Red State

Nouri al-Maliki had best watch out for Obamabus, because it hungers, and my first question just got answered: Maliki denies the report from Der Spiegel, saying that his words were "misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately," according to CNN.

Maliki became a quick friend to Obama as soon as that report came out, but now will he, too, go under the bus along with grandma?

Update: Via Gateway Pundit we have the original statement made by the Obama campaign on the 'mistranslated' remarks by Maliki:

Senator Obama welcomes Prime Minister Maliki's support for a 16 month tieline for the redeployment of U.S [sic] combat brigades. This presents an important opportunity to transition to Iraqi responsibility, while restoring our military [sic] and increasing our commitment [sic] to finish the fight in Afghanistan.

It's not a good idea when you're trying to present yourself as a great diplomat, to go and fall so easily for an agenda-driven 'mistranslation' of an important allied leader by some European magazine, I should think. Oops.

P.S. What exactly was "increasing our commitment" supposed to mean? Does "commitment" come on a sliding scale for Barack Obama? That is, do some commitments not really mean he's committed, but others do? Which commitments has he made on the campaign trail need increased so they'll stick?

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Remaining arguments against the proposition that the surge and the counterinsurgency strategy implemented in Iraq have been successful revolve around the contention that there has been no political reconciliation in the country.

Such claims are harder to make these days:

Iraq's largest Sunni Arab political bloc returned to the government fold Saturday after calling off a nearly one-year boycott of the Shiite-dominated leadership--another critical stride toward healing sectarian rifts.

The return of the National Accordance Front does more than politically reunite some of Iraq's main centers of power.

It was seen as a significant advance toward reconciliation and efforts to cement security cooperation between Shiite-led forces and armed Sunni groups that rose up against al-Qaida in Iraq.

The United States has pressured Iraq's government to work toward settling the sectarian feuds, which brought daily bloodshed until recent months. The hope is that more parties staked in the future of Iraq could mean a quicker exit for U.S. and other foreign forces.

If such a quick exit is possible, it will be because the surge and the counterinsurgency effort made it possible to secure a more peaceful existence in Iraq and set the stage for acts political reconciliation the likes of which have been reported in this story. And yes, it occurs to me that we ought to reward the Presidential candidate whose confidence in the surge and the counterinsurgency plan has been proven to have been entirely justified.

It got reported ad nauseam and was held up as an example of all of the poor planning the United States had engaged in while preparing for the aftermath of the fall of the Ba'athist regime.

And here's the thing: It didn't happen.

A recent mission to Iraq headed by top archaeologists from the U.S. and U.K. who specialize in Mesopotamia found that, contrary to received wisdom, southern Iraq's most important historic sites -- eight of them -- had neither been seriously damaged nor looted after the American invasion. This, according to a report by staff writer Martin Bailey in the July issue of the Art Newspaper. The article has caused confusion, not to say consternation, among archaeologists and has been largely ignored by the mainstream press. Not surprising perhaps, since reports by experts blaming the U.S. for the postinvasion destruction of Iraq's heritage have been regular fixtures of the news.

[. . .]

According to the Art Newspaper article, "The international team . . . had been expecting to find considerable evidence of looting after 2003 but to their astonishment and relief there was none. Not a single recent dig hole was found at the eight sites, and the only evidence of illegal digging came from holes which were partially covered with silt and vegetation, which means they [were] several years old."

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If you are a New Yorker and pay taxes, you had better hope that John McCain wins the next election. Because if he doesn't, your taxes may skyrocket:

New York tax filers reporting more than $375,000 a year in earned income may end up paying nearly 60% of their wages in taxes to the government under a Barack Obama presidency, economists who have analyzed his plan said.

The Democratic presidential candidate is proposing not only raising the federal income tax, but also adding a Social Security tax for those Americans earning more than $250,000 a year. For New Yorkers, that could mean that if the current Social Security rate is applied, the marginal tax rate, or rate on every extra dollar earned, could rise to 58%.

"This is a very eye-popping number," a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Alan Viard, said.

Read it all. $375K per year is not chicken feed, but it's not all that much in the grand scheme of things either, what with college costs for kids, the cost of raising and educating them in the years before college and the costs of living in New York. In addition to all of these burdens, an Obama Administration is itching to impose a tax regime that will take away hard earned money from taxpayers and will slow down economic activity so significantly as to exacerbate any recession in which we may currently find ourselves.

I would, by the way, not be surprised in the slightest to find out that taxpayers in other states will find themselves under similarly oppressive tax regimes. Of course, the question of whether or not they will be taxed to death depends on how they vote in the upcoming Presidential election.

The anti-Chambliss meme will start slow. First the media will remind voters of the anti-Cleland ad Chambliss ran. You know the one. Everyone on the left claims it compared Cleland to Bin Laden, even though it didn't.

But the media will echo that sentiment.

They'll remind voters about how close the race was in all the polls. They go on the attack over Chambliss's attacks. The national press will pick up the story.

Then they'll start innocently trying to give this story credibility. They'll suggest that Chambliss stole the election with Diebold's help.

That's the way the media works these days. The media, you'll note, is not treating this Raw Story article credibly right now. Instead, they are going to let it fester. Pretty soon, however, the Raw Story article will move beyond what is largely seen as a partisan operation designed to build an anti-conservative, anti-GOP narrative, and will make its way into alternative news publications.

After it has sat a while in those publications, the MSM will declare that it simply must investigate the charges since so many people have begun talking about it. And they'll never actually deal with the substance. They'll just touch it enough to get a taint of illegitimacy to Chambliss's election right around mid-October.

That's what those people do these days when their investigative journalists resign to run as far left Democrats for Congress.

How did this not get more attention?

With reporting deadlines looming, congressional officers have issued revised guidelines that ease some of the lobbying disclosure requirements enacted last year.

The revised guidance, issued by the Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate, relaxed the rules for disclosure of lobbyist contributions to parties at this summer’s Democratic and Republican national conventions, among other changes.

So, just as the Democratic convention is getting more and more behind in fundraising, they make it easier for lobbyists for pay for the parties that they can't afford to pay for. How bad is it? From the Wall Street Journal

Under the new guidelines, "it's hard to envision any event at the conventions that would trigger disclosure," said Kenneth Gross, an attorney at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP who advises lobbyists on complying with ethics rules. "This relieves lobbyists from tracking and reporting much information about attending or paying for events involving public officials, that would have been required before."

Just remember this when you see all the promises. What I wonder is where the outrage is.

The McCain campaign has been showing signs of life, as Moe deftly points out. There is one issue that we know motivates McCain enough to go on the offensive, and that is national security in general and the war in Iraq in particular. Barack Obama is set to travel to Iraq to view firsthand the success of the troop surge strategy that he opposed. And the McCain campaign isn't about to let him try to share in the credit.

The campaign released a statement yesterday, reacting to the news that the Bush Administration and the Iraqi government have come to an agreement on a "general time horizon" for the continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. To some on the left, the announcement is vindication for Obama's plan to remove troops from Iraq quickly. For some on the right, the announcement pulls the rug out from under John McCain, who has steadfastly argued that the duration of the U.S. troop presence should be determined by conditions, not politics. Both are evidence of shallow thinking.

Rather than a defeat for McCain, and evidence of the prescience of the Senator from H.O.P.E.™, the announcement is a vindication of McCain's call for a surge of troops to begin with. It is evidence of the correctness of Republican and Administration policies on the war and should be celebrated as such. It also shows the dangerous irony of Obama's and liberals' timidity on matters of war. In their zeal to end hostilities and prevent casualties, Democratic policies lead to longer wars and more bloodshed.

McCain's statement hits all those themes and more.

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For Sunday, July 20, 2008

FOX News Sunday (FNS): Host Chris Wallace will talk to Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen about Iraq, then to surrogates: Joe Lieberman (McCain) and Evan Bayh (Obama).

This Week (ABC): Host George Stephanopoulos won't be there, as the network is doing the British Open golf. Without American Tiger Woods in the tournament, good luck with that, fellows.

Meet the Press (NBC): Host Tom Brokaw will talk to Al Gore about his latest version of weird science. Interesting, the two journalists on the roundtable later will be David Gregory and Chuck Todd, both mentioned as possible hosts for MTP eventually.

Face the Nation (CBS): Host Bob Schieffer seeks to avoid controversy by turning his questions to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Late Edition (CNN): Host Wolf Blitzer talks to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; House GOP Whip Roy Blunt; and his usual cast of thousands.

= = = = =

My wife will make me coffee. Mike Mullen, Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh, Al Gore, Hank Paulson... they're all great Americans with important things to say, save Gore, and now that I think of it, it's not every week that we have earth-shakingly exciting guests. And the people watching golf will be no better off. Or not much.

I'll have the review live, on the front page, tomorrow.

Via Gateway Pundit:

Bring it.

To the extent that national security plays a role in this election--and unlike many observers, I am not convinced that it will not play a significant role--it should be recalled over and over and over again that when it came to discussing and analyzing the prospects of the troop surge in Iraq and the implementation of the attendant counterinsurgency strategy, one side got it right and another got it completely and entirely wrong.

Each side is represented by one major party candidate for the Presidency of the United States. I've called the attention of readers to this before, but consider once again the words of Machiavelli:

Of no little importance to a prince is his choice of ministers, who are good or bad according to the prince's intelligence. In forming an opinion about a ruler's brains, the first thing is to look at the men he has around him, for when they are adequate and loyal he can be considered prudent, because he recognizes those who are competent and keeps them loyal. When they are otherwise, the prince is always to be estimated low, because the first error he makes, he makes in choosing advisers.

If Machiavelli was right, then when one goes into the voting booth, one ought to recall both which candidate showed the most impressive amount of brainpower both when it came to predicting and gauging the surge's success and when it came to selecting friends with the best judgment possible on the surge's success. The candidate who scored the highest in this competition has a strong claim to being the one best prepared to take on the challenges and rigors of the Presidency.

And fortunately, Peter Wehner identifies who that candidate is in the link above.

That appears to be what has been established between the United States and Iraq in figuring out the future status of American forces in Iraq and when those forces may ultimately be able to come home. For more on this issue, you should make sure to check out this interivew between NBC's Andrea Mitchell and General David Petraeus:

I can see myself signing on to a plan with "aspirational goals" concerning the future of American troops in Iraq. But hard and fast timetables with dates will only serve to give remaining insurgent and terrorist forces the information they need to wait out American forces and then run rampant once the United States leaves. There must remain significant amounts of flexibility in any plan to allow for adaptations to changes in conditions, as General Petraeus points out in his interview with Andrea Mitchell. The absence of such flexibility will not only make any agreement not worth the paper that it is written on, it will actively work to undermine both American and Iraqi security interests.

Do I really care whether or not Sam Nunn referred to the Czech Republic and/or Slovakia by the outdated name of Czechoslovakia?

No. No, I do not. It was likely an honest mistake, the kind we make all the time no matter how smart we are.

But of course, the fact that John McCain used the name "Czechoslovakia" out of habit caused a brand new spate of "John McCain is senile/losing it/not smart enough to be President" stories. I await with eagerness similar stories to come out about Sam Nunn and his fitness for serving as Vice President or Secretary of State/Defense in an Obama Administration. Not to mention stories wondering why Barack Obama relies on an adviser who believes that "Czechoslovakia" is still extant as a geopolitical entity.

I mean, turnabout is still fair play, is it not?

The easiest way to measure the overall partisan makeup of the country is to ask people. Many pollsters do this with regularity. Rasmussen does this on a monthly basis with a massive sample. Here are some of those numbers:

DATE YEAR: R% D% I% Diff%
Nov 2004: 37.1 38.6 24.3 -1.6
Nov 2006: 31.4 37.5 31.2 -6.1
Nov 2007: 32.5 37.4 30.2 -4.9

Jan 2008: 33.1 38.7 28.2 -5.6
Feb 2008: 31.8 41.5 26.7 -9.7
Mar 2008: 32.1 41.1 26.8 -9.1
Apr 2008: 31.4 41.4 27.2 -10.0
May 2008: 31.6 41.7 26.6 -10.1
Jun 2008: 31.5 41.0 27.5 -9.5

From 2004 to 2006, Rs disappeared by Ds stayed about the same. Since 2006, Rs have stayed about the same but Ds have gained. Overall, we have moved from close to parity to a Dem lead of 10 points. But these are national numbers, and we all know that states are what matters.

So I was happy to see someone took the time to find voter registration numbers on a state-by-state basis:

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Barack Obama has apparently given up on the idea of attempting to draw parallels between himself and John F. Kennedy by going to Berlin. (Not to say there aren't obvious parallels: unprepared and feckless to be sure but too early to have the Bay of Pigs.) He's still going to Berlin. And we're informed that he will bring his HOPECHANGE carnie act to the Siegessäule. The Victory Monument.

The next round in Germany's favorite parlor game - where will Barack Obama give his public speech during his visit here next week - is under way.

All bets are now riding on the Victory Column in the former West Berlin, with the Brandenburg Gate visible less than a kilometer and a half, or a mile, away in the distance. The Obama campaign has yet to announce a location and declined to comment on the reports.

In 1985, Ronald Reagan paid a visit to Bitburg cemeteryin the, then, Bundesrepublik Deutschland. A crap storm ensued because some of the German war dead in the cemetery were Waffen SS.

The Siegessäule, as the name implies, was built to honor "victory." Now which victory, we have a right to ask, has Germany had since Blücher, (Field Marshal not Frau) saved Wellington's bacon at Waterloo that an American politician would wish to be associated with?

In this case apparently three of them appeal to the Obama campaign. The Danish-Prussian War, when Prussia forever removed the threat of Danish hegemony from Europe and snapped up the Danish duchies of Schleswig and Holstein in the process. The Austro-Prussian War in which Prussia snapped up a handful of German principalities. And the Franco-Prussian War in which Prussia eliminated the remainder of the German statelets and took Alsace and Lorraine from France in the bargain.

And we all thought Obama was going to be a wuss on defense policy.

One:

....aannnnnnd then Two:

http://www.redstate.com/static/redstate/doc/2008/07/18/OBAMA_TRAVEL_PACKET.doc

I don't know which is going to tick off Obama supporters more - and truth be told? I can't say that I remotely care. Hey, it's not my fault that the Democrats seem ready to nominate a candidate who, if they had cut Hillary Clinton in half, would have ended up being the third most qualified national security choice among the Democrats...

Moe Lane

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