The DB, for those who don’t know, is kind of a consortium of wishy-washy small-’c’ conservatives comprised of pseudo-intellectuals, Frum-esque charlatans and, of course, the Queen of Young and Restless Conservatism, that stalwart of the middle and unashamedly self-congratulatory Daughter of Maverick…the Blonde Muppet herself, Meghan McCain.

(Incidentally, Meggie Mac rests much of her alleged conservative cred on the fact that she was on stage as an embryo in 1980 at Ronald Reagan’s nomination. For what it’s worth, and that would be nothing, I was there too, as a 3-year old with my Mom and Dad, who was an alternate delegate. Read some more books Meg. I still think you could be a real asset once you get a handle on the truth)

That said, Reihan Salam seems to be the most cogent of the bunch and his article linked above is actually a very good one outlining the quandry into which Obama has put himself with his idiotic, counterproductive non-strategy-strategy for future U.S. military operations in Afghanistan:

And so the president is caught in an extremely awkward position. Abandoned by the Democrats, he is relying on the support of a shrinking centrist foreign-policy establishment that, to put it bluntly, has zero political muscle. The conservatives who back the troop surge don’t think the president is going far enough, and most expect that his effort to craft a compromise counterinsurgency will fail. Among grassroots conservatives, there is a growing sense that the U.S. military is too hamstrung by concern about civilian casualties and political correctness to wage an effective military campaign under Obama, which implies that there is little point in offering him political support.

That’s exactly right. Obama isn’t even trying to “win” this war. I said before and I’m sticking to it, this move is an entirely political one, calculated to achieve maximum gain on the back end at the expense of our troops, the mission and short-term liberal disgust on the front. Eighteen months (or so) from now, many more soldiers will have died, the domestic Afghan security forces will be unprepared and largely compromised, Al-Queda and/or the Taliban will have regrouped and manned up for their own surge but Obama will be pulling the troops out just around the time he starts gearing up for his run at a second term.

Teriffic.

One more quick article today on this from George Will:

Obama’s surge will bring to 51,000 his Afghanistan escalation since March. Supposedly this will buy time for Afghan forces to become adequate. But it is not intended to buy much time: Although the war is in its 98th month, Obama’s “Mission Accomplished” banner will be unfurled 19 months from now — when Afghanistan’s security forces supposedly will be self-sufficient. He must know this will not happen.

[...]

On Tuesday the Taliban heard a distant U.S. trumpet sounding withdrawal beginning in 19 months. Also hearing it were Afghans who must decide whether to bet their lives on the Americans, who will begin striking their tents in July 2011, or on the Taliban, who live there.

Many Democrats, who think the $787 billion stimulus was too small and want another one (but by another name), are flinching from the $30 billion one-year cost of the Afghan surge. Considering that the GM and GMAC bailouts ($63 billion) are five times bigger than Afghanistan’s GDP ($12 billion), Democrats seem to be selective worriers about deficits. Of course, their real worry is how to wriggle out of their endorsement of the “necessary” war in Afghanistan, which was a merely tactical endorsement intended to disparage the “war of choice” in Iraq.

The president’s party will not support his new policy, his budget will not accommodate it, our overstretched and worn down military will be hard-pressed to execute it, and Americans’ patience will not be commensurate with Afghanistan’s limitless demands for it. This will not end well.

A case can be made for a larger and more protracted surge. A better case can be made for a radically reduced investment of resources and prestige in that forlorn country. Obama has not made a convincing case for his tentative surgelet.

George Orwell said the quickest way to end a war is to lose it. But Obama’s halfhearted embrace of a half-baked nonstrategy — briefly feinting toward the Taliban (or al-Qaida or a “syndicate of terror”) while lunging for the exit ramp — makes a protracted loss probable.

Will is right, this will not end well. I don’t always agree with Will and he makes a point in the article of lying again about supposed “non-existent” WMD in Iraq to square his circle, but this time he’s right on the money. Old-Guard establishment conservative sellout or not, this will not end well.

Russ

So now the Speaker of the House and a Democratic Senator from North Dakota have in the span of a week, basically called those who are wary of the propaganda-ready show trial of KSM down the street from Ground Zero, un-American reactionaries who should pack up and leave because they, not us, love America.

Wow. Take that 9/11 families. Incidentally, the rally to protest HoBama’s decision will be on “December 5 at a park adjacent to the Manhattan federal courthouse where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others will be tried just blocks from Ground Zero.” You can sign their petition here. Pam has the story.

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) told CNSNews.com that civilian courts are well-suited to prosecute al Qaeda terrorists and that “if people don’t believe in our system, maybe they ought to go somewhere else.”

Conrad also dismissed a question about the rights of terrorists captured on foreign battlefields and the rules of evidence in terms of a civilian court trial as not serious.

Well of course he did. Honestly people, you and your crazy concerns about the “constitution” and “laws”…ease up off my back about it:

On Capitol Hill on Nov. 19, CNSNews.com asked Conrad: “We’re going to have a civilian trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. If our troops–the evidence against him is going to be found in Afghanistan, there on the battlefield–if our troops need to enter a house and they think that there’s evidence there, should they have to establish probable cause and get a search warrant from a judge first?”

Conrad said: “You’re not being serious about these questions, are you?”

Pffft. Evidence.

Maybe we oughta go somewhere else.

(watch the video at the link. I don’t know how to add it here)

Sixty-three percent (63%) of U.S. voters say political correctness prevented the military from responding to warning signs from Major Nidal Malik Hasan that could have prevented the Fort Hood shootings from taking place.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 16% disagree and do not believe political correctness kept military authorities from possibly stopping the killing of 13 people and the wounding of many others in the November 5 incident. Twenty-one percent (21%) are not sure.

This is tremendously encouraging for someone like me who despises political correctness, not only because I’m a Jersey bigmouth who lacks a filter, but also because I’m someone who has studied enough to recognize the significant damage such a speech regime does to free states and the quality of political discourse. Make no mistake about it, I firmly believe that P.C. is what’s bringing down the quality of our political discourse and not the yellin’ and the cussin’.

The Fort Hood massacre was a preventable terrorist attack that happened because the powers that be were indirectly silenced by the disastrous, amorphous, intangible shock collar known as “political correctness”.

That’s it.

My first question is whether this 34,000 is the same as this 34,000. Is this just another leak that won’t pan out? Why do we have to wait until December 1 to get the announcement? I think this 34,000 is the same as the support troops increase he announced in October, but perhaps with an added component of combat troops.

The word “combat” shows up only once in the article:

As it now stands, the plan calls for the deployment over a nine-month period beginning in March of three Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., and a Marine brigade from Camp Lejeune, N.C., for as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops.

“For as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops”? This isn’t anywhere near what the Generals have asked for and, depending on the breakdown of that smaller 23,000 number, isn’t by any account I’ve heard even a reasonable number ofcombat troops necessary for making a difference:

The plan adopted by Obama would fall well short of the 80,000 troops McChrystal suggested in August as a “low-risk option” that would offer the best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan.

It splits the difference between two other McChrystal options: a “high-risk” approach that called for 20,000 additional troops and a “medium-risk” option that would add 40,000 to 45,000 troops.

There are 68,000 U.S. troops and 42,000 from other countries in Afghanistan. The U.S. Army’s recently revised counterinsurgency manual estimates that an all-out counterinsurgency campaign in a country with Afghanistan’s population would require about 600,000 troops.

So the “plan” splits the difference between the ‘bad’ and ‘worse’ plans. This guy is just some kind of leader isn’t he?

Maybe instead of hacking away coming nowhere near 100 on the Golf course this clown should have been studying with his Generals and coming up with an actual exit strategy, instead of this new “off-ramp” nonsense.

And what is an “off-ramp”? I’m glad you asked:

The administration’s plan contains “off-ramps,” points starting next June at which Obama could decide to continue the flow of troops, halt the deployments and adopt a more limited strategy or “begin looking very quickly at exiting” the country, depending on political and military progress, one defense official said.

Ed hit the nail on the head on this:

A Commander in Chief doesn’t need “off-ramps.”  Any President can call an end to a deployment based on his own judgment.  Putting these conditions into the American strategy signals weakness — a desire to pull out without getting blamed for the decision.   Obama wants to be off the hook for an eventual withdrawal by claiming that he’s forced to do it because of these benchmark failures.  And if Obama’s that keen to retreat, he should just do it now.

I gotta get up earlier in the morning.

That’s the money point right there. Doesn’t it just seem like Obama’s doing all of this to placate some political opponents instead of, you know, doing everything possible to win the war? There is no reason whatsoever for these “off-ramps” because he’s the boss anyway.

Couple this with yesterday’s rumors about possible surrender negotiations and it becomes unavoidably clear that because our President is not committed to the lives of our soldiers, it’s time to bring them all home and let the chips fall where they may.

There is no way on this Earth that Obama is playing to a “mid-20’s” handicap.What that means, basically, is that he is consistently hitting three strokes under 100 over a par-72 18 holes, a feat that isn’t accomplished often even for “serious recreational golfers”. As an example, I’ve broken 100 only three times in probably somewhere north of 60 rounds of Golf, and I practice as often as I possibly can. Obama, disturbingly, has played somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 rounds as President. What this idiotic report is saying is that Obama’s peak performance for half of the required rounds is a 92-97.

No…Way.

This might be the biggest lie I’ve heard yet. By all accounts the guy played a handful of times before he became President. Since then, it is clear that he has played an inappropriate amount of times considering the issues with which he has to deal and how badly he’s screwing them up. But I will eat the circuits in my laptop if Obama has broken the century mark more than once. And even if he did break it once, he got lucky that time.

No, that’s not strong enough. I’m willing to wager everything I’ll ever be worth that he hasn’t legitimately come within a half-dozen strokes of 100 yet on an honest scorecard. Golf is an honest gentleman’s game. Obama would no doubt lie on the Golf Course just as easily as he lies to us on a daily basis.

For those of you who don’t know, Golf is by far the hardest game in the world to play well consistently. Not the hardest single thing to do in sport mind you, that honor is still reserved for hitting a major league slider squarely; despite Elizabeth Williamson’s snarky “ugly 20’s” handicap crack, the fact remains that unless Obama is not only playing too much Golf but practicing it as well, there is no way he’s coming anywhere near, let alone under 100 with consistency.

Williamson says that while the President’s handicap is a “matter of national security” according to Axelrod, those who have seen him play say his swing is “robotic”, that he’s hit another player’s ball and that his swing shows he “needs a little bit of work”.

Translation: The President’s Golf game is worse than his foreign policy strategy. Yeh, chew on that for a second.

Trust me on this one. There is simply…no..way. Golfers who read this will know what I’m talking about.

Consider it an open challenge: Obama v. Me over 18 to decide the fate of ObamaCare. Any course, anywhere, anytime.

Whenever you’re ready hotshot.

(this post was edited for language by the author. Many thanks to RedState readers for bringing this to my attention.)

Barack Obama looked tired on Thursday, as he stood in the Blue House in Seoul, the official residence of the South Korean president. He also seemed irritable and even slightly forlorn. The CNN cameras had already been set up. But then Obama decided not to play along, and not to answer the question he had already been asked several times on his trip: what did he plan to take home with him? Instead, he simply said “thank you, guys,” and disappeared. David Axelrod, senior advisor to the president, fielded the journalists’ questions in the hallway of the Blue House instead, telling them that the public’s expectations had been “too high.”

Wait…whose expectations were “too high”? What people were sitting around back home going, ‘Man, Obama’s gonna topple Chinese Communism while he’s over there and maybe Free Tibet while he’s at it.’

Too high? I for one think that after watching our President bow down to royalty, his trip is a rousing success because he didn’t bend over for Hu Jintao and take it up the tailpipe on State television. After watching Obama fail miserably everywhere he goes, my expectations for him consist of hopefully not selling nuclear secrets for a photo-op.Too high? Axelrod is a funny guy sometimes.

But what I’m not so sure about is the writer’s suggestion that Obama may have to alter course and take a more, gasp!, Bush-like approach to foreign policy:

There are many indications that the man in charge at the White House will take a tougher stance in the future. Obama’s advisors fear a comparison with former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, even more than with Bush.

Have you gotten this feeling from Obama or his team? I haven’t. I’ve seen no indication of a toughening Obama except for some useless and meaningless get tough talk like “time is running out,” Obama said in Korea. What the hell does that mean coming from Obama? Nothing.

Obama is a child, nothing more. He is a lost little boy playing grown-up in a serious and often dangerous world. I’ll be honest with you and say that if Obama were thinking about transitioning to a more serious approach to foreign policy, that could end up being even more scary than the status quo because, like a child, Obama simply doesn’t know how to act like a grown-up. If he tries playing Reagan or Bush on the world stage, there’s a very good chance that the real grown-ups in the room won’t take too kindly to the gesture. Like Newt says, “Carter tried weakness and the world got tougher and tougher because the predators, the aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators, when they sense weakness, they all start pushing ahead…”

A year has passed now since Obama was elected and the world is acutely aware of who he is and who he isn’t. He is a foreign policy neophyte with zero experience, a tendency toward condescension and little credibility. He is not willing to stand up for human rights, defend Freedom abroad or challenge the world to promote our interests. If Obama tries a 180 now it will be interpreted as disingenuous and backfire royally.

I’d just rather Obama stop traveling and get serious here at home for a while.

Russ

I mean…just look at her.

But seriously, is there anything more fun than speculating about what Sarah might do? Not for my money…

The reason it came up is because Rasmussen has McCain and potential challenger J.D. Hayworth in a statistical dead heat at 45-43 Maverick.

Bill Kristol at the Standard thinks Sarah will ride to the rescue in the event McCain is about to fall.

I couldn’t disagree more. I can’t see Sarah Palin sticking it to her base by going back on her word to only back Conservatives. No way. That doesn’t happen.

What’s more though…? I don’t think Sarah owes McCain anything. Listen to me, Sarah Palin would have been where she is now one way or another. Look at her. If it wasn’t Maverick, it would have been someone else.

But more likely than that it would have been Sarah Palin herself. I knew who Sarah Palin was before McCain picked her. In fact, I’m pretty sure I posted something to the effect that I hoped he would pick her during the run-up last year. Can anyone tell me with a straight face that Sarah Palin would never have wound up on the big stage without John McCain?

Ludicrous I tell you. Ludicrous.

Justice McNamara said here a little while ago that “Sarah Palin is going to be President one day. It’s inevitable so accept it and live with it. Its star power…and she has it.” This is true. I think there’s more to it than just star power, but it’s true nonetheless.

But it’s true whether John McCain ever picked her for V.P. Some people are stars. Sarah Palin is one of them. She doesn’t owe John McCain anything anymore except maybe a polite thank you and a nice bottle of scotch for his retirement. All John McCain did was accelerate the inevitable.

Incidentally, I just wanted to highlight one of the funniest lines I’ve ever read in a blog post. Allahpundit:

Remember, Reid and The One are itching to revive amnesty in the Senate next year as part of their grand “piss off every last independent in America” strategy.

I literally almost fell off my chair laughing when I read that. I’m still laughing.

But, if that’s true, and I for one happen to believe it is, it’s just another reason that Sarah has to run, if at all, for the Conservative. This is assuming that Hayworth is not an amnesty guy, of course.

In the end, it’s probably most palatable for everyone if Sarah just declines to get involved with Arizona at all. But there’s no way she campaigns for McCain against a viable Conservative candidate.

She’s too right for that.

This is the point dear readers. Information is good. Ordinarily, the more information at our disposal the better. The more data we have on the pros and cons of any medical procedure or test the better.

That’s not the issue though and, not surprisingly, the NYT misses or simply ignores the point as they so often do. The relevant question is, who is the proper decision maker concerning whether women should or should not undergo a given test? The answer tothat question is, quite frankly, more important in the long run than whether more tests or less tests are the better option:

The challenge of persuading patients and doctors to accept such standards requires a transformational shift in thinking, particularly when the disease involved is as prevalent, as deadly, and as potentially curable as cancer. How do you convince them that it is in their best interest to play the odds when they have been conditioned for so long to not gamble on health? After all, for the one in 1,904 women in their 40s whose life would be saved by early detection of breast cancer, taking the risk would in retrospect seem a bad choice.

“This represents a broader understanding that the efforts to detect cancer early can be a two-edged sword,” said Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at Dartmouth who is among the pioneers of research into the negative effects of early detection. “Yes, it helps some people, but it harms others.”

Dr. Welch said this week’s recommendations could mark a turning point in public acceptance of that notion. “Now we’re trying to negotiate that balance,” he said. “There’s no right answer, but I can tell you that the right answer is not always to start earlier, look harder and look more frequently.”

That concept is proving easier to swallow in the halls of Dartmouth Medical School than in the halls of Congress. Coming as they did at the height of debate over a sweeping health care overhaul, the recommendations have provided fresh ammunition for those who warn that greater government involvement in medical decision-making would lead to rationing of health care. It has not mattered that the breast cancer screening recommendation is only advisory, and that the federal government, the American Cancer Society, and numerous private insurers have said they will not adopt it.

Of course it doesn’t matter. Just because the NYT is confident that the Government won’t ration care doesn’t mean they won’t. In fact, based on the NYT track record in predicting what Government will or will not do, you’ve got pretty damn good odds betting against them on any given issue.

Why does anyone need the Government to advise on this issue anyway? Rapid dissemination of information isn’t an issue anymore and hasn’t been for half a century. If Dartmouth Medical School, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists or anyone else has data or research they think is important let them publish it and subject to review. This is the way it’s been done since time immemorial.

The problem arises when Government, who always has an agenda, gets involved and starts issuing “advisories” from on high. Who cares if the task force’s recommendations aren’t binding now? The fact that a Government agency took a position on this issue is enough to make any rational person stop and ask why. And when no less an authority than the American Cancer Society comes back and says the Government is backing the wrong horse, it makes it even less likely that the Government made the right decision.

For a decade now we’ve gone through this charade with the “global warming” idiots who have been proven unequivocally wrong after several phony IPCC studies were debunked in their entirety. The Obama administration, through the Preventive Services Task Force, has now picked a side in a debate over when women should have mammograms performed before anyone has had a chance to put one sides analysis through the proper peer review ringer. Couple that with the fact that Government run health care will lead to rationing and Kay Bailey Hutchinson is right:

One life out of 1,904 to be saved,” Ms. Hutchison said, “but the choice is not going to be yours. It’s going to be someone else that has never met you, that does not know family history.” She added, “This is not the American way of looking at our health care coverage.”

If the Obama administration was ever serious about returning science to its rightful place, they should immediately retract the task force’s recommendations and let science, real science, hammer this out the way it was meant to be. Put your findings out there for the world and let science have at it.

Otherwise we may just find out that, like there’s no such thing as anthropogenic global warming, Dartmouth and the Federal Government were wrong.

It’s not easy, but basically the plan would be for the State’s to enact Amendments to their own Constitutions guaranteeing that private choice in medical care shall not be infringed nor penalties imposed for failing to obtain coverage. Will recounts an Arizona initiative to do just that:

In 2006, long before there was an Obama administration determined to impose a command-and-control federal health-care system, a young orthopedic surgeon walked into the Goldwater Institute here with an idea. The institute, America’s most potent advocate of limited government, embraced Eric Novack’s idea for protecting Arizonans from health-care coercion. In 2008, Arizonans voted on Novack’s proposed amendment to the state’s Constitution:

“No law shall be passed that restricts a person’s freedom of choice of private health care systems or private plans of any type. No law shall interfere with a person’s or entity’s right to pay directly for lawful medical services, nor shall any law impose a penalty or fine, of any type, for choosing to obtain or decline health care coverage or for participation in any particular health care system or plan.”

Read the article for Will’s Constitutionality analysis, which effectively boils down to ‘it very well might be found Constitutional’. The only thing I’ll add to it is that the question, I think, will ultimately come down first to whether Congress intended to completely “occupy the field” and second, more importantly, whether Congress even has the right to do so with an issue such as Health Care.

So who goes first? Oklahoma? Texas? Will notes that despite being outspent 5 to 1 by opponents of the initiative, the measure lost by less than 9,000 votes out of 2.1 million cast. That’s good news for State’s that want to get a jump on throwing up as many roadblocks to ObamaCare as possible.

So be the first to call your Governor and suggest it. Hell I may even do so with Jersey’s newly-minted Republican, if only for shits and giggles.

Russ

Surely not us.

One connection that’s not talked about often enough is that between economic superiority and military superiority. They obviously go hand in hand. Your two most prominent examples being how we marshaled our resources in the 40’s to defeat the Socialist Nazis and how we did so again in the 80’s to defeat the Communist Soviets. One involved bloodshed and the other, excluding for this exercise the proxy wars, did not, but the fact remains that both were won as much because free enterprise will always defeat collectivist economies as they were won because free people have more for which to fight.

A devastating consequence of Obama’s systematic deconstruction of our economic engine will inevitably be that our military dominance will suffer:

The new dynamic - in which the U.S. remains a world force, but does not hold the pre-eminent position it attained after World War II - is the result of global financial centers shifting to Asia, said Stephen Daggett, a defense policy and budget specialist for the Congressional Research Service.

“The days of the American Century were really in the last 50 years of the 20th century,” told members of the House Armed Services Committee.

This is bad news. For all of the liberals whining about our military for the last century, nobody can even plausibly contend that we’ve ever had aspirations of expansion and conquest beyond our present borders. We may set up shop in most corners of the globe, but those outposts are and have always been defensive in nature. The trouble arises when the balance of military power shifts to collectivist nations who do have expansionist tendencies. Give those nations an opening and they will take advantage.

Still, military spending as a percentage of the nation’s gross domestic product has remained relatively slight at 1 percent currently, compared with a post-World War II peak of 14 percent during the Korean War, Mr. Donnelly said.

“It seems this administration finds massive amounts of money for bailout and [stimulus spending] but not enough to fund the basic money needed for defensive hardware and personnel,” said Rep. Trent Franks, Arizona Republican.

While information from behind the Silk Curtain is, as usual, notoriously difficult to analyze accurately, China by comparison is and has been spending close to 5% of their GDP on their military. The double edged sword of our own shifting priorities under Democratic rule and China’s economic juggernaut with their clear desire to challenge the U.S. for global dominance does not bode well for stability in the not too distant future.

Like so many other issues, why liberals refuse to learn unmistakable lessons from history is truly baffling. Try as you may, but at the end of the day the only rational conclusion to which one can come is that liberalism is indeed a sickness of the mind whereby all analytic faculties are consumed and neutralized by an overwhelming lust for the power to control man’s destiny.

I don’t think China will make a direct move on us anytime soon. But based on the bluster from other hostile nations over the past 11 months, don’t be surprised if they do. Joe Biden told us that the world will challenge Barack Obama.

In possibly his only prescient moment, Biden was absolutely correct.

Russ