August 27, 2008

The Weekly Standard published this photograph of the set for Barack H. Obama's grand speech Thursday night at Denver's Invesco Field:

Everybody, including the Standard, has described this set as "a miniature Greek temple;" the post above is titled "the Temple of Obama." Alas, everybody but me has it all wrong.

Here is a zoom on that section of the photograph showing the ersatz colonnade:

That's not a Greek temple at all. But it certainly seems quite familiar, doesn't it? Imagine viewing it from the grandstand... do you get it?

If you're still uncertain, take a look at this picture. See any similarities?

Yes sir, having previously designed his own Obamic presidential seal, B.O. now constructs his own, private White House. But like everything else in Obama's campaign, it's nought but a pretty facade with nothing behind it... half of a soap bubble.

There's a moral in here somewhere, but darned if I can suss it out. However, I do wonder what comes next. Starting next week, will Obama begin delivering his airy-fairy, canned speeches from his very own knock-off of the Oval Office?

I'm reminded of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer rescues the set from the old Merv Griffin Show from the dumpster, sets it up in his living room, and proceeds to create mock talk shows with Jerry, Elaine, and George, just as if he really were Griffin (a weird and bizarre Griffin). Eventually, Kramer becomes so consumed by the fantasy that he cannot stop.

Isn't there something more than a little creepy about one of the two major candidates spending hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars playing "dress-up" with the trappings of the presidency?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 27, 2008, at the time of 6:18 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

Here are a few more, taken from two of my favorite contact sports: movies and politics. Play them at your own risk.

To the king

Take a shot every time Barack H. Obama exhibits classic symptoms of megalomania.

To the queen also

You must drink whenever Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham says anything condescending.

We, the lying

Watch the elite media's coverage of a political event -- a convention, a debate, a fundraiser, etc. Toss back a shot every time one of the unbiased reporters accidentally refers to the Democrats in first person plural.

Straight-up express

Have an Irish whiskey (neat) every time John McCain refers to his audience as "my friends."

Edward the red-nosed senator

Have a cocktail whenever it appears that Ted Kennedy has had a cocktail.

Captain left-turn

Listen to Dennis Kucinich speak and have a shot whenever he starts sounding like Marvin the Martian.

Southern comfort

Watch the Republican National Convention. Take a drink whenever you hear anything depressing or defeatist.

Geneva Convention definition of torture

Watch the Democratic National Convention. Take a drink whenever you feel the urgent need to do so.

Liver of the thin man

Watch any William Powell, Myrna Loy movie. Have a drink whenever either one of them does (if you're a real mensch, have the same drink they do).

Wheel in the sky keeps on turning

Take a drink whenever you hear about another Hollywood remake of a classic move. Or a cult movie. Or a successful comic book, videogame, or amusement-park ride.

And finally...

Mojave

Watch any Hollywood musical made post 1970. Have a shot whenever any principal sings three bars on key. (This one is safe for minors, pregnant women, and alcoholics.)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 27, 2008, at the time of 3:36 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

August 26, 2008

According to Real Clear Politics, Team Obama just released a press statement that begins thus:

I condemn Russia's decision to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states and call upon all countries of the world not to accord any legitimacy to this action. The United States should call for a meeting of the United Nations Security Council to condemn Russia's decision in coordination with our European allies. The U.S. should lead within the UN and other international forums to cast a clear and unrelenting light on the decision, and to further isolate Russia internationally because of its actions.

I am astonished that Barack H. Obama still, even today, doesn't know that Russia is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council... and as such has veto authority over any "condemnation" the United States might push in the UNSC. Evidently, even after his last UN-Russia gaffe, nobody on his campaign staff picked up the phone and called the principal to enlighten him.

Alternatively, perhaps the One is so enlightened anyway that such illuminating calls from the rabble are discouraged.

I also find it illuminating that even now, the only concrete action Obama suggests to put some teeth into his condemnation is to call an international forum and wag our finger at Vladimir Putin. Perhaps the One We Have Been Waiting For has been spending too much time with the One Who Did Not Have Sex With That Woman.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 26, 2008, at the time of 1:40 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)

August 25, 2008

The Taliban in Pakistan has begun to behave as bloody-mindedly as did al-Qaeda in Iraq, when it seized control over the Sunni areas of Iraq under Musab Zarqawi in 2004, when he publicly declared his allegiance to the main al-Qaeda.

The more AQI practiced indiscriminate human sacrifice upon the Iraqi Sunnis, the more desperate the victims became; in the end, they turned on AQI with the ferocity of the damned. We now call this moment the "Sunni Awakening," and it played a crucial role in our victorious counterinsurgency strategy against the insurgent forces in that country -- as Gen. Petraeus and his top COIN advisor, David Kilcullen, along with COIN architects Fred Kagen and Gen. Jack Keane, always knew it would.

Simply put, they realized that if you give fanatic death-worshippers like al-Qaeda power, life under its rule will inevitably turn intolerable, even impossible. The Sunni will revolt, and that would be the perfect opportunity for us to recruit them to the side of Iraq and the United States.

It looks to me as if the Taliban has devolved into the same pattern of mindless devastation right now in Pakistan -- and I believe it will produce the same results:

Concern that the turmoil was distracting the government from tackling urgent economic and security issues was borne out Thursday when twin Taliban suicide bombers killed 67 people at an arms factory near the capital.

Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik announced Monday that the group responsible for the attack, the Tehrik-e-Taliban, was banned. He said the militants had "created mayhem" in the nuclear-armed nation.

Anyone caught aiding the Taliban in Pakistan - which will have its bank accounts and assets frozen - faces up to 10 years in prison.

The ban came 24 hours after Pakistan rejected a Taliban cease-fire offer in Bajur tribal region, a rumored hiding place for Osama bin Laden, where an army offensive has reportedly killed hundreds in recent weeks.

"This organization is a terrorist organization and created mayhem against public life," said Malik.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, an umbrella group of militants along the rugged Afghan border set up last year, has claimed responsibility for a wave of suicide bombings in the last half year that have killed hundreds.

Its leadership is formally separate from the Taliban movement which was swept from power in Afghanistan in 2001.

However, some of its members are believed to help recruit, arm and train volunteers for the Taliban-led insurgency against government and NATO troops on the Afghan side of the frontier.

Bear in mind, this is the same fragile Pakistan coalition government -- which collapsed today -- that earlier cut a deal (brokered by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif) with the Taliban militants in the Waziristan and Balochistan areas of Pakistan, allowing them autonomy so complete it verged on independence in exchange for a promise not to engage in suicide attacks inside Pakistan.

Now that agreement is clearly ended: The Pakistan army is going after the Taliban hammer and tooth, while the terrorists are busily sacrificing as many Pakistanis as they can cram into the mouth of their blood-and-soul eating Moloch idol.

In poker, when you have the worst hand, the only way to win is to raise and try to buffalo the player with the best hand into folding. The Taliban understand this principle, even if they've never played Texas Hold 'Em in their lives; and they know they have the weaker hand. The only chance they have to win is to go all out to seize the country before the fractious, now fractured government can respond.

That means total terrorist war against Pakistan. And that, of course, is exactly the scenario that created the Sunni Awakening in Iraq: No matter how anxious people are to avoid a fight, no matter how afraid they are, if you back them into a corner and then try to take away even that last refuge -- they will fight for their lives.

And being cornered, they will fight with the ferocity of a stag at bay, with complete abandonment of any scruples about killing, maiming, or torturing captured Taliban death-worshippers.

The current -- rather, the former government of Pakistan, now fallen, will be of little help; the two major figures are former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the author of the deal with the Taliban devil, and presidential front-runner Asif Ali Zardari, widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto -- and perhaps the most corrupt man in Moslemdom, which is saying an awful lot. Zardari is colloquially known as the "Three Billion Dollar Man," the amount he is believed to have stolen, embezzled, and otherwise squirreled out of Pakistan, Switzerland, Poland, France, and many other countries. He spent eleven years in prison for corruption and was only released under heavy pressure from Nawaz Sharif.

But Sharif now believes that Zardari has betrayed him:

The main problem between Mr. Sharif and Mr. Zardari was a profound disagreement over the future of the former chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, who was fired by President Musharraf in March 2007, reinstated by the court in July, and placed under house arrest in November. He was finally freed in March of this year, but has yet to be restored to the bench.

Mr. Sharif has insisted that Mr. Chaudhry along with some 60 other judges, who were also fired in November, when Mr. Musharraf declared emergency rule, should be restored to the bench.

To drive home the point about broken promises, Mr. Sharif, a former two-time prime minister, released an accord signed by the two men on Aug. 7.

The document shows that Mr. Zardari and Mr. Sharif agreed that all the judges would be restored by an executive order one day after Mr. Musharraf’s impeachment or resignation. But Mr. Zardari stalled.

In an interview with the BBC Urdu-language radio service on Saturday, Mr. Zardari defended his position, saying agreements with the Pakistan Muslim League-N were not “holy like the holy Koran.”

And why does Zardari not want to allow Chaudhry to return to the high court? Asif Ali "Mr. Bhutto" Zardari is only free and able to run for the presidency because he was granted amnesty from still more corruption charges after Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, allowing him to return from exile. Zardari believes that Sharif and his favorite judge Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry intend to revoke that amnesty and immediately arrest Zardari -- clearing the way for Sharif's own presidential puppet-candidate, former Chief Justice Saeed-uz-zaman Siddiqui. With Siddigui as president and (likely) Nawaz Sharif as Prime Minister, the latter would be the de facto dictator of Pakistan -- more or less just like his arch rival Pervez Musharaff did, but without the backing of the military.

This could easily precipitate a real civil war (not the ersatz "civil war" the Democrats periodically rediscover in Iraq)... a bloody civil war between three sides -- the Pakistan Muslim League-N ("N" for Nawaz Sharif), the Pakistan Peoples Party (formerly Bhutto, now her husband Zardari), and of course the Taliban -- where the grand prize is control of the nation's demonstrated nuclear arsenal.

But there is a fourth side none of those three has yet taken seriously, and that is the Pakistan people themselves. If, as I expect, the oceans of blood unleashed by each of the three players in the main event leads to a widespread revolt against them all -- a Pakistani Awakening -- then we may actually see real democracy, not dictatorship, kleptocracy, or theocratic totalitarianism, come to Pakistan for the first time in its short existence as an independent state.

That is probably the only outcome that might avert a nuclear catastrophe. We indeed live in interesting times.

I wonder what Barack H. Obama's plan is for dealing with the Pakistan perplexity?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 25, 2008, at the time of 6:49 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

August 23, 2008

My little sister Julie is just about due to give birth to her first child (she and her husband have already picked out the name Madison, which I like a lot -- especially as the obvious nickname is Maddy). I just called to see how Julie is doing, and the following high jinks ensued:

Dafydd: Are you planning to use anaesthetic?

Julie: Oh yeah; I'm not a big fan of pain. I'm definitely getting an epidural. I'm a little nervous about a spinal injection, but I'm going for it anyway.

Dafydd: A lot of women like to experience every sensation of giving birth; you're not one of those?

Julie: Dafydd, if I could be in the other room when Maddy was born, I'd go for it!

I'll announce here when the Madster enters the world. Sachi and I are too old to have kids now (theoretically we could adopt, but they don't like adopting kids out to older parents), and my brother Boffo and his better half have no interest in kids so far; so this is as close as it will get. (Of course, determinations can change, and the latter pair are younger than Julie.)

Maddy can be our rent-a-kid, returnable the moment novelty wanes...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 23, 2008, at the time of 2:58 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

The Democrats have trotted out their own Vietnam POW, Phillip Butler, who was shot down over Vietnam (like John S. McCain III), was a prisoner of war for eight years (McCain was a POW for five and a half years), and has now written a small piece telling us why he won't be voting for McCain.

It boils down to something very simple: Phillip Butler opposes McCain because Butler is a liberal Democrat.

There is nothing wrong or disreputable about this; but of course, it's hardly surprising, either. Heck, I won't be voting for Barack H. Obama because he's a liberal Democrat. In Butler's entire piece, he offers only one reason why anybody but a liberal Democrat might consider voting against McCain:

I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

Well, all right. But for me, McCain's temper is vastly overbalanced by Obama's fecklessness, grandiosity, narcissism, radicalism, and willingness to cozy up to America's bitterest enemies, from Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright to Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But then, I'm not a liberal Democrat.

And oddly, for the rest of the piece, Butler paints us a portrait of an honorable, courageous, loyal, dedicated, and conservative John McCain. Does he think this will appall or turn off the electorate? Did the Democrats even read anything beyond the title? Here are some excerpts from what the Democrats think is an "attack piece" on McCain:

John was a wild man. He was funny, with a quick wit and he was intelligent. But he was intent on breaking every USNA regulation in our 4 inch thick USNA Regulations book. And I believe he must have come as close to his goal as any midshipman who ever attended the Academy....

John's treatment as a POW:

1) Was he tortured for 5 years? No. He was subjected to torture and maltreatment during his first 2 years, from September of 1967 to September of 1969. After September of 1969 the Vietnamese stopped the torture and gave us increased food and rudimentary health care.... John allows the media to make him out to be THE hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals.

Butler offers no evidence that John McCain controls the media.

2) John was badly injured when he was shot down. Both arms were broken and he had other wounds from his ejection. Unfortunately this was often the case - new POW's arriving with broken bones and serious combat injuries. Many died from their wounds. Medical care was non-existent to rudimentary. Relief from pain was almost never given and often the wounds were used as an available way to torture the POW....

3) John was offered, and refused, "early release." Many of us were given this offer. It meant speaking out against your country and lying about your treatment to the press. You had to "admit" that the U.S. was criminal and that our treatment was "lenient and humane." So I, like numerous others, refused the offer....

But it must be remembered that [McCain] was one hero among many -- not uniquely so as his campaigns would have people believe.

Butler offers no evidence that McCain's campaign has claimed that he was the only hero of Vietnam.

John McCain served his time as a POW with great courage, loyalty and tenacity.... He was a POW who surmounted the odds with the help of many comrades, as all of us did....

Senator John Sidney McCain, III is a remarkable man who has made enormous personal achievements. And he is a man that I am proud to call a fellow POW who "Returned With Honor." That's our POW motto. But since many of you keep asking what I think of him, I've decided to write it out. In short, I think John Sidney McCain, III is a good man, but not someone I will vote for in the upcoming election to be our President of the United States.

But again, the last few paragraphs of Butler's piece make clear why he won't: He complains about McCain's support for "Bush's war in Iraq" and even trots out the "100 years" canard without seemingly understanding what McCain clearly said; Butler attacks "John's views on war, foreign policy, economics, environment, health care, education, national infrastructure and other important areas," equating them with those of President George W. Bush; he's afraid that McCain will appoint judges who believe in judicial restraint, which would surely lead to "continuing loss of individual freedoms, especially regarding moral and religious issues;" he argues that McCain is too comfortable with "some really obnoxious and crazy fundamentalist ministers;" and he attacks McCain for treating Bush decently... as opposed, I assume, to spitting in Bush's face, as Butler evidently would like to do.

In short, Butler is simply a true, blue liberal... and he is convinced that McCain is a true conservative -- just as McCain says he is. Is that a persuasive reason to vote against the man?

If this is what the Democrats are relying upon to turn the public away from McCain and towards Barack Obama, then -- as I said in an earlier post -- bring it on.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 23, 2008, at the time of 3:17 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

August 22, 2008

That's what Huge Hewgitt said today, echoing what Fred Barnes said yesterday and the McCain campaign has been pushing for a week or so now. But I think it's nonsense on stilts.

Why do candidates traditionally get a bounce from their parties' conventions? Because until then, they've barely been seen by ordinary (non-activist) voters; they've popped up in occasional televised clips from some speech on the nightly news, in a campaign ad, maybe a newspaper interview. In ordinary elections, the convention is the first time that a whopping, huge segment of voters actually tunes in to see what the candidate is all about: Thus, many of them form their first impressions during or after the convention.

If the candidate has anything at all going for him, he gets a bit bounce, as people say, "So that's who he is! Nice feller." Of course sometimes, the reaction is, "So that's who he is -- what a pompous jackass!" Then you have the Kerry Phenomenon... a 1-point "bounce" in the polls (otherwise known as a 1-point dull, sickening thud).

But season we've seen wall-to-wall coverage of every last prophetic revelation by the One. The TV and radio stations follow him around with cameras and microphones, and they broadcast every utterance that trickles from his lips.

Breathes there a man or woman in America today who hasn't had his brain saturated, even oversaturated, with lashings of Barack H. Obama for the last twelvemonth? We've all been force-fed his vapid speeches, his cheap audacity, his empty-suited hope. Everybody knows virtually everything about the man -- and many of them are already annoyed at his grandiosity, his hyperinflated self-esteem -- "We are the Ones that we have been waiting for," sooth! -- and his ludicrous pretensions and self-delusions:

Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war, and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth!

Who in this last, best hope on Earth -- apart from those actively working on his campaign, who are probably already in his corner -- is burning with curiosity to see Obama give a speech? How many more are burning with exasperation that they can't hardly swing a dead cat without hitting Obama making yet another speech carried live by all eighteen networks? Who besides yellow-dog Democrats is going to breathlessly tune in to the Democratic National Convention from Monday through Thursday to be transported across Elysian fields by the transcendent rhetoric of Senator B.O.?

I have a feeling this is going to be a very disappointing "bounce" for the Democrats this year, just as I (correctly) predicted the same for 2004. I think Obama's bounce is going to be no more than a jumping flea... say, 5% at most; and it will be gone by the time the GOP convention begins on September 1st, just four days after the Democratic convention ends.

Contrariwise, a lot fewer people know anything about John S. McCain, other than the disrespectful and risible caricature pushed by the elite media and by Obama himself in campaign ads. I suspect that a lot more truly undecided voters will watch the Republican National Convention, many of them moderate Republicans, independents, and even moderate Democrats; and they will come away much more favorably impressed by McCain than they were beforehand. Therefore, McCain will get a bigger bounce from the GOP convention than will Obama from the Democratic convention.

Who's with me on this? Do you all think this is going to be a blowout bounce for Barack?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 22, 2008, at the time of 6:55 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)

With Barack H. Obama coyly dragging out the naming of his running mate, I just thought of a truly inspired way (if I may toot my own kazoo) that John S. McCain could ambush the inexperienced senator from Illinois.

Imagine if today, McCain were to call a press conference -- and name his own running mate before Obama names his!

That would turn today into a huge McCain-news day, forcing Obama to put off naming his VP, lest it have no impact at all. But he can't wait; the convention is starting Monday, I think. So either Obama has to withhold the unveiling until the convention speech... or else he has to name his "fellow traveler" tomorrow, in the wake of McCain's announcement. Either way, McCain takes the initiative, and Obama is reduced to saying "me too!" like Rudy, the little joey of the Sour Kangaroo in Horton Hears a Who.

And think how it would throw the Obama campaign into a quagmire, as the Democrat begins second-guessing his own pick. Can he un-invite someone from the ticket? Or would he be forced to stick with his choice, even if McCain's choice makes some other Democrat more strategic?

Alas, it'll never happen. Steve Schmidt, McCain's campaign capo di tutti i capi, isn't that clever. Or perhaps not that wicked.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 22, 2008, at the time of 1:47 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

August 21, 2008

So John S. McCain is "rich" and "out of touch" because he didn't know offhand how many residences he and his wife own. Right? Well, perceptions sometimes overrule reality; but for this post, let's talk about the reality.

Cindy McCain inherited a vast fortune, today worth possibly as much as $100 million, from her beer-distributing father, James Hensley; Hensley & Co. is one of the largest distributers for Anheuser-Busch. When you have what Friend Lee's grandfather calls "a lotta hell money," you would be a fool to manage it yourself. You have a veritable army of accountants, probably at several different firms, each specializing in a different aspect of money management.

Anybody who has ever had a 401K or IRA account and chosen to let professionals manage it -- which includes a great many middle-income Americans who are not by any stretch of the imagination "rich" -- understands McCain's dilemma... do all those people really know, offhand, exactly what stocks, bonds, commodities, or real properties in which their accounts are invested?

Cindy McCain probably knows; Politico should have asked her. But the question they asked McCain wrongly implies that McCain has so many residences in which he lives that he doesn't know how many... kind of like Saddam Hussein and his palaces.

In fact, the McCains own eight properties; but five of them are investment properties, some of which their kids (and one elderly aunt) are allowed to occupy in the meantime. John and Cindy McCain don't live in those properties themselves.

McCain knows exactly how many houses they have for personally living in; two: a condo in Phoenix, Arizona, and a house in Arlington, VA (used when the Senate is in session). (The Obamas also own at least two properties, one in Illinois and one near D.C.) They also have a ranch in Sedona, AZ, that McCain uses for Senate-related business, and which Cindy sometimes uses for entertaining business clients. The other five properties -- two condos in Phoenix, two in Coronado, CA, and one in La Jolla, CA -- are for long-term investment and for their kids, with one condo for Cindy McCain's aunt.

McCain made the mistake of trying to answer the question honestly and completely when Politico asked; he didn't know how many properties his wife had for investment purposes, and he said so:

Q: How many houses do you and Mrs. McCain have?

A: I think -- I'll have my staff get to you. It's condominiums where -- I'll have them get to you.

It's a classic "gotcha" question: Politico didn't ask, "how many houses do you and Mrs. McCain have as your own personal residences;" so rather than give the dishonest answer of "two," he was honest and included the condos they own as investments. That was a figure he wouldn't know (Cindy has bought several recently)... and likely neither would Sens. John Kerry (D-MA, 95%), Ted Kennedy (D-MA, 85%), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA, 90%), Squeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Haight-Ashbury, 93%), or any other very rich person who had investment portfolios managed by accountants, know exactly how many real-estate investments they have.

(Had McCain answered only as to his personal residences, the headline would have been, "McCain Lies About Number of Houses He Owns!")

Is McCain very rich today? Absolutely yes; he married an heiress. But Barack H. Obama is at least quite rich himself, earning millions of dollars a year on royalties that are, to a large extent, driven by his presidential candidacy. And unlike Obama, McCain has never argued that wealth is a sin that should be punished by confiscatory taxation.

How about the other question: Is McCain "out of touch" with concerns of the typical voter? That question, coming from somebody with the background of Obama, is laughable. Let's take a look at a few side-by-side comparisons:

Birth and childhood

• First, Barack Obama was born in Hawaii to parents who both went on to earn advanced degrees -- his father as Harvard economist, his mother as a PhD anthoropologist.

• McCain was shunted to one military base school after another, and was also home-schooled by his stay-at-home mother. For his junior-high years, McCain attended a religious school, St. Stephen's & St. Agnes School in Alexandria, VA; then his father was transferred again, and McCain naturally followed. All in all, McCain attended 20 different schools... at most of which he got in disciplinary trouble for fighting and talking back.

Higher education

• Obama went for two years to Occidental College, then shifted to ultra-liberal Columbia University in New York City for his bachelor's degree -- in political science and international relations, of course.

  After graduation, he worked for a few years as a "community organizer" in Chicago (he has never adequately explained what that meant); then he attended Harvard Law School... where he was selected as editor of the Harvard Law Review without ever having written (or submitted) an article to that legal journal. [Actually, one anonymous "note," said to be written by Obama, has been found; it doesn't appear to amount to much. See Power Line for details.]

Military service

• John McCain served honorably in the United States Navy for 27 years, rising to the rank of Captain (the Navy equivalent of Colonel in the other branches). During that time, he was awarded 15 medals and decorations from the United States Navy and two from the Republic of Vietnam. The former include the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Legion of Merit with Combat-V and one gold star, and of course a Purple Heart for wounds that nearly killed him when he was shot down, shot, beaten, and bayoneted in the belly.

  He was held as a prisoner of war for five and a half years, during which he was tortured, beaten, starved, and confined in appallingly unhygienic conditions.

  Upon return, he attended the U.S. Naval War College; later he commanded the largest aviation squadron (50 A-7 Corsairs) in the Navy, RAG VA-174 "Hellrazors." He got his final promotion to Captain, then was assigned to head the Senate Liaison Office within the Navy.

On beyond college and service

• After getting his J.D. at the ripe, old age of 31, Barack Obama was hired by the University of Chicago, where they paid him to write his voluminous memoirs. After several years writing, he and Michelle jetted off to Bali for a number of months for some peace and quiet.

  The memoirs of Obama's adventurous life were eventually published as Dreams From My Father. For twelve years, before and after writing Dreams, he was also a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

  While being paid as a full-time lecturer, he also served in the Illinois State Senate, was briefly employed by a law firm, and sat on seven boards of directors for various left-wing foundations, funds, and committees. Then he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004.

  Certainly nobody could call such a curriculum vitae "elitist!"

Now that I think about it, I believe John S. McCain is more "elite" than Barack H. Obama, at least in one respect: McCain has the eliteness of merit, talent, duty, sacrifice, military service, and above all, honor... while Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.

Yeah. A fight between these two gentlemen over who is more in touch with ordinary people? Bring it on.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 21, 2008, at the time of 7:08 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

August 20, 2008

Back in June, I wrote a post, Obama Campaign More or Less Concedes Ohio and Florida to McCain, in which I finished with an obscure reference that I think needs amplification:

All in all, I believe McCain has many more paths to victory than does Obama; and I also believe that if John McCain will finally take off the gloves and start fighting Obama in the center, this will not even be a close race:

• McCain can make an excellent start by aggressively pushing to drill for oil everywhere that he has not already taken off the table -- which only includes the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the actual coastal waters of states that reject drilling.

  That still leaves the outer continental shelf on both oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, the Bakken shale-oil formation, and other shale-oil sites. He can also push for liquification of coal, natural gas, and continue his quest for more gasoline refineries and nuclear power plants... "Drill here, drill now, pay less." Surveys show that Americans now strongly favor drilling, drilling, and more drilling;

• He can aggressively pursue a constitutional amendment to undo the horrible Supreme-Court decision last week in Boumediene and dare Obama and the Democrats to oppose it: "Obama and his Democratic friends think foreign terrorists fighting America deserve more rights than our own soldiers," he can argue;
• He can hammer Obama on the staggering taxes he plans to raise, on Obama's complete indifference to gasoline prices, his refusal to visit Iraq or meet with Gen. Petraeus before yanking the troops out, his wildly liberal stances on abortion, same-sex marriage, and guns, and his complete ignorance of how most people in the United States live and worship;
• And he can tie Obama more directly to the latter's prediction that the counterinsurgency strategy would be a complete failure and disaster: If we had followed Obama's strategy, we would have withdrawn from Iraq in defeat. Fortunately, we followed McCain's judgment... and we have pretty much won, with some mopping up left to do.

...

If McCain gets ahead of the power curve on the issues listed above, I believe this will be a 9-point election... and we won't have to worry about this or that little state: McCain will take many states that Kerry held last election.

So what do I mean by a "9-point election?" I don't literally predict that John S. McCain will win by exactly nine points; a "9-pointer" is like a "quarter pounder": It's just a name, not a precision measurement.

But I do mean that I conditionally predicted -- and since the condition has by and large been met, I now turn this into a full-scale prediction -- that McCain is going to win this presidential election by a fairly substantial margin: More than 6% nationwide and around 350 electoral votes. Maybe more.

In the entire twentieth century, how many presidents were elected by less than 5%? Only four, I believe: Woodrow Wilson in 1916, John F. Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968, and Jimmy Carter in 1976. There were, of course, 25 presidential elections from 1900 through 1996 (I cut it off there, not at 2000, because the 2000 election was for a term that began in the 21st century) -- so 16% of 20th-century elections were really close.

And then, 24 years after the Carter election, we had back to back "really close elections" in 2000 and again in 2004. It's not normal to have such close elections, and I don't believe we'll see one in 2008; so the only question is who ends up on top.

For a number of reasons -- none related to polling, though that too is starting to confirm my sense of flow -- I do not believe that Barack H. Obama is about to surge. In fact, I believe he already peaked, and it will be John S. McCain who surges right into the White House. Putting A and B together to get 4, I believe that McCain will win the election by more than 5%.

But in fact, Obama is a particularly bad candidate who is woefully underperforming the "generic Democrat," while McCain is very much outperforming the "generic Republican." So I'm giving him that extra edge: If I must pick a number, I'll say he wins by 7% over Obama, or 52.5% to 45.5%, with 2% going to other candidates.

That isn't a landslide, by the way; Ronald Reagan beat Carter by almost 10% and Mondale by more than 18%. Still, 7% is a substantial win with no wiggle room for Democrats to cheat or sue their way into the White House... and so decisive that they cannot even whine about it. (Well, maybe that's going too far.)

That big a win translates into a lot of close states going to McCain -- Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and many others; the Electoral College tends to magnify victory. So I predict 350 electoral votes for McCain, leaving 188 for Obama. (As a subsidiary forecast, I prognosticate that Larry Sabato's "Crystal Ball" will prophesy that Obama will win... until about a week before the election, at which point Sabato will abruptly reverse himself, jumping aboard the gravy wagon.)

Also, a substantial win in the presidential race should translate into a number of victories in the congressional races; we'll likely still lose some seats, but it won't be anywhere near the debacle that "pundants" are predicting today.

I'm staking my claim now, once again cutting against the conventional wisdom. I'm often right -- as when I predicted more than a year and a half ago that Hillary Clinton would not be the Democratic nominee; but I have certainly been wrong, as I was about the 2006 elections, when I failed to take into account the GOP's astonishing talent at self immolation.

We'll see. At the moment, I think I'm the only person predicting a "9-pointer." Even the McCain campaign is saying it will be razor-close... though I think they're just playing the expectations game. So write this day in your diary, as it will either mark the point at which the Lizard demonstrated his political prescience... or the day he went off the rails on the crazy train!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 20, 2008, at the time of 6:29 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack (1)

August 19, 2008

After the Saddleback fiasco for Barack H. Obama, the first meme floated by Obama surrogates (in particular by Andrea Mitchell) was that the only way John S. McCain could have sounded so prepared, so confident, and so well informed was that -- he must have cheated.

He was outside the "cone of silence;" he heard the questions beforehand; he had an unfair advantage because Obama had to go first. But that has been pretty definitively debunked; guest blogger DRJ, for one, at Patterico's Pontifications has a timeline that pretty much rules out that possibility.

So now the desperate Democrats have floated a new meme: McCain's "cross in the dirt" story is "hauntingly like" a story told by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. McCain stole it! It never happened! Sure, John McCain may have done better answering the questions... but all that is negated because he's a serial plagiarist. After all -- didn't he also steal Jackson Brown's "Running on Empty," and didn't he insert a few words from a Wikipedia entry into some speech?

(Of course, if Barack Obama selects Joe Biden as his running mate, the accusation of plagiarism might be quietly dropped.)

Well. Let's take a look at this charge...

In the first place, when did this Solzhenitsyn story appear? It dates from a 1997 article, but it is not even a direct quotation from Solzhenitsyn; instead, it's a retelling by Fr. Luke Veronis, "an American priest serving in Albania," of a moment when Solzhenitsyn had hit a nadir during his long incarceration and had given up all hope:

Laying his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude work-site bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to many other prisoners.

As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly, he lifted his eyes and saw a skinny, old prisoner squat down next to him. The man said nothing. Instead, he drew a stick through the ground at Solzhenitsyn’s feet, tracing the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.

As Solzhenitsyn stared at the sign of the Cross, his entire perspective changed. He knew that he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet in that moment, he knew that there was something greater than the evil that he saw in the prison, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that the hope of all mankind was represented in that simple Cross. And through the power of the Cross, anything was possible.

Note the most significant difference: In the Solzhenitsyn story, it's not a guard but rather another prisoner who makes the sign of the cross. If McCain stole the story, why would he change the actor from prisoner to guard? After all, if he's trying to show the fortitude they all displayed, it makes more sense if the prisoners themselves keep each other alive and hopeful, as in his other story about his fellow prisoner who sewed a small American flag out of scraps of cloth.

Second, much is made (e.g., by Andrew Sullivan) that in McCain's first full account of his captivity, written in 1973, he doesn't mention this story. But of course, one could equally well note that in Solzhenitsyn's first full accounting of his story, the Gulag Archipelago, also first published in 1973 (in French; the first English version dates from 1974, I believe), he evidently neglects to tell his own "cross in the dirt" story as well. Lot of that going around.

The story does not come from the Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn's seminal work about his many years in the Soviet political prison system. If someone can find this story there, please let me know, and I will correct this post. I don't think the book is available online in a searchable format (it's probably still in copyright), and I have no intention of thumbing through each page of both volumes of the book to find a single short anecdote. But nobody so far has claimed that the account appears in that work... just in the Veronis article.

Various liberal commentators insist that McCain first told his own story in 1999, two years after the Veronis article. But what they mean is that 1999 was when he first used it publicly as part of a campaign stump speech. But we have a very different claim by one of McCain's fellow POWs, Orson Swindle, held in the Hanoi Hilton at the same time, sometimes in the same cell with McCain:

"I recall John telling that story when we first got together in 1971, when were talking about every conceivable thing that had ever happened to us when we were in prison" Swindle told me a few minutes ago. "Most of us had been kept apart or in small groups. Then, in 1970, they moved us into the big cell. And when we all got to see each other and talk to each other directly, instead of tapping through walls, we had 24 hours a day, seven days a week to talk to each other, and we shared stories. I vaguely recall that story being told, among other stories." [1971 would be 26 years before the Fr. Veronis story first appeared, and even three years before the Gulag Archipelago itself was published in English, just in case the new claim is that the story appears there. I find it unlikely that McCain would have obtained a review copy while in the Hanoi Hilton.]

"I remember it from prison," Swindle continued. "There were several stories similar to that in which guards -- a very few, I might add -- showed compassion to the prisoners. It was rare, and I never met one, but some of the guys did."

So now, for the Democrats to maintain this meme -- vital to proving that Obama really won the Saddleback non-debate, no matter what ignorant, uninformed voters may have thought -- they must pursue one of the following options:

• Orson Swindle, who is campaigning for McCain, is a big, fat liar. McCain never told him any such story. Swindle, like his name, is just lying to save McCain from the consequences of the senator's own serial prevarications, lies, slanders, and vicious Swift-Boating of the One, "the leader that God has blessed us with at this time," as Squeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Haight-Ashbury, 93%) said last Sunday.
• Swindle is simply addled and confused, probably dating to the days of his nightmarish confinement. He's just like Ronald Reagan, whom we now know began suffering the symptoms of his unusually slow-progressing Alzheimer's disease around 1947, when he became president of the Screen Actors Guild and developed an incomprehensible loathing of Communists. Swindle is senile and befuddled and, well, he's just a bundle of nerves. He can't help it... he probably really does hallucinate that McCain told him that story in 1971. But of course, we know that's impossible -- because Solzhenitsyn himself didn't recount the original until 1997. [The wheels on the bus go round and round...]
• All right, so maybe Swindle is right and McCain really did tell it to him and other prisoners in 1971. But all that proves is that McCain was a serial fabricator even back then. Look at all the other lies that he has told through the years: That the surge is a success, that an embryo is a person from the moment of conception, that we should lower taxes... the man is obviously a pathological liar, and you don't become one of those overnight. Therefore, the evidence is overwhelming that McCain was simply lying about that, air quotes, "cross in the dirt" story as long as 37 years ago. How can even Republicans possibly elect such a corrupt, Bible-thumping Nazi to the presidency?

So, Democrats, what's it to be then, eh? Which explanation do you pick to keep the Meme Team alive?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 19, 2008, at the time of 3:46 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

August 18, 2008

I rarely do this, as you know -- publish a post that simply repeats the reasoning of somebody else's article. But David Freddoso on National Review Online has an article that is so powerful and urgent that I'm inclined to emphasize it here, following the lead of Scott Johnson at Power Line.

According to Freddoso's research (along with that of the Springfield, Illinois chapter of the National Right to Life Committee), Obama voted against a bill that came before his committee in the Illinois state senate in 2003 that would simply have declared that any baby who survived an abortion attempt, and was accidentally born alive instead, shall be considered a human person with all the rights of any other baby born alive. The bill was in response to Chicago hospitals that were taking second shots at such improperly born children, making sure the "procedure" was successful, no matter how many times it took -- and no matter whether the abortion was finished before or after live birth.

But now he has realized that this vote may come back to haunt him in his quest for the presidency... so he's brazenly lying, claiming the bill was instead an attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade.

What makes this even more flagrant (and vile) is that the bill included language -- which Obama and every state senator on the committee, unanimously inserted -- explicitly avowing that it only affected the rights of babies that had actually been born alive and would have no impact whatsoever on foetuses still in the womb.

It would not even have forbidden partial-birth abortion, since the body of the bill explicitly defined a live birth as "the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of that member [of the species homo sapiens];" as partial-birth abortion means an incomplete extraction (as the name implies), its legality would not have been affected by this bill.

(What it would have affected is a botched partial-birth abortion, where the doctor accidentally delivers the entire baby, rather than everything but the head. It would have prevented hospitals from picking up the fully born baby and continuing with the "procedure" -- prying open the infant's skull and sucking out her brains with a vacuum.)

I really want John S. McCain and the GOP to jump on this: It's so obviously mendacious a denial, about an issue that is so fundamentally repulsive to real Americans -- letting living, born babies die of exposure in order to punish them for surviving an abortion attempt -- that I cannot see how he can weasel his way out of it.

And please bear in mind... I am pro-choice on abortion up to about two-thirds of the way through pregnancy. Nevertheless, I am not pro-choice on infanticide, which is what this bill was designed to prevent. And there is no way anybody living in a civilized culture (anybody but a lunatic liberal) can justify killing a post-born infant by deliberate neglect (starvation, dehydration, cold)... just because the mother originally wanted it removed from her womb.

All right; it's out. Why must they slay it as well?

Obama's policy itself is murderous, and his vain attempt to lie his way out of it deeply offends my intelligence and shocks my conscience.

(I have put the full text of the law in the "slither on," along with the modifying amendment unanimously adopted by the committee.)

Slither on, o Wise, for "Obama's "No Child Left Alive" Policy" doth continue...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 18, 2008, at the time of 3:12 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

August 17, 2008

So there's these three guys, right? And they're tramping in the woods when they happen to stumble across the corpse of a Bigfoot. And -- no, wait; they were in hot pursuit of an escaped felon, who shot a Bigfoot -- evidently mistaking him for a Fulton County sheriff -- which ran into the forest -- the Bigfoot, not the felon (or the sheriff) -- and these three guys followed hoping to render first aid. Oh, wait a minute; that's a different story. I meant to say these three guys were tracking a herd -- pack -- pod? Tracking a heel of Bigfeet. Bigfoots? And they saw one die, so they quickly stuffed him into the giant-sized freezer they always carry along on backpacking trips.

Yeah, that's the ticket:

[Matt] Whitton, ["an officer on medical leave from the Clayton County Police Department"] and Rick Dyer, a former corrections officer, announced the discovery in early July on YouTube videos and their Web site. Although they did not consider themselves devoted Bigfoot trackers before then, they have since started offering weekend search expeditions in Georgia for $499. The specimen they bagged, the men say, was one of several apelike creatures they spotted cavorting in the woods. [I picture a dozen or so Bigfeet, dressed in English regency costume, dancing a lobster quadrille through the underbrush.]

As they faced a skeptical audience of several hundred journalists and Bigfoot fans that included one curiosity seeker in a Chewbacca suit, the pair were joined Friday by Tom Biscardi, head of a group called Searching for Bigfoot. Other Bigfoot hunters call Biscardi a huckster looking for media attention.

I don't get this, I really don't. I don't understand how intelligent, supposedly common-sensical people like Michael Medved can so passionately believe in cryptozoological hoaxes so inherently implausible: How could a gigantic mammal -- much bigger than a human, about the size of a small bear (which, incidently, is my nominee for what animal, if any, is actually in the Sasquatchic freezer) -- roam the hills and hollers of the American Southeast, Middle West, Northwest, and the frozen Himalayas for all of human history... without leaving a single unambiguous trace of its existence?

No body. No skeleton. No identifiable tracks. No fur scraped off on a tree. No teeth. No poop. No blood, saliva, or DNA. And of course, no clear and untampered video -- that isn't obviously a brown bear balanced precariously on its hind legs, or some fat guy in a gorilla suit, balanced precariously on his hind legs.

And why just those places? I might understand if it were found only in the United States -- but only in the United States and Tibet? Why not Andalusia, the Black Forest, the Amazon, or the French Riviera? Why don't we find Yetis in the casinos of Monte Carlo, Sasquatches in Sierra Leone, and Bigfeet on Brighton Beach?

Whitton, Dyer, and Biscardi (sounds like a cross between an Italian biscuit and a Puerto Rican rum) showed up at the press conference; but they inadvertently neglected to bring the body itself for examination, as they had previously promised. Big surprise.

Instead, they brought an e-mail from "a scientist" (I'm surprised they didn't say "egghead"), which they insisted was clear evidence that they really had found the elusive, hirsuit humanoid... but I'll let our sagacious readers be the jug of that:

Biscardi, Whitton and Dyer presented what they called evidence supporting the Bigfoot theory. It was an e-mail from a University of Minnesota scientist, but all it said was that of the three DNA samples sent to the scientist, one was human, one was likely a possum and the third could not be tested because of technical problems.

For the love of Harry and the Hendersons, didn't those nitwits even read the e-mail before forwarding it to the media? As Charlie Brown would say, "How humiliating!"

By the way, I absolutely love this exchange between Tom "Bigfoot" Biscardi and the press:

Biscardi fielded most of the questions. Among them: Why should anyone accept the men's tale when they weren't willing to display their frozen artifact or pinpoint where they allegedly found it? How come bushwhackers aren't constantly tripping over primate remains if there are as many as 7,000 Bigfoots roaming the United States, as Biscardi claimed?

"I understand where you are coming from, but how many real Bigfoot researchers are out there trekking 140,000 miles a year?" Biscardi said.

Gee, Tom, I don't know. But how many Bigfoot researchers ever shot a Sasquatch in their pajamas?

Why doesn't Tom just answer the questions? Because there is no answer, of course; at least nothing coherent (or sober). One can ask similarly pointed questions about "Nessie," the mythological Loch Ness Monster, which is supposed to be a plesiosaur:

• How did one dinosaur manage to survive for 65 million years -- wouldn't there need to be a breeding population?
• Given the paucity of fish in Loch Ness, what does Nessie eat?
• How does a cold-blooded reptile survive in a frigid freshwater lake in northern Scotland, which in winter approaches freezing?
• Plesiosaurs don't live forever: Where are all the bloated, floating Nessie bodies and skeletons from the hundreds of generations which must have died just in the last few centuries?
• Since Loch Ness is only about 10,000 years old, having been carved out by glaciers during the last ice age, where did Nessie(s) live for the 64,990,000 years before that?
• While we're on the subject, how did cold-blooded Nessie survive that ice age, and the hundreds of previous ice ages, in the first place?
• Since plesiosaurs were air-breathers, they had to take frequent breaths, as do whales, dolphins, walruses, and every other air-breathing, water-dwelling creature; why don't tourists see Nessie popping up to breathe constantly, day and night?

• Finally, if Nessie is a plesiosaur, how does it stick its head out of the water? I suspect Wikipedia is probably correct in its Plesiosaur entry:

  "Contrary to many reconstructions of plesiosaurs, it would have been impossible for them to lift their head and long neck above the surface, in the 'swan-like' pose that is often shown {Everhart, 2005; Henderson, 2006}. Even if they had been able to bend their necks upward to that degree (which they could not), gravity would have tipped their body forward and kept most of the heavy neck in the water."

Intelligence is not just cramming a lot of facts into your head or memorizing formulas or somesuch; it also requires synthesizing old information into new information -- or in popular terms, using your head. There is no Nessie; there is no Sasquatch; there is no Mothman and no crashed alien spaceship in Area 51.

We know these creatures do not exist because if they did, we would have found them. The common (and foolish) retort from cryptozoologists is, "What about the coelacanth and the giant squid?" But in fact, this is an argument against the cryptozoologists' position:

We always knew that coelacanths existed; we just thought they were extinct. But we found the first live one 70 years ago, and we have studied them extensively since then (even using submersible vehicles to study them in situ).

And as far as giant squids, we have literally thousands of intact corpses on file in various marine biology labs. So for these two unquestionably extant "monsters," we have ample evidence for them -- including living and freshly dead specimens.

So where are Nessie and Bigfoot?

Unless Messrs. Whitton, Dyer, and Biscardi can actually produce a bona-fide Bigfoot bod, I think we can answer the question above: Their only known habitat is our fevered imaginations.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 17, 2008, at the time of 5:03 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

August 16, 2008

For months now, various yahoos have offered wild guesses as to who John S. McCain will name as his running mate. Generally, the putative "inside information" seems more designed to freak out Republicans and send them running around in circles with their hair on fire... sort of like Homer Simpson at a typical Simpson barbecue (if Homer had hair, that is).

Nameless wretches have variously suggested Joe Lieberman, Rudy Giuliani, Tom Ridge, Lincoln Chafee (whose middle name is Davenport, aptly enough), or that woman who claims Don Siegelman was railroaded. At each new and increasingly bizarre claim, more and more Republicans froth at the mouth, chew broken bottles, and bay at the moon.

Evidently, however, some wag named Jon Keller, who works out of some television station in Boston (WBZTV), believes turnabout is sauce for the gander. Keller speculates on his blog that Barack H. Obama has short-listed for VP a chap with a familiar name, face, and loser history... yes, Mr. Keller suggests -- I rib you not -- that Obama is seriously considering bringing Sen. John F. Kerry onto the ticket as running mate... though I cannot guarantee that Keller isn't ribbing us all:

So why would Obama reach out to Kerry as his choice?

Kerry brings more money and name recognition to the table than any other name on the Obama list so far. Americans do tend to love a comeback kid and this would be the most amazing political comeback since Richard Nixon came back from the dead forty years ago....

Polls show many voters question Obama's foreign policy credentials to be a wartime president. As a decorated veteran and longtime member of the senate foreign relations committee, Kerry could fill that gap. [Oh please, oh please...!]

Obama suffers from being a new face on the political scene, but Kerry -- warts and all -- is well known to the voters [I'll say he is!], and in 2004, he did draw more votes than any democrat ever has. [But of course, considerably fewer than the already unpopular George W. Bush.]

Apart from the obvious boost it would give the Republicans -- and the long-awaited return of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth -- I have another, more personal reason why I dream of just such a cockamamie choice, as implausible and unlikely as I find it.

I so desperately want to hear some constipated conservative call up Hugh Hewitt, hyperventilate about the possibility, and finally threaten -- "If that jerk Obama picks John Kerry as running mate, I'll... I'll just vote for McCain, I swear to God I will!"

That alone would be worth the price of admission.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 16, 2008, at the time of 2:45 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

August 14, 2008

Pravda and the little pravdaniks have a new party line on the rape of Georgia:

Russians were told over breakfast yesterday what really happened in Georgia: the conflict in South Ossetia was part of a plot by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, to stop Barak Obama being elected president of the United States....

The Obama angle is getting wide play. It was aired on Wednesday by Sergei Markov, a senior political scientist who is close to Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister and power behind President Medvedev.

So I begin to wonder: How long before this same Kremlin meme begins showing up in the unbiased, nonpartisan elite Western and American media?

At least it's quite clear which presidential candidate the Kremlin favors. Is it not fascinating that virtually every enemy of America is hoping against hope for Barack H. Obama to be elected president -- not John S. McCain?

Here's another juicy bit from the Soviet -- whoops, Russian news agencies:

A classic of Soviet-speak also came from Vasili Lickhachev, a former Russian Ambassador to the EU. “The West has spent a lot of time, energy and money to teach Georgia the tricks of the trade... to make the country look like a democracy,” he said.

“We and many other nations see through this deceit. We understand that the seditious tactics of the so-called colour revolutions are a real threat to international law and the source of global legal nihilism.”

And this one is particularly jolly:

The coverage goes down well in developing countries that want an alternative to CNN and BBC World Service, a Russian official said. “We have learnt from Western TV how to simplify the narrative.”

Thank you, Ted Turner; we're now to be inundated by "McPravda."

A very chummy bilateral relationship is developing between the Russian establishment "press" and the paranoid Left in America... between the Cossacks and the Kossacks, if you will: Each feeds off the other's conspiracy theories, citing its counterpart as a "source" for its own recycled insanity. They're a pair of cannibals, each consuming the other; when do they finally run out of meat?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 14, 2008, at the time of 10:26 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Russia and its supporters within the Democratic Party constantly charge that Georgia engaged in "provocations" that justified at least some military response by Russia, if not quite as severe a one as it actually undertook. Yet among the provocative actions that Russia itself committed was issuing Russian passports to large numbers of separatists and sympathizers in South Ossetia. In fact, this is what finally gave Russia its pretext for this operation, as it claimed the need to protect "its citizens in South Ossetia."

This would be equivalent to Mexico offering Mexican passports to any "Aztlan"-supporting Hispanic-American radicals living in the American Southwest, then sending Mexican troops into Arizona to stop ICE raids, calling them war crimes against Mexican citizens.

A majority of Ossetians gleefully accepted these passports; and as John S. McCain noted, there are billboards across South Ossetia and Abkhazia reading "Vladimir Putin is our president."

Russia insists it was acting as a peacekeeper in South Ossetia, rejecting Georgian accusations that it has been supplying arms to the separatists.

But it has vowed to defend its citizens in South Ossetia -- of which there are many. More than half of South Ossetia's 70,000 citizens are said to have taken up Moscow's offer of a Russian passport.

Clearly, residents of those provinces think of themselves as Russian citizens (of Iranian descent), not Georgians; and they declare all of Ossetia (North and South) and Abkhazia to be independent and sovereign nations... notwithstanding the fact that no country, not even Russia, has recognized that independence.

The ceasefire, brokered by Nicholas Sarkozy, between Russia and Georgia -- which Russia has already violated -- calls on all military forces to return to the status quo ante. When (if) the Russians do withdraw, and if Georgia is somehow able to gain control of the breakaway territory, I would not like to see the passport fiasco ignored.

What should be Georgia's response? Very simple: Accepting a Russian passport should be considered the same as renouncing Georgian citizenship. I'd like to see Georgia begin deporting every Ossetian or Abkhazian who took Russia up on its offer.

Peacekeeping forces from NATO may be able to help them implement this. The inevitable charge of "ethnic cleansing" will ring hollow; their deportation would not be based on ethnicity but on self-selection: The deportees willingly renounced Georgian citizenship and were being deported as "undesirable aliens" who knowingly participated in activity that destabilized South Ossetia and promoted secession.

The Ukrainians are probably planning to sit tight and hope their turn doesn't come before the US election. If McCain wins, Ukraine should take a good hard look at NATO and EU membership. The alternative may be a return to vassal status under a new Evil Empire.

Hatched by Lee on this day, August 14, 2008, at the time of 3:21 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

August 13, 2008

The Associated Press, in the body of Pete Yost, has made serious accusations of impropriety against presumptive Republican nominee John S. McCain... charges that surely warrant federal investigation and possible disqualification from the presidential race:

McCain stands charged with deliberately and maliciously supporting democracy over the increasingly progressive, humanitarian, and laudible People's Federation of Russia.

More serious is the accusation that the senator, who is older than dirt, took onto his campaign staff a man, Randy Scheunemann, who willfully and with malice aforethought accepted money from the liberal democracy of Georgia -- but pointedly refused to do the same for Georgia's progressive neighbor to the north, which we can unanimously agree he should have done, in all fairness. To discriminate between democracy and progressivism, as McCain continues to do, is to engage in out and out discrimination.

Finally, the most serious charge: Before McCain hired Scheunemann, he was a paid lobbyist, frequently granted access to McCain's inner office; this allowed Scheunemann to argue in favor of democracy over progressive, peaceful consolidation and internationalist coalition-building -- without McCain ever giving the latter equal time, as the Progressive Fairness Doctrine-Plus (soon-to-be introduced in Congress) requires.

These astonishing lapses call McCain's judgment into serious question and raise ethical concerns. Concern at the highest levels about McCain's moral qualification are mounting, as Yost elucidates:

John McCain's chief foreign policy adviser and his business partner lobbied the senator or his staff on 49 occasions in a 3 1/2-year span while being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the government of the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

The payments raise ethical questions about the intersection of Randy Scheunemann's personal financial interests and his advice to the Republican presidential candidate who is seizing on Russian aggression in Georgia as a campaign issue.

The implication that a sitting United States Senator's position on an important issue might be influenced by a paid lobbyist is disturbing enough; but when the issue is the conflict between the so-called "elected" "President" Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia and the progressive, action-oriented, people's government of Vladimir Putin -- and the lobbyist in question (Scheunemann) is paid by one of the parties to the conflict (the wrong one) -- it raises the moral stakes to EthCon 4.

Progressive law professor Stephen Gillers puts the whole issue on the back of his hand:

"Scheunemann's work as a lobbyist poses valid questions about McCain's judgment in choosing someone who -- and whose firm -- are paid to promote the interests of other nations," said New York University law professor Stephen Gillers. [Particularly nations that cling to the discredited political theory of "democracy."] "So one must ask whether McCain is getting disinterested advice, at least when the issues concern those nations."

"If McCain wants advice from someone whose private interests as a once and future lobbyist may affect the objectivity of the advice, that's his choice to make."

But the choice McCain has made about Herr Scheunemann speaks volumes.

Gillers' credentials and wisdom are certainly beyond reproach; he was, for example, the first unofficial John Kerry advisor in 2004 to suggest that he pick former President Bill Clinton as his running mate. The raised eyebrow of Gillers alone should provoke an investigation by the appropriate congressional committee; does the fact that John McCain allowed himself to be lobbied by a democratic nation, while rejecting the support of nondemocratic, illiberal nations, legally disqualify him from the presidency?

Even McCain's own spokesman was forced to admit that the senator has an unhealthy obsession with democratic nations... and a well-known bias against progressive people's republics, such as the People's Federation of Russia, the Joyful Worker's Friendship Republic of Cuba, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam:

McCain has been to Georgia three times since 1997 and "this is an issue that he has been involved with for well over a decade," said McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers.

McCain's strong condemnation in recent days of Russia's military action against Georgia as "totally, absolutely unacceptable" reflects long-standing ties between McCain and hardline conservatives such as Scheunemann, an aide in the 1990s to then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.

The ongoing collusion between McCain and Scheunemann -- first pointed out by the campaign of Barack H. Obama -- has now drawn the scrutiny of the fourth branch of the federal government, the Associated Press; RICO charges have been considered, as well as accusations of conspiracy:

Scheunemann, who also was a foreign policy adviser in McCain's 2000 presidential campaign, has for years traveled the same road as McCain in pushing for regime change in Iraq and promoting NATO membership for Georgia and other former Soviet republics.

While their politics coincide, Russia's invasion of Georgia casts a spotlight on Scheunemann's business interests and McCain's conduct as a senator.

Scheunemann's firm lobbied McCain's office on four bills and resolutions regarding Georgia, with McCain as a co-sponsor or supporter of all of them.

AP unearthed a bombshell when they reported that McCain personally telephoned the putative "Mikheil Saakashvili" under highly suspicious circumstances involving $200,000 changing hands -- and then again yesterday; sensing the possibility of skulduggery, Barack Obama made his own follow-up call to begin the investigation into the potentially unethically and possibly even criminal behavior of his rival, behavior which could, in theory, result in John McCain being disqualified for the presidential run, clearing the way for Obama's ascension:

Four months ago, on the same day that Scheunemann's partner signed the latest $200,000 agreement with Georgia, McCain spoke with Saakashvili by phone. The senator then issued a strong statement saying that "we must not allow Russia to believe it has a free hand to engage in policies that undermine Georgian sovereignty."

Rogers, the McCain campaign spokesman, said the call took place at the request of the embassy of Georgia. And McCain campaign spokeswoman Nicolle Wallace added that the senator has full confidence in Scheunemann. "We're proud of anyone who has worked on the side of angels in fledgling democracies," she said in an interview.

McCain called Saakashvili again on Tuesday. "I told him that I know I speak for every American when I said to him, today, we are all Georgians," McCain told a cheering crowd in York, Pa. McCain's Democratic rival, Barack Obama, had spoken with Saakashvili the day before [obviously in an investigative capacity only, which has not been denied so far by either campaign].

The McCain campaign has likewise issued no statement whatsoever answering the unasked question of whether yesterday's call also involved hundreds of thousands of dollars going into the pocket (or pockets) of person (or persons -- or people, even) unknown.

The extent of Scheunemann's treacherous lobbying of McCain is jaw-dropping... always on behalf of democracies, and actually specializing, it appears, in those which have turned perversely against progressivism and the will of the people by rebelling against centrally planned, rational, scientific authority:

In addition to the 49 contacts with McCain or his staff regarding Georgia, Scheunemann's firm has lobbied the senator or his aides on at least 47 occasions since 2001 on behalf of the governments of Taiwan and Macedonia, which each paid Scheunemann and his partner Mike Mitchell over half a million dollars; Romania, which paid over $400,000; and Latvia, which paid nearly $250,000. Federal law requires Scheunemann to publicly disclose to the Justice Department all his lobbying contacts as an agent of a foreign government.

After contacts with McCain's staff, the senator introduced a resolution saluting the people of Georgia on the first anniversary of the Rose Revolution that brought Mikhail Saakashvili to power.... [!]

In 2005 and 2006, McCain signed onto a resolution expressing support for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia; introduced a resolution expressing support for a peace plan for Georgia's breakaway province of Ossetia; and co-sponsored a measure supporting admission of four nations including Georgia into NATO.

It hardly comes as a shock, then, when that same pair, McCain and Scheunemann -- now conspiring in the open to deny the American presidency to yet another progressive hero of the people -- issue utterly biased, partisan propaganda speeches opposing the reunification of Georgia with the motherland. In stark contrast, the response of Obama has been measured, uncertain, and far more nuanced; he has consistently supported both sides in this conflict, thus exhibiting perfect fairness and cultural relativism, magnificently positioning himself for his upcoming coronation over the pretender.

The aged and increasingly cranky McCain, who personally witnessed the destruction of Pompei, may not himself be as culpable as Scheunemann; many of McCain's Senate colleagues have said for years that something funny happened to him during his lengthy prison term, and he may just not be quite right anymore.

But there is no such extenuating circumstance that can explain Randy Scheunemann's persistent refusal to give the same benefit of the doubt to progressive people's republics that he routinely extends to democracies that hold "elections" -- elections that rarely produce the popular unanimity that accompanies the true elections found in the People's Federation of Russia, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and the Free and Progressive Islamic Republic of Iran.

Scheunemann is widely suspected of being a neoconservative, leading a cabal of neoconservatives who are trying to impose their crabbed and narrow worldview on the rest of the country. Troubling questions about McCain's moral fitness to lead -- which were already mounting -- continue to mount, as AP enumerates:

• Scheunemann "relentlessly pushed for war in Iraq;"
• Scheunemann and his neoconservative cronies relentless called for phony "regime change" in Iraq to create a new "world order;" yet now they hypcritically oppose the honest regime change in Georgia;
• Scheunemann and his co-conspirators have the temerity actually to defend the supposed "surge" in Iraq... even having the gall to expropriate the noble word "progress" to describe it;
• Scheuenemann has been described (for example, in this sentence) as the "fuhrer" of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which nakedly called for the overthrow of a popularly elected government by force and violence -- though Scheunemann himself may have remained clothed;
• Scheunemann has been linked to the Project for the New American Century, which propagandized about various alleged "links" between Iraq and "terrorists;" yet a massive investigation by a blue-ribbon federal commission clearly debunked PNAC's purple prose, finding that Iraq and al-Qaeda never carried out any joint operations simultaneously commanded by senior officers in both organizations under an order signed by both Osama B. bin Laden and Saddam O. Hussein at a signing ceremony held in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Not even once;
• Most damning, Scheunemann has been connected to "a Who's Who of neoconservative luminaries including William Kristol and Richard Perle." Confronted with this evidence, Scheunemann was utterly unable to deny it.

While it may be eye-opening, mind-boggling, and astonishing, it should not be surprising that a creature like the Scheunemann is able to seduce a man with the questionable history of John McCain (whose first forray into the Senate required him to wear a toga) into supporting a brutal democratic regime like Georgia, that has engaged in some of the most aggressive, warmongering behavior that we've seen since the dark days of Ronald Reagan. Consider these accounts from a highly respected news agency (hat tip to John Hinderaker at Power Line, who is evidently just as concerned about this neoconservative unilateralism and democracy-mongering as I):

War between Russia and Georgia orchestrated from USA

Russian officials believe that it was the USA that orchestrated the current conflict. The chairman of the State Duma Committee for Security, Vladimir Vasilyev, believes that the current conflict is South Ossetia is very reminiscent to the wars in Iraq and Kosovo.

Russia: Again Savior of Peace and Life

The international community collectively held their breath waiting for the reaction of Russia after the savage, brutal, criminal attack by Georgia on South Ossetia. After having offered a cease fire in hostilities, the back stabbing Georgians immediately violated the cease fire, invading South Ossetia and causing massive destruction and death among innocent civilians, among peacekeepers and also destroying a hospital....

Georgian troops attempted to storm the city [Tskhinval] much as Hitler‘s Panzer divisions blazed through Europe. Also noteworthy is the fact that Georgian tanks and infantry were being aided by Israeli advisors, a true indicator that this conflict was instigated by outside forces....

Relating what has become common practice among war criminals, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reported: "A Russian humanitarian convoy has come under fire. Panic is growing among the local population, and the number of refugees is increasing. There are reports of ethnic cleansing in some villages... The situation is ripe for a humanitarian catastrophe."

The two-faced, underhanded foreign policy of Georgia

Ask anyone in the Caucasus region, and they will tell you never to trust a Georgian because they would shake your hand with a smile and then stab you in the back. On Friday morning, we saw a perfect example of this treachery, when hours after declaring a ceasefire, Georgian military units launched a savage attack on the civilians of South Ossetia.

Hours after Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili, the pro-western Washington-backed anti-democratic stooge (attacks on opposition policians in Georgia are rife) declared a unilateral ceasefire, the Georgian army lanched a savage attack on the capital of the province of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, with tanks and infantry, while the air force bombed a village and strafed a Russian humanitarian aid convoy.

That a member of "the world's greatest deliberative body" would align himself with such "democracy" against a progressive people's state is deeply troubling. That he would do so on the advice of a being of pure, existential evil, who used to accept filthy lucre from the bloodstained hands of a democratic state, to conspire against historical inevitability... is despicable.

I stand foresquare with the Democratic Party, the presidential campaign of Barack H. Obama, and the progressive supermajority of Americans in demanding that John S. McCain, firstborn son of Cain the fratricide after he betook himself to the land of Nod and got himself a wife, be ruled ineligible for the high office of President of the United States. And that the Republican Party, as punishment for knowingly nominating a man with such a disgraceful and stomach-turning predeliction for democracy over progressivism, be disallowed from substituting any other criminal, thuggish Republican for such an august office.

The only appropriate response to these staggering revelat