Senator Obama, where is your indignation over Democratic big shots laughing about hurricane coming to New Orleans?

Here is the HOPE artist months ago in New Orleans. Heard anything from him yet about this? Anyone seen anything on CNN, New York Times, Washington Post?

Democrats Adapt the Paris Hilton Case for Obama

The Grand Poobah of the MSM (Misogyny Stream Media),Tom Brokaw, on "Meet The Press" has defended the deep inexperience of Barack Obama by saying his experience is augmented by the fact that he has been running for President for twenty months. That is obviously a new Democratic talking point. Let me remind the Democrats and Tom, Pompous of Mumble, that this is the same resume of Paris Hilton. Paris Hilton is famous because she is famous. Barack is qualified to be President because he has experience running for President.

DemocRats Think Hurricane Hitting New Orleans is Funny

I will try and restrain myself in expressing my utter contempt for the Democrats. Listen to a sitting Democratic Congressman from South Carolina Don Spratt and Don Fowler, former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, gleefully talking about the calamity that will be wrecking American lives in Louisiana. In a less enlightened age they would be hog-tied, tarred and feathered. Hat tip : Powerline

"Everything is cool."

Obama and Biden Weekend Fishing Trip

Black King and White Queen

In the game of Chess the Queen is the strongest piece on the chessboard from the standpoint of being able to move, attack, capture, and generally to create havoc for the opponent. While the Kings are the most powerful pieces on the chessboard, the Queens are second in command. Removing an opposing Queen and seeking to keep the player's Queen is a key focus and a strategic advantage. Does McCain play Chess?

Obama foolishly gave up his Queen and now has to fight with the lesser Bishop Biden. McCain has his Queen in play. The Democrats are rashly seizing on the youth and lack of experience of Palin and in doing so are exposing their King Obama. The more the Democrats focus and try to diminish the unknown Palin, they reduce her stature in the eyes of the public, but what happens when the public actually meets Palin? They expect little, but Palin will surprise them.

Today, she was stunning.

The more the Democrats foolishly spend energy attacking her, they waste time that should be used to protect their King.

Palin got a field grade promotion, of that there is no doubt, but Obama barely finished boot camp. Palin is not his opponent. That is McCain and now everyone is talking about Palin. Obama surely does not want to talk time in grade and service with John McCain.

Who even cares about Joe Biden? Interesting game.

Our Gal in 1984

Sarah Palin, getting ready for a ride to the White House

Alaska Gov. Palin is McCain's VP pick

Sen. John McCain has chosen Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his vice-presidential candidate on the Republican ticket for the White House, CNN has learned.

Does stirring oration, enraptured youth, and outdoor extravaganza impress you?

If it does, you would not be the first. The youth in this old video clip were obviously hungry for change and not terribly interested in the details. They were tired of the old and yearned for a new era, a thousand years of it if I recall. 

Absurd comparison? Like Obama and Michelle, political orators always have that tinge of anger and remind their audience of a shared victimization by the powers that be. It is part of an irresistible  formula that has predictable results on us mortal beings. 

Spread the verbal and visual smorgasbord  before the crowd and you will get the familiar results known by all natural leaders. However, the party always ends and rarely ends well. Some may even pine for the oratorically  challenged "w." 

Did I just say that?



hat tip: Doug, from a previous post.

Chancy Obama

A Speech to the Delegates

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: August 29, 2008
DENVER NYT

My fellow Americans, it is an honor to address the Democratic National Convention at this defining moment in history. We stand at a crossroads at a pivot point, near a fork in the road on the edge of a precipice in the midst of the most consequential election since last year’s “American Idol.”

One path before us leads to the past, and the extinction of the human race. The other path leads to the future, when we will all be dead. We must choose wisely.

We must close the book on the bleeding wounds of the old politics of division and sail our ship up a mountain of hope and plant our flag on the sunrise of a thousand tomorrows with an American promise that will never die! For this election isn’t about the past or the present, or even the pluperfect conditional. It’s about the future, and Barack Obama loves the future because that’s where all his accomplishments are.

We meet today to pass the torch to a new generation of Americans, a generation that came of age amidst iced chais and mocha strawberry Frappuccinos®, a generation with a historical memory that doesn’t extend back past Coke Zero.

We meet today to heal the divisions that have torn this country. For we are all one country and one American family, whether we are caring and thoughtful Democrats or hate-filled and war-crazed Republicans. We must bring together left and right, marinara and carbonara, John and Elizabeth Edwards. On United we stand, on US Airways, there’s a 25-minute delay.

Ladies and gentleman, I never expected to be speaking before you today. Like so many of our speakers at this convention, I come from a hard-working, middle-class family. I was leading a miserable little life, but, nevertheless, overcame great odds to live the American Dream. My great-grandfather fought in Patton’s Army, along with Barack Obama’s great-grand uncles’ fourth cousin once removed.

As a child, I was abandoned by my parents and lived with a colony of ants. We didn’t have much in the way of material possession, but we did have each other and the ability to carry far more than our own body weights. When I was young, I was temporarily paralyzed in a horrible anteater accident, but I never gave up my dream: the dream of speaking at a national political convention so my speech could be talked over by Wolf Blitzer and a gang of pundits.

And today we Democrats meet in Denver, a suburb of Boulder, a city whose motto is, “A Taxi? You Must be Dreaming.”

And in Denver, we Democrats showed America that we have cute daughters who will someday provide us with prestigious car-window stickers. We heard Hillary Clinton’s ringing endorsement of “the weak-looking thin guy who’s bound to lose.”

We heard from Joe Biden, whose 643 years in the Senate make him uniquely qualified to talk to the middle class, whose family has been riding the Acela and before that the Metroliner for generations, who has been given a lifetime ban from the quiet car and who is himself a verbal train wreck waiting to happen.

We got to know Barack and Michelle Obama, two tall, thin, rich, beautiful people who don’t perspire, but who nonetheless feel compassion for their squatter and smellier fellow citizens. We know that Barack could have gone to a prestigious law firm, like his big donors in the luxury boxes, but he chose to put his ego aside to become a professional politician, president of the United States and redeemer of the human race. We heard about his time as a community organizer, the three most fulfilling months of his life.

We were thrilled by his speech in front of the Greek columns, which were conscientiously recycled from the concert, “Yanni, Live at the Acropolis.” We were honored by his pledge, that if elected president, he will serve at least four months before running for higher office. We were moved by his campaign slogan, “Vote Obama: He’s better than you’ll ever be.” We were inspired by dozens of Democratic senators who declared their lifelong love of John McCain before denouncing him as a reactionary opportunist who would destroy the country.

No, this country cannot afford to elect John Bushmccain. Under Republican rule, locusts have stripped the land, adults wear crocs in public and M&M’s have lost their flavor. We must instead ride to the uplands of hope!

For as Barack Obama suggested Thursday night, wherever there is a president who needs to tap our natural-gas reserves, I’ll be there. Wherever there is a need for a capital-gains readjustment for targeted small businesses, I’ll be there. Wherever there is a president committed to direct diplomacy with nuclear proliferators, I’ll be there, too! God bless the Democrats, and God Bless America!

"As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden."

More on Russia and the EU.

European Concerns Over Russia Increase. US and NATO Warships Entering the Black Sea

Turkish protests at US and Nato warships moving into the Black Sea

Georgia: Europe unites to condemn Kremlin

David Miliband joined a chorus of Western leaders to condemn Russia, accusing the Kremlin of jeopardising European security by recognising Georgia's two breakaway regions.

By Con Coughlin in Kiev, Adrian Blomfield in Tbilisi and Harry de Quetteville in Berlin Telegraph

6:08AM BST 28 Aug 2008

The rhetorical salvoes showed the new strain on relations with Russia. For its part, the Kremlin said it had only defended its citizens in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, argued the decision had been "unavoidable".

Speaking in Ukraine's capital, Kiev, the Foreign Secretary said that Russia was "more isolated, less trusted and less respected" as a result of its actions in Georgia. These breached a United Nations Resolution, approved by Moscow last April, which reaffirmed Georgia's sovereignty over Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Mr Miliband placed the onus for avoiding a new Cold War firmly on President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia. "The Russian President says he is not afraid of a new Cold War. We don't want a new Cold War. He has a big responsibility not to start one," he said.

Comparing Russia's actions to the Prague Spring of 1968, when Moscow suppressed a reformist Czech government, Mr Miliband said: "The sight of Russian tanks in a neighbouring country on the 40th anniversary of the crushing of the Prague Spring has shown that the temptations of power politics remain. The old sores and divisions fester. And Russia is not yet reconciled to the new map of this region."

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany's foreign minister, issued a stark warning. "If we don't watch out, Europe's whole security architecture will start to falter with unforeseeable consequences for all of us. The spiral of provocation must stop immediately," he said.

France, which holds the European Union's rotating presidency, expressed concern that Moscow, emboldened by its military success in Georgia, could turn on other former Soviet republics with breakaway provinces and large Russian minorities.

Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, described the situation as "very dangerous" and said: "There are other objectives that one can suppose are objectives for Russia, in particular the Crimea, Ukraine and Moldova."

Moscow backs separatist rebels in Moldova's region of Transdniester in much the same way that the Kremlin supported South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russian nationalists have frequently called for the return of the Crimea, which was transferred to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954.

So far, only the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has followed Russia and recognised the independence of the two regions. Mr Lavrov, the Kremlin's foreign minister, said: "I can only say that we will not be roving the globe, twisting hands and twisting arms of people for them to recognise South Ossetia or Abkhazia."

He added that Russia taken this step for the sake of its citizens in both enclaves. "This recognition was absolutely unavoidable. Short of losing our dignity as a nation, we couldn't act otherwise," said Mr Lavrov.

America did not join the verbal barrage against Russia. Instead, the US Coast Guard ship Dallas docked in Georgia's port of Batumi and unloaded humanitarian aid. The USS McFaul, a destroyer armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles dropped anchor nearby in the Black Sea.

Mr Medevedev claimed yesterday the American ships were supplying arms to Georgia. Raising the possibility of a naval confrontation, he ordered the Russian cruiser "Moskva" and two missile boats to deploy off the coastal city of Sukhumi in breakaway Abkhazia.

This summoned memories of the first confrontation of the Cold War when the USS Missouri was deployed in the Black Sea in 1946 to deter Russian threats against Turkey.

Hail Obama. Democrats Prepare Annointment.

Obama Speech Stage Resembles Ancient Greek Temple
August 26, 2008

DENVER (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.

The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos' National Football League team plays.



Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington's Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party's nomination for president.

He will stride out to a raised platform to a podium that can be raised from beneath the floor.

The show should provide a striking image for the millions of Americans watching on television as Obama delivers a speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.


Politicians in past elections have typically spoken from the convention site itself, but the Obama campaign liked the idea of having their man speak to a larger, stadium-sized crowd not far from where the Democratic National Convention is being held, at the Denver pro basketball arena.

Obama was taking a page from the campaign book of John Kennedy in 1960 when the future president delivered his acceptance speech to 80,000 people in the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Once Obama speaks, confetti will rain down on him and fireworks will be fired off from locations around the stadium wall.

Democratic convention organizers said the theme for the evening is "Change We Can Believe In," which has been a consistent message of Obama's presidential campaign.

Oscar-winning actress and singer Jennifer Hudson will sing the national anthem that night.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; editing by David Wiessler)

In case you missed it:

Maureen Dowd

Some good comments on the last thread, but Maureen Dowd nails it:

High Anxiety in the Mile High City


By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: August 26, 2008
DENVER


The New York Times

I’ve been to a lot of conventions, and there’s always something gratifyingly weird that happens.

Dan Quayle acting like a Dancing Hamster. Teresa Heinz Kerry reprising Blanche DuBois. Dick Morris getting nabbed triangulating between a hooker and toes.

But this Democratic convention has a vibe so weird and jittery, so at odds with the early thrilling, fairy dust feel of the Obama revolution, that I had to consult Mike Murphy, the peppery Republican strategist and former McCain guru.

“What is that feeling in the air?” I asked him.

“Submerged hate,” he promptly replied.

There were a lot of bitter Clinton associates, fund-raisers and supporters wandering the halls, spewing vindictiveness, complaining of slights, scheming about Hillary’s roll call and plotting trouble, with some in the Clinton coterie dissing Obama by planning early departures, before the nominee even speaks.

At a press conference with New York reporters on Monday, Hillary looked as if she were straining at the bit to announce her 2012 exploratory committee.

“Remember, 18 million people voted for me, 18 million people, give or take, voted for Barack,” she said, while making a faux pro-Obama point. She keeps acting as if her delegates are out of her control, when she’s been privately egging on people to keep her dream alive as long as possible, no matter what the cost to Obama.

Hillary also said she was happy about the choice of Joe Biden because he added “intensity” to the ticket. Ouch.

She added insult to injury by coming out Tuesday night looking great in a blazing orange pantsuit and teaching the precocious pup Obama something about intensity and message. She thanked her “sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits,” and slyly noted that Obama would enact her health care plan rather than his.

She offered the electrifying fight that the limpid Obama has not — setting off paranoia among some Democrats that they had chosen the wrong nominee or that Obama had chosen the wrong running mate. “It makes perfect sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together in the Twin Cities because these days they are awfully hard to tell apart,” she said.

Afterward, some of her supporters began crying, as they were interviewed by reporters, saying that her speech had proved that she would make a better president than Obama. And, as one said, she would only give him “two months” to prove himself.

Ed Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania, compared Obama to the passive-aggressive Adlai Stevenson and told The Washington Post that Obama gives six-minute answers and “is not exactly the easiest guy in the world to identify with.”

At a meeting of the Democratic women’s caucus Tuesday, 74-year-old Carol Anderson of Vancouver, Wash., a former Hillary volunteer, stood in the back of the room in a Hillary T-shirt and hat signed by Hillary and “Nobama” button and booed every time any of the women speakers mentioned Obama’s name.

She’s voting for McCain and had nothing nice to say about the Obamas. What about the kids, I asked. “Adorable,” she agreed. Well, I said, Michelle raised them.

“I think her mother does,” Anderson shot back, adding: “I wonder if Michelle would give the Queen one of her little knuckle punches?”

Bill’s pals said he was still gnawing at his many grievances against the younger version of himself he has to praise Wednesday night; the latest one being that the Obama folks, like all winners, wanted control over Bill’s speech, so that he did not give a paean to himself and his economic record, which is what he wanted to do, because he was incensed that Obama said a couple critical things about his administration during a heated campaign.

Finally, Obama had to give in on Monday and say he would allow the ex-president to do exactly as he likes, which is what he usually does anyhow.

Obama’s pacification of Bill made his supporters depressed and anxious that he was going to be a weaker candidate than they had hoped and fearful that, as in Obama’s favorite movie, “The Godfather,” every time Democrats try to get away, the Clintons pull them back in.

And Democrats have begun internalizing the criticisms of Hillary and John McCain about Obama’s rock-star prowess, worrying that the Invesco Field extravaganza Thursday, with Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi, will just add to the celebrity cachet that Democrats have somehow been shamed into seeing as a negative.

So that added to the weird mood at the convention, with some Democrats nitpicking Obama’s appearance, after Michelle’s knock-out speech and the fabulously cute girls, with a reassuring white family in a town he couldn’t remember at one point. They wondered why he wasn’t wearing a tie, fearing he looked too young, and second-guessed Michelle’s green dress, wondering if it clashed with the blue stage, and fretted that there wasn’t a speaker Monday night attacking McCain and yelling about gas prices.

“I’m telling you, man,” said one top Democrat, “it’s something about our party, the shtetl mentality.”

Hillary on Stage

This is open to blogging as you see it, real time. Hillary, according to Dick Morris, is out to outshine Biden.

Biden got about 6000 votes to Hillary's 18 million.

Obama's and Michelle's egos would not allow them to pick the VP that would have won the election for them.
Now she has to put on the show. It should be good. Hillary will come out of this looking better than Obama and Biden.

And the video, Obama does not want you to see:

MSNBC Gets Called Out by Joe Scarborough

 

The Worst of the Worst, David Schuster, Keith Olberman, Chris Matthews and Mika Brzezinski.

Hello America, Meet June Cleaver Obama.

Previously recorded.

The Michelle Obama that was sort of fun and interesting was released from an anger detox center in Stepford, Connecticut and appeared in Public for the first time in weeks at the DNC big tent.

Michelle shared her telepromted revised history of the Obama's and looked very nice in a smart blue dress, the blue dress being an obvious olive branch to Bill Clinton.

Michelle also had some very nice words to say about her new heroine Hillary.

Ah yes, but the Stepford treatment was not complete. The hint of the old Michelle was still there, as she saw and described Hillary as almost successful but still enshrined in victimization by the system.

Michelle pointedly noted that Hillary put 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling.

There was hardly a dry Democratic eye to be seen; even Screaming Joe looked weepy. Unfortunately for me, I am in a country that fails to recognize the appeal of MSNBC, so I am at a loss and also disadvantaged at not being able to experience Chris Matthews convulsed in emotion. If any of you did see him, please share.

ErectUs intErrUptus

EU President Rules Out Sanctions Against Russia
By Lisa Bryant Voice of America
Paris
25 August 2008

Current EU president France has ruled out sanctions against Russia as European Union leaders consider ways to pressure Moscow to fully comply with a ceasefire agreement. Lisa Bryant reports from Paris that EU leaders will meet next week to discuss the crisis in Georgia.

In an interview on French public radio Monday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the European Union did not foresee sanctions against Russia, even though Moscow continues to have troops in Georgia.

Kouchner said the worst had been avoided in Georgia and the majority of Russian troops had retreated from Georgian territory.

Kouchner spoke a week before European leaders meet in Russia to decide how to deal with the Georgian crisis that flared up over the breakaway region of South Ossetia. France currently holds the rotating presidency of the 27-member European Union. Acting on behalf of the bloc, French President Nicolas Sarkozy flew to Russia and to Georgia earlier this month to negotiate a cease-fire after clashes between the two over South Ossetia.

The EU divided over how to deal with Russia, with some members wanting a tougher position against Russia than others.

Moscow has refused to fully retreat from Georgia, arguing the cease-fire deal gives it the right to keep some forces there. On Monday, Russia's lower house of parliament vowed to back independence for South Ossetia and another breakaway region in Georgia.

Kouchner said it was important to control the corridor in which the Russian forces patrol - and it would be easier after the summit to send observers from the EU and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to Georgia to monitor the cease-fire.

Is This Week Going to be Better for Obama Than Last?

August 24, 2008 Politico
Categories: MSNBC

Rendell: Obama coverage was embarrassing

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell was supposed to give “closing remarks” during this afternoon’s Shorenstein Center-sponsored panel discussion with all three Sunday show moderators — NBC’s Tom Brokaw, ABC’s George Stephanopoulous and CBS’s Bob Schieffer — but instead, he opened up a can of worms about bias in 2008 election coverage

"Ladies and gentleman, the coverage of Barack Obama was embarrassing," said Rendell, in the ballroom at Denver's Brown Palace Hotel. "It was embarrassing."

Rendell, an ardent Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter during the primaries, now backs Obama in the general election. Brokaw and Rendell began debating campaign coverage, including the on-air comments by Lee Cowan, and when MSNBC came up, Rendell went after the cable network.

“MSNBC was the official network of the Obama campaign," Rendell said, who called their coverage "absolutely embarrassing."

Chris Matthews, Rendell said, "loses his impartiality when he talks about the Clintons.”

At that point, PBS's Judy Woodruff, who was moderating the moderators event, said: "Why don’t we let Governor Rendell sit down."

That was met with applause from the crowd of big-time media figures, which included Arianna Huffington, Gwen Ifill, Al Hunt, and Chuck Todd.

Woodruff allowed Brokaw to respond, and in defending the network, he said that Matthews and Keith Olbermann are "not the only voices" on MSNBC.

Frank Marshall Davis, mentor to Obama, and Sexual Predator.

...author of "Christ is a Dixie Nigger"

Take a long and hard cold look at what makes Barack Hussein Obama and ask yourself "Is this the man you want to set and control the American education system for your children and grandchildren?" 

How important is a family and education to a young person? What of the early family and friends of Barack Hussein Obama? 

_____________________________________

Frank Marshall Davis, alleged Communist, was early influence on Barack Obama
New details about a black poet in Hawaii who was a key early influence in Barack Obama’s life can be revealed by The Telegraph.  (hat tip: Bobal)

By Toby Harnden in Washington Telegraph
Last Updated: 9:25PM BST 24 Aug 2008

Barack Obama visited Mr Davis on several occasions to get his advice when he was grappling with racial issues Photo: AFP
Although identified only as Frank in Mr Obama’s memoir Dreams from My Father, it has now been established that he was Frank Marshall Davis, a radical activist and journalist who had been suspected of being a member of the Communist Party in the 1950s.

Obama's true colours: Making of the man who would be US president

Mr Davis moved to Honolulu from Chicago in 1948 with his second wife Helen Canfield, a white socialite, at the suggestion of his friend the actor Paul Robeson, who advised them that there would be more tolerance of a mixed race couple in Hawaii than on the American mainland.

A bohemian libertine who drank heavily and loved jazz, he became friends with Stanley Dunham, Mr Obama’s maternal grandfather in the 1960s. Mr Davis died in 1987 at the age of 81, five years before Mr Dunham.

“He knew Stan real well,” said Dawna Weatherly-Williams, a close friend of Mr Davis “They’d play Scrabble and drink and crack jokes and crack jokes and argue. Frank always won and he was always very braggadocio about it too. It was all jocular. They didn’t get polluted drunk. And Frank never really did drugs, though he and Stan would smoke pot together.”

While his mother was in Indonesia during part of his teenage years, Mr Obama lived with his white grandparents. Mrs Weatherly-Williams said that the poet was first introduced to the future Democratic presidential candidate in 1970 at the age of 10.

“Stan had been promising to bring Barry by because we all had that in common - Frank’s kids were half-white, Stan’s grandson was half-black and my son was half-black. We all had that in common and we all really enjoyed it. We got a real kick out of reality.”

Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's half-sister, told the Associated Press recently that her grandfather had seen Mr Davis was “a point of connection, a bridge if you will, to the larger African-American experience for my brother".

In his memoir, Mr Obama recounts how he visited Mr Davis on several occasions, apparently at junctures when he was grappling with racial issues, to seek his counsel. At one point in 1979 Mr Davis described university as “an advanced degree in compromise” that was designed to keep blacks in their place.

Mr Obama quoted him as saying: “Leaving your race at the door. Leaving your people behind. Understand something, boy. You’re not going to college to get educated. You’re going there to get trained.”

He added that “they’ll tank on your chain and let you know that you may be a well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you’re a nigger just the same.”

It has also been established that Mr Davis, who divorced in 1970, was the author of a hard-core pornographic autobiography published in San Diego in 1968 by Greenleaf Classics under the pseudonym Bob Greene.

In a surviving portion of an autobiographical manuscript, Mr Davis confirms that he was the author of Sex Rebel: Black after a reader had noticed the “similarities in style and phraseology” between the pornographic work and his poetry.

“I could not then truthfully deny that this book, which came out in 1968 as a Greenleaf Classic, was mine.” In the introduction to Sex Rebel, Mr Davis (writing as Greene) explains that although he has “changed names and identities…all incidents I have described have been taken from actual experiences”.

He stated that “under certain circumstances I am bisexual” and that he was “ a voyeur and an exhibitionist” who was “occasionally mildly interested in sado-masochism”, adding: “I have often wished I had two penises to enjoy simultaneously the double – but different – sensations of oral and genital copulation.”

The book, which closely tracks Mr Davis’s life in Chicago and Hawaii and the fact that his first wife was black and his second white, describes in lurid detail a series of shockingly sordid sexual encounters, often involving group sex.

One chapter concerns the seduction by Mr Davis and his first wife of a 13-year-old girl called Anne. Mr Davis wrote that it was the girl who had suggested he had sex with her. “I’m not one to go in for Lolitas. Usually I’d rather not bed a babe under 20.
“But there are exceptions. I didn’t want to disappoint the trusting child. At her still-impressionistic age, a rejection might be traumatic, could even cripple her sexually for life.”

He then described how he and his wife would have sex with the girl. “Anne came up many times the next several weeks, her aunt thinking she was in good hands. Actually she was.

“She obtained a course in practical sex from experienced and considerate practitioners rather than from ignorant insensitive neophytes….I think we did her a favour, although the pleasure was mutual.”

On other occasions, Mr Davis would cruise in Hawaii parks looking for couples or female tourists to have sex with. He derived sexual gratification from bondage, simulated rape and being flogged and urinated on.

He boasted that “the number of white babes interested in at least one meeting with a Negro male has been far more than I can handle” and wished “America were as civilised as, say, Scandinavia”. He concluded: “I regret none of my experiences or unusual appetites; for me they are normal.”

According to Mrs Weatherly-Williams, Mr Davis lost touch with Mr Dunham some time in the 1980s. John Edgar Tidwell, who wrote the introduction to Davis's memoir and edited a collection of his work, said that there was no mention of Mr Dunham or Mr Obama in any of Mr Davis’s papers.

McCain Should Now Choose a Woman to Win.

August 24, 2008
The Obama-Not Hillary Ticket
By Dick Morris Real Clear Politics

It doesn't take a political genius to realize that Barack Obama needed to nominate a woman for vice president. Obama's key

problem is that there is no gender gap. In the most recent Zogby poll, he runs only 2 points better among women than among men. A Democrat should be running 10 to 15 points better among women.

If Obama is to have a hope of winning, he needs to improve his performance among female voters. The Fox News poll indicates that only about half of those who backed Hillary Clinton in the primaries are voting for Obama and that fully one in five is now planning to back McCain. Attractive to women voters because of his maverick positions on issues and his willingness to defy the Republican orthodoxy, McCain is garnering votes from women who should be part of Obama's core constituency.

So why didn't Obama name a woman? He couldn't nominate Hillary because she came with such baggage that he'd be spending his entire campaign swatting away charges directed at the Clintons. It would be priceless to see Obama trying to justify Bill's refusal to publish the names of the donors to his library or to explain what Bill is doing in Dubai and Kazakhstan.


But what about Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius? While not a national figure, she is attractive and articulate, and would have made a fine candidate. But Obama was terrified that the Clintons would wreck vengeance if he named a woman other than Hillary. But it was all a bluff.

Hillary's delegates would have celebrated the selection of a woman and would not have held it against Obama that it was someone other than Hillary. Hillary, for her part, would have had to grit her teeth and support Sebelius or risk alienating her core constituency. But Obama didn't dare do what he needed to do. He wimped out.

The fact that Barack Obama named Joe Biden as his vice presidential candidate will have relatively little impact on the strategic framework of the race. Biden was the best of the names on Obama's short list. His experience in foreign affairs, his tough advocacy of the Democratic agenda and his skill at handling himself will all help Obama's campaign, but not decisively. The other options were worse. Tim Kaine, governor of Virginia, had as little experience as Obama. Evan Bayh, senator from Indiana, is way too soft spoken and mild for a rough and tumble campaign.

But the most important thing is that Obama did not choose a woman. He needed one. With Hillary's evident availability for the nomination, his failure to name her or some other woman stands out starkly to women voters. It doesn't matter to them that he chose Biden over Bayh or Kaine. What matters is that he did not choose Hillary or another woman.

Now, John McCain can take advantage of Obama's blunder by coming back with a woman nominee for president. Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison would be an excellent choice. She's been around for decades and is not going to start making mistakes now. Her nomination would be a signal to American women that McCain takes their aspirations seriously, even if Obama does not. Hutchison is not charismatic. But her circumstances would be if she were nominated. The prospect of a woman vice president would electrify women throughout the nation.

I have previously written about the advantages of Joe Lieberman for vice president. His nomination would send a signal of bipartisanship that would be notable and would hasten Democratic defections. But conservatives would be horrified by the choice of Lieberman. And Obama's failure to nominate a woman is such a glaring misstep that McCain should pounce and take advantage of it.

The ticket will nominally be Obama-Biden. But, to millions of American women it will be Obama and not Hillary.

What has Russia Done for Us Lately? Not Much.

The Democrats keep touting the benefits of negotiations and one-on-one communications as a panacea for all that ails the political world. Does it work? The short answer is "maybe and maybe not."

It has done little with Russia. The Bush design to work through personal channels with Vladimir Putin is a wreck, but no one can fault George Bush for not having tried.

The idea was to include Moscow into the western civilization of the new millenium. That was based on the delusional religion of inclusion and multi-culturalism. Common sense and human observation should have told us that little would change in Russia.

It hasn't and it wont. The Washington Post has noticed:

_____________________

Who Needs Russia?

The United States should make a clear-eyed assessment of the fruits of strategic cooperation.
Washington Post Editorial

Saturday, August 23, 2008

ON THURSDAY, while overseeing his country's continuing occupation of neighboring Georgia, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev found time to meet with visiting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Mr. Assad, who is under suspicion of ordering the murder of political opponents in Lebanon, lavishly praised Russia's invasion of Georgia and asked for more Russian weapons. Mr. Medvedev acceded to this request, according to his foreign minister.

This was a small and unsurprising event in the annals of Russian diplomatic history. But it's worth noting as the United States and its European allies consider how to reshape relations with Russia in the wake of its Aug. 7 invasion of Georgia. A common theme of commentary since the war began has been that the United States is constrained in its condemnation of -- or sanctions against -- Russia because it needs Russia too much in areas ranging from counterterrorism to checking the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran. But you can't lose what you never had, and it's fair to question how much help Russia has been providing in any of those areas, even before Aug. 7.

Iran provides a useful example. Russia has participated, with Germany, France and Britain, in talks aimed at persuading Iran to abandon its nuclear program and even has gone along with some sanctions enacted by the U.N. Security Council. But Russia's principal contribution has been to slow the process and resist meaningful sanctions, stringing the Bush administration along just enough to convince it that truly effective measures -- sometime, somewhere down the road -- might be possible. Iran's nuclear program has proceeded without inhibition. Meanwhile, Russian experts help develop Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, and Russia sells Iran air-defense weapons it can use to protect its nuclear sites and anti-ship weapons it could use to menace Persian Gulf shipping traffic in the event of conflict. While the administration blames Iran and its proteges, including Hamas and Syria, for destabilizing the Middle East, Russia sells arms to all of them, and to Venezuela and Sudan.

None of this means that the United States should seek or welcome a new cold war with Russia. Russia could make life far more difficult for many of America's friends if it chose to do so, just as it could, if it chose, help combat terrorism and nuclear proliferation. But President Bush's imagined partnership with president-turned-prime-minister Vladimir Putin has been pretty much an empty husk for a long time. We hope and believe that the West would not under any circumstance barter away the independence or territorial integrity of a small, free and helpless nation in exchange for a promise of big-power cooperation. But when that promise is an illusion, the calculation should become even easier.

Eye Candy

A Quiet Saturday Night at the EB

Slade said:

You know, there's already two alpha dogs, a rottweiler, two pitbulls, a chihuahua, a bassett hound, a mixed breed, a (serious) shi'tzu, a standard French poodle, and moi, the Heinz 57 mutt; oh, and an Australian multilingual sheepdog.

Of course, Sam's the sheepdog but who are the others? I think I know who the Bassett is, but...
While you're all thinking about that, here's a little lesson on the law of unintended consequences.

McCain Locks and Loads on Biden

A Biden Problem: Foot in Mouth
After Announcing Presidential Bid, Biden Slammed for Obama Remarks
By JAKE TAPPER
WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2007

Senator Joe Biden, D-Del., the loquacious chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who launched his presidential campaign today, may be experiencing an ailment not entirely unknown to him: foot in mouth disease.

Biden is taking some heat for comments he made to the New York Observer, in which he said of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., a rival for the nomination: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Immediately the conservative media establishment -- Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report, bloggers -- publicly pounced. At Townhall.com, Mary Katherine Ham wrote: "A clean black man? The first black guy on the American political scene who can both shower regularly and speak properly? Is that really what Biden thinks? If a Republican had said this, we'd have a national outpouring of grief over the residual ignorance and racial insensitivity in our country, and the guy would be in sensitivity training until around about the time John Kerry is elected president."

"'He is a clean African-American'?" Limbaugh asked. "If Biden thinks that Obama is clean then he has to think that others are not clean. Does he mean that he knows that Jesse Jackson is not clean? Does he mean that he knows that Reverend Sharpton is not clean? ... See, folks, this is the problem for the libs. Once they get off script they expose their idiocy, they expose their prejudice."

But it wasn't just conservatives.

"When I heard his comments I thought Joe Biden was referring to a bygone era," said Donna Brazile, the former campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign and a prominent African-American political consultant. "Years ago when white folks referred to black people with education they often used words like articulate. To suggest they were different, they were acceptable. That they were OK as compared to rest of African-Americans. So I think it came across that Joe Biden was referring to Sen. Obama as if he was a candidate running in the 1960s, not in the 21st century."

"They are loaded words," Rev. Jesse Jackson told ABC News. "And that's why he should interpret what he meant by those loaded words. It was an attempt I thought to diminish Barack's attributes and dismissive of our previous campaigns that made Barack's candidacy possible."

Jackson said Biden's remarks "could be divisive."

ABC News January 2007

Joe Biden Is Obama VP Choice

Iowa results for Joe Biden-5th place, 2,328 votes- scarfed up an amazing 1% of the vote.

I am told from a neighbor and friend of Joe Biden that he be the man. I cannot cite the source but I see that CNN is now making the call.

Obama's People

Drift and complacency are dooming Obama's campaign
By MARTIN SIEFF
Aug. 22, 2008 at 1:12 PM

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- Sen. Barack Obama heads into his nominating convention in Denver next week on the skids: Four years ago Sen. John Kerry, the doomed Democratic contender against President George W. Bush, was in a far stronger position heading for his nominating convention in Boston than Obama is now.
Three major polls this week put Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican putative presidential nominee, either breaking even or ahead of Obama by as much as 3 percentage points. McCain's gaffe about how many houses he owns isn't likely to significantly change the situation. Obama's eagerness to zero in on it makes a mockery of his overconfident and naive pledge to stay positive throughout his campaign.

Devastating to Obama is the polling data that say as many as 20 percent of Hillary Clinton supporters now say they will vote for McCain. Obama, riding into a convention where his nomination is assured, therefore remains burdened by a resentful, confused and highly divided party, even though there are actually no major contentious issues that should divide it. It is McCain, against all the Conventional Wisdom predictions of earlier this year, who presides over an increasingly united party rallying to his support.

The race is obviously far from over, but the skid in Obama's standings over the past month has been extraordinary: The Dog Days of August, so fatal to Democratic nominees like Kerry and Michael Dukakis in 1988, have eaten Obama alive, too.

Obama has committed no obvious super-blunders, but he has had his share of embarrassing bloopers, as has McCain. The campaign for the presidency of the United States is now so grueling that either of the main contestants would have had to come from the planet Krypton to be immune to its pressures. However, the mainstream U.S. media have magnified and even distorted McCain's every hiccup and ignored the far more numerous gaffes from Obama.

The idea that race has become a key issue in the campaign is also absurd. It is true that 9 percent of those polled in one survey said they were reluctant to vote for a black candidate. But they were never going to vote for a liberal Democrat of any persuasion anyway.

Everyone knew Obama was an African-American from before the moment he threw his hat in the ring for the Iowa caucuses: Indeed, as a freshman senator aged only 46, with no national experience beyond his four years so far in the Senate and a virtually non-existent record on key votes and legislative accomplishment there, he would not have gotten within a prayer of his party's presidential nomination had the romance of his Kansas-Kenya background not made him a dream candidate first.

Also, Obama was riding consistently high in the polls a couple of months ago, with leads as great as 12 points or more in some polls. His victory over a conservative septuagenarian after eight years of a Republican in the White House with gas prices at a record high, the dollar plummeting and the housing market in chaos seemed assured.

Obama has not veered from his planned message. He has meticulously masterminded every detail of what was supposed to be his imperial progress. The problem is that none of it is working.

When Obama moved to the center on a host of issues to sound reassuring, he sacrificed his reputation for bold, innovative change and for courageous integrity. When he wowed world leaders and public audiences on his foreign trip from Afghanistan to Berlin, he came across at home instead as a celebrity on a Paris Hilton scale. The more the U.S. media gave his grand tour favorable coverage, the more his poll numbers fell.

Even Paris Hilton's famed YouTube video hurt Obama in the end much more than it did McCain, because Hilton, like McCain, spoke coherent, honest and detailed sense on energy issues. She acknowledged the nation's need to maintain and expand offshore oil drilling and other conventional energy resources.

By contrast, the alternative energy resources that Obama advocates are still largely non-existent in terms of technological and engineering capability. When Hilton shows a greater, more confident and far more detailed mastery of one of the three key issues in the entire campaign than the Democratic nominee, he really has problems.

Most of all, Obama and his strategists never anticipated that McCain, with fewer financial resources and a far smaller, more informal staff, would prove energetic, aggressive and effective in his daily counterpunches at the Democratic candidate.

Although McCain is more than a quarter-century older than Obama, he is the one who has been far more intellectual, coherent, energizing and dynamic in the national debate. Obama's favorite means of presentation -- the long, usually vague but inspirational soaring rhetoric of a prepared speech -- was great to rally Democratic Party hard-core activists back in the early days of the campaign, but MTV generation America has no time for it. McCain's punchy messages are making far more impact there.

If Obama loses after everything he had going for him, including the biggest financial war chest in U.S. political history, the venerable liberal establishment of the Democratic Party is likely to be eaten alive by a neo-populist new generation over the next few years. To lose three times in a row -- especially in an election in which every economic indicator pointed to a Democratic landslide -- will make sweeping, unprecedented change and upheaval in the party inevitable.

Worst of all, Obama has been in apparent denial about his collapsing poll numbers when the one thing above all the public craves from its national leader in a time of fear and economic crisis is, as the greatest of Democratic presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, famously said in his first inaugural in April 1933, "action, and action now."

Obama simply must deliver a credible, detailed plan of action to confront the economic and energy issues facing the nation in Denver next week. If he doesn't, his goose is cooked.

Gents, Please buy the ladies a drink.

Vice President David Petraeus

PETRAEUS FOR VICE PRESIDENT

US Makes Deal to Withdraw from Iraq

2011 is U.S. target date for troops' pullout from Iraq
11:54 PM CDT on Thursday, August 21, 2008

From Wire Reports
BAGHDAD – The United States has agreed to remove combat troops from Iraqi cities by next June and from the rest of the country by the end of 2011 if conditions in Iraq remain relatively stable, according to Iraqi and American officials involved in negotiating a security accord.

The withdrawal timetable, which Bush administration officials called "aspirational goals" rather than fixed dates, are contained in the draft of an agreement that still must be approved by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders before it goes before Iraq's Parliament. It has the support of the Bush administration, American and Iraqi officials said.

Obama Brings a Knife to a Gun Fight

You want to talk real estate? You sure?

Is Barack an American Patriot?

The word patriot comes down from the Greek, patrios 'of one's fathers,' Latin, patriota 'fellow countryman,' and from patris, 'fatherland.' It means a person who vigorously defends his country from enemies and detractors.

Hattip:apfte

Dear Friends:

My name is Joe Porter.

I live in Champaign , Illinois . I'm 46 years old, a born-again Christian, a husband, a father, a small business owner, a veteran, and a homeowner. I don't consider myself to be either conservative or liberal, and I vote for the person, not Republican or Democrat. I don't believe there are "two Americas " - but that every person in this country can be whomever and what ever they want to be if they'll just work to get there - and nowhere else on earth can they find such opportunities. I believe our government should help those who are legitimately downtrodden, and should always put the interests of America first.

The purpose of this message is that I'm concerned about the future of this great nation. I'm worried that the silent majority of honest, hard-working, tax-paying people in this country have been passive for too long. Most folks I know choose not to involve themselves in politics. They go about their daily lives, paying their bills, raising their kids, and doing what they can to maintain the good life. They vote and consider doing so to be a sacred trust. They shake their heads at the political pundits and so-called "news", thinking that what they hear is always spun by whomever is reporting it. They can't understand how elected officials can regularly violate the public trust with pork barrel spending. They don't want government handouts. They want the government to protect them, not raise their taxes for more government programs.

We are in the unique position in this country of electing our leaders. It's a privilege to do so. I've never found a candidate in any election with whom I agreed on everything. I'll wager that most of us don't even agree with our families or spouses 100% of the time. So when I step into that voting booth, I always try to look at the big picture and cast my vote for the man or woman who is best qualified for the job. I've hired a lot of people in my lifetime, and essentially that's what an election is - a hiring process. Who has the credentials? Whom do I want working for me? Whom can I trust to do the job right?

I'm concerned that a growing number of voters in this country simply don't get it. They are caught up in a fervor they can't explain, and calling it "change".

Change what?, I ask.

Well, we're going to change America , they say.

In what way?, I query.

We want someone new and fresh in the White House, they exclaim.

So, someone who's not a politician?, I press.

Uh, well, no, we just want a lot of stuff changed, so we're voting for Obama, they state.

So the current system, the system of freedom and democracy that has enabled a man to grow up in this great country, get a fine education, raise incredible amounts of money and dominate the news and win his party's nomination for the White House - that system's all wrong?

No, no, that part of the system's okay - we just need a lot of change.

And so it goes. "Change we can believe in." Quite frankly, I don't believe that vague proclamations of change hold any promise for me. In recent months, I've been asking virtually everyone I encounter how they're voting. I live in Illinois , so most folks tell me they're voting for Barack Obama. But no one can really tell me why - only that he's going to change a lot of stuff. Change, change, change.

I have yet to find one single person who can tell me distinctly and convincingly why this man is qualified to be President and Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful nation on earth - other than the fact that he claims he's going to implement a lot of change.

We've all seen the emails about Obama's genealogy, his upbringing, his Muslim background, and his church affiliations. Let's ignore this for a moment. Put it all aside. Then ask yourself, what qualifies this man to be my president? That he's a brilliant orator and talks about change?

CHANGE WHAT?

Friends, I'll be forthright with you - I believe the American voters who are supporting Barack Obama don't have a clue what they're doing, as evidenced by the fact that not one of them - NOT ONE of them I've spoken to can spell out his qualifications. Not even the most liberal media can explain why he should be elected. Political experience? Negligible. Foreign relations? Non-existent. Achievements? Name one. Someone who wants to unite the country? If you haven't read his wife's thesis from Princeton , look it up on the web. This is who's lining up to be our next First Lady? The only thing I can glean from Obama's constant harping about change is that we're in for a lot of new taxes.

For me, the choice is clear. I've looked carefully at the two leading applicants for the job, and I've made my choice.

Here's a question - where were you five and a half years ago? Around Christmas, 2002. You've had five or six birthdays in that time. My son has grown from a sixth grade child to a high school graduate. Five and a half years is a good chunk of time. About 2,000 days. 2,000 nights of sleep. 6, 000 meals, give or take.

John McCain spent that amount of time, from 1967 to 1973, in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp.

When offered early release, he refused it. He considered this offer to be a public relations stunt by his captors, and insisted that those held longer than he should be released first. Did you get that part? He was offered his freedom, and he turned it down. A regimen of beatings and torture began.

Do you possess such strength of character? Locked in a filthy cell in a foreign country, would you turn down your own freedom in favor of your fellow man? I submit that's a quality of character that is rarely found, and for me, this singular act defines John McCain.

Unlike several presidential candidates in recent years whose military service is questionable or non-existent, you will not find anyone to denigrate the integrity and moral courage of this man. A graduate of Annapolis , during his Naval service he received the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross. His own son is now serving in the Marine Corps in Iraq . Barack Obama is fond of saying "We honor John McCain's service...BUT...", which to me is condescending and offensive - because what I hear is, "Let's forget this man's sacrifice for his country and his proven leadership abilities, and talk some more about change."

I don't agree with John McCain on everything - but I am utterly convinced that he is qualified to be our next President, and I trust him to do what's right. I know in my heart that he has the best interests of our country in mind. He doesn't simply want to be President - he wants to lead America , and there's a huge difference. Factually, there is simply no comparison between the two candidates. A man of questionable background and motives who prattles on about change can't hold a candle to a man who has devoted his life in public service to this nation, retiring from the Navy in 1981 and elected to the Senate in 1982.

Perhaps Obama's supporters are taking a stance between old and new. Maybe they don't care about McCain's service or his strength of character, or his unblemished qualifications to be President. Maybe "likeability" is a higher priority for them than "trust". Being a prisoner of war is not what qualifies John McCain to be President of the United States of America - but his demonstrated leadership certainly DOES.

Dear friends, it is time for us to stand. It is time for thinking Americans to say, "Enough." It is time for people of all parties to stop following the party line. It is time for anyone who wants to keep America first, who wants the right man leading their nation, to start a dialogue with all their friends and neighbors and ask who they're voting for, and why.

There's a lot of evil in this world. That should be readily apparent to all of us by now. And when faced with that evil as we are now, I want a man who knows the cost of war on his troops and on his citizens. I want a man who puts my family's interests before any foreign country.

I want a President who's qualified to lead.

I want my country back, and I'm voting for John McCain.

Another point of view.

A day at the beach

Man dies when bluff collapses at San Diego beach

Thu Aug 21, 1:28 AM ET

A tourist from Nevada was killed Wednesday when a stretch of oceanside bluff at the Torrey Pines State Beach collapses, authorities said.

The 57-year-old, whose identity was not released, was at the beach with his brother and nephew when rocks the size of basketballs came down, officials said.

"He was just spending a day at the beach with his family," said Maurice Luque, spokesman for the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department. "He'd gone to the foot of the cliff to take off his shoes, and a small section of the bluffs just gave way and came down."

The section of collapsed cliff — about 30 feet wide — was several hundred feet below the Torrey Pines Golf Course, which hosted the U.S. Open in June.

The beach and parts of the bluff surrounding the collapse were closed.

"John McCain's President" and Barack Hussein Obama

Anyone running for the presidency of the United States has to accept the rules and traditions of US law and the procedures established for change and transition of power. It is the culture and it is mandatory. It is the law. It is a sensible law, necessary for a civil society.

Any military man knows that a salute is a recognition of the uniform and the office. It is mandatory and not reserved for an officer that you like. It is part of military culture and vital to discipline and cohesion.

Barack Hussein Obama, by association, deed and mouth has demonstrated contempt for America. He does not have African slave roots, yet has taken up with the most radical of the left-wing black agenda. That is fine for the ghetto and race-hustling industry, but not for the real America. Yes, there is a real America as there is right and wrong, good and evil, patriotic and unpatriotic.

An educated fool is still a fool, and slick smooth cool Barack, with the thinest and weakest of real American roots, talks the jive of the radical left when he states that George Bush is "John McCain's president." The American people should make sure that Barack Hussein Obama is never president of anything.

In case you need to be reminded about what is a real American:

Nato's Straw House

The quick take on NATO is not promising. Since the false ending of the Cold War the most important NATO undertaking has been in Afghanistan, but other than the Germans fascinated by skulls the war has not been conducted with any fire in the NATO belly. The odds of NATO lasting in Afghanistan, till a win, are not good.

Georgia is another matter. Do not hold your breath waiting for Georgia to get into NATO. NATO is not what we hoped it would be. Whether NATO has built a straw house or one of sticks, it sure ain't brick.

The charade may as well stop here. Expansion to Soviet borders is pointless.
We have returned to “spheres of influence” and "balance of power." Get used to it.

___________________

If Nato won't fight, what's it for?
Tuesday, August 19, 2008, 10:33 AM GMT [General]

NATO is meeting in summit at Brussels. Sixty years after the alliance was signed, can anyone tell me what it's for?

The revival of Russian revanchism might seem to answer that question. Except that NATO has been conspicuous by its absence from the Georgian conflict. Let's conjecture that Russia tried something similar in a NATO state. Say it moved troops into Latvia following inter-communal rioting. (It wouldn't declare war, of course. No one ever declares war these days.) Say that, as in Georgia, it agreed to remove its forces but somehow didn't quite get round to pulling them out. Does anyone really believe that this would trigger an all-out NATO counter-offensive? That Turkish troops would surge up through Georgia to harry Russia's south? That the Norwegian and Icelandic navies would blockade Archangel? That American and Canadian and British and Belgian forces would be dispatched to relieve the Baltic States?

It seems likely that that a Soviet attack on West Germany during the Cold War would indeed have triggered a military response. Certainly the possibility was strong enough that the USSR never took the risk. In that sense, NATO was a triumphant success. But is it still the best possible vehicle for the advancement of its members' collective interests?

I ask the question with genuine regret. In the days when NATO had an obvious purpose, I was one of its biggest supporters. As a teenager, I was a member of an organisation called Peace Through NATO, which used to hold debates against CND supporters. Our side would always begin by smugly reminding the CNDers that it was thanks to the nuclear deterrent that we were free to hold such debates at all. How tiresome they must have found us.

The end of the Cold War removed NATO's foundational rationale. In order to find itself a new role, the alliance took to expanding rapidly. But, in doing so, there is a danger that it has made a fiction of Article V: the clause that treats an attack on one member as an attack on all.

I hope I'm wrong. I'd certainly be in favour of fighting for the freedom of the Baltics. Britain did so once before. The only direct clash between our Armed Services and the Red Army was in Estonia in 1918. We lost a number of sailors, who were buried locally. When the Soviets annexed Estonia, they dynamited every monument that dated from the independence period. But the graves of the British sailors were kept hidden and tended by local patriots. They are still there. I hope the British would fight again. But would the rest?

Ten French Troops Killed in Afghan Fighting

PART TWO OF VIDEO ( Previous military engagements)



Ten French troops killed in Afghanistan
Reuters
Tuesday, 19 August 2008

Ten French soldiers have been killed in fighting with Taliban insurgents east of the Afghan capital, an Afghan military official said today.

The soldiers, part of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), were killed in a major battle with insurgents that began on Monday about 30 miles east of Kabul, he said.

It was the biggest single loss of French troops in Afghanistan since US-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban after the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York.

France has 1,670 troops in Afghanistan having sent an extra 700 soldiers this year, responding to a US call for its NATO allies to send more forces to check a surge in violence.

ISAF said its troops were engaged in a "major battle" with insurgents in Kabul province that began on Monday, but spokesmen declined to comment on the French casualties.


The Afghan Defence Ministry said 27 insurgents have been killed or wounded in the clashes in Ouzbin area to the east of Kabul and at least two Afghan soldiers have been wounded.

The Taliban said on its Web site that 20 US soldiers had been killed in the fighting, which they said erupted after militants ambushed a convoy of Afghan and foreign forces late on Monday. That claim could not be immediately verified.

MSNBC Buffoon, Chris Matthews, and Feminist Revenge

It's No Longer Just About Hillary
By Froma Harrop Real Clear Politics

After hearing her name placed in nomination at the Democrats' convention next week, Hillary Clinton will no doubt urge her followers to support Barack Obama. What good that gesture will do for the Obama candidacy remains to be seen. Clinton has already made it several times, but a new Pew Research Center poll shows that 28 percent of her primary voters do not intend to vote for Obama, a number virtually unchanged from June.

Of special concern are women, particularly older ones, whom in the past could be counted on to vote for whatever Democrat was running for president. Many remain scandalized by the sexist attacks on Clinton during the recent campaign. A stubborn 18 percent of Clinton's female voters vow to back McCain, according to a poll for Lifetime television networks. Another 6 percent plan to support neither major-party candidate.


Perhaps Clinton does not possess the magic wand to move her troops. The storyline goes that many women disappointed by Clinton's loss or angry at the nasty campaign just needed time "to heal." Once Hillary gave them the nudge, they'd get with the program.

Thing is, it's no longer about Hillary for many of them. I sat in on a group of high-powered Clinton supporters gathering in New York last week to create a nonpartisan group called The New Agenda. There was little discussion of the current campaign.

The New Agenda's agenda is to look out for women's political interests where the Democratic Party and old-line feminist organizations had failed. The attendees reserved special fury for the Democratic National Committee and its passivity before the misogynistic carnival. One of their specifics is getting MSNBC jester Chris Matthews fired -- and if he intends to run for the Senate from Pennsylvania, to end that idea.

Every member has her own plans for November, including for a few, voting for Obama. Co-founder Amy Siskind, a former Wall Street exec and Clinton fundraiser, told me, "I won't vote for Obama, but I'm not sure what I'll do." Cynthia Ruccia, a Democratic activist from Columbus, Ohio, who twice ran against Republican John Kasich, is supporting McCain -- and organizing other Democrats in her swing state to do likewise.

The McCain camp has noticed. Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and McCain's adviser, met with Siskind in New York. She flew to Columbus to confer with Ruccia, Nancy Hopkins, another New Agenda founder, and 75 other miffed Democratic women. (Hopkins is the MIT biologist who famously protested a suggestion by then-Harvard University President Lawrence Summers that boys might be innately better at science than girls.)

DNC chairman Howard Dean has called Ruccia twice. "He was just waking up to the thought that women around the country were upset over the treatment of Hillary," she told me. Ruccia tends to doubt that putting Clinton's name to a roll-call vote will mollify many of the female holdouts. "The train left the station a long time ago," she said.

The New Agenda wants to become a women's-voice alternative for the National Organization for Women and NARAL, which they see as moribund and appendages of the Democratic leadership. Members note that when rapper Ludacris sang a pro-Obama ballad calling Hillary "an irrelevant b-," the president of NOW didn't get out of bed to complain.

For many of these women, whatever nice things Clinton says about Obama in Denver won't matter much. They have decided that they can live with McCain, and they're already inoculated against the crude anatomical references that left-wing bloggers will send their way. (There's not one they haven't heard.) Hillary can't do much to change their feelings -- even if she wanted to.

McCain Best Suited to Stand Against NeoSoviet Aggression

Over the past several years I have become increasingly wary and concerned over events in Russia and the cult of personality of Vladimir Putin. I have not counted how many posts have been made about Putin, but there have been many. The general tone presented Putin as a dangerous Soviet era thug.

Over the past three years, we have made a transition from the Schroeder-Chirac-Bush approach of inclusion with Putin, to one of increasing caution and now alarm. Europe and the US are once again reentering a twilight and dangerous period of adjustment with Russia and a Soviet revival. The "triumph of Democracy days" of the eighties and nineties is over. The world is once again devolving into spheres of influence and balance of power politics.

Putin is a tough, experienced and ruthless politician. He is leading a country that adores him and welcomes a resurgent Russia. The opposition to Putin has been crushed inside Russia. Outside of Russia is a different story. American power and leadership is once again necessary and will be appreciated. Iraq is over.

On Saturday night, I watched Obama and McCain at Saddleback Church. The comparison between an idealistic and inexperienced academic and a tough and battle-scarred veteran could not have been more obvious. You owe it to yourself to watch and compare. I enclose a brief video on the highlights of McCain.

________________________

David Cameron and John McCain are best suited to defy Russian aggression

By Janet Daley
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 18/08/2008

Telegraph

...In the United States, the story is taking a more predictable but no less riveting course. John McCain was always going to be the net gainer in a foreign crisis. Not only does he have precisely the experience - both personal and political - of coping with war and international threat, but his manner and his presence seem designed to be both reassuring and inspiring. This is a man who endured horrific torture as a prisoner of war but refused to be released earlier than the men who served under him, and who has had the political fortitude to put his own moral principles above partisan loyalty.

So if you are looking for a guy to stand up to the Russians - or anybody else, for that matter - without blinking, you are probably going to give McCain the benefit of the doubt over the very young, very untried Obama, whose experience on the world stage consists of a whirlwind series of speaking engagements.

Last Saturday night, the two contenders appeared on a platform together for the first time - not to engage in a formal presidential debate which would have been improper since neither has been formally nominated as yet, but to participate in a novel format staged by the Saddleback Church, one of the largest evangelical congregations in America.

Saddleback is a moderate outfit and its pastor, Reverend Rick Warren, is a famously benign and tolerant figure. He called his event a "civil forum" and stated specifically that his intention in chairing it was to restore civility to political discourse. He was scrupulously fair and courteous to both presumptive candidates, to whom he put the identical questions in separate interviews (out of each other's hearing). It was, as the commentator Charles Krauthammer said afterwards, a brilliant "controlled experiment" in which both men were subjected to identical examinations in identical conditions. I stayed up to watch the whole two hours of it between 1am and 3?am. It was as illuminating as any political event I have ever witnessed.

Mr Obama came first. He was, as we have come to expect, articulate, engaging and very relaxed ("comfortable in his skin", as is often said). He responded with charm if some ambiguousness to the tricky questions that arose on the evangelical heartland issues, most notably abortion, on which he is pro-choice. But the most interesting aspects of his performance (especially in retrospect when we had heard McCain) lay in what he did not say.

Asked whether he thought that evil existed and, if so, what should be done about it, he replied that it did and that we had to confront it "on our streets". The only international reference that he made in this answer was to Darfur. There was no mention of al-Qaeda, Russia or Georgia. In another answer, he described the most significant moral failing of the United States as not getting to grips with domestic poverty, racism and sexism. Asked to define the "rich" whom he has said should pay more tax so that government can improve society, he offered a figure of $250,000 a year. His performance was attractive and fluent in its own terms.

But within moments of McCain appearing to face the same queries, the Obama poise looked positively laconic and the Obama answers insubstantial. Where he had glided through the session with glib personableness, McCain electrified the hall. His answers were direct, detailed and full of the personal anecdote that his life experience has to offer.

Asked the question about evil, he cited al-Qaeda and Islamic extremism. (He would, he said, pursue Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell if necessary.) America had a moral obligation to defeat genocide wherever it occurred, and he was "very saddened by Russia's re-emergence as an empire". Georgia had achieved democracy and deserved our support. On the definition of "rich", he said that he did not want to raise taxes for anyone in tough economic times. He made it clear, too, that he supported education vouchers to allow poor children greater opportunity.

Both men answered the question, "What is worth risking lives for?", with the word "freedom", but it was McCain whose memories gave it force. Ironically, the man whose age is thought to be a liability seemed more energetic and robust than his rival, whose cool sophistication looked somehow inappropriate for the times.

An Opportunity for Europe or Wishful Thinking?

Perhaps a new Russian image would be helpful.

Controlling the new Russia requires new thinking

Observer
Sunday August 17 2008

It is clear, in the short term at least, what must happen in South Ossetia. Russia must honour its ceasefire agreement with Georgia. Russian troops must withdraw to positions they held before the current conflict erupted. Both sides must allow peacekeepers into the region and return to negotiations on the final status for the enclave. Georgia's attack on the separatists would be reversed, Russia's ostensible war aim would be achieved.

Moscow's reluctance to follow such a course proves that its war aims were more ambitious: a fundamental change in the balance of power in Europe.

It is easy to see why the Kremlin should want such a shift. At the end of the Cold War, it lost control of a vast economic-political bloc. It ceded territory to neighbouring states and saw a rival military alliance advance on its borders. Few states are easily reconciled to such a drastic shrinkage of global status.

Although Britain knows the pain of losing an empire, the more common comparison is with Germany after the First World War - humiliated, plunged into an economic crisis, followed by the emergence of an authoritarian ruler pledging to restore national pride.

Given the parallels, it is hardly surprising that many of Moscow's former satellites are nervous. They see Russia's intervention in South Ossetia as a blatant land grab. In the Kremlin's claim to be protecting the local population, they hear echoes of Hitler's professed concern for the well-being of Sudeten Germans before marching into Czechoslovakia.

That interpretation is shared, in part, by Washington. The US has responded to the South Ossetian crisis with renewed determination to hem Russia in. Its method is to press ahead with plans to include Georgia and Ukraine in Nato and to deploy anti-ballistic-missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. When, in the past, Russia has complained about the 'son of Star Wars' system, the US has insisted it is meant to deter Iran. It now looks transparently like old-fashioned Cold War escalation.

One crucial difference between the current East-West confrontation and the Cold War is that, this time, the economic ties binding the two sides are stronger. Russia needs access to Western markets; the West - and Europe in particular - needs Russian oil and gas. That creates an opportunity for the European Union, the world's largest single market, to play a moderating role, steering the conversation away from military grandstanding and towards economic negotiation.

But there is another, more worrying factor distinguishing present hostilities from the Cold War enmity. Under Soviet rule, many Russians privately shared the West's view of their leaders as thugs. But the Russian intelligentsia that secretly admired democracy has been either crushed or co-opted by Vladimir Putin.

Unlike the tired dogma of Marxist-Leninism, Mr Putin's brand of militarist nationalism enjoys genuine popular support.

Such a country will not defer to Nato out of respect for its members' status as democracies. But it might be convinced of the wisdom of settling disputes through international institutions rather than military adventurism. Inevitably, that raises allegations of Western hypocrisy. In defence of its campaign in South Ossetia, Russia cites Western actions in Kosovo and Iraq. That is neat rhetoric from the Kremlin, but as justification for its assault on Georgia it is plainly cynical. Russia's claim to be 'keeping the peace' in South Ossetia is belied by its army's penetration into undisputed Georgian territory and by credible allegations that it is facilitating atrocities by anti-Georgian militias.

Such aggression must not be rewarded. But Cold War-style brinkmanship will not make Russia's neighbours safer. It will only reinforce the Kremlin's view that small states are pawns in a strategic game. The best guarantee of security and peace in Europe since the end of the Cold War has been economic integration, achieved through the EU. It is Brussels, not Washington, that stands the best chance of persuading Moscow to change its ways.

Obama's Pay Grade.

A profile in courage.

When Warren, noting the 40 million abortions that have taken place since Roe V. Wade, asked John McCain the same question about when life begins, McCain answered:

"At the moment of conception."

To my Evangelical friends, what more do you need to know?



An E-1 (private) could figure this one out.

The US Does Not Like Surprises from Russia

Back to the 19th Century

Europe and the United States are once again assessing the consequences of failed democracy in Russia. The Telegraph addresses the issue as a return to 19th century politics of balance of power. It Observes...

"For a decade after the Soviet Union collapse, the United States reigned supreme. As the sole victor of the Cold War, Washington was in the position to force the rest of the world to adopt its ideology of democracy. Those that did not lost economic support and faced isolation.
American power might not have waned but it is facing challenges from the resurgence of the East, China, India and Russia, challenges that have not been the primary focus of the State Department as the United States grapples with the problem of Islamic extremism.
Mr Putin is convinced that a multi-polar world is being born and that Russia is firmly placed to establish itself as a leading power in it. Moscow's support of countries that follow an autocratic philosophy similar to Mr Putin's are therefore being assiduously courted, as has been shown in recent UN vetoes by Russia on resolutions condemning or imposing sanctions on Zimbabwe and Burma.
Mr Putin sees the possibility of great dividends in a battle between democracy and autocracy. But, even though he mourned the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geo-political tragedy of the 20th century, he realizes that the new era will not be shaped by two competing powers alone.
With Russia, China and the European Union in the frame, he believes that, instead of the Cold War, the new political era will be dominated by concepts such as the balance of power and the creation of alliances -- in other words, the diplomacy of the 19th century not the 20th."

The New York Times jumps in as well.

_____________________________

As Russian Tanks Roll, Europe Reassesses


By JUDY DEMPSEY NY Times
Published: August 15, 2008

BERLIN — The Russian tanks rumbling across parts of Georgia are forcing a fundamental reassessment of strategic interests across Europe in a way not considered since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the subsequent collapse of Communism.

For nearly two decades, European capitals in concert with Washington have encouraged liberalization in lands once firmly under the Soviet aegis. Now, they find themselves asking a question barely posed in all those years: How far will or can Russia go, and what should the response be?

The answer will play out not just in the European Union, but also along its new eastern frontier, in once obscure places like Moldova and Azerbaijan.

Already, French leaders, acting on behalf of Europe, have firmly told the Russians they cannot insist on the ouster of Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, as a precondition for a cease-fire.

Farther west, in Poland, a long-stalled negotiation on stationing parts of a United States missile defense system was quickly wrapped up, as American negotiators on Thursday dropped resistance to giving the Poles advanced Patriot missiles.

The Poles, of course, had their own security in mind. “Poland wants to be in alliances where assistance comes in the very first hours of — knock on wood — any possible conflict,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.

“The reality is that international relations are changing,” said Pawel Swieboda, director of demos EUROPA, an independent research organization based in Warsaw. “For the first time since 1991, Russia has used military force against a sovereign state in the post-Soviet area. The world will not be the same. A new phenomenon is unfolding in front or our eyes: a re-emerging power that is willing to use force to guarantee its interests. The West does not know how to respond.”

At stake 20 years ago was whether the Kremlin, then under Mikhail Gorbachev, would intervene militarily to stop the collapse of Communism. But Mr. Gorbachev chose to cut Eastern Europe free as he focused — in vain — on preventing the collapse of the Soviet Union itself.

Communist bloc lands from the Baltic States in the north to Bulgaria in the south have since joined the European Union and NATO — a feat, despite flaws, that in the Western view has made the continent more secure and democratic.

But Russia never liked the expansion of NATO. In the 1990s, it was too weak to resist; today, in the Caucasus, Russia is showing off its power and sending an unmistakable message: Georgia, or a much larger Ukraine, will never be allowed to join NATO.

The implications of Russia’s action reverberate well beyond that, from the European Union’s muddled relations with a crucial energy supplier, Russia, through Armenia and Azerbaijan in the south and east, to Ukraine and Moldova in the west.

This region has everything that the West and Russia covet and abhor: immense reserves of oil and gas, innumerable ethnic splits and tensions, corrupt and authoritarian governments, pockets of territory that have become breeding grounds or havens for Islamic fundamentalists. As a result, the region has become the arena for competition between the Americans and Europeans on one hand, and Russia on the other, over how to bring these countries into their respective spheres of influence.

The European Union — as ever, slow and divided — has offered few concrete proposals to bring the countries of what Russia calls its “near abroad” — Belarus, Ukraine, the Caucasus and the Caspian — closer to Europe. Analysts say the 27 member states have not been able to separate their view of Russia from adopting a clear strategy toward the former Soviet republics on the union’s new eastern borders.

“The Georgia crisis shows that Russia is in the process of testing how far it can go,” said Niklas Nilsson of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Stockholm. “This is part of a much bigger geopolitical game. It is time for the Europeans to decide what kind of influence it wants in the former Soviet states. That is the biggest strategic challenge the E.U. now faces.”

NATO, led by the United States and several Eastern European countries, has reached out more actively. At a summit meeting in Bucharest, Romania, in April, Georgia and Ukraine failed to get on a concrete path to membership as they had sought, but did secure a promise of being admitted eventually.

Georgia and its supporters say that NATO membership would have protected Georgians from Russian tanks. Western European diplomats by contrast note with relief that Georgia is not in NATO, and thus they were not required to come to its defense.

The newly resurgent Russians, buoyed by oil and gas wealth and the firm leadership of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, have played their hand with less hesitation.

Tomas Valasek, the Slovak-born director of foreign policy and defense at the Center for European Reform in London, says Russia has used the ethnic and territorial card to persuade some NATO countries that admitting Ukraine or Georgia would prove more dangerous and unstable than keeping them out. Georgia’s incursion Aug. 7 into South Ossetia serves both these Russian arguments, as well as Moscow’s passionate objections to the West’s support for an independent Kosovo.

Recognize Kosovo’s break with Serbia, Mr. Putin warned last spring, and Russia will feel entitled to do the same with South Ossetia and Georgia’s other breakaway enclave, Abkhazia — where Mr. Putin needs stability to realize his cherished project of the 2014 Winter Olympics in nearby Sochi.

Ukraine, bigger than France and traditionally seen by Russians as integral to their heritage and dominion, has been conspicuously quiet over the past week. Senior Ukrainian officials say that the weak European Union response on Georgia will only embolden Russia to focus even more on Ukraine, where many inhabitants speak Russian and, particularly in the eastern half, look to Moscow, not Kiev, for leadership.

“The crisis in Georgia has clear implications for regional security, and of course Ukraine,” said Hryhoriy Nemyria, deputy prime minister of Ukraine, who is responsible for European integration. “This crisis makes crystal clear that the security vacuums that have existed in the post-Soviet space remain dangerous.”

Abortion , Diversity, 2042, and the Election of 2008

An inconvenient truth and not part of the plan.

The press was giddy as it announced that Non-Hispanic whites will drop below half of the population as early as 2042. Why is this happening? How is it happening? Where are the whites going and who is replacing them?

Immigration of course, unplanned and uncontrolled immigration is part of it but not all.

Forget the obvious mess "diverse" parts of the world find itself in, the Left and their mouth pieces are still selling and celebrating diversity and diversity does not mean Poles and Germans and Italians and Irish.

No, diversity means a crayola box of a human party mix and their extended families. That is gospel and if you happen to be white and object, shut up or go to the corner designated for racist thoughts and tendencies.

How did all this happen? It could have something to do with the ethnic cleansing and flushing of unborn Americans down the toilet. That of course is a woman's right to choose. Some could call it an insane formula for the demise of a country. The abortion numbers are in the tens and twenties of million. Conceived in America, the home-grown human variety is non persona, non grata. The American human legacy is being sucked out of wombs and emulsified under the cover of euphemisms. The not quite humanoid is being supplemented by whomever shows up at the airport or hoofing it in on worn out sneakers, manufactured in some diverse part of the world.

Both sides of this population changing scissor are snipping away at America and both are dogma to the Democrats.

The Democrats are still demanding, legislating and celebrating diversity . They think it, dream it and sweat it. They eat it and shit it out for all to admire. They wreak of it and are actually engineering and guaranteeing it with political tweezers, suction devices and verbal gymnastics. The Democratic position and abortion plank is:

“The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.”

Germany cautious and loves the Obama approach.

"In this century -- in this city of all cities -- we must reject the Cold War mind-set of the past, and resolve to work with Russia when we can, to stand up for our values when we must, and to seek a partnership that extends across this entire continent." -- Barack Obama, Berlin, Germany

RUSSIA | 14.08.2008
Germany Wants Balanced EU Approach to Russia, Georgia

Steinmeier warned the EU had to talk to both Georgia and Russia to resolve the conflict

Germany's foreign minister Thursday urged the EU to take a balanced approach to the Caucasus conflict. The EU has to keep channels of communication open with Russia if it hopes to help stabilize the region, he said.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Thursday, Aug. 14, the European Union should maintain an even-handed approach to the conflict between Russia and Georgia if it wanted to play a constructive role in forging long-lasting peace in the Caucasus.

"It remains the case that a level-headed policy is the one that most helps people in the region," Steinmeier told reporters after a meeting of the German parliament's foreign affairs committee.

"We must criticize what needs to be criticized and we have done this in the past, including with clear words when necessary towards Russia ... with regard to Russian bombing of Georgia and the presence of Russian troops in Georgia-proper," Steinmeier said.

The foreign minister warned that the EU had to keep talking to both sides if it hoped to calm the crisis.

"We should also pursue a policy which is sensible and realistic," Steinmeier said on German television. "If the EU really wants to play a stronger role in the region, if the EU wants to help in the stabilization of a crisis-hit region, then the lines of communication must be kept open to Tbilisi and Moscow."

Divisions in EU over dealing with Russia

His comments came a day after EU ministers agreed to consider sending a mission to monitor a fragile French-brokered peace deal between Russia and Georgia.

But divisions have emerged in the European Union over the best way to deal with Moscow after fierce fighting erupted between Georgia and Russia last week.

Many new EU members have condemned Russia's violent push into Georgia and want the EU to scrap talks with Moscow on a new strategic partnership that would enhance political and economic cooperation.

The United States, a strong backer of Georgia, and Britain have slammed Russia's military campaign against Georgia and have blamed it for the clashes that broke out between Russian and Georgian forces in the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

"To begin to repair the damage to its relations with the United States, Europe, and other nations and to begin restoring its place in the world, Russia must keep its word and act to end this crisis," US President George W. Bush said this week. "The United States of America stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia."

Moscow has reacted by warning Washington it would have to choose between partnership with the Kremlin or supporting Georgia.

Germany avoids blaming Moscow

Steinmeier's comments, however, reflect a more nuanced attitude in Germany towards Moscow in the current conflict.

German politicians, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, have carefully avoided assigning blame in the conflict. The country, which is heavily dependant on Russian energy supplies, is a strong advocate of closer ties with Moscow. Earlier this year, Germany led European resistance to plans, pushed by the US, to put Georgia on the track to NATO membership.

Merkel will seek to calm the rift between Russia and the West when she meets with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Sochi on Friday.

This week, Merkel's spokesman said she would deliver a tough message to Medvedev in Sochi.

"Two points are sacrosanct for Germany," Merkel's spokesman Thomas Steg told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday. "The first is that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia are not called into question in future talks. The other is that it is totally unacceptable to question the legitimacy of the democratically elected Georgian government."

Delicate balancing act

At the same time, experts hope Merkel's even-handed approach will make Russia more open towards the chancellor's message expected to be delivered in private to Medvedev.

"Merkel will try to convince Medvedev to move toward a ceasefire, accept a monitoring mission of the OSCE and hopefully also be open to a stabilizing, international peace force in the region," Ruprecht Polenz, a veteran member of Merkel's conservative party and head of the foreign policy committee of the German parliament told DW-RADIO.

A day earlier, Polenz told news agency Reuters the EU should bind Russia closer to the bloc and consider offering Moscow a "privileged partnership" if it shows a willingness to adopt European values.

"I think the EU should make Russia a very clear proposal with clearly stated expectations in order to positively influence Russia's future behavior," Polenz told Reuters, adding it would be a mistake to scrap ongoing partnership talks with Russia because of its conflict with Georgia.

DW staff (sp)

Russian Tattoos, Jacked in the Caucasuses,

God of crime

The Russian word for God - Bog -
is also an acronym used by criminals.

It means "I shall rob again".

Brave Old World
by Victor Davis Hanson

Russia invades Georgia. China jails dissidents. China and India pollute at levels previously unimaginable. Gulf monarchies make trillions from jacked-up oil prices. Islamic terrorists keep car bombing. Meanwhile, Europe offers moral lectures, while Japan and South Korea shrug and watch -- all in a globalized world that tunes into the Olympics each night from Beijing.

"Citizens of the world" were supposed to share, in relative harmony, our new "Planet Earth," which was to have followed from an interconnected system of free trade, instantaneous electronic communications, civilized diplomacy and shared consumer capitalism.

But was that ever quite true?

In reality, to the extent globalism worked, it followed from three unspoken assumptions:

First, the U.S. economy would keep importing goods from abroad to drive international economic growth.

Second, the U.S. military would keep the sea-lanes open, and trade and travel protected. After the past destruction of fascism and global communism, the Americans, as global sheriff, would continue to deal with the occasional menace like a Muammar al-Gaddafi, Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-il or the Taliban.

Third, America would ignore ankle-biting allies and remain engaged with the world -- like a good, nurturing mom who at times must put up with the petulance of dependent teenagers.

But there have been a number of indications recently that globalization may soon lose its American parent, who is tiring, both materially and psychologically.

The United States may be the most free, stable and meritocratic nation in the world, but its resources and patience are not unlimited. Currently, it pays more than a half trillion dollars per year to import $115-a-barrel oil that is often pumped at a cost of about $5.

The Chinese, Japanese and Europeans hold trillions of dollars in U.S. bonds -- the result of massive trade deficits. The American dollar is at historic lows. We are piling up staggering national debt. Over 12 million live here illegally and freely transfer more than $50 billion annually to Mexico and Latin America.

Our military, after deposing Milosevic, the Taliban and Saddam, is tired. And Americans are increasingly becoming more sensitive to the cheap criticism of global moralists.

But as the United States turns ever so slightly inward, the new globalized world will revert to a far poorer -- and more dangerous -- place.

Liberals like presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama speak out against new free trade agreements and want existing accords like NAFTA readjusted. More and more Americans are furious at the costs of illegal immigration -- and are moving to stop it. The foreign remittances that help prop up Mexico and Latin America are threatened by any change in America's immigration attitude.

Meanwhile, the hypocrisy becomes harder to take. After all, it is easy for self-appointed global moralists to complain that terrorists don’t enjoy Miranda rights at Guantanamo, but it would be hard to do much about the Russian military invading Georgia's democracy and bombing its cities.

Al Gore crisscrosses the country, pontificating about Americans’ carbon footprints. But he could do far better to fly to China to convince them not to open 500 new coal-burning power plants.

It has been chic to chant "No blood for oil" about Iraq's petroleum -- petroleum that, in fact, is now administered by a constitutional republic. But such sloganeering would be better directed at China's sweetheart oil deals with Sudan that enable the mass murdering in Darfur.

Due to climbing prices and high government taxes, gasoline consumption is declining in the West, but its use is rising in other places, where it is either untaxed or subsidized.

So, what a richer but more critical world has forgotten is that in large part America was the model, not the villain -- and that postwar globalization was always a form of engaged Americanization that enriched and protected billions.

Yet globalization, in all its manifestations, will run out of steam the moment we tire of fueling it, as the world returns instead to the mindset of the 1930s -- with protectionist tariffs; weak, disarmed democracies; an isolationist America; predatory dictatorships; and a demoralized gloom-and-doom Western elite.

If America adopts the protectionist trade policies of Japan or China, global profits plummet. If our armed forces follow the European lead of demilitarization and inaction, rogue states advance. If we were to treat the environment as do China and India, the world would become quickly a lost cause

If we flee Iraq and call off the war on terror, Islamic jihadists will regroup, not disband. And when the Russians attack the next democracy, they won't listen to the United Nations, the European Union or Michael Moore.

Brace yourself -- we may be on our way back to an old world, where the strong do as they will, and the weak suffer as they must.

Obama, 'Please give it up for my friend, John Edwards'

How about a little comic relief?

For many months Obama has been warning about South Ossetia and Abkhazia? Sounds like a "Kerry in Cambodia" moment.

This is painful to watch. Obama could not get away fast enough. His is uncomfortable with the material he is reading.
He makes astonishing assertions that for many months he has been warning about Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia. Care to see if you can find them? I found this generic to nothing statement on his Senatorial website from Mar 3, 2008:

Ukraine and Georgia have also been developing their ties with NATO. Their leaders have declared their readiness to advance a NATO Membership Action Plan, MAP, to prepare for the rights and obligations of membership. They are working to consolidate democratic reforms and to undertake new responsibilities in their relationship with the Alliance. I welcome the desire and actions of these countries to seek closer ties with NATO and hope that NATO responds favorably to their request, consistent with its criteria for membership. Whether Ukraine and Georgia ultimately join NATO will be a decision for the members of the alliance and the citizens of those countries, after a period of open and democratic debate. But they should receive our help and encouragement as they continue to develop ties to Atlantic and European institutions.

"NATO enlargement is not directed against Russia. Russia has an important role to play in European and global affairs and should see NATO as a partner, not as a threat. But we should oppose any efforts by the Russian government to intimidate its neighbors or control their foreign policies. Russia cannot have a veto over which countries join the alliance. Since the end of the Cold War, Republican and Democratic administrations have supported the independence and sovereignty of all the states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and we must continue to do so. President Putin recent threat to point missiles at Ukraine is simply not the way to promote the peaceful 21st century Europe we seek.

"NATO stands as an example of how the United States can advance American national security--and the security of the world--through a strong alliance rooted in shared responsibility and shared values. NATO remains a vital asset in America's efforts to anchor democracy and stability in Europe and to defend our interests and values all over the world. The Bucharest summit provides an opportunity to advance these goals and to reinforce a vital alliance. NATO's leaders must seize that opportunity."

Paranoid Nostalgia Under the KGB Psycho, Vladimir Putin

The post may be redundant to our previous post, Ultimately, Russia Loses, but the point must be reinforced and understood:

• Vladimir Putin is a dangerous and deranged man.
• Russia is a weak and dangerous country.
• Russia is in serious social decline.
• Oil wealth is allowing Russia to indulge in the fantasy that it can reconstruct its lost empire.

There are many many examples of the paranoid nostalgia for the past. Probably the most absurd came to my attention while having dinner with an Icelandic friend some months ago. She told me that the Russians were flying forty year old bombers just off Icelandic air space. She wondered why and I replied without hesitation,"because he is nuts". Putin is certifiable. Russia flying strategic bombers next to Iceland in 2008 is the equivalent of an adolescent going to the attic and dressing in his father's camphor-laden army uniform. He is nuts.

______________________

From The Times
Richard Beeston
August 13, 2008
Strutting Russia is heading for a fall
Opinion is hardening against the Kremlin. For all its bluster, it is weak and vulnerable

Rarely have Russians had such cause to celebrate their hero. One minute Vladimir Putin was in Beijing mixing with Russian athletes on the opening day of the Olympics. Moments later he reappeared in the Caucasus, sleeves rolled up and directing a victorious counter-attack against his arch-rival Mikhail Saakashvili, the Georgian President. Fleeing refugees and wounded civilians were comforted. Generals saluted smartly as they were sent off to battle. No one was left in any doubt that Mr Putin, rather than the absent President Medvedev, was still firmly in charge of the country.

In the space of only five days the Russian Prime Minister succeeded not only in smashing the Georgian Army but also teaching all those in the “near abroad”, as Russia refers to its neighbours in the former Soviet empire, a painful lesson about challenging Moscow in its own backyard.

The decisive action was in sharp contrast to the response in the West. The war in Georgia exposed deep divisions in the transatlantic alliance and revealed the impotence of the Bush Administration in protecting its closest friend in the region.

Respect is something Mr Putin and many of his countrymen believe they lost when the Soviet Union broke apart 17 years ago. They may now feel that over the past few days some of that loss has been restored.

For Russians sunning themselves on the Mediterranean or enjoying the long summer evenings at their dachas in the countryside, this is the plausible narrative faithfully repeated by the state-controlled media.

Unfortunately, the conclusions they draw are completely wrong. Russia may have smashed its tiny neighbour but victory will come at a heavy price. The war will reduce rather than increase Russia's stature abroad, where the Kremlin faces growing isolation.

Since the emergence of the modern Russian state during the Yeltsin years in the 1990s, the country has been regarded as chaotic and corrupt but broadly peaceful and certainly no serious threat. Back in 2003 Condoleezza Rice, the Russophile US Secretary of State, famously advised President Bush to “forgive” Russia for its stand against the Iraq war, while France was punished and Germany ignored.

To judge by the language of both US presidential candidates responding to the Georgian war, forgiveness is no longer an option. Democrat or Republican will take a much harder line towards Russia over its aggressive foreign posture, its increasingly autocratic Government and the inescapable conclusion that Mr Putin is determined to remain in power indefinitely.

The Europeans may seem divided, but behind the bland statements calling on both sides to stop the recent fighting something significant has happened. Six European leaders, five of them from the former Soviet bloc, chose to stand side by side with Mr Saakashvili yesterday as he struggled to remain in power. The events in the Caucasus will only serve to harden opinion against Russia at Nato and in the EU.

The mini-war in Georgia may have surprised some Europeans, but it was expected weeks ago by British Intelligence. Thanks to the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-KGB officer who was poisoned in London by suspected Russian agents nearly two years ago, Britain has completely reassessed its relationship with Moscow. MI5, which reports that Russian agents in Britain are now back at Cold War levels, regards Russia as the third most serious threat to British security after terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Attempts to rehabilitate relations have faltered and the recent treatment of BP by its partners and the Russian authorities has only reinforced the view that Russia cannot be trusted.

Flush with billions from the sale of oil and gas, the Kremlin may calculate that it does not need allies in the West and would rather be respected and feared than befriended.

That too would be a serious mistake. For all its big-power bluster, Russia is weak and vulnerable. Russian tanks and aircraft may have smashed the fledgeling Georgian Army with ease, but most of the weaponry was Cold War-era and many of the troops conscripts. Anyone who has seen the Russian Army operating in the Caucasus knows that the military will need a generation to modernise. Meanwhile America, and its main Nato allies, are decades ahead in military technology and combat experience.

Russia is also facing a severe demographic crisis. Its population is shrinking by 700,000 people a year. The UN estimates the population will fall below 100 million by 2050, down from around 146 million today.

As for the economy, it is booming thanks to natural resources that account for 70 per cent of the country's wealth. But the oil price is in a state of flux. Russia has failed to diversify. Should energy prices fall sharply, the economy could collapse, as it did a decade ago.

Mr Putin once described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. Trying to resurrect it could be the greatest folly of the 21st.

Richard Beeston is foreign editor of The Times

Latin American Superiority, la Flaca.

Ultimately, Russia Loses.

Nostalgic for Chechnya

While the pundits and the politicians scramble to find a response to the NeoSoviet attack on Georgia, you have to ask yourself what will Putin get out of this venture? The short answer is nothing good. A few of the obvious liabilities are:

• Russia and Putin have no credibility in any European country and less in the US.
  
• Russia has bought another bloody guerrilla war in the Caucasus.
• The long term prospects for Russia being a reliable energy partner has been diminished.
• European investment in Russia will decline. It will become more expensive.
• Revenue from energy exports will be diverted to unnecessary military spending at the expensive of necessary infrastructure.
  
• Emigration from Russia will accelerate.
• Drug abuse, AIDS, and alcoholism will increase.
• European acceptance for the US missile defense system will improve.
• Russian political influence will decline.
  

Russia has shot itself in the foot. It will find itself in a difficult position to stand down and will pay an awful and bloody price for a rash and foolish mistake.

____________________

RUSSIAN “TANDEMOCRACY” STUMBLES INTO A WAR

By Pavel K. Baev
Eurasia Daily Monitor

Monday, August 11, 2008

Moscow was disconcertingly taken by surprise with the sharp escalation of hostilities in South Ossetia last Friday. The most apparent part of the problem was the lack of leadership, as President Dmitry Medvedev departed to a Volga resort and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin went to Beijing to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. The greater problem was the serious military and political miscalculations that had resulted in the apparently chaotic emergency decision-making (Kommersant, August 9; Ezhednevny zhurnal, August 8). It is hard to blame the military for missing the Georgian preparations for the large-scale offensive, since the command of the Armed Forces had been thoroughly reshuffled: The Chief of the General Staff was replaced in early June, his first deputy (the head of the Main Operational Department) was fired in early July and not replaced, and the commander of the Ground Forces was replaced in the first days of August (Nezavisimaya gazeta, August 5).

The main blunder, however, was political, as the Kremlin seriously overestimated its ability to dominate the situation in the conflict zone. The large-scale military exercises conducted across the North Caucasus in July were supposed to demonstrate Russia’s superiority in projecting power (Nezavisimaya gazeta, July 18). In parallel, the withdrawal of the railway troops from Abkhazia in early August symbolized Moscow’s flexibility and responsiveness to the peace proposals advanced by Germany (Nezavisimaya gazeta, August 8). Putin was confident that his performance at the NATO Bucharest summit had effectively blocked Georgia’s Atlantic aspirations; several stern “warnings” should have ensured that Georgia would not dare make any pro-active move. Surprise was so complete that Putin, according to those who saw him in Beijing, was pale with barely controlled rage, which he tried to convey to U.S. President George Bush and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev (Moscow echo, August 8).

The issue for Putin was not only that he had never expected Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to launch a blitzkrieg in the opening day of the Olympic games, but also that the crucial stage in Moscow was left for Medvedev to perform. It was only at 15:00 local time that Russian Security Council gathered to consider the available options, and Medvedev was acutely aware that any sign of hesitation on his part would destroy the little credibility he had gathered during the first 100 days of his presidency (www.gazeta.ru, August 9). The result was a brief statement condemning Georgia’s “aggression” and asserting that “We will not allow the deaths of our fellow citizens to go unpunished.” By that time, however, the Russian massive armored column was already approaching Tskhinvali, and it could only be assumed that it was indeed Medvedev who had given the “go-ahead” order earlier in the morning.

In the highly stressful first day of an unexpected war, Medvedev had to disregard both the agreements that limited Russia’s peacekeeping role of monitoring the ceasefire (with no provisions for “peace enforcement”) and the domestic legislation that required a resolution of the Federation Council authorizing the use of Armed Forces outside Russia’s borders. The TV propaganda machine was instantly switched on providing non-stop coverage of the “humanitarian catastrophe,” and the statements by military officials that the Georgian soldiers were “finishing off” wounded Russian peacekeepers at the captured observation posts were provocative to the extreme (RIA-Novosti, August 8).

The immediate task of the military operation was clear--to push back the Georgian troops that had captured Tskhinvali after heavy bombardment, but the heights around the city were taken only on Sunday. The key problem for the Russian troops was that reinforcements and supplies could be moved in only by one narrow road under fire from Georgian positions. The lack of quick demonstrative success prompted Moscow to opt for punishing air-strikes on Gori and Poti, while the bombs dropped on the Vasiani Airbase outside Tbilisi were probably intended to force the evacuation of U.S. military instructors. This disproportional response allowed Saakashvili to portray Georgia as a victim of aggression and generated international pressure for a ceasefire (Moscow echo, August 9). Medvedev, however, had to listen first to the generals who argued that control over Tskhinvali could not be secured without opening the key supply line to the north, which required storming several Georgian villages, from Tamarasheni to Kemerti. The population of this enclave had to be evacuated to Georgia in order to prevent brutal “ethnic cleansing” by volunteers from the North Caucasus.

Driven by this war logic, Medvedev might discover that his “‘liberal lawyer” image has transmogrified into a hawkish quasi-warrior, who is, in fact, a hostage to several clans of reinvigorated siloviki (www.gazeta.ru, August 9). He might think that his grasp on power in the experimental “tandem” has suddenly strengthened and even find it enjoyable to give Putin an order to change his schedule and go to Vladikavkaz to coordinate the humanitarian relief operations. Putin, however, thrives in the “dirty war” environment, and he easily trapped Medvedev with the tough statement about genocide that would involve “mortal damage” to Georgia’s territorial integrity (www.newsru.com, August 9).

The catch is that Russia cannot maintain its ambivalent stance of supporting the secessionist quasi-states and acknowledging that they remain parts of Georgia; nor can it keep pretending that it is not a party to the conflict but merely the guarantor of a non-existent peace process. Prior to the war, Moscow had been very irritated by Eduard Kokoity’s corrupt regime, but now to all intents and purposes it owns South Ossetia and has not only to provide aid but to resolve the status issue (Ezhednevny zhurnal, August 8). Medvedev is forced to make decisions that he is very uncomfortable with and to place them in a new strategic line for the Caucasus that he is not really qualified to draw, while Putin takes charge over practical matters like distributing money and resources. Spoils from this “victory” would hasten Russia’s drift from democracy, worsen its investment climate, and add more tension to relations with the West and with Ukraine. Diplomats may contemplate a return to the status quo ante, but Russia has changed in the course of this entirely unnecessary war, and the damage cannot be undone.

Putin Reveals His Soul to EU and NATO. Georgia is Just the Beginning.

Georgian Soldier

Georgia: Vladimir Putin sends emphatic message of global importance
Russia's pounding of Georgia means it will use force to protect all 25 million Russians in states that belonged to the Soviet Union

By David Blair, Diplomatic Editor Telegraph
Last Updated: 6:23PM BST 11 Aug 2008

By seizing the opportunity to pound Georgia with air strikes and military incursions, Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister, is sending an emphatic message with global consequences.

The curtain has fallen on the era when Nato steadily expanded into Eastern Europe and onwards to embrace former republics of the Soviet Union - and Russia was able to respond with nothing more than bluster.

Moreover, Mr Putin has demonstrated that the Kremlin will use force to protect the 25 million Russians who inhabit the Soviet Union's successor states, well beyond the mother country's borders.
The importance of this message cannot be exaggerated. Whether the populations of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia's two breakaway regions, are genuinely Russian or merely the recipients of passports recently issued from Moscow matters little. Dmitry Medvedev made the crucial point last week when he stated that as Russia's president, he was obliged to protect the "security and dignity" of all Russian citizens, wherever they may live.

Countries ranging from Latvia to Moldova to Ukraine have large Russian minorities. If their presence justified Russian intervention in Georgia, might the same happen in these countries? Is the fighting in Georgia merely a prelude to what lies ahead in nations close to the heart of Europe?

Some Russians in the "Near Abroad" - the term used by Moscow's officials to refer to former Soviet Republics - inhabit clearly defined enclaves, uncannily similar to South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Russians of Moldova have carved out the self-styled "Dniester Republic", a small, lawless region which Moscow effectively controls.

Elsewhere, Russian minorities have no enclaves, but they still enjoy significant influence simply because of their size. The 900,000 Russians in Latvia comprise well over a third of the population and the 500,000 in Estonia account for about 30 per cent.

Ukraine is the most crucial link in the chain. This aspiring member of both Nato and the European Union has 11 million Russians, concentrated in its eastern regions and particularly in the Crimea, where they comprise about 70 per cent of the population.
Jonathan Eyal, the head of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, said that Russia's key priority was to prevent Ukraine from joining Nato, but further military intervention was unlikely.

"They don't need to do the same elsewhere simply because what is happening in Georgia has already driven home the message that what happens in these Russian enclaves, wherever they are, is for Russia to determine and no-one else," he said.

Mr Eyal said that Moscow's operation in Georgia would serve as a "deterrent" to any other country with a Russian minority. "The message is 'you do not touch any of them because the Russian military is determined to defend them even if it means crossing an international border with their tanks."

Moscow had "indirectly given a military guarantee" to Russian minorities across the former Soviet Union, especially in Ukraine.

This goes beyond merely guaranteeing their safety and the status of any enclaves they may have created. It also amounts to Moscow threatening force against any former Soviet Republics aspiring to Nato membership.

Ukraine was officially promised admission to Nato during the Alliance's last summit in April, although Russian objections ensured that no timetable was given.
When Mr Putin sent the tanks into Georgia, Mr Eyal there was "absolutely no doubt that one of his key calculations was Ukraine".

In essence, Mr Putin was seeking to deter Ukraine from pressing ahead with its plan to join Nato - and Mr Eyal believes that Russia's plan has succeeded.

If so, the balance of power in Europe has fundamentally changed and Russia has, through the use of force against Georgia, seized the power to veto Nato's future membership.

Ukraine is by far the most important of the former Soviet republics. Columns of Russian tanks hundreds of miles from its borders may now have changed its future.

Wishful Thinking and Loathing on Georgia

 Loathing Material.

Looking at the entire spectrum of media, one has to come to the conclusion that no one knows what to do with the "Czar Baby" of Georgia. It is too small and too close to Russia for anyone to risk an expanding conflict with Russia. It is the perfect place for Vladimir Putin to further his dreams for Russia. This is after all, all about Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Putin is all about western wishful thinking.

I confess to a deep antipathy towards Russia. My entire military experience regarded them with suspicion and loathing. Some years after I exited the military, I had an occasion to be a guest of the Soviet government as a member of a Scandinavian/American trade visit. The visit was during the early Yeltsin years and there was  noise about a changing Russia. My ten days in Moscow and the military town of Tambov convinced me that Russia was a corrupt society from top to bottom. I did not trust them nor did I believe for one moment they would change for the better. The visit also confirmed my belief that the Russians were deeply humiliated and shamed by where events had brought them and that nothing should be done by the West to further humiliate them. No one asked for my advice and I had no position to give it, but the talk of expanding Nato was troubling to me.

The expansion of Nato was always problematic and made no logical sense. As the EU expanded to include ex-Soviet occupied states, military cooperation and treaties would be necessary, but that should have been inside of an organization that was not dominated by the US. That organization was the EU.  

Nato was the necessary creation of the Cold War. Nato should not have been expanded, but the EU could have been expanded as a Nato member. That would have been a distinction with a difference. That did not happen.

The outcome is before us. Georgia has walked into a trap, set by Putin. No direct military assistance can be given to Georgia. The Georgians will suffer greatly for their error and wishful thinking that the US and Europe will be there for them as an ally. The US cavalry will not be riding to their rescue. The best that will be done for Georgia will be well short of Georgian naive expectations. 

The loathing will spread, wishful thinking will not.

Georgia, Annihilation of a Democracy. What Would Obama Do?

"Change" that you can bet will impress Putin's Russia.

WASHINGTON (Reuters)

- U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday urged restraint by both Russia and Georgia in the conflict over the breakaway region of South Ossetia in Georgia.

Obama, a Democrat, also echoed the Bush administration in supporting the territorial integrity of Georgia.

"I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict," Obama said in a statement. "Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full-scale war. Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected."

Obama called for direct talks among all sides and said the United States, U.N. Security Council and other parties should try to help bring about a peaceful resolution.

_________________________

Seize the moment. Expose to the American people the incredible shrinking stature of the man who would be POTUS in times of war. He has nothing to say and knows nothing of how we find ourselves in this situation. This statement could have come from Oscar Arias of Costa Rica. The sounds of Russian tanks should be the sounds of a crushing defeat for the community organizer.

Do not get me wrong. McCain is no novice to the region and has not always been right in his decisions. In fact he was an early supporter (1999) of US involvement in Kosovo. At the time, most Americans and Europeans supported US action in Kosovo. I personally felt it was a mistake. The expansion of Nato east confused me and made little sense to me. Now, I find myself in the awkward position presented by the binary world of American politics in having to choose between a man that does not have a clue and one who has made decisions where I disagreed.

We have committed the United States to supporting freedom and democracy in parts of the world where there has been little of either. Georgia is where that decision has led us. We have trained them, armed them and encouraged their movement into Nato. Russia is now striking back. Georgia is the new Kosovo. What happens in Georgia will have unknown consequences to Europe and the United States for a generation. We are facing the real Russian face of Vladimir Putin. Putin is no community organizer. He is a ruthless experienced brutal KGB boss. He has the money and the motivation to re-establish a more Soviet Russia. Hope ain't gonna cut it.

____________________________________

Georgians Leave South Ossetia As Focus Shifts to Black Sea



Georgian officials said Sunday that they had withdrawn their forces from South Ossetia. Russan navy vessels meanwhile arrive at Georgia's Black Sea coast in what could become the next hotspot of the war.

Georgian National Security Council Secretary Alexander Lomaia told AFP news service on Sunday, Aug. 10, that his country's forces had "practically left" all of South Ossetia "as an expression of good will and our willingness to stop military confrontation."

Georgian and Russian forces had exchanged artillery fire in the early hours of Sunday, Aug. 10, South Ossetia officials said, while Russian planes bombed the runway of a military airfield near Tbilisi international airport according to a Georgian official.

Russia sending more soldiers, ships to Georgian coast


Moscow and Tbilisi have been unable to agree on a ceasefire deal
Russian warships meanwhile arrived at the Georgian Black Sea coast, according to news reports.

"The navy was ordered not to allow supplies of weapons and military hardware into Georgia by sea," a Russian navy source was quoted as saying by Russian news service Interfax, Reuters reported.

The Russian ships were blocking access to the port for ships carrying grain and fuel, Lomaia told the AFP. He added that Russian planes bombed a military airfield some five kilometers outside the capital Tbilisi.

Georgia said a Russian air raid had "completely devastated" the Black Sea port of Poti in attacks that the country's UN ambassador likened to "a full-scale military invasion"

This was followed up with air raids on Gori, the main Georgian city closest to South Ossetia. Apartment blocks in Gori were left in flames and residents said scores of people were killed.

Georgia: "Annihilation of a democracy"


Georgia's offensive to take the enclave of South Ossetia has been unsuccessful
Russian bombers also headed for the coast, Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili said Saturday after air raids on the port of Poti and the city of Gori, where inhabitants said scores of people were killed.

"What they are doing is nothing to do with conflict, it is about annihilation of a democracy on their borders," Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said in an interview with the BBC.

Saakashvili declared a "state of war" on Saturday but also offered a ceasefire to Russia.

But a meeting of the UN Security Council on Saturday failed to agree on a call for an immediate ceasefire. Russia's ambassador to the UN said Moscow would not agree to a ceasefire until Georgia removed all its troops from South Ossetia.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Moscow viewed the Georgian offensive as "something that has elements of genocide and war crimes situation," and Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev said he would order an investigation of Georgian crimes against civilians.

US Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff made it clear Washington blamed Russia for escalating the fighting.

"This is a conflict that is expanding and getting out of control," he said. "The proximate cause is the massive escalation perpetrated by outside forces."

Conflict widens to Abkhazia

Fears of the conflict spreading added urgency to international calls for a ceasefire.

The conflict spread to Abkhazia, another breakaway region of Georgia, where the separatist government said its forces had launched attacks on Georgian troops. Georgia accused Russia of staging the attacks in the Kodori Gorge region, the only part of Abkhazia controlled by Georgia.

Britain said a joint European-US mission was due to have arrived in Georgia late Saturday to try to help broker a ceasefire with Russia.

"We have urged an immediate halt to the violence and a stand-down by all troops," US President George W. Bush told reporters. "We call for an end to the Russian bombings."

The European Union "strongly states its commitment to the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Georgia and its internationally recognized borders and urges Russia to respect them," said a statement released by France, which hold the EU's rotating presidency and said it would host a meeting of EU foreign ministers early next week.

Source of friction


Russia and Georgia disagree on the number of casualties and refugees
Russian and South Ossetian estimates put the death toll on the South Ossetian side at a minimum of 1,400. All but a few of the dead were civilians, according to Moscow. Georgian figures ranged from 82 dead, including 37 civilians, to a total of some 130 dead.

South Ossetia broke from Georgia in the early 1990s. It has been a constant source of friction between Georgia and Russia, which opposes Tbilisi's aspirations of joining NATO and has supported the separatists without recognizing their independence.

Russia backs the separatist government in South Ossetia and sent in tanks and troops on Friday in response to pro-Western Georgia's military offensive to take back the province which broke away in the early 1990s after a separatist war.

DW staff (sms)

George Bush, Ass Man

Stratfor's Thoughts on South Asia

George Friedman, the founder of Stratfor.com was a guest on Dennis Prager's radio show this week. He had some interesting comments about Afghanistan.

1. The situation there is worse than is being reported.
2. We are in Afghanistan not to rebuild that country but to control al-Qaeda.
3. Al-Qaeda is sheltered next door in the Northwest territories of Pakistan.
4. The Central government controls only the cities, the Taliban control the countryside.
5. We don't have enough troops in our entire army to do what the Russians couldn't do with 300,000 soldiers in Iraq.
6. We have no strategy.
7. The Pakis are infiltrated with Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathizers.
8. The current Paki government has no idea how to deal with the problem.
   
9. When Obama talks about going into Pakistan to get al-Qaeda, he doesn't bring up the costs of doing so.
10. Musharraf, although now irrelevant, lied to both sides in order to survive in power. He lied to us and he lied to his own people. Friedman says the next President must always bear that in mind. In other words, the Pakis are not to be trusted.
11. Iran is bluffing about nuclear weapons. They are enriching uranium but are far from developing the war heads and their delivery systems.
12. The issue between the US and Iran is not about nuclear weapons but the control of Iraq. The Iranians, remembering a million casualties in its war with Saddam Hussein, fear a US proxy. The US fears a Shia controlled Iraq.
13. We can live with the Taliban.

What do you think?

Georgia: morning update

Strategic Forecasting yesterday:

Strategically, we said Russia would respond to Kosovo’s independence, and they have. Russia is now declaring the Caucasus to be part of its sphere of influence. We have spoken for months of how Russia would find a window of opportunity to redefine the region. This is happening now.

All too familiar with the sight of Russian tanks, the Baltic countries are terrified of what they face in the long run, and they should be. This is the first major Russian intervention since the fall of the Soviet Union. Yes, Russia has been involved elsewhere. Yes, Russia has fought. But this is on a new order of confidence and indifference to general opinion. We will look at this as a defining moment.

The most important reaction will not be in the United States or Western Europe. It is the reaction in the former Soviet states that matters most right now. That is the real audience for this. Watch the reaction of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Nagorno-Karabakh and the Balts. How will Russia’s moves affect them psychologically?

The Russians hold a trump card with the Americans: Iran. They can flood Iran with weapons at will. The main U.S. counter is in Ukraine and Central Asia, but is not nearly as painful.

Tactically, there is only one issue: Will the Russians attack Georgia on the ground? If they are going to, the Russians have likely made that decision days ago.

Focus on whether Russia invades Georgia proper. Then watch the former Soviet states. The United States and Germany are of secondary interest at this point.

Telegraph.co.uk today

Russian forces have invaded the Georgian province of Abkhazia hours after taking control of most of South Ossetia, said Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Georgia reports new air attack near capital.

Russian military aircraft also raided the Georgian town of Gori on Saturday. An Associated Press reporter who visited Gori shortly after the bombing saw several apartment buildings in ruins, some still on fire, and scores of dead bodies and bloodied civilians. The elderly, women and children were among the victims.

It is the worst outbreak of hostilities since the province won de facto independence in a war against Georgia that ended in 1992.

The fighting threatens to ignite a wider war between Russia and Georgia, which accused Russia of bombing its towns, ports and air bases. Georgia, a former Soviet republic with ambitions of joining NATO, has asked the international community to help end what it called Russian aggression.

_______________________

To our friends and allies:

I'm sorry, my friends, most likely you're on your own. There's very little that we can do to help you. The Euros were decimated by last century's wars and the US is tapped out in South Asia and Iraq. There's no will in the West for resisting slow incremental bear attacks. Like any herd in the wild, an occasional sacrifice on the periphery is seen as the cost of survival for another day. Of course, those in closest proximity to the predator are certainly more anxious than those more removed from the dining...

No, I'm afraid there will simply be more denunciations followed by nothing.

Russia Sends a Message

From Stratfor.com:

Given the speed with which the Russians reacted to Georgia’s incursion into South Ossetia, Moscow was clearly ready to intervene. We suspect the Georgians were set up for this in some way, but at this point the buildup to the conflict no longer matters. What matters is the message that Russia is sending to the West.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev summed this message up best: “Historically Russia has been, and will continue to be, a guarantor of security for peoples of the Caucasus.”

Strategically, we said Russia would respond to Kosovo’s independence, and they have. Russia is now declaring the Caucasus to be part of its sphere of influence. We have spoken for months of how Russia would find a window of opportunity to redefine the region. This is happening now.

The Eighth Day of the Eighth Month of the Eighth Year

Friday, August 8, 2008.

The Dollar
The dollar rose against the Euro, oil prices continue to fall and pending homes sales increased int the United States. This good news has a black lining; the fear of recession.

TOKYO, Aug. 8 (AP) - (Kyodo)—The euro fell to a five-month low against the U.S. dollar and also dropped against the yen Friday in Tokyo on increasing pessimism about the eurozone economy fueled by cautious comments from European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet on growth outlook.

The euro's fall against the dollar, as well as against the yen, led to increased confidence in the U.S. currency, pushing the dollar to a seven-month high at the upper 109 yen level.

At 5 p.m., the dollar was quoted at 109.84-85 yen against 109.39-49 yen in New York and 109.44-46 yen in Tokyo at 5 p.m. Thursday. It moved between 109.30 yen and 109.95 yen during the day, and most frequently traded at 109.60 yen.

The euro was quoted at $1.5166-5167 and 166.59-63 yen against Thursday's 5 p.m. quotes of $1.5320-5330 and 167.66-76 yen in New York and $1.5465-5467 and 169.26-30 yen in Tokyo.

The single European currency was the main driving force in Tokyo deals, dealers said.

The euro met heavy selling, apparently affected by the ECB's acknowledgement that the eurozone economy has been slowing, the dealers said.

The European economy which usually lags the US in growth and recession is now beginning to show signs of a slowdown. The dollar has traditionally been a good storm haven for wary investors and with gold prices currently in the stratosphere, we could see a flight to dollars as the world feels increasingly economically uneasy. On the other hand, the world markets are so easily spooked and it's hard to say what will happen from one day to the next.

****************************

Should The President have Scolded China?

Reuters
Thursday, 7 August 2008

Just hours before flying to Beijing for the Olympics today, US President George Bush used some of his bluntest language yet in publicly pressing China to improve its human rights record.

In a speech in Bangkok on the eve of the Games' opening ceremony, when the eyes of the world will be on Beijing, Bush voiced "firm opposition" to China's detention of dissidents, human rights advocates and religious activists.

"The United States believes the people of China deserve the fundamental liberty that is the natural right of all human beings," he said in comments likely to anger China's communist leadership.

"We speak out for a free press, freedom of assembly, and labour rights not to antagonise China's leaders, but because trusting its people with greater freedom is the only way for China to develop its full potential," he said.

timing

Timing is everything including timing.

I Promise Beer in Every Drinking Fountain

Gitmo jury gives bin Laden driver 5 1/2 years

Gitmo jury gives bin Laden driver 5 1/2 years

6 minutes ago

A military jury gave Osama bin Laden's driver a stunningly lenient sentence on Thursday, making him eligible for release in just five months despite the prosecutors' request for a sentence tough enough to frighten terrorists around the globe.

Salim Hamdan's sentence of 5 1/2 years, including five years and a month already served at Guantanamo Bay, fell far short of the 30 years to life that prosecutors wanted. It now goes for mandatory review to a Pentagon official who can shorten the sentence but not extend it.

It remains unclear what will happen to Hamdan once his sentence is served, since the U.S. military has said it won't release anyone who still represents a threat. The judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, said Hamdan would likely be eligible for the same administrative review process as other prisoners.

Hamdan thanked the jurors for the sentence and repeated his apology for having served bin Laden.

"I would like to apologize one more time to all the members and I would like to thank you for what you have done for me," Hamdan told the panel of six U.S. military officers, hand-picked by the Pentagon for the first U.S. war crimes trial in a half century.

The military has not said where Hamdan will serve his sentence, but the commander of the detention center, Navy Rear Adm. David Thomas, said last week that convicted prisoners will be held apart from the general detainee population at the isolated U.S. military base in southeast Cuba.

"I hope the day comes that you return to your wife and daughters and your country, and you're able to be a provider, a father, and a husband in the best sense of all those terms," the judge told Hamdan.

Hamdan, dressed in a charcoal sports coat and white robe, responded: "God willing."

Pakistan Again. Musharraf Facing Impeacment.

Impeachment threat for Musharraf
BBC

Ruling coalition parties in Pakistan say they have agreed "in principle" to start impeachment proceedings against President Pervez Musharraf.

Their representatives are said to be looking at a draft impeachment resolution, after three days of talks.

The president's allies were defeated in elections in February, but he has so far resisted pressure to quit.

Correspondents say there are no other confirmed details about how an impeachment process might proceed.

They say the question of whether or not to impeach Mr Musharraf has threatened to divide the governing coalition.

The president has previously said he would prefer to resign than face impeachment.
Last year, he gave up control of the army, the country's most powerful institution, but he retains the power to dissolve parliament.

How the military reacts to any efforts to oust him would be crucial in determining his fate.

Mr Musharraf has delayed his departure to China, where he was due to attend the opening of the Olympic Games.

Aug 6 - Little Boy and Hamdan

Aug 6, 2008

AP.

Salim Hamdan held his head in his hands and wept Wednesday as the six-member military jury declared the Yemeni guilty of aiding terrorism, which could bring a maximum life sentence.

Hamdan was captured at a roadblock in southern Afghanistan in November 2001 and taken to Guantanamo Bay in May 2002.

The military accused him of transporting missiles for al-Qaida and helping bin Laden escape U.S. retribution following the Sept. 11 attacks by serving as his driver. Defense attorneys said he was merely a low-level bin Laden employee, a minor member of a motor pool who earned about $200 a month.

Army Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a former Guantanamo official who has since become critical of the legal process, mocked the choice of Hamdan for the tribunal's first trial.

"We can only trust that the next subjects ... will include cooks, tailors, and cobblers without whose support terrorist leaders would be left unfed, unclothed, and unshod, and therefore rendered incapable of planning or executing their attacks," Abraham said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

You can't blame Defense attorneys for characterising Hamdan as "a minor member of a motor pool." As long as no one buys it. Not even in civilian courts is the get away driver of a bank heist considered a "member of the motor pool." We're not talking about al-Qaeda, Inc or a uniformed army of a signatory of the Geneva Conventions. Hamdan knew what he was getting into and as bin Laden's driver, he was certainly in a fairly tight and trusted circle of terrorists. He was not a common thief among thieves.

As to the cooks, tailors and cobblers who provided material support to al-Qaeda, I would remind you that there were plenty of civilians providing material support in Dresden, Germany during WWII. No one read them their Miranda rights. Yesterday, was the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. I don't remember hearing about any "leaflets of indictment" being rained down on the "good" people of Hiroshima before "little man" in an instant, passed judgment on over 100,000 souls.

Apparently, in those days, people were less confused about the existential job requirements of stopping an enemy intent on killing you.

Magic Mushrooms

British tourist survives magic mushroom jump
Published: Wednesday 06 August 2008

A British tourist jumped from a hotel window in Amsterdam on Tuesday afternoon after eating magic mushrooms. The 18-year-old survived the ten-metre fall, which was broken by a shop sign and a table.

At the weekend a teenager died in The Hague after he jumped out of a window under the influence of magic mushrooms.

Press Aghast at Obama Pledge of Allegiance

The immediate reaction of the crowd was derision. Obama was quick on his feet. Listen to the press reaction to guy later in the clip.

Sadistic Rapist, Murderer, José Ernesto Medellin Gets Justice in Texas

Most of the MSM believes that the most significant thing about the murdering rapist and illegal immigrant Medellin is that he was a Mexican. Now he is a dead Mexican.

__________________

Mexican executed after appeal denied in Texas

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Mexican national Jose Ernesto Medellin, whose death penalty conviction in the rape and murder of two teen girls sparked international controversy, was put to death in Texas on Tuesday night, prison officials said.

Jose Ernesto Medellin was put to death for his part in the gang rape and murder of two Texas girls.

Corrections spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said Medellin died at 9:57 CT.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied the last-ditch appeal of a Mexican national on Texas' death row late Tuesday, paving the way for him to be executed for a pair of brutal slayings, state corrections officials said.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said about 9:15 p.m. that the court had turned down the appeal of Jose Ernesto Medellin.

Medellin's capital appeal was an unusual one that pitted President Bush against his home state in a dispute over federal authority, local sovereignty and foreign treaties.

At issue is an international court's ruling that Medellin and about 50 other Mexicans have been illegally denied access to their home country's consul. Allowing travelers such access when they are arrested abroad is common practice.

At about 7 p.m., an hour after the execution could have taken place, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Corrections said the execution was in a "holding pattern."

The high court in March ruled for Texas, allowing the execution to proceed, but Medellin's lawyers filed a flurry of emergency appeals in state and federal courts, requesting a stay. They argued that Congress and the Texas Legislature should be given a chance to pass legislation that would give their client a new hearing before punishment is carried out.

Such a bill is pending in Congress, but no recent action has been taken in either chamber. In an August 1 letter, three Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee urged Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, to postpone executions "in order to provide Congress with the time needed to consider this situation."

The case centers on whether the state has to give in to a demand by the president that the prisoner be allowed new hearings and sentencing. Bush made that demand reluctantly after an international court concluded Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on American death rows were improperly denied access to their consulate upon arrest, a violation of a treaty signed by the United States decades ago.

Medellin's execution will be the first of what promises to be a busy month at the state's death chamber in Huntsville. Five other men are scheduled to die by lethal injection in the next four weeks, including one on Thursday.

Medellin was 18 when he participated in the June 1993 gang rape and murder of two Harris County girls, Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16. He was convicted of the crimes and sentenced to death.

The prisoner's lawyers argued Mexican consular officials were not able to meet with the man until after his conviction.

Thirteen Texas death row inmates from Mexico will be affected by the high court ruling. Only Oklahoma has commuted a capital inmate's sentence to life in prison in response to the international judgment.

The International Court of Justice ruled in 2004 that the United States had violated the rights of the prisoners, in part because officials and prosecutors failed to notify their home country, from which the men could have received legal and other assistance. Those judges ordered the United States to provide "review and reconsideration" of the convictions and sentences of the Mexican prisoners.

The world court again last month ordered the United States to do everything within its authority to stop Medellin's execution until his case could be further reviewed.

Based in The Hague, Netherlands, the International Court of Justice resolves disputes between nations over treaty obligations. The United States is a signatory to the 1963 Vienna Convention, which lays out rights of people detained in other nations. The appeal the Supreme Court ruled on in March turned on what role each branch of government plays to give force to international treaty obligations.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a 6-3 majority that the international court's judgments cannot be forced upon individual states. The president also cannot "establish binding rules of decision that pre-empt contrary state law," he said, and the treaty itself does not specifically require states to remedy any treaty violations.

The chief justice added that the international court "is not domestic law," thereby restricting the president's power over states. "The executive's narrow and strictly limited authority to settle international claims disputes pursuant to an executive agreement cannot stretch so far as to support the current presidential memorandum" that would force Texas to conduct a new state trial, he wrote.

The Mexican government filed an appeal with the international court against the United States in January 2003, alleging violations of international law. Medellin filed his own federal and state appeals based on similar complaints, as well as a claim of ineffective counsel. Medellin has the support of the European Union and several international human rights groups.

Bush said he disagreed with the international court's conclusions, but agreed to comply with them. In a February 28, 2005, executive order, he said, "The United States will discharge its international obligations ... by having state courts give effect to the decision in accordance with general principles of comity in cases filed by the 51 Mexican nationals addressed in that decision."

The Bush White House typically backs states in their power to carry out executions, but Justice Department officials said that in these instances, the president's power to conduct foreign policy outweighed states' interests.

The Supreme Court originally heard the Medellin case in 2005 but did not rule on the merits. It waited instead for lower courts to resolve the federalism angle before rehearing the appeal in October.

The Real Paris Hilton, A World Class Slut.

Paris Hilton and 50 cent.

In case you missed how Paris Hilton became famous, this is how.

She is a world-class, web-shared slut. The new term is a pop-tart. She is what was commonly called a "pig". She still is except times have changed and today she is a celebrity pig. Now she does nothing new except she does it for public consumption and the public does consume it. How it plays in politics is anyone's guess.

She has taken offense at John McCain and his comparing her vaccuous life to that of Barack Obama. She has responded with another video. I am sure Barack is pleased.




Paris Hilton issues tart rebuttal to McCain ad
By DEVLIN BARRETT – 26 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AP) —

Attention, America: Paris has spoken. Paris Hilton, the blonde, doe-eyed celebrity thrust into the presidential campaign in an ad by Republican candidate John McCain, issued a tart rebuttal Tuesday, albeit in a scantily clad, tongue-in-cheek kind of way.

Last week, McCain launched an ad comparing Democratic rival Barack Obama to Hilton and Britney Spears, suggesting Obama was no more than a celebrity candidate unready to lead the nation.

Hilton initially shied away from the debate over the ad and its effectiveness. But she responded Tuesday with a spoof on the comedy Web site Funny or Die.

"Hey America, I'm Paris Hilton and I'm a celebrity, too. Only I'm not from the olden days and I'm not promising change like that other guy. I'm just hot," Hilton said, speaking as she reclined in a pool chair in a revealing bathing suit and a pair of pumps. "But then that wrinkly, white-haired guy used me in his campaign ad, which I guess means I'm running for president. So thanks for the endorsement white-haired dude."

"I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead," she said.

A Saudi Head Hacker. Allah be Praised.

Speaking of capital punishment. Our good friends the Saudis are not quite as squeamish about these things. The religion of peace demands one not to spare the sword. I doubt there are few to none, who have gone through fifteen years of appeals.

Saudi justice demands the death penalty for many infractions that would go unnoticed in the West. Justice is not universal in application. Is justice possible without the death penalty?

Adios José. Texas Should Execute José Medellín Immediately

Gang rapist and sadistic murderer José Medellín.

Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16, took a short cut across a park at a late hour in June 1993 and happened upon the gang of six teenage boys, who grabbed and raped them for an hour.

Jennifer Ertman, murdered at 14.

The boys then strangled them with a belt and a shoelace and stomped on their throats. After a four-day frantic search that engaged the entire city of Houston, their bodies were found with the help of a gang member's brother.

Medellin had bragged to his friends that the victims were virgins.

Five of the gang members were sentenced to death. One has been executed, and a second is awaiting an execution date.

Texas is preparing to execute this illegal Mexican invader on Tuesday, defying a ruling of the international court, orders from US President George W Bush and demands from the Organization of American States, the US secretary of state and the US attorney general. All right Texas.

_________________

Elizabeth Pena 16, viciously raped and murdered.

Texas execution plan defies Hague order

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
The Guardian, Tuesday August 5 2008

Officials in Texas defied the international court of justice last night to affirm the scheduled execution today of a Mexican national at the centre of a global legal row.

The state's board of parole and corrections rejected a last minute appeal from lawyers for José Medellín.

He is now scheduled to be put to death at 6pm local time despite an order from the court at The Hague to halt his execution.

Legal experts and human rights organisations said the execution would be seen as an act of defiance of international law after a ruling from the ICJ that Medellín was denied his right to consult with Mexican embassy officials during his trial.

"US respect for international law might be further damaged by this execution," said Brian Evans of Amnesty International.

"We are deeply disappointed with this recommendation from the board of pardons and paroles," said Donald Francis Donovan of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, counsel to Medellín "The board has failed to support the United States in fulfilling its international legal obligations. The board's action ... risks the safety of thousands of Americans travelling and living abroad.

Katharine Huffman, a spokeswoman for Medellín's legal team, said the case was being monitored by the international community. "The failure on the part of the US could have very serious implications for our relationship with Mexico as well as other nations," she said.

But the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, has repeatedly indicated the execution would go ahead. Texas has the most active death chamber in America.

"The [ICJ] has no jurisdiction here in Texas. We're concerned about following Texas law and that's what we're doing," a spokeswoman for Perry said.

Medellín has spent most of his adult life on death row after he was convicted in the 1993 gang rape and murders of two teenage girls.

His hopes now rest on the US supreme court. His lawyers had asked the board for a 240-day stay of execution to give Congress time to enact legislation that would spare him.

A bill now before Congress would compel Texas and other states to comply with international treaties guaranteeing foreign nationals on trial the right to consult with officials from their home countries.

Medellín is the first of 51 Mexicans on death row in the US whose cases have become an embarrassment for the Bush administration.

In a 2004 ruling the ICJ ordered the courts to grant a review of their cases, and George Bush earlier this year urged the authorities in Texas to revisit Medellín's case. But the supreme court ruled that the president had overstepped his authority.

Last month the ICJ ordered the US to "take all measures necessary" to block Medellín's execution. Huffman warned that America could still be in conflict with the court until the cases of the other 50 Mexican nationals on death row are resolved.

Obama, Off-Shore Drilling, On-Shore Politics

Wall Street Journal

Democrats Get Drilled

Some cracks are appearing in the solid wall of opposition that Democrats have erected against proposals for expanding domestic production of oil.

The House voted to adjourn for its August recess yesterday, but only by a vote of 213 to 212 as minority Republicans were able to convince over a dozen Democrats to break with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and support staying in session in order to deal with high energy prices. On the Senate side, Majority Leader Harry Reid broached the idea of an "energy summit" that would convene in September and consider more domestic drilling.

Even the Obama campaign, stung by a new John McCain commercial that contrasts his celebrity cult status in Europe with his refusal to address high gas prices at home, may be in motion. Former Sen. Gary Hart, an Obama surrogate, told the Denver Post that the gas price issue is a top concern of voters. He said it was possible that Senator Obama would back offshore domestic drilling if it were part of a much larger package that focused on clean energy and conservation. But the Obama campaign still insists that the Senator views calls for offshore drilling as a distraction from the real energy debate.

That could change if polls continue to show the power of the issue to move voters. Last week, a poll in the swing state of Colorado found that 9% of state voters say they've changed their minds and become supporters of offshore energy exploration.

Don't be surprised if Democrats use the August recess to meet behind the scenes with their environmentalist allies to put together a Plan B approach to block further Republican exploitation of the drilling issue.

-- John Fund

Obama, Quick, Glib and Deadly Wrong on Pakistan.

Listen to the words of this Pashtun fighter. Is he an Al Qaeda operative?

He is not. He is not a terrorist.

He does not care about what goes on in New York or Jerusalem or Chicago. He cares plenty about his tribe and his turf.

Obama declared that he would use military force against Al Qaeda operatives in tribal areas of Pakistan. He will send in US forces to try and hunt down such men as this. It will be the Obama equivalent of solving the energy crisis by topping up tires.

The junior inexperienced community organizer and Senator from Illinois said in 2007:

"I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges," Obama said. "But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. ... If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will."

Obama, if elected President, will get more Americans killed in Afghanistan than Bush did in Iraq. He is ignorant about Afghanistan and Pakistan and painfully naive on foreign policy. He is however, very good at running a campaign. That is what a community organizer does. If his campaign is successful we will end up with a  Jimmy Carter of color. We will pay hell for the folly. I urge you to read this:

______________________________________

Current Afghan conflict finds echoes in centuries-old feud between tribes
Jul 24, 2008
Canadian Press

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — It's a centuries-old tribal feud pitting Afghanistan's noble clans against the perennial outsiders - and Canada and its allies have been dragged into the middle of it.

The current conflict in Afghanistan is only the latest chapter in three centuries of squabbling between the two main tribal clans of the country's dominant Pashtun ethnic group.

Experts say the West must make a better effort to understand the tribal complexities or its nation-building project in Afghanistan is doomed to fail.

It is no easy feat for an outsider.

The byzantine dynamics of Afghanistan's tribal system include ancient rivalries, election processes and legal codes that can vary from one village to the next.

There are about 60 main Pashtun tribes and they include roughly 400 smaller sub-tribal offshoots - some are tiny, some have hundreds of thousands of members, some break with the majority and some simply sit on the fence.

But boiled down to its simplest description, this is a rivalry between two giant sets of families: the Durrani and the Ghilzai. Their history of violence makes the vaunted Hatfield-McCoy feud look brief and blissful by comparison.

"I really think tribal factors are still important," said Nasir Islam, a University of Ottawa professor who provides a two-day training course on Afghan culture to Canadian soldiers before they deploy.

"It's the $64,000 question: How do you bring change to a society that is so tradition-bound?"
For most of the last three centuries, the blue-blooded Durrani tribal clan ruled Afghanistan, providing the country with its kings who periodically sought to exercise control and bring modernity to the hinterland.

Their attempts to create a modern, central government prompted several violent uprisings from the Ghilzai - a name loosely derived from the term "mountain swordsmen."
President Hamid Karzai is a Durrani.

More specifically, he is a Popalzai, the royal-blooded sub-branch of the Durrani family tree that traces its ancestry to Ahmad Shah Durrani, the 18th century king widely considered the founder of Afghanistan.

The Taliban regime was comprised almost exclusively of Ghilzai tribesmen.

Members of this tribal family are the backbone of today's insurgency, as were their ancestors who waged revolts against Durrani royalty.

The Ghilzai also rebelled against the communists, even though three of the country's Soviet-backed rulers belonged to their clan.

Before that, they rebelled against Durrani kings like Amir Abdurrahman, known as the Iron Amir for his often brutal efforts to reduce the power of tribal leaders and increase the presence of the state in the 19th century.

A Ghilzai uprising later derailed Amanullah Khan's plan to modernize the country with a new public school system for boys and girls, a constitution that guaranteed equal rights, and an end to the strict dress code for women.
After 10 years of trying, Khan was forced into exile in 1929.

It might be tempting for outsiders to see these ancient bloodline identities as an impediment to building a stable Afghan state.
But many of the country's most reputed observers argue the exact opposite: that foreigners and the central government need to better understand tribal realities and incorporate them into larger state structures.

They say that the current nation-building project is being undermined by a lack of cohesion with traditional structures.
Nasir Islam suggests that while a legal system develops, the state should recognize tribal dispute-resolution mechanisms. Plaintiffs could then be allowed to appeal tribal verdicts to a state-run court, he says.

One of the world's leading experts on Afghanistan makes a similar argument.

Barnett Rubin says that in most of the country, the only law enforcement available to villagers rests with tribal councils and their crude interpretation of Islamic law.

The political scientist at New York University argued in a Foreign Affairs magazine article last year that there will be only two options available in the years to come, pending the development of a modern justice system: "Enforcement of such customary or Islamic law - or no law at all."

An incident just last week in northern Afghanistan illustrates his point.

A father in Sarpul province publicly threatened to make his entire family suicide-bombers unless he gets justice in the gang-rape of his 12-year-old girl.

He said the rapists had bribed their way out of trouble because they had powerful links to the police department and politicians.

One Afghan scholar describes how rural-dwellers consider their traditional legal system fairer than anything foreigners have to offer. It may crude by western standards, exceptionally harsh in some cases, and jaw-droppingly misogynistic - but at least the people will follow it.

For serious matters, like a murder trial or a treaty negotiation, Pashtun tribes will gather all adult men for a so-called shura.
In the case of an accidental killing, the trial begins with the placing of a stone on the ground between the houses of two feuding parties. It is a symbolic gesture that declares an inviolable truce period - with members of each home forbidden from crossing that stone to fight.

The adult men of the tribe deliver a verdict after gathering the facts of a case. The ultimate aim is to find a satisfactory solution for both families, and not to punish any individual but to establish some compensation to the injured parties.
Penalties for a crime can see one family forced to transfer land, money or one of its females to the injured parties.
A family that refuses to abide by the verdict can have its house burned down.

Two academics who described the process in a recent paper say foreigners are being led astray if they believe the current government can replace these systems.

"This is a dangerous and fundamentally bankrupt approach," say Afghanistan scholars Chris Mason and Thomas H. Johnson.
"(It is) arrived at by misguided bureaucrats, policy analysts, and westernized Afghan elites, who are the first to downplay the importance of tribalism ... Such elites (are) often the only contacts of western policy professionals."

In fact, the Canadian government is keenly aware of the powerful tribal dynamics at play in the rural areas.

Its analysts have closely studied the legal system and attempted to incorporate tribal realities into their interaction with locals.
If a public works contract is tendered in a village with different tribes, there is an effort to ensure that various clans each receive a share of it.

The Canadians have seen how tribal leaders can serve as the most reliable bulwark against the insurgency.
In areas where the tribal structure is weakest, the Taliban tends to be strongest. In the Kandahar districts of Sanzari and Arghandab, the number of Taliban attacks and incursions skyrocketed after the death of local leaders.

"When the leaders tell people, 'Stand against the Taliban,' they will stand," said a local Afghan who acts as a cultural adviser to the Canadian government.

"Now the Taliban are killing tribal leaders."

The Taliban have always railed against tribalism and described their own mission as a pan-Islamic one that should unite Muslims of different tribes.

However, they have used the symbolism and rules of tribal politics to their advantage.

When their leader Mullah Omar sought to assert his authority over the country in 1996, he repeated a grand gesture that cast him as a modern-day Ahmed Shah Durrani.

He headed over to a Kandahar shrine that supposedly holds a cloak that once belonged to the Prophet Muhammad - one that Durrani brought back from the Holy Land in 1768 - and draped it over his shoulders.

That symbolic gesture helped build Omar's reputation as "Leader of the Faithful," and cast him as a modern-day heir to the famous patriarch of the Durrani bloodline.

The Taliban also use the rules of Pashtun tribalism to their advantage on the battlefield. When they hide in villages and NATO planes bomb those villages, they know they are winning converts to their side.

The ancient principle of badal - vengeance - is among the core tenets of Pashtunwali, the ancient tribal code.

Human-rights groups estimate that by December of 2001, more innocent civilians had already been killed in coalition strikes than the total number who died on Sept. 11.

And when foreign soldiers forcibly enter a home, search a woman, and especially if they kill an innocent person, they have made new enemies.

The Taliban know the rules well.

"If your brother or my brother was killed by someone, we would not be happy," says Nasir Islam.
"(But in Pashtunwali) it's a question of honour. If you do not take revenge, you are dishonourable."

Tonight at the Elephant Bar

A Wake Up Call for McCain

A little advise from Dick Morris.

____________

August 02, 2008
McCain Should Hit Obama Where It Hurts - on Policy
By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
Real Clear Politics

When is the McCain campaign going to get serious? It seems to be marking time with softball ads, more appropriate to the soundbites campaign media spokespeople exchange with one another than to strategic paid media hits. One ad talks about how the media loves Obama. Another mocks him as a celebrity. Each throws pitty-pat punches, far short of the kind of knockout blows one would expect from a presidential campaign. Were I a donor to McCain's campaign, paying for these pathetic spots, I would demand a refund. Or sue for malpractice.

Yet despite this softball nonsense, Obama remains vulnerable, no better than two points ahead despite the bounce from his overseas trip.

Are the McCain people waiting for September to get serious? If so, they are making a big mistake and missing an important opportunity. History indicates that the best time to beat a new candidate is in the summer. August to be precise.

Dukakis, Mondale, and Kerry all were destroyed in the summer, long before the fall campaign began. In 1984, the offensive against Geraldine Ferraro crippled Mondale well before Labor Day. In 1988, the pledge of allegiance, revolving door, and Willie Horton ads all ran in the summer. Dukakis was dead by September. And the swift boat attack on Kerry defeated him well before the summer was over.

McCain needs to make voters afraid of Obama. Not, as he suggests self-servingly, by emphasizing that he "doesn't look like all the other presidents on dollar bills," but by hitting him on the two fronts where it would really hurt -- the economy and national security. Obama's inexperience and the wildly liberal proposals he has made in his primary campaigning, both set him up for a crippling blow this month.

Oil drilling is an issue, but it does not provoke the fear that the McCain campaign needs to elicit to win. It's just an issue disagreement with bad consequences for the nation. Obama's position on the issue is not a recipe for national disaster.

But his tax plans and their likely economic consequence are very much a plan for catastrophe. Doubling the tax in invested capital, and ratcheting up the top tax bracket to an effective 60%, will plunge the nation into a real depression. Not a recession or a downturn or a correction or a slowdown. A depression. McCain needs to hammer this point home again and again and again in his advertising. He has to put top level economists on television talking about what the Obama tax program will mean to America. Obama is suspect as an ideological liberal, anyway. And nobody thinks he has the experience to be a good president. So the potential to scare voters by accurately elaborating what his tax plans will mean to the entire country -- not just the rich on whom the burden will directly fall -- is enormous.

When Obama says he will only tax the rich, it's like saying he won't shut down the entire ship, just the engine room. If McCain just talks about Obama's tax program in the abstract, most voters will shrug and note that the tax hikes won't really apply to them. Only 2% of Americans earn more than $200,000 a year and only 6% make more than $100,000. But if McCain explains the economic impact of Obama's tax proposals on all Americans, he will score points and could score a knockout.

The national security offensive should have two parts. First, McCain's ads should portray Obama as naive. By taking off on his comment that Iran is a "tiny country" that couldn't hurt the US much, he can show how the Democrat is not prepared to cope with the serious national security problems which will face the next president. The more the crisis with Iran ratchets up, the more dividends this approach will reap for McCain. But, as with the argument of an impending depression if Obama wins, McCain needs to begin the argument now and let it pile up by the fall.

Secondly, McCain should take Obama's proposed changes in the Patriot Act and show how they would weaken us in the face of domestic terror threats. Don't let the liberal media fool you. Bush's domestic security initiatives are very popular. How will Obama explain his legislation to notify suspected terrorist groups seven days after Homeland Security begins an investigation of them? Or how will he explain his opposition to the wiretapping that saved the Brooklyn Bridge from destruction. McCain needs to paint Obama as weak on homeland security.

This race is there for the winning, but McCain is using his paid media ads as mere press releases, touching on the events of the day without really using them as a strategic tool to destroy Obama. He needs to start doing so now

.

Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton. To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to www.dickmorris.com.

Will Anything Hit the Fan?

From today's NYTimes

August 1, 2008
Pakistanis Aided Attack in Kabul, U.S. Officials Say
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Concerns about the role played by Pakistani intelligence not only has strained relations between the United States and Pakistan, a longtime ally, but also has fanned tensions between Pakistan and its archrival, India. Within days of the bombings, Indian officials accused the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, of helping to orchestrate the attack in Kabul, which killed 54, including an Indian defense attaché.

This week, Pakistani troops clashed with Indian forces in the contested region of Kashmir, threatening to fray an uneasy cease-fire that has held since November 2003.

The New York Times reported this week that a top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled to Pakistan this month to confront senior Pakistani officials with information about support provided by members of the ISI to militant groups. It had not been known that American intelligence agencies concluded that elements of Pakistani intelligence provided direct support for the attack in Kabul.

American officials said that the communications were intercepted before the July 7 bombing, and that the C.I.A. emissary, Stephen R. Kappes, the agency’s deputy director, had been ordered to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, even before the attack. The intercepts were not detailed enough to warn of any specific attack.

The government officials were guarded in describing the new evidence and would not say specifically what kind of assistance the ISI officers provided to the militants. They said that the ISI officers had not been renegades, indicating that their actions might have been authorized by superiors.

“It confirmed some suspicions that I think were widely held,” one State Department official with knowledge of Afghanistan issues said of the intercepted communications. “It was sort of this ‘aha’ moment. There was a sense that there was finally direct proof.”

The information linking the ISI to the bombing of the Indian Embassy was described in interviews by several American officials with knowledge of the intelligence. Some of the officials expressed anger that elements of Pakistan’s government seemed to be directly aiding violence in Afghanistan that had included attacks on American troops.

Some American officials have begun to suggest that Pakistan is no longer a fully reliable American partner and to advocate some unilateral American action against militants based in the tribal areas.

The ISI has long maintained ties to militant groups in the tribal areas, in part to court allies it can use to contain Afghanistan’s power. In recent years, Pakistan’s government has also been concerned about India’s growing influence inside Afghanistan, including New Delhi’s close ties to the government of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.

American officials say they believe that the embassy attack was probably carried out by members of a network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose alliance with Al Qaeda and its affiliates has allowed the terrorist network to rebuild in the tribal areas.

American and Pakistani officials have now acknowledged that President Bush on Monday confronted Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, about the divided loyalties of the ISI.

Pakistan’s defense minister, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, told a Pakistani television network on Wednesday that Mr. Bush asked senior Pakistani officials this week, “ ‘Who is in control of ISI?’ ” and asked about leaked information that tipped militants to surveillance efforts by Western intelligence services.

Pakistan’s new civilian government is wrestling with these very issues, and there is concern in Washington that the civilian leaders will be unable to end a longstanding relationship between members of the ISI and militants associated with Al Qaeda.

Spokesmen for the White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article. Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, did not return a call seeking comment.

Further underscoring the tension between Pakistan and its Western allies, Britain’s senior military officer said in Washington on Thursday that an American and British program to help train Pakistan’s Frontier Corps in the tribal areas had been delayed while Pakistan’s military and civilian officials sorted out details about the program’s goals.

Britain and the United States had each offered to send about two dozen military trainers to Pakistan later this summer to train Pakistani Army officers who in turn would instruct the Frontier Corps paramilitary forces.

But the British officer, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, said the program had been temporarily delayed. “We don’t yet have a firm start date,” he told a small group of reporters. “We’re ready to go.”

The bombing of the Indian Embassy helped to set off a new deterioration in relations between India and Pakistan.

This week, Indian and Pakistani soldiers fired at each other across the Kashmir frontier for more than 12 hours overnight Monday, in what the Indian Army called the most serious violation of a five-year-old cease-fire agreement. The nightlong battle came after one Indian soldier and four Pakistanis were killed along the border between sections of Kashmir that are controlled by India and by Pakistan.

Indian officials say they are equally worried about what is happening on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border because they say the insurgents who are facing off with India in Kashmir and those who target Afghanistan are related and can keep both borders burning at the same time.

India and Afghanistan share close political, cultural and economic ties, and India maintains an active intelligence network in Afghanistan, all of which has drawn suspicion from Pakistani officials.

When asked Thursday about whether the ISI and Pakistani military remained loyal to the country’s civilian government, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sidestepped the question. “That’s probably something the government of Pakistan ought to speak to,” Admiral Mullen told reporters at the Pentagon.

Jalaluddin Haqqani, the militia commander, battled Soviet troops during the 1980s and has had a long and complicated relationship with the C.I.A. He was among a group of fighters who received arms and millions of dollars from the C.I.A. during that period, but his allegiance with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda during the following decade led the United States to sever the relationship.

Mr. Haqqani and his sons now run a network that Western intelligence services say they believe is responsible for a campaign of violence throughout Afghanistan, including the Indian Embassy bombing and an attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul earlier this year.

David Rohde contributed reporting from New York, and Somini Sengupta from New Delhi.

It's interesting that this story came out today. Could it indicate that the US has "given up" on the Pakis or is it meant as a message to them that our patience has a limit?

If You Own a Mutual Fund or Have a Retirement Fund, Obama Wants Part of It

Hosanna in the highest

Obama wants to redistribute your wealth, savings and earnings to someone who needs it more than you do. No? oh yes. His Marxist solution to take away from oil companies is really a taking from the owners of oil companies. Exxon Mobil for example is over 50% owned by institutions and the rest by private investors and savers. Millions of accounts, owned by the saving and responsible class have small amounts, 100 shares of companies like Mobil. It was bought by after tax earnings and savings. Obama's people do not save or invest. They will get their share out of your share. Sorry about that.

Obama's 'emergency' economic plan

By MIKE ALLEN Politico| 8/1/08 9:38 AM EST

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Friday announced an “Emergency Economic Plan” that would give families a stimulus check of $1,000 each, funded in part by what his presidential campaign calls “windfall profits from Big Oil.”

The first part of Obama’s plan is an emergency energy rebate ($500 to individual workers, $1,000 to families) as soon as this fall.

“This rebate will be enough to offset the increased cost of gas for a working family over the next four months,” Obama said. “Or, if you live in a state where it gets very cold in the winter, it will be enough to cover the entire increase in your heating bills. Or you could use the rebate for any of your other bills or even to pay down debt

Separately, Obama’s plan includes a $50 billion stimulus package that his campaign claims would save more than 1 million jobs.

Obama announced his plan 27 minutes after a Labor Department report showed unemployment hit a four-year high of 5.7 percent in July — the highest rate since March 2004, when it was 5.8 percent.

“We need to do more,” Obama said in a statement. “That’s why today I’m announcing a two-part emergency plan to help struggling families make ends meet and get our economy back on track.

McCain reacted to the surprisingly dour jobs report with a two-paragraph statement: "Across this country, Americans are hurting and today's job numbers are just the latest reminder of the economic challenges we face. ... Unlike Sen. Obama, I do not believe that raising taxes is the answer to our economic problems. There is no surer way to force jobs overseas than to raise taxes on businesses.”

Obama announced his plan for a windfall profits tax on oil companies on June 9 in Raleigh, N.C., as he launched a two-week economic tour after clinching the Democratic nomination.

Friday’s proposal says Obama “is proposing to offset the cost of his emergency energy rebates over the next five years by enacting a windfall profits tax on big oil companies.”

“Obama simply asks that big oil companies contribute a reasonable share of the windfall profits they receive from high oil prices over the next five years to pay for emergency assistance for families right now,” the campaign says.

Our Good Friends in Pakistan

His Sliminess Gillani, Paki Prime Minister.

Gillani secured a pledge from Bush to respect Pakistani sovereignty in exchange for promises from Islamabad to crack down on the militants. "This is our own war," Gillani said. "This is a war which is against Pakistan."

Watch the video and then read this little ditty from the Washington Post. Is there a bigger turd in the punch bowl than Pakistan?

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U.S. Officials: Pakistani Agents Helped Plan Kabul Bombing (Hat tip Doug)

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 1, 2008; Page A01

U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that elements of Pakistan's military intelligence service provided logistical support to militants who staged last month's deadly car bombing at the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan's capital, U.S. officials familiar with the evidence said yesterday.

The finding, based partly on communication intercepts, has dramatically heightened U.S. concerns about long-standing ties between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, and Taliban-allied groups that are battling U.S. forces in Afghanistan, according to two U.S. government officials briefed on the matter.

The July 7 bombing at the Kabul embassy has been linked to fighters loyal to Jalaluddin Haqqani, an ethnic Pashtun militant who has led pro-Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and has been associated with numerous suicide bombings in the region. More than 40 people were killed in one of the deadliest attacks on Afghan civilians since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

"There continues to be evidence of Taliban and Haqqani network involvement in the Indian Embassy bombing as well as the attempted assassination of [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai," said a senior U.S. official briefed on the reports. He said there was "significant" evidence suggesting that individual ISI members provided logistical support to the embassy bombers. He declined to elaborate further.

CIA officials raised the issue of possible ISI support for the embassy bombers during a meeting last month between the newly elected Pakistani government and a delegation led by Stephen Kappes, the agency's director of clandestine operations, two officials said. The conclusion by U.S. intelligence and the visit were first reported by the New York Times.

One official involved with U.S. counterterrorism efforts stressed that the ISI has generally worked closely with U.S. intelligence in battling al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in the tribal region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But he acknowledged that the Pakistani intelligence service is "not monolithic."

The intelligence community is divided about the extent of Taliban sympathies within the Pakistani service, a second senior official said. "You will find folks who will say there is significant penetration of the ISI by terrorist elements and that's a serious concern," the official said. "But others are saying that certainly, there's penetration, but we don't think it's top to bottom."

Pakistani officials have repeatedly denied the allegation of ISI support for the Taliban, though Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar, who accompanied Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani in a visit to Washington this week, acknowledged that his U.S. counterparts had aired serious concerns. Following their meetings this week, Gillani and President Bush sought to ease bilateral tensions over the conduct of the campaign against terrorism. Their talks focused on efforts to clamp down on al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists in Pakistan's northwest tribal areas.

Gillani secured a pledge from Bush to respect Pakistani sovereignty in exchange for promises from Islamabad to crack down on the militants. "This is our own war," Gillani said. "This is a war which is against Pakistan."

Pakistan, which has received more than $10 billion in U.S. aid since 2001, has resisted suggestions that troops from the United States or other countries be allowed into the region.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, when asked yesterday whether the ISI and the military were aligned with the Pakistani government, said it was a question "the government of Pakistan ought to speak to."

Mullen, who recently traveled to Pakistan, said the country's leaders made clear during talks that they recognized the tribal areas pose "a serious internal threat to Pakistan, and it's growing," and that they are "committed to taking steps to . . . address it."

U.S. concerns about Taliban support within the ISI's ranks date back nearly a decade. Robert Baer, a former CIA case officer with experience in the region, noted that the ISI was an early backer of the Taliban during the 1980s, at a time when they were allied in the fight against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Some ISI officers forged personal ties with Taliban commanders that persist today, he said.

Staff writers Ann Scott Tyson and Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.