COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Monday, June 30, 2008

The Increasingly Loathsome Wesley Clark



Wesley Clark, The hero of Waco, is taking shots at McCain's military service, questioning his leadership capacity in comparison to whom? Barack Obama?

Clark has best been described as a vain, pompous, brown-noser.

He answers his own argument in that he is an opportunistic example of why one who once wore a uniform is not necessarily qualified for anything.

Take a look back at the perfumed prince:


DEFENDING AMERICA

David H. Hackworth
April 20, 1999

CLARK AND VIETNAM.

NATO's Wesley Clark is not the Iron Duke, nor is he Stormin' Norman. Unlike Wellington and Schwarzkopf, Clark's not a muddy boots soldier. He's a military politician, without the right stuff to produce victory over Serbia.

Known by those who've served with him as the "Ultimate Perfumed Prince," he's far more comfortable in a drawing room discussing political theories than hunkering down in the trenches where bullets fly and soldiers die. An intellectual in warrior's gear. A saying attributed to General George Patton was that it took 10 years with troops alone before an officer knew how to empty a bucket of spit As a serving soldier with 33 years of active duty under his pistol belt, Clark's commanded combat units -- rifle platoon to tank division - for only seven years. The rest of his career's been spent as an aide, an executive, a student and teacher and a staff weenie.

Very much like generals Maxwell Taylor and William Westmoreland, the architect and carpenter of the Vietnam disaster, Clark was earmarked and then groomed early in his career for big things. At West Point he graduated No. 1 in his class, and even though the Vietnam War was raging and chewing up lieutenants faster than a machine gun can spit death, he was seconded to Oxford for two years of contemplating instead of to the trenches to lead a platoon.

A year after graduating Oxford, he was sent to Vietnam, where, as a combat leader for several months, he was bloodied and muddied. Unlike most of his classmates, who did multiple combat tours in the killing fields of Southeast Asia, he spent the rest of the war sheltered in the ivy towers of West Point or learning power games first hand as a White House fellow.

The war with Serbia has been going full tilt for almost a month and Clark's NATO is like a giant standing on a concrete pad wielding a sledgehammer crushing Serbian ants. Yet, with all its awesome might, NATO hasn't won a round. Instead, Milosovic is still calling all the shots from his Belgrade bunker, and all that's left for Clark is to react. Milosevic plays the fiddle and Clark dances the jig. 'Stormin' Norman or any good infantry sergeant major would have told Clark that conventional air power alone could never win a war -- it must be accompanied by boots on the ground.

German air power didn't beat Britain. Allied air power didn't beat Germany. More air power than was used against the Japanese and Germans combined didn't win in Vietnam. Forty three days of pummeling in the open desert where there was no place to hide didn't KO Saddam. That fight ended only when Schwarzkopf unleashed the steel ground fist he'd carefully positioned before the first bomb fell.

Doing military things exactly backwards, the scholar general is now, according to a high ranking Pentagon source, in "total panic mode" as he tries to mass the air and ground forces he finally figured out he needs to win the initiative. Mass is a principle of war. Clark has violated this rule along with the other eight vital principles. Any mud soldier will tell you if you don't follow the principles of war you lose.

One of the salient reasons Wellington whipped Napoleon in 1815 at Waterloo is that the Corsican piecemealed his forces. Clark's done the same thing with his air power. He started with leisurely pinpricks and now is attempting to increase the pain against an opponent with an almost unlimited threshold. Similar gradualism was one of the reasons for defeat in Vietnam.

Another mistake Clark's made is not knowing his enemy. Taylor and Westmoreland made this same error in Vietnam. Like the Vietnamese, the Serbs are fanatic warriors who know better than to fight conventionally in open formations. They'll use the rugged terrain and bomber bad weather to conduct the guerrilla operations they've been preparing for over 50 years.

And they're damn good at partisan warfare. Just ask any German 70 years or older if a fight in Serbia will be another Desert Storm. It's the smart general who knows when to retreat. If Clark lets pride stand in the way of military judgment, expect a long and bloody war.

74 comments:

  1. Wesley and Hackworth:
    Only the Good Die Young

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  2. Never knew about this story of obsession:
    ---
    - Dominique Dunne -

    An adult young woman, Dominique fell in love with John David Sweeney, a noted Los Angeles chef at trendy restaurant Ma Maison.
    ---
    In 1983, Sweeney was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 6 1/2 years. After serving a little more than half of his sentence, he was released.
    His sentence remains controversial to this day.

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  3. Dominique Dunne - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Her last TV appearance, aired after her death, was in an episode of Hill Street Blues.
    She played a teenage mother who is a victim of parental abuse.
    Some of her bruise marks were actual bruises inflicted from abuse by Sweeney the night before filming.[1]
    The episode was dedicated to her memory.

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  4. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

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  5. I say we all call him and fry his brain:

    http://www.koreus.com/video/telephone-portable-mais-popcorn.html

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  6. Crap.
    Is that real, Mat?

    Son's brain is mush if it is.
    ...knew an LA cop that got disability from using (higher powered) radios.
    His dad was a dentist!

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  7. Doug,

    When you're on the 'level' it's the same whether read left to right or right to left

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  8. The microwave was invented after a researcher walked past a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket. :)

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  9. I'm staying home in November.


    One Obama Vote Down....

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  10. She hid it where!

    http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x1y6ya

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  11. Watch and learn, Doug.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM9x5tefjcY

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  12. Methuselah: The microwave was invented after a researcher walked past a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket. :)

    He made a fortune. Unfortunately, he had no children to pass it on to. Funny that.

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  13. INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Monday he will never question others' patriotism during the race and blames his own "carelessness" for some criticism of him so far.
    Obama sought to reassure voters about his commitment to the country, choosing the aptly named town of Independence as his backdrop.

    Questions about his patriotism were raised during the Democratic nomination fight, and Obama recently started wearing a flag pin on his lapel in one attempt to answer them. But a weeklong focus on American values in the run-up to Friday's July 4 holiday represents his most concerted effort so far to do so.

    Obama said he chose the topic in part because of his experience during the race, even though he has always considered his love of country a given and his inspiration for running for office.

    "I have found, for the first time, my patriotism challenged—at times as a result of my own carelessness, more often as a result of the desire by some to score political points and raise fears about who I am and what I stand for," he said before a crowd of a few hundred people at the Truman Memorial Building here. "I will never question the patriotism of others in this campaign. And I will not stand idly by when I hear others question mine."

    Obama also sought to tamp down controversy surrounding comments over the weekend from a supporter. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark said in a television appearance that the Vietnam War-era military service of John McCain, Obama's Republican opponent, does not necessarily qualify him to be commander in chief.

    McCain was a fighter pilot who was captured and held as a prisoner of war for more than five years.

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  14. Gordon appears to have embraced the magical thinking that all cultures will eventually, with prosperity, act like the West and Northern Asia did…
    3rd and 4th African, Muslim, and Latin residents in Europe and America belie that claim.
    History also shows that not only does demography lessen the power of the slower reproducers, it can move them off their native land (Serbs, NAs, Ainu, Greek Islands) - but

    Even exterminate them entirely over time (neanderthals, Arawak Indians from several Caribbean islands, various protoraces and ethnicities we only know from bones or DNA markers in the engulfing successor humans of Bantu, Javanese, Han ethnicity.)

    There was no great final battle between humans and neanderthal. Just a small differential in birthrate and survival to breeding age that led Neanderthals to be pushed off the paleolithic versions of The Levant, California…to remoter, less productive lands where the birthrate edge widened slightly until Cro Magnon man was ready to take over those lands with the power of greater numbers.

    ****************
    Bret:
    Fertility rates are strongly correlated with population density. Europe is more densely populated than the US. Thus it currently has low fertility. Once the population of Europe drops, their fertility will increase and the population will level off. The United States’ population will increase until it gets more crowded, then it will drop.
    I suspect that both religiosity and government footprint is also related to population density.
    No gloom and doom. Only simple feedback mechanisms.

    Bret’s theory would be comfortable and reassuring if it was true. Unfortunately, it isn’t.

    In 4 generations of breeding in densely-packed refugee camps, Palestinian birthrates exploded. The rates or rural Mexicans hitting high population density US and Mexican cities has gone up 2 to 5-fold. And held for 2nd and 3rd gen descendents. A pattern also seen in urbanized Arab and African populations moving to high density urban environments. While some anthrpologists argue they give birth at no significantly different rates and some ethnicities do go down…the effective birthrate - thanks in no small part to the feverish effort of well-intentioned white people to lower 3rd world infant mortality and provide free care to poor mothers with a pregnancy every year - has gone up massively in births surviving to reproductive age.

    ********************
    Where this ends I don’t know. Many think the neaderthals were intelligent beings, capable of grasping the portending doom of their kind but passively experiencing it - condemned by flaws in their culture and lifestyle - agreeing with the verdict..

    It may be the West, even the European part of the white race, and slow-breeding other ethnicities like the San People and Yamoto may passively accept extinguishment after a long period of being chased out of verdant fields they once ruled, farmed, and played in to desert and mountain redoubts that are but the next phase where demography will confront and defeat them and in the end, hold out hope that the people now in power thanks to “democracy and majority rule” will at least let a remnant live on in reservations and in theme parks where the conquering masses can bring their clutches of children and watch the colorful whites and Japanese, and other surpassed people perform. Watch whites re-enacting Roman events, strange Greek dialogue absent ANY credit to Allah, cowboy shows, the strange foods of long-gone French and Italian cooking. Whites can be studied from some of their long-ago media shows like Leave it to Beaver and Monty Python and Casablanca…back when whites thought they were a race worth surviving…before they agreed they were an evil oppressor race that had to embrace MultiCulti and post communist rule of them by lawyers….
    But a lot of the offensive stuff, like the cathedrals of Europe, signs of white opulence, all the textbooks about things dead white people did would be agreed by all to be best destroyed and eradicated from the record.
    The Japanese would be fun, with Samurai flicks, a theme park set to lure Africans, Muslims to the long since destroyed Emperor’s palace reproduction. And the San could have a little desert village set aside in Mexican Arizona after the Bantu wiped out their last stand in the Kalihari.

    It could be the last whites of Europe may be so blindly devoted to “majority rule” “female power”, tolerance, “multiculti as faith”, and complete grovelling to the rule of Jewish and Leftist lawyer’s arbitrary, made-up laws that they will be silently full of pride that they suicidally stuck with those values as they watch their last days.
    Watch the last unclean pig killed and buried, the last wine bottle smashed, the last fertile European white women (self-righteously screaming in outraged feminist protest) being veiled and swaddled and carried off to a house to have her unused womb soon productively filled with the progeny of a proper Nigerian Muslim man. A house she will never leave unless by male permission. As the few Euroweenie males nod as she is dragged off that it is proper under Sharia, Sharia is law, and that everything is being done completely legally under Dhimmitude. And of course - they have been barred for 1500 years from any contact, friendship, intimacy with a Muslim woman as unclean and a death sentence for any Muslim female disgracing her family, tribe, and Allah so.

    The solution might be in a West counter-revolution that of necessity would have to destroy Constitutions, end democracy, and kill Jewish and Gentile agents pushing Multi-culti.

    That may sound ugly to people conditioned all their lives it is better to end up like white Rhodesians, Serbs than defy sacred tenants the Jewish and Gentile progressive intelligensia say matter even more than survival.

    The Sacred Parchment of the Constitution scrapped, even burned to get a better Operating Manual for America????…(which in the end is but a scrap of paper that codified what the People wanted a nation to do for them…not Holy writ right from God, the Talmud..)Burned? The very words of the Holy Founding Fathers and the interpretation skills of Mighty Lawyers Dressed in Robes of what those words really meant about green-lighting abortion and buggery and gay marriage - no longer blindly worshipped??? Monstrous!!
    Just as democracy is supposed to be about the supreme wisdom of the collective thoughts of the masses - as if they were immune to rampant manipulation by clever Ruling Elites that convince them a vote for more Gov’t goodies all for free, a vote for great leader Hitler, kind Comrade and father Stalin is the right vote.
    Democracy has failed catastrophically in the past, it will do so again in the future.
    Nor are media owned by a few in the Ruling Elite a check on selling a people, a race, a civilization out.
    The Western media, instead of being a defender of Western peoples and their civilization - are run by the sorts like the Sulzberger-Ochs Family of the NY Times that thought the Jewish Bolsheviks got it right and spent two decades covering up democides in favor of convincing fellow Jews and the masses that Jewish progressivism was on a roll in the Soviet Union and social justice for all was being achieved.
    In modern times, the same sort of actors, not majority Jewish when you count Europe or even the non-Jewish influential Left in America - is out to say white history is evil, multi-culti and transnational progressive human rights law that only targets whites - is the only valid narrative. And all cultures are equal in merit except for all the evil done by whites.

    And outside meta-issues, the same media extolls Western women that sacrifice kids to make partner in a law firm and who die eventually and only leave behind an adopted Somali girl or 2-3 highly pampered cats. Or say that no one should be more admired than the indulgent, always looking for a man that will be “good enough” Carrie on the chick pleaser “Sex in the City” as her fertility runs out after 500 dates, 4 promotions, and hundreds of swank nights out with 15 buck a glass cocktails…

    I have my doubts that the West will let itself be demographically snuffed by post-communist Jewish progressives and the Gentile Left by high foreigner bithrates and Open Borders immigration and acceptance of right of mass refugee settlement - as atonement for all their “great crimes” of racism, sexism, colonialism, anti-semitism, homophobism. incorrect cultural and class sumpremacy beliefs..

    My belief is the masses of Europe are already beginning to seethe under edicts of Eurocrats and “International Lawyers/UN apparachniks” that they no longer have any say in the most basic of issues that will be resolved by the New Sanhedrin of Elites.

    I suspect when it comes crunch time when the surviving Euros understand they have no place to go to retreat to and it is fight or live as a persecuted minority in nations cities that resemble Karachi or Rwanda, they will fight.
    It will be the military, along with tremendous popular support of the beseiged and disenfranchised white masses. And it must be deady.
    The transnationalists and other elites out to destroy the West cannot be allowed to retreat to become a potent opposition - protected by immense personal wealth, civil service immunity, academic and think tank sanctuaries. To shatter those elites, they either have to die, do a Trotsky and go into exile and keep quiet to remain safe, or they don’t keep quiet and go out with an ice-pick, figuratively speaking.

    True revolutions - like the coming one to prevent extinction of the West and all its good things and liberties, must kill off or imprison without recourse - the entrenched agents of causes that are collapsing the West and the self-determination of white people on their native lands.
    At the same time, unlike Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin or Mao such an effort cannot be collective, even genocidal in aim - but a scalpel to permanently cut out the insitutions, leaders and main backers that give the malignancies attacking the West such potency.
    At the same time, just as the world said the Euros lacked the moral authority to raise a peep about being run out of countries they colonized, the world may have to accept a Revolutionary Europe, even America - running out unacceptable cultures and demographic threats to them from foreign lands to avoid going the way of the Neanderthals, Ainu, many Latin American, Caribbean indigenous & Native American tribes.

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  15. Cedarford,

    These transnational imperialists are as representative of the Jewish population as are the Jihadi freaks of Naturai Karta. If want to understand Jewish thought, study Israel.

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  16. I'm assuming when you're referring to the "malignancy attacking the West with such potency" you're referring to the Jihadi Ummah. But there's a very simple solution out. It is to transition out of dependence on oil.

    Btw, Cedarford, Russia is part of the West. And so too is China and India.

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  17. While the exodus continues.

    Those were the days of futures past.

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  18. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  19. "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick

    "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Albert Einstein

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  20. If ^you want to understand Jewish thought,..

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  21. As for me I'm not buying that cell phone pop corn popper, though you can read a newspaper at night by a cell phone tower, with a couple of clips and a light bulb, if you hook it to the metal security fence, according to a friend, whom I take on faith. I'd like to look under the table.

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  22. That's the first time I ever saw Cedarford post on the EB. I guess Wretchard is hemorraging commentators.

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  23. I have a strong feeling that I just don't know. Much of anything.

    Cedarford's canvas is very broad. Scholarship front and center.

    Having said that, my eye is on the ball.

    Near-term it's independence from foreign oil.**

    Long-term it's independence from oil.

    ** A strong second place is border security. This issue has two components that need to be de-linked - physical security along the border and processing of the 12M illegals. I only care about the first. Rat posted what seemed like a reasonable approach to processing but I am willing to negotiate that component. The first is non-negotiable.

    The insidious encroachment of progressive and transnational progressive thinking will be furthered with the election of Obama - and it will enter under the radar of public perception.

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  24. Nobody knows what happened to Mr. Neanderthal. He went missing is all we really know, leaving some traces. We need to have an Elephant Bar seance, and see if we can make contact. If contact is established, we need to have a prepared question list handy, as we don't know much about him either, and want to ask the right questions.

    We could try to use the talents of Remote Viewer Ed Dames, retired, US military to retrospectively view the situation, but I think it would be a waste of money. Besides, having cashed in on the unwitting, I heard he ran off to Serbia with a new bride.

    Dames was in this area once, working with a grieving family and the police, trying to find the missing body of a young person, but nothing turned up, and Dames left with a check.

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  25. Nobody knows what happened to Mr. Neanderthal.

    Look in the Denver international airport.

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  26. While Coast to Coast has a majority of crackpots like Major Ed Dames, once in a while they have something like this guy--

    Mon 06.30 >>
    Crime expert Philip Carlo will discuss his latest work on the emerging international Mafias and how law enforcement is struggling to stay ahead.

    --whom I've listened to before, and seems to know what he is talking about.

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  27. If the Neanderthalers are at the Denver International Airport, they must be at the departure gate--

    FEAR & LOATHING IN DENVER

    Last updated: 1:08 am
    June 30, 2008



    So much for having a good time at the Democratic National Convention.

    The party's Denver confab has adopted a regimen of political correctness of the sort not seen since George McGovern was boycotting grapes.

    Organizers have laid down strict rules, The Wall Street Journal reports, aimed at producing the "greenest convention in the history of the planet."

    They include:

    * No fried foods. Whatsoever.

    * All meals must include "at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple and white."

    * At least 70 percent of all food must be organic and grown locally.

    And organizers have recruited 900 recycling enforcers to ensure that every scrap of trash goes into the proper bin.

    And to make sure that any balloons used are biodegradable, the convention's director of greening (no kidding) has been burying samples in a compost heap.

    But full compliance is proving difficult. For example, a demand that the 15,000 fanny packs to be distributed to volunteers all be made in the US of organic cotton by union labor turns out to be impossible: Such things don't exist.

    Here's an idea. Why not do the whole thing over the Internet?

    No color coordination required.

    --as for me I'd rather spend time in a mountain cave, with a few bones scattered about, cave bear sleeping in the back. At least I could eat meat.

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  28. BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has vetoed a bill that would have doubled salaries for the state's lawmakers.

    The Republican had previously said he would not veto the bill even though he didn't agree with the raise. The veto came after several election recall petitions were filed against Jindal and other state legislators.

    The pay raise has been sharply criticized by bloggers and talk-radio hosts.

    The bill would have paid lawmakers $37,500 a year. The National Conference of State Legislatures says it would have made Louisiana legislators the highest-paid in the South and the 14th highest-paid in the country.

    Jindal has been mentioned as a possible running mate for presidential candidate John McCain.

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  29. Look and see where some of that money Barack has to spend, is going.
    Marching from Atlanta to the Sea.

    RALEIGH, N.C. -- On a hot afternoon in this southern U.S. town, Tom Wolf, a field organizer for Barack Obama, delivered the fruits of hundreds of hours of staff effort -- 130 voter-registration applications -- to the Wake County Board of Elections office. They had been filled out by a handful of Republican-leaners, a few dozen young adults and scores of older African-Americans who stopped voting years ago.

    Those older blacks were the focus for Mr. Wolf,
    a foot soldier in one of the most unconventional aspects of the Illinois senator's presidential campaign. Sen. Obama reckons that a surge in black voters will put in play long-solid Republican regions across the country, lifting Democratic candidates for all offices, from the White House to Congress to state legislatures. "I guarantee you African-American turnout, if I'm the nominee, goes up 30% around the country, minimum," Mr. Obama said at a campaign event this past winter.
    ...
    For Sen. Obama, the registration initiative is at the fore, especially since the main reason for low black turnout is low registration. The U.S. Census Bureau says that while registered black voters turn out at a rate generally even with white counterparts, qualified African-Americans register at a lower rate nationally -- 68% to 75% for whites. The gap is particularly stark in the battleground state of Florida, where only 53% of eligible blacks were registered in 2004, compared with 71% of whites. In Virginia, it was 58% to 72%.


    If Sen. Obama can achieve registration parity, the effect could be significant, since African-Americans traditionally vote Democratic about 90% of the time. Nationally, black turnout at white levels would have meant an additional 1.6 million voters in 2004, narrowing the three million-vote gap separating President Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry. In states and districts with a heavy concentration of black citizens, the gap could have thrown victory to Democrats, including North Carolina, long a Republican stronghold, and currently considered a virtual toss-up by many analysts.

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  30. Nationally, the Obama campaign is training 3,000 volunteers to conduct voter-registration drives as part of its "Obama Fellows" program. These volunteers pledged to work 30 hours a week for six weeks this summer, focusing on blacks, Latinos and young voters in select states.

    Among those states is Florida, which President Bush won by 380,000 votes four years ago and 537 votes in 2000. Four hundred Obama Fellows are targeting an estimated 500,000 qualified African-Americans who sat out the 2004 election. These efforts may be aided by recent law changes there, where the governor has made it easier for convicted felons to regain their voting rights.

    In North Carolina, the Obama campaign has nine paid staff and about 150 near-full-time volunteers registering new voters -- an unusually large force for this period of the election cycle. An estimated 343,000 black citizens there were eligible to vote in 2004 but didn't; President Bush won the state by 400,000 votes.

    Voter-registration efforts are an incredible drain on resources; a few hundred registrations can represent hundreds of staff hours. Consequently, registration drives in the past for presidential candidates have almost always turned on money. At a recent minirally for Obama volunteers here that drew about 200 people, the campaign's Mr. Wolf got pledges to fill 35 four-hour shifts -- about 1,000 doors knocked, with not a single hour devoted to partisan politics. "We keep the registration stuff separate from the campaigning stuff," Mr. Wolf says.

    But money isn't a problem for Sen. Obama -- he has outraised Sen. McCain by nearly 3 to 1 so far, and currently supports a ground staff exponentially larger than his Republican rival. "Most campaigns don't have the time, the inclination or the resources to do voter registrations," says Shailen Bhatt, a paid Obama organizer in North Carolina. "We have all three."

    Deondra Ramsey, a 24-year-old Raleigh native and political science student, began pulling full-time volunteer shifts as an Obama Fellow even before the program officially started. "I need to get my foot in the door -- I want to be a part of this," she says.

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  31. Romney would bring McCain some money, maybe Michigan, but that's about all I can think of. If he had Tancredo he might do better.

    The old McCain two step two faced dance.

    110 degrees here today, Rat. Air conditioner keeps going off, too, when I need it.

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  32. Would it [Obama plan] help Social Security's financing problems? Mr. Obama has no idea. One of his senior economic advisers admitted to me that no one on the campaign has run any detailed models or performed any rigorous analysis. When one proposes an enormous tax increase, shouldn't there at least be a spreadsheet somewhere?

    It looks like that war chest isn’t being used to sharpen the economic platform.

    Let the techs work it out.

    We have values to attend to.

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  33. This A/C unit still only has a few years on it. But the low temps here are in the high 80s, lately, so it runs a night, at times.

    doug and I used to harp on the Pakistan delemia, but to no avail.

    Though the source is the NYTimes, the story plays pretty true to what is known.

    Playin' whack mole, but with both hands tied.

    To get Washington’s attention, the commander, Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, ordered military officers, Special Operations forces and C.I.A. operatives to assemble a dossier showing Pakistan’s role in allowing militants to establish a haven.

    Behind the general’s order was a broader feeling of outrage within the military — at a terrorist war that had been outsourced to an unreliable ally, and at the grim fact that America’s most deadly enemy had become stronger.

    For months, military officers inside a walled-off compound at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where a branch of the military’s classified Joint Special Operations Command is based, had grown increasingly frustrated at what they saw as missed opportunities in the tribal areas.

    American commanders had been pressing for much of 2006 to get approval from Mr. Rumsfeld for an operation to capture Sheik Saiid al-Masri, a top Qaeda operator and paymaster whom American intelligence had been tracking in the Pakistani mountains.

    Mr. Rumsfeld and his staff were reluctant to approve the mission, worried about possible American military casualties and a popular backlash in Pakistan.

    Finally, in November 2006, Mr. Rumsfeld approved a plan for Navy Seal and Army Delta Force commandos to move into Pakistan and capture Mr. Masri. But the operation was put on hold days later, after Mr. Rumsfeld was pushed out of the Pentagon, a casualty of the Democratic sweep of the 2006 election.

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  34. The Republicans need to decide if they want to win this election or argue over amnesty.

    This game of mine's bigger than yours is tiresome.

    Obama and Clinton are hugging and kissing while the Republican base is scape-goating.

    Even Chris Matthews thinks the race will be close.

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  35. while Mr. Bush vowed early on that Mr. bin Laden would be captured “dead or alive,” the moment in late 2001 when Mr. bin Laden and his followers escaped at Tora Bora was almost certainly the last time the Qaeda leader was in American sights, current and former intelligence officials say. Leading terrorism experts have warned that it is only a matter of time before a major terrorist attack planned in the mountains of Pakistan is carried out on American soil.

    “The United States faces a threat from Al Qaeda today that is comparable to what it faced on Sept. 11, 2001,” said Seth Jones, a Pentagon consultant and a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation.

    “The base of operations has moved only a short distance, roughly the difference from New York to Philadelphia.”

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  36. Cedarford is more optimistic about the people of Europe throwing off their shackles. I don't see it happening until the money runs out and then, it will be too late. The demographics will have swung against them. They will be old, childless, handicapped by a lifetime of socialism and surrounded by a much younger population no longer willing to support the old Euros who never really accepted them anyway.

    No, I don't see any mass movements reacting to the coming onslaught.

    Change happens slowly until a tipping point is reached...

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  37. Well sure, a clooose race is a competition, a horserace.
    Makes for good ratings.

    And it will be close, State by State.

    About 12 of them can go either way, at this point. The map's at RCP, free for the viewing.

    If he can put GA or NC in play, that changes the whole dynamic of the typical GOP/Rove national campaign.

    The thing to focus upon is not McCain's campaign, but the Senate and Congressional seats up for grabs.

    A minimum of 41 GOP seats in the Senate, on 21Jan09 should be the priority.

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  38. If Obama (possibly the most inexperienced nominee to ever run for the Whitehouse) is elected, it will be a sign that America has also reached a tipping point. It will mark the point in history where a majority of American voters suspended all scruples in favor vague promises of change and hope. It will be a sign that Americans want the same nanny state socialism as Europe.

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  39. Which, if McCain is the selfless patriot, is why he took the Federal money. His money raising efforts can go to the RNC, in much larger amounts per contribution, ten times, or more, I think.

    The RNC can then use those funds to defend a filibusterable Senate.
    Spend whatever it takes, in those States targeted for turnover, by the Dems.

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  40. Spend it like there's no tomorrow. No President and No Congress equals chaos in the Supreme Court.


    Meanwhile:
    "June 19, 2008: The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has turned up a "death list" (hit list) attributed to Mexican drug cartels. The list includes the names of an American policemen in New Mexico. Allegedly several US citizens appear on the list. Several lists have appeared in the last month, naming people in northern Mexican cities (most of them in the city of Ciudad Juarez, which is across the border from El Paso, Texas). "

    Read more depressing south of the border news here.

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  41. The Tragic End of Bush's North Korea Policy
    By JOHN R. BOLTON
    June 30, 2008

    Maskirovka – the Soviet dark art of denial, deception and disguise – is alive and well in Pyongyang, years after the Soviet Union disappeared. Unfortunately, the Bush administration appears not to have gotten the word.

    With much fanfare and choreography, but little substance, the administration has accepted a North Korean "declaration" about its nuclear program that is narrowly limited, incomplete and almost certainly dishonest in material respects. In exchange, President Bush personally declared that North Korea is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism or an enemy of the United States. In a final flourish, North Korea has undertaken a reverse Potemkin Village act, destroying the antiquated cooling tower of the antiquated Yongbyon reactor. In the waning days of American presidencies, this theater is the stuff of legacy.

    North Korea has consecutively broken every major agreement with the U.S. since the North's creation. The Bush administration provides no reason why this one will not be added to that long list except the audacity of hope. Where have we heard that recently? Barack Obama and John Kerry both announced support for the deal, and Mr. Obama said he intended to apply Bush's policy to other rogue states, thus confirming the early start of the Obama administration

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  42. No, whit, at least one other successful candidate for President had less "experience" than Obama:

    Before his election as President, Lincoln was a lawyer, a member of the United States House of Representatives, and an unsuccessful candidate for election to the Senate.

    Had run for State wide office, and lost, whereas Obama, won.

    Nope, Mr Lincoln had a mighty thin resume, too.
    Just look how his tenure turned out.

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  43. Lincoln Obama or Abraham Barak. The precedent has been set for a novice to lead the country.

    I guess I'll have to take comfort in the fact that Obama seems so vague and wavering and without strongly held principles that he won't take the country over the leftist falls.

    Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side...

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  44. Just heard on Fox News, San Francisco , on their dime, flys "kids" arrested for dealing crack cocaine out of the country so that they will not be deported by the Feds.

    Some of them have been arrested four or five times. Feds allege that San Fran is aiding the criminals.

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  45. Nope, Mr Lincoln had a mighty thin resume, too.
    Just look how his tenure turned out....
    He got 600,000 people killed, all americans. A genius.

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  46. He turned a homicidal maniac loose on Southern farms and cities.....

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  47. He turned a homicidal maniac loose on Southern farms and cities.....

    Did you want a kinder gentler war that ran until 1870 and killed two million boys? Perhaps we ought not have nuked Japan as well, and let the war run until 1947, lest someone call Truman a homicidal maniac.

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  48. Just heard on Fox News, San Francisco , on their dime, flys "kids" arrested for dealing crack cocaine out of the country so that they will not be deported by the Feds.

    In Federal Way, which is the town next door to me to the south, an illegal immigrant who had been deported in 1995, 1997, and 2001 for drug charges passed out in his backyard, and when he woke up his baby was found burned up in his firepit, with evidence that he was alive when he fell in. The city had to beg the judge not to let him out on bail, because then ICE would nab him and deport him for a fourth time, and he would escape justice.

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  49. The just didn't want him to reap the benefits after discovering that fire will cook meat.
    ...and you don't even need a cellphone.

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  50. And the making of the Republicans into a National Party, of consequence.

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  51. Guilty on all counts.
    Mr Lincoln

    In the pursuit of extending the inalienable rights of man, to all men.

    Well more of them, in a small but vitally incremental step.

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  52. Lincoln was poorly served by his generals, the first (or second) of which, MCClellan, was a 'perfumed prince.'

    Obama brings a liberal agenda to the table with might well turn out to be a Democratic controlled Congress.

    The only thing he has in common with Abe Lincoln is his inexperience.

    Suddenly, the topic du jour on television and radio talk shows, at water coolers and the most exclusive cocktail parties is how well Sen. Barack Obama can do among whites, especially the demographic group pundits call the “white working class.”

    The truth is these voters have been around for decades. They’re “The Silent Majority,” “Jill and Joe Six-Pack” and “Reagan Democrats,” and whatever the name, they have given Democratic presidential candidates the back of their hands since 1964.

    Or what used to be called the Middle Class.

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  53. Bobal:Romney would bring McCain some money, maybe Michigan, but that's about all I can think of.

    Good, maybe McCain could use it to pay his back taxes. You know, if I didn't pay my taxes for four years running, King County would sell my house and take it right off the top. Talk about not connecting with Joe Sixpack. Must be nice to own so many houses you forget your obligations on all of them. The only question is whether we want this guy signing the bills Congress sends him. If you can't run seven houses, how can you run the world's lone superpower?

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  54. - In Flag City USA, False Obama Rumors Are Flying -
    Here's a nice article about them ignerant working class folks, Slade.

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  55. People often fall behind in property taxes, when the bill is mailed to the huse and the occupent is not the owner. Whole industry built around that business, now some fellow runs an infomercial selling "how to"

    What the AmEx billing indicates is the McCain family has cash flow in excess of $250,000 per month, to pay those non-revolving charges.

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  56. I sure hope Huffington is right with her "Sept. Suprise"

    Starting to make a lot of sense.

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  57. If the Republicans start to dicker during the conventon, they will lose. Used to be the party of loyalty. If the Republicans can't get behind McCain - and it appears to me they can't, then suck it up.

    You think the people of Flag City are confused by Obama, guess what they will think about a party that kicks out its own candidate as too weak to beat a "black Muslim."

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  58. Slade,

    How the hell did McCain get thru? Tell me that the Russkies can't learn a thing or two from the GOP apparatchiks.

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  59. "Used to be the party of loyalty."

    Loyalty to what?



    "He was a champion of comprehensive reform, and I admired him for it," Obama said after a loud ovation that included a chant of his last name.

    The McCain campaign, however, said after the speech that Obama had actually been an impediment to the carefully-crafted immigration compromise.

    .
    .

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080629/pl_politico/11418

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  60. John Derbyshire:

    "Wes Clark's a jerk, no argument from me on that. In cases like this, though, it's worth remembering that military folks' attitudes to other military folk always have a different tone and flavor from civilian-to-military attitudes. "Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier," and that thought is a restraint on every civilian-military comment.

    Eisenhower remarked that he was better able to handle the joint chiefs than a civilian would have been because, having been their peer, he was not intimidated by them. He knew they put their pants on one leg at a time, same as he did.

    John McCain's service to his country was exemplary. Whether it would or would not bring value-added to a McCain presidency is a fair topic for discussion; but military people are much more at ease with that discussion than civilians.

    There is even, I often notice, a difference in the way these matters are talked about between the draft and post-draft generations. If you grew up in the 1950s the military was an everyday part of life, the way it hasn't been for a long time since. Uniforms were everywhere; the generation of adult men just above you had mostly served, often in combat; young men expected to serve; TV and the movies were full of military themes and sitcoms. (What was the last military-themed TV sitcom? C.P.O. Sharkey? How many citizens under forty even know what "C.P.O." stands for?)

    Now, for most people, the military is off in a corner somewhere. There isn't that old easy familiarity. That makes it easier to hold exaggerated attitudes, including excessive deference. Listening to the culture at large, I don't think excessive deference is anything like as big a problem as ignorant mockery — e.g. the numbskull general in dozens of movies of the past 20 years. To the degree it inclines conservatives to overlook John McCain's many, many shortcomings, though, it is something of a problem.

    We're stuck with the guy now, I suppose. Let's keep in mind, though, that great acts of valor and endurance are no guarantees of executive good sense."

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  61. "He knew they put their pants on one leg at a time, same as he did."

    The aforementioned Andrew Bacevich being another notable in this category.

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  62. How the hell did McCain get thru?

    Exactly my point. If the Republican base cannot back McCain, they should have thought of that before now. They were arrogant. I'm supposed to what - vote for Obama who represents everything I think will be wrong for the country at this time. I won't do that. The Republican pols won't get a free pass in September.

    I understand a number of posters here just despise the man after up close and personal experience. Well, each mind his own. I have heard some of McCain's policy positions (health care - far superior in terms of options - I am waiting for the energy plan just released which I understand is very detailed - used some spreadsheets of all things) and I am fully comfortable voting for him.

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  63. Comprehensive Health Care Reform

    Comprehensive Immigation Reforem

    Comprehensive Tax Reform


    Lawmakers need to wean themselves from the idea of comprehensive reform. I don't believe it can be done with our form of government.

    Establishing time-sensitive mission-critical milestones is done by junior staffers in private sector projects for decades.

    In fact, I thought this was the norm - environmental legislation is amended every d@mn session.

    Comprehensive Energy Reform.

    Right.

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  64. Let's keep in mind, though, that great acts of valor and endurance are no guarantees of executive good sense.

    Neither is 20 years in Trinity Church.

    I'm not getting the "excessive deference" vibes so much as I am the "d@mn, why does he have to have such a hard to rebut plus in his background" vibes.

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  65. The Keating scandal. McCain was cocky in his early days. All of us are. He was slapped down. Did he learn a lesson? It appears to me that he did.

    While I remain uncomfortable with Obama's personal background, I am opposed to the liberal agenda he embraces.

    And I remain concerned about his experience level. As already noted, the executive influences economic cycles only to a marginal degree. The focus is international.

    Where McCain has the edge.

    I suspect that Republicans are more than a little dismayed that he lacks the Romney-like appeal. I recall that Romney has a little problem with telling white lies.

    Well, as far as appeal is concerned, Lincoln comes to mind.

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  66. And as far as appeal is concerned, has anyone walked through the Denver International Airport lately?

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  67. “Ultimately, he sacrificed his health as he worked tirelessly around the clock on our presidential campaign, ignoring the pleas of his doctors to pull back,” Paul said.

    Though Arizona Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, won the Republican nomination for president, Paul raised more than $35 million during his 17-month campaign and won more than 1 million votes.

    Grass-roots support and a campaign message that filled Internet sites helped drive the fundraising, which at times outpaced any other candidate.


    Campaign Chief Dies at 49

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  68. As far as appeal is concerned, Ron Paul is tinged as far right as Obama is far left. Both tried to mitigate the edge. Paul didn't. Obama might.

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  69. I was looking for Men Sandals and was wondering if Elizabeth and James is the best designer for Men Sandals?

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