Right Wing Nut House

My, what a difference a couple of years make.

It was two summers ago that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited Washington and addressed a joint session of Congress.

Except there were quite a few empty seats in the Chamber when the Prime Minister rose to speak. That’s because Democrats were boycotting Maliki’s historic appearance according to some, because he was an American “puppet” and not the head of an independent country.

That was then, this is now.

Yesterday, Maliki told German news magazine Der Speigel that he supported Barack Obama’s 16 month timetable for withdrawal of American troops. A corrected statement put out later by the PM’s office delinked Maliki’s statement from Obama’s specific call for a timetable but his meaning was clear. Maliki said that those advocating a withdrawal where Americans come out “sooner rather than later” are being more “realistic.

So, we’re going. But why are the Democrats making such a huge deal out of Maliki’s statements? They are giddy with joy over the fact that Maliki is acting like the independent head of a sovereign country when just two years ago they were saying exactly the opposite.

Which is it? Is Maliki a puppet or is he independent? Obviously, when Maliki isn’t doing what Democrats want he is a puppet. When his ideas reflect their thinking, he isn’t.

Wow, what sophistication. Such nuance.

Hypocrites.

Then let’s remember that the Democrats have been calling for withdrawal even when doing so would have been a catastrophic setback for Iraqi security. They were calling for a withdrawl even when doing so would have meant a humiliating defeat for the US as we would have abandoned the field of battle to the enemy while under fire. They were calling for a withdrawal even when doing so meant that thousands - perhaps tens of thousands of Iraqis would have been butchered in unrestrained sectarian violence. They were calling for a withdrawal even when al-Qaeda was at the heighth of its power in Iraq, controlling wide swaths of the country and was poised - once we left - to make a bid for carving out an independent duchy that would have given them shelter and protection to mount operations worldwide. They were calling for a withdrawal even when Shia militias were roaming the streets murdering innocent Sunnis while the poorly trained and corrupt Iraqi police and army looked on and did nothing.

They were calling for a withdrawal even as President Bush changed our counter-insurgency strategy and put General Petreaus in charge of a surge in US troop numbers - a surge every major Democrat including their nominee for president screamed at the top of their voices would be an utter, total, and complete failure. They were calling for a withdrawal even when the surge began to work and violence was dropping. They called for a withdrawal even when they called Petreaus a liar to his face and that he was “cooking the books” on the falloff in violence in Iraq. They were calling for a withdrawal - and saying the war in Iraq was “lost” or a “failure” - as late as the beginning of this year. They were calling for a withdrawal even as the Iraqi government slowly and painfully began to move toward political reconciliation, denigrating these efforts as “too little too late” while predicting that once the extra troops associated with the surge went home, the violence would pick up again.

They have opposed, obstructed, denigrated, mocked, accused the military of lying, predicted disaster again and again and again, all the while calling Maliki a “puppet” and the Iraqi government a joke.

I guess we should simply forget their previous stupidity and call them geniuses now?

UPDATE

For those who believe the clarification from Maliki’s office. that I mention and link to above,  substantially changes the political dynamic in this country, i.e. Democrats (Obama) are geniuses because they were “ahead of the curve” on withdrawing from Iraq, you are incorrect. Allah from Hot Air:

As if it’s not bad enough that they’re trying to spin this after the fact, the Times reports that the statement was put out by Centcom, just to make the U.S. fingerprints on it extra legible, I guess. In any event, Maliki’s desire to make any timetable contingent upon further security gains was already clear from the Spiegel translation - or more specifically, the first version of the Spiegel translation, before they went and surreptitiously changed it.

The PM’s clarifying statement was released through CENTCOM which means it has the White House’s fingerprints all over it. The only real change from the Der Speigel interview has to do with making withdrawals contingent on further improvements in security - which is what Bush and Maliki agreed upon on Friday.

The fact is, McCain is in an awful tough spot now that Maliki has basically agreed with his opponent. No doubt McCain will try and change the subject and point to Obama’s wretched judgment on the surge as well as his many previous calls for withdrawal when the situation in Iraq was dire.

It may very well be that Iraq is less of a campaign issue for McCain than it is now for Obama. How this plays out will probably be fairly predictable. The media will declare Obama the second coming of Bismark and the inexperience in foreign policy issue will be dead and buried. 

This post originally appeared in The American Thinker

Because my website has been down over much of the last day, I feel it only fair that I cancel the Obama Jokefest Contest.

 Frankly, I didn’t get enough jokes to fill an hour radio show. That will teach me a lesson in humility if nothing else.

The Obamafication of the world has begun. The Grand Pooh Bah and Paladin of empty platitudes and cotton candy rhetoric has arrived in Afghanistan as he begins a tour of the world he will rule once he dispenses with a pesky old man in the formality of an American election.

It will be at that point that there will be true rejoicing over the fact that America finally has a leader who understands what the world wants from her; to lie down, roll over on her back, and beg to have her stomach scratched.

Obama and the left (as well as a sizable segment of the American people) are desperate to have America “liked again.” The fact that this has never been the case seems to have escaped the lightening like wit of liberals. At the risk of boring you on the subject, the notion that “the world was with us” after 9/11 is so easily debunked that I have devoted several blog posts to this myth. It wasn’t just Arabs who danced in the street when the towers fell. Our allies in Europe and Asia made it clear in the weeks following the attacks that we had it coming to us due to our insufferable arrogance and that it was a good thing America was brought down a peg or two.

The left is fond of talking about the world being a more dangerous place thanks to Bush and that our alliances are in tatters, our allies disgusted, and that we have more enemies now than when Bush took office.

The world is indeed a more dangerous place. But that is because we are finally doing what should have been done 25 years ago; we are confronting the problem of Islamic extremism head on and not trying to wish it away as the previous three presidents were wont to do. There is no doubt in my mind that going after the terrorists, terrorist cells, and governments that support terrorism has made us more unpopular in the Islamic world. Obama believes he can change this dynamic and I wish him well in trying to do so. But the first move he makes of which they don’t much approve, you can bet the same rhetoric being directed against Bush will be dusted off and hurled at a President Obama.

The nations of the world have competing interests as well as common concerns. Some of those interests conflict with our own. The questions about Obama’s foreign policy have always been the about the tightrope that an American president must walk between standing up for our vital interests - alone if necessary - while cooperating with other nations on issues of common concern. I am totally unconvinced that Obama is even aware of the tightrope, that his idea of a successful foreign policy is not having anyone mad at us.

This is not only unrealistic, it is foolhardy. Most nations who wish us ill - even many of our friends - would prefer an America who was the equal of other nations, our superpower status subsumed to serve the will of the do nothing bureaucrats at the United Nations. This is the position of much of the left in this country, in Europe, and most certainly in places like Tehran, Damascus, and the Kremlin. Pinning Gulliver down with a thousand restraining ropes at the hide bound UN would sit quite well in those places where the independent exercise of American power is seen as a threat to their own nefarious designs.

In the end, that is the question about Obama that no one can answer. How vigorously will he defend America’s interests? Will he do so even though it will not be popular in the rest of the world? At bottom, this is the ultimate “global test” - an American president acting in our vital interests and willing to take the disapprobation of the world as a consequence.

Where there is common cause to make with other nations we should make it. Where there are issues that need addressing such as Darfur, the Congo, Zimbabwe, or the Iranian nuclear program we should wherever possible work toward consensus with other nations on what should be done.

But every president since the UN was founded has come up against the intransigence, the blindness, the cynicism, and the double crossing found there and at some point has abandoned multi-lateralism in favor of promoting American interests at the expense of other nation’s desires. In short, does Obama have it in him to buck the rest of the world if he has to? Of this, I am unconvinced.

Will he think more of his personal reputation as a healer, a compromiser, a “good world citizen” - at least how that term is defined by our friends and enemies than the interests of the country? I think there is ample evidence that Obama is at least a borderline narcissist and would have a hard time separating his own image from American interests. Being praised for restraint is fine - as long as it’s justifiable. But what if Obama puts receiving that praise ahead of common sense or America’s interests?

Part of the reason the American people rejected John Kerry was because they weren’t sure he could take decisive action - alone if necessary - to protect America’s security. The same questions should be asked of Obama. Unfortunately, many voters seem enamored of the vision laid out by the left and Obama of a world welcoming America with open arms and praising her forbearance and willingness to act in a cooperative manner with other countries - even at the expense of our own interests.

Does this make us noble? Or stupid? The fact that it could make us dead is all that should concern us.

That’s right. You can assist our liberal friends in Hollywood while breaking new ground in comedy history by coming up with jokes, humorous anecdotes, limericks, or one liners all directed towards the Democratic nominee for president Barack Obama.

SUBMISSIONS

Submissions can be in the form of written comments to this post as well as my post announcing the contest yesterday. Or, I would actually prefer recorded jokes submitted as an attachment to an email. That’s because the best of the lot will be read or played on a special edition of The Rick Moran Show on Blog Talk Radio this coming Sunday at 6:00 PM Central Time.

PRIZES

First Prize - $25.00 Gift Card

Second Prize - $10.00 Gift Card

Third Place - $5 gift Card

(Gift Cards will be VISA Gift Cards)

DEADLINE

Deadline for entry is noon central time on Sunday.

Send sound files in MP3 or Windows Media audio format only. Attach to email sent to this address.

elvenstar522-at-AOL-dot-com.

It should be obvious by now that our liberal friends in Hollywood responsible for writing jokes for late night hosts, talk shows, and especially the Comedy Central icons John Stewart and Stephen Colbert are having a tremendous amount of difficulty coming up with nasty, belittling, supercilious bon mots to direct at Barack Obama - the same kind of material they routinely create to lampoon conservatives and Republicans.

Quite simply, they are stuck. They have writers block. They are caught between the rock of political correctness and the hard place of partisan hackery and don’t have a clue how to escape.

Joe Harwood of the New York Times defined their dilemma on Joe Scarborough’s show the other day after the host skewered the comedy writers for being wusses when it came to criticizing Democrats and Obama:

SCARBOROUGH: I just– I never want to hear anybody from ‘The Daily Show’ or any of these other shows ever saying again, ‘We speak truth to power.’ ‘Cause you know what they do? They speak truth to Republicans. Republicans are funny. They have been idiots and jackasses over the past seven years. But, please, don’t be subversive, because you’re not. Because you’re a hack. You’re a hack for the Democratic Party and you only tell jokes about one side. BRZEZINSKI: Joe– No, this is not about being in the tank.

Harwood is an idiot. I have absolutely no trouble lampooning conservatives or Republicans for that matter. What it takes is something that most liberals in Hollywood simply don’t have.

One single independent brain cell in working order.

Beyond Harwood’s idiocy, how about Scarborough’s liberal co-host saying that the reason we don’t hear Obama jokes is because, well, there’s nothing funny about him:

BRZEZINSKI: But I really think you are missing a bigger problem here or challenge, however you want to put it, for comedy writers or for satirists, I hope I’m using the right word there. But my point is that there are layers of what’s politically correct and layers of what potentially could incite the wrong things. When have you a candidate who is black and who has a name people have made fun of and have bad information on the internet on, I think there are layers here that present really great challenges.

“Great challenges?” Are you fricking kidding me? Obama is a walking talking joke book waiting to happen. You could compile an encyclopedia of humor just about the size of his ears. His stick like frame should be made fun of early and often.

And oh my God what some classic comedians would have done with “Obama-worship.” Saturday Night Live’s skits only scratched the surface. There’s comedy gold in them thar worshipful minions that we have yet to see realized in any comedy format.

Plus, it should be obvious to anyone by now simply noting Obama’s reaction to The New Yorker cover that the man possesses the sense of humor of a Tapir. And the creepy way he talks about himself and his movement along with incidents like the “Obama Almost Presidential Seal” all should be supplying plenty of fodder for comedy writers without coming anywhere near any kind of line that would even hint at his race, or his name, or anything else.

Q.What’s the difference between Obama and Dumbo?A. Dumbo hasn’t flip flopped on FISA reform.

Or

Q. What’s the difference between Obama and a string bean?

A. A string bean isn’t a dangerous far left liberal who hangs around with radicals, crooks, and terrorists.

I know readers of this site can do better than that. And I’m prepared to put my money where my mouth is to prove it.

ANNOUNCING THE RIGHT WING NUTHOUSE OBAMA JOKEFEST!

That’s right. You can assist our liberal friends in Hollywood while breaking new ground in comedy history by coming up with jokes, humorous anecdotes, limericks, or one liners all directed towards the Democratic nominee for president Barack Obama.

SUBMISSIONS

Submissions can be in the form of written comments to this post as well as the official contest post I will be putting up later today. Or, I would actually prefer recorded jokes submitted as an attachment to an email. That’s because the best of the lot will be read or played on a special edition of The Rick Moran Show on Blog Talk Radio this coming Sunday at 6:00 PM Central Time.

PRIZES

First Prize - $25.00 Gift Card

Second Prize - $10.00 Gift Card

Third Place - $5 gift Card

DEADLINE

Deadline for entry is noon central time on Sunday.

Send sound files in MP3 or Windows Media audio format only. Attach to email sent to this address.

elvenstar522-at-AOL-dot-com.

It wasn’t exactly a highlight of Barack Obama’s rather uninspiring speech on national security the candidate gave in Washington on Tuesday. But buried under the interminable rhetoric on how the candidate, once president, will be able to wave his magic wand (or perhaps wiggle his nose like Jeannie) and conjure up coalitions of allies to deal with this problem or that (even getting Iran and Syria to cooperate on Iraqi security which would be a magic trick worthy of Merlin), there was a shocking admission by Mr. Obama that he and his Democratic colleagues had been wrong about Iraq for years.

For the first time since the Iraq war began, a Democratic leader uttered the “V” word and “Iraq” in the same sentence. That’s right; Obama called for “victory” in Iraq:

At some point, a judgment must be made. Iraq is not going to be a perfect place, and we don’t have unlimited resources to try to make it one. We are not going to kill every al Qaeda sympathizer, eliminate every trace of Iranian influence, or stand up a flawless democracy before we leave – General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker acknowledged this to me when they testified last April. That is why the accusation of surrender is false rhetoric used to justify a failed policy. In fact, true success in Iraq – victory in Iraq – will not take place in a surrender ceremony where an enemy lays down their arms. True success will take place when we leave Iraq to a government that is taking responsibility for its future – a government that prevents sectarian conflict, and ensures that the al Qaeda threat which has been beaten back by our troops does not reemerge. That is an achievable goal if we pursue a comprehensive plan to press the Iraqis stand up.

The candidate actually defines the terms of “success” and “victory.” Why is this significant.

Because last year, Barack Obama declared the war a failure and unwinnable:

Senator Barack Obama said Tuesday that even if the military escalation in Iraq was showing limited signs of progress, efforts to stabilize the country had been a “complete failure” and American troops should not be entangled in the sectarian strife.

“No military surge, no matter how brilliantly performed, can succeed without political reconciliation and a surge of diplomacy in Iraq and the region,” Mr. Obama said. “Iraq’s leaders are not reconciling. They are not achieving political benchmarks.”

This is at the time Obama was calling for “an immediate withdrawal” of all American troops without consulting the Iraqis, the generals on the ground, or anyone else he says today that he “has always said” he would consult:

“Let me be clear: There is no military solution in Iraq and there never was,” Obama said in excerpts of the speech provided to the Associated Press.

“The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq’s leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year — now,” the Illinois senator says.

A strange part of his definition of “victory” that he stated in his Tuesday speech sounds a lot like retreat before complete victory is achieved:”

To achieve that success, I will give our military a new mission on my first day in office: ending this war. Let me be clear: we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — one year after Iraqi Security Forces will be prepared to stand up; two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, we’ll keep a residual force to perform specific missions in Iraq: targeting any remnants of Al-Qaeda; protecting our service members and diplomats; and training and supporting Iraq’s Security Forces, so long as the Iraqis make political progress.

We will make tactical adjustments as we implement this strategy — that is what any responsible commander-in-chief must do. As I have consistently said, I will consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government. We will redeploy from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We will commit $2 billion to a meaningful international effort to support the more than 4 million displaced Iraqis. We will forge a new coalition to support Iraq’s future — one that includes all of Iraq’s neighbors, and also the United Nations, the World Bank, and the European Union — because we all have a stake in stability. And we will make it clear that the United States seeks no permanent bases in Iraq.

“Achieve success” by “ending this war?” This kind of disconnect from reality reminds me of the new Soviet government in 1917 simply declaring the war was over and marching off the battlefield. They did this because their negotiations with the Germans were becoming all to real with the Kaiser demanding huge chunks of Soviet territory and crippling war reparations.

The Germans watched in amazement as more than 3 million Russian troops abandoned their positions and started the long trek home. Not quite believing their good fortune, the Germans were, at first, rather cautious. But once they realized the Soviets were retreating, they quickly advanced and turned the retreat into a rout. After pushing hundreds of miles into Russia bagging huge numbers of Russian soldiers as prisoners in the process, the Soviets realized their mistake and meekly returned to the bargaining table, giving the Kaiser virtually everything he wanted.

Drawing an historical parallel with Iraq using the Soviet-German history during World War I is probably not fair since al-Qaeda and the Shia militias can no way be compared to the German army on the Eastern front in 1917.

But where I think the analogy is apt is in positing that both the terrorists and the militias will be strengthened considerably by a withdrawal more beholden to some timeline than events on the ground. Since the candidate can’t seem to make up his mind whether he wants to pander to his base by eschewing consultation or whether he wants to pander to rational voters by including such caveats with his timeline, we just don’t know. On Tuesday at least, he was for consultation and for making “tactical adjustments” if necessary.

What if Obama had talked of “victory” and “tactical adjustments” and “consulting generals” during the primary campaign? Sure is a far cry from “immediate withdrawal,” although perhaps he meant he would withdraw the troops immediately after we felt we had achieved victory? I daresay if he had breathed the word “victory” during his contest with Hillary Clinton, he would have been hooted off the stage.

That’s because both legislative leaders of the Democratic party declared the war “lost” more than a year ago. First, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on 4/20/07:

“I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and - you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows - (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday,” said Reid, D-Nev.

And here’s Nancy Pelosi on 2/10/08:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said twice Sunday that Iraq “is a failure,” adding that President Bush’s troop surge has “not produced the desired effect.”

“The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “They have not done that.”

So has Obama in effect, repudiated the two most powerful leaders in the legislative branch of his own party?

You bet he has. Since neither Reid nor Pelosi have seen fit to come forward and admit that they were spectacularly wrong in their assessment of Iraq, Obama has hung them - and most of the rest of his own party - out to dry. He has redefined the goals in Iraq - albeit incoherently - by stipulating that “success” and “victory” were now the aims of American policy and not withdrawal and defeat which is still the de facto position of the netroots and the far left Moveon crowd.

Why no one has noticed this in the media is probably due to the fact that now we are enjoying a modicum of success in Iraq on all fronts, the political fruits of victory will be spread around to somehow include Democrats. It is impossible to give George Bush and his mostly conservative war supporters all the credit despite the defeatist and obstructionist policies carried on for most of the war by their political opponents. It would be inconsistent with their past reporting of Bush as a boob and incompetent. Room must be found for the Democrats to share in whatever success we achieve in Iraq.

So congratulations to Barack Obama who has now hopped on to the victory train - now that it’s almost at the station and preparing to unload.

UPDATE: CORRECTION URGENTLY NEEDED

How could I be so stupid? Yes I was dropped on my head as an infant but that doesn’t explain how I could have possibly mixed up Samantha from Bewitched with Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie.

Both my good friend Jim from the site bRright and Early and reader Mike S. were kind enough to point out my error in ascribing Samantha’s magic gesture of the nose wiggle to Jeanie. Of course, Jeanie would cross her arms and bob her head to initiate her magic spells. I apologize for the confusion.

As to which one is sexier, from the vantage point of age, no doubt Samantha is cuter but Jeanie’s costume…ooh la la. Did you know that the network censor refused to allow Barbara Eden’s navel to show?

We’ve come a long way, baby…

Way up on top of the mountain where our messiah-in-waiting is hurling his thunderbolts at John McCain and dispensing manna in the form of soothing bromides and empty platitudes, a distant, ominous rumbling can be heard far below the summit that portends some possible trouble for our hero when his coronation takes place in Denver late in August.

It is an unconfirmed story and indeed, sounds like one of those rumors that are circulated during the dog days of summer in the interregnum between the time a candidate clinches the nomination and the convention. There may be more wishful thinking than truth here but it nevertheless presents an interesting scenario.

Are some Superdelegates having second thoughts about Obama as the nominee?

Big news folks - it looks like our efforts in contacting those Superdelegates are starting to pay off, so keep on writing to them (ok, maybe Donna B’s a waste of time). There are unconfirmed reports, based on phone banking efforts to reach out to Super Ds, that eight previously Obama SDs expressed that, given the opportunity, they would vote for Hillary at the convention.

I heard about an interview Will Bower of PUMA did recently, where he said delegates are starting to say they’ll vote for Hillary in Denver if the DNC did the right thing and ran an open and fair convention. That means a roll call vote with Hillary’s name put into nomination, and on the ballot.

So I shot an email to Bower to ask him where he got that info from, and here’s what he sent me regarding the efforts of a friend of his

“A large phone banking effort to the super d’s combined with Obama’s flips and poor presumptive nominee performance, etc have yielded doubts within the super delegates, enough that 3 elected and 5 DNC members have confided that should they have the opportunity to do so, they will vote for Hillary.”

Maybe this is why BHO and the Toxic Trio are pushing so hard to keep Hillary off the roll call ballot eh? I’ve been wondering what they’re so afraid of now it looks like we have part of the answer.

First of all, even in the unlikely event that this is true, Hillary is going to need at least 100 of those switches to claim the nomination so 8 flippers is hardly anything to get excited about.

Secondly, I can’t believe this is true because there has been no sudden shift in the polls, no big controversy involving Obama, and no calls at all from anywhere in the party that I have heard for a change at the top.

And the number one reason Hillary will not be on the ballot is to prevent an extended demonstration of support for her thus deflecting attention that should be paid to Obama. The messiah will not want to share the limelight with anyone given the extremely limited exposure over the air TV is going to be giving the convention. The “Big Three” can still gather 18-20 million eyeballs in front of the TV compared with cable’s 8-10 million. This means that every prime time minute will be scripted for maximum impact.

I doubt whether the Obama crew is worried that Hillary will stampede the convention and wrest the nomination from Mr. Lightwalker. Instead, the whole roll call of the states thing is extremely time consuming and while a quaint relic of an era when conventions were important, it doesn’t fit in to the modern “production” of what the handlers want the convention to be. Better to have speeches from well known Democrats with Obama surrogates making the rounds of the anchor booths upstairs, hammering home whatever themes and issues are on tap for that day.

This is a pity because the highlight of any political convention for me was to hear each state’s name called and some poor schmuck who had been years toiling in obscurity for the party would get their 15 seconds of national TV exposure.

“Mr. Chairman….Mr. Chairman…The great state of Illinois - Land of Lincoln - Hog Butcher to the World -#1 in production of soybeans - Birthplace of Adlai Stevenson, Paul Simon, and the great Mayor of the great city of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley - Home of Senator Richard Durbin - location of the largest ball of twine in the world - proudly casts all 184 of its votes for its favorite son, the next president of the United States, Barrack Hussein Obama!

And with each state, the bragging would get bigger and more outrageous. Some state leads in the production of potato chips. Another in horseradish. Still another in port-o-potties.

And the hats. Oh, those convention hats. Humongous donkeys or elephants sitting on top of straw hats. Hats with a message. Hats that light up with the candidate’s name. The TV back then loved the hats, couldn’t get enough of them.

Not now. Conventions are rather soulless affairs today with the delegates probably a lot more sober than they were 40 years ago when I first began to watch them. And both sides feature more of their gimlet eyed radicals who somehow manage to make it on screen - no doubt because the networks always love controversy at a convention and the radicals usually disagree with the mainstream.

The convention in Denver will be no different. The networks will seek out Hillary delegates, asking them if they are pleased with the efforts at unity by the Obama campaign. The Obama camp will try their best to put forward satisfied Clintonites but I guarantee you the networks will find several disgruntled Hillary delegates and try and gin up controversy.

Another sure fire way to create a bogus meme will be for the networks to find Democrats who are dissatisfied with the way the campaign is being run. Apparently, that might be easier than one would think:

After a brief bout of Obamamania, some Capitol Hill Democrats have begun to complain privately that Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is insular, uncooperative and inattentive to their hopes for a broad Democratic victory in November.

“They think they know what’s right and everyone else is wrong on everything,” groused one senior Senate Democratic aide. “They are kind of insufferable at this point.”

Among the grievances described by Democratic leadership insiders:

• Until a mailing that went out in the past few days, Obama had done little fundraising for Democratic candidates since signing off on e-mailed fundraising appeals for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee immediately after securing the Democratic nomination.

• Obama has sometimes appeared in members’ districts with no advance notice to lawmakers, resulting in lost opportunities for those Democrats to score points by appearing alongside their party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

• The Obama campaign has not, until very recently, coordinated a daily message with congressional Democrats, leaving Democratic members in the lurch when they’re asked to comment on the constant back and forth between Obama and John McCain — as they were when Obama said earlier this month that he would “continue to refine” his Iraq policies after meeting with commanders on the ground there.

Apparently, the Obama camp wants to arrive in Washington next January not beholden to anyone in the party for their victory. This is all well and good except they might remember the example of Jimmy Carter.

Carter also arrived in Washington as an outsider. And while it is true he owed nothing to nobody, the opposite was true as well; nobody owed Carter a damn thing. Soon, it became apparent that simply being the head of the party meant little if there was nothing tangible to cement the loyalty of those under you. The normal log rolling that any president is forced to employ on legislation in order to get it passed is interrupted and in the end, it was everyone for themselves with nothing much getting done.

If Obama believes he will ride into Washington on a white horse and clean up the cesspool there without the help of his own party - help bought and paid for during the election by assisting the party in electing House and Senate members - then he is tragically mistaken. He could very well turn into a one term wonder like Carter.

Let’s hope he makes a better ex-president than the peanut farmer from Georgia.

There is no doubt that the number one reason Barack Obama was able to defeat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president was his opposition to the Iraq War “from the beginning.” Even as events in Iraq faded into the background - thanks to the success of the new counterinsurgency strategy and the addition of 30,000 soldiers starting in January, 2007 - Obama kept up his criticism of Hillary Clinton’s vote to authorize the war while proclaiming to one and all that the “surge” had failed and that a withdrawal of the American military from Iraq regardless of the situation on the ground was our only option.

At the time, it seemed a winning strategy. Polls were overwhelmingly in favor of a withdrawal of American forces while the base of the Democratic party rallied to his anti-war, pro-American humiliation message. In fact, it could be said that Obama’s anti-war position was the cornerstone of his campaign for president.

The only possible risk for the candidate would be if things actually turned around in Iraq and the American people had a change of heart on the willy nilly withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. Both eventualities seemed remote as late as the beginning of this year.

As it turns out, Obama was whistling past the graveyard with his Iraq policy. With the dramatic military success of the surge and the equally surprising strength shown by the Iraqi government and army in fighting both al-Qaeda and the rogue Shia militias who were responsible for most of the sectarian violence in the country as well as some timid but definitive steps toward political reconciliation, Obama suddenly finds that he has no place to hide and his Iraq policy as relevant as a week old newspaper.

What do you do when the cornerstone of your campaign collapses and you are exposed as being dead wrong about the number one foreign policy issue of the campaign? If you’re Barack Obama, you write an op-ed in the New York Times and lie through your teeth.

Powerline nails Obama to the wall, calling attention to his blatant fibbing about his position on Iraq by quoting the candidate’s own words in the past and comparing them to the lies he wrote in yesterday’s op-ed:

Obama admits that he opposed the surge, and the attendant change in strategy and tactics, that have brought us close to victory. But he somehow manages to twist his being wrong about the surge–the major foreign policy issue that has arisen during his time in Congress–into vindication:

The op-ed lists Obama’s reasons for opposing the surge - and not surprisingly, they are not the reasons he has been touting for more than a year:

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

Oh really? If Obama keeps this up, pretty soon his nose is going to be as big as his ears. John Hinderaker explains:

Actually, however, Obama opposed the surge not because of those “factors” but because he thought it would fail. He said, on January 10, 2007, on MSNBC:

I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.

On January 14, 2007, on Face the Nation, he said:

We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality — we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.

On March 19, 2007, on the Larry King show, he said:

[E]ven those who are supporting — but here’s the thing, Larry — even those who support the escalation have acknowledged that 20,000, 30,000, even 40,000 more troops placed temporarily in places like Baghdad are not going to make a long-term difference.

On May 25, 2007, in a speech to the Coalition Of Black Trade Unionists Convention, Obama said:

And what I know is that what our troops deserve is not just rhetoric, they deserve a new plan. Governor Romney and Senator McCain clearly believe that the course that we’re on in Iraq is working, I do not.

The fact is, Obama simply has no place to hide when it comes to explaining his position on Iraq. His analysis of the situation is no longer valid - if it ever really was. His policies based on that analysis are no longer operative. He has been exposed as a rank opportunist - an anti-war candidate who claimed to be the only candidate who could bring an end to the war.

Except now the war is ending and there is precious little he can say that would obscure the fact that he was as “spectacularly wrong as John McCain was spectacularly right” as Hinderacker points out.

He had two choices; he could go for door #1 and come clean, say he was wrong, and develop a new policy that would refelct the realities on the ground. Or, he could opt for door #2 and lie, obfuscate, and muddy the waters, trying to hide his original positions.

Monty Hall never gave a contestant such an easy choice.

But Obama’s shameless cover-up didn’t stop there. According to The New York Daily News, Obama has actually scrubbed his website of any criticism of the surge!

Barack Obama’s campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq, the Daily News has learned.

The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a “problem” that had barely reduced violence.

“The surge is not working,” Obama’s old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province.

The News reported Sunday that insurgent attacks have fallen to the fewest since March 2004.

Obama’s campaign posted a new Iraq plan Sunday night, which cites an “improved security situation” paid for with the blood of U.S. troops since the surge began in February 2007.

It praises G.I.s’ “hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics and enormous sacrifice.”

Campaign aide Wendy Morigi said Obama is “not softening his criticism of the surge. We regularly update the Web site to reflect changes in current events.”

Oh for God’s sake Wendy, do you think we’re as stupid as liberals? Do you “regularly update the Web site” to cover up your candidate’s most spectacular errors in judgement?

Part of Obama’s furious backtracking on Iraq might be the result of something even I didn’t think was possible. A significant shift in the American people’s perception of the situation in Iraq and what our strategy should be:

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds the country split down the middle between those backing Sen. Barack Obama’s 16-month timeline for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and those agreeing with Sen. John McCain’s position that events, not timetables, should dictate when forces come home.

Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, will deliver what his campaign is billing as a “major address” on Iraq today in Washington, part of an effort to convince voters that he could serve effectively as commander in chief. The public is also evenly divided on that question, with 48 percent saying he would be an effective leader of the military and 48 percent saying he would not.

On Iraq policy in general, Americans continue to side with Obama and McCain, his Republican rival, in roughly equal numbers, with 47 percent of those polled saying they trust McCain more to handle the war, and 45 percent having more faith in Obama.

The poll results suggest that months of Democratic attacks on McCain’s Iraq position have not dented voters’ basic trust in his ability to lead the country’s armed forces: Seventy-two percent said McCain would make a good commander in chief.

“The most important number by Election Day is whether a majority of the electorate has achieved a comfort level with Obama as commander in chief,” said Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster who was a strategist for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, and who considers Obama’s 48 percent a strong starting position. “I think this is the one dimension on which he will be tested and where Republicans will try hard to raise big doubts about Obama.”

Obama will be forced to alter his position, moving closer to McCain on Iraq while moving farther and farther away from the netroots who can do nothing but throw tantrums at how they have been betrayed.

Where will all this dizzying manuevering get Obama? Because the press will not call him out for this monumental flip flop - this Mother of All Campaign Backfills - it is not likely he will be hurt very much at all. More likely, the disillusioned left will grumble a bit and still turn out for him in November. Those on the far left always have Ralph Nader or Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney. For the center, there is only the here and now in politics which is what Obama is counting on with this incredibly cynical move.

Exposing Obama for the lightweight he is will be the challenge for McCain. Hopefully, Obama will continue to lead with his chin on issues like Iraq and make the Republican’s job easier.

The cluelessness demonstrated by many conservatives regarding the comments made by now former McCain economic adviser and surrogate Phil Gramm has been a revelation of sorts. I have discovered that my own brand of conservatism is probably as irrelevant to the mainstream of conservative thought as classical liberalism is to mainstream thinking on the left. There doesn’t seem to be any room in either ideology these days for much in the way of independent thinking and nuance.

If you stray from the merciless orthodoxy imposed by political necessity and a diseased kind of group-think prevalent on both sides, you leave yourself open to the most withering kind of criticism and the ultimate disapprobation shown by your erstwhile ideological allies; you are accused of being the enemy.

No matter. I realize that my take on the Phil Gramm controversy does not comport with that of most conservatives. And the defense of Gramm’s remarks by the likes of George Will and economic historian Amity Shlaes (in the Washington Post no less) show an even greater divide between what I used to think mainstream conservatism represented and my own views. What this bodes for the future, I cannot say. All I know is that this dust-up over Gramm’s remarks has me at odds with most people I considered my ideological allies.

Forget that Gramm’s remarks about America being in a “mental recession” and that our fellow countrymen are a “nation of whiners” were insensitive, crass, stupid, and abominably ill-timed. They were just plain bad politics and trying to justify them as “true” in any sense whatsoever is the heighth of political ignorance.

To chastise your fellow countrymen who are genuinely worried about the way the world seems to be giving way underneath their feet as change and uncertainty sweeps across the country in the form of ever rising energy costs and a housing crisis to which there doesn’t seem to be any bottoming out bespeaks an obliviousness to the political realities of what is happening beyond your own small corner of the world. Your appeal to an economic Darwinism as a model for the American people to follow is as outmoded as it is despicable.

“Shut up and take it” seems to be the message most conservatives want to send to the American people. That and the fact that “technically” we are not in a recession because we haven’t had two full quarters of negative economic growth. This is not only a suicidal political strategy, it shows conservatives with as much empathy for their fellow countrymen as that of a three toed sloth.

Telling people who are genuinely hurting that they are essentially imagining the fact that they are having problems making ends meet because energy costs have doubled or that the idea that we are bleeding jobs in this country shouldn’t cause them any concern, or that affordable health insurance for them and their families is a pipe dream so you better not get sick, or saving for their kid’s college education is an impossibility so plan to go into hock up to your eyeballs, is idiotic. And then accusing them of being spoiled brats for voicing their concerns is so politically tone deaf as to be beyond belief.

No, we are not in a depression and our economic situation is not as dire as it was in 1980. But consider the following and then tell me that the 80% of people in this country who make up the middle and lower classes are imagining how times are tough.

* Payrolls contracted for the 6th straight month in June despite the unemployment rate holding steady at 5.5%

* Wages have grown only 2.8% this year - below the 4% rate of inflation. And you wonder why people are worried about falling behind?

* We have lost 578,000 non government jobs - down every month - since last November. The rate of job loss has increased each of the last three months.

* Decelerating wage increases coupled with a rising rate of inflation reveal a weak bargaining position not only for unions but for most others who count on that pay raise every year to maintain their standard of living.

* 345,000 jobs lost this year in residential construction with another 51,000 lost among non-residential builders. No one has a clue when or where this housing meltdown will end. With a government bailout of secondary mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now a foregone conclusion, things may get even tighter in the housing markets.

* Another 33,000 manufacturing jobs lost. That makes 24 straight months of losses in the industrial sector.

* The number of underemployed workers has skyrocketed; 9.9% of the total workforce is now considered underemployed. Most of these people are part timers who would rather be working full time. The total number of underemployed workers has increased over the last year from 4.3 million to 5.4 million.

* “June’s 5.5% unemployment rate represents a 1.1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate since March 2007, and an addition of 1.76 million to the unemployment rolls.”

* “Workers paychecks are under attack from three sides: diminished jobs and hours, slower hourly wage growth, and faster price growth. Moreover, most workers lack the bargaining power necessary to fend off these attacks.”

(Source: Economic Policy Institute. Quotes are direct from this report)

These numbers are not made up by the New York Times. They are not hatched in the basement of the Democratic National Committee. They are available at the Bureau of Labor Statistics to anyone who wishes to delve into the details of our faltering economy.

To have stood on the deck of the Titanic and pointed to the one half of the ship that was still above water and proclaim that the ship had not sunk yet would have, I’m sure, given absolutely no comfort to the passengers. And yet conservatives have rallied around Phil Gramm, clapping him on the back for “telling the truth” regarding our weak kneed countrymen who just don’t know how good they’ve got it.

Perception is what matters in this case. And regardless of where you believe the American people got their ideas about the economy being in trouble - a biased media, the evil Democrats, or even their own personal experience - telling them they are imagining their economic plight and that if they open their mouths to complain about the doubling of gas prices or the slow torture of watching food prices rise every week at the grocery store that they are akin to blubbering babies only shows that Republicans not only deserve to lose, they must lose for the good of the country.

The American people don’t want handouts. They don’t want government to give them a job or secure their futures. They want to know someone is listening to their concerns and understands their problems. The health insurance crisis is real. It keeps real people awake at nights worrying about their loved ones and their future. Now I don’t truck with a purely government solution to this problem and neither does McCain. But unless we understand how fundamental this concern is to the vast majority of the American people, conservatives deserve to be consigned to the back benches of power until they are educated about what affects the real lives of real people.

What defending Gramm shows is that conservatives live in an opaque bubble where they can only see shadows and undefined shapes outside of their little cocoon. They know that the people are out there but they have no insight into what their dreams and desires might be. They don’t have a clue about what moves them, what causes them concern, what worries they have about their children’s future. They are oblivious to their fears. And to top it off, they appear to be uncaring if they suffer.

Does this sound like an ideology you would vote for? Is this the recipe for conservative victory at the polls?

To demonstrate such ignorance and then be proud of it bespeaks a monstrous disconnect between political reality and the way conservatives have taken values like self-reliance, prudence, independence, and thrift and turned them into a club to beat their fellow countrymen over the head. There are ways to encourage people to practice these values without disrespecting their perception of their own personal economic situation.

Gramm and his defenders have failed to do that and have instead substituted a gross economic “survival of the fittest” critique that demonstrates a singular soullessness when it comes to lecturing their fellow citizens about how conservatives have gleaned the “true” economic conditions in the country and that any other theory that contradicts this revealed truth is evidence of mental disease.

This is not the conservatism of Reagan or anyone I am familiar with. One needn’t disconnect the brain from the heart to be a conservative. But for the defenders of Gramm, there appears to be some faulty wiring that has not only led to turgid logic but also a misfiring of the empathy gene.

Not a good combination if you’re a conservative and expect success at the polls.

Greetings from the frontiers of science! Today’s assignment is a thought experiment involving “Active SETI” (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) which entails beaming powerful radio signals containing unmistakable proof that they emanate from an intelligent civilization out into the great void of space. The point of the exercise? To light earth up like a Christmas tree across the Milky Way galaxy so that any technological civilizations out there would have no trouble seeing us.

This method of actively seeking out intelligent life in our galactic neighborhood is the opposite of our SETI efforts to date where we use “Passive SETI” to try and listen for a message or beacon from another civilization. These passive programs date back to the 1970’s and have benefited from massive increases in our abilities to scan the radio spectrum for hints of life. Multi-channel spectrum analysis that allows us to listen to millions of “channels” from specific stars at one time has dramatically increased the chances of success - someday.

Alas, to date there has been no indications that anyone in the cosmos is interested in communicating with anyone else. We have found no beacon, no messages inviting us to make contact. And we haven’t stumbled across any inter-planetary communications networks that would prove the existence of alien life beyond earth.

But take heart. We have explored only a small piece of the sky so far and there are several good reasons why we may have even missed a message in past sweeps. We may not be technologically advanced enough to decode it. We may lack the imagination to recognize a message even though it’s been right in front of us. But the most likely reason we have yet to achieve success in our SETI efforts is that there just aren’t that many civilizations transmitting.

Does this mean that there are fewer advanced civilizations than we thought? This is a definite possibility. It could very well be that the deck is stacked against any intelligent civilization reaching our level of sophistication. Rouge asteroids or comets, an unstable sun or moon, a nearby supernova not to mention the possibility that the denizens of any technologically advanced society could blow themselves up all make it a distinct possibility that while intelligent life is abundant in the universe, it doesn’t necessarily stand to reason that it survives long enough to reach out and try and touch someone.

Then again, there could be another explanation for our failure to make contact with an alien race. And this reason is at the heart of the debate over the passive vs. active SETI programs.

Perhaps those alien civilizations know something about the neighborhood that we don’t; that calling attention to ourselves by lighting earth up like a flare in the blackness of space might bring unwelcome - indeed catastrophic - attention to our planet.

The question isn’t so much are there evil alien monsters out there bent on death and destruction of any planet luckless enough to come to its attention. The question is why take the chance?

Should it be our position that all alien races are benign and would mean us no harm? The more I think about that the less I agree with it. Not necessarily because aliens would be hostile. They may have the best of intentions. As Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel points out in his book The Third Chimpanzee that any contact with an alien race is likely to resemble the contact made here on earth between advanced civilizations and primitive ones to the catastrophic detriment to the primitives. It may be best that until we have reached a level of technology more equal to our neighbors, we remain passive observers of their civilization.

And beyond that, there is the question of who decides whether escalating our SETI program to include active measures to make contact should be our policy?

Author, lecturer, scientist David Brin has thought about these issues of First Contact and other SETI matters for many years. He serves on a SETI subcommittee of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) charged with developing protocols and policies regarding our SETI efforts. It was this subcommittee that came up with the very First SETI Protocol: “Declaration Of Principles Concerning Activities Following The Detection Of Extraterrestrial Intelligence” - a great read if you are at all interested in this stuff.

This is from a piece Brin wrote two years ago about the controversy of active vs. passive SETI:

With that success behind us, we on the IAA subcommittee turned to a Second Protocol dealing with Transmissions from Planet Earth. The widely accepted draft contained articles asking that all of those controlling radio telescopes forebear from significantly increasing Earth’s visibility with deliberate skyward emanations, until their plans were first discussed before open and widely accepted international fora.

It seemed a modest and reasonable request. Why not present such plans, openly, before a broad and ecumenically interested community of experts in fields like exobiology, sociology, history and biology, at a conference where all matters and concerns could be honestly addressed? If for no other reason, wouldn’t this be common courtesy?

At first, the subcommittee drafting the Second Protocol deemed this to be obvious. Moreover, the core group at the SETI Institute seemed to concur. Indeed, this was not even a new document, but rather a revision of one that the Instituter’s own Jill Tarter presented to the UN six years ago — confirming that they once favored restraint and consultation before transmission. They are the ones who have changed their minds.

But recently… and after a draft appeared ready for submission to the IAA… several members of the IAA SETI Committee, including chairman Seth Shostak, abruptly balked and demanded alterations, abandoning even a collegial and moral call for pre-transmission discussions.

Indeed, suddenly all notions of pre-consultation or discussion — before making Earth dramatically more visible — were derided as paranoid, repressive of free expression and nonsensical. Almost no discussion of the matter was brooked; no questions were answered.

(HT: Instapundit)

I should add here for clarity that most of the scientists at the SETI Institute favor holding discussions on placing more emphasis on active search protocols. The balkers are a group of Russians for the most part who apparently have ideological reasons - among others - for not even allowing a forum for all interested scientists to participate.

Brin points out that the ideology grew out of the old Soviet model. The Russians believe any aliens receiving an active SETI message would be benign because they would be socialists! They figure any advanced intelligence would have developed along the socialist model of governing and would therefore, by definition, be peaceful.

On such stupidities might the fate of the world hang.

As I said, the question of whether or not to engage in active SETI research should hang on erring on the side of caution. This is especially true since what is driving the active SETI movement is impatience at the lack of progress in the passive SETI program. One can certainly understand the desire to reach out and attempt contact. But without examining all the ramifications by failing to invite other scientists and researchers into a debate before starting any active SETI search is not only foolhardy but unscientific.

It reminds me of the global warming debate. Scientists who will brook no opposition to their cherished beliefs vilify their colleagues who think differently. They are simply frozen out of the discussion, marginalized in the community. This has proven to be a huge mistake as more and more information challenging climate change orthodoxy is either dismissed out of hand or tainted with charges of coming from biased sources. It has had a deadening effect on scientific debate and thus has done a disservice to policy makers and the public who are groping for answers on who to believe and what to do - if anything - about climate change.

Recently, Brin updated his 2006 article with ominous news:

As of Summer 2008, Retired senior US diplomat Michael Michaud has resigned from the IAA SETI Subcommittee in protest over what he sees as continuing efforts to repress open discussion of these issues, and to disparage those who see anything wrong with METI. He was recently joined by Dr. John Billingham, one of the founding fathers of SETI and director of NASA’s long-running SETI program.

The METI folks make the point that in 20 years, anyone with a computer and a dish will be able to aim their own powerful signal at the stars so why oppose their efforts today? They make a good point while at the same time, obviating the need for active SETI research to begin immediately. There is time to discuss all of the issues surrounding active SETI before it becomes a reality.

Work on the Second SETI Protocol should continue and a consensus reached. For if we can’t come together on these basic questions regarding our potential role in a crowded universe where contact with other civilizations becomes a reality, we will be unprepared for any consequences that might arise from this success.