Max Boot’s LA Times op-ed on Georgia has brought a lovely response from Pravda:
The opinion piece in the online version of the Los Angeles Times (2008.08.12) is a clear and classic example of the type of material western readers are being bombarded with in what appears to be an orchestrated campaign of disinformation to shape public opinion against Russia. As was the case in Iraq, the Western public is being duped by what amounts to a perverse act of manipulation… and is guzzling the bait hook, line and sinker.
The piece “Stand up to Russia” was shown to me by a Russian friend, who asked me to reply in PRAVDA.Ru, which was quoted in this two-page schmuckfest of unadulterated bilge. It could almost have been printed by the British Bullshit Corporation or written by that other insolent female who got a Pulitzer. Max Boot, “Senior fellow in National Security Studies at the Council of Foreign Relations)” is the name of the author in this case.
We now see clearly why the National Seecutiry Agency was so adept in defending the people of America on 9/11, as adept in fact as Washington’s (chuckle) military advisors were in Georgia.
When I read through this article last night, I thought, “Where does one begin?” I mean, it is one nonsensical piece of drivel from beginning to end, a tissue of lies and insults directed at Russia without one iota of truth from the first letter to the final period.
For a start, the piece opens with a childish chortle, comparing the Russian Army to the “Red Army”, a clear attempt to paint the modern Russian Federation with the Soviet brush, then, wait for it, yeah here it is, line 2 of paragraph 2, the “collapse” of the Soviet Union. It’s like those animal documentaries where you have three failed hunting scenes then finally the kill, where the lionesses get the gazelle and cart it off to daddy. And it is so predictable as to be boring.
True, like the Red Army, the Russian Army has the capacity to carpet nuke all countries, be they NATO or anything else, which commit acts of aggression against Russia but unlike the USA, Russia does not deploy atomic weapons or Depleted Uranium against civilians. And for Max Boot’s information, and that of his readers, once and for all, the Soviet Union did not “collapse” (there was no confrontation after all, not even a stand-off; relations with the West were at their highest point at the time, with perestroika and glaznost in full swing). The voluntary dissolution of the Soviet Union was forecast and accounted for in its Constitution. When the members wished to leave, they did and most of them formed alternative and looser trading organizations such as the CIS, among others.
And that is just page one of three.
Not many people have the honor of being accused of spreading misinformation by Pravda. (ASIDE: I particularly love the bit about how the Soviet Union was voluntarily dissolved as soon as its members wished to leave.) I hope Boot doesn’t get Polonium poisoning.
UPDATE: The Pravda article is by one Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey, an odd name for a Kremlin mouthpiece. Who is he? Pravda doesn’t follow the western convention of telling you something about an article’s author, but in an era of search engines, they don’t need to.
I don’t really buy them, but for what it’s worth, a couple of respectable sources have somewhat optimistic accounts of the Russo-Georgian war. The Belmost Club (two days ago) thinks it’s not over, that the Georgian army is intact and has fallen back to a defensible position. Classical Values (yesterday) thinks that Georgia is okay and overall this is actually a win for the United States.
I’d like to believe this, but it’s hard to reconcile with the reality of advancing Russian tank columns.
The child singer at the opening ceremonies was lip syncing:
When nine-year-old Lin Miaoke launched into Ode to the Motherland at the Olympic opening ceremony, she became an instant star.
“Tiny singer wins heart of nation,” China Daily sighed; “Little girl sings, impresses the world,” gushed another headline, perhaps in reference to Lin’s appearance on the front of the New York Times. Countless articles lauded the girl in the red dress who “lent her voice” to the occasion.
But now it emerges that Lin was lent someone else’s voice, following high-level discussions – which included a member of the Politburo – on the relative photogenicity of small children.
The recording to which Lin mouthed along on Friday was by the even younger Yang Peiyi. It seems that Yang’s uneven teeth, while unremarkable in a seven-year-old, were considered potentially damaging to China’s international image. . . At the last minute, officials decided a switch was needed, according to the translation by the China Digital Times website.
This is also interesting:
The switch may reflect underlying cultural preferences as well as the incredible attention paid to Olympic preparations.
Research by Daniel Hamermesh, an economist at the University of Texas, has suggested that the “beauty premium” in parts of China is far more pronounced than in the west for women.
Dr Hamermesh’s work shows that ugly people earn below the average income while beautiful people earn more. In Britain, attractive women enjoy a +1% premium. But in Shanghai, the figure was +10%.
Georgia’s Security Council chief says Russians have bombed and looted the city of Gori outside the breakaway province of South Ossetia in violation of the truce.
Alexander Lomaia says that the Russian military bombed Gori Wednesday morning and entered the city. The Russian military then let paramilitaries into Gori who started massive looting.
An AP reporter outside the city of Gori saw the convoy speeding past and heading south.
Besides the terrible killings inflicted by the fanatics on those who refuse to pledge allegiance to them, Al-Qa’eda has lost credibility for enforcing a series of rules imposing their way of thought on the most mundane aspects of everyday life.
They include a ban on women buying suggestively-shaped vegetables, according to one tribal leader in the western province of Anbar.
Sheikh Hameed al-Hayyes, a Sunni elder, told Reuters: “They even killed female goats because their private parts were not covered and their tails were pointed upward, which they said was haram.
“They regarded the cucumber as male and tomato as female. Women were not allowed to buy cucumbers, only men.”
Despite considerable support from her own caucus, Nancy Pelosi has steadfastly refused to allow a vote on offshore oil drilling. Now The Hill reports that she is on the verge of capitulating. At the very end of the article is a little fact that explains why:
Democrats realize that it will be difficult to end their legislative year in September without a vote because the offshore drilling moratorium must be renewed every year.
Virginia Governor Tim Kaine bizarrely credits Obama for the “ceasefire”:
“It was a bad crisis for the world. It required tough words but also a smart approach to call on the international community to step in. And I’m very, very happy that the Senator’s request for a ceasefire has been complied with by President Medvedev.”
This is bizarre on at least three levels. First is the idea that Obama could induce Medvedev to do anything by issuing press releases from his Hawaii vacation. Second is the idea that Medvedev (rather than Putin) is the one in charge anyway. But most bizarre is Kaine’s failure to observe that Medvedev’s announcement was a lie, as Russian forces were not yet observing any ceasefire. (Whether they are even now is hard to determine.)
This is the kind of foolishness that one only sees in the midst of election season.
UPDATE (8/13): Silly season continues. Not only did Obama fix the problem, but now Susan Rice says McCain “complicated” the crisis. Has no one pointed out to this bunch that an international crisis is an excellent time to be serious?
Like Kosovo, Bosnia, Kuwait and other unfamiliar places before, Ossetia reminds us that a small, remote corner of the globe can explode into an international crisis. One who was up to speed on Georgia and the menace it faced from Russia was veteran Sen. John McCain. He had visited the Caucasian nation three times in a dozen years. When fighting erupted, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate got on the phone to gather details and issued a statement Friday summarizing the situation, tagging Russia as the aggressor and demanding it withdraw its forces from the sovereign territory of Georgia.
It took first-term Sen. Barack Obama three tries to get it right. Headed for a vacation in Hawaii, the presumed Democratic candidate for commander in chief issued an even-handed statement, urging restraint by both sides. Later Friday, he again called for mutual restraint but blamed Russia for the fighting. The next day his language finally caught up with toughness of McCain’s.
Making matters worse, Obama’s staff focused on a McCain aide who had served as a lobbyist for Georgia, charging it showed McCain was “ensconced in a lobbyist culture.” Obama’s campaign came off as injecting petty partisan politics into an international crisis. This was not a serious response on behalf a man who aspires to be the leader of the Free World. After all, what’s so bad about representing a small former Soviet republic struggling to remake itself as a Western-style democracy?
The comparison between the two candidates served to emphasize the strength McCain’s experience would bring to the White House in a dangerous world.
Obama’s favored approach to international issues, diplomatic talks, failed to stop Russia’s invasion. Vladimir Putin, a KGB bull in the former Soviet Union, wants to restore Russia as the supreme power of Eurasia and, to that end, bully former vassal states like Georgia out of their democratic ways. The fear is that Ukraine will come in his cross hairs next.
Good lord. I truly hope this is a case of a Hollywood celebrity exaggerating his own importance:
Oscar-winner Clooney, 47, is said to be helping the Democratic candidate to polish his image at home and abroad. But he is also sharing with Obama his strong opinions on Iraq and the Middle East.
Sources say the actor has tried to hide the pair’s friendship for fear his Left-wing views and playboy image would hurt the Presidential hopeful’s bid for the White House.
But Democratic Party insiders have revealed that Clooney and Obama regularly send texts and emails to each other and speak by phone at least twice a week.
One said last night: ‘They are extremely close. A number of members of the Hollywood community, including Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, offered to help raise funds for Barack but it was with George that he struck up this amazing affinity.
‘George has been giving him advice on things such as presentation, public speaking and body language and he also emails him constantly about policy, especially the Middle East.
‘George is pushing him to be more “balanced” on issues such as US relations with Israel.
‘George is pro-Palestinian. And he is also urging Barack to withdraw unconditionally from Iraq if he wins.’ . . .
The acquaintance added: ‘He has tried to keep the true extent of their involvement out of the Press because he is frightened of alienating voters.’
Clooney himself has admitted in an interview: ‘I’ve had the conversation with him saying, “Look, I’ll give you whatever support you need, including staying completely away from you.”’
As if Samantha Power and the other loonies weren’t bad enough.
The fighting isn’t over yet, but under the safe assumption that Russia prevails, National Review has some suggestions. One of them, that Georgia immediately be admitted into NATO, requires the optimistic assumption that there is still a Georgia to admit. The rest seem sound though.
As the ceremony got under way with a dramatic, drummed countdown, viewers watching at home and on giant screens inside the Bird’s Nest National Stadium watched as a series of giant footprints outlined in fireworks processed gloriously above the city from Tiananmen Square.
What they did not realise was that what they were watching was in fact computer graphics, meticulously created over a period of months and inserted into the coverage electronically at exactly the right moment.
The fireworks were there for real, outside the stadium. But those responsible for filming the extravaganza decided in advance it would be impossible to capture all 29 footprints from the air.
As a result, only the last, visible from the camera stands inside the Bird’s Nest was captured on film.
The trick was revealed in a local Chinese newspaper, the Beijing Times, at the weekend.
Ordinarily, one’s inability to get a picture safely doesn’t justify faking it. (Why would any photographer ever enter a war zone?) But perhaps journalistic ethics don’t apply to the Olympics.
It’s clear now that Russia will not accept Georgia’s capitulation in South Ossetia, that it has additional territorial aims in Georgia. That’s about all that’s clear, though. Richard Ferdandez tries to make sense of things. His bottom line is that it appears Russia is trying to split Georgia in two, taking Georgia’s Black Sea ports and leaving a rump Georgia landlocked and isolated.
Ralph Peters observes additionally that this was clearly a planned effort, not the emergency reponse that the Kremlin claims:
How do I know that the Russians set a trap? Simple: Given the wretched state of Russian military readiness, that brigade could never have shot out of its motor pool on short notice. The Russians obviously “task-organized” the force in advance to make sure it would have working tanks with competent crews.
Otherwise, broken-down vehicles would’ve lined those mountain roads.
The Russians planned it. And they hope to push it to the limit.
Yuval Levin at NRO reports that Barack Obama’s excuse for voting against Illinois’ version of the Born-Alive Act appears to be a lie:
Six years ago, Congress passed the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act,” making it illegal to kill a child who is fully born during an attempted abortion. The bill passed without a single opposing vote in either house, and was signed into law by President Bush on August 5, 2002. When he was a state senator at that same time, Barack Obama opposed a state version of the bill in Illinois. His explanation for the vote since then has been that the state version did not include a so-called “neutrality clause” which says explicitly that the bill is not meant to influence the legal standing of a fetus before birth one way or another. The federal law contained such a clause, and the state law, Obama has long insisted, did not. As recently as June 30, the Obama campaign made that case to answer the charge (in that case from Bill Bennett) that Obama had opposed the Born-Alive Act.
But now, the National Right to Life Committee has uncovered proof that Obama in fact voted in committee against even the version of the Illinois Born-Alive Act that did include exactly the same “neutrality clause” as the federal bill. On March 12, 2003, when the bill was being debated, an amendment was added that inserted the neutrality language of the federal bill verbatim into the Illinois bill. Obama voted for the amendment (that’s the vote on the left-hand column on this committee vote record), and then voted against the amended bill (that’s the vote on the right on the same document). All the Democrats on the committee (which Obama chaired) followed his lead, and the bill was defeated.
This was, again, legislation that in the same form had by then passed unanimously at the federal level. Even NARAL did not oppose it. Apparently Barack Obama did, and his old explanation for doing so seems at odds with the facts.
THE John Edwards “love child” story finally hit the national news media and made the front page of yesterday’s Times. For weeks, Jay Leno joked about it, the Internet was abuzz, and readers wondered why The Times and most of the mainstream media seemed to be studiously ignoring a story of sex and betrayal involving a former Democratic presidential candidate who remains prominent on the political stage. . .
Murray Bromberg of Bellmore, N.Y., was glad The Times was not touching this seamy business. “I heartily approve,” he said. But everyone else I heard from over the past several weeks was either puzzled or outraged that the newspaper, which carried front-page allegations of a John McCain affair, was ignoring the relationship between Edwards and Hunter. John Boyle of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., said, “I hope you will find the time to tell me why this news story is not reported by your paper.” Some readers, like Bert A. Getz Jr. of Winnetka, Ill., were sure they already knew the answer: liberal bias.
I do not think liberal bias had anything to do with it. But I think The Times — like The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, major networks and wire services — was far too squeamish about tackling the story. The Times did not want to regurgitate the Enquirer’s reporting without verifying it, which is responsible. But The Times did not try to verify it, beyond a few perfunctory efforts, which I think was wrong. Until the ABC report, only one mainstream news organization, McClatchy newspapers, seemed to be making headway with the story.
Not that it would have been easy. David Perel, the editor of the Enquirer, said, “This is a very hard story to prove, and I think that has frozen people in place.”
Oh, boo hoo. Reporting is just too hard. Better not to try.
Anyway, Hoyt’s shtick is familiar now: admit that the NYT screwed up (it’s generally inarguable anyway), but deny bad faith. Sometimes, though, denying bad faith is hard. For example, he has to explain why they ran the Vicki Iseman story (an undersourced, inconclusive story about an affair that some people thought McCain might have had), but wouldn’t touch this:
[NYT editors] Keller and Stevenson said it was wrong to equate the McCain and Edwards stories, as so many readers and bloggers have. The editors saw the McCain story as describing a powerful senator’s dealings with lobbyists trying to influence government decisions, including one who anonymous sources believed was having a romantic relationship with him. “Our interest in that story was not in his private romantic life,” Keller said. “It was in his relationship with lobbyists, plural, and that story took many, many weeks of intensive reporting effort.”
I would not have published the allegation of a McCain affair, because The Times did not convincingly establish its truth.
Hoyt is too much of a company man to point out that the last sentence refutes Keller and Stevenson’s argument. Their case might hold water, if they had been able to establish any of what they insinuated. But, as it turned out, they had nothing — unlike the Enquirer — and the story they ultimately ran hinged on the conjecturally salacious lede.
In the first installment of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon game, he had the current war in Georgia almost nailed. I remembered that the first Ghost Recon was set in Georgia, but I had forgotten that the date was August 2008.
It’s not the first time that Clancy has predicted a major world crisis. In his novel Debt of Honor, he anticipated the use of passenger planes as weapons against America.
Time has always had a soft spot for Moqtada. Now it seems their blindness for him is boundless:
Shi’ite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr stepped back into Iraq’s political fray Friday with an offer that (if genuine) Washington would be hard-pressed to refuse: Set a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, and the Mahdi Army will begin to disband. “The main reason for the armed resistance is the American military presence,” said Sadr emissary Salah al-Ubaidi, who spoke to reporters in Najaf Friday. “If the American military begins to withdrawal, there will be no need for these armed groups.”
Geez. “Hard-pressed to refuse.” If Sadr couldn’t force us out when he was somewhat strong, how are we hard-pressed to refuse him now that he is weak?
It should be perfectly obvious what Sadr is doing. The United States is already negotiating with Iraq the future of U.S. forces in their country. Reports say that the agreement is likely to set a goal of removing U.S. troops by 2013, subject to continued progress in security. Sadr is positioning himself to take credit for that agreement when it is concluded.
ASIDE: By the way, the British are the ones who make deals with Sadr, not us.
It’s good to know that Pittsburgh doesn’t have the nation’s worst mayor, I guess:
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was ordered released from jail Friday on condition that he post $50,000 US cash bail and wear an electronic monitoring device. He’s also forbidden to travel.
A lower court judge revoked Kilpatrick’s bail and sent him to jail Thursday for violating his bail conditions.
The mayor had made a trip to Windsor, Ont., on city business July 23 without informing the court in advance. That requirement was one of the bail conditions imposed on Kilpatrick while he and a former top aide await trial on charges of perjury, misconduct and obstruction of justice. . .
The charges against the mayor and his aide arise from their testimony in a civil trial last year, where they denied having a romantic relationship. Steamy text messages have cast doubt on that claim.
Moments after the judge’s ruling, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox announced that he’s also charging Kilpatrick with assaulting a police officer for allegedly interfering with a detective who was trying to deliver a subpoena to a friend.
Cox said an arrest warrant has been issued and police are expected to pick up Kilpatrick at the Wayne County Jail, where he was being processed for release.
The noxious air [in Beijing] has been a major headache for Olympic organizers, with athletes voicing concerns over the potential impact to their health and performance. Beijing’s air pollution regularly reaches levels two or three times above what the World Health Organization considers safe.
On Friday, the official air pollution index for Beijing was at 94, similar to levels of moderate pollution recorded earlier in the week. The WHO recommends levels below 50 for healthy air, while China considers anything above 100 to be harmful to sensitive groups including children and the elderly. . .
Beijing officials on Friday continued to insist that the murky haze enveloping the city is not the result of pollution, but instead is fog created by moisture vapor in the air. Visibility, they say, is not necessarily an indicator of air quality.
“The air quality, I think it’s good. It looks a little bit misty. You cannot judge the air quality by its appearance.”
I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict. Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war. Georgia’s territorial integrity must be respected. All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis.
Argh. This man wants to be President of the United States.
If you can’t figure out who’s at fault even in a case as clear-cut as this, you never will. And what’s this garbage about the Security Council? Doesn’t Obama understand that the UN Security Council has tried and failed already, and it always will fail because Russia has a veto? Also, Russia is bombing Georgian air bases just 15 miles from the Georgian capital. What exactly would full-scale war look like?
UPDATE: A day later, Obama has figured out who’s at fault:
“I condemn Russia’s aggressive actions and reiterate my call for an immediate ceasefire,” Obama said in a statement.
“Russia must stop its bombing campaign, cease flights of Russian aircraft in Georgian airspace, and withdraw its ground forces from Georgia.”
Russia has launched its first war of aggression since the end of the Cold War. I wish more people were paying attention. (Via Instapundit.) Reuters story here.
UPDATE AND BUMP: John McCain has issued a statement:
Today news reports indicate that Russian military forces crossed an internationally-recognized border into the sovereign territory of Georgia. Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory. What is most critical now is to avoid further confrontation between Russian and Georgian military forces. The consequences for Euro-Atlantic stability and security are grave.
The government of Georgia has called for a cease-fire and for a resumption of direct talks on South Ossetia with international mediators. The U.S. should immediately convene an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to call on Russia to reverse course. The US should immediately work with the EU and the OSCE to put diplomatic pressure on Russia to reverse this perilous course it has chosen. We should immediately call a meeting of the North Atlantic Council to assess Georgia’s security and review measures NATO can take to contribute to stabilizing this very dangerous situation. Finally, the international community needs to establish a truly independent and neutral peacekeeping force in South Ossetia.
Also, a few hours later, the press has started paying attention. This is the top story at the Washington Post and Fox News, the number two story at the New York Times and MSNBC, and number three at CNN.
Has Al Jazeera decided it wants to pretend it’s a real news source? Hmm:
Arabic television station Al Jazeera said on Thursday a July broadcast in honor of a Lebanese prisoner freed by Israel violated its code of ethics.
Israel said on Wednesday it would no longer assist the Qatar-based network because of the July 19 birthday party broadcast for Samir Qantar, who spent 29 years in an Israeli jail for a 1979 attack in which five Israelis were killed.
The network said in a statement that its editorial board concluded that the broadcast “violated Al Jazeera’s Code of Ethics”. The network said it “regards these violations as very serious and will assess what action is necessary”.
The Al Jazeera show featured Qantar using a scimitar, a traditional Arab sword, to slice a cake with his picture on it.
Some 900 days after I became the only person in the Western world charged with the “offence” of republishing the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, the government has finally acquitted me of illegal “discrimination.” Taxpayers are out more than $500,000 for an investigation that involved fifteen bureaucrats at the Alberta Human Rights Commission. The legal cost to me and the now-defunct Western Standard magazine is $100,000.
The case would have been thrown out long ago if I had been charged in a criminal court, instead of a human rights commission. That’s because accused criminals have the right to a speedy trial. Accused publishers at human rights commissions do not.
And if I had been a defendant in a civil court, the judge would now order the losing parties to pay my legal bills. Instead, the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities won’t have to pay me a dime. Neither will Syed Soharwardy, the Calgary imam who abandoned his identical complaint against me this spring.
Both managed to hijack a secular government agency to prosecute their radical Islamic fatwa against me — the first blasphemy case in Canada in over 80 years.
China has announced that during the Olympics, protesters will be allowed to assemble in designated protest areas. Yeah. Or, as they’re commonly called in China, jails.
A secret deal between Britain and the notorious al-Mahdi militia prevented British Forces from coming to the aid of their US and Iraqi allies for nearly a week during the battle for Basra this year, The Times has learnt.
Four thousand British troops – including elements of the SAS and an entire mechanised brigade – watched from the sidelines for six days because of an “accommodation” with the Iranian-backed group, according to American and Iraqi officers who took part in the assault.
US Marines and soldiers had to be rushed in to fill the void, fighting bitter street battles and facing mortar fire, rockets and roadside bombs with their Iraqi counterparts. . .
US advisers who accompanied the Iraqi forces into the fight were shocked to learn of the accommodation made last summer by British Intelligence and elements of al-Mahdi Army. . . The deal, which aimed to encourage the Shia movement back into the political process and marginalise extremist factions, has dealt a huge blow to Britain’s reputation in Iraq.
Under its terms, no British soldier could enter Basra without the permission of Des Browne, the Defence Secretary. By the time he gave his approval, most of the fighting was over and the damage to Britain’s reputation had already been done.
The British would have done better to focus less on not being American, and focus more on not sucking. Churchill must be rolling in his grave.
POSTSCRIPT: Mudville Gazette spotted this, and makes it the conclusion of a long post tracking the British failure in Basra, but I think he buries the lede. (Via Instapundit.)
This makes me prouder of the US team than anything that will happen on the field:
Lopez Lomong, a Lost Boy of the Sudan and a member of Team Darfur, was selected Thursday (Beijing time) as flag bearer for the U.S. Olympic team in Friday’s opening ceremonies — the same day winter Olympian Joey Cheek had his visa revoked by China because of his prominent role with Team Darfur.
Cheek, a 2006 gold medal-winning speedskater who expected to arrive in Beijing today, is angry that the Chinese government is taking this “effort to suppress discussion about human rights.”
He was happy about Lomong’s selection but said it had no bearing on his situation. Lomong, 23, a 1,500-meter runner, was born in Sudan and driven from his family after a rebel attack. After escaping from a rebel camp at 6, he spent 10 years in a refugee camp in Kenya before arriving in Tully, N.Y., and becoming a citizen a year ago. “His selection is a statement to how moving his story is,” Cheek said. “The fact that he survived these tragedies is an amazing story.”
Cheek is co-founder of Team Darfur. He had planned to attend the Games to support the 70-plus athletes who will be competing in Beijing who have signed onto Team Darfur. The group is critical of the Chinese government’s funding of the Sudanese regime responsible for the genocide in Darfur.
As tens of thousands of foreign journalists arrive to test China’s pledges to respect media freedom during the Olympic Games, the nation offered apologies Tuesday for the beatings that police gave two Japanese journalists who were covering a deadly assault by Muslim separatists.
Paramilitary police kicked and beat the journalists, throwing one to the ground, putting boots to his head and body, and damaging his photo gear.
In a separate incident, police entered the hotel room of an Agence France Presse photographer and forced him to delete photos of the attack scene, the French agency said. . .
As part of its pledge to win the right to host the Olympics, China offered international media complete freedom around the period of the Aug. 8-24 games.
With four days left before the start of the 2008 Summer Games, Chinese officials have not lived up to key promises they made to win the right to host the Olympics, including widening press freedoms, cleaning up their capital city’s polluted air and respecting human rights.
The failures were evident Monday:
A thick pall of smog covered Beijing, raising concerns that endurance events such as long-distance races would have to be moved out of the city. Some still held out hope that emergency measures would clear the city’s air by Friday.
Near Tiananmen Square in the heart of the city, police scuffled with protesters who said they were evicted from their homes to make way for Games-related development.
Chinese censors continued to block access to politically sensitive Web sites for thousands of foreign journalists gathered at the Olympic press center.
These failures stand in contrast to the Herculean efforts China has made to prepare for the Olympics, building world-class venues, housing and other infrastructure.
Palestinian brothers inside the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip are listed in government election filings as having donated $29,521.54 to Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign.
Donations of this nature would violate election laws, including prohibitions on receiving contributions from foreigners and guidelines against accepting more than $2,300 from one individual during a single election, Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the Federal Election Commission, told WND in response to a query. . .
Last week, the Atlas Shrugs blog outlined a series of donations in 2007 made to Obama’s campaign from two individuals, Monir Edwan and Hosam Edwan, totaling $29,521.54. In an online form on Obama’s campaign site, the Edwans listed their street as “Tal Esaltan,” which they wrote was located in “Rafah, GA.”
Rafah is not a city in Georgia. The Atlas blog immediately raised concerns that the money may have been donated from the Gaza Strip town of Rafah. . .
A WND investigation tracked down the Edwans, who are brothers living in the Tal Esaltan neighborhood of Rafah, a large refugee camp in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The Edwans are a large clan that include top Hamas supporters.
Speaking to WND, the two brothers praised Obama and admitted giving the money online to his campaign. They said they are not U.S. citizens or green card holders but are citizens of “Palestine.”
One thing that hasn’t received much attention in conservative and Republicans circles is the ongoing conversation on the left about the possibility of Nuremberg-style war-crimes trials for members of the Bush administration should a Democratic president take office. I’m not exaggerating or introducing the Nazi analogy myself; they actually use the phrase “Nuremberg-style” when they discuss “war-crimes tribunals.” And they are quite serious (although the more moderate of them prefer a “truth commission.”)
At the Netroots Nation gathering in Austin, Texas last month — that is the successor to YearlyKos — Dahlia Lithwick, of the Washington-Post-owned website Slate, did an interview with the Talking Points Memo site in which she described a panel discussion she had just taken part in on what is known as the “first 100 days of accountability.”
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, charged with perjury and other felonies for his testimony in a civil trial, was ordered to jail Thursday because he violated his bond by taking a quick trip to Canada without notifying authorities.
Kilpatrick apologized and acknowledged that he made a mistake when he visited Windsor, Ontario, minutes away from Detroit, for city business last month. But 36th District Court Judge Ronald Giles was not moved, saying he needed to treat the mayor like any other defendant.
Four Mexican soldiers crossed into Arizona and held a U.S. Border Patrol agent at gunpoint before realizing where they were and returning to Mexico, federal authorities said Wednesday.
The confrontation occurred early Sunday on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation, about 85 miles southwest of Tucson, in an area fenced only with barbed wire, said Dove Crawford, a spokeswoman for the Border Patrol.
The soldiers, outfitted in desert camouflage, pointed their rifles at the agent and shouted at him not to move, Crawford said. They lowered their weapons after about four minutes when the agent convinced them of who he was and where they were, she said. The soldiers then retreated into Mexico.
Okay, honest mistake and no one was harmed. But:
T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union for Border Patrol agents, said the incursions have created a disturbing pattern.
Bonner said there have been at least a half-dozen situations in recent years in which Mexican soldiers have entered U.S. territory and shot at Border Patrol agents.
“It’s a minor miracle that none of our agents have been killed or seriously injured,” he said.
“It’s inexcusable to not know where the border is” when military units have global positioning capabilities, Bonner said.
The instances in which the Border Patrol strays into Mexico are few and far between, Bonner said.
And “we have no incursions with Canada,” he added. “Absolutely none.”
It’s a good point about the GPS. This doesn’t need to happen, and it shouldn’t.
In the latest jarring illustration of the country’s doctor shortage, a family physician in Northern Ontario has used a lottery to determine which patients would be ejected from his overloaded practice.
Dr. Ken Runciman says he reluctantly eliminated about 100 patients in two separate draws to avoid having to provide assembly-line service or extend already onerous work hours, and admits the move has divided the community of Powassan.
Yet it was not the first time such methods have been employed to determine medical service. A new family practice in Newfoundland held a lottery last month to pick its caseload from among thousands of applicants. An Edmonton doctor selected names randomly earlier this year to pare 500 people from his heavy caseload. And in Ontario, regulators have heard reports of a number of other physicians also using draws to choose, or remove, patients. . .
The unusual practice seems to be a symptom of the times, said Jill Hefley, spokeswoman for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. A paucity of medical professionals has left an estimated five million Canadians without a family doctor.
UPDATE: More glorious socialized medicine in Britain:
The cleanliness of most NHS hospitals in England is threatened by frequent invasions of rats, fleas, bedbugs, flies and cockroaches, a report claims.
Figures released by the Conservatives show that 70% of NHS Trusts brought in pest controllers at least 50 times between January 2006 and March 2008.
Vermin were found in wards, clinics and even operating theatres. A patients’ group said the situation was revolting.
Amanda Carpenter was unable to verify a Washington Post story about some peculiar contributions to the McCain campaign, and asked the Post to put up or retract. (Via Instapundit.) They have now issued a correction that eviscerates the article.
This story was always rather odd, even before Carpenter took it apart, because they didn’t really have anything; just a few people who made (or, as it turned out, didn’t make) large contributions to McCain that you might think wouldn’t have.
Osama bin Laden’s former driver was convicted on one charge and acquitted on another Wednesday, handing the Bush administration a partial victory in the first U.S. war crimes trial in a half-century but failing to settle the debate over whether the proceeding was just.
A six-member military jury found Salim Ahmed Hamdan guilty of supporting al-Qaeda by driving and guarding the terrorist leader. The jurors found him not guilty of conspiring with bin Laden in terrorist attacks. The same uniformed jurors will hold another hearing Wednesday afternoon to determine a sentence.
Anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is planning to disarm the Mahdi Army by turning the militia into a civic and social service organization, a significant strategic shift, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. In a brochure obtained by the paper and confirmed by Sheikh Salah al-Obeidi, Sadr’s chief spokesman, the Mahdi Army will now be guided by Shiite spirituality instead of anti-American militancy. . .
The move, according to the Wall Street Journal, could further enhance the stability of Iraq amid a government military crackdown and dwindling popular support. The brochure states the al-Mumahidoon will undergo an intellectual and scientific jihad focusing on education, religion and social justice.
“[The army] is not allowed to use arms at all,” the brochure reportedly says.
A few months ago, Time was trumpeting that Sadr had beaten us. (To the best of my knowledge, they have never retracted that, either.) Now he’s converting his “army” into a sort of Shiite rotary club. How the (purportedly) mighty have fallen.
Tens of thousands of taxi drivers in Beijing have a tool that could become part of China’s all-out security campaign for the Olympic Games. Their vehicles have microphones — installed ostensibly for driver safety — that can be used to listen to passengers remotely.
The tiny listening devices, which are connected to a global positioning system able to track a cab’s location by satellite, have been installed in almost all of the city’s 70,000 taxis over the past three years, taxi drivers and industry officials say.
As with digital cameras used in cities such as London, Sydney or New York, the stated purpose of the microphones is to protect the driver. But whereas the devices in other countries can only record images, those devices in Beijing taxis can be remotely activated without the driver’s knowledge to eavesdrop on passengers, according to drivers and Yaxon Networks Co., a Chinese company that makes some of the systems used in Beijing. The machines can even remotely shut off engines.
Whether these microphones are used to spy on riders is unclear. Asked if police could listen in on conversations in taxis, a Beijing police official declined to comment, saying that such matters were “confidential” and that they were “not supposed to release such details to the public.”
According to Fred Kaplan, the Army promotion board, now chaired by General Petraeus, is finally promoting asymmetric warfare experts to General:
Any officer looking at the names on this panel—and the ones I’ve listed aren’t the only ones—would very clearly get the message: The Cold War is over, and so, finally, is the Cold War Army.
It didn’t work out so well the last time they tried it, and we have much more power in the region now. For a less crazy regime, I would call this an empty threat. With those guys, who knows.
Garbage collectors would inspect San Francisco residents’ trash to make sure pizza crusts aren’t mixed in with chip bags or wine bottles under a proposal by Mayor Gavin Newsom.
And if residents or businesses don’t separate the coffee grounds from the newspapers, they would face fines of up to $1,000 and eventually could have their garbage service stopped.
The plan to require proper sorting of refuse would be the nation’s first mandatory recycling and composting law. It would direct garbage collectors to inspect the trash to make sure it is put into the right blue, black or green bin, according to a draft of the legislation prepared by the city’s Department of the Environment.
The program is designed to limit the amount of food and foliage that goes into the city-contracted landfill in Alameda County, where the refuse takes up costly space and decomposes to form methane, one of the most potent of greenhouse gases. It will also help San Francisco, which city officials say currently diverts 70 percent of its waste from landfills, achieve a goal set by the Board of Supervisors to divert 75 percent by 2010 and have zero waste by 2020.
Environmentalists are growing harder and harder to parody.
POSTSCRIPT: Zero waste by 2020! That’s the best plan I’ve heard since Mike Huckabee said we should be free of energy consumption by 2017. The laws of thermodynamics are really just guidelines, after all.
In response to falling oil prices, Brian Noggle writes:
Brothers and sisters, this is why Congress must act now! It’s not important what action they take, whether it’s foolish rule against oil speculators or more sensible plans to allow off-shore drilling or oil exploration on public lands.
What is important is that our ruling political class realize that unless it acts, citizens might get the impression that market forces alone can cause declining gas prices, and that sometimes the rain falls without the dances of the rainmakers on the floors of the House and Senate.
I’ve just discovered WebCite, a great service that creates permanent archives of web pages for citation in scholarly works. It’s also useful for bloggers who want to link to a page that might be changed or deleted. Well done!
According to this LA Times report, a key member of Al Qaeda’s WMD effort, now captured, had problems with the glass ceiling:
One of the more elusive and mysterious figures linked to Al Qaeda — a Pakistani mother of three who studied biology at MIT and who authorities say spent years in the United States as a sleeper agent — was flown to New York on Monday night to face charges of attempting to kill U.S. military and FBI personnel in Afghanistan. The Justice Department, FBI and U.S. military in Afghanistan said that Aafia Siddiqui, 36, was arrested in Ghazni province three weeks ago. . .
For years, the FBI and the CIA have been desperately trying to find Siddiqui, who they say spent several years in Boston as a “fixer” for admitted Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, providing haven and logistical support for terrorist operatives that he sent to the United States to launch attacks. . .
One former CIA weapons of mass destruction analyst who tracked Siddiqui said that she became extremely frustrated years ago, however, when she was told by senior Al Qaeda leaders to help their cause by getting pregnant.
“They told her that the best thing she could do for Al Qaeda was to start popping out little jihadists,” said the former CIA officer, who left the agency in 2006. “She was furious; she knows more about this stuff than pretty much anyone in the organization.”
Siddiqui never gave up her desire to launch attacks against the United States and its allies, according to FBI and Justice Department records made public Monday night.
According to court papers, Afghan national police officers in Ghazni province, south of Kabul, the capital, observed Siddiqui acting suspiciously near the provincial governor’s compound July 17.
When they searched her handbag, they found documents relating to explosives, chemical weapons and weapons involving biological materials and radiological agents, along with descriptions of landmarks in New York City and elsewhere in the United States, and liquid and gel substances sealed in bottles and jars.
As Glenn Reynolds points out, she can’t allow a vote because she knows she would lose. Fine, but the Speaker is no dictator. This seems like a perfect use for a discharge petition. The signatures on a discharge petition are public (a 1993 reform that hasn’t yet been undone), so it would serve to put Democrats on record.
IOC president Jacques Rogge was accused of backtracking on promises of press freedoms Saturday and some Internet sites remained blocked less than a week before the Beijing Games begin. . .
“Let me be very clear on this,” said Rogge, speaking publicly for the first time since arriving in Beijing on Thursday. “We require that different media have the fullest access possible to report on the Olympic Games. And I’m adamant in saying there has been no deal whatsoever to accept restrictions. Our requirements are the same from host city to host city and remain unchanged since the IOC entered into a host city contract with Beijing in 2001.” . . .
“I’m not going to make an apology for something that the IOC is not responsible for,” Rogge said “We are not running the Internet in China. The Chinese authorities are running the Internet.”
Not reponsible, my ass. They knew what China was when they gave them the Olympics. Then there’s this:
During an IOC news conference earlier Saturday, Rogge was quoted as saying “foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China. There will be no censorship on the Internet.”
IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies suggested that Rogge, who is Belgian, may not have been precise when he spoke of “no censorship” because he was speaking in English, not his native tongue.
I don’t think that explanation — even if we were to believe it — is very good cover. The IOC president hasn’t had occasion to learn the meaning of the world “censorship”?
Hugo Chavez says two dozen Russian fighters can defeat the US Navy:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says 24 Sukhoi fighter jets have been delivered to Venezuela — and are ready to defend his country from “imperialist” aggressions.
Chavez claims the U.S. Navy’s Fourth Fleet poses a threat to Venezuela, and he’s vowing to push forward with a multibillion-dollar arms buildup aimed at dissuading a possible U.S. military strike. . .
U.S. officials deny Washington has designs on Venezuela.
The article doesn’t say what model the planes are, but Wikipedia says they’re Su-30MK2s. I understand it’s a decent plane (by non-Western standards), but not something that could go toe-to-toe with the US Navy in the unlikely event of a military showdown, particularly in such small numbers.
For years, when she approached Iraqi Army checkpoints and produced an identification card for soldiers to study for clues about her sect, Nadia Hashim used a simple formula to signal the mostly Shiite Muslim force that she, too, is a Shiite.
“I am one of you,” she’d say.
The soldiers would harass Sunnis, but they’d simply wave Hashim through.
Now her pat line gets her an official reproach.
When a relative used it recently, a soldier admonished the driver and the passengers. “‘We are Iraqis, and you shouldn’t say such a thing,’ ” recalled Hashim.
The 35-year-old mother of three said that for her and countless other Iraqis, the fact that soldiers are now using nationalist rather than sectarian language is a significant change. Being a Shiite is no longer key to her survival.
Clark Hoyt, the New York Times ombudsman, has written his inevitable column on his paper’s rejection of McCain’s op-ed piece. (Actually, it came out a week ago, but it never got much attention and I only went looking for it today.)
Hoyt admits the paper screwed up. He concludes:
In the midst of an intense presidential campaign, publishing an Op-Ed from one candidate without a plan for one from his opponent, invites just the sort of beating The Times is taking this week.
But his critique is really that they should have finessed the issue better; he excuses the actual rejection:
Andrew Rosenthal, the editor of the editorial page of The Times, said McCain’s Op-Ed was not rejected. Shipley was asking for revisions, just the way The Times asks every Op-Ed contributor for revisions, Rosenthal said. “Barack Obama’s Op-Ed was also edited,” Rosenthal said. “We asked for revisions, and it was edited. Every article in The New York Times gets edited.”
But McCain was not being asked for some minor, routine editing changes. What Shipley wanted amounted to a total rewrite.
This is a distinction without a difference. As anyone in academia knows, almost never is a paper rejected outright. Instead, the author is invited to resubmit the paper after making major revisions. Often, those required revisions are enough (or even intended) to scuttle the paper.
What revisions did the NYT ask of McCain? Just this:
“We don’t use the Op-Ed page for people to respond directly to articles in the paper or other Op-Eds. That’s what letters to the editor are for,” Rosenthal said. “The McCain campaign was aware of that before they sent in their draft.”
Shipley told Michael Goldfarb, the deputy director of communications for the McCain camp, “It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece.” The article “would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory – with troop levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the Senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan.”
The first bit (arguing that they don’t publish responses to op-eds as op-eds) is not really true, but more importantly it’s a red herring. If they wanted a non-response, they could have simply asked for that. Instead, they went on to give a set of requirements that were tantamount to an outline of the op-ed they would be willing to publish.
Here’s the point that Hoyt misses. The New York Times is hostile to McCain. They don’t want to publish an effective McCain piece, and even if they did, they don’t think like he does (as is quite evident from their outline’s talk of timetables). The New York Times simply cannot expect to dictate the content of an op-ed by the candidate they hate. If they really wanted to publish a piece from McCain, they needed to give him the latitude to convey his own message.
Hoyt misses two other points as well. First, their claimed “no response” rule, even if we accept that it is a real rule, hardly makes sense in this context. Obama’s op-ed attacked McCain, and attacked the policy McCain has advocated (i.e., the surge). Is it reasonable that Obama can attack McCain, but by virtue of having published first, he cannot be rebutted?
Second, even if we set aside the NYT outline, a piece explaining McCain’s policy would be pointless. He already has a record, and has consistently and publicly advocated the course that we are finally on. Unlike Obama, there is no need for McCain to explain what his policy is.
Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the nation’s voters say they’ve seen news coverage of the McCain campaign commercial that includes images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and suggests that Barack Obama is a celebrity just like them. Of those, just 22% say the ad was racist while 63% say it was not.
However, Obama’s comment that his Republican opponent will try to scare people because Obama does not look like all the other presidents on dollar bills was seen as racist by 53%. Thirty-eight percent (38%) disagree.
This is looking like a major unforced error by Obama.
In 2005, Congress considered energy legislation that included an off-shore inventory. The inventory would provide an estimate of our off-shore reserves. Taking it wouldn’t mean drilling; it would just tell us what’s out there. Yet Obama voted to kill the off-shore inventory provision. So, unfortunately, did John McCain. However, the effort to kill the inventory failed, and the first inventory report was issued in February 2006.
Obama, though, did not give up in his efforts to keep the public ignorant. In January 2007, he proposed legislation to eliminate the authorization to conduct the inventory, as established in the 2005 law. . . The key provision . . . provides that “Section 357 (42 U.S.C. 15912) (relating to comprehensive inventory of OCS oil and natural gas resources)” is “repealed as of the date of enactment of this act.” It’s my understanding that Obama is the only sponsor of this legislation.
Ironically, Obama called his legislation “The Oil SENSE Act.” How audacious a label for an act that would deprive the public of key information relevant to deciding whether off-shore drilling makes sense. . .
It’s wonderful that Obama now thinks it might be ok to drill off-shore, provided that such drilling is part of an “overarching really thoughtful” energy package. Perhaps now, as part of the package, Obama will stop opposing an inventory of our off-shore energy assets.
This AP headline caught my eye: “Hamas Says It is Closing in on Suspects in Deadly Bombing.” Is Hamas actually cracking down on suicide bombings against Israeli civilians?
Ha ha. Just kidding. They’re investigating a bombing staged (allegedly) by the rival Palestinian faction, Fatah, against Hamas:
Hamas security forces on Saturday battled fighters in a tribal stronghold where they say suspects in a deadly bombing last week were hiding. Two Hamas police officers were killed and 35 people wounded.
The fighting with machine guns and mortars raged around the stronghold of the Hilles clan, which is allied with Hamas rival Fatah. Loud explosions could be heard throughout Gaza City, and ambulances and police cruisers raced to the scene.
The six Hamas policemen were in a critical condition, a police spokesman said. He also reported 15 arrests.
It was the most violent confrontation between Hamas forces and Fatah supporters since last week’s deadly bombing, in which five Hamas militants and a six year-old girl were killed in a beachside attack.
Hamas blamed Fatah and arrested more than 200 Fatah supporters in the toughest crackdown since seizing Gaza by force last year. The group said the clan is hiding bombing suspects. The clan denies the charge, and said it would defend its homes.
Was it Barack Obama, who not so subtly pointed to John McCain and seemingly accused him of trying to scare voters by drawing attention to the fact that Obama doesn’t look like (read: he is African American) all the other presidents? Or was it McCain’s campaign, which cried foul over Obama’s statements with such vehemence that race became the story of the day on all the networks, in all the papers and on all the blogs? . . .
Four things are already clear from the controversy. First, Obama campaign officials, lacking any example of McCain ever pointing directly or indirectly at Obama’s race as an issue in the campaign, have backpedaled rapidly away from any suggestion that their Republican opponent is using the very tactics Obama suggested on Wednesday.
Campaign manager David Plouffe was pressed hard during a conference call on Thursday for examples and could not point to any. An inquiry to the Obama campaign later in the day produced no immediate response and later no answer to a direct question asking for evidence to buttress Obama’s suggestion that McCain would try to scare people into not voting for Obama because he’s black.
Most citizens know little about politics. They are rationally ignorant. Because there is so little chance that your vote will be decisive (less than 1 in 100 million in a presidential election), there’s no incentive to acquire political knowledge if your only reason for doing so is to cast a better-informed vote in order to ensure that the “right” candidate wins. Numerous studies find, however, that swing voters – defined as those who are in the ideological center and don’t have any strong identification with either party – are among the most ignorant. For example, in my research using questions from the 2000 National Election Study, I found that self-identified “Independent-Independents” could on average correctly answer only 9.5 of 31 basic political knowledge questions, scoring much lower than self-described “strong Democrats” (15.4) and “strong Republicans” (18.7). Many other studies find similar results.
Thus, the voters who know the least are the ones who tend to determine electoral outcomes. Not exactly a comforting thought.
Why do swing voters tend to be so much more ignorant than the rest of the electorate? It’s tempting to assume that it’s because they are stupid. However, ignorance is not the same thing as stupidity. Even very smart people are inevitably ignorant about a great many things. Indeed, as noted above, for most voters political ignorance is actually quite rational.
Barack Obama’s proposed “Emergency Economic Plan” is unabashed redistributionism. He would give one-time rebates of $1000 per family paid for by a “windfall profits tax” on oil companies. A purer form of buying support with stolen money I have never seen.
Setting aside the immorality of robbing Peter to bribe Paul, the windfall profits tax has been tried before and failed. According to the Tax Foundation, the Congressional Research Service (a non-political government agency that provides analysis services to Congress) found that Carter’s windfall profits tax raised one-quarter of the projected revenue (or one-eighth, depending on how you count), and hampered domestic oil development by 3-6%, thereby increasing US dependence on foreign oil by 8-17%. Obama wants to try it again.
Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, acknowledged on “Good Morning America” Friday that the candidate was referring, at least in part, to his ethnic background.
When pressed to explain the comment, Axelrod told “GMA” it meant, “He’s not from central casting when it comes to candidates for president of the United States. He’s new to Washington. Yes, he’s African-American.”
Barack Obama’s top strategist said Friday that John McCain’s campaign manufactured a racial debate when it accused Obama of “playing the race card” the day before. . .
Axelrod said in his interview Friday that Obama “in no way” intended his comments in Missouri to be interpreted as racial.
“He does this in a self-mocking way: ‘Look, I know I’m not from central casting when it comes to presidents of the United States. I am new. I am relatively young, I haven’t spent my life in Washington. And yes, I am African American, and that will be some fodder,’” he said.
But Obama was talking about Republican scare tactics at the time. And he has made the claim before.
At a June fundraiser in Florida, he said: “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. … They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black? He’s got a feisty wife.”
I’m confused. It’s not racial for Obama to refer to his race in the context of “Republican scare tactics,” but it is racial for McCain’s campaign to respond to that? How’s that work?
I think Obama is making a mistake to pick a fight on this terrain, where the facts are so favorable to McCain. They don’t want to blow this up, they want to make it go away.
. . . and Obama ought to know it, according to an NYT op-ed:
LAST weekend, Barack Obama dazzled crowds in Europe. Discussing international security, he spoke eloquently about needing an American-European partnership to defeat terrorism.
In Paris, he said that “terrorism cannot be solved by any one country alone,” and that we should establish partnerships. In Berlin, he expressed hope that Europeans and Americans “can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks” of terrorists worldwide.
But there’s one problem. We already have a counterterrorism partnership with the European Union. And it works. Indeed, despite news media caricatures of aggressive Americans feuding with pacifist Europeans, both groups are quite serious about protecting citizens by working together. . .
In 2004, J. Cofer Black, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, testified about the success of these partnerships before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on European affairs. Had Senator Obama, who now heads that subcommittee, read the transcripts from the meeting, which took place before he came to office, or had he held a similar hearing, he might have known that the partnerships he called for last week already exist.
After years of investment and sacrifice, Americans and Europeans deserve accurate information about our efforts to defeat international terrorism, especially from a prospective commander in chief.
UPDATE: Power Line has some text the NYT cut from the piece. Here’s the original ending:
In 2004, the top State Department counter-terrorism official testified about such success before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Subcommittee on European Affairs. Interestingly, Senator Obama now chairs the same committee yet has not held a single hearing to become informed about the US-EU counter-terrorism partnership.
He explains that he has been too busy campaigning while maintaining that he possesses sound judgment. Yet, in matters of international cooperation against terrorism, the best judgment is informed judgment. As a potential commander-in-chief, Senator Obama would do well to study the successful US-EU counter-terrorism partnership and support its continued success.
One way to do that when overseas is not to focus on dazzling a public that envisions the next Kennedy gracing Berlin’s streets. Instead, he can learn from the intelligence and law enforcement professionals in Europe who protect the public. Otherwise, they may revise the famous quote in honor of Senator Obama: “Ich bin ein Beginner.”
In an aside about the Landstuhl controversy (one actually irrelevant to their article) Time treats the Obama campaign’s explanation as fact:
The new McCain story line has also been hurt by factual problems in many of their charges, which could cause McCain problems over time. . . [An advertisement] suggested that Obama avoided meeting with troops in Germany because he could not bring along the media to make it a photo op. In truth, Obama canceled the meeting because he did not want to be accused of holding a campaign event with wounded soldiers.
Wrong. In truth, we don’t know exactly why Obama canceled the meeting. However, we do have most of the story, and we do know that it was not for the reason the Obama campaign originally gave (concern over appearances of a campaign event), nor was it for the second reason the campaign gave (the Pentagon scuttled the visit). By Obama’s own admission, the reason had to do with the hospital’s refusal to allow a particular campaign operative, retired general Jonathan Gration, to attend.
McCain’s accusation was supported by an NBC News report that indicated the visit was cancelled because campaign staff and the media would not be permitted to attend. As it turned out, NBC was on to something, but garbled the facts. Consequently, McCain is no longer running the ad.
Time is entitled to slant its articles in favor of Obama, but it ought to get the facts right.
You can’t make this stuff up: Louise Lucas, a Democratic Virginia state senator, drives a Hummer to her press conference blasting John McCain’s energy policy.
Sen. Barack Obama’s chief strategist conceded that the Democratic presidential candidate was referring to his race when he said Republicans were trying to scare voters by suggesting Obama “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”
The comment had triggered a charge Thursday from Sen. John McCain’s campaign manager that Obama had “played the race card… from the bottom of the deck.”
Obama’s camp initially denied the remark was a reference to Obama’s race. . . “He was referring to the fact that he didn’t come into the race with the history of others,” Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday. “It is not about race.”
But Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, acknowledged on “Good Morning America” Friday that the candidate was referring, at least in part, to his ethnic background.
When pressed to explain the comment, Axelrod told “GMA” it meant, “He’s not from central casting when it comes to candidates for president of the United States. He’s new to Washington. Yes, he’s African-American.”
That seemingly obvious reference sparked the first real fireworks between the two camps as backers of both candidates accused the other of trying to subtly inject race into the presidential contest.
Curiously, Axelrod also conceded that McCain’s “Celebrity” ad was not racist:
The Obama campaign made clear Thursday that they did not believe McCain was using Obama’s race, but accused the Republicans of “low road politics.”
(ASIDE: Will Josh Marshall and the New York Times retract their accusations of racism now? I won’t be holding my breath.)
For my part, I think it was a good ad. Obama has striking weaknesses as a candidate. He has no legislative accomplishments to speak of, is the most liberal Senator, ispronetogaffes, and has a bizarre inability to admit even obviousmistakes. But Obama is not a mere candidate, he is a phenomenon. His rallies resemble rock concerts or revival meetings as much as political rallies. When he travels, all the major anchors travel with him. Pop stars compose videos that sing his praises and recite his speeches. Indeed, many of his followers (including his wife) see him as a literal messiah.
For McCain to win, he needs to cut Obama down from a phenomenon to a candidate. That’s what the “Celebrity” ad tries to do: ridicule the Obama phenomenon and get voters to see him as a mere candidate. As a candidate, Obama can be beaten.
Of course Obama and his adoring fans hate the ad. Not only is it effective, but as the saying goes, “one easily bears moral reproof, but never mockery.”
Posted by K. Crary 
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