Along the lines of my post yesterday about the media's shameless backing of Barack Obama, here's another example:

A Top Obama Fund-Raiser Had Ties to Failed Bank
By JOHN R. EMSHWILLER
July 21, 2008; Wall Street Journal Page A10

For the Pritzker family of Chicago, the 2001 collapse of subprime-mortgage lender Superior Bank was an embarrassing failure in a corner of their giant business empire.
Billionaire Penny Pritzker helped run Hinsdale, Ill.-based Superior, overseeing her family's 50% ownership stake. She now serves as Barack Obama's national campaign-finance chairwoman, which means her banking past could prove to be an embarrassment to her -- and perhaps to the campaign.

Superior was seized in 2001 and later closed by federal regulators. Government investigators and consumer advocates have contended that Superior engaged in unsound financial activities and predatory lending practices. Ms. Pritzker, a longtime friend and supporter of Sen. Obama, served for a time as Superior's chairman, and later sat on the board of its holding company.

Sen. Obama has long criticized predatory subprime mortgage lenders and urged strong actions against them.
Just another case of Obama's "Do as I say, not as I do" campaign. But I noticed -- other than this story only appearing in the WSJ, not saturated daily in the NYT and every 10 minutes on CNN -- that this was run on page A10.

Dollars to donuts, had Obama been Republican you can bet this would have made page 1.

Labels: 2008, corruption, media bias, Obama

The New York Times has declined to publish an op-ed by Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, Drudge reports. Why? According to the explanation by the NYT Op-Ed editor, David "Chicken" Shipley, it just wasn't Obama enough. Chicken Shipley said that if McCain would rewrite it so that it "mirrors Senator Obama's piece" - yes, no joke, he actually wrote that - the NYT would be pleased to run it.

Why refuse to run it? Because in the marketplace of free ideas the left routinely gets it's collective butt kicked. And they know it.

This egregious case of leftward media slant, denying any evidence of victory in Iraq which McCain cites in his op-ed, is proof of that. They simply can't compete. Worse, the NYT and their Copperhead ilk spent so much ink and whining promoting defeatism in Iraq for 5 years that rather then admit wrong and premature commitment to defeat they just avoid the facts on the ground in Iraq. Period.

They redefine diversity, inclusiveness, open-mindedness, enlightenment, intellectualism, all the other leftist buzzwords, etc., to mean that they'll just refuse to acknowledge any opinion that doesn't neatly fit their "progressive" point of view. Well, I'm laughing at their superior intellect.

Because, for conservatives, having the New York Times refuse to publish your opinion is a badge of honor. Shipley, such the schmuck that he is, will probably help McCain by promoting his op-ed, and getting more people to read it, than would have happened had they just run the piece. What a moron.

Here's the McCain op-ed which the NYT was too scared to run.

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation "hard" but not "hopeless." Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there," he said on January 10, 2007. "In fact, I think it will do the reverse."

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that "our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence." But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, "Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress." Even more heartening has been progress that's not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama's determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his "plan for Iraq" in advance of his first "fact finding" trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military's readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five "surge" brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his "plan for Iraq." Perhaps that's because he doesn't want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be "very dangerous."

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we've had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the "Mission Accomplished" banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don't win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

Labels: 2008, Iraq, mccain, media bias, NYT, Obama

Barack Obama isn't bilingual. Neither are his children. But he's "embarrassed" because the rest of us are just like him. More condescending nonsense from the Obama camp:

[Investors Business Daily] Obama peddled his Ameriphobic nonsense at a town hall meeting Tuesday morning in Powder Springs, Ga. Asked a simple question about what he'd do to stop teenagers from dropping out of school — more of a job for a student body president than a U.S. president — he lost the plot, as the (English-speaking) Australians like to say, venturing into dangerous (for him) no-teleprompter territory.

"I agree that immigrants should learn English," he ranted. "But understand this: Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they'll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. "You know, it's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say (is), 'Merci beaucoup.' "

Does he think that one day the rest of the world will stop speaking English just to keep single-language Americans out of the loop? Is he aware that English, as an example, is the worldwide official air-traffic-control language? Has he ever talked to foreign businessmen — or any businessman at all, for that matter — who have different native tongues, yet speak English to each other so they can be understood? Or is he trying to establish some cosmopolitan street-cred with the hipsters who fawn over him?

English became the global language because Britain spread its mother tongue through colonization and trade. And the U.S. sailed capitalism, ambition, a tireless work habit, fairness, justice, the rule of law and a rigorous military defense against tyranny to the top of the world. It's not fashionable to say so in the circles that Obama travels in, but the power and universality of the English language confirm — and strengthen — America's way of life.
Exactly. The world's citizens don't learn English because they have some enlightened attitude that Americans do not. They learn it because so many of them, for several hundred years, had to in order to be successful and compete. Example, just as a greater percentage of American military and politicians spoke French, say, circa 1780 -- it served a necessity! Today, Europeans learn English because the United States conducts business globally, has an annual Gross Domestic Product of $13 trillion -- grossly more than any other country on the planet -- and because they're (Europeans) more likely to vacation here than we are there.

And here I was told that Obama was supposed to be brilliant. His opening comment, the idea that if we learn Spanish our overwhelming influx of illegal immigrats -- mostly from Mexico -- will be more likely to learn English, is juvanile. If Bush said such a thing, he'd be ridiculed, and justly so.

On the contrary to Obamanomics, the opposite is true. Why bother learning English if everyone speaks Spanish? Were you to move to Japan you'd learn Japanese because you'd have to do so, but you wouldn't bother if they all spoke English, right? Else, what's the point?

And while we're on the topic, why should any American bother learning a European language, especially French? The last time I checked, France wasn't exactly becoming an economic powerhouse. Seems to me, if you're going to make the argument, we better learn Chinese.

Finally, Obama's point doesn't sit well with Americans at large (hat tip to Jim Geraghty)

Eighty-three percent (83%) place a higher priority on encouraging immigrants to speak English as their primary language. Just 13% take the opposite view and say it is more important for Americans to learn other languages.
But what do they know? I mean, how dare they question the hypocrisy of the messianic Rockstar-in-Chief Barack Obama.

Labels: 2008, academic bias, Economics, media bias, Obama

The Metaphysics and Some Politics of Global Warming

Regarding Bret Stephens's "Global Warming as Mass Neurosis" (Global View, July 1): In 1992, at my 25th Harvard College reunion, we got an accurate forecast of the "ideological convenience" driving global warming alarmism. In a discussion of the Rio Summit on environment and development, one of my classmates effused, "Who would have thought that the environment would bring us world government?" In other words, the advent of world-wide "pollution" controls will lead to world government (which all of us statist Harvard grads eagerly await).

On the other hand, climatologist Patrick Michaels has noted that we merely need to "follow the money" to explain global warming enthusiasm among scientists and academicians: Huge amounts of taxpayer dollars are running down the drain of climate research, and the people raking in the bucks are the same ones spouting the global warming nonsense.

--Grant W. Schaumburg Jr.
Boston

Labels: climate, corruption, earmarks, environment as religion, global warming, media bias, taxes

The fatal defeatists of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, etc., may all believe we're losing in Iraq, but apparently Iraq's neighbors do not:

[WSJ] The Prime Minister is also making it clear to his Arab neighbors that his government is not about to collapse. Apparently, they believe him: Jordan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have announced plans to break the Arab diplomatic embargo of Iraq and return their ambassadors to Baghdad; the UAE has also forgiven $7 billion of Iraqi debt. Perhaps Saudi Arabia and Egypt will follow.
Ho-hum, more just desserts from the Petraeus surge and not a word from our mainstream media regarding it. Indeed, antiwar liberals as a whole have invested so much in our defeat in Iraq that they choose to ignore any facts of success, especially since good news in Iraq translates to a more competitive campaign from John McCain. And the mainstream media certainly can't have anyone ruining the promotion of their favorate rock-star-in-chief, Barack Obama.

Example: what hardball toics did NBC Today Show co-anchor Meredith Vieira press upon Obama? His shopping habits and that he liked pie over candy and junk food. Tough stuff.

The, ahem, hard-hitting program spent 20 minutes on the Obama family. Can the McCain family expect equal time from NBC? Of course, that might be more difficult since McCain's two sons are both serving in our armed forces, one having served in Iraq.

But back to the lecture at hand, the MSM's obvious antiwar slant in its Iraq coverage.

Gerard Baker of the UK Times explains:

the evidence is now overwhelming that on all fronts, despite inevitable losses from time to time, it is we who are advancing and the enemy who is in retreat. The current mood on both sides of the Atlantic, in fact, represents a kind of curious inversion of the great French soldier's dictum: "Success against the Taleban. Enemy giving way in Iraq. Al-Qaeda on the run. Situation dire. Let's retreat!"

... Since it is remarkable how pervasive this pessimism is, it's worth recapping what has been achieved in the past few years.

Afghanistan has been a signal success. There has been much focus on the latest counter-offensive by the Taleban in the southeast of the country and it would be churlish to minimise the ferocity with which the terrorists are fighting, but it would be much more foolish to understate the scale of the continuing Nato achievement. Establishing a stable government for the whole nation is painstaking work, years in the making. It might never be completed. But that was not the principal objective of the war there.

Until the US-led invasion in 2001, Afghanistan was the cockpit of ascendant Islamist terrorism. Consider the bigger picture. Between 1998 and 2005 there were five big terrorist attacks against Western targets - the bombings of the US embassies in Africa in 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, 9/11, and the Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005. All owed their success either exclusively or largely to Afghanistan's status as a training and planning base for al-Qaeda.

In the past three years there has been no attack on anything like that scale. Al-Qaeda has been driven into a state of permanent flight. Its ability to train jihadists has been severely compromised; its financial networks have been ripped apart. Thousands of its activists and enablers have been killed. It's true that Osama bin Laden's forces have been regrouping in the border areas of Pakistan but their ability to orchestrate mass terrorism there is severely attenuated. And there are encouraging signs that Pakistanis are starting to take to the offensive against them.

Next time you hear someone say that the war in Afghanistan is an exercise in futility ask them this: do they seriously think that if the US and its allies had not ousted the Taleban and sustained an offensive against them for six years that there would have been no more terrorist attacks in the West? What characterised Islamist terrorism before the Afghan war was increasing sophistication, boldness and terrifying efficiency. What has characterised the terrorist attacks in the past few years has been their crudeness, insignificance and a faintly comical ineptitude (remember Glasgow airport?)

The second great advance in the War on Terror has been in Iraq. There's no need to recapitulate the disasters of the US-led war from the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 to his execution at the end of 2006. We may never fully make up for three and a half lost years of hubris and incompetence but in the last 18 months the change has been startling.

The "surge", despite all the doubts and derision at the time, has been a triumph of US military planning and execution. Political progress was slower in coming but is now evident too. The Iraqi leadership has shown great courage and dispatch in extirpating extremists and a growing willingness even to turn on Shia militias.

Basra is more peaceful and safer than it has been since before the British moved in. Despite setbacks such as yesterday's bombings, the streets of Iraq's cities are calmer and safer than they have been in years. Seventy companies have bid for oil contracts from the Iraqi Government. There are signs of a real political reconciliation that may reach fruition in the election later this year.

The third and perhaps most significant advance of all in the War on Terror is the discrediting of the Islamist creed and its appeal.

This was first of all evident in Iraq, where the head-hacking frenzy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates so alienated the majority of Muslims that it gave rise to the so-called Sunni Awakening that enabled the surge to be so effective.

But it has spread way beyond Iraq. As Lawrence Wright described in an important piece in The New Yorker last month, there is growing disgust not just among moderate Muslims but even among other jihadists at the extremism of the terrorists.

Deeply encouraging has been the widespread revulsion in Muslim communities in Europe - especially in Britain after the 7/7 attacks of three years ago. Some of the biggest intelligence breakthroughs in the past few years have been achieved from former al-Qaeda supporters who have turned against the movement.

There ought to be no surprise here. It's only their apologists in the Western media who really failed to see the intrinsic evil of Islamists. Those who have had to live with it have never been in much doubt about what it represents. Ask the people of Iran. Or those who fled the horrors of Afghanistan under the Taleban.

This is why we fight. Primarily, of course, to protect ourselves from the immediate threat of terrorist carnage, but also because we know that extending the embrace of a civilisation that liberates everyone makes us all safer.

Every death is an unspeakable tragedy. It's right that each time a soldier is killed in action we ask why. Was it really worth it?

The right response to the loss of brave souls such as Corporal Sarah Bryant, the first British woman to die in Afghanistan, is not an immediate call for retreat. It is, first of all, pride; a great, deep conviction that it is on such sacrifice that our own freedoms have always rested. Then, defiance. How foolish is the enemy that it might think our grief is really some prelude to their victory? Finally, confidence. We are prevailing in this struggle. We know it. And everywhere: in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and among Muslims around the world, the enemy knows it too.

Labels: 2008, Iraq, mccain, media bias, Obama, Petraeus

Haditha Justice
Marines vs. smears.

By Michelle Malkin

Yet another U.S. Marine, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, had charges dropped Tuesday in the so-called Haditha massacre — bringing the total number of Marines who’ve been cleared or won case dismissals in the Iraq-war incident to seven. “Undue command influence” on the prosecution led to the outcome in Chessani’s case. Bottom line: That’s zero for seven for military prosecutors, with one trial left to go.

I repeat: Haditha prosecution goes 0-7. But you won’t see that headline in the same Armageddon-sized font the New York Times used repeatedly when the story first broke.

The Times, Rep. John Murtha (D., Pa.), and the rest of the antiwar drum-pounders who fueled the smear campaign against the troops two years ago should hang their hands in shame. They won’t, of course. Perpetuating the “cold-blooded Marines” narrative means never having to say you’re sorry.

It means never having to look Lt. Col. Chessani (charges dismissed), Lt. Andrew Grayson (acquitted), Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum (charges dismissed), Capt. Lucas McConnell (charges dismissed), Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt (charges dismissed), Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz (charges dismissed), Sgt. Frank Wuterich (awaiting trial), and their families in the eyes and apologize for the preemptive character assassination they all faced at the hands of the hyperventilating, noose-hanging press.

Murtha and company applied Queen of Hearts (“Off with their heads!”) treatment to our own men and women in uniform while giving more benefit of the doubt to foreign terror suspects at Gitmo. It is worth recalling, because the press won’t do it for you, what they concluded about the now-crumbling Haditha case in the summer of 2006 before a single formal charge had been filed.

MSNBC hangman Keith Olbermann, who couldn’t wait to define the entire war in Iraq by a single moment about which he knew nothing, inveighed that the incident was “willful targeted brutality.” Due process? For convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, of course. For our military? Never mind.

Far-left The Nation magazine railed, “Enough details have emerged . . . to conclude that . . . members of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment perpetrated a massacre.” The publication also judged the event “a willful, targeted brutality designed to send a message to Iraqis.” Not content with hanging the troops, The Nation pinned blame on the president and a so-called “culture of impunity” that supposedly permeates the most accountable military in the world.

Singing the same tune as The Nation, the New York Times spilled a flood of front-page ink on the case and took things a step further in a lead editorial blaming not just President Bush, but also top Pentagon brass for the “nightmare” killings in Haditha. Times reporter Paul von Zielbauer filed over 30 stories on the case, which the paper wishfully called the “defining atrocity” of the Iraq war.

Hoping to facilitate a self-fulfilling prophecy, media tools around the world likened Haditha to the Vietnam War’s most infamous atrocity — from the Guardian (“My Lai on the Euphrates?”) to the London Telegraph (“Massacre in Iraq just like My Lai”) to the Los Angeles Times (“What happened at the Iraqi My Lai?”) to the New York Times’s Maureen Dowd (“My Lai acid flashback”) and the Associated Press, which reached into its photo archives to run a 1970 file photo of My Lai to illustrate a Haditha article.

And, of course, there’s the permanent stain left by the slanderous propaganda of Rep. Murtha — the stab in the Marines’ backs heard ‘round the world: “Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.”

Relatives of the Haditha Marines have called for Congress to censure Murtha, who cuts and runs to the nearest elevator when questioned about the Haditha dismissals. He and the Haditha smear merchants have skated while the men and their families suffered global whippings on the airwaves and eternal demonization in print. Whose “culture of impunity”?

Labels: Haditha, Iraq, media bias, Murtha, Smearing the Troops

"I am for having women in the newsroom and minorities in the newsroom -- I'm all for it. It opens up our eyes and gives us different perspectives. But just as well, let's have people with military experience; let's have people from all walks of life, people from the top-echelon schools but also people from junior colleges and the so-called middling schools -- that's the pageantry of America . . . You need cultural diversity, you need ideological diversity. You need it."

That's a quote from an interview Tim Russert had with Bernard Goldberg, author of the 2001 hit exposing mainstream media slant, Bias.

Labels: media bias

Even the Washington Post notices that fellow news agencies have ignored some very important and good turning points in Iraq, especially regarding the ability of Iraqis to govern themselves:

THERE'S BEEN a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks -- which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington's attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have "never been closer to defeat than they are now."

Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained "special groups" that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. It is -- of course -- too early to celebrate; though now in disarray, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr could still regroup, and Iran will almost certainly seek to stir up new violence before the U.S. and Iraqi elections this fall. Still, the rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments -- and it ought to mandate an already-overdue rethinking by the "this-war-is-lost" caucus in Washington, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

Gen. David H. Petraeus signaled one adjustment in recent testimony to Congress, saying that he would probably recommend troop reductions in the fall going beyond the ongoing pullback of the five "surge" brigades deployed last year. Gen. Petraeus pointed out that attacks in Iraq hit a four-year low in mid-May and that Iraqi forces were finally taking the lead in combat and on multiple fronts at once -- something that was inconceivable a year ago. As a result the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki now has "unparalleled" public support, as Gen. Petraeus put it, and U.S. casualties are dropping sharply. Eighteen American soldiers died in May, the lowest total of the war and an 86 percent drop from the 126 who died in May 2007.

If the positive trends continue, proponents of withdrawing most U.S. troops, such as Mr. Obama, might be able to responsibly carry out further pullouts next year. Still, the likely Democratic nominee needs a plan for Iraq based on sustaining an improving situation, rather than abandoning a failed enterprise. That will mean tying withdrawals to the evolution of the Iraqi army and government, rather than an arbitrary timetable; Iraq's 2009 elections will be crucial. It also should mean providing enough troops and air power to continue backing up Iraqi army operations such as those in Basra and Sadr City. When Mr. Obama floated his strategy for Iraq last year, the United States appeared doomed to defeat. Now he needs a plan for success.

Labels: Iraq, media bias, Petraeus

The following retort of Scott McClellan's book-bash of Bush is from Peter Wehner, a former deputy assistant to the president, who knew and worked along side Scott McClellan.

He [Scott McClellan] would have us believe that the Bush administration was, at bottom, massively and deeply deceitful and corrupt — but this has only dawned on Scott since he started writing his book, years after the fact. Let's just say that for these revelations to spring forth as if truth were like a time-released capsule, in which things magically get clearer with the passage of time (and the signing of book contracts), is, well, suspicious. And my former colleagues are absolutely right to point out that Scott not only never raised any objections contemporaneously, in meetings or with his superiors; in fact, he said almost nothing at all, at any time, about anything of consequence. ... Scott seems to be that rare bird who kept those concerns suppressed, if he had them at all. And now, years later, he finally feels liberated to make arguments he didn't appear to believe at the time.

Scott's broader claim that "in some small way" his hope is to "move us beyond the destructive partisan warfare of the past 15 years" and that he wants to "contribute to [a] national conversation" about making our politics higher and better is not terribly persuasive. The same can be said about his complaints about his disdain for "the Washington game." In fact, one of the oldest games in Washington is to turn against those in power who cared for you and gave you the greatest opportunity in your life to serve this nation — and to do so in a book, for which you received a hefty advance.
It's also been pointed out that one of McClellan's suppossed turning points was upon learning that he had been lied to by Karl Rove, who claimed he had nothing to do with the leak of Valerie Plame's name. Just one problem with that -- the man who admitted to leaking Plame's name was Richard Armitage, not Karl Rove. How can one be betrayed by someone who didn't betray?

Labels: mcclellan, media bias, PlameGate, revisionist history

I'll say this for Scott McClellan, at last he learned how to communicate. He was, to my mind, one of the worst press secretaries in presidential history — at least in modern times, continually cowed by the press, never able to show any confidence, and making us all wince whenever he held a briefing.

His book, titled What Happened, seems to go after Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, the president and others. The main releases we read about are how the president bollixed the response to Katrina and how the White House made a political campaign of the Iraq war, using, as Scott puts it, "a propaganda campaign."

The first thing to ask about these kinds of books is "does it help history, does it shed light, does it add to the sum total of knowledge about a topic history or contemporary analysis can use to shed light on an administration?" OR, rather, "is this a self-aggrandizing after-the-fact justification to bolster one's own reputation and credibility?" especially after having done such a poor job in the first place.

I think we'll probably find this book is mostly of the latter category. The evidence I've seen does in fact show that the administration had different justifications for the liberation of Iraq — but we saw them plainly and in the open before as well as after the invasion. The president, the secretary of state, the VP, and many others gave lots of reasons for the invasion of Iraq. There were international legal cases, there were public policy cases, there were national security cases all to be made. And they were. The idea that the press didn't do its job and was too soft on the president — as McClellan writes — is, frankly, laughable. Raise your hand if you have any evidence that the press was too soft on the administration.

As far as Katrina, I think we all know and can admit it was both a public policy and public relations disaster. We had a bad FEMA director, the president should not have flown over the disaster, or said Michael Brown was doing a good job. But it wasn't just the administration that didn't do so hot. I seem to recall state and local officials, those who had more access to the facts on the ground, those tasked with evacuation plans, those responsible for the city and state, were pretty unprepared as well. Heck, the mayor's family fled the state. Not the city, the state.

Finally, we'll learn more as those written about in his book speak out. I note Fran Townsend is already on record saying she recalls no meeting where Scott McClellan ever objected to what was being said or made his dissenting views known. And I'll just leave you with this — having not read the book and having no plans to do so: don't you think that when someone has an objection to what is being done, they owe it to the public and as a mark of duty to do something about it or say something about it at the time, rather than wait two years and save it for a book? Does that in and of itself not cut down some of the credibility.

The job of press secretary is not easy, but it can be done well, as Tony Snow and Dana Perino have shown. You want a Democratic example, I always thought Mike McCurry did a good job — and with good cheer in a tough time. But I'll say one other thing, too. I think this genre of book is losing its cachet, and people are getting a little tired of the game which goes something like this: Get a high-level job, make your name and reputation, do an average job at it, then write a book after you leave that helps nobody but bolsters your own reputation at the expense of those without book contracts. It's one of the uglier things in Washington, and as I say, I think its days will soon be over. People are tired of it.

-- Seth Leibsohn

Labels: mcclellan, media bias, revisionist history

Investors Business Daily has a quick retort of the factually-challenged HBO film, Recount, suggesting that Bush stole the 2000 election. What was it Joesph Goebbels said? "...when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous."

Goebbels was attempting to criticize Churchill at that time, but the concept of the big lie -- that saturation and repetition of propaganda will revise memory of factual history -- has been elevated to pathetic heights vis-a-vis liberal romanticizing of the 2000 election.

In all its specific and unambiguous language, the [Florida state] law clearly stated in section 102.111: "If the county returns are not received by the Department of State by 5 p.m. of the seventh day following election, all missing counties shall be ignored, and the results shown by the returns on file shall be certified."

All the U.S. Supreme Court decided was to reaffirm that, according to the U.S. Constitution, the manner in which elections are conducted is up to each individual state and that the will of the people as expressed through the laws enacted by the popularly elected Florida legislature stood and could not be overturned by a Florida Supreme Court legislating from the bench.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says: "The principal issue in this case, whether the scheme that the Florida Supreme Court had put together violated the federal Constitution, that wasn't even close. The vote was 7 to 2." It was Al Gore, he adds, "who made it a judicial question. It was he who brought it into the federal courts."

All the votes were counted, and recounted, and counted again. And not a single recount, either by local boards or major news organizations, found a way for Gore to win. A comprehensive review of 64,248 ballots in all 67 Florida counties by the Miami Herald and its parent company, Knight Ridder, in partnership with USA Today, found that Bush's slender margin of 537 votes would have tripled to 1,665 votes even under the generous counting standards advocated by Gore.

Another review conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the request of CNN, the New York Times and other news organizations found that Bush still would have won Florida even if the U.S. Supreme Court had not ended the nonsense.

In 2000, the election boards of Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties were all controlled by Democrats. The infamous butterfly ballot was designed by a Democrat. The attorney general of Florida at that time was Democrat Robert Butterworth.

Voters were instructed at the polling place: "After voting, check your ballot card to make sure your voting selections are clearly and cleanly punched and there are no chads left hanging on the back of the card."

The fact is, Gore himself requested recounts in only four counties where he thought he might gain votes, not lose them. Gore lost not because Florida was "stolen," but because he couldn't carry his home state of Tennessee, the people who knew him best.

Labels: Bush-Gore, Hollywood bias, media bias, revisionist history

Jim VandeHei and Josh Kraushaar report that "the GOP is heading into the 2008 election without a single minority candidate with a plausible chance of winning a campaign for the House, the Senate or governor." First, note the weasel words: "plausible chance of winning." That's meant to exclude candidates like Allen West. Why didn't VandeHei and Kraushaar simply write: "The five to ten GOP candidates who have a shot of winning Democratic seats are white"? Well, that's not provocative enough to make it up on Drudge, now is it?

Also, VandeHei and Kraushaar ask: "So who's to blame for this diversity deficit?" They cite Jack Kemp, who says it's due to a "pitiful" recruitment effort, and a former black GOP candidate, who says it's because the GOP is broke. Good points. But VandeHei and Kraushaar never mention the vile attacks by liberals upon GOP minority candidates. For example, Democrats darkened Bobby Jindal's skin in a 2003 election, and even after his victory, he still endures accusations of "being a 'potato': brown on the outside, white on the inside," as the Washington Post reported.

And who can forget the case of 2006 Maryland Senate candidate, Lt. Gov. Michael Steele? The Washington Times reported: "attacks against the first black man to win a statewide election in Maryland include pelting him with Oreo cookies during a campaign appearance, calling him an 'Uncle Tom' and depicting him as a black-faced minstrel on a liberal Web log."

So Howard Dean's got a pretty good racket. First, slam the GOP as a "white Christian party." Then ruthlessly attack GOP minority candidates for betraying "their people." When the GOP fails to recruit a decent number of minority candidates, sit back, relax, and wait for the mainstream media to publicize your talking points.

-- Mike Goldfarb, Weekly Standard

Labels: 2008, media bias

Here's a rather odd splitting of hairs -- Time Magazine's "objective" reporter Joe Klein takes John McCain to task because Barack Obama has never said he'd talk with Ahmadinejad specifically, just Iran's leaders, which is to say Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Um, Joe, how is that better than talking to Ahmadinejad?

[From Joe Klein's Time.com blog] At a press conference here, I just asked John McCain about why he keeps talking about Obama's alleged willingness to talk to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has no power over Iranian foreign policy, rather than Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who does. He said that Ahmadinejad is the guy who represents Iran in international forums like the United Nations, which is a fair point. When I followed with the observation that the Supreme Leader is, uh, the Supreme Leader, McCain responded that the "average American" thinks Ahmadinejad is the boss. Didn't get a chance to follow up to that, but I would have asked, "But isn't it your job to correct those sorts of mistaken impressions on the part of the American public?" Oh well... As I said below, there is a real debate lurking beneath all this bluster--whether we directly engage our adversaries, as we did during the cold war. McCain says no. Obama says yes. They should have it out in debate.
Again, nonsensical hair splitting.

Sure, technically, the Ayatollah and his Supreme Council (i.e., the Ayatollah and 11 mullahs) call all the shots. But Ahmadinejad, as McCain pointed out, is their boy, and he's hardly powerless.

In any event, this is irrelevant.

What is relevant is Klein's second point - that we "engaged" our adversaries during the Cold War. The thing is, Klein is backwards on his conclusions. Then again, reporters are often ignorant of history.

Many key points:

* Iran is not the Soviet Union. It is nowhere near as powerful or influential and thus it's a mistake to elevate them as such.

* We didn't have direct talks with the Soviets and Chinese because we wanted to. We did so because we had to. See point one.

* This isn't the Cold War. Under Nixon, we talked with China in large part to leverage them off of the Soviets. We correctly identified a weakness in their supposed Communist alliance. Thus, we didn't talk with our enemies out of anything but a strategy to undermine them, not because of some highbrow liberalism like Obama and company propose.

* Finally, Reagan didn't get elected, pick up the telephone and start talking to the Soviets, as our misinformed revisionist-history liberal friends keep stating. Indeed, Gorbachev wasn't even leader of the USSR when Reagan took office, Leonid Brezhnev was. Reagan met with Brezhnev with preconditions (namely, the US brazenly placed scores of Pershing II missiles in Europe), not without preconditions, as Barack Obama's own website claims he'd do with Iran (Obama's website: "Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.")

* It wasn't until Gorbachev took office that Reagan got anywhere with the Soviets, because the West recognized that Gorby was someone we could reason with. So even if one wants to elevate Iran to the status of the USSR (folly #1), neither the Ayatollah nor Ahmadinejad are anywhere near the reasonable guy that Gorby was (folly #2).

* At bare minimum, Reagan only talked with his enemies from a position of strength (did I mention the Pershing II missiles parked in Russia's back yard?). He likewise didn't fail to call a spade a spade. He reminded the Soviets at every turn of their cruelty - calling them the "Evil Empire," or telling them that "the march of freedom and democracy" would "leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history." I don't see any strength like that from Obama or Democrats in general. In fact, they go out of their multi-cultural, diversity-lovin', kumbayah way NOT to dare insult the Iranians. With the exception of far left Kool-Aid drinkers, the Obama camp looks whimpy to everyone, espeically to the Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad.

In summary: Joe Klein needs to open up a frakin' history book, because his knowledge has been found lacking.

Labels: 2008, folly, foreign policy, mccain, media bias, Obama, Reagan, Russia

Okay, sure the economy sucks. But portraying it as never been worse is silly.

Take the headline "Food Stamp Use Nears Record," which is only partially accurate. True, the 28 million Americans who will use food stamps in 2008 is the highest number ever. But that raw number is a poor measure; it doesn't provide context.

What's relevant is the percentage of the population that's on food stamps. And the worst years there are 1993, 1994 and 1995.

Yes, it was during the second Camelot presidency that the largest portions of the population were using food stamps: 10.4% in 1993 and 1994, and 10% in 1995.

Even if 28 million Americans use food stamps in 2008 as projected — and eagerly reported — with 303.5 million people in the country, the rate of 9.2% would still be lower than those three Clinton years.
That's from Investors Business Daily. Read the rest.

Labels: Clinton, Economics, media bias

Krauthammer hits one out of the park.

'A Rank Falsehood'

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, March 28, 2008; A19

Asked at a New Hampshire campaign stop about possibly staying in Iraq 50 years, John McCain interrupted -- "Make it a hundred" -- then offered a precise analogy to what he envisioned: "We've been in Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea for 50 years or so." Lest anyone think he was talking about prolonged war-fighting rather than maintaining a presence in postwar Iraq, he explained: "That would be fine with me, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed."

And lest anyone persist in thinking he was talking about war-fighting, he told his questioner: "It's fine with me and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintained a presence in a very volatile part of the world."

There is another analogy to the kind of benign and strategically advantageous "presence" McCain was suggesting for postwar Iraq: Kuwait. The United States (with allies) occupied Kuwait in 1991 and has remained there with a major military presence for 17 years. We debate dozens of foreign policy issues in this country. I've yet to hear any serious person of either party call for a pullout from Kuwait.

Why? Because our presence projects power and provides stability for the entire Gulf and for the vulnerable U.S. allies that line its shores.

The desirability of a similar presence in Iraq was obvious as long as five years ago to retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, one of Barack Obama's leading military advisers and his campaign co-chairman. During the first week of the Iraq war, McPeak (an Iraq war critic) suggested in an interview that "we'll be there a century, hopefully. If it works right." (Meaning, if we win.)

Why is that a hopeful outcome? Because maintaining a U.S. military presence in Iraq would provide regional stability, as well as cement a long-term allied relationship with the most important Arab country in the region.

As McPeak himself said about our long stay in Europe, Japan and Korea, "This is the way great powers operate." One can argue that such a presence in Iraq might not be worth the financial expense. A legitimate point -- it might require working out the kind of relations we have with Japan, which picks up about 75 percent of the cost of U.S. forces stationed there.

Alternatively, one might advocate simply bolstering our presence in Kuwait, a choice that would minimize risk, albeit at the sacrifice of some power projection. Such a debate would be fruitful and help inform our current negotiations with Baghdad over the future status of American forces.

But a serious argument is not what Democrats are seeking. They want the killer sound bite, the silver bullet to take down McCain. According to Politico, they have found it: "Dems to hammer McCain for '100 years.' "

The device? Charge that McCain is calling for a hundred years of war. Hence:

• "He says that he is willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq" (Barack Obama, Feb. 19).

• "We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another 100 years" (Obama, Feb. 26).

• "He's willing to keep this war going for 100 years" (Hillary Clinton, March 17).

• "What date between now and the election in November will he drop this promise of a 100-year war in Iraq?" (Chris Matthews, March 4).

Why, even a CNN anchor (Rick Sanchez) buys it: "John McCain is telling us . . . that we need to win even if it takes 100 years" (March 16).

As Lenin is said to have said, "A lie told often enough becomes truth." And as this lie passes into truth, the Democrats are ready to deploy it "as the linchpin of an effort to turn McCain's national security credentials against him," reports David Paul Kuhn of Politico.

Hence: A Howard Dean fundraising letter charging McCain with seeking "an endless war in Iraq." And a Democratic National Committee news release in which Dean asserts: "McCain's strategy is a war without end. . . . Elect John McCain and get 100 years in Iraq."

The Annenberg Political Fact Check, a nonprofit and nonpartisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, says: "It's a rank falsehood for the DNC to accuse McCain of wanting to wage 'endless war' based on his support for a presence in Iraq something like the U.S. role in South Korea."

The Democrats are undeterred. "It's seldom you get such a clean shot," a senior Obama adviser told Politico. It's seldom that you see such a dirty lie.

Labels: 2008, Iraq, mccain, media bias

I don't know if the website Obamamessiah is a promotion of Barack Obama as a religious figure or a subtle criticism of those who seem to be promoting Obama as just that -- but in any event it's chocked full of creepy examples of liberals and "progressives" (i.e., fascism by another name) who view Obama as something more than just another politician.

One such example comes from television and soccer-mom magnate Oprah Winfrey.

It isn't enough to tell the truth, Winfrey said. "We need politicians who know how to be the truth. I do believe, I do today, we have the answer to Miss Pittman's question – it's a question that the entire nation is asking – is he the one?" Winfrey said. "South Carolina – I do believe he's the one
Oh, really?

What's creepy about this isn't so much regarding Obama, but his followers.

As we've just started to discover - because of the main-stream media only now doing its job and covering Obama more critically - through the Tony Rezko link, or through Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is that Obama is a politician no different than any other.

Today's Washington Post: Regarding Obama's claim that his "very existence" can be traced to the Kennedy family "the key details are either untrue or grossly oversimplified."

In other words, Obama isn't one who tells "the truth" but just another politician who will exaggerate for influance sake. Politics is defined as the art of influancing people. Obama isn't the "New Testament," as NBC's Chris Matthew's labeled him (shamelessly, given he's "objective" reporter, right?), he's just another guy running for president.

Contrary to Obama's claims in speeches in January at American University and in Selma last year, the Kennedy family did not provide the funding for a September 1959 airlift of 81 Kenyan students to the United States that included Obama's father. According to historical records and interviews with participants, the Kennedys were first approached for support for the program nearly a year later, in July 1960. The family responded with a $100,000 donation, most of which went to pay for a second airlift in September 1960.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton acknowledged yesterday that the senator from Illinois had erred in crediting the Kennedy family with a role in his father's arrival in the United States. He said the Kennedy involvement in the Kenya student program apparently "started 48 years ago, not 49 years ago as Obama has mistakenly suggested in the past."

...In his speech commemorating the 42nd anniversary of the Selma civil rights march, Sen. Obama linked his father's arrival in the United States with the turmoil of the civil rights movement. Although the airlift occurred before John F. Kennedy became president, Obama said that "folks in the White House" around President Kennedy were looking for ways to counter charges of hypocrisy and "win hearts and minds all across the world" at a time when America was "battling communism."

"So the Kennedys decided 'we're going to do an airlift,' " Obama continued. " 'We're going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is.' This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman whose great-great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves. . . . So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born."

A more accurate version of the story would begin not with the Kennedys but with a Kenyan nationalist leader named Tom Mboya, who traveled to the United States in 1959 and 1960 to persuade thousands of Americans to support his efforts to educate a new African elite. Mboya did not approach the Kennedys for financial support until Obama Sr. was already studying in Hawaii.
Read the rest.

Will the Kool-Aide drinking Obama acolytes begin to see their leader as a politician, not a savior?

Don't count on it.

Labels: 2008, academic bias, Hollywood bias, media bias, Obama

Update by Thomas Joscelyn here.
***

So John McCain committed a political gaffe this week because he seemed to confuse Sunni with Shiite extremists in Iraq, and also which one or the other is receiving support from the government of Iran?

The criticism is ignorant on several counts:

First, if true that Iran is sponsoring and training *only* Shiite extremists but not Sunni, how is that a good thing? And why isn't the scandal that liberals seem to have no issue with this rather than a supposed mix-up by McCain?

Second, Obama pounced and further belittled McCain as one who "[claims he] will follow Osama bin Laden to 'the gates of hell' but refuse to follow him where he actually goes." This opens the door to attack on Obama -- Is Obama (once again) claiming he'll invade the Afghan-Pak border? And, if he feels Iraq is lost, how does Obama think we could ever win in the Afghan-Pak border where the terrain is twice as formidable?

Finally, there are many examples of Shiite and Sunni collaboration.

Khobar Towers, 1996: 13 Sunni Saudis helped Shiite Hezbollah, the Iranian backed terror group, detonate explosives to kill 19 U.S. servicemen.

Saif al-Adel, the Sunni Muslim and Egyptian mastermind of the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, was trained by Shiite Hezbollah. Indeed, the late Imad Mugniyah, a Shiite Muslim, of Hezbollah personally tutored Osama bin Laden, a Sunni Muslim. Thus, Sunni-Shiite relations have no issue with cooperation when murdering Americans is the topic.

And, one wonders, have the media critics and members of the Obama campaign ever bothered to read the 9-11 Commission report?

[The 9-11 Commission Report, p61] In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan between al Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing support-even if only training-for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States. Not long afterward, senior al Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. In the fall of 1993, another such delegation went to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon for further training in explosives as well as in intelligence and security. Bin Ladin reportedly showed particular interest in learning how to use truck bombs such as the one that had killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983.The relationship between al Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations. As will be described in chapter 7, al Qaeda contacts with Iran continued in ensuing years.
I guess not. But who needs facts when one has saturation coverage. Iran will cooperate with anyone so long as it undermines the US.

And while we split hairs on which extremist is which they just kill us.

Labels: al qaeda, Iran, Iraq, mccain, media bias, Obama, terrorism, war on terror

Same old, same old. Thanks to the gents over at Weekly Standard for debunking the latest in the 'Saddam had no ties to terror' myth. It's amazing the lengths the MSM go to split hairs between al Qaeda terrorism versus just plain Islamic-extremist terror. Okay, so Saddam didn't have have tea parties with bin Laden and Zawahiri, but he nonetheless had no problem fully supporting or funding persons and terror organizations cut from the same cloth.

A new Pentagon report on Iraq and Terrorism has the news media buzzing. An item on the New York Times blog snarks, "Oh, By the Way, There Was No Al Qaeda Link." The ABC News story that previews the full report concludes, "Report Shows No Link Between Saddam and al Qaeda."

How, then, to explain this sentence about Iraq and al Qaeda from the report's abstract: "At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust"? And how to explain the "considerable overlap" between their activities which led not only to the appearances of ties but to a "de facto link between the organizations?" (See the entire abstract below.)

And what about this revelation from page 34? "Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda -- as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's long-term vision." (The example given in the report is the Army of Muhammad in Bahrain, a group the Iraqi Intelligence Service describes as "under the wings of bin Laden.")

And there is this line from page 42: "Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives."

Really? Saddam Hussein "supported" a group that merged with al Qaeda in the late 1990s, run by al Qaeda's #2, and the New York Times thinks this is not a link between Iraq and al Qaeda? How does that work?
Here's a little more from Michael Goldfarb -- it's also another case where our intelligence agencies and thinktanks produce executive summaries (the only thing the media reads) that directly contradict the body of these reports:

The Iraqi Intelligence documents discussed in the report link Saddam’s regime to: the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (the “EIJ” is al Qaeda number-two Ayman al Zawahiri's group), the Islamic Group or “IG” (once headed by a key al Qaeda ideologue, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman), the Army of Mohammed (al Qaeda's affiliate in Bahrain), the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (a forerunner to Ansar al-Islam, al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq), and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (a long-time ally of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan), among other terrorist groups. Documents cited by the report, but not discussed at length in the publicly available version (they may be in a redacted portion of the report), also detail Saddam’s ties to a sixth al Qaeda affiliate: the Abu Sayyaf group, an al Qaeda affiliate in the Philippines.

Both the EIJ and the IG were early and important core allies for Osama bin Laden as he forged the al Qaeda terror network, which comprises a number of affiliates around the world.
More by Eli Lake of the NY Sun, here.

Labels: al qaeda, bin Laden, Iraq, Islamic extremism, media bias, terrorism

[WSJ] Mr. Spitzer coasted into the Governorship on the wings of a reputation as a "tough" public prosecutor. Mr. Spitzer, though, was no emperor. He had not merely arrogated to himself the powers he held and used with such aggression. He was elected.

In our system, citizens agree to invest one of their own with the power of public prosecution. We call this a public trust. The ability to bring the full weight of state power against private individuals or entities has been recognized since the Magna Carta as a power with limits. At nearly every turn, Eliot Spitzer has refused to admit that he was subject to those limits.

The stupendously deluded belief that the sitting Governor of New York could purchase the services of prostitutes was merely the last act of a man unable to admit either the existence of, or need for, limits. At the least, he put himself at risk of blackmail, and in turn the possible distortion of his public duties. Mr. Spitzer's recklessness with the state's highest elected office, though, is of a piece with his consistent excesses as Attorney General from 1999 to 2006.

He routinely used the extraordinary threat of indicting entire firms, a financial death sentence, to force the dismissal of executives, such as AIG's Maurice "Hank" Greenberg. He routinely leaked to the press emails obtained with subpoena power to build public animosity against companies and executives. In the case of Mr. Greenberg, he went on national television to accuse the AIG founder of "illegal" behavior. Within the confines of the law itself, though, he never indicted Mr. Greenberg. Nor did he apologize.

In perhaps the incident most suggestive of Mr. Spitzer's lack of self-restraint, the then-Attorney General personally threatened John Whitehead after the former Goldman Sachs chief published an article on this page defending Mr. Greenberg. "I will be coming after you," Mr. Spitzer said, according to Mr. Whitehead's account. "You will pay the price. This is only the beginning, and you will pay dearly for what you have done."

Jack Welch, the former head of GE, said he was told to tell Ken Langone -- embroiled in Mr. Spitzer's investigation of former NYSE chairman Dick Grasso -- that the AG would "put a spike through Langone's heart." New York Congresswoman Sue Kelly, who clashed with Mr. Spitzer in 2003, had her office put out a statement that "the attorney general acted like a thug."

These are not merely acts of routine political rough-and-tumble. They were threats -- some rhetorical, some acted upon -- by one man with virtually unchecked legal powers.

Eliot Spitzer's self-destructive inability to recognize any limit on his compulsions was never more evident than his staff's enlistment of the New York State Police in a campaign to discredit the state's Senate Majority Leader, Joseph Bruno. On any level, it was nuts. Somehow, Team Spitzer thought they could get by with it. In the wake of that abusive fiasco, his public approval rating plunged.

Mr. Spitzer's dramatic fall yesterday began in the early afternoon with a posting on the Web site of the New York Times about the alleged link to prostitutes. The details in the criminal complaint about "Client-9," who is reported to be Mr. Spitzer, will now be played for titters by the press corps. But one may ask: Where were the media before this? With a few exceptions, the media were happy to prosper from his leaks and even applaud, rather than temper, the manifestly abusive instincts of a public official.
Where were the media before this..? Indeed! Had Spitzer had a capital R after his name rather than a capital D, no doubt would have learned his name long ago.

Labels: corruption, democrats, media bias

Meanwhile... when they're not killing puppies (see below) I guess they're busy being heroes saving lives.

Jeff Jamaledine is a German citizen, born in Berlin to a German mother and a Gambian father. He now lives in Germany after having served two tours in Iraq and having been wounded twice. The second wound was nearly fatal--he was shot in the face at close range in a battle that claimed the lives of two Americans and at least 27 jihadists.

It's really one of the most remarkable stories I've read of action in Iraq. When Jamaledine was shot, there were no medevac helicopters in the area. There were Apaches. But the Apache is a two seater--no room for cargo, or wounded. When the call went out--by a soldier who was himself wounded--that Jamaledine needed to be evacuated immediately, one of the Apaches landed on the scene and had him strapped in. This meant the co-pilot had to "hang on outside" for the trip back to the base. Both of the crew were risking their jobs, but they got Jemaldine out. The Apache's crew then rejoined the battle, with the co-pilot sitting in a pool of blood for the rest of the night.
Not puppy killers. Heroes.

Labels: heroes, Iraq, media bias