Iran Fighting Proxy War Against U.S., Crocker Says

The U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, has indicated that Tehran has used Iraq to launch a proxy war against the United States.

The New York Times has the story:

Iran is engaging in a proxy war with the United States in Iraq, adopting tactics similar to those it has used to back fighters in Lebanon, the United States ambassador to Iraq said Friday.

The remarks by the ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, reflected the sharper criticism of Iran by President Bush and his top deputies over the past week, as administration officials have sought to trace many of their troubles in Iraq to Iran.

Mr. Crocker said in an interview that there had been no substantive change in Iranian behavior in Iraq, despite more than a year of talks between the Bush administration and Iran over how to calm Shiite-Sunni tensions in Iraq. He said that the paramilitary branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps was continuing to direct attacks by Shiite militias against American and Iraqi targets, although he offered no direct evidence.

Asked if the United States and Iran were engaged in a proxy war in Iraq, Mr. Crocker said, “I don’t think a proxy war is being waged from an American point of view.” But, he added, “When you look at what the Iranians are doing and how they’re doing it, it could well be that.”

While Bush administration officials have long denounced what they have described as Iran’s meddling in Iraq, Mr. Crocker’s language was unusually strong, reflecting fresh concern about what he described in Congressional testimony this week as Iran’s role in supplying militias with training and weapons, including rockets used in recent attacks on the Green Zone, in Baghdad.

The Bush administration is trying to exploit any crack it can find between the largely Shiite, pro-Iranian government of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and Iran’s Shiite government. On Friday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that Iran’s role in supporting radical Shiite militias in recent clashes with Iraqi security forces had been an “eye-opener” for the central government in Baghdad.

“I think that there is some sense of an increased level of supply of weapons and support to these groups,” Mr. Gates said. “I would say one of the salutary effects of what Prime Minister Maliki did in Basra is that I think the Iraqi government now has a clearer view of the malign impact of Iran’s activities inside Iraq.”

From Mr. Bush down, administration officials this week have been turning up the volume on Iran. Administration officials said that Iranian support for Shiite militias became increasingly evident late last month during the indecisive Iraqi operation to wrest control of Basra from Shiite militias, in addition to the rocket attacks on the Green Zone.

Administration officials have long accused Iran of supporting Shiite militias in attacks on American forces in Iraq. The difference now is that administration officials are trying to convince the Iraqi government that Iran may not be the ally it thought, and is behind attacks against Iraqi government forces. That is a harder sell, given that Iran has supported Iraq’s government.

Mr. Bush this week accused Iran of arming, financing and training what he called “illegal militant groups.” He said that Iran had a choice, and hinted that the United States would try to sow distrust between the governments of Iran and Iraq, if Iran did not stop backing the attacks.

“If Iran makes the right choice, America will encourage a peaceful relationship between Iran and Iraq,” he said Thursday. “If Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests and our troops and our Iraqi partners.”

See also, Thomas Jocelyn "Iran's Proxy War Against America" (Claremont Institute), Joseph Lieberman, "Iran's Proxy War" (Wall Street Journal), and Kenneth Timmerman, "Iran's Proxy War Against America" (FrontPageMagazine).

Photo Credit: New York Times

Texas Takes Tough Line on Polygamists

My wife and I were enthralled with the media coverage earlier this week on the FLDS scandal in Texas, where authorities have taken into custody hundreds of girls amid allegations of cult polygamy.

Today's Los Angeles Times has an excellent overview of the story, indicating that Texas - unlike Arizona, Utah, and other states - takes a hard line in protecting public safety from wayward polygamy groups:

After a polygamist sect took up residence outside this tiny ranch town a few years ago, the library stocked paperback, cassette and hardcover copies of "Under the Banner of Heaven," an unsparing look at such groups that was suddenly in hot demand.

The local weekly newspaper devoted stories in nearly every edition to the outsiders. And it posted online audio clips of the sect's self-styled prophet, Warren Jeffs, ranting in a creepy monotone about the Beatles being covert agents of a "Negro race."

The people of Eldorado (pronounced el-doh-RAY-do) took in the sect's arrival with nervous anticipation -- because they understood that, unlike in Utah and Arizona, this would not last long in Texas.

Texas' aggressive raid this month -- in which state investigators took custody of more than 400 children, disclosed evidence that men were marrying girls at puberty, and discovered beds allegedly used for sex acts inside a towering temple -- is the most decisive action against the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in at least half a century.

Court papers released Friday showed that state investigators hauled off a cache of evidence from the polygamist compound that included marriage and birth records and what was cryptically described as a "cyanide poisoning document."

Texas' raid contrasts sharply with the approaches of Arizona and Utah, which have looked the other way for decades while the FLDS put underage girls into "spiritual marriages." The 10,000-member sect was founded in the 1930s by religious leaders who continued practicing polygamy after it was banned by the Mormon Church in 1890.

"God bless Texas," said Flora Jessop, an activist who escaped the FLDS at age 16. "The state has done in days what Arizona and Utah failed to do in more than a century -- protect children."

Authorities in the sect's home states have recently taken more aggressive steps; Utah successfully prosecuted Jeffs last year for being an accomplice to rape after he arranged the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her cousin, and Jeffs awaits trial in Arizona on similar charges.

Utah and Arizona officials have long argued that polygamists are too entrenched in their states to simply stamp them out. In Utah, Atty. Gen. Mark Shurtleff's office has prosecuted polygamists for child abuse. But it has never contemplated a full-scale raid like the one in Texas, spokesman Paul Murphy said.

But see also the Times' related coverage, especially the "History of Polygamist Sect":

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is a rogue offshoot of the Mormon Church, which has disavowed the sect. Polygamy is a central FLDS tenet, and FLDS followers believe the Mormon Church was wrong to have banned it in 1890. Here's a brief history of the group and recent events involving its leader, Warren Jeffs, who is imprisoned:

* 1930s: The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints breaks from the Mormon Church.

* 2002: Sect leader Rulon Jeffs dies and his son Warren becomes prophet, or leader, of the FLDS.

* 2003: Warren Jeffs starts banishing "unworthy" men and boys from the church. He reassigns wives and children to new husbands and fathers.

* 2005: Jeffs goes into hiding after felony criminal charges are filed against him in Arizona for the alleged arrangement of marriages between underage girls and adult men.

* 2006: In April, felony criminal charges are filed against Jeffs in Utah, accusing him of rape by accomplice in arranging a 2001 marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin.

* 2007: Jeffs is convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of five years to life in prison.

* March 29-31, 2008: A 16-year-old girl calls a domestic violence shelter and reports that she lives at the YFZ (Yearning for Zion) Ranch, an FLDS compound near Eldorado, Texas, and that she has been sexually and physically abused by her 49-year-old husband.

* April 3: Texas police enter the YFZ compound and begin interviewing residents.

* April 4: Police begin removing children from the compound; eventually, 416 children are removed and placed in state custody.

See also, " Blind Eye to Culture of Abuse: Children of a Polygamist Sect Have Been Exploited, Molested for Years."

The New York Times has more information on the Texas case, "Texas Polygamy Raid May Pose Risk."

Photo Credit: "COMPOUND: The 1,691-acre YFZ Ranch, which stands for Yearning for Zion, in Eldorado, Texas," Los Angeles Times

Obama's Comments Aren't Controversial?

I guess you just have to get inside the minds of contemporary leftists to really understand their thinking. I mean, for the deep activists of the Democratic Party, folks like Jeremiah Wright are just speaking truth to power.

Sure, some commentators like Lanny Davis get it (bigotry and hate are "pretty much a staple" of the left nowadays, he says), but most of the lefties remain clueless.

Enter Ezra Klein (stage extreme left), via Memeorandum.

Klein's got a new post up suggesting that the content of Obama's San Francisco "bitter" speech on working class Pennsylvanians is uncontroversial:

I'm not really sure what the big deal over Obama's comments in SF is supposed to be....

As far as I can tell, few actually find the argument underlying Obama's statement controversial. It's a pretty standard thesis, and has been delivered, in various forms, by everyone from John McCain to Bill Clinton. It's that the way Obama phrased it is politically damaging, particularly the inclusion of guns and religion (though I think the crucial ambiguity in his comments is that he's talking about guns and religion in their role as conveyors of political identity and social unrest, rather than in their more natural roles of shooting at things and believing in God).

Perhaps Kein hasn't seen "Primary Colors." Bill Clinton's certainly not without his personal pathologies, but few people could speak more accurately on - let alone identify with - the plight of the downsizing industrial working classes. (Of course, Klein was only 7 years-old during the pre-primary phase of Clinton's 1992 presidential election bid.)

Victor Davis Hanson's more accurate when he says that Obama's statements are controversial, because they

...suggest both hostility and a certain us/they contempt for a slice of America that the Obamas apparently know very little about—but for the first time in their lives are rapidly discovering.

Klein adds further that all of this is a media frenzy designed to drive reader interest. Oh sure, a point all the more interesting coming from Klein, who's feted as an up-and-comer in the liberal establishment press (where the media vultures are always hovering over the next Abu Ghraib or Scooter Libby scandal).

But hey, Klein's at least got a reputation as a "respectable liberal blogger."

See also, TPM Election Central, "Geoffrey Garin: Obama's Small-Town Comments Would Damage Him In General Election - And Super-Dels Should Consider Them."

"People Wonder Why I Quit University Teaching..."

I haven't followed the case of Mark Steyn all that closely (here's a little background).

But I just love this quote, in the context of the continuing controversy surrounding the Canadian Human Rights Commission's threat to freedom of speech (source):

People wonder why I quit university teaching. Imagine an office - all your colleagues and all your supervisors and anyone with a say in your tenure prospects, your research funding and your publications - where everyone organizes their careers in such a way that a "human rights" commission would have no reason to object. Their teaching practices, their research, their political views; everything they think and do including and especially their "private" lives from the television they (do not) watch to the fast food they (do not) eat to the sex lives they (do not) allow themselves to have. Even the concept of a "private" life dismissed as reactionary and/or illusory and in any event subject to the scrutiny of any undergraduate with internet access and a grudge. That is the life I escaped. Even a couple years after the fact I find it a surprise when my internal censor warns me against writing something for fear of losing my livelihood and my career and I realize I have already crossed that bridge, burned it and done a little dance some time ago. It is a small price for freedom compared to the price so many have already paid for me. But it is something.

My "internal censor" goes off pretty regularly.

Folks have asked me about this, in light of my neoconservative blogging. I'm outspoken, and I pride myself on having an honest voice in my writing, even if that rumples a few feathers (although I'm not up for tenure at a big university research department, so perhaps I've got more freedom than others).

Glenn Reynolds has a bit roundup of related news.

Democratic Party Identity Politics

Jerry Bowyer puts his finger on contemporary Democratic Party politics at today's Wall Street Journal, "Pennsylvania Divided":

As a Pennsylvania voter, I'm disheartened by the identity politics now playing out as both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battle for votes among Democratic Party factions.

One in five supporters of Mrs. Clinton here say they won't vote for Mr. Obama should their candidate lose (and vice versa, according to pollster Terry Madonna of Franklin & Marshall College). Only 12% of nonwhite Pennsylvania voters support Mrs. Clinton. Only 29% of white ones support Mr. Obama. Gender and age cohorts break along similarly sharp lines, with women and older voters going for Mrs. Clinton, men and young voters trending toward Mr. Obama.

As a student of political history, I see these poll results as something deeper than a passing nomination squabble. For at least 40 years, Democrats have been playing identity politics and empowering factional blocs within their party.

Though others might pick a different starting point, I'd trace the start of that process to 1968 Chicago, where antiwar protestors rioted outside of the party's national convention and party leaders inside responded by creating the McGovern-Fraser commission. That commission went on to write presidential nomination rules establishing delegate quotas based on age, race and gender. State parties followed suit by structuring caucuses to favor organized activist groups such as unions.

And so now Pennsylvania Democrats, like their brethren around the country, are splitting along race, age, gender and geographical lines as they are forced to choose between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama. But then, why shouldn't they? Democratic voters are just doing what they've been trained to do – thinking of themselves in group terms.

Bowyer suggests James Madison had similar thoughts in mind when he praised the "mischiefs of faction" in the Federalist Papers.

It's a little more complicated than this (see Walter Stone, Republic at Risk: Self Interest in American Politics), but I like Bowyer's conclusion nevertheless:

Democrats might have once hoped that Pennsylvania would settle their nomination fight. Instead, it has shown how dangerous it is to put voters into factional blocs that can then be exploited along racial lines. To the extent that Democrats suffer this year for not learning that lesson earlier, well, to quote Mr. Obama's pastor (who himself was quoting Malcolm X): "the chickens have come home to roost."

See also my earlier post, "Making More (Non) Sense Among Democratic Party Constituencies."

Opponents Hammer Obama on “Bitter” Americans Statement

I still don't think Barack Obama's intemperate remarks about Philadelphia's working class population will derail his campaign.

Still, the episode's providing an important clarifications of what's wrong with the Obama phenomenon.

Victor Davis Hanson points to some of the key contradictions underlying the controversy, suggesting the increasing "McGovernization of Obama":

I still believe that by August, Obama, the half-term rookie Senator, will have become the second George McGovern....

So here we have the essential Obama, a walking paradox between the postmodern hip-Ivy-Leaguer who sneers at middle-class America’s supposed prejudices and parochialism, while at the same time courting an anti-Enlightenment, prejudicial demagogue like Jeremiah Wright. For free trade or anti-free trade? For 2nd-amendment rights or not? Post-religious or pious and fundamentalist? For public campaign financing or not? A uniter of various groups or someone who sees America in terms of “they”? Straight-talking or someone who evokes "context" to explain away the inexplicable?

Again, we will see more and more of these condescending statements of the Michelle Obama strain, more and more of Revs. Wright, Meeks, Lee and others peddlers of division like them, and more and more clues to a long hostility to Israel—in what will eventually become the most disastrous chapter in recent Democratic history.

And pundits keep wondering why Hillary won't give up?

See also, Allahpundit, "Obama Tries Again: You Know, I Probably Could Have Said it Better."

Congestion Pricing: Environmental Extremism Threatens Middle Class Lifestyles

There's an interesting debate going on over London's "congestion pricing," which is a fancy phrase for the levying of confiscatory taxes on vehicle owners commuting to their jobs in the city.

Hard-left blogger Matthew Yglesias thinks it's a great idea: "Congestion pricing is working out great in London."

He cites this piece at the American Prospect, which praises London's taxes to high heaven - not only for apparently "encouraging" more people to take public transit, but for helping "lower income residents ... as most don't have cars, don't drive, and are more likely than wealthy residents to use public transit."

There you have it: The social engineering benefits of environmental programs. It's not just about reducing congestion or clearing the air of pollutants. We need to help the poor get a lift on city's gritty double-deckers!

(Actually, London's discontinued double-decker routes due to the disparate impact of that form of public transportation on the disabled.)

Being a car-loving Southern Californian, I don't cotton too well the the notion of congestion pricing.

A recent articles in the Los Angeles Times highlighting the London program's impact on the middle class only confirmed my suspicions:

The Hackings, like many of their neighbors, are a two-car family. Every morning, Giles Hacking gets into his Mercedes CL500 in West Kensington and drives to his office across town near London Bridge.

Sarah Hacking piles the three children into the Jeep Cherokee and drops them off at their schools. Often, her mother pitches in and delivers one of the youngsters.

Soon, though, multi-car families like the Hackings may be wishing all they had to contend with was London's $8-a-gallon gasoline. In an unusual municipal experiment aimed at fighting global warming where the rubber meets the road, the British capital in October is to begin imposing a $50-a-day carbon emissions fee on every gas-guzzling private vehicle driven in the central city.

Even for the Hackings, who live in one of London's better neighborhoods and earn a good income from an old family import/export business, that will be a significant jolt: $100 a day for the school and work runs, $150 if Grandma gets involved.

"It's outrageous," said Sarah Hacking, expressing a sentiment that appears to elicit a strong amen from many of those here who drive the big sport utility vehicles that Mayor Ken Livingstone refers to derisively as "Chelsea tractors."

"We'd have a massive loss if we tried to sell our cars. And I can't have a tiny little car because I have three children who go to three different schools," she said.

"At the moment, we just have to pay. We really have no choice."

The new fee, adopted by the mayor after a long consultation with the public, has prompted threats of a lawsuit from Porsche and anger from many London drivers, some of whom have vowed to make it a central issue in the campaign leading to the mayoral election May 1.

For five years, London has been assessing drivers a daily "congestion charge," now set at $16, to drive into the central city and a large swath around it, a fee designed to tackle the infernal bottlenecks that have turned much of London into a parking lot.

The program has become a test case for major cities around the world. The New York City Council this week voted for a three-year trial program that would impose an $8 charge on vehicles entering Midtown and Lower Manhattan, a plan that still needs approval from the state Legislature.

San Francisco has studied imposing a charge as a way of easing central-city traffic jams; cities in Norway and Sweden have also flirted with congestion pricing; and Singapore has been charging downtown drivers since 1975.

But London's pending carbon dioxide emissions charge goes beyond traffic control and establishes one of the first significant municipal climate change programs in the world.

Oh yeah, congestion pricing's "working great in London."

Note that if one owns a "low emitting" vehicle the city's going to eliminate the congestion fee.

I'd say the policy discriminates against middle class working families with children.

But hey, the poor will be able to get around town better!

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

Making More (Non) Sense Among Democratic Party Constituencies

This post updates my earlier entry, "Radical Schizophrenia? Making Sense of Democratic Party Constituencies." There I noted:

We've seen a lot of irrationality this campaign season on the right of the spectrum, which thankfully has moved largely toward remission. But as the Democratic race becomes increasingly frenetic, we're seeing snowballing incoherence among the competing factions of the Democratic Party base.

The context for the update is the current battle over activism versus electoral viability within the hard-left Democratic Party base.

It turns out there's some controversy over the Obama campaign's "purging" of progressive antiwar types from delegate lists to the national party convention. It's a bit complicated, and I frankly doubt Obama's all that unhappy with his extreme progressive support, but the debate's interesting to monitor nevertheless.

Here's MyDD on the latest dust-up on the left:

Well, interesting things indeed went on in the dead of night as delegate candidates are being evaluated by the Obama campaign in California to see if they're worthy of inclusion as prospective delegates to Denver. Marcy Winograd over at the blog we do not name or link to said...

By dusk on Wednesday, the California Obama campaign had purged almost all progressive anti-war activists from its delegate candidate lists. Names of candidates, people who had filed to run to represent Obama at the August Democratic Party National Convention, disappeared, not one by one, but hundreds at a time, from the Party web site listing the eligibles. The list of Obama delegate hopefuls in one northern California congressional district went from a robust 100 to an anemic 23, while in southern California, the list in Congressman Waxman's district almost slipped out of sight, plunging from a high of 91 candidates to 17. Gone were strong women with independent political bases.

Marcy went on to state that the remaining candidates appeared to be mostly "bundlers and their girlfriends".

Marcy has paid her dues- she ran against Jane Harman in CA-36 in 2006, and got 37.5% of the votes with a lot of progressive support. The wisdom of the Obama campaign pissing off this kind of person remains to be determined.

Over at Calitics, Brian Leubitz is not happy.

Obama Slashes and Burns through the Delegate List

Today, I learned that I have been pruned out of my delegate race. I will say that I didn't really expect to win. There were people in my district that were better organized and better known (Chris Daly). And they both made the cut. However, I didn't figure the campaign to whom I donated money, and to whom I traveled to two different states for, would decide that I wasn't loyal enough. Heck, I spent March 4 working for Buffy Wicks (the CA field director) in Texas at the Election Hotline... this is a function of the Obama campaign, and if they expect to get any more time or money from me, I need to hear some sort of reasonable answer from the campaign.

And we get the so-called "rationale" for eliminating "certain types" of people...

It turns out Huffington Post has protested Obama's progressive purge:

It's hard not to be cynical. Remaining on the list of approved candidates is the slate of candidates (longtime campaign volunteers) that the Obama campaign has officially endorsed, as well as several names recognizable from local politics. These delegate candidates aren't to be faulted for being longtime political activists, but the cynic in me wonders why those names remained while the "nobodies" on the list disappeared. The Obama campaign owes those of us who were cut a fuller explanation of the decision process.

This is followed by MyDD's conclusion:

This is where the real progressives are being asked to get off the bus. Ideologically motivated people, the progressives who have been in Bush's face and raising a stink about the Bush Administration long before it became fashionable, are being seen as not trustworthy.

What Obama's campaign wants is "mules" - people who will go to the convention and vote for Obama, no matter what. It's not about the issues, it's about the candidate. If these delegates have strong dedication to particular causes they might be persuadable, so none of those types are allowed.

Why does this surprise anyone? All along, Obama's campaign has been about getting elected, Chicago style - that's it. Causes come and go, but the pursuit of political power goes on.

"Thanks for the help, liberal blogosphere and grassroots activists, but we'll take it from here". Heh.

Oh, by the way, it's all Hillary's fault - as usual. She MADE them do this.

See also the latest from HuffPo, "'Big Tent' Re-Opens: Obama Campaign Reverses CA Delegate Purge."

The Consequences of Withrawal From Iraq

A couple of years back, when Iraq was descending into an endless spiral of terrorist violence, and hopes for an American victory were fading fast, some analysts warned against a precipitous withdrawal:

Certainly the most damning consequence of failure in Iraq is the likelihood that an American withdrawal would provoke a take-no-prisoners civil war between the Sunni and Shiite Arabs, which could easily reach genocidal intensity.

We're now three years forward, and the calls for an American surrender in Iraq are as loud as ever. No matter that we're experiencing what's been called a "miraculous" strategic turnaround, the hard-left still clamors for a hasty retreat, strategic consequences be damned (see Matthew Yglesias for more cluelessness).

But check out Dr. Sanity's post yesterday, where she quotes an Iraqi blogger on the dangers of failure in Iraq:

The solution of the Iraqi situation cannot be helped by trying to find scapegoats and excuses to run away and escape. The formulae expounded by the Democrats amount to nothing but defeat and escapism. The problem is that this is a situation where defeat is fatal. If anybody thinks that the U.S. can run away this time, and sits safely and happily in tranquil isolation between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, is in grave error. Solutions can be found to reduce casualties and expenses, but the strategic involvement of the U.S. in Iraq is a necessary and sufficient condition to avert a disaster the scale of which boggles the mind. A disaster that is infinitely more serious and dangerous than the aftermath of the Vietnam defeat. Because the Vietnamese had a clear objective, i.e. to unify their country and once that this objective had been achieved, they had no more business with the U.S. and the West. In the case of Iraq, the objectives and purposes of the enemy are fundamentally different, as has been expounded “maint fois” by people of the like of Al-Zawahiri et. al.; so many times have we heard Al-Qaeda leaders affirm that they consider Iraq the central front in their International Jihad campaign, and as being the more appropriate battle ground, being in the heart of the Arab world and so near to the holy lands apropos to which they share the sick visions of certain of their western (and non-western) counterparts of Armageddon’s and Apocalypses and all such kinds of nonsense and legend.

Yes, but to hear those on the left, this is all a mirage. It's the United States that's the problem, all the more reason to quit the mission:

It is time for the United States to remove itself from the quagmire in Iraq and begin a phased redeployment of troops. Staying on the current path will only continue to strengthen Iran's position in Iraq and the region, a result that undermines America's national security interests.

Right...

Staying in Iraq will "undermine" America's interests, while bolstering the West's implacable foes throughout the region. Such comments are anti-intellectual and grossly misstate the world's ideological, political, and strategic realities.

Obama's Working Class Insensitivity

Barack Obama made a huge gaffe when campaign this week in Pennsylvania, when he suggested that small-town folks become "bitter" and "cling" to guns, religion, and "anti-immigrant sentiment"

Whoo, that's an inconsiderate mouthful!

The Los Angeles Times has the overview:

Battling for support in Pennsylvania and other blue-collar bastions, Barack Obama fended off charges of elitism and insensitivity Friday after painting a harsh portrait of America's struggling small towns.

The controversy -- fanned by rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain -- began when the Huffington Post website published remarks the Illinois senator made last weekend at a closed-door San Francisco fundraiser.

In those comments, Obama said he understood why residents of some hard-pressed communities grew angry.

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Fellow Democrat Clinton, campaigning in Pennsylvania ahead of the state's April 22 primary, suggested Obama was offering condescension rather than solutions. "Pennsylvania doesn't need a president who looks down on them," the New York senator said at a Philadelphia rally. "They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them."

A strategist for Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) joined in the criticism. "It's a remarkable statement and extremely revealing," said Steve Schmidt. "It shows an elitism and a condescension toward hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking."

Indeed. But get the whole speech at the Huffington Post.

Obama's remarks have created a feeding frenzy on the right side of the blogosphere.

Here's Paul Hinderaker, asking "is Obama's campaign over?:

It may be. I don't see how anyone known to have uttered these words can be elected President:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Barack Obama's arrogance has been evident for some time, and it's no shock, perhaps, to learn that that he shares this bigoted opinion, common among urban liberals, of people who live in "small towns." But to actually express it, in public, at a campaign event, is stunningly stupid.

With respect to the Hindrocket, Obama's campaign's nowhere near done.

As I've chronicled in my recent posting on the Democratic campaign, "No Enemies on the Left," Obama's statements are fundamentally in line with activist thinking among large segments of the Democratic Party's constituent base.

Captain Ed has an excellent post indicating how Democrats and the Obama campaign are tying to distance themselves from the controversy be reframing the debate:

In their attempts to spin away from Barack Obama’s stunningly stupid remarks at a San Francisco fundraiser last weekend, Democrats and the Obama campaign have focused on only the least objectionable portion of the comment as a means to frame the national discussion. In a single sentence where Obama called small-town Midwestern voters overly religious bigots who cling to their guns out of frustration with George Bush, the Democrats have decided to build their defense on “bitter”.

Andrew Sullivan tries to put things in context:

You can see the point he [Obama's] is trying to make - it's the Thomas Frank argument - and you can argue about its merits, back and forth. I don't think it's meant pejoratively about the blue collar workers Obama is trying to engage. But the context of these remarks is political gold for McCain and Clinton. Especially Clinton. You will hear these words on Fox News for a very, very long time.

I hope so.

Freedom's Watch Falls Short on Expectations

One conspicuous element of the current changes in American politics is the role of online advocacy organizations like MoveOn.org, and to a similar extent blogs like Daily Kos.

Interest group politics has moved online in many respects, especially on the hot-button issue of the war in Iraq. But the movement's been most prominent for left-wing partisan mobilization, as today's New York Times article on Freedom's Watch indicates:

The conservative group Freedom’s Watch, headlined by two former senior White House officials, had been expected to be a deep-pocketed juggernaut in this year’s presidential election, heralded by supporters on the right as an aggressive counterweight to MoveOn.org, George Soros and the like.

But after a splashy debut last summer, in which it spent $15 million in a nationwide advertising blitz supporting President Bush’s troop escalation in Iraq, the group has been mostly quiet, beset by internal problems that have paralyzed it and raised questions about what kind of role, if any, it will actually play this fall.

The group was conspicuously absent this week as Gen. David H. Petraeus, the United States commander in Iraq, returned to Congress to testify. Moreover, the troubles at Freedom’s Watch come as some Democratic-aligned groups are seeking to take the offensive, with one group, Progressive Media USA, planning to raise $40 million to spend on advertisements and other efforts to undermine Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Independent groups not constrained by the limits placed on campaign contributions to candidates and parties have increasingly become major players in races for federal offices. Those known as 527s, named for the section in the tax code they fall under, raised more than $400 million in the 2004 election cycle alone, according to the Campaign Finance Institute. Such efforts could be especially beneficial for Mr. McCain, who has badly trailed his Democratic counterparts in fund-raising.

Backers of Freedom’s Watch once talked about spending some $200 million, a figure that officials now say was exaggerated. Lending to the aura of ambition, the organization moved into a state-of-the-art 10,000-square-foot office in Washington and hired a staff of about 20, with talk of bringing in scores more for a vigorous campaign to promote conservative issues.

Behind the scenes, however, Freedom’s Watch has been plagued by gridlock and infighting, leaving it struggling for direction, according to several Republican operatives familiar with the organization who were granted anonymity so they could be candid about the group’s problems.

Although the organization was founded by a coterie of prominent conservative donors last year, the roughly $30 million the group has spent so far has come almost entirely from the casino mogul Sheldon G. Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Sands Corporation, who was recently listed as the third-richest person in the country by Forbes magazine.

Mr. Adelson has insisted on parceling out his money project by project, as opposed to setting an overall budget, limiting the group’s ability to plan and be nimble, the Republican operatives said. Mr. Adelson, who has a reputation for being combative, has rejected almost all of the staff’s proposals that have been brought to him, leaving the organization moribund for long stretches, the operatives said.

“What has happened here is pretty much you had a single donor who essentially dictates the way things occur or do not occur,” said one of the Republican operatives.

A spokesman for Mr. Adelson said he was unavailable for comment. But Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary who sits on the group’s board, suggested that Mr. Adelson’s refusal to finance certain projects was tied to his dissatisfaction with the leadership.

“Sheldon has a proven track history of being fantastically generous,” Mr. Fleischer said. “What’s important is to always earn his confidence.”

Whatever the explanation, with prospects of the group’s going full bore in the presidential campaign seeming to dim, Republican strategists cited a lost opportunity. “Now we’re at a stage in the presidential campaign, if there was a group that could effectively advocate for the issues that are important to John McCain, it would be a good thing,” said Terry Nelson, who was Mr. McCain’s campaign manager until last summer and was political director for President Bush’s campaign in 2004. “But there’s nobody there that’s ready to do it. I think people hoped Freedom’s Watch would play that role.”

The difficulties at Freedom's Watch should trouble conservatives intent on balancing the extremities of the left.

It could be that the strength of such online advocacy groups is correllated to which party holds the White House.

Online interest group activity has surged in importance during the Bush years. Perhaps an Obama adminstration will kindle conservative grassroots Internet organzation during an era of hard-left partisan dominance in Washington.

********

Extra: Note what Oliver Willis says about the hard-left advocacy organizations:

MoveOn was founded by normal Americans, built a huge grassroots membership, then became an institution on the left. Freedom’s Watch, like the right often tries, skipped the whole messy grassroots bottom-up segment and leapt right into being an institution of the right with its financing by the same money barons who fund so much of the right.

My guess is that Willis is not familiar with George Soros, who, of course, is a real down-home kind of a guy.

But Willis also includes Daily Kos in his category of "normal people." Perhaps wanting to gas Jews is a "normal" aspiration for those on the hard-left end of the spectrum.

See also, "Conservative Group Thinks it Has Answer to MoveOn.org."

Hat tip: Memeorandum

French Exhibition to Commemorate 9/11

MEMENTOS: Keys from the World Trade Center are among the items representing the 2001 attacks to be shown in the French city of Caen.

*********

Like many Americans, I wasn't pleased with the French pursuit of narrow national self-interests in the run-up to Iraq. On the other hand, I wasn't so pleased with all the French-bashing we saw on this side of the Atlantic in the aftermath.

France, for all it's aspirations to international grandeur and puissance, is one of the world's great nations, with contributions to Western civilization too numerous to recount. French politics veers much too far to the left on occasion, but there's a history and culture to the nation that remains one of the world's most fascinating.

The French people, moreover, do indeed appreciate their centuries-old partnership with America. The strength of those ties seem to wax and wane at times, especially amid periods like the backlash against Iraq, but the fundament's still there, sturdily under the surface.

French respect for the United States will be on display this summer, when a new historical exhibition opens in city of Caen, on the coast of Normandy. The exhibition, "A Global Moment," is covered in today's Los Angeles Times:

On the shores of Normandy where thousands of Americans died in the cataclysm that was D-day, a museum that aims at being more than a collection of rusting relics is preparing to commemorate another day that changed the world: Sept. 11, 2001.

More than 120 mementos, including building keys and a smashed-up vehicle, are being shipped from New York to the French city of Caen for the first exhibition outside the United States, and the largest anywhere on the attack, its roots and aftermath.

That France is playing host to the exhibition might surprise Americans who remember the "freedom fries" uproar that greeted Paris' opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which the Bush administration tied to its war on terrorism. But the director of the Caen Memorial, a museum of conflict and peace, said the show would have neither an American nor French take on events surrounding Sept. 11, but rather a global view.

"The people who died in those buildings were from 16 countries and every religion," Director Stephane Grimaldi said. "It was an attack against America. It was an attack against democracy and human rights. We want to tell that story."

The exhibition, titled "A Global Moment," is expected to open June 6 at the museum, which was built to remember those who died on that date in 1944 and in the Battle of Normandy that began with the landings.

Grimaldi said that although the relationship between the French and Americans has been complicated by post-Sept. 11 politics in recent years, museums that try to explain the meaning of war are valuable as a way to discuss peace and shared democratic values.

"The American troops' coming to Normandy to free Europe was a turning point in World War II," he said during an interview in Paris. "While we still don't know the historical significance of 9/11, we know it is a turning point and it is time to begin to understand and explore it together."

Grimaldi said he chose the 9/11 exhibition to mark the 20th anniversary of the French museum because the act of terrorism that day in 2001 is so important to contemporary politics and everyday life around the world.

"The world today is the world of 9/11," he said, "and our museum is here not to be just another collection of things from the past, of old tanks and helmets, but to understand the world of today that is so marked by terrorism."

Read the whole thing.

The article notes the stress of relations surrounding the Iraq war, but notes as well that French President Nicolas Sarkozy 's getting Franco-American relations back on track.

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

Radical Roundup - April 11, 2008

Just when Barack Obama's actually made a decent foreign policy statement (pledging not to negotiate with Hamas), a leading lefty blogger argues, "one has to wonder why he's taking such a hard line."

Oh sure, that's a tough one. Hamas' ultimate depravity couldn't have been a deciding factory, right? In march, for example, Hamas cheered the murdering of eight students at the seminary in Jerusalem, saying "We bless the operation. It will not be the last."

In addtion, here's the BDS line of the day (courtesy of The Reaction):

Sadly, it's looking less, and less, likely that we will see him exit the White House, handcuffed, in a perp walk - as he so richly deserves.

A presidential "perp walk"!

That's a new one, but not to be outdone, here's Juan Cole on our Republican "dictatorship":

War turns Republics into dictatorships. The logic is actually quite simple. The Constitution says that the Congress is responsible for declaring war. But in 2002 Congress turned that responsibility over to Bush, gutting the constitution and allowing the American Right to start referring to him not as president but as 'commander in chief' (that is a function of the civilian presidency, not a title.)

Now Bush has now turned over the decision-making about the course of the Iraq War to Gen. David Petraeus.

So Congress abdicated to Bush. Bush has abdicated to the generals in the field.

That is not a Republic. That is a military dictatorship achieved not by coup but by moral laziness.

I think Bush's decision-making's trumped by Cole's intellectual laziness.

I mean, this is sure one lousy dictatorship! Bush is now generally considered a lame duck, with approval rating dropping to record lows on top of that. Geez, you'd think the "Decider" would be able to manufacture a little more consent than that!

But don't take my word for it: "A man who didn't decide he wanted to be president until well into his forties certainly is an unlikely tyrant" (source).

But hey, what more fitting way to conclude a "radical roundup" that with some afternoon FDL, on Michael Yon:

All the while Michael Yon's been saying we're winning, over 2200 Americans have been killed. So what I wanna know is -- at what point will war cheerleaders propagandists like Michael Yon feel enough shame to finally STFU?

In 1945, 6,800 died at the Battle of Iwo Jima, but, of course, that was the "good war."

Those were the days I guess...

Photo Credit: "Gunman in Jerusalem Attack Identified, New York Times

Democrats Sabotage War They Voted to Authorize

David Horowitz and Ben Johnson have posted the introduction to their new book, Party of Defeat, at FrontPageMagazine.

Here's the editors' background blurb from the post:

The following is the introduction from the new book Party of Defeat by David Horowitz and Ben Johnson. The introduction lays out the book's thesis: that the opposition to the war in Iraq has crossed a troubling boundary. For the first time, a large number of national leaders have not merely opposed a war; that would be their inalienable right under the U.S. Constitution. Instead, they have actively sabotaged an ongoing war they voted to authorize and which our troops are currently winning. Party of Defeat is available from the FrontPage Magazine Bookstore for $15, less than Amazon.com. -- The Editors.

Here's a key passage from the introduction:

The object of war is to break an enemy’s will and destroy his capacity to fight. Therefore, a nation divided in wartime is a nation that invites its own defeat. Yet that is precisely how Americans are facing the global war that radical Islamists have declared on them.

The enemies who confront us are religious barbarians, armed with the technologies of modern warfare but guided by morals that are medieval and grotesque. Their stated goal is the obliteration of America and the conquest of the West. They have assembled a coalition that includes sovereign states such as Iran and Syria, Muslim armies such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas, and terrorist cells that are globally dispersed and beyond counting....

Striking America’s homeland on September 11, 2001, jihadists murdered thousands of unsuspecting civilians, and came within a terrorist attack or two of destabilizing the American economy and unleashing chaos.

As the victim of these unprovoked and savage attacks, and as the defender of democratic values in three world wars, America would seem a worthy cause. Instead, America is on the defensive, harshly criticized by its traditional allies and under political attack by significant elements of its own population.

In this epic conflict Americans appear more divided among themselves than they have been at any time in the century–and–a half since the Civil War. Never in those years was an American commander-in-chief the target of such extreme attacks by his own countrymen with his troops in harm’s way. Never in its history has America faced an external enemy with its own leaders so at odds with each other.

Even as American soldiers have fought a fanatical enemy on the battlefields of Iraq, their president has been condemned as a deceiver who led them to war through “lies”; as a destroyer of American liberties; as a desecrator of the Constitution; as a usurper who stole his high office; as the architect of an “unnecessary war”; as a “fraud”; as a leader who “betrayed us”; and as a president who cynically sent the flower of American youth to die in foreign lands in order to enrich himself and his friends.

These reckless, corrosive charges are made not by fringe elements of the political spectrum, but by national leaders of the Democratic Party, including a former president, a former vice president and presidential candidate, and three members of the United States Senate (among them a one-time presidential candidate). These attacks occurred not after years of fighting in Iraq, when some might regard the result as a “quagmire,” but during the first months of the conflict, when the fighting had barely begun. They were made not over a war that was forced on Americans, or surreptitiously launched without their consent, but a war authorized by both political parties. They were directed not merely at its conduct, but at the rationale of the war itself—in other words, at the very justice of the American cause.

Although they voted for the bill to authorize the war, leaders of the Democratic Party, such as Senator Hillary Clinton, turned around after it was in progress and claimed that it was “George Bush’s war,” not theirs. They argued that Bush alone had decided to remove Saddam, when in fact it was a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who made regime change the policy of the United States. They argued that the war was “unnecessary” because Iraq was “no threat.” But who would have regarded Afghanistan as a threat before 9/11? They maintained that because the war in Iraq was a war of “choice,” it was therefore immoral. But every war fought by America in the twentieth century, with the exception of World War II, was also a war of choice.

Cartoon Credit, Nice Deb, "Once Again, Encouraging Words From Dingy Harry On Iraq."

(Harry Reid voted for the 2002 Iraq war authorization in the Senate, and has justified his shift to Democratic defeatism saying, the "evidence at the time was persuasive.")

American Economy Hasn't Bottomed Out, Forecast Shows

I've noted a few times that despite arguments to the contrary, the U.S. is not technically in a recession. I've noted, further, that UCLA's respected Anderson forecast recently discounted recession fears.

Now, there's no doubt we're having dramatic economic instability, but at 5.1 percent the unemployment numbers are nowhere near the levels of labor market dislocations of previous economic downturns.

What to do?

Let me refer readers to the Wall Street Journal's forecasting survey of economists who suggest the U.S. economy's yet to hit bottom (via Memeorandum):

The weakening U.S. economy has further to fall, according to the majority of economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey.

By a 3-to-1 ratio, respondents said the economy is in a recession, and almost three-quarters said the economy hasn't yet hit bottom. "It's hard to say," said Lou Crandall of Wrightson ICAP, because "it doesn't feel like anything we've experienced in decades."

Well, with this economic consensus, perhaps Hillary Clinton's not precipitous in her suspected abandonment of the 1996 welfare reform legislation.

Readers should drop me a line should they find women and children sleeping on grates.

In Hardball McCain Smears, Obama Casts Doubts on Transcendental Appeal

Barack Obama, who repeatedly refuses to denounce left-wing smear attacks against eventual GOP nominee John McCain, looks more and more like a run-of-the-mill politician, rather than the image of some transcendent political star he's tried to cultivate.

Steve Huntley makes the case:

The best indicator of Republican John McCain's surprisingly strong presidential prospects in what should be a slam-dunk Democratic year is not his solid general-election poll numbers but rather the increasingly shrill attacks from Democrats.

The latest was a grotesque slam from Barack Obama supporter Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia. In a newspaper interview in his home state, Rockefeller let loose this stinker: "McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues."

Never mind that laser-guided missiles hadn't been invented during the Vietnam war. Bombing is a part of warfare, and McCain was serving his country as have legions of other bomber airmen. Rockefeller smeared them all. One further point: McCain was a prisoner of war in Hanoi when U.S. planes bombed the city, on the orders of McCain's admiral father.

So wrong was this that Rockefeller not only quickly apologized, but his office also later made a point of saying that McCain had accepted his apology.

For his part, Obama said nothing, but his campaign issued a statement that he "does not agree" with Rockefeller's remarks.

It wasn't the first time Obama let his campaign do the talking when one of his supporters crossed the line. Last week, liberal radio talk show host Ed Schultz, speaking at a political event before Obama, called McCain a "warmonger." It was another shameful slur on a war hero. Inconveniently for Schultz, the New York Times carried a story a few days ago that McCain's Marine Corps son had just served a tour of duty in Iraq.

The day after this ugly character assassination, Obama twice declined to repudiate Schultz's statement, according to the Los Angeles Times. His campaign finally had a spokesman say, "John McCain is not a warmonger and should not be described as such."

Contrast that to McCain's handling of his own episode with a conservative talk show host shooting off his mouth. After learning that Bill Cunningham had, at a McCain rally, repeatedly referred to the Democratic candidate as "Barack Hussein Obama," McCain immediately stepped forward to condemn Cunningham's behavior. This took political courage because McCain already had problems with the right-wing talk show circuit, which considers him insufficiently conservative.

Obama has himself attacked McCain with a flagrant distortion, accusing him of wanting to bog America down in Iraq fighting for 100 years. The respected Annenberg Political Fact Check Web site said Obama had "twisted" McCain's words. Answering a question about how many years U.S. forces would be in Iraq, McCain said, "Make it a hundred. . . . We've been in Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me, as long as American, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed."

Obama, who complains about "snippets" of anti-American talk misrepresenting the whole career of his spiritual mentor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has no problem quoting McCain out of context.

Be prepared for more of this. Wealthy Democrats plan to fund a $40 million, four-month attack barrage against McCain, reports Politico. It will be independent of whoever is the Democratic nominee, but is yet another sign of Democrats' worry about McCain.

The recent attacks could be written as standard political hardball in a hotly contested race. But, as McCain points out, Obama has promised a campaign of hope, free of the cynicism and divisive ugly politics of the past. True, good intentions tend to go by the wayside when you're battling for the most powerful job in the world. And the line between legitimate electioneering and reckless politics can be fuzzy. Still, all this does leave Obama looking a bit more like just another politician.

See also, "Obama's Nebulous Campaign Funding Operation."

Think Progress Continues its Spurious Reporting

It seems Think Progress can't break away from the style of shoddy reporting and pseudo-scoop smears against the McCain campaign that's tarnished its reputation in recent weeks.

The latest bit to that effect is its report on the Pentagon's "stop-loss" policy that's been blown out of context in recent antiwar debates:

On Sept. 14, 2001, President Bush issued Executive Order 13223, allowing the administration to implement a “stop-loss” policy. Under stop-loss, “military personnel can be prevented from leaving the armed forces upon completing their enlistment terms.” Stop-loss policies were created after the Vietnam War. However, the Bush administration has overstretched the military by extensively using these orders to make up for declines in re-enlistment as the Iraq war drags on.

Yesterday on PBS’s Newshour, ret. Lt. Col. Ralph Peters — who now advises Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign on national security affairs — called the dangers of stop-loss policies a “myth of the left.” “Stop-loss is old,” said Peters. “This is not a new thing. In time of crisis, soldiers can be extended. They know it.”

Peters was sharply rebutted by Bobby Muller, president of Veterans for America, who pointed out that many high-ranking military officials have also warned that the Bush administration’s policies are overstretching the armed forces...

Peters, a retired United States Army Lieutenant Colonel, is a respected analyst of civil-military relations. The debate here looks, well, like a debate ... one in which the competing interpretations of stop-loss look less scandalous than Think Progress would have us believe.

Here's another interpretation on the stop-loss policy, from Urban Grounds:

My little brother and I enlisted in the US Army together in August of 1990.

The recruiter who signed us up went over our contract with us very thoroughly.

As the United States had just declared war on Iraq, he also explained the portion of our enlistment contract that detailed the Army’s Stop-Loss policy.

While I knew plenty of Soldiers who didn’t like the policy, I didn’t know any who didn’t know about it and that it was a part of their enlistment contract.

See also Gateway Pundit, "'Think Progress' Publishes Misleading Troop Withdrawal Post."

Obama's Nebulous Campaign Funding Operation

There's a lot of disparate stories coming in on Barack Obama's nebulous network of campaign finance.

For one, the Washington Post notes, Obama's got some big money bundlers of various origins who are casting doubt on the campaign's claim that the preponderance of its support is in small contributors and middle American common folk (via Memeorandum):

Sen. Barack Obama credits his presidential campaign with creating a "parallel public financing system" built on a wave of modest donations from homemakers and high school teachers. Small givers, he said at a fundraiser this week, "will have as much access and influence over the course and direction of our campaign that has traditionally been reserved for the wealthy and the powerful."

But those with wealth and power also have played a critical role in creating Obama's record-breaking fundraising machine, and their generosity has earned them a prominent voice in shaping his campaign. Seventy-nine "bundlers," five of them billionaires, have tapped their personal networks to raise at least $200,000 each. They have helped the campaign recruit more than 27,000 donors to write checks for $2,300, the maximum allowed. Donors who have given more than $200 account for about half of Obama's total haul, which stands at nearly $240 million.

The Post article highlights the model of campaign finance that's emerged in presidential elections since George W. Bush's 2000 campaign, which was the first to eschew public financing in the primaries.

The campaign bundling's not as controversial as the hypocrisy of the message of preponderant grassroots support, Obama's scam of a "parallel public financing" system, and not to mention the large contributions that Obama's getting from Iraq defense contractors, donations which certainly raise questions as to Obama's fidelity to the hardcore base of antiwar supporters which has mobilized heavily to his banner.

The Wall Street Journal's got an editorial on Obama's shifting campaign fianance associations:

Mr. Obama has also made much of his campaign's pledge not to accept money from political action committees, raising the majority of his funds from small private donations. PACs typically make up less than 1% of overall election donations to Presidential candidates, so that's no sacrifice.

Industry PACs may not give directly to his campaign, but employees of industries may do so, and many of his contributors have come from executives and their spouses. For example, Mr. Obama leads all candidates in donations from the pharmaceutical industry and commercial banks, among other industries. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks fundraising in elections, Mr. Obama has received $528,765 from people in the pharmaceutical industry and $1,380,108 from commercial banks. He comes in second to Mrs. Clinton in donations from lawyers with $13,690,170, just over a million shy of her total.

There is in fact a real parallel financing system already in place and ready to support Mr. Obama. It's called George Soros and so-called 527 groups such as the Democrat-supporting Fund for America or the newly named Progressive Media USA. Progressive Media recently announced plans for a $40 million, four-month campaign against Mr. McCain, and that's only one group in the game.

The Politico reported yesterday on the Progressive Media Group's planned big-money smear campaign against John McCain, "Dems plan $40M hit on McCain."

But check out Chris Cillizza's post yesterday on the anti-McCain efforts:

The Fund for America, a political organization aligned with several major players in Democratic politics, has raised better than $11 million -- largely from wealthy individuals -- since its inception last November and doled out nearly half that sum to various progressive organizations around the country.

FFA, as its known in Democratic circles, is set to report collecting $4.1 million between Jan. 1 and March 31 when its report is due with the Internal Revenue Service on April 15. As a 527 organization, the group can take unlimited donations from individuals but must disclose the names of its contributors.

The vast majority of that cash comes from a stable of well-heeled donors who are familiar to any political junkie....

FFA is organized as a grant-giving organization -- using the cash it collects to fund a variety of progressive causes. Its founders insist it is not primarily an election-year vehicle but rather an attempt to put into place a longer-term conduit for major donors to fund key activities and groups throughout the country.

"FFA was created to promote and support the long-term strength of the progressive movement," said Amy Dacey, the group's executive director. "Beyond our efforts this year, we intend to raise and distribute funds in 2009, 2010, 2011 and beyond. We've got our eye on the long-term success of the progressive movement against the more established and aggressive conservative movement, and we'll settle for nothing less."

To that end, FFA's largest grants during the first three months of 2008 went to national groups with an eye on the presidential election.

FFA sent $2.5 million to Campaign to Defend America, a 501(c)(4) organization headed by former Moveon.org Washington director Tom Matzzie. That group -- and its plans for the fall -- remain something of a mystery to even some Democratic party insiders although the group did run ads last month in Ohio and Pennsylvania that labeled Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as the "McSame" as President Bush on a variety of key issues. The ad buy was estimated at $1 million.

I wrote about these developments the other day, indicating how Mattzie's moved away from the discredited "Betray Us"-style of attack mobilization to a newer model of radical electoral agitation politics.

All of these trends point to Obama's operation as extremely opportunistic - even Machiavellian - in merging mainstream big-money bundling operations with hardline antiwar factions who're notorious political tools for the Democratic Party establishment.

Newly Sworn In, Speier Blasts Iraq War in First House speech

Democrat Jackie Speier, just elected to Congress this week in a special election, attacked the Iraq war in a burst of first day partisanship on Capitol Hill:

For a few feel-good moments on the floor of the U.S. House today, Jackie Speier basked in bipartisan applause as she was sworn in as its newest member. Her family, supporters and kids cheered as she embraced her new colleagues.
Then, in her first speech in Congress, Speier spoke out about Iraq, and the boos and hoots began from the Republican side of the aisle.

"When will we get out of Iraq?" was the most frequent question she heard, she told the House, while campaigning in the special election she won Tuesday to succeed the late Rep. Tom Lantos.

"The process to bring the troops home must begin immediately," she said, as several Republicans loudly booed. Rep. Darrell Issa, a Vista Republican, bolted from his seat and left the floor.

The hoots grew in volume as Speier, a Hillsborough Democrat, continued.

"The president wants to stay the course and a man who wants to replace him suggests we could be in Iraq for 100 years," she said, a reference to Republican John McCain's assertion that U.S. forces could be there decades, if they are not under attack.

The San Francisco Chronicle has more:

Newly elected Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier of Hillsborough was sworn into Congress Thursday morning and promptly gave a fiery speech criticizing the Iraq policies of President Bush and likely GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, leading some Republicans to boo and walk out of the House chamber.

Speier, who won a special election Tuesday to finish the term of the late Rep. Tom Lantos, has always been an outspoken lawmaker in her years as a San Mateo County supervisor, state assemblywoman and state senator. She served notice Thursday that she plans be just as aggressive as a member of the House.

"The process to bring the troops home must begin immediately," Speier told a packed House presided over by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco. "The president wants to stay the course and a man who wants to replace him suggests we could be in Iraq for 100 years. But Madam Speaker, history will not judge us kindly if we sacrifice four generations of Americans because of the folly of one."

While Democrats applauded, Republicans began a chorus of low boos. Some Republicans who had congratulated her just moments before, including Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), walked out of the hall in protest.

Speier's 13-year-old daughter, Stephanie, who was watching from the House gallery, asked, "Why are they booing my mom?"

After her speech, Speier said she had held more than 60 public meetings while campaigning for the 12th Congressional District seat and the most common question was, "When will we get out of Iraq?" She said didn't expect the negative reaction from Republicans, but it didn't bother her.

"That's the combat that goes on here," she said. "I'm not a newbie to this process."

Wearing a bright red overcoat, the 57-year-old Democrat was met with hugs from colleagues, including some Republicans, when she walked into the House chamber Thursday morning. Her friend, Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, gave her a kiss.

After being sworn in by Pelosi, Speier began her speech by praising her predecessor, Lantos, who died in February of esophageal cancer after serving in Congress for 27 years. Speier said she recently corrected a speaker in her district who said she was "replacing" Lantos.

"I had to laugh," she said. "I was elected to succeed Congressman Lantos. No one will ever replace him."

Well, let's hope not.

Just last September Lantos attacked General David Petraeus during the Iraq commander's congressional testimony, in what can best be recalled as a circus atmosphere of antiwar hysteria.

Speier's apparently already hard at work to "replace" the Lantos legacy.

Photo Credit: San Jose Mercury News