Straight Talk: Analyzing Presidential Diplomacy With U.S. Enemies

Gallup reports that a large majority of Americans supports presidential-level diplomatic talks with our international enemies, including Iran (and this finding's noteworthy as Iran tops the list of perceived foes of the United States).

The report is careful to note that public support for talking to our enemies could decline if the dangers of such an approach became demonstrably evident in the course of the long presidential campaign:

The issue of using presidential diplomacy with U.S. enemies distinguishes Barack Obama from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, and even from his opponent for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton.

Obama is the only one of the three who has said he would personally meet with the leaders of countries like Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela as president, and he recently defended his position by saying "strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries." Clinton has criticized Obama's approach as "naïve," and McCain has been unrelenting in his attacks on the issue, accusing Obama of being dangerously inexperienced and having "reckless judgment."

Bottom Line

McCain may eventually persuade more Americans that there is nothing for the president of the United States to discuss with hostile foreign leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and that to do so only undermines U.S. efforts to destabilize such regimes.

However, for now, whether it's the leader of an "enemy" country, generally, or the president of Iran, specifically, Americans think it's a good idea for the president of the United States to meet directly with the nation's adversaries.

We can thus see that while public opinion appears favorable to Barack Obama's position, a spirited campaign debate on the merits of meeting our enemies (especially unconditionally) could very well provide the context for a more skeptical public stance vis-à-vis our foes.

One doesn't get this nuance from Matthew Yglesias, who writes on Gallup's findings today:

One point I've been trying to make in my book talks is that there's precious little evidence that public opinion is demanding a neo-imperial foreign policy for the United States. Nobody felt during the 2000 presidential campaign that the public was clamoring for a new Orwellian doctrine of "anticipatory self-defense" (to repeat the phrase used in Doug Feith's book) in which the United States was going to launch aggressive wars against countries that hadn't attacked us or our allies and had no plans of doing so. September 11, clearly, had a large impact on public opinion but even then there was little public interest in doing this, which is why the Bush administration overstated both the scale and the immediacy of the alleged Iraqi threat while drastically downplaying the costs.

And you see again that while it took a certain amount of courage for Barack Obama to stand up to the crusted-over notion that the United States should set itself up as too damn important to conduct high-level talks with regional adversaries, there's not some genuine avalanche of public opinion on the other side of this issue. What you have instead is a political and media system that's very vulnerable to hype, fearmongering, hysteria, etc. But calm political leadership that doesn't panic at the first sign of conservative self-confidence about the politics of warmongering has a real chance to win these fights.

Yglesias make reference to his book, Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats.

I've read the book, and to study Yglesias is to understand how the folks on the left can ideologically twist and turn endlessly to devise a position on international conflict where the resort to arms would never be considered a viable policy position of the Unitied States.

Notice how Yglesias offers no clear, verifiable reference for his claim that:

September 11, clearly, had a large impact on public opinion but even then there was little public interest in doing this, which is why the Bush administration overstated both the scale and the immediacy of the alleged Iraqi threat while drastically downplaying the costs.

Considering Yglesias has made a career out of hammering "liberal war hawks," and as one who's demonized John McCain as "the militarist," we might think that we'd at least get some empirical confirmation for these substantive claims and spurious smears.

Straightforward polling data from the "even then" period after 9/11 puts Yglesias in a bind:

FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll. March 12-13, 2002. N=900 registered voters nationwide. MoE ± 3.
						.
"Do you support or oppose the U.S. military action being taken in response to the terrorist attacks?"
		Support	Oppose	Not Sure
		%	%	%
	3/12-13/02	91	6	3
	2/26-27/02	82	11	7
	1/30-31/02	89	7	4
	1/9-10/02	90	5	5
	12/12-13/01	91	6	3
	11/28-29/01	91	5	4
	11/14-15/01	91	6	3
	10/31 - 11/1/01	87	8	5

Not only that, in 1998, when the Clinton/Gore administration ratcheted-up American foreign policy efforts to prevent Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction, large majorities favored military efforts over non-military means to resolve the crisis:

Previous polls have shown that controlling weapons of mass destruction and containing Iraq are among the public's top priorities in foreign affairs, and underpin support for a tough approach toward Iraq. Also, Americans seem to have become less patient about using non-military measures against Iraq since the last inspection crisis. Gallup (1/16-18) found 75 percent believed military force "will eventually be necessary to keep Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction" -- up from 56 percent last November (11/21-23), after inspections were resumed.

So, while this is two years before the 2000 presidential election campaign, the polling data show support for military action over diplomacy ("non-military measures"); and while these polls do not survey support for regime change per se, the data here, gathered during a Democratic administration, nevetheless cast asperision on blanket left-wing denunciations that there was "little public interest" in "anticipatory self-defense."

Moreover, after the fall of 2002, when U.S. intelligence officials, as well as those in intelligence bureaus around the world, had documented Iraq's continuing efforts at WMD procurement, American public opinion firmly supported the Bush administration's policy of regime change:

The standard question used by many public opinion organizations, including the Pew Research Center, asks whether the respondent favors or opposes taking military action to remove Saddam Hussein from power. These questions yield higher measures of support than the standard question asked by Gallup/CNN/USA Today, which asks about invading Iraq with ground troops....

Here are recent polls on the general question of using force in Iraq:

Organization	Dates	N	Question	Favor/Yes	Oppose/No	DK
Pew Research Center	1/8-12/03	611	Would you favor or oppose taking military action in Iraq to end Saddam Hussein's rule?	68	25	7
Fox News/ Opinion Dynamics	1/14-15/03	900 RV	Do you support or oppose U.S. military action to disarm Iraq and remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein?	67	25	8
CBS/NYT	1/19-22/03	997	Do you approve or disapprove of the United States taking military action against Iraq to try to remove Saddam Hussein from power?	64	30	6
Newsweek	1/23-24/03	1001	In the fight against terrorism, the Bush Administration has talked about using military force against Saddam Hussein and his military in Iraq. Would you support using military force against Iraq, or not?	60	35	5
Time/CNN	1/15-16/03	1010	Do you think the U.S. should or should not use military action involving ground troops to attempt to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq?	60	33	7
ABC/Washington Post	1/16-20/03	1133	Would you favor or oppose having U.S. forces take military action against Iraq to force Saddam Hussein from power?	57	41	3
NBC News/Wall Street Journal	1/19-21/03	1025	Do you think that the United States should or should not take military action to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq?	56	36	8
Gallup/CNN/ USA Today	1/23-25/03	1000	Would you favor or oppose invading Iraq with U.S. ground troops in an attempt to remove Saddam Hussein from power?	52	43	5

This analysis, then, raises serious doubt on Yglesias' larger assertions that Barack Obama's views are in line with public opinion on international diplomacy. To quote this passage once more:

And you see again that while it took a certain amount of courage for Barack Obama to stand up to the crusted-over notion that the United States should set itself up as too damn important to conduct high-level talks with regional adversaries, there's not some genuine avalanche of public opinion on the other side of this issue.

The Gallup data discussed at the start of this post are much more variegated than Yglesias' view suggests, and a review of public opinion trends in precisely those periods Yglesias claims support his push for diplomacy-at-all costs indicates how drastically unserious (even dangerous ) are the representative foreign policy points of the far-left.

The Truth on Iraq: Voters Wary of Precipitous Drawdown

Hard-left commentators routinely argue that "huge majorities" want out of Iraq, and that the war should be a slam-dunk for the Democrats in November.

Daily Kos, for example, recently went on and on about "how bad" the Iraq issue would be for the Republicans this fall, "The Iraq Problem For McCain and The GOP."

But as Andrew Kohut notes, the public's views on the conflict have lost urgency as a campaign issue, a trend that coincides nicely with the gains in security on the ground:

It turns out that Iraq is not the pivotal campaign issue that it seemed to be less than a year ago. Indeed, the war is no longer the top concern among voters.

A lot has changed with respect to Iraq in a relatively short period of time period. Voters have come to feel better about the way the war is going, and with American casualties declining, there is more optimism about our efforts there. While most Americans still believe the war was a mistake, the percentages of people who think the war is going badly or believe that the United States is losing ground against the insurgents has decreased compared with a year ago. In short, while no less important, Iraq is a somewhat less pressing issue....

At the same time concerns about the economy — and prices specifically — have soared. In almost all rankings of issues in national opinion polls, the economy is No. 1 and Iraq is No. 2.

How the war will figure as an issue in the coming election is complicated by ambivalent and contradictory public opinions. One of the more interesting findings in Republican exit polls was that John McCain, despite his strong support for the war, was more likely to win the backing of voters who disapproved of the war, while G.O.P. supporters of the war voted for other candidates (most often Mitt Romney.) And surprisingly, a late April Pew survey found voters thinking that Mr. McCain could do a better job than Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in handling the war by a 50 percent to 38 percent margin in Mr. Obama’s case and a 49 percent to 43 percent margin in Mrs. Clinton’s case. A late May poll found a much closer division of opinion between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama, 46 percent to 43 percent, but not one that favored the Illinois senator.

Note something here: While a majority of Americans think the war's been a mistake, we continue to see the public resisting a preciptious retreat from the conflict:

Follow-up questions to those who favor withdrawal reveal that, relatively few think that American troops should be taken out immediately (16 percent); most favor gradual withdrawal (39 percent) over the next year or two. And follow-up questions to those who back keeping troops in Iraq until the country stabilizes also found a good number saying they favor a time table (14 percent). This leaves a relatively small segment of the public (26 percent) supporting an open-ended commitment to keeping American forces in Iraq.

I've written quite a bit on public opinion and Iraq.

One of the most egregious failures of the media in the last year is not only the increasing unwillingness of war opponents in the press to acknowledge the success of the Petraeus counterinsurgency program, but also the continuing meme that public opinion on the war is uniformly hostile to continuing the deployment.

Simply because the war's unpopular doesn't necessarily mean that we should throw our hands up and surrender.

See also my earlier entry, "The Radical Left's Denialism on Iraq Public Opinion."

Althouse: "I Guess I Don't Read the Lefty Blogs Enough"

I love Ann Althouse's blogging, but she's behind the curve in her entry this morning on the leftosphere's Clinton-Obama civil war:

"The harmony that existed between MyDD and Kos since the birth of the Netroots no longer exists today."

Writes TNR's Dana Goldstein. I guess I don't read the lefty blogs enough. I had no idea. Anyway, it seems that back in February, Jerome Armstrong (My DD) came out for Hillary Clinton, and the commenters on both sites have been fighting ever since. And then there was that "writers strike" by the pro-Clinton diarists at Kos.

After announcing her departure from the site, [strike leader] Alegre was the subject of insults by dozens of commenters.

Dozens! Ooh. Ouch.

[Kos's Markos] Moulitsas fumed on the site's front page, "People expect me to give a damn that a bunch of whiny posters 'go on strike' and leave in a huff. When I don't give a damn, people get angry that their expectations aren't being met." Of course, characterizing Clinton supporters, especially female Clinton supporters, as "whiny," didn't sit well with many. A Maryland mother of two in her mid-40s, Alegre said she won't publicize her real name because she fears harassment from anti-Clinton bloggers and commenters....

The Netroots has always had a hostile streak, and it's natural that as the Democratic Party and the Netroots themselves began to wield more power, some of that hostility would be directed inwards. Its denizens are also a relatively homogeneous bunch--largely male, middle-aged, college-educated, and upper middle class.

Really? Upper middle class? I can believe there are more men than women, but enough to make it "relatively homogenous"?

I guess Alegre wants back in at Kos, since the writer's strike didn't have much impact, to which Althouse notes:

The writers strike was a dumb idea that left its leader without a high platform to blog from. Now, she has her regrets. Sorry, that's not the big theme she wants it to be. If Alegre deserved the elevation she once had on that platform that Kos built, she ought to be able to blog independently now instead of whining — yeah, whining — about not having a place in his heart.

Now that's ouch!

Readers will recall that I've chronicled some of these intra-leftosphere battles, see "Radical Schizophrenia? Making Sense of Democratic Party Constituencies" and "Barack Obama and the Democratic Party Fracture"

More Pfleger: "America Is The Greatest Sin Against God"

Jack Tapper reports that Michael Pfleger's controversial sermon denouncing Hillary Clinton's also included attacks on this country as a "sin Against God":

In another excerpt from Rev. Michael Pfleger's sermon last Sunday, May 25, from the pulpit of Sen. Barack Obama's now former church, Trinity United Church of Christ on the South side of Chicago, the longtime Obama associate condemns America for racism in fairly harsh terms.

Watch HERE:

"Racism is still America's greatest addiction," Pfleger says. "I also believe that America is the greatest sin against God."

There seems to be a mixed reaction to that from the pews. But Pfleger explains:

"If the greatest command is to love, than the sin against love must be the greatest sin against God who IS love and who calls us to love one another. So that this greatest sin against God, racism, it's as natural as the air we breath."

Obama, of course, resigned from Trinity on Friday, saying he didn't want to be held accountable for every word spoken from the pulpit at the church, and he didn't want the church to continue to have the media disrupting its worship. The last straw may have been Pfleger's mocking of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, from the pulpit in this same sermon.

But Obama's relationship with Pfleger -- who is the priest at a different, Catholic, church -- spans decades.

Jennifer Rubin also comments on Obama's statement that he has "deep regard" for the hate-filled preachers of his former church:

True to form, Barack Obama’s explanation yesterday of his reasons for leaving Trinity Church are a model of double-talk....

The Trinity cast of characters and Obama’s reaction to them have been more revealing than more a dozen-plus debates, all the speeches, and just about anything that has happened in over a year of campaigning. It might be even more revealing if the media would take their role seriously and press Obama on some of these obvious points. But Obama, however inadvertently, has done a fairly good job of letting us know how he makes both political and moral judgments. And that is perhaps the most important thing to know about a potential President.

See also, Power Line, "Get Me From the Church on Time."

Edward Kennedy Scheduled for Brain Surgery Today

CNN reports the Senator Edward Kennedy will undergo brain surgery today to remove a malignant growth in Kennedy's left parietal lobe:

Sen. Edward Kennedy announced Monday he will undergo surgery to treat a malignant brain tumor.

"Over the past several days, Vicki and I, along with my outstanding team of doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital, have consulted with experts from around the country and have decided that the best course of action for my brain tumor is targeted surgery followed by chemotherapy and radiation," the senator said in a statement.

"This morning, I will be undergoing surgery with Dr. Allan Friedman at Duke University Medical Center and expect to remain there to recuperate for approximately one week.

"Shortly thereafter, I will start radiation treatments at Massachusetts General Hospital and begin chemotherapy. After completing treatment, I look forward to returning to the United States Senate and to doing everything I can to help elect Barack Obama as our next president."

Duke University Medical Center is in Durham, North Carolina.

Friedman is an internationally recognized tumor and vascular neurosurgeon, according to the Duke medical center Web site. He is responsible for over 90 percent of all tumor removals and biopsies conducted at Duke, the Web site says.

Aides said Kennedy would be going into surgery around 9 a.m. ET and the surgery would last four to six hours.

Treatment will include surgery and highly focused radiation and chemotherapy, they said.

The 76-year-old Democrat, who has represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate since his election in 1962, suffered a seizure on May 17 while walking two of his dogs at his home in Hyannisport, Massachusetts.

Kennedy's doctors said a few days later that preliminary results from a brain biopsy showed that a tumor in the left parietal lobe was responsible for the seizure.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, who is also a neurosurgeon, said a tumor in that area of the brain could affect the senator's ability to speak and understand speech, as well as the strength on the right side of his body.

Gupta said such tumors don't usually metastasize or spread to other parts of the body.

"What they do do -- and I think that's a concern to people -- is that they grow, and sometimes they invade other normal parts of the brain. That is the big concern here," he said.

My thoughts and prayers got out to the Kennedy family

Antiwar Attacks on U.S. Military Spending

Robert Scheer has an essay up today, at the Los Angeles Times, criticizing trends in military spending throughout the post-9/11 period. As many readers may recognize, Scheer is a former new-left '60s radical who has been a vocal critic of American foreign policy throughout the Bush era.

Scheer's piece is a classic guns-versus-butter attack on the defense sector, drawing on long-discredited theories of power-elite systems and the iron-triangle relationships of the military industrial complex.

Scheer rails away at increases in gross defense spending, and throws in figures from other federal bureaucratic agencies to inflate his urgency ("... other federal budget expenditures for homeland security, nuclear weapons and so-called black budget -- or covert -- operations).

"Black budget"? It's always some conspiracy for those on the hard left - and this is certainly par for Scheer, who remains a central member of the contemporary radical establishment in academe and journalism.

But check out FrontPageMag's analysis of Scheer's background, from an earlier episode of attacks on the war, when war opponents were more likely smear the Bush administration for alleged "fascist imperialism":

Scheer began his career with a 1961 book defending Fidel Castro and was the Cuban dictator’s chosen publisher of Ché Guevara’s diaries. Scheer’s history of support for Communist revolutionaries (not nationalists or pragmatists) stretches back 40 years and began with his Cuban romance. Cuba, of course, is the exemplar of Communism’s imperial ambitions – the very ambitions that Scheer pretends don’t exist. In 1963, Castro sent 22 tanks and more than 100 Cuban troops to the Algerian National Liberation Front led by Ahmed ben Bella, ultimately giving two billion francs to the Arab Marxists. Ché Guevara famously called for radicals to “create two, three…many Vietnams” – the title also of a book by Ché wannabe Tom Hayden – and died trying to launch one in Bolivia. This martyrdom inspired Ho Chi Minh's followers to host Raul Castro shortly after the Fall of Saigon.

Castro reached his imperial apex when he sent 50,000 troops to aid the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola in its efforts to foist Leninism in the former colonial nation. Cuban troops fought in the Congo well into the Reagan administration and Fidel sent aid to the brutal “Red Rule” of Ethiopia’s Communists, architects of one of the worst politically devised famines in world history. Castro’s efforts to build an airport for Soviet bombers in Grenada provoked Ronald Reagan to take defensive military action. The Sandinista dictators were his personal protégés, trained in Havana to spread Marxist police states throughout Central America. The trainers of Nicaragua’s secret police were Cubans loaned by Castro for that very purpose.

So Scheer is well aware that Communism was a messianic creed and an imperialist enterprise and one that the North Vietnamese Communists shared. But acknowledging this would prevent him from writing yet another column (he has written them before) on how it would be good thing for America to lose its wars with totalitarian enemies. But this is the very column that Scheer has been writing for the last three years about America’s war against the Islamic totalitarians in Iraq – another nation in which French self-interest left the United States to take care of a murderous autocrat they kept in power. Plus ça change....

As Captain Ed has argued regarding the left's relentless denialism on the war:

The defeatists have been exposed. They cannot run, but they can keep spinning. Even their colleagues in the media have begun to notice the good news, however, and the facade of defeat has begun its inevitable collapse.

Because war opponents no longer have any credible attack on the Iraq deployment in either the military or political dimensions, they've shifted to the economic and human costs of the mission (including making U.S. troops out as victims of the Bush administration's "war machine").

But as Larry Kudlow notes in his essay, "What Price Freedom?":

Surprise, surprise. Having failed to puncture General Petraeus’s story about great improvements on the ground in Iraq, liberals are now saying the cost of the Iraq war has somehow undermined the economy — even caused the current slowdown. What complete nonsense....

What is the cost of freedom? While the Left refuses to acknowledge it, the U.S. homeland has not been attacked since September 11. Right there is a big economic plus. Since President Bush went on the offensive and took the battle to Iraq, al Qaeda and other extremist terrorist groups have been utterly routed by U.S. forces. But in tying the jihadists down on their home turf, and keeping them from mounting another coordinated attack on the U.S., our economy has benefited incalculably.

Then again, the anti-war forces might want to recall John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, in which he called on Americans to “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to ensure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Do these folks actually think 1 percent of GDP is too large a price, too heavy a burden? I sure hope not.

Well, yes, 1 percent of GDP is too much for war opponents, but the argument's not compelling - indeed, it's mostly a rehash of old Marxist talking points from earlier eras in the history of anti-American radicalism.

American Deaths in Iraq Down Sharply

Combat fatalities for U.S. service personnel in Iraq are down for the month of May, the New York Times reports:

American casualties dropped in May to their lowest monthly level — 19 — since the invasion in 2003, the United States military said Sunday, though officials said they were reluctant to highlight the number as a milestone.

There have been troughs in American casualty rates before, only to be followed by rising numbers of fatalities. Just on Sunday, one American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad. The military has instead focused on falling rates of enemy attacks, among other indicators, as a measure of improving security.

Even amid the news of declining deaths, efforts to negotiate a long-term security pact that would set out how long American forces stay in Iraq suffered a setback on Sunday when the Iraqi government criticized proposals from American negotiators and vowed to reject any deal that violates Iraqi sovereignty.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has been under political pressure to resist some American demands. Street protesters loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, for example, burned American flags on Friday to oppose the deal, and Mr. Sadr promised that his followers would stage regular protests through the summer.

The pact, called the Status of Forces Agreement, would address the future of American bases in Iraq, immunity for American soldiers and security contractors, the power of American troops to detain Iraqis and conduct military operations, and control of Iraqi airspace. A United Nations resolution that authorizes the presence of American troops in Iraq expires in December, and the world body is not expected to take the issue up again — leaving it to the United States and Iraq to work out between them.

Along with Mr. Sadr, the main Shiite political parties in Mr. Maliki’s government have come out against key elements of the proposed agreement sought by the Americans. Kurds support a strong American military presence, and some Sunni Arab politicians support the pact because they see the United States military as a bulwark against the rising power of the Shiite majority in Iraq.

“The Iraqi side has a vision and a draft different from the American vision and American draft,” the Iraqi government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said in a statement. “The Iraqi government is focusing on preserving the complete sovereignty of Iraqi land, Iraqi sky and Iraqi water.”

Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, meeting with his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, in Iraq on Sunday, said the government would study agreements in Germany, Japan and Turkey allowing American bases in these countries. “Negotiations will continue,” said Mr. Zebari, a Kurd.

Mr. Kouchner, who said earlier that France would look to the future in cooperating with the Iraqi government though it had opposed the American -led invasion, used the visit to praise security gains in Iraq, saying he had noticed “huge improvements.”

Earlier this month, the American military released statistics showing that overall attacks had dropped to their lowest level over a one-week period since March 2004, before the Sunni uprising flared in western Iraq.

The 19 American deaths in May were a steep drop from the 52 fatalities the previous month, when the American military was supporting an Iraqi Army operation to quell an uprising in the Sadr City district of Baghdad.

Of the 19 soldiers who died in May, 14 were listed as killed in action, four were non-combat deaths and one died in the United States after being wounded in combat in Iraq.

The United States lost the highest number of soldiers in a single month in November 2004, when 137 American service members were killed, coinciding with the Marine assault of the western city of Falluja, according to icasualties.org, a group that tracks American deaths in the war.

Notice how the Times hedges the positive news with the dire tone on Iraqi political progess.

For some balance, see Captain Ed, "WaPo: Why is No One Reporting the Success in Iraq?"

See also, AJStrata, "The World Greeted A Different Iraq This Morning."

Real Men? The Return of the Retrosexual

You've got to love this post by Dr. Joy Bliss at Maggies Farm, "The return of the Retrosexual?":

Women often can be heard adopting the passive-aggressive victim posture, and bitching about how easy and good men have it in life. Fortunately, there are plenty of wise women out there who appreciate how tough it is for a boy child to become a man: so tough that many never do it.

From the Daily Mail, a book review: The Return of Real Men: Ladies, Get Ready to Meet Mr. Retrosexual.

They're back? I didn't know they ever went away.

Let's bring some politics into this, just for fun. McCain is the Retrosexual: he knows guns, wouldn't back away from a fight and can use his fists, bait a hook, and can mess with an old Chevy carburetor. Obama: pure Metrosexual, with clean nails, probably never used a chain saw or shot a handgun in his life, and probably hires illegal Mexicans to do his gardening. "I'll have a chardonnay spritzer, please, when you have a chance." A classic "pretty boy," like John Kerry would have been had he been handsome.

Photo: Atticus Finch, a portrait of a real man [...]

I like my nails clean, but I'm no stranger to handguns, shotguns, or cleaning out the pigsty down on the farm.

As for the retro-metro divide, I like McCain: He's a national greatness conservative, and we could use a little more of that in this day an age.

Don't forget to check the Daily Mail article, here.

I'll have more later!

No Certainty in Democratic Nomination Race

Voters today in Puerto Rico will allocate another 55 delagates toward the Democratic presidential nomination. For all the appearance of a likely Barack Obama candidacy this fall, there's little certainty as to the party's next steps.

The New York Times reports:

The big drama now facing the Democratic Party in the presidential contest is how, when and even whether Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will depart the race.

The contest is coming to a close as Puerto Rico votes on Sunday and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday, finishing a process that began five months ago in Iowa. Even if those results do not put Senator Barack Obama over the top, aides to both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton said they expected enough superdelegates to rally behind Mr. Obama in the 48 hours after the final primaries to allow him to proclaim himself the nominee.

In many ways, Mr. Obama is wheezing across the finish line after making a strong start: He has won only 6 of the 13 Democratic contests held since March 4, drawing 6.1 million votes, compared with 6.6 million for Mrs. Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton has kept her counsel about what she might do to draw her campaign to a close. But when the rules committee of the Democratic Party divided up delegates from Michigan and Florida on Saturday night, Harold Ickes, a committee member and Clinton adviser, said she was reserving the right to contest the decision into the summer.

Still, despite the fireworks, Mrs. Clinton’s associates said she seemed to have come to terms over the last week with the near certainty that she would not win the nomination, even as she continued to assert, with what one associate described as subdued resignation, that the Democrats are making a mistake in sending Mr. Obama up against Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Her associates said the most likely outcome was that she would end her bid with a speech, probably back home in New York, in which she would endorse Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton herself suggested on Friday that the contest would end sometime next week.

But that is not a certainty; Mr. Obama’s announcement on Saturday that he would leave his church was just another reminder of how events continue to unfold in the race. She has signaled her ambivalence about the outcome, continuing to urge superdelegates to keep an open mind and consider, for example, the number of popular votes she has won. Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a superdelegate who has been at the forefront of calling for uncommitted Democrats to make a choice soon after the last vote, said in an interview that Mrs. Clinton called him last week and urged him to “keep an open mind until the convention.”

Assuming Mr. Obama reaches the number of delegates and superdelegates he needs to secure the nomination in the coming week, Mrs. Clinton will be faced with three options, associates said: to suspend her campaign and endorse Mr. Obama; to suspend her campaign without making an endorsement; or to press the fight through the convention. Several of Mrs. Clinton’s associates said it was unlikely she would fight through the convention, given the potential damage it would do to her standing in the party, which is increasingly eager to unify and turn to the battle against Mr. McCain.

Mrs. Clinton would almost surely face the defection of some of her highest-profile supporters, as well as some members of her staff. She would no doubt also face anger from Democratic leaders.

The drama was high at yesterday's DNC bylaws committee meeting:

See also Captain Ed, "Clinton Supporter at Rules Committee: “They’re Throwing the Election Away!”

I'll have more later!!

Never Ever Learned to Read or Write So Well...

The new Rolling Stone's cover feature is "The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time."

These "greatest hits" compilations are completely arbitrary, but they can still be fun. The #1 guitar song is Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode," so let's let it roll:

Here's Rolling Stone's summary of Berry's classic:

"If you want to play rock & roll," Joe Perry told Rolling Stone in 2004, "you have to start here." Recorded 50 years ago, on January 6th, 1958, at the Chess Records studio in Chicago, Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" was the first great record about the joys and rewards of playing rock & roll guitar. It also has the single greatest rock & roll intro: a thrilling blast of high twang driven by Berry's spearing notes, followed by a rhythm part that translates a boogie-woogie piano riff for the guitar. "He could play the guitar just like a-ringing a bell," Berry sings in the first verse — a perfect description of his sound and the reverberations still running through every style of rock guitar, from the Beatles and the Stones on down. "It was beautiful, effortless, and his timing was perfection," Keith Richards has said of Berry's playing. "He is rhythm man supreme." Berry wrote often about rock & roll and why it's good for you — "Roll Over Beethoven" in 1956, "Rock and Roll Music" in '57 — but never better than in "Johnny B. Goode," a true story about how playing music on a guitar can change your life forever.

I've actually been mulling the question of history's greatest rock-and-roll hits, especially guitar anthems, since I've been writing my "lightening up" series.

It turn's out that #7 on the list is "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," one of the initial songs I wrote about here.

Not included among the "100 greatest songs" are any of Mick Ronson's power hits when he was David Bowie's sideman in the early 1970s. I've been planning a couple of posts on Bowie soon, but I'm not the only one who took exception to Ronson's exclusion:

OK, let me get this straight. No Mick Ronson, like "Moonage Daydream." A guy who did so many unbelivable things with the guitar...

The comment thread's got a few more folks getting much more animated.

The issues's also got interviews with guitar heroes like Jimmy Page and Eddie Van Halen. Here's Van Halen on some of the classic bands, like the Kinks:

I just like songs. I don't mean to sound like a prick or nothin', but I've never really been that much of a fan of bands outside of Cream. And I don't really listen to anything nowadays. The last record I might've bought was Peter Gabriel's So. With Cream, I was more a fan of their interaction live. You know, they were an example of "What's the difference between jazz and rock & roll? We just play louder." That's all. We get 12 notes. Do what the f**k you want with 'em, you know.

I'll have more, so have a great night!

The Case for Conservatism and Ideas

Remember when Gabriel over at Ace of Spades said "if you're anything like me, [this is] really going to make you mad"? He was talking about how pissed-off he gets at widespread and despicable left-wing extremism and inanity.

It seems like I've been getting angrier every day, frankly, at the sheer vacuity that's so common among those who are supposed to be the highly acclaimed opinion-setters of the Democratic left.

An outstanding case in point is the recent entry from "Kathy G" at Matthew Yglesias' page, "Are "Ideas" the Cure to What Ails Conservatism?." Here's the introduction, plus a couple of key passages:

Lately, we've heard a lot about how conservatives are allegedly "out of ideas." Lack of ideas is supposedly the reason conservatives have recently been losing a slew of elections and scoring low ratings in public opinion polls, and why George Bush is the most hated president since the final days of Richard Nixon. What conservatives need, say some, are "new ideas." That's the ticket! Then their fortunes, currently in such spectacular free fall, will rally once again and stage a dramatic comeback.

I confess that talk of ideas in the context of American electoral politics long puzzled me....

Then I finally got it. By "ideas," by and large the pundits seem to mean a boutique-y marketing of a political agenda to the policy-making elites. As the historian David Greenberg once wrote, the main task of the Heritage Foundation (and I would argue, of other think tanks as well) is to "flood politicians and editorialists with ready-made policies and easy-to-digest talking points." Many political "ideas" amount to changing the packaging, but not the basic product. Old wine in new bottles and all that. Because I don't believe there really are any big "new ideas" in politics. It's just the same old ideas dressed up in a fancy new set of clothes.

For example, an old idea that conservatives have is that markets pretty much always work better than the public sector. So they thought up school vouchers as a way to strengthen the private school system and weaken the public school system. They don't like government programs, so they've been trying, for years now, to privatize Social Security. They don't like progressive taxation, so they've advocated a flat tax. And on and on.

Conservative "ideas" tend to amount to policies that transfer resources out of the public sector and into private hands. On the other side of the coin, liberal "ideas" do the reverse: they take money out of private hands and put it into the public sector, for the purpose of helping the less advantaged or solving social problems. Often, liberal "new ideas" take the form of new government programs. For example, several years ago when Tim Russert asked Rahm Emanuel what the Democrats' "new ideas" were, Emanuel mentioned enacting universal health care, significantly increasing subsidies so that more people can attend college, and creating a national institute for science and technology research.

The distribution of money and power in our society is basically what liberals and conservatives fight over. Liberals tend to want the money and power to be more equally shared, while conservatives want it to be concentrated in the hands of the corporations and the rich. But it's considered rude to speak publicly of things so vulgar as money and power, so when attempting to persuade elites, both sides find it helpful to talk about "ideas." That makes these things a lot more comfortable for all concerned -- we can all pretend that we're have a high-minded debate about ideals, instead of a grubby, down-and-dirty fight about power.

Greenberg noted that "In American politics, liberalism and radicalism have been the preferred ideologies of the intellectuals." With the glut of liberal intellectuals around, coming up with "ideas" -- new programs and policies -- has not been much of a problem for the left. Those ideas may not have been fashionable, and some of them -- like universal health care, for example -- are very, very old. But "ideas" have always been there.

Conservatives have had more of a challenge along these lines. For one thing, once upon a time there were very few conservative American intellectuals. As Greenberg points out, "So insignificant was conservatism a half-century ago that Lionel Trilling could claim there were no true conservative ideas in our culture, only 'irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.''' But it's not only that conservatives tend to attract fewer eggheads to their cause; while it's easy to frame a new government program as an idea, it's much harder to make dismantling such a program sound like an idea.

Half a century ago, at the dawn of the conservative movement, conservatives faced another, even deeper problem: their political aims were viewed with distaste by many of the elites -- policymakers, middle- and high-brow journalists -- that they were trying to appeal to. Racism and class warfare have an ugly edge to them, after all. So it was all the more important that conservatives come up with some high-minded "ideas" to sanitize their more controversial and unsavory goals.

In this respect, Milton Friedman was God's gift to the conservative movement. Friedman was a great economist and a world-class intellectual who, like the conservatives, believed in a radically deregulated state and in free markets as the best (or least bad) solution to virtually every social or political problem. Better yet, his ideology implied that screwing over the working class was not only the most economically efficient way to run our society, but conformed to the highest ideals of cosmic justice.

Eureka! in Friedman-style economics, conservatives had at last found their "ideas." Friedman-omics provided the figleaf of intellectual respectability which covered the moral depravity of much of their politics. Friedmanesque ideologues began to prevail in economics departments across the country, so many of the policy elites the conservatives sought to influence were already thoroughly schooled in the "magic of the market." Economics-based appeals flattered the elites by making them feel smart, and also by implying that their worldly success was entirely deserved, earned by the dint of their hard work and "human capital," and not by the luck of the draw of what class they happened to be born into.

No doubt that, once conservatives captured the policymakers and the elite opinion-making journals like The New Republic, it became much easier to get their policies enacted. Why, all the right-thinking people were united in their belief that dismantling the welfare state was the way to go; it was so uncool, so déclassé, so retro to believe otherwise. Only those dirty f**king hippies at The Nation would disagree.

It's a mistake, though, to believe that conservatives, or liberals, win elections because of "ideas." I've long believed that the power of "ideas" in politics to be way overrated...

There's lots more at the post, but the basic gist really does confirm the left's pedestrian logic that conservatism can be broken-down to economic greed. This is truly a case of postmodern reductionist nihilism.

This reductionism to be expected or lamented - as Matthew Yglesias is a trained philosopher, from Harvard - so either he completely endorses "Kathy G's" essential claim that ideational progess has reached some final endpoint - that debates on ideas are really just jockeying to better package archaic notions of static right or justice - or his break from blogging's ending up totally giving away the store.

As Captain Ed notes in a post tonight on conservatism, dicussions of the philosophy of ideas really need to begin with first principles. The Captain gets right into a discussion of such basic points of classical conservatism as the notion of limited government, and he goes on to suggest, essentially, that calls for being "compassionate" ineluctably tend to expand the scope of government, rather than limit its reach and protect the rights of the individual.

This is good, but according to "Kathy G's" basic point, conservatism versus liberalism's alleged to be more about the distribution of wealth and social obligation. Certainly there's that element in ideological debates over equity and opportunity, but that's not a first principle in the sense of ideological fundamentals (conservatives, in wanting to limit the state, essentially keep property rights as basic to human freedom, and thus to be conservative is accordingly to limit the confiscatory power of goverment, which inherently threatens liberty).

So, when we talk about political ideologies, when we get down to first prerequisites, the key concern is the pace and scope of change.

Liberals and conservatives can be placed along a continuum of ideological orientations as those positions correlate to demands on the pace and reach of social transformation. The continuum is more complicated if we include the major ideological concepts of radicals, liberals, moderates, conservatives, and reactionaries. We move from left to right when discussing these terms, and the further to the left one places oneself on the spectrum the more radical (essentially revolutionary) is the degree of change (contemporary groups like the Stalinist International ANSWER would be placed at the extreme left).

At the other end of the continuum are the forces of reaction, who are opposed to change in its own right, and who would like to take society back to an earlier period in history - indeed, some of the extremist fringes of reaction often seek some kind of millenarian utopianism, often identified in racialist terms (Germany's Nazi Party, and its obsession with early Germanic mysticism or Teutonic Aryanism, is the obvious example of such extreme right-wing millenarianism, but even today's neo-confederate ideology can be characterized as such to some degree).

Everyday conservatives, on the other hand, support incremental change in the social order, changes that reflect custom and traditions preserved through the ages, but accepting of progress when the preservation of human, universal right is at stake.

Thus it's extremely simple and condescending to refer to modern conservatives as a bunch of "Archie Bunkers," crass simpletons insistent on holding their place greedily in some placement of lumpen working class identity.

But note further the language deployed by "Kathy G": Conservatives are seen as promoting markets to weaken the social realm, to "transfer" resources out of the "public sector into public hands." Nothing better illustrates the mindset of today's American left-wing than its orientation toward society's wealth. The "public sector" does not produce resources - private markets do. This is not an argument against governmental intervention or a strong state, for as economists like Douglass North have shown, private markets can become too anarchic and Darwinian in the absence of legal frameworks of regulatory and institutional norms.

The contemporary left, as seen in countless blog posts and articles in journals like the American Prospect, advocates a dramatically interventionist domestic agenda, one that seeks to move the United States more toward the European social democratic model, and with leftist calls for trade protection and multilateralism in interanational security, modern day "progressives" have shifted even closer to the radical position on the continuum than left-liberals of the 1970s and 1980s.

What's interesting is how "Kathy G's" notion of "ideas" consists essentially of expanding the ways to enhance state power and increase distribution. Indeed, those things she lists as novel (and moral) - Emanuel's universal health care, greater subsidies to education, and money for R&D in science and technology - are not new.

The fact is that conservatives are not out of ideas. Greater reliance on markets has shown in recent decades to be a far superior approach to expanding fairness and opportunity than have been efforts to resurrect the paternalistic liberalism of the great society. Take social policy, for example. In the last twelve years the notion driving anti-poverty policy is that people should work rather than rely on the state for support. That is, the traditional solutions to poverty as supporting workfare over welfare, and liberating the classic individualism of self-sufficiency, has been far superior to straight cash handouts to the poor or disadvantaged.

Take social policy further, the GOP can be faulted for not pushing well-enough an incentive-based approach to helping the poor. Society needs to find ways to provide incentives for purposive behavior, like getting kids to school on time, establishing consistent patterns of attendance, or paying the rent on time. We are seeing some "incentive-based" programs at the state level, for example, in the "Pathways to Rewards" initiatives, currently being used in cities like Chicago. Programs like this, also used to assist to the poor transitioning to work, have shown real results.

In international relations one of the most powerful ideas offered this season is the notion of the league of democracies. Think about it: John McCain has borrowed strands from both sides of the political spectrum in offering a new and different approach to great-power organization compared to anything we're seeing from the Democratic candidates. This is fresh thinking, seeking the establishment of international institutions that can be unshackled from the 60-year straightjacket of the United Nations, to work toward a new concert of interests working together among the great powers to effect real change internationally, either independently of existing multilateral organizations, or in tandem with them when traditional power politics doesn't impede cooperation.

Leftist foreign policy writers and bloggers routinely attack to notion of a concert of democratic powers, frankly, because it really is new, and it would shake up the radical shibboleths that American power needs to be restrained and "legitimized" by suffocating it within overlapping institutions and norms of a liberal international order.

I imagine I could go on - precisely because there are so many good ideas! But wait! Social Security privatization? We need it, but it won't be coming soon, not because it's a bad idea, but because the safety net of America's social democratic state is indeed entrenched. President Bush was onto something with his calls for private retirement accounts, as part of his vision toward reorienting American politics to an "opportunity society." If a Democratic president, say, Bill Clinton, had proposed such a program, we might not see the same kind of vitriol and utter demonization that we see in the type of commentary found in the "Kathy G" essay.

But let me close with Milton Freidman, since "Kathy G" makes him out as a foil for evil conservative venality. In the YouTube below, Freidman leaves far-left talk show host Phil Donahue utterly helpless, completely flummoxed in his inability to respond to the simple logic of market rationality:

Liberals and conservatives fight over way more than the "distribution of money and power."

In addition to the rationality of markets - and the personal moral authority of individual responsibilty - conservatives respect tradition as the way societies preserve historical goodness and, frankly, the divine right guaranteeing that all men are created equal.

In a post discussing far left-wing foreign policy, Mere Rhetoric suggested that "spoiled liberal Ivy kids are not ready to talk to adults yet."

I'd add that they're not ready to talk like political philosophers either.

Obama Campaign: Never Claimed Surge Wouldn't Work

In a sure sign that Barack Obama's quaking in his boots over the Iraq issue, the campaign's top strategist is claiming the Obama never disputed the likelihood of success under the new counterinsurgency strategy (via Flopping Aces):

This would be shocking, if it weren't so pathetic.

Next to Harry Reid, Obama was the perhaps the biggest Iraq detractor in the Senate in 2007.

I've posted a bunch on this, but see the New York Times, "Obama Sees a ‘Complete Failure’ in Iraq."

See also, Ace of Spades, "Hope and Change: Top Obama Strategist Changes Obama's Previous Position on the Surge, and Hopes You Won't Notice."

The Neoconservative Case Against Obama

American Thinker's got a great piece up by "Bookworm," who's a self-proclaimed "neoconservative."

Bookworm says she understands the handwringing on the right over John McCain's presidential bid, but he says the conservative case for the election's not about the Arizona's Senator's credentials:

You see, from my point of view, this election isn't really about John McCain at all. It's about Barack Obama. Of course, it shouldn't be about Barack Obama. During a time of war and economic insecurity, one of the two presidential candidates should not be a man who has no life history, beyond a remarkable ability at self-aggrandizement, and no legislative history, despite a few years paddling about in the Illinois State Legislature and three years (count ‘em, three) doing absolutely nothing in the United States Senate.

That Obama is a man of no accomplishments or experience, though, doesn't mean that he hasn't managed to acquire some bad friends and bad ideas. The friends are easy to identify: Comrade . . . I mean Rev. Wright; Michelle "the Termagant" Obama; the explosive Ayers and Dohrn duo; Samantha "Hillary is a Monster" Power; Robert "Hamas" Malley; Zbigniew "the Jews are out to get me" Brzezinski; etc. Over the years, he's sought out, paid homage to, and been advised by a chilling collection of people who dislike America and are ready to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone who talks the Marxist talk and walks the Marxist walk.

Obama's ideas are as unnerving as his friends. To my mind, the Jihad that Islamists have declared against us is the fundamental issue of our time. Thanks to the nature of modern asymmetrical warfare, the fact that these Jihadists number in the tens of thousands, rather than the millions, and that they're often free operators, not formal armies, does nothing to lessen the serious threat they pose to American freedoms. We've seen with our own eyes the fact that, using our own instruments of civilization, 19 determined men can kill almost 3,000 people in a matter of hours.

Nor was 9/11 an aberration, committed by the only 19 Islamic zealots on planet Earth. Whether they're using the hard sell of bloody deaths, or the soft sell of co-opting a nation's institutions and preying on its well-meant deference to other cultures and its own self-loathing, the Jihadists have a clearly defined goal -- an Islamic world - and they're very committed to effectuating that goal. And while it's true that, of the world's one billion Muslims, most are not Jihadists, the fanatic minority can still constitute a critical mass when the passive majority either cheers on the proposed revolution from the sidelines or does nothing at all. As Norman Podhoretz has already explained, this is World War IV.

I understand this. You understand this. McCain understands this. Obama, however, does not understand this. He envisions cozy chit-chats with Ahmadinejad and loving hand-holding with Hamas. There's every indication that, given his world view, he'll take Clinton's "Ah feel your pain" approach one step further, and engage in a self-abasing "I -- or, rather, America -- caused your pain." That approach failed when Carter tried it, and it's only going to fare worse the second time around.

Obama is also bound and determined to withdraw instantly from Iraq, even though the momentum has shifted completely to the American side. Even though another famous Illinois politician spoke scathingly of General McClellan for "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" at Appomattox, Obama has not learned from that painful lesson. He is adamant that he will repeat McClellan's errors and enshrine the snatching method as national policy. Every five year old understands that you don't leave the fight when it's going your way; Obama, however, does not. That is scary in and of itself.

This is a good argument, but of course we're still seeing cases of McCain derangement, precisely at the time Barack Obama's preparing to launch his general election campaign (from the arena where the GOP will hold their convention, no less, in a cold slap at conservatives, who he thinks he'll master in the fall with his on-high rhetorical flourishes).

I'll have more later!

(See also, "African Connection? Questions of Character Surround Barack Obama.")

Taking Nuclear Jihad Seriously

Earlier this week, major media outlets reported on recent intelligence warnings of a new Al Qaeda videotape calling for WMD attacks against civilians. It turns out that the threat, labeled "Nuclear Jihad, The Ultimate Terror," was bogus.

The political reactions to the reports reveal quite a bit about how those on the left and the right perceive the current war on terror.

Upon hearing of the reports, Shakesville wrote:

In a world, where fear can only be conquered by being more afraid ... A ragtag group of fear-mongering fascists will do their best to STOP YOU FROM NOT BEING AFRAID!!!!

The post is illustrated with drawings of blood-splattered zombies screaming "BrainSSSS...!!!!", and the entry also includes a photoshopped image of John McCain morphing into George W. Bush.

Note again that the entry does not mention the jihad web threat being bogus, and thus this type of mockery is being offered when constitutionally-legitimated governmental agencies are working to prevent an attack on the country.

The Shakesville reaction's frankly mind-boggling, and it's not just isolated extremists on the far-left who harbor this type of sentiment (it's not a leap from the whacked-out imagery of Shakesville to the "journalism" of Spencer Ackerman or to the acclaimed "liberal institutionalism" of Matthew Yglesias).

Rick Moran wrote about this on Wednesday:

We've heard this tune before from al-Qaeda before so I'm not sure about the real threat the message might contain. But along with other factors - including open talk on al-Qaeda websites of defeat in Iraq - it may be significant that we are hearing about terrorists using WMD's at this time....

There is the usual criticism on the left about "scare tactics" but frankly, I wish they'd give it a rest. They have the good fortune of knowing that if they are wrong and we are attacked, no one will remember them belittling the idea as they shift their attack from the Administration scaring people to blaming Bush for any disaster.

Not only that, were a genuine attack to occur, the administration would be smeared remorselessly by the left for failing to stop the next attack (through alleged incompetence, or by diverting resources to the fighting in Iraq, which is not the "real" terror war, etc., etc...).

Note further that the Daily Mail has published an apocalyptic story on the nuclear jihad, "Al-Qaeda's Terrifying Vision of a Devastated America in the Wake of a Nuclear Attack."

The photo of Washington, D.C., in rubble, reproduced above, was distributed in the Al Qaeda video, as the Daily Mail reports:

Washington is laid to waste. The Capitol is a blackened, smoking ruin. The White House has been razed. Countless thousands are dead.

This is the apocalyptic scene terrorists hope to create if they ever get their hands on a nuclear bomb.

The computer-generated image ... was posted on an Islamic extremists' website yesterday.

It appeared as rumours swept the Internet that the FBI was warning that an Al Qaeda video was about to be released urging militants to use weapons of mass destruction to attack the West.

The information was said to be coming from 'groups that monitor Islamic militant websites'.

The FBI was quick to point out that it had not issued any warning and that the video was not an official Al Qaeda release through its media arm, Al Sahab, but simply an ' amateur' collection of old footage spliced together and posted on the Internet.

U.S. analysts said a lot of effort had been put into the video - entitled Nuclear Jihad, The Ultimate Terror - with graphics, music, and clips of different leaders and groups.

The same expertise seems to have gone into creating this image of a devastated Washington.

Al Sahab puts out more than 80 'officially sanctioned' videos a year to keep up the propaganda on the West. And the Internet shows how easy it is to stir up militancy. One message with the Washington picture said: 'The next strike's in the heart of America. When? When? When? And How?'

To ridicule conservative "wingnuts," the liberal blog "First Draft" wrote:

The Freepi froth over this story from the Daily Mail ... Most of the Freepi lose their minds ...

The "Freepi" is a macabre reference to the participants in a web forum at Free Republic.

"First Draft" hammers the "Freepi" for their ignorance, as according to the post, the radioactive image of the nation's capital flattened is said to be from a video game known as "Fallout." And after the proprietary nature is identified by commenters at the thread, "First Draft" slams the "Freepi" some more, noting that the commercial orginins of the image "does not deter the crazy in the slightest." The "crazy" reference" is to this comment from the thread:

Wherever it comes from, it looks like Muslim Jihadists love the picture. It’s their dream come true.

What's interesting is this last comment from the thread hits the nail on the head - and that's the point: It does not matter if the image of flattened Washington, D.C., was generated by Pakistani militants or some software programmers in Banglaore.

It's the intentions of the terrorists that matter. The global anti-American jihad would love nothing more than to level the United States in a flash of nuclear hell blessed by Allah himself.

But it's all a bunch of "fascist fear-mongering," to hear it from those at the barricades of the hard-left hordes.

The threat of catastrophic nuclear terror is not unreasonable to experts in security studies, however. As Harvard's Graham Allison has written:

If a terrorist nuclear attack did occur in the United States, the first questions asked would be who did it, and where did they get the bomb? Bin Laden would top the list of probable perpetrators. But the supplier would be less certain; it could be Russia, Pakistan, or North Korea, but it could also be Ukraine or Ghana. Russia would probably top the list not because of hostile intent but because of the enormity of its arsenal of nuclear material, much of it still vulnerable to insider theft. Pakistan would likely rank second due to the ongoing links between its security services and al Qaeda, and the uncertain chain of command over its nuclear weaponry. North Korea, the most promiscuous weapon proliferator on earth, has already sold missiles to Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia and so would merit suspicion. As would Ukraine and Ghana, which operate Soviet-supplied research reactors with enough heu for one or more nuclear weapons. Interestingly, Saddam-era Iraq would not have even made the top ten.

With so much left-wing criticism of the administration's handling of America's alliance relations with Pakistan - a state currently facing a political crisis of epic proportion - one would think that analysts and commentators on both sides of the partisan divide would take these jihadi terror reports seriously.

While this point may hold when it comes to professional experts, that's certainly not the case around the leftosphere - which is an unsettling prospect, given how much influence these folks are likely to have under a Democratic administration.

African Connection? Questions of Character Surround Barack Obama

Politeia offers a thought-provoking article on Barack Obama's pattern of questionable associations, penetrating especially into the Illinois Senator's African ties: "Obama's Character and the Kenya Association."

What do these relationships say about Obama's character, integrity, and national values?

Senator Barack Obama’s character is an unknown. While the focus has been on his associations and their questionable character, another thought that surfaces is the question of Obama's character and whether it is more about his disloyalty than the specific purpose or principle of the associations we have so much trouble accepting. His character could be called into question by all sides. On the one hand, he appears to have a close association with Rezko, Wright, Ayers, Winfrey, and Odinga. On the other hand, whenever publically questioned, he appears to disown or disavow any shared purpose, principle or belief that these people hold so dearly as their life's cause. Which is it? With respect to character, either answer indicts Senator Obama as deceptive and disloyal. His "purpose" is self serving (if anything). His "principles" are compromised either way. His speeches together with his intelligence and charm have inspired millions and yet most of his followers have no idea of what he stands for except platitudes of “change” or he says he will “unify people to bring them together.” The power of speech from a charismatic person can be a powerful thing. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the American people to thoroughly examine what Senator Obama stands for along with his record before caving into his rhetoric from the campaign trail.

For more information, see "The True Name and Mission of Obamessiah."

See also, Big Girl Pants, "Observations From Africa On the Agent of Change...," and Karl Rove, "Obama's Revisionist History."

Image Source: The People's Cube

Game Theory: Freeloaders Strike Back Against Society's Most Productive

I saw this piece on game theory in this morning's Wall Street Journal, but didn't consider posting on it. Neptunus has his take, so I'll let it rip after all with a cover post:

The WSJ has an interesting article in the front section about game theory, specifically a game which allows players to pool resources and receive rewards. In order to test how different cultures deal with collaboration - and, equally important - non-contributors, players are allowed to hoard their own resources and still share in the general spoils, thus becoming freeloadoers. The next twist is to allow contributors to punish freeloaders, which in many cultures shames them into contributing to the general fund.

Many cultures, but not all:

Among students in the U.S., Switzerland, China and the U.K., those identified as freeloaders most often took their punishment as a spur to contribute more generously. But in Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Greece and Russia, the freeloaders more often struck back, retaliating against those who punished them, even against those who had given most to everyone’s benefit. It was akin to rapping the knuckles of the helping hand.

Interesting.

And perfect!