Looking for the Colonel Jessup discussion I referenced in my last post, I came across the post “GOOD MOVIE, WRONG LESSON,” written on January 31, 2003 and imported over from the original blogspot site (unfortunately, owing to then-existing vagaries, sans comments).  It was the fourth substantive post and fifth total post ever on the site, written on my first day as a blogger:

Jonah Goldberg’s column today is an excellent example of how you can agree with someone’s conclusions but strongly object to their argument. Yes, the Tom Cruise character in “A Few Good Men” was a smart-aleck pretty boy (as he is in all of his watchable movies; he’s dreadful when he tries to go against type). Yes, the Jack Nicholson character (Colonel Jessep) had some great lines and it was easy to cheer for some of them. But Jessup was a villain in the flick. However well intentioned, he believed himself above the rules of his society and ordered his subordinates to break the law, with the tragic result of killing one of the men under his command. And then covering it up rather than taking responsibility. Not exactly heroic. I’d hate for Jessep to be the role model for American foreign policy. And, getting to Goldberg’s direct point, while it’s true that the US provides the lion’s share of the NATO defense burden, that doesn’t mean the Europeans have lost all right to dissent. They’re sometimes (okay, usually) annoying, but they aren’t our subordinates; they’re sovereign states with a rather different set of interests. Indeed, that’s the reason we need to preserve the option to act “unilaterally” rather than having all our actions subject to a NATO or UN veto.

I’d stand by every bit of that still, except for the jab at Cruise.  He’s subsequently done quite well in other types of roles. I’d also use paragraph breaks.

Barack Obama has taken things off his campaign site that might be used by opponents to embarrass him, James Gordon Meek reports in the NY Daily News under the headline “Obama Purges Web Critique of Surge.”  Why, it’s our Outrage of the Day!

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

The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a “problem” that had barely reduced violence. “The surge is not working,” Obama’s old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks – not U.S. military muscle – for quelling violence in Anbar Province.

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

Obama’s campaign posted a new Iraq plan Sunday night, which cites an “improved security situation” paid for with the blood of U.S. troops since the surge began in February 2007. It praises G.I.s’ “hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics and enormous sacrifice.”

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

I question the timing. It’s awfully convenient that the Daily News published something on Sunday and the Obama campaign just happened to take that into account in a speech he gave on Monday, let alone that he just so happened to put that speech up on his Iraq page over the weekend!

Jim Hoft has screen caps proving the perfidy.  He also gets in a perfectly clever CHANGE you can believe in… quip.

Ed Morrissey believes that “the Obama campaign has yet to acknowledge that the changes came from a strategy he opposed and that he predicted would fail. “   Obama’s Monday NYT op-ed, “My Plan for Iraq,” does that, though:

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge,  our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true.

One can reasonably disagree with his plan; indeed, I do.  But he acknowledges the successes of the Surge while still arguing that it’s time to start drawing down our forces.

Scott Johnson says it’s 1984 and this is Obama’s version of the Ministry of Truth.  Matt Lewis thinks it’s “sinister” and “secretive.” But campaign websites are marketing vehicles, not permanent document repositories.  Nor do they operate on the ethical premises of the blogosphere, where purging old posts is considered unsporting.

Pamela Geller thinks that, “when he denies with a straight face that he’s changing anything, Obama gives new meaning to chutzpah.”  But he’s not changing anything!  He still supports withdrawal 16 months after he takes office, albeit with some caveats that he didn’t emphasize during the primaries.  And he says right there in the NYT op-ed — published yesterday — that he opposed the Surge.  If he’s trying to hide that fact, he’s going to need to be a mite more clever about it.

Dan Riehl gets to a much more productive debating point: “Obama claims to have judgment you can trust. I have to assume he’s talking to our enemies in the Middle-East given the judgment he displayed on the surge.”

More reactions at memeorandum: American Power, Blue Girl, Red State, www.redstate.com, American Spectator, JustOneMinute, Media Blog, The New Republic, TalkLeft, Marc Ambinder, Think Progress, The Swamp, Matthew Yglesias, The Strata-Sphere, democracyarsenal.org, Lawyers, Guns and Money, TPM Election Central, Behind the Numbers, Buck Naked Politics, Political Machine, Raw Story, On Deadline, American Power, Booman Tribune and The Fix

In commenting about John McCain’s budget plans, Matthew Yglesias threw out this comment:

Given the present circumstances, I can’t think of any good reason for a presidential candidate to be promising to that we’ll be at balanced budgets in four years. It would be nice to see the deficit on a decreasing trajectory rather than an increasing one, but achieving short-term balance isn’t necessary or even necessarily desirable.

While it’s true that a balanced budget probably isn’t possible in the next four years, getting the deficit back on a decreasing trajectory is an absolute necessity. Why? Because it’s one of the easiest steps we can take towards strengthening the dollar, which as of today is now trading at an all time low against the Euro.

A weak dollar right now is part of the cause of high oil prices, and is causing a cascading effect of higher prices everywhere else in the economy, too. Wholesale prices rose 1.8% last month alone, and are up 9.2% over the past year. When you consider that the U.S. is a large net importer of goods, it’s impossible to think that a weak dollar isn’t behind this rise in prices.

Now, with our credit markets in crisis, the last thing this country needs is for foreign investors to get scared off by a weak dollar. As this excellent post at Information Arbitrage explains, we need those investments if we’re going to carry through this problem in the credit markets, and that ain’t gonna happen if investors don’t have confidence in the dollar.

One of the best ways to stengthen the dollar and bolster U.S. credit is to show that we can get our spending under control. In other words: we can cut spending and put ourselves on a trajectory towards a balanced budget. Alas, this is Presidential campaign season–which means that all investors can see right now are promises of tax cuts and spending increases from both candidates.

That’s not the message we need to be sending.

Image: Market Preview blog.

UPDATE: One thing that needs to be made clear, as my colleague Dave Schuler points out in the comments below, that part of “balancing the budget” means we need to stop accounting federal expenditures as “off-budget.” It’s easy to make it look like you’re doing something about the deficit when you “don’t count” large expenditures. The reality is that ALL federal spending needs to be in balance with ALL federal income, period.

Google Maps is beta testing a new “walking directions” feature, Alex Chitu reports.  Apparently, it’s just being tested  out on a small number of randomly selected users.

Since I wasn’t among those selected, I was a bit dubious since I was unable to personally verify, let alone test, said service.  A quick search of another of Google’s products, its ubiquitous search service, revealed that  Caroline McCarthy couldn’t, either.  Doug Caverly, though, posts a screenshot.   The Inquisitr claims to have talked to people at Google and was told that “A random portion of users may see [the] walking directions experiment in Google Maps.”

For those living in the suburbs, the concept of “walking directions” is amusing.  If it’s close enough to walk to, you probably know how to get there.  Now that I’m working in DC, however, I’ve actually had several occasions where I needed to go somewhere in town where driving and parking would have been either frivolous or more trouble than it was worth, using Metro was slower than walking, and where the “Google Driving Directions” were certainly sending me along a circuitous route.  The prevalence of one-way streets and traffic circles adds substantial distance to a car trip that becomes a noticeable inconvenience when walking the same route.

via Techmeme

Jonah Goldberg has sparked a minor blogospheric furor for a recent column in which he castigated Barack Obama, John McCain, and others for promoting a compulsory national service program, which he compared to slavery.

There’s a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

For those who don’t remember, the 13th Amendment says: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime … shall exist within the United States.”

Most of the outrage directed at this column deals directly with these two paragraphs. And, frankly, I do think that Goldberg did employ some bad rhetoric here. But it’s bad rhetoric used to make an excellent point. Namely, that there’s something un-American about compulsory national service. As Goldberg points out:

In his speech on national service Wednesday at the University of Colorado, Obama promised that as president he would “set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year.”

Now, Obama’s plan, like most plans of this type, doesn’t outright mandate that all students perform national service. It merely makes such service a condition for federal education dollars. So in a technical sense, these types of plans probably don’t run afoul of the 13th Amendment. But they’re still pretty appalling, and I think that Goldberg does make an excellent point here:

This is the real problem with national service mania: It seeks to fix what ain’t broke. No, national service isn’t slavery. But it contributes to a slave mentality, at odds with American tradition. It assumes that work not done for the government isn’t really for the “common good.”

I agree with this sentence wholeheartedly. Both Obama and McCain’s service plans serve the nefarious idea that people ought to be forced to help somebody else, which is something that is anathema to the rights of “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” that this country was ostensibly founded upon. I can’t be the only one who shook his head in disbelief at John McCain’s essay about ‘patriotism, in which he said:

Patriotism is deeper than its symbolic expressions, than sentiments about place and kinship that move us to hold our hands over our hearts during the national anthem. It is putting the country first, before party or personal ambition, before anything. [emphasis added]

Yes, in John McCain’s worldview, country reigns supreme. Above religion. Above conscience. Above the human race as a whole. At least, that’s the conclusion you have to reach if you take his words at face value. But that’s the very ideology that drives the clamor for compulsory service–the idea that the lives of young people are not their own. That their dreams and their ambitions should be shunted aside in the name of some vaguely defined “greater good.”

Look, if a kid wants to spend 50 hours a year volunteering at a soup kitchen or building a house for habitat for humanity, then more power to him. If she wants to spend that time playing video games or basketball, or even *gasp!* holding down a part-time job well, that’s her choice, too. The point of America is that you got to make the choice about what you want to do with your life, not have some bureaucrat decide for you.

Clunky prose aside, I think that Goldberg was dead on in condemning compulsory service. It’s an antiquated, un-American notion that should by no means make its way into federal law.

Al Qaeda in Iraq [AQI] is all but defeated, Marie Colvin reports for The Sunday Times.

A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10.  Operation Lion’s Roar, in which the Iraqi army combined forces with the Americans’ 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, has already resulted in the death of Abu Khalaf, the Al-Qaeda leader, and the capture of more than 1,000 suspects. The group has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen yesterday, and sporadic bombings aimed at killing large numbers of officials and civilians.

[...]

American and Iraqi leaders believe that while it would be premature to write off Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni group has lost control of its last urban base in Mosul and its remnants have been largely driven into the countryside to the south.  Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, who has also led a crackdown on the Shi’ite Mahdi Army in Basra and Baghdad in recent months, claimed yesterday that his government had “defeated” terrorism.

In a sidebar companion piece, Colvin explains how we got here:

The reversal of fortunes is attributed to the “surge” strategy of General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces, who targeted Al-Qaeda in Iraq above all else after securing an extra 30,000 troops last year. His officers exploited local resentment of the terrorists and promised to protect those who resisted them. Under Petraeus’s plan, they established awakening councils, or groups calling themselves concerned local citizens. These Sunni groups helped to drive Al-Qaeda from many of its bastions.

US and Iraqi forces were then able to retake large swathes of the country and complete the “clearing” of cities such as Ramadi and Falluja and large areas of Baghdad. The overall number of attacks in Iraq has fallen by 80% in the past year alone.

Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, has gone on in recent months to reassert control over Basra in the south and Baghdad’s Sadr City, the two main strongholds of the Shi’ite Mahdi Army.

TigerHawk observes, “Notwithstanding the operation against the jihadis in Mosul, we have now gone nine consecutive days without an American KIA (which, if memory serves, is the longest stretch without a single KIA since [May 2003]). The implication is obvious: Iraqis, not Americans, are now at the tip of the spear. That is evidence of a successful counterinsurgency.”

Indeed it is.  It is not, however, sufficient evidence that the counterinsurgency is a success.

Most obviously, AQI and other foreign fighters have always constituted a tiny fraction of the anti-government forces.  Indeed, AQI barely existed when the insurgency started.  They were, however, the most violent and ruthless element.  Further, well-timed terrorist attacks such as the bombings of the Askariya shrine in Samarra escalated a relatively minor insurgency into a major sectarian conflict.

Even if AQI stays on the mat and the tide of replacements coming in from Syria and elsewhere remains stemmed, there’s still the domestic elements with which to contend.  Most significantly, does the Mahdi Army continue its cease fire?  If Muqtada al-Sadr and company decide to make another stand, violence could escalate dramatically.

Turning to US domestic politics, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays.  One could argue that this is good news for John McCain, one of the earliest and staunchest advocates of the Surge.  His argument that the war would have been far more successful if his calls for a larger force had been heeded years ago are buttressed. At the same time, however, Barack Obama can reasonably argue that, if AQI is defeated, the already tenuous relationship between the Iraq War and the global war on terrorism is ended.  These positive developments actually undermine the argument that his calls for rapid withdrawal amount to surrender to the terrorists and acceptance of American defeat.  If AQI is no more, then we’re left with a simple “nation building” operation.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan summarizes the “We’re winning, Vote Obama” position nicely:

[I]f someone had told me a year ago that fifteen of eighteen benchmarks had been reached, that all the parties were in negotiation over future politics, that al Qaeda was close to dead at the hands of the US and the Iraqis, and that oil contracts were being handed out amid four-year lows in violence, I wouldn’t have believed them.

Of course, this all makes Obama’s 16 month withdrawal timetable more and more feasible.

TigerHawk retorts, “If we are, as Andrew says, to judge the judgment of the two candidates, then the answer is clear. Eighteen months ago John McCain argued that the safest way out of Iraq was to win, then withdraw. Barack Obama, parroting the received wisdom of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, said that victory in any meaningful sense was not only unlikely, but that the presence of large numbers of American soldiers actually fed the insurgency and decreased the prospects for stability.”

Jim Hoft believes that this is “a huge blow to Democrats,” especially Obama, “Who was wrong about the surge, wrong about the US military, and wrong about turning Iraq over to its dangerous neighbors, and still flip-flopping like a wet noodle on where he stands.”

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds: “If you have to go to The Belmont Club to find out how it’s going, then it’s a success. Failure, the NYT has no trouble covering.”

Barack Obama gave a speech yesterday in which he said there was some flexibility in his plan, touted throughout the Democratic primary season, to withdraw combat troops from Iraq within 16 months followed by another speech in which he explained that he meant no such thing.

Michael Cooper and Jeff Zeleny have a solid summary and analysis piece for the NYT, headlined “Obama Strives to Retain Some Flexibility on His Iraq Policy”

Mr. Obama said at his first news conference that he planned a “thorough assessment” of his Iraq policy when he visits the country later this summer. “I’ve always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability,” he said. “That assessment has not changed. And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.”

This drew some criticism . . .

So the Obama campaign hastily scheduled a second news conference to try to clarify his remarks. “We’re going to try this again,” Mr. Obama said. “Apparently, I wasn’t clear enough this morning on my position with respect to the war in Iraq.”

“Let me be as clear as I can be,” he said. “I intend to end this war. My first day in office I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission, and that is to end this war — responsibly, deliberately, but decisively. And I have seen no information that contradicts the notion that we can bring our troops out safely at a pace of one to two brigades a month, and again, that pace translates into having our combat troops out in 16 months’ time.”

He added that when he had spoken about possibly refining his policies, he was referring to questions about how big of a residual force should be left behind to train Iraqi forces and conduct counterterrorism operations — not the overall timeline for withdrawal.

Jonathan Weisman gets page 1 of WaPo with a report titled “Obama May Consider Slowing Iraq Withdrawal.”  He’s even more pointed:

Sen. Barack Obama raised the possibility of slowing a promised gradual, 16-month withdrawal from Iraq if he is elected president, saying that Thursday he will consult with military commanders on an upcoming trip to the region and “continue to refine” his proposals.
[...]
In a second, hastily convened news conference, Obama insisted that his policies have not changed, and that he has “not equivocated” or is not “searching for maneuvering room” on Iraq.

Weisman wrote almost the exact same piece for WaPo’s Trail blog under the presumably selected-by-him post title “Obama Softens on Iraq Withdrawal Timeline.”

Politico’s Mike Allen (”Obama to ‘refine’ Iraq plan“) had the same take:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Thursday backed off his firm promise to withdraw combat forces from Iraq immediately and instead said he could “refine” his plan after his trip to Baghdad later this month.

Zeleny, writing for the NYT Caucus blog (”Obama Might ‘Refine’ Iraq Timeline“), had this helpful info late last evening:

As a presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama has not been known for holding an abundance of news conferences. That was not the case here on Thursday, when he called two in a span of four hours.

So what prompted him to call a second afternoon session to talk specifically about Iraq?

Mr. Obama was scrolling through news reports on his Blackberry – taking particular note of stories about his Iraq policy – when he told his advisers he wanted to better explain a statement he made earlier about continuing to “refine my policies” regarding a timeline for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

Modern campaigning at its finest!

This back-and-forth prompted dozens of blogopsheric responses, holiday weekend or not. memeorandum has logged responses from TIME.com, TPM Election Central, Hot Air, Redstate, Macsmind, Taylor Marsh, Major Garrett’s Bourbon Room, Liberal Values, Sister Toldjah, THE LIBERAL JOURNAL, Talking Points Memo, The Moderate Voice, The Carpetbagger Report, Power Line, Eunomia, The New Republic, The Corner, The News Buckit, Hullabaloo, Gateway Pundit, protein wisdom, The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room, The Impolitic, Truthdig, Real Clear Politics, Swampland, Weekly Standard Blog, Angry Bear, GOP.com, NO QUARTER, Pajamas Media, The Sundries Shack, TownHall Blog, TPM Election Central, Wake up America, Redstate, The New Republic, American Spectator, Washington Monthly, democracyarsenal.org, Soccer Dad, Pajamas Media, iowahawk, Hot Air, NewsBusters.org, Flopping Aces, Stop The ACLU, Open Left, The Jed Report,  The American Mind, Patterico’s Pontifications, Obsidian Wings and The Swamp as I write at 6:30 on a holiday morning.

I’ve only clicked through and scanned a dozen or so of those but it seems that Republican-leaning bloggers think that this is “The Mother of All Flip Flops” whereas Democrat-leaning bloggers think this is just a sign that Obama’s a thoughtful guy who will listen to the experts on nuanced issues, unlike the evil BushCo who will never ever change their mind when presented with evidence.

For my part, nothing about Obama’s statements yesterday surprise me. I’ve long believed that the differences between Obama and Hillary Clinton and between the Democrats and John McCain on Iraq have been wildly overplayed to draw contrasts in the election. Obama would work harder for withdrawal than McCain, who would be more committed to finishing what we’ve started. Either, though, would face the same reality on the ground, the same domestic political pressure, and essentially the same advice from the Service chiefs and combatant commanders. Come 20 May 2010, the sixteenth month of the 44th presidency, we’ll most assuredly still have a significant combat contingency in Iraq, yet a smaller one than we now have.

Taylor Marsh, no Obama lover, reminds us that Obama has always hedged his bets on Iraq including telling the late Tim Russert, “I believe that we should have all our troops out by 2013, but I don’t want to make promises, not knowing what the situation’s going to be three or four years out.”

Michael Cohen’s response is more amusing:

I smell a rat here. Not that long ago the McCain folks were attacking Obama for sticking to a phased withdrawal and refusing to shift course based on the improved security situation in Iraq. So now he talks of refining his policy and they go nuts because he has “reversed” himself. Isn’t that what they wanted him to do? So which one is it – do the McCain folks want Obama to switch course or don’t they?

They do! They think Obama’s “new” position is much sounder public policy than the bumper sticker “out in 16 months” nonsense that he’s hammered to his core audience, despite repeatedly sending signals that his actual policy was more nuanced and reality-dependent. At the same time, changing positions, even slightly, on a core policy issue is something opposing campaigns always seize upon with glee.

Good public policy often isn’t good politics, for those reasons. Nuance is both more confusing and more subject to attack than bold pronouncements. Fundamentally, though, Hilzoy’s right:

Obama is saying what he will do if he is elected. He won’t be able to do any of it until he takes office, nearly seven months from now (if he wins.) The situation in Iraq can change quickly and unpredictably. Moreover, in the nature of things, there is information about the situation there that he will only have access to once he takes office. For Obama to say that he knows for sure, right now, exactly what he will do, in every detail, and that neither the advice he receives from the commanders on the ground nor anything that happens in the intervening months could possibly change his mind, would be idiotic. Politically expedient, perhaps, but idiotic nonetheless.

Campaigns, however, aren’t philosophy seminars. You’re better off doing bumper stickers and bold pronouncements in your speeches and leaving the nuance and caveats for you white papers or, better yet, your advisers and surrogates.

Is that the way it ought to be? Perhaps not. But many of the people chiding the press and Republicans for making such a big deal of this are still flogging the McCain “100 years” horse, months after the meaning was clear.

Shaun Mullen wonders “Why Are Right-of-Center Bloggers So Silent On Torture?”

He searched high and low and could find no right-of-center bloggers who made any mention at all, for example, of yesterday’s NYT story “China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo.”  I’d note that Andrew Sullivan wrote roughly 600 posts on the subject yesterday, including this one, which pretty well covered our bases.  Some conservatives have disowned him, though, so perhaps he no longer counts.

A quick search of my RSS feed showed plenty of non-Sullivan forays into the subject, although not that article in particular.

Amusingly, John Cole, who’s in Sully’s boat of being a conservative disgusted with the GOP and thus on the outs with much of the Right Blogosphere, calls the gang at Red State “hacks” for not having written about the story despite not having done so himself aside from noting the hackery of the Red Staters for not having written about it.

Otherwise, Mullen’s right:  I’m not finding discussion on the conservative blogs about the NYT/China story.

Plenty do, however, weigh in on the other torture story yesterday, Christopher Hitchens’ Vanity Fair piece explaining that, yes, waterboarding is torture.   Cole, incidentally, is among them.

Ace contends Hitch is “whining” and approvingly passes on the observation that, “Torture is any experience so horrible that no-one would consider trying it out simply for the purpose of writing a Vanity Fair article about what it’s like.”  Glenn Reynolds and Ann Althouse concur.  Stephen Green is mostly amused.

Bruce McQuain responds to yet another torture piece, a  column by Chris Satullo in the Philadelphia Inquirer arguing we should cancel the Fourth of July celebrations out of shame at our torture policy.  Bruce retorts that Satullo is a “nimrod.”

Anyone who reads this blog knows where I stand on torture. I don’t support its use and find it to be both morally wrong and morally repugnant. But for goodness sake, a little perspective would be nice – we actually have a process which reviews such things and acts to curtail such activities if we feel that to be necessary. That is precisely what we did.

Pat Lang, who I figure gets at least honorary conservative cred on the basis of being a retired colonel and Senior Intelligence Service officer, observes,

Clearly, some sadist or group of sadists with a vivid imagination took advantage of the national trauma of 9/11 to use the old communist enemies’ methods as a model.

Whoever did that inflicted a grave injury and disgrace on the United States.  The culprits should be punished as an example to future generations of sadists.

So, why so little attention on the conservative blogs? Two explanations come readily to mind:

1. Quite a few on the Right actually support the use of coercive interrogation techniques, considering them a reasonable tool in protecting the country from the Islamofascist hordes and preventing another 9/11. Alternatively, even if they opposed “torture,” they believe waterboarding and other techniques which don’t cause permanent damage are acceptable.

2. They, like most of their counterparts on the Left, mostly highlight stories advantageous to their candidate or party and downplay those which are potentially harmful to the Cause.

3. They’re bored with the story, considering it largely “old news” and variations on a theme.

The third of those explains why I didn’t bother with the story yesterday. I’ve written perhaps dozens of posts over the years condemning torture, both on moral and practical grounds, and don’t frankly see why the fact that the Chicoms used the same techniques makes any difference or adds any legitimate persuasive power to the argument.

The Manufactured Outrage of the Day comes to us from Joe Stephens and his page A3 piece for today’s Washington Post, “Obama Got Discount on Home Loan.”

Shortly after joining the U.S. Senate and while enjoying a surge in income, Barack Obama bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To finance the purchase, he secured a $1.32 million loan from Northern Trust in Illinois.

The freshman Democratic senator received a discount. He locked in an interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago. The loan was unusually large, known in banker lingo as a “super super jumbo.” Obama paid no origination fee or discount points, as some consumers do to reduce their interest rates.

Compared with the average terms offered at the time in Chicago, Obama’s rate could have saved him more than $300 per month.

Why, that’s not right! A millionaire Senator getting a more favorable home loan than some average schmoe? How could that be?!

Actually, that’s rather a question that answers itself, no?   Nate Silver issues an “Irresponsible Journalism Alert” and points out that:

[T]he amount of the loan and the nature of the property are not the only factors that determine a mortgage rate. Another major consideration is the creditworthiness of the borrower. According to current rate quotes from myFICO.com, a borrower with very good credit can expect a mortgage rate about 30 basis points better than someone with pretty good credit, and a borrower with excellent credit can expect about a 50 basis point discount.

How credit worthy was Obama?  Well, aside from being a United States Senator, a steady gig if ever there was one, and having just received a $2.27 book deal, he and his wife combined to make around half a mil a year.  Not Rush Limbaugh money, to be sure, but he was probably a decent credit risk.

Ed Morrissey wants to know, “Can the lender identify (anonymously) any other borrower during the relevant time period that got the same favorable rate and, if so, what was the basis for setting the rate that low for the other borrower(s)?”  Not an unfair question especially, as Ed notes, when “Obama has spent plenty of time castigating credit lenders in this campaign for their capricious practices and bad management.  He has rung the populist bell, saying that ordinary Americans can’t get a break from lenders while the powerful play by different rules.”  But, yes, I’d be willing to bet that other well-heeled folks got these kind of rates.

Obama’s spokesman claims, “Obama received the same rate as would have been available to anyone with his financial profile and with an offer from another institution.”  I’m inclined to believe him.

To the extent this has legs it will, like the Cindy McCain back taxes scandal, be because it draws attention to the fact that the Obamas and McCains make a whole lot more money than regular folks and get treated better because of it.  But who didn’t already know that?

Major caveat:  Larry Johnson promises that “shortly, we will reveal additional details.” Given how famous he is for doing that, I’ll be refreshing that page every few minutes.*

Other responders at memeorandum: The Crypt’s Blogs, TownHall Blog, Redstate, MSNBC, Flopping Aces, michellemalkin.com, puma pac, Right Wing News, The Caucus, The Campaign Spot, Fox News, Confederate Yankee, Salon, Ben Smith’s Blogs, TBogg, Brilliant at Breakfast, Political Machine, Comments from Left Field, TPM Election Central, The Swamp, JammieWearingFool, Macsmind, Bark Bark Woof Woof, The Political Carnival, Whiskey Fire, Washington Monthly, The Campaign Spot, and Jack & Jill Politics

____________

*Yes, this I’m being ironic here.   Like a pony.

Rush Limbaugh isn’t going to have any trouble affording good cigars, having just re-upped with Clear Channel through 2016 for $400 million, including a $100 million signing bonus.  And you thought pro athetes got paid a lot.

Said to be Limbaugh’s most lucrative deal ever by far, the new agreement runs through 2016 and includes a previously unheard-of nine figure signing bonus. For those of you in Rio Linda, that means more than $100 million, upfront.

[...]

Beyond infuriating the left, that staggering sum is sure to reinforce the widespread industry belief that talk represents one of broadcast radio’s only remaining bright spots. While several other major outfits are struggling to survive, Limbaugh and Premiere have provided a steady revenue stream for Clear Channel.

In fact, while advertisers have begun to abandon music radio for the Internet and other media, Limbaugh has recently added sponsors.

Clearly, I’m in the wrong business. Then again, if I could captivate 20 million listeners three hours a day for a couple decades, I’m sure I’d make more, too.

UPDATE:  The Chavets piece: “Late-Period Limbaugh.”

Thomas Schaller,  the author of Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South, argues that the notion that Barack Obama has a good chance of winning Southern states because he’ll energize black turnout is based on fallacious reasoning.

The first myth is that African-American turnout in the South is low. Black voters are actually well represented in the Southern electorate: In the 11 states of the former Confederacy, African-Americans were 17.9 percent of the age-eligible population and 17.9 percent of actual voters in 2004, analysis of Census Bureau data shows.

And when socioeconomic status is held constant, black voters go to the polls at higher rates than white voters in the South. In other words, a 40-year-old African-American plumber making $60,000 a year is, on average, more likely to vote than a white man of similar background.

My guess is that this is largely a function of the enormous influence of black churches, which do an amazing job of getting their congregations motivated to vote and have an infrastructure in place to get them to the polls.

The second myth is that Democratic presidential candidates fare better in Southern states that have large numbers of African-Americans. In fact, the reverse is true, because the more blacks there are in a Southern state, the more likely the white voters are to vote Republican.

He cites the case of Mississippi, where Bush beat Kerry by 20 points in 2004, and shows that even a massive increase in black turnout would not do the trick unless he could simultaneously get a 50 percent increase of white voters over Kerry.  Ignoring the Bob Barr factor entirely, Schaller contends the same dynamics hold true in Georgia and North Carolina.

The one reasonable target, then, is the Old Dominion, where “a huge influx of upscale non-Southerners, who have taken over the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia” could make him viable.  This, despite the fact that the “black population in Virginia is, as a percentage, among the lowest in the region.”

Stacy McCain agrees wholeheartedly, except to point out that, “this trend applies generally nationwide. Even in Northern states, the larger the black population, the more heavily the white vote tends to shift toward Republicans.”

Jonathan Martin notes that Schaller isn’t telling us anything that V.O. Key didn’t know in 1949, when he told us “departures from the supposed uniformity of southern politics occur most notably in those states with fewest Negroes and in those sections that are predominantly white.”

Dan Riehl, meanwhile, thinks, “There is a very good chance that the media, liberals and Blacks will be expecting to wake up to the first Black POTUS one November morning, only to be shocked by the result. Think of it as the OJ verdict in reverse.”

Rather than taking the lesson that he might as well just give up on the non-Virginia South, though, Obama and his strategists would be served to double down on their efforts to avoid running as “the Great Black Hope.”  If he runs as “the black candidate” and has surrogates constantly charging “racism” every time he is challenged, he’s going to have a hard time making inroads in any state Kerry didn’t win in 2004.  Then again, all he needs is to peel off 18 Electoral Votes.  Virginia, with its 13, wouldn’t do it.  Ohio, with 20, would.  Or Virginia plus Iowa or New Mexico or Colorado.  Or simply Iowa plus New Mexico plus Colorado.

Schaller’s right, then, that Obama can win the presidency without competing in the South.  But campaigning in such a way as to give himself a chance — or make McCain spend money in — the South will likely help himself in those other states as well.

Thus far, he seems to be doing just that, including making a big play for Evangelicals.

Story via memeorandum. Photo credit: The Trail/AP.

Arthur Silber is, as am I, fascinated by the cult of personality surrounding Barack Obama.  He notes some anecdotal creepy gushing on a local radio show and then

Reactions of this kind to Obama are fairly common. No, they are not this extreme much of the time, but such statements are far from unusual. And many of Obama’s less obviously deluded supporters fall along the same continuum. Take a look at the woozily sentimental, intellectually reprehensible remarks collected at the beginning of “Obama’s Whitewash,” the third excerpt here, and the comments here. Moreover, this kind of reaction — an emotion-driven response utterly devoid of coherent ideational content, a response that leads far too many people to be enthusiastically willing to believe virtually anything that Obama might proclaim and to follow him anywhere — is one that Obama and his campaign explicitly seek to elicit.

People had better wake the hell up, and they had better study some history very damned fast. I have sometimes remarked, and I repeat the warning here, that the twentieth century was a nonstop train of horrors — yet in one sense, the most terrible and horrifying aspect of the twentieth century is that we learned absolutely nothing from it.

Among the horrors of the twentieth century were several notable leaders who initiated events that led to slaughter and destruction on an ungraspably monumental scale. These charismatic leaders evoked a response from their followers almost identical to that called forth by Obama. These leaders specialized in “personal stories of political conversion.” Doesn’t anyone see the connection? Doesn’t anyone remember any of this?

This, incidentally, from a man who can scarcely imagine voting for a Republican.

James Benjamin goes further:

Although I seriously doubt that Obama is the next Hitler, his followers are every bit as authoritarian as those who followed Bush (or Schwarzenegger, as I seem to recall) just a few years ago, and that’s something a despot, a strongman would want.

[...]

I would not be at all surprised if either Obama himself were revealed to be some sort of wild card authoritarian in his own right, and/or numerous of his followers were wild card authoritarians – i.e., those who can pose as “leftists” but once in a position of power begin to crack down on dissent much like the right-wingers we all know and loathe. Obama’s own embrace of warmongers, neoliberals, and of course of the awful FISA bill that is likely destined to pass does not bode well for those who wish to continue arguing that he is “progressive” (whatever that is supposed to mean any more). The behavior by groups of Obama fanatics on some of the community blogs (lots of bully tactics as I recall) and the apparent efforts by Obama partisans to shut down individually run anti-Obama blogs is a relatively mild expression of that authoritarianism; we should keep in mind that we’re still early in the game.

Jesse Taylor believes this line of reasoning has guano-level sanity and snarks, “While he lacks any political element of fascism in his platform, he makes up for it in some people liking him a lot, which is like 60% of fascism anyway.”

Obama is quite possibly the most charismatic politician of my lifetime.  Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had superb oratorical skills and charismatic personalities but neither made crowds swoon to the extent Obama does.  John Kennedy was murdered before I was born and it’s hard for me to assess him apart from the strange fascination and conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination plot.  Perhaps Dwight Eisenhower and, certainly, Franklin Roosevelt had it.

Like Silber, it worries me when people get so emotionally involved in their leaders.  I’m not concerned that Obama is going to annex Canada and start the ethnic cleansing of white working class Appalachians and people named Larry;  Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were evil men, not good ones who went mad with too much power.

Then again, I don’t think that George Bush or Arnold Schwarzenegger (or even Rudy Giuliani) are “authoritarians,” “despots,” or “strongmen,” either.  Executives naturally believe in the rightness of their cause and seek to push the envelope of their power when they’re being thwarted by inconvenient institutions.  Some do so more than others.

The problem with cults of personality in the American experience is it that it furthers our tendency to trust government to take care of us.  FDR was well meaning in constructing the New Deal and the vast machinery of government bureaucracy needed to support it to combat the unique challenges of the Great Depression; unfortunately, the solution long outlasted the crisis.  Similarly, I believe torture, rendition, habeus corpus suspension, the Department of Homeland Security, and the other over-reactions to the 9/11 attacks were well intentioned measures to make us safer.

Both Obama and his opponent, John McCain, have a streak of crusading righteousness in them that leads to a dismissiveness to criticism.  Some of our best and some of our worst presidents have had it.   Fortunately, we have a set of institutions — separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism — and a political culture that make realizing authoritarian ideals difficult.

via memeorandum

Some Obama supporters are apparently taking advantage of Google’s terms of service to silence anti-Obama blogs, Simon Owens of Bloggasm reports. The company automatically shuts down sites upon receipt of TOS violation claims until they’re able to do a human audit, a rather slow process with given little priority on the free BlogSpot service.

After some digging it became apparent that several Blogspot accounts had been shut down because of similar spam issues, and nearly all of them had three things in common: Most were pro-Hillary Clinton blogs, all were anti-Barack Obama, and several were listed on justsaynodeal.com, an anti-Obama website.

A “Flag Blog” link sits at the very top of every free Blogspot account. If a person finds objectionable content on a Blogspot site or suspects it’s publishing spam, he or she can click on the link and it will send a notice to Google requesting “human review.”

Larry Johnson and others charge that this is a coordinated effort by “Obama supporters,” a rather nebulous group, but they have no proof as of yet. Certainly, nothing yet ties this to Obama or his campaign team. Sister Toldja says “it wouldn’t be surprising to find out this indeed was happening, considering how so many far left Obama supporters react at the slightest hint of criticism of Barry Oh.”

Indeed. It’s hard to imagine, given the pattern, that “Obama supporters” aren’t behind this. I’d be surprised, indeed, if Obama or senior campaign staff had any knowledge of this. Unless some major news comes out toward that end, then, the Obama angle is only tangentially interesting.

The crucial issue here is the ease with which electronic speech can be stifled. Jim Geraghty observes that “Google may need to revisit its policy in managing Blogspot,” snarking, “At the very least, the system should inquire if the person making the complaint has adopted the middle name “Hussein”. And Warner Todd Huston reminds us that this isn’t a unique occurence, with many conservative blogs having previously fallen victim to Google’s policies.

The power of Google in the marketplace is troubling. I say that as someone who’s an avid user of their products, especially Gmail and Google Search, and who derives some small income through Google’s AdSense program. On the other hand, I also, like most other bloggers, am at the mercy of Google — by far the biggest player in Internet search — for ranking in their system and referred traffic.

As I’ve recounted previously, I’ve been the victim of BlogSpot myself. More than a dozen niche blogs that I had on that domain, including the original incarnation of Outside the Beltway, was summarily “disappeared” and I was unable to get a non-automated response out of Google. I’ve said it before and I repeat: If you’re serious about your blog, get your own domain.

It doesn’t end there, though. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act provides that those who claim copyright infringement on material published on the Web merely have to lodge a formal complaint with the server and the host is obligated to take the material down in short order. The burden of proof is on the publisher, not the claimant, to prove that they have a right to publish the content. That power could easily be abused in an election cycle.

YouTube (which has been absorbed into the Google collective) and various other highly influential online outlets have adopted similar “guilty until proven innocent” rules. I have received several notices from YouTube informing me that a company has claimed a copyright on a posted video and that, while the video I posted would remain operational, all statistics and so forth would be credited to the claimant.

[Claimant] claimed this content as a part of the YouTube Content Identification program. YouTube allows partners to review YouTube videos for content to which they own the rights. Partners may use our automated video / audio matching system to identify their content, or they may manually review videos.

If you believe that this claim was made in error, or that you are otherwise authorized to use the content at issue, you can dispute this claim with [Claimant] and view other options in the Video ID Matches section of your YouTube account. Please note that YouTube does not mediate copyright disputes between YouTube owners. Learn more about video identification disputes.

In fact, the videos in question were legitimately copywrited and I’ve got no quarrel with the outcome. I only posted them to my account to preserve them, having posted videos on OTB only to have the original poster remove them and screw up the post. But the policy here is bizarre: YouTube will take action based on a claim but they provide zero recourse!

Given that online communication is increasingly important in politics and business, we’re going to need a better, more efficient means of dispute resolution than we currently have. Right now, it’s far too easy to do mischief.

The Trash Heap Has Spoken Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

This will be the last contest at OTB for a couple of weeks.

(Courtesy of Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines)

✰ THE WINNERS ✰

First: Cowboy Blob – So there I was, perfectly camouflaged at the bottom of the swimming pool….

Second: Hodink – “Auntie Em and the gang greet Dorothy. Yet again Kansas is looking drab.”

Third: markm – Clinton aide “Hey, Mrs. Clinton, Barack really wants you and Bill to help him campaign on his wonderful bid for the Presidency. Your thoughts?”

HONORABLE MENTION

Wyatt Earp – Hillary: “It’s great to be back in Washington smacking some balls around!”

radio Free Fred – “I Never Knew You Could Have That Much Fun With A Ping Pong Ball And A Lighter!”

Dennis – HOLY CRAP! Get Monica outa here!

Suzanne Berton – And Obama thought I’d just go away for good! I never go away.

ℛODNEY’S BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

“Uh, Did you iron my shirts yet?”

“Well… when I landed by broom at the Baghdad Airport they couldn’t see me until the final approach.”

The OTB Contest Regular Schedule will return mid-July
]]> http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/caption-contest-winners-4/feed/ 0 http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/mccains-pay-back-taxes-on-aunts-condo/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/mccains-pay-back-taxes-on-aunts-condo/#comments Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:54:54 +0000 James Joyner http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/?p=24144

The latest mini-scandal in Campaign 2008 is that the McCains have apparently not done a good job keeping track of their finances.   HuffPo has gotten 1420 Diggs at this writing with a story headlined “McCains Defaulted On Home Taxes For Last Four Years, Newsweek Reports.” It promises “a highly embarrassing report.”  Newsweek has delivered with “Mrs. McCain, San Diego County Would Like a Word” or, as the page head puts it, “Cindy McCain Pays Back Taxes on San Diego Condo.”

The lede is surprisingly fair:

When you’re poor, it can be hard to pay the bills. When you’re rich, it’s hard to keep track of all the bills that need paying. It’s a lesson Cindy McCain learned the hard way when NEWSWEEK raised questions about an overdue property-tax bill on a La Jolla, Calif., property owned by a trust that she oversees. Mrs. McCain is a beer heiress with an estimated $100 million fortune and, along with her husband, she owns at least seven properties, including condos in California and Arizona.

San Diego County officials, it turns out, have been sending out tax notices on the La Jolla property, an oceanfront condo, for four years without receiving a response. County records show the bills, which were mailed to a Phoenix address associated with Mrs. McCain’s trust, were returned by the post office. According to a McCain campaign aide, who requested anonymity when discussing a private matter, an elderly aunt of Mrs. McCain’s lives in the condo, and the bank that manages the trust has not been receiving tax bills on the property. Shortly after NEWSWEEK inquired about the matter, the McCain aide e-mailed a receipt dated Friday, June 27, confirming payment by the trust to San Diego County in the amount of $6,744.42. County officials say the trust still owes an additional $1,742 for this year, an amount that is overdue and will go into default July 1. Told of the outstanding $1,742, the aide said: “The trust has paid all bills shown owing as of today and will pay all other bills due.”

Obviously, this is an awkward situation but a familiar one. Clearly, the McCain’s weren’t intentionally skipping out on their taxes; this was an administrative error. I suspect the most embarrassing thing here will be the revelation that they own seven homes.

There’s quite a buzz over this for a story that broke on a Saturday night (it’s 6:30 a.m. Sunday morning as I write). memeorandum has sixteen responses already, almost exclusively from the Left.

• Mark Kleiman: “It must be nice to own so many houses you can’t remember which ones you’re four years in arrears on your real estate taxes.” (Which, again, I think is the most damaging take-away.)

• Eric Kleefeld: “This isn’t exactly the kind of story that speaks positively of John McCain’s ability to manage the public’s finances.”

• Mark Adams: “This has got to go down as the worst Presidential campaign by a major party since Herbert Hoover’s reelection motorcades were pelted with eggs and rotten fruit.” (I’m guessing he wasn’t around for Michael Dukakis.)

• Gun Toting Liberal: “Just because Señor McCain wasn’t born on U.S. Soil doesn’t mean he gets a ‘pass’ when it comes to financing our government’s ambitious projects, Sir and Ma’am.”

• Pam Spaulding: “McSame says our taxes are too high and he wants to preserve the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, right? I guess none of that really matters to him anyway since he doesn’t bother paying them on his beachfront condo. Why does John McCain hate America?”

• Jill S.: “If the McCains can’t handle owning eight houses, perhaps they ought to consider being more like the common people they’re trying to pass as and sell a few of them.”

• Jeff Fecke: “[If a] lower-middle-class family is a few weeks late paying rent, they get evicted. John and Cindy McCain are by any measure phenomenally wealthy, and they haven’t paid taxes on at least one of their seven (!!) houses for four years.” (It’s surprisingly hard to evict people for not paying rent in most places. And you certainly know when you’re not paying it.)

• Nate Silver introduces a scale for judging the impact of scandals and judges this “Medium-impact, but not spicy.”

Stacy McCain, the only Republican responding, is decidedly not a fun of “the other McCain.” He concludes, “An overblown nothing of a story, as it turns out. It appears to be a case of misdirected mail.” His disagrees with my assessment of the fairness of the lede, which he complains, “tries to play the class warfare card a bit too obviously.” Perhaps so. Then again, it strikes me as quite accurate.

And lest new or occasional readers think I’m merely excusing McCain while I’d be hammering Barack Obama for this, this was precisely my reaction when I learned that Al Franken had failed to pay income taxes in seventeen states.

I’m no great fan of Franken but this explanation strikes me as quite plausible. People who make that kind of money hire accountants and sign where they’re told and write out whatever checks are necessary. Due dilligence tends to involve a quick scan to make sure nothing’s obviously out of whack.

Mistakes happen, even to conscientious, honorable people. They’re still embarrassing, obviously, but hardly disqualifying.