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.

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.

Ezra Klein jumps on a growing meme the home ownership isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and that the government should stop subsidizing it.

He points to Paul Krugman, who argues in today’s NYT that it’s time to rethink our decades-long bipartisan consensus that home ownership should be encouraged. While everyone stresses the advantages of owning your own home, like building equity and creating a stake in one’s community, not enough emphasis is placed on the disadvantages.

• If housing prices fall, you can lose money

• The cost and difficulty of selling a house makes it harder to move for a new job

• If gas prices suddenly double and you live a long way from work, it sucks

That’s really only two reasons, since the last merely restates the third: Owing ties you down.

Not mentioned in Krugman’s column, but more certain than the others:

• When you own your own home, you’re responsible for maintenance and will inevitably spend much more in “upgrades” than if you rent.

Anyway, I see from Ezra’s “link blog” that James Surowiecki wrote almost exactly the same article for the New Yorker back in March. Better yet, Andrew Oh-Willeke wrote all of this in a May 2006 blog post, before the subprime lending crisis hit, putting him way ahead of the curve.

Klein, Surowiecki, and Oh-Willeke all note that easy lending exacerbated these issues, since so many people are now mortgaged up to their eyeballs, buying ever-bigger homes, and now feeling the crunch as the economy has slowed down. Back in the days when one had to put 20 percent or more down to buy a home, people were much more insulated from these effects.

Ezra argues, “[T]oday, owning a home looks a whole lot more like renting. Fairly few homeowners actually ‘own’ anything. Rather, they have a sizable mortgage, and they pay money to a bank. That’s not all that different than paying money to a landlord.” But that’s not right. Having lived a somewhat nomadic existence, I’ve “owned” and rented numerous times. Every time I’ve done the latter, I’ve lost money. The landlord got X dollars a month and, at the end of our relationship, I left with nothing. Conversely, every time I’ve taken out a mortgage, I’ve built sizable amounts of equity which I was able to extract from the house upon selling it and then reinvest later. Indeed, there have been years when my house earned more money than I did.

Since moving into our current house nearly two years ago, my wife and I have “lost” money, in that the house would currently sell for perhaps 5 percent less than we paid for it. Then again, we’re still far ahead of where we would be had we rented all these years. And we went into the current mortgage with open eyes; the housing bubble was already bursting but we wanted to move to a nicer house and neighborhood and figured we’d rather be “stuck” in this house than the one we left.

Beyond the economics, there’s a huge psychic value to owning your own place. You don’t have to worry about your landlord selling the place out from under you or “going condo.” You can paint the walls any color you damn well please, rip out the carpets and put in hardwood floors, have all the pets you want, and just generally live your life with greater autonomy. And I’ve never once raised my rent!

But, yes, it’s more expensive and you’ve got less ability to chuck it all and move to Mexico. And, if you bought into more house than you could afford and suddenly need to move, you risk emerging in worse financial shape if prices plunge.

All told, though, I recommend home ownership highly.

That said, however, I agree with Ezra on the public policy question: “Does it make economic sense for home buyers to be subsidized by renters?” No, it doesn’t.

Now, one could argue the degree to which they are. Home owners pay more property taxes than their renting counterparts, which means we pay much more for the public schools, even if we have no kids going to the public schools. And, since high earners, who pay the lion’s share of income taxes, are also likely to be homeowners, we’re paying a disproportionate amount for public services, even those which subsidize ourselves like the added infrastructure costs of supplying roads, utilities, and whatnot to the suburbs.

Even so, the most obvious subsidy, the ability to write off home mortgage interest, has always struck me as silly. There’s not much doubt that it artificially tips the scales not only in the rent vs. buy calculation but even encourages people to buy larger homes than they could otherwise afford since a portion of one’s monthly mortgage payment is actually “paid for” by the taxpayers. There’s no good rationale for that.

David Paul Kuhn argues that John McCain should strongly consider choosing a woman as his vice presidential running mate in order to woo angry Hillary Clinton supporters. That premise strikes me as absurd, in that no Republican woman is going to be a suitable substitute for Clinton in the minds of her supporters. Still, reaching out to women as a means of attracting moderates is worth exploring.

Kuhn considers Condoleeza Rice the obvious choice but takes her at her word that she isn’t interested. Instead, he focuses on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, and Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Palin, 44, would add youth to the GOP ticket. As governor she has shown a willingness to veto some of the state’s large capital projects, no small plus for fiscal conservatives. But it’s her personal biography, which excites social conservatives, and reformist background that might most appeal to McCain.

She’s stridently anti-abortion, and recently brought to term her fifth child — who she knew would have Down syndrome. A hunter, fisher and family woman with a rapid professional rise, Palin is a natural for Republican framing.

Palin has become a darling of the conservative blogosphere in recent months and has been touted quite a bit. She’s no doubt a rising star. But it makes little sense to nominate a 44-year-old with no foreign policy experience to be one heartbeat away from the presidency on a ticket whose principal message is that it’s risky to put a 44-year-old with relatively little foreign policy experience in charge of our nation’s security.

Fiorina is also already close to McCain. The two of them recently sat down at his Arlington headquarters with frustrated Clinton supporters and urged them to shift their political allegiance to him. On the campaign trail and on shows like CBS News “Face the Nation,” she’s served as a ubiquitous advocate of the candidate. Privately, she has also become one of McCain’s most trusted economic advisers.

That sounds like the résumé of a future Treasury Secretary, Fed Chairman, or Council of Economic Advisers chair. The vice presidency would be an odd entry job into politics. And, again, aside from trade issues, what’s her international relations background?

Hutchison had already engaged on McCain’s behalf, defending his embrace of the controversial conservative Pastor John Hagee earlier this year and making the rounds as a surrogate on the Sunday political shows (including an appearance Sunday on ABC’s “This Week”), though, like McCain, it’s a medium that does not suit her. And also like McCain, she is not a gifted campaigner.

In Texas, where she has been comfortably reelected, one Republican strategist notes that she’s “proven she can get scores of Hispanics in a huge state surrogate.”

I saw her on “This Week,” which I inadvertently TiVo’d. Rather than risk falling asleep at 11 a.m., I soon fast forwarded to the roundtable. She reinforces McCain’s negatives without bringing anything.

Palin would be my initial favorite if forced to chose from among these three candidates. But, surely, there are better choices? Going the extra mile to look at women and minority candidates makes sense; picking a weak candidate simply to fill a quota, however, does not.

Pakistan is condemning a U.S. air strike which allegedly killed 11 Pakistani paramilitaries as a “completely unprovoked and cowardly act.”

U.S.-led forces killed Pakistani troops in an airstrike along the volatile Afghan border that Pakistan’s army condemned on Wednesday as “completely unprovoked and cowardly.”

U.S. officials confirmed that three aircraft launched about a dozen bombs following a clash between Taliban militants and Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces late Tuesday. Pakistan says the strikes killed 11 of its paramilitary troops.

The Pakistani army said the airstrike hit a post of the paramilitary Frontier Corps in the Mohmand tribal region and was a “completely unprovoked and cowardly act.” It launched a strong protest and reserved “the right to protect our citizens and soldiers against aggression,” the military said in a statement. The statement said the clash “had hit at the very basis of cooperation” between the allies in the war on terror.

U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson was summoned to Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry. “The United States regrets that actions in Mohmand agency on the night of June 10 resulted in the reported casualties among Pakistani forces who are our partners in the fight against terrorism,” a U.S. Embassy statement said. It expressed condolences to the families of the dead.

In Washington, a Pentagon official said there was an airstrike during an incursion by insurgents into Afghanistan from Pakistan. The aircraft launched an airstrike under a policy that allows coalition forces to cross into Pakistan if they are in hot pursuit of a target, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

But it was not clear if the aircraft actually crossed into Pakistan. In a statement issued from Afghanistan, the coalition said it had retaliated after its forces came under small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire about 200 yards inside Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province during an operation that had been “previously coordinated” with Pakistan. The coalition fired artillery, and then using drones to locate more “anti-Afghan forces,” launched airstrikes “until the threat was eliminated.” The Taliban said eight of its fighters died in the skirmish.

Strangely, the Bush administration has seemingly adopted Barack Obama’s position, which was dismissed as “foolishly naive,” on this matter.

I presume that our forces were acting on good faith that they were following the rules of engagement and that they are telling the truth when they say they notified the Paks of what they were doing. It’s doubtful any of that will matter, though, in Pakistani sentiment.

A bureaucratic SNAFU almost cost seven Palestinian students their ability to study abroad on prestigious Fulbright scholarships.

The U.S. has reinstated the Fulbright scholarships of seven Gaza Strip students blocked by Israel from leaving the Hamas-ruled territory, the State Department said Monday. The students were informed Thursday that their scholarships for the upcoming academic year would be deferred because they couldn’t get out of Gaza, which Israel blockaded after the Islamic militants seized power a year ago.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. reversal came on orders from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who first heard about the scholarship snafu on Friday. “She wasn’t pleased,” McCormack said.

Israel and the United States have tried not to point fingers in public over the scholarship incident, but each government clearly thinks the other made mistakes early on. Israeli officials say U.S. diplomats didn’t ask for special exemptions for the Fulbright students, while U.S. officials say Israel should have recognized immediately that these were a special case. U.S. officials also blame themselves.

McCormack appeared to blame lower-level U.S. diplomats or support staff for the decision to yank the scholarships without discussing the implications with enough higher-ups. “On our side there was some decision-making that in retrospect we wouldn’t have taken,” he said. “The secretary is just pleased that it’s been fixed, or will be fixed.”

David Siegel, spokesman at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, defended Israel’s Gaza closure policy. “Hamas exploits every opportunity to send terrorists and weapons across the border, including under the guise of humanitarian cases,” Siegel said. “Israel has a strong interest in the emergence of a moderate and educated Palestinian leadership.”

One understands the Israeli trepidation about young Palestinians crossing into their territory. But even hard-liners recognize that hand selected students engaged in cross-cultural education are the last people one wants to keep out.

Thankfully, that understanding is apparently reflexive at the top of both chains of command even if there was some overzealous misapplication of regulations a few rungs down. Bureaucracies screw these kinds of things up all the time, thus the “N” in SNAFU. What’s unusual is fixing the problem so quickly.

I’ve just gotten this PR announcement from Denver University, with which I’m not affiliated:

DU’s Graduate School of International Studies will be renamed tomorrow, Wednesday, May 28. Renaming the school will honor one of the most notable and successful individuals in DU history, as well as mark an exciting time for the school.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and other distinguished guests will gather to commemorate the renaming at a press conference held Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 10 a.m. You can watch the announcement on a live streaming video found on the DU Web site.

The school’s most famous alumni are Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and U.S. Army Chief of Staff George Casey. So, obviously, it’s going to be the Condi Rice school, no?

No. Apparently, it’s going to be the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, after Albright’s father and the school’s founding dean. Korbel’s been dead for 21 years but I guess siring one Secretary of State and training another is a pretty good reason to get honored in such a way. Then again, I’m not sure his name adds any prestige to the school.

I’m not sure why DU is trying to be cloak-and-dagger with the announcement. They published the news last week, after all.

A thinly-sourced report by the Jerusalem Post claiming that President Bush had told the Israeli government that he plans to attack Iran before leaving office has been flatly denied by the White House.

The White House on Tuesday flatly denied an Army Radio report that claimed US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term. It said that while the military option had not been taken off the table, the Administration preferred to resolve concerns about Iran’s push for a nuclear weapon “through peaceful diplomatic means.”

Army Radio had quoted a top official in Jerusalem claiming that a senior member in the entourage of President Bush, who concluded a trip to Israel last week, had said in a closed meeting here that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action against Iran was called for.

The official reportedly went on to say that “the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice” was preventing the administration from deciding to launch such an attack on the Islamic Republic for the time being.

So, we have an anonymous top Israeli official passing on third hand information from an anonymous member of Bush’s entourage about what may or may not have been said in a meeting. And a White House denial.

Hmm. Of course, if the president was planning on attacking Iran but wanted to keep it secret until after the election, he’d have to deny that. And, if he wasn’t planning anything of the sort, he’d deny it, too.

My sense remains that, whatever Bush’s views on what is “called for” in the case of Iran, we’re incredibly unlikely to actually do anything.

The Eight Belles Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

(AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

✰ THE WINNERS ✰

First: Elmo – The good news is …. it’s good Hillary day. The bad news is, we flip the coin again tomorrow.

Second: Deathlok – Hillary announces her running mate.

Third: charles austin – One is a caricature full of hot air, and the other is a clever use of inflated balloons.

HONORABLE MENTION

Dodd – In a last ditch effort to revitalize her campaign, Hillary! hires another new campaign manager.

Maggie Mama – “Stepford Wife? Who said I come across like a Stepford wife?”

Mister B – For the life of him, Bill couldn’t figure out what happened to all the condoms he purchased.

radio free fred – “The Air To The Throne.”

yetanotherjohn – Stick a fork in her, she’s done.

Gollum – Budget cuts at the Secret Service led to a slightly novel strategy for decoys.

ℛODNEY’S BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

Neither likes pricks.

Oh the huge vanity

OK, we’ll pop her, but she does poll 5 points higher than the real thing.

The Monday Contest also can beat the Orlando Magic.

The Pentagon is backing a massive development project financed by Marriott and others to gentrify Baghdad.

Forget the rocket attacks, concrete blast walls and lack of a sewer system. Now try to imagine luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad. That’s all part of a five-year development “dream list” — or what some dub an improbable fantasy — to transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone from a walled fortress into a centerpiece for Baghdad’s future.

But the $5 billion plan has the backing of the Pentagon and apparently the interest of some deep pockets in the world of international hotels and development, the lead military liaison for the project told the Associated Press. For Washington, the driving motivation is to create a “zone of influence” around the new $700 million U.S. Embassy to serve as a kind of high-end buffer for the compound, whose total price tag will reach about $1 billion after all the workers and offices are relocated over the next year. “When you have $1 billion hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbors are. You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time,” said Navy Capt. Thomas Karnowski, who led the team that created the development plan.

[...]

But developers are clearly looking many years ahead and gambling that Baghdad could one day join the list of former war zones such as Sarajevo and Beirut that have rebounded and earned big paydays for early investors.

Spencer Ackerman is outraged at the very idea.

Your neighbors! Your actual neighbors, the ones whose country it is, experience shortages of water, electricity, fuel, cooking oil, medical care, security and more. The rise of this hotel compound will drain resources away from a desperate population.

[...]

Never, ever, let another warmonger get away with telling you that you want to end the war because you don’t care about the Iraqi people’s fate. He probably has his luxury suite already booked in the forthcoming International Zone Hilton.

I’m quite dubious of the plan and certainly wouldn’t invest my retirement savings in developing luxury resorts in the middle of a war zone. Still, the idea makes sense. Presumably, companies investing $1 billion in facilities will have a great stake in working to improve the infrastructure, security, rule of law, and other things necessary to ensuring the success of their business venture. Even for conglomerates, that’s real money.

At what point is it conscionable to build luxury hotels? Certainly, most of Cairo, Egypt is a slum by Western standards. Yet, there you will find more than a dozen magnificent luxury hotels, mostly clustered into a central zone, which cater to well-off tourists. Is that immoral? Or does it provide jobs for locals and gradually improve their standard of living?

For that matter, while America’s inner cities are a far cry from Baghdad, many of them are nonetheless impoverished, crime-ridden, and dysfunctional. Yet, almost all of them have luxury hotels, condos, restaurants, and so forth. Indeed, that’s true of our nation’s capital, where $500 a night hotels and restaurants selling $200 bottles of wine are within easy walking distance from neighborhoods none of the patrons of said establishments would venture into at night.

Wealth and abject poverty, safety and danger, and have and have not often coexist in close proximity. And the good often “draws resources away” from the bad. Why should Baghdad be any different?

This morning the Miami Herald published a story quoting a “Pentagon study” that found the situation in Iraq “a major debacle” with the “outcome in doubt”. The story is also being carried by McClatchy, the Herald’s parent company. Obviously, quite a few in the blogosphere have made substantial hay out of the piece.

The excellent SWJ Blog contacted the author of the study and found that not only were the findings of the study misrepresented but that the study was about the period from 2002 to 2004 and not about current events at all. The meat of their quote from Joseph Collins, author of the study is this:

It was not an NDU study, nor was it a Pentagon study. Indeed, the implication of the Herald story was that this study was mostly about current events. Such is not the case. It was mainly about the period 2002-04. The story also hypes a number of paragraphs, many of which are quoted out of context. The study does not “lay much of the blame” on Secretary Rumsfeld for problems in the conduct of the war, nor does it say that he “bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” It does not single out “Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley” for criticism.

This is followed by a summary of the actual contents and findings of the study.

A John McCain-Condolezza Rice ticket would beat the Democratic “Dream Ticket” of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Clinton’s “home” state of New York, a Marist College poll shows.

A McCain/Rice ticket would edge out both a Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton ticket for New York’s 31, usually true blue, electoral votes: 49% of registered voters in New York State support a John McCain/Condoleezza Rice ticket compared with 46% who support Hillary Clinton as president and Barack Obama as vice president. The Democrats don’t fare any better in New York with Obama at the top of the ticket as president and Clinton as vice president. McCain/Rice receives 49%, and Obama/Clinton has 44%. Although an Obama led Democratic ticket does better against McCain/Rice among non-enrolled voters than a Clinton/Obama ticket, Clinton/Obama is stronger with women against the Republicans.

While it’s not inconceivable that McCain could win New York, it’s highly unlikely. Even aside from the fact that Marist polled “registered voters” rather than applying a likely voter screen, any polling is just noise until the Democrats settle their nomination fight.

As noted this morning, McCain is outpolling both Clinton and Obama right now nationally precisely because he doesn’t have an opponent. So long as the Democrats are divided, a large number of Clinton and Obama partisans will tell pollsters that they wouldn’t vote for the other candidate. When push comes to shove, almost all of them will.

That said, this finding is somewhat interesting:

Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman is not an asset to McCain against a Clinton/Obama ticket in New York. McCain/Lieberman receives the support of only 40% of New York’s registered voters compared with 53% who support a Clinton/Obama ticket. With Lieberman as his running mate, McCain is also behind but competitive in the state against an Obama/Clinton ticket. 45% of registered voters support a McCain/Lieberman ticket compared with 49% who support an Obama/Clinton ticket.

One would think Lieberman, from neighboring Connecticut, would be more attractive to New York Democrats and Independents than the more conservative Rice. Presumably, this reflects the antipathy many Democrats have for the “traitor” Lieberman rather than an ideological preference.

UPDATE: CNN’s Alex Mooney is more excited by the poll than I am, noting that “In 2004, John Kerry beat President Bush there by nearly 20 points. In 2000, the margin between Al Gore and Bush was an even higher 25 points.”

Rice herself attempted to put the speculation to rest Tuesday, saying, “I very much look forward to watching this campaign and voting as a voter — I have a lot of work to do and then I’ll happily go back to Stanford.”

But with polls like this, it’s likely some Republicans hope she reconsiders.

McCain’s already doubling down on the Iraq War, so adding Rice wouldn’t hurt him in that regard. He is, however, working very hard to fight off the notion that he’d represent a “third term” for the unpopular President Bush. I don’t see how running with his most prominent remaining foreign policy staffer would help in that regard.

The bitterness of the Democratic presidential race kicked up another notch yesterday, with the discovery that popular Air America radio host Randi Rhodes recently performed a profanity-laced standup routine in which both Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton were repeatedly referred to as “big f-ing whores” (minus the sanitization, naturally). (She also called Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Dick Cheney racists and anti-Semites but Air America seems not to be upset by that.)

Here’s the video — which hasn’t been sanitized:

Air America released the following statement:

Air America has suspended on-air host Randi Rhodes for making inappropriate statements about prominent figures, including Senator Hillary Clinton, at a recent public appearance on behalf of Air America in San Francisco which was sponsored by an Air America affiliate station.

“Air America encourages strong opinions about public affairs but does not condone such abusive, ad hominem language by our Hosts,” said chair Charlie Kireker.

Brian Maloney questions the timing: “Consider this: the incident occurred two full weeks ago, on 22 March. What explains the delay in her removal? Certainly, there wasn’t a public controversy to deal with, almost no one not in attendance that night even knew about it.” He notes that Kireker is a Clinton supporter and that Rhodes has made even more outrageous statements about the likes of Mitt Romney without repercussions.

Rhodes is claiming breach of contract and that her employers have “damaged my hard won excellent reputation in the broadcast industry.” No, really.

Meanwhile, award-winning columnist, reporter, editor, author, bon vivant and raconteur Stacy McCain defends “his girl” from Rhodes’ insults.

via memeorandum

The body of Staff Sergeant Keith Maupin, the American soldier who was captured and murdered nearly four years ago, has finally been officially identified.

Sgt. Keith Matthew Maupin’s parents vowed to never let the U.S. Army forget about finding their son. Their efforts included trips to the Pentagon and even meeting with President Bush, but they ended in disappointment Sunday: An Army general told them the remains of Maupin, a soldier who had been listed as missing-captured in Iraq since 2004, had been found.

“My heart sinks, but I know they can’t hurt him anymore,” Keith Maupin said after receiving word about the remains of his son, who went by Matt.

On Monday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed sympathy to Maupin’s family. “This has been especially difficult for the Maupin family because of not knowing for almost exactly four years. So I want to extend my condolences,” Gates said, speaking to reporters aboard a flight to Denmark.

The Army didn’t say how or where in Iraq his son’s remains were discovered, only that the identification was made with DNA testing, Maupin said. A shirt similar to the one his son was wearing at the time of his disappearance was also found.

[...]

Matt Maupin was a 20-year-old private first class when he was captured April 9, 2004, after his fuel convoy, part of the Bartonville, Ill.-based 724th Transportation Company, was ambushed west of Baghdad. A week later, the Arab television network Al-Jazeera aired a videotape showing a stunned-looking Maupin wearing camouflage and a floppy desert hat, sitting on the floor surrounded by five masked men holding automatic rifles. That June, Al-Jazeera aired another tape purporting to show a U.S. soldier being shot. But the dark and grainy tape showed only the back of the victim’s head and not the execution.

The Maupins refused to believe their son was dead. They lobbied hard for the Army to continue listing him as missing-captured, fearing that another designation would undermine efforts to find him. The Pentagon agreed to give the Maupins regular briefings, and Bush met with them when he traveled to Cincinnati.

Keith Maupin said the Army told him soon after his son’s capture that there was only a 50 percent chance he would be found alive. He said he doesn’t hold the Army responsible for his son’s death, but that he did hold the Army responsible for bringing his son home. “I told them when we’d go up to the Pentagon, whether he walks off a plane or is carried off, you’re not going to leave him in Iraq like you did those guys in Vietnam,” Maupin said.

[...]

Four U.S. service members remain missing in Iraq: Capt. Michael Speicher, a Navy pilot, has been missing since the 1991 Persian Gulf War; Sgt. Ahmed al-Taie, a 41-year-old Iraqi-born reserve soldier from Ann Arbor, Mich., was abducted while visiting his Iraqi wife in October 2006 in Baghdad, and Pfc. Byron Fouty and Sgt. Alex Jimenez have been missing since May 12.

Honestly, I’ve presumed Maupin has been dead since my 24 June 2008 post SPC Keith M. Maupin Murdered and haven’t given him much thought since. I’m glad that his family finally has closure and hope the same will be true of the other four families.

When I heard this story this morning, I was puzzled by the continual references to him as “Sergeant Maupin,” remembering him as a specialist. This discrepancy is due to an interesting Army policy: Maupin was a mere private first class when he was taken hostage but, “A month after his capture, Maupin was promoted to the rank of specialist. In April 2005, he was promoted to sergeant.” On 3 August 2006, he was promoted to staff sergeant. How so?

“This will keep Staff Sgt. Maupin in line with his peers so that when he returns he’ll have some catching up to do as far as proper schooling goes, but at least he’ll have the rank of his peers, who are now part of the NCO corps,” said Maj. Annmarie Daneker, 88th Regional Readiness Command Public Affairs Office.

Missing after the attack, Maupin was immediately placed in an accountability status referred to as “Duty Status: Whereabouts Unknown.” His status was later changed to “Missing-Captured.”

It’s a nice gesture. One presumes his next of kin was paid his salary, too, until this determination.

UPDATE: From the article that announced his promotion to SSG: “Maupin remains entitled to rights and privileges for pay and promotions as long as he remains on active-duty status. His basic monthly pay continues to go into an account Maupin set up before deploying. “

Ilan Goldenberg notes that, for all the United States has invested in Iraq — and in propping up Maliki — we’ve gotten very little in return in this particular episode. By most educated guesses (although by no means all) Maliki didn’t bother to seek our input before launching this messy internecine fight with the Shiite forces of al-Sadr and hasn’t provided particularly good intelligence so that we at least know what the hell’s going on after the fact. Ultimately, “It’s a way of life for the Iraqi government. They do stupid things that put our troops at risk for their own political benefit because they know that American troops will step into the breech and cover their asses. ”

While I’m still having trouble unraveling Maliki’s motivations in all this, I think John Robb gets it right on how it came to this:

[T]he US military isn’t following its published COIN doctrine. Instead, it’s following the dictates of open source counter-insurgency. This doctrine, still unarticulated and very far from officially condoned by the US military (policy lags theory and theory lags practice), has a top level goal of stability, even if it at the expense of the host government’s legitimacy. To achieve stability, deals or truces are made with non-state groups (formed around strong primary loyalties like tribalism, religion, ethnicity, clan, and neighborhood). The benefits of these deals and truces are clear, if they reduce violence they get a degree of autonomy and in some cases money, weapons, and training. As we have seen over the last year, it works.

Open source counter-insurgency can work indefinitely if the host government remains passive (although at the cost of a badly functioning hollow state and lots of money). However, if the host government calls the bluff (the gap between “policy” and “practice”) and begins to roll back the autonomy awarded to competitive non-state groups, the entire effort will shatter. Maliki is doing this now with his excursion into Basra. As a result, US policy in Iraq is now being gored by the horns of a dilemma. The US appears to be unable to decide which bad option to select: support Maliki and the country collapses into an orgy of violence – or – let him fail and the Iraqi government loses its remaining legitimacy and cohesion.

Pat Lang points out that this isn’t our only problem.

My problem with the present course of events is the ruthlessness of the propaganda campaign being successfully waged by the Bush Administration. The president has succeeded in “framing” the discussion in such a way that Maliki and his assembly of Badr Corps militias are represented as being the equivalent of George Washington suppressing the Whiskey Rebellion. The noble Maliki is portrayed as motivated by a selfless desire for “national” unity. The MSM has re-transmitted that idea without serious question.

In fact he is merely acting on behalf of an emerging alignment of pro-Iranian forces in Iraq that have successfully pulled the wool over American eyes.

You may have noticed that no Kurdish units of the “Iraqi Forces” have been brought down from the north for this “fandango.” You may also have noticed that our Concerned Local Citizens/Sons of Iraq (read Sunni tribal Arab auxiliaries) are not involved. Show me some engaged units in this that are not Shia.

A fair point and one that I haven’t seen elsewhere.

That wars are fought to achieve political objectives is so fundamental that it’s a Week One lesson in any basic military science or international conflict course. The problem in Iraq is that we’re fighting an asymmetrical war (or, perhaps, as Fred Kaplan puts it, “wars”) not only in terms of capabilities and tactics but also of objectives. It’s not unusual for adversaries to have varying objectives (unconditional surrender vs. cessation of hostility, e.g.); indeed, it’s normal.

What’s unusual is for allies to have such varied objectives. Moreover, in this case, I’m not sure we even know what Maliki’s objectives are. And his coalition isn’t even the only one on “our side” who we’ve got to accommodate.