Confederate Yankee

June 23, 2008

Network News: If We Can't Lose The War, We'll Act Like It Doesn't Exist

Someone please tell CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan that her reaction is precisely the reaction her peers are shooting for:


"If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts," Ms. Logan said.

Logan admits here a common complaint about the kind of news reported out of Iraq for the duration of the war, which is a macabre focus on blood-soaked sensationalism to the near exclusion of any other sort of story.

The newsworks (to perhaps coin a phrase) have never been interesting in reporting all the news, a fact that far predates television. News outlets—both state-controlled and private—have had a propaganda role throughout history. What may be unique among western news organizations is an often obvious desire to present only one side of the story, even when they have the option of objectivity. They are guilty of providing propaganda just as state-run media often are, but are often blind to this, confusing the biased views they advocate with "truth."

This bias is often wrongly blamed upon the political leanings of a news outlets ownership. In days past (and perhaps in the New York Times present), family control over an outlet may have strongly influenced the focus and bias of news organizations, but the modern reality of corporate news ownership, with organizations and divisions of news organizations being bought, sold, fragmented, consolidated, and always for sale, has rendered that argument laughably simplistic and out of date.

No, in the modern era where news is viewed by "suits" as another potential revenue stream and not a public service, "news" is pushed to be shallow infotainment providing immediate gratification. It is under this pressure-cooker environment that producers, editors and journalists are forced to drop even the pretense of objectivity and produce news quickly, cheaply and sensationally. This pressure brings personal biases out in sharp relief. Journalists, which have self-defined themselves time and again as being left-of-center in their world views and based in bias-reinforcing left-of-center urban enclaves, pushed by business-oriented ownership focused on ratings, have succumbed to their baser instincts, leading us into situation where news is reduced to little more than a veneer of political advocacy attempting to guide the public on how they should think about current events. From global cooling global warming global cooling climate change, to views of conflicts, the proper application of diplomacy, and even the kind of lightbulbs we use, the media attempts to shape how we think by presenting the news they deem newsworthy from a perspective they deem correct.

Reality, however, does not have a leftward bias (neither does it have a rightward bias). Reality, like nature, seeks equilibrium... balance.

The reaction of the newsworks is simple when reality intrudes on the narrative: they dispute it, then they ignore it, and if they can no longer ignore it, they pretend that they never held a contrary position.

Presently, the falloff in news coverage in Iraq is the result of media attempting to ignore that the "quagmire in a failed state" narrative they've been promoting has been failing for over a year.


According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been "massively scaled back this year." Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The "CBS Evening News" has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC's "World News" and 74 minutes on "NBC Nightly News." (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

I'm sure that psychologists have more precise terms to describe this collective behavior, but it comes down to this: the situation in Iraq is far better than the media have predicted it would be, and they aren't sure what to do. They don't want to report success, as success means having to explain why they've been wrong. They also morbidly hope—no doubt subconsciously—that things will once again turn worse, and vindicate their years of predicting doom and failure.

So coverage withers away. The war becomes a non-event, and thankfully, a Presidential campaign between a far left shape-shifter and an occasional Republican provides a welcome distraction.

The War in Iraq is plenty interesting to Americans. That has never faded in five years, and most would be heartened to hear what independent reporters have been indicating for months; that real progress has been made economically, diplomatically, and militarily.

But the newsworks doesn't want to admit they may have been wrong, and so their interests have now focused eslewhere. They don't want to undermine a political party that long ago made abandoning Iraq a key part of their party platform. They don't want to expose a shameful candidate who has made defeating his own military and abandoning a fledgling democracy his signature issue.

From their perspective, it is better to provide only the bad news, and when the bad news fails to live up to expectations, to ignore the uncomfortable.

Damn the news. Send in the clowns.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:18 AM | Comments (42) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

June 20, 2008

The Real "Dead-Enders"

It has been fascinating—and often more than a little infuriating—to watch the anti-Administration wing of the anti-war movement over the past year.

I'd like to first make that distinction clear: there are those who are against the concept of warfare to resolve conflicts, and those that are against this war in specific because they have an acute loathing for their domestic political opposition, led by the current President. Make no mistake: so many of those who presently claim to be anti-war now would change their position on military intervention in an heartbeat if it meant intervening in Darfur or (_fill_in_the_blank_), if it satisfied their political desires and could be painted as a "humanitarian" mission.

Those politically-motivated progressives that see anti-war sentiment as little more than a way to grab power via the ballot box have been most aggravating and occasionally amusing. They saw that an unpopular and protracted war was a way to market themselves to pick up seats in Congress in 2004 and 2006, and hoped perhaps they could ride anti-war sentiment to the White House in 2008.

They rallied behind an eloquent dove of a candidate who has repeatedly promised America to withdrawal U.S. forces on a rigid 16-month timetable, regardless of condition on the ground or the effect it would have on the Iraqi people or on the stability of the region.

That timetable was predicated upon conditions on the ground in Iraq in 2006, when violence was spiraling out of control, and it seemed all but assured that Iraq would become a failed state. Obviously, a lot has changed in the time since Barack Obama predicated his campaign on achieving defeat, and in the past year in particular.

Violence dropped as U.S. and Iraqi forces moved off-base and into the communities, and as the communities themselves began rejecting insurgents, terrorists, gangs, and rogue militias. The Iraqi Parliament, once almost as ineffective as our current Congress, has passed important reconciliation legislation, including an amnesty law that has already led to hundreds of captured insurgents, including Associated Press personnel, to be set free.

Though leading Democrats like Harry Reid still insist that the war is lost, and the Speaker of the House insists that any progress must be due to Iran's moderating influence (and not the success of American and Iraqi forces in killing those carrying out those "moderating Iranian influences" it has become obvious to most of the world that the Iraqi experiment just might work and is well worth pursuing.

Austin Bay noted this morning that freshman Senator Hopeandchange may be trying to distance himself from his adopted policy of purposeful defeat (h/t: Instapundit):


Obama still touts his pull-out — sort of, occasionally, okay, less occasionally. Obama, like his cohort of supporters, is politically committed to defeat. Obama will now rely on rhetoric to assauge the DailyKos-crowd and obscure his shift on Iraq. He will change his position– and Samantha Power prepared the way several months ago in her ill-fated BBC interview this past spring. Obama thinks he can get away with it: he just backed out of public financing.

The NY Times on the deal before the vote. And Fox.

The real rubes in this election won’t be the rural Midwesterners Obama slandered, the ones who cling to their guns and religon. It will be the gray-haired profs with ponytails, clinging to their cannabis and liturgy of defeat.

When Obama quietly slinks aways from his signature issue and the anti-Bush wing of the anti-war movement loses their defeat-at-any-cost pledgemaster, what will become of the anti-war progressive fringe?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:21 AM | Comments (62) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

June 18, 2008

Obama Volunteers Boot Muslims From Stage

I don't think for a second that the freshman Senator is himself anti-Muslim—his father's family and many of his half-siblings are Muslim—but this incident once again shows he is part of anything other than a post-racial campaign:


Two Muslim women at Barack Obama's rally in Detroit Monday were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women's headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate.

The campaign has apologized to the women, all Obama supporters who said they felt betrayed by their treatment at the rally.

"This is of course not the policy of the campaign. It is offensive and counter to Obama's commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. "We sincerely apologize for the behavior of these volunteers."

He can blame the volunteers that forced these Muslim women off stage today in two separate incidents by different Obama volunteers, but these incidents aren't the first and second audience-shaping controversies for Obama's campaign. In April, campaign volunteers issued a directive to "Get me more white people, we need more white people" for Michelle Obama's appearance at Carnegie Mellon.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:25 AM | Comments (41) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

AP, Let's Do This Thing

Michelle Malkin's take is typical of bloggers who find the Associated Press' tiered excerpt pricing scheme targeted at bloggers to be farcical, but I think her response of charging the Associated Press for content they cite from bloggers doesn't go far enough.

I propose that in addition to charging AP for using blogger content, that AP be charged editorial fees when bloggers are forced to do the fact checking that in-house editors fail to do. For every blog entry proving than an Associated Press story is using false information or misleading, the Associated Press should pay that blogger the AP-supplied standard of $2.50/word. Just doing a quick check of my content from the present back until the beginning of May, the Associated Press owes me editorial services fees of $2,580 for 1,032 words correcting AP stories dating back to May 2. Some of that would be returned to AP (at $2.50/word) for the text examples I cited, but overall, it is a worthwhile enterprise. If I went back through all of my archives, I suspect that I could easily compile a fact-checking bill for the AP in the tens of thousands of dollars.

You'll not find me complaining about the Associated Press' new ideas of content fees. Their accountants, however, may feel otherwise.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:41 AM | Comments (25) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

An Army Learns

Over at The Donovan, proof that this generation of military leaders is learning from mistakes made in the past.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:03 AM | Comments (21) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gore Shame

The worlds greatest environmental hypocrite wastes so much energy that his consumption would power 232 normal homes.



Sadly not content with even that level of wastefulness, the Goracle has now taken to directly belching balls of energy into the atmosphere.

Update: Steve Strum notes (correctly) that Gore's annual usage would power 232 normal homes for a month. Not quite as bad as originally thought, but still horrific.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:44 AM | Comments (26) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

June 17, 2008

Obama Gaffes Again

Somebody get a history book for the clueless freshman Senator from Illinois (my bold):


And, you know, let's take the example of Guantanamo. What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks -- for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated.

And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world, and given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, "Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims."

For the moment let's ignore that terrorist recruitment in general (and for al Qaeda in particular) is on the decline and Barack is making up his inconvenient untruths as he goes along, to focus instead on his insistence that Bill Clinton's flawed policy of treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue is somehow a winning strategy. We'll use Obama's own 1993 WTC bombing example to debunk his claim.

It's quite simple: where is the 1993 World Trade Center bomb-builder? Is he in a U.S prison, as Obama claims? Not even close.

Though grossly neglected in the media, Abdul Rahman Yasin conducted the first attempted chemical weapons attack on U.S. soil by terrorists with the 1993 World Trade Center bomb. The bomb that detonated in the WTC garage in 1993 was built by Yasin to create smoke filled with sodium cyanide *(update, see below) which he hoped would rise through elevator shafts, ventilation ducts, and stairwells to suffocate 50,000 people.

Fortunately for those in the World Trade Center that day, the bomb burned hotter than Yasin expected, and incinerated the cyanide as it detonated instead of spreading it in toxic smoke.

Yasin fled the United States after the bombing to Iraq, and lived as Saddam Hussein's guest in Baghdad until the invasion. He is still free, and wanted by the FBI.

Once again, Barack Obama is dead wrong on the facts.

Update: It now appears that the claim that Yasin used sodium cyanide in the bomb is on very weak ground, and is more than likely false From an online term paper that does a good job of synthesizing the story.


Forensics in World Trade Center Bombing in 1993

... So, what were the evidences, which supported the statement of the Judge Duffy, that there had been cyanide in the WTC bomb? The main question to be solved here lied in the following: what could be the consequences of mixing cyanide with nitric or sulfuric acids, both of which had been found in the bomb fragments? The FBI chemist Steven Burgmeister was the main person to be inquired about the results of the forensic chemical analysis. The thing is, that Burgmeister never made it clear, that he had come to any positive conclusions as for cyanide' presence in the explosive. (Dwyer, 1994, p. 237) This is an abstract from the Burgmeister's interview by one of the prosecutors during the trial:

Prosecutor: What happens, when sodium cyanide is mixed with nitric or sulfuric acid?

Burmeister: There is formed hydrogen cyanide, which is a gas, and which is extremely toxic.

Prosecutor: When you say, that hydrogen cyanide is very toxic, could you give an idea of how toxic it is?

Burmeister: Very toxic, if you breathe, you are dead… (Burgmeister, 1994, p. 6911)

One of the proofs for FBI agents was the discovery of the bottle with sodium cyanide at the place, where the terrorists were preparing their explosive. But it is clear, that this does not directly prove there was any cyanide in the bomb. The fact is that sodium cyanide may be used for different purposes, for example, for photography. Its cost is very low, and it is sold in tons for industrial use. There have been also carried out technical analysis as for how much cyanide would be needed to create such an explosive, and how it is possible to create hydrogen cyanide and the assertions of the Judge Duffy were not confirmed by the FBI. (Dwyer, 1994, p. 240)

It seems that the cyanide claims I cited in this and the previous blog entry were based upon the words of Judge Duffy, based upon his interpretation of what he heard from FBI chemist Steven Burgmeister, yet Burgmeister neither confirmed nor denied cyanide was in the bomb. I'm not sure how Duffy got from Burgmeister's statements to his conclusion. Forensics did not recover any cyanide at the bomb site, only a small quantity at the sit where the bomb was constructed.

None of that matters to the central thesis, which is that Obama was wrong about terrorist recruitment and about his daft view that combating terrorism is best done as a law enforcement matter.

Law enforcement is the enforcement of laws after they have been broken and a crime has been committed. Preemption is not an option using this model; you can't arrest a terrorist until they have broken a law, and you can't do that unless you have jurisdiction, cooperation with local law enforcement, a judge who will give you a warrant, etc. Good luck with that.

The terrorists use asymmetrical warfare as their tool of choice, and common sense dictates that the proper response is also military in nature.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:04 PM | Comments (107) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

They Never Change

Pfleger's baaaaack:


Two weeks after his controversial sermon on race sparked a national uproar, Rev. Michael Pfleger returned Monday to his office at St. Sabina Catholic Church, expressing gratitude to Cardinal Francis George and saying activism would always be a part of him.

Pfleger said he would wait to make further comments until mass Sunday, when he plans to address his entire congregation for the first time since George suspended him. St. Sabina, one of the most vibrant Catholic churches in the city, is predominantly African-American and draws nearly 2,000 worshipers.

"I'm good. I'll speak Sunday and give my talk then," Pfleger said as he sifted through a desk full of papers. "I'm grateful to be back and to do what I'm called to do. I'm grateful to the cardinal for letting me back."

When asked if he was the same "Michael Pfleger" as before, he said: "I'm me. I'm not changing. This is how I've been since I've been born. I'm not changing."

I find it refreshing that like the other radicals in Barack Obama's closet, Michael Pfleger is the same person today as he was yesterday, as he was more than 20 years ago when he first became a moral compass for Barack Obama. Jeremiah Wright, likewise, seems to have never veered from his course in the decades Obama followed him until now, even after those controversial views were exposed. These men have strong views and convictions that are unwavering. Their core values have apparently remain unchanged. Most of Obama's associates have also remained true to themselves.

Obama kicked off his political career at the home of domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn. The Obama campaign has tried to minimize their relationship, but the facts remain that Obama has extensive tied to Ayers.

Obama and Ayers served together for many years at the Woods Fund, and Obama was chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a $50 million education grant project for which Ayers wrote the grant proposal. Steve Diamond at the blog Global Labor and the Global Economy makes a compelling argument that it was a concerted effort of the Ayers family, including terrorist Bill, his father Thomas, brother John, and Bill's Manson Family-admiring wife (and fellow Weatherman terrorist) Bernadine Dorhn that "made" Obama's poltical career:


Thus, we have one possible answer to the question: Who "sent" Obama? It was the Ayers family, including Tom, John, Bill and Bernardine Dohrn.

It is highly unlikely that a 30-something second year lawyer would have been plucked from relative obscurity out of a left wing law firm to head up something as visible and important in Chicago as the Annenberg Challenge by Bill Ayers if Ayers had not already known Obama very well. One possibility is that Obama proved himself to the Ayers's in the battle for local school control when he was at the DCP in the 80s.

Diamond also ties Obama's present Presidential campaign to other radicals, including the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a faction of which later became the Weathermen:


As it turns out, there are other ex-SDS types around the Obama campaign as well, including Marilyn Katz, a public relations professional, who was head of security for the SDS during the disaster in the streets of Chicago in 1968. She is close (politically) to Carl Davidson, a former vice president of SDS and longtime Fidelista, who is webmaster for a group called Progressives for Obama, that is headlined by other former 60s radicals like Tom Hayden and the maoist Bill Fletcher. Davidson and Katz were key organizers of the 2002 anti-war demonstration where Obama made public his opposition to the Iraq war that has been so critical to his successful presidential campaign. Davidson apparently moved into the maoist movements of the 70s after the disintegration of SDS.

None of these people have deviated from established characters and viewpoints that are unerringly radical in nature when compared to the traditional values of most Americans.

This web of radical associates strongly suggests that the actual substance of Barack Obama is quite different from the carefully-scripted character his campaign message machine has tried to forge in the media. It strongly suggests that his continual, inevitable surprise at the uncovered radicalism of his dearest friends and oldest contacts is entirely feigned.

The Obama campaigns attempts to minimize his troubling, decades-long relationships with radicals is nothing more than more or less than the work of a campaign feverishly trying to hide a past that most conservative Democrats and independent voters would find revolting.



From his absolutist views on the Second Amendment in favor of outlawing most common firearms, to support of a radical view of reproductive rights "too close to infanticide" that suggests babies who survive abortions should be left to die, to a "dazed and malaised" return to Jimmy Carter's failed economics, the greatest challenge to Barack Obama's campaign is consistently Barack Obama himself, and his requirement of us that we believe a lifetime shaped by and shared with the most radical fringes of society was a lifetime spent in the dark, not knowing who these people really are, unaware of the influence they had over him.

Barack Obama requires potential voters to accept that he doesn't know his friends, his family, nor himself. Should someone with such a stunning lack of awareness be President?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:55 AM | Comments (25) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Chinese Company Develops "UFO"

Interesting, of course, but abductees say they feel like being probed again a half hour later.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:21 AM | Comments (21) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

June 16, 2008

POT MEET KETTLE: Obama Says Black Men Should Be Better Fathers

Frankly, I agree with the general sentiment. He's raised valid points few will argue.

That said, I did notice that Obama gave his speech at the Apostolic Church of God, and not Trinity United Church of Christ. Obama recently quit Trinity at roughly the same time it was discovered that Rev. Jeremiah Wright was refusing to relinquish control of the church, and lynching advocate Rev. Michael Pfleger issued forth his most recent offensive comments against Hillary Clinton in specific and white people in general in front of a congregation roaring their approval.

Someone should ask Obama if absentee fatherism is any worst than purposefully exposing their children to the hate speech of that radical church for nearly the entirety of their short lives. One doesn't have to be an absentee father to be a bad one, a point that a man closely aligned with a cadre of racists, conspiracy theorists, political radicals, anti-Semites, and domestic terrorists would no doubt rather ignore.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:33 AM | Comments (27) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

McClatchy's Dying: Who's Got the Will?

You could have seen this coming a mile away:


McClatchy Co., which owns The News & Observer newspaper in Raleigh, said Monday it will cut 10 percent of its work force in a move to save $70 million a year as the publisher continues to struggle to attract advertising dollars.

McClatchy, which also owns The Charlotte Observer, the Kansas City Star and Miami Herald, will trim about 1,400 employees. The staff reductions are part of a plan to reduce overall expenses by $95 million to $100 million over the next four quarters.

That is hardly surprising, considering we're in an environment where many print-based news outlets are fading, but perhaps McClatchy in particular wouldn't be fading as fast if they would try to address at least two points.

  1. Make an attempt to remove obvious and pervasive left-leaning political biases in reporting;
  2. find a less obnoxious and politically-charged slogan that the nutroots favorite, "Truth to Power."

The powers that be are not amused with the company's business sense, and many readers are immediately turned of by McClatchy's editorial stance. A flailing company should try to shore up a reader base, not alienate potential readers and advertisers, who will simply find a less-obviously biased competitor.

Enjoy "speaking truth to power" McClatchy, all the way to bankruptcy.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:22 AM | Comments (26) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

June 13, 2008

Tim Russert Dead at 58

I've written hundreds of posts critiquing journalism, but have never had anything but respect for Tim Russerts' professionalism. He was what a journalist should be, and he will be missed.

Go with God, Mr. Russert.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:56 PM | Comments (26) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

al Sadr Crafting an Iraqi Hezbollah?

Via email from a trusted source, a VOI account. It looks like al Sadr is going to continue his Iranian-backed insurrection against the Iraqi government:


The anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr on Friday expressed intention to authorize setting up "cells
to resist the occupation", head of the political bureau of Sadr's
Movement said.

"The declaration by Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr to form cells to resist the
occupation comes in full conformity with the approach of the
Sadrists," Sheikh Liwa Semaysam told Aswat al-Iraq- Voices of Iraq-
(VOI) on the phone.

The key Sadrist leader added that these cells will "have a written
authorization by Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr to carry out their task, on
the condition that arms will only be in their hands for use against
the occupier and none else."

Sheikh Semaysam, a close aide of Sadr, provided no further details.

If true—and apparently, it is—al Sadr is attempting to split and sanction a military wing off of the Madhi Army and Iranian "Special groups" to continue insurgent operations, while making at least a face-value attempt to demilitarize the organization.

Intresting, isn't it?

Iran tried to infiltrate Iraqi government at all levels, along with militia groups and criminal gangs. Obviously, as PM Maliki's clearing out of Sadrists from Baghdad to Basra proved, the government route has failed, and the militia route is on the ropes.

As a result, al Sadr is apparently attempting to craft an Iraqi Hezbollah, entrenching his group socially as an Iranian-supported shadow government with it's own insurgent military wing. Iraq's security forces and government are far less fractured than those in Lebanon, so it seems unlikely that al Sadr's hopes will come to fruition, but the development does raise an interesting question, namely: is this the best Iran has left?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:45 AM | Comments (29) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Che We Can Beleive In?

Nope, not concerned about liberal judges, at all.

(h/t Gabriel Malor)

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:10 AM | Comments (21) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Krauthammer: Iraqis Have Done "Nothing;" Somehow Obama Has Done Less

And here's his sarcastic list of the "nothings" they've accomplished that "cut-and-run Barry" Obama tries to pretend haven't happened:


  1. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sent the Iraqi army into Basra. It achieved in a few weeks what the British had failed to do in four years: take the city, drive out the Mahdi army, and seize the ports from Iranian-backed militias.
  2. When Mahdi fighters rose up in support of their Basra brethren, the Iraqi army at Maliki's direction confronted them and prevailed in every town — Najaf, Karbala, Hilla, Kut, Nasiriyah, and Diwaniyah — from Basra to Baghdad.
  3. Without any American ground forces, the Iraqi army entered and occupied Sadr City, the Mahdi army stronghold.
  4. Maliki flew to Mosul, directing a joint Iraqi-U.S. offensive against the last redoubt of al-Qaeda, which had already been driven out of Anbar, Baghdad, and Diyala provinces.
  5. The Iraqi parliament enacted a de-Baathification law, a major Democratic benchmark for political reconciliation.
  6. Parliament also passed the other reconciliation benchmarks — a pension law, an amnesty law, and a provincial elections and powers law. Oil revenues are being distributed to the provinces through the annual budget.
  7. With Maliki having demonstrated that he would fight not just Sunni insurgents (e.g., in Mosul) but Shiite militias (e.g., the Mahdi army), the Sunni parliamentary bloc began negotiations to join the Shiite-led government. (The final sticking point is a squabble over a sixth Cabinet position.)

You would think that the media would do more to force Obama to recognize that his view of Iraqi is frozen in time in 2006. AFP, Reuters, McClatchy, the Associated Press, etc., all have journalists in the region. Many have multiple reporters, videographers, and photographers throughout the country of Iraq itself.

At least one of those news agencies, the Associated Press, has benefited directly and publicly from the new laws passed by the Iraqi Parliament that have largely been ignored in the press. Pulitzer-winning AP photojournalist Bilal Hussein, captured with a known al Qaeda leader, was released from prison several months ago directly as a result of Iraq's new amnesty law, and not, as the news organization would have you believe, because he was found innocent.

But the media refuse to push Obama and other Democrats to admit to their failure to recognize the massive changes sweeping Iraq since the 2006 elections.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid still doggedly insists that the U.S. "surge" is a continuation of Bush's original policies, and that strategically, tactically, and politically, nothing has changed. He still shrilly insists the war is "lost" acting as if the Sunni and Shia Awakening movements, Iraqi political advancement on both domestic and foreign policy fronts, and the impressive performance of Iraqi security forces successfully executing a cascade of large-scale operations, never occurred.

Nancy Pelosi presides over the other half one of the most unaccomplished Congresses in U.S. history, with the lowest approval rates in history, currently a dismal 10.3% lower than even George W. Bush's 29% approval rating. She take a similar route as Reid, insisting that there is no progress... but said if there was, it is because of the efforts of Iran. She will not credit the American and Iraqi forces with their hard-won successes. Instead, she would give credit to those training and arming forces those fighting against the Iraqi government.

Neither Reid, nor Pelosi, nor their anti-war allies will concede progress in Iraq because they've thoroughly wedded their political futures to failure there, and have left themselves no viable escape routes. This means that Democrats have created for themselves a vicious trap, where for the good of their party, they have to pull against two democracies (the United States and Iraq), against freedom, and against peace.

They have created for themselves a hell where for their aspirations to come true, they must hope for a failed state, crippled by resurgent brutality. The must hope that recent successes change back for the worst. History may well well look back on the post-surge Democratic House and Senate of 2007-2008 as being the most anti-democratic Congress since similar Democrats (called copperheads) attempted to concede the U.S. Civil War.

Barack Obama took the lead early in attacking the Iraq War, even when he was just a state Senator in Illinois and had no access to intelligence information to base that opinion upon. He doggedly stuck to that position through the worst of Iraq's violence in 2006, riding a cry of withdrawal and defeat to prominence, first in the U.S. Senate, and then within scant months of graduating from his mediocre stint in state politics, into the Democratic Presidential race.

His strident, unwavering opposition to the war is the entirety of his appeal; without the conflict, his resume of unaccomplishments and rote university-indoctrinated progressive politics make him an entirely conventional and uninteresting urban Democratic candidate, if one admittedly better at reading a teleprompter than most.

For this reason, Barack Obama is forced to continue running on a platform of failure in Iraq. He cannot acknowledge that his position on the war has been proven wrong. To make that concession—admitting that John McCain was right to take the unpopular position of supporting the "surge" now that the situation has so radically changed in favor of success—is to admit defeat in the general election.

Instead, Barack Obama has hitched his entire political future to becoming a political Frankenstein. He combines the worst aspects of two Presidents reviled by many; Jimmy Carter's naive pacifism and horrific grasp of taxation and economics, with George W. Bush's dead-certain stubbornness, tightly-scripted and excessively-controlled (one might even say Rovian) public relations, arrogant detachment, and inflexibility.

Obama is a man wedded to a singular message, which he markets as "hope and change."

But his "hope" is reliant on a return of brutal sectarian and terrorist violence, the collapse of the first Arab democracy, and the extinguishing of freedom. His "change" entails a headlong and arbitrary retreat, regardless of what threats the ensuing security vacuum will cause in the lives of Iraqi men, women, and children just beginning to cautiously embrace a less violent, dictator-free society.

Barack Obama has staked his future on dragging two nations back into the past, into defeat. That is not a change we can accept from a man who has never shown at any point in his life that he is capable of being a leader.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:54 AM | Comments (26) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

June 12, 2008

You Don't Want to Go There

Judging by all the links noted on Memeorandum to this Salon article, the left has decided to raise a huge stink about a Fox News caption labeling Michelle Obama as "Obama's baby mama."

There are two reasons they should drop this tempest in a teacup quickly. The first is that Michelle Obama has referred to herself in similar terms ("My baby's daddy Barack Obama" is the same thing as calling herself "Obama's baby mama", making them look rather childish and petty.

The second is that they don't want to start a legitimacy argument related to this particular candidate. Barack Obama Sr. never divorced his first wife Kezia Obama. His wedding to Ann Dunham when she was three months pregnant with the junior Senator was illegitimate, and so was the junior Senator. This isn't "new" news—the information has been out there for anyone to see—and it shouldn't be that big of a deal, but his supporters shouldn't start conversations that they may not want to finish.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:39 PM | Comments (74) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

June 11, 2008

Rallying for Defeat

John McCain is presumably learning a hard lesson as Democrats and their willing accomplices in the media unfairly rip him (yet again) over comments about Iraq taken utterly out of context.


The exchange that has Democrats licking their chops began when co-host Matt Lauer asked about the surge strategy in Iraq: "If it's working Senator, do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?"

McCain replied: "No, but that's not too important. What's important is the casualties in Iraq, Americans are in South Korea, Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine. American casualties and the ability to withdraw; we will be able to withdraw. General [David] Petraeus is going to tell us in July when he thinks we are.

"But the key to it is that we don't want any more Americans in harm's way. That way, they will be safe, and serve our country and come home with honor and victory, not in defeat, which is what Senator Obama's proposal would have done. I'm proud of them. And they're doing a great job. And we are succeeding and it's fascinating that Senator Obama still doesn't realize that."

From that exchange, all Democrats heard was "No, but that's not too important."

The deceptively shortened quote was possibly taken out of context by ignorance, but far more likely by design. What McCain seemed to be saying is that arbitrarily-decided pullout dates (such as the 16 month "run for the exits" date favored by Obama) are asinine; conditions on the ground should indicate when a withdrawal is feasible, and he thinks he'd have a better idea of when that might possible be the next time General David Petraeus briefs Congress in June.

Common sense, isn't it?

John "find me a river" Kerry twisted McCain's words, perhaps filtered through a too tight magic hat, and claimed:


McCain's comment was "unbelievably out of touch with the needs and concerns of most Americans," saying that to families of troops in harm's way, "To them, it's the most important thing in the world."

Kerry claimed "an enormous, fundamental flaw in his candidacy for the presidency, which supposedly has hung on his strength as commander in chief and his understanding of foreign policy."

Kerry's foreign policy, like freshman Senator Obama's, is based upon the goal of losing the war, hoping that even at this late date a defeat could be portrayed as Bush's loss, not a concerted effort by the leaders the modern Democratic Party to cost their nation a war in the hope of establishing short-term political gains.

These Copperhead Democrats naturally view a desire for victory a "fundamental flaw," one that is "unbelievably out of touch" with their goals.

Ignored by the media in McCain's comments was his noting that Obama and many of his supporters still refuse to concede progress in Iraq, despite across-the-board gains.

Democrats have spent the past seven years excoriating George W. Bush for doggedly holding an absolutist view on certain issues, immune to acknowledging changing conditions. I find it highly amusing that they now rally around a political neophyte with many of the exact same personality traits.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:47 PM | Comments (54) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Get Your Racist Checklist Here

Here you go, haters.

I'll have you know this does not help Michelle Obama's children.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:23 AM | Comments (22) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

June 10, 2008

Welcome Back Carter



Despite the hopes of Democrats, the economy isn't going to tank, at least not unless Barack Obama gets into the White House.

While the media would like to help along the meme that McCain's financial plan of low taxes and lowered government spending is a continuation of Bush's economy, that is fiction. McCain's policies are in line with Ronald Reagan's successful conservative economic plans; of the two Presidential candidates, it is Obama's plan that is more like those practiced by Bush.

The bloated government and increased spending seen under the Bush Administration is horrific from a fiscally conservative standpoint, and a prequel to what would occur if the ultra-liberal Obama campaign lives up to its promises, creating more than $87 billion in new government and entitlements. Obama will need to substantially raise taxes to fulfill even some of his campaign promises.

Think Bush is bad? Obama will be worse, pulling for "higher income taxes, Social Security taxes, capital gains taxes, dividend taxes," and taxes on job-creating small businesses straight out of the "dazed and malaised" days of James Earl Carter's failed one-term Presidency. I'm sure I am not alone in hearing from parents concerned that an Obama presidency will ruin the economy for their children.

This is just on the home front, where Obama thinks he's strongest. Overseas, Obama is even more of a dismal failure.

We are not losing in Iraq, despite the best efforts of Democrats in Congress and on the Presidential campaign trial. Oh, they've certainly tried, but the war is actually progressing well enough that a Iraqi Sunni sheik is pressing to go to Afghanistan to help fight al Qaeda there. He trusts America. Democrats? Not so much.

As for Iran, the mullah's no doubt salivate at the possibility of an Obama presidency, and the reasons why are obvious.

They seek to exploit Obama's status as a foreign policy naif pledged to a campaign of pacifism to recreate the glory days of their Islamic Revolution. I'd remind you that these were their glory days due in no small part due to Carter's ineffectual Presidency, which Obama is already emulating with his stated policy of unconditional talks with tyrants. Other strongmen in the region also smell Obama's fear, which is why they are actively campaigning for him.

He's a well-rounded candidate, the first-term senator from Illinois. Obama's foreign policy is equally incompetent as are his domestic policies, all of which are as bad or worse than that of the thirty-ninth President.

Higher taxes. Bigger government. Intrusive regulations.

Welcome Back, Carter.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:52 AM | Comments (35) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Impeachment: Just Do It

Former Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has filed articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush.

I hope that the Democrat-controlled Congress will not treat this event with the seriousness that it deserves, and instead, high on their own fumes, launches full-blown impeachment proceedings.

Let's do this thing.

We've been listening the fringe left grow ever more hysterical over the past few years, perpetrating the "Bush lied, people died" hyperbole so long and hard that they now accept their fevered fantasies as fact, even as their own politically-motivated investigations proven otherwise.

So let us see the Democrats make their very best case for impeachment. Let us see every one of their "facts" placed under extreme scrutiny in a national spotlight, carried across network and cable news and wire services in an onslaught of continuous wall-to-wall coverage, with nary a second of coverage ignored.

Support your rhetoric. Make your best case directly to the American people. Lay out all the facts, under oath.

Give it your best shot, impeachment fans.

We can hardly wait.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:01 AM | Comments (58) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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