Doomsday Strategy

AJ-Strata discusses Hillary's latest comments, and is well worth the read.

That said, it's a very interesting strategy... one that could very well sink Obama in 2008.

Think about it: Come June 3, Hillary is likely to emerge with a slight lead in the overall popular vote. She will have won a large number of the major primaries. And, of course, there are two large delegate-rich states which she won, but which will probably not have a single delegate.

Once the delegates are denied, Hillary will refuse to endorse Obama. She and her supporters will very publicly sit on their hands. She will simply state that she cannot support the disenfranchisement of Michigan and Florida. Obama, of course, will have to find some way to mollify her - and in doing that is going to reinforce the perception that he's a bit of a wimp.

Eventually, when the damage is done, Hillary will graciously (yeah, right) stand aside for Obama and watch him lose. She will then run in 2012 on an "I told you so" campaign.

U.S. Congressman a FARC go-between?

Interpol has recently confirmed that Raul Reyes's laptop has not been tampered with. If that is the case, then Gateway Pundit raises an interesting bombshell.

Perhaps it's time to ask Barack Obama if he intends to sell out Colombia to the tender mercies of Hugo Chavez and FARC.

Playing with fire...

If Marc Ambinder is correct, there is a very strange idea of healing going around certain camps.

This is frightening - because if so, then one way or another, we will have instability in America for a long time. The reason is best explained by Orson Scott Card in the afterword to his book Empire:

Rarely do people set out to start a civil war. Invariably, when such wars break out both sides consider themselves to be the aggrieved ones. Right now in America, even though the Left has control of all the institutions of cultural power and prestige -- universities, movies, literary publishing, mainstream journalism-- as well as the federal courts, they feel themselves oppressed and threatened by traditional religion and conservatism. And even though the Right controls both houses of Congress and the presidency, as well as having ample outlets for their views in nontraditional media and an ever-increasing dominance over American religious and economic life, they feel themselves oppressed and threatened by the cultural dominance of the Left.

And they are threatened, just as they are also threatening, because nobody is willing to accept the simple idea that someone can disagree with their group and still be a decent human being worthy of respect.

Can it lead to war?

Very simply, yes. The moment one group feels itself so aggrieved that it uses either its own weapons or the weapons of the state to "prevent" the other side from bringing about its supposed "evil" designs, then that other side will have no choice but to take up arms against them. Both sides will believe the other to be the instigator.

Could Ambinder be blowing smoke? I hope so. But both Hillary and Obama would have motives to pursue such investigations. Hillary has a vindictive streak that is bigger than the Rocky Mountains.

Obama would probably have to do so in order to placate his political base, especially if he has had to back down from a confrontation with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and General Petraeus over Iraq, a confrontation that would probably torpedo his administration. You thought the 1993 gays in the military controversy was rough?

Senator Jay Rockefeller, You're an Idiot

Well, Senator Rockefeller (Moron-WV), an Obama supporter, really put his foot in his mouth this time:

In the Charleston Gazette Sunday, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, who has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said that Sen. John McCain "has a temper" and, according to the story, "believes McCain has become insensitive to many human issues.

"McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues."

OK, in order:

1. McCain was an attack pilot, not a fighter pilot. Big difference. Fighter pilots make movies. Attack pilots make history. Properly utilized, fighter pilots kill other fighter pilots. Properly utilized, attack pilots kill governments.

2. McCain was an attack pilot long before precision-guided munitions were in use; he had to fly close enough to well-defended targets to risk getting his ass shot down, which explains why his ass WAS shot down.

3. McCain endured five years as a POW without any idea of when--or IF--he would be released. He declined an early release offer as part of keeping faith with his fellow POWs. He probably cares more about people than you do, Senator Rockefeller. Frankly, your remarks make me wish that stupidity were physically painful; we'd have a whole lot less of it.

Pelosi muscled...

AJ Strata reports that Nancy Pelosi has caved on the super-delegates.

One of two things happened: Most likely, the DCCC told her they could not hold the House if the donors pulled their funds. Or, she has just decided to flip-flop.

Hillary Clinton is a very good political brawler. She clearly won this round.

How bad is it for the Dems?

Whoever wins the Hillary/Obama deathmatch will lose at least 19% of the other candidate's supporters, and as much as 28%.

This is not just losing, it's getting blown out.

Furthermore, the GOP is not likely to lose as many voters. On the one hand, Hillary engenders a fierce response from them. On the other hand, Obama's pastor caused a controversy that Obama has not handled well. This translates into a blowout win.

The conservatives who demanded ideological purity on immigration and elsewhere? Out of luck. John McCain will, in all likelihood, win without them.

They forgot one simple lesson: The winner decides the terms, not the loser. Now, McCain will win, and he will have a level of support in the general election that will likely be a mandate.

In other words, he will have the support to pass things like comprehensive immigration reform.

Conservatives gambled and lost. The consequences are going to be painful for them. Maybe now, they will learn that half a loaf is better than nothing.

The Democratic primary just went high-order...

Looks like the Democrats now have guaranteed themselves a nasty convention. Just looking at the maneuvering gives me the feeling that their convention will not turn ugly, it will start ugly.

And the superdelegates will have to decide it.

Meanwhile, McCain doesn't have to do that much...

Yeah, sure...

Barack Obama tried to spin his wife's comments after some incoming fire.

Weak.

Sorry, I know it sounds harsh, but it's a weak explanation.

If she meant the politics, why didn't she say so? She got a graduate degree from Princeton, for crying out loud!

Once again, Barack Obama is treating Americans like they are stupid, and that we didn't really hear what we heard.

Thwarting Democracy...

Democrats sure do not act Democratic at times. The only reason gay marriage is the law in Massachusetts is because a court imposed it on that state.

Now, in order to thwart an intelligence program that they lack the votes to stop, they decide to let the trial lawyers handle it, as the Wall Street Journal explains:

We asked one phone company executive what he'd do, after Friday's expiration, in response to a government request for cooperation. His answer was blunt: "I'm not doing it. If I don't have compulsion, I can't get out of court [and those lawsuits]. . . . I'm not going to do something voluntarily." Having talked to telecom executives, we can tell you this view is well-nigh universal.

Mr. Reyes claims that existing wiretap orders can stay in place for a year. But that doesn't account for new targets, which may require new kinds of telecom cooperation and thus a new court order. Mr. Reyes can make all the assertions he wants about immunity, but they are no defense against a lawsuit. For that matter, without a statute in place, even a renewed order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is likely to be challenged as illegitimate. A telecom CEO who cooperates without a court order is all but guaranteed to get not merely a wiretap lawsuit, but also a shareholder suit for putting the company at legal risk.

George W. Bush wins two presidential elections. He is the commander-in-chief, and as such, is responsible for this country's security. His approach was explicitly chosen in 2004, during the war.

Instead, trial lawyers and activist judges will subvert the will of the people.

Another Democrat protecting Iran

It looks like Joe Biden is now joining James Webb in going to the mat for Iran.

Let's review some of what Iran has been doing:
* They support Hezbollah, the terrorist group that bombed the Marine Barracks in 1983, with all sorts of weapons, including C-802 anti-ship missiles.

* They have provided weapons to insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan - weapons used in fatal attacks against our troops.

* The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has sent advisors to terrorist groups and the insurgents in Iraq.

* Iranian leadership has openly declared their intentions to acquire nuclear weapons and to wipe Israel (perhaps America's best friend in the Middle East) off the map.

Biden's defense of this regime is appalling. What part of "Iran helps terrorists kill our troops" doesn't he understand?

They want us there...

The Iraqi government seems to be eyeing a long-term American military presence.

If I'm a Democrat running for Congress or the White House, the "Oh, crap!" meter is running very high at this news. If there is this formal request that the United States of America maintains a long-term presence in Iraq, it becomes much harder for the Dems to please their political base. It would put them in line with Muqtada al-Sadr as well as Iran and Syria, but that would be it.

Oh, and they would be leaving an ally in the lurch. Typical of them (see their treatment of Colombia under President Uribe), but it won't play well here, especially if the declaration of intent becomes public.

0-for-40

That is the Democrats' track record on cutting and running from Iraq.

And now, the surge has shown signs that it is succeeding. And it is causing a turnaround in public opinion, according to Pollster.com.

Republicans (including the president) have made real progress in swaying opinion to their side, while 10 months of Democratic efforts have failed to persuade citizens that the war continues to be a disaster. The war of partisan persuasion has tilted towards the Republicans and away from the Democrats, at least in this particular aspect.

In essence, the battle of public opinion is being won here, and that means our troops have a chance to win the war over there.

And the Democrats now get to explain reality to their base.

She's no Iron Lady...

Hillary seems to play the victim any time someone asks her a hard question.

Hillary is smart and she can be pretty good. But when you throw her off her script, she gets rattled, big time.

Add to that the way the MoveOn/DailyKos wing has been calling the shots, and the Dems are in a hole. Tack on the do-nothing Democratic Congress, and the Dems have real problems.

Rove's read...

Karl Rove's read of the 2008 landscape - at least as it pertains to Congress - is worth keeping in mind.

Why is Rove's take worth remembering? Let's lay it out: When he and President Bush were running the game plans from 2000-2004, the GOP made electoral gains.

After pledging a "Congress that strongly honors our responsibility to protect our people from terrorism," Democrats have refused to make permanent reforms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that the Director of National Intelligence said were needed to close "critical gaps in our intelligence capability." Their presidential candidates fell all over each other in a recent debate to pledge an end to the Terrorist Surveillance Program. Then Senate Democratic leaders, thinking there was an opening for political advantage, slow-walked the confirmation of Judge Michael Mukasey to be the next attorney general. It's obvious that this is a man who knows the important role the Justice Department plays in the war on terror. Delaying his confirmation is only making it harder to prosecute the war.

Democrats promised "civility and bipartisanship." Instead, they stiff-armed their Republican colleagues, refused to include them in budget negotiations between the two houses, and have launched more than 400 investigations and made more than 675 requests for documents, interviews or testimony. They refused a bipartisan compromise on an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, instead wasting precious time sending the president a bill they knew he would veto. And they did this knowing that they wouldn't be able to override that veto. Why? Because their pollsters told them putting the children's health-care program at risk would score political points. Instead, it left them looking cynical.

The list of Congress's failures grows each month. No energy bill. No action on health care. No action on the mortgage crisis. No immigration reform. No progress on renewing No Child Left Behind. Precious little action on judges and not enough on reducing trade barriers. Congress has not done its work. And these failures will have consequences.

In essence, I think AJ-Strata has been right - the American public is going to look for a problem-solver in 2008. The Republicans have two of them competing for the nomination, and ranking 1-2: Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

The 2006 midterm defeat is now looking like a great boon to the GOP. In essence, the GOP now has the chance to shake some of its strident fringe on issues like immigration and abortion, instead focusing on winning the Global War on Terror and getting the economy in shape. The Dems will be beholden to their strident fringe, which bitterly opposes the war.

Shades of 1988, anyone?

WHACK!

From the Drudge Report:

Bush says Dems beholden to 'Moveon.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters'... Developing...

Given that the Democratic presidential nominees seem to be arguing over who will roll out the most cowardly foreign policy, one has to agree with this on a factual level.

Remember, MoveOn.org even opposed kicking Taliban ass after 9/11.

UPDATE: We have a link.

Pelosi's cratering numbers...

It seems Nancy Pelosi's poll numbers are cratering. The explanation that we are supposed to believe is that she's not making changes.

I don't think so.

I think we got a very good look at what Pelosi and other Democrats wanted to do (quit with regards to the war on terror, particularly Iraq; massive tax increases; a bumbling foreign policy), and decided they don't like it.

EDIT: Hint to Nancy - Dishonesty and attempts to intomidate only make it worse.

Sock it to `em... but not directly.

Charlie Rangel's new idea is a tax increase on all of us.

The attempt to soak the rich is nothing new. But the real sucker-punch for all of us is the corporate income tax increases. Those are gonna get passed right on to us.

Rangel's betting that because we don't see it, we won't be upset. Got news, Charlie. I can figure it out. And I'm spreadin' the word.

Henry Waxman reprises Cotton Mather...

Henry Waxman's latest charges against Blackwater remind me of the time I read something Cotton Mather wrote about one of the Salem witch trials in high school.

It was not fun to read - not because I tend to prefer a good Tom Clancy novel, but because there was no interest in justice. If you ask me, Waxman has made up his mind about Blackwater already. Any hearing he has will be about as fair as those trials were back in the day.

Think of it as left-wing McCarthyism.

My response to Pete Stark...

By now, most of you have heard about or seen Pete Stark's comments about President Bush.

President Bush will probably turn the other cheek. Again. We won't see him ask Stark if he'd care to repeat that comment to his face. We won't see him say Stark needs his ass kicked. He won't tell Stark "yob tvoyu maht", even though Condi Rice could make sure he could get the pronunciation right.

I view every one of the deaths the United States has suffered in the Global War on Terror as a tragedy. For amusement, I pay Pete Stark's mamma a visit.

A power play fails...

The Dems had to pull their joke of a surveillance bill yesterday. In essence, they were trying to force a law-enforcement model on the military - and to do so without allowing any amandments or a real debate.

That power play failed, and the Dems are going to shift to more SCHIP demagougery - an endeavor that will be more likely to succeed thanks to the antics of some on the right.

Not a good situation for the Dems at all.