Barack Obama

 Cato's Chris Edwards is correct.  Republicans are playing small-ball.  They have no real vision, so they've ended up with policy paralysis.  - Jon Henke

As I note in a recent New York Post op-ed Republicans are fond of implying that President Obama is a big-spending socialist. But the House GOP recently offered a spending cut plan that was able to find savings worth less than one percent of Obama’s budget.

As Tad DeHaven and Brian Riedl have also pointed out, the GOP spending reform effort is rather pathetic. It proposed specific annual budget cuts of about $14 billion per year.

Consider that the center-left budget wonks at the Brookings Institution put their heads together a few years ago and came up with a “smaller government plan” that proposed about $342 billion in annual spending cuts (by 2014). The Brookings authors note:  

These cuts are achieved by reducing government subsidies to commercial activities ($138 billion); by returning responsibility for education, housing, training, environmental, and law enforcement programs to the states ($123 billion) . . . by cutting entitlements such as Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare ($74 billion); and by eliminating some wasteful spending in these entitlement programs ($7 billion).

Thus, the Brookings scholars found cuts more than twenty times larger than the House GOP leadership cuts, and Brookings proposed its plan back when the deficit was about one-fifth of the size it is today. (Note that both the Brookings and GOP plans would also put a cap on overall nondefense discretionary spending, in addition to these specific cuts).

My point in the New York Post piece is that the GOP needs to challenge Obama’s big spending agenda at a more fundamental level. They need to do some careful research, pick out some big spending targets, and go on the offense. Why not propose to eliminate the Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development? Why not sell off federal assets, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, in order to help pay down the federal debt? Why not open up the U.S. Postal Service to competition?

Obama won’t agree to these reforms at this point, but they would hopefully open a serious national debate about reforming our massive and sprawling federal government. Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the congressional Republicans in 1994 didn’t win by splitting hairs with the Democrats over 1% of spending. They offered a more fundamental critique.

At least, GOP leaders need to offer up spending reforms as bold as those of the Brookings Institution.

Chris Edwards is the director of tax policy studies at The Cato Institute

The latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report recently reported their findings on the cost of the Senator Ted Kennedy’s health care bill that would cover 16 million of the 46-47 million uninsured.  Before going into the nitty-gritty of the report, the uninsured count includes illegal immigrants, those who are eligible for federal programs but have not signed up, and those who have the ability to pay for insurance but choose not to do so.

Back to the costs: The CBO has estimated that $1.3 trillion would be required over 10 years to cover just 16 million of the uninsured. This does not include the public option, the deal that President Barack Obama wants. The reality is that the public option would ultimately lead to a government-run, single-payer health care plan for America.

Based on these numbers, the cost to cover one of the uninsured is $8,125 per person per year. If the estimated population of the United States was put at 307 million, the end cost per year of ObamaCare would be just over $2.49 trillion per year.

Considering that there are over $77 trillion coming in liabilities in Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest on the debt, and the debt itself, adding this will ultimately break the bank and kill any hope of economic freedom for Americans who will be enslaved by the government to cover the debt either by confiscation taxes on all Americans or by massive hyperinflation.

Congratulations, America. You’ve been had (for electing these weasels in Washington) and now you, your children, and your children's children are going to pay the consequences.

“A prominent South Carolina Republican” needs lessons in evolutionary biology and damage control, as well as race relations:

A prominent South Carolina Republican killed his Facebook page Sunday after being caught likening the First Lady to an escaped gorilla.

Commenting on a report posted to Facebook about a gorilla escape at a zoo in Columbia, S.C., Friday, longtime GOP activist Rusty DePass wrote, “I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s ancestors – probably harmless.”

Busted by South Carolina political blogger Will Folks on his FITNEWS blog, DePass told WIS-TV in Columbia, “I am as sorry as I can be if I offended anyone. The comment was clearly in jest.”

Then he added, “The comment was hers, not mine,” claiming Michelle Obama made a recent remark about humans descending from apes. The Daily News could find no such comment.

His response is not very helpful, and isn’t even accurate with regards to evolution. I bet Michelle never said such a thing because she has a better understanding of modern science than DePass. Humans and apes have a common ancestor. Humans did not descend from apes such as modern gorillas.

Beyond that biological error, it is true that Michelle Obama is related to apes. Of course so am I  and so is DePass, along with every other human in the world. This makes it impossible not to wonder, of all the humans in the world, why DePass used Michelle Obama as an example.

Meteor Blades has more on DePass' non-apology apology:

Clearly in jest. Clearly. Surely. Only humorless, hypersensitive, politically correct people would make a stink over something so harmless. How could anybody be offended by a joke that DePass probably heard the first version of from his grandfather who heard it from his grandfather?

No surprise there. In fact, the ape reference in relation to African Americans has a long history. But it's not just history. Some Americans, especially those of us raised in the South, grew up with it as standard fare, even in the classroom. While the crudest depictions of black people as apes have disappeared from American culture, for many there remains a mental association of African Americans with apes.

Not only is it not a jest, it is also not harmless prejudice. According to six cognitive studies put together by a team of psychologists led by  Professor Philip Atiba Goff, "participants’ basic cognitive processes ... significantly alter[ed] their judgments in criminal justice contexts."

Included in the team's studies - published as "Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization, and Contemporary Consequences" - was an archival look at hundreds of articles published in the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1979-1999. They discovered that blacks convicted of capital crimes were four times more likely than convicted whites to be described with "ape-relevant" language, such as "barbaric," "beast," "brute," "savage" and "wild."[...]

Arriving in Los Angeles in the late 1980s, I went on dozens of ridealongs in police cruisers as part of an effort to get acquainted with the gang phenomenon in the part of the city that was then called South Central, then predominately African American. Officers constantly would refer to a call as an N.H.I. I soon discovered this meant No Humans Involved.

I suppose Rusty DePass would find that pretty funny, too.

Irony free reporting from the Las Vegas Sun:

A former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been appointed by President Barack Obama as chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which will decide the fate of a Yucca Mountain nuclear repository.

Gregory B. Jaczko has been a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission since 2005 and is serving a five-year term.

"I am honored President Obama has entrusted me with the responsibility of serving as the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission," Jaczko said after he learned of his appointment late today. "I look forward to continuing to work closely with the talented and dedicated agency staff and my fellow commissioners.

It is just a tad mystifying how this article went to print without a mention of the potential conflict of interest for Jaczko on Yucca Mountain. But then again, the reporter actually managed to publish this next sentence which is probably indicative of the quality of investigative journalism at the Sun.

After learning of the appointment of Jaczko as NRC chairman, Senator Harry Reid said, "I am pleased that President Obama has appointed such a qualified individual to lead the commission.

I am certain Senator Reid was pleasantly unsurprised by this appointment.

Crossposted at Conservatives for Science

In today's New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman belatedly notices major changes that have been occuring in the Middle East for at least five years:

[S]omething is going on in the Middle East today that is very new. Pull up a chair; this is going to be interesting.

What we saw in the Lebanese elections, where the pro-Western March 14 movement won a surprise victory over the pro-Iranian Hezbollah coalition, what we saw in the ferment for change exposed by the election campaign in Iran, and what we saw in the provincial elections in Iraq, where the big pro-Iranian party got trounced, is the product of four historical forces that have come together to crack open this ossified region.

First is the diffusion of technology. The Internet, blogs, YouTube and text messaging via cellphones, particularly among the young — 70 percent of Iranians are under 30 — is giving Middle Easterners cheap tools to communicate horizontally, to mobilize politically and to criticize their leaders acerbically, outside of state control. It is also enabling them to monitor vote-rigging by posting observers with cellphone cameras.

I knew something had changed when I sat down for coffee on Hamra Street in Beirut last week with my 80-year-old friend and mentor, Kemal Salibi, one of Lebanon’s greatest historians, and he told me about his Facebook group!

The evening of Lebanon’s election, I went to the Beirut home of Saad Hariri, the leader of the March 14 coalition, to interview him. In a big living room, he had a gigantic wall-size television broadcasting the results. And alongside the main TV were 16 smaller flat-screen TVs with electronic maps of Lebanon. Hariri’s own election experts were working on laptops and breaking down every vote from every religious community, village by village, and projecting them on the screens.

Well, Mr. Friedman, it's good of you to notice what's been going on in the region for several years now; it's better late than never.  Where this story gets interesting, however, is to whom Mr. Friedman (unlike Fareed Zakaria) gives credit for this monumental development:

for real politics to happen you need space. There are a million things to hate about President Bush’s costly and wrenching wars. But the fact is, in ousting Saddam in Iraq in 2003 and mobilizing the U.N. to push Syria out of Lebanon in 2005, he opened space for real democratic politics that had not existed in Iraq or Lebanon for decades. “Bush had a simple idea, that the Arabs could be democratic, and at that particular moment simple ideas were what was needed, even if he was disingenuous,” said Michael Young, the opinion editor of The Beirut Daily Star. “It was bolstered by the presence of a U.S. Army in the center of the Middle East. It created a sense that change was possible, that things did not always have to be as they were.”

When I reported from Beirut in the 1970s and 1980s, I covered coups and wars. I never once stayed up late waiting for an election result. Elections in the Arab world were a joke — literally. They used to tell this story about Syria’s president, Hafez al-Assad. After a Syrian election, an aide came in and told Assad: “Mr. President, you won 99.8 percent of the votes. It means that only two-tenths of one percent of Syrians didn’t vote for you. What more could ask for?”

Assad answered: “Their names!”

Lebanese, by contrast, just waited up all night for their election results — no one knew what they’d be.

In other words, President Bush's grand strategy for winning the global war on terror is working, albeit more slowly than anyone predicted.  Of course, as in any war, there have been setbacks along the way:

the Bush team opened a hole in the wall of Arab autocracy but did a poor job following through. In the vacuum, the parties most organized to seize power were the Islamists — Hezbollah in Lebanon; pro-Al Qaeda forces among Iraqi Sunnis, and the pro-Iranian Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and Mahdi Army among Iraqi Shiites; the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan; Hamas in Gaza.

Fortunately, each one of these Islamist groups overplayed their hand by imposing religious lifestyles or by dragging their societies into confrontations the people didn’t want. This alienated and frightened more secular, mainstream Arabs and Muslims and has triggered an “awakening” backlash among moderates from Lebanon to Pakistan to Iran. The Times’s Robert Mackey reported that in Tehran “chants of ‘Death to America’ ” at rallies for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week were answered by chants of “Death to the Taliban — in Kabul and Tehran” at a rally for his opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi.

To those of us who were paying attention, of course, this was apparent back in 2007.  Finally, Friedman closes with a mush brained sop to his liberal readers:

along came President Barack Hussein Obama. Arab and Muslim regimes found it very useful to run against George Bush. The Bush team demonized them, and they demonized the Bush team. Autocratic regimes, like Iran’s, drew energy and legitimacy from that confrontation, and it made it very easy for them to discredit anyone associated with America. Mr. Obama’s soft power has defused a lot of that. As result, “pro-American” is not such an insult anymore.

On the other hand, maybe what's going on right now is the result of a process that was set off five years ago that we have become increasingly irrelevant to over time.  FWIW, Bush probably was too hands off in 2005 and 2006, which probably did allow the Islamists more room to make their move than we had to allow them.  At the same time, doubling down in Iraq in 2007 definately convinced the locals we were there to stay.  Now, in 2009, the process seems to have taken on a life of it's own.

Over the next few years, this will be interesting....

I hope this helps.

That is all.Cahnman out.

The agonizingly close relations between the GOP establishment and the loonier elements in the right wing media who have been on an increasingly mainstream basis feeding the hatred of the far right extremists who have been committing violence has been receiving increased attention. This has been discussed recently by Judith Warner, Paul Krugman, and Frank Rich. Krugman recently wrote, “Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.” Frank Rich discussed this topic at length in his latest column:

Conservatives have legitimate ideological beefs with Obama, rightly expressed in sharp language. But the invective in some quarters has unmistakably amped up. The writer Camille Paglia, a political independent and confessed talk-radio fan, detected a shift toward paranoia in the air waves by mid-May. When “the tone darkens toward a rhetoric of purgation and annihilation,” she observed in Salon, “there is reason for alarm.” She cited a “joke” repeated by a Rush Limbaugh fill-in host, a talk-radio jock from Dallas of all places, about how “any U.S. soldier” who found himself with only two bullets in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden would use both shots to assassinate Pelosi and then strangle Reid and bin Laden.

This homicide-saturated vituperation is endemic among mini-Limbaughs. Glenn Beck has dipped into O’Reilly’s Holocaust analogies to liken Obama’s policy on stem-cell research to the eugenics that led to “the final solution” and the quest for “a master race.” After James von Brunn’s rampage at the Holocaust museum, Beck rushed onto Fox News to describe the Obama-hating killer as a “lone gunman nutjob.” Yet in the same show Beck also said von Brunn was a symptom that “the pot in America is boiling,” as if Beck himself were not the boiling pot cheering the kettle on.

But hyperbole from the usual suspects in the entertainment arena of TV and radio is not the whole story. What’s startling is the spillover of this poison into the conservative political establishment. Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan G.O.P. chairman who ran for the party’s national chairmanship this year, seriously suggested in April that Republicans should stop calling Obama a socialist because “it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago.” Anuzis pushed “fascism” instead, because “everybody still thinks that’s a bad thing.” He didn’t seem to grasp that “fascism” is nonsensical as a description of the Obama administration or that there might be a risk in slurring a president with a word that most find “bad” because it evokes a mass-murderer like Hitler.

The Anuzis “fascism” solution to the Obama problem has caught fire. The president’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and his speech in Cairo have only exacerbated the ugliness. The venomous personal attacks on Sotomayor have little to do with the 3,000-plus cases she’s adjudicated in nearly 17 years on the bench or her thoughts about the judgment of “a wise Latina woman.” She has been tarred as a member of “the Latino KKK” (by the former Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo), as well as a racist and a David Duke (by Limbaugh), and portrayed, in a bizarre two-for-one ethnic caricature, as a slant-eyed Asian on the cover of National Review. Uniting all these insults is an aggrieved note of white victimization only a shade less explicit than that in von Brunn’s white supremacist screeds.

Obama’s Cairo address, meanwhile, prompted over-the-top accusations reminiscent of those campaign rally cries of “Treason!” It was a prominent former Reagan defense official, Frank Gaffney, not some fringe crackpot, who accused Obama in The Washington Times of engaging “in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain.” He claimed that the president — a lifelong Christian — “may still be” a Muslim and is aligned with “the dangerous global movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood.” Gaffney linked Obama by innuendo with Islamic “charities” that “have been convicted of providing material support for terrorism.”

If this isn’t a handy rationalization for another lone nutjob to take the law into his own hands against a supposed terrorism supporter, what is? Any such nutjob can easily grab a weapon. Gun enthusiasts have been on a shopping spree since the election, with some areas of our country reporting percentage sales increases in the mid-to-high double digits, recession be damned.

Violence committed by right wing (or left wing) extremists is the more serious problem. But a similar, even if less violent, mindset can be seen in the recent outrage against David Letterman: despite agreement from Letterman that he should not have told a joke which was clearly about Bristol Palin, and despite the fact that Bristol Palin has been the target of jokes from multiple comedians largely because of the manner in which Sarah Palin has intentionally placed her children in the public spotlight for political gain, many of them continue to attack with outright lies as to what Letterman actually said.

There was no point in attacks on David Letterman once he conceded that he should not have told the joke, with many of these conservatives proceeding to over play their hand and ultimately discrediting themselves. The controversy is about the desire of the authoritarian base of the Republican Party, which has hijacked the right, to prevent any criticism of their extremist agenda and has little to do with any real concern about sexist jokes. They tend to wage their war with little regard for fact, with such distortions being common place. This has included a similar distortion of a joke told by John Kerry in 2006, the fabrications of the Swift Boat Liars, all the lies about Obama which were spread during the presidential campaign, and the recent lies about Sotomayor such as that sixty percent of her decisions have been overturned (& not surprisingly though, even a Next Right editor repeated it.) While less extreme and violent than those who have been committing violence, the conservative movement has increasingly become dominated by those who show hostility towards reason, freedom of expression, and the contemporary culture.

I was forwarded this from a friend on Wall Street. It is from the in-house newsletter his firm's senior analyst circulates.

There can be no explanation other than that the US taxpayer is suffering from boiling frog syndrome. As the old story goes (which is totally fantastic, btw), if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, he will immediately leap out. However, if you put a frog into a pot of cool water and gradually turn up the heat, you can cook him alive right before your very eyes. Of course, what this visual suggests is that we are being lulled into a cozy state. (I guess any rebate checks or decreased withholding tax, coupled with the regular excoriation of the rich, backed up with promises to raise taxes on those rotten, earning dirt bags … and on those rotten, earning dirt bags alone … will get an Administration a lotta’ brownie points towards this goal of lulling.) By degrees, we are becoming accustomed to the changes that are being made. And as the water in which we are stewing heats up, I fear some kind of desensitizing is taking hold as well. Unfortunately, we won’t realize until it’s too late, that the continuous installments of increasingly hotter water eventually will cause our demise. What’s particularly galling about our situation is that the changes that are being rammed thru are not even being done all that stealthily. The problem as I see it, though, is that the subject matter is a bit too sophisticated or complex for the average, lazy American to want to lift a finger to either educate himself, or better, put a stop to the madness. 

I presume we want to turn down the thermostat--so what's the plan to cause that to happen, folks?

By Rose Pedenko and Tanya Simon

The United States of America was once the welcoming haven for all who wished to escape persecution and oppression. But 2009 will go down in history as the beginning of the end of the “Land of the Free” and supplanted by the “Land of Indentured Government Servants” and “Home of the Brave” by “Home of an Embittered Military.”

With a proposed imposition of a “value-added tax,” or “VAT,” and deep cuts in defense spending, this Administration is on the verge of single-handedly destroying this country. It is one thing to suggest a national sales tax “in lieu of” federal income taxes, but a VAT added to all the hard-earned dollars we are forced to shell out, gives us little hope for a return to the highest overall standard of living enjoyed on God’s green earth. Who knew the answer to illegal immigration was making our economy worse than the immigrants’ country of origin?

Our veins have been nearly tapped dry, and now the federal government wants to put into effect yet another tariff. Do they want to suck the remaining initiative out of us? On the bright side, this VAT may alienate the entire electorate, which would be a blessing in the 2010 congressional elections.

The Democrat Majority has become the killjoy of the American spirit. They dismissed an opportunity for immediate relief in the form of tax holidays in favor of the new Chinese water torture: massive debt. For a party that is wholly married to the idea of no torture, they seem to take pleasure in doing so with increased tax initiatives.

Rather than levy taxpayers, why not eliminate bloated pensions and expense accounts for all “elected” officials, particularly in the House and Senate? With 435 House members and 100 Senators, the bill to taxpayers is roughly over $1 billion per year. No wonder every Tom, Schnook and Harry wants to enter politics. Their eyes are on the honeyed benefits. Snip – a billion here, a billion there, and we’re on our way.

Just how bad is bad enough when it comes to taxation?

It’s bad enough that slackers are encouraged to make a “career” out of politics or government employment—for what they can bleed from it rather than do what is right for The People. The perfect candidate is one that has achieved great success and wants to give back, not take, take, take by raising taxes. Term limits should be a primary target for voters. Inflated salaries, perquisites, pensions and bloated expenses would be dredged out for good. We could then support optimists instead of oppressors and carpetbaggers.

It’s bad enough that our employer 401(k) savings and pension plans have sunk like buckets of bolts into the briny. One form of immediate relief might be for the government to rescind income tax on retirement accounts with a ten-year sunset.  Although Americans invested their pre-tax dollars in good faith, they also (inadvertently) placed their trust in the hands of incompetent and greedy legislators who flagrantly breached their fiduciary duty to protect us from corruption in the securities trade. It was that specific government failure that wiped out what we once referred to as our golden years.

It’s bad enough that Chrysler is on the verge of bankruptcy, but on June 1, 2009 GM filed for Chapter 11, and the U.S. government became controlling shareholder. Had we allowed them to file for Chapter 11 in the first place, the taxpayers would have been spared hundreds of millions in wasted bailout dollars.

It’s bad enough that the liberal mainstream media push celebrity extravagances in our faces when more and more of us are sleepless and sweating as to how to make ends meet in this economic downturn. But the media also seem compelled to elevate Barack Obama’s wasting of taxpayer dollars to fly all over the country to that same celebrity status. Contrary to liberal pundits’ tendency to pooh pooh criticism of the Obamas fun as a petty Republican smear tactic, it’s more about enjoying themselves at taxpayer expense.

Yes, the office of president demands costly security, but there’s a difference between necessary travel and frivolous and wasteful photo ops. The President can give another one of his sudsy speeches, or sign a bill, just as easily in the Oval Office or Rose Garden.

Notwithstanding this President’s tax and spend mentality, we must give credit where credit is due: he does give good teleprompter. But deprived of that machine in Buchenwald, he referred to Angela Merkel as “cancellor.” (Perhaps that’s how it’s pronounced in Austrian.) Had it been President George W. Bush, the press would have had a field day with the latest addition to the Bush lexicon.

It’s bad enough that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is, once again, unnecessarily spending taxpayer dollars to flit around the globe, this time to China. When was she appointed Ambassador? She did this once before when Condoleeza Rice was Secretary of State. Pelosi’s self-importance only served to embarrass former President Bush, our State Department, and the American People. On the upside, she proved then that she’s a jackass and hopefully Californians will get the last hee-haw come election time.

It’s bad enough that our borders are sieves, through which endless streams of illegal aliens cross into the United States. Once they nest themselves, they waste no time producing anchor babies and drain our city and state treasuries in the hundreds of millions of dollars. They then demand blanket amnesty and citizenship. And the price to all taxpayers is long-term Democratic Party loyalty.

It’s bad — and not getting any better. Bear market rallies notwithstanding, as conservatives, we are hoping the 2010 congressional elections will serve to bring back the decency, faith, and trust that was flushed down the sewer by the relentless Obama storm. It is our unwavering belief the tax and spend Democrats will be swept from office in a wave of bi-partisan anger.

Fareed Zakaria writes a safe too little too late article on Iraq; no single money quote:

Obama still has the power to shape a decent outcome in Iraq. In doing so, he could help change the political dynamic within the Arab world and present a new model of America's relations with a modern, Muslim, Arab country.

Not that any other President of the United Staes was talking about that 6 and 1/2 years ago (when it was tough) or anything....

(Since I'm gonna go through the article graf by graf, I'd like to pre-emptively (there's that phrase again) inform Mr. Zakaria that his opinion on the liberation of Iraq and the surge remains as irrelevant now as it was in 2003 and 2007.  The only reason I comment on his opinion now is because the drive by media gives him more coverage than he deserves.)

Next, emphasis on slow:

Iraq is going through a slow but crucial transformation, from war zone to new nation-state. The next set of policies that Washington and Baghdad decide upon will determine how well this turns out.

Duh.

Next:

When the surge was announced in January 2007, I was somewhat cautious about it. I believed that more troops and a proper counterinsurgency strategy would certainly improve the security situation—I had advocated more troops from the start of the occupation—but I believed that the fundamental problem in Iraq was political discord among the country's three main sects and ethnic groups. The surge, in my view, would alleviate those tensions but also postpone the need for a solution. Only a political agreement among these groups could reach one.

Insert the word might between but and also and everyone believed this; what's your freaking point?!?

Also, rephrase "Postpone the need for a solution" with "Buy Us Some Time" and the surge suddenly looks a lot better.

I was wrong in some ways. First, the surge turned out to be a more sophisticated strategy—encompassing political outreach to the Sunnis—than I had imagined. Second, the success of the surge empowered the Baghdad government, brought Sunni rebels out from hiding and thus broke the dynamic of the civil war. Sunni militants have now been identified, their biometric data have been collected and their groups are being monitored. They cannot easily go back to jihad. The Shiite ruling elites, secure in their hold on the country, have less to gain by ethnic cleansing and militia rule.

Calling the surge sophistocated; how magnanimous of you!!!  I'm glad you were wrong in some ways!

They cannot easily go back to jihad.  No kidding (I'd use a scatalogical reference were I feeling less charitable).  Credit where it's due to the admittedly flawed Nuri-al Maliki with David Petraeus and Ray Odierno getting the assists on the goal.

Jihadists biodata being held by the US Military; why didn't the drive by media tell me about that in 2007 or anything?!?

Next:

An adviser to surge commander Gen. David Petraeus told the reporter Nir Rosen that the civil war in Iraq would end when the Sunnis knew that they'd lost and the Shiites knew that they'd won. Both now seem to be true.

Petraeus' adviser told you the war would be won when the Sunni's knew they'd lost and the Shiites knew they'd won....Gee, I'm sooo glad you and everyone else in the drive by media made that sooo easy from 2003-January 20, 2009 (btw, I could find a million more links on this topic if I felt like investing the time).  At least both now seem to be true....

Next:

while a renewal of the civil war—and a return to high casualty levels—is highly unlikely

Speaking for myself, I'd say damn near impossible over highly unlikely.  They again, I'm an optimist when my country takes courageous actions overseas.

Oh, and, by the way, I'm sorry your original concerns about the Surge remain.  I had forgotten that Fareed Zakaria's personal opinion is our primary metric for judging the success of America's Iraq Policy.

Next:

American influence is not what it was a few years ago.

Duh.  Thank you Fareed Zakaira.  Had I never heard or read you say this, I might not have lived a personally satisfying life.

Next:

Today, Arab regimes paint a picture of Iraq that suggests that American-led democracy has led to chaos, collapse and, perhaps more crucially, to Shiite tyranny. This is a damning indictment because for the rest of the Arab world—which is overwhelmingly Sunni—it suggests that democracy is something to be feared. It is also a convenient lesson because it means that Arab dictators can postpone indefinitely any need to open up their own political systems. But the message does resonate: opinion polls show that large majorities view Iraq as a failure and a sham democracy.

That's right because your buddies in the drive by media didn't have anything to do with this....

(Sorry, Common Dreams was the only site that still has that story up.  That said, much like the last link I could find a million more stories on a similar there if I felt like investing more time on this).

Next:

It isn't. There is much going on in Iraq that is admirable. Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis are beginning to work out their differences through negotiation, not violence. Freedom of speech abounds. A new economy is taking shape, in which entrepreneurs are creating jobs and a civil society. Elections are punishing thugs and theocrats who cannot deliver services and rewarding more-pragmatic forces. The appeal of radical Islam is waning.

Duh.

Next:

This was not Barack Obama's war. But it might well turn out to be his greatest legacy to the Arab world. Ambassador Ryan Crocker ended his distinguished stint in Iraq with these fitting words: "In the end, how we leave and what we leave behind will be more important than how we came."

Fareed, when we win this war, it will be George W. Bush's legacy to the Arab World.  Barack Obama will get the credit that Mariano Rivera gets when he comes into the game with Yankees up by 17,000 runs because he needs some work.

I end this post with the full text of my e-mail to Fareed Zakaria about this article:

In other words, what you're saying is that now that George W. Bush is out of office, it's OK for the drive-by media to say nice things about America's policy there.

How we leave being more important than how we got in has been true since day 1; the only thing that's changed since then is the American President's last name and the weather.

Some of us had the courage of our convictions to stick with Iraq when it was unpopular.

Generations from now, George W. Bush will be remembered as the American Hero he truly is while insignificant intellectual poseurs such as yourself will fade into the irrelevance you deserve.

To paraphrase Davy Crockett: You can go to hell; I'll stay in Texas.

Adam Cahn Austin, TX

P.S. "War of Choice" my ass.

I hope this helps.

That is all.

Cahnman out.

2,820 days safe in America, but no longer. President George W. Bush kept us safe for 2,688 days! Dear Leader ZerO kept us safe for 132 days!

On September 11, 2001, America was attacked by Muslim Terrorists on American soil.

On June 1, 2009, Americans where once again attacked on American soil by Muslim Terrorists.

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, a Muslim convert attacked a military recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas. He killed Private William Long and wounded Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula. Even though the Terrorist had an initial preliminary FBI investigation started on him, no full blown investigation was authorized. An article from STRATFOR.com might shed some light on that.

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090603_lone_wolf_lessons

However, politics have proved obstructive to all facets of counterterrorism policy. And politics may have been at play in the Muhammad case as well as in other cases involving Black Muslim converts. Several weeks ago, STRATFOR heard from sources that the FBI and other law enforcement organizations had been ordered to “back off” of counterterrorism investigations into the activities of Black Muslim converts. At this point, it is unclear to us if that guidance was given by the White House or the Department of Justice, or if it was promulgated by the agencies themselves, anticipating the wishes of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.

The defenders of American security have been suffocated by the new administrations attitude and policies. The likelihood that a preliminary investigation will be authorized for a full investigation by a supervisor has been diminished. There is a fear that their career could be ruined or worse if they did as they want, and not as the administration might wish.

Your safety, your families safety, and the safety of every American in America has been diminished. Because everyone in our security organizations has been living in fear. Not of terrorists, but of our own government. Ever since Dear Leader ZerO opened the door for criminal prosecution for the people who just offer mere legal opinions on what is lawful regarding terrorists. Now all of the brave men and woman who guard our safety are shaking every time they need to make a decision to investigate, question, or arrest a suspected terrorist.

No longer will terrorists be stopped BEFORE they commit an act of war. Now, thanks to Dear Leader ZerO, many will only be arrested AFTER they have committed a crime.

Video at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUeBuG7prWE