Political Football

This is a great article that should be read carefully. The next president not only has to provide answers to these questions but many more. I would encourage all voters to listen to what Candidate Obama says and tell us what his policies would be as president, as long as you could also tell us how he would make them happen. To us he seems long on rhetoric with a lovely and melodious speaking voice but says very little of substance.

Link

September 30, 2007

Questions for Obama

By George Will
Is it audacious to hope for more clarity from Barack Obama than he has so far supplied? Herewith 17 questions for him:

You advocate leaving in Iraq “some” U.S. forces for three missions — fighting al Qaeda, training Iraqi security forces and protecting U.S. forces conducting those two missions. Some experts believe that even 60,000 U.S, troops would be insufficient for those functions — even if the Iraqis were not, as they will be for the foreseeable future, dependent on U.S. logistics, transport, fire support, air support, armor and medivac capabilities.

What is your estimate of the numbers required by your policy?

How, and in consultation with whom, did you arrive at your estimate?

As to fighting terrorists but not insurgents — how would soldiers and Marines tell the difference?

If, while searching for terrorists, they make contact with insurgents, would your rules of engagement call for a full force response?

You say all “combat brigades” should be out of Iraq “by the end of next year.” Even if al-Qaeda is still dangerous?

Who, after the end of next year, will protect U.S. noncombat forces that you say “will continue to protect U.S. diplomats and facilities” and to “train and equip” Iraqi forces?

In an AP interview you argued that preventing genocide in Iraq is not a sound reason for keeping troops there: “By that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife, which we haven’t done. We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done.”

Do you think U.S. obligations to Iraq, and to the many Iraqis who have actively collaborated with us, are no greater than our obligations, if any, to the residents of the Congo or Darfur?

Would a humanitarian disaster have to threaten to be a strategic disaster for the United States before an Obama administration would intervene militarily?

In his second Inaugural address, the president said: “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.” You have said: “In today’s globalized world, the security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people.”

Well. Given that the goals of liberty and security can both generate foreign policy overreaching, and given the similarity between your formulation and Bush’s, should people who are dismayed by Bush’s universalizing imperative be wary of yours?

Does not yours require interventions in Darfur — where you say “rolling genocide” is occurring — the Congo and similar situations?

You stress the importance of people taking “responsibility” for their actions. But in a Financial Times column regarding the subprime mortgage turmoil, you said lenders, by “lowering their lending standards,” were guilty of “pushing,” “hoodwinking” and “driving” low-income buyers into mortgages “they could not possibly afford.” The “victims,” you wrote, “are the millions of borrowers who followed the rules, whose only crime was in taking out mortgages that lenders told them they could afford.” You propose a fund to help these millions of borrowers, partially paid for by penalties on lenders who committed fraud or behaved “irresponsibly.”

Puzzles abound. How did lenders “push” these people?

Are these “victims” absolved of personal responsibility simply because they were “told” they could afford the mortgages?

Could you define — and defend punishing — lending that is “irresponsible” but not fraudulent?

The foreclosure rate for so-called “jumbo” mortgages — those of more than $400,000 — is approximately the same as the rate for subprime mortgages.

Are borrowers who seek and receive such large mortgages also blameless “victims” of being told and driven to do something reckless?

In 1978, in a case regarding racial preferences in admissions to a California medical school, the Supreme Court ruled, in an opinion written by Justice Lewis Powell, that race can be considered a “plus” factor for minority applicants. But Powell’s biographer, John Jeffries of the University of Virginia law school, writes that when the justices met in conference to deliberate about the case, and Thurgood Marshall said such preferences would be needed for another century, Powell was “speechless.” In 2003, the court affirmed the constitutionality of racial preferences in admissions to the University of Michigan law school. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for the majority, said such preferences would be unnecessary in 25 years.

How long do you think they will be necessary?

By what criteria do you measure necessity?

Why are they necessary now, two generations after the civil rights laws of the 1960s?

More questions to come, 17 answers from now.

I’m not a fan of Bill O’Reilly or Juan Williams, but Dems for reasons that are very sad, are trying to marginalize the voices of O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh this week by taking some things they said out of context.

Here is the Rush Limbaugh episode – sounds like the Dems in the House are actually introducing a resolution on the House floor condeming Rush.

Here is more on the O’Reilly episode from Juan and RoR.

The culprit? Media Matters, funded by George Soros, like Moveon.org –

At what point are we concerned that a foreigner is spending so much money to disrupt political discourse in this country?

Linky to article below

Friday, Sep. 28, 2007

What Bill O’Reilly Really Told Me

By Juan Williams

It started with Bill O’Reilly’s grandmother. And it blew up into charges of O’Reilly being called a racist and me being attacked as a “Happy Negro” (read that as a lackey or Uncle Tom).

O’Reilly, controversial host of the top-rated TV cable talk show on Fox News Channel, interviewed me on his radio show about a woman-hating, N-word-spouting rapper being hired by McDonald’s for a celebrity endorsement. O’Reilly has been on a crusade against big companies legitimizing a crass, hateful and pornographic popular culture by putting stars like Snoop Dogg, the pornographer/rapper, in their ads.

Sad to say, but a lot of today’s rappers fit the bill.

They make their name by bragging about how many people they’ve killed, how many times they’ve been shot and how many “bitches” they’ve abused. And those rappers, along with no-talent black comedians who use the N-word and profanity constantly, are creating a very negative image of black people in music, in music videos and in the movies.

So, O’Reilly says to me that the reality to black life is very different from the lowlife behavior glorified by the rappers. He told me he was at a restaurant in Harlem recently and there was no one shouting profanity, no one threatening people. Then he mentioned going to an Anita Baker concert with an audience that was half black, and in sharp contrast to the corrosive images on TV, well dressed and well behaved.

I joked with O’Reilly that for him, a guy from Long Island, a visit to Harlem was like a “foreign trip.” That’s when he brought up his grandma. He said she was prejudiced against black people because she knew no flesh-and-blood black folks but only the one-dimensional TV coverage of black criminals shooting each other and the rappers and comedians glorifying “gangsta” life and thug cool. He criticized his grandmother as irrational for being afraid of people she really did not know.

I defended his grandma.

After watching all those racist, minstrel images of black people, I argued, she is right to buy into stereotypes of blacks as ignorant, oversexed and violent. And I said while I worried about his grandma having racist images justified in her mind I had bigger worries.

The most pernicious damage being done by the twisted presentation of black life in pop culture is the self-destructive message being beamed into young, vulnerable black brains. Young black people, searching for affirmation of their racial identity, are minute by minute being sold on the cheap idea that they are authentically black only if they imitate the violent, threatening attitude of the rappers and use the gutter language coming from the minstrels on TV.

The lesson from the rappers and comedians is that any young brother or sister who is proud to be black has to treat education with indifference, dismiss love and marriage as the business of white people and dress like the rappers who dress like prisoners — no comb in the jail so they wear doo-rags all day, and no belts so their pants hang down around their butts.

That was the heart and soul of the conversation between O’Reilly and me. The point of the whole exchange was to defeat corrupt, untrue and racist images of real black people.

So imagine how totally astounded I was when I heard O’Reilly was attacked on the basis of that radio conversation as a “racist.” He was slammed for saying he went to a restaurant in Harlem and had a good time. He was slammed for saying the audience at the concert was nicely dressed. The suggestion was that O’Reilly had racist preconceptions about the restaurant and the concert crowd.

That twisted assumption led me to say publicly that the attacks on O’Reilly amounted to an effort to take what he said totally out of context in an attempt to brand him a racist by a liberal group that disagrees with much of his politics. But the out-of-context attacks on O’Reilly picked up speed and ended up on CNN, where one commentator branded me a “Happy Negro” for allowing O’Reilly to get by with making racist comments without objection.

This is so far from the truth of the conversation on the radio that it is beyond a matter of words being taken out of context. This is a pathetic cowardly, personal attack against me intended to damage my credibility and invalidate any support I offer to O’Reilly against the charges that he is a racist.

For the record, I am a black man who lives in a black neighborhood in a mostly black city, and is married to a black woman. I am also the author of several books and documentaries on the civil rights movement. And any viewer of the O’Reilly TV show knows that O’Reilly and I respect, even like, each other but are frequently at loud, finger-pointing odds over politics and people.

But this is an attempt to take down O’Reilly and dismiss anyone offering him support — me. This is along the lines of telling anyone who calls attention to the excesses of hip-hop culture a “self-hating” black man and skewering anyone who dares to say there is a crisis in black America because of the high dropout rates, high crime rates and high out-of-wedlock birth rates.That is what happened to another well-known Bill, Bill Cosby, after he spoke out about the self-destructive images and behavior in the black community.

The critics want to shut up Cosby, O’Reilly, me and anyone else who points out the crisis in black America. They want anyone who dares to speak publicly about problems in black America to fear being called a racist, if they are white, or a “Happy Negro” if they are black. They want silence so they can continue to make money by distorting black life and allowing black on black murder rates to climb along with the black dropout rate and the black poverty rate.

The critics want to paralyze efforts to help those locked in poverty and too often in a criminal culture where acceptance of drug use and violence becomes acceptable. They don’t want black people to be known as Americans with a long distinguished history of patriotism, reverence for education and a willingness to fight for America’s ideals — justice for all — despite the harsh facts of slavery and legal segregation.

They prefer to bash anyone who points out their tragic, mindless willingness to sell out the history and pride of black people to make a buck. But take this from the “Happy Negro.” The critics are some Sad People.

Here is just one sentence of this bizarre article I have posted completely below.

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“I would like to see good faith talks begin between the Israelis and Palestinians to bring peace and justice (for both),” said Carter, who spearheaded the first Mideast peace talks at Camp David in 1978.

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Check this article and tell me where it says Carter wanted justice for Israel. Carter wants Israel to go away and blames them for all problems in the Middle East.

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Jimmy Carter steps into the Hollywood spotlight

by Michel Comte Tue Sep 11, 8:37 AM ET

TORONTO (AFP) – Former US president Jimmy Carter joined the ranks of movie stars like Brad Pitt and George Clooney at the world premiere of “Man from Plains,” the biopic about his life, which premiered Monday at the Toronto film festival.

The documentary by Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme The Silence of the Lambs follows Carter on a promotional tour eight months ago for his controversial book “Palestine Peace, not Apartheid.”

It also touches on his life since his one-term presidency (1977-1981).

While thousands of Clooney and Pitt fans crushed barricades around their hotel, a smaller, but duly awestruck group gathered outside a local cinema hoping for the 39th US president’s autograph.

Taking part in the film festival’s first geo-political talk, taped for television, Carter called for Washington to hold “direct talks” with Iran, laid out his vision for Mideast peace and lamented the “unwarranted and unprecedented” religious fundamentalism that has crept into US politics.

In a stinging attack on US President George W. Bush and his Christian supporters, he said: “I worship Christ who was the prince of peace, not pre-emptive war.”

“A superpower like the United States should use all of its resources … to promote peace,” he said.

Talking about his book, Carter said: “I hope it will precipitate attempting to find peace in the Holy Land.”

“It’s one of the most important political issues in the world, because a lot of the animosity (in the world) is centered around what’s happening to bring peace or not bring peace in (Israel-Palestine).”

“There hasn’t been one single day of peace talks in the last seven years,” he complained.

“I became very frustrated to see the stagnation there and the animosity building up around the world against my own nation just because we had not tried to bring peace to Israel and its (surrounding) states,” he said, explaining his inspiration for the book.

Carter noted that he and his wife Rosalynn had visited the Palestinian territories on three occasions in recent years.

“I was amazed and almost nauseated to see the encroachment by Israel on Palestinian land and the persecution of the Palestinians,” he said, citing 205 fortified Jewish settlements in “choice places” in the West Bank.

Rosalynn commented that the wall built by Israel to separate the two sides, but condemned internationally, was “shocking.”

“I would like to see good faith talks begin between the Israelis and Palestinians to bring peace and justice (for both),” said Carter, who spearheaded the first Mideast peace talks at Camp David in 1978.

From September 5 to 17, 1978, Egyptian president Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat and Menachem Begin, prime minister of Israel, met with Carter at Camp David and agreed on a framework for peace in the Middle East.

They invited other parties to the Arab-Israel conflict to adhere to it. But peace remains elusive.

Why has that early success never been repeated?

“In the first place, Washington (lately) hasn’t tried,” said Carter. “And the entire world now feels that America has let the Palestinians down.”

Former US President Bill Clinton tried in the dying days of his presidency in 2000, but failed to secure a peace pact. Most blamed Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat for holding out for a better deal.

President Bush has planned talks in November, but 42 percent of Palestinians who support will not be represented, Carter said.

Still, “I think there’s a good prospect of finding peace in the future,” he said optimistically.

The key to breaking the deadlock is “swapping land for peace,” based on the 2003 Geneva Accord, he said.

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Note the reporter inserted (for both) (my bold) in the article, a fairly common occurrence when the writer wants to clarify a quote, usually when a pronoun or name is assumed or is in another sentence outside the quote. Notice too the addition of (lately) by the author, implying that other presidents before George W. Bush did try but W did not.

You’ve Now read the full article.

Jimmy Carter was simply the worst president in US history, and he is even a worse ex-President. He had the extreme honor of serving on the world stage at the same time of the great Anwar Sadat. Without Sadat’s vision, there would be nothing but craziness out of the Carter Administration. This man of peace was assasinated by the fundamentalists that Carter is now bowing to and are today terrorizing the Palastinian people.

As you search for more information, you will rarely seen Sadat referred to as Muhammad or another spelling of the same first name.

Brad Pitt and George Clooney are dolts. History will be the judge.

go here and here if you want to read more

The second link is a series of 10 articles written in the Investor’s Business Daily online magazine that sets the record straight. Best case, Carter is demented. Worst case, he spawned the seeds of what is now jihad in the Middle East.

Chicago Cubs win N.L. Central

Link to story

Hillary Clinton ‘could cost Democrats dear’

By Toby Harnden in Washington

Link to source  Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

It’s not hard to understand supply-side economics. High taxes slow down economic activity. That’s why we tax cigarettes.

On a larger scale, the Kennedy-Johnson tax cuts in 1964, reducing the top marginal rate on income over $400,000 from 91 percent to 70 percent and cutting the bottom rate from 20 percent to 14 percent, produced an upsurge in investment, an increase in overall economic growth, and a decrease in unemployment from 5.2 percent in 1964 to 3.8 percent in 1966.

Kennedy explained his upcoming tax cuts in a 1962 address to the Economic Club of New York: “The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system, and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes.”

And the impact on the deficit if taxes are cut? “It is a paradoxical truth,” said Kennedy, “that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.”

The purpose of the tax cuts was “not to incur a budget deficit,” he said, “but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”

The choice, Kennedy asserted, was “between two kinds of deficits: a chronic deficit of inertia, as the unwanted result of inadequate revenues and a restricted economy, or a temporary deficit of transition, resulting from a tax cut designed to boost the economy, increase tax revenues, and achieve, I believe — and I believe this can be done — a budget surplus. The first type of deficit is a sign of waste and weakness; the second reflects an investment in the future.”

As it turned out, federal income tax revenues, adjusted for inflation, increased at an average yearly rate of 2.1 percent in the four years prior to the Kennedy tax cuts and increased at an average yearly rate of 8.6 percent in the four years after the tax cuts.

Similarly, Reagan’s across-the-board tax cuts in 1981 and 1986, reducing, for instance, the top federal income tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent, produced a dramatic turnaround in a failing economy.

“Let’s remember what things were like when Reagan took over,” explained Edwin J. Feulner, founder and president of The Heritage Foundation. “In 1980, inflation was running at 13.5 percent, the prime leading rate stood at 21.5 percent, unemployment and poverty were rising, real income and productivity were falling, and real economic growth had ceased.”

And after Reagan’s supply-side prescription was applied? “The results: the largest peacetime economic boom in U.S. history and nearly 20 million net new jobs,” Feulner said.

Additionally, inflation fell from double digits in 1980 to 1.9 percent in 1986, federal revenues increased by nearly half a trillion dollars over their 1980 levels by the end of Reagan’s second term, the federal budget deficit fell from 6.3 percent of GDP in 1983 to 2.9 percent in 1989, and unemployment dropped from 7.1 percent in 1980 to 5.3 percent in 1989.

None of the aforementioned results should be too surprising. “When people are prohibited from reaping much of what they sow, they will sow more sparingly,” said James D. Gwartney, economics professor at Florida State University and, previously, chief economist of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.

Higher tax rates, in short, discourage work effort, reduce business investment, expand joblessness, and restrict economic growth — and will, eventually, shrink the tax base, as evidenced by an overtaxed and shrinking Pittsburgh.

Still, some people, otherwise bright, can’t seem to understand the obvious.

Jonathan Chait, for instance, a senior editor at The New Republic, warned in the magazine’s Sept. 11 cover article — “Feast of the Wingnuts: How Economic Crackpots Devoured American Politics” — that the United States has been “hijacked by a tiny coterie of right-wing economic extremists, some of them ideological zealots, others merely greedy, a few of them possibly insane.”

Chait spotlights early supply-siders Jude Wanniski and Arthur Laffer as the quintessential examples of the possibly insane: “Wanniski and Laffer believed it was possible to simultaneously expand the economy and tamp down inflation by cutting taxes, especially the high tax rates faced by upper-income earners.”

In fact, that’s exactly what happened.

Let me preface this article with an analogy I heard yesterday.  What are the two most popular surgical proceedures today where costs are going down?

1) Lasik eye surgery
2) bariatric surgery

Why?  Because neither are typically fully covered by insurance =  costs must be competitive =  the free market rules.  It’s that simple.

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Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) — When Hillary Clinton last took a stab at repairing America’s health-care system, advertisements featuring “Harry and Louise” — a fictional couple struggling to comprehend her proposal — aroused nationwide hostility. An overwhelming majority of Americans rejected her grand vision of an enormous government-run health-care bureaucracy.

There is no question that her plan was one of the single biggest domestic-policy political blunders of the past 50 years. We would not have had a House Speaker Newt Gingrich if there had not been a Hillary health-care plan.

But as a frontrunner in a race where every challenger for the 2008 presidential election has a health plan, Clinton has decided she must have one, too. So here we go again.

Putting Hillary in charge of the Democratic health-care plan for the election is a little like asking Mike Dukakis to be in charge of military photo ops. Dukakis, one might suppose, would tell candidates they should stay away from tanks, and if they ever get near one, to at least refuse the headgear. Clinton, for her part, has taken a similar tack, using the 1993 plan like a chart of troubled waters.

The problem is, even without the ludicrous headgear, the famous Dukakis photo would have been a disaster because it showed Dukakis in a tank. It wasn’t the headgear that was the problem, it was the nerdy candidate.

Likewise, a look at the Clinton plan suggests that the fundamental problem from 1993 is still with us: Hillary Clinton and health care do not mix.

The Plan

The crux of Hillary’s plan is an “individual mandate,” which requires that all Americans buy health insurance, but guarantees that the government will make insurance available to everyone at “affordable” prices.

To accomplish this, the plan will create a government- regulated national pool through which individuals can purchase insurance. Those who are already insured would get to choose whether to keep their current health coverage or purchase the new national plan.

Additionally, Clinton would force big businesses that don’t offer health insurance to pay a tax.

In order to sell to the national pool, the government would demand that insurers cover all applicants (“guaranteed issue”) and that premium levels would have to be indiscriminate, regardless of people’s health status when they apply (“community rating.”)

What’s more, premiums wouldn’t be allowed to exceed a predetermined fraction of total household income.

She estimates that her plan would cost $110 billion per year — which is probably low, but who’s counting?

Goodbye, Tax Cuts

To pay for it, Clinton hopes to exploit the significant savings from improved health-care technology, particularly from electronic medical records. She would also use some of the revenue from the repeal of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts. Additionally, she advocated a cap on the tax deductibility of health insurance for wealthy Americans with expensive insurance coverage.

In other words, Hillary is telling every American that they must purchase a health-insurance product the government likes. This is inconsequential if you already have a plan the government will like, but a serious problem if government makes you purchase something you don’t want.

Although Massachusetts is the only state to try out the individual mandate, there have been a variety of experiments with community rating and guaranteed issue by state governments. States with these regulations tended to experience higher premiums and lower rates of coverage, particularly among the healthy.

Failure in Kentucky

In 1995, Kentucky implemented community rating and guaranteed issue for individuals. Two years later, the market for individual insurance collapsed, as almost all the non-group insurers chose to leave the market. In response, these regulations were abolished in 2000.

In 1993, community rating and guaranteed issue were introduced in New Jersey’s non-group health-insurance market. Premiums skyrocketed and coverage rates declined precipitously. In 2003, in order to counter this trend, the government approved high-deductible “basic and essential” plans, permitting adjustable premiums, which immediately became popular.

Today, in the tiny New Jersey non-group market, consumers have two choices: purchase a “basic and essential” plan with minimal coverage or buy a standard health-insurance plan they can’t afford.

Forced Into Pools

The lesson: individuals with costly health problems will want to gravitate toward generous and costly plans. Healthy individuals, especially the young, will want to avoid getting stuck with big insurance bills, either by purchasing the narrowest coverage possible, or by avoiding the purchase altogether.

If we want to avoid the New Jersey experience writ large, government will have to force many people into pools they don’t want to be in, or stick taxpayers in general with the soaring costs of the plans that attract the sick.

The hand of government will have to be heavy indeed. The most likely outcome is that federal law will require proof of insurance of every individual, even those without a job. Penalties for those without insurance would likely be monetary, and steep enough to force many individuals to purchase insurance products they otherwise would avoid.

It would probably take a little while for Hillary’s plan to make a complete mash out of the current health-care universe. When it does, you can bet that the “fix” will be something that looks very much like her 1993 plan. The difference is, this time voters might not see it coming.

HERE is a fair representation of Rudy’s plan

Link to story

Be afraid, be very afraid…

Clinton campaign kills negative story
By: Ben Smith
September 24, 2007 04:52 PM EST

Early this summer, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for president learned that the men’s magazine GQ was working on a story the campaign was sure to hate: an account of infighting in Hillaryland.

So Clinton’s aides pulled a page from the book of Hollywood publicists and offered GQ a stark choice: Kill the piece, or lose access to planned celebrity coverboy Bill Clinton.

Despite internal protests, GQ editor Jim Nelson met the Clinton campaign’s demands, which had been delivered by Bill Clinton’s spokesman, Jay Carson, several sources familiar with the conversations said.

GQ writer George Saunders traveled with Clinton to Africa in July, and Clinton is slated to appear on the cover of GQ’s December issue, in which it traditionally names a “Man of the Year,” according magazine industry sources.

And the offending article by Atlantic Monthly staff writer Josh Green got the spike.

“I don’t really get into the inner workings of the magazine, but I can tell you that yes, we did kill a Hillary piece. We kill pieces all the time for a variety of reasons,” Nelson said in an e-mail to Politico.

He did not respond to follow-up questions. A Clinton campaign spokesman declined to comment.

The campaign’s transaction with GQ opens a curtain on the Clinton campaign’s hard-nosed media strategy, which is far closer in its unromantic view of the press to the campaigns of George W. Bush than to that of Bill Clinton’s free-wheeling 1992 campaign.

There’s little left to chance. Hillary Clinton may have an unparalleled campaign “war room” — but there aren’t any documentary film-makers wandering around this one, and lovers of the D.A. Pennebaker film “The War Room” can rest assured they aren’t getting a sequel.

The spiked GQ story also shows how the Clinton campaign has been able to use its access to the most important commodity in media — celebrity, and in fact two bona fide celebrities — to shape not just what gets written about the candidate, but also what doesn’t.

There’s nothing unusual about providing extra access to candidates to reporters seen as sympathetic, and cutting off those seen as hostile to a campaign.

The 2004 Bush campaign banned a New York Times reporter from Vice President Dick Cheney’s jet, and Sen. Barack Obama briefly barred Fox News’s Carl Cameron from campaign travel.

But a retreat of the sort GQ is alleged to have made is unusual, particularly as part of what sources described as a barely veiled transaction of editorial leverage for access.

The Clinton campaign is unique in its ability to provide cash value to the media, and particularly the celebrity-driven precincts of television and magazines. Bill Clinton is a favorite cover figure, because his face is viewed within the magazine industry as one that can move product. (Indeed, Green’s own magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, ran as its October cover story “Bill Clinton’s campaign to save the world.”)

It’s a fact that gives the Clintons’ press aides a leverage more familiar to Hollywood publicists than even to her political rivals — less Mitt Romney and more Tom Cruise, whose publicists once required interviewers to sign a statement pledging not to write anything “derogatory” about the star.

The Clinton campaign has more sway with television networks than any rival. At the time Clinton launched her campaign, the networks’ hunger for interviews had her all over the morning and evening news broadcasts of every network — after her aides negotiated agreements limiting producers’ abilities to edit the interviews.

This past weekend, she pulled off another rare feat — sitting for interviews with all the major Sunday talk shows. In most cases, the Sunday shows will reject guests who have appeared on competing shows.

Clinton’s team is also unusually aggressive in moving to smother potentially damaging storylines, as last spring when Wolfson and other aides took aim at an unflattering book by writers Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.

GQ describes itself as “the definitive guide to fashion and grooming,” but also has a history of carrying groundbreaking reporting and long-form writing.

This presidential cycle, it has commissioned pieces from well-regarded Washington magazine writers on the presidential candidates, including a piece by Ryan Lizza, now of the New Yorker, on Barack Obama.

Green was not a particular favorite of the Clinton campaign, however. He took the assignment from GQ not long after finishing an unflattering 13,000-word profile in the November 2006 Atlantic Monthly, which concluded that the junior Senator from New York is, more or less, a timid, calculating pol.

“Today Clinton offers no big ideas, no crusading causes — by her own tacit admission, no evidence of bravery in the service of a larger ideal. Instead, her Senate record is an assemblage of many, many small gains.

Her real accomplishment in the Senate has been to rehabilitate the image and political career of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Impressive though that has been in its particulars, it makes for a rather thin claim on the presidency. Senator Clinton has plenty to talk about, but she doesn’t have much to say,” he wrote.

The next spring, according to people with the story and sources Green spoke to, he spent digging into the tensions within Hillary Clinton’s campaign — widely speculated about among reporters, but at the same time notoriously difficult to report from a political circle known for keeping internal disputes inside the family.

In particular, a source familiar with Green’s story said, he had focused on internal criticism of the campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle.

Green had also asked questions about the pay package of the campaign’s communications director, Howard Wolfson, who is technically a consultant and left a lucrative communications practice in New York City to take the job, and whose compensation is the subject of speculation within the campaign. (Speculation about Wolfson’s compensation, sources said, was not in Green’s final GQ draft.)

Green approached the Clinton campaign to discuss the details of the story, which he described to Wolfson over dinner at a downtown Washington, D.C. restaurant, a source familiar with the conversations said.

Soon after that, Carson, who is now Hillary Clinton’s traveling press secretary, told GQ that the former president would not cooperate with Saunders’ planned profile if Green’s piece ran.

Green declined to comment on the fate of his story, referring questions to GQ and to Carson. Carson declined to comment on his discussions with GQ.

Green and GQ’s features editor, Joel Lovell, argued for rebuffing the Clinton campaigns demands, sources said, but Nelson made the final call to kill the story.

Saunders, the Syracuse novelist who is writing the Clinton story for GQ, declined to discuss his story, citing GQ policy.

He told the Syracuse Post-Standard in July that he was planning to travel with the former president to tour Clinton Foundation projects in Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and South Africa and said he’d voted for Bill Clinton twice.

“It seems like [Clinton’s] gift, one of his gifts, is everybody likes him and knows him, so he can get people in a room and make things happen,” Saunders told the Syracuse paper. “I just like the idea that at this elderly stage of life, you can go and get your doors blown off.”

Asked by Politico if he was interested in hearing how his access to Clinton was procured, he demurred.

“I don’t think I want to know,” he said.

Link from powerlineblog.com

Times Admits It Violated Policies in “Betray Us” Ad

This morning, Clark Hoyt, Public Editor of the New York Times, acknowledged that the paper had violated its own advertising policies by giving MoveOn.org a discounted rate for the ad that accused General Petraeus of being a traitor. Hoyt also said that in his judgment, the ad should not have been approved under the paper’s policy that states, “We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature.”

I think it is a reasonable inference that someone in the Times’ advertising department collaborated with MoveOn.org to get the ad into the paper on the critical morning when General Petraeus’s testimony began, while charging the group the paper’s discounted “standby” rate, because the Times employee shared MoveOn’s desire to smear Petraeus. It is revealing, too, that the Times employee who is charged with enforcing the policy against “attacks of a personal nature” didn’t see anything out of bounds about calling our commanding general in Iraq a traitor. Hoyt was a little more sensitive on this point:

Were I in Jespersen’s shoes, I’d have demanded changes to eliminate “Betray Us,” a particularly low blow when aimed at a soldier.

Low blow, indeed.

It seems reasonable to conclude that the Times’ collaboration with MoveOn in disseminating the attack on General Petraeus was a natural consequence of the paper’s pervasive left-wing and anti-military culture.

Picture by Marilyn Wedel

Chriss Winston spoke at a Republican group meeting yesterday evening and her story is worth telling and her book is worth promoting here. The website promoting her book is here – How to Raise an American

(from the book) “If we, as a nation, allow this growing cynicism to continue to infect our youngest generations, we put them and our country’s future at risk.” — Link to Book on Amazon Everyone should buy and read the book she co-wrote with Myrna Blyth, “How to Raise an American”.

Calling Iowa her home until she left for Washington with Jim Leach’s staff in 1976; this Maryland citizen obviously felt right at home, walking to the mic joking that she may get a great ovation by simply saying “Go Hawks!” and sitting down. (We had to choose between attending the dinner or watching the Iowa-Wisconsin game) She connected her life in the political arena, what that time meant to her and how it moved her to write this book.

“Kids don’t understand they’re part of history too,” Winston said. She said we should also help them cut through the noise of media reporting and teach our children to be more skeptical of the media. Her book is filled with suggestions, and a good summary as well as part of the first chapter is on the subject website (link above).

Winston’s father was on Utah Beach during D-Day and fought in the Battle of the Bulge but as most WWII vets did, he rarely spoke of those years. Chriss and her husband took the opportunity to take their son to the Normandy Beach and traveled the path her father did on the march to Germany. Her son collected some sand off the beach in a small plastic bag to show his Grandfather.

Chriss urged us to use any excuse to talk history to our children. Driving them to the soccer field? Who is the field named after – let’s talk about it…

Unfortunately Chriss’ father passed away suddenly so they had no time to share the pictures of their trip. During the interment ceremony, on his own – her son stepped forward and opened the bag of sand and let the grains fall softly over the lowered casket. Clearly, Chriss and her husband have raised an American Son.

Buy the book for yourself or a parent you know. Good stuff.

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=local&id=5664018&ft=print
here is an article on Cook County’s proposal to raise their sales tax from 9% to 11%. Illinois and Cook County in particular are heading toward disaster with their tax structure and unfriendly attitude toward business.

Read these notes from prior links
http://www.politicalfootballblog.com/2007/06/06/rants-from-the-looney-left/

I just remember when Tommy Thompson was in town talking about taking jobs from Illinois after the former Governor Jim Thompson of Illinois took jobs from an overtaxed Wisconsin what he called the “Billboard War”.

At the state’s border Jim Thompson put up a billboard leaving Illinois “when you get tired of paying all those taxes in Wisconsin, Governor Thompson would invite you to move to Illinois” When Tommy took office, he lowered taxes and had an identical billboard saying the same thing about Governor Thompson wanting them to now move to Wisconsin — the other Governor Thompson.

The funny yet sad thing is both of those states with Democrat leadership are taxing their citizens terribly; and Iowa is soon to follow suit. We MUST elect more Republicans to the Legislative and Executive branches of government to stop this madness.

Democrats must understand the money has to come from somewhere, you can’t “force” consumers to buy American and if businesses can make more money outside the shores of the United States it’s their right to move. The picture in my head just now is that of a firing squad formed in a circle READY – FIRE – AIM! The lunatics are in fact in control of the asylum.

http://time-blog.com/swampland/2007/09/why_drudge_is_a_disgrace_1.html
Why Drudge is a disgrace? I mean he’s gossipy, and sometimes wrong – the above link wants to show evidence that Matt Drudge is biased.

The horror! (actually I think he’s equality excitable on gossip from either side of the aisle…) Drudge is what you want it to be I guess. But it’s a blog. One of the first and widely read. I tell you what, for every BLOG post / Headline – whatever from Drudge that Mr. Klein thinks shows bias I can show you one hundred from the supposed neutral mainstream PRESS who are paid to write in an unbiased, and fact supported articles about world events. see here and here for starters.

There’s a difference between blogs and news reporting, and I’m starting to believe specific blogs like http://powerlineblog.com and the posters at http://littlegreenfootballs.com more because the owners are “policed” by the viewers and they accept that.  The MSM writes biased reports and expect everyone to accept it as truth.

and did you catch this…. more stories that are not getting much mainstream media coverage…
more successes in Iraq

and something’s going on in Syria who’s telling the truth?
Syria: nothing was bombed
UK paper – Israel destroyed Syrian Nuke site

one week later…
Syria Iranian missle test

a Charles Krauthammer article from 9/21 posted below
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/09/middle_east_volcano.html

however, before u get to that story read this. Our former governor at his finest as noted by the WSJ Opinion Journal Best of the Web

‘A Very Interesting Pass’
“A top campaign adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton says Rudy Giuliani’s stormy personal life will be fair game should he win the Republican nomination for president,” the New York Post reports:

“There’s a lot that the rest of the country is going to get to know about Mayor Giuliani that the folks in New York City know,” said Tom Vilsack, former Iowa governor and a co-chairman of the Clinton campaign.

“I can’t even get into the number of marriages and the fact that his children–the relationship he has with his children–and what kind of circumstances New York was in before Sept. 11,” Vilsack said during an interview on NY1 last night.

“There are lot of issues involving Mayor Giuliani . . . He’s got a very interesting past.”

Giuliani is just lucky Mrs. Clinton doesn’t practice the politics of personal destruction.

Political Hay
Hillary Slayer
By Philip Klein
Published 9/17/2007 12:09:19 AM

As one of his supporters, actor Robert Duvall, might say: Rudy played this one beautifully. Last week, all Republican politicians worth their weight came out blasting MoveOn.org for taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times smearing Gen. David Petraeus on the day he was scheduled to deliver his Iraq progress report to Congress. The outrage among conservatives only grew as leading Democrats failed to condemn the ad, Hillary Clinton questioned the general’s honesty, and it was disclosed that the far left group was given a drastically reduced advertising rate in the New York Times.

But while other Republicans complained, Rudy Giuliani did something about it. Speaking to reporters in Atlanta on Thursday, Giuliani demanded that the New York Times give his campaign the same discounted rate so it could take out an ad defending Gen. Petraeus and assailing Clinton and MoveOn.org for “character assassination of an American general in a time of war.” He also called on the paper to run the ad at the time of his choosing (Friday, the day after President Bush’s primetime address to the nation).

The next morning, American liberals had to spit out their soy milk while reading their paper of record over breakfast. Within the front section of the newspaper was a full-page ad documenting Petraeus’s stellar military record as well as Clinton and MoveOn.org’s attacks. “Who should America listen to,” the ad asked, “A decorated soldier’s commitment to defending America, or Hillary Clinton’s commitment to defending MoveOn.org?” Even better, Giuliani’s public challenge to the New York Times forced them to give him the same discounted rate.

But Giuliani was just getting warmed up. After making the New York Times buckle under pressure, his campaign released a Web ad contrasting Clinton’s strong comments in support of the 2002 Iraq War Resolution with her attack on Gen. Petraeus last week. While none of her Democratic rivals have been able to lay a finger on Clinton for her opportunistic positions on the war, the Giuliani ad hammered the point home. The Clinton campaign was forced to twist itself into a pretzel by once again trying to assert that when she voted for the Iraq War resolution, she was actually voting to allow inspectors more time to work, and that despite telling Gen. Petraeus that his reports require a “willing suspension of disbelief” she was not accusing him of being untruthful.

As demoralized conservatives begin to fear that another Clinton presidency is inevitable, this episode demonstrates that Giuliani may represent the Republicans’ best shot at defeating Hillary in next year’s election.

Throughout his career, Giuliani has excelled at relentlessly pursuing opponents, whether in the courtroom or political arena. As a young prosecutor in the 1970s, before he became a celebrity for taking on the mob, he gained notice for his successful prosecution of Democratic Congressman Bertram L. Podell in a bribery trial. The New York Times magazine recounted the dramatic conclusion in a 1985 profile: “Under Giuliani’s intense cross-examination, Podell faltered, became so nervous he poked out his eyeglass lens, asked for a recess and gave up, pleading guilty.”

Giuliani’s background as a prosecutor and gift for speaking plainly and with clarity makes him ideally suited to cut through the type of word parsing for which the Clintons are legendary.

That was on display last week, as Giuliani not only criticized Hillary Clinton as other Republicans did, but also mocked her for the wording of her attack on Gen. Petraeus.

“I’ll tell you what she said, it’s pretty simple,” Giuliani told reporters last Thursday. “You go interpret it, because this is typical — how can I say this in the kindest way about the Clintons? — not the most direct way of saying what it is you’re trying to say.”

He continued, “This is what she said to Gen. Petraeus: ‘I think the reports you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief.’” Giuliani paused, and then for maximum dramatic effect, repeated the phrase. “The willing suspension of disbelief I imagine means the general wasn’t telling the truth.”

While it is popular for conservatives to lament the existence of the liberal media, Giuliani understands that it is a reality. Rather than belly-ache about it, or, as the Bush administration often has done, ignore attacks by assuming people aren’t paying attention and they will go away, Giuliani understands that conservatives need to simply be better at using the media to their advantage, as he did when he fought entrenched liberal interest groups as mayor.

“If I run against Hillary Clinton, I’m perfectly prepared to carry this battle, not expecting that the New York Times or the major networks…are going to give us anywhere the same kind of favorable coverage they will give her,” Giuliani told Hugh Hewitt last week. “I’m a realist, I’m not saying that in any way where I have a chip on my shoulder. I’ve lived with this all during the time I was mayor of New York City. The reality is we just have to be better at communicating.”

During the Democratic primary Clinton has gotten a free pass on one of her biggest vulnerabilities — that she is just at the start of her second term in the U.S. Senate and has no major accomplishments to speak of — because Barack Obama and John Edwards have even less experience. But Giuliani’s strong executive record and impressive achievements in New York City would highlight Clinton’s relative lack of credentials. As Giuliani has said repeatedly when assessing the Democratic field, they share one thing in common: “they’ve never run a city, state or business.” This is a weakness of Hillary Clinton’s that neither Fred Thompson nor John McCain could exploit, given that their political experience is limited to being legislators.

Mitt Romney can point to executive experience, but he lacks some of Giuliani’s other strengths in a race against Clinton. For one, while Giuliani would be well-suited to expose Clinton for her lawyerly word-parsing, Romney is susceptible to the same criticism as Clinton. Regardless of whether conservatives come to view his conversions on a number of issues as genuine, Romney’s overt shifts will provide ample fodder for the Clinton campaign to use in attack ads, effectively neutralizing any attempt by Republicans to portray Clinton as a phony political opportunist.

Right now, despite the low approval ratings of President Bush and strong opposition to the war in Iraq, Giuliani remains in a statistical dead heat with Clinton, not only nationally, but in blue states including Pennsylvania and New Jersey. While there are certainly many factors that conservatives will have to consider when choosing the Republican nominee, all they have to do is look at the reincarnated HillaryCare plan that is being unveiled today to recognize that the ability of a Republican candidate to defeat Hillary Clinton should be a major consideration.

This looks like a battle Giuliani was born to fight.

Philip Klein is a reporter for The American Spectator.

Link to story

Officials: Shiites Interested in Alliance With American Troops

Saturday , September 15, 2007

KUT, Iraq — American commanders in southern Iraq say Shiite sheiks are showing interest in joining forces with the U.S. military against extremists, in much the same way that Sunni clansmen in the western part of the country have worked with American forces against Al Qaeda.

Sheik Majid Tahir al-Magsousi, the leader of the Migasees tribe here in Wasit province, acknowledged tribal leaders have discussed creating a brigade of young men trained by the Americans to bolster local security as well as help patrol the border with Iran.

He also said last week’s assassination of Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, who spearheaded the Sunni uprising against Al Qaeda in Anbar province, only made the Shiite tribal leaders more resolute.

“The death of Sheik Abu Risha will not thwart us,” he said. “What matters to us is Iraq and its safety.”

The movement by Shiite clan leaders is still in the early stages but offers the potential to give U.S. and Iraqi forces another tactical advantage in curbing lawlessness in Shiite areas. It also would give the Americans another resource as they beef up their presence on the border with Iran, which the military accuses of arming and training Shiite extremists.

Similar alliances with Sunni tribes in the western Anbar province helped break the grip of groups such as Al Qaeda in Iraq and were widely cited in the Washington hearings as a major military success this year.

Such pacts to fill the vacuum left by Iraqi police and soldiers unable or unwilling to act against Shiite militias carries even greater potential spinoffs for Iraq’s U.S.-backed leadership—but also higher risks.

Shiites represent about 60 percent of Iraq’s population and the bulk of the security forces and parliament. Worsening the current Shiite- on-Shiite battles could ripple to the highest levels.

But U.S. officials at the heart of the effort hope to tap a wellspring of public frustration with militias and criminal gangs to recruit the tribal volunteers.

“It’s an anti-militia movement … Shiite extremists of all stripes,” said Wade Weems, head of a Provincial Reconstruction Team leading the dialogue in the Wasit province southeast of Baghdad.

“We see consistently expressed deep frustration or anger with the activities of militia that appear to be untethered to any sort of guiding authority, appear to be really criminal in nature,” he added.

But while the military has made inroads with Sunni leaders in some Baghdad neighborhoods and areas surrounding the capital, including Diyala province, officials stressed it’s too early to know if efforts to extend the strategy to Shiite leaders will take root.

“This is a very different province and a very different dynamic and we’re not going to just adopt lock, stock and barrel another province’s model and impose it here,” Weems said. “This will take some time for us to understand exactly what it is these tribes want to do.”

In Anbar, the goal of the Sunnis was to drive Al Qaeda in Iraq away from towns and villages because of the terror movement’s attempt to impose a rigorous Islamic lifestyle.

In Wasit, which borders Iran, the goal is to rein in armed Shiite groups, some of them probably armed by Iran, which are locked in a power struggle that is making life intolerable for ordinary people.

U.S. officers believe last month’s fighting among rival Shiite militias during a religious festival in Karbala may have been the last straw. Up to 52 people died in the clashes, which marred what was supposed to be a joyous celebration.

Anger also rose after the assassinations of two southern provincial governors that were seen as part of a brutal contest among rival Shiite militias to control parts of Iraq’s main oil regions.

Fearing a backlash, Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of Iraq’s biggest militia, ordered a six-month freeze on his Mahdi Army’s activities and began reorganizing the force to purge unruly elements.

“Al Qaeda clearly made a mistake in Anbar,” U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday during a news conference. “But Jaish al-Mahdi (the Mahdi Army) may have made some mistakes in the Shia area—the violence at Karbala on the religious holiday, the assassination of the two Shia governors.”

“There are some signs that the Shia are perhaps beginning to have the same—get the same kind of wake-up call with respect to their extremists that the Sunnis in Anbar did,” he said.

Since Karbala, Weems said he has attended a “flurry of meetings” with sheiks interested in ways they can use their formidable influence to help restore order.

“They are well aware of what’s happened in Anbar province, the role that the tribes played in securing some of the less secure areas in that province,” he said. “There has been a good deal of success with those, not just in Anbar but in other areas.”

Army Capt. Majid al-Imara, who said he has been charged with establishing the new force, said each battalion will be made up of 350 men chosen by tribal leaders, and they will be armed and equipped by the Iraqi government and paid $300 monthly, he said.

Col. Peter Baker, the commander of the 214th Fires Brigade that took over Forward Operating Base Delta near Kut in June, also said the idea was for the tribal volunteers to act as an “auxiliary police force” that could provide security in an organized fashion but let the sheiks maintain control of tribal members.

He said the long-term effect of al-Sadr’s order was unclear, but he expressed willingness to reach out to the extremist groups to join the process, saying he was getting the word out through intermediaries but had not contacted the militants himself.

“There is a power struggle within the insurgency, within the extreme Shia,” he said. “If they stand down, then there’s a chance. If they don’t stand down, then that’s a signal of what their intentions are.”

One of the obstacles is the lack of a single enemy, such as Al Qaeda in Iraq, which alienated Sunni tribal leaders and even other insurgents by killing sheiks and trying to impose a strict interpretation of Islam.

Shiites are getting increasingly fed up, however, with the fighting among rival militia groups, as well as the criminal nature of gangs engaging in extortion and setting up illegal checkpoints.

Weems acknowledged fears that the tribal leaders could abuse their authority and said he expected the movement to start with small groups that would receive mandatory training in when and how to use force, with careful monitoring.

“As with any group that is taking on a security function where the police seem to be failing, there are concerns,” he said. “We’ll probably adopt a model of growing these from smaller groups and measuring their success before we broaden it.”

But, he said, the ultimate goal was to quickly “integrate those tribal volunteers into one branch of the Iraqi security forces, be it the army, the police or—here in Wasit—the border patrol.”

Iowa State (0-2) beat IOWA (2-0) 15-13 yesterday and it wasn’t as close as the score appeared. ISU took a 12-0 (4FG) into half time; Iowa scored 13 unanswered points in the second half but ISU produced a game winning drive, running out time and kicking a last second chip shot for the win.

“Culbertson is very representative of their football team,” Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said. “He was 0-for-3 (in field goals this season) and he makes five today. He did a good job. Iowa State came ready to play and we struggled. They deserved the win.”

Several of those FGs were against a decent wind too. This is ISU’s big game of the year. I was worried about this game, ISU has a good, experienced QB and at least one WR that will be playing in the NFL next year.

Iowa played the first half in a daze, and ISU played with energy. I guess ISU had a lot of turn overs in the first two games and only one yesterday – can’t figure out why ISU lost two games (to Kent and UNI). The Iowa offensive and defensive lines were porous – we have work to do.

Next week Wisconsin @ Camp Randall in a night game carried by ESPN. We play well there, I just hope we play better than yesterday. This could be embarrassing. Go Hawks.

from Confederate Yankee blog

Democrats Support the Troops – Until they start to talk…

Congressional Democrats are trying to undermine U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus’ credibility before he delivers a report on the Iraq war next week, saying the general is a mouthpiece for President Bush and his findings can’t be trusted.

“The Bush report?” Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin said when asked about the upcoming report from Gen. Petraeus, U.S. commander in Iraq.

“We know what is going to be in it. It’s clear. I think the president’s trip over to Iraq makes it very obvious,” the Illinois Democrat said. “I expect the Bush report to say, ‘The surge is working. Let’s have more of the same.’ ”

The top Democrats — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California — also referred to the general’s briefing as the “Bush report.”

Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Chuck Shumer and Democratic Senators/Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were among those Senators who voted to confirm General Petraeus to his position as commander of American forces in Iraq without a single objecting vote, 81-0, on January 26, 2007.

They did not question the capability of the 1974 West Point graduate and Princeton PhD when they had their chance to reject him. Nor did they denounce or even raise serious doubts about allegiances or partisanship then, when they easily could have stated their disagreement with a simple “no” vote.

What a difference 223 days and the fear of success makes.

… and I’m already disappointed.

Glen Mason, last heard of when he was fired from MINEEEESOTA, is doing the color for the game… boy are they reaching, and that really shows how the B10 network and Iowa is ranked — too bad …   Hope the Hawks play well, time to grab my radio – I’m not listening to THAT….

Listening to the radio broadcast and watching the game on TV can be un-nerving. The radio feed is about 4,5 seconds ahead of the TV feed. Good thing is I can flip over to another game and never miss a play on the iowa game. Go PENN STATE beat ND… ::: smile :::

Oh, and it’s 7-0 Iowa – receivers are looking GREAT tonight, catching everything near them, but the kicking game is awful.

Half time 28-0, great game – a lot to work on, but a lot to praise. SYR = + 1 yard total offense in the first half – they are stacking 8 in the box so Jake is passing a lot and doing well. 192 yds passing in the first half – I suspect they will try to build on the 49 yards of running offense in the 2nd half. Jake looks good. A lot like a left handed Tate, a bit taller with a heavier body – gaining confidence with every game.

not giving the B10 network very good grades, lousy announcers, and they cut out 3 times during the game that I remember, to some promo or commercial for over a minute – appeared to be an accident – dunno – sloppy.

Final 35-0, very good effort for the Hawkeyes. Looks like ISU is having a rough year, but they always play Iowa tough. We travel to ISU next week. go Hawks!

from Powerlineblog.com

Der Spiegel has interesting information about the terror bust in Germany; as usual, however, you have to read between the lines:

Three suspected Islamist militants who were planning to attack U.S. installations in Germany had orders to act by Sept. 15….According to surveillance details published in Der Spiegel magazine, the men had been given a two-week deadline for their planned strikes in a late August call from northern Pakistan that was monitored by German police.

So al Qaeda’s top leaders were anxious to precipitate an attack on Americans by September 15. Why? That’s the date on which General Petraeus will deliver his report to Congress. Al Qaeda, as always, was playing to the Democrats in Congress, the press, and the American people. Undoubtedly, similar orders have gone out to al Qaeda’s agents in Iraq and around the world.

Note, too, how German authorities found out about the planned attack. They eavesdropped on a phone call from Pakistan to Germany. This is the exact equivalent of the NSA program that is ritually, but inaccurately, described in the press as “domestic spying.” Most Democrats denounce the program as unconstitutional.

Further, it was the NSA program that brought the German terrorists to light:

The arrests were the culmination of an investigation that began a year ago, when U.S. officials alerted German authorities to e-mails intercepted from Pakistan.

If the Democrats get their way, the NSA will not be able to use this tactic unless it has enough knowledge, enough days in advance, to get an order from a FISA judge. You can be sure, however, that the liberals will never mention this incident when they denounce the program as an invasion of constitutional rights.

To comment on this post, go here.

Best of the Web Today – September 4, 2007

By JAMES TARANTO
 Just What the Lawyer Ordered
Who does John Edwards think he is, our mother? The Associated Press reports from Tipton, Iowa, on the lovely and talented one’s latest brainstorm:

Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.

“It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,” he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. “If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.”

He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat “the first trace of problem.” Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, announced earlier this year that her breast cancer had returned and spread.

Edwards said his mandatory health care plan would cover preventive, chronic and long-term health care. The plan would include mental health care as well as dental and vision coverage for all Americans.

“The whole idea is a continuum of care, basically from birth to death,” he said.

Aside from its obvious creepiness, there is something dissonant on several levels about a liberal politician in this day and age calling for government to police everyone’s medical care.

For one thing, liberals, who these days are more or less uniformly pro-abortion, invariably speak of that practice in terms of “privacy” and “choice.” But how in the world can anyone who values privacy and choice more than life itself possibly countenance a policy of forcing women to have mammograms?

For another, we live in a time when liberals often sound like antigovernment kooks, making far-fetched claims that the government is spying on all of us, torturing innocent terrorists, deliberately letting hurricane victims die, etc. Of course the object of this paranoia isn’t government per se but the Republican Party and especially the current administration. Some have even asserted (see, for example, this 2005 item about former Enron adviser Paul Krugman) that conservative ideology precludes competent governance.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume this assertion is true. It is also true that Americans in recent decades have shown a preference for conservative ideology, electing conservative Republicans in four or five of the past seven presidential elections (and, in the other two, choosing a Democrat who proclaimed “the era of big government is over”). If only liberals can handle big government, and American’s can’t be trusted to elect liberals, expanding the government in the way Edwards proposes is a dreadful idea regardless of where you stand politically.

The question would-be Edwards supports should be asking is: Would you want George W. Bush making medical decisions for you? Is there anyone who would answer in the affirmative?

Postscript at the top: Iowa won 16-3. A less than impressive victory over a MAC conference team, but a win is a win. Defense was good and showed some great moments. The offensive line is good and could be great if they stay healthy, especially at the center. Too many dropped balls and Christensen showed some major jitters – but I think he can only get better and maybe much better.

Syracuse from their loss on Friday night to Washington at the Dome. Looks to be another good practice game for Iowa – we definitely have an awesome 1-2 punch with Young and Sims at running back – would love to see them in the same backfield occasionally.

Lessons learned? Break out the radio to listen to Gary and Eddie for the game, the announcers were horrible. There are so many games televised anymore, and Iowa is not in the top 25 (nor should they be with this showing) this could have been the analyst first game – they didn’t even pronounce names right. Broadcasting 101.

I think I’ll start a Syracuse thread already, more to say – it should be a fun night game to watch at Kinnick.

Bad news is Dominique Douglas and Anthony Bowman may be tossed off the team after an arrest for theft 3 weeks ago. They are, however, back in school from what I understand.

Good news is Kick off is only days away! GO HAWKS!

Dace Richardson will be held back in the NI game Saturday but hoping to start against Syracuse at home next week. Alex Kanellis is out for the season, maybe permanently – too bad, he’s a class guy. Christensen is definitely the #1 QB going in, no clear #2 at this point (#2 and #3 have had mediocre practices) but good competition with the kicking game.

Iowa vs Northern Illinois – Saturday September 1 –2:34 kickoff, playing in historic (and sold out) Soldier Field in Chicago. ESPNU for me. Mediacom is carrying it nationally.

In Kirk We Trust

A little mood music?

http://www.scothawk.com/intro.html