RealClearPolitics ran a good article today by Robert Samuelson that talks about the way our government works. What comes out of Washington is more about gestures than substance. He starts by citing the move to raise the minimum wage and lays out why such an effort is a pointless endeavor. He goes on to propose a package of agenda items that he thinks the government should act on if it really wants to do something for this country. Link below:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/01/politics_is_more_about_gesture.html 

Dick Morris wrote a piece today for The Hill talking about Obama's opposition to a ban on legislators hiring family members for their campaign staffs or PAC staffs. Obama's inexperience will begin to show, along with votes like the one talked about below, as his record comes under increasing scrutiny. Link and excerpts below:

http://thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/DickMorris/011707.html 

Presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made his first misstep a few days ago when he joined only a handful of Democrats in opposing a Senate reform banning the increasingly widespread practice of legislators hiring their family members on their campaign or PAC payrolls. Obama has not heard the last of this vote.  Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.)...voted righteously in favor of the reform and will probably use the Illinois senator’s vote against him in the presidential primaries.

When a legislator hires his or her spouse on the campaign or PAC payroll, he is effectively converting contributions to his campaign committee into personal income that flows into the family’s checking account, blurring the line between contribution and bribe.

There is, of course, a certain hypocrisy in the Senate action since very few senators, in fact, hire their families on their payrolls. It is, though, widely practiced in the House of Representatives, where 30 members have their families on their payrolls. 

So the congressional ethics reform of 2007 boils down to this: The House banned the use of corporate jets but the Senate did not, even though senators are more likely to avail themselves of the luxury than is the average House member. The Senate banned hiring family members but the House did not, even though House members are far more likely to hire their significant others to work for them.

But whatever the reason for his vote, Obama has screwed up.  The public will not take kindly to a senator who pledged to clean up the political process voting to allow wives to be hired with special-interest campaign funds. 

Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of “Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race.” To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to www.dickmorris.com.

The link below is for an article in today's . Where was the media coverage when President Bush hired high-level officials (Powell, Rice, Gonzalez, etc.) for his cabinet? President Bush has had one of the most diverse, both in gender and race, administrations in history. The problem, though, is that they all belong to the wrong party.....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/16/AR2007011601848.html 

The Chicago Tribune ran a piece today on Barack Obama's Presidential bid. I think he will run away with his tail between his legs after the Clinton attack machine gets done with him in the primaries. Link and excerpts below:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0701170103jan17,1,6736380,print.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true 

By Mike Dorning and Christi Parsons

Sen. Barack Obama took an important formal step on Tuesday toward a Democratic presidential campaign that would make him the most formidable African-American candidate ever, offering a call to common purpose as a remedy to bitter partisan divisions and marking a potential turning point in the nation's race relations.

His candidacy would create a historic moment, as the American public contemplates a leader of mixed-race heritage, the son of an African father and white Kansan mother. Race would be a subtext to a campaign that also would raise grave policy issues on the war in Iraq, with Obama an early and consistent critic of the ongoing U.S. military mission there.

His efforts to reach toward the center with appeals to common ground is a reversal of the recently successful political formula of polarization to drive up turnout among base voters that won President Bush re-election in 2004.

In a campaign, he would faces challenges to his lack of experience in high government office. He has only two years in the U.S. Senate and no major accomplishments in that body, although his limited time in office is counted as a virtue by some who seek a break with the political past.

But Obama brings to a presidential bid eloquence, the political power of celebrity, a hopeful vision and a sense that his candidacy would be a clear break with the established order.

Obama's path to victory would be a gantlet of relentless fundraising, laserlike scrutiny and an exhausting grind of campaigning. Mounting a presidential campaign would present a huge organizational and financial undertaking for a candidate who is relatively new to the national political scene and did not even face a serious Republican opponent in his only prior high-level campaign, for the U.S. Senate in 2004.

In both the Democratic primary and the general election, he would face opponents who have been laying the groundwork for their bids for years. Political opponents and the voting public will be watching to see how he stands up to the rigorous testing of a national campaign.

Likely Democratic candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) can rely on a political organization she and her husband have nurtured for years. And former vice presidential nominee John Edwards, who already has announced his candidacy, began cultivating supporters in early primary states almost immediately after the 2004 election.

Most political professionals involved in presidential politics believe that Obama's celebrity and his ability to reach small donors through the Internet position him well to meet the financial challenges ahead. His advisers also expressed optimism that he will be financially competitive.

Despite his renown, Obama's public persona also is an unfinished canvas, and he must work to fill that in before his opponents do. The campaign will force him to take more detailed positions on complex issues.

He already is being pressed in uncomfortable ways on his approach to Iraq. While Obama has opposed Bush's increase in troop levels in Iraq, he has not joined those calling for a congressional cutoff of funding for the "surge," while Edwards has demanded just that.

mdorning@tribune.com

cparsons@tribune.com

Tom Brewton had an excellent piece on American Daily today. Democrats are really frustrated by the President's insistence on his surge strategy. They believe that because they are opposed, the President should abdicate his Constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief. The Cheney interview on Fox News Sunday really peeved them, especially when the VP said there was nothing Congress could do about it.

The article is worth a read. Link and excerpts below:

http://www.americandaily.com/article/17269 


Native of Louisiana; graduated from Louisiana State University in 1956. While there had the good fortune to study political science under Eric Voegelin and Constitutional law under Walter Berns. Graduated from the Harvard Business School in 1958, then worked in the Wall Street financial community for thirty years. After retiring, surrounded by liberals in Scarsdale, New York, began writing op-ed pieces for local newspapers and essays for my children, aiming to counter the barbarism of liberal-socialism. From this came my website, The View From 1776 ( http://www.thomasbrewton.com/ ). A staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc.

Send Feedback To Tom Brewton    Site: http://www.thomasbrewton.com

The American Thinker ran a good piece today by Mr. Patrick Poole. I have included the link and a few excerpts here:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/01/governor_schwarzenegger_should.html 

By Patrick Poole

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger kicked off his first full term in office this week by announcing during his state-of-the-state address that he intends to implement a state health insurance plan to cover all residents, including illegal aliens. But before riding the universal health care train too far, Gov. Schwarzenegger might want to make a stop in Nashville to see exactly how such a plan has actually worked for Tennessee, where that state's abysmal TennCare program has forced dozens of hospitals out of business, pushed thousands of doctors and other health care professionals out of the state, destroyed any semblance of competitive health insurance market, and nearly drove the state government into bankruptcy.

Below are excerpts from an International Herald Tribune article that I have a problem with. The media finds a few guys who aren't sure about the war anymore and portrays their story as indicative of the entire military. The reality, though, is that morale among deployed troops is among the highest in the military. To go one better, retention rates (reenlistments) in the Army and Marine Corps, the two branches doing most of the fighting and dying, are highest among deployed units and consistently beat the goals set by those branches.

That sends an important message that is overlooked by the mainstream media: the guys and gals doing the fighting and dying are signing up to stay!! Why would they do that if they were questioning what we were accomplishing there? In fairness to IHT, they did manage to quote ONE officer who was in support of the U.S. effort in Iraq.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/17/africa/ME-GEN-Iraq-Soldiers-Reflect.php 

BAGHDAD, Iraq

Their alarm clocks went off at 3:30 a.m., sending members of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division reaching for their M-4 assault rifles then trudging from their tents and trailers into mud that quickly covers their boots.

Piling into Humvees, they rumbled through verdant brush along irrigation canals south of Baghdad, which provides excellent cover for bombs. Hundreds of American soldiers have died in these mostly Sunni Muslim villages since the war began.

But nearly four years into the fighting, some soldiers say it's getting more difficult to swing their legs over the edge of the cot each morning. With America's Iraq policy in flux, some troops say they're asking themselves for the first time whether the U.S. can win the war — or what winning really means here.

The soldiers said they do their jobs and leave politics to the generals. But the debate in the U.S. over the legitimacy of the Iraq conflict has trickled down to the soldiers patrolling this dangerous area.

An article on the DoD web site talks about the need for effort from the international community in Afghanistan. The problem is that the international "community" has not been very helpful to date. Repeated requests by the NATO commander on the ground for more troops and economic assistance have gone largely unheeded. Now SecDef Gates is talking about boosting U.S. troop levels there. Our European "allies" are quite content to let us shoulder the burden, even when they have a direct stake in the outcome. Link and excerpts below:

http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?id=2716 

By Sgt. Sara Wood, USA American Forces Press Service

The solution in Afghanistan will not be military in nature, but will be possible with the cooperation and work of the international community, the former commander of U.S. European Command said here today. “The good news about Afghanistan is that you’ve got about 60 countries that are doing something in Afghanistan. That’s an awful lot of potential that can be brought to good use,” Marine Gen. James L. Jones, who led EUCOM for four years while serving as NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, said in an interview.  The No. 1 problem in Afghanistan, which the international community has not done a good job dealing with, is narcotics, Jones said. “It’s preventing the legitimacy of the economic revival of Afghanistan,” he said. “It’s providing money for the insurgency; it’s contributing to the corruption of public officials and prevents the emergence of the new Afghanistan.”  Afghanistan also needs work on the quality and quantity of its police forces, and the government needs to be more visible within the country, providing proof of its strength and the progress it is making, Jones said.  Afghanistan presents several challenges for the U.S. and its international partners, Jones acknowledged, but said he remains optimistic that success there can be achieved and sustained with the right amount of outside help.

Link and excerpts below: 

http://www.therant.us/staff/prelutsky/01172007.htm 

Burt Prelutsky
Years ago, when I still worked in advertising, I was a copywriter on the Mattel account. It should have been fun because they made toys. But it wasn’t, mainly because of all the restrictions the FCC placed on commercials aimed at children. In one of the spots I wrote, a little boy, playing with his Mattel racing car on the floor, imagined himself leading the pack at the Indy 500. It never got produced. Even though it would have been shot as an obvious daydream, and even though every little squirt playing with the car would imagine himself winning at the Brickyard, we weren’t permitted to show the toys doing anything they couldn’t actually do in real life. So, how is it that nobody else ever seems to get called on the carpet for their lies and exaggerations? How is it, for instance, that every liberal from Ted Kennedy to Jesse Jackson can get away with pretending that American blacks are still living like slaves, and that four decades after the Civil Rights Act, the only thing keeping blacks out of the cotton fields are Democrats in Washington? ...how is it that Jimmy Carter, that sanctimonious phony who was a disaster during his four years in the White House and a disgrace in the quarter of a century since, can pass himself off as equal parts statesman and saint? While most of us wished that he would simply slink back to his peanut farm after Ronald Reagan whupped his butt in ‘80, we hadn’t realized how starved he was for the spotlight. Recently, he has been barnstorming all over the country, peddling his book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” Carter contends that his purpose in writing the book -- in the unlikely event it was he and not some anonymous ghost who actually put Carter’s vile thoughts on paper -- was to open a dialogue about the Middle East.  Where does one begin to deal with all the lies foisted off by Mr. Peanut?  Something that Carter, who has often boasted of his close friendship with Yasser Arafat, insists on overlooking is that prior to 1948, the “Palestinians” were in fact the Jews living on the land that was the basis for the modern state of Israel. It was land, mainly sand, they had bought at inflated prices from Arabs for over 50 years. The fact that it is now the Arabs who are known as Palestinians is the result of a clever P.R. firm that suggested that if they wanted to picture themselves as underdogs in order to garner sympathy, they should stop calling themselves Arabs. After all, there were only about five million Jews in Israel and about 125 million Arabs surrounding them, and calling for their extinction. Whenever I hear an American claim that he favors Arabs in this ongoing conflict, a conflict perpetuated by a people who think Hitler left the job only half-done, I wonder why. Whenever I hear an American claim that people who treat their women like chattel; who live under theocratic rule; who oppose freedom of speech and certainly religion; who cheered and danced on 9/11 and then, for good measure, insisted that Israel was behind the attack; and who pay homage to suicide bombers; are preferable to Israelis, a people who share our values and who are exactly like us, except that they’re Jewish, I know that I’m in the presence of an anti-Semite. Even if he happens to be a former president of the United States.
Burt Prelutsky used to write a humor column for the L.A. Times and movie reviews for Los Angeles magazine. He has freelanced for a number of national magazines and has written any number of award-winning TV movies, along with episodes of everything from "Mary Tyler Moore" and "MASH" to "Dragnet" and "Diagnosis Murder." He is the author of "Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco." He lives in L.A., where he spies on the liberals.

There was a good piece from Paul Weyrich on GOPUSA.com today. The Democrats are in a bind. They can't cut off funds for the war because it would be political suicide. They can only posture and hope we stay mired in Iraq to improve their chances in 2008. I agree with Mr. Weyrich's assessment of President Bush: he really believes in what he is doing, no matter what the polls say. Sticking to your principles, huh? That's a new one for Washington. Link and excerpts below:

http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/pweyrich/2007/pmw_01171.shtml 

By Paul M. Weyrich
January 17, 2007

Last week, along with millions of Americans, I watched President George W. Bush deliver his address to the nation. The President is proposing that an additional 20,000 troops be deployed to Iraq in order to quell the violence, especially around Baghdad.

I don't know what the reaction of others has been. I know what mine was. I was sad. The President seemed alone. Indeed, the next day almost all Democrats and some Republicans ripped the President's policies to shreds. 

President Bush almost stands alone. Only a single Democrat in the Senate, Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT), is with him and at least five Republicans oppose him. That means opposition to escalation of the war might be successful.

In the House of Representatives President Bush has greater support. 

The question I have is how do the Democrats want to carry their opposition to Bush's escalation. If they don't watch out they will own the war.

Senator Joseph P. Biden, Jr. (D-DE) whines that the Constitution prohibits the Congress from doing anything about Bush policies. Biden came to the Senate in 1973. Surely he must remember, and no doubt voted for, measures to cut off funds for the Vietnam War. Congress has the power of the purse. It can cut off funds at any time. Of course, if Congress did that Members would need to answer charges that they are hurting American and Coalition troops.

The problem for the Democratic leadership is its left wing. This past week many anti-war rallies were held across the nation.

The Democratic leadership no longer can get by with pawning off a "sense of Congress" resolution as having any real effect.

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has indicated that he will organize a filibuster if there is a push to cut off funds for Iraq. If he does he would let the President off the hook. Actually this might be a bluff on McConnell's part. With defectors such as Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN), usually an Administration stalwart, the Senate Republican Leader must worry if he put together 41 votes whether he could keep them together.

Getting back to President Bush, one thing is clear. The man believes what he is doing in Iraq is absolutely the right thing. He has staked his Presidency on the Iraqi War. I also would say his legacy will be determined by what happens in Iraq. If Bush is given a free hand and I am inclined to believe the Democrats will give it to him, if only to avoid ownership of the Iraqi War, then clearly the decision would be his and his alone. 

Should sentiment in the country be such that the public really would turn against the war, then and only then would the Democratic Leadership fully satisfy the left wing. If sentiment remains where it now appears to be the Democratic Congressional Leadership well may run the risk of cutting off money to get the troops home.

This whole symbolic vote thing by the Dems is ridiculous. It is pure partisan political posturing. Nothing more. I expect many Republican lawmakers to abandon the President, not on principle, but on re-election prospects in 2008. The war is unpopular, so personal beliefs get benched in favor of what will work at election time. Link and excerpts below:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070117/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq 

Bruised by the elections and divided on the Iraq war, Republicans will find themselves in a tough spot when Democrats force them to go on record for or against President Bush's troop strategy.

Democratic House and Senate leaders intend to hold votes to gauge GOP opposition to Bush's decision to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq. Senate leadership is expected by Thursday to propose a resolution denouncing the plan, with debate planned around the same time Bush delivers his State of the Union speech next Tuesday.

The resolutions also would help Democrats measure GOP support for more aggressive legislative tactics, such as cutting off funds for the war.

Such a vote puts many Republicans in an uncomfortable position. They will have to decide whether to stay loyal to an unpopular GOP president and risk angering voters disillusioned by the war or buck the party line.

Bush has been trying to sell his revised war plan to the public in a series of television interviews. He told PBS's Jim Lehrer in an interview broadcast Tuesday that keeping his old policies in place would lead to "a slow failure," but withdrawing from Iraq, as some Democrats and other critics suggest, would result in an "expedited failure."

In spite of Bush's efforts to gain support, several GOP members are offering only tepid endorsements of his plan, as well as a wait-and-see approach to the Democratic resolution.

Acknowledging their party is divided on Iraq, Republican leaders are trying to stave off a showdown in Congress by casting Democratic efforts as a political ploy to embarrass the president.

Another great act by the 9th Circus Court of Appeals. Link and excerpts below:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070117/ap_on_re_us/millennium_terror 

A federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out the sentence of a man who was convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport at the turn of the millennium.

Ahmed Ressam was arrested near the U.S.-Canadian border in December 1999 after customs agents found 124 pounds of explosives in the trunk of his car as he disembarked from a ferry in Port Angeles, Wash.

Prosecutors said he was intent on bombing the airport on the eve of the millennium. The arrest raised fears of terrorism attacks and prompted the cancellation of New Year's celebrations at Seattle's Space Needle.

Ressam was sentenced to 22 years in prison after being convicted of all nine charges. On Tuesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reversed his conviction on one of the charges and sent the case back to a lower court to issue a new sentence and explain the rationale behind the 22-year term.

Two of the three appellate judges said Ressam was improperly convicted of carrying an explosive while committing a felony: lying on a customs form.

After his conviction in 2001, Ressam began cooperating with authorities in hopes of winning a reduced sentence. He faced a maximum of 65 years in prison.

Over the next two years, according to court documents, he provided information on more than 100 potential terrorists and testified against coconspirator Moktar Haouari and Sept. 11 plotter Mounir el-Motassadeq.

OpinionEditorials.com ran a good piece today from Nathan Tabor. Excerpts and link below:

Nathan Tabor

I know you’re busy earning a living…chauffeuring your kids to soccer practice…fixing the leaking faucet in your bathroom. And I know that it’s not that you don’t care—but that you care so deeply that it’s hard for you to even think about what’s been going on in this country this week—it’s just so painful.

But, if you’re a conservative, I think you’ll need to park the mini-van long enough to call up your local talk radio talk show and vent. After all, you deserve it, since it’s your hard-earned dollars that are paying the salaries of the designer-suited politicos who not only want to take the aforementioned hard-earned money away from you, but destroy all the values you hold dear in the process.

Here’s what the past week of liberal Democratic control of Congress has done for our nation:

Democrats summarily dismissed the President’s new strategy for Iraq. Openly. Publicly. Enthusiastically. We are in the midst of a hard-fought war that is putting our sons’ and daughters’ lives on the line. We owe it to them to support them in the field. Yet, Democrats—and when did Nancy Pelosi go to War College?--claim the President’s plan is unworkable. Yet, they have no plan of their own. 

Democrats attempted to embarrass the President and portray him as being out of touch with the American public by forcing a vote on a federal funding plan for embryonic stem cell research that he had promised to veto. Embryonic stem cell research has resulted in zero successful treatments. That’s why its backers are so determined to get federal funding, because private investors aren’t willing to put their money in it. Instead, they’re funding the proven, ethically sound research known as adult stem cell research. 

Pelosi’s 100 Days campaign is just more Democratic propaganda. The aim is not to advance this nation diplomatically, strategically, or scientifically. It’s all just an effort to see how much Dems can get away with once they’re in power. 

As a fellow conservative, I don’t blame you if you’re fed up with scandal, corruption, and political gamesmanship in Washington. So am I. But if you care about this country’s future…and the future of your grandchildren…you’ll take action now. 

http://www.opinioneditorials.com/freedomwriters/ntabor_20070117.html

The Los Angeles Times ran an article this morning about active duty military personnel appearing on Capitol Hill yesterday in opposition to the war in Iraq. Sergeant Liam Madden was quoted as saying, "We will not be silent while thousands die."

I'll say right up fron that I am an officer in the United States Army, so readers of this blog will know where I am coming from before taking shots.

These guys want to stop President Bush's surge strategy and find a way to start bringing home our troops. It is my belief that not only are they wrong, but they should immediately be separated from their respective military services.

As uniformed personnel we are held to a different standard. Once we sign up, it is not our place to question every change in strategy put forth by our chain of command, especially when the changes involve the Commander-in-Chief. Their actions are prejudicial to good order and discipline, essential elements of any professional military force.

This is a volunteer Army, or Navy, or Marine Corps, or whichever you choose. You are free to leave if you cannot perform your duties. And the members of Congress who encourage these actions are just as much at fault. When you put on that uniform, you are no longer an ordinary citizen. You give up some rights. You know that when you enlist.

It is simply unacceptable for these military personnel to conduct themselves the way they are. They don't have a problem cashing their paychecks, but then don't want to do what their country has told them from the beginning they may have to do. We have civilian leadership of the military for a reason and these service members are out of line.

If they won't separate themselves from service, then the respective branches should do it for them. This reminds me of something a drill sergeant told me many years ago when I was in basic training:

"We're here to preserve democracy, son, not practice it."

Lofty goals from the new Secretary-General. Might I suggest that if he wants to do something about nuclear proliferation he should try to get the Security Council to pass a meaningful resolution against either North Korea or Iran. Take your pick; I don't care which one. Excerpts from VOA below:

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region, peace in the Middle East and nuclear disarmament are among his top priorities. He also says strong partnership between the U.N. and the United States is important. VOA's Sean Maroney reports.

In a speech prepared for delivery in Washington Tuesday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spoke with optimism that, although the challenges facing the international community have grown more complex, the United Nations should thrive.

 

Secretary General Ban said strong partnership between the United Nations and United States is a key element of the world body's success.

"United Nations needs strong participation and active participation and strong support of the United States, as U.N. and U.S. have a shared objective of promoting human rights, democracy and freedom, and peace and security, as well as, mutual co-prosperity," he said.

He said such a partnership is essential especially now as the United Nations faces some of its biggest challenges.