Biden's Foreign Policy Strengths

For a long, wide-ranging, and frank interview with Biden on foreign policy, go here. His ego is on full display, but so is his experience and analysis. Here is an account of his trip to Romania by an impressed U.S. Ambassador.

But a large part of foreign policy is being able to see in advance the consequences of our actions. That's what the judgment question is all about. As for his judgment in seeing in advance the big issues of recent years, Iraq and terrorism, here is what I found:

IRAQ

He voted to authorize force so that Bush would have the backing he needed at the U.N, but he understood that the threat of Iraq was exaggerated, that we would need U.N. support, and that the post-war recovery period would be difficult and up to a decade in duration. At the moment before invasion, he cautioned that Bush was going to war recklessly and without leveling with the American people about the costs. His greatest mistake seems to have been trusting Bush with war powers.

08/04/02 - USA Today

"I believe there probably will be a war with Iraq," said Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "The only question is, is it alone, is it with others and how long and how costly will it be?"

09/12/02 - FoxNews.com

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., issued the appeal a day before Bush's speech on Iraq to the U.N. General Assembly. Bush is expected to ask the Security Council to compel Iraq to readmit U.N. weapons inspectors. It is not clear whether he will say the United States is prepared to use force against Iraq if the Iraqi president refuses to comply.

Biden, in remarks to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, said he will be "extremely disappointed" if Bush lays out a unilateralist approach in his U.N. speech that conveys the message, "`The world be damned, here we go.' That is not in our interest," Biden said.

He said Iraq has biological and chemical weapons and is trying to add nuclear capabilities. But he said he sees Saddam as someone who would give up his weapons in order to retain power and is not bent on destroying the world.

10/10/02 - Senate floor speech quoted in USA Today on 02/08/07

"There is a danger that Saddam's downfall could lead to widespread civil unrest and reprisals," Biden said on the Senate floor on Oct. 10, 2002.

Biden warned in that speech that "one-third of that population (in Iraq) hates the other two-thirds of the population. They say Iraq will quickly be able to organize itself politically, economically, and militarily, into a peaceful, unified nation, free of weapons of mass destruction. The American people need to know that most experts believe Iraq will require considerable assistance politically, militarily, and economically. Indeed, they say we should speak not of 'the day after,' but of 'the decade after.' "

Fall 2002 - recounted by David Corn in December 2006

Before the vote, Biden tried to craft a bipartisan alternative to the White House resolution that would have partly restricted Bush's authority. That effort failed. Discussing the final bill on the Senate floor, Biden described Iraq's WMDs as a threat to the United States—but he noted that this threat was not immediate and that Iraq was not in league with al-Qaida. He said:

We have time to deal with that problem in a way that isolates Saddam and does not isolate the United States of America, that makes the use of force the final option, not the first one, that produces the desired results, not unintended consequences.

And he claimed Bush believed this, too: “That is the course President Bush has chosen.” Biden hailed Bush's recent decision to ask the U.N. for a resolution that would demand that Saddam accept new inspections. “Thank God for Colin Powell!” Biden exclaimed. As for what might happen after an invasion, Biden said,

There is a danger that Saddam's downfall could lead to widespread civil unrest and reprisals. There is only one thing I disagree with in the President's speech on [October 7]. He said what could be worse than Saddam Hussein? I can tell you, a lot... This is a much more complicated country than Afghanistan.

Biden noted that there would be plenty of challenges in post-invasion Iraq, that meeting them would be tough and costly, and that chaos in Iraq could lead to regional warfare involving Iran and Syria. Bottom line: Biden had a handle on the nature of the threat posed by Iraq and the potential consequences of an invasion; he failed to suss out that Bush was committed to war.

11/11/02 - Meeting with The Trotter Group as reported in USA Today

In separate meetings last week with members of The Trotter Group, an organization of black columnists, Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration's national security adviser, and Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the lame-duck chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, differed over virtually every aspect of this looming conflict.

"The guys who have to fight this war don't think it's a good idea," said Biden, the Senate's leading Democrat on foreign affairs. To buttress his point, Biden recounted a recent conversation he had with an unnamed chairman of one of the military services, who told him that a U.S. war with Iraq would be "the dumbest thing in the world."

Rice, however, rejected the suggestion that any key military leader doesn't back Bush's Iraq policy.

Republicans took "something that nobody, including the president, believes is an imminent danger and moved it up in the election cycle," Biden said of the war resolution Bush got Congress to adopt shortly before this month's midterm elections. (Biden said that after his own more restrictive resolution lost support, he reluctantly backed the one that passed to give Secretary of State Colin Powell the leverage he needed to get the United Nations to adopt a resolution that would slow the Bush administration's rush to war.) There is "zero evidence that Saddam has cooperated with al-Qaeda," Biden told the black columnists.

Rice differed sharply with Biden on this point. She compared Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. Saddam's government, she said, "has supported terrorism and harbored terrorists," and as a consequence the Bush administration must be "concerned about the potential union of terrorism, extremism and weapons of mass destruction" because "bad guys travel in packs."

12/10/02 - Larry King Live

And really, Larry, what we found whether we were talking to anyone from our military, and we met a lot of generals in addition to Franks in the region, all the way to, you know, Palestinian reformers and everyone in the region was, It's not going to be the day after, it's going to be the decade after.

And they want to know, are we in for the long haul? Are we going to make sure that country isn't going to disintegrate? It's going to be a very tough job. And establishing a democracy, as the administration is talking about, is going to be a monumental task.

What they really want to know is, If you're going to go get him, are you going to finish the job? And they don't mean just take him down. They mean -- they mean stabilizing the situation after he is taken down.

...

I think the president's got it just right. He's playing this out the way he should play it out because, quite frankly, Larry, the one thing we don't want to do is we don't want to be an occupying power after we take down Saddam. We got to have other folks in on the deal.

We have to have this a civilian run operation somewhat like Kosovo after the fact with U.S. and coalition forces backing it up. Otherwise we're going to be there as the sitting ducks.

And so it's very, very important that we all stay together and the closer we're together, the more the president's in on the deal with the rest of the United Nations, the more likely it is that Saddam is going to yield. It's not likely, but it is more likely.

12/20/02 - Washington Post Op-Ed (with Hagel) titled "Iraq: The Decade After"

Although no one doubts our forces will prevail over Saddam Hussein’s, key regional leaders confirm what the Foreign Relations Committee emphasized in its Iraq hearings last summer: The most challenging phase will likely be the day after — or, more accurately, the decade after — Saddam Hussein.

Once he is gone, expectations are high that coalition forces will remain in large numbers to stabilize Iraq and support a civilian administration. That presence will be necessary for several years, given the vacuum there, which a divided Iraqi opposition will have trouble filling and which some new Iraqi military strongman must not fill. Various experts have testified that as many as 75,000 troops may be necessary, at a cost of up to $ 20 billion a year. That does not include the cost of the war itself, or the effort to rebuild Iraq.

Americans are largely unprepared for such an undertaking. President Bush must make clear to the American people the scale of the commitment.

02/07/03 - FoxNews.com

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that before any military force is used, the United States should seek U.N. support.

"While we can win the war on our own, we are much better off with the support of the United Nations," Biden said, adding that post-war efforts will require help from "as many countries as possible." Biden and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said that Bush needs to explain to the American people what war with Iraq will require in terms of monetary and personnel commitment.

"I don't think many Americans understand the scope and the magnitude" of what a war will mean, Biden said.

9/11

On September 10, 2001, the day before the attacks of September 11th, Biden warned that the Bush Administration was focusing too much on missile defense and not enough on terrorism. At the National Press Club, he said:

“Sure, we’ll do all we can to defend ourselves against any threat — nobody denies that — but even the joint chiefs says that a strategic nuclear attack is less likely than a regional conflict, a major theater war, terrorist attacks at home or abroad, or any number of other real issues. We’ll have diverted all that money to address the least likely threat, while the real threat comes to this country in the hold of a ship, the belly of a plane, or smuggled into a city in the middle of the night in a vile in a backpack. And I ask you, if you want to do us damage, are you more likely to send a missile you’re not sure can reach us, with a biological or chemical weapon because you don’t have the throw weight to put a nuclear weapon on it, and no one’s anticipating that in the near term, with a return address saying “it came from us, here’s where we are”? Or, are you more likely to put somebody with a backpack crossing the border from Vancouver down to Seattle, or coming up the New York Harbor with a rusty old ship with an atom bomb sitting in the hull? Which are you more likely to do? And what defense do we have against those other things.

“Watch these hearings we’re about to have. We don’t have, as the testimony showed, a public health infrastructure to deal with the existing pathogens that are around now, we don’t have the investment, the capability to identify or deal with an anthrax attack. We do not have, as ambassador to Japan now, Howard Baker, and his committee said, the ability to curtail the availability of chemical weapons lying around the Soviet Union — the former Soviet Union and Russia — because they don’t know what to do with it. They showed us a report where they showed us photographs of things that look like outhouses, clapboard — clapboard buildings with no windows and padlocks on the door, that have been many chemical weapons in that building, could destroy the bulk of the East Coast, and we’re not spending the money to help them corral and destroy that in the name of this search. The cost estimate was $30 billion over 10 years in this bipartisan commission and it was listed as the most urgent threat to the United States of America.”

Temporary AFK

I know it's convention season, and it's when I should be paying lots of attention. However, I'm headed overseas in 3 weeks for 3 weeks. To be able to afford this I'm forced to work many extra shifts these days. I'm just not going to be able to devote the time to this blog that is required to post intelligently. So, with your forgiveness, I'm going to disappear until I return from Vietnam in October. Please continue to argue in my absence.

Know Only Enough to Be Afraid

I have heard that, whatever Ayers did in the past, he has distinguished himself since as a serious academic and is an unavoidable player in Chicago Democratic politics. However, I can certainly understand concerns about Obama's relationship with him and questions as to how he can associate with a radical terrorist.

That said, this ad is disgusting. Not because it questions his relationship with Ayers, but because it suggests that Obama himself may be a terrorist. Why even mention 9/11, which has nothing to do with Ayers, except to tie Obama directly to Islamic terrorists like Osama bin Laden? And why the suggestion that there's something dangerous we don't know about Obama?



A legitimate ad would be about Obama's unprincipled association with radicals for political gain. This ad goes farther in suggesting that Obama shares Ayers support for terrorism.

I don't think this group wants people to know more about Obama. Then they might not be so scared of him.

Obama is trying to keep the ad off the air. He also has a response ad:

McCain's Houses

It's good to see Obama hitting him on this.





This is the kind of bullshit issue Americans really care about.


Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

Biden

I'm happy with the pick, but honestly a bit nervous. Things are definitely gonna be interesting!

Is McCain's cross story true?

Here is an excerpt from the transcript of the forum with Pastor Rick Warren:

The Vietnamese kept us in prison in conditions of solitary confinement, or two or three to a cell. They did that because they knew they could break down our resistance. One of the techniques that they used to get information was to take ropes and tie them around your biceps, loop the rope around your head and pull it down beneath your knees and leave you in that position. You can imagine it's very uncomfortable.

One night, I was being punished in that fashion. All of sudden the door of the cell opened and the guard came in. The guy who was just -- what we call the gun guard -- just walked around the camp with the gun on his shoulder. He went like this and loosened the ropes. He came back about four hours later and tightened them up again and left.

The following Christmas, because it was Christmas day, we were allowed to stand outside of our cell for a few minutes. In those days we were not allowed to see or communicate with each other, although we certainly did. And I was standing outside, for my few minutes outside at my cell. He came walking up. He stood there for a minute, and with his sandal on the dirt in the courtyard, he drew a cross and he stood there. And a minute later, he rubbed it out, and walked away.

For a minute there, there was just two Christians worshipping together. I'll never forget that moment.

Here, he uses it in an ad:



A DailyKos contributor calls bullshit. Apparently, it matches a story from The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, of whom McCain is a big fan. Sullivan points out that it is absent from McCain's 1973 account of his imprisonment.

Obama's VP Options

This is my ranking of the top 5 of the rumored short list with a bonus off-the-radar dream pick at the end. I'm not going to mention my favorite choice, Jim Webb, or my least favorite choice, Hillary Clinton, because the word is neither is on the short list. I'm also not going to mention Sam Nunn because I don't think there's any chance for him, but I'd put him around the middle of the pack.

I should point out that, while my top 2 are foreign policy picks, I don't think Obama necessarily needs a foreign policy VP. Obama is completely capable of handling foreign policy. Picking a foreign policy guy could even have the detrimental effect of confirming the idea that Obama himself is lacking in that area. However, there are certainly voters out there who worry about Obama in foreign affairs and I think the right VP could help just as Cheney helped Bush get elected. That's just a long way of saying that whether a person knows or doesn't know foreign policy wasn't a major factor in this list.

5. Evan Bayh (Senator from Indiana)

He could actually deliver a state that McCain expects to win with his family's name and may help elsewhere in the Rust Belt. I'm not sure he is much more than a name, though. He is a good politician, but a little too much of a typical politician. He's very boring, and supported Hillary and the War in Iraq. Those two things aren't terrible in themselves, but they indicate that he has no political courage. I wouldn't blame Obama for making the pick, but I really dislike Bayh.

4. Kathleen Sebelius (Governor of Kansas)

By some perverse Clinton logic, any other woman as VP would be a slap in the face to Clinton. That's one reason I like Sebelius! For another, she has almost impossibly high approval ratings in a deeply red state. And she plays into a Democratic Western Strategy. She may also help Obama remind voters that his mother's family is from Kansas. She personally is the daughter of a popular politician from the battleground state of Ohio. She and Obama seem to get along very well and she was an early ally. Unfortunately, she seemed extremely boring in the State of the Union response.

3. Tim Kaine (Governor of Virginia)

I can't figure out if he looks creepy or down-to-earth. He has a law degree from Harvard, was an early endorser and reportedly gets along very well with Obama, and hails from an important state. He has very little experience, though, even in domestic politics. He is personally pro-life but says the right things about favoring pro-choice policies. The Democratic Party is going to be pro-choice, but Obama and Kaine may be able to soften the image created by folks like NARAL. He has seemed fine in interviews.

2. Wesley Clark (Retired General)

He got into trouble and Obama was quick to denounce him a while back, so I'm thinking he's not a likely pick. He is not even expected to be at the convention, but that could be a fake out. If he is the VP, the fact that he is a Clintonite could help unite the party. His background is very impressive. Seriously, check out his Wikipedia page. West Point valedictorian. Rhodes Scholar. Vietnam War hero. His master's degree thesis was a precursor to the Powell Doctrine. Strong leadership as he moved up the ranks in the Army. Supreme Allied Commander during Kosovo. He shores up Obama's military and foreign policy credentials real quick. I'm not totally comfortable with Clark, but there are worse options.

1. Joe Biden (Senator from Delaware)

He was my second choice in the primaries. He has extensive experience working in the Senate where he will preside as VP. He has a lot of foreign policy experience as a result of his activities in the Senate and is eager for a fight on foreign policy. He would be great at attacking McCain and it would be even more powerful coming from Biden as they have worked together and been friends for many years. He would kill anybody in the VP debate, one of the most important qualifications of a VP candidate. He doesn't pull any punches. His "a noun, a verb, and 9/11" comment about Giuliani was genius. I like that he doesn't seem to have much of a filter on what he says, but that is his biggest drawback as a VP candidate. He will say something very controversial between now and November, and it is not Obama's style to take risks. Delaware is almost a Southern state, so Biden would probably be good at connecting with conservative independents. If I had confidence that Biden could avoid causing problems for Obama, he'd be far and away my favorite option. As it is, he's only slightly preferable to the others.

*. Brian Schweitzer (Governor of Montana)

I haven't read anywhere that he is on the short list. He's probably more a part of the Democratic Party's future than its present. But he's an exciting politician. I have only seen a few interviews with him, but he seems intelligent, genuine, and mainstream. The picture is Schweitzer downing a shot to celebrate after personally delivering the liquor license to allow the re-opening of a Montana bar made famous by Kerouac. The Democrats have a better chance of turning the West blue than the South. He could help. On energy policy, he is a big advocate of coal gasification and liquefaction. Oh, and he speaks Arabic! Here's the case for Schweitzer from FiveThirtyEight.com.

Should Obama Sue?

The Obama Nation, a new book about Obama from the guy behind Unfit for Command, is full of lies.

Usually a public figure will not sue for defamation for 2 reasons: (1) it increases the profile of the defamatory statement; and (2) it is likely to be unsuccessful.

The first reason may not apply here because the book is already a bestseller sure to be used by the conservative noise machine.

The second reason is grounded in the fact that, while an ordinary person need only prove the falsity of the statement, the Supreme Court has held in NY Times v. Sullivan that a public figure has to also prove that the statement was made with actual malice (i.e. knowledge of the falsity or reckless disregard for the truth). Obama has enough money that he need not really care whether he wins so long as the public relations result is to effectively challenge the accuracy of the book. Also, I suspect that actual malice could be proven here. The author has made no secret of the fact that his goal is to destroy Obama.

I would probably conclude that the risk of seeming whiny and overly litigious outweighs the potential benefits of filing suit, but I don't know that Obama should automatically reject the idea of a lawsuit.

Here is Obama's 40 page response.

Obama's Tax Plan

Obama advisors Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee state the case in his favor in the WSJ:

Overall, Sen. Obama's middle-class tax cuts are larger than his partial rollbacks for families earning over $250,000, making the proposal as a whole a net tax cut and reducing revenues to less than 18.2% of GDP -- the level of taxes that prevailed under President Reagan.

Both candidates for president have proposed tax plans. But they are starkly different in their approaches and their economic impact. Sen. Obama is focused on cutting taxes for middle-class families and small businesses, and investing in key areas like health, innovation and education. He would do this while cutting unnecessary spending, paying for his proposals and bringing down the budget deficit.

Troop Donations Favor Obama

OpenSecrets:

According to an analysis of campaign contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain, and the fiercely anti-war Ron Paul, though he suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination months ago, has received more than four times McCain's haul.

I don't think this is particularly important, but I'm quite confident that Republicans would find it important if the ratio were reversed.

Effective Government

Yglesias' response to Ryan's question.

Beinert's Paradox

Matthew Yglesias' post about "Beinert's Paradox" is clever but wrong. Yglesias, responding to Beinert's suggestion that Obama woo racist Democrats by favoring class-based affirmative action, argues:

But of course on the merits of the issue, abandoning race-based affirmative action makes sense to the extent that we don’t think present-day racism — as opposed to economic issues that may in some cases reflect the legacy of racism — is a substantial problem. But if racism really is a huge barrier to Obama’s electoral prospects, that suggests that present-day racism really is a substantial problem and we should probably maintain some focus on race per se.

I have made a similar argument to Beinert's on this blog. I think Yglesias' counterargument is too simplistic.

Part of the problem is that Beinert seems to overstate the number of Democrats and Democratic leaners out there who will completely refuse to vote for Obama solely because of race, leading Yglesias to characterize racism as a "huge barrier" to Obama. It may be that race is a factor for close to 20% of these voters, but as Beinert points out, these voters would be willing to vote for a black candidate who they believe shares their values, whatever the hell that may mean for each voter. The prejudice is still worrisome, but less racist than it might be in that these voters are ultimately voting based on the content of a candidate's character and not the color of his skin.

The main problem with Yglesias' logic is that he equates opposition to race-based affirmative action with racism. A reasonable fair-minded person could oppose race-based affirmative action. And I don't think it is irrational to worry that an African-American would be too inclined to favor race-based preferences. There also exists some white resentment based opposition to policies such as affirmative action that I can understand as being nonracist even if I disagree with it.

Hot Chicks Dig Obama

Some are accusing McCain of exploiting fears of miscegenation with his new ad:



I'm thinking Obama really shouldn't have said this:

Voter Fraud Fraud

Ohio is trying to make it easier to vote with election day registration. Of course, the Republicans are threatening to prevent more people from being engaged in the process.

Between their continuous attempts to mislead the public and their constant efforts to make it more difficult to vote, Republicans are showing that they have no respect for democracy. They don't want us to vote. If we do jump through the hoops and get to the polls, they want us to exercise our right based on misinformation.

I.O.U.S.A.

Deficit spending only a Republican could get away with:

Edwards

I don't care that he cheated on his wife. That's between John and Elizabeth.

I am pissed that he pursued the Democratic nomination knowing this potential scandal was out there. Can you imagine if he were the presumptive nominee today? Or worse, if this came out after the convention nominated him? It would be total disaster.

Even if he had managed to get into the White House before this story broke (which I can't imagine given the increased scrutiny on the nominee), it would have severely weakened him and his chances of enacting the policies he supposedly believes so strongly in.

The affair was very reckless for him personally. The subsequent candidacy jeopardized his entire party. Besides being a despicable husband, he is a selfish narcissistic jerk.

I write this as someone who strongly supported Edwards in 2004.

Obama Returns Fire

A very powerful ad airing on radio in Ohio:


Good for Barack. They need to get this thing on TV there.

The McCain campaign is clearly freaked out by it.

McCain's Respectful Campaign

McCain is looking less and less like the candidate of 2000 and becoming more indistinguishable from Bush.



His latest TV ad, "Painful", blatantly lies about Obama on taxes:



Here's that darn chart again:


Newsweek:

McCain released three new ads with multiple false and misleading claims about Obama's tax proposals.

A TV spot claims Obama once voted for a tax increase "on people making just $42,000 a year." That's true for a single taxpayer, who would have seen a tax increase of $15 for the year – if the measure had been enacted. But the ad shows a woman with two children, and as a single mother, she would not have been affected unless she made more than $62,150. The increase that Obama once supported as part of a Democratic budget bill is not part of his current tax plan anyway.

A Spanish-language radio ad claims the measure Obama supported would have raised taxes on "families" making $42,000, which is simply false. Even a single mother with one child would have been able to make $58,650 without being affected. A family of four with income up to $90,000 would not have been affected.

The TV ad claims in a graphic that Obama would "raise taxes on middle class." In fact, Obama's plan promises cuts for middle-income taxpayers and would increase rates only for persons with family incomes above $250,000 or with individual incomes above $200,000.

The radio ad claims Obama would increase taxes "on the sale of your home." In fact, home-sale profits of up to $500,000 per couple would continue to be exempt from capital gains taxes. Very few sales would see an increase under Obama's proposal to raise the capital gains rate.

A second radio ad, in English, says, "Obama has a history of raising taxes" on middle-class Americans. But that's false. It refers to a vote that did not actually result in a tax increase and could not have done so.

These ads continue what's become a pattern of misrepresentation by the McCain campaign about his opponent's tax proposals.

ZOMBIES EVERYWHERE!!!!

Obama as the Antichrist

As ridiculous as it sounds, there is real fear of this among some, and McCain's "The One" ad may be deliberately exploiting that fear:

As the ad begins, the words "It should be known that in 2008 the world shall be blessed. They will call him The One" flash across the screen. The Antichrist of the Left Behind books is a charismatic young political leader named Nicolae Carpathia who founds the One World religion (slogan: "We Are God") and promises to heal the world after a time of deep division. One of several Obama clips in the ad features the Senator saying, "A nation healed, a world repaired. We are the ones that we've been waiting for."

The visual images in the ad, which Davis says has been viewed even more than McCain's "Celeb" ad linking Obama to the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, also seem to evoke the cover art of several Left Behind books. But they're not the cartoonish images of clouds parting and shining light upon Obama that might be expected in an ad spoofing him as a messiah. Instead, the screen displays a sinister orange light surrounded by darkness and later the faint image of a staircase leading up to heaven.

Perhaps the most puzzling scene in the ad is an altered segment from The 10 Commandments that appears near the end. A Moses-playing Charlton Heston parts the animated waters of the Red Sea, out of which rises the quasi-presidential seal the Obama campaign used for a brief time earlier this summer before being mocked into retiring it. The seal, which features an eagle with wings spread, is not recognizable like the campaign's red-white-and-blue "O" logo. That confused Democratic consultant Eric Sapp until he went to his Bible and remembered that in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel, the Antichrist is described as rising from the sea as a creature with wings like an eagle.

The Ad:

In Case You Were Confused

Toby Keith is a Democrat opposed to the Iraq War. Yeah, that Toby Keith:

Keith still bristles at how the song painted him as a gung-ho right-winger when he's a lifelong Democrat. It also associated him with a war he never supported.

CBS News:

"When the Iraq war started, I was a little mad because we didn't finish what we started in Afghanistan," he said. "Our troops had to move on into Iraq. Our government asked them to go do it for whatever reason. We won't know for probably 0 or 30 years whether it was the right thing to do or not."

Although Keith has supported President George W. Bush, he says he is not a conservative.

"It's amazing how many Republicans call me for support. And then they go, 'You're a Republican right?' And you go, 'Well I'm actually a lifetime Democrat,'" he said. "And then they go, 'Oh, sorry.' And the Democrats want so bad — the real liberals really want to hate me. And then they go, 'I still hate you, but I can't believe you're a Democrat.' So I'm not a real political guy. I'm a very patriotic guy."

I don't know how I could ever have been mistaken.

Obama Does the Pledge of Allegiance

Obama responds to a heckler and refutes a rumor at the same time with some great theater:


Here's more of the heckler, who seems unhinged:



His dad fought in World War II!

ExxonMcCain

It's silly, but no sillier than a lot of the useless garbage coming fron the Republicans (e.g., tire gauges).

McCain Goes Nuclear

McCain toured a nuclear power plant today:

Senator John McCain toured a nuclear power plant in Michigan on Tuesday to highlight his support for the construction of 45 new nuclear power generators by 2030, a position that he said distinguished him from his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama.

Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, portrayed his support of nuclear energy as part of an “all-of-the-above approach” to addressing the nation’s energy needs at a time of $4-a-gallon gasoline. He called it “safe, efficient, inexpensive and obviously a vital ingredient in the future of the economy of our nation and in our mission to eliminate over time our dependence on foreign oil."

It's important to point out that Obama agrees that nuclear power should be considered.

I've said before that I think talking about nuclear power as a solution to dependence on oil is simply an excuse to blame the left. The implication is that we wouldn't be in this mess if we could get rid of those darn environmentalists who prevent nuclear power plants.

I am not opposed to nuclear power, but it will not reduce oil prices. Oil is primarily used to make goods and fuels that would not be replaced by nuclear power. Yes, if everyone drove electric cars nuclear power may be part of the electricity supply to charge those cars. But the combination of off-peak charging and coal power could allow us to charge those cars without nuclear power.

I think a big reason for nuclear power's popularity is that many people don't understand off-peak electricity generation capacity. Electric companies must constantly be able to provide power to you so that when you flip the switch, the light comes on immediately. During the day, we use electricity to run our offices and factories. During the evening, while everyone has the lights on and is running the TV, DVD player, cable box, dishwasher, clothes dryer, computer, etc., the power companies have to be able to meet the demand during those peak hours. The problem is you can't store electricity during off-peak hours to meet peak demand. The companies have to buy enough electricity generation capacity to meet maximum energy usage, but during the night this electricity generation capacity is essentially wasted while we sleep. The fact that plug-in electric cars would normally be charging at night allows us to finally use this off-peak capacity. We could replace most gas-powered cars with electric cars without increasing our electricity infrastructure at all. And while nuclear power is better than other power plants in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, our current electricity grid is better than the internal combustion engine on that front. Replacing the internal combustion engine with a battery charged by electricity currently reduces grenhouse gas emissions by 40%.

In the article, McCain describes his energy policy as "all of the above." But offshore oil drilling shouldn't even be considered part of a multi-pronged effort to deal with the energy crisis because it is actually counterproductive for several reasons: (1) billions of dollars invested in offshore drilling is money that could be invested in alternative energy; (2) by increasing the profit margins of oil, we encourage continued investment in oil by energy companies; and (3) to the extent that it reduces prices, and I don't think that it will, it disincentivizes the use of alternative energy. Remember, the purported benefits of offshore drilling won't be seen for a decade. This isn't a temporary solution to ease the burden on consumers. It is a long-term commitment to oil.

UPDATE:

Pride in Being Ignorant

Dissembler in Chief

Politico has read Ron Suskind's new book:

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.

Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.

The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

The letter’s existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’”

Politico has more interesting stuff about the workings of the White House and the deliberate use of Cheney to preserve willful ignorance on Bush's part as to the illegal actions of his administration.

We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For

Andrew Sullivan explains what the line really means:

But I think some have missed a nuance. The phrase is actually a self-indictment as well as a self-congratulation. The point is surely that we shouldn't wait for someone else to save us, or lift us up, or fix our problems or address our fate. We are the only ones who can do this. And we're responsible for our own failure. The sentence is actually a criticism of Obama's own supporters.

More from McCain's Respectful Campaign

This is just silly.



The "symbol" quote is a gross misrepresentation, and the McCain campaign has to know it.

I'm sure this is doing a lot to contribute to the debate over energy policy, economic growth, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, education, global warming, deficit spending, entitlements, etc.

Next thing you know, Obama will be promising world peace:



Boy, what a jackass that guy was!

Who Benefits from a Consensus for Withdrawal?

Michael Crowley says McCain because it allows him to shift the debate from his unpopular advocacy of a long-term stay to who will be better at wrapping up.

Polling shows that McCain is basically even with Obama on Iraq. On other foreign policy issues, McCain leads by a wide margin. On practically every other issue, such as economic policy, Obama leads. Therefore, Iraq is a drag on McCain's only strength. If McCain can get Iraq out of the way, he has a cleaner shot at Obama on foreign policy.

The McCains - Just Regular Folks II

McCain has $520 loafers that he wears everywhere. I'm sure an elitist like Obama has several pairs of $520 loafers.

Matthew Yglesias makes an interesting point that the super-wealthy McCains probably stand to gain millions from his tax cuts for the wealthy. I wouldn't accuse McCain of self-dealing, but I think it's legitimate to ask whether McCain really understands the financial circumstances of many in Middle America.

Who's more like Britney?

In a recent ad McCain compares Obama to Britney and Paris in an essentially substance free attempt to what exactly? I'm not sure.

However:

A full vote? Really?

I'm your fan. I'm going to vote for you. I've even gone so far as to say I think you might be a real departure from politics as usual. Then this? Of course you want a full vote when you're the only nominee left.