A lesson has been learned. The lighter, faster response military model advocated by Donald Rumsfeld has it’s place, but not when dealing with a vicisously sectarian, force focused culture. In other words, Bush’s surge is showing consistent, trend-worthy results, not least in the area of record low American casualty figures

Of the 21 fatalities this month, 14 have been combat related. Since the surge, even Iraqi security force fatalities are signficantly down. al Qaeda is disbanding, and American, Iraqi and coalition losses are shrinking. Hopefully, with increasingly more breathing room, the Iraqi politicians can produce some statesmen, and establish a working federal government.

The most impressive part of the new information coming out of Iraq is the utter and nearly total defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq, and even more encouraging, that American officials are convinced that al Qaeda, not sectarian violence, is presently the main concern in the country. Iraq is not in the midst of a civil war. It is not Vietnam. In fact, the dissimilarities have been there since the beginning. Unless, of course, you were a bit slow on the uptake, and part of the Democrat leadership. Harry Reid, circa February, 2007

After months of heated rhetoric slamming President Bush’s Iraq policy, the Senate’s top Democrat moved into new terrain by declaring the Iraq war a worse blunder than Vietnam.

“This war is a serious situation. It involves the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country,” Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, told CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.”

“So we should take everything seriously. We find ourselves in a very deep hole and we need to find a way to dig out of it.”

Asked whether he considers it a worse blunder than Vietnam, Reid responded, “Yes.”

Comparisons to Vietnam are nothing new, but a “worse than” designation from a top lawmaker is.

Reid never supported the surge, by the way.

When Iraq’s government is stable and fully functioning, Joe Lieberman will be the only Democrat to thank. And for a time, even he was kicked to the curb.

As a side note to the topic of winning in Iraq, do you really want to vote for “abandon the world, now” Ron Paul? Or, for that matter, the apologizing Mike Huckabee, who wants to further destabilize Pakistan, and now fears a Pakistani immigrant invasion?

Foreign policy is too important in 2008 to not occupy billing number one on everyone’s political radar – well, it’s always too important, actually. It’s the lack of a foreign policy as the discussion de jour in the nineties that has exacerbated some problems in the 2000s.  Even with Paul and Huckabee, and Obama, it’s not the lack of foreign policy experience that bothers me about them, but more so an apparent lack of judgment.

From the penumbral and ideologically decadent pages of the Huffington Post, we are given a summary of the goings-ons of the major conservative think tanks.

I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. There are fewer worse ideas out there than socialism, and the concept of a living wage is just plain silly. I wish someone, anyone, on the Left would go to the trouble to take one simple basic economics course.

Ah, but with a literary wag of my finger, I warn you that correspondence classes with the University of Moscow do not count.

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

Economist Bruce Bartlett (no liberal, by any stretch) comes out with a fourteen page offensive demonstrating the many drawbacks to the Fair Tax. Among the many problems noted by Bartlett, these struck me as the most notable. My summary, in order of importance:

1. Prices and wages can be sticky. The implementation of the 22% (or 23%, or 30% – see below) sales tax will be immediately felt in an inflationary way, even though, from a balance sheet perspective, the elimination of the income tax should result in an eventual wash. In the meantime, until wages fall and reach the new equalibrium of the post-income tax world, we have a significant problem.

2. There’s no guarantee the federal reserve can manage the money supply sufficiently to ward off the deleterious effects noted above.

3. The actual Fair Tax rate is more like 30%, not 23%. Bartlett notes the discrepancy in salesmanship this way

Unfortunately, the Fair Tax rate is not really 23%. It’s actually 30% when thought about the same way we think of state sales taxes. The 23% figure is what is known as the tax-inclusive rate; the 30% rate is called the tax-exclusive rate. Think of the difference this way: You go to the store now and buy something for $1.00. The FairTax adds 30 percent for a total price of $1.30. Since the 30-cent tax is 23% of $1.30, this is where the 23 percent figure comes from.

It’s in the details, but you never hear about. The new, revised sales tax rate is now at 31.27%.

4. The inclusion of state and local governments as part of the tax base is deceptive. Any increase in the costs to local governments will necessarily be borne by the tax base under their respective jurisdictions. This means, on average an average increase in local sales taxes by 80%. If you take the governments out of the tax base, the actual rate of the national Fair Tax increases to absurd levels. Further, the rebate portion of the plan is accounted for as an expansion of the tax base, not government spending, which it is.

There are many more holes in the concept. Read the Bartlett article in its entirety for the rest of the skinny. Ilya Somin has a brief summary here.

There is a smattering of new laws going into effect in Tennessee come January 1, 2008. Always the most interesting to me, considering what I do on a daily basis, are the new criminal statutes. The Crooks with Guns law, as it has been entitled, drastically increases the punishments for gun related crimes associated with the commission of certain enumerated “dangerous felonies”. I have uploaded a quick outline summary I did of the law this morning here (the entire statute can be found here). The operative elements of the new TCA 39-17-1324 are as follows:

(a) Possessing a firearm with the intent to go armed during the commission of or attempt to commit a dangerous felony

(b) Possessing a firearm during

1. the commission of a dangerous felony;

2. an attempt to commit a dangerous felony;

3. flight or escape from the commission of a dangerous felony;

4. flight or escape from the attempt to commit a dangerous felony.

The teeth are in the sentencing. If the defendant has a prior felony conviction, the law creates a new class of felony, essentially a “Super C Class” and a “Super D Class”. Violations of subsection (b) are deemed a Class C felony, but demand a mandatory minimum ten (10) year sentence with zero release eligibility, and no option for supervised release. However, the standard Class C felony for a Range I offender is three (3) to six (6) years. The new law stands alone at a minimum of ten (10) years, regardless of the range of the offender (this isn’t problematic with Range II offenders, where the range itself is six (6) to ten (10) years, where the minimum simply becomes the maximum already allowed in the range). A violation of subsection (a) is a Class D felony, with a minimum sentence of five (5) years if the defendant has a prior felony conviction. Without a prior felony conviction, the minimums are six (6) and three (3) years, respectively.

As well, jail credit is tweaked with the new law. In Department of Correction custody, one typically qualifies for “good time”, which is usually getting three days of credit against your sentence for every two you serve (standard in local Davidson County custody, which is for sentences under six (6) years, is two days for every one day you serve). The Crooks with Guns law largely eliminates such good time – akin to federal sentencing rules, you can complete your sentence no earlier than after having served 85% of it.

One aspect of the proposed change in the gun laws puzzles me, however, In amending TCA 39-17-1307, possessing a deadly weapon that is not a firearm in the commission of a “dangerous felony” as listed in the Crooks with Guns law is a standard Class E felony. That part makes sense, and would apply to knives, pool cues, baseball bats, etc. However, possessing a firearm in the commission, attempt to commit or escape from a non-dangerous “offense” (note, not felony) is a Class E felony. A Class E felony entails a one (1) to two (2) year sentence for a Range I offender. So, in essence, if you possess a firearm while committing the least serious misdemeanor, you could suffer a felony conviction (think Driving on a Suspended License because of unpaid tickets, or Criminal Trespass, both Class C Misdemeanors – and the way it is written, possessing a valid concealed carry permit wouldn’t matter a lick).

To me, this part seems to be an overreach of the law, and would operate entirely outside the spirit of the Crooks with Guns law. Hopefully the amended wording won’t be enforced in that manner, but with the way the legislature wrote it, my reading certainly confirms the new law would allow it.

Kat Coble takes offense at my previous post asserting that child obesity is a form of abuse. Fair enough … disagree all you want. But, don’t write falsehoods about my statements in the process.

Ms. Coble writes the following on her blog:

Sarah Moore writes this morning in praise of the British government’s attempts to take custody of a fat 8 year-old from his parents.

She must be reading between some lines that don’t exist on my post. Where is this supposed praise? My focus is on frustration with the parents, not the actions of the government. Sometimes children do need to be taken out of dangerous home situations, but that was not the argument I made in my post. I dole out my praise very carefully … don’t assign such an action to me when it doesn’t exist.

Bottom line is that attitudes like Sarah Moore’s–of seeing fat parents with their fat kids in McDonalds and being disgusted–bug the krep out of me in a big way. It’s prejudice cloaked in moral superiority.

I did not write that I was disgusted, and I would never use such a word to describe the situation. I wrote that it makes me sad, and that’s the truth. Do not change my emotions for me. Being sad and being disgusted are two very different things.
It’s not an issue of prejudice. It’s concern for the welfare of a child. I am libertarian as far as adults are concerned. If you are over eighteen, do whatever you want to your body as long as you don’t harm others in the process. But, children shouldn’t have to deal with the poor decisions made by their parents. That’s why I favor seatbelt laws for children only … they aren’t old enough to make that decision. Same thing goes for food. and physical fitness.

I’m sorry that Ms. Coble gets so upset that I have concern for the health of a child.

UPDATE: Now Aunt B over at “Tiny Cat Pants” gets in on misinterpreting what I write.  She offers the following:

Sarah Moore acts like a dink.  Coble calls her on it.  And Sarah Moore makes it worse.

Keep an eye out for the meat of Moore’s argument, which seems to be “Fat people don’t make me feel disgusted; they make me feel sad.  See, that’s totally different.  I’m not hostile; I’m patronizing.  And it’s okay to be patronizing; it shows you care.”

Wrong.  I could care less if an adult is overweight.  An adult who has some extra poundage evokes no feelings of sadness in me whatsoever.  In some cases this weight is a choice, in others it’s not.  Not my concern either way.  I am specifically referring to children who have no choice in their diet and are being fed crap on a regular basis.  That is not patronizing — I just can’t imagine not feeling concern for every kid on this planet.
Perhaps if I had used the word “f***” in its various forms throughout my post, Aunt B would be more likely to understand what I wrote and wouldn’t jump to wrong conclusions.

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

A new ad from John Edwards entitled “Time for Truth”

“These big corporations, in their greed — they are stealing your children’s future.”

The link to view the ad is here. Yes, big corporations, and their greed. Sigh. Has anyone actually, empirically, without the use of populist tripe, ever shown how big business hurts the economy? I have yet to come across anyone employing a populist screed like John Edwards back it up with anything but a higher decibel level, which ironically, is what Edwards does at the end of this thirty second spot. The Breck girl is certainly in fine form.

Just the facts, m’am – just the facts.

Captain’s Quarters has assembled world reactions to Bhutto’s assassination

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner: “[T]his horrible act … reaffirms France’s commitment to the stability of Pakistan and its democracy.”

India: “[W]e must express our deep concern at anything that disrupts and disturbs the even keel of democratic governance in Pakistan.”

Iran: “We hope the Pakistani government will identify and bring to justice those behind such a criminal act and restore tranquility to the country.”

Russia: “We strongly condemn this terrorist act, present our condolences to the family and friends of Benazir Bhutto and hope that Pakistani authorities will provide for national stability.”

India’s further reaction will be interesting to watch, as well as the prospects of increased Iranian interference in internal Pakistani affairs.

I’ll have more thoughts on it later, more related to how the presidential candidates respond throughout the day than how things are evolving on the ground in Asia. As usual, the best place on the web to follow developments is Drudge.

Pakistan was already a mess. Now it’s a nuclear empowered bigger mess. I don’t think there’s much more expert analysis needed, and I’m not one to offer it. Muslim fundamentalists executed a pro-Western, female candidate for prime minister, largely because she was female, and had threatened to do so multiple times before. I’m not among the surprised.

UPDATE More from Bob Krumm

Byron York opines on the potential political fallout of the Bhutto assassination. He contends that this hurts Iowa frontrunners Huckabee and Romney, helps Giuliani and McCain, and would help Fred Thompson if more people were paying attention to him. By the same logic, someone else it helps is Hillary. That’s because we will be reminded that very recently Obama had some very naive things to say about Pakistan.

Add this to the recent Iowa polling, and Michelle Obama may prove to be quite the distinguished prophetess.

Apparently, Barack Obama is drafting black South Carolina ministers into compulsive service

Earlier this month, Obama’s campaign released a list of what it said were nearly 130 senior pastors in South Carolina endorsing his run for the Democratic nomination. But when contacted by The Associated Press, several ministers said they have yet to decide who will get their vote and were unclear how they ended up on the Illinois senator’s list.

“I really haven’t decided to endorse him yet. I was thinking about it,” said the Rev. Clifford Gaymon of Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church in rural Clarendon County.

…

But some ministers said their names were used without their permission. Gaymon, mistakenly listed as retired on the Obama list, said he’s been to campaign events to find out more about the Illinois senator, but did not receive a phone call about making an endorsement.

The Rev. Michael Blue of Door of Hope Christian Church in Marion was added to the list without permission and has asked the Obama campaign to take his name off the list, said church spokesman Ronnie Green.

Apparently, Hillary has had a similar problem. No word yet on whether the ministers who have requested removal from Obama’s list have pooled enough money to get on Mike Huckabee’s.

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

Fred Thompson had this stinger to offer Hillary Clinton

“There is no woman on the horizon that ought to be president next year, let’s all agree on that.”

I’ve said it before,  and I hope through next year I remain right. Both the first black president and the first woman president will both be Republicans. Count on it.

Politico has a roundup sorta post on Barack Obama’s developing populist persona (forgive the colloquialism – I was simply following Obama’s script, which you can see if you click through).

Populism as a strategy certainly feels good in the short term.  Huckabee is all over it. Obama is pushing it. Edwards started it. Ron Paul is a short lived phenom because of it.  But on a national level, over the long hall, it never works. Not since 1828, anyway.

Howard Dean waxed populist in 2004, and it was a scream.  Al Gore went that route in 2000, and almost covered by stealing Florida. One has to go back aways from there to see a truly populist centered campaign.  But unless you count Jimmy Carter in 1976, no one has won in that particular style, and even that was only on the heels of the most devastating presidential scandal since Teapot Dome.

Every time I hear Obama, Edwards and Huckabee speak, my thoughts drift, wondering which one of them will be the first to do a “cross of gold” campaign spot – Huckabee came close. Unfortunately, white crosses don’t count.

Obama is the populist to watch, though. Channeling legendary progressive Henry Wallace, and lifting some of his mid-20th century copy, Obama now seems set to ride out Iowa on niche populist issues, employing a two-forked message focusing on agricultural subsidies and protectionist trade policies. If it works, we may be in for a treat – Obama’s first five year plan would likely be unveiled in New Hampshire.

Before Catherine was born, Nathan and I agreed upon a fair division of sports allegiances that we would try to impart upon our daughter. Nathan gets the Tennessee Titans and the Atlanta Braves. I get the Maryland Terrapins for both basketball and football (sorry, Catherine … it’s not looking so good these days). We share the Nashville Predators and Sounds.

I have tried to play along, even purchasing a generic Titans jersey for my daughter (as seen in this photo taken several months ago).

I want the Titans to make the playoffs, as this will make my husband happy. However, in the unlikely event that both the Steelers and Titans proceed far enough into the playoffs to face each other, I may have to sneak a Steelers t-shirt under Catherine’s jersey. That way, when the Steelers roll over the Titans with a convincing victory, Catherine can reveal the black and gold with pride. The girl needs something since my pathetic Terps are 6-6 so far this season, including two losses at home against non-ACC opponents. Maybe our baseball team is good this year …

I have been lamenting for months that there was no candidate in the field of presidential contenders who inspired me. I was beginning to fear that I would not be able to bring myself to push the button for anyone come November 2008. I can now lay those fears to rest. Cynthia McKinney is running for president!  All of those evenings I spent on bended knee praying to God for a real leader to take the helm for our country have been well-spent.

I’ve never voted for a Green Party candidate before, but I believe that I am ready to make that leap.  Who could not support a politician who has spoken such true words of wisdom:

“Gore’s Negro tolerance level has never been too high. I’ve never known him to have more than one black person around him at any given time.”

Is there a meter for gauging such tolerance? Does it resemble a pedometer in any way? If so, perhaps we can affix them to people across the country and monitor “Negro tolerance levels”. I smell a doctoral thesis! Someone’s gonna get a grant!

“I see many parallels between rapper Tupac Shakur’s death and the attacks and deaths carried out by the FBI … against political musicians and activists since the 1950s.”

I’m on the highway with you, Ms. McKinney, but I’m in a different lane. I think that the murder of Notorious B.I.G. was a much better example of government assassination of a rap “artist”. Everyone knows that East Coast rap is a much bigger threat to national security than the lightweight rhymes put down by those West Coast losers.

“The Israeli occupation of all territories must end, including Congress.”

The next time I’m at one of those anti-war rallies that I frequent, I am going to carry a Congress flag next to my Palestinian flag.  I hope I can hold both of them and my drum all at the same time.  Liberation from the Zionist Empire!

“Eight generations of African-Americans are still waiting to achieve their rights – compensation and restitution for the hundreds of years during which they were bought and sold on the market.”

Wow! I didn’t realize there are still eight generations of African Americans currently alive. Has the Guinness Book of World Records been notified? The matriarch of that family tree must be really old!! As I’ve stated before, if we discover a living person who was a slave in this country, then our government should give him all he wants and more.

Thank you, Ms. McKinney, for restoring my hope for the 2008 election.  I look forward to the opening of your Nashville office so that I can volunteer.  In the meantime, I am saving a spot on my bumper for a campaign sticker.

I ran across this scanning the Tennessee blogs today (courtesies go here)

A Knoxville native is the Tennessee citizen journalist on MTV’s Street Team ‘08, which was announced last week.

The Street Team is made up of 51 citizen reporters who will follow the 2008 election with weekly multimedia reports optimized for mobile devices. See a story with the full list.

The reports will be distributed on MTV’s mobile site, its social site think.mtv.com and the Associated Press’ Online Video Network, which includes knoxnews.com.

The Tennessee reporter is Nashville-based Dustin Ogdin, a documentary filmmaker, whose latest project is “Shielded Brutality.” He also did a short this year on the “living wage” controversy at Vanderbilt University.

This sounds, well…useless.

The technology idea is great. I’m all for more of it, especially in covering politics. Unfortunately it’s an MTV product, which means that no one who watches it will be awake in time to vote. I assume there is a hope that the inclusion with the AP sites might offer some sort of journalistic redemption.

One doesn’t have to be an old codger to realize the relative unimportance of the youth vote. The eighteen to twenty-nine demographic, which, mind you, I am barely detached from, is good for many economically important things (such as our nation’s future), but voting in the present is not one of them. In fact, they are pretty darn awful at it.

Remember the “Vote or Die” ad campaign from 2004? I think Paris Hilton was involved, who didn’t vote. Its sponsor, P. Diddy, wasn’t registered either. Serving the logic of the campaign, apparently, tragically, a lot of young people died.

Hunter Thompson said it well

“Yeah, we rocked the vote all right,” quips Hunter S. Thompson, the gonzo journalist himself. “Those little bastards betrayed us again.”

So beware you candidates who rely on the unreliable. Howard Dean learned the lesson, and only lived to scream about it. My sixth sense points me this year to another victim. If Hillary holds it together (a big “if”), the Barack Obama candidacy still remains in great peril. Betting the political farm on the support of my generation is akin to navigating Cape Horn in the SS Minnow. If I were Obama, I’d stay away from the red long sleeves.

UPDATE On topic, the AP’s quote-of-the-day (the day being Christmas Eve, 2007)

“Many candidates over the years have said they’ll bring in more young people and more women to the caucuses. Virtually all of those efforts have been failures. No matter how much hoopla surrounds the caucuses, the people who show up tend to be the party regulars.” – Hugh Winebrenner, an emeritus professor and caucus historian at Iowa’s Drake University.

Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, recently jailed Russian dissident, comments on Vladimir Putin’s ascendancy

The free press has been demolished, elections are canceled and rigged, and then we hear how popular Mr. Putin is. Opposition marches are crushed, and we’re told–over and over–how much better off we are today than in the days of the Soviet Union. This week Time magazine named Mr. Putin its 2007 “Person of the Year.”

Unfortunately, there is no silver lining to Russia’s descent into dictatorship. If anything there is a look of iron to it.

It’s worth a complete read. It is, in fact, your father’s Russia.

You do it like Mitt Romney

“The Monitor’s editorial board is regarded as a liberal one on many issues, so it is not surprising that they would criticize Governor Romney for his conservative views and platform,” said Romney spokesman Kevin Madden. “Governor Romney has taken firm positions that are at odds with the board’s support for driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, their position against school choice and their advocacy for taking ‘Under God’ out of the Pledge of Allegiance. The governor happens to disagree with the editorial board on all those issues.”

New Hampshire’s Concord Monitor is the offending party.  As far as Republicans go, there aren’t too many newspaper editorial boards of which any of us ought to be seeking approval. Even in the primary process, most boards tend to support whoever they view as the least offensive Republican candidate – the Concord Monitor endorsed John Kerry in the 2004 general and Al Gore in 2000.  It is especially odd in this instance that the Monitor hasn’t yet endorsed anyone, but went out of its way to slam Romney, who has been very public, and in my view, non-evasive, in his explanations addressing his changes on some of the issues.

As noted above, the Monitor endorsed notable flip-flopper Al Gore in 2000.  As many may know, Al Gore used to be pro-life, and pro-gun, but through a series of evolutions (presumably accelerated by global warming), shifted liberal on both. Prior to the 2000 election and his present life as a Nobel Prize winning liberal darling, Al Gore was a gentlemanly Southern Democrat  I guess with the Concord Monitor it’s not so much that you changed where you once were, but that you end up where they want you to be.

It comes from local Nashville columnist Saritha Prabhu

Meanwhile, the “planetary emergency” continues, and I’ll close with a wayward, if slightly macabre, thought: When the planet gives one last heave and decides to get rid of us, as I’m floating along in that last tidal wave or whatever, it’ll be one last consolation, before I go under, to pry that soggy global-warming-denying report from the deniers’ cold, dead hands.

Is it any wonder that advocates of man-made global warming are starting to be taken less and less seriously?

This guy would be a lot of fun at a party. But what about Visa?

I am only thirty-two years old, so perhaps I am too young to begin a “back in my day” or “these young whippersnappers” routine. However, I have been quite irritated with the behavior of some youth in my neighborhood this week and I’m wondering if my frustrations are off-base.

A couple of days, a group of three teenaged boys (perhaps around fourteen years old) was skateboarding down my street. Every other word out of their mouths was “f***in’” or “f***ed”. I find it so disturbing that this type of language is so casually included as an integral part of communication. (They also spoke the sign language version of the word to an innocent SUV that drove by)

I NEVER used that kind of language when I was in high school, and rarely find that word exit my lips today. I think it only happens when I get caught behind a minivan driver going ten miles under the speed limit with no knowledge of how to use a turn signal (and then I feel quite bad about using such language). I remember spending the night at my friend Suzanne’s house when I was around eleven. We decided we were going to say cuss words out loud. We had to do it at the same time, because we were too scared to perform such a feat solo. So, I would say, “Let’s say the ’s’ one.” Then, we would count to three and quietly whisper that particular four-letter word. I felt so guilty that I told my mom about it when I went home in the morning. Now, these words just seem to be another part of a kid’s vocabulary.

I wasn’t just bothered because the boys were using such an offensive word. It’s also the people around whom they decided to say it. An elderly gentleman who was sitting on his front porch just shook his head in disgust as the kids screamed and skated past his house. And, they continued the tirade of “f” bombs as they went past Catherine, who was playing in the front yard.  I threw them a dirty look and said, “Nice language”, to which they responded by laughing and pointing at Catherine.

I understand that when you get more than one teenager in the same place, the need to impress is automatic.   I’ve heard kids using bad language walking out of the Y, hanging out in the library, waiting for the school bus and so on.  I guess these offensive words sound cool or grown-up to them.  Every time I hear that garbage coming out of their mouths, though, I am saddened by the coarseness and poor behavior that appears to be so commonplace now.