As I went on vacation at the end of July, Barack Obama was leading John McCain by three to four percentage points in national polls. When I returned last week he still was. But lo and behold, a whole new plot twist had rolled off the bloviation assembly line in those intervening two weeks: Obama had lost the election!
The poor guy should be winning in a landslide against the despised party of Bush-Cheney, and he's not. He should be passing the 50 percent mark in polls, and he's not. He's been done in by that ad with Britney and Paris and by a new international crisis that allows McCain to again flex his Manchurian Candidate military cred. Let the neocons identify a new battleground for igniting World War III, whether Baghdad or Tehran or Moscow, and McCain gets with the program as if Angela Lansbury has just dealt him the Queen of Hearts.
Obama has also been defeated by racism (again). He can't connect and "close the deal" with ordinary Americans too doltish to comprehend a multicultural biography that includes what Cokie Roberts of ABC News has damned as the "foreign, exotic place" of Hawaii. As The Economist sums up the received wisdom, "lunch-pail Ohio Democrats" find Obama's ideas of change "airy-fairy" and are all asking, "Who on earth is this guy?" ...continue reading
Blowback from Bear Baiting
By Patrick Buchanan
Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.
Nasser's blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili's blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili's army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.
Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin.
Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America's lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli.
Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear.
American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight -- Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end. ...continue reading
Obama, McCain discuss faith, issues at Saddleback Church forum
By Maeve Reston and Seema Mehta
The presidential candidates were on stage together for just a moment, but John McCain and Barack Obama offered an arresting contrast Saturday night both stylistically and on sensitive issues, most sharply on abortion.
In the two-hour forum at Orange County's Saddleback Church, Obama told Pastor Rick Warren that it was "above my pay grade" to define when a baby gets human rights, while McCain quickly answered, "At the moment of conception."
The Republican candidate had the easier task in the back-to-back interviews before about 2,800 members of the evangelical church in Lake Forest. He drew frequent applause with crisp answers intended to reinforce his conservative credentials. ….continue reading
Presumptive Presidential nominees Senator John McCain (Rep. - Ariz.) and Senator Barack Obama (Dem. - Ill.) appeared jointly Saturday evening at a forum hosted by the Rev. Rick Warren (center) at his Saddleback Church in Orange County, California.
Is Jon Stewart the Most Trusted Man in America?
By Michiko Kakutani
IT'S been more than eight years since "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" made its first foray into presidential politics with the presciently named Indecision 2000, and the difference in the show's approach to its coverage then and now provides a tongue-in-cheek measure of the show's striking evolution.
In 1999, the "Daily Show" correspondent Steve Carell struggled to talk his way off Senator John McCain's overflow press bus -- "a repository for outcasts, misfits and journalistic bottom-feeders" -- and onto the actual Straight Talk Express, while at the 2000 Republican Convention Mr. Stewart self-deprecatingly promised exclusive coverage of "all the day's events -- at least the ones we're allowed into." In this year's promotional spot for "The Daily Show's" convention coverage, the news newbies have been transformed into a swaggering A Team -- "the best campaign team in the universe ever," working out of " 'The Daily Show' news-scraper: 117 stories, 73 situation rooms, 26 news tickers," and promising to bring "you all the news stories -- first ... before it's even true."
A Two-Sided Descent Into Full-Scale War
"The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart
By Peter Finn
TSKHINVALI, Georgia, Aug. 16 -- Nine days ago, late in the afternoon of Aug. 7, Georgian tanks, artillery and infantry began moving out of bases in Georgia and toward South Ossetia, a zone long held by separatists who are backed by Moscow.
About 800 troops from Georgia's 4th Battalion left a base in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, that Thursday afternoon, according to Georgian Defense Minister Davit Kezerashvili. Later that day, units armed with the BM-21 Grad, a multiple rocket system whose World War II version was known as Stalin's Rain, moved out of their base in Gori, about 40 miles away.
As the Georgian units approached the contested zone from the south, Russian army forces were massed just to its north, separated from it only by the 4,000-yard-long Roki Tunnel through the Caucasus Mountains. The Russian units were receiving intelligence reports about the Georgian movement. About 8 p.m., Russian military aircraft took off and skirted Georgian airspace, staying just outside it, according to Kezerashvili. ….continue reading
Though this spot is the program's mocking sendup of itself and the news media's mania for self-promotion, it inadvertently gets at one very real truth: the emergence of "The Daily Show" as a genuine cultural and political force. When Americans were asked in a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press to name the journalist they most admired, Mr. Stewart, the fake news anchor, came in at No. 4, tied with the real news anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS and Anderson Cooper of CNN. And a study this year from the center's Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded that " 'The Daily Show' is clearly impacting American dialogue" and "getting people to think critically about the public square." ….continue reading
Obama Raises Over $51 Million In July
By Sarah Wheaton and William Bardenwerper
The Obama campaign said on Saturday that it received more than $51 million in July -- including contributions from 65,000 new donors -- slightly less than the previous month.
The report on donations to Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, followed by one day figures made public by the campaign of Senator John McCain, which took in a more modest $27 million last month.
Still, July was the best fund-raising month ever for Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, and the fifth month in a row that donations to his campaign exceeded those of the previous month.
The Obama campaign said it had $65.8 million on hand, compared with Mr. McCain's $21.4 million at the end of July. ….continue reading
Forces Align Against Republicans In Senate Races
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Even the top Republican in charge of the party's Senate campaigns concedes that the GOP will lose seats this year -- the only question is how many.
With President Bush's ratings at rock-bottom, fewer Republicans signing up to vote, and voters nationally gravitating toward Democrats in public polls, the GOP is bracing for defeats in November that will expand Democrats' now razor-thin 51-49 majority in the Senate.
Democrats have solid chances of winning five seats, according to strategists in both parties and public polls, and realistic shots at picking off another three to five Republican senators. Republicans have only one good opportunity for replacing a Democrat, in Louisiana.
A quirk of the political calendar -- Republicans are defending 23 seats this year to Democrats' 12 -- put the GOP at a disadvantage from the start. Worse still, those include five Republican retirements -- which typically make it harder to keep a seat -- compared to none among Democrats. ….continue reading
Windmills Split Town And
Families
Pakistan's Musharraf Facing Impeachment Countdown
By Helen O'Neill
LOWVILLE, N.Y. - "Listen," John Yancey says, leaning against his truck in a field outside his home.
The rhythmic whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of wind turbines echoes through the air. Sleek and white, their long propeller blades rotate in formation, like some otherworldly dance of spindly-armed aliens swaying across the land. ….continue reading
ISLAMABAD (AFP) -- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf Sunday faced a countdown to possible impeachment after the coalition government said he had until the end of the weekend to stand down.
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on Saturday that the key US ally had to make a decision on resigning to avoid being impeached "by today or tomorrow, as there is no room for any delay".
The coalition, led by the party of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, also said it had finalised impeachment charges against Musharraf and would lodge them in parliament early next week.
Talks between Musharraf's aides and the government aimed at securing him indemnity from prosecution have been hampered meanwhile by the opposition of Nawaz Sharif, another ex-premier.
Saudi Arabia and reportedly the United States and Britain have all sent envoys in a bid to resolve the crisis in the nuclear-armed nation, a frontline state in the "war on terror".
No president has been impeached before in Pakistan's 61-year history. ….continue reading
