Kautzman’s AP GO PO Blog

by Charles Krauthammer

About the only thing more comical than Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was the reaction of those who deemed the award “premature,” as if the brilliance of Obama’s foreign policy is so self-evident and its success so assured that if only the Norway Five had waited a few years, his Nobel worthiness would have been universally acknowledged.

To believe this, you have to be a dreamy adolescent (preferably Scandinavian and a member of the Socialist International) or an indiscriminate imbiber of White House talking points. After all, this was precisely the spin on the president’s various apology tours through Europe and the Middle East: National self-denigration – excuse me, outreach and understanding – is not meant to yield immediate results; it simply plants the seeds of good feeling from which foreign policy successes shall come.

Chauncey Gardiner could not have said it better. Well, at nine months, let’s review.

What’s come from Obama holding his tongue while Iranian demonstrators were being shot and from his recognizing the legitimacy of a thug regime illegitimately returned to power in a fraudulent election? Iran cracks down even more mercilessly on the opposition and races ahead with its nuclear program.

What’s come from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking human rights off the table on a visit to China and from Obama’s shameful refusal to see the Dalai Lama (a postponement, we are told). China hasn’t moved an inch on North Korea, Iran or human rights. Indeed it’s pushing with Russia to dethrone the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

What’s come from the new-respect-for-Muslims Cairo speech and the unprecedented pressure on Israel for a total settlement freeze? “The settlement push backfired,” reports the Washington Post, and Arab-Israeli peace prospects have “arguably regressed.”

And what’s come from Obama’s single most dramatic foreign policy stroke – the sudden abrogation of missile defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed? For the East Europeans it was a crushing blow, a gratuitous restoration of Russian influence over a region that thought it had regained independence under American protection.

But maybe not gratuitous. Surely we got something in return for selling out our friends. Some brilliant secret trade-off to get strong Russian support for stopping Iran from going nuclear before it’s too late?

Just wait and see, said administration officials, who then gleefully played up an oblique statement by President Dmitry Medvedev a week later as vindication of the missile defense betrayal.

The Russian statement was so equivocal that such a claim seemed a ridiculous stretch at the time. Well, Clinton went to Moscow this week to nail down the deal. What did she get?

“Russia Not Budging On Iran Sanctions: Clinton Unable to Sway Counterpart.” Such was the Washington Post headline’s succinct summary of the debacle.

Note how thoroughly Clinton was rebuffed. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that “threats, sanctions and threats of pressure” are “counterproductive.” Note: It’s not just sanctions that are worse than useless, but even the threat of mere pressure.

It gets worse. Having failed to get any movement from the Russians, Clinton herself moved – to accommodate the Russian position! Sanctions? What sanctions? “We are not at that point yet,” she averred. “That is not a conclusion we have reached … it is our preference that Iran work with the international community.”

But wait a minute. Didn’t Obama say in July that Iran had to show compliance by the G-20 summit in late September? And when that deadline passed, did he not then warn Iran that it would face “sanctions that have bite” and that it would have to take “a new course or face consequences”?

Gone with the wind. It’s the U.S. that’s now retreating from its already flimsy position of just three weeks ago. We’re not doing sanctions now, you see. We’re back to engagement. Just as the Russians suggest.

Henry Kissinger once said that the main job of Anatoly Dobrynin, the perennial Soviet ambassador to Washington, was to tell the Kremlin leadership that whenever they received a proposal from the United States that appeared disadvantageous to the United States, not to assume it was a trick.

No need for a Dobrynin today. The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck, needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and “reset” buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naiveté, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels.

Charles Krauthammer is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group. His e-mail address is letters@ charleskrauthammer.com.

by Kathleen Parker
The Spokesman-Review

As the Republican Party continues its pilgrimage through the desert, its leaders may be missing the oasis for the vale of tears.

The answer to the party’s woes isn’t a revamped Web site (GOP.com) offering – wowser! – really cool social networking platforms.

The answer won’t be found in the sudden realization that 83 percent of people 18 to 24 have an online profile – or other late-breaking revelations that merely reinforce the perception of the GOP as woefully behind the curve.

The answer is … drumroll, please … women.

If the GOP is really serious about expanding the party, it’s time for the men to hush and let the pros take over. As the saying goes: If you need something done, hire a busy woman. Or, as the White House Project puts it: “Add women, change everything.”

In the past few months, several conservative women have emerged as candidates and critics to challenge the notion that the GOP is the party of men. They’re also putting to rest any thought that Sarah Palin is the female face of the party.

The McCain campaign had the right idea; it just picked the wrong woman.

Among the newer comers are two mega-businesswomen and two famous daughters, representing younger generations with divergent ideas. Although these aren’t the only Republican women rising, they offer a glimpse at what could become a surge of hormonal correction on the conservative side.

First up in this new league of their own are two celebrity entrepreneurs. Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay, is running for governor of California. And Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett-Packard CEO, plans to challenge California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. Neither woman has any political experience beyond advising and stumping for Sen. John McCain during his last presidential run, but that would seem a bonus to an incumbent-weary nation.

Fiorina, the first woman to run a Fortune 20 company, has lost some of her early luster with Republican voters, according to a recent Field Poll. And Democrats have criticized her as “one of the 20 worst CEOs in the country,” a bold charge from the party that propelled a community organizer with zero executive experience to the White House.

Fiorina’s lower numbers are likely a reflection of her reduced visibility recently while undergoing breast cancer treatments. By contrast, her Republican opponent has been stumping to the tune of more than 160 political events since last November. A close adviser says Fiorina, who is “definitely running,” is on the mend and expects to be locked and loaded in a couple of weeks.

Billionaire Whitman is running a tight race against two opponents for the Republican nomination, spending much of her own money along the way. If she wins – and then defeats Democrat Jerry Brown (big ifs) – she would become one of only four Republican women governors.

This deficit in high office is both a taint on the GOP and a reflection of the broader assumption that Republicans are monolithically against women’s rights. Specifically, the party’s pro-life platform alienates pro-choice women, as well as moderates, who otherwise might find common cause with conservative principles.

Women such as pro-choice Whitman and “personally” pro-life Fiorina could help change that impression, while also raising other issues women care about. Fiorina caused a slight ripple in the Republican zeitgeist during McCain’s campaign when she criticized insurance companies for covering Viagra and not birth control.

Meanwhile, another Meg (McCain) and Liz Cheney, daughter of the former vice president, have emerged as strong voices in a party with too few sopranos.

It isn’t quite fair to group McCain with Cheney, given their respective resumes – one a 24-year-old celebrity blogger whose fame is (thus far) inherited and the other, Cheney, 43, a former deputy assistant secretary of state. But both are relatively fresh voices with instant name recognition. And each appeals to a different, perhaps untapped, demographic.

Cheney, recently dubbed a “red-state rock star,” just launched a new Web site, KeepAmericaSafe.com, where she and others plan to critique foreign policy issues. And the socially liberal McCain, though she may not please the party elders, appeals to younger voters who otherwise wouldn’t consider lifting the flap on the old man’s tent.

Four women: a pro-life hawk; a pro-choice, pro-gay rights libertarian; two entrepreneurs, one pro-choice and one pro-life. This doesn’t sound like your daddy’s Republican Party, but it could be your daughter’s – if the men wise up.

Kathleen Parker is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group. Her e-mail address is kathleenparker@ washpost.com.

Charles Krauthammer is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group. His e-mail address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com.

Derrick Skaug (former MSHS AP GO PO Student)

The Daily Evergreen

Published: 08/31/2009 6:49pm

Being called a liberal used to be an insult, but after eight years of former President George W. Bush, being a liberal is not only acceptable, it is preferable. Now that conservatives have realized tarring someone as a liberal is not an effective election strategy, dirtier words are being slung.

President Barack Obama’s economic policies are being labeled as socialism, communism and even fascism. I will not speak for the legitimacy of communism or fascism because both systems are, at best, ineffective and, at worst, dangerous. Socialism, on the other hand, should not be considered an insult or something to be feared because we are all socialists.

It’s true. No matter what Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck say, the U.S. has been a socialist state for a very long time. Not one country on earth operates under a true laissez-faire economy.

Every single student at WSU is supporting a socialist program – public schools. A socialist education system still offers choice unlike communist systems. Parents can pay to have their children attend a private school, or they can send their kids to a taxpayer-supported public school.

The shipping and mail industry is the same way. When I buy products off of Ebay or Amazon, some of my products are delivered by FedEx. On the other hand, the U.S. Postal Service, which is an independent government agency, which provides jobs for Americans, delivers the rest of my mail.

The U.S Constitution actually gives Congress the right to set up post offices. Apparently, that dreaded socialism even managed to taint our sacred constitution.

Another government-funded segment of society interfering with the free market nature of raging wildfires is the fire department. A scene in Martin Scorsese’s film “Gangs of New York” depicted two private firefighting companies grappling over who would get to put out a raging inferno that was destroying an entire city block. This was not drawn out of thin air. A vast multitude of private fire companies did exist. Thankfully, very few still do. A true, free market supporter should find the closest private firefighting company and put that number on speed dial.

It’s ironic that the only socialist program that conservatives like to support is the military, which tends to have a monopoly on national defense. Most Americans seem to prefer the military rather than their private sector counterpart, Blackwater. And there seems to be no private sector competitors to the police, except maybe bodyguards.

The question boils down to how conservatives can support so many socialist programs, including the bailouts of entire industries, but not a public health care option.

Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP are all popular socialist health care programs that conservatives would never tamper with. Yet these programs let many Americans fall through the cracks – those with preexisting conditions, the lower-middle class and many others. Most Americans just want to be able to make their own choice between a public or a private option when it comes health care.

Supporters of a public option are socialists, but then again, aren’t we all?

Illinois Senators Vote 59-0 to Oust ‘Devious’ and ‘Unfit’ Governor

By Kari Lydersen and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 30, 2009; A01

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. Jan. 29 — The state senators stood up one by one in a hushed chamber on Thursday to call Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) a liar and a hypocrite who put his ego and his pocketbook ahead of the interests of Illinois.

One called him “devious, cynical, crass and corrupt.” Another said the evidence of abuse of power was “overwhelming.” A third said he was “without a doubt unfit to govern.”

Together, they voted 59 to 0 to reject Blagojevich’s theatrical last-minute pleas and remove him from office, ending a stormy tenure that left the nation’s fifth-largest state paralyzed by its governor’s alleged misdeeds and nationally ridiculed for its latest bout of corruption.

“I believe our state must enter rehab,” Sen. Randall Hultgren (R) told his colleagues before the vote. “Moral rehabilitation.”

Blagojevich’s repudiation in a state where he was elected twice to the governorship and three times to Congress could mark a dramatic exit from the national stage, which he commanded briefly but memorably. His next battle is expected to come in federal court in Chicago, where he risks losing his freedom over allegations that he schemed to trade official actions for political contributions and other favors.

Blagojevich, charged with wire fraud and bribery, is free on $4,500 bond.

Before Thursday’s speechmaking was over, and a pair of unanimous votes were cast to oust Blagojevich and bar him from Illinois public office for life, the governor had already taken his final flight home to Chicago aboard a state airplane. After he arrived, on a darkening winter afternoon, as his fate was about to be sealed, he went for a jog.

Talking with reporters later, he called the verdict “un-American.”

“The fix was in from the beginning,” Blagojevich said, insisting that he wants no pity.

“There are tens of thousands of people across America just like me who are losing their jobs, or who have lost their jobs,” Blagojevich said. “To the people of Illinois, God bless all of you. I want you to know that I haven’t let you down.”

Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn became the state’s 41st governor and said he would move right away into the Italianate red-brick governor’s mansion that Blagojevich disdained. Quinn supported Blagojevich during their reelection on the Democratic ticket in 2006, but the men have not spoken since August 2007.

“The rule of law prevailed in Illinois. We are ready to move forward,” Quinn said after the vote. “Something I’m going to work on night and day is to ask folks to put aside differences of the past and really focus on the common good. We’re going to make this a year of reform in Illinois.”

Quinn quoted labor leader Cesar Chavez, saying “Sí se puede” — “Yes, we can.”

The impeachment saga moved from drama to farce and back again in the 51 days after FBI agents arrested Blagojevich in the middle of what U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald called “a political corruption crime spree.” Along the way, Blagojevich bucked calls to resign and outmaneuvered Democratic leaders in Springfield and Washington to appoint Roland W. Burris, little known and years out of politics, to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Obama.

Instead of challenging his impeachment, he was 700 miles away when the trial began Monday, denouncing the proceedings in more than a dozen national television interviews as a “kangaroo court.” He showed up only on Thursday, to deliver his own closing argument.

It was a speech long on passion and short on answers, and it did nothing to help his cause. Blagojevich spoke of his immigrant parents, his hard-luck upbringing and good works he claimed as governor. He called the proceedings “an evisceration of the presumption of innocence.”

“There was never a conversation where I intended to break any law,” Blagojevich, 52, told the Senate. “How can you throw a governor out of office on a criminal complaint and you haven’t been able to show or to prove any criminal activity? I’m appealing to you and your sense of fairness.”

His defiance left his accusers unmoved in the face of evidence from witnesses and secret wiretaps that appeared to show that Blagojevich schemed to profit from his official actions: He allegedly tried to sell Obama’s former Senate seat and allegedly plotted to force the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial writers by threatening to withhold $150 million in state money for Wrigley Field, owned by Tribune Co.

Prosecutors said Blagojevich plotted to extort campaign contributions from a racetrack operator, a road contractor and an executive of a Chicago children’s hospital whose doctors were owed $8 million in Medicaid reimbursements.

Senators noted that Blagojevich refused to be questioned under oath about the 13 alleged misdeeds that House prosecutor David Ellis called an “unmistakable” pattern of abuse of power. Ellis paid particular attention to FBI excerpts of 60 taped conversations.

“Our point was on his words, his secretly recorded words, and who in the world was more qualified to testify about the governor’s words than the governor himself?” Ellis asked during his closing argument.

“He talked more about the evidence with Barbara Walters on ‘The View’ than he did in this chamber today, where he’s facing impeachment and removal from office. He could have been here, and he wasn’t.”

“The silence that spoke loudest was the absent voice of the governor,” Sen. Toi Hutchinson (D) said before she voted to remove him. “The price of corruption is high, and the people of my district are tired of paying for it, over and over and over.”

“He reminded us today in real detail,” said Sen. Matt Murphy (R), “that he is an unusually good liar.”

Sen. Kirk Dillard (R) added, tongue in cheek, that Blagojevich has a bright future in Hollywood.

Blagojevich became the first Illinois governor to be impeached and expelled from office. Three Illinois governors since 1973 were convicted after leaving office, including his predecessor, George Ryan (R), who is still in prison.

The Blagojevich saga may be remembered for the target’s salty words, captured on the FBI tapes.

“I’ve got this thing and it’s [expletive] golden,” Blagojevich said of his authority to choose Obama’s successor, “and I’m just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing.”

As Sen. James Meeks (D) informed his colleagues that he was planning to vote to kick Blagojevich out of office, he said, “We have this thing called impeachment and it’s bleeping golden, and we’ve used it the right way.”

Slevin reported from Chicago.

Froma Harrop
The Providence Journal
December 12, 2008

Have New York Democrats lost all self-respect? Their excited talk of whether Caroline Kennedy is “interested” in Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat makes you wonder. The late John F. Kennedy’s daughter has made at least one feeler phone call to New York Gov. David Paterson. And Uncle Teddy, the Massachusetts senator, is busy pulling the levers to slip her in. The seat will be vacant upon Clinton’s confirmation as secretary of state.

This unsavory spectacle has been upstaged by the wild drama in Illinois, where Gov. Rod Blagojevich is being accused of trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat. The doings in New York are not blatant corruption, but they are corrosive to our democratic ideals. Lest anyone forget the point of the American Revolution, our representatives are not chosen by hereditary succession, which, to quote Thomas Paine, “is an insult and imposition on posterity.”

Of course, Caroline can ask for whatever she wants. The astounding part is that the idea of such a request hasn’t been laughed out of the news pages.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, against all evidence, touts Caroline as “a very experienced woman.” Her government service starts and ends at raising private money for the New York City schools. While a worthy endeavor, it’s a socialite’s job.

For nearly four decades after her father’s assassination, Caroline commendably resisted the call to become a Democratic Party ornament. Then at the 2000 Democratic convention, she stepped on the stage to the tune of “Camelot” and, with no little presumption, thanked the American people for “sustaining us through the good times, and the difficult ones, and for helping us dream my father’s dream.” Then she introduced “Uncle Teddy.”

Women’s groups have been eager to see Clinton replaced by another female. The Feminist Majority and the National Organization for Women had already endorsed Carolyn Maloney, a congresswoman who has represented parts of Manhattan and Queens for 15 years.

But if Caroline Kennedy wants the job, all bets are off, according to Feminist Majority President Eleanor Smeal. “You’re talking to someone who thinks Ted Kennedy is the most effective senator there,” Smeal actually told the New York Times.

Here you have it. Without a second thought, feminists talk of throwing a seasoned, self-made professional overboard to make room for a Kennedy princess.

Uncle Ted has been reminding Democrats that Caroline would be backed by – as the Times straightforwardly put it – “the Kennedy family’s extensive fundraising network.” That’s nice, but this is New York state, where electing a Democrat requires no miracle.

Set aside whether any seat should be gender-specific. It certainly shouldn’t be genealogy-specific. But that’s one of Caroline’s selling points, at least from the Kennedy perspective. The seat was held for three years by her uncle Robert F. Kennedy, who was killed in 1968. For this reason, RFK’s son Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was also eying the seat for himself. (Perhaps he could be made ambassador to France, instead.)

Hey, what about the Moynihans? Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan occupied that Senate chair for more than 20 years. No Moynihan has yet come forward to claim it as a family possession to be handed down unto the generations.

Are we really having this conversation?

Paterson says he hasn’t decided whom he will choose, though he notes that Caroline is “thinking about” the Senate position. According to the Times, “Some influential Democrats have privately suggested that given the buzz set off by Ms. Kennedy’s emergence, the governor would have little choice but to appoint her if she decided she truly wanted the job.”

Actually, he does have a choice.

Can New York Democrats summon up some dignity? We shall see.

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By John R. Bolton

July 26, 2008

SEN. BARACK OBAMA said in an interview the day after his Berlin speech that it “allowed me to send a message to the American people that the judgments I have made and the judgments I will make are ones that are going to result in them being safer.”

If that is what the senator thought he was doing, he still has a lot to learn about both foreign policy and the views of the American people. Although well received in the Tiergarten, the Obama speech actually reveals an even more naive view of the world than we had previously been treated to in the United States. In addition, although most of the speech was substantively as content-free as his other campaign pronouncements, when substance did slip in, it was truly radical, from an American perspective.

These troubling comments were not widely reported in the generally adulatory media coverage given the speech, but they nonetheless deserve intense scrutiny. It remains to be seen whether these glimpses into Obama’s thinking will have any impact on the presidential campaign, but clearly they were not casual remarks. This speech, intended to generate the enormous publicity it in fact received, reflects his campaign’s carefully calibrated political thinking. Accordingly, there should be no evading the implications of his statements. Consider just the following two examples.

First, urging greater U.S.-European cooperation, Obama said, “The burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together.” Having earlier proclaimed himself “a fellow citizen of the world” with his German hosts, Obama explained that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Europe proved “that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”

Perhaps Obama needs a remedial course in Cold War history, but the Berlin Wall most certainly did not come down because “the world stood as one.” The wall fell because of a decades-long, existential struggle against one of the greatest totalitarian ideologies mankind has ever faced. It was a struggle in which strong and determined U.S. leadership was constantly questioned, both in Europe and by substantial segments of the senator’s own Democratic Party. In Germany in the later years of the Cold War, Ostpolitik — “eastern politics,” a policy of rapprochement rather than resistance — continuously risked a split in the Western alliance and might have allowed communism to survive. The U.S. president who made the final successful assault on communism, Ronald Reagan, was derided by many in Europe as not very bright, too unilateralist and too provocative.

But there are larger implications to Obama’s rediscovery of the “one world” concept, first announced in the U.S. by Wendell Willkie, the failed Republican 1940 presidential nominee, and subsequently buried by the Cold War’s realities.

The successes Obama refers to in his speech — the defeat of Nazism, the Berlin airlift and the collapse of communism — were all gained by strong alliances defeating determined opponents of freedom, not by “one-worldism.” Although the senator was trying to distinguish himself from perceptions of Bush administration policy within the Atlantic Alliance, he was in fact sketching out a post-alliance policy, perhaps one that would unfold in global organizations such as the United Nations. This is far-reaching indeed.

Second, Obama used the Berlin Wall metaphor to describe his foreign policy priorities as president: “The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.”

This is a confused, nearly incoherent compilation, to say the least, amalgamating tensions in the Atlantic Alliance with ancient historical conflicts. One hopes even Obama, inexperienced as he is, doesn’t see all these “walls” as essentially the same in size and scope. But beyond the incoherence, there is a deeper problem, namely that “walls” exist not simply because of a lack of understanding about who is on the other side but because there are true differences in values and interests that lead to human conflict. The Berlin Wall itself was not built because of a failure of communication but because of the implacable hostility of communism toward freedom. The wall was a reflection of that reality, not an unfortunate mistake.

Tearing down the Berlin Wall was possible because one side — our side — defeated the other. Differences in levels of economic development, or the treatment of racial, immigration or religious questions, are not susceptible to the same analysis or solution. Even more basically, challenges to our very civilization, as the Cold War surely was, are not overcome by naively “tearing down walls” with our adversaries.

Throughout the Berlin speech, there were numerous policy pronouncements, all of them hazy and nonspecific, none of them new or different than what Obama has already said during the long American campaign. But the Berlin framework in which he wrapped these ideas for the first time is truly radical for a prospective American president. That he picked a foreign audience is perhaps not surprising, because they could be expected to welcome a less-assertive American view of its role in the world, at least at first glance. Even anti-American Europeans, however, are likely to regret a United States that sees itself as just one more nation in a “united” world.

The best we can hope for is that Obama’s rhetoric was simply that, pandering to the audience before him, as politicians so often do. We shall see if this rhetoric follows him back to America, either because he continues to use it or because Sen. John McCain asks voters if this is really what they want from their next president.

John R. Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “Surrender Is Not an Option.”

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David Lightman
McClatchy
July 11, 2008

WASHINGTON – The presidential race remains volatile and unpredictable, largely because of a huge bloc of undecided swing voters.

“The middle of the electorate is reasserting itself in this election,” according to a Pew Research Center survey released Thursday.

Among all voters, Democrat Barack Obama leads Republican John McCain by 48 percent to 40 percent. Pew polled 2,004 people by land line and cell phone from June 18 to 29.

The White House hopefuls face an unusual number of variables, and as a result “the outlook for the presidential election in midyear is substantially different than at comparable points in time in recent campaigns,” the survey found.

Among those variables:

•Independents make up about one-third of the electorate, and those who have preferences are split virtually evenly between Obama and McCain, with 42 percent for Obama and 41 percent for McCain.

However, some 46 percent of independents are undecided or only lukewarm toward their current choices. Only 28 percent of them said they’d certainly vote for Obama, while only 26 percent said they were sure to back McCain.

•Both candidates “face formidable challenges in consolidating their bases.” McCain has “an enthusiasm problem” among Republicans, while Obama “has a unity problem” among Democrats.

McCain has the bigger hurdle, as Pew found that he “receives far less strong backing from his supporters.” Only 35 percent of McCain’s supporters say they back him strongly, while 55 percent of Obama’s voice strong support for him.

Though Obama is slowly gaining support among backers of Hillary Clinton, his former rival, problems remain, as he has the backing of only 69 percent of her loyalists. Only 35 percent of them said he was “personally qualified,” while 43 percent said McCain was.

•Turnout is likely to be far higher than in previous recent elections.

Voter interest, particularly among Democrats, continues at high levels. Younger people in particular are more interested than usual. Pew found that two-thirds of 18- to 29-year-olds have given “quite a lot of thought” to the election, up from 53 percent four years ago and 35 percent in June 2000.

•Domestic issues are foremost on voters’ minds.

Some 44 percent said they most wanted candidates to discuss the economy, with Iraq a distant second priority at 19 percent.

David S. Broder
The Washington Post
April 17, 2008

UPPER DUBLIN, Pa. – For 40 of his 65 years, ever since he first registered, Martin Greenblatt has been voting Republican in this Philadelphia suburb. Through much of the past winter, the retired teacher considered himself a supporter of Rudy Giuliani. But when the former New York mayor quit the race without a single primary victory, Greenblatt made a radical decision.

He re-registered as a Democrat so he could vote for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in next Tuesday’s primary.

In a day of interviewing outside the library in this Montgomery County community just before Wednesday’s Democratic TV debate in Philadelphia, Greenblatt’s story was just one of many describing the strange journeys people have taken to their current positions – and the disquiet some of them feel about the votes they are about to cast.

While Clinton had more supporters in these interviews than Obama (or Republican John McCain), it is obvious that all the campaign time the candidates have lavished on Pennsylvania since Ohio and Texas voted for Clinton and McCain on March 4 has fueled more doubts than enthusiasm.

Greenblatt is typical. Asked about McCain, this longtime Republican said, “I don’t like his (Iraq) war policy. I supported the war at the beginning, but I’m increasingly disillusioned with it. McCain just seems to want to keep it going.”

Obama has little appeal to Greenblatt. “He hasn’t had the experience,” Greenblatt said, in a comment I heard many times from other voters. “Two years in the Senate, and one of them he spent running for president. And I’m not happy with Rev. (Jeremiah) Wright,” Obama’s controversial pastor.

Clinton fares better in Greenblatt’s view. “She is a tough lady,” he said. “Lots of experience. And she’s built a good team.” Still, Greenblatt admits “she is not the best candidate we could have, just the best available.”

Another Democratic voter, Ellen Sharm, 49, of Fort Washington, is unequivocally opposed to Clinton, because “my father hated Bill Clinton and he hated her.”

Sharm herself is equivocal about Obama and McCain, and says she is “halfway between” their opposing views on Iraq – with Obama urging an immediate start on a pullout and McCain saying the U.S. should remain in force until Iraq is stable. Sharm describes her own position on the war as “wishy-washy” and, while her disqualification of Clinton “out of respect for my father” dictates a vote for Obama in the primary, she says “if it’s Obama vs. McCain, I’ll have to consider” what to do in November.

Obama has made some gains among these voters, with one crediting the Illinois senator’s ads during the past two weeks for a shift from a certain-for-Clinton ballot to undecided. But many others said they remain uncertain about Obama’s specific policies and skeptical about his short resume.

But none of that deters the youngest voter in our sample, 26-year-old stage manager Francis Sapienza, of Fort Washington. “It’s Obama for sure,” he said. “It may be idealistic, but I really like his emphasis on change.”

As for McCain, some Republicans reflected the doubts among conservatives about his policy views.

Harry Duerr, of Ambler, a 66-year-old retired municipal employee, said he is disillusioned with the spending habits of Republicans in Congress and sees President Bush as “ignorant,” so he will cast a protest vote for libertarian-minded Rep. Ron Paul in Tuesday’s primary. In November, he said, “I’ll vote for McCain,” because “the Democrats are too far left.”

Another retiree, 76-year-old Frank McMahon, of Upper Dublin, has doubts about McCain, in part because of his age, but would probably vote for him in November if he picked someone like Mitt Romney as his running mate – a younger and more conventional conservative.

Kathleen Birchler, of Dresham, a retired office worker in an electronics plant, clings to her Republican identity despite the fact she “can’t stand” either Bush or Vice President Cheney. She has ruled out Obama, in part because he professed to be unaware of Wright’s political views despite 20 years of attending his services.

But she – along with many Democrats – wishes “McCain weren’t so strong for the war,” and so she might vote for Clinton if she were to win the nomination.

Anyone who thinks most of these voters are settled in their choices does not hear what they’re saying.

Robert Scheer
Creators Syndicate
November 2, 2007

Not to stoke any of the inane conspiracy theories running wild on the Internet, but if Osama bin Laden weren’t on the payroll of Lockheed-Martin or some other large defense contractor, then he deserves to have been. What a boondoggle 9-11 has been for the merchants of war, who this week announced yet another quarter of whopping profits made possible by George W. Bush’s pretending to fight terrorism by throwing money at outdated Cold War-style weapons systems.

Lockheed-Martin, the nation’s top weapons manufacturer, reaped a 22 percent increase in profits, while rivals for the defense buck, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, increased profits by 62 percent and 24.7 percent, respectively. Boeing’s profits jumped 61 percent, spiked this quarter by its commercial division. But Boeing’s military division, like the others, has been doing very well indeed since the terrorist attacks.

As Newsweek International put it in August: “Since 9-11 and the U.S.-led wars that followed, shares in American defense companies have outperformed both the Nasdaq and Standard & Poor’s stock indices by some 40 percent. Prior to the recent cascade of stock prices worldwide, Boeing’s share prices had tripled over the past five years, while Raytheon’s had doubled.”

Not bad for an industry in serious difficulty with the sudden collapse of the Cold War at the beginning of the 1990s, when the first President Bush and his Defense Secretary Dick Cheney were severely cutting the military budget for high-ticket planes and ships designed to fight the no-longer-existent Soviet military. Sure, they had Iraq to kick around, but the elder Bush never thought to turn the then very real aggression of Saddam Hussein into an enormously expensive quagmire. He both defeated Hussein and cut the military budget.

Not so Bush the younger, who exploited the trauma of 9-11 as an occasion to depose the defanged dictator of Iraq and thus provide a “shock and awe” showcase for the arms industry, which continues to benefit obscenely from the failed occupation. The second Iraq war, irrationally conflated with the 9-11 attack that had nothing to do with Hussein, provided the perfect threat package to justify the most outrageous military boondoggle in the nation’s history.

The bin Laden boys only had an arsenal of $3 box knives, but Bush claimed Hussein had WMD. Sadly for the military-industrial complex, Hussein’s army collapsed all too suddenly. But the insurgency, much of it fueled by the Shiites, who were ostensibly on our side, provided the occasion for pretending that we are in a war against a conventionally armed and imposing military enemy.

Of course, we are in nothing of the sort with this so called “war on terror,” a propaganda farce that draws resources away from serious efforts to counter terrorism to reward the corporations that profit from high-tech weaponry that has little if anything to do with the problem at hand.

As Columbia University professor Richard K. Betts points out in Foreign Affairs magazine: “With rare exceptions, the war against terrorists cannot be fought with army tank battalions, air force wings or naval fleets – the large conventional forces that drive the defense budget. The main challenge is not killing the terrorists but finding them, and the capabilities most applicable to this task are intelligence and special operations forces. … It does not require half-a-trillion dollars worth of conventional and nuclear forces.”

That half a trillion only covers the Pentagon budget for expenses beyond the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars or the Department of Homeland Security. Those last three items total more than $240 billion in Bush’s 2008 budget requests. Add to that the $50 billion spent on intelligence agencies and an equal amount of State Department-directed efforts, and you can understand how we manage to spend more fighting a gang of mujahedeen terrorists, once our “freedom fighters” in that earlier Afghanistan war against the Soviets, than we did at the height of the Cold War.

“The Pentagon currently absorbs more than half of the federal government’s discretionary budget,” writes Lawrence J. Korb, “surpassing the heights reached when I was President Reagan’s assistant secretary of defense. … And much like the 1980s, we are spending billions of dollars on weapons systems designed to fight the Soviet superpower.”

Thanks to bin Laden and Bush’s exploitation of “war on terror” hysteria, the taxpayers have been hoodwinked into paying for a sophisticated military arsenal to fight a Soviet enemy that no longer exists. The Institute for Policy Studies calculated last year that the top 34 CEOs of the defense industry have earned a combined billion dollars since 9-11. They should give bin Laden his cut.