With almost everyone in the press jumping on Obama to get a piece of ripping down the golden boy for the sake of headlines, I almost feel bad leveling criticism at him.

The attacks on him have been the polar opposite of fair: Meaning, utterly unrelated to reality. On one side you have the standard screaming out of the National Review and its readers, denouncing him for the 100% Liberal voting record that they gave Obama, based on standards they devised and will not let the public see. On the other side, you’ve got the likes of the LA Times, criticizing Obama for racing toward the center on issues when, in truth, he’s not saying anything different than what he’s been saying for over a year.

But my criticism differs from these in an important regard: It is fair; specifically because it calls out Obama for being unfair.

The victim of this unfairness was General Wesley Clark, former Presidential candidate, former Clinton shill. Like him or not, the man organized the enormous US Armed Forces and its allies to bring peace to the Balkans during a genocide. He knows military strategy. And the point he made recently, was that for all of McCain’s service to the country, McCain isn’t strategy minded due to his time in the service.

…having served as a fighter pilot _ and I know my experience as a company commander in Vietnam _ that doesn’t prepare you to be commander in chief in terms of dealing with the national strategic issues that are involved. It may give you a feeling for what the troops are going through in the process, but it doesn’t give you the experience first hand of the national strategic issues.”

And he’s right. One can argue McCain’s overall strategic acumen, but whatever degree of it he has, doesn’t come from learning to fly a plane, being tortured or organizing a squadron during peacetime.

So, just like being a plumber doesn’t make you a county director of civil engineering, or a retail cashier makes you an investment banker, McCain’s service doesn’t give him a huge leg up over Obama, and that’s something voters should consider.

McCain, of course realizing that he has nothing else to go on but for voters’ perception of him as a scrappy all-time champeen of all things martial, blew up at the remarks. It was as if Clark had accused him of eating babies for Communism. More to the point, they acted as though Obama had accused him.

…let’s please drop the pretense that Barack Obama stands for a new type of politics. The reality is he’s proving to be a typical politician who is willing to say anything to get elected, including allowing his campaign surrogates to demean and attack John McCain’s military service record.”

The proper response to that is, “What’s so demeaning about saying that it doesn’t lead to grand strategic knowledge? Do we expect our PT boat crew chiefs to know how to hack satellites? Or our Marine tankers to know how to pilot F-14s? No. It was a simple statement about your service record, and if you think it’s untrue, then by all means disagree, but just like I wouldn’t assume that knowing how to operate a waffle iron would lead to my understanding how to run the Waffle House corporation, I don’t think voters should assume knowing how to play with your joystick makes you a field marshall.”

Instead, the Obama campaign has wasted a lot of wind denouncing Clark:

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said, “As he’s said many times before, Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain’s service, and of course he rejects yesterday’s statement by General Clark.”

Campaign wunderkind David Axelrod also ripped into Clark just hours ago. So while McCain’s cronies get all the more message discipline and coordination, it’s nice to see such a united front from the Democrats - from “Obama Undercutting His Brand As Candidate Of Change” in the LA Times to the throngs of abuse he’s getting for FISA, guns and appeasing-and-or-being-too-mean-to Republicans.

So I close with this reminder; a cautious conclusion to my fuming over unfairness:

Remember, the alternative is vastly more moronic and sleazy. Case in point, to retaliate against any attacks on his service record - read: Any non-fawning, orgasm-less heaping of praise thereon - McCain has enlisted a man he once called, ‘dishonest and dishonorable,’ Colonel Bud Day, a former advocate associated with SBVT who spoke in one of their ads.

Day at once set to calling into question Clark’s own strategic acumen. His technique was not to use logical comparison, or professional, but stupidity and emotionalism:

“Things were very difficult for [McCain],” he said. “He was horribly wounded in his extremities, and it was questionable if he would survive his experience.

He set a high standard for himself because the Vietnamese tried to release him and he showed courage by refusing that to come about. We had an opportunity to watch a president in office, a Democrat who was extremely ineffective during those years. [McCain] learned an awful lot from that…

General Clark spent a month in Vietnam, got badly wounded and was evacuated, that was his experience. I say let’s hold the two of them up and compare them.”

Okay, let’s compare.

First, the logical comparison: There is no real comparison, save that they were both in the same country at around the same time and were wounded. Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s move onto the issues.

Second, the professional comparison: Well, by the above information, not much difference. Let’s look at the rest of their experience. McCain, rose to be Captain, organized the lives of around a hundred people in peacetime. Clark, a lifetime in the service, ovesaw TRADOC during its most significant years of improvement (early 90s), and six years of strategic - not tactical, not organizational; strategic, rank-of-commanding-General - experience in war; a war we won, defined a new and peaceful Balkans, and lost nearly no fatalities.

But no, it’s only in the heart-thumping, dumbly sentimental sense that they even come near to looking like McCain’s ahead. For first we have that dastardly, “extremely ineffective” Democratic President Colonel Day refers to - the dreaded Lyndon Johnson. What bearing he has on McCain’s strategic know-how, I don’t know; especially since he was in office for less than a third of the time McCain was captive. Nixon was President most of the time.

And next we have the notion that, again, suffering makes you qualified to lead. It doesn’t. If anything, it may make you less qualified, as you bear the scars and specters of your torment.

I don’t expect Obama, or even his dread “surrogates,” to say as much. I don’t even expect him to denounce Colonel Day for acting like an authority and leading people astray on what strategic knowledge comes from, or McCain for hiring a man like Day after denouncing him. But I hope Obama does learn that while it’s important to be fair to one’s enemies, it’s even more important to extend that courtesy to one’s friends.

Evangelical Reverend Jim Wallis called on the Obama camp yesterday to make reduction of abortions a plank in this election, and so extended an olive branch from the pro-life community that Obama should seize for the good of his campaign and the good of the country.

“Abortion reduction should be a central Democratic Party plank in this election,” Wallis told ABC News. “I’ll just say that flat out.”

This gives Obama an opportunity unique for Democratic candidates for nearly thirty years, and critical to his mission of overcoming bi-partisanship: The chance to demonstrate that Democrats and the pro-choice community are not only not in favor of abortions, but that they have the best solutions at reducing them.

The former concern is important because for too long, pro-choice has been painted as some kind of malignant “anti-life,” with Democrats seemingly heartless to the genuine moral discomfort held by many about abortions. As the opponents of Roe v. Wade shower all those they can with the worse excesses of abortion - from unnecessarily brutal procedures, twisted bureaucracies and callous expectant mothers - the Democrats have done nothing to prove them wrong. They have instead robotically defended the absolutism of the system as it stands - not only of choice, but of every aspect of the current system.

This has, arguably rightly, made them seem entirely divided from the concerns of those who want something to be done to limit either the forms or frequency of abortions. And that has not only widened the divide between the right-wing and the left. For some voters, it is the very essence of the divide.

How many Catholics or Evangelicals resolve their struggle with the issue of abortion by turning from the doctrinaire left? In turn, the right has used this wedge issue to win votes for all manner of causes that have nothing to do with abortion - many of which could be argued as contrary to a genuine concern for all life being cared for by the state.

Thus the right has been able to claim, with some credence, that the left does not care about people’s qualms about abortion. And the left has been able to claim, with some credence, that the right does not care about life once it’s born.

Obama’s embrace of the challenge to reduce abortions can mend that divide, and so mend one of the deepest and most significant schisms in the modern political terrain.

Beyond the matter of healing the American body politic, there is the additional advantage that the Democrats’ platforms actually can reduce abortions more effectively than the GOP’s stock solutions.

Nothing prevents abortions better than preventing unwanted pregnancies - a solution even superior to simply making the procedure illegal. And nothing prevents unwanted pregnancy better than birth control.

Abstinence-only education has been a hallmark of the Bush administration and the Religious Right, and it has been a disaster. For those not versed in these programs, the vast majority (of the top thirteen programs, eleven, serving 158 out of 168 educational facilities) are not only are sporadically riddled with scientific inaccuracy and barbaric gender notions, but all must also actively discourage contraception. Such as, under the HHS grant system, ‘SPRANS,’ which has received the most funding:

“Under the SPRANS requirement, abstinence-only education programs are not allowed to teach their participants any methods to reduce the risk of pregnancy other than abstaining until marriage. They are allowed to mention contraceptives only to describe their failure rates.”

Given that they do nothing to limit actual frequency of teen sex, that means these programs aren’t scaring kids away from sex, just from condom use and disease-free sex.

The numbers bear this out, as small states and southern states with the most conservative social attitudes top the chart for teen pregnancies, six of them even passing California in terms of gross total. Should Obama bravely and intelligently link these facts with the cause of a common will to reduce abortions, we’ll not just see a healthier political climate, but a healthier nation as well.

He should make condom distribution and sex education hallmarks of this new “pro-life” movement. He should rally those “in it for the babies” to start fighting for rights, funding and programs for single mothers, young mothers, struggling mothers. He should advocate adoption while expressing respect for the personal liberty of the woman as an American citizen, informed and capable of making her own decisions about her body.

He should, in essence, turn the powers of the federal government and the will of the pro-life cause to the effort of truly improving and respecting all life, in all stages: The expectant mother as well as the unexpected child; the sexually active woman as well as the financially helpless single mother; the mothers who are barely more than children themselves as well as the children of those who society must bear the cost of supporting.

Only this would qualify as a true American pro-life movement. And right now, only Obama can create it.

Today, a voice of prophecy from within the upper rungs of the US Evangelical community announced that a principal monster in recent American history is on the decline.

I often muse on monsters, and on what people at the times of their decline must have felt and thought when at last they realized that the monsters were no longer there, no longer real - at what point did scholars accept that the scrawl on a map reading “Here There Be Dragons” was only figurative? When were the braids of garlic taken down from the doors, the salt used simply to flavor food rather than cast away demons? When did we finally, as a people, give up on the idea of finding a giant?

There must have been a comfort to it, but with it, a certain degree of willful disbelief - an instinct that demanded that the monster was real, their impotence just another sinister deceit, their dread violation imminent. There must be those who believed the only fact that mattered was keeping the door barred and the cross clenched tight.

I’m trying not to be one of those. I’m trying to believe that James Dobson is soon to fade from the political scene.

In his article, “Dr. Dobson Has Just Handed Obama Victory,” Frank Schaeffer, novelist, Evangelical and former religious right member, declared that Dobson was on his way out:

Dobson is one of the Evangelical religious right old guard. He’s to the right what Nader is to the left.

For those of you unaware, Dobson is the head of ‘Family Research Council,’ a media network and political action group that four cornerstones: The eradication of all forms of legal abortion, sex education and birth control; the blanket ban of gay marriage and gay rights; the mandate of Christian prayer and teaching in public schools and services; and severe punishments for criminals.

It is little surprise, then, that Dobson became to George W. Bush what Billy Graham was to Nixon. His power was more considerable, in fact, with his prayers welcoming Bush to office on the inaugural day and his pay-off coming hours later as Bush cut off funding to all human rights groups abroad that had the audacity to mention contraception, thus causing more abortions, AIDS babies and unwanted pregnancies.

Since then, Dobson has been a guiding light, helping Bush lead America back toward the dark ages. Principally, his role has been to deliver the Evangelical vote as a bloc, giving the administration and its cronies in the GOP that crucial dependable sliver of voters that kept them winning elections, much to peoples’ shock.

But the political winds have shifted, and with them, Dobson’s fortunes. His followers have been scattered like wheat, you might say, as the Evangelical community fragments into the dozens of diverse political positions it once was before the era of the Religous Right’s yoke.

This transformation, compellingly depicted in the CNN Special, “God’s Warriors,”
may surprise many accustomed to seeing “concerned Christians” as a tongue-clucking, gay-sex-obsessed voting bloc. We now have the bizarre offshoots of Pastor Hagee’s eschatalogy-made-policy ministry, Cizik’s “Green like Jesus” movement, and numerous other reassessments of what it means to be both old enough to vote and born-again. I eagerly await the release of “The Faith of Barack Obama” by Evangelical author Stephen Mansfield, who wrote a similar piece on George W. Bush, rallying readers to examine and endorse Obama as a “true Evangelical.”

Mansfield’s principal concern is not policy, but the sincere synergy with a person of sincere faith. That is a priority many Evangelicals share. It may, in turn, harken an era of shared political will between the future President Obama and the Evangelical community at large, as they come to embrace his vision of a more universal, tolerant and social Christianity.

Soon, we might find ourselves marveling at the very notion that such monsters as Dobson could have even existed in Evangelical America.

The Supreme Court of the United States yesterday made a decision striking the DC handgun ban. As I have always wanted to own an AK-47 assault rifle, I support that decision.

I’ll clarify. In the assault rifle world, the M-16 is a prissy primadonna of a prom date, while the AK-47 is the kind of gal you marry. It is durable, sexy in a brutal kind of way, and holds cartridges as long as Hulk Hogan’s middle finger that can pulp bear flesh. And while I don’t buy for a minute that Rambo could have burst from concealment underwater firing the persnickety M60 machinegun, he might have extruded from unprocessed waste with an AK-47 and I’d believe it could still fire. What’s more, it’s an iconic weapon - the death dealing device that embodies the post-colonial, over-proliferating late-20th century; the gun of the mujahadeen, the Soviet, the African warlord.

As for why the Supreme Court ruling inspires me to believe I’ll some day own one of those homicidal fashion plates, is the basis of its holding - that it is not a collective right, but an individual right, to bear arms.

“The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense in the home.”

Hooray! And considering that the DC handgun ban was all about restricting one type of firearm, and thus was found Unconstitional based on this ruling, this ruling therefore opens the door for all firearms.

The decision goes on to pick away at the holding in the ruling opinion, in typically pusillanimous fashion, but I don’t buy it, as it goes contrary to the core of the holding. Scalia, writing the ruling opinion, specifically says that felons and the mentally ill won’t be able to get guns, and that concealed weapons don’t apply.

To that, I ask - and many ask with me - why not?

Everybody wants “strict constructionists” and not “liberal judges who legislate from the bench,” right? That’s certainly the kind of judge you’ve preened about being. So let me introduce you to the strict construction, Justice Scalia:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

And here is your ruling again:

“The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense in the home.”

Plain as day - it says nothing about, “except for the blind,” or “except for felons,” or “except when its kept in the trunk of your car.”

The holding held, as strict constructionism does, that you’re not allowed to add anything to the law. Meaning, no exceptions as to whether an individual has a criminal record, or is insane, or doesn’t need a coaxial anti-aircraft machinegun for home defense. No exceptions based on statistics that say inner cities like Washington, DC are being decimated by gang violence often involved handguns, or complaints from the police. That was the basis of the ban - a specific solution for a specific problem - but that’s not what the strict construction of the Constitution is about: It’s about general liberties that protect us from those specific solutions.

Perhaps the Court would have a platform to stand on in regulating based on criminal record or deadliness of weapon if it had ruled that militias had anything to do with it. After all, that would be about collective security; protecting the state at the individual’s expense. But they ruled just the opposite. For interests of “collective security,” see the DC handgun ban, now going down in flames.

Some may call this “reductio ad absurdum” - the old Latin phrase about how some logical arguments lead to ridiculous ends if followed through completely, and thus refute the basis of the argument. I, and the Supreme Court, call it a Constitutional liberty of the United States.

They may think the cat is not out of the bag - that they can exercise some ridiculous double-standard in cases like the Assault Weapon Ban, waiting periods and possession by felons. In truth, considering the pernicious, self-interested behavior of many of their rulings - which determine the logical meaning of the Constitution but hit traditionally powerless citizens with restrictions all the same - I wouldn’t put it past them. But this much is certain: The Supremes are going to be a busy bunch in the future, as organizations like the NRA are going to use this simple holding to challenge all manner of gun laws.

The Constitution is at last being taken at its word; the law is at last on their side. And my only worry now when it comes to the queenly AK is how much shipping and handling from Liberia is going to cost me.

A development on the global security scene today underscored just how many disasters President Bush, in his arrogant ignorance, has piled upon our nation - his removal of sanctions against North Korea and pending removal of them from the State Department list of terrorism sponsors.

To what do they owe this jaw-dropping generosity?

North Korea is planning the televised destruction of a 65-foot-tall cooling tower at its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. The cooling tower is a key element of the reactor, but blowing it up - with the world watching - has little practical meaning because the reactor has already been nearly disabled.

In case you’re not so intimately familiar with the history of the Bush administration’s relationship with the North Koreans and their nuclear weapons program that your skin crawls to hear of this, here’s a quick summary:

Clinton followed the lead of the South Korean government in dealing with North Korea, slowly dismantling sanctions as the North Koreans visibly dismantled their WMD and rocket program.

Bush rolled in and cut off the civilian nuclear technology that had been being sent to Korea under the “Agreed Framework,” as it was called. Then he spouted off about North Korea being part of the infamous and utterly incomprehensible “Axis of Evil.” He swore up and down about North Korea’s wicked deeds, and North Korea promptly kicked every form of surveillance out of their country, cranking the WMD programs up to full speed. Bush did nothing but bluster.

For six years.

Six years passed with Bush insisting on multi-lateral talks and sanctions and in essence just yelling over the 38th parallel as the North Koreans sped their development of missiles that could hit America and nuclear weapons to completion. Then, amazingly, right after the nuclear test, North Korea said it was open to nuclear disarmament talks with the UN and the parties the US had brought to the table.

Time to rejoice? Not exactly. Inspectors are back in North Korea, being directed where the Koreans want to direct them. In return, the Koreans have received aid and a lifting of financial restrictions.

And surprisingly, about this time, North Korean nuclear components started showing up in other countries - Syria, namely.

The Bush administration’s reaction? Give North Korea more concessions than even Clinton did by removing sanctions and taking them off the terrorism sponsor list. In his own words:

“I’m pleased with the progress. I’m under no illusions. This is the first step. This isn’t the end of the process. It is the beginning of the process.”

Actually, Dubya, it’s at a place even further back than the beginning. It’s the beginning of the process to get back to somewhere near the beginning of the process: A point where North Korea didn’t have nuclear weapons, didn’t have inter-continental missiles, wasn’t selling nuclear programs to unstable Middle Eastern nations and was actually held accountable for their deeds by the watch list.

I sometimes wonder if the President makes decisions entirely counter to reality. Before, North Korea was getting the big carrot of light-water reactors from the US, and could be observed, and so he cut them off and antagonized them as much as possible. Now, North Korea has the ability to make nukes and is selling them to other countries, so they get a stamp of approval from the State Department and we open trade with them.

It’s such typical behavior by the coterie in the White House today - and of the man who, in pursuit of the White House, so slavishly and irrationally parrots them, John McCain. Meaning, it’s typical bully behavior; picking on the weak and talking tough, but simpering and crawling as soon as someone shows a little muscle.

McCain’s all too ready to sound off about takin’ the fight to the terrorists in Iraq indefinitely, but ask him if he’s willing to go the whole hog and actually look for Osama where he lives, and suddenly the Admiral’s son is puling about how it’s just too complicated.

Bush puts all of America’s strategic chips in his cash cow of an anti-ballistic missile program, fanning the fires of an arms race just at the time the USSR’s old stockpiles are crumbling and Pakistan’s selling country-killing tech to anyone who’ll buy, but then has the gall to suck up to Russia and North Korea.

Both men need to learn a basic tenet of warfare: Do not talk the bloody talk unless you are prepared to walk the bloody walk.

Where does their kind of behavior get us? Taking one step forward at a place leagues worse than the beginning we started at.

Obama has waved away public financing - and, with it, his pledge to adopt it - in lieu of private donations, and the press has been quick to pounce. Even customary allies are unsheathing their claws, with the Comedy Central political pair - Colbert and Stewart - devoting whole segments of their show to pounding on Barack for hypocrisy. All this invective is being spent to fill the spitoons of a non-story.

I don’t just support Obama’s action because I support Obama. I support it for a pair of reasons, the primary one being that I’m a fan of fairness and effective campaign finance reform.

Right now, campaign financing is still deeply twisted. McCain-Feingold may have been a first step, but it was a halting one that toppled us into a dark political era where the speech of the masses and their candidates were more, not less, restricted relative to special interests. As any who closely watched the 2004 election recall, it fashioned the feudal system of the 527s - impelling PACs, special interests and big money donors to pour their cash into proxy rather than into the candidates’ pockets.

And the 527s are less responsible in their speech than the candidate’s direct campaign. 2004 saw SBVT and the mighty MoveOn.org; now 527s have spread like tribbles, less responsible and further congesting the dialogue. In sum, campaign financing restrictions made big money arm the extreme, turning down the volume on the candidate’s voice and raising it for surrogates who say the kinds of things the candidate doesn’t want to be held accountable for.

McCain embraces this kind of battlefield, where he can drone on about “straight talk” and holding hands with Obama during town hall debates while his proxies spread the word about Obama’s “gutter” religion and mangle his wife’s words. He is proving himself to be a master of the “smile at their face, stab ‘em in the back” strategy his legislation has raised to dominance.

Obama, by contrast, has eschewed 527s and discouraged donations to them - even the mainstays like MoveOn. As his dazzling campaign donation record shows, he has received most donations from private citizens in small amounts - his average being $91. Over 3 million have donated, while - unlike McCain - lobbyist and PAC money is absent as a corporate force.

What this means is that Obama had two choices:

One, he could stick by the pledge he made before revolutionizing campaign financing via the internet. That would mean his money would have to be filtered elsewhere, and in the era where the 527s are a candidate’s arsenal, Obama, rejecting them, would be unarmed. It would be just another contest of PAC vs. PAC, by the sleazy, extreme, back-biting rules McCain likes. Only McCain would have 527s, lobbyists and PACs, while Obama would only have a spending limit.

Or two, he could do what he did and stick by his donors. Allowing them to donate without limit, he would be able to keep himself free of PACs, lobbyists, special interests and 527s. McCain would be overwhelmed - a triumph of the small donor over corporate cash.

Option two seems like the high road to me, but instead, Obama is getting slammed by everyone from FOX News through US News & World Report to The Daily Show. Few seem interested in taking a clear look at the morality of the two systems of financing embraced by the candidates. No mention of John McCain flip-flopping on financing, perhaps illegally, was heard, nor was the court of lobbyists he has and Obama rejects.

The only morality they seem concerned with was Obama’s hypocrisy - his change of position - and that brings me to the second reason I support Obama’s campaign financing decision.

I do not want another President who decides to do something stupid, and still does it even though a better idea comes along.

We’ve had eight years of that, fellow Americans - eight years of firing Generals rather than listening to them, of sticking by slobs like Perle and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz rather than kicking them out, of Brownies and Albertos and Harriet Myers. I don’t want another President who keeps passing anti-habeus corpus legislation for the Supreme Court to turn down. I don’t want any more leadship based on “sticking by your guns” rather than doing the best thing based on the facts.

It’s not poll-driven and PAC-fueled; it’s principled and it’s practical. It’s not a story of a candidate failing to do what’s right. It’s an example of doing what’s right despite having committed to what was wrong.

The US Army’s greatest adversary of the 21st century has presented itself plain as day. No, it’s not Kim Il Jong’s blizzard of surplus Soviet tanks. It’s the Bush White House.

Here’s the story. It’s one you might’ve heard before. The wars of the Bush administration have seen more outsourcing of military functions to the private sector than ever before. Funny thing is, the privatization has led to profiteering:

Since 2005, the Army Criminal Investigation Command has opened 168 investigations related to contract fraud in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, according to spokesman Chris Grey.

The US Army’s good at producing simple solutions, though you wouldn’t know it from their paperwork. When faced with the daunting task of trying to regulate the rampant corruption, over-charging and mismanagement of Private Military Contractors (PMCs), they came up with a chain of command to impose oversight.

After all, since virtually nothing has been done to the likes of Halliburton and Blackwater by the White House, the Army has the right - nay, the responsibility! - to protect itself. Right?

Wrong, according to the Office of Management and Budget, who specifically refused to allot the $1.2 million for the five Generals the Pentagon had recommended the Army put in place.

This is abyssmal. At least a billion dollars is known to have been overcharged, and billions more were granted or proposed under suspicious circumstances. The very least the Army could do is appoint someone to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again, and the White House deliberately shoots it down.

It’s been noted that the disaster in Iraq has not been a disaster for Bush and Cheney’s friends at Halliburton, DynCorp and other PMCs. It has, in fact, been for the close friends and co-investors of these men, an enormous financial windfall. It’s been the jackpot.

And whatever their ultimate motives, their actions this week were clearly geared to keep it that way.

Post Script: So as to not to seem as though I am making insubstantiated accusations of collusion, I will be composing a post detailing the interrelation between VP Cheney, Bush and the PMC sector. I assure you, dear reader, that my accusations of a connection are substantiated.

Regardless of whether candidate is game for a mudfight, the chum-slingers in print are all too pleased to amp up the character abuse, as two developments in the media surrounding the 2008 Election proved today.

Aimed at Obama are veteran operatives of the same outfit that took up the Swift Boat Vets’ cause in the interest of GOP political victory - conservative public relations firm Creative Response Concepts, the print arm Regnery Publishing, and right-wing operatives Jerome Corsi and David Freddoso.

Corsi and Freddoso are both releasing books in the interest of being “fair and balanced” - which is to say they intend to present every harmful rumor about Obama’s career in the most venomous and inflammatory way possible. The publisher in charge of Freddoso’s book as much as says so:

By highlighting negative aspects of Obama’s record and background, Ross says, Freddoso may compel others to offer more critical coverage of the Democratic nominee.

I’m sure this comes as a relief to the millions of Americans who, so sick of the brief glimpses at issue-based politics we’ve had so far, long for a return to the media’s obsession with matters like people’s pastors, beer preferences and bowling scores.

Corsi and Freddoso will surely provide plenty of fodder for the networks to ruminate over the pathetically irrelevant relationship of Obama to “radicals” and “radical agendas.” Their scurrilous tone will at the very least make the well of Obama’s proffered fresh approach to politics seem bitter. Expect periodic downpours of sneering insinuations about Obama and the Weathermen, and liberal - no pun intended - mention of the review of Obama’s voting record, a study courtesy of Freddoso’s own magazine, a periodical constitutionally devoted to destroying the reputation of political opponents.

But even John McCain is not immune to the media’s lust at echoing the voices from the fringe. Apparently some reporter at Fortune magazine led McCain’s chief adviser - the sociable, substantially soiled Mr. Charlie Black - into admitting that a terrorist attack would boost McCain’s chances.

It was hardly shark fishing on the Orca to get Black to take bait. The reporter got Black chatting about McCain’s surprise win in New Hampshire, in the same breath as talking about the Senator’s national security credentials:

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an “unfortunate event,” says Black. “But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.”

What’s written out of the next part is glaring evident; the reporter following up - meaning, scenting blood in the water and going for the famously weak Black’s leaking mouth:

As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,” says Black.

“Concedes” and “raise the issue” meaning put words in the fellow’s mouth, then pressuring him into admitting it. I don’t necessarily mind that kind of aggressive follow-up, but in this instance, it’s not follow-up, it’s a trick to get something provocative in print.

As venal and hollow as I find John McCain now, I strongly doubt the man wants another terrorist attack - Black, though he represented mass-murdering African dictators, either. Yet that’s precisely how things are being presented.

And this is my problem with both assaults on the candidates - not only are they provocative, they are also unfair and stupid in the extreme.

In the case of the CRC-promoted, Regnery-published, shill-written books on Obama, it is unfair because while all politicians must work with all manner of people - even some they disagree with; even the unsavory - not all politicians are inspiring. Obama is.

And while I think he has more integrity than the standard stock of politicians, I do not hold any illusions that he has had to cut deals, move money and make allies that would dismay many voters. Such is politics. Not everyone need be Hillary Clinton, but just about everyone has known a Tony Rezko or Bill Ayers.

That Corsi and Freddoso pass off their agenda of destroying a politician from a rival party as some kind of “need for perspective” is preposterous.

Similarly preposterous is the masquerade of shock by the media at Black’s comments. Unless that shock is, “I can’t believe he was so stupid as to walk right into that” - in which case, they haven’t been following Black or the McCain campaign very closely - then it’s the worst acting job this side of a sixth grade talent show.

Who doesn’t know that a terrorist attack would benefit the GOP in the polls? Everyone from TIME magazine to David Cross, HuffPost bloggers to the Pentagon has acknowledged that as soon as the bombs start going off, loads of Americans cozy up to the Republicans. There’ve been movies made about it, books written about it, endless hours of punditry yammering on it.

Is it news that Black leapt through the hoops of putting the obvious pieces together? That John McCain is a Republican, and terrorist attacks help Republicans in the polls, thus a terrorist attack would help McCain?

Under customary circumstances, these kinds of unfair distractions would be merely offensive. Given the world we live in, they’re travesties.

We require not only a President, but a political atmosphere, that has the focus and energy to combat crises as radical as any we’ve faced since World War II: Genocide in Darfur, ethnic cleansing in Palestine, nuclear brinksmanship in the Middle East, proliferation of uncontrolled nuclear, biological and chemical weapons from the former USSR, the rise of a belligerent Russia, the rise of China, the decline of the dollar, the pathetic dependence on oil, the agonies of human trafficking world wide, the dangerous senility of our public school systems, and on and on, from Pakistan’s tribal zones to the perils of a surge in American inner city gang violence.

Instead we get defamation and dumb-bell, melodramatic gotcha journalism.

It was said by Alexis de Tocqueville that, “In Democracy, people get the government they deserve.” Right now, we’re getting the government the sensation-drunk media allows us to have.

Let us hope that in November, the people realize they deserve better than that.

I’m not surprising anyone by noting that the core of the GOP’s strategy is attacking Obama’s patriotism, but recent developments in that scandal might serve to silence the echo chamber.

Dan Abrams presents the story on McCain’s own statements about love of America, and the rapid response of the right wing media in concealing their justified - but, in the circumstances, damning - complexity:

Obama released his first General Election ad today.

It gets right to the core of his biggest difficulty - the lack of familiarity with him and his policies. Hopefully this will be the first strike in chiseling away the mask of liberal radicalism that his opponents have draped him in.

The Taliban may have thought they were massing for a major offensive, but instead showed up for a severe drubbing outside Kandahar. Our military and NATO on the whole can put another proud notch on our gun butt. But the victory only serves to sweeten a bitter pill we have to take when trying to scheme success in Afghanistan.

The details of the battle are scarce at this point. As I noted in a previous article, the Taliban had been on an old-school offensive through Arghandab province, seizing villages and blowing stuff up like they were the army of Tamerlane resurrect.

Of course, they were actually what they’ve always been - up-armed street thugs with vulpine guile and second-hand Pakistani weaponry - and so when our forces locked down their noisy advance, there was Hell to pay.

Afghan and NATO-led forces killed or wounded hundreds of Taliban on Thursday in an offensive to clear the militants from the outskirts of Kandahar city, according to the provincial governor.

“Hundreds” could be an overstatement, but the reality is that the dread Taliban offensive stomping through Arghandab had its back broken. Fighting remains ahead, the countryside is still in flames, but Kandahar is safe.

For how long, though? And to what end? These questions aren’t criticism of any particular policy, nor should they be taken as pessimism. Rather, they are evoked by one of the lines to come out of the AP report on this recent Battle of Arghandab.

“They have suffered hundreds of dead and wounded and many of their casualties are Pakistanis,” [Kandahar provincial governor Assadullah Khalid] said.

The presence of Pakistanis in the Taliban forces shouldn’t just be an assumption - they are likely the majority of any Talib force complement these days.

The logical extension then is that America and NATO are at war in Afghanistan to defend it from Pakistan - not the government of Pakistan, true, but fighters based in, funded by, and consisting mainly of people from Pakistan. The Taliban has always been the groomed champion of Pakistan’s “ISI” - a sort of CIA on steroids that has been the real power in Pakistan since around the start of the Afghan-Soviet War.

So for America to be successful, it needs to address this strategic truth and define its goals accordingly. We nominally entered Afghanistan to depose the Taliban and take out al-Qaeda. We did both, but then discovered that they both just change their ZIP code to Pakistan and come back into Afghanistan whenever they want.

So now do we just go after al-Qaeda in Pakistan, in order to eliminate some of the luminaries and big bankrollers in global terrorism, like Osama?

Do we expand that mission into Pakistan to take out the Taliban as well - a mission that would involve a counter-insurgency vastly larger than Iraq, directed against the civilian population and bringing us in direct conflict with Pakistan’s intelligence services?

Or do we, as we are now, just wait in Afghanistan as the enemy masses up across the border, hitting us and Afghanis harder every time?

Scenario One is favored by Barack Obama, as I’ve noted several times with aplomb. He even mentioned it again today, as Arghandab rages:

“I’ve repeatedly challenged George Bush and John McCain’s refusal to hold the Pakistani government accountable for inability to crack down on Al Qaida and Taliban operating within their borders. We are not going to get Afghanistan right until we get our Pakistan policy right.”

Scenario Three, as Obama points out, is McCain’s scenario - another depressing War of Occupation without end. It means stationing at least 37,000 troops in Afghanistan indefinitely, to play border guards on the most difficult border in the world. I assure you, the Rio Grande has nothing on the Hindu Kush.

Today again proved America’s incomparable tactical supremacy. What we need now is to restore our strategic supremacy. All the gadgets and training in the world can’t do that. Only intelligent planning can.

Only the American voter can.

By popular demand, I’m covering the surprising revelation that the Democratic Congress has outbid not only the usually venal, poll-steered White House, but the GOP as well, when it comes to immigration enforcement.

Homeland Security budget bill now moving through the House Appropriations Committee specifies that at least $800 million be spent after Oct. 1 to identify and remove the most violent and dangerous criminals from the U.S. And Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) is expected to take an even more aggressive approach Wednesday in his own plan, adding more money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations within Homeland Security.

In short, the Dems are plotting a pretty politically safe course in addressing one of the illegal immigration problems - they’re going after those who’re actually known to have committed crimes.

Does an infusion of tax dollars address what a deportation effort needs? Yes, according to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement responsible:

Homeland Security officials say any long-term solution rests on investing in new technologies and improved interoperability to give ICE a virtual presence throughout prisons and jails nationwide.

Is the Democrat solution more than what the GOP was doing, though? Yes; vastly more.

…after the new Democratic Congress added $200 million to the agency’s 2008 budget for this purpose, the White House didn’t continue the funding…

Comparatively speaking, the Democrats have been worlds better than the GOP on immigration enforcement.

In 2003, 445 worksite enforcement arrests of illegal immigrants were made. In 2007, there were 4,077. In 2006, the last year of the GOP Congress, j”ust 67,000 illegal immigrants had been charged for deportation; by 2007 that number had doubled to 164,000, and the goal is to begin proceedings for 200,000 persons this year.”

In short, prior to the Democratic takeover of Congress, immigration law enforcement was a travesty. Now it is approaching effective on some areas like deportation. But the resources are still far below adequate to address even that:

…ICE estimates that it would require between $2.1 billion and $3.4 billion each year to remove all illegal immigrants convicted of crimes…

That is deemed an “impossible” sum. It is a hefty price tag, after all.

But it is also the amount of money spent on Iraq in a single week.

Obama responded to McCain’s snide accusations that he didn’t know about Iraq because he hadn’t been there in two years with customary grace and vision - by rising above them, and announcing he will not only be visiting Iraq, but Afghanistan as well.

Obama has said before he was considering a trip, but his comment to reporters Monday was his first clear confirmation. He said more details will be announced shortly, and that he also plans a visit to Afghanistan.

The inclusion of Afghanistan is politically wise for a number of reasons. The most obvious reason is that it raises the stakes with McCain. I considered it a foolish expectation that a candidate visit a war zone, but now that expectations game plays in Obama’s favor, demanding that McCain announce a trip to Afghanistan in order to keep pace.

More importantly, it underscores Obama’s message and strategic outlook that Afghanistan is as critical - if not more so - as Iraq in the War on Terror.

It has always struck me as somewhat ironic that the very personification of the War on Terror’s objective, Osama bin ladin, has been able to cool his heels and operate with virtual impunity in Afghanistan’s border regions outskirts, without raising the ire of the most fervid supporters of the war. Considering the tendency - even the eagerness - to invoke the specter of 9/11 when challenged in their foreign policy beliefs, the right-wing has been stunningly numb to Osama’s continued prosperity.

This best change. It has to. And yet, we do not see it changing with McCain.

First off, we don’t hear McCain’s rhetoric changing from the Bush administration’s standard saws. Just today, his campaign criticized Obama for a “September 10th mindset.” That is a profoundly empty statement, not only relying that the listener react emotionally rather than rationally, but requiring they not question it.

For instance, the particular issue McCain contrasts with Obama on was the matter of whether Guantanamo detainees should have Constitutional legal protections or not. Now mind you, all of our prisoners customarily do, foreign or not. And the administration has made plain that the Gitmo crowd were not covered by the Geneva Convention like an enemy army would be. Mind you, the majority of detainees have been found to have had no links to terrorism, instead having been turned in for money by mercenaries or rival governments.

So in essence, Obama was criticized for giving the captives some form of legal rights, whereas McCain considered the smart, proper thing to do was to give them no rights at all.

If this position wasn’t cynical and stupid enough, McCain’s comments on Afghanistan raise further questions as to how sensible he is about matters of war. Asked by conservative media figure Michael Smerconish why we couldn’t invade the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas to pursue bin Ladin, McCain tried to sound erudite and reasonable:

“…there is a reason why [the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region] hasn’t been governed since Alexander the Great. They are ruled by about, as my understanding, 13 tribal entities and nobody has ever governed them.”

Unfortunately for McCain, that explanation is neither erudite or reasonable. In the first case, it’s not erudite because that area has, in fact, been effectively pacified, by rulers from the aforementioned Alexander, to Mahmud, to Tamerlane. In one form or another, it has proven it can be stable and prosperous.

Even more to the point is why it’s not reasonable: For while Afghanistan’s factious, backward and corrupt rulership might be a good reason not to invade in the first place, we passed that decision point awhile ago. Now we’re there, and we have a job to do.

That job is narrowly defined: Get Osama, and cut off the head of al-Qaeda. But even on that matter, McCain complains that we can’t just violate Pakistani sovereignty. To that, I ask, why not? The War on Terror was predicated on the notion that we couldn’t let little things like international law keep us from zapping the terrorists before they hit us with “another 9/11.” And while I actually refute most of that, I have to ask the question:

“If we marched some troops quietly into Pakistan’s border region for the sole purpose of hunting Osama, would Pakistan really complain all that much?”

Given that doing so would only make us isolate them further, cut off the oodles of aid money we fountain them in, and inspire us to beef up India, I doubt it. Obama does too, which is why, though McCain sneeringly accuses him of being out of touch with military matters, he remains firm on his policy that we would put boots on the ground in Pakistan whether they like it or not if it would bag us Osama.

Who’s got “September Ten Head” now, McCain?

This is precisely the kind of leadership we don’t need - the kind that so clouds the actual events of the war with the smoke of emotional drama that we don’t see that they, and not their critics, are the ones standing in the way of victory. For years under Bush, complaining about a lack of troops, armor or an exit strategy in Iraq was declared tantamount to treason, and a wide population of the American public accepted that. Now McCain is doing the same to mask his own mistakes.

He needs to get the facts right. First off, lacking a permanent troop presence in Iraq isn’t “surrender,” it’s obeying will of the government we installed and saving us hundreds of billions. Secondly, the War on Terror’s answer isn’t to hem and haw about how many tribes Afghanistan has - it’s to see its mission through by getting Osama no matter what the cost. And in that second case, it would be high time, what with the Taliban hitting back hard as ever.

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defense said Tuesday that between 300 and 400 militants _ many of them foreigners _ took over the Arghandab region 10 miles northwest of Kandahar. The offensive Monday came three days after a Taliban attack on Kandahar’s prison that freed 400 insurgents.

Facts seem obscured by McCain at every turn, though; not just the military affairs he seems so vapid about. His latest answer to the agony of soaring gas prices was to beat the old drum of off-shore drilling.

Whether you oppose the moratorium or not, hoping to increase America’s 3% share of world oil to 3.25% or even 4% at the expense of our ailing oceans is not going to affect oil prices much. Furthermore, it would be ten years before any major output from offshore drilling could be expected.

Waiting a decade to shift our control of the market by 1% isn’t a plan to help the economic pain of today. It’s pushing an agenda through a gimmick while letting people continue to get screwed.

That - on the Iraq he wants to occupy despite its people’s will and so claims no less will be victory; on the Afghanistan he ignores even though our greatest enemy lives there and attacks with impunity; on Constitutional rights, economy, immigration - seems McCain’s only strategy.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama will be heading for the war front, with a lead in the polls and the solutions to make it worthwhile.

John Stewart mocked the mainstream media’s habit of picking up every ridiculous anti-Obama non-story distortion and treating it like something newsworthy.

I can’t help but notice the frequency of FOX News and CNN clips in that piece. Considering the ubiquity of those news outlets, it’s no wonder people are as desensitized and jaded with political coverage.

As an aside, I am aware of the irony that I’m perpetuating this vicious cycle insofar as that I’m making a story out of the media making a story out of non-stories. In order to maintain Karmic balance, I’ll compose a piece on Afghanistan and on the immigration issue later today.

Some good things today were obvious, like Gore’s endorsement of Obama. That’s an example of a good that not only is unexciting in its obviousness, but also in that it has nearly no effect on the race now.

But the obscure good things - the ones you have to seek to enjoy - have a certain piquancy to their appreciation. Such was the case with the appointment of Patti Solis Doyle, Hillary’s fired campaign manager, to the Obama campaign.

It’s a boon enough to Obama to have this motivated Latina and her great clout in that key demographic on Obama’s side. But it’s the position Doyle was appointed to that really delights me: “Chief of Staff to the Vice Presidential Nominee.”

That position not only means she’ll be able to groom and direct the anonymous Obama VP to communities he would be well-served to court. It also means it’s practically confirmed that Hillary won’t be the VP. Coupling her with a woman she fired just wouldn’t work.

In the case of today’s news breaks from the Obama campaign, good things come best in subtle packages.