Now before we get our panties in a wad or overly excited I am not quite sure as to the authencity or validity of this report.  It's out there and we will see if this truely does materialize, but I thought it was at the very least worthy of notifying everyone.  It will be very interesting if this actually pans out to be a valid story.  Many of you recall rumors of a tape that would surface during Clinton's campaign that was going to indicte the Obama's regarding their views about our country.  Apparently these tapes are in negotiation with API. I want to give thanks to Pat Dollard and his gang for posting this.  Again, this not confirmed as of yet.

 

Michelle Obama tapes’ imminent release approaching: API in a serious negotiation with FOX NEWS on the best way forward

Posted by africanpress on October 21, 2008

 

I Love This Film And The Music Rocks!

Are we the least bit surprised by this? 

 

Posted by hillbuzz under Uncategorized
 

Another excellent article from Professor Engram.  His analytic views are always interesting to read supported with historical context to previous remarks from Obama.  A piece I think you will enjoy.

 

Either that, or he is deliberately deceptive. I hope it is the latter.

This does not mean that his performance in last night's debate was politically ineffective. Never forget that in presidential debates, as amazing as it might seem, style is what mostly matters to the American people. Stylistically, Obama did a fine job of creating the impression that he is someone other than his long history suggests he is. And that's good for him. Substantively, however, McCain simply cleaned Obama's clock and showed that the junior senator from Illinois is dangerously unprepared to be our next commander in chief. I wish that mattered to the viewing audience, but history suggests that it will not. To most Americans, it's all about style. Thus, we probably won't see any major shift in the polls as a result of last night's debate, and I cannot even predict the direction of any minor shift that might occur.

Overall, it was a fine debate, and both did well in terms of achieving their political objectives. And the moderator (Jim Lehrer) was simply outstanding.

Although it does not matter all that much to the voting public, substance does matter to me, so that's what I'll focus on. On the Iraq war, Obama was at his best when he said:

And so John likes -- John, you like to pretend like the war started in 2007. You talk about the surge. The war started in 2003, and at the time when the war started, you said it was going to be quick and easy. You said we knew where the weapons of mass destruction were. You were wrong.

This made me wonder if Obama believed that the Iraqis did not have WMDs or if he instead believed that we should not invade even though he thought they did. Based on the one anti-war speech that might catapult him all the way to the presidency, I conclude that Obama thought that Iraq had WMDs:

Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

And Saddam Hussein is the man who would be in charge today had we not invaded. Under that scenario, he would not be sitting on his hands watching his mortal enemy -- Iran -- develop a nuclear bomb. Obviously, after our troops were gone, Saddam would get on with developing the WMDs that he wanted the world to believe that he already possessed. Perhaps ensuring that this scenario became a reality reflects profoundly excellent judgment on Obama's part, but that's not obvious to me. Still, it is clearly debatable, and the fact that Obama opposed the invasion is certainly not what makes him dangerously naive.

The whole problem with Obama's judgment is that he thought made great sense, once Osama bin Laden decided to make Iraq the central front in the war on terror, to accept defeat in Iraq. That is, after opposing the invasion, Obama's next big idea was to withdraw our troops and hand al Qaeda the glorious victory it sought in Iraq. Fortunately, and no thanks to Obama, al Qaeda has been crushed in Iraq, and their reputation throughout the Muslim world has been greatly diminished, not enhanced. Thus, I was surprised to hear Obama say this:

And I wish I had been wrong for the sake of the country and they had been right, but that's not the case. We've spent over $600 billion so far, soon to be $1 trillion. We have lost over 4,000 lives. We have seen 30,000 wounded, and most importantly, from a strategic national security perspective, al Qaeda is resurgent, stronger now than at any time since 2001.

He was apparently referring to this article:

Government report: Al Qaeda strongest since September 11, 2001

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Al Qaeda is the strongest it has been since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a new U.S. government analysis concludes, according to a senior government official who has seen it.

Some unnamed senior government official who says he has seen the report makes this claim, and that's good enough for Obama. It gives him cover to make a misleading claim, but it is a seriously flawed assessment because it glosses over a critical detail: what would al Qaeda's position be today had we abandoned Iraq at the height of al-Qaeda-induced sectarian violence there (as Obama proposed that we do)? Obviously, they would be very much stronger than they are today. Also, al Qaeda's strength, whatever it might be, derives from its safe havens in Pakistan, which was also noted in the article:

"We actually see the al Qaeda central being resurgent in their role in planning operations," John Kringen, head of the CIA's intelligence directorate, testified at the hearing Wednesday. "They seem to be fairly well settled into the safe haven in the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan there. We see more training. We see more money. We see more communications."

Thomas Fingar, deputy director of national intelligence, told lawmakers that al Qaeda leaders hiding in Pakistan are able to maintain relationships "with affiliates throughout the Middle East, North and East Africa and Europe."

And this fact brings up the complete non sequitur that an enthralled media allows Obama to get away with every time (and will do so again now): Because al Qaeda's safe havens are inside Pakistan, how will withdrawing our troops from Iraq and sending them to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban serve to defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan? ...

http://engram-backtalk.blogspot.com/

We are learning more and more regarding Obama's past despite his best efforts.  Excellent article.

 

 

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.

The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.

The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.

The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.

One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212856075765367.html

This is one of my favorite bloggers who methodically mapped out our casualties and progress in Iraq.  He has now turned his attention towards Afghanistan.

 

 

Most of what I know about our war against al Qaeda in Iraq came from a detailed analysis of casualties, especially casualties from suicide bombers (my analysis here, for example, goes far beyond what you'd ever learn from a reporter). I cannot be certain that an analysis of casualties in Afghanistan would yield similar insights, but I recently realized that I know very little about them. Thus, before expressing any strong opinions about what we should do in that country, I thought I would inquire into the matter. In this post, I present the details of how I arrived at my estimates of casualties in Afghanistan from 2005 through 2008. If you want to skip the details and just see the end result, jump to the chart at the end of this post.

Tracking casualties in Iraq is relatively easy because several web sites are devoted to the issue. Tracking casualties in Afghanistan is harder because no such resources are available. However, the AP maintains casualty counts that they sometimes refer to in their articles, and I found this Wikipedia article that also covers the issue. News stories that refer to casualties in Afghanistan often specify a casualty figure and then sometimes mention that most of casualties are militants. Here is one from 2005:

Afghan News 10/16-17/2005 – Bulletin #1208
Compiled by the Embassy of Afghanistan in Canada

Officials blamed the bombing on the Taliban, who are mostly active in southern and eastern parts of the country where some 1,200 people -- mostly militants, but also more than 50 U.S. soldiers -- have been killed in Taliban-linked attacks this year.

That story was published in October of 2005, and I used the figure of 1200 casualties to project an annual total of 1515...

 

In any case, I considered all of this information to arrive at estimates of casualties in Afghanistan for 2005 through 2008 (with the 2008 figures being a projected result based on casualties so far this year). I mainly used counts from the AP, then I assumed that 25% were civilian casualties and 13% were Afghan security force casualties. I also obtained casualty totals for NATO soldiers from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (here). Putting all of that information together, I generated this chart:

As you can see, violence has increased over the last few years, and most of the casualties (by far) were inflicted on the Taliban. More than 4000 Taliban were killed in 2007, and the number will likely exceed 3500 this year. NATO casualties are far lower, but they have increased from about 130 in 2005 to about 300 in 2008, with about half being U.S. casualties (again, the 2008 figure is a projected value). I estimate that about 12 Taliban militants are killed for every NATO soldier that is killed. Even so, the Taliban were somewhat more deadly in 2008 than 2007, and this may reflect the help they are now receiving from al Qaeda field commanders. The Taliban are relentless, but they are not particularly competent. No one would ever say that about al Qaeda.

The numbers shown in this chart are ballpark estimates, and they represent my first attempt to get a handle on casualties in Afghanistan. I'll have more to say about them, but, for now, I just want to get these figures into a post that I can refer to (and update) down the line.
http://engram-backtalk.blogspot.com/2008/09/casualties-in-afghanistan.html

This was simply stunning when I heard about it.  The pictures reveal just how devastating that collision truley was.

 

 

90 Percent Of The Crew Was Injured

September 19, 2008: Three and a half years after the American submarine USS San Francisco hit the top of an underwater mountain, the medical report has been released. The collision, of a sub moving at over 50 kilometers an hour, smashed the sonar equipment that fills the bow (front) of the sub, as the boat careened off to one side. The sub's sudden change of speed and direction was unexpected by the crew. Thus 90 percent of the 138 man crew were injured. One sailor later died. Most of the injuries were minor, but a third of the crew had serious problems (nine had broken bones, two had dislocated shoulders, nine had concussions and 23 had cuts). Fortunately, the two sailors with medical training were not injured, and were able to prevent all but one of the injuries (a bad concussion) from getting worse. The navy is used its study of the San Francisco medical situation to make changes in how subs are equipped, and sailors trained, to deal with large scale injuries. The navy also noted that 15 percent of the crew still had psychological problems months after the accident. This is not unusual for sailors involved in a large scale accident.

But there were other reasons for poor morale among the San Francisco sailors. The sea mount the sub hit had been spotted by survey satellites in 1999 and 2004, but the intelligence agency responsible, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, said it didn't have the money to update naval charts. Neither did the navy, or anyone else. Thus American submarines were allowed to continue moving around amidst all manner of uncharted hazards. Instead, the sailors on duty when the San Francisco hit the sea mount were punished for not having taken more frequent depth soundings (which would have indicated they might be approaching an obstacle), or consulting another map (than the one originally used) that showed a possible sea mount five kilometers from where they actually collided with one.

The navy held the crew responsible for the collision. Six members of the crew were given non-judicial (no court martial) punishment for their actions, or inactions, that caused the accident. At the time (January, 2005), the sub was traveling at high speed and at 500 feet depth. The six sailors punished included officers, senior NCOs and lower ranking sailors. Punishment ranged from letters of reprimand to reduction in rank. The charges were hazarding a vessel and dereliction of duty. The investigators concluded that these six crewmen could have detected the approaching sea mount and taken evasive action if they had followed proper procedures. The captain of the sub was earlier relieved of command.

At the same time, the navy also gave awards, for helping save the submarine after the collision, to eighteen NCOs and two officers. These included two Meritorious Service Medals, nine Commendation Medals, four Achievement Medals and five Letters Of Commendation.

The lack of courts martial indicates that the navy didn't feel it had strong enough evidence for that approach, which is more like a jury trial, and demands more compelling evidence. The non-judicial punishment hurts, but does not destroy, the career of a submariner. This is because the navy has a hard time recruiting qualified people for this kind of work. The navy could have held one or more courts martial, but apparently were convinced that just using the non-judicial punishment would get the matter behind them with a minimum of fuss and penalty. The charges in the non-judicial hearings were of the you should have seen this coming and been more cautious variety. Anyone who knows anything about nuclear submarines, and their crews, knows that these are the most cautious and deliberate sailors in the fleet. Eventually, more details of these proceedings, and the collision itself, will come out.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htatrit/articles/20080919.aspx 

Folks, our troops busted their asses to bring stability in Iraq.  We are in a financial crisis as well as an energy crisis and three Dems kill a deal that would have given us more oil on the market and an investment in Iraq's future.  For their work China has now signed a deal with Iraq.  A nation who did absolutely nothing will reap rewards because three Democratic Senators fked this all up.  The Dems do NOT have our interests at heart.  It makes me sick.

 

No Oil for Blood

by Frederick W. Kagan - (Weekly Standard)

This morning, I had the honor of testifying before the House Budget Committee on the situation in Iraq. The discussion was polite and civilized, and was a reminder that even now it is possible for people who disagree about what to do in Iraq to argue without raised voices and disagreeable language (apart from the Code Pink women, yelling for those who think that shouting opponents down is preferable to arguing with them). Congressman Brian Baird once again demonstrated that it is possible even for those who bitterly opposed the war to recognize the importance of doing the right thing now–as well as the possibility of crossing the Republican-Democrat sectarian divide on this issue. One question came up repeatedly in the hearing that deserves more of an answer than it got, however: Why, after all the assistance we’ve given to Iraq over the past five years, was the first major Iraqi oil deal signed with China and not with an American or even a western company? The answer is, in part, because three Democratic senators intervened in Iraqi domestic politics earlier this year to prevent Iraq from signing short-term agreements with Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, Chevron, and BP.

The Iraqi government was poised to sign no-bid contracts with those firms this summer to help make immediate and needed improvements in Iraq’s oil infrastructure. The result would have been significant foreign investment in Iraq, an expansion of Iraqi government revenues, and an increase in the global supply of oil. One would have thought that leading Democratic senators who claim to be interested in finding other sources of funding to replace American dollars in Iraq, in helping Iraq spend its own money on its own people, and in lowering the price of gasoline for American citizens, would have been all for it. Instead, Senators Chuck Schumer, John Kerry, and Claire McCaskill wrote a letter to Secretary of State Rice asking her “to persuade the GOI [Government of Iraq] to refrain from signing contracts with multinational oil companies until a hydrocarbon law is in effect in Iraq.” The Bush administration wisely refused to do so, but the resulting media hooraw in Iraq led to the cancellation of the contracts, and helps to explain why Iraq is doing oil deals instead with China.

Senators Schumer, McCaskill, and Kerry claimed to be acting from the purest of motives: “It is our fear that this action by the Iraqi government could further deepen political tensions in Iraq and put our service members in even great danger.” For that reason, presumably, Schumer went so far as to ask the senior vice president of Exxon “if his company would agree to wait until the GOI produced a fair, equitable, and transparent hydrocarbon revenue sharing law before it signed any long-term agreement with the GOI.” Exxon naturally refused, but Schumer managed to get the deal killed anyway. But the ostensible premise of the senators’ objections was false–Iraq may not have a hydrocarbons law, but the central government has been sharing oil revenues equitably and there is no reason at all to imagine that signing the deals would have generated increased violence (and this was certainly not the view of American civilian and military officials on the ground in Iraq at the time). It is certain that killing the deals has delayed the maturation of Iraq’s oil industry without producing the desired hydrocarbons legislation.

http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/574iglgp.asp?pg=2

Well, as usual we hear how this is all President Bush's fault through the usual rhetoric one can expect during the Presidential running.  The collapse of the banks are due in part to piss poor oversight and laws passed some time ago.  But let's look closely to what led us to this moment, shall we?

 

Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically the "trickle-down" economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend.

But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street's most revered institutions.

Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.

The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but "predatory."

Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the '90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.

And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi-governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the real estate market in America.

As soon as Clinton crony Franklin Delano Raines took the helm in 1999 at Fannie Mae, for example, he used it as his personal piggy bank, looting it for a total of almost $100 million in compensation by the time he left in early 2005 under an ethical cloud.

Other Clinton cronies, including Janet Reno aide Jamie Gorelick, padded their pockets to the tune of another $75 million.

Raines was accused of overstating earnings and shifting losses so he and other senior executives could earn big bonuses.

In the end, Fannie had to pay a record $400 million civil fine for SEC and other violations, while also agreeing as part of a settlement to make changes in its accounting procedures and ways of managing risk.

But it was too little, too late. Raines had reportedly steered Fannie Mae business to subprime giant Countrywide Financial, which was saved from bankruptcy by Bank of America.

At the same time, the Clinton administration was pushing Fannie and her brother Freddie Mac to buy more mortgages from low-income households.

The Clinton-era corruption, combined with unprecedented catering to affordable-housing lobbyists, resulted in today's nationalization of both Fannie and Freddie, a move that is expected to cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

And the worst is far from over. By the time it is, we'll all be paying for Clinton's social experiment, one that Obama hopes to trump with a whole new round of meddling in the housing and jobs markets. In fact, the social experiment Obama has planned could dwarf both the Great Society and New Deal in size and scope.

There's a political root cause to this mess that we ignore at our peril. If we blame the wrong culprits, we'll learn the wrong lessons. And taxpayers will be on the hook for even larger bailouts down the road.

But the government-can-do-no-wrong crowd just doesn't get it. They won't acknowledge the law of unintended consequences from well-meaning, if misguided, acts...
http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306370789279709