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We need to stop, look, and listen. The quality of our electorate is the key to our success, and the quality is and has been going down hill. Constantly doling out something for nothing to the unproductive in an increasingly costly nanny state expands that dependent segment of the population.

I’m afraid by the time we wake up on this the damage will be irrevokably done.

stenwin77 on February 29, 2008 at 10:56 AM

Yep, I know….

Reagan had real vision, real solutions, real ideas. Tangible and realistic.

Barack Hussein Obama has only change and hope. Lofty plans and Hollywood realism.

Kini on February 28, 2008 at 9:25 PM

Reagan isn’t running.

McAArp represents a lot of what’s wrong with our country right now. He has been PART of the problem the past 8 years. While he might be right on the war, there are other issues at stake here.

That’s why I supported Mitt, he was outside of DC. Against BHO, it would have been a big +.

I hope you are wrong. Some think that the average Democrat is inherently racist , so they wont vote for BHO.

TheSitRep on February 28, 2008 at 9:19 PM

He’s only HALF black, isn’t he?

There is no question that Barack Fitzgerald Obama is a featherweight non-thinker. But I have a feeling that he would keep our troops in Iraq just so he could claim the final victory. Yep, he’s that shallow.

Zorro on February 28, 2008 at 9:13 PM

Zorro, I believe his middle name is Milhous.

That’s an angle I hadn’t thought of, … possible.

I’m continually alarmed at how clueless Obama is. Someday soon the voting public will discover the Messiah has no clothes.

NNtrancer on February 28, 2008 at 8:43 PM

I just hope it’s before the election, not after a national tragedy.

I will continue to say this no matter what the MSM tells me. McCain will not only beat Obama, he will win in a landslide and Obama will get destroyed in the debates.

noelgallagher2k on February 28, 2008 at 8:41 PM

Do you dream in color.

I see it quite differently.

I see debates where the media softballs the big O, and “sets up” the Repub. candidate.

I see J. McAarp making gaffs like he did 2x in one speech yesterday (using the word dispirited instead of spirited, and calling himself a liberal Repub)

I see the media putting HOT, unkind lights on J. McAarp, showing him pale and sweating,

I see J. McAArp being highlighted by the likes of JUAN HERNANDEZ, and thereby totally alienating (no pun intended) his base.

I see moderates and “progressive” Republicans swallowing the “HOPE” line and voting for the O.

I see the big O out fund-raising J. McAArp about 5 to 1,

I see the big O putting HRC on the ticket -drawing the women vote.

I see J. McAArp putting a liberal/”progressive” Republican (?) on the ticket and further pissing off his base.

But, that’s just me. I tend to dwell in reality.

And time will tell who is “right” (again, no pun intended).

Al-Qaeda exists there now [...]

AQI exists there now. Despite what we call them, and despite them adopting the AQ brand, they are still a separate group (and a recently-formed one, at that). While they’re certainly bad people and a regional threat, they aren’t the people who attacked us. That seems to be the implication in what McCain has been saying — that fighting terrorists and insurgents in Iraq has something to do with what happened on 9/11. That’s lazy fear mongering. Justify it on its own merits.

“We need to be prepared across the board for what a new president will bring,” Mullen said. “I do worry about a rapid withdrawal. . . [that would] turn around the gains we have achieved and struggled to achieve and turn them around overnight.”

This rather highlights how tenuous those gains really are. What good is progress if it completely collapses the day that the occupying army leaves? We’re five years in, and we haven’t made any lasting progress?

This points out the problem with Barack Obama and the rest of the Iraq war opponents: they insist on looking backwards at the decision to invade Iraq rather than the reality of what we face now.

It’s not as if McCain is admitting that going in was a mistake. McCain still thinks it was the right thing to do. More than that, he wants to keep going on this track (”there’s gonna be other wars”). Obama would be stupid not to keep pointing that out. And as noted above, the reality we face now is that we’ve made little lasting progress in five years. We’ve created chaos and given terrorists a cause célèbre. We’ve elevated Iran — a country whose animosity we’ve provoked and cultivated for decades — to the status of regional superpower. Our major reasons for going in have proven to be false (with much to suggest they were outright lies) — which means that our only possible reasons for staying must be circumstances that came about because of our invasion. We made this mess, and some warped international sense of duty compels us to try to clean it up, even though our own military leadership admits that we’ve made no lasting progress towards that goal in five deadly years. That might be acceptable if our reasons for going in were valid, and there were real, immediate national security interests at stake. But absent those we’re just on an indefinite, deadly and expensive masochistic adventure that doesn’t benefit us. Yeah, that’s selfish, but we’re not running a charity or a nation-building service here. America needs to look out for America.

Alden Pyle on February 29, 2008 at 7:44 AM

Ah, brings back the memory of David Dinkins as mayor here in NYC. But I could have pointed to Phili, Detroit, or any number of places destroyed by the guilt you describe. It seems now that the majority is made up of two types of voters– those too stupid and dependent to know better, and those just intelligent enough to feel liberalism’s allure and the guilt it promotes. It’s a crying shame, literally, but we do get what we deserve.

Once the voters woke up the next day and realized they voted in a bull shnitzer who’s first priority was to spend $15 grand on new curtains to pimp the gov’s crib, and tossed the prudent Cown Victoria in favor of the Caddy DTS with 20″ wheels on the tax payers’ dime, the sugar coated rainbows and cotton candy for began to clear and they saw that they voted in Deval / Obama because he was black and it gave them a warm fuzzy feeling to show they weren’t racist by doing so…well the hangover set in.

It’s a bad sign when our military leaders have to prepare for the worst because a potential future POTUS might deliberately and willing put our military in a unfavorable and unwinnable situation by retreating from a mission which is currently enjoying major success.

Yakko77 on February 28, 2008 at 8:42 PM

Just more evidence that our system of government is failing (due to liberalism). The military issuing a warning to the civilian government is common throughout the world. Perhaps one day here too the military, like in Turkey for ex., will become the guarantor of democracy–of a sort. There are worse fates.

I just thought the photo above was beautiful, so I figured I’d add it. Something about it seemed to me to fit with the mysteries of Leap Year. I know, leap year is not all that mysterious, but the photo seems to me to be. I shamelessly grabbed t…

I do not fear Barak Hussein. I feel he was picked to show how utterly thin the so-called Clinton legacy really was. Just think– a 3 year Senator has torched that Legacy, and the inevitability of Hillary. Let’s just take that in for a minute.
He was given to us for a reason, and I believe he will be dismissed in November, and by quite a margin.

Second off, CJCS DOES have operational control of certain types of strategic forces, although not the type we have in Iraq and usually only on a day to day basis. MB4 is wrong.

Third, responding to some of the posts, Congress can only CONFIRM a CJCS-nominee, not appoint one of their own. DoD is in the Executive Branch, after all. Losing retirement pay shouldn’t be an issue for a four star, because, at a minimum, they’ll retire at the two-star level unless confirmed for three or four star pay. Two star retirement pay is better than most active duty folks make. Of course, by the time you get your third or fourth stars pinned on, you’re more politician than warrior, so unfortunately, it DOES weigh into the decision to retire or not.

Sloppy reporting.