The anointed one's pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a miracle in action - and a blessing to all his faithful followers...

 

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.

He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the

Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.

And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.

From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.

And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child's very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.

The International Olympic Committee confirmed its decision to ban Iraq from taking part in the Beijing Olympics because of the government’s interference with sports by disbanding the country's National Olympic Committee, Reuters reported.

The IOC had warned of sanctions against Iraq after the country disbanded its Olympic committee and other sports in May.

"In spite of all the joint efforts of IOC and OCA (Olympic Council of Asia), over the last months to find a positive solution with the Iraqi government authorities, we regretfully inform you that the decision of the IOC executive board dated 4 June 2008 to suspend the National Olympic Committee of Iraq is confirmed," AFP reported the IOC letter to Iraq said.

"We deeply regret this outcome which severely harms the Iraqi Olympic and Sports Movement and the Iraqi athletes but which is unfortunately imposed by the circumstances," the letter said.

The IOC decision culminates a drawn-out internal feud in Iraq that many see as an extension of Shiite payback to Sunnis who once held a cozy niche in Saddam Hussein's regime.

Back before the Republican Party was saddled with John McCain as its nominee, The New York Times called him "the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe." The paper praised him for "working across the aisle to develop sound bipartisan legislation" and predicted that he would appeal to "a broader range of Americans than the rest of the Republican field."

And on MSNBC's "Hardball," from the way Chris Matthews carried on about McCain, you'd think he had caught a glimpse of Obama's ankle. Matthews said that McCain was "the real straight talker ... a profile in courage ... more seasoned than the current president, a patriot, of course ... honest and respected in the media. He has all the pluses in the world of a sort of a, you know, an Audie Murphy, if you will, a real war hero."

I guess the party's over.

Now the Times won't even publish McCain's op-ed. I wouldn't have published it either -- I've read it twice and I still can't remember what it says -- but I also wouldn't have published McCain's seven op-eds in The New York Times since 1996.

Since McCain has gone from being a Republican "maverick" who attacks Republicans and promotes liberal causes to the Republican nominee for president, he's also gone from being one of the Times' most frequent op-ed guest columnists to being an unpublishable illiterate.

by Shushannah Walshe 
Rochester, NH–

John McCain returned to his second home of New Hampshire today, holding his trademark campaign event, a town hall. The crowd was very enthusiastic breaking into a standing ovation when he walked on stage. He quickly went after his rival making a pointed attack on Barack Obama’s stance against the troop surge in Iraq compared to his own initial support, “This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.”

He continued attacking his rival on Iraq and the troop surge, even bashing Obama’s initial plan to have all troops withdrawn by now, even though the presumptive Democratic nominee has switched to a 16-month withdrawal policy, “You might recall that Senator Obama, my opponent said the surge would not succeed. That he wanted us out. If he had his way we would have been out last March. We would have never done the surge. We would never have succeeded and we would have had defeat and my friends that would have been catastrophe for he United States of America,” McCain then went after Obama’s comments yesterday that he would still be against the troop surge, “He was wrong then. He was wrong now and he still fails to acknowledge–he still fails to acknowledge that the surge succeeded.”

The Republican nominee-in-waiting told the crowd that the improved situation in Iraq is “fragile,” but that Obama’s withdrawal plan “refuses to acknowledge the conditions on the ground. “

While Obama visits the Middle East, McCain has not only been hammering him on his Iraq policy, but that this is his very first trip to Afghanistan trying to make him look inexperienced. He also said today that the combination of more troops and using the same strategy of “clear, hold, and build” as in Iraq will help improve the violence and instability in the country.

Speculation swirled Tuesday that McCain might name his vice presidential partner within the next few days - right in the middle of Barack Obama's overseas tour.

McCain aides were not helping tamp down the speculation with their comments, often made late in the afternoon, of "no announcement today."

But what about tomorrow? Or where? On Tuesday, McCain campaigned in New Hampshire, not all that far from a lakeside summer home of vanquished GOP rival Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor. Romney was nowhere to be seen. Well, it wasn't really that close to his lakeside home.

One member of the audience told McCain he seemed like a very "forgiving" man. "Have you forgiven Mitt Romney?" he asked the senator.

Amid laughter, McCain said, "Mitt has been of tremendous help to my campaign. ... He does a better job for me than he did for himself."

 

[...]

 

All questions about the process of selecting a running mate are quickly shot down.

"It's the one subject we've been forbidden to talk about," said senior adviser Mark Salter. He promised to come to the press area of McCain's plane, "but I won't tell you anything." That is, unless it's "what's wrong with Barack Obama's judgment," Salter joked. Actually, he wasn't joking.

The Arizona senator disparaged Obama as "someone who has no military experience whatsoever."

"When you win wars, troops come home," McCain said. "He's been completely wrong on the issue. ... I have been steadfast in my position."

On Afghanistan, McCain said, "I've always said it's long and tough and hard."

As to Iraq, "We've succeeded. We're not succeeding, we've succeeded,"

In a TV ad on national cable and in 11 states, McCain pushed his support for offshore drilling as the remedy for rising gas prices.

And even though McCain opposes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and during his 2000 presidential run opposed lifting the offshore drilling moratorium, his ad clearly tries to blame rising prices on support for the moratorium by Obama, a first-term Illinois senator.

As the price readout on a lonely gas pump rolls over to $5, the announcer asks, "Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump?" Rising from the background is the sound of a crowd chanting: "Obama, Obama, Obama." A smiling Obama appears on the screen with a pump rising over his right shoulder.

Finally the announcer says: "One man knows we must now drill more in America and rescue our family budgets. Don't hope for more energy, vote for it. McCain."

Barack Obama may be on a world tour surrounded by a fawning media, but Sunday an expert in electronic document forensics released a detailed report on the purported birth certificate -- actually a "Certification of Live Birth" or COLB -- claimed as genuine by his campaign. The expert concludes with 100% certainty that it is a crudely forged fake: "a horribly forgery," according to the analysis published on the popular right-wing Atlas Shrugs blog.

The purported birth certificate was published by the left wing Daily Kos blog on June 12 in response to unconfirmed reports that Obama was not in fact born in the United States (Canada and Kenya were suggested as the possible locations of his actual birth). Since he would in that case not be a natural born US citizen (his mother was not present in the US sufficiently long as an adult to pass American citizenship on to him automatically), he would not be eligible to be president. Israel Insider has followed the story in five previous articles (the previous one here) and uncovered evidence, most recently, of admitted forgery among Daily Kos bloggers, tolerance of electronic forgeries on the blog site, as well as efforts by a blog administrator to conceal the admission of forgery.

The latest examinaton of the purported documents is by far the most detailed and technically sophisticated to date.

Atlas Shrugs publisher Pamela Geller reports that the expert analyst, who goes by the screen name "Techdude", is "an active member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, American College of Forensic Examiners, The International Society of Forensic Computer Examiners, International Information Systems Forensics Association -- the list goes on. He also a board certified as a forensic computer examiner, a certificated legal investigator, and a licensed private investigator. He has been performing computer-based forensic investigations since 1993 (although back then it did not even have a formal name yet) and he has performed countless investigations since then."

 

The pseudonym was apparently inadequate to prevent Techdude's identity from being exposed. He reports that last week one or more persons "decided to track me down and vandalize my car and hang a dead mutilated rabbit from my front door in a lame attempt to intimidate me from proceeding with releasing any details of my analysis. They did succeed in delaying the report by a few days but instead of deterring me they just really pissed me off. To their credit, if I had not taken a few days off from the analysis I would have missed the most damning piece of evidence -- the remnants of the previous security border."

Techdude's detailed report, which runs more than 3000 words and 20 pages with extensive magnified illustrations and comparisons, reaches the following conclusion about the documented that was first published on the Daily Kos extreme left-wing blog and subsequently publicly endorsed by the Obama campaign, both in statements by official spokesmen, and featured on its "Fight the Smears" website. Here are some of conclusions:

"The (Daily) KOS image security border pattern does not match any known specimen from any known year. It does not match the pre-2006 nor does it match the post-2006 certificate patterns. The placement of the text in all of the pre-2006 and post-2006 certificates are almost identical pixel location matches while the image?s text placement does not match any known specimen from any known year. The shape and kerning of the fonts used in the 2006 through 2008 certificates are identical while the shape and kerning of the fonts used in the image does not match any known specimen. The KOS image shows clear signs of tampering such as the mismatch in RGB and error levels, visible indications of the previous location of the erased security border, easily detectable patterns of repeating flaws around the new security border, EXIF data that says the image was last saved with Photoshop CS3 for Macintosh, and finally a technician from Hawaii who confirms it just looks wrong."

The evidence, he says, allows for two possible scenarios by which the document was fabricated:

"There are two obvious scenarios used to create the image that can be ascertained from evidence. Either a real COLB was scanned into Photoshop and digitally edited or a real COLB was first scanned to obtain the graphic layout then blanked by soaking the document in solvent to remove the toner. After rescanning the blank page to a separate image the graphics from the previously obtained scan could then be easily applied to the blank scan after some editing and rebuilding. It would also explain why date stamp bleeds through the paper and the various bits of toner located around the image as well as the remnants of the previous location of a security border."

The purported birth certificate was published by the Daily Kos on June 12 in response to unconfirmed reports that Obama was not in fact born in the United States (Canada and Kenya were suggested as the possible locations of his actual birth). Since he would in that case not be a natural born US citizen (his mother was not present in the US sufficiently long as an adult to pass American citizenship on to him automatically), he would not be eligible to be president.

After more than a month of controversy and demands that the Obama campaign produce a paper birth certificate for analysis, this damning new evidence raises the stakes for the democratic party and its front-runner.

Will Obama and his people continue to stonewall in the facing of the mounting evidence of forgery, and provide paper proof of an authentic, original birth certificate or even a genuine secondary Certificate of Live Birth? And will the mass media and mainstream pundits -- which so far have hesitated to touch the hot potato -- finally address the loaded issue of his possible unfitness to meet the basic Constitutional requirement for a President?

Perhaps the outspoken Israeli press corps will be able to do what their fawning American counterparts have failed to do so far. Obama's visit this week to Israel will be an opportunity to begin asking the tough questions -- however unpolitically correct -- about his apparently forged birth certificate and what that means for his citizenship status and Constitutional fitness to be the next leader of the free world.

Obama will speak about “historic” US-German relations, but once again, Obama’s own grasp of history has been proven deficient. Not only does the site contain a monument to Prussian victories over other American allies in Europe, its placement was decided by Adolf Hitler — in order to impress crowds in his idealized version of Berlin called Germania.

 

[...]

 

Hitler didn’t just move the monument to its more central location. He had a taller column built for it as well, to emphasize its message of German military domination over Europe. He saw it as a message to Germans of their destiny — as well as to other Europeans as their destiny as well. It was never meant as a symbol of peaceful, multicultural co-existence.

 

Team Obama has outdone themselves on symbolism with this choice. They’ve managed to make their hosts uncomfortable for a second time with their choice of rallying point, and perhaps more so this time. If one wanted to talk peace, what worse location could one choose than Adolf Hitler’s favorite monument to militaristic domination? One has to wonder how France, Denmark, and Austria will feel about Obama rallying German masses under the Siegessäule. Deja vu?

 

Obama could be excused for his gaffe, except for two reasons. His team certainly understood the historical weight that the Brandenburg Gate would have lent his event, so why didn’t they bother to ask the Germans about the Siegessäule? Quite obviously, the Germans understand the meaning and subtext of the monument, and most of them wonder why Obama does not. Maybe this is a better example of clueless Americans traveling abroad than those who can only say Merci, beaucoup.

The Pakistani government has negotiated yet another peace agreement with the Taliban in the tribal agencies bordering Afghanistan. The latest agreement was signed in the Orakzai tribal agency, Geo TVreported.

The agreement mirrors other peace deals that have been signed in the tribal areas and in several settled districts in the Northwest Frontier Province.

Orakzai is the sixth of seven tribal agency agencies where the government has negotiated peace agreements with the Taliban. The western border region with Afghanistan is now virtually under Taliban control. While the Pakistani military operates outposts along the border and maintains garrisons in some agencies, the Taliban are free to establish and maintain their shadow governments and surge forces into Afghanistan.

The security situation in northwestern Pakistan and in Afghanistan has rapidly deteriorated since the government initiated its latest round of peace accords with the Taliban and allied extremists in the tribal areas and settled districts in the Northwest Frontier Province. Peace agreements have been signed with the Taliban in North Waziristan, Swat, Dir, Bajaur, Malakand, Mohmand, and Khyber.

Negotiations are under way in South Waziristan, Kohat, and Mardan. The Taliban have violated the terms of these agreements in every region where accords have been signed.

The Taliban, al Qaeda, and allied terrorist groups have established more than 100 terror camps in the tribal areas and the Northwest Frontier Province, US intelligence officials have told The Long War Journal.

BAGHDAD — After intense U.S. assaults, Al Qaeda may be considering shifting focus to its original home base in Afghanistan, where American casualties are running higher than in Iraq, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Saturday.

"We do think that there is some assessment ongoing as to the continued viability of Al Qaeda's fight in Iraq," Gen. David Petraeus told The Associated Press in an interview at his office at the U.S. Embassy.

Whatever the result, Petraeus said no one should expect Al Qaeda to give up entirely in Iraq.

"They're not going to abandon Iraq. They're not going to write it off. None of that," he said. "But what they certainly may do is start to provide some of those resources that would have come to Iraq to Pakistan, possibly Afghanistan."

He said there are signs that foreign fighters recruited by Al Qaeda to do battle in Iraq are being diverted to the largely ungoverned areas in Pakistan from which the fighters can cross into Afghanistan. U.S. officials have pressed Pakistan for more than a year to halt the cross-border infiltration. It remains a major worry not only for the war in Afghanistan but also for Pakistan's stability.

Discussing Al Qaeda in cautious terms, Petraeus said he is not certain of the reliability of the intelligence information about the terrorist network's latest thinking. He was adamant, however, that until now Al Qaeda has seen Iraq as its best opportunity for establishing a militant Islamic state closer to the Persian Gulf.

"That could be under review," Petraeus said. "We do think they are considering what should be the main effort."

He offered a mostly upbeat assessment of conditions in Iraq just weeks before he is to make a recommendation on whether to further reduce U.S. troop levels. Petraeus said the country is showing fresh signs of promise not only on the security front, where insurgent attacks are down sharply, but also politically.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Fox News he is convinced the Iranians are seeking to building an atomic bomb, “a very destabilizing possibility in that part of the world.” He stressed the US had the capacity and the reserves to attack Iran as a last resort

DEBKAfile’s Washington sources stressed the special significance of Mullen’s statement on Sunday, July 20. The night before, a senior Israeli security official said that if the US-Iranian talks failed, President Bush planned to use the three-month period between the November elections in America and his exit from the White House in January for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Senior Israeli official: If nuclear talks fail, Bush will order Iran attack between November and January. This assessment was reported by Israeli national radio Saturday overnight quoting a high-placed “security-political” official.

The source predicted that President George W. Bush would order Iran attacked between the November 4 presidential election and his exit from the White House in January. The quote was aired shortly after the six-power talks with Iran in Geneva – with US official participation for the first time – failed, and just before Israel chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi set out for Washington. He is to spend a week there as guest of Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

DEBKAfile’s political sources describe the disclosure as a step aimed at slowing down the collapse of Israel’s stated policy of relying on international diplomatic pressure to thwart Iran’s acquisition of nuclear arms. It is expected to raise a furious outcry from the powers spearheading the diplomatic effort and prompt extreme reactions from Tehran.

Our sources report that the unidentified Israeli “security-political” source sought to achieve three objectives:

1. Underlining the signal that the US military option had not been taken off the table after the state department spokesman said Iran must choose between cooperation with the international community and confrontation.

The official was also giving Israel’s answer to the latest evaluations making the rounds in Washington that the Israeli Air Force does not have enough warplanes to strike Iran’s nuclear sites without American military support.

2. A signal that the presence at the Geneva talks Saturday, July 19, of Under Secretary of State William Burns, far from being a concession, was an implicit ultimatum. Tehran was being told that no more than three months remained for it to suspend uranium enrichment before Bush made good on his pledge to resolve the issue before he left the White House. No member of the Bush administration is saying this directly, whether Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert Gates or the president himself. Israel will not doubt be rebuked for its disclosure.

3. As a high-risk step to derail the accommodations Washington and Tehran are on the way to reaching in their secret talks on a wide range of issues, with the exception of the nuclear controversy, as revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly and DEBKAfile. Israel fears being abandoned and left out in the cold on all its fronts against Iran by these accommodations.

Tehran may well seize on the Israeli disclosure as a pretext to ditch the nuclear negotiations on all levels, unless all six powers offer guarantees against their pursuit of military initiatives.

   

   

   

   

                                     

“The irony is, the only people McCain can count on to vote for him are the very Republicans he despises — at least those of us who can get drunk enough on Election Day to pull the lever for him. In fact, we should organize parties around the country where Republicans can get drunk so they can vote for McCain. We can pass out clothespins with his name as a reminder and slogan-festooned vomit bags. The East Coast parties can post the number of drinks necessary for the task to help the West Coast parties.” — Ann Coulter

WASHINGTON — The political vision of a summer gas tax holiday died a quick death in Congress, losing to a view that federal excise taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel — far from dropping — will have to go up if they go anywhere.

Despite calls from the presidential campaign trail for a Memorial Day-to-Labor Day tax freeze, lawmakers quickly concluded — with a prod from the construction industry — that having $9 billion less to spend on highways could create a pre-election specter of thousands of lost jobs.

Now, lawmakers quietly are talking about raising fuel taxes by a dime from the current 18.4 cents a gallon on gasoline and 24.3 cents on diesel fuel.

The fuel taxes go into the Highway Trust Fund, which is used for road construction and repair and mass transit. Depriving the 52-year-old Highway Trust Fund of $9 billion at a time when it is heading into the red doomed the notion of a gas tax holiday in Congress.

[...]

Senate Democrats in May tried to add $5 billion to an aviation overhaul bill to replenish the highway trust fund next year; Republicans objected. Democrats tried again in June, but this time for $8 billion; Republicans objected to that, too.

Congress should first reduce spending on pet projects, known as earmarks, argued Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. "I'm not going to let the Senate spend all this money when nobody is looking, especially when we refuse to stop wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on earmarks."

[...]

Among other revenue-raising possibilities, the commission recommended gradually increasing the current federal fuel taxes to 40 cents a gallon.

Other ideas that will be on the table when lawmakers write a bill next year including more toll roads and public-private partnerships, congestion pricing and user fees where drivers pay a tax based on how many miles they drive.