Surge-like in one respect, at least: They'll be out in the countryside in small forts, protecting and interacting with the locals. These Marines will not be tasked with hunt-and-kill missions much, but presumably (I hope) other fighters will.

But this is Obama. Who knows.

Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday morning, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military's new counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

The operation will involve about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was dispatched to Afghanistan earlier this year by President Obama to combat a growing Taliban insurgency in Helmand and other southern provinces. The Marines, along with an Army brigade that is scheduled to arrive later this summer, plan to push into pockets of the country where NATO forces have not had a presence. In many of those areas, the Taliban have evicted local police and government officials, and taken power.

Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population. The brigade's commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, said his Marines will focus their efforts on protecting civilians from the Taliban, and on restoring Afghan government services, instead of a series of hunt-and-kill missions against the insurgents.

Prayers.

Posted by: Ace at 01:12 PM | Add Comment
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Or be expelled from the OAS.

And Obama's part of this.

Palin Steele wanted me to say something nice about Obama for once.

Well, okay. Here's something nice. He looks like he's not afraid to "take it in the mug," if you know what I'm sayin'.

That's always a good thing.

Posted by: Ace at 01:08 PM | Add Comment
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20 seconds in.

Via Weasel Zippers. I'm stealing this one, but they earlier had a vid of a truck full of terrorists being taken out.

They're gibbed, in video-game terms.

Thanks to "momma."

Posted by: Ace at 01:00 PM | Add Comment
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Earlier Chip Reid and Helen Thomas (!) slammed Gibbs for Obama's fake "town hall," in which questioners and questions would be chosen by Obama's staffers.

Although both objected to the process, neither remembered to ask about the fact that Obama would know the questions ahead of time. Thus giving a false appearance that he was prepared to answer any question put to him, when in fact he'd already worked out the answers for the questions he chose to ask himself.

Check out Politico's claim:

After receiving hundreds of questions through the White House website and social networking sites, President Barack Obama took up just seven of them Wednesday at a health care town hall.

The event was touted as a way to open the process and invite questions from voters around the country via YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. But two of the three audience questions came from two groups that are largely supportive of the president, Health Care for America Now and the Service Employees International Union.

...

Before the event even began, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs took heat during his daily briefing for the White House prescreening questions and hand-selecting the invitees. Northern Virginia Community College, which hosted the event, and the White House Office of Public Engagement chose the 200 people in attendance, and other aides selected the questions — although the president did not know what he would be asked.

Read that again: Politico is not reporting that the White House claims Obama did not know what he would be asked. It is reporting, as a fact, not "claimed" by anyone but independently verified by Politico, that Obama did not know what he would be asked.

This is laughable. We are talking about a thin-skinned, media-controlling, image-obsessed Teleprompter-addicted celebrity-in-chief. But Politico tells us, straight up, no caveat, he just didn't know the questions ahead of time.

I have long been annoyed by the way the media chooses to say one side or the other argues something. I have long noticed that when Republicans say something, the media says Republicans claim, which is a scare-word suggesting that while they claim it, it's untrue. "Claim" usually has that negative connotation. The "false" of "false claim" is usually read as gloss on claim.

When Democrats argue something, the neutral words "argue" or "say" are used. Or, better yet still, the positive word believe. "Believe," notice, is unlike "claim" in that someone can claim something they don't actually believe, but if you believe it, obviously you're not lying about your beliefs.

Thus my favorite form of reporting: "Republicans claim... but Democrats believe..." Never the opposite, unless the reporter gets carelress. The positive-sounding word is used for Democrats, the negative-sounding one for Republicans.

If someone truly believes something, and his opponent merely "claims" the opposite, who are you predisposed to believe? Right. Well, that's quite intentional.

I do this myself. When I want to express skepticism about a report, I'll start the headline "Claim:" and then restate the claim. When I'm less skeptical, I'll use the less-negative, less-doubtful "Report:".

But even worse than this is the media's tendency to omit the "argue" or "claim" word entirely when it comes to Democrats, and simply report as verified facts what are more accurately described as the claims as of an interested party.

As Politico does here-- no one in the White House "claims" Obama didn't know the questions. To even report someone is "claiming" this would raise questions in the reader about how credible this claim is in the first place -- which Politico doesn't want to do. So they just take out the "claim" entirely and report it as objective fact.

When this reporter/fan club chapter president was typing up her little newsletter, she realized the word "claim" had negative connotations and tended to draw attention to a claim which was risible on its face. Not being able to think of any synonym which didn't call attention to the ridiculous claim, she simply edited out "claim" and reported it as a fact.

Nicely done.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

Posted by: Ace at 12:31 PM | Comments (1)
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Kind of cute, but I don't like the way it implies that the debt is an ongoing problem. The debt is an ongoing problem, of course, but the kind of staggering, jaw-dropping debt we now face is an entirely new one.

Seems to me the last thing you should be telling people is "We've had this same problem in the pretty much the same form since the War of 1812." If that's the case, gee, I guess we can keep on limping along with it a bit, eh?

Correction: Not a Parody! It's a real Schoolhouse Rock, from the 90s (didn't know they were making them then).

That's why it's not pounding on Obama.

Oops. I figured it was a parody. Apologies.

Thanks to Drew for straightening out my loose shit.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:51 AM | Comments (1)
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Good pic.

Zelaya's court-ordered, congressionally-approved replacement says the only way Zelaya returns to power is at the head of an invading foreign army. Which isn't out of the question, which sort of suggests that maybe Honduras was right to depose this guy.

TNR has a good article scolding Obama for fetishizing the trappings of democracy while undermining the reality of it. Interesting reading:

unday's coup in Honduras has been portrayed as a throwback to the bad old days when Latin American armies got drafted in as the ultimate umpires of political conflict. But in arresting president Manuel Zelaya in his pajamas and putting him on the first plane out of the country, Honduras's generals were acting out of fear of a genuine and growing threat to Latin Democracy: the looming prospect of unchecked, hyper-empowered executive power held for life by a single, charismatic individual.

Seen in context, Sunday's military powerplay was different in important ways from the traditional Latin American putsch. The generals move came at the unanimous--yes unanimous--behest of a congress outraged by Zelaya's not-particularly-subtle attempts to extend his hold on power indefinitely. It followed a series of clearly unconstitutional moves on Zelaya's part, including his attempt to unilaterally remove the chief of the army, which, according to Honduras's Constitution, can only be done by a congressional super-majority.

And congress's request had been seconded by the nation's Supreme Court, which is sworn to uphold a constitution that explicitly makes the act of "inciting, promoting or backing the continuation in power or re-election of the President of the Republic" punishable with the loss of Honduran citizenship.

So while we wince at the image of soldiers kidnapping a president, it's important to recognize that the move against Zelaya was, if not strictly speaking constitutional, certainly institutional.

The Honduran constitution, then, expressly forbids any attempt by a president to change the constitution to seek additional terms -- for good reason, of course, given the tendency of Latin American "democracies" to endure for precisely as long as a current president wishes to allow elections. It further deputizes the Supreme Court in guaranteeing this one-term-only-no-exceptions clause, and further strips the citizenship from anyone attempting any shenanigans.

Whether this was strictly by the book I have no idea, but clearly Zelaya was breaking the law -- the core political law of Honduras: No Unending Political Power by Strongmen -- and the rest of the government was charged with stopping him.

Naturally, then, Obama's on Zelaya's side.

Closely related, Leon Weisthaler critiques those liberals, including at his own magazine, making excuses for Obama:

[W]alzer was hardly the only liberal making bleak excuses for Obama's zealous refusal to show any zeal. We shall not be moved, indeed. But Walzer got it exactly backward....

Obama's parsimonious performance in the first weeks of the rebellion in Tehran, the disappearance of his eloquence and his championship of change, was an attempt by the president to impersonate the rest of us, to be just another saddened consumer of tweets and feeds. Hence his refrains about "bearing witness" and "the world is watching." That is uplift for a demonstration, or a vigil. Witnessing and watching are varieties of passivity. The rest of us witness and watch, because we can do little else. (Hitting "send" is not a muscular form of political action.) Obama seems to think that there is some force in the admonition that the world is watching; but history plentifully demonstrates that when the world is watching, all the world does is watch.

...

I do not agree that Obama's diffidence about liberation and human rights is owed entirely to a fear of nuclear proliferation. He has another commitment. He is determined to be the un-ugly American. This excites him. He is consecrated to an engagement with the Muslim world, which is not entirely consistent with a consecration to democracy. Even as the brutality of the ayatollahs was increasing, Obama made a point of referring graciously to "the Islamic Republic of Iran," as if it would be a slander against Islam or Iran to refer to the regime in a less legitimating manner. (The commentators are declaring a "crisis of legitimacy" in Iran, but there can be no crisis of legitimacy where there is no legitimacy.) Why does Obama care so much for Khamenei's good opinion? Khamenei will blame the West whatever the West does, because he believes that the West is forever to blame. Khamenei responded to Obama's rapture in Cairo with this. And soon, if he is to act according to his plan, Obama will have to sit down with Ahmadinejad. Perhaps he will shake his hand. Perhaps he will he wear a green tie. There are many ways for an American to be ugly or un-ugly. The hearts of millions are about to be broken. They will look to the president of the United States. Will his mincing cease? Will the realist get real? In recent days Obama has begun--not under pressure, of course--to "condemn" and to "deplore." The oppressed people of Iran may now endure what other oppressed peoples have endured: the learning curve of an American president. It is the insult that history adds to their injury.

I don't think it's just about being an "un-ugly American." We have twice now seen Obama ally with tyrants, actual or would-be, over democrats, simply because those tyrants were historically the sorts supported by the anti-American left.

Meanwhile he continues to deliberately snub Britain, a former colonial power despised by the anti-American left.

As Goldfinger said, "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."

UN Ambassador Rice Refuses to Call Iran's Government "Illegitimate;" Justifies "Meddling" In Honduras, Though: Odd that some coups are worth pointing out and others are not.

I disagree with this:

Like it or not, The OneÂ’s going to end up having to pick a side here and siding with the regime simply isnÂ’t viable politically. The only question is when heÂ’ll throw in with Mousavi. Tick tock.

I hate to say it but it seems the revolution is crushed. A bit of gasoline thrown on the fire at a key moment could have engulfed the country, but Obama instead threw sand on it.

Obama won't have to choose because, with his tacit permission, the regime is going to kill everyone it can get away with killing and arrest and beat those it can't. Then Obama gets his way, gets his thuggish pals back in power and has overseas pen pals to exchange love letters with, and can bask in the praise of the tyranny-loving left.

Just Curious: If I'm right and Obama has engineered, to the extent he can, the continued power of the mullahs, will anyone in the media question him on "losing Iran"?

Hmmmm... Putting lie to Spaceballs' claim that evil will always prevail, because good is dumb.

Or at east providing some nuance -- evil is dumb, too.

The ballots Ahmadinejad is displaying on TV, to prove he "won," appear completely fake, all with the same signature and all crisp and unfolded.

Like they were all just run off a printer, which of course they were.

Posted by: Ace at 11:02 AM | Comments (1)
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So reports say.

Incidentally, that picture linked at the end of the post -- the atrocity -- is extremely disturbing.

So disturbing, in fact, Obama just emailed me to say he'd like to see the debate enter a "less-robust" phase.

Mousavi, meanwhile, declares Ahmadinejead "illegitimate" and calls for more protests.

Posted by: Ace at 09:58 AM | Comments (3)
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Caught by James Pethokoukis:

Here are two possible explanations that the administration was so wrong. And sorting through them matters a great deal, because they point in opposite policy directions. The first explanation is that the economy has deteriorated because the stimulus package failed. Some critics say that stimulus just doesnÂ’t work, while others argue that this particular package was too small or too badly constructed to make a difference. The second answer is that the economy has deteriorated in spite of the stimulus. In other words, the patient is not as sick as he would have been without the medicine he received. But he is a lot sicker than doctors realized when they prescribed it. To me, the evidence is fairly compelling that the second answer is the right one.

Well of course it is, darling.

Pethokoukis doesn't buy the Times' spin.

It’s not so much that a more negative forecast would have prevented Obama from spending large amounts of money, it’s that he would have been forced to tilt the stimulus more in favor of tax cuts which work a lot of faster than government spending (though both are pretty inefficient as “stimulus”).

And the grand predictions for the magic the stimulus would work were also necessary on this score, because Obama was claiming his big-spending stimulus, and only his big-spending stimulus, would avert disaster.

Remember, too, how quickly this was cooked up in Nancy Pelosi's office and then rammed through Congress. A combination of sky-is-falling-claims coupled with outlandish predictions of how wonderfully the stimulus would work if we passed it now got the thing passed with minimum debate and scrutiny.

Seems to be a pattern developing here.

Posted by: Ace at 08:20 AM | Comments (1)
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Always a hot button:

The marines have a different attitude towards this. As they put it, "every marine a rifleman." In practice, this means that the majority of marines, who have combat support jobs, continue to get infantry training. So the marines in Iraq called these all-female teams (3-5 women) Lionesses. Again, no shortage of volunteers, as female marines, even more than their sisters in the army, were eager to get into the fight. But that's not what the lioness teams were created for. What the marines had also noticed was that the female marines tended to get useful information out of the women they searched. Iraqi women were surprised, and often awed, when they encountered these female soldiers and marines. The awe often turned into cooperation. Most Iraqi women are much less enthusiastic about fighting the Americans than their men folk (who die in large numbers when they do so.) Being a widow is much harder in the Arab world than it is in the West.

The marines also noticed that the female troops were better at picking up useful information in general. This is something Western police forces noted, in the last few decades, as women were allowed to work in all areas of police work, including detectives and crime scene investigators. Iraqi men were also intimidated by female soldiers and marines. In the macho Arab world, an assertive female with an assault rifle is sort of a man's worst nightmare. So many otherwise reticent Iraqi men, opened up to the female troops, and provided information. Women also had an easier time detecting a lie (something husbands often learn the hard way.)

Discuss.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:50 AM | Comments (1)
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Gibbsy said we're allowed to start measuring Obama's success with the economy now.

he US private sector shed 473,000 jobs in June to cope with a prolonged recession, a survey by payrolls firm ADP showed Wednesday with a warning that unemployment will rise for several more months.

The June job cuts were worse than the 395,000 expected by most analysts but lower than 485,000 in May, which was revised from the previous 532,000 figure.
Monthly employment losses in April, May, and June averaged 492,000, a notable improvement over the first three months of the year, when monthly losses averaged 691,000, according to the ADP National Employment Report.

"Nevertheless, despite some recent indications that economic activity is stabilizing, employment, which usually trails overall economic activity, is likely to decline for at least several more months, although perhaps not as rapidly as during the last six months," ADP said.

The ADP figures came a day ahead of the keenly awaited June government labor report, which would provide the latest economic snapshot of the world's largest economy reeling from recession since December 2007.

While the ADP report for June was not as dire as the initial headlines indicated when taking the May revision into account, "it isn't good news," said Briefing.com's Patrick O'Hare.

I'm surprised they didn't spin this into good news. "Funemployment!"

George Bush took the Golden Cowbell with him, and he's not giving it back. At least not until a worthy man takes the presidency again.

Posted by: Ace at 07:49 AM | Add Comment
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