Maj. Smith and Col MacFarland's rundown on how the Awakening and surge worked. Its a 12 page long article in PDF form. Contrary to what the Messiah asserts, the Awakening was hardly an accidental development. It was carefully cultivated and nurtured.

...It is gratifying to see our model adapted and used elsewhere in the War on Terror. It proves once again that America’s Army is truly a learning organization. In the end, probably the most important lesson we learned in Ramadi was that, as General Petraeus said, “Hard is not hopeless.”

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 08:07 PM | Comments (26)
Post contains 171 words, total size 1 kb.

I know: It's old.

But I don't mean the P.J. O'Rourke essay. I mean the breaking, real-world news.

Driver abuses speed limit and himself

A TERRITORY man filmed himself speeding at 150km/h while masturbating at the wheel of his drug-laden car, a court heard.

His Holden SV6 was allegedly laden with 5kg of drugs, including two cannabis plants resting on the back seat, the court was told.

Brendon Alan Erhardt, 39, was granted bail so he could marry his girlfriend of six months before he goes to jail.

Prosecutor Sergeant Melinda Edwards said in court the father-of-three told police he "had masturbated while driving'' just before he was stopped for speeding on the 130km/h stretch of the Stuart Hwy.

"(He) also video recorded himself masturbating while travelling at a speed of 150km/h.''

He does have an alibi:

It is alleged that officers found 4.96kg of cannabis hidden in a blue esky in the boot, two cannabis plants on the back seat, two drug pipes and a loaded .22 rifle.

Sgt Edwards said Mr Erhardt was arrested and told officers he had "found'' the drugs at a rest stop 100km north of Coober Pedy -- and he intended to smoke all of it at his Noonamah home.

Mr Erhardt also told police he had used the rifle to shoot "kangaroos from the vehicle whilst driving north''.

He was booked on three charges: Driving While Awesome, Carrying a Lethal Awesome without License, and Possession of Awesome with Intent to Distribute.

Thanks to MattM.

Posted by: Ace at 05:20 PM | Comments (43)
Post contains 283 words, total size 2 kb.

Not incriminating. Just weird.

Bob McGovern is an intuitive who has worked as a healer since 1988. He works with energy in the area of the emotional fields. He uses philosophy, psychology and the intuitive to find resolutions that move people back into alignment with the universe and into a place of peace, harmony and joy.

Bob uses the intuitive to help people with a variety of life issues, including relationships, career and health. His knowledge of the past and the future helps people find balance in the present. He is able to separate out surrounding negative energy, which allows people to have a clearer perception of their own options and choices. He works to empower people so that they can respond to the challenges of daily life with greater discernment and fuller understanding.

Link added by me.

Deceiver suggests that the media call this guy about his non-role in this non-scandal and find out what he was non-doing non-reserving rooms for the non-couple.

But that's silly. Bloggers can do that as well.

Posted by: Ace at 03:04 PM | Comments (35)
Post contains 213 words, total size 1 kb.

Not exactly a tough sell, now is it?

The presumptive Republican nominee has embarked on a bare-knuckled barrage of negative advertising aimed at belittling Mr. Obama. The most recent ad compares the presumptive Democratic nominee for president to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton — suggesting to voters that he’s nothing more than a bubble-headed, publicity-seeking celebrity.

The ad gave us an uneasy feeling that the McCain campaign was starting up the same sort of racially tinged attack on Mr. Obama that Republican operatives, some of whom work for Mr. McCain now, ran against Harold Ford, a black candidate for Senate in Tennessee in 2006. That assault, too, began with videos juxtaposing Mr. Ford with young, white women.

Mr. Obama called Mr. McCain on the ploy, saying, quite rightly, that the Republicans are trying to scare voters by pointing out that he “doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills.’’

But Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, had a snappy answer. “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” he said. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.’’

The retort was, we must say, not only contemptible, but shrewd. It puts the sin for the racial attack not on those who made it, but on the victim of the attack.

It also — and we wish this were coincidence, but we doubt it — conjurs up another loaded racial image.

The phrase dealing the race card “from the bottom of the deck” entered the national lexicon during the O.J. Simpson saga. Robert Shapiro, one of Mr. Simpson’s lawyers, famously declared of himself, Johnny Cochran and the rest of the Simpson defense team, “Not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck.”

If you listened to Rick Davis defending himself from Obama Communications Director Andrea Mitchell below, you know the Obama campaign has been peddling the "racial attack" storyline to the media (and bottomdwelling bloggers, of course) for two days.

This is what Obama does. Hillary supporters were driven bonkers by this during the primaries. On the surface, Obama pretends to be post-racial, while actually making expressly racial appeals on occasion.

But it's behind the scenes where he plays the race card again and again. He know it will backfire if he himself is out there screaming racism with all the subtlety of Al Sharpton waiting for a cab. So instead he gets his surrogates to do it for him -- while his top advisers frantically dial the media all day trying to get them to do Obama's dirty work for them.

And usually, the media is more than happy to play campaign coordinator for Obama.

Just ask Hillary.

Question: Does the media have the responsibility to report on what stories a campaign is pushing to them secretly? I realize this is hypothetical, since they'll never drop dime on their beloved Obama.

But if a campaign consistently denies it's making racially-tinged attacks on an opponent, while secretly pushing those attacks every hour to media allies, doesn't the media have a responsibility to report on what the campaign is really doing, hidden from public view?

Or does the media consider itself an actual, formal partner in Obama's election campaign?

Everyone in the MSM knows damn well that the Obama campaign is pushing the racial appeals behind the scenes. They know that, because they're the ones getting the frantic calls from Obama's people "suggesting" such storylines.

How long is the media going to continue this charade? How long will they falsely portray Obama as post-racial and trans-racial when they know damn well the campaign is hyper-racial on phone calls with them, explicitly attempting to racialize just about every issue and ad and statement that Obama gets peeved about?

Or is this just their Special Little Secret with their Special Little Friend?

Racist Organization Insinuates That Obama Will Steal Their White Women: Why, just look at this hypersexual shot of a white woman with face cast dangerously close to Obama's swarthy nethers!

That's from this racist political organization.

Thanks to BumperStickerist.

Posted by: Ace at 02:32 PM | Comments (63)
Post contains 709 words, total size 5 kb.

A small MSM outlet actually bothers to do a little journalism, and hits a jackpot.

As the Charlotte Observer points out, the child was born two months after Andrew Young (an Edwards confidante) claimed paternity, so why isn't ol' Andrew's name listed there?

Asked Thursday why no father was listed on the birth certificate, Hunter's attorney, Robert Gordon of New York, said, “A lot of women do that.”

Reminded that he and Hunter had publicly revealed the father's identity two months earlier to the National Enquirer, Gordon said, “That's a personal matter between them.”

Gordon declined to comment further.

That's okay. You don't have to comment, Gordo. I think we can all fill in the blanks on our own.

Thanks to CJ.

PS: If the MSM continues its embargo in the face of even this, well, I'll be impressed.

PPS: I just intercepted this secret coded communique from the NYT to the LAT. Can anyone make heads or tails of it?

TECTROP

THELZIBEA

PPPPS: Here's why, it seems, Reille Hunter did not just write in "Andrew Young:"

With unmarried couples, California State law requires both parents to sign a “Declaration of Paternity” form prior to the father's name being put on the birth certificate. If the father is not present, his name may be added to the birth certificate at a later date after proper forms are obtained from the Department of Vital Records.

Young may have been unwilling to carry the ruse that far (though I'm not sure why he balked here), and Reille wasn't permitted to sign in his stead.

Posted by: Ace at 01:31 PM | Comments (55)
Post contains 278 words, total size 2 kb.

10. "celebrity"

9. "arrogant"

8. "inexperienced"

7. "oil"

6. "higher taxes"

5. "John Edwards' Love-Bastard"

4. "liberal"

3. "Jeremiah Wright"

2. "ludicrous"

...and the number one Obama/Media Forbidden Racial Codeword...

1. "Vote for John McCain (wink, wink!)"

Posted by: Ace at 01:06 PM | Comments (32)
Post contains 59 words, total size 1 kb.

There's bias, there's being in the tank, there's carrying water, there's kneepads.

And then there's Andrea Mitchell.

Wow. Bravissimo, Miss Mitchell.

Posted by: Ace at 01:00 PM | Comments (31)
Post contains 35 words, total size 1 kb.

How is that racist, you ask? Well, first of all, everything bad you say about Obama is racist. But specifically, Joshua Jay Jeremiah Micah Ezekiah Boutros-Boutros Valderaama Marshall says all this "presumptuous, arrogant elitist narcissist" business is just racial code words for "uppity colored:"

I note with interest today, John McCain's new tactic of associating Barack Obama with oversexed and/or promiscuous young white women. (See today's new ad and this from yesterday.) Presumably, a la Harold Ford 2006, this will be one of those strategies that will be a matter of deep dispute during the campaign and later treated as transparent and obvious once the campaign is concluded.

But what I'm most interested in today is the new meme the McCain campaign has been pushing for the last few weeks that Obama is presumptuous, arrogant and well ... just a bit uppity.

...

So please keep an eye out for references to Obama's presumptuousness, arrogance, etc., from John King and other reporters. Let us know when you see them and send us in examples -- in text or video. McCain gets to run the campaign he wants. Remember, he hired the operative who put together the Ford/Bimbo ad. But I want to keep tabs on which reporters are helping him retail the message.

These guys are so horny for someone to call Obama a shiftless darkie they're thisclose to saying it themselves.

Thanks to CJ for the Hugh Hewitt tip and of course Slublog for the shop.

Slublog, you just made Josh Marshall's list, buddy.

More: This is how Obama plays the race card, mostly: through surrogates, so he can maintain his pose as "post-racial:"

In the primary, Obama's campaign, with the partial exception of South Carolina, never overtly drove the cries of racism. Part of the candidate's selling point to the white majority is that he isn't a bearer of racial grievance, and he is very careful to preserve that impression. Meanwhile, his surrogates and the media pursued the stories, doing real damage to Clinton's campaign and her husband's legacy.

And among Obama's surrogates are the netroots-- Talking Points Memo in particular:

Around midnight on July 16, New York Times chief political correspondent Adam Nagourney received a terse e-mail from Barack Obama's press office. The campaign was irked by the Times' latest poll and Nagourney and Megan Thee's accompanying front-page piece titled "Poll Finds Obama Isn't Closing Divide on Race," which was running in the morning's paper. Nagourney answered the query, the substance of which he says was minor, and went to bed, thinking the matter resolved.

But, the next morning, Nagourney awoke to an e-mail from Talking Points Memo writer Greg Sargent asking him to comment on an eight-point rebuttal trashing his piece that the Obama campaign had released to reporters and bloggers like The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder and Politico's Ben Smith. Nagourney had not heard the complaints from the Obama camp and had no idea they were so steamed. "I'm looking at this thing, and I'm like, 'What the hell is this?' " Nagourney recently recalled. "I really flipped out."

Obama's attempts to mau-mau (am I allowed to say that?) the press may or may not be successful; but some reporters aren't buying the Obama camp's preferred practice of crying racism at the drop of a hat.

But it definitely won't work with the broader public. So Obama's game here is a dangerous one for him. White people bitterly cling to their resentment that they can't say boo without being accused of being closet, or out and proud, racists. If Obama thinks he's actually going to persuade the middle by claiming that you don't vote for him, you must be a racist, he's in a for a bad surprise.

This worked in the primary, because all liberals are required to pretend that every single cry of racism is valid. Not so among the bitter, clingy folks.

Posted by: Ace at 12:09 PM | Comments (95)
Post contains 659 words, total size 5 kb.

Neat:

): As PopularMechanics.com first reported here, scientists from NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and Texas A&M have just officially announced at a press conference that soil samples taken by Phoenix on Mars is water ice.

"We expected to find water—hat's why we came here, but we're very pleased to see we landed right on top of water ice," says Peter Smith, the principal investigator for Phoenix at the University of Arizona.

The a hard, solid substance discovered 2 in. under the soil beneath the lander is "definitely" a solid layer of water ice.

Two new trenches will be carved and explored for different kinds of ice. "We also hope to answer the question ... if this is a habitable zone on Mars," Smith said, adding that he hopes to guide future missions to search for life where the Phoenix lander is located.

And now the search for life:

The Phoenix mission will be extended, but team leaders arenÂ’t sure how long the lander will last, so theyÂ’re gathering as much information and evidence on Mars as possible. "We're learning as we go along the best way to heat the soil ... and we have ways of fine tuning the instrument to look for organic molecules at the expense of other molecules," Boyton said. "It will be very helpful to have more time ... to use all of TEGA's 8 ovens [to heat samples for measurement in a spectrometer]."

So the hunt for organics on Mars has officially begun.

Oddly, NASA made no mention of the fact that they also discovered a human bootprint on Mars:

"We just do shit like that to fuck with people," a NASA team leader explained.

Posted by: Ace at 11:51 AM | Comments (33)
Post contains 282 words, total size 2 kb.

It's kinda funny, and it hits the swing issue of oil, but that's not what makes it good. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:55 AM | Comments (17)
Post contains 157 words, total size 1 kb.