OT..Buying votes is a time honored tradition.

Is anyone shocked that the Obama campaign re-opened their PAC and started using it to dole out contributions in the early states? …

in recent months, Obama has handed out more than $180,000 from the nearly dormant PAC to local Democratic groups and candidates in the key early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, campaign reports show.
(snip)

talkleft

I guess that really shows what kind of politician he is. You just can’t hide who you really are. When you open your mouth stuff comes out.

OT–

Is Faux News cannibalizing one of their own?

Former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) suggested on Sunday that Fox News is biased against his campaign, charging that the network highlights commentators who have been critical of his run for the presidency.
…

Thompson is done. You just can’t criticize the party propaganda machine and get away with it.

eCAHNomics @ 21

Funny thing about ‘the surge is working.’ If we were working our way down to this level of failure, we’d be horrified. But since things have been so much worse, down looks like up.

and they’re probably cooking the books

The same people who had ‘the math’ on election day 2000 and again in 2004. I’d probably be disappointed if they didn’t stay true to form and lie every way they could.

McCain is an embarrassment to himself, his family, to the Senate and to America. It didn’t have to go this way, but this is the Bush era. What a shame.

One question should do it.

The splurge “working” means one thing: bush has jacked enough troops into Baghdad and the restive midlands to put that part of the country into semi-lockdown, complete with a maze of concrete blast barriers, ethnic cleansing, and checkpoints everywhere.

Now. What makes anyone think that without our troops there to perpetuate it in perpetuity, that the “stability” can be sustained?

Take your time for the answer, Fox/Friedman; no hurry. The election is still a year away, and we all know the ingrate Iraqis have finally come to their senses and will be offering garlands and their daughters, to our weary troops, for the pastoral tranquility that bush has finally given them. :o)

Watching bush and CentCom decide to go a-schmoozing with the Sunni insurgents, many of them Baathists from the good old days, is not going down well with the Shia. They fear, and rightly, I think, that the seemingly genetic disposition of the bush family to sell them out, is rearing it’s ugly head yet again.
:o)

They think, again, I believe rightly, that co-opting the Sunni insurgents with arms and money has an ulterior motive on the part of bushCo, of trying desperately to stave off the control of most of Iraq (or at least, that part of it blessed with the lubricity of all those dead dinosaurs) by Shiites who will inevitably be exchanging ass-rubs with the hard-liners in Teheran.

I think these factors will mitigate against the Kumbayah Chorus ever getting off the ground in Iraq, more than anything the Sunnis do or don’t do.

I think that believing that there is a corner to be turned, is utter bullshit…of the same kind that for years polluted and perverted any sensible thinking about how to end the misery of that other clusterfuck, Vietnam.

I think the shit is probably going to hit the fan, whether we leave in 10 weeks or 10 years; but that decision will have to be made by the factions which bush unleashed when he so insanely went haring after Saddam and his oil.

The denouement of this bloody, chaotic, little soap opeara is not going to be a happy one for us, but with at least a half-million dead, and a country in ruins, from “Operation Surrogate Viagra”, why should it be?

Has God suspended the law of kharma?

“The Surge is Working” has become the received opinion of the US media. It will be the received opinion until there is some visible change in the situation- casualty figures go way up again. The future of our nation is strangely in the hands of the Iraqis.

The future of our nation is strangely in the hands of the Sunnis.

In January 2005 I made what seemed to be an obvious prediction. I predicted that we could not ever defeat the Sunni insurgency. I predicted that a time would come that we would need to (have to) make accommodation with this fighting force. My favorite line on this subject was from Rummy who said, “It’s not like we can just call up these guys.”

Well, these guys have not only fought us to a standstill, they, in adherence to their code of honor, consider that they defeated the USA forces and are now willing to deal. We lost to the Sunni insurgency: they won and are now willing to sit at the table with the defeated occupying forces to establish their socio/political future.

I find this an intriguing point.

There’s also the silence from the main stream media. I see no mention that the Sunni’s have kept their honor by fighting us to a standstill and that having won, they are entering negotiations and pursuant thereto daily IED attacks have been halved. When we witness our ‘bring-them-on” President smilingly meeting with entities that have heretofore been killing US troops on a daily basis, I get a feeling of visceral disgust for the hypocrisy it entails..

There’s the Washington/American political angle, not only that we lost, but that the surge arrived as the Anbar/Western Provinces etc (not Baghdad) based Sunnis were claiming victory and it, the surge, had not an iota’s affect on the main reduction in hostilities.

And there’s the point that we are cooperating and arming the Sunnis (to defeat Al Queda) thus establishing a viable military and political Sunni entity which is in direct opposition to the main purpose of the surge. We surged to allow a national political reconciliation but by accommodating the ‘victorious’ Sunnis we have worked against the national (majority Shia) government.

I worry for the military because these events could easily backfire. More guns and more Sunni cohesion is a risky strategy.

I don’t worry about the Cheney/Bush crowd. I would like to see the American voters informed that we in essence have lost the main military pacification objective versus the Sunnis, that the surge did not accomplish its aims and that politically motivated incompetence still rules the lives of our troops.

________________________

My January 2005 prediction:

The ghost of Arafat will appear from the Sunni side and George B. to his enormous bile-choking displeasure will have to deal. Were that it were otherwise but this is written.

Fielding one per cent of the Sunni fighting-age men as active insurgents/freedom fighters with three percent as cadre (40,000) creates a stalemate. They can not dislodge us and our Shia forces nor can we pacify them.

Personally I would find this leader (or group) now and begin the next phase. Offer them administrative control of electric and water reconstruction projects. They create no-kill, no-maim zones, implement the projects, Halliburton yes, Halliburton no, who cares, and we release the money on a quasi ‘completion’ basis.

This gambit lacks all pride and ego but we do get to stay a while.

Sarge might say “Light em if you got em,” for a change.