JustOneMinute

A Not-Yet-Reported Palin "Scandal"

I don't know if this will qualify as a scandal but I am pretty sure you are reading this here first
- Sarah Palin endorsed a contingency lawsuit against one of the State of Alaska's pension consultants after the state legislature refused to bankroll the legal effort:

The state filed a $1.8 billion malpractice lawsuit Thursday against a consulting firm it claims is a reason Alaska's public employee pension system is in crisis.

The state alleges that Mercer Human Resource Consulting Inc. gave negligent advice and even made basic math errors. Mercer was the state's actuary company and advised Alaska on its public employee and teacher retirement systems for nearly 30 years until being replaced in 2005.

"Fully aware of the billions of dollars at stake, Mercer nevertheless made fundamental errors in methodology and even in basic calculations, and failed to assign competent, experienced personnel to work for the plans," the state charged in its lawsuit.

The state claims Mercer badly miscalculated the growth rate of health care costs. Public employers used Mercer's actuarial information in deciding how much they should contribute to the pension funds.

...

Gov. Sarah Palin asked the Legislature this spring for $12 million to pay for the lawsuit. Lawmakers refused to give her the money.

"At that time my concerns had not been answered as to the probability of prevailing in the lawsuit," said Anchorage Republican Rep. Mike Hawker, a member of the Finance Committee.

The state has instead negotiated a contingency agreement with the law firm it retained to assist in the suit. The firm will get a percentage of whatever award Alaska receives after costs, ranging from 25 percent if the award is up to $200 million to 5 percent if Alaska prevails for more than a billion dollars.

That New York firm -- Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison -- is also paying the Juneau firm of Lessmeier and Winters to help.

Hawker said the contingency seems to be a responsible way for the state to pursue what could be challenging litigation.

Sitka Republican Sen. Bert Stedman also said he's comfortable with that approach to the suit.

"Clearly there's some question as far as the quality of work done by Mercer," said Stedman, co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee.

The lawsuit was filed in Alaska Superior Court in Juneau.

Here is a bit of the Google-cache of a gone-but-not-forgotten State of Alaska announcement:

State Files Suit Against Mercer Seeks $1.8 Billion in Damages

December 6, 2007, Juneau, Alaska - Governor Palin today announced the filing of a lawsuit by Attorney General Talis Colberg and the Department of Law against Mercer (US) Inc., the former actuary for Alaska’s Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS) and Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) pension plans.  The lawsuit seeks more than $1.8 billion in damages from Mercer for mistakes in calculating the pension plans’ expected liabilities, including mistaken actuarial assumptions and methods about future health care costs, and basic mathematical and technical errors.

“I am committed to aggressively pursuing the ’healing’ of Alaska’s retirement plans so the burden of the several-billion-dollar unfunded liability does not fall on the backs of ordinary citizens. Filing this lawsuit is an important step in that process,” Governor Palin said.

Here is other coverage.  If a PACER maven could track that suit through what I presume is the Federal Court in Juneau that would be lovely.  I am reasonably certain the suit is still alive because I heard about it at a picnic this afternoon from a Mercer employee.  Now, a bit of disclosure - my source probably would not have been a Palin fan even absent the lawsuit; OTOH, he was explicit in saying he had no idea whether she was involved with the suit.  From the reporting she was sufficiently involved to let herself get quoted backing it.

So what does it mean?  Well, perhaps Republican disdain for trial lawyers and speculative contingency lawsuits is a sometime thing.  Superficially this suit appears to me to be yet another public entity that would prefer to flail about and sue someone rather than than admit that they deliberately under-funded their pension plans in order to avoid raising taxes or cutting services.   But I say that as a Jersey guy where that sort of behavior was the norm; maybe Alaska has a legitimate beef here.  Maybe.  In any case, Ms. Palin would not have been governor during the period if underfunding, but she could have blown the whistle on the lawsuit.

This is by no means a major scandal even if the lawsuit is substantially without merit.  Let's file it under "Troubling".  By way of comparison, file this under "How does he keep a straight face?"

 

Gustav Watch

Let's have a Gustav thread.

Sunday Open Thread, With a Palin Tilt

We probably ought to have both a Gustav watch and a Palin watch thread, to see which is the greater disaster.

Ross Douthat argues that maybe Palin won't be so bad. 

My take - I run into Connecticut women in their 40's and 50's, almost all with college or advanced degrees and professional experience.  I understand that is not Palin's target demographic nor was there any thought of turning Connecticut Red.  However, the best thing I can say about the Palin pick is that all these women are now wishing they were Republicans because they would be qualified to be President, too.

I don't like the pick - I feel as if McCain is throwing long on second down with plenty of time on the clock (Note - we are officially abandoning baseball metaphors for the rest of year).  I don't have confidence in his selection process, I don't like the result, I have a hard time believing this is the way he will pick a Cabinet and staff the executive branch, I don't like surrendering the "inexperienced" card with the idea of out "hope and changing" Barack - let's say I don't like it. 

Oh, well - maybe this pick is killing 'em in the heartland.  I would think Ms. Palin would have good working class and evangelical appeal.

Next thread - Gustav.

MORE: OUCH.  Well, I could cherry-pick negative reaction all afternoon.  Here is some good advice from Jonah Goldberg.

Looks Like A Saturday Open Thread

Sorry, something unexpected takes me away.

Traditional Friday VP Speculation Open Thread

Please complete the following:

If McCain selects [      ] I will personally [        ].

We are looking for originality here - I have already pre-empted "Romney" and "gag myself with a spoon".

SPOILER ALERT:  Or, if you want to cheat and read the actual pick, go ahead.

Achingly Phony

I assume there was a receptive audience for Obama's speech and I understand that I was not predisposed to be impressed.  To the extent that I could set that aside, I thought he was good but not great - I am sure Dems will be satisifed, but I don't think they will have thrills running up their legs. 

For myself, there were a number of moments when I marveled at Obama's ability to deliver his lines with a straight face.  This is from the prepared text:

But what I will not do is suggest that the Senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism.

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain.

Oh, please - he won't question McCain's patriotism and therefore McCain shouldn't question his.  I think Obama ought to feel free to question McCain's patriotism and he can let us know how that works out.  And McCain is surely free to ask about Obama's education reform sidekick Bill Ayers (are we allowed to question his patriotism?).

I experienced more pain here in the March of the Strawmen:

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country. The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than for those plagued by gang-violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination. Passions fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers.

Stop.  Who stands in opposition to reducing unwanted pregnancies?  There are heated disputes about means (free condoms handed out in schools?) but not about ends.

Who favors allowing criminals access to AK-47s?  No one.  Part of the the dispute is whether the assault weapons ban favored by the Democrats, which keeps AK-47s out of everyone's hands, is Constitutional and effective.

Who favors denying gay partners the right to hospital visitation?  That is not the dispute - gay rights advocates want marriage (both the rights and the word), not civil unions or visitation rights.  In 2004 states were amending their constitutions to prevent "marriage", not visitation rights.  George Bush was (sort of) pushing a Constitutional amendment to ban marriage, not visitation rights. 

And where in the immigration debate is the lobby demanding mothers and children be separated?  As to the other part of Obama's immigration insight - "I don't know anyone who benefits when... an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers" - of course he does.  The employer benefits from paying lower wages and the illegal workers benefit by holding a job at near-US wages for which they are not legally qualified (and on which they may not be paying taxes.)  Is he saying that everyone should be able to get behind stricter workplace enforcement of current laws?  That will cause an Hispanic panic among his supporters.

This came from the "We know what you are but what is McCain?" file and was shockingly honest, albeit unintentionally:

  If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.         

The first words from the ABC commentator I heard assessing the speech were that Obama had been surprisingly aggressive, tying McCain to Bush and insisting that McCain was running for Bush's third term.  We understand that Obama has no record to run on but we did not expect him to be so candid.

I thought his Inspirational Big Finish was comical:

America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future.

Back to the future!  Call me hidebound but I think the future is coming whether we pledge to march into it or not.  The choice is not Forward or Back, it is left or right.  Or maybe right or wrong.

Oh, well.  I am sure a bitter dispute is still raging at MSNBC as to whether this was the greatest oration of all time in this or any galaxy, or merely the greatest oration in the history of earth.

REWRITE!  Someone should have changed this (my emphasis):

That promise is our greatest inheritance. It's a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night, and a promise that you make to yours...

My eleven year old son piped up with "What about me?".  Should have been "children", not "daughters".  One child left behind - there's a lost vote in seven years.

           

What We Are NOT Hearing From Obama

On the topic of Bill Ayers, Barack Obama and their joint multiyear effort together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (dedicated to public school reform) we have seen from the Obama campaign outrage and the attempted stifling of dissent.

I have a simpler suggestion for a response from Team Obama that might be effective and would, unlike the current effort, have a modest basis in reality - Obama should just admit he ordered the Code Red.

This is the sort of statement I have in mind:

"Yes, I am proud of my work on education reform with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  Any attempt to reform a big city's public schools is inevitably caught up in political cross-currents, but I believe I gained valuable insight and experience, and I continue to have confidence in many of the initiatives supported by the Challenge." (At some point the Obama people will need to provide examples of some Challenge successes, but that is for another day.)

"And yes, Bill Ayers was involved.  The mayor, the governor, the head of the Chicago schools and much of the Chicago political establishment turned out in 1995 to celebrate the launch of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Bill Ayers helped co-found.  Do I deplore his terrorist activities in the 60's?  Of course.  But his insights into education reform are valued by Chicago's mayor and many others, so I was obliged to work with him, and together we helped Chicago's children and parents".

Obama could say something like that, or his campaign could, or some under-worked lefty blogger could pry their fingers out of their ears, stop humming "I can't hear you!" and hop to and address this Ayer issue.  A possible starting point is this Chi Trib story from 2000 which seems to have found kind words for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and other school reform efforts (maybe; I haven't splurged to buy it):

WORST ON THE WAY TO FIRST CHICAGO'S LOCAL SCHOOL COUNCILS ARE IN THEIR SECOND DECADE. AND GUESS WHAT?; SUDDENLY OTHER CITIES ARE COPYING THEIR SUCCESS. Series: SCHOOL REFORM A report card. The first of two articles evaluating the efforts of Chicago's local school council system.

Now the Annenberg Foundation reviewed the efforts of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and concluded it had "limited impact".  But they must have done something right!  If Hillary can present her health care debacle of 1993 as a learning experience, surely Obama can do the same with this.  And since education reform, like health care reform, is a high national priority Obama really ought to take ownership of his personal history.

Now, this "honesty is the best policy" tactic may not sway Obama's harshser critics.  But who in the media or the general public is an authority on Chicago school reform circa 1995?  If Obama insists he learned from his mistakes and scored a few successes with his attempt at school reform, at a minimum his supporters will have more upon which to hang their hats than the current "Kurtz is a liar who bashed Scandanavian homosexuals" defense is giving them.

Radio Killed The Media Star

Steve Diamond, who has led the way on untangling the Obama/Ayers/Annenberg Challenge connection, was listening to the radio while Obama's mob tried to shout down Stanley Kurtz.

MORE: A bit of flavor from Jonah Goldberg and Andy McCarthy.

Jim Lindgren is baffled by the zeal of the Obama response:

2. Kurtz, unlike Ayers, is denounced in the most vicious and uncivil terms (there is a lot more than I quoted). If Obama or his campaign had ever denounced Ayers with the fervor that his campaign has now used in denouncing Kurtz, Obama wouldn’t be having trouble on his connection to Ayers...

I think I can help with this puzzle:

3. I heard Kurtz’s statements on FOX, and — though my memory may well be faulty — I thought that Kurtz was speculating that Ayers had probably recruited Obama, not stating it as a fact.

From MichaelW of Q&O:

First off, Kurtz has not made any such claim, neither in the interview cited in the email, nor in his article for the National Review. He has suggested that Obama's recruitment by Ayers was likely given the extent of their relationship, but he hasn't explicitly claimed that Obama was definitely recruited. This is why Smith hasn't seen any "hard evidence" backing up such a claim: Kurtz didn't make it.

He offers a link to a YouTube clip of the interview, so I presume his confidence is justified (YouTibe locks up my computer - I am trapped in the 90's).

I Am Sort Of Taking This Personally

Stanley Kurtz is a "slimy character assassin" because he has been poking at the Obama/Ayers/Chicago Annenberg Challenge story?  Geez, that is a bizarre over-reaction from Team Obama.  What's next, the Kewl Kids will mock his wheels at the Prom?

Here we go:

And tonight, the campaign launched a more specific campaign: an effort to disrupt the appearance by a writer for National Review, Stanley Kurtz, on a Chicago radio program. Kurtz has been writing about Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, and has suggested that papers housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago would reveal new details of that relationship.

The campaign e-mailed Chicago supporters who had signed up for the Obama Action Wire with detailed instructions including the station's telephone number and the show's extension, as well as a research file on Kurtz, which seems to prove that he's a conservative, which isn't in dispute. The file cites a couple of his more controversial pieces, notably his much-maligned claim that same-sex unions have undermined marriage in Scandinavia.

"Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse," says the email, which picks up a form of pressure on the press pioneered by conservative talk radio hosts and activists in the 1990s, and since adopted by Media Matters and other liberal groups.

"It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves. At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies," it continues.

Kurtz's lies?  Examples, please:

Just last night on Fox News, Kurtz drastically exaggerated Barack's connection with Ayers by claiming Ayers had recruited Barack to the board of the Annenberg Challenge. That is completely false and has been disproved in numerous press accounts.

And there is more on this a bit later:

Kurtz claimed on Fox News that William Ayers recruited Obama to the
Annenberg Challenge -- a flat out lie. Ayers did not serve on the
board of the Challenge, and he had nothing to do with Barack's
recruitment.

As to the "numerous press accounts", I have no idea what they are talking about - there has been very little contemporary press coverage of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge to date (neither the WaPo nor the Times had discovered it as of this morning).  As to press coverage in 1995, it was sparse; the fact of Obama's chairmanship is scarcely reported, let alone details as to how he was recruited.

Now, it is true that Ayers was not on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge - so what?  He was a prominent co-founder and worked with the Challenge for several years through his  role as co-founder of the Chicago  School Reform Collaborative.

So it is certainly plausible that Ayers recruited Obama (I would bet on it); it is implausible that Ayers had no role at all in selecting a chairman.  But did Ayers recruit Obama?  Who would know, other than Ayers and Obama, and who has asked them?  And considering Obama's past tap-dancing on this issue, who would believe his answer?

A possible resolution might be available in the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Mr. Kurtz has been riffling through for a couple of days now.  Research, evidence, new conclusions... possible?  Before this campaign flack calls Kurtz a liar, let's see some evidence, from either side [and see CLARIFICATION below].

And while we are on the topic - another reason to think that Ayers recruited Obama in 1995 is that there is an excellent chance Obama and Ayers first partnered up on education reform in 1987.  Bill Ayers was coordinating the ABC's Coalition of which Obama's group, the Developing Communities Project, was a part.  That is one more "smear" for Team Obama to contest bitterly, I suppose.

SPEAKING OF SMEARS:  Obama's "Fight The Smears" website is a blank on Ayers.  Maybe they are planning a whole new website devoted to this?

CLARIFICATION:  From Q&O:

First off, Kurtz has not made any such claim, neither in the interview cited in the email, nor in his article for the National Review. He has suggested that Obama's recruitment by Ayers was likely given the extent of their relationship, but he hasn't explicitly claimed that Obama was definitely recruited. This is why Smith hasn't seen any "hard evidence" backing up such a claim: Kurtz didn't make it.

MORE:  The LA Times blog comments; their lead:

As nation watches Denver, Obama campaign muscles Chicago station over ex-radical Ayres

In a surprising attempt to stifle broadcast criticism of its candidate, the presidential campaign of freshman Illinois senator Barack Obama is organizing supporters to confront Chicago's WGN radio station for having a critic of the Illinois Democrat on its main evening discussion program.

They spell "Ayers" correctly in the body - can't they make common cause with the headline writers?

John Fund has a few paragraphs on Ayers and Obama in the WSJ, picking up on the cover-up theme:

Also unexplained is the sudden sensitivity on Team Obama's part. It's already known that Mr. Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, hosted a key fund-raising party during Mr. Obama's first bid for public office and also served with Mr. Obama on the board of a Chicago-based charity until 2002. Today, the University of Illinois will finally release documents it tried to keep from the public on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the liberal school reform effort founded by Mr. Ayers and chaired by Mr. Obama. Obama campaign aides insist the two men had only a casual relationship. During a Democratic primary debate last April, Mr. Obama said that "the notion that . . . me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense."

We may know more about the relationship between the two men later this week, after reporters have plowed through the once-suppressed Annenberg Challenge records.

News And Perspective

Ezra Klein laments the Dem Lost Week Convention, with a second from Andrew Sullivan.  This perspective on the media and their news judgment is laughable:

Then the Republican Convention will begin...  And the media will not cover Ron Paul's protesters with the vigor or attention they gave to Hillary Clinton's diehards.

Let's see - a Senator, former First Lady and former front-runner making history as the first woman with a serious chance at a major party nomination versus Ron Paul, a former something or other and current I-forget-what (if I ever knew).  One got eighteen million votes and the other got eighteen million hits at his website.  Why in any real world would their die-hard supporters get equal coverage?

Chris Bowers is nervous as well.  Sorry, "frustrated".

MORE:  This is stage management?  Having Obama nominated by acclamation (after a dramatic intercession by Hillary) at 4:48 Mountain Time, or 6:48 here in America?  What are they going to show in prime time, replays of Michael Phelps' races?  Or maybe Met-Phillies highlights?

Baffling.

Not A Fine Day For The Irish

In a little-noticed qualifier to a pre-convention release, Team Obama announces they may eliminate the special envoy to Northern Ireland.  Dems fought for and got this post under Clinton and it has been continued by Bush.

Ben Smith of The Politico is paying attention.

Here is the BBC:

US presidential candidate Barack Obama is to ask the British and Irish governments and NI party leaders if a special US envoy is still necessary.

Mr Obama said "the crisis period has passed, and the people are now in charge of their own destiny".

He said he would discuss "whether a senior administration official, serving as point person for Northern Ireland, would be most effective".

Mr Obama, who has Irish ancestry, has issued a US-Irish relations statement.

The Irish Echo:

However, it was the statement's seeming retreat from the envoy policy, which came into being during the Clinton administration after years of lobbying by Irish American groups and activists, that sent up a red flag even as Democrats prepared in Denver for Obama's acceptance speech Thursday.

"I'm Shocked, I really am," veteran Democratic activist Brian O'Dwyer said.

"The stupidity of it, that somehow the idea that it is all over (in Northern Ireland) and there is no need for an envoy; this of all things. Irish American is most proud of the fact that it obtained an envoy, O'Dwyer, a prominent supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries, told the Echo.

"This was fought for, clawed for, for many years," said O'Dwyer.

O'Dwyer said there were many issues that could still be watched over by a special envoy, and that Irish Americans feared that the progress to date in Northern Ireland could be let slip if the U.S. involvement was diminished.

"It's hard for me to fathom how anyone who knows anything about Ireland would say this. This is a signal that the U.S. government will detach. If he (Obama) wins, the operative word is detachment," O'Dwyer said.

And the Irish Times:

Irish Voice publisher Niall O'Dowd, who supported Mrs Clinton in the Democratic primaries, said the statement was unclear but warned that any weakening of US input in the North would be "completely unacceptable" to Irish-Americans.

"A special envoy continues to be vital and necessary," he said. "Wholehearted American support and involvement will also be vital in resolving the upcoming issues of policing and devolution."

I have no doubt the Obama campaign will "clarify" this promptly.

MCain Should Not Need To Distort (A Lot) To Win

Call me delusional but I think McCain could beat the engaging but insubstantial Obama on his own merits and does not need to rely on distortions as in this ad:

Today's new McCain ad -- "Tiny," which you can watch HERE -- crosses a new line into dishonesty, however, beyond whether or not it's actually airing anywhere.

The script reads; "Iran. Radical Islamic government. Known sponsors of terrorism. Developing nuclear capabilities to 'generate power' but threatening to eliminate Israel.

"Obama says Iran is a 'tiny' country, 'doesn't pose a serious threat,'" the ad continues. "Terrorism, destroying Israel, those aren't 'serious threats'? Obama -- dangerously unprepared to be president."

This is a dishonest representation of Obama's words.

On May 18, on Pendelton, Oregon, Obama said that "strong countries and strong Presidents talk to their adversaries. That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao. I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela -- these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, 'We're going to wipe you off the planet.'

"And ultimately that direct engagement led to a series of measures that helped prevent nuclear war, and over time allowed the kind of opening that brought down the Berlin Wall," Obama continued. "Now, that has to be the kind of approach that we take. You know, Iran, they spend one-one hundredth of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance. And we should use that position of strength that we have to be bold enough to go ahead and listen. That doesn't mean we agree with them on everything. We might not compromise on any issues, but at least we should find out other areas of potential common interest, and we can reduce some of the tensions that has caused us so many problems around the world."

On its face Obama's policy towards Iran has been a muddle - he has said will meet without preconditions with the leaders; subsequent "clarifications" taught us that may or may not include Ahmadinejad and that Obama contemplated "preparations" but not preconditions before a meeting.

I quibble with the conclusion at the Political Punch:

That is not even close to Obama saying Iran is a "tiny" country that "doesn't pose a serious threat."

If you look closely (try squinting), the passage I have emphasized - If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance - sorta kinda implies that Iran does not pose a serious threat to us now.  I mean, right now Iran seems to be standing pretty good chances of proceeding with their nuclear program, yes?

Well.  Obama is murky enough on Iran without McCain stirring more mud into the mix.  Distortions, even if defensible, simply gives an eager press the chance to write "McCain Lies" stories, which steps on the message.  The truth ought to be effective enough - when this bubbled up in May even the Times was willing to present McCain's side fairly.

Wind Power And The Power Grid

The NY Times pokes at one of the obvious problem with wind power - our current power grid is not well suited to getting power from where the wind turbines are to where the customers are.

My fave bit:

The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.

Country roads?  Not a series of tubes?

But seriously - this is one more infrastructure challenge that will, like it or not, require Federal coordination if not Federal money:

Politicians in Washington have long known about the grid’s limitations but have made scant headway in solving them. They are reluctant to trample the prerogatives of state governments, which have traditionally exercised authority over the grid and have little incentive to push improvements that would benefit neighboring states.

In Texas, T. Boone Pickens, the oilman building the world’s largest wind farm, plans to tackle the grid problem by using a right of way he is developing for water pipelines for a 250-mile transmission line from the Panhandle to the Dallas market. He has testified in Congress that Texas policy is especially favorable for such a project and that other wind developers cannot be expected to match his efforts.

“If you want to do it on a national scale, where the transmission line distances will be much longer, and utility regulations are different, Congress must act,” he said on Capitol Hill.

I want wind farms in the Dakotas and concentrating solar plants in New Mexico to brighten my day.  And that is because I want to stick it to petro-terrorists and the Russian mafia, not save a stray polar bear or two.  McCain should be pounding this - conservation and increased production is a matter of national security, not environmentalism.

MORE:  Glenn Reynolds opines. Let me hat tip Memeorandum and toss TNR into the mix with a pricetag:

The real problems here are political, not technical—or even economic. (The Energy Department says it would cost $60 billion for a "high-voltage backbone" that would allow wind to generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity—and that would be spread out over many years and millions of customers.)

GET THAT TIGER:  The Tigerhawk has lots more on smart power grids of the future.

Leadership that's shirking.

Patterico Busts Sullivan

Sully has lost track of the Swiftboaters, as Patterico explains.  Ted Sampley has been after McCain and Kerry for years,arguing that they have promoted the cover-up of US prisoners still held in Vietnam (Think Rambo - First Blood Part Two, or Second Blood).  From Salon:

According to author Susan Katz Keating, who has written extensively on Vietnam veterans and the POW/MIA movement for the Washington Times and Soldier of Fortune magazine, deception is what Sampley does for a living. Her book "Prisoners of Hope: Exploiting the POW-MIA Myth in America," published in 1994 by Random House, exposes how Sampley and his allies abused the hopes of grieving families for fun and profit. Their best-known victim, until now, was Sen. John McCain. He first drew Sampley's poisonous attention when, along with Kerry, he debunked the idea that Americans were still being held by Vietnam, and endorsed the restoration of diplomatic relations with the Communist government.

Keating describes in detail how, in 1992, Sampley commenced a "scurrilous" crusade to punish McCain:

"Sampley ... accused McCain of being a weak-minded coward who had escaped death by collaborating with the enemy. Sampley claimed that McCain had first been compromised by the Vietnamese, then recruited by the Soviets.

"To those who know McCain and are familiar with his behavior in captivity, the charge is ludicrous. McCain resisted his captors to such a degree that he was isolated in a special prison for troublemakers. He repeatedly refused special favors, including early release, and emerged as a spiritual and religious leader for other prisoners. Nonetheless, Sampley was persistent enough in his claims that the press in McCain's home state of Arizona picked up on the KGB story."

This was long before the Swift Boats took their turn on center stage.

My Temples Are Pounding

ABC News sets the stage for a few laughs:

Obama Speech Stage Resembles Ancient Greek Temple
Reuters
DENVER 

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.

The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos' National Football League team plays.

Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington's Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party's nomination for president.

He will stride out to a raised platform to a podium that can be raised from beneath the floor.

We are desperate to see the poster!  A suggested starting point is here:

 


Roman, Greek - don't vex me. [UPDATE:  An entrant at Powerline.]

MORE:  A show of nerves from Alex Koppelman at Salon:

I suppose there's an outside chance this could actually look good when it's finished and all the trappings are in place. But right now it just seems incredibly tone-deaf.

You'll love it when the time comes.  Can I hear a "Yes We Can"?

D'OH!  Obama will orate on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech given in front of the Lincoln Memorial, so this is really a MLK tribute.  A tasteful yet subtle tribute.

HMM:  The Captain rejects the Lincoln Memorial connection because Obama's temple is rounded.  I'm guessing that the temple is rounded on the set to appear flat on television, or some such (sort of similar to the reason columns are curved to appear straight...).  Anyway, King will double-surely be invoked in The Speech, so I am sticking with the Lincoln Memorial motif.

DOUBLE HMM:  Are they saving the surprise or have they not thought of this yet?  The Obama camp does not invoke King in their own defense:

On the flight from Billings, Mont., to Denver, Colo., Obama senior strategist David Axelrod responded to the criticism.

"I know that Sen. McCain and his people have been shooting barbs about the 'opulence' of our convention from the mountaintop at Sedona at the McCain estate. I don't think it warrants a response."

OK, there is a third choice - I am all wet with this King/Lincoln Memorial thing.  Nahhhh...

Annenberg, Obama, And Ayers

Unrepentant Weatherman Bill Ayers in in the news, linked to his friend and colleague from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Barack Obama.

The NRO editors join in while we wait for Stanley Kurtz to riffle the Challenge archives at the University of Illinois Chicago library.

Fox News got a peek at the archives:

FOX News was among several news organizations that reviewed the university’s records by appointment. In one agenda, a March 15, 1995, meeting featured Obama making introductions and Ayers giving a briefing.

But more than a year later, Obama pushed the group to be bolder in its reforms, according to the Associated Press, which also reviewed the documents. Minutes from an October 1996 gathering show Obama, a guest at a meeting of the collaborative, raised questions about what the group should be doing.

The Associates Press reports the minutes characterized Obama’s concerns as twofold: Whether the group was raising additional money and whether money was being used “to prop up existing organizations as opposed to creating fresh educational practices in the schools?”

“At the end of five years, will we have broken the mold? Not much seems to be bubbling up that is inspiring or substantive,” the minutes say, paraphrasing Obama.

The "collaborative" to which they refer was founded and led by Bill Ayers (see his resume) and did a lot of the staff work for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

And here is the AP:

The minutes of the Annenberg Challenge meetings show that during a June 1995 meeting, Ayers was credited with having "worked diligently" to support the effort. More than a year later, Obama pushed the group to be bolder in its reforms.

"At the end of five years, will we have broken the mold? Not much seems to be bubbling up that is inspiring or substantive," October 1996 minutes say, paraphrasing Obama.

Ayers and Obama clearly worked together - odd that Obama forgot.

The Chicago Tribune describes the media frenzy at the library and notes the Obama cover-up:

The UIC records show that Obama and Ayers attended board meetings, retreats and at least one news conference together as the education program got under way. The two continued to attend meetings together during the 1995-2001 operation of the program, records show.

At a Democratic debate this year when the association between Obama and Ayers was raised, Obama said: "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood. . . . He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis." Obama called Ayers' past radical acts detestable.

But critics note that Obama visited Ayers' home for a meeting at the start of his first state Senate bid in the mid-'90s.

And the Canada Free Press wonders whether criticizing Obama is a crime.  Geez, when the Canadians mock our press freedom...

The NY Times is all meta - they are happy to bash the shadowy group besmirching their candidate but are unwilling to note the long. strong tie between Ayers and Obama by way of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  When last we looked, Jim Rutenberg of the Times was utterly unaware of (or at least, unwilling to report) that tie; now, his final paragraph warms up their readers for revelations to follow:

The fight may move to another front this week.

The University of Illinois at Chicago is in the process or releasing documents detailing Mr. Obama’s involvement with a non-profit education project started by Mr. Ayers.

It's almost like reporting!

The WaPo also focuses their coverage on Obama's bold, non-Kerryish push-back.  Here is a bold, colorful quote from an Obama operative who WON"T BE BULLIED:

Obama campaign lawyer Robert F. Bauer replied: "If someone rides up to a convenience store with a sawed-off shotgun and a prior record, I'm not intimidating anybody by calling the cops. . . . If this [Republican] campaign is going to be run in McCarthyite fashion by lawbreakers in an illegal way, they are going to pay a price."

Boy, talking about Ayers and riding around with shotguns - wise?

The WaPo aids the mainstreaming of Bill Ayers and lays the groundwork for Obama's alibi:

Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, a radical organization that claimed responsibility for a dozen bombings between 1970 and 1974. He is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an expert on public school reform.

However, the rest of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge link will have to wait for another story - as of this reporting, the Ayers/Obama tie is still quite tenuous in WaPoWorld:

Ayers did hold a gathering for him in 1995 when Obama first ran for the Illinois Senate, and he later contributed $200 to his reelection campaign. But Bauer said that hardly constitutes launching the political career of a University of Chicago Law School lecturer and the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review, who had just published his first memoir, "Dreams From My Father."

The WaPo website hosts the AP story noting the Chicago Annenberg Challenge but their featured A1 story is silent on that connection.  That is actually funny, in a head-bangingly predictable sort of way.

"Here's A Situation Where Folks Are Lying"

Barack Obama defended his opposition to proposed Illinois state laws protecting "born-alive" infants and dismissed his critics as liars:

CBN Correspondent David Brody: Real quick, the born alive infant protection act. I gotta tell you that's the one thing I get a lot of emails about and it's just not just from Evangelicals, it about Catholics, Protestants, main – they're trying to understand it because there was some literature put out by the National Right to Life Committee. And they're basically saying they felt like you misrepresented your position on that bill.
 
Obama: Let me clarify this right now.
 
Brody: Because it's getting a lot of play.

Obama: Well and because they have not been telling the truth. And I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying. I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported – which was to say – that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born – even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion. That was not the bill that was presented at the state level. What that bill also was doing was trying to undermine Roe vs. Wade.

Obama is right!  This is a situation where folks are lying.  However, the Annenberg Fact Checkers have concluded that the liar is Obama.

A June 30 Obama campaign statement responding to similar claims by conservative commentator William J. Bennett says that SB 1082 did not contain the same language as the federal BAIPA.

Obama campaign statement, June 30: Illinois And Federal Born Alive Infant Protection Acts Did Not Include Exactly The Same Language. The Illinois legislation read, "A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law." The Born Alive Infant Protections Act read, "Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being 'born alive' as defined in this section." [SB 1082, Held in Health and Human Services, 3/13/03; Session Sine Die, 1/11/05; BAIPA, Public Law 107-207]

The statement was still on Obama's Web site as of this writing, Aug. 25, long after Obama had accused his detractors of "lying." But Obama's claim is wrong. In fact, by the time the HHS Committee voted on the bill, it did contain language identical to the federal act.

Obama has such a small a resume that it is a wonder he still needs to run from it.

Night Two Open Thread

Tell us how the Dems are doing; the Yanks are down 3-2 in the top of the fifth.

Michelle Obama

Betsy Newmark thinks Michelle Obama's speech will impress those who only know about her "what she said yesterday".  Memory aides are provided.

Tiger Hawk rounds up the round-ups and opines:

First Lady Michelle Obama would be a dramatic, jarring, revealing, awakening, slap in the face for Americans who want their first lady a certain way. That might be just what we need.

Too bad they're such lefties.

I gave her speech a pass - I figured the professional image consultants would do a fine job preparing something go her to read.

KVETCH, KVETCH:  Even the NY Times can't keep this quiet:

DENVER — When her husband ran for Congress in 2000, Michelle Obama groused so much about handshaking and fund-raising that Arthur Sussman, then her boss at the University of Chicago, finally asked if she truly could not find a single thing about campaigning to enjoy.

Mrs. Obama thought for a moment. Visiting so many living rooms had given her some new decorating ideas, she allowed.

Eight years later, the once reluctant campaigner is at the center of a multimedia charm offensive that may be the most closely managed spousal rollout in presidential campaign history. On Monday night, Mrs. Obama delivered a prime-time speech at the Democratic National Convention, preceded by an intricately made biographical video, a touch usually afforded to candidates, not their wives.

Even Obama, in The Audacity of Hope, mentioned that it is often raining in Michelle's world.  But not last night!

RICHARD COHEN:

The transformation of Michelle Obama from a bracingly proud contemporary woman -- mother, wife, career woman -- into a prime time Betty Crocker was sad to see.

He liked the Sister Grim better angry.  This wanted-to-be-fawning-but-couldn't New Yorker profile should bring back happier memories.

Obama Responds On Ayers

Obama has an ad up "responding" to the criticism of his relationship with Bill Ayers.  Left unanswered:

1.  Why has he been covering this up before now? 

Obama's campaign manager David Axelrod told The Politico in February that

"Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school," he said. "They're certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together."

Obama told George Stepanopolous during the Democratic debate in Philadelphia that

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from.  He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

The so-called "Fact Check" at the Obama website does not disclose that Obama and Ayers worked together on a failed education reform project from 1995 to 2001, and had probably first teamed up on education reform in 1987.          

ADDENDUM:  In May the NY Times had this (my emphasis):

Mr. Obama also fit in at Hyde Park’s fringes, among university faculty members like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, unrepentant members of the radical Weather Underground that bombed the United States Capitol and the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. Mr. Obama was introduced to the couple in 1995 at a meet-and-greet they held for him at their home, aides said.

Not likely - per the workings of the political calendar the meeting would have been in the second half of 1995.  Obama and Ayers had surely met by March of 1995 when the Chicago Annenberg Challenge had its first board meeting.

2.   Set aside the fact that Obama was a mere lad when Ayers was setting bombs; today Ayers is an unreconstructed hard-left radical with dramatic views on education and society - as he explained to Hugo Chavez during a speech in Venezuela in 2006, "La educacion es revolucion!"

Obama worked for five years with Bill Ayers on education reform while they were both with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  Are we being asked to believe that, just as Obama initially claimed to have been unaware of Jeremiah Wright's views, he was also unaware of Ayers current radicalism?

Coming soon - "That's not the Bill Ayers I knew".

So why the cover-up?  We can't know, since at this point we don't know the full extent of the Obama/Ayers relationship.  But at a minimum, I expect that the campaign is uncomfortable with the reality that their man of almost non-existent executive experience was in fact chairman of a high-profile belly-flop in education reform.  I doubt that soccer moms or anyone else will be thrilled to learn that Obama hung with unapologetic terrorists, talked about school reform, and achieved nothing.

MORE:  Headscratching and huzzas from the right side of the blogosphere - no one can see how promoting this story helps Obama.

Here we go - Team Obama is filing with the DoJ to squash dissent. 

Jim Geraghty is pleased that Obama characterizes Ayers as a "radical".

Jennifer Rubin calls it "the biggest goof yet".

AllahPundit says thank you to Team Obama.

THE AD:  A transcript might be here at TIME but the page won't load for me.

NO RADICAL LEFT BEHIND:  One of the first education reform grants made by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was to former SDS leader turned Maoist Mike Klonsky, a friend of Bill Ayers from back in the day who had a blog at the Obama site until he was outed.

Refunds For Some But Not All?

Warren Buffet may or may not have been kidding when he mused that Edwards' donors ought to engage in a class action lawsuit against their candidate, but apparently Edwards has in fact been refunding money to some, but not all, donors. 

Wouldn't that buttress a class-action lawsuit? Why is Edwards taking care of his fat-cat bundlers but not reimbursing Joe Lunchbucket's $100?  Troubling.

OK, per the post's UPDATE we see speculation that these are max donors who had contributed to a now-irrelevant general election fund.  Even so, aren't there any min donors in that category?  (Hmm, quite probably not - my guess is that once a donor maxes out for the primary cycle future donations are held in suspense until the candidate qualifies for the general.)

I'M SORRY I ASKED:  As a test of the "max donor" theory I picked from a refunds page someone who got $500 back, attorney D Wobbrock of Lake Oswego, OR.

From the FEC search I see that D Wobbrock gave $1,300 to Edwards on 5/16/2007 and another $500 on 6/30/2007; he got a refund of $500 on 3/24/2008 even though he had not maxed out.

Beats me.  There are other Wobbrock contributors from the same address (presumably family members), so who knows?  And who cares?

Tom Delay -The Dismissal Is In The Mail

A Texas state appeals court backs Delay's argument that his indictment is flawed because the relevant statute covered cash, not checks:

Money-laundering charges against former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay and two indicted co-conspirators may be dismissed because the 2002 campaign finance case involved checks and not cash, a lawyer for DeLay said Sunday night.

"We win," said Dick DeGuerin, DeLay's lawyer, "because there's nothing but checks in the case."

The state's 3rd Court of Appeals on Friday actually upheld the money-laundering indictments against DeLay's two campaign associates, John Colyandro of Austin and Jim Ellis of Washington.

But the ruling contained a silver lining for the trio's lawyers because it concluded that the state's money-laundering statute — written in 1993 to combat illicit drug activity by focusing on the cash in the criminal transactions — did not apply to checks at the time DeLay is accused of laundering corporate money into campaign donations. The Legislature changed the law in 2005 to include checks.

Lawyers for the three defendants have included the check-versus-cash argument in other legal motions. But it was not part of the constitutional challenge that was before the 3rd Court of Appeals, so the appellate court could not dismiss on those grounds, DeGuerin said.

Instead, the court upheld the money-laundering indictments against DeLay's associates, saying the law is not unconstitutionally vague and gives adequate notice of the conduct that would be considered illegal. Three judges, all Republicans, issued Friday's opinion, which was written by Justice Alan Waldrop.

Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle said the check-versus-cash argument is absurd: "The court's reasoning is like saying that you can get away with murder if you pay the hit man with a check."

Prosecutors can file a motion for a rehearing before the appellate court.

DeLay is technically not a part of Friday's opinion because he was indicted a year after Colyandro and Ellis. But the ruling could effect all three.

DeGuerin said he would take the appellate court's opinion back to Pat Priest, the trial judge in San Antonio, who has dismissed the check argument previously. Armed with the opinion, however, DeGuerin said he expects Priest to reconsider DeLay's motion to dismiss the charges because only checks — not cash — were involved in the transactions.

This is not over, but it looks as if we are in the late innings.

Biden On School Reform And Race

Mark Coffey has a doozy from Biden by way of a WaPo editorial backing him:

...we saw a glimpse of the old [self-defeatingly verbose]  Biden when he met with The Post’s editorial board during his short-lived presidential campaign. Asked about failing schools, Mr. Biden seemed to suggest that one reason so many of the District’s schools fail is the city’s large minority population and contrasted D.C. schools with those in Iowa. “There’s less than 1 percent of the population in Iowa that is African American,” Mr. Biden said. “There is probably less than 4 or 5 percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you’re dealing with.” The Biden campaign quickly issued a statement asserting that the candidate was referring to socioeconomic status, not racial differences. The lesson we took was not to think that Mr. Biden is a racist — we don’t — but to worry about his tendency to speak too much before he thinks enough.

Wow - bring on the clean and articulate students.  Well, if a Republican had said that earnest libs would be leaping from tall buildings.  Fortunately Biden is a Dem so its all good.

Ironman

Interesting:

Human exoskeleton suit helps paralyzed people walk

By Ari Rabinovitch
Mon Aug 25, 11:10 am ET            

HAIFA, Israel (Reuters) – paralyzed for the past 20 years, former Israeli paratrooper Radi Kaiof now walks down the street with a dim mechanical hum.

That is the sound of an electronic exoskeleton moving the 41-year-old's legs and propelling him forward -- with a proud expression on his face -- as passersby stare in surprise.

"I never dreamed I would walk again. After I was wounded, I forgot what it's like," said Kaiof, who was injured while serving in the Israeli military in 1988.

"Only when standing up can I feel how tall I really am and speak to people eye to eye, not from below."

The device, called ReWalk, is the brainchild of engineer Amit Goffer, founder of Argo Medical Technologies, a small Israeli high-tech company.

Something of a mix between the exoskeleton of a crustacean and the suit worn by comic hero Iron Man, ReWalk helps paraplegics -- people paralyzed below the waist -- to stand, walk and climb stairs.

Goffer himself was paralyzed in an accident in 1997 but he cannot use his own invention because he does not have full function of his arms.

The system, which requires crutches to help with balance, consists of motorized leg supports, body sensors and a back pack containing a computerized control box and rechargeable batteries.

The user picks a setting with a remote control wrist band -- stand, sit, walk, descend or climb -- and then leans forward, activating the body sensors and setting the robotic legs in motion.

"It raises people out of their wheelchair and lets them stand up straight," Goffer said. "It's not just about health, it's also about dignity."

EYE CONTACT

Kate Parkin, director of physical and occupational therapy at NYU Medical Centre, said it has the potential to improve a user's health in two ways.

"Physically, the body works differently when upright. You can challenge different muscles and allow full expansion of the lungs," Parkin said. "Psychologically, it lets people live at the upright level and make eye contact."      

One hopes this is just the beginning.

Kristol For Lieberman

Well, this suggestion from Bill Kristol would make for an interesting race:

So what’s to be done? McCain could well decide the obstacles to Pawlenty and Romney aren’t insuperable, and pick one of them. He could choose a different Republican governor or ex-governor, senator or congressman. Or he could decide that Obama’s conventional pick of Biden allows him to seize the moment by making a bold choice. He could select the person he would really like to have by his side in the White House — but whose selection would cause palpitations among many of his staffers and supporters: the independent Democratic senator from Connecticut, Joe Lieberman.

Lieberman could hold his own against Biden in a debate. He would reinforce McCain’s overall message of foreign policy experience and hawkishness. He’s a strong and disciplined candidate.

But he is pro-abortion rights, and having been a Democrat all his life, he has a moderately liberal voting record on lots of issues.

Now as a matter of governance, there’s no reason to think this would much matter. McCain has made clear his will be a pro-life administration. And as a one-off, quasi-national-unity ticket, with Lieberman renouncing any further ambition to run for the presidency, a McCain-Lieberman administration wouldn’t threaten the continuance of the G.O.P. as a pro-life party. In other areas, no one seriously thinks the policies of a McCain-Lieberman administration would be appreciably different from those, say, of a McCain-Pawlenty administration.

Would McCain-Lieberman have a better prospect of winning than the more conventional alternatives? If they could get over the early hurdles of a messy convention and an awful lot of conservative angst and anger, I’ve come to think so.

Those are some big hurdles.

Marc Ambinder thinks there is something to this balloon, and wonders whether it might usefully reinforce McCain's maverick brand.

Going To The Library

Steve Diamond of Global Labor has been leading the charge on the Obama/Ayers connection to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  Today he has lots of questions about the role being played by the library where the Chicago Annenberg Challenge archives were housed. 

Conservative critic Stanley Kurtz had contacted the University of Illinois at Chicago library requesting permission to review the archives.  For some reason, this set off alarm bells at the library.  Mr. Diamond writes:

An earlier statement by a UIC spokesperson stated that UIC contacted the donor of the CAC records and that it was then discovered that an "ownership agreement" had not been prepared for the CAC records. This is most likely not accurate.  No such agreement is likely in this situation. A gift of corporate records, such as those of the CAC, is valid without a written instrument.

...

But more fundamentally there would be no reason for anyone in the Special Collections Library to even question the validity of the gift of the CAC documents! 

And a donor would never be allowed to know who or when someone is asking to review a validly granted gift of documents. That violates the confidentiality of library users. It reminds me of the concerns that civil libertarians have properly raised about the Patriot Act.

That leaves only one possible conclusion:  Someone inside the UIC Library clearly was concerned that a critic of Barack Obama might be attempting to examine these public records. That led to an unprecedented and, in my view, highly inappropriate notice to the donor of the CAC documents that a potential political critic of Obama was interested in the documents.

They told Glenn Reynolds that if Bush were re-elected no library user would have any privacy.  And they were right!

Colin Powell For VP?

This looks like an trial balloon floated by the McCain people rather than Team Powell but still:

Retired Gen. Colin Powell is among the potential running mates who have been considered by John McCain, campaign advisers told Politico.

Powell was among the possible vice presidential choices the Arizona Republican senator was thinking of when he said he would not rule out a supporter of abortion rights, a key adviser said.

Campaign officials say McCain has told them not to discuss the process.

Well.  I can see Powell wanting a bit of redemption since his last major twirl on the world stage was at the United Nations assuring us that Saddam had WMDs.  Whether McCain wants to be burdened with that I can't say.  I have objected to Rice for VP as too closely tied to BushCo; Powell scarcely carries as much baggage, but he carries some.  (Sneaky idea - re-inflaming the delirious anti-war left might not be a bad idea; they have never been their own best friends in terms of presentation, and putting the war, the surge and the way forward in Iraq back in the news can't be worse for McCain than talking about the economy.)

I recall some tension between Powell and the many members of the Bush Administration who had never served in the military.  Although there is an Army/Navy thing, I suspect Powell would be satisfied with McCain's cred.  I also think McCain could play the "Tme to serve, old soldier" card on Powell and draft him onto the ticket in a way that no one else could.

As to "Ready to Lead On Day One" - well, a McCain/Powell ticket would have so much gravitas that it might displace tides and the moon, let alone the cute and fluffy Obama/Biden.  Geez, talk about bringing a bag of rocks to a pillow fight...

Now, there might be a question of whether anyone other than the press corps would actually vote for these two.  Republican strategists ought to weigh carefully the merits of a ticket that actually included a Republican, but this might be the year for something different.  Powell would excite me; Romney would put me to sleep.

TOGETHER AGAIN:  This old link featured Colin Powell and Joe Biden slugging it out with the Euros at Davos in January 2003.  Go, Colin!  Go, Joe! 

LOCATION, LOCATION, AND LOCATION:  At Patterico's Place a nod to Romney from WLS:

But, if McCain picks Romney, I think he cements two states that will make it very difficult for Obama to find a path to 270.  I think Romney brings McCain Nevada without question, and very likely brings him Michigan.

Nevada, with an increasing minority population and very powerful union presence, is a Bush state that the Dems see as ripe for Obama to pick off.  But Romney probably solidifies the state for McCain because 7% of the Nevada population is Mormon.  It has the 5th highest % of Mormons among all the states.  Mormons tend to vote GOP anyway, but having Romney on the ticket will drive up turnout.

Romney’s long family ties to Michigan, combined with the sad state of the Michigan economy which is presided over by Dems at all levels of state Gov’t, AND the fact that Obama/Biden may be one of the least gun-friendly tickets in recent history — and the NRA is strong in Michigan — all work to move Michigan over to McCain’s column.

COUP-DOS FOR POWELL:  From the Captain:

The Powell trial balloon looks more like a way to counter the Kristol story (about Powell endorsing Obama) than a serious selection for the VP slot by McCain.  If McCain could get Powell to accept the position, it would definitely be a coup, but Powell’s made it clear he isn’t interested.

And from Curt at Flopping Aces:

Oh, it definitely would be a coup to get him on the ticket but the man could of won the nomination for President if he desired, why take a back seat job?

OK, support from the right.

Calling Captain America

Abbott and Costello Obama and Biden appeared together today and delivered a gaffe-fest:

When introducing his running mate, Obama said, "So let me introduce to you the next president - the next vice president of the US of America, Joe Biden."

And then when it was Biden's turn to speak, the Delaware senator called the presumptive Democratic nominee "Barack America" instead of Barack Obama.

"My friends, I don't have to tell you, this election year the choice is clear. One man stands ready to deliver change we desperately need. A man I’m proud to call my friend. A man who will be the next president of the United States, Barack America,” Biden said, per ABC News' Sunlen Miller.

However the official Obama campaign transcript of Biden's remarks sent to reporters omitted part of the misspeak, reading: "A man who will be the next president of the United States, Barack Amer – You know, you learn a lot of things being up close with a guy."

You learn a lot of things being up close with a guy.  Sometimes including his name.  Should be a fun couple of months and maybe even a zany four (Or eight! Or eight to ten!  Or twelve!) years.

Looks Like The Obama Campaign Laid An Egg

By way of the Ace we see this image hosted at the Obama website (I am not the most computer-savvy guy going, but I am satisfied this is no spoof.)

Coupled as it is with the Biden announcement, I can only infer that the Obamaites think they laid an egg (no dissent here).

I'll be saving a screen shot, you can bet.

PLAY AT HOME:  On the left below is my screenshot of the Obama/Biden screen.  Note the blue background to the left of "Your e:mail". 

When you are at the Obama website, right-click on that blue background, select "View Background Image", et voila - until they change it, they are laying an egg with this one.

I love these guys.

MORE:  OK, it is at least a couple of months old, so they have been planning to lay an egg for a while.

Joe Biden

Joe Biden is the VP pick.  It's interesting how far off the table the war in Iraq has fallen as an issue for the Democrats - Biden voted for the fateful resolution in 2002 (isn't this all about judgment?) and has not been much of a proponent of willy-nilly withdrawal, and yet here he is.  Some snippets from this collection of his thoughts:

From Sept 2007, Meet The Press:

Q: Will you insist on a firm withdrawal date?

A: I will insist on a target date to get American combat forces out, all but those who are necessary to protect our civilians that are remaining there, and to deal with al-Qaeda.

Q: If the president does not accept a firm withdrawal date, will you vote to cut off funding?

A: I will vote, as long as there's a single troop in there, for the money necessary to protect them, period.

Q: Many Democrats who will vote in the primary will say "The only way to stop this war is to cut off funding. Everything else is small talk, and unless you're willing to do that, you will not be the Democratic nominee."

A: You need 67 votes to cut that off. All 51 votes will do is delay building these vehicles [with armor to protect troops]. And if you tell me I've got to take away this protection for these kids in order to win the election, some things aren't worth it. Some things are worth losing over. That would be worth losing over.

Also from that Meet The Press:

Q: Your presidential campaign has a political ad about Iraq:

NARRATOR: "In a world this dangerous, with a crisis as tough as Iraq, hard truths need to be told. Joe Biden says this war must end now."

Q: In 2005, you said: "We can call it quits and withdraw from Iraq. I think that would be a gigantic mistake. Or we can set a deadline for pulling out, which I fear will only encourage our enemies to wait us out--equally a mistake." You've changed your mind?

A: Well, I have changed my mind, but I haven't changed my mind in any fundamental way. If you go back, I [always said] you need a political solution. And there's time, I thought back then, if the administration had been wiser, to generate a political solution allowing us to pull out. Now the situation we're in, if the president continues to insist on this strategically-flawed notion of being able to establish a central government that can control Iraq before we leave, I ain't buying into that.

That refes to his Biden plan to split Iraq into three federated states, which was at least a plan for something resembling stability and victory.

And here was a whiff of reality from Aug 2007 (my emphasis):

Q: What if al Qaeda takes over Iraq?

A: You know, Bush has not told the truth for seven years; it's time we tell the truth. The truth is if al Qaeda establishes a base in Iraq, all these people who talk about going into Pakistan are going to have to send your kids back to Iraq. And so the fact of the matter is it matters how we get out of Iraq. Separate the parties. Give them control over their own security. Begin to draw down our troops. But let's start talking the truth to the American people.

I like the way he begins that with some Bush-bashing in an attempt to bond with is base.

Let's note that the Council on Foreign Relations describes Biden as a fierce war critic (the same could have been said of McCain, one might argue).  Biden did oppose the surge, so he has gone 0 for 2 at crunch time.

MORE:  Ron "The Dean" Fournier of the AP is scathing:

DENVER – The candidate of change went with the status quo.

In picking Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate, Barack Obama sought to shore up his weakness — inexperience in office and on foreign policy — rather than underscore his strength as a new-generation candidate defying political conventions.

He picked a 35-year veteran of the Senate — the ultimate insider — rather than a candidate from outside Washington, such as Govs. Tim Kaine of Virginia or Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas; or from outside his party, such as Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska; or from outside the mostly white male club of vice presidential candidates. Hillary Rodham Clinton didn't even make his short list.

And a Brit braces the Euros for possible defeat with the news that Obama does not have this in the bag with a cogent overview of the race that concludes thusly:

The key to understanding the presidential campaign as it enters its phase of maximum intensity is this. The more the campaign is about the concerns of the American voter, especially the state of the economy but also the general anxiety about the direction of the country, the more likely they are to throw the Republicans out.

But the uncomfortable truth for the many devoted fans of Senator Obama is that the more the race is about him, the less likely he is to win it.

I MAY DISAGREE WITH GOLDBERG HERE:  Jonah:

I think it is an outright terrible decision on Obama's part to pick Biden. Yes, he helps balance Obama's inexperience on foreign policy, but he also reminds people of it.  Yes, Biden could conceivably be effective as an attack dog. But Biden is such a gasbag he makes the Hindenburg look like a sack of rocks. Obama doesn't need to increase his lip-flapping quotient.

OK, Biden and Barack may come off as the "Just Words - and lots of 'em" Dream Team.  OTOH, Biden may be best equipped to make Barack look laconic.  And the inevitable gaffes from Biden should distract nicely from the inevitable gaffes from Obama.

JERALYN MERRITT:  A long time Hilary supporter is holding her nose.                                               

Chicago Annenberg Challenge Archives To Be Opened

Kurtz gets results:

DENVER -- As the Democratic Party prepares to unleash its presidential nominating convention here, the University of Illinois at Chicago said today that it will release records of Sen. Barack Obama's service to a nonprofit organization linked to William Ayers, a Chicago education professor who was a radical protestor in the 1960s.

Sen. John McCain's allies have been trying to exploit the tie between Obama and Ayers, with a McCain fundraiser donating nearly $2.9 million for an independent TV ad focusing on Ayers, whose Weatherman group took credit for bombings that included nonfatal blasts at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol four decades ago.

The records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge,which Obama chaired and which Ayers co-founded, will be made available to the public on Tuesday, UIC said in a statement.

The National Review magazine had attempted to obtain the records and was told the donor had not cleared their opening. Today, the university said it now has legal authority to allow public access to the material.

Next Tuesday?  Well, no one was going to notice over the weekend anyway, what with the Olympics and the big Biden (or whomever) announcement.  But folks who want a head start will find links to all sort of useful stuff at Steve Diamond's blog (1, 2).  Tax returns provide a list of groups that received donations - my fave so far is the group led by former student radical and Ayers colleague Mike Klonsky.  Just another friend of Barack.

Pete Yost of the AP has friendly coverage, closing with this:

In April, Obama said he "deplored" Ayers' actions in the 1960s and that "by the time I met him, he is a professor of education at the University of Illinois. We served on a board together that had Republicans, bankers, lawyers, focused on education." .

That might give the impression that Obama has been forthright on this topic.  In fact, this comment, made during a Fox News interview, was baffling - Bill Ayers never served on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (he was a co-founder and worked closely with the board as leader of the Chicago School Reform Collaborative but never had a board seat). 

Obama did serve on an education related board with Thomas and John Ayers, Bill's father and brother.  Obama and Bill served on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a charitable board not focused specifically on education.  Obama's comment circles around the truth but never makes a landing.

Regardless, Obama also said this about his relationship with Ayers in the Philadelphia debate a few days before the Fox interview:

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from.  He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.            

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George.                  

People probably did not glean from that response that Obama and Ayers had worked together on a high profile push for education reform for five years.  Or that, bombs notwithstanding, Ayers is an unreconstructed hard leftist with views on education that might rattle a soccer mom (try Ayer's speech to Hugo Chavez down in Venezuela).

And here is what Obama's campaign manager David Axelrod told Ben Smith of The Politico in February:

"Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school," he said. "They're certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together."

Not even close.

Michael Barone sees an Ayers problem in Obama's future and wonders "Why Won't the Mainstream Media Question the Obama Narrative?"

And speaking of not questioning, Jim Rutenberg of the NY Times enters the fray with what looks like a self-parody.  When the story broke that a new attack group was running an ad against Obama citing Bill Ayers, I opined that this would "give the MSM an excuse to write ten thousand words deploring shadowy attack groups while devoting half a sentence to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge."  I was wrong twice - the Times only devotes a few thousand words to probing shadowy Republican attack groups and does not mention the Chicago Annenberg Challenge at all.  Here is their coverage of the Obama-Ayers connection, from the closing three paragraphs:

Mr. Ayers, now a professor of education in Chicago, was a founder of the Weather Underground, which bombed government buildings in the early 1970s. He was indicted on conspiracy charges that were thrown out for prosecutorial misconduct.

He served with Mr. Obama on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a charitable organization, and, along with his wife, the former Weather Underground member Bernardine Dohrn, hosted Mr. Obama at their home in 1995 when he was running for state office.

Mr. Obama has called Mr. Ayers “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old.”

Times reporters are in for a series of surprises, although their readers may not be.  Well, unless they get their news elsewhere than the Times.

Timetables And Stopped Clocks

The NY Times reports that US and Iraqi negotiators have agreed on a conditions-based timetable for the withdrawal of US troops fro Iraq:

BAGHDAD — The United States has agreed to remove combat troops from Iraqi cities by next June and from the rest of the country by the end of 2011 if conditions in Iraq remain relatively stable, according to Iraqi and American officials involved in negotiating a security accord governing American forces there.

The WaPo website runs a Reuters report emphasizing that there are no firm dates in the agreement:

Iraq says no firm dates in draft U.S. troops deal

By David Alexander and Wisam Mohammed
Reuters
Thursday, August 21, 2008;  5:46 PM

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A draft agreement between the United States and Iraq contains no fixed dates for U.S. forces to withdraw, but Iraq would like combat troops out by the end of 2011, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said on Thursday.

"The draft does not contain definite dates," Dabbagh said.

He said Iraqi negotiators were proposing U.S. troops end patrols of Iraqi towns and villages by the middle of next year, U.S. combat troops leave Iraq by the end of 2011 and all U.S. troops leave three years later.

But he made clear those deadlines were not yet fixed, and represented the government's negotiating position, not an explicitly agreed text: "This is the Iraqi government's view and what the government wants."

Conditions-based, no firm dates - Dan Froomkin of the WaPo takes a victory lap, pretending that this is what Dems have been talking about all along:

In agreeing to pull U.S. combat troops out of Iraqi cities by June, and from the rest of the country by 2011, President Bush has apparently consented to precisely the kind of timetable that, when Democrats called for one, he dismissed as "setting a date for failure." Bush can call it an "aspirational goal" until he turns blue, but a timetable is exactly what it is, thank you very much.

You're welcome.  Mr. Froomkin is not a candidate for President, but let's hear from another fantasist:

"I am glad that the Administration has finally shifted to accepting a timetable for the removal of our combat troops from Iraq. Success in Iraq depends on an Iraqi government that is reconciling its differences and taking responsibility for its future, and a timetable is the best way to press the Iraqis to do just that. I welcome the growing convergence around this pragmatic and responsible position.

Given the greatly improved security situation in Iraq it may be perfectly responsible to talk of withdrawing US troops now.  But back when Obama gave his surrender speech in January 2007 he deemed the situation a civil war.  His intention was to withdraw US troops in order to force Iraqis to engage in political reconciliation and he actually included a backwards conditions-based criteria - if the Iraqi situation improved, US troops would linger:

Mr. President, today in Iraq, we sadly find ourselves at the very point I feared most when I opposed giving the President the open-ended authority to wage this war in 2002 - an occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences in the midst of a country torn by civil war.

The American people have waited and the American people have been patient. We have given chance after chance for a resolution that has not come, and, more importantly, watched with horror and grief the tragic loss of thousands of brave young American soldiers.
            
The time for waiting in Iraq is over. The days of our open-ended commitment must come to a close. And the need to bring this war to an end is here.

That is why today, I'm introducing the Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007.

...The redeployment of troops to the United States, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the region would begin no later than May 1st of this year, toward the end of the timeframe I first proposed in a speech more than two months ago. In a civil war where no military solution exists, this redeployment remains our best leverage to pressure the Iraqi government to achieve the political settlement between its warring factions that can slow the bloodshed and promote stability.

My plan allows for a limited number of U.S. troops to remain as basic force protection, to engage in counter-terrorism, and to continue the training of Iraqi security forces.

And if the Iraqis are successful in meeting the thirteen benchmarks for progress laid out by the Bush Administration itself, this plan also allows for the temporary suspension of the redeployment, provided Congress agrees that the benchmarks have actually been met and that the suspension is in the national security interest of the United States.

The U.S. military has performed valiantly and brilliantly in Iraq. Our troops have done all that we have asked them to do and more. But no amount of American soldiers can solve the political differences at the heart of somebody else's civil war, nor settle the grievances in the hearts of the combatants.

The idea that, as of January 2007, a troop withdrawal based on a fixed timetable to be suspended only if conditions improved does not appear, in hindsight, to have been the wisest course, although Obama defended it as untested during his well-covered trip to Iraq recently. 

Enough with the links to Froomkin and Obama.  Folks looking for logic should go to Commentary.
 

BY WAY OF CONTRAST:  Here was the Administration objection to a timetable in a message sent to Congress in July 2007 (my emphasis):

The Administration strongly opposes any provision that sets an arbitrary date for beginning the withdrawal of American troops without regard to conditions on the ground or the recommendations of commanders. Precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would not bring peace to the region or make our people safer here at home. Withdrawal could embolden our enemies and confirm their belief that America will not stand behind its commitments. Setting a date for withdrawal is equivalent to setting a date for failure and could lead to a safe haven in Iraq for terrorism that could be used to attack America and freedom-loving people around the world. It is likely to unleash chaos in Iraq that could spread across the region.

As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.

A Truly Vicious Hit Piece

This is one of the more vicious hit pieces on Obama I have seen - a timeline of his "career".  Geez, look at all the empty boxes punctuated by the occasional speech or new book about Obama.  Let's elect him President quickly so he has something to put on his resume and can write another book about himself.

YOU SEE RIGHT THROUGH ME: OK, I 'fess up - seeing Obama as Director of the Developing Communities Project from 1985 to 1988 is not news to me but it graphically illustrates the point I have been making about his initial alliance with Thomas and Bill Ayers in the ABCs coalition back in 1987.  Note the Developing Communities Project as a member of the ABCs coalition coordinated by Bill Ayers.  The goal was public school reform, just as with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, but Ayers did not simply pick Obama's name out of a hat when Obama was made chairman of the Challenge back in 1995 - Ayers had known him for years.

Interestingly, not even the new right wing attack group seems to know this.  Yet.

MORE:  Let's help fill in the blank boxes on Obama's timeline:

During the months of May and June 1988, ABC'S carried out a legislative strategy that one Republican legislator called "the most effective grassroots lobbying campaign I have ever seen.

School would not start for Obama at Harvard until late August or September.  However, per "Dreams From My Father" (p 290) we see that Barack planned to leave his directorship at the Developing Communities Project in May of 1998.  But on p. 289 he tells us that

"The months passed at a breathless pace, with constant reminders of all the things left undone.  We worked with a citywide coalition in support of school reform."

I doubt the ABC's Coalition sprang into being in June 1988 and pulled off such an effective grassroots operation.  Per this detailed history (p. 20) the ABCs Coalition formed in March of 1988.  More background:

A bitter month-long school strike disrupted the opening of school in fall 1987, spurring parent and community groups to demand not only an end to the school strike, but also radical change in how the school system operated. After the strike was settled, Mayor Harold Washington convened an Education Summit that included many CURE supporters, along with business leaders sympathetic to radical decentralization.

The Education Summit spawned the broader Alliance for Better Chicago Schools (known as the ABC’S Coalition) and brought together parent, community, and business leaders around a common reform agenda. The reform movement now comprised Chicago grassroots activists from every racial and ethnic background and virtually every Chicago neighborhood, including both multi-issue community organizations and groups that focused solely on school reform.

Washington died in November 1987; this account says the ABC's Coalition formed in "the middle" of 1988:

Mayor Washington revived the summit process, but died shortly afterward. By the middle of 1988 it became clear to Chicago business that Washington's summit was not going to produce the kind of changes that they felt needed to be made. Three summit subgroups were preparing legislation to be considered in Springfield. Chicago United responded by forming a business/community advocacy coalition called the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools (ABCs Coalition). The goal of this coalition was to draft a consensus school reform bill.

The proposal hammered out at the summit was presented at the end of March 1998 and went nowhere, apparently.  The timing is certainly close enough that an enterprising reporter ought to ask for a clarification from the Obama campaign.  As if.

AYERS IN CHICAGO:  A 1990 Chicago Reader profile of Bill Ayers includes this about his entry into school reform:

Few members of the school reform movement can say for certain when it was that they first met Ayers. It was as though one day they looked and he was there.
That would have been late 1987, in the aftermath of a debilitating 21-day teacher strike that enraged parents and inspired them to demand immediate change.
By then Ayers had moved to Hyde Park and was working at UIC.
"I arrived just as the movement was picking up," says Ayers. "I was immediately intrigued. I started attending different meetings. I couldn't stay away."
Some of his new allies knew nothing about his background; those who did didn't care. He was friendly and personable. He was liked by virtually everyone he met.

...It was at Sabin that he met Lourdes Monteagudo, then the school's principal. On the south side he met Coretta McFerren, leader of a group called the People's Coalition for Educational Reform.
"I love Bill; I truly think of him as my brother," says McFerren. "I don't agree with everything he says. ...
McFerren and others invited Ayers to meetings of the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, a coalition that includes members of Hispanic, business, black, and civic organizations. He started attending the group's monthly meetings, held over breakfasts of eggs, sausage, rolls, fruit, and coffee in a conference room on the 57th floor of First National Bank's downtown headquarters.
In many ways, Ayers's philosophy was ideal for ABCs. The targets of his criticism--central office bureaucrats and ineffective classroom teachers--were not members of the coalition. For ABCs' members he had almost nothing but praise.
Within a few weeks, the group named Ayers convener, which means he runs their meetings.
"He plays a good role because he listens to what everyone is saying," says Laurie Glenn, a member of the coalition. "That's important with a group like ABCs, which has so many divergent interests and so many members who want to talk."
"If necessary, I'll let everyone talk until they are exhausted," Ayers adds. "The meetings go on a little long, but it doesn't matter so long as people feel they've had their say."

Can anyone muster a date out of that?  Let's say that Bil Ayers may well have been chairing meetings by April or May of 1988, leaving plenty of time for him to have met Barack.

FactCheck Checks Obama's Birth Certificate

Fact Check is given access to Obama's birth certificate and endorses it, which neither surprises me nor prompts a reassessment of any official editorial positions.  However, they close with this sloppy logic which I have derided before; they are commenting on a birth announcement which appeared in a Honolulu newspaper a week after Obama was born:

Of course, it's distantly possible that Obama's grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his U.S. citizenship in order to run for president someday.

Tres amusant.  But it is much less distantly possible that the grandparents planted the story in order to buttress their grandchild's claim to American citizenship as protection against a day when their daughter would be trying to gain custody of a black child with a Kenyan father in a Kenyan court.  Divorces do happen, even nasty ones.

The Surge Is Working

The Times has an exit interview with Gen. Petraeus, who discuss the success of the surge but won't state publicly his recommendation for continued troop levels.

Reading a buried-in-the-back story about the success of the surge is, I have decided, very good news in the spirit of this classic exchange:

“ANDREA: Unhappy the land that has no heroes! . . .

GALILEO: No, unhappy the land that needs heroes.”

Some snippets:

Yet for all the signs of fatigue, General Petraeus is preparing to leave Iraq a remarkably safer place than it was when he arrived. Violence has plummeted from its apocalyptic peaks, Iraqi leaders are asserting themselves, and streets that once seemed dead are flourishing with life. The worst, for now, has been averted.

And so in the general’s exhaustion comes the glimmer of hope, and also a caveat: Iraq has indeed stepped back from self-destruction, General Petraeus said, but the gains are tenuous and unlikely to survive without an American effort that outlasts his tenure. By the time he leaves for the United States next month to assume overall command of American forces in the Middle East and Afghanistan, he will have spent a total of 48 months in Iraq since the war began.

“I don’t know that it was a death spiral, but I mean it was a pretty dire situation,” General Petraeus said, referring to the situation upon his arrival here as the senior commander in Iraq in February 2007. “There have been very substantial gains at this point. Don’t take any of this to imply that we think we’re anywhere near finished.”

...

The surge, clearly, has worked, at least for now: violence, measured in the number of attacks against Americans and Iraqis each week, has dropped by 80 percent in the country since early 2007, according to figures the general provided. Civilian deaths, which peaked at more than 100 a day in late 2006, have also plunged. Car and suicide bombings, which stoked sectarian violence, have fallen from a total of 130 in March 2007 to fewer than 40 last month. In July, fewer Americans were killed in Iraq — 13 — than in any month since the war began.

The result, now visible in the streets, is a calm unlike any the country has seen since the American invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in April 2003. The signs — Iraqi families flooding into parks at sundown, merchants throwing open long-shuttered shops — are stunning to anyone who witnessed the country’s implosion in 2005 and 2006.

And on future troop levels:

The question of America’s continued commitment is likely to be taken up immediately by the new president, whoever he is, when he moves into the White House in January. General Petraeus suggested he had some details in mind, but did not think them appropriate to discuss publicly. “I can,” he said, “but I won’t.”

“The only statement I think somebody in a position like this can responsibly make is that it obviously depends on the conditions and how much risk one is willing to take,” General Petraeus said, referring to the next president.

The surge has been so successful that even Barack Obama is able to praise it.

Sen. Barack Obama, edging away from a long-held position, tacitly acknowledged the success of the Iraq troop-surge strategy during an appearance Tuesday before the country's largest organization of combat veterans.

"Let's be clear, our troops have completed every mission they've been given," Mr. Obama said at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Orlando, Fla., where the likely Democratic presidential nominee courted military voters who are expected to play a pivotal role in several swing states. "They have created the space for political reconciliation."

Let's also be clear that Obama's judgment was that the surge would not succeed and, as of a month ago, was not meeting our strategic goals.  Whatever.

Stryde Hax Gets Results!

Yesterday we posted on Stryde Hax, an earnest striver who wanted to take on and take down the Chinese government lies about their gymnastic team.  And Stryde Hax gets results!  The International Olympic Committee has taken his results and promised a full whitewash:

The International Olympic Committee has ordered an investigation into mounting allegations that Chinese authorities covered up the true age of their gold-medal winning gymnastics star because she was too young to compete.

An IOC official told The Times that because of "discrepancies" that have come to light about the age of He Kexin, the host nation’s darling who won gold in both team and individual events, an official inquiry has been launched that could result in the gymnast being stripped of her medals.

The investigation was triggered as a US computer expert claimed today to have uncovered Chinese government documents that he says prove she is only 14 - making her ineligible to compete in the Olympics - rather than 16, as officials in Beijing insist is her age.

Mike Walker, a computer security expert, told The Times how he tracked down two documents that he says had been removed from a Chinese government website. The documents, he said, stated that He’s birth date was January 1 1994 - making her 14 - and not January 1 1992, which is printed in her passport.

If they take away her medals I will eat one.  OK, a medal made of chocalate, anyway...

Ad To Air On Ayers And Obama

The AP reports that an independent group will be running an attack ad focused on the link between Obama and Ayers.  That should kick this story into the news and give the MSM an excuse to write ten thousand words deploring shadowy attack groups while devoting half a sentence to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  The AP also cleans up an Obama quote to make him appear a bit more candid.  Well, he is helpless without a teleprompter, so I am sure he welcomes the assistance.

Some stray points - the attack group does not specifically mention the time Ayers and Obama spent together working on education reform (with "limited impact", per the final assessment).  In fact, I am not so sure this group is up to speed on that topic - they might as well be referring to the Obama/Ayers overlap on the Woods Fund of Chicago:

A conservative nonprofit group with a past link to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign is spending $2.8 million on an ad questioning Democrat Barack Obama's relationship to a founder of the 1960s radical group Weather Underground.

The ad, which is expected to begin airing Thursday in Michigan and Friday in Ohio, focuses on William Ayers, whose Weatherman organization took credit for a series of bombings, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol 40 years ago.

American Issues Project, the sponsor of the ad, is a nonprofit 501(c)4 organization. One of its board members, Ed Failor Jr., was a paid consultant for McCain's campaign in Iowa last year. The campaign paid his firm $50,000 until July 2007. American Issues Project spokesman Christian Pinkston said Failor has no connection to the McCain campaign now.

Ayers is now a university professor. He and Obama live in the same Chicago neighborhood and served together on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a charity group. Ayers also held a meet-the-candidate event at his home for Obama when Obama first ran for office in the mid-1990s.

"Barack Obama is friends with Ayers, defending him as, quote, 'Respectable' and 'Mainstream,'" the ad states. "Obama's political career was launched in Ayers' home. And the two served together on a left-wing board. Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it? Do you know enough to elect Barack Obama?"

Here are links to the ad and the supporting material (167 page .pdf).  A word search on "Annenberg" comes up blank.  The ad script is after the break.

The AP is coy and amusing with this:

Obama has distanced himself from the radical activity of the Weather Underground. In an interview with "Fox News Sunday" in April, Obama said he "deplored" Ayers action in the 1960s.

"Mr. Ayers is a 60-plus-year-old individual who lives in my neighborhood, who did something that I deplore 40 years ago when I was 6 or 7 years old," Obama said then. "By the time I met him, he is a professor of education at the University of Illinois. We served on a board together that had Republicans, bankers, lawyers, focused on education."

I cite the Obama interview on Fox occasionally because it is so baffling.  The AP left out a key qualifier from the original (my emphasis):

Now, Mr. Ayres [Ayers] is a 60 plus year old individual who lives in my neighborhood, who did something that I deplore 40 years ago when I was six or seven years old. By the time I met him, he was a professor of education at the University of Illinois.

We served on a board together that had Republicans, bankers, lawyers, focused on education, who worked for Mayor Daley. Mayor Daley, the same Mayor Daley probably who when he was a state attorney prosecuted Mr. Ayres’s wife for those activities, I (INAUDIBLE) the point is that to somehow suggest that in any way I endorse his deplorable acts 40 years ago, because I serve on a board with him.

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was a private charitable group that surely did not work for Mayor Daley, nor was Bill Ayers on its board.  Upon its dissolution the Challenge passed its remaining assets to the Chicago Public Education Fund, which was an advisory board to the mayor.  However, Bill Ayers was not a member; his father Thomas and his brother John were.

So Obama almost told something like the truth - he did work on education reform with Bill Ayers - but they were not both working for the Mayor and Bill Ayers, although deeply involved with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, was not on the board there.

But the AP has cleaned it up so that it appears that Obama is telling the truth.  Almost!

And the point of their association is not that Obama endorses bombing.  The point is that Obama worked closely with a hard, unreconstructed leftist on education reform (Ayers to Hugo Chavez - "La  educacion es revolucion!"), a vital topic to every soccer mom, and accomplished nothing.

MORE:  The Boston Globe politics blog runs the AP report and an Obama blast-back.

Cracking The Annenberg Cover-Up

Here is a suggestion for cracking the Annenberg cover up - get the Illinois Attorney General involved through the Public Access Counselor.

Amy Ridenour of the National Center for Public Policy Research seemed optimistic on the legal front as well.

As noted earlier, Victoria Chou, a Dean in the College of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, was Secretary of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge when it was dissolved in 2002.  If she did not donate the archives herself she certainly ought to know who did.  Ken Rolling, the Executive Director, either knows the donor or was the donor.

In a related post, Dan Riehl goes through some of the evaluations of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge under Chairman Barack Obama's leadership.  "Limited impact" was the phrase used by the Annenberg people; I preferred "failure".

Steve Diamond has links to the key documents here.  And a follow-up here.

MORE:  P. 7 of the 2000 Annual Report mentions the process by which the Challenge will wrap itself up.  Responsibility for final reports and legal matters was placed with Executive Director Ken Rollings and Chief Financial Officer Gopika Malhotra under the supervision of the Board.   That should cover the archives as well.

No Basement

John McCain and his wife Cindy adopted a child from Bangladesh; Andrew Sullivan finds something to criticize:

This is interesting. Part of the McCain Celebrity, as packaged for the evangelical base, is the rescue of two Bangladeshi girls at the behest of Mother Theresa, one of whom, Bridget, they subsequently adopted. During my live-blogging of Saddleback, I described the McCain adoption story as "peerless." And it is indeed an admirable, selfless thing - and a completely legitimate aspect of a candidate's life to be part of his campaign message. The story of how Mother Teresa talked them into it makes it all the more poignant.

The only trouble is: it's not true:

OK, the Mother Teresa part if not true; it once appeared on the McCain website, which has now been edited.

But let Andrew continue:

A 1991 article in the Arizona Star at the time of the adoption only mentions that the children were from an orphanage that was started by Mother Teresa. It does not mention a meeting with Mother Teresa or her asking McCain to bring the girls to the US.

This is the pattern:

A story that shows the McCains' genuine compassion and faith is embellished over the years to make the story a little more perfect, a little more salient, a little better as a narrative. It's especially important to add these embellishments when your goal is to appeal to a fundamentalist base, when your own prickly, personal and private faith isn't very marketable. And when your adopted daughter is Bangladeshi, and when that fact has been disgracefully used against you by the Bush machine in 2000, and when some fringes of your base get queasy about multi-racial families, what better way to describe the adoption than as something Mother Teresa herself "implored" you to do? More interesting: the first actual reports of this event do not mention this fact. They are added later.

They are added later?  Uh huh, and then they are subtracted.  Here is McCain at the Saddleback forum with Pastor Rick Warren:

MCCAIN: Well, I think we have to make adoption a lot easier in this country. That's why so many people go to other countries to get - to be able to adopt children.

(APPLAUSE) My great hero and role model Teddy Roosevelt was the first modern American president to talk about adoption and how important it was, and I promise you this is my last story.

Seventeen years ago Cindy was in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She went to Mother Teresa's orphanage. The nuns brought her two little babies who were not going to live. Cindy came home. I met her at the airplane. She showed me this 5-week-old baby and said, "Meet your new daughter." She's 17, and our life is blessed - and that's what adoption is all about.

Factually accurate, and no mention of a meeting with Mother Teresa.  Odd - Sullivan says the point is to pander to the religious right, yet McCain forgot to pander to the Saddleback audience.

Here is McCain in an interview from 2004 (praise Google):

Dadmag: Your youngest daughter Bridget is adopted. Why did you decide to adopt Bridget?

McCain: Well it was primarily my wife's Cindy's idea. She was in Bangladesh and she and some of the medical personnel visited Mother Theresa's orphanage to try and help the children there. There were two little baby girls there. One had a heart problem the other a severe cleft palate. Cindy was very concerned about their ability to survive and their need for medical treatment, so she decided to bring them here for medical treatment. She fell in love with both of them. We decided to adopt Bridget. Two close friends of ours, adopted Mickey, the other child.

Again, the ungilded lily.

Here is a local reporter paraphrasing but not quoting McCain from Aug 15:

He also talked of 17 years ago when Cindy was on a humanitarian trip and Mother Theresa came up to them with two 5-month-old girls. Mother Theresa told Cindy if they didn’t take one of these babies home she would die. So Cindy did, telling her husband when she returned: “I’d like to introduce you to your new daughter.”

Now McCain is telling the story he didn't tell Rick Warren.  Odd - maybe the reporter misrepresented or misunderstood this.

Here is an AP description of a McCain campaign flyer shamelessly exploiting their daughter:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain is using an image of his adopted daughter in a new campaign mailing in the state where push polling involving the girl helped derail his White House bid eight years ago.

In a mailing showing up at homes Thursday, the Arizona senator's wife, Cindy, is pictured holding a baby in a blanket as she walks with a woman from Mother Teresa's orphanage.

"Cindy cradles little Bridget, a baby she and John adopted in 1993 from Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh. Bridget has been a great blessing to the McCain family," the mailing says. "Today, Cindy and John work together to promote adoption and to help women facing crisis pregnancies."

No mention of a meeting with Mother Teresa.

Here is ABC News getting the story from Cindy McCain - no mention of a meeting with Mother Teresa:

For McCain, it is also personal. Sixteen years ago, on a visit to an orphanage in Bangladesh, she saw a tiny baby with severe facial deformities and a cleft palate.

"I had been working there somewhat for a few weeks and I always kept going back to her at the end, at the beginning of the day," McCain said. "Whatever I was doing, I would always wind up at her little bassinet. I would hold her and play with her. So when it came time to leave, there was just something there. I mean, she chose me."

Interestingly, the ABC News story was offered as a supporting link by a McCain enthusiast explaining that Mother Teresa was involved.  Over-excited loyalists?

Well, I'll tell you what the pattern is - Andrew Sullivan sees an outlandish accusation against John McCain and re-echoes it without doing even a minimum of research.  At this point, unless John McCain is to be held accountable for every word of his website there is no story. 

What we are missing is any direct quote from John McCain or Cindy McCain [Oops - see "HMM" below for a quote from Cindy] telling this story of a meeting with Mother Teresa.  Instead, we have several instances of John McCain telling the story accurately, an example of his wife presenting it accurately to ABC News and his campaign apparently getting it right in a flyer.  Against that we have one example of a reporter possibly fluffing it, one example of a blogger totally fluffing it, and the now-edited McCain website (original), which could easily be explained away as sloppy staff work by someone misled by the mis-reporting on the internet. Or does Sully think that this biographical point should have been reviewed with John McCain himself even though he has presented it accurately in the past?

Sullivan's assertion that this story was "embellished over the years to make the story a little more perfect, a little more salient" needs some support.  It looks from here as if it is Sullivan doing the embellishing.

Well, keep flinging poo, Andrew - something will stick.  And better luck with the research.

SINCE YOU ASK:  Yes, since Barack Obama was specifically asked about his relationship with Bill Ayers at the Philadelphia debate and his campaign put out a "Fact Check" that night, I think it is reasonable to hold Barack Obama responsible for the omissions in that website presentation.

HMM:  Foo Bar finds a direct Cindy McCain quote from an Aug 9, 2008 story describing a campaign event from January 2008 (if I am following correctly).  This makes me wonder whether Cindy has sometimes run off the rails in her tale-telling:

No one is calling McCain cute but Cindy speaks movingly when she describes a visit to a Mother Teresa orphanage in Bangladesh in the early 1990s. It was then, she says, that she “stumbled upon the most beautiful little girl I’d ever seen. She had a terrible cleft palate. She had problems with her feet. She had problems with her hands. She had all kinds of problems. As only Mother Teresa can do, she prevailed upon me to take this baby and another baby – get them out of the country and take them to the United States for medical care.” On the flight from Bangkok to Los Angeles, Cindy says, she realised, “I couldn’t give this child up … she had chosen me. Well, the kick in this was I hadn’t told my husband. So when I stepped off the plane in Arizona I was holding her, and John met me at the airport and, of course, there were a lot of cameras there. He whispered down to me and said, ‘Well, where’s she going to go?’ I looked up at him and sort of thought, ‘Well, our house – how about that?’”

OVER TO JANE:

Let's see: I came under Sniper fire in Bosnia; Bill Ayers and I are just acquaintances; My affair ended in 2006; my wife was inspired by Mother Teresa.

Yeah, McCain should definitely drop out of the race. 

STILL MORE:  Cindy McCain forget the embellishing/pandering script during her June 2008 Newsweek interview:

She named her charity the American Voluntary Medical Team. In 1991, she camped in the Kuwait desert five days after the end of the gulf war to bring medical supplies to refugees. That same year, she visited Mother Teresa's orphanage in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where she saw 160 newborn girls who had been abandoned. The nuns handed her a small baby with a cleft palate so severe that she couldn't be fed. Another baby, also just a few weeks old, had a heart defect. Worried they would die without medical attention, Cindy applied for medical visas to take the girls back to the United States. But the country's minister of health refused to sign the papers. "We can do surgery on this child," an official told her. Cindy, frustrated, slammed her fist on the table. "Then do it! What are you waiting for?" The official, stunned, simply signed the papers. "I don't know where I got the nerve," Cindy said.

When she arrived in Phoenix, she carried the baby with the cleft palate off the plane. Her husband met her at the airport. He looked at the baby.  "Where is she going," he asked her. "To our house," she replied. They adopted the little girl and named her Bridget. Family friends adopted the other little girl.

What was the pattern, Andrew?

HALF-RESEARCHED:  Mark Nickolas, writing at the HuffPo, digs up some old cites of the McCains telling the story accurately and some contemporary cites of Cindy getting it wrong in support of his headline,

"The Anatomy of a Deception: How The McCains Changed Their Baby Adoption Story Just Before 2008 Campaign Began".

His anatomy does not explain why Cindy forgot to change her story for Newsweek and ABC News, as mentioned above, or why McCain forgot to change it for Saddleback or the campaign flyer.

Mr. Nickolas provides four bits of supporting evidence:

- a no-link (Lexis?) to the Brit Sunday Mail, but the excerpt is the same as already provided above by Foo Bar. 

- a link to the Feb 3, 2008 Telegraph but this is a reporter paraphrase, not a direct quote. 

-  another reporter paraphrase in a June 2008 Digital Journal piece. 

-  he notes the change in the website - it was accurate in November 2004, changed to include Mother Teresa at the time of the two Brit stories, and has since been restored to accuracy.

So the critics insisting that the McCains changed their story have the website and one direct quote from a reporter filing the same story for British and Australian newspapers.  Defenders (Moi, mes amis!) have multiple direct quotes from 2008 from John, Cindy, and the campaign in big-time media outlets.

Was there really some plan to change the story to pander to the religious right?  Does the religious right spend a lot of time reading the Daily Telegraph?  In any case, John Podhoretz thinks that doing something because Mother Teresa asks you to is easy; doing it from your own heart shows more character.  Regardless, I think this incident simply demonstrates that if a person tells a story often enough they will misspeak or be misheard.  Over-enthusiastic staffers took care of the rest (Or cause and effect - the reporter got the bum info from the website).

Welcome To Chicago - See You In November

Columnist John Kass of the Chicago Tribune welcomes Stanley Kurtz to Chicago and laughs at the idea that Kurtz will get ahold of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge archives linking Obama and Ayers before the election.

The relationship between the ambitious Obama and the unrepentant Ayers is a subject that excites Republicans, who haven't really thwacked that pinata as hard as they might. It really irritates Obama and his political champion, Chicago's sovereign lord, Mayor Richard M. Daley.

"This is a public entity," Kurtz told us Wednesday. "I don't understand how confidentiality of the donor would be an issue."

You don't understand, Mr. Kurtz? Allow me to explain. The secret is hidden in the name of the library:

The Richard J. Daley Library.

Eureka!

The Richard J. Daley Library doesn't want nobody nobody sent. And Richard J.'s son, Shortshanks, is now the mayor.

Hard to believe that with our aggressive national media covering a Presidential campaign that Obama and Daley could manage this cover-up in plain sight.  Yeah, real hard.

VERY INTERESTING:  Mata Harley at Flopping Aces is trying to reason backwards, figuring someone at the Annenberg Foundation ought to be in charge.

Well - I bet they don't want their reputation sullied, so they may be able to influence events (but one quick hint of their predilections would be to see which board members are donors to Obama.)

However - IANAL but my guess is that legally the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was a separate legal entity with a separate board and another successor group.  The archives would have been in the possession of who - the Secretary?  Obama was a former chairman and current board member by the time the Challenge folded; he could surely find out who the donor is, but very probably is not the donor.  Ken Rolling, Executive Director, would be a good candidate.

This 2003 return tells us the Chicago Annenberg Challenge dissolved as of Jan 30, 2002 and transferred $68,500.55 to the Chicago Public Education Fund.

Ken Rolling signed the tax return as Executive Director. 

The article of dissolution was signed by Victoria Chou as Secretary and Edward Bottum as President.  The officers and directors are listed on pages 20-21.  Ms. Chou is a Dean in the College of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago.  For whatever reason, Mr. Bottum does not appear.

OK, for my money, Ken Rolling and Ms. Chou are the two people most likely to have ended up in possession of the archives, which were not specifically mentioned in the resolution of dissolution.  Although to laymen possession is nine/tenths of the law, I doubt that mere possession would make either Rolling or Chou the "owner" in a legal sense.

Both Ken Rolling and Victoria Chou are currently on the Leadership Council of the Chicago Public Education Fund, the successor to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  From the 2001 report I see Barack Obama, Ken Rolling, and Edward Bottum on the leadership council (along with Thomas and John Ayers).

Rolling, Bottum and Chou know the donor or one of them is the donor.  IMHO.  And I am not a lawyer but I don't see how they can claim with a straight face to "own" these archives in a way that would allow them to be kept from the public.

I imagine they will be getting some phone calls from our eager press corps.

MORE:  Amy Ridenour of the National Center for Public Policy Research thinks the archives are owned by the successor entity, the Chicago Public Education Fund.

STILL MORE:  Amusing faux-solidarity from the LA Times blog coverage:

School seals records on Obama's service with radical Ayers

These annoying journalists are at it again, trying to poke around into papers in the background of candidates' lives. This time it involves freshman Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, his friend and former radical activist William Ayers and the University of Illinois.

Right, journalists have been pushing this story hard.  Later we will read "The Little Red Hen".

But to be fair, the LA Times goes above and beyond by showing the classic photo of Bill Ayers tromping on an American flag.

FOR THE TO-DO LIST:  Here is a listing of the grant recipients from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  Anyone spot anything?

IN THE FAIRWAY:  The WSJ blog plays the Ayers story straight.

 

Information Wants To Be Free

Information wants to be free and "Stryde" of Stryde Hax wants to help liberate it.  Specifically, he (she?) wants to see if he can outwit the Chinese government officials and censors who are propagating the myth that gold medal gymnast He Kexin is eligible for these Olympics.  And he wins the gold, finding cached spreadsheets at Chinese government sites documenting her age as 14.

Hat tip to King Kaufman at Salon; our earlier coverage is here.

AND ON THE HIGH ROAD:  How insanely great is Usain Bolt?  I've seen some fair sprinters in my lifetime, obviously including Carl Lewis and Michael Johnson (YouTube), but Bolt was unreal.

If Bolt, now 22, wants to simply go to London in 2012 and complete a double-double in the 100/200, well, good for him and very impressive.

But if he wants to boggle the world of track and field forever he will take up his coach's suggestion to run the 400 and become the first person to complete that absurd triple.  I would say it can't be done, but I would've said a 6' 5'' sprinter can't win the 100.

"Wow", Indeed - McCain Team Shoves Ayers Cover-Up Into The Spotlight

Rich Lowry reprints this press release from the McCain campaign:

Please see comment from me on Barack Obama’s new ad supposedly running in Georgia:

“Barack Obama’s ad is ridiculous. Because of John McCain, corruption was exposed and people like Jack Abramoff went to jail.

“However, if Barack Obama wants to have a discussion about truly questionable associations, let’s start with his relationship with the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, at whose home Obama’s political career was reportedly launched. Mr. Ayers was a leader of the Weather Underground, a terrorist group responsible for countless bombings against targets including the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and numerous police stations, courthouses and banks. In recent years, Mr. Ayers has stated, ‘I don’t regret setting bombs … I feel we didn’t do enough.’

“The question now is, will Barack Obama immediately call on the University of Illinois to release all of the records they are currently withholding to shed further light on Senator Obama’s relationship with this unrepentant terrorist?”

—McCain spokesman Brian Rogers

That will make it harder for the media to ignore this.  Pete Yost of the AP reported on this (sort of) yesterday; today the Chicago Tribune local politics blog reported that Mayor Daley  would rather not be involved:

Mayor Richard Daley declined to answer directly Wednesday when asked whether a University of Illinois-Chicago organization named after his father should release documents related to Sen. Barack Obama's service for a nonprofit education project started by 1960s radical William Ayers.

The university's Richard J. Daley Center has refused to release records of the project, which put Obama, the soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee, in contact with activist Ayers, who now is an education professor in Chicago.

Here is the NY Times coverage - nada.  Per News.Google, the WaPo is also giving this story a miss.  However, Jake Tapper of ABC News repeats the Brian Rogers statement noted above and adds this:

Rogers the raised the fact that, as the Chicago Tribune reports here, the University of Illinois this week refused to release records related to Obama's work with Ayers on the education project the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, at the request of an unnamed donor of the materials.

“The question now is, will Barack Obama immediately call on the University of Illinois to release all of the records they are currently withholding to shed further light on Senator Obama’s relationship with this unrepentant terrorist?" Rogers asked.

The link to the Chi Trib reports is a reprise of the Yost/AP report.

Stanley Kurtz, who kick-started this scuffle, is worried that the library may simply hand the Chicago Annenberg Challenge archives back to the mysterious donor (Bill Ayers?).  He also tells us that the AP may be simply going through the motions (surprise!) - they never contacted him for a comment.

And Steve Diamond, the main man on this story, has also gone though some of these missing documents and posts his thoughts.  Some highlights:

While the University sits on the complete Annenberg Challenge records, several months ago I was able to obtain certain key records of the Challenge - including board minutes, annual and semi-annual reports and financial records - from Brown University's Annenberg Institute. Brown housed the national Annenberg Challenge program that was set up in 1993 by a gift of $500 million from Walter Annenberg. 

While the material I was provided is helpful it is no substitute for the complete documentary record that is apparently housed at the University of Illinois (some 70 linear feet of documents according to the library's public records) and thus that public University should immediately make available to the public those records.

Below is an analysis of what I found in the documents I was able to obtain. 

And my personal favorite educational reform - "No Maoist Left Behind":

6) One of the first grants awarded in 1995 was a $175,000 Implementation Grant to the Small Schools Workshop. The Workshop had been founded by Bill Ayers in 1992 and was headed up by his former SDS comrade and hardcore Maoist, Mike Klonsky. Klonsky actually visited China and met with its stalinist leaders in the early 1970s. Klonsky still heads up the Small Schools Workshop and, until it was summarily removed, hosted a blog on "social justice" and education issues on the official Barack Obama Presidential campaign website. Hundreds of thousands of dollars more would be forthcoming from the CAC for the Klonsky group.

Developing...

Annenberg-Gate

Steve Diamond has been leading the way on the Obama/Ayers/Annenberg Challenge story which has finally been discovered by the AP.  Now he looks at the cover-up of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge archives sought by Stanley Kurtz.

Almost Like Reporting

Pete Yost of the AP covers the cover-up of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge archives described yesterday by Stanley Kurtz at NRO:

WASHINGTON – The University of Illinois on Tuesday refused to release records relating to Barack Obama's service to a nonprofit group linked to former 1960s radical activist William Ayers.                        

The university's Chicago campus said the donor of the records that document the work of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge has not yet turned over ownership rights to the material.            

The university is "aggressively pursuing" an agreement with the donor, and as soon as an agreement is finalized, the collection will be made accessible to the public, the university said in a one-paragraph statement.                        

There was no indication when an agreement will be worked out. The university did not identify the donor who it said was concerned that the release not invade personal privacy.

Since the mainstream media has never yet reported on this Ayers/Obama link the typical reader is probably scratching his or her head.  Mr. Yost provides some background:

Ayers is an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who in his youth co-founded the Weatherman organization, later known as the Weather Underground Organization, which espoused violence as a necessity for political change.                        

In the 1990s, Ayers was instrumental in starting the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which was awarded nearly $50 million by a foundation to help reform Chicago schools.                        

Obama was the first chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and Republicans have been highlighting his ties to Ayers through the group.            

The Republican National Committee posted the National Review article on the RNC's Web site.

...

Obama was board chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge for three years starting in 1995 and he remained on the board until the project closed in 2001.   

The $49.2 million was the largest private gift ever made to Chicago schools. The money went to 250 schools in one of the nation's largest school districts.

That is almost like reporting.  Yost makes no mention of the fact that Obama was asked about Ayers at the Philadelphia debate in April and described him as ""a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago...", rather than as "a guy I worked with on education reform for six years without accomplishing anything" (The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was ultimately judged a failure by the Annenberg Foundation.)

Yost makes no mention of the fact that the Obama website produced a "Fact Check" on the Obama/Ayers relationship which made no mention of this failed collaboration on education reform.

Yost makes  no mention of the fact that previously the Obama campaign was telling reporters that (a) Obama and Ayers met through kids who went to the same school, or (b) Obama and Ayers first met in the second half of 1995 when Ayers hosted a campaign kick-off for Obama.  Since Obama became chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in January 1995, that was false.

In fact, its almost as if the Obama campaign has tried to conceal this Obama/Ayers relationship.  And now some mysterious unnamed donor is continuing the cover-up by sitting on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge archives.

And Yost almost reports on it.

So what does it mean?  Well, none of us can judge the relationship at this point since a lot of possibly important information is being concealed.  But the fact of an ongoing cover-up might spark some journalist's curiosity.

And why the cover-up?  My guess is that the Obama campaign recognizes that education reform is a hot topic with voters everywhere.  Obama, the man with limited executive experience, might not want to highlight his executive belly-flop here, undertaken in partnership with a hard left unrepentant domestic terrorist.  But that is just a guess.

NO MAOIST LEFT BEHIND:  One of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge grants was to former student radical Mike Klonsky.  More awkwardness.

EVERYBODY INTO THE POOL:  Credit where due - at least Mr. Yost noted the story.  Take a guess as to whether we will see coverage in the paper or blog at the WaPo, the NY Times, and the LA Times.  I say zero for six.  But enterprising researchers can find lots of links to background articles in this old post.

GUESS AGAIN:  OK, you're a highly paid Obama media consultant - what strategy do you recommend?

(a) Continued stonewall.

(b) Selective release to a few friendly reporters (pardon my redundancy) twenty minutes prior to the VP announcement; then next week and for the next two months, chant "Old news.  We have answered those questions.  Distraction.  Hope.  Change."

(c) Confess everything, including the Ayers disposal of Jimmy Hoffa.

Mais Oui, Mon Ami

Andrew Sullivan is shocked (shocked!) that anyone could think that his questioning of McCain's cross in the dirt story could be characterized as "Swiftboating":

Swift-boat? Moi?

It's worth noting that pursuing the cross-in-the-dirt evangelical parable as it might have happened to McCain is in no way impugning anyone's war record. No one is disputing in any way what McCain did in Vietnam, his heroism, his sacrifice or any jot and tittle of his combat in arms and time in captivity.

Uh huh.  McCain tells a story of his war time experience meant to illuminate his character.  Sully questions that story but he is not "disputing in any way what McCain did in Vietnam".  Hmm, I guess he is merely disputing what a Vietnamese guard did, and what McCain remembers.  Quel difference!  Or as Sister Toldjah rejoins "Yeah.  And my writing this post? It’s not part of my blog."

Byron York is a calming beacon of light:

Team McCain reshaped and altered the utterly believable story, Sullivan says, to appeal to the evangelical base, beginning in the 2000 campaign. (And we all know how hard John "agents of intolerance" McCain was working to sweet-talk evangelicals back in 2000.) Anyway, Exhibit A in this is a McCain campaign ad telling the cross-in-the-dirt story. In the ad, we see video of someone making a cross in dirt — using a stick. And McCain had said the North Vietnamese guard used his sandal. Aha!

I threw in my two cents about the bitter "stick versus sandal" schism in comments to this post:

However - a sandal is also a lot less visually interesting to film, at least in a quick ad (What do you show, some guy shuffling his feet?). Creative license.

I have a very hard time believing that Sully wouldn't be offering these rationales himself if he were sincerely interested in sorting this out.  [Long time McCain aide and co-author Mark Salter goes with "artistic license".  OK, then, show us the license...]

As to why McCain didn't tell the story himself in 1973 - a commenter suggested that maybe ratting out a Christian sympathizer among the prison guards struck McCain as a bad idea. 

But if you think that is a long shot, how about my suggestion, which found support from a Sully-sympathizer:

If I may dare to play armchair psychologist — one point of the “cross in dirt” story is McCain’s recognition of and reconciliation to the humanity of his often brutal captors. My guess is that in May of 1973 he had not fully worked through his issues with the North Vietnamese.

Well.  Let the Switfboating continue!

TRYING TO GRASP THE SUBTLETIES OF "SULLYBOATING":  Let's see if I get Sullivan's argument - McCain's memory of a cross in the dirt is not a story about his courage or in his military record, and he may or may not have invented it in 2000 for political purposes; therefore, critics are not engaging in "Swiftboating" when they pick at it.

Well, then, what about folks, including the Swiftboaters, who questioned Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" story?  That incident was not in Kerry's record (since it never happened!); he had not received a mdeal for it; and he seemd to have invented it for political purposes (e.g., in a Senate speech in 1986 Kerry's point was that he had special moral authority to denounce a secret Iran-Contra war since he had been a participant/victim of Nixon's secret war in Cambodia in 1968.  Please ignore the fact that Nixon was inaugurated in January 1969.)

By Sullivan's new standard the Swiftboaters were not Swiftboating Kerry on this topic, since they were only questioning a politically motivated story and not "real" conduct in Vietnam.  A fine distinction - can we call this "Sullyboating"?

Pretty complicated!  In my world, if a politician wants to run on his record, critics should be free to examine it, and take the consequences.  In Sully's world, the rules are less clear, but let me guess at a summary - it is OK to attack Republicans.

When Is A Flag Not A Flag?

The Captain is having too much fun with the Dems latest gaffe.

Looks Like Sully Is Serious

Andrew Sullivan, despite his long history of deploring the "Swiftboating" of John Kerry, remains determined to call into question John McCain's story about a Vietnamese prison guard drawing a cross in the dirt at Christmas.  Here is his initial post and three follow-ups.  Whoa.  Where is this freight train headed, asks Megan McArdle.

I know what you're thinking - unless we can interview every prison guard in Vietnam we can never prove this story to be false, and anyway, who cares?  But let's give Excitable Andy a chance to frame the issue:

And of course, none of this would be salient were it not for the obvious motive for coopting the story. McCain has never been a very devout man. He doesn't come across that way in his first account of the story; and he doesn't come across that way now. But as the Christianists took over the GOP, he must have understood that this was a problem - especially against Bush in 2000. So in 1999, the story, already poignant and true in its particulars, changes into a much more grandiloquent and sectarian affair, echoing deep evangelical themes and tropes.

And it would not be salient if McCain hadn't deployed the anecdote in his own words - with a misleading image - in a campaign ad, and used it again in front of an evangelical audience Saturday night. And it would not be salient if religious fanatics had not a strangle-hold on the Republican party, seeking doctrinal assurances and echoes of their own type of faith in political candidates.

...And why are we not allowed to ask these questions, when they relate to one of the most important questions anyone can ask about a president: the question of integrity? If McCain has fabricated a religious epiphany for political purposes, it is about as deep a betrayal of core integrity as one can imagine, and the latest example of how pernicious the religious domination of political life in America has become.

Hmm.  When John Kerry was running on his military resume yet refusing to release his records or his diary, these questions were deplorable.  Times change.

As to the notion that McCain is inventing his religiosity, I addressed that in my first post.  but ai am happy to try again for folks interested in an answer (I expect Sully's question is strictly rhetorical).  The fact is that John McCain, in describing his captivity to US News and World report in 1973, described the importance of God and faith in his prison experience in several passages, excerpted below:

I was finding that prayer helped. It wasn't a question of asking for superhuman strength or for God to strike the North Vietnamese dead. It was asking for moral and physical courage, for guidance and wisdom to do the right thing. I asked for comfort when I was in pain, and sometimes I received relief. I was sustained in many times of trial.

Later McCain described the church riot:

In March of 1971 the senior officers decided that we would have a showdown over church. This was an important issue for us. It also was a good one to fight them on. We went ahead and held church. The men that were conducting the service were taken out of the room immediately. We began to sing hymns in loud voices and "The Star-Spangled Banner."

The "gooks" thought it was a riot situation. They brought in the ropes and were practicing judo holds and that kind of stuff. After about a week or two they started taking the senior officers out of our room and putting them over in another building.

Shrewd of McCain to have planted those passages in 1973 in anticipation of the rise of the religious right.  And his talk to Reagan's prayer group in 1974 showed similar foresight:

"In 1974, his last year as governor, Reagan invited McCain to speak at the annual prayer breakfast in Sacramento. 'Nancy cries when we send out the laundry,' said Reagan in his introduction, 'so I want to tell you, she'll never make it through listening to a talk by our next guest, Commander John McCain.' Never glancing at a note, McCain told a prison parable, of being in solitary, a hole in the ground, [Note: In the entire official records, McCain was never, yes never, ever in solitary - in a hole in the ground. POWs at the Briarpatch were, but not McCain - in any of the prison camps where he spent time.], unbearable heat, suicidal thoughts intensifying. By chance he discovered some scratchings on the wall, the words of a previous inmate: 'I believe in God, the Father Almighty.'"

"Reagan was right. Mrs. Reagan had the Kleenex out within five minutes. She wasn't alone. 'There must have been three hundred or four hundred people, maybe more than that, all these people sobbing,' said Nancy Reynolds. 'Not just sniffling. Ronald Reagan was sitting up there bawling. We were all dazzled,' she continued. 'He was a natural speaker, as she was beginning to realize, a natural politician.

Now, McCain's critics (IIRC, it was at DKos) have read that passage and cite it as evidence that the cross-in-dirt story is fabricated!  Their point is that the cross story would have been at least as powerful a tale as the story McCain told.  My response is this - if McCain was inventing stories of his religiosity in 1974, that is hardly consistent with Sully's theory about McCain inventing a religious tale to solve his political problem with the religious right in 1999.

Whatever.  Sully was not interested in the facts when Kerry was the subject, and I doubt he is interested in the facts now.  Although we will never have proof of the "cross in dirt" story, there is certainly evidence that McCain found comfort in his faith during his time in captivity, as revealed in those passages from 1973/74.  Hence, Sully's concern that McCain may have "fabricated a religious epiphany for political purposes" can be set to rest (but I bet it won't be!).

While we are here, let's tackle Sully question about "The Nightingale's Song" - three of McCain's Christmases in Vietnam are described with no mention of the cross-in-dirt story.  Inexplicable?  Well, "Nightingale" gives a sentence to the church riot on p. 194 but I can find no mention (using Amazon's search) of McCain linked to praying or prayer, nor do I find the "Father Almighty" story McCain told in 1974.  Does that mean that McCain de-fabricated them as of 1995, or is it possible that the author had little interest in that aspect of McCain's prison experience?

With that said, I know we will be able to rouse Andrew's new-found curiosity about loose ends and war stories.  Why was it that Zaladonis, a ship-mate of Kerry's in Vietnam, was interviewed repeatedly by Douglas Brinkley and by the Boston Glove reporters in 2003 yet never mentioned that he was with Kerry when Kerry won his first Purple Heart?  Zaladonis only provided the detail that he was with Kerry for Kerry's first combat, first medal, and the scariest night of Zaladonis' life when Kerry came under criticism in 2004.  Odd?  Kerry never released the records (such as his Purple Heart application) or his War Notes that might have shed light here.  Troubling?  Isn't that question at least as valid as the questions Sully is proposing today?

Or if Sully is worried that McCain is lying about his religious conviction (There are no atheists in foxholes but plenty in POW camps?), maybe we can get him as interested in the little matter of Obama's tie to Bill Ayers.  That is a topic where we know that the Obama camp has been lying to reporters; here is The Politico from last April:

Information about the pair's connection has been dribbling out over the past few months. Obama first met Ayers in 1995, during Obama's first state Senate campaign, and the two met with a small group of local liberal activists at Ayers' house. Exact details of the meeting are unkown because Obama and Ayers have declined to discuss it.

The Politico dates that meeting to the second half of 1995; Obama became chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in January 1995.  The Challenge was dedicated to education reform and co-founded by Bill Ayers, who worked closely with the chairman for several years thereafter.  Right now Stanley Kurtz is trying to get the Chicago Annenberg Challenge archives but despite initial permission his access has now been taken away.  Why the cover-up? 

And why am I confident that questions that cut to the heart of Kerry's character, or Obama's, are still viewed by Sully as nothing more than deplorable right-wing distractions despite his own ludicrous assault on McCain's assertions of faith?

Oh Ree-elle-y?

More than you want to know about John Edwards.

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge - The Fog Thickens

Barack Obama and unrepentant Weatherman Bill Ayers worked together on public school reform in Chicago for several years through the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, co-founded by Bill Ayers and originally chaired by Barack Obama.  This aspect of the Ayers/Obama relationship got surprisingly short shrift when Obama was asked about Ayers at the Philadelphia debate and has also been concealed by the Obama website's "Fact Check" and in their recent denunciation of Jerome Corsi's book.

And now the whiff of cover-up grows stronger.  Stanley Kurtz, writing at NRO, details his attempt to gain access to hundreds of Chicago Annenberg Challenge records housed at the Richard J. Daley Library of the  University of Illinois at Chicago.  Although initially assured that the documents were available to the public, Mr. Kurtz has since been given shifting stories the gist of which seems to be that the documents are off limits.  And who is making this determination?  The library won't say, although it is entirely possible that Bill Ayers is the guiding force behind this delay.

So let's see - Obama has been misrepresenting his relationship with Ayers to the press (this misdirection of Ben Smith of The Politico from last February is a comedy classic) and now someone is blocking access to the records detailing the workings of the group founded by Ayers and chaired by Obama.  In another world the press would smell a cover-up.  In this one?  My guess has been that the mainstream press will remain in the tank for Obama rather than risk annoying their remaining readers by appearing to be pawns of the right-wing attack machine.

As an example of the press covering for Obama consider this NY Times reporting on the Obama/Ayers tangle from last May:

Mr. Obama also fit in at Hyde Park’s fringes, among university faculty members like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, unrepentant members of the radical Weather Underground that bombed the United States Capitol and the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. Mr. Obama was introduced to the couple in 1995 at a meet-and-greet they held for him at their home, aides said.

Now, along with Mr. Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Mr. Ayers has become a prime exhibit in the effort by Mr. Obama’s presidential rivals to highlight what could be politically radioactive associations. In 2001, Mr. Ayers said he did not regret the Weatherman bombings. Even so, in Hyde Park, he and his wife were viewed favorably for their work in addressing city problems. Mr. Ayers was just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” Mr. Obama said recently.

The two men were involved in efforts to reform the city’s education system. They appeared together on academic panels, including one organized by Michelle Obama to discuss the juvenile justice system, an area of mutual concern. Mr. Ayers’s book on the subject won a rave review in The Chicago Tribune by Mr. Obama, who called it “a searing and timely account.”

Now what basis could the Times have for noting that "The two men were involved in efforts to reform the city’s education system"?  It can't be the meet-and-greet fundraiser where they were "introduced" (As if - per The Politico, the fundraiser was in the second half of 1995; Obama was already chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which was kicked off in January 1995).  It can't be a panel on the juvenile justice system.  It wouldn't be their overlap on the Woods Fund of Chicago, a general charity.

I think the Times knows more than they are comfortable telling.  As to the nature of their discomfort, well, as noted I think they want to leave their readers in a comfort zone.

WILL THE POLITICO TAKE THIS UP?  From The Politico last April:

Information about the pair's connection has been dribbling out over the past few months. Obama first met Ayers in 1995, during Obama's first state Senate campaign, and the two met with a small group of local liberal activists at Ayers' house. Exact details of the meeting are unkown because Obama and Ayers have declined to discuss it.

Clearly false.  So what are they going to do about it?

LET THE RECORD NOTE:  There was a push for public school reform in Chicago in 1987, before Obama went off to Harvard in the fall of 1988.  The group led by Obama, Developing Communities Project, was part of the ABCs Coalition led by Thomas Ayers (Bill's dad) and coordinated by Bill Ayers himself.  The odds are pretty good that this is when Bill Ayers and Barack Obama first met.  I wonder whether the Times knew that, too.

CREDIT WHERE DUE:  Mr. Kurtz is kind enough to note my digging and ranting on this topic but correctly gives the Gold to Steve Diamond of Global Labor.

THE FOG AT FOX:  Obama was asked about Bill Ayers a few days after the Philadelphia debate in an interview on Fox.  He sorta kinda told something like the truth while continuing the cover-up:

Now, Mr. Ayres [Ayers] is a 60 plus year old individual who lives in my neighborhood, who did something that I deplore 40 years ago when I was six or seven years old. By the time I met him, he was a professor of education at the University of Illinois.

We served on a board together that had Republicans, bankers, lawyers, focused on education, who worked for Mayor Daley. Mayor Daley, the same Mayor Daley probably who when he was a state attorney prosecuted Mr. Ayres’s wife for those activities, I (INAUDIBLE) the point is that to somehow suggest that in any way I endorse his deplorable acts 40 years ago, because I serve on a board with him.

As I noted at the time, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was a private entity which could not reasonably be construed as working for Mayor Daley (lots of detail in Part D of this Diamond post).  The successor group did advise Daley, but Bill Ayers was not on that board (his father and brother were.)  So this presentation sugarcoats the reality, which is that Ayers co-founded a private charitable group ands (very probably) tapped Obama to run it.  More covering up for the press to ignore.

TAX RETURNS:  Courtesy of Appalled we have tax returns for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge for 1998 (link) and 1999 (link).  The real gold would be in finding a controversial disbursement (Maoists For Genocide, anyone?) but nothing leapt off the page at me.  However,  Steve Diamond noted a grant to former Weatherman Michael Klonsky.

Obama, Ayers, And Education Reform

The American Thinker picks up the story of Obama's long and concealed association with unrepentant Weatherman Bill Ayers and their mutual efforts on education reform.  This piece on Ayers' current radical views is helpful.