I’ve added several whoppers to the D’Oh-Bama gaffes and more page. He’s been busy. Apparently, he hasn’t had much sleep lately.

Well, you win some and you lose some. Apparently I overestimated Hillary Clinton’s capacity to endure ostracism and campaign debts. I was certain she would not bow out, and yet she did. I will say this, though: in her “concession speech” she referred to herself a total of 108 times. She referred to Barack Obama 19 times.

Is Hillary really really endorsing Barack Obama? It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.

Do you recall, back in the heady days of inevitability, Hillary deigned to allow the peasants to pick her campaign song? Perhaps her post-campaign theme should be the Beatles, “When I’m 64.” (Hillary Clinton will be 64 in 2012). To wit:

When I get older, I’m running again
Just four years from now
Will you still be voting for me then next time?
More campaigning with blue collar swine.

If the phone rings at quarter to three
Who should answer more?
Will you still need me
Will you elect me
When I’m sixty four?

I’ll be in Denver too
And if you say the word
I will stay in view

I could pretend, mending this feud
But when the results are in
You will hear me swearing that “I told you so”
On Sunday morning political shows

I’ll stay in the Senate,
Passing the years
I will wait four more
Will you still need me
Will you elect me
When I’m sixty four?

Over the summer, we’ll hear reportage
On his Reverend Wright, I won’t disappear

For him I will campaign
But under baited breath
I’ll root for John McCain

Send me a postcard drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely wasting away

Give me an answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me
Will you elect me
When I’m sixty four

Many have rightfully criticized McCain’s June 3rd speech as stiff and awkward. In response, the McCain campaign has hired former Obama speech consultant Yuri Lee Sedthet. The results have been immediate and compelling:

• While visiting the destroyed Back To the Future set at Universal Studios in California, McCain asked “so does the time machine still work?“
• Speaking to a group of fellow veterans, McCain noted, “Many soldiers never came back, and I see some of those men here today.”
• When asked why he felt Californians would not vote for him over Senator Obama, McCain (R-Arizona) replied, “Sen. Obama, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Hawaii. So it’s not surprising that he would have an advantage in some of those states in the West.”
• Regarding the controversy over Reverend Wright, McCain said “The point I was making was not that Reverend Wright harbors any racial animosity. He doesn’t. But he is a typical black person who, uh, if he sees somebody in the government that he doesn’t know there’s a reaction that’s been been bred into our experiences that don’t go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way and that’s just the nature of race in our society.”
• In a speech on foreign relations, McCain promised to “work with the President of England on trade issues in the European States.”
• Regarding his efforts to work with Democrats in office, McCain noted that “I’ve worked with members of the Democratic party in 57 states. I haven’t worked with anyone in Alaska or Rhode Island yet.”
• Speaking to a group of Pearl Harbor survivors, McCain, who was born in 1936, noted his connection with that day of infamy, “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened at Pearl Harbor. So Roberta and John S. McCain got together and John McCain Jr. was born. So don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Pearl Harbor. Don’t tell me I’m not coming home to Pearl Harbor.”

I have noted before that Hillary does not want the V.P. spot on Barack Obama’s presidential ticket. She wants, more than anything, the nomination for herself. Failing that, she wants Obama to fail miserably, either in November so she can challenge President McCain or, less ideally, as president, so she can challenge Obama for the nomination (ala Reagan v. Ford). In any case, joining the ticket aligns her with him, and you don’t tie yourself to your opponent voluntarily.

So, what is her end game? I continue to believe she will take the nomination fight to the convention. She still has her ploy in “making every vote count” in Florida and Michigan (she mentioned suffrage and disenfranchisement three times in her speech last night). Now, she can add the V.P. stakes as another reason to take the fight to Denver and prolong the battle (and thereby weaken Obama). Here’s how:

Hillary will spend the next few weeks (there are about 12 weeks until the convention begins) privately and not-so privately through surrogates, coercing Obama to offer her the V.P. spot. If he offers her the spot (which will make him appear weak and will tarnish his “Change” message), she will haggle over details or make unacceptable conditions, dragging out the process as long as possible. In the end, she will either make him look impossibly weak or continue the fight to the convention.

If he refuses, or even more inflammatory, if Obama dares to pick his own running mate, she will continue to press her supporters to “draft Hillary” as V.P. She will (behind the scenes) arrange for a floor vote on the Vice Presidential nomination (and, depending on how offensive his pick is, possibly contest the presidential nomination as well). (Maureen Dowd has already reported that Clinton has requested a roll call vote, which the Obama camp rejects as a possible trick!). As Bob Beckel pointed out, if she forces a vote for V.P., a lot of superdelegates will have to vote for her, even if they went for Obama at first. She only needs about 10% defections to pull it off.

Assuming Hillary wins the V.P. floor vote, she will, magnanimously decline to serve as V.P. “Barack Obama is our nominee for president,” she will screech over boos from her own supporters, “and he clearly does not want me to serve in his administration. In the interest of party unity, I therefore decline the nomination for Vice President.”

Barack Obama then goes on to get hammered by the Reagan Democrats who see him as rejecting their candidate. President McCain is sworn in and we get four more years of lower taxes and dead terrorists. Hillary can then jump back in for the 2012 cycle, which will begin in just three short years.

I have decided to keep track of the Obama Gaffe Machine in its ever-expanding work to test the mainstream media’s limits of denial. It has turned out to be a bit more ambitious than I first thought, so it is not yet done. Given the frenzy today, I thought it appropriate to launch a bit early.

Please feel free to comment or suggest new gaffes on the permanent Obama Gaffe page.

I find it mildly amusing that Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean have all come out in the past two days promising to bring an end to the Democratic presidential campaign next week. While it is true that the party “leaders” can apply pressure to the unaligned super delegates, they cannot apply pressure to Hillary herself. What is needed to end this race is a concession speech from the runner-up. Does anyone really think that is forthcoming?

Let’s look at the carrots and sticks that the Democrats have over Hillary Clinton. First, the sticks:

• Campaign Debt. Hillary has amassed about $11 million dollars worth of campaign debt that, under McCain-Feingold, she must repay before the nominee is selected at the convention. $11 million is a lot of money, even to the Clintons, but most of it is owed to small suppliers. Has anyone ever accused the Clintons of looking out for the little guy?
• Obama’s Inevitability. The argument goes: once enough super delegates come to Obama, Hillary will have no choice but to concede to Obama. This argument is so utterly unhinged from the past 4 months, it borders on parody. Hillary Clinton has been mathematically eliminated since just after Super Tuesday. No one reasonably expected Hillary to be able to pull this out without a tremendous Yankees-lose-four-straight-to Boston style collapse by Obama. Once she lost those 10 straight primaries, the end was inevitable. Nothing has changed, and it won’t.
• Hillary’s Future In the Party. To think that Reid, Pelosi or Dean could threaten the Clintons with any plausible political damage is laughable. Half the time, Reid and Pelosi can’t even get their own colleagues to get behind legislation they themselves are backing. And trust me, Hillary Clinton covets this nomination far more than some farm subsidy.

And now the carrots. Ask yourself, what is it that Hillary Clinton is asking for:

• Florida and Michigan. If you think this is anything but a cynical ploy, you’re doing it wrong. Hillary does not care one iota about the voters or delegates of Florida and Michigan. How do I know? Before it mattered, her delegates to the DNC voted unanimously to strip both states of their delegates. The only reason Hillary cares about these delegates is that it gives her a reason to take the fight to the convention.
• The Vice Presidency. As I have mentioned before, Hillary does not want Obama to win. She wants him to fail miserably so that she and Bill can say “We told you so,” in 2012. If that is her strategy, she wants to stay off the ticket to avoid blame, while paying lip service to a united party. She will campaign for Obama, she may even hedge her bets by requesting a Supreme Court spot, a cabinet role or a choice ambassadorship, but she will not join the ticket.
• A speaking role at the convention. Try and deny her this. This is not even negotiable for Hillary. She will speak at the convention, whether Pelosi, Reid and Dean like it or not. With almost exactly half of the delegates on the floor being Hillary supporters, can you imagine the pandemonium if she is denied a prominent role? Moreover, the media, even with it’s pro-Obama drunken stupor, would have to cover Hillary’s competing press conference(s) and other distractions.

In my opinion, there is just no leverage to force Hillary out of the race. Hillary truly believes that Obama will be exposed before November as the Chicago political operative he is (she would know), and she has faith that McCain will not run for two terms. No matter the numbers, no matter the odds, Hillary will drag this out to the convention. She will make a big speech, a thinly veiled warning to those who vote for Obama. She will force a vote (maybe even several platform votes to embarrass Obama). She will set the stage for four years hence, when her new campaign theme will be “I told you so.”

I had a uncle who was one of the, um, who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz, and liberate the concentration camps. And the story in our family was, is that, when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn’t leave the house for six months. Now, obviously, something had really affected him deeply. But at that time, there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, Las Cruces, New Mexico, May 26, 2008 (Memorial Day).

For those without access to the “right” wing of the internet, I will let you in on an open secret, U.S. troops never entered Auschwitz. The concentration camp at Auschwitz (Poland) was the largest in the German-controlled territories. Being east of Berlin (the furthest advance of U.S. and allied troops), it was liberated by the Soviet Union’s Red Army. Of course, Obama’s recent gaffes on geography may be signs he has “lost his bearings” completely, and he may have forgotten that Poland is east of Germany, just as he forgot that Kentucky borders Illinois. (Obama is apparently channeling Haley Joel Osmet in seeing dead people, so perhaps he’s not fit for the rigors of such a long campaign.)

It is true that the United States Army did, however, liberate several Nazi concentration camps, and I am sure that the horror of uncovering these camps in April of 1945 was overwhelming and lasting. It’s still early days in the latest Obama gaffe/whopper, but time will (hopefully) tell as to whether Obama was (a) merely misstating a (presumably true) family legend (certainly a mere gaffe, confusing Auschwitz with Dachau or another camp); (b) unknowingly repeating a false family legend or (c) making this up out of whole cloth (as he did his “claim on Selma“).

The first two are not so troublesome, as many of us take as gospel that which our grandparents told us (even if they are typical, white racists). For example, my grandmother (not a racist) told me that my late grandfather liberated the town in Italy where she was born. It’s a heart warming story, and I may repeat it in public one day. There’s no reason to issue a FOIA request for Grandpa Al’s records, but then again, I’m not claiming he liberated Auschwitz.

There are some troubling side stories here. There are questions as to whether Obama even has an uncle on that side. In addition, the fact that he would mention his grandfather’s tenuous connection (again to the wrong Nazi camps) in a 2002 speech and this (apparently long lost) uncle’s direct connection in 2008 also undermines the credibility of the uncle’s story. And finally, much like outing grandma as a racist, where is the compassion for this uncle’s suffering? If you had lived through the Great Depression, seen your country attacked by Japan, marched across Europe and Africa, watching your best friends die in combat, only to discover the truly disgusting depths of the human capacity for evil, would you want your slick nephew airing your dirty laundry, bragging about the most trying times of your long life to score political points?

In any case, I am sure that, if and when the media picks up on this gaffe/lie, we will be told that this is a “distraction” meant to keep us from “focusing on the real issues.”

On a less personal scale, of all things not to be taken lightly, the Holocaust should be at the top of anyone’s list. Auschwitz is a name that will live in the annals of evil for as long as humans walk the planet. If you’re going to raise the issue, if you’re going to connect yourself with those who, when earth’s foundation fled, took up arms against evil on Earth, you really need to get your story straight. Those who fought Germany and Japan, those who endured the Bataan Death March, the landings at Normandy, the shivering cold of Bastogne, they all deserve our loyalty and respect. To offhandedly make a claim on their legacy to make political hay is despicable. To fabricate such a claim is neigh treason to their memory.

Obama supporters continue to cling (perhaps out of bitterness) to the notion of direct diplomacy with Iran. Their retort to the tidal wave of criticism is, “well, what would you do? Invade Iran.” This is part of the Democratic strategy of criticizing U.S. foreign policy. It takes an incredibly narrow view of the history of Iraq. Perhaps many Obama supporters cannot remember that far back, but the United States imposed sanctions on Iraq for 12 years. For many Obama supporters, this dates back to their kindergarten days. The notion that the United States reflexively invaded Iraq after 9/11 is as absurd as the most deranged Obama fantasy.

Iraq is a separate animal from Iran. Iraq was a brutal, but secular, dictatorship run by an aging psychopath. Iran, though run by equally brutal psychopaths, has a growing populist democracy movement. There are reformers, in some cases openly calling for democratic reforms in Iran, such a pro-American base did not exist in Iraq, certainly not with nearly the same strength.

Invading Iran is not a plausible scenario for many reasons. So what would I do about Iran? More importantly, what would Ronald Reagan do? Toppling an evil empire, as the old Cowboy from Tampico showed us, requires determination, restrained aggression, compassion and cooperation (and a little bit of luck).

Reagan showed us that determination (some would say “Cowboy diplomacy” or “stubborn refusal to be reasonable”) is not a weakness in the face of evil. A president needs to convince the enemy, the people under its oppression, U.S. allies and the global spectators (the United Nations, for example), that the full power of the United States will be brought to bear so that freedom, not tyranny, will win the day. Certainly, a president must be willing (and plausibly so) to commit the full might of the U.S. military to destroying Iran. This commitment must be broader than that. It must include economic policies and diplomatic efforts with other countries. Most importantly, this determination cannot waiver, it cannot be subject to the whims of pollsters or pundits. In 1987, after six years of “preparations”, Ronald Reagan demanded that Mikhail Gorbachev tear down the Berlin Wall. His speech writers objected. His Secretary of State objected. The media mocked him as a dottering old fool. Two years later, the wall came down.

Reagan knew that naked determination, however, was not enough. Just as in high-stakes poker, restrained aggression is key to brinkmanship. Reagan knew that placing Pershing II missiles in Europe would provoke the Soviets. He also knew they deserved it and would see it as a sign of strength. Reagan was roundly mocked for the Strategic Defense Initiative, a futuristic system that now protects the United States and its allies. But the old man knew that the floundering Soviet economy and years of brain drain meant the Soviets could not possibly keep up.

Reagan also knew that there was a fundamental difference between a Soviet and a Russian. He often spoke warmly of the Russian people, with compassion and empathy for their plight. He knew, and he was able to convey, that every man and woman were born with the same rights and that communism is an affront to basic human dignity. He said so, sincerely, publicly and often.

Finally, Reagan was a great communicator. He knew that, as powerful as the United States is, it cannot take on the entire world. Nor can the United States prosper in a world where our allies become embittered or isolated by our unilateral foreign policy. He knew that, even though the United States would bear most of the burden of promoting freedom, our allies and those who remained neutral should always feel welcome in the fight.

So, what would Reagan have us do?

• He would never, ever, meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As former Reagan adviser K.T. McFarland points out, “negotiating without leverage is not negotiating, it’s begging.” You will know it’s time to meet with the Iranian leader when the Iranian leader is a moderate, not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Patience is a passive form of determination. Reagan would spend his first term in office publicly criticizing and ostracizing Iran until regime change became its only hope for survival. He would promote an aggressive domestic policy for energy independence and a strong U.S. dollar, along with sanctions crippling the Iranian economy (just as cheap oil crippled the Soviet economy).
• Reagan would use our military gains in Iraq to occupy and frustrate Iran along its common border with Iraq. No Iranian would be able to cross the border without seeing an impressive display of American hardware and clear-eyed GI’s just waiting for Mahmoud to try something stupid. Just as the Soviet Union was unsettled by the Pershing II Missiles in West German, so Iran will be unsettled by 10 battalions of the U.S. Army amassed on its border and two carrier groups loitering off shore. Moreover, any Iranian agent found in Iraq will be treated as an invading force. Overly aggressive Iranian speedboats will experience the devastating accuracy of the American Navy, just as Gaddafi’s air force learned in the 1980s.
• Reagan would also find compassion for those suffering in Iran. Radio Free Iran (and Video Free Iran) would give Iranians hope, and kind words appealing to the Iranian people’s basic humanity would embolden reformers and give the Iranian Lech Wałęsa the courage to challenge the mullahs. Americans would open their doors to Iranian families and word of American compassion and the benefits of freedom would be trumpeted throughout the broader Middle East.
• Finally, direct diplomacy would be used, but not with Iran. Reagan would meet with our allies and those who trade with Iran. We would apply pressure against those who would deal with Iran and reward those who turn away.

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama is fond of calling John McCain’s candidacy the “third term of George Bush.” John McCain lacks the flair necessary, but he would be far more justified in calling Barack Obama’s candidacy the second term of the Jimmy Carter failure. I would love to see a side-by-side comparison of Jimmy Carter’s and Barack Obama’s idiotic policies, but I just don’t have the time or emotional capacity to re-live the horrors of the 1970’s. Without doubt, however, the most obvious similarity between the two is their naked willingness to meet with dictators, fascists and terrorists.

Although the Obama campaign is now retreating from the dangerously naive policy set forth by Obama himself, the fact remains that Obama is open to meeting with Iran, without precondition. Preconditions, of course, are those “barriers to diplomacy,” such as “Before we meet with you, you have to stop killing U.S. soldiers and innocent civilians in Iraq,” or “Stop building your nuclear plants, or we won’t meet with you.” Obama now says that how would, of course, have “preparations” before meeting with a man who has called our ally a “rotting corpse” and promised its annihilation.

The term “preparation” is a wonderfully naive term. It makes it sound as if Obama has such a childish view of the world that he thinks McCain is criticizing him for not planning an itinerary. “Of course we’re going to have preparations. We’ve booked the flight, we have a suite of hotel rooms, and I even brought a pen and a notepad, so I can take dictation copious notes from my dear friend Mahmoud.”

In a speech on Sunday, however, Obama betrayed the depth of his naiveté.

(You should watch the video, as Obama’s “come on” demeanor speaks volumes of his attitude). Three things jumped out of his speech:

1. Negotiations brought down the Berlin wall. This is a fundamental misstatement of history. President Reagan’s unflinching anti-Communism, aggressive expansion of our military capabilities and his refusal to talk with Soviet hardliners like Chernenko lead to the internal and external reforms. And, not to be too dramatic, but Reagan’s demand to Gorbachev that he “tear down this wall”, was not made over an ornate conference table in a quiet Swiss hotel. It was made in front of the damn wall to a cheering crowd of Germans.
2. “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 did.” This is absurd. During the Cold War, the USSR could annihilate the United States and its allies, and vice versa. This stalemate, known as mutually assured destruction, only works with rational people. The Soviets were horribly brutal, but they were not about to cause the extinction of mankind to prove a point. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, has never been successfully accused of being a rational person. While it is true that the Iranian military poses no serious threat to the United States military, the Enola Gay, similarly posed little or no threat to the Hiroshima police force. It was the nuclear device it carried that did all that damage. Obama’s idiotic assertion that these “tiny” countries “don’t pose a serious threat to us” begs the question, how many Israeli, European or U.S. cities would have to be sacrificed in nuclear holocausts before Obama realized that one man with a bomb is a serious threat to us?
3. “Iran spends 1/100th of what we spend on their military. If they ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they would’nt stand a chance.”I have to admit, this took me all of three minutes to debunk, most of which was spent looking for my calculator. According to publicly available data on the CIA website, Iran’s military expenditure in 2008 will be (2.5% of GDP) $21.3 billion (not sure if this includes their “peaceful nuclear program”). The U.S. military expenditure in 2008 (including fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and deployments on every continent) will be (4.05% of GDP) $561.3 billion. No matter how you cut it, Iran spends way more than 1/100th of what America spends on their military. In real dollars, Iran spends 1/25th of what the U.S. does on it’s military (four times what Obama implies). In terms of percentage of GDP, Iran spends more than half of what the U.S. spends. Per capita, Iran spends 1/6th what the United States spends. Anyway you look at the numbers 1/100th isn’t even close.

Obama has proven himself, again and again, to be naive on foreign policy (even suggesting we invade an ally and nuclear power, Pakistan). Although he seems to be backing off of his ridiculous policy now, who will be the voice of reason when, God forbid, President Obama’s ridiculous and dangerous ideas are not reigned in by an opposing nominee?

One of my coworkers here was surprised the other day when I mentioned I was in favor of a strong Democratic party. “You’re joking, right?” he said, impressed with my apparent deadpan. No, I’m not. While it’s true that I tend to vote Republican, and I support Republican principles of limited government, a strong military and I take pride in American values and history, I know that a strong Democratic party is necessary to keep the fat bloated idiots who represent us in check.

After six years of a Republican-controlled executive and six years of Republican-controlled legislature, the Republican party had become a disgusting reminder of the corruption of power. Look no further than yesterday’s interim election loss in the former stronghold of Mississippi. (A Democrat won the open seat by running on a limited government, socially conservative agenda.) Republicans have taken the American taxpayer for a ride, forgetting who it is that brought them to power. They have greedily stolen money from the public coffers in the hopes it would insure them against negative public opinion. Instead, it foments it.

Of course, had they had a true adversary, one who could stand on opposing principles and provide a legitimate challenge to their claimed authority, well, maybe the fall could have been prevented. In any event, two strong political parties provide Americans with what they really want, a government so tied up by political machinations it doesn’t have time or energy to screw with us.

Sadly, the Democratic party is as much a spoof of itself as the Hollywood liberal elitists it represents. Several commentators have noted in the past several days that the Democrats and the media are attempting to redefine “negative attacks” as any criticism of Obama (Abe Greenwald for example). And, as if to prove the point, the entire Democratic party has gone into a tizzy about President Bush’s comments today to the Knesset.

President Bush, without pointing to Obama or anyone else, noted that “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.” Obama was quick to object (too quick, if you ask me). But what is telling about Obama’s (and Nancy Pelosi’s and Joe “Foul Mouth” Biden’s) response is the complete lack of denial. Obama has campaigned, in part, on the promise to hold talks with Iran and others without precondition (Robert Malley, one of his advisors has even gotten a head start). Isn’t it fair for someone, anyone, to question the validity of such an approach? Didn’t Carter fail miserably as president and later, as Palestinian stooge? Why is it, exactly, that this is unfair and out of bounds?

Nancy Pelosi: the comments are “beneath the dignity of the office.” Okay, that’s your opinion, but do you deny that the Democratic party, (including you) have advocated direct talks with terrorist nations?

Rahm Emanuel: Notes that, “The tradition has always been that when a U.S. president is overseas, partisan politics stops at the water’s edge,” and whines that President Bush is not abiding by this time-honored tradition. Mr. Emanuel must have an exceedingly small capacity to recall recent events as the Democratic party seems to delight in attacking President Bush when he is overseas, even when he is visiting active war zones.

Joe Biden: Well, he’s nothing but a cranky bastard in need of a nap. There again, he blames Bush for an increase in terrorism, but doesn’t even attempt to defend the Democratic position of diplomacy at all costs.

Again, this speaks volumes of the weakness of the Democratic party. They are either unable, unwilling or unprincipled to such a degree that they cannot even bear to see a plank of their own presidential platform questioned by one of the least popular presidents in modern history. It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.