Bumped to the top.

The M&P Compact isn't the only handgun I've got out on loan. Here's a stock picture of the very nice J-frame 637 CT (Crimson Trace Laser) I've been carrying. That little capsule-shaped bump at the top of the grip is the laser aiming module.

I've had some very nice items loaned to me in recent weeks for a long-term story I'm developing, including this one.

Nice, isn't it?

The only downside of this project is that while I've found the shooting industry to be very gracious and giving, there are still some out-of-pocket expenses involved, and finances are a bit tight right now as we adjust to the new baby, as you might expect.

If you can chip in a couple of bucks, I'd greatly appreciate it, and if you can't that's cool, too.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:09 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Father Michael Pfleger, lynching advocate and 22-year friend and mentor to Barack Obama, found his testimonial whitewashed from the official Presidential campaign website by Monday, even before his latest rant against Hillary Clinton and white entitlement before Obama's long-time and current congregation at Trinity United Church of Christ.

Predictably, as he always does when one of his associates is revealed as a radical, Obama feigned shock proclaimed his disappointment. Pfleger apologized.

Both men would like for you to think that this kind of outburst was unexpected and rare, but it seems that public radicalism has characterized Pfleger's entire career, and perhaps drew the men together to when Obama met Pfleger for the first time more than 20 years ago.

Michael Pfleger is just one of the men who have helped mold the man who is now the presumptive Democratic nominee. Hiding behind a cool facade and rigidly-enforced message discipline is a candidate who has had his philosophies and ideals forged around men who have roots in fomenting race-hatred and hard-left political ideologies.

Barack Obama, Sr. abandoned his son when he was a toddler and only met with him once more before dying in 1982. Obama Sr. first married to a woman named Kezia in a tribal ceremony and never divorced her. Senior left a pregnant Kezia in Kenya with and infant soon to enrolled at the University of Hawaii on an academic scholarship. It was there he took his second wife, Ann Dunham, who did not know he was already married. Barack Hussein Obama, Junior was born six months later. Senior left his second wife and son when he was admitted to Harvard, and divorced Dunham in 1963. Senior returned to Kenya with another American woman he met at Harvard and joined the Kenyan Ministry of Transportation as an economist, writing a paper Problems Facing Our Socialism that advocated 100% taxation. This aligned him with Kenyan communists, and alienated him from the sitting government, and effectively torpedoed his career.

Frank Marshall Davis was a member of the Communist Party USA, mentored Obama during his high school years, and was alleged to be his role model as a black man when few others were around to make an impression, as Obama was only one of three black students at his school as he was being raised in the home of his white grandparents. Obama wrote admiringly of Davis in Dreams from my Father. A poet, Davis' poems "Smash-on, victory-eating Red Army" and "Christ is a Dixie Ni__er" which dismissed Jesus as " another New White Hope" probably wouldn't endear Davis to too many of Obama's supporters of any race.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright came into Obama's life after the future senator graduated Columbia and became a community organizer, railing against the Reagan Presidency, "where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds."

Wright led Trinity United Church of Christ, a church dedicated to Black Liberation Theology, a toxic mix of Marxism and Black Nationalism based upon the work of James Cone, who claimed in Black Power and Black Theology (via Say Anything):

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community. . . . Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

Wright's sermon "The Audacity of Hope" which stated that we live in a society "where white folks greed runs a world in need" inspired Obama's second book, using that same title.

Wright's racism, paranoia, and conspiracy theorizing, including his most recent outbursts that finally forced Obama to repudiate his pastor after doggedly following his teaching as a member of Wright's congregation for 20 years, are well-documented and mercifully do not need to be repeated. What is not as well know is that while Obama has distanced himself from Wright, he has not renounced membership in the radical church Wright grew and lorded over until his recent retirement.

Lest you begin to think Barack Obama sought guidance merely from men consumed by a love of radical political ideologies driven by race hatred comes Bill Ayers, who proves that Obama's fascination with radical and sometimes violent political ideologies is color blind.

Ayers is well known as an unreformed domestic terrorist, who was part of the Weather Underground, a radical leftist group that bombed American government buildings, targeted a soldiers' dance for a mass-murder (before Ayer's then-girlfriend Diana Oughton blew herself and other Weathermen up while making pipe bombs for the attack), and which later killed police during an infamous armored car robbery along with members of the Black Liberation Army.

Obama kicked off his political career at Ayer's home, and served with Ayers as a member of the ultra-liberal Woods Fund. Ayers has also served with Obama on numerous panels and they knew each other in social circles. Before he became a debilitating factor in Obama's presidential campaign, Ayers was said to be regarded as a friend of Obama, according to his campaign staff.

By comparison, Father Michael Pfleger, while a frothing radical in any other company, actually looks sedate compared to other men who have helped shape and mold Barack Obama.

There are other men in the freshman Senator's life who have no doubt had a far more benign influence on who he has become, but one is forced to wonder what kind of radicalism floats through Obama's mind, based upon the company he's kept.

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John McCain may be the older of the two, but Barack Obama is the candidate hopelessly lost in the past.

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The lefty blogosphere and some of the more unhinged Democrats in Congress have worked themselves into a lather over claims made in a New York Times article, Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand, which claimed that the Department of Defense was using retired military officers hired by news agencies as military analysts to spread propaganda.

The most "ethical Congress ever^TM," never missing a chance to launch a politically-charged investigation if it could somehow be blamed on the military or Republicans, sent letters to some of the military analysts, essentially asking them if they were shills for the Administration.

General Barry R. McCaffrey (ret.) responded in no uncertain terms.

Here's a taste:

If you want to read the rest, Michael Yon has the exclusive.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 05:48 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The story of the misleading DC Metro memo issued by the Department of Defense continues as Michael Yon digs into the authenticity of the memo's origins and skewers a critic in the process.

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From Multi-National Force – West PAO, via email:

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq – A Coalition force service member was removed from his duties today amid concerns from Fallujah's citizens regarding reports of inappropriate conduct.

Multi-National Force - West initiated an investigation into reports that a coin with a Bible verse written in Arabic was distributed to Iraqi citizens as they passed through a Fallujah entry control point. If the allegation is substantiated, appropriate action will be taken.

"Regulations prohibit members of the coalition force from proselytizing any religion, faith or practices," said Col. Bill Buckner, MNC-I spokesman, "and our troops are trained on those guidelines before they deploy."

"This has our full attention," said Col. James L. Welsh, chief of staff, Multi-National Force - West. "We deeply value our relationship with the local citizens and share their concerns over this serious incident."

This was reported earlier today by McClatchy, but quite frankly, when a news organization runs items under the tagline "truth to power," by an author also published by al Jazeera, I like to get confirmation first. I've got a request in for more details on this, and will update again if they have additional information.

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The special kind of delusion it takes to believe that Iraq was irretrievably lost in 2006 is still alive and well and in positions of leadership in the Democratic Party.

Speaking with the San Francisco Chronicle, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi insisted that the surge failed, and insists that if there is any progress, it is because Iran allowed it.

Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn't happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn't accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.

Cue the flaming skull.

Pelosi's needful delusions means that dictator-loving, Jew-hating 9/11 conspiracy-theorist Cindy Sheehan is not the most insane candidate vying for California's Eight District House seat.

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I emailed Allahpundit yesterday, wondering why Barack Obama's favorite lynching advocate priest and spiritual mentor of 22 years quietly saw his endorsement drop away from the faith testimonials page at barackobama.com.

As you may remember, Father Michael Pfleger has a history as a radical leftist, and the long-time friend of Obama, Jeremiah Wright, and Louis Farrakhan once called for a local gun shop owner to be dragged into the street by an angry mob and "snuffed out."

That outburst didn't get him removed from Barack's list of supporters, but Allahpundit thinks that he may have found the rant that did.

Does Barack Obama know any sane people?

And while we're on the subject: Why is Barack Obama still a member of this church? Why does he expose his children to such hatred by calling this congregation home?

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Despite their best intentions and willing accomplices in some press outlets, Democrats have apparently been unable to convince the international community that time stopped in Iraq in 2006.

"Notable progress" has been made in Iraq despite persistent problems, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday at an international summit to promote peace in the violence-wracked country.

"If we were asked to use just one word to describe the situation in Iraq today, I would choose the word 'hope,'" Ban said at the Stockholm, Sweden, conference. "Iraq is stepping back from the abyss that we feared most."

Barack Obama, of course, refuses to see any signs of progress in Iraq as a matter of policy and self-interest. His campaign is wedded to the leftmost fringe of the Democratic Party, who insist that failure is the only acceptable opinion in Iraq. The freshman senator from Illinois still publicly advocates headlong retreat from Iraq within 16 months of taking office if elected, and will not be swayed by stark warnings from international experts and regional governments that such a retreat would reverse all the gains paid for by coalition casualties, and perhaps trigger events as severe as a regional war that would impact energy markets and economies globally.

Right now, the greatest threat to Iraq's future isn't Iran, militants, or sectarian divides, but an inexperienced defeatist from Chicago.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:28 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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What could possibly go wrong?

Students in North Carolina's private and public colleges would be required to mentor public school-age children to receive a bachelor's degree after 2012, under a bill filed this week.

Sen. Tony Rand, D-Cumberland, named the proposed community service program in memory of two college students who were shot to death earlier this year – Eve Carson, the student body president at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Abhijit Mahato, a Duke University graduate student.

The bill would require any student seeking a bachelor's degree to spend 20 hours per semester mentoring and tutoring a public school-age child. The bill doesn't specify for how many semesters the mentoring would be required.

It makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Two college students were murdered by street thugs who were drop-outs, so Rand's obvious reaction is to force more college students to spend time with failing students that come from similar environments as the killers.

If Rand wanted to actually do some good, perhaps he could get on board with organizations pushing for allowing CCH holders to carry on college campuses, instead of providing a victim delivery service.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:14 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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They can't be bothered to post a simple tribute to fallen servicemen who fought for the freedoms they enjoy, but find the time to post about a rather pointless accomplishment by a mountaineering New Zealander and his Sherpa guide.

If they find out that Hillary didn't dodge conscription and was a RNZAF navigator during World War II, will they end his tribute as well?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:20 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Would someone please provide ABC News' Sam Donaldson with some facts?

It is perhaps progress in this commentary piece for a journalist to admit that Obama needs schooling— I do find it amusing that he refers to McCain as "the professor" and Obama as "his callow student"—but he grossly overestimates the size of al Sadr's faltering organization by an enormous amount, while downplaying Madhi Army defeats at the hands of the Iraqi security forces in recent weeks.

Iraq will almost certainly be one of the central issues in November -- if McCain is lucky it will remain relatively calm with casualties relatively low. But there is a wildcard named Moqtada al-Sadr, the 34-year-old Shiite leader of a 2 million man army.

When the surge began, al-Sadr instructed his army to lie low. Why fight an increased American force? But we all saw what happened a few weeks ago when al-Sadr loosed his men in Bashra and Bagdad -- violence flared, casualties spiked -- before calling another truce.

I'd like for Mr. Donaldson to explain where he got a figure of 2 million for the collection of neighborhood militias, street gangs, and "special groups" that make up the JAM (Jaish al Mahdi). Most estimates of the group have not put numbers larger than roughly 60,000 strong at any point in the conflict, and present numbers are said to be in rapid decline even now because of their growing unpopularity among Iraqi Shia.

I'd also like Donaldson to justify his dishonest portrayal of events in Basra and Baghdad. In both cities the Madhi Army suffered horrific losses at the hands of Iraqi security forces before suing for peace out of a sense of self preservation, and in both cities, Iraqi soldiers and police continued to relentlessly push into neighborhoods formerly dominated by Madhi Army thugs event after these "treaties" were agreed upon. In Basra, Iraqi government forces now rule virtually uncontested as they continue to carry out targeted strikes against wanted members of the Madhi Army. GoI security forces entered Sadr City with an unexpectedly large number of soldiers equipped with heavy armor, surprising the militiamen, who have yet to formulate a response.

Donaldson is obviously as much an Obama cheerleader as he is a journalist, but his 37-years in the business don't give him the right to make up his own reality.

Stick the facts, Sam. One Dan Rather at a time is enough.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:19 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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1 Walter Cronkite. Tet caused Walter to declare defeat, and although we won by a large margin, the statement became fact in the minds of the People. Sammy Boy is attempting to Walter the facts.

Posted by: JP at May 28, 2008 03:46 PM (Tae/a)

2 Sam Donaldson's op-ed can be explained very simply: Namely, Sambo's hairpiece has tentacled into his brain and it's now doing all of his thinking and writing for him. Look at this pic and tell me it ain't so: http://www.pnc.edu/cd/news/newsphotos/Donaldson_Sam.jpg

Posted by: MarkJ at May 28, 2008 04:15 PM (ZFVlP)

3 Sam got his data from the same place Dan Rather got the Bush Air National Guard documents.

Posted by: C-C-G at May 28, 2008 04:34 PM (+icbL)

4 If I am not mistaken, there are only about five million men in Iraq who are Shia Arabs more or less of military age (i.e. between 14 and 60). Sam Donaldson fancies al-Sadr has a stupefying ability to inspire participation. (Recall that al-Sadr's electoral vehicle won 0.8% of the vote on the last occasion he fielded a stand-alone slate).

Posted by: Art Deco at May 28, 2008 05:15 PM (ewZQX)

5 When did the definition of "news" become --- "Telling people what is likely to happen weeks (or months) down the road?" Turing "news" coverage into weather forecasting has gone hand-n-hand with turning it into a vehicle for opinion-giving (a.k.a "analysis"). Please, tell me, "EARLIER today, John McCain said concerning Iraq policy 'blah blah blah blah.'" And leave out the, "This will likely mean come election time that if blah blah blah"... Just the news ---- what happened yesterday....please....

Posted by: usinkorea at May 28, 2008 05:24 PM (qObWH)

6 The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 05/29/2008 A short recon of whatÂ’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.

Posted by: David m at May 29, 2008 02:07 PM (gIAM9)

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With stories like this popping up with disturbing frequency, no wonder Congress has such dismal approval ratings.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:43 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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If the Iraq War is "lost" as journalists, politicians, and other Democrats continue to shrilly insist, then why is the Iraqi military choosing American weapons?

It isn't because American M16s are better than AK-47s for the needs of the Iraqi military (they aren't), but because Iraqis are impressed by American soldiers and want to emulate them.

Do you think they would be so eager to adapt our gear if we were losing?

Me neither.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:40 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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...is that so few people read it that you're unlikely to see enough web traffic from them to know they've even brought up your name.

That they got the facts wrong is almost irrelevant, but amusing.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:38 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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So Barack Obama's uncle helped Patton's 3rd Army liberate the concentration camp at Auschwitz, which is a neat trick, considering that the 3rd Army never made it into southern Poland. It was instead Russians that liberated the camp, and if that wasn't embarrassing enough for the rookie Senator, his mother was an only child.

Still going on the assumption that his material grandparents knew how many children they have, it would seem apparent that his Kenyan father's side must have provided the uncle that helped liberate the camp, or Obama was lying on Memorial Day about his family's military service. Could he really be that dumb?

Something has to be off here... there is no way he would simply create an uncle. If his mother was an only child, then the uncle wold have to be on his father's side, but I somewhat doubt that Kenyan Luo tribesmen left Africa, and served in either the 3rd U.S. Army under Patton or the Russian Army.

As we missing something here, or is Obama blatantly lying about his family's military sacrifices in a Memorial Day speech?

Update: Only CBS News' Maria Gavrilovic and WaPo's Karl Vick seems to have the "uncle at Auschwitz" claim, which does not appear in Obama's prepared remarks and can't be heard . Either Obama ad-libbed a line afterward and can't be in the video and the media was only working from prepared remarks (which happens more often than you'd suspect) , or Gavrilovic both implausibly made up that same claim.

Update: The Obama camp has responded, and indicates that it was not Obama's uncle (he didn't have one) but his great uncle that served in the 89th Infantry Division, and the camp he was part of liberating was not Auschwitz in southern Poland, but Ohrdruf, part of the Buchenwald camp system, in central Germany, which was liberated four months later.

The Washington Post isn't impressed, and for good reason. It wasn't a "lie". He just didn't get any of the truth right.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:49 AM | Comments (21) | Add Comment
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I pretty much ignored political news this weekend, only to find out that the top story on Memeorandum.com this morning was of a gaffe Barack Obama made regarding Memorial Day.

On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes—and I see many of them in the audience here today—our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.

As you may imagine, "I see dead people" is a crack being used in blog posts with a great degree of derision and amusement as the freshman Senator's opponents have a field day with his fficial&client=firefox-a">chronically gaffe-prone campaign.

Obama's latest unintelligent statement behind us, Jimmie at the Sundries Shack accurately snipes:

After this campaign, I swear, I don't want to hear one more person crack wise about Dan Quayle ever again. Quayle had a couple very unfortunate gaffes and was forever painted as immature and plain old dumb.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, has enough gaffes to his credit to start a fleet of charter boats and not a single soul in the MSM has even breathed the "D" word about His Deific Changiness. His goofs are coming at a rate of a couple a week now, far more than Dan Quayle ever did and certainly more than George Bush, who has become the Golden Standard of Chimpitude to the left for his verbal advenures[sic].

He makes excellent points.

Quayle was hammered by Democrats as a vice presidential candidate in 1988 for being too inexperienced, serving just two terms in the House and one full-term in the Senate before being selected as George H.W. Bush's running mate two years into his second Senate term(versus Obama, who announced his run for President 1/3 the way through his very first Senate term).

Based upon his weak debate performance against Lloyd Bentsen and a series of frankly stupid comments he made as a candidate and vice president, Quayle was hammered an an intellectual lightweight worldwide.

When Bush '41 was diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat in 1991, the world seemed terrified:

Newspapers in France, Germany, Italy and Britain this week also puzzled over a political system that allows a man of relatively little national experience to stand next in line to the leadership of the world's most powerful nation.

In Italy, La Repubblica in Rome referred to what it called America's "cardio-constitutional crisis," and Il Giornale of Milan heard echoes of European history in Mr. Bush's situation.

In a front page editorial on Tuesday, Il Giornale said, "The invincible President becomes politically vulnerable because of his heir, just as, in the centuries of the dynasties, the absence or the frailty of a successor could undermine the most powerful of kings."

In Germany, a dispatch from Washington that appeared Tuesday in the General Anzeiger of Bonn described the American President as "the most powerful single person in the world" and noted how "carelessly" the American political system chooses its Vice President.

"Dan Quayle may grow with the position as did Harry Truman," the report said. "But the world would rather put its destiny into the hands of a man who has already proven himself."

One of the bluntest reactions came from The Financial Times of London, the bible of the city's business and banking community. In an editorial on Tuesday, the paper wrote: "Mr. Quayle was a cynical political choice in 1988 and, thankless as the Vice President's job often is, he has done little since to convince that he is qualified to serve as chief executive in his own right."

In Paris, Le Monde on Monday called Mr. Quayle "a man who inspires, rightly or wrongly, more jeers than confidence" and wondered whether Mr. Bush would now change his mind about keeping him on the Republican ticket in 1992.

And yet, for all the fear he inspired, Quayle was smart enough that he knew not to start his political career at the home of domestic terrorists who are still proud for attacking their nation, and who still harbor a fondness for cult-leading murderer Charles Manson.

Obama? He did.

Quayle didn't attend a church for two decades built upon a "religion" that is a mix of Marxism, racial identity politics, and Christianity. Obama did, and as a matter of fact, he's still a proud member of that congregation.

Quayle didn't follow a radical, racist pastor espousing conspiracy theories and hate. He didn't include among his other decades-long mentors a radical priest who espouses support for the murder of people he doesn't like. Obama? He did, only recently dropping Pfleger's endorsement from barackobama.com where it resided between endorsements from Rev. Delman Coates and "Eileen P.".

Quayle—along with most third-graders—even somehow seems to know how many states there are in the United States, something Obama hasn't yet grasped.

Barack Obama is far more prone to foolish associations and questionable statements Dan Quayle ever was, and yet has compiled more collective idiocies in just one campaign that Quayle has managed in his entire political career.

Our current President, George W. Bush, is lambasted by the political left for a Quayle-like tendency for verbal gaffes known as Bushisms and is widely regarded by them as an idiot, (even as he has somehow outsmarted them into winning the White House twice), and yet the worst of Bush's 7+ years in office is only on par with what Obama offers up as standard fare.

The same press that excoriated Bush and Quayle for lesser offenses is giving Obama a free pass for a continuing series of verbal stumbles, stumbles that would have them tied up in knots denouncing the intelligence of Republicans. Is it because Obama is an African-American that they refuse to question his intelligence, or is it because he's a Democrat?

If the former, the media is racist; if the latter, they are biased to the point of being incompetent. Perhaps they are both. Andrew Sullivan was a Quayle apologist who is now firmly behind Obama and seemingly blind to his faults. Other members of the media are just as bad, or worse.

Don't get me wrong. Barack Obama isn't an idiot.

Barack Obama is pretty, he reads a teleprompter beautifully, and when given the time to compose a speech, he writes beautiful words as well, empty though they so often are. He just doesn't do well when forced to think on his feet, or under pressure.

By that standard, he is "dumber" than Bush, and "dumber" than Quayle, issuing forth a staccato beat of misstatements and empty platitudes when under the slightest pressure. That should not be a surprise. He's a remarkably shallow candidate with a considerable record of ducking responsibility and hard decisions in his meager legislative record, and is utterly lacking of any meaningful executive experience.

It would nice for the press to acknowledge these truths. It would be nice of the to recognize that Obama isn't the Messiah.

He isn't even a decent Brian.

Update Good Grief. Two huge gaffes in one speech?

Has anyone copyrighted the term "Obamanation" yet?

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Oh no, she didn't:

Hillary Clinton today brought up the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy while defending her decision to stay in the race against Barack Obama.

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it," she said, dismissing calls to drop out.

I never thought I'd see the day that a candidate would suggest that part of the reason she's remaining in the race is the possibility of her rival being murdered.

If someone informs her that the Obama assassination myth is merely media projection against "bitter" and "clingy" Americans, will she finally go away?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:40 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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In what I think is a fairly well-balanced article about the significant increase in the use of U.S. Hellfire missiles during the recent campaign against Shiite militiamen in Baghdad's Sadr City came this utterly bizarre claim:

One of Zahara's uncles, Dhia Rahi Shaie al-Koreishi, 34, a taxi driver, and her grandmother, Um Fadhil al-Koreishi, were killed by the blast.

"The heart of this family has been ripped out," said Alaa Rahi Shaie, 29, another uncle, who was stoic in describing the death of his brother. "This is his blood," he said, indicating red splotches in front of his home. "And the remains of his head are over there."

He pointed at a large mound of dirt. A group of young boys dug out the remains and then showed visitors a black bag filled with clumps of hair and scalp.

Family members and neighbors said they didn't see anyone in the area fire rockets. Two black funeral banners hung outside the battered home to honor the dead.

I'm sure some of my readers are more familiar with Muslim burial rites than I (just about anyone would be), but I've always been under the impression that Muslims were very careful to respect the dead and bury them as intact as possible shortly after their demise. Banners honoring the dead are nice. Not treating their remains like kabob scraps is nicer.

Does the claim here of the remains of Dhia Rahi Shaie al-Koreishi's head being unceremoniously dumped in a sack and buried by the family in a dirt pile where children perform ad-hoc exhumations strike anyone else as being odd, even for what we've heard of Iraq?

As for the apparent premise of the article that AGM-114M Hellfire II missiles take an inordinate number of civilian lives... well, I'm not sure what to tell you.

Hellfires are preferred for being one of the most accurate missiles currently deployed, and it has the added benefit of having a smallish explosive warhead, making it somewhat less dangerous than some other weapons systems that we could deploy.

The Post does not make any attempt to distinguish how many of the 251 Iraqis killed by Hellfire missiles were Shiite militiamen, Iranian-trained " Special Groups" operatives, and how many were real non-combatant civilians.

While the Post article was less than clear on this point, it seemed possible that Uncle brains-in-a-bag could have been one of the two men loading rockets into a vehicle who were watched for hours before being killed, and grandma might have simply had the misfortune of having her son followed home by a missile. Or they could have been innocent bystanders... we simply don't know.

We do know that the video accompanying the article shows several strikes on obviously armed fighters (including a large group caught red-handed firing rockets), with no obvious civilians nearby. Still, in urban combat civilians will always run the risk of being casualties, and we are making attempts to minimize that possibility now through tactical decisions made, and in the future via new weapons systems. The 5.3 lbs Spike missile, at just over two-feet long will hopefully provide just as much precision with less collateral fragmentation than the Hellfire in future urban conflicts.

Even then, the best advice for civilian in urban conflict areas is simple: don't stand to close militiamen and terrorists.

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