Good Friends

Until he threw them under the bus. And people were stupid enough to believe it.

clipped from pajamasmedia.com After all, in a 2004 interview he bragged that he went to Wright’s Trinity every Sunday (even on THE SUNDAY?) and had some rather inspirational mentors (GG is the Chicago Sun-Times interviewer): GG: Do you still attend Trinity? OBAMA:Yep. Every week. 11 oclock service. …. GG: Do you have people in your life that you look to for guidance? OBAMA:Well, my pastor [Wright] is certainly someone who I have an enormous amount of respect for. I have a number of friends who are ministers. Reverend Meeks is a close friend and colleague of mine in the state Senate. Father Michael Pfleger is a dear friend, and somebody I interact with closely. GG:Those two will keep you on your toes. OBAMA: And they’re good friends. Because both of them are in the public eye, there are ways we can all reflect on what’s happening to each of us in ways that are useful. I think they can help me, they can appreciate certain specific challenges that I go through as a public figure.

The "People's Ticket"

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com The "people's ticket" ordered a little snack from room service at the Waldorf, as the N.Y. Post's page Six reports: While he was at a meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Michelle Obama called room service and ordered lobster hors d'oeuvres, two whole steamed lobsters, Iranian caviar and champagne, a tipster told Page Six. I'd guess the bill for that snack came in at around $350. Iranian caviar ain't cheap — even if you negotiate for it yourself. What the hell . . . Your campaign contributions (soon to be your tax dollars) at work.

She hated her country before she loved it. And let's fund the Iranian nutjobs while we're at it also...

Welfare As "Tax Cuts"

clipped from www.spectator.org HEMPSTEAD. N.Y. -- "We are going to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans," Barack Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, said in the spin room here at Hofstra University following the final debate of the 2008 presidential election. Plouffe was repeating one of the boldest claims made by the Obama campaign. It's a claim that the Wall Street Journal editorial board href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122385651698727257.html">dubbed "Obama's 95% Illusion," noting that more than a third of Americans don't pay any income taxes, and that what Obama's plan does do is offer a raft of subsidies and government payments to individuals and families that he redefines as "tax cuts." His proposal looks more like a redistribution scheme than an honest effort to reduce taxes -- as he href="http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/13/obama-plumber-plan-spread-wealth/">revealed on Monday when he told a now famous Ohio plumber that his plan aimed to "spread the wealth around." If Barack Obama can effectively claim that his plan cuts taxes on 95 percent of Americans, then the term "tax cut" has no meaning.

Joe (Menchu) The Plumber

clipped from betsyspage.blogspot.com For those on the left who think that this whole story is about Joe's personal background, let me put in in terms they should understand. Think of Joe as a symbolic construct whose situation is "fake but accurate." The left always seems to like that sort of approach to what they regard as underlying truths. Think of him as the left thought of href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menchu">Rigoberta Menchu, the Guatemalan writer who won the Nobel Prize for literature with her autobiography of how, as an indigenous Mayan, she and her family had suffered at the hands of the Guatemalan army. Except it turns out that many of the details in her autobiography were fabrications. That didn't matter to the left or the Nobel Prize Committee because they regarded her story, true or not, as an essential expression of suffering that could have been true.

OContentedness

clipped from baseballcrank.com Is the real Obama the deeds of yesterday, or the more soothing words of today, when he distances himself from so many of his old friends? I don't actually pretend to know whether Barack Obama shares the beliefs of Bill Ayers; I only know that he was content to send millions of dollars Ayers' way to "educate" the children of Chicago and give a glowing review to Ayers' book. I don't actually pretend to know whether Barack Obama shares the beliefs of Rev. Wright; I only know that he was content to sit in Wright's pews for two decades, bring his young daughters to have their heads filled with Wright's ravings, donate to Wright's church, declare Wright to be his spiritual mentor and name his best-selling book after one of Wright's incendiary sermons. I don't actually pretend to know whether Barack Obama shares the beliefs of the New Party; I only know that he was content to put his name on their party line and sign a contract to support their platform.

Barack The Plumber

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Chilled

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com And yet, for that Joe is being pilloried, every aspect of his private and professional life being sorted through and exposed. To prove ... what? What does that have to do with Obama's answer? What does Joe's situation have to do with Obama's philosophical answer — that he wants to "spread the wealth"? Obama's answer goes down the memory hole while the nation concentrates its fire on obliterating Joe the Plumber. It's sickening, it's maddening and it's downright chilling. Sorry for the length. But I am just SEETHING. And: I could care less about Joe's background, whether he's legit, or whether he is a McCain operative. What I do care about is that I could be attacked like a public figure simply for asking a question, like Joe. I am chilled. No longer undecided either.

Joe Shall Not Question The One

clipped from hotair.com He asked a question.  He stood on a rope line, and Obama picked him to ask it.  The Tanning-Bed Media seems to feel that they have a duty to expose every last part of Wurzelbacher’s life, but that asking Obama to explain his political partnerships with Tony Rezko and William Ayers, and his long friendship and financial support of rabid demagogues Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger, are not just out of bounds but downright racist. So what have we learned from this episode? Thou shalt not offend The One by asking him a question.  Of any kind. Anyone who questions The One will have to undergo a public pillorying of a kind unseen since the Red Scare, or perhaps the Inquisition. The Tanning-Bed Media will happily participate in any inquisition, as long as it keeps them from investigating irrelevant issues like Obama’s ties to the Chicago Machine, William Ayers, ACORN, or his record on protecting infanticide.

The Miracle Is That Scores Did Not Decline

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com It is not surprising, therefore that prominent members of the "Afrocentric," rites of passage movement spoke at Wright's church during the late 1980s and 1990s. Obama missed church on these occasions, no doubt. But Obama was right in the middle of the process through which tens of thousands of dollars were funneled by CAC into SVACC teacher training programs. In 1995, the year Obama assumed control of CAC, he publicly rejected "the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation," thereby embracing the Afrocentirc educational philosophy of the SVACC, Wright, and Ayers. And according to Kurtz, it is clear from the documents that Obama reviewed and commented on proposals to fund the training programs of SVACC, including the African rites of passage based programs. We've noted in the past that CAC's own evaluators found that Annenberg-aided schools showed no improvement in achievement scores. The miracle is that scores did not decline.

The Diversity Recession

clipped from www.vdare.com  As I've  argued, the Bush Administration wanted to turn Hispanics into Republican voters by making them homeowners through easy credit. George W. Bush and Karl Rove don't deserve all the blame, however. Their lax mortgage policies were largely a continuation of trends to boost minority and low income mortgage access that were well under way in the Clinton Administration—as I pointed out in my June Takimag.com article on "The Diversity Recession." These lax mortgage policies also had the secondary effect of encouraging residential real estate speculation—“flipping”—by minorities and non-minorities alike. Right now, the elite consensus (as in the 1930s) is that the free market failed. The truth, to which we blinded ourselves in an orgy of political correctness, is that the America of 2008 doesn't have the human capital to justify the valuations of wealth it thought it had.

Mothers Of Meltdown

clipped from isteve.blogspot.com Why did the mortgage market melt down so badly? Why were there so many defaults when the economy was not particularly weak? Why were the securities based upon these mortgages not considered anywhere as risky as they actually turned out to be? This report concludes that, in an attempt to increase home ownership, particularly by minorities and the less affluent, virtually every branch of the government undertook an attack on underwriting standards starting in the early 1990s. Regulators, academic specialists, GSEs, and housing activists universally praised the decline in mortgage-underwriting standards as an “innovation” in mortgage lending. This weakening of underwriting standards succeeded in increasing home ownership and also the price of housing, helping to lead to a housing price bubble. The price bubble, along with relaxed lending standards, allowed speculators to purchase homes without putting their own money at risk.

Protecting Acorn

clipped from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com In her latest column Marinka discovered that Barack Obama co-sponsored legislation to protect ACORN from criminal prosecution for harassing banks to approve loans for individuals who could not afford them. These practices helped push our country into its current economic crisis. But, thanks to Barack Obama, ACORN will not have to worry about facing any consequences for its dubious practices. href="http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/5548">The Canada Free Press reported: Not only did Barack Obama's presidential campaign pay more than U.S. $800,000 to a front of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform, Now, ACORN, currently under investigation in a dozen States for voter registration fraud and bribery schemes, for “get-out-the-vote-efforts”; Obama co-sponsored legislation called the “Helping Families Save their Homes in Bankruptcy Act of 2007”-- that was supported by ACORN and protects them.

It's All He Really Knows

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com But there are at least six reasons to fear that Obama will govern from the far left. First, it’s all he really knows. Obama grew up in a left-wing household, attended elite left-wing dominated universities, and spent the remainder of his formative years as a community organizer alongside the likes of Wright and Ayers. Second, it’s how he votes. In 2007, according to the National Journal, Obama’s voting record was the most liberal of any senator. Third, it’s what he falls back on. Obama is scripted to be “post-partisan.” But when off-script he’s liable to blurt out that those who resist the leftist agenda bitterly “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to those who aren’t like them.” And when his wife said that, as an adult, she has never been proud of America, Obama defended her statement as applied to American politics. This is “god damn America” lite.

OWelfare

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com A lot of people are noting this exchange between Barack Obama and a plumber who has figured out that under an Obama administration, his taxes will be increased. Obama explains that he has nothing against the plumber personally, but wants to "spread the wealth around:" Obama's "tax" plan would in effect undo the greatest accomplishment of the Republican Congress, welfare reform. It would reinstate the federal welfare system that we thought was gone for good with the repeal of AFDC. Not only a welfare system: a welfare system that would rapidly grow from more than a half trillion to over a trillion dollars a year. That plumber is right to be nervous. I wonder, though, how many voters know that Barack Obama proposes to put the federal government back in the welfare business to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

This Is The Acorn...

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... Obama worked for.

Economists Petition Against O

clipped from taxprof.typepad.com Hundreds of economists (including Nobel Prize winners Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Robert Mundell, Edward Prescott, and Vernon Smith) have signed letters opposing Barack Obama's economic and tax plans (here, here, and here): We are equally concerned with his proposals to increase tax rates on labor income and investment. His dividend and capital gains tax increases would reduce investment and cut into the savings of millions of Americans. His proposals to increase income and payroll tax rates would discourage the formation and expansion of small businesses and reduce employment and take-home pay, as would his mandates on firms to provide expensive health insurance. After hearing such economic criticism of his proposals, Barack Obama has apparently suggested to some people that he might postpone his tax increases, perhaps to 2010. But it is a mistake to think that postponing such tax increases would prevent their harmful effect on the economy today.

Welcome To The New O, Same As The Old O

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com We wrote here about Barack Obama's ties to the New Party during the 1990s. The New Party was a far-left organization founded by members of the Democratic Socialists of America and other extremists. It not only endorsed Obama in his 1996 state Senate race, but, when Obama won, wrote that he was an "NP member." To my knowledge, no mainstream reporter or news outlet has asked Obama whether he was, as the New Party wrote, a member of that organization, or whether he subscribed to the New Party's far left--it's fair to say "socialist"--platform. This is from the Spring 1996 edition of New Party News: New Party members won three other primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State Senate), Michael Chandler (Democratic Party Committee) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary)..."these victories prove that small 'd' democracy can work" said Obama. This photo was on the front page of that issue of New Party News:

The Golden Goose

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com As ACORN ran its campaigns against local banks, it quickly hit a roadblock. Banks would tell ACORN they could afford to reduce their credit standards by only a little - since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal mortgage giants, refused to buy up those risky loans for sale on the "secondary market." That is, the CRA wasn't enough. Unless Fannie and Freddie were willing to relax their credit standards as well, local banks would never make home loans to customers with bad credit histories or with too little money for a downpayment. So ACORN's Democratic friends in Congress moved to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to dispense with normal credit standards. Throughout the early '90s, they imposed ever-increasing subprime-lending quotas on Fannie and Freddie. But then the Republicans won control of Congress - and Rep. Roukema scheduled her hearing. ACORN went into action to protect its golden goose. ...

G*d D#mn Amerikka!

clipped from headingright.com Black Muslim lawyer Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour recently made news when it was revealed that he was a patron of Barack Obama and recommended him for admission to Harvard Law School in 1988. Back in the 1960s, al-Mansour, whose “slave name” was then Don Warden, was deeply involved in Bay Area racial politics as founder of a group called the African American Association. A close personal adviser to Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, al-Mansour helped the pair establish the Black Panther Party but later broke with them when they entered coalitions with white radical groups. And why is it that black racists such as al-Mansour constitute a significant proportion of these hate mongers? In large part, it is because blacks have been specifically and aggressively targeted for recruitment by leaders of the worldwide jihad, just as they were targeted for recruitment by the Communist Party USA in the 1920s.

Quite Low?

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com From the mailbag: Hi Peter, Another reason why Siglitz might not be the best Nobel Prize to rely on, for now, is that when he worked for Fannie Mae he flunked big time ... The reader includes a link to this 2002 study, "Implications of the New Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Risk-Based Capital Standard," which was co-authored by none other than Joseph Stiglitz.  The study's conclusion?  "[T]he exposure of the government to the risk that the GSEs [that is, Fannie and Freddie] will become insolvent appears quite low."

And Now For Some Real Entertainment

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Whoops!

clipped from www.audacityofhypocrisy.com Plaintiffs filed their class action lawsuit on July 6, 1994, alleging that Citibank had engaged in redlining practices in the Chicago metropolitan area in violation of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), 15 U.S.C. 1691; the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601-3619; the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; and 42 U.S.C. 1981, 1982. Plaintiffs alleged that the Defendant-bank rejected loan applications of minority applicants while approving loan applications filed by white applicants with similar financial characteristics and credit histories. Plaintiffs sought injunctive relief, actual damages, and punitive damages. Obama, Barack H. (Illinois)

Obama, Acorn and the Roots Of Crisis

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References

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The Memory Hole

clipped from www.qando.net "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." The ABCs Coalition was formed in March 1988 (p. 20) and was coordinated by Bill Ayers (photo). Yet Obama never met the fellow coordinating this 1988 coalition. And years later, after all his hard work in creating the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Bill Ayers graciously assented to Obama becoming chairman even though the two men had never met, Obama had no background in education, and no one had reviewed Obama's qualifications with Bill Ayers. Uh huh. Well, that is Obama's current story - let's see if they stick to that through the election. Hmmm. So many questions left unanswered.

I'm OK...

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Obviously, the success of the bailout can't be judged on a couple of weeks in the stock market. Still, the rationale for ramrodding the bailout through Congress with essentially no debate over alternatives was that it was urgently necessary to do something immediately lest financial markets collapse. At the moment, that rationale isn't looking too persuasive.

Wow. That would be me that got landed on.

Dicey

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk The British Government estimates the cumulative carbon saving from all its plans at somewhere between 950 and 1,100 million tonnes of CO2 by 2030. Computer modelling - using DICE (dynamic integrated model of climate and the economy) - shows that the net effect of the UK renewables effort is impossibly tiny. The temperature increase by 2100 without Mr Brown's plan would have been 2.4536181C. With the best-case scenario the huge UK effort means that the temperature at the end of the century would be 2.4532342C. The effect is a difference of about 0.00038C - or about one three-thousandth of a degree in a hundred years. This is the equivalent of delaying the temperature increase by the end of the century by a little less than a week.

1995?

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com I suggested in yesterday's article that Obama and Ayers probably met when Obama was at Columbia and Ayers was at the nearby Bank Street College.  (They had Edward Said as a common connection.)  Even if my hypothesis is not right, Obama and Ayers were both involved in a hotly contested education reform controversy in Chicago in 1987-88.  And as Ed Whelan has noted, from 1984-88, Ayers wife, Bernadine Dohrn, was an intern at the Sidley Austin law firm, where Michelle Obama was an intern in 1987 and became an associate in 1988 Obama was given very weighty responsibility in 1995 over what was a $150M+ education reform project that Ayers masterminded.  At the time, Obama was only a third-year associate at a small law firm, with no executive experience.  It is highly, highly unlikely that Ayers would have permitted such an arrangement unless he knew and trusted Obama.  Given the common places and people in their past, it is a virtual certainty that they met before 1995.

Europe: What Would We Do Without It?

clipped from www.qando.net But wait, there's more: Russia has also mended fences with Germany, concluding a new bilateral energy deal and winning assurances from Angela Merkel, the chancellor, that Berlin would not support granting Georgia or Ukraine Nato candidate status when the alliance meets in December. Europe - what would we do without it?

And This One

clipped from www.qando.net Obama trained ACORN activists. A 1995 Chicago Reader article on Obama stated “Obama continues his work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons.” Obama also ran Project Vote, known for widespread voter fraud, which Time magazine called “a non-partisan arm” of ACORN. In a speech to ACORN in 2007, cited by Newsmax, Obama gushed “I have been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois. ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it and we appreciate your work.” I'm sure he does - especially their work in the key battle-ground states for this election.

Why That One Of Course

clipped from www.qando.net And who has been an advocate for, worked with and trained members of ACORN? Why "that one" of course. Brad O'Leary puts it all in context for you: Following the DNC Convention, Saul Alinsky’s son, L. David Alinsky, wrote a letter to the Boston Globe. “Barack Obama’s training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing his effectiveness,” the son wrote. “I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It’s a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.” The great community organizing Obama did was through the radical Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). ACORN is notoriously known for its radical, and often illegal, practices and adherence to the radical philosophy of Saul Alinsky.

1000 Sundays

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Not The Same Thing

clipped from townhall.com Second, wisdom and blue-chip college educations are not quite the same thing. The fools in Washington and New York who blew up Wall Street had degrees from our finest professional schools. The most chilling example, at the very beginning of this ongoing mess, came in 2003 during the House Financial Services Committee's hearing on Fannie and Freddie. At one point, Harvard Law School graduate Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., asked Fannie Mae CEO and fellow Harvard Law School graduate Franklin Rains -- who took millions in bonuses even as he helped bankrupt the once-hallowed institution -- whether he felt the mortgage giant had been "under-regulated." Raines answered him under oath, "No, sir." Then overseer Frank announced, "OK. Then I am not entirely sure why we are here."

ACORN, The New Party And The O

clipped from www.humanevents.com In 1995, the New Ground, the newsletter of the Chicago Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, noted, “In Chicago, the New Party's biggest asset and biggest liability is ACORN. “Like most organizations, ACORN is a mixed bag. On one hand, in Chicago, ACORN is a group that attempts to organize some of the most depressed communities in the city. Chicago organizers for ACORN and organizers for SEIU Local 880 have been given modest monthly recruitment quotas for new New Party members. On the other hand, like most groups that depend on canvassing for fundraising, it's easy enough to find burned out and disgruntled former employees. Naturally, Barack Obama was an active part of ACORN at the time, helping it legally in court and helping it organize voters.  By 1996, ACORN and the New Party were essentially the same body.  Along with the Democratic Socialists of America, the New Party endorsed Barack Obama in his State Senate bid.

What's Going To Give?

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com This may be a case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The political, cultural and social establishments are determined to elect the pro-status quo, anti-change candidate, Barack Obama, as President. The power and money arrayed behind Obama seem unbeatable. At the same time, it is inconceivable that the American people would elect a socialist President. So, if this report is correct, something's got to give. In June sources released information that during his campaign for the State Senate in Illinois, Barack Obama was endorsed by an organization known as the Chicago "New Party". The 'New Party' was a political party established by the Democratic Socialists of America (the DSA) to push forth the socialist principles of the DSA by focusing on winnable elections at a local level and spreading the Socialist movement upwards. ...

Where The Jews Are Republican

clipped from www.weeklystandard.com "We respect war heroes in Israel, especially those like McCain who were POWs," notes Mitchell Barak, managing director of the Jerusalem-based Keevoon Research, Strategy & Communications. "We see Obama fantasizing about how he wants to sit down and talk to the terrorists, and he loses a lot of Israelis right there. He comes off as unrealistic and insensitive to the existential challenges facing the Jewish state, and as naïve." Naïve, indeed. It's a theme that popped up frequently when I mentioned Obama's name. Obama lacks experience. Obama doesn't understand how to deal with terrorists in general, and radical Islamic terrorists in particular. Most Israelis, who live daily with the threat of terrorism, simply don't trust Obama. Take the residents of Sderot, a smallish Israeli city perched half a mile from the Gaza Strip. Since 2001, 7,000-8,000 rockets have rained down on Sderot from Gaza. Fifteen Israelis have died in these attacks and more than 600 have been wounded.

Not Confused By The Facts

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com Barack Obama's being the first serious black candidate for President of the United States is what most people consider remarkable but how he got there is at least equally surprising. The story of Obama's political career is not a pretty story. He won his first political victory by being the only candidate on the ballot-- after hiring someone skilled at disqualifying the signers of opposing candidates' petitions, on whatever technicality he could come up with. Despite his words today about "change" and "cleaning up the mess in Washington," Obama was not on the side of reformers who were trying to change the status quo of corrupt, machine politics in Chicago and clean up the mess there. Obama came out in favor of the Daley machine and against reform candidates. Senator Obama is running on an image that is directly the opposite of what he has been doing for two decades. His escapes from his past have been as remarkable as the great escapes of Houdini.

Blowing Up The Dam

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com Here is how John Cochrane, Myron S. Scholes Professor of Finance in the University of Chicago, characterized the bailout, in an interview with Fox News: "The legislation is like this: some boats are sinking, so rather than bailing those boats out, you blow up the dam and drain the whole lake." That comment, and many like it, was offered even before "sweeteners" were added, that would in themselves roll any economist's eyeballs. It is worth adding that not one of the politicians voting on the 450-odd-page bill can possibly have read the whole thing, let alone deeply considered the implications of its parts. Few of them have an understanding of the crisis they are legislating for. The blind are leading the blind.

A New Meaning For "Financial Armageddon"

clipped from www.qando.net Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves are so low that the country can only afford one month of imports and faces possible bankruptcy. Officially, the central bank holds $8.14 billion (£4.65 billion) of foreign currency, but if forward liabilities are included, the real reserves may be only $3 billion - enough to buy about 30 days of imports like oil and food. Nine months ago, Pakistan had $16 bn in the coffers. The government is engulfed by crises left behind by Pervez Musharraf, the military ruler who resigned the presidency in August. High oil prices have combined with endemic corruption and mismanagement to inflict huge damage on the economy. The price-tag to rescue them? About 100 billion. As mentioned, Pakistan is a critical ally in the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It is also has nuclear weapons and a rather large population of radical Islamists who would love nothing better than to get their hands on them.

Got It

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com McCain: Of course we would come to their aid without waiting for the UN. Obama: We would use "all our tools" and "sanctions" and "cost-benefit analysis." So let me get this straight: Obama wants to preemptively attack a country without provocation in Pakistan, but refuses to commit to use military force to defend an ally after THEY have been invaded.    Got it.