LIGHT BULBS THAT DON'T SIGNIFY IDEAS

BY MARK STEYN

Everything's difficult, isn't it? In the Democratic presidential candidates' debate, Sen. Barack Obama was asked what he personally was doing to save the environment, and replied that his family was "working on" changing their light bulbs.

Is this the new version of the old joke? How many senators does it take to "work on" changing a light bulb? One to propose a bipartisan commission. One to threaten to de-fund the light bulbs. One to demand the impeachment of Bush and Cheney for keeping us all in the dark. One to vote to pull out the first of the light bulbs by fall of this year with a view to getting them all pulled out by the end of 2008.

In 1914, on the eve of the Great War, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey observed, "The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." Whether he was proposing a solution to global warming is unclear. But he would be impressed to hear that nine decades later the lights are going out all over Washington.

This week, both the House and the Senate voted for defeat in Iraq. That's to say, Congress got tired of waiting for deadbeat insurgents to get their act together and inflict devastating military humiliation on U.S. forces. So America's legislators have voted to mandate the certainty of defeat. They want the withdrawal of American forces to begin this October, which is a faintly surreal concept: Watching CNN International around the world, many viewers unversed in America's constitutional arrangements will have been puzzled by the spectacle of a nation giving six months' notice of surrender. But the cannier types in the presidential palaces will have drawn their own conclusions.

For example, as Congress was voting, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would withdraw from the post-Cold War arrangements of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty in protest at American plans to install missile defense systems on the Continent. In the first months of the Bush administration -- pre-9/11 -- this issue was mostly theoretical. European leaders couldn't quite figure out why anyone would need a system to take out incoming nukes but Bush seemed hot for it and, that being so, you might as well be inside the system rather than out.

Six years on, Iran is going nuclear and nobody seems minded to stop them. So a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe is a more practical benefit than it once seemed. In fact, the mullahs are precisely the kind of fellows the system's intended for: small nuclear powers less susceptible to conventional deterrence theory. There might be quite a few of these a decade down the line. Reluctant to find themselves living under a Shia Persian nuclear umbrella, the Sunni Arab dictatorships are said to be pondering whether they might benefit from going the nuke route. The Saudis and Egyptians could certainly afford it very easily.

So what's Putin's game? Well, he leads a country with severe structural defects (a collapsed birth rate for everyone except Russia's Muslims, a depopulating east, disease-ridden menfolk face down in the vodka) but a relatively buoyant economy -- or, to be more precise, kleptocracy. In particular, Western Europe is increasingly dependent on Russia as an energy supplier. Putin calculates that even a weak Kremlin can make mischief for America. The missile-defense interceptors might have been expressly designed for fin-du-civilization Europe: You don't have to do anything, you don't have to attack anyone, you don't have to be beastly and aggressive like the swaggering Texan cowboy. You just have to go about your business and, if anything's heading your way, the Yanks will press a button and blow it to smithereens and send you a confirmatory e-mail afterward. But Putin is putting Continental leaders in the position of having to choose between even this benign defensive technology and relations with Russia. And, given European dispositions, he must surely feel he's got a sporting chance of winning this one. And, if he does, he will in effect be making the world safe for Iranian nuclear blackmail.

Why would he do this? Well, why wouldn't he? As I always say, if you live in Tikrit and Ramadi, the Iraq issue is about Iraq. But, if you live anywhere else on the planet, Iraq is about America. In Tehran, Pyongyang, Khartoum, Caracas, Beijing, Moscow and the South Sandwich Islands, they watch Harry Reid & Co. on the 24/7 cable channels and draw their own conclusions about American will.

The Defeaticrats are being opportunist: They think they can calibrate the precise degree of U.S. defeat in Mesopotamia that will bring victory for them in Ohio and Florida. Contemptible as this is, it wouldn't be possible had the administration not lost the support of many of the American people over this war. The losses are devastating for the individuals' families but they are historically among the lowest in any conflict this nation or any other has fought. So I don't believe the nightly plume of smoke over Baghdad on the evening news explains the national disenchantment. Rather, the mission as framed by the president -- help the Iraqi people build a free and stable Iraq -- is simply not accepted by the American people. On the right, between the unrealpolitik "realists" and the "rubble doesn't cause trouble" isolationists and the hit-'em-harder-faster crowd, the president has fewer and fewer takers for a hunkered-down, defensive, thankless semi-colonial policing operation. Regardless of how it works on the ground, it has limited appeal at home. Meanwhile, the leftists don't accept it because, while they're fond of "causes," they dislike those that require meaningful action: Ask Tibetans about how effective half a century of America's "Free Tibet" campaign has been; or ask Darfuris, assuming you can find one still breathing, how the left's latest fetishization is going from their perspective:

"On Sunday, April 29, Salt Lake Saves Darfur invites the greater Salt Lake community of compassion to join with us as we honor the fallen and suffering Darfuris in a day of films, discussion and dance with a Sudanese dance troupe."

Marvelous. I hope as the "Salt Lake Saves Darfur" campaign intensifies in the decades ahead there'll be enough Darfuris to man the dance troupe. It would be truer to say that the greater Salt Lake community of compassion, like Sen. Obama with his light bulbs, is "working on" saving Darfur.

In Khartoum, Tehran, Moscow and elsewhere, the world's mischief-makers have reached their own conclusions about how much serious "work" America is prepared to do.

ROSIE GETS THE BOOT.....RIGHT IN THE.......

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate the ousting of one Rosie O'Donnell. No longer will the public be forced to hear her fat trap jabber on about the 911 "conspiracy" or her vitriolic hatred of Donald Trump. (We all know she is just jealous of his comb over...as am I!). Barbara Walters and "The View" claim that she is leaving because of the money — the bleeding heart liberal just can't get enough. Go figure. But we all know it is because audiences, yours included, cannot stand to have her as an outrageous mouthpiece for one minute longer. The people have spoken. Rosie, you're fired!

But fear not, my friends. She plans to come back and guest host special programs on autism and depression. That's depressing. This is exactly the sane, level-headed woman that I would want preaching about the mental and physical health of our country.

Oh, and the article happens to be written by my buddy at the NYTimes Jacques Steinberg. You might remember that he is too busy to print a correction about my computer's instrumental musical selection, but he happened to have time to give a big, fat plug to Rosie's personal blog in this article. Here's an idea Jacques: why don't you print a correction to your story, attacking me and talk radio, and then link to Nealz Nuze where readers can read about it first hand (in journalism speak, you might call that "directly from the source"). This way the people can determine for themselves what is truth and what isn't, since in your job as a journalist you don't seem to feel that that is necessary.

DATE CERTAIN FOR SURRENDER

Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have finally delivered to Al Qaeda and Islamic radicals across the world a message of American surrender and weakness. Sure, the Democrats call for a specific date for surrender to Al Qaeda in Iraq will be vetoed ... but the message is clear. Americans -- at least the party in charge of our congress and our purse strings -- have lost their will to fight. There they were, Pelosi and Reid, standing in front of one of those made-for-TV backdrops reading "Strategy for Security" cutting the legs out from underneath every man and woman serving in our armed forces, not only in Iraq, but everywhere in the world.

Look --- I understand fully that mistakes have been made in this war. I'm one who believes that not enough troops were sent to Iraq in the first place. I still can't understand why we didn't dedicate the resources that were needed to seal the borders with Iran an Syria. Perhaps elements of Saddam's army should have been retained to serve the new Iraq. Mistakes? Sure! But what is the proper course of action when mistakes are made? Do you abandon the project, or do you regroup and forge ahead, perhaps wiser from your experience.

I think that from the very beginning the Democrat leadership has been dedicated to undermining Bush in Iraq any way they can. Their goal has been solitary and simple. Destroy the Bush presidency and pave the way for complete Democrat control in 2009. I truly believe that Democrats are perfectly willing to strengthen Islamic terrorists generally and Al Qaeda specifically if that is what needs to be done for them to destroy George Bush. The desire for revenge for 2000 is that strong. Perhaps the true motivation behind Democrat obstruction and maneuvering might have become more obvious to the American people if it were not for the fact that the mainstream media shared the Democrats goal ... destroy Bush, defeat Republicans, return liberalism to power in Washington.

By the way ... concerning last night's debate ....Hillary Rodham said last night that her vote to authorize the war in Iraq was "based on the information that was available to me at the time." Well, guess what? That is exactly the position President Bush was in when he pressed for war against Saddam Hussein. Hillary gets a pass on her "information that was available to me at the time" line, Bush does not. And so it goes.

HILLARY VIOLATES HER OWN "RUTGERS PLEDGE"

By Michelle Malkin ·

Neeever mind...

Last week, Hillary Clinton issued what she called the "Rutgers pledge" in the wake of the Don Imus firing:

"Will you be willing to speak up and say, "Enough is enough,' when women or minorities or the innocent or powerless are marginalized or denigrated?" Clinton said in her speech to about 700 people. "Will you say there's no place -- if there ever was, there certainly isn't now -- for disrespect or bigotry to be seen as funny?"

Despite condemning bigotry, misogyny, and disrespect, however, Hillary decided to guest-blog this week on one of the far Left's most degrading and bigoted sites. The Hillary campaign was quite proud of the appearance. Mary Ann Akers and Danny Glover report:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton caused a minor stir this week with her guest-blogging appearance at Firedoglake, a site where one of the lead bloggers last year painted Sen. Joseph Lieberman in blackface before apologizing and removing the entry at the behest of Lieberman's opponent.

Clinton, D-N.Y., posted an entry at Firedoglake on Tuesday to mark Equal Pay Day and to tout her legislation aimed at guaranteeing women the same pay as men when they do the same work. Clinton also briefly engaged the blog's readers in the comments at the bottom of her post.

Mary Ann Akers, who writes The Sleuth blog for The Washington Post, reported that Democratic activists privately questioned Clinton's decision to appear on Firedoglake because of the tarnished reputation of Jane Hamsher, one of its chief bloggers.

Last summer, while following Democrat Ned Lamont of Connecticut in his bid to unseat fellow Democrat Lieberman, Hamsher posted an image of Lieberman in blackface at The Huffington Post. Although Hamsher never worked in a paid capacity for Lamont's campaign, she did produce a video for the campaign. Her close connections to Lamont prompted the campaign to contact her about the image.

She deleted it and apologized, but according to Akers, the incident is fresh enough in the minds of some Democrats that they think Clinton should have kept her distance from Firedoglake.

Hamsher's blackface stunt is the tip of the iceberg.

Hamsher is the woman who criticized conservative author/commentator Kate O'Beirne as "sandpaper snatch" and who snarled "The bitch is dead meat."

Hamsher's blog is the site where one unhinged regular blogger (not a commenter, mind you, but a Hamsher-approved guest blogger...like Hillary) attacked Democrat Ellen Tauscher as a "prostitute" and applauded another blogger for calling her "a bribe-taking corporate whore and shit eater who has guaranteed herself a nasty primary in 2008."

Hamsher's blog is the site where another unhinged regular blogger referred to conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham as a "cunt," which he later changed to "Bitch Troll From Hell."

What was that pledge again, Hillary? Oh, yeah:

Will you be willing to speak up and say, "Enough is enough,' when women or minorities or the powerless are marginalized or degraded...

...Will you say there's no place -- if there ever was, there certainly isn't now -- for disrespect or bigotry to be seen as funny?

Ask Hillary to take her own pledge: Click for contact form.

***

FRC spotlights another case of Hillary violating her own pledge...by refusing to give back gobs of money raised by foul-mouthed rapper Timbaland:

Hat tip: Matt Lewis@Townhall.com

Ed Driscoll: Don Imus could not be reached for comment.

***

Meanwhile, Hillary tries to spin her bogus black-cent. She really thinks she's good at this.

REID'S GLASS HOUSE

by Amanda B. Carpenter

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) has a nasty habit of name-calling, which reared its ugly head again when the Nevada senator tried to deflect charges from the White House about his position on the war.

Last week, Reid told reporters that Vice-President Dick Cheney was the “administration’s attack dog.” To warrant this charge, Cheney had said Reid’s views on Iraq policy were “uniformed and misleading.”

This testy exchange was prompted by an April 23 speech Reid gave at the Woodrow Wilson Center. There, Reid told listeners that “winning the war is no longer the job of the U.S. military.”

Revolving Views

A few days before that, on April 19, Reid declared the “war is lost” and said the President’s surge of U.S. troops to Iraq is “not accomplishing anything.” But the next day on the Senate floor, after receiving some backlash from his own party, Reid claimed, “No one wants us to succeed in Iraq more than Democrats.”

After breaking from the Republicans’ weekly policy luncheon on April 24, Cheney told reporters Reid was campaigning against the war for political gain. “Sen. Reid himself has said the war in Iraq will bring more his party more seats in the next election,” Cheney said. “It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage.”

Through the midterm elections, Reid pledged to keep full funding for U.S. troops in Iraq. Then, after the Democrats took the majority on Capitol Hill, Reid said he supported funding the war as long as certain benchmarks were met. In early April, Reid signed on with Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold’s legislation to prohibit funding for the war by March 31. The bill also calls on the President to begin withdrawing troops within four months.

“Last November, Sen. Reid said there would be no cut-off of funds for the military in Iraq,” Cheney said. “So, in less than six months time, Sen. Reid has gone from pledging full funding for the military, then full funding with conditions, and then a cut-off of funding. Three positions in five months on the most important foreign policy question facing the nation and our troops.”

Doubts Petraeus

In January, Reid voted to confirm Gen. David Petraeus to be commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq. Petraeus was appointed by President Bush to carry out a surge of about 21,000 U.S. troops, most of them into the Baghdad area. When Reid was asked by CNN if he would believe Petraeus if Petraeus said the surge policy in Iraq was working, Reid said, “No I wouldn’t.”

In a press conference, Reid was asked to address the charges of inconsistency the Vice President made against him. Reid refused to answer. Instead, Reid called Cheney the “administration’s chief attack dog” and told reporters “I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with someone who has a 9% approval ratings.”

Reid is wise to decline answering these charges: They are correct. Below is a compilation of quotes from Majority Leader Reid that show both his propensity to insult and his inconsistent position on the war.

“I think that he [Justice Clarence Thomas] has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court.” --NBC’s "Meet the Press," December 5, 2004

“I'm not a big Greenspan fan -- Alan Greenspan fan. I voted against him the last two times. I think he's one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington.” --CNN’s "Inside Politics," March 3, 2005

"The man's [President George W. Bush] father is a wonderful human being. I think this guy is a loser." --Speech at Del Sol High School May 7, 2005

"When he [Bill Frist] got this job, he had had limited experience on the Senate floor, and he was leaving. He had term-limited himself. So he has no institutional integrity. ... He doesn't feel as strongly about the Senate. He does whatever the White House wants him to do.” --Washington Post, December 19, 2005

“Can you think of one thing that has gone right in Iraq? And I'm having -- searching and I'm having trouble finding that.”-- Press conference, September 19, 2006

'I'm going to throw bombs sometimes -- I'm going to be conciliatory other times.”- New York Times, November 10, 2006

“We're not going to do anything to limit funding [for the war] or cut off funds, even though there are some on the outside who suggest that.” --Associated Press, November 29, 2006

“Just as with Vietnam, there was never a time when funds were cut off from Vietnam. And I don’t think anyone can find a war that this country was engaged in where the funds were cut off. No one is talking about cutting off the funds.” --"The Charlie Rose Show," March 5, 2007

“Reauthorization [of the war] isn’t such a good idea, more than likely. I think probably what might be better is to specifically do away with the authorization whatsoever, period. And then just assign specific legislative authorizations to what the troops there could do. Get rid of the original authorization [of the war]. --"The Charlie Rose Show," March 5, 2007

“I am pleased to cosponsor Senator Feingold’s important legislation…. If the President vetoes the supplemental appropriations bill and continues to resist changing course in Iraq, I will work to ensure this legislation receives a vote in the Senate in the next work period.”-- Joint statement issued by Feingold and Reid on April 2, 2007.

"The American people, I repeat, have to understand what is happening. It is not worth another drop of American blood in Iraq. It is not worth another damaged brain." --interview with Ed Schultz, April 2, 2007

“We’re going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war. Senator Schumer has shown me numbers that are compelling and astounding.” --Press conference, April 12, 2007

“I support, with Senator Feingold, legislation that would start redeployment in 120 days, and there would be a cut-off date April 1, 2008. I support that. And there will be a time when I’m going to be looking to Senator Feingold and others for a time to do that.” --Press conference, April 19, 2007

“Now, I believe myself … that this war is lost and that the surge is not accomplishing anything.”-- Press conference April 19, 2007

“No one wants us to succeed in Iraq more than Democrats.” -- Speech on the Senate floor, April 20, 2007

"General Petraeus, the commander on the ground, has said so himself. Twenty percent [of the war in Iraq] can be won militarily and 80 percent has to be won through our diplomatic efforts, politics, and economics. I repeat: the only way to succeed lies through a comprehensive political, diplomatic and economic strategy. So says the commander on the ground there, General Petraeus." -- April 20, 2007

CNN: [President Bush] has also said that General Petraeus is going to come on the Hill and make it clear to you that there is progress going on in Iraq, that the so-called surge is working. Will you believe him when he says that?

REID: “No, I don’t believe him.” --CNN’s Situation Room April 23, 2007

REPORTER: The Vice-President suggested you've been inconsistent in your position [on Iraq], changing, he said, three times in five months, from no cutting off of funds, to funding with limitations, to now cutting off funds --

REID: I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating. --Press conference, April 24, 2007

SENATE PASSES SURRENDER BILL; EMBEDS REPORT FROM THE GROUND

Senate passes surrender bill; embeds report from the ground

By Michelle Malkin

Get out the veto pen, President Bush.

***

The Tank publishes Joe Lieberman's floor statement. Here's a tidbit:

I have great respect for my friend from Nevada. I believe he has offered this proposal in good faith, and therefore want to take it up in good faith, and examine its arguments and ideas carefully and in depth, for this is a very serious discussion for our country.

In his speech Monday, the Majority Leader described the several steps that this new strategy for Iraq would entail. Its first step, he said, is to “transition the U.S. mission away from policing a civil war—to training and equipping Iraqi security forces, protecting U.S. forces, and conducting targeted counter-terror operations.”

I ask my colleagues to take a step back for a moment and consider this plan.

When we say that U.S. troops shouldn’t be “policing a civil war,” that their operations should be restricted to this narrow list of missions, what does this actually mean?

To begin with, it means that our troops will not be allowed to protect the Iraqi people from the insurgents and militias who are trying to terrorize and kill them. Instead of restoring basic security, which General Petraeus has argued should be the central focus of any counterinsurgency campaign, it means our soldiers would instead be ordered, by force of this proposed law, not to stop the sectarian violence happening all around them—no matter how vicious or horrific it becomes.

In short, it means telling our troops to deliberately and consciously turn their backs on ethnic cleansing, to turn their backs on the slaughter of innocent civilians—men, women, and children singled out and killed on the basis of their religion alone. It means turning our backs on the policies that led us to intervene in the civil war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the principles that today lead many of us to call for intervention in Darfur.

This makes no moral sense at all.

It also makes no strategic or military sense either.

***

Michael Yon's latest dispatch is up with many trademark vivid photos, like this one, giving you an up-close look at the soldiers and the surge:

Yon's caption: "Combat soldiers can sleep anywhere: leaning curled in hallway steps , with bricks as pillows. With practically nobody here to tell the stories of their hard work, sacrifice and heartening professionalism, we have left our soldiers behind in this war."

Yon to broadcast a reality show from Iraq:

Michael Yon, the acclaimed independent photo journalist and war correspondent currently embedded in Iraq covering the “surge” has signed an exclusive deal with Peace River Company LLC and Extant Media to produce a verite television series that will film his war zone dispatches from Iraq.

This television vehicle, tentatively titled “Michael Yon: Dispatches/Iraq”, will bring a new dimension to Yon’s sometimes brutal blog accounts and vivid images as he covers the life and death struggle of the soldiers and citizens of this war torn country. Yon is one of the only journalists to brave the streets of Baghdad beyond the protected Green Zone and bring unfiltered war accounts to the American public...

13 episodes are planned.

Meanwhile, the tireless J.D. Johannes reports from Iraq:

48 hours without sleep.

24 hours without food.

6 hours with little water.

It was the most successful mission I had ever been on. Insurgencies are not beat with hammer and anvil clearing operations. They are not beat with presence patrols conducted from the confines of humvees that resemble bank vaults or Bradly fighting vehicles or Strykers.

Insurgencies are beat with a piece of paper: A Census Form...