Democrats About to Claim Credit for Iraq Progress?The New York Times has this interesting article which describes how Hillary Clinton was FOR sending more troops to Iraq before she was AGAINST the idea and is now coming full circle again and supporting the idea that we are winning. Hillary's not alone. All of the top Dem candidates are caught in a bind of their own making:
As Democrats See Security Gains in Iraq, Tone ShiftsMeanwhile, Democrats continue to harp on the phony Iraq progress benchmarks that Democrats in Congress dreamed up to hamstring the President and snatch defeat from the jaws of Victory.
By PATRICK HEALY
New York Times
November 25, 2007
As violence declines in Baghdad, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are undertaking a new and challenging balancing act on Iraq: acknowledging that success, trying to shift the focus to the lack of political progress there, and highlighting more domestic concerns like health care and the economy.
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But the changing situation suggests for the first time that the politics of the war could shift in the general election next year, particularly if the gains continue. While the Democratic candidates are continuing to assail the war — a popular position with many of the party’s primary voters — they run the risk that Republicans will use those critiques to attack the party’s nominee in the election as defeatist and lacking faith in the American military.
Charles Krauthammer takes that bit of idiocy on directly:
On Iraq, a State of Denial
By Charles Krauthammer
Real Clear Politics
November 23, 2007
It does not have the drama of the Inchon landing or the sweep of the Union comeback in the summer of 1864. But the turnabout of American fortunes in Iraq over the past several months is of equal moment -- a war seemingly lost, now winnable. The violence in Iraq has been dramatically reduced. Political allegiances have been radically reversed. The revival of ordinary life in many cities is palpable. Something important is happening.
And what is the reaction of the war critics? Nancy Pelosi stoutly maintains her state of denial, saying this about the war just two weeks ago: "This is not working. . . . We must reverse it." A euphemism for "abandon the field," which is what every Democratic presidential candidate is promising, with variations only in how precipitous to make the retreat.
How do they avoid acknowledging the realities on the ground? By asserting that we have not achieved political benchmarks -- mostly legislative actions by the Baghdad government -- that were set months ago. And that these benchmarks are paramount. And that all the current progress is ultimately vitiated by the absence of centrally legislated national reconciliation.
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But does the absence of this deus ex machina invalidate our hard-won gains? Why does this mean that we cannot achieve success by other means?
Sure, there is no oil law. But the central government is nonetheless distributing oil revenue to the provinces, where the funds are being used for reconstruction.
Sure, the de-Baathification law has not been modified. But the whole purpose of modification was to entice Sunni insurgents to give up the insurgency and join the new order. This is already happening on a widening scale all over the country in the absence of a relaxed de-Baathification law.
As for federalism, the Kurds are running their own region, the Sunni sheiks in Anbar and elsewhere are exercising not just autonomy but control of their own security, and the southern Shiites are essentially governing themselves, the British having withdrawn in all but name.
Yes, a provincial powers law would be nice because it would allow for provincial elections. We should push hard for it. But we already have effective provincial and tribal autonomy in pivotal regions of the country.
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Al-Qaeda in Iraq is in disarray, the Sunni insurgency in decline, the Shiite militias quiescent, the capital city reviving. Are we now to reverse course and abandon all this because parliament cannot ratify the reconciliation already occurring on the ground?
Do the critics forget their own arguments about the irrelevance of formal political benchmarks? The transfer of power in 2004. The two elections in 2005. The ratification of the constitution.
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So, just as we have learned this hard lesson of the disconnect between political benchmarks and real stability, the critics now claim the reverse -- that benchmarks are what really count.
Campaign Trail Quickies 
--Fred Thompson Not Finished
Yes, some GOP voters have been disappointed that the early hype about Fred Thompson's presidential campaign turned out to be that: just hype.
But the opposite hype that Thompson's campaign is a total flop is also wrong. And Thompson took the matter on directly in this interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday:
"If you look at the national polls, you'll see that I'm running second and have been running second for a long time.I'm running ahead of a guy who spent probably $50 million more than I have and been running for a year longer. If you look in South Carolina, I've either been leading or tied for the lead for a long, long time. I moved from fourth to third in Iowa, ahead of Rudy Giuliani."
Thompson's national ranking has been declining, but he does retain second place in the Real Clear Politics polling averages chart
and while his polling average in South Carolina has him third, the latest Rasmussen poll has him tied with Romney (who continues to come on strong in SC)
From the Mike's America archives: Fred Thompson Visits Mike's America
-- Novak: "Huckabee, the False Conservative"
Bob Novak reports that "real conservatives shudder" at the thought of Mike Huckabee as President:
Huckabee, the False Conservative--Rudy: It's time to unmask Romney
Real Clear Politics
By Robert Novak
November 26, 2007
...Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist, big-government advocate of a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans. Until now, they did not bother to expose the former governor of Arkansas as a false conservative because he seemed an underfunded, unknown nuisance candidate. Now that he has pulled even with Mitt Romney for the Iowa caucuses with the possibility of more progress, the beleaguered Republican Party has a frightening problem on its hands.
When Mitt Romney visited Mike's America I noted that it didn't take any prompting for Mitt to go on the attack against Rudy. Seems to me that turnabout is fair play. Rudy has consistently avoided attacking his opponents, preferring to run against Hillary Clinton. But it's crunch time and Mitt is coming on strong in places like South Carolina where he now is tied with Fred in the latest Rasmussen Poll but leads in the overall RC Politics average.Rudy: It's time to unmask Romney
By: Jonathan Martin
The Politico
Nov 26, 2007
WINDHAM, N.H. — In a big strategic shift, Rudy Giuliani hammered Mitt Romney’s record Sunday on three fronts, saying it was time to “take the mask off and take a look at what kind of governor was he.”
Using some of the toughest language of his campaign, Giuliani, in an interview with Politico, slammed Romney on health care, crime and taxes. At the same time he portrayed the one-time moderate as a hypocrite on a host of social issues who lives “in a glass house.” It was easily the most sweeping attack Giuliani has delivered against Romney in this campaign.
“He throws stones at people,” Giuliani said in an interview on his campaign bus. “And then on that issue he usually has a worse record than whoever he’s throwing stones at.”The Romney camp responded by calling Giuliani's attack "nasty" and offering a point-by-point rebuttal.
Last, Not Least-- Stem Cell Debate Over?
The End of the Stem-Cell Wars--Biofuels Not The Panacea for Energy Independence?
A victory for science, for the pro-life movement, and for President Bush.
by Ryan T. Anderson
The Weekly Standard
12/03/2007
The stem cell wars are over. Leading scientists are telling us that they can pursue the most promising stem cell research without using--much less killing--human embryos. This breakthrough enables researchers to create human embryonic stem cells directly from adult cells. In fact, the new method may actually prove superior to embryo-destructive alternatives. This is the biggest stem cell advance since James Thomson became the first scientist to isolate embryonic stem cells, less than a decade ago.
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It also is illustrative of the politics of science. Had a President Gore or a President Kerry allowed the science to go forward without regard for moral principle, it would have set a terrible precedent. A Gore or Kerry presidency would have bestowed federal blessing and taxpayer funds on laboratory work predicated on the assumption that embryonic human beings can be treated as spare parts and that cloning to kill is acceptable.
But because President Bush stood his ground, we have avoided that moral catastrophe. Had Bush lost either election, or had he caved to pressure from those who slandered him as "antiscience," it is very possible that the new method of stem cell production--the new gold standard, in all likelihood--would never have been found. Most likely, science and the public would have accommodated themselves to the mass production and mass killing of human embryos.
Who's Fueling Whom?--Man Now Threatening the Life of the Universe?
Why the biofuels movement could run out of gas
By Richard Conniff
Smithsonian magazine
November 2007
...Over the past few years, biofuels have acquired an almost magical appeal for environmentalists and investors alike. This new energy source (actually as old as the first wood-fueled campfire) promises to relieve global warming and win back America's energy independence: instead of burning fossil fuels such as coal or oil, which fill the atmosphere with the carbon packed away during thousands of years of plant and animal growth, the idea is to extract energy only from recent harvests. Where we now pay larcenous prices to OPEC, we'd pay our own farmers and foresters instead.
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So what's the hitch? Partly it's that bit about doing a little planning. The move to biofuels thus far looks more like a stampede than a considered program to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. Critics in the financial community have used words like "gold rush" and even the dreaded "bubble," fretting that "biofool" investors are putting too much money into new refineries, which could go bust as markets and subsidies shift or as technologies and feedstocks become obsolete.
Question: How can liberals politicize this and how can the United Nations tax it?
Mankind 'shortening the universe's life'
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
The Telegraph (U.K.)
Nov. 21, 2007
Forget about the threat that mankind poses to the Earth: our very ability to study the heavens may have shortened the inferred lifetime of the cosmos.
Parallel universe proof boosts time travel hopes
Quantum theory and relativity explained
Surfer Dude's Theory of Everything - The Movie
That does not mean the field of astronomy does direct harm. A universe with a truncated lifespan may come hand in hand with the ability of astronomers to make cosmological measurements, according to two American scientists who have studied the strange, subtle and cosmic implications of quantum mechanics, the most successful theory we have.
Over the past few years, cosmologists have taken this powerful theory of what happens at the level of subatomic particles and tried to extend it to understand the universe, since it began in the subatomic realm during the Big Bang.
But there is an odd feature of the theory that philosophers and scientists still argue about. In a nutshell, the theory suggests that quantum systems can exist in many different physical configurations at the same time. By observing the system, however, we may pick out one single 'quantum state', and therefore force the system to change its configuration.
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