Chicago Daily Observer

The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost.

Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace — a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.

Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.

Gabriel Sherman’s article “End of the Affair“ in The New Republic recounts a lot of gripes reporters have with the arrogance and secrecy of the Obama campaign. Most of it is the usual dull whining, but this is interesting:
“Reporters who have covered Obama’s biography or his problems with certain voter blocs have been challenged the most aggressively. “They’re terrified of people poking around Obama’s life,” one reporter says. “The whole Obama narrative is built around this narrative that Obama and David Axelrod built, and, like all stories, it’s not entirely true. So they have to be protective of the crown jewels.” Another reporter notes that, during the last year, Obama’s old friends and Harvard classmates were requested not to talk to the press without permission.”
Better late than never, I suppose …
By the way, can you imagine being asked not to talk to ... Read More...

Vituperation, thy name is calumny: Let us work together to have a lot less of it.
A frightening number of Americans today take the position that they have the right and urgent obligation to be not just vocal advocates but also strident Internet propagandists. Using fear and unsubstantiated assertions and appeals to primitive fears, their spiked goal is to cause one candidate or the other to lose the coming Presidential election.
Some dismiss such individuals as annoying gnats; others would have us guard against them as though they were attack dogs. They can be either or both.

A man with whom I grew up is one of these. He collects snarling, biting attacks against Senator Barack Obama off the Internet and E-mails them to a long list of family members, friends and foes. The tenor of most of these verbal onslaughts indicates they had been fabricated by ... Read More...