Back when I was posting in public forums on social and political issues, a right-winger played a little trolling game. He started a new topic and made a declaration which, after all this time, I cannot even remember, but it was some rather lame right-wing assertion; he said that he wanted to see how long it would take for a liberal to come around and “whine” about it.

No question about it, I should have stayed away; taken by itself, the posting was obnoxious and should have been ignored. The poster in question, however, was someone we interacted with a lot–it was along the lines of someone you’d worked with for a while doing the same thing. You would not fall into the specific trap, but you might say, “hey, you’re being an ass, you know that?” Which is what I did; I posted saying that I would not comment on his assertion, but the “game” itself was inane.

That, of course, was enough, and the guy started doing a virtual-online victory dance. Within hours, the moderator deleted the offending posts and must have come down hard on the guy, as he emailed me privately and apologized–something he clearly would not have done on his own.

I mention this because I was reminded of the episode when reading about the McCain campaign’s latest attack tactic. He creates an ad in which Barack Obama is shown in sequence with two “sexually available white women” frequently perceived as vacuous attention-seekers. While this could just barely within the bounds of credibility be explained away as interposing Obama with “top celebrities,” almost no one missed the racial and sexual innuendo.

Obama replied, somewhat obliquely, that McCain was trying to scare voters, making fun of his name and that he “doesn’t look like all the presidents on the dollar bills.”

McCain’s campaign immediately accused Obama of “playing the race card.”

That’s right, all you have to do is make a poorly-concealed stab with racial and sexual innuendo just barely deniable enough, wait for your opponent to respond in any way whatsoever, then accuse him of bringing the whole thing up. Similar in nature to that wingnut on the public forum I frequented, but a lot slicker, of course–and the media is not as honest as the moderator of that forum was.

Anyone else here see the Hand of Rove at work?

So, if Obama played a commercial calling McCain a “kidder” showing McCain along with images of George Burns and Bob Hope (in photos where both were around 100 years old), and McCain inevitably made a reference to age, could Obama then accuse McCain of “playing the age card”? And how would conservatives respond to that?

Seymour Hersh in an interview with Think Progress, about how Cheney and his staff were trying to think up ways to start a war with Iran:

There was a meeting. Among the items considered and rejected — which is why the New Yorker did not publish it, on grounds that it wasn’t accepted — one of the items was why not…

There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives.

And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

So, the New Yorker editors thought that it wasn’t news because during a meeting in which the Vice President was conspiring with administration officials to come up with a way to falsely manufacture a war with a foreign nation, a method that could easily be described as treasonous and at the most charitable, highly illegal, was rejected.

These are the standards we’ve fallen to. We become aware that the Vice President of the United States of America is trying to manufacture a false pretense for going to war, and it’s not considered news. When, of course, the fact that it was rejected is only partly exculpatory; the fact that the intent to commit illegal acts was there should have been a huge news story. But they passed on it as if it wasn’t anything extraordinary.

I have to admit, that was my personal reaction as well–that this just confirms something that I was pretty certain of for some time anyway. That’s the problem with assuming the worst of this gang in the White House: when you find that your assumption of their criminality and foulness is confirmed to be true, you can’t react with surprised outrage. It seems the media feels the same way: “Oh, the Vice President is conspiring to commit illegal acts? Well, we know he’s a scumwad who does stuff like this, so as long as he didn’t actually follow through, I guess we have nothing.”

I am so glad that Bush and Cheney brought honor and dignity back to the White House.

Via Andrew Sullivan, John Riley makes an excellent point:

We just got off a conference call with Camp McCain, defending their new ad comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

They said they thought the ad was legitimate because Obama is a big celebrity (which happens to be what John McCain was, too, when he came home from Vietnam and started to build his political career), and Britney and Paris were Number 2 and 3.

The problem: Anyone with even a vague sense of pop culture knows that Britney and Paris are yesterday’s news. Here’s a link to Forbes’ Celebrity 100. Paris and Britney don’t even make the list any more.

Instead, the top 10, in order: Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, Angelina Jolie, Beyonce Knowles, David Beckham, Johnny Depp, Jay-Z, The Police, JK Rowling, Brad Pitt.

So, they didn’t pick other big celebrities, who were either men, or black, or married.

What they picked was two sexually available white women.

But it must have been a coincidence, because we know John McCain wants to run an elevated campaign focusing on the serious issues that America faces.

The most charitable one could be would be to say that McCain’s people wanted to convey the idea that Obama was just as silly, simple, and vacuous as Britney and Paris. But it’s kind of hard to ignore the subtext–either these people were simply incompetent, or they fully realized that Britney and Paris don’t top the list and would contrast disturbingly to many “values-sensitive” Americans in a racial/sexual sense. But to point out Oprah and Tiger Woods along with Obama would have elevated him in public opinion, not slimed him. One can only guess that these clever attack dogs felt they could slip in a twofer.

While the NYT seemed kind of clueless on the McCain negative ad story, they did do a very good job delving back into Barack Obama’s years as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. During a stretch where he ran for and eventually became a state senator, the piece includes insights from students, coworkers, and law professors. Not all comments are highly positive, but there’s very little there that could be called bad. But it is impossible to read the article and not come away with the clear impression that Obama is highly intelligent, fair-minded, deeply thoughtful, and very conversant on critical legal and political issues. This is no 790th-of-795 John McCain, nor the mental pygmy who currently occupies the White House.

Of course, that may be a turn-off to many Americans who seem comfortable with a president who is as dumb and as ordinary as we are. But with luck, enough Americans are tired enough of having a demented chimpanzee in the White House that they’d be willing to risk having someone highly intelligent in there instead.

The NYT story includes links to reproductions of Obama’s 1994 syllabus for the course “Current Issues in Racism and the Law,” final exams from 1996 to 2003, and commentary on the materials and the article by several legal experts.

Here’s a fresh headline out of the New York Times:

McCain Goes Negative, Worrying Some in G.O.P.

SPARKS, Nev. — In recent days Senator John McCain has charged that Senator Barack Obama “would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign,” tarred him as “Dr. No” on energy policy and run advertisements calling him responsible for high gas prices.

The old happy warrior side of Mr. McCain has been eclipsed a bit lately by a much more aggressive, and more negative, Mr. McCain who hammers Mr. Obama repeatedly on policy differences, experience and trustworthiness.

“In recent days”? Where has this reported been? Does he publish a new story only once every three months? McCain has gone negative on Obama since day one, he was negative since before Obama won against Hillary. But he really laid into Obama since the wrap-up of the nomination, going negative immediately.

McCain started in early June by claiming Obama didn’t know squat about Iraq, challenging Obama to the Middle East trip (oops); in that attack, he accused Obama of being so wrong he’d lose the war, hand victory to Iran, and waste U.S. soldiers’ lives. Then he ripped Obama as being another Jimmy Carter. Then he accused Obama of being a serial tax-hiker who would raise everybody’s taxes. Then he seared Obama for not taking public financing. Then he faked indignation after Wes Clark spent five minutes calling McCain a hero but suggested that getting shot down is not experience which qualifies you as president, attacking the Obama campaign for “swiftboating” McCain.

And then McCain got nasty.

He linked Obama to Fidel Castro, echoing the attack that Obama was the poster boy for Hamas. He chimed in on Bush’s claim that Obama was an “appeaser,” generally blasting Obama for being clueless on foreign policy. He accused Obama of bailing on his Senate responsibilities, and of voting against funding for the troops (Obama voted for more funding more often than McCain did). He even released an attack ad when Obama used a version of the presidential seal (something a lot of Republican candidates do).

He attacked Obama two weeks ago, saying that Obama had no ideas about energy policy, calling Obama “Dr. No.” He later incredibly blamed Obama for higher gas prices, acting as if Obama’s opposition to increased offshore drilling (which McCain himself opposed just a few months back before he flip-flopped) was the reason prices are high at the pump. He accused Obama of flip-flopping on Iraq, when Obama was in fact being consistent (this just before McCain flip-flopped and adopted Obama’s plan). He accused Obama of deliberately trying to lose the Iraq War in order to win the election. He had the chance to publish a foreign policy piece in the NYT, which actually had the good judgment not to run it, as it was little more than an extended attack against Obama, and not a foreign policy piece, which had been asked for. After whining about Obama’s trip to Iraq for about a week, he then released a horrifically false ad claiming that Obama snubbed wounded soldiers because the press wasn’t around, and “went to the gym” instead (showing footage of Obama in a gym… with soldiers). And now, McCain is attacking Obama for being popular, likening him to self-centered celebrities like Britney Spears.

McCain’s ads have been getting nastier and uglier, but recent ads have been relatively negative, not contrastively. If McCain had any positive ads, it’s easy to forget as they were drowned out by all the negative ads. So, why is the NYT publishing a story that seems to suggest that McCain has only started getting negative in the past week or two?

Part of Microsoft’s new ad campaign to resuscitate Vista is something they’re calling “The Mojave Experiment.” They found a bunch of people who had never used Vista and who had only heard bad things about it, and told them that they had a new version of Windows called “Mojave” which they wanted to show them. Predictably, all of the people were “wowed” by the demo and had a completely new and positive opinion on Vista. In essence, it’s a rehash of the old is-it-really-margarine? commercial.

Of course, it’s a complete fraud. The bad things such people might have heard about Vista could include crashes (the only bad thing mentioned explicitly in the campaign video), incompatibility with hardware/lack of drivers, it’s a memory hog and might require new equipment, the security is obnoxious with endless nagging reminders… stuff like that. This is the kind of stuff that only becomes apparent if you’re using it in real life, however; in a demo, on a powerful and carefully controlled machine with the settings just right, walking a person through the cool features with an expert on hand to assist… well, you could make almost any piece of crap software look presentable. And when you first present Vista with the Flip 3D and the Gadgets on the side and make a sales pitch about improved security without having to live through it, I’m sure anyone’s impression would be positive.

But the coolness of Flip 3D soon fades (if you were prescient enough not to get Home Basic in the first place), you begin to wonder if you really need that clock taking up valuable screen space, and the nagging security forces you to investigate successfully how to turn off the major security features so you can have a peaceful computing experience (until the first significant piece of malware hits you).

In short, a demo is not actual use, and actual use is where people have gotten the worst impressions of Vista. The demo did not show these people that they would have to pay for expensive upgrades if not a completely new computer in order to use Vista without it slowing their PC to a crawl. The shiny new and high-power machine they undoubtedly used in the ad campaign was likely tweaked such as to have virtually no chance of crashing, with the person leading the demo knowing what pitfalls to avoid. The demo did not show them that their existing printer and other hardware might not still be compatible. The demo did not have them use any of their existing software to see what problems would develop. The demo did not give them time to realize that there was really not much of substance that is not already in XP. They got a dose of flash on a specially prepared machine (which is probably what impressed them more than Vista’s features even if they weren’t aware of it), and so were snookered into giving a chrome-plated turd the thumbs up. (“Oooohh, look! Chrome!”)

An honest test would have taken these same people, given them a free copy of Vista to take home and install on their own and then use for a month, and then report back. But they didn’t do that, because they knew full well that the results would be a whole lot less impressive.

The ad site is here. Despite my version of Safari having Flash installed, the site wouldn’t play on it. Figures.

And, oh yeah, did you hear about the outrageous thing Obama did? He promised to visit wounded veterans, but he insisted that, for security reasons, the wounded vets–many with special medical needs–would have to come to the hall where the speech would be given two hours early, and then be sequestered there until after Obama finished speaking and had left. Since there are no bathrooms in the hall, the wounded and disabled vets would have to hold it in for three or four hours, waiting for Obama’s leisure. The vets group cancelled the event because of this.

Can you imagine the outcry? Can you imagine the howls of outrage by conservatives offended without limit by the temerity and arrogance of that punk Obama? Can you imagine the weeklong media circus? The non-stop pundits decrying Obama for so blatantly abusing out honored veterans?

Except, as you’ve undoubtedly already guessed, it wasn’t Obama. It was Cheney. And the outraged conservatives? Not to be found, of course. And the media coverage? What, are you kidding me?

IOKIYAR.

This is why so many public opinion polls are worthless:

Ramesh notes the imprecision of the phrase “affirmative action,” a phrase often used by reporters when describing racial preferences. The imprecision is quite useful for supporters of preferences. Voters are far more favorably disposed to policies described as “affirmative action” than they are to policies described as “racial preferences.” When a policy is described as “affirmative action,” polls show an almost even split in support and opposition. In contrast, a Newsweek poll last summer showed that Americans oppose “racial preferences” by a margin of 82%—14%. The opposition to “racial preferences” also includes a plurality of blacks.

Support for “affirmative action” evaporates when it’s revealed to mean that a black applicant to an elite school is 200 times more likely to be admitted than a white comparative. Thus, supporters of preferences employ the term “affirmative action”— a benign policy designed to “level the playing field.” Who could be opposed to that?

This is why conservatives work so hard to vilify certain names, terms, and expressions; controlling the language means controlling public opinion, and through that, public policy. It also shows that the more these policies are understood, the more clear-headed public opinion is likely to be. Were people to understand exactly what Affirmative Action is–not the common political canard–there would be almost universal approval. But what has happened is that the quota–something which is not “Affirmative Action”–has been vilified by egregious examples, and then has been lumped in with all other laws and policies regarding prevention and redress of racial discrimination, under the label of “Affirmative Action.” Many people think that AA means forcing any given workplace to hire unqualified black people–many think, in fact, that this is the intended purpose of AA–when the term “Affirmative Action” by itself is nothing more than a set of guidelines which, when examined, are very fair and reasonable. Quotas are something different, coming in many sizes and types; even many quotas would be largely approved of if understood better.

Take this situation, for example. An employer displays a blatant bias for hiring whites over blacks. The employer advertises only in venues likely to be seen by whites, and rarely if ever hires a black person. One black person who is highly qualified does see the ad and applies for a job, and is turned down. They file a complaint with the EEOC, which then comes to the place of employment and does an investigation. The EEOC investigator finds several inequities in the workplace, noting the hiring practices, and that in a community where the qualified workforce is 20% black, the company in question, with 100 employees, only has one black person working there. The EEOC then warns the business that they should follow guidelines, such as advertising to the community in general, rather than specifically to race-limited venues, and that they keep records of the hiring process to show that they gave fair consideration to all applicants. After 18 months, the EEOC investigator returns, and finds that not only has the firm not made any changes to their hiring policies, but they have fired the only black employee, hired no other black people during that time, and have received three more complaints by highly qualified black applicants turned down with no explanation, for which the company has kept no records to prove equity in hiring. The EEOC gives a more stern warning, and goes away for another 18 months. When they return, the situation is unchanged, with more complaints being entered. Finding a rather clear racial bias at the firm, they bring the company to court and sue for a quota to be established. The judge agrees, and tells the company that they must follow EEOC hiring practices and, since they have shown clear disdain for voluntary fair hiring, must hire in a fashion that reflects the makeup of the local qualified workforce. Not the local community, but the qualified workforce. If the people in the community qualified to fill a position are 20% black, their hiring record must reflect that. “What if we can’t find that many qualified black people?” the company owner asks. “If you can prove that none applied, you’re off the hook” is the answer.

This is an example of the process which generates non-legislative-mandated quotas. It is, one could easily argue, very fair. But because it comes under the category of “racial quota,” a majority would disapprove and want it to be thrown out.

Not all quotas follow this process; some are mandated generally, and some are applied unfairly. Some are required under the law, some are completely voluntary, and others are wrongly enforced by people who believe the untrue version and out of fear of imagined prosecution, enforce the stereotype of the unfair quota they somehow think they have to create. Some quotas are good and even necessary, some are not good and should be thrown out. But each type should be considered separately and specifically described, with the rationale and effects clearly laid out, before it is judged; errant cases of mismanagement should not be held up as model cases, but rather the standard implementation under law. Affirmative Action–which, in the strict, specific sense is nothing more than a set of guidelines for fair hiring, treatment, pay, promotion, and firing–should be considered in the same way, as well as all other related issues.

But we don’t do that. Instead, we have public opinion polls which gauge public reactions to terms which are greatly biased due to concentrated political campaigns to distort their perceived meaning. And then we see politicians basing public policy on this.

Conservatives clearly understand this principe and use it as a weapon. To fight abortion, they take the most extreme case possible, twist it out of its true proportion so as to make it look like infanticide, killing healthy babies for selfish, heartless reasons, and then try to classify the entire abortion issue based upon that impression.

As long as we allow ourselves to react to generalities, without demanding clarification and definition, we’ll be open to that kind of manipulation. Of course, the clarification I speak of is largely a task for the media, so I’m not holding my breath or anything.

I’m still pretty blind to media focus in some ways back in the U.S. in that if it’s not highlighted in media coverage or part of the shows I’m catching on podcast, I don’t often see it; could someone tell me, what is the general reaction to McCain’s petty whining about Obama’s trip, especially in regards to the latest series of vicious attacks claiming Obama only visits troops if there are cameras around?

It’s been made pretty clear that Obama canceled the trip because Pentagon officials told his campaign that not only were reporters and cameras unwelcome, but that no visit could be allowed if campaign staff were present, and Obama decided that the visit would just look too much like a campaign event whether cameras were present or not. It has also been made clear that Obama has made several visits to wounded soldiers without cameras (like he did quietly just a month ago, with the most recent visit being the day before in Baghdad), and that McCain has canceled similar visits for similar reasons, just as recently as April (“We follow the rules” was a good enough excuse when he did it).

And yet McCain continues to run slimy attack ads claiming that Obama only wanted to use the troops as a PR backdrop, as if he doesn’t give a damn about the troops (tell us again, McCain, about how you fought tooth and nail to kill the new G.I. bill because it was “too generous”?). This after repeatedly claiming that Obama wanted to lose the Iraq War in order to win the campaign, just one step short of calling Obama a traitor outright.

Now, we all have seen unmistakable proof that the media is actively covering for McCain, but really–how far does McCain have to go, how outrageous do his lies and attacks have to become before enough dissent filters through the media wall protecting him to make an impact on public perception?

Also, why hasn’t the media focused on the fact that McCain’s campaign has been strongly negative since day one? They usually make a big deal of such things, but not this time, for some strange reason….

And though it could be the boost from Obama’s overseas trip, maybe it could be McCain’s implosion which has caused Obama to shoot ahead in the daily tracking polls.

I saw this interview on a CNN podcast, actually. McCain claimed he could get bin Laden, and Blitzer went only so far as to ask him how; McCain replied:

I’m not going to telegraph a lot of the things that I’m going to do because then it might compromise our ability to do so. But, look, I know the area, I have been there, I know wars, I know how to win wars, and I know how to improve our capabilities so that we will capture Osama bin Laden — or put it this way, bring him to justice…We will do it, I know how to do it.

The obvious question after that was, “if you know how to capture bin Laden, Senator, then why haven’t you told the current president how to do so, or if you have, why hasn’t he put your plan into motion?”

Naturally, Blitzer didn’t ask that. Instead, he asked McCain to dance his victory dance and simply presume bin Laden has been captured, so “what do you do with him?” Then Blitzer sped ahead to talk about a “new controversy” about Obama, putting them on the “defensive,” with the word “SNUB” big in the subtitle, pronouncing “Doesn’t meet with wounded troops.”

Not in the podcast: McCain saying that he approved of the 16-month time table for withdrawal, which was the biggest story of the day. They edited that part out.

Don’tcha just love the Liberal Media™?

It’s been an interesting few days out the window. Yesterday was the Sumida River fireworks, and today there was a spectacular lightning storm and sunset.

Yesterday’s fireworks show was, actually, a big disappointment. It came on what was arguably the haziest day of the year so far; we could barely see Akihabara from Ikebukuro, and that cut down on the show considerably. Add the smoke from the previous fireworks, and it got hard to see anything. In fact, the haze just got worse and worse as the evening went on; by the end of the show, we could see the fireworks streaking up, only to disappear, and, if we were lucky, the faintest of outlines of a starburst would show through. Most of the bursts, however, were simply invisible.

Here are a few shots from earlier in the show:

Tonight, there was a much more spectacular light show, and I almost missed it. However, I heard some sounds out on the balcony, and knew that winds had started tossing about a few things we’d left out there. As I went out to batten down the hatches, as it were, I saw a tremendous thunder- and lightning-storm charging by to the north, darkening the sky before sunset.

It was still far too light to take time exposures to catch the lightning, so I tried another strategy: with my finger on the shutter, I waited for lightning bursts to come, hopefully catching some prolonged bursts that way. When that was not successful, I just held down the shutter and took continuous shots, dozens at a time–and that worked. The lightning was frequent enough that I got some good shots. The last one, the most spectacular, is available in an enlarged version when clicked:

And then, out of nowhere, there came an amazing red lighting. Clouds had cleared around the sun as it set, and even as lightning continued to scatter to the north, a brilliant red and orange wash broke out from the west. As we’re on the east side of the building, I could not see the sunset directly, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t see some fantastic light effects. Many of the images below–which don’t do the reality justice–are available in larger sizes. I swear, some of them look like images of Coruscant from the Star Wars movies.

The Sunshine 60 building looked almost ominous in the light:

Here is a panorama of Akihabara to Ochanomizu–first cut into two parts, then in full, but reduced in size artificially. Click on the lowest image to see the full-sized image, 1920 pixels wide. The buildings almost look like toy models here.

Sachi and I decided to take a walk today, one of those walks where you don’t know exactly where you’re going to go, and the point is to see what’s along the way rather than what’s at the end of the road. So we kind of chose a direction and started walking, choosing our turns as we went.

One place we ended up was discovering a great little supermarket we never imagined existed before, but there it was–great produce, low prices, a really great place, and we never would have found it if we hadn’t gone “bura bura,” which in Japanese means to wander along without direction.

We kept going until we got, quite unintentionally, to Itabashi Station, or near to it, and wandered into a “shotengai no matsuri,” or a street fair. Great smells there–yakitori cooking, along with all manner of foods common to such venues in Japan. One place I asked Sachi we stop at was the kaki-gori, or shaved ice stand. It is often loosely translated as a “snow cone” stand, but these are not snow cones. It’s in a dish, and it’s finely shaved ice, very different from crushed ice. This stuff melts in your mouth, it’s good.

The guy dishing it out at the end there was a sweet old guy who eagerly wanted to speak English and invited us to come back on August 9, when they have their second and last street fair of the year. Don’t know if we’ll make it back, but I can think of worse places to go.

Sachi and I got back home soon before sunset, and in time to be disappointed by our view of the Sumida-gawa fireworks–mostly because they were drowned out by the haze of the day. But it was a nice day nonetheless.

This is a huge flip-flop, and no amount of backpedaling by those on the right can make it not so. McCain, who has always said that Obama is near-traitorous for wanting to withdraw troops, now approves of Obama’s timeline, but tries to waffle in ways to make it seem he’s not taking on Obama’s position.

…asked why he thinks Mr. Maliki had called 16 months a pretty good timetable, Mr. McCain gave his enigmatic answer.

“He said it’s a pretty good timetable based on conditions on the ground,’’ Mr. McCain said. ”I think it’s a pretty good timetable, as we should — or horizons for withdrawal. But they have to be based on conditions on the ground. This success is very fragile. It’s incredibly impressive, but very fragile. So we know, those of us who have been involved in it for many years, know that if we reverse this, by setting a date for withdrawal, all of the hard-won victory can be reversed.’’

Democrats exulted, sending around the statement to reporters to suggest he was coming around to Mr. Obama’s way of thinking. The McCain campaign did not explain the timetable remark, but said that Mr. McCain’s position remained that he wants the troops to withdraw based on conditions on the ground.

There’s a lot here. First of all, we see the transparency of “time horizon” vs. “time table” or “time line,” that they are pretty much interchangeable. He focuses on Maliki, not Obama, of course–though it’s pretty interesting that just a few days ago, he claimed he knew better than Maliki what Maliki wanted, and Maliki didn’t want a withdrawal in 16 months to two years–and now McCain has completely reversed himself, not only admitting that Maliki wants that timeli–er, “time horizon,” but that McCain himself now thinks it’s “pretty good.” I guess McCain does want to lose the war in order to win the campaign, eh? And what’s with the NYT calling his answer “enigmatic”? Seems pretty clear to me.

But here’s the kicker: McCain claims that the whole difference is that his time-whatever will be based on conditions on the ground, and Obama never said he’d do that! And that makes all the difference! Got it? McCain wants to withdraw in 16 months based on conditions on the ground, but Obama is stuck tight to the timeline without adjusting for ground conditions. Obama wants to ignore conditions on the ground.

A few weeks ago, however, the RNC released a statement in which they criticized Obama for saying this:

I’ve always said that I would listen to commanders on the ground. I’ve always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed. And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.“ (Sen. Barack Obama, Press Conference, 7/3/08)

So we have Obama saying he’d pay attention to conditions on the ground just three weeks ago! Now, the RNC released that statement as a way of criticizing Obama, claiming that he’s flip-flopped, and that he had never before said he’d withdraw based upon conditions on the ground.

Except…

”The precise size of the residual force will depend on consultations with our military commanders and will depend on the circumstances on the ground, including the willingness of the Iraqi government to move toward political accommodation. But let me be clear on one thing: I will end this war, and there will be far fewer Americans in Iraq conducting a much more limited set of missions that include counterterrorism and protection of our embassy and U.S. civilians.“ [Washington Post, 3/2/08]

And:

”According to all the reports, we should have been well along our way in getting the Iraqi security forces to be more functional. We then have another 16 months after that to adjust the withdrawal and make sure that we are withdrawing from those areas, based on advice from the military officers in the field, those places where we are secured, made progress and we’re not just willy-nilly removing troops, but we’re making a determination – in this region we see some stability. We’ve had cooperation from local tribal leaders and local officials, so we can afford to remove troops here. Here, we’ve still got problems, it’s going to take a little bit longer. Maybe those are the last areas to pull out.“ [New York Times, 11/1/07]

There are more statements to that effect as well. But you get the idea.

So, in the end, we have John McCain flip-flopping on Afghanistan and Iraq, now saying he wants to do pretty much exactly what Obama has said for a long time should be the plan–even though just a few days ago, McCain claimed that this exact same Iraq policy was a recipe for losing the war and that John McCain would never do that!

Now, to sit back and watch conservatives contort themselves into pretzels to try to explain this one off.

All irrelevant nonsense about the poetic “citizen of the world” reference aside, it’s hard to see Obama’s Berlin speech as anything but momentous. In large part it is because of the message, both the plain message and the underlying one: while fiercely patriotic to America, the speech was also welcoming and accepting to the world. What Obama did, in part, was to roll back the clock, bring us back to the days after 9/11, and showed what Bush should have done, and in lieu of that, what people around the world will not only accept but strongly desire–that we do our best to erase the past seven years and start over again with new hope and optimism. Even as he outlined the challenges and dangers and called for sacrifice, he evoked an image of international community with America at its center which should have been the legacy of 9/11, instead of the Iraq War and relative American isolationism which have so richly rewarded Osama bin Laden’s efforts. This speech in Berlin marked a desire to change all of that, and to bring the world closer together. It showed that America can again become a respected world leader.

But from a different, more specific perspective, it was momentous in another way: it showed the kind of president Barack Obama can be and the kind of president John McCain cannot be. McCain might complain about the coverage Obama has been getting on this trip, but what he cannot deny is that Obama did it all, with no favors or favoritism from anyone else. McCain either couldn’t or, more likely, did not even try to make his past trips this momentous, he probably could not have generated the interest and focus, and imagining him up there in Germany giving that speech almost evokes an incredulous chuckle. But it comes back to the point: McCain never even tried. He didn’t think to do something like this, just like Bush did not do when he should have back in 2001. All he thinks of is stuff like visiting American cities named “Berlin” as a cheesy theatrical trick, while releasing increasingly negative ads and coming close to calling Obama a traitor who wants to lose the Iraq War. Compare that with Obama’s travels and his magnificent speech in Berlin, and McCain looks like a cheap, petty huckster compared to Obama’s statesman.

The media machine will have to work overtime to dispel this truth and prop up McCain as someone who somehow is a credible presidential candidate.

McCain’s flub about the Surge being responsible for the Anbar Awakening was bad enough, but wait until you hear his exquisitely contorted backpedaling on why he didn’t misspeak–it’s gotta be a prize-winner, for sure.

First of all, a surge is really a counterinsurgency strategy, and it’s made up of a number of components. And this counterinsurgency was initiated to some degree by Colonel McFarland in Anbar province relatively on his own. When I visited with him in December of 2006, he had already initiated that strategy in Ramadi by going in and clearing and holding in certain places. That is a counterinsurgency. And he told me at that time that he believed that that strategy, which is, quote, the surge, part of the surge, would be successful. So then, of course, it was very clear that we needed additional troops in order to carry out this counterinsurgency.

Prior to that, they had been going into places, killing people or not killing people, and then withdrawing. And the new counterinsurgency — surge — entailed clearing and holding, which Colonel McFarland had already started doing. And then of course later on there were additional troops, and General Petraeus has said that the surge would not have worked and the Anbar Awakening would not have taken place successfully if they hadn’t had an increase in the number of troops. So I’m not sure, frankly, that people really understand that a surge is part of a counterinsurgency strategy, which means going in, clearing, holding, building a better life, providing services to the people, and then clearly a part of that, an important part of it, was additional troops to help ensure the safety of the sheikhs, to regain control of Ramadi, which was a very bloody fight, and then the surge continued to succeed, and that counterinsurgency.

Got that? The Surge™ really happened months before we ever heard of it, executed by General McFarland, who confided this secret Surge™ to John McCain personally; the “Surge™” is not a “surge” in the number of soldiers, which is what everyone, including President Bush, has been saying it was, instead it was short for “counterinSURGEncy,” which one can only suppose we WEREN’T doing until late 2006, and it was this special McCain-McFarland McSurge™ which was responsible for everything coming up McRoses™.

If that ain’t the most twisted, frakked-up, sorry-ass excuse for a cover-your-ass rationale to explain off a huge gaffe, then I don’t know what is.

Well, there was McCain just a few days ago claiming that he knew what Maliki and the Iraqis wanted better than Maliki and the Iraqis, and that their repeated statements about endorsing Obama’s withdrawal plan was just confusion as McCain knew what they really wanted, which was what McCain has been pushing for, of course. Silly Iraqis.

There is just so much wrong with McCain’s Surge™ obfuscation that it’s not funny. He claims the surge helped in Anbar, when the counterinsurgency actions he described took place primarily in Baghdad, and claims that the Surge™ was what protected the sheiks who started the Anbar Awakening, though the sheik most responsible for starting the Awakening, Abu Risha, was assassinated at the height of the Surge™ (the Surge™ we all know about, not the surge before the Surge™).

American MSM’s reaction: we’ll have to see, but I am guessing it will be the same old usual “nothing to see here!”

In Japan, a lot of signs are in English, especially for travel. You have almost all traffic signs with English translations at the bottom, and what street signs there are usually have English as well. And virtually every train station sign has English translations, from the signs hanging from the ceiling directing you to different parts of stations, to the signs at each station telling you which station it is. Many train lines even have English versions of the recorded announcements declaring which station you’re at.

One glaring exception to the bilingual rule: signs above ticket vending machines. The signs tell you the price to each station and the name–but in Japanese only. And station names tend to be some of the hardest things to make out in Japanese. Why they never include English, even written in tiny letters, is beyond me. Not that it’s a problem for me–I can read the kanji well enough–but it makes it very hard for tourists and relatively new residents to get the right ticket when going to an unfamiliar place.