From the AP (via Yahoo News):

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama ridiculed Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday for saying Britain’s decision to pull troops from Iraq is a good sign that fits with the strategy for stabilizing the country.

….

“Now, keep in mind, this is the same guy that said we’d be greeted as liberators, the same guy that said that we’re in the last throes. I’m sure he forecast sun today,” Obama said to laughter from supporters holding campaign signs over their heads to keep dry. “When Dick Cheney says it’s a good thing, you know that you’ve probably got some big problems.”

Later in the same story:

While in Texas, Obama raised money in Houston Thursday night, where he said he’d like to see an end to the “tit-for-tat” that dominates politics.

This is what happens when a person gets used to not being held accountable for what he says. He’ll say anything, and then say or do the opposite the very next day, with no sense of irony.

That’s how other Democrats can vote for the war in Iraq, then rail against it as a lie and a waste for 4 years, all while saying they “support the troops.”

As for Vice President Cheney’s prior statements on the war, we’d rather express hope for victory and be overly optimistic than be hoping for defeat.

Once again, Mark Steyn gets to the bottom line perfectly:

To the Slow-Bleed Democrats, it’s the Republicans’ war. To an increasing number of what my radio pal Hugh Hewitt calls the White-Flag Republicans, it’s Bush’s war. To everyone else on the planet, it’s America’s war. And it will be America’s defeat.

A defeat in Iraq, which the Democrats in Congress are working to guarantee (whether they’re hoping for a defeat or not is irrelevant. What they do is what matters, not how they feel.) will not be a defeat just for the Bush Administration, it will be a defeat for our nation. As much as they may wish to, the Democrats cannot split the two. All those who don’t get that are wholly unqualified to be in any public office.

If the Democrats took the war and its consequences seriously, then they would stop the partisan games (and save the canard that a few Republican defections make the games “bipartisan”. A handful of exceptions don’t disprove the rule. These non-binding resolutions are political stunts – about political gain, not American gain.) and hold a real vote on whether to end the war by cutting off the funding for it. They have the power to do so. They refuse to use that power. This fact alone proves they aren’t serious.

More:
Hugh Hewitt

Check out this ABC news video about the Iraq-al Qaeda connection, from 1999. [For the slow learners, that was before George W. Bush was president.]

Yeah, but it was all a fraud “made up in Texas” by Bu$hCo and his oil buddies.

It would be bad enough if this “Bush lied” garbage was only coming from the crazed nutroots bloggers and communist front group “anti-war” protesters. But it’s coming from the leadership of the Democratic Party – Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Howard Dean, etc.

These are people who know very well what they’re saying is untrue. And then they have the audacity, after slandering their own country for 4 years, to complain that the reputation of the United States in the “international community” has suffered.

There was a bipartisan consensus, going back to the 1990s, that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terrorism, had and/or was actively pursuing weapons of mass destruction, and was a strategic threat to the United States and the region. The notion that President Bush made it all up and “lied us into war” is absolutely absurd. And the Democratic leadership knows it. So it is they who are deliberately misleading the American people.

A few quick reactions to Barack Obama’s appearance on 60 Minutes:

We wondered if Obama has ever had any second thoughts about his boilerplate left-wing beliefs when he drives through a decaying, crime-ridden government housing project as he did with Steve Kroft in his appearance on 60 Minutes last night.

Thee was no evidence last night that he had. There has been no evidence in his calls for “universal health care” (socialized medicine), more federal funding for failing government schools, etc. For those on the left, too often it’s only their good intentions that matter, not the (often devastating) results.

At one point, Mrs. Obama said (in response to a question from Kroft about fears of potential violence as her husband runs for president), “…the realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station…”

Why the reference to race there? Is a well off Harvard graduate U.S. Senator, who no doubt lives in a nice neighborhood, yet who happens to be black, at much greater risk of being shot at a gas station than the average American? It seemed an odd place to make that reference.

We hope the country has enough maturity to deal with Obama’s frank revelations of his experimentation with drugs when he was a young man. We found his frankness about it and his refusal to run away from it with any “I didn’t inhale” type spin very refreshing:

In his book, he wrote that when he was in high school and in college he smoked marijuana and inhaled. He also wrote that he did a little “blow”"”as he put it””when he could afford it.

Asked to explain why he did that, Obama says, “Well, you know, I think it was typical of a teenager who was confused about who he was and what his place in the world was, and thought that experimenting with drugs was a way to rebel. It’s not something that I’m proud of.”

But the senator says he does not regret being so candid. “You know, I don’t. I mean, I think one of the things about national politics is this attempt to airbrush your life. And it’s exhausting, right, you know. ‘This is who I am. This is where I’ve come from.’ And you know, if we have problems in this campaign, I suspect it’s not gonna be because of mistakes I’ve made in the past. I think it’s gonna be mistakes that I make in the future,” he tells Kroft.

Kroft opened with a general description of Obama’s positions:

He is a left-of-center Democrat who favors abortion rights, universal healthcare and wants to roll back tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

…i.e. a lockstep left-wing Democrat.

He is the only major presidential candidate who opposed the Iraq war before it began and wants to withdraw most U.S. troops by March 2008. He would redeploy some of them to Afghanistan, keep others in the region to protect strategic U.S. interests.

Why we should get in the middle of the “civil war” in Afghanistan and fight al Qaeda there, but not in Iraq, he doesn’t say. This seems to be the typical posturing from Democrats who want to avoid the appearance of across the board opposition to military action.

Via Drudge, Senator Barack Obama reportedly says in an interview with CBS 60 Minutes:

…if you look African American in this society, you’re treated as an African-American.

Which apparently means you go to Harvard, get a law degree, win election to the U.S. Senate in a landslide, and receive a huge wave of enthusiastic and fawning press coverage at the mere hint you might run for president. (Obama announced today that he is running.)

On the plus side, Obama, at least at this point, seems willing to reject the politics of knee-jerk racial victimhood that is unfortunately so prevalent on the left today:

Will being African-American hold him back as a candidate? “No…. If I don’t win this race it will be because of other factors –[that] I have not shown to the American people a vision for where the country needs to go that they can embrace,” Obama tells Kroft.

Of course being black isn’t holding him back, it’s propelling him. A white candidate with Obama’s resume clearly would not be receiving the media buzz he’s getting now. Obama is no doubt a smart, accomplished, charismatic man (don’t dare call him “articulate”), but there’s also no doubt he’s getting a few bonus points because of the color of his skin – a bit of unofficial affirmative action, if you will.

In one respect this is a great thing. It is a huge national repudiation of the Jesse Jackson-Al Sharpton notion (shared by much of the Democratic Party/left) that America is awash in racism. A nation awash in racism would not be expressing enthusiasm for Barack Obama, to say the least.

Senator Obama, who is a boilerplate liberal on the issues, has so far offered nothing but vague talk about “coming together” and so forth, and not much in the way of substance. We hope the country does not embrace that from any candidate.

So, we cannot exactly wish Senator Obama good luck, because we don’t want a liberal Democrat to be president. But if he maintains the high road in his campaign, avoiding the usual race-mongering politics of the Democrats, he will have done his country a service, even if he doesn’t win the presidency. On that point we wish him the best.

More:
Memorandum
The Washington Post

From Meet the Press today, the comprehensive John Edwards plan to fix Medicare and Social Security:

Well, here’s, here’s what I think we’re going to have to do, actually, in both cases. This is such a hot political issue that it will require serious””this is the one area where it will require really serious bipartisan effort to get anything done. You know, this has been approached and approached and approached in the past. But I do have””and, and so what I would do is, let me first say what I would do as president of the United States, I would bring together leaders on both sides and experts and put””try to put together something that would work on both Social Security and, and Medicare.

“…bring together leaders…” and “…try to put together something that would work…” Brilliant! Why didn’t anyone else think of that – let’s try something that works! Evidently he’ll fill us in on all the fine details after the inauguration. How vapid can a candidate be? Is this really the best the Democrats can offer the country? Apparently so.