This election is going to be decided primarily on the war in Iraq. It seems most Americans are either fed up, angry, or just want the whole mess to go away. It won't go away, it is a mess and all the Republican pundits in the world aren't going to sell this endless civil war. The President, Vice-President, Republican candidates, Congress people, Senators can't sell the endless dead and wounded. They can't even sell it to the military and then they call the soldiers phony. The response to Rush has come from the field

Apparently anyone in the military is above criticism as long as they agree with Rush's brave belief that we should be in Iraq "as long as it takes." And I use the term 'we' loosely, as I believe the closest Rush has ever gotten to combat was watching We Were Soldiers with surround sound.

Please link to this blog because the pictures and captions are very good. What is not being taken into account in this war is the military viewpoint. There are a number of retired generals who have spoken out, many who lead our troops in Iraq. There are large numbers of soldiers serving in Iraq who are speaking out. These are brave, honorable soldiers serving their country, doing the best they can, being labeled as phony. Don't take my word for it, but take theirs.

Enough is enough. Those who want our youth to fight their war should not be labeling those they send as phony (especially when they got a deferment for ingrown hair-really that's what Rush did). We can and must get out of Iraq even if it takes a year. Start somewhere.

67-29 which is a veto sustaining majority in the Senate. President Bush has already declared an intention to veto, with some extremely masterful language:

Today, the Senate passed a State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) reauthorization bill that fails to focus on poor children, and instead creates a new entitlement program for higher income households. In fact, the bill specifically eliminates the requirement that states enroll 95% of children in households under 200% of the federal poverty level.

The President will veto this bill because it directs scarce funding to higher incomes at the expense of poor families.

We encourage Congress to send the President a continuing resolution extending SCHIP so coverage for the children who rely on the program will not be threatened. We should take this time to arrive at a more rational, bipartisan SCHIP reauthorization bill that focuses on children in poor families who don't currently have insurance, rather than raising taxes to cover people who already have private insurance.

When the bill passed the House, it did not do so with enough votes to sustain a veto in that body. I would expect that the Democrats would want to put it up for another vote, just to increase the pressure "for the children." This issue is just too easy to demagogue, they won't give up that opportunity.

On the merits of the bill, I'm with the president completely. If the politicians want to do something to help working class families around health care, how about full tax credits for health care? How about coming up with a comprehensive solution to the portability problem? In my opinion this is all about fixing a problem that largely does not exist for the opportunity to beat your political opponent about the head and neck.

Pass SCHIP as it was last year and move on to a real issue.

Don't look now, but if Congress doesn't reach some sort of an agreement for the next fiscal year's budget, the federal government will run out of money on Oct 1. Although political rhetoric is high, there is little chance of the Democrats going down the Newt Gingrich 1995 path and shutting down the government - primarily because they recognize that Newt's battle with President Bill Clinton was largely seen as a victory for Clinton, making Newt even more demonizable (is that a word?) until his exit from Congress in 1998. So, Democrat leaders are going to propose an interim budget to give them more time to "negotiate" with the White House on spending issues.

The draft resolution, which is still being finalized, is intended to buy as many as six additional weeks for negotiations, though Democrats are pessimistic about their chances of making much progress with Mr. Bush. With the exception of veterans' health care and border-security funds, the White House has signaled little flexibility, and neither House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) nor Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) appears to have much appetite for a protracted fight. "I don't want a headache. I want to try to work this out," Mr. Reid said last week after meeting with White House Budget Director Jim Nussle. At the same time as the standoff over domestic spending, Congress is being asked by Mr. Bush to provide more money to implement his Iraq policy, which the top leaders adamantly oppose.

With President Bush emboldened after his victories in Congress last week, his threats of vetoes are being taken more seriously by the Democrats. The Dems simply don't have enough votes to override any Presidential veto right now, be it on the war or general spending. That's not likely to change over the next six weeks, so look for the Democrats to capitulate on many of the White House's demands in the final budget, especially in matters regarding defense spending and funding the War in Iraq. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi believe, rightly so, that giving in on war spending at this precise moment, having lost all anti-war votes so far this fall session, would be the final straw for much of their far-left base. Hence the postponement of the final budget.

Drudge is reporting that President Bush has gone on the record stating that he believes Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic presidential nomination, but she will lose the general election to a Republican challenger. This comes from an excerpt in the forthcoming book The Evangelical President by Bill Sammon, in which Bush states: "She's got a national presence and this is becoming a national primary...And therefore the person with the national presence, who has got the ability to raise enough money to sustain an effort in a multiplicity of sites, has got a good chance to be nominated."

While it seems a certain that Clinton will win the nomination, the certainty that she would lose is, well, not so certain at this stage of the game. The comments by Bush that a Republican will win the White House are not necessarily echoed by those close to the president. Former adviser Karl Rove feels the race will be too close to call and this sentiment is basically repeated on the record by Vice President Dick Cheney in the following comment: "[The election] could go either way."

The latest numbers on Iraq will give even a hardened economic analyst like Alan Greenspan a panic attack.

The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000a minute, according to the group's analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes. The estimates made by the group, which opposes the conflict, include not only the immediate costs of war but also ongoing factors such as long-term health care for veterans, interest on debt and replacement of military hardware.

This is known as full-cost accounting which is what the IRS does when it says it costs 40 cents a mile to operate a typical car. This is what it is costing to run this war all piled on an already bloated national deficit that is becoming untenable. Like a sub-prime mortgage gone bust, we can't even afford the interest on the national debt. This war, which the leading Republican candidates fully support as a permanent war, coupled with Bush's fiscal insanity, has rendered our country the debtor nation of all time. We're in hock up to and including the White House.

This war, which is decimating the military, leaving tens of thousands of our youth crippled for life has already cost almost a trillion dollars. $720 million a day. What could we be doing?

The money spent on one day of the Iraq war could buy homes for almost 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children, or could outfit 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity

That's just a start. It's a question of priorities and what safety really means. Ask yourself: would we be safer if we had not invaded and occupied Iraq for the past 4.5 years? If we had supported the UN instead of going it alone and invaded would we be spending our treasure and youth today? Perhaps O.J., Britney, and the other celeb trash would be alone in the headlines and we could be building a better country.

It's apparently a slow news day because the wire services are trying to manufacture a controversy:

In a speech defending his administration's Iraq policy, Bush said former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's brutality had made it impossible for a unifying leader to emerge and stop the sectarian violence that has engulfed the Middle Eastern nation.

"I heard somebody say, Where's Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas," Bush, who has a reputation for verbal faux pas, said in a press conference in Washington on Thursday.

So it's not the most artful way to get the point across, but Warner Houston at Newsbusters makes it clear that Bush was using Mandela as a stand in for a generic peacemaker, and not saying anything specific about Mandela himself or his current body temperature.

Could it be any more obvious that Bush is saying that there aren't any Iraqis filling the same sort of role in Iraq that Nelson Mandela filled in South Africa? Could it be any more clear that Bush was saying that Saddam "killed all the Mandelas" of Iraq?

Yes, and Nelson Mandela is dead don't you know, and there must be some WMD oil around here somewhere. I hope President George Bush campaigns with every Republican in the land (who will have him). If you want a real tell on how far the Republican party has fallen watch how far the Presidential and Congressional candidates run from Bush. They may want him for their $2,000/plate chicken dinners because the rich have made out like bandits (literally) under this president. As he once said, he's their president.

He just isn't ours. The president of the war that never needed to happen, the economy that is a house of debt cards, the balloning national debt, the shame of Katrina, the cronyism, the no-bid contracts, the million dollar screws (literally), the most vacations ever, and the worst health care. Yes, please campaign with Rudy, Fred, Newt, and Tom, Dick and Mitt. Go for it or as you would say, bring it on.

The fact that 25% of the voters will continue following him over one cliff after the other does not mean the rest of America has lost its mind. Of course, given the Democrats have been unable to get even the Webb amendment thru the Senate, they may well need 60 seats to end the war.

Please Mr. President, campign often, campaign in every state and let's see how it goes. Maybe you could get bin Laden to campaign with you. At least then you could say you found him.

Karma will get you. When you violate the principles of a political ideology to the degree that the current Republican leadership has and to the degree that it has, it is only a matter of time that the voters will simply start abandoning the party.

According to the Politico, the polling organization Public Opinion Strategies has noticed a huge trend of voters no longer identifying/affiliating with the Republican Party. While the article mentions that the most significant drops in affiliation would be Independents who formerly favored conservative ideals, it also ignores the fact that many former registered Republicans are moving more towards the Independent ticket disenfranchised with the party. While these voters won't cast a pro-Democrat vote, they will simply opt not to vote at all preferring to stay at home in protest with the hopes that in the long run letting the current Republican leadership lose office and somewhere down the road be replaced by a legitimate conservative.

Yes, the Iraq war is a major part of the Republicans losing popularity, but there is more to it.

One of the huge fallacies about political groups in the United States is that all Republicans are conservative and all Democrats are liberals. This is not really an accurate sentiment as there are conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans and moderates in both parties. (And, yes, there are also fringe element radical and reactionary groups within both parties as well.)

What is utterly perplexing about the Republican Party is that it has moved more and more towards a hybrid of the classical Rockefeller Republican (often derided as country club Republicans) and emerging Neo-Conservatives (There are variants to the origin of what a neo-con is, but it is usually a combination of former conservative democrats who drifted to the Republican wing and globalists) yet the base of the Republican Party is primarily classical Reagan and Goldwater conservatives and the base isn't happy with this new crop of Republicans who are heavy on government spending, open borders, globalization, et al. In June, rage and anger from the base over President Bush's pro-amnesty stance led to a revolution of sorts which saw a massive drop in grass roots donations combined and this has now manifested to a multitude of the conservative base moving towards independent status.

This should come as no surprise. Why should conservatives affiliate themselves with a party that is not conservative?

Once again, the Uniters, those comic book hero characters in their own minds, have done it again. They've united the generals against a war with Iran. It seems fairly common now that a general retires and soon after starts speaking out against the Iraq debacle or the pending Iran fiasco. This time it's Gen. John Abizaid who most recently was the Army general who headed Central Command for nearly four years. He said:

The Iranians are aware, he said, that the United States has a far superior military capability. "I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear," he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States. "There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."

He went on to say there is basis for hope in dealing diplomatically with Iran and that Iran recognizes that it cannot compete with the US's arsenal. He took a shot at the White House and reminded his audience that war is only a very last resort. Even while Cheney is trying to goad the Iranians into war, it's becoming clear there is little stomach for yet another war at the Pentagon. There will always be those who fear any other nation who might, possibly, some day in the future, threaten our vaunted superiority but it isn't Iran. Their attempt to build a bomb may well be a self defense mechanism. Our nation has been undercut but not by them or North Korea but by the Uniters.

Our military is hurt and way overextended. They squandered every resource and world opinion is we are allowing ourselves to be led by incompetents. The definition of kakistocracy is : Government by the least able and most unprincipled. That's what we have all right. Thank you General for joining many recent retired military in speaking the truth.

I don't know what to think. On the one hand, Bush AG appointee Michael Mukasey seems to be a stand up guy with a great resume and a solid career in civil service. On the other hand, Charles Schumer likes him. Phil reported earlier that there isn't likely to be much resistance to Mukasey, but conservatives still aren't sure whether they like this or not. On the anti- side we have Calabresi at Time:

But in dropping Olson and going with Mukasey, Bush has opened himself up to attack from the right. Conservatives are worried about Mukasey's 1994 denial of asylum for a Chinese man who said his wife had been forced to have an abortion under that country's one-child law, which they say indicates he's weak on pro-life issues. And though he has consistently ruled with the Administration on a number of important and high-profile terrorism cases, Mukasey broke with them in an early, crucial ruling, saying that American citizen Jose Padilla had a right to a lawyer, no matter what his status in the war on terror. Mukasey is also very close to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whom social conservatives distrust.

On the pro- side we have Peter Wehrner at the Corner:

The number of Iraqis displaced from their homes by the war is now around 4.2 million. More than half of those have fled the country altogether, while the remaining 2 million have left their homes and sought shelter in other parts of Iraq. Overwhelmed by the constant stream of Iraqis crossing the border, Syria (who has taken in 1.2 million people) and Jordan have have effectively refused to accept any more refugees. Still, some 60,000 Iraqis abandon their homes each month. Sweden, a country opposed to the invasion of Iraq, has stepped up to the plate, taking in over 40 percent of the 22,000 Iraqis who came to Europe in 2006. Since 2003, on the other hand, the U.S. has opened its doors to a scant 1,521 Iraqis.

This hasn't been lost on our man in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, who has been firing off angry memos to his bosses in Washington, trying to streamline the process of bringing vulnerable Iraqis to the United States.

In his missive, Crocker said the admission of Iraqi refugees to the United States remains bogged down by "major bottlenecks" resulting from security reviews conducted by the departments of State and Homeland Security. Applicants must wait eight to 10 months from the time they are referred to the U.S. authorities by the U.N. refugee agency before they set foot in the United States, he said.

Why is eight to 10 months too long to wait?

Human rights groups and independent analysts say thousands of desperate Iraqis who have worked alongside Americans now find themselves the targets of insurgents and sectarian militias, prompting many of them to seek residency in the United States or Europe.

The red tape at the Department of Homeland Security seems to be a major culprit in all of this. But so too is the administration's colossal failure to adequately plan for this war. Just one more hard lesson, I suppose.

In case you haven't heard, President Bush announced the nomination of federal judge Michael Mukasey as his next (and hopefully last) attorney general.

Mukasey was appointed by Ronald Reagan, has a rep as a law and order guy and yet the Dems will probably not oppose him. Why? Because they likely suggested him among others to the White House as being acceptable. Highly unlikely the WH is looking for yet another fight with the Senate and looked for a compromise candidate.

How could Mukasey, a strict law and order guy, a right winger in most things, be a compromise candidate? Well, as a judge in the Jose Padilla case he stood up to the Bush's then AG (that would be Alberto Gonzales) and told them they needed to follow the law in prosecuting people. He was apparently suggested by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and since Schumer would be a key senator in the confirmation process, that is the telling clue.

The fact the WH is avoiding a fight over this nomination is telling as well. They really don't have the forces to take on a unified Dem team but fortunately for them, they don't have to. The national Dems keep backing away from the big fights: defunding the war and/or impeachment because they don't have the votes in the Senate. Maybe they're right but some people think they should try. There's still 16 months of this Administration and so far they have reduced America to being something less than a super power, ravaged the military, the treasury, and can't even clean up after a hurricane. They're so incompetent it boggles the mind but at least they've stopped fighting over the AG. Let's hope this one can restore some professionalism at the Justice Department. It's long overdue.

According to this article in the UK Telegraph, and I've heard it said before, President Bush is determined that by the time he leaves office, Iran will not have the capability to make nukes. So far, this has meant ever increasing diplomatic pressure, but is military action necessary?

It appears that the final pieces for a military offensive are falling into place. The French are on board now, thanks to a recent election. Israel bombed a high value target in Syria, which may or may not have been nuclear material, they won't confirm or deny. Syria has links to Iran and North Korea. Iran has been overtly working against us in Iraq. And now rumors are that Rice is on board with the military option:

Now it has emerged that Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution, is prepared to settle her differences with Vice-President Dick Cheney and sanction military action.

Read the article for the rest. It is quite possible that this election cycle the question of Iraq may take a back seat to that of Iran. It's hard to imagine Bush getting support from Americans and Washington DC for an attack, but a significant portion of the 70% of the public who rate him poorly do so because he isn't fighting hard enough.

Wow. Alan Greenspan's memoir is being previewed and George W. does not come out well. Remember, Greenspan is a life long Republican and a revered voice in financial circles. He was optimistic when his friends were elected.

When Bush and Cheney won the 2000 election, Greenspan writes, "I thought we had a golden opportunity to advance the ideals of effective, fiscally conservative government and free markets. . . . I was soon to see my old friends veer off to unexpected directions."

Here's what he's saying now about the Bush administration:

"Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences." The large, anticipated federal budget surpluses that were the basis for Bush's initial $1.35 trillion tax cut "were gone six to nine months after George W. Bush took office." So Bush's goals "were no longer entirely appropriate. He continued to pursue his presidential campaign promises nonetheless."

Smack down and he's only getting warmed up. Tell us how you really feel Alan.

By the end of last year, Greenspan writes with some bitterness, Washington was "harboring a dysfunctional government. ... Governance has become dangerously dysfunctional."

This from Alan Greenspan, never considered a radical. He worked with whoever was in office. He apparently appreciated Bill Clinton's ability to digest facts and face economic reality but pretty much says President Bush is the worst president ever. Now, I'm no Greenspan fan myself but we have found something to agree on here. The national debt has escalated faster than Republicans can send more brigades to the endless war. History will not be kind to this reckless cowboy and Greenspan is probably just the start. Worst President Ever, not the heroic cardboard cutout the Pretender sports.

Ted Olson has had an outstanding careers as a lawyer, Solicitor General of the United States and other positions in which he has helped the conservative cause. That would be exactly why the Democrats fear him.

Olson is expected to be the nominee for the vacant Attorney General position last held by the politically inept Alberto Gonzalez. He would be an excellent candidate for that position as he has played the political game before and would not be stupid enough to be taken down by the Democrats for something that should not even have been considered a scandal in the first place.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has promised a fight and it appears the GOP may just find a backbone on this one and fight for a good nominee.

Olson is hated by the Clintons as his late wife wrote a scathing book about Hillary -- "Hell to Pay" -- that was among the best of that genre. She also wrote of the last days of the Clinton administration and was merciless as well. Then, while traveling to L.A to appear on Bill Maher's show, she was killed as four terrorists slammed the plane she was on -- Flight 77 -- into the Pentagon.

Imagine if a Democratic president nominated a highly-qualified candidate for a position who has lost his wife in a terror attack. Imagine the fawning media coverage that candidate would receive. There's no way a Republican-led legislative body would vote against that candidate because the media would destroy them. Unfortunately for Mr. Olson, he's a Republican so he'll receive no mercy from Senator Harry Reid or the media.