By Mike DeVine

As I get up off my knees from thanking Nature’s God for our first and latest Treasury Secretaries, I see the current state of economic affairs in dimes not spared, gardens not grown and three non-filing stations near my Carolina home.

I ran out of gas today when none of the three closest stations to my home were selling any. But I didn’t run out of food despite the fact I don’t grow it and no brother asked me if I could spare a dime.

1929 it ain’t, and, despite our problems, it won’t be, unless We the People commit historical mass suicide and turn the Indispensable Nation’s affairs over to Nancy, Harry and Barack’s 21^st Century version of Herbert Hoover.

Given that Obama and Pelosi have not learned the lesson of the Quaker State’s first oil well and our delivery from riding Donkeys, it should not surprise us they from the party of that stubborn like a mule donkey, have also failed to learn the lessons of Hoover, for they want to repeat his post-1929 crash trade tariffs and tax hikes.

The Hoovercrats blame the current financial crisis on a lack of regulation, despite the fact that it was Clinton Era regulations that directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to guarantee mortgage loans to credit risky borrowers in the name of fighting supposed “institutional white racism.” So the loans flowed, egged on by an overabundance of non-salaried realtors and loan officers whose universe of potential customers were mostly credit challenged. The Hoovercrats now label the fruits of their regulations, “predatory lending” and were successful in enacting a major bailout of ARM mortgagees a few months ago.

For their part, McCain-Palin are out there blaming the Housing/Credit Crunch driven financial market crisis on “corruption on Wall Street.” This is too simplistic an explanation and too shallow a justification for “more regulation”.

While I would denounce Michael Douglas’s “greed is good” declaration in the movie Wall Street, greed is, and always has been since Eve bit the apple. And our system has been and is the best at channeling same for good and mitigating the bad as has ever existed.

The fact is that no amount of regulation can prevent speculative bubbles in a free society. And the alternative to a free society is the biggest bubble of all: tyranny and its attendant deprivation that makes one long for our relatively puny bubbles.

This is a basic lesson from that early Babylonian garden: without free choice, there can be no real prosperity. The Founders understood that for wealth to be created, people would have to risk failure, with the prize for success being to get to keep the fruits of one’s labor.

After man left gardens and started hiring them out to Winn Dixies, it became necessary for government to grow, so the argument of big vs. small government is moot. The issue is how big and whether governed by basic principles or moral hazard.

Clearly, Fannie and Freddie guaranteed too large a percentage of mortgage loans and their failure, combined with other factors including a weak dollar and high energy prices, has caused a crisis that we remain in the midst of. But I am confident that President Bush’s genius at Treasury, Henry Paulson, who lately has eschewed Sunday rest, based on Christ’s adage that the Sabbath was made for man, and not vice versa, to do the yeoman’s work of adjusting the Hamilton edifice for a changing world.

But one thing has not changed, as evidenced by the recent spectacular rise in the dollar: The United States is THE indispensable nation. The world can’t thrive without selling their wares here and investing their money here. The rise in the dollar started soon after Putin over-reached in Georgia. A dying mafia nation flush with lottery oil money counted on western euro weenies to counsel their eastern neighbors on surrender. But Bush put the US military on land and sea in Russia’s path to Tbilisi while the former slave states flew their Presidents to the Caucasus to give Putin the middle finger.

Russia’s stock market crashed. But they have Ossetia and the North Pole.

The world is voting with their money on America, while the Hoovercrats want to take money from Americans while denying them their own oil on the hope for a wind driven alchemy even Merlin the Magician couldn't conjure.

President Bush twice tried to get Congress to limit Fannie and Freddie. Pelosi refused.

John McCain tried to do the same. John McCain wants to drill offshore. Obama does not. McCain wants you and the businesses you work for and shop at to keep more of the fruits of their labor. Obama wants to raise taxes.

One day, the USA will fall. Greece and Rome fell. Eventually we will fall, and eventually I will die. But I’m not throwing my body in front of a semi to hasten the day.

For the world, we are too big to fail, but for Obama, despite the role of non-accountability in the current crisis, wants to sell the idea that the government should ensure no one can fall. The last great such experiment ended with a wall falling near where his campaign began its descent in Berlin. For Pelosi and Obama, the government is still too small to satisfy their gargantuan egos. But they are blind to America’s greatness, greatness too big to indulge their historical ignorance.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." - The Chief Justice

Race 4 2008

"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson

By Mike DeVine (with voluminous excerpts from StephC of Hillbilly politics)

In the aftermath of the failures of hope, change, messiah impersonations and lipstick on pigs, the Obama campaign has decided to re-cast The One as The Gipper by asking America this question :

“Are you better off now than you were four or eight years ago?”

Before venturing into StephC’s (aka hillbilly) cornucopia of wisdom (in blockquotes below) that re-frames the better question of When did we stop being better off?, let’s look at the domestic and foreign political landscape of 1980 when Ronaldus Magnus first posed his four-year question to the incumbent president.

The Democratic Party had held congress for the previous 16 years and the White House for the previous four. This is key, so remember it.

The Congress had abandoned the anti-communist South Vietnamese army while they were winning the war an almost impeached republican president had turned around before resigning over an unauthorized third rate burglary he covered up. President Carter turned loose the Islamic and Communist, dawgs from Hell in Tehran and Afghanistan, respectively, with his recitations of our “inordinate fear of communism” and the Ayatollah Khomeini was “a religious man I can work with” as he abandoned the Shah. Soviet tanks rolled unencumbered by any fear they would be checked by any action save for less RSVPs for track meets.

A new economic statistic called the “misery index” had to be invented to fully translate what is still the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. Interest rates and inflation were mean 20% while unemployment neared 105. And Joe Biden was around to support moratoriums and/or regulations that have prevented the building of any new nuclear power or oil refinery plants and which have prevented the expansion of areas available for oil/natural gas on US soil of offshore since 1978.

Since Obama was only 12-15 years old when Democrats committed the above crimes against the United States, he is able to commune with them in good conscious.

Fast forward to present day (post defeat of the USSR by Republicans and a few Dem boll weevils in the Cold War) America and its near full employment and low interest rates; a decimated al Qaeda with terrorists fleeing defeat in a post three elections Iraq; and Roberts and Alito on a Supreme Court one vote shy of ending the slaughter of small human beings in the millions.

Eight years ago, faced with a tech bubble hangover from the Clinton years, President Bush and a Republican Congress passed tax rate cuts that nipped that recession in the bud and prevented one following the attacks of September 11th. After suffering multiple terrorist attacks in the 1990s, there has been no successful terrorist attack on American soil since that fateful day seven years ago.

No thanks to Democrats in Congress, including Obama and Biden. And even Hillary voted against funds for the troops and called General Petraeus a liar. Remember that “liar” word, for it weighs heavy on the ways in which hillbilly Steph describes when we stated to be worse off.

And while Democrats can claim no credit for the economic prosperity of this decade that has overall and minority homeownership still at record levels nor for the success of the surge that has overall victory in Iraq in sight, they sure do own most of the blame for our problems that have so many worse off.

Democrats who stopped expanded oil drilling/nuclear-oil refinery plant construction from 1980-2000 via Speakers Tip O’Neil and Jim Wright and President Clinton, have defeated all of President Bush’s attempts to revive same staring in 2001 thanks to Senate Majority Leader Daschle, Minority Leader Reid via filibusters, and Speaker Pelosi, the later despite extreme suffering by low-income families and all businesses that threatens the health of our economy.

It is Democrat created Maes (Fannie and Freddie) that are crumbling under the rubble of a credit/housing crunch partially caused by Democrat legislation and liberal court decisions that make lenders fear lawsuits for race discrimination if they don’t lend to credit challenged borrowers. So, even before Hurricanes Katrina and Ike devastated the Gulf, Hurricane Jack A*s kicked America in the teeth. In 2004, America rejected Tornado Kerry that spun off the Jack A*s. I will let StephC pick things up from there re:

1) Bushlied

In October of 2004, just a month before the elections, here came the meme, “Bush Lied, People Died.” If he did, so did Clinton and every member of Congress who stood for the war in Iraq but we’re not supposed to remember that. Kerry was getting stomped during the campaigning in spite of women drooling over him. They had to do something and this something was the precursor to the nation not being better off.

With yet another contested election to face, the Democrats also said they don’t recognize Bush as president. They continued the mantra of “Bush Lied, People Died” yet in spite of all the calls to impeach both Bush and Cheney, that’s all the Democrats had because they were the minority in Congress. In 2005, they ramped up the rhetoric against Bush and threw Cheney in as well and along came Katrina which created the perfect storm against Bush and Cheney.

2) Katrina

We all took an economic hit from Katrina. Gas prices soared because of the damage to wells in the Gulf, which had the domino effect of prices for everything going up. Money was tighter and we were still in the long war so the “Bush Lied, People Died” mantra worked in this gloomy scenario aided by the disaster that was Katrina. This couldn’t be helped and by the time prices were at pre-Katrina levels, it was too late.

Another by-product of Katrina was a greater amount of illegal immigration as they saw an opportunity to make loads of money and came in droves to fill up labor and construction jobs on the Gulf. Illegal immigration has always been something of a problem, even more so after 9/11, but Katrina was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.

We couldn’t absorb them into other jobs and the economic hit from having to deal with them on top of everything else just added to the Democrats’ gleeful meme of doom and gloom, although at the time the illegal aliens weren’t identified publicly as a big problem. I know this because my husband, being in construction was discussing with his boss whether they would be sending anyone to the Gulf to help with clean up when suddenly they were all told, they weren’t needed because crews were coming from Mexico. They came to make some quick money, but then, they stayed.

3) Democrats control Congress for last two years

The Democrats win Congress with their memes and that’s the turning point towards South. In the early months we didn’t see a lot of difference except for the fight against wholesale amnesty for untold numbers of illegal aliens. But then, Al Gore won an Oscar for his Global Warming scam which has profited him and anyone in it the scam with him but no one else. States raised taxes and the only real legislation that Congress has done in the last almost two full years, now, is mandates for ethanol and a host of other environmental indignities that have done nothing but take money out of our pockets because the price of basic foods went through the roof at an enormous pace. In addition, global demand for oil has risen as China has entered the global economy as a major player. So, gas prices go up as ever slave to the law of supply and demand.

While global warming mandates had already brought about a price increase in basic foodstuffs, also tied to the law of supply and demand, the increase in fuel prices made a bad situation worse. By the way, they still haven’t impeached Bush and Cheney and there’s a good reason why. It might make a good campaign slogan but there’s not much meat in it and that’s all they have. Impeachment hearings would bring out the fact that they all saw the same intelligence that Bush had and also the fact that 4 of the 5 components which Saddam was accused of possessing were found. Instead of wondering where the 5th component went to, it was more politically expedient to say Bush lied.

Oh, and gasoline isn’t the only thing that comes from a barrel of oil. Nor diesel. Something we take for granted every day comes from those barrels of oil: plastics. Everything we use on a daily basis has some plastic parts attached to it: home and cell phones, household appliances, computers, the knobs on your kitchen stove, and more. Some fabrics are made with nylon, a byproduct of oil as well. Vaseline is called petroleum jelly in its generic name… key word: petroleum. Some cosmetics are made using petroleum jelly as the base. And more. In short, there is no such creature as oil independence. There’s nothing to replace it in all its forms.

And Congress’ more open government? Well, since the Democratic majority, Congress has attempted to slip through all sorts of legislation without informing the public about what they’re doing and have subjected the other side of the aisle to indignities of all kinds, yet, complain about partisanship. Earmarks that were considered out of control before are now the norm. Between entitlements and earmarks we’re bankrupting the country and that’s a fact. And the Democrats promise more of the same. I read somewhere or heard somewhere that for every dollar put in for subsidized health care only 4 cents of it is actually spent on the health care.

That’s something for you proponents of government universal healthcare to think about. It may be expensive now but the government is going to give you only 4% of what you pay in. You may well find entire paychecks swallowed into universal healthcare at which point many will wonder why they work at all.

So, our government has thrown us into the global warming scam which has trapped us financially and ramped up earmarks, besides. They have passed legislation to bail out banks and mortgage companies who made bad business decisions. Case in point, Bank of America, which decided sometime early last year they were going to extend credit to illegal aliens. Those illegal aliens don’t have the same obligations that ordinary citizens do and just walked away from those obligations and left the rest of us to foot the bill. But Congress has the answer!!! Bail them out and let one of the bailees write the legislation.

So, Barack, you may try and jip the Gip, but I doubt you will be heard above the dins of your 20-year pew-parked in a Hate Whitey America Church while living in a house bought with funds from Saddam’s regime via Chicago Way Felon Rezko and a political career launched with Chicago Way Felon Unrepentant Terrorist Ayers.

You and Biden are part and parcel of the reasons we started to get worse off with your bushlied, terrorists rights bills that seek to handcuff the Commander in Chief in intelligence gathering and opposition to victory in Iraq.

I suspect that your impersonation of Reagan will fall as flat as your Jesus mime. But I know one or two characters that you could successfully mimic:

George McGovern and Michael Dukakis.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." - The Chief Justice Race 4 2008 "One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson

The media focuses on horse races between men while the Earth turns. Some major events have occurred on the third stone from the Sun and significant dawgs haven’t barked within the din of mostly insignificant barking by McCain, Obama and Biden.

Russian forces occupy a small portion of former USSR slave state, Georgia. For the first days and weeks after Russia’s invasion, the media was filled with voices of doom that the US was powerless to prevent Russia from taking Georgia, Ukraine and even Poland. (Reminds me of a middle school bully bragging about smacking a wheelchair bound classmate in the boy’s room.) They focused on Putin’s smile in China, flight to “the front” as Bush’s beach volleyball party continued and years’ old soul peering stories.

Weeks later, Georgia exists. American military planes occupy Tbilisi with guns and butter ala Berlin airlift, but it is the presence of their bodies and the flag on their uniforms that keeps the bear (see cub circa 2008) at bay.

Ukraine, Poland and the rest of Free World New Europe (Rummy was right) have openly defied Russia with Poland allied with America on Star Wars. Thank you Gipper.

Iran endures riots and demonstrations in the street as MembersOnlyJacket-ijad has been forced to buy Great Satan brand wheat. They still breadlessly occupy Tehran and Qum, but no part of the Free World, including its newest member: Iraq.

The Olympics have ended with the USA the medal winner leader. The Big Question: How long will it take the thousands of homeless Chinese driven from their homes for aesthetic reasons to be re-located to their ramshackle lean-tos that look so spectacular to Obamas on NBC.

Ah, the luxury of obsessing on the utterances of a one-disciple chosen at 3am Messiah in a nation devoid of terrorist attacks from a still-free UBL (is dead free?) in a dangerous world.

Thank you President George W. Bush.

A President that liberated Iraq and saved Tbilisi and New Europe without firing a shot while rubbing sun tan oil on the back of a gold medal holding beach volleyball babe.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." - The Chief Justice Race 4 2008 "One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson

The crisis can't wait till Inauguration Day, 2009. America is not a TV show whose plot hinges on what camera angle CNN decides to use to make McCain look old and short and Obama look like he has a clue.

Americans are hurting and the fact that we haven't had two consecutive quarters and can shout "Recession!" to the rooftops, ain't filling the tank for a trip to Myrtle Beach or leaving enough dough after a trip to the Exxon Station to buy the Leseur peas instead of the Kroger brand. Grandma in Rome, GA still misses seeing the grand kids in Atlanta most weekends since she lives more than a few blocks away.

Democrats speak of windmills as Rome burns.

Millions of Americans are in pain. America faces a crisis that the Democrat party has manufactured for the sake of Green money as surely as Judas betrayed Christ for the silver variety.

As JKF said in from the Oval Office as Blacks were being bloodied on bridges and hosed down in cities bridges led to, the issue is essentially a moral one, as old as the scriptures. I wish, as FDR admonished in much, much worse times, that all we had to fear was fear itself, but unlike the Republicans of the 1930's, the national Democratic Party of the 21st century naughts is morally and intellectually bankrupt.

Yes, rational Americans should fear the let them eat cake Democrats in Washington.

President Bush, you and your GOP congressmen should have called out these vile people for their unpatriotic, enemy emboldening speech that caused more Americans to be killed before the surge in Iraq. You all should have called them out and shamed them live on Hannity & Colmes.

Now you can redeem yourself.

President Bush, we have a crisis. Americans are hurting. You know that if Congress passed laws unleashing the free market in oil, refineries and nuclear plants, that the price would fall and non-college educated men and women would find great paying jobs in abundance.

For God's sakes, we are the United States of America. Quaker State was discovered here. Panama Canal. Model T's are USA. I-85 from Nawlins thru Atlanta and on to I-95 weren't scrubbed because it couldn't be finished in 24 hours. Sargent York saved France. Patton saved Italy. MacArthur saved South Korea. Man on Moon. Berlin wall fall.

Get on the tube Mr. President. An economic 911 is destroying the American dream for people without limousines, today!

You rose to the occasion to defeat the enemy that attacked us on 911. They are now reduced to bootleg doctored videos twice a year. Bob Woodward's book shows that you immediately identified the enemy and that it was war only minutes after the 911 attacks.

Mr. President, you know who the enemy is now. You have pleaded for more oil drilling since you took office in 2001. Your "New Tone" has not tamed the savage Donkey beast. Yes, by all means, please revere the office you occupy.

But sir, the Democrats are causing Americans to lose their non-Oval Offices.

Sir, call them out. They are waging war on the poor and middle class and small business, and ultimately the economic vitality of this country and they have, are and can do serious damage before you leave office.

Mr. President, please be that One man with courage that makes a majority. The majority is waiting.

ACT! Damn the tone. The kids need to hear Grandma's tones in Rome.

And fellow Republicans, there is nothing wrong with couching the argument as a plea to help the lower and middle income families. We are not compromising principle and policies or pandering by stating the fact that conservative free market capitalism is good for America, especially including middle America and the poor. In fact, we should and must if we want to translate the fact of a country that is center right to have a government that is center-right.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." - The Chief Justice Race 4 2008 "One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report

DNA is no more a magic bullet for clearing or convicting criminal defendants and suspects than were the ancient practices of seeing if a suspect could survive poisoning of being thrown in a lake tied to a rock.

And neither gamecock nor Mike DeVine, esq. needs assistance from any CockStradamus to forecast that we will soon discover that convicts paroled due to DNA evidence were actually guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted.

This rooster crows the above in the wake of Boulder County (CO) District Attorney Mary Lacy's public "clearing" of the parents of murdered 6-year old beauty queen, JonBente Ramsey in 1996, "citing new DNA tests."

Ever heard of the axiom that one cannot prove a negative?

Hope so.

Some facts:

a) Murder suspects have been cleared by prosecutors since time immemorial (most of which was before DNA became more than merely three letters of the alphabet;

b) Ramsey's parents could have and should have been "cleared" years ago due to a lack of evidence of guilt and the "new" DNA tests that purport to identify same male DNA in different locations no more clear the parents than all the first drop of blood of an unknown male found at the beginning of the investigation;

c) One can murder without leaving DNA;

d) One's DNA can be all over God's creation and the corpus delicti and be innocent of murder and worthy of a prosecutor's public "clearing" eleven years earlier; and

e) Prosecutors are human beings and, often times politicians, that love to be able to avoid any actual professional responsibility and judgment they are paid for when they can hang their hat on a "magic" test (enter DNA).

It is a disgrace that the parents have been hung out to dry this long. No one knows who killed the child and no one knows the parents didn't.

What we do know is that a Colorado prosecutor has perpetuated the myth that district attorneys, law enforcement, juries and parole boards need not think when DNA "evidence" or the lack of same, is involved.

Early in the investigation, police found male DNA in a drop of blood on JonBenet's underwear and determined it was not from anyone in her family. Investigators were unable to say who it came from and whether that person was the killer.

In 2003, the Ramseys got a major boost when a federal judge handling a defamation lawsuit involving the couple said the evidence was more consistent with the theory that an intruder killed JonBenet.

Three years later, only months after Patsy Ramsey died, the case seemed to veer into absurdity when John Mark Karr, an American teacher in Thailand, offered a bizarre confession to the slaying.

He was whisked from to Colorado but was released after prosecutors concluded he couldn't have killed her, and once again there was no prime suspect.

Then, late last year, prosecutors turned over long underwear JonBenet was wearing to the Bode Technology Group near Washington, which looked for "touch DNA," contained in skin cells left behind where someone has touched something. The lab has used this technology for at least three years.

The laboratory found previously undiscovered genetic material on the sides of the girl's long underwear, where an attacker would have grasped the clothing to pull it down, authorities said. The DNA matched the genetic material found earlier.

District Attorney Mary Lacy said the presence of the same male DNA in three places on the girl's clothing convinced investigators it belonged to JonBenet's killer and had not been left accidentally by an innocent party.

"It is therefore the position of the Boulder District Attorney's Office that this profile belongs to the perpetrator of the homicide," she said in a statement Wednesday. In a letter to the Ramseys, she said the DNA evidence "has vindicated your family."

I hate to break it to the do-gooders for whom no one is guilty 'cept society and the lock-em up and throw away the key-ers that think all those arrested are guilty (of something anyways) , that God has not returned to Earth as DNA evidence.

That someone's DNA is found in a particular incriminating place or not found, is not a sine qua non of proof beyond a reasonable doubt nor its anti-thesis.

Man cannot escape the fact that the DNA glass can only be seen thru a glass darkly just like those non-DNA glasses the Apostle Paul spoke of.

Lawyer Lacy, given the atrocious treatment the Ramseys were afforded by your office for eleven years, you were right to make a public clearing. You were wrong to pretend that their atrocious treatment was the fault of your predecessors' lack of spine and professional responsibility and you were wrong to pretend that this new DNA evidence absolves the Ramseys and your office.

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report

Victory in Iraq is ours (see July 13 below), and, as predicted by Cockstradamus weeks ago, the victory will be declared before the November election.

Rooster crowing from from June 22

Accelerated troop level reductions will be announced based on success. For many moons now, this announcer of dawns has been nagged by an idea that dawned on me after Iraq’s security forces started winning battles on their own against Sunni-backed al Qaeda, Shia militias and even Iranian backed militias. We may be able to declare victory in Iraq very soon and announce accelerated withdrawals of victorious troops whose services are no longer required due to their success. I have always maintained that, while I want to maintain a major presence in Iraq, much like we did in Europe and the Pacific after WWII and Korea, it is vitally important that at some point there be an acknowledgement that we have won the Battle of Iraq and that any withdrawals be due to and seen as a result of our victory over the al Qaeda, radical terrorists, and Iran. In discussions with people that didn’t favor the war but who now want the USA to win, I found myself thinking to myself that my mantra of opposing troop reductions could and should soon yield to the most important mantra: victory.

News report from July 13

The Bush administration is considering the withdrawal of additional combat forces from Iraq beginning in September, according to administration and military officials, raising the prospect of a far more ambitious plan than expected only months ago. Such a withdrawal would be a striking reversal from the nadir of the war in 2006 and 2007… Even as the two candidates argue over the wisdom of the war and keeping American troops there, security in Iraq has improved vastly, as has the confidence of Iraq’s government and military and police, raising the prospect of additional reductions that were barely conceivable a year ago. While officials caution that the relative calm is fragile, violence and attacks on American-led forces have dropped to the lowest levels since early 2004. “As the Iraqi security forces get stronger and get better, then we will be able to continue drawing down our troops in the future,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in Fort Lewis, Washington State, on Tuesday. “And I think that this transition of control and of responsibility, primary responsibility for security is a process that’s already well under way and based on everything that I’m hearing will be able to continue.” General David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, has already begun the review of security and troop levels. He and Bush promised in April that such a review would take place. Petraeus is expected to be more cautious than some policy makers in the administration and at the Pentagon might like. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were discussing military planning, said he was more likely to recommend a smaller reduction, but still a withdrawal. One senior administration official cautioned that the president, who will have the final say, would be reluctant to endorse deep or rapid reductions if they jeopardized his goal of establishing a stable and democratic government in Baghdad.

When I wrote my June 22 forecast, questions were raised as to who, in the Presidential and congressional campaigns, would be helped. On June 22, I wrote:

the long list of accomplishments that lead inevitably to my pre-Election Day 2008 expectations: 1. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sent the Iraqi army into Basra. It achieved in a few weeks what the British had failed to do in four years: take the city, drive out the Mahdi Army and seize the ports from Iranian-backed militias. 2. When Mahdi fighters rose up in support of their Basra brethren, the Iraqi army at Maliki’s direction confronted them and prevailed in every town — Najaf, Karbala, Hilla, Kut, Nasiriyah and Diwaniyah — from Basra to Baghdad. 3. Without any American ground forces, the Iraqi army entered and occupied Sadr City, the Mahdi Army stronghold. 4. Maliki flew to Mosul, directing a joint Iraqi-U.S. offensive against the last redoubt of al-Qaeda, which had already been driven out of Anbar, Baghdad and Diyala provinces. 5. The Iraqi parliament enacted a de-Baathification law, a major Democratic benchmark for political reconciliation. 6. Parliament also passed the other reconciliation benchmarks — a pension law, an amnesty law, and a provincial elections and powers law. Oil revenue is being distributed to the provinces through the annual budget. 7. With Maliki having demonstrated that he would fight not just Sunni insurgents (e.g., in Mosul) but Shiite militias (e.g., the Mahdi Army), the Sunni parliamentary bloc began negotiations to join the Shiite-led government. (The final sticking point is a squabble over a sixth cabinet position.)

My June 22 article also cites a Frank Rich column that evidences fears on the left that America will be seen as having won the Iraq War before November, yet many conservative nervous nellies still ponder that victory could hurt John McCain.

Poppycock.

When I say that “we” have won the war, I mean the United States of America, but it is the left and most of the Democratic Party that has called this Bushlied’s War. They opposed funding when they were in the minority during the stay the course years that won the trust of the Iraqis as well as the surge McCain had long called for that tipped the balance.

Obama brags that he opposed the war while in Kindergarten, I mean the Iliinois State Legislature and has opposed troop funding. The words “win” or “success” in Iraq never cross his lips.

Take heart my friends, not only will America benefit from victory, but so will those that worked to acheive it, and that is Joe Lieberman, President Bush, John McCain and most all Republicans sans Chuck Hagel.