Combat Deaths in Iraq Decline; MSM Says Reasons Aren’t Clear

I saw this one linked earlier, elsewhere, but when I went back for it, couldn’t find it. McQ did and posted his extended comments. Worthwhile.

But the real reason the “reasons aren’t clear” is what the MSM doesn’t dare say: Mr. Bush is doing his job, as are the military under him. The plans as laid out are working correctly. Our military actions have proved to be far more successful than the left and the mainstream media (a redundancy, granted ) is willing to admit; it doesn’t fit with their narration.

Put another way; the old adage of the best defense being a superior offense, holds true in wartime, as well.  There again, something the left dare not admit.

We’ve been told forever, that the economy was going to be total trash.  And of course it was all W’s fault.  Of course, we see exactly the opposite happening.  The economy has never been in better shape.  This, in spite of all of the “expert” predictions about what was going to happen with an economy.

Notice in the link to article, that the experts are surprised that the death rate in Iraq is down.  And they are equally surprised that we are having the success that we are.  At some point, someone’s going to have to admit that the supposedly experts don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, and that Mr. Bush knows precisely what he’s doing.

Nah… they’ll never go that far.

But, there it is.

The one thing Hitch doesn’t understand, Billy, and apparently, you don’t either, is that a constant reexamination of the faith as part of the process.  Indeed, such questioning is Biblically acknowledged, in Mark, I think.

Here’s the secret; That questioning process is one that all believers go through. such internal questioning, such internal battles, are the underlying theme of the relationship between Christ and his disciples, for example.  Who among us, after all, doesn’t have self doubt? Frankly, it’s the ones that don’t go through the questioning process, that scare the cookies out of me.

Mind, we’re not just talking about religion, in that sense.  I mean, I’m not trying to get preachy here, by any stretch of the imagination.  But to expect that somebody could face what she did both in her personal and professional life and not have internal questions about her stance on life, and her faith is ludicrous.  Fear and self doubt are natural, and indeed, frankly, they are among the largest motivators in human existence. Even Christ himself had them.
If you want this writ large, here you go;

Without such allowance for internal questioning, you end up with what we see in the Middle East currently… and unquestioning mob. Far as I’m concerned, even from the view of a nonbeliever, that allowance for questioning is a major difference between the two cultures that should not be so lightly discounted as Hitchens does.

Oh… and let’s also acknowledge, that Hitchens has his own reason for the vitriol he directs at the Church… reasons which would seem to stretch well beyond the boundies of logic.

James Joyner, over at Outside The Beltway, is running a post this morning and titled “Edwards opposes medical choice”.

If John Edwards is elected president, Americans will have no choice but go to the doctor when told.

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.

“It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,” he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. “If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.”

He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat “the first trace of problem.” Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, announced earlier this year that her breast cancer had returned and spread.

Most of the bloggers covering this one are, understandably, focusing on the tyranny angle:

• Steven Taylor: “If one doesn’t go to one’s annual whatever, will there be a fine? Will the CDC dispatch agents to your house to force the tests on you?”

• Jon Henke: “Which one of John Edwards’ two Americas gets a freedom of choice and privacy that extends beyond the uterus?”

• Darleen Click: “State nannyism doesn’t get much better than this.”

• Brennan: “You want to get an abortion? That’s up to you. You want to decide not to go to the doctor? He’ll force ya to. Oh the freedom!”

• Ann Althouse: “He’s so warmed up about the generous benefits he’s promising that he doesn’t even hear the repressiveness in his own statements.”

• Ron Chusid: “A plan like this makes Edwards even more authoritarian than the current Republican Party.”

It strikes me, though, that Edwards is at least being honest about the trade-offs involved. If the government is going to be responsible for everyone’s health care (and at some point in the not-too-distant future, it will be) then it will naturally set all manner of preconditions for receiving treatment

It’s true; Edwards is being honest about the goal, here. In this process, he makes himself singularly unlikable.  But it’s not just Edwards; It’s a goal that all those pushing government health care and in mind.

And James is conditionally correct; If … If… you make the assumption that government’s going to be taking over the responsibility from the individual, that would make sense.  But is such a takeover desirable?  there’s the issue.  There is the question that none of the Democrats and too few of the Republicans, frankly, are even bothering to ask.

Even worse, those questions don’t even address the issue of the people who would be controlling such matters being the most incredibly corrupt group of people on the face of the planet… Democrats.

Since this is within shooting distance of my desk, here, perhaps I should mention it:

s When it comes to wolfing wings, Sonya Thomas is a wiz.

The 105-pound competitive eater who goes by “The Black Widow” bested a dozen beefy rivals Saturday night, scarfing 173 wings in 12 minutes to win the wing-eating contest at the National Buffalo Wing Festival.

“That’s 5.17 pounds of wings,” said Brian Kahle, spokesman for the annual Labor Day weekend event in the city where Buffalo wings were born.

Thomas, 40, of Alexandria, Va., also held the festival’s previous record of 161 wings in 12 minutes, set in 2004.

“She’s the crowd favorite,” Kahle said. “It was 12 huge guys and her.”

Thomas has set numerous records in competitive eating events, including 37 hot dogs in 12 minutes; 35 bratwursts in 10 minutes; 11 pounds of cheesecake in 9 minutes; 44 lobsters in 12 minutes; and 250 Tater Tots in 5 minutes.

I must admit I was curious… 105lb? That’s not exactly the situation that you expect.  You gotta figure you’re going to be dealing with a woman who if you were planning to date her, you’d need a larger car.
So, I went looking for a snapshot, and found several .

Here’s one.

No, I don’t know what to make of it, either.

It’s what I get for sleeping late, I suppose.  Everybody else’s been all over this story since sunup:

 AL-ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq —(AP)  President Bush and his national security team made a first-hand assessment of the war in Iraq and prospects for political reconciliation Monday as a showdown nears with Congress over the U.S. troop buildup.

The president secretly flew 11 hours to this air base in a remote part of Anbar province, bypassing Baghdad in a symbolic expression of impatience with political paralysis in the nation’s capital. The gesture underscored the U.S. belief that the spark for progress may come at the local level.

Of course the story mumbles:

Critics of the war argue that while the troop buildup may have tamped down violence, the Iraqis are making almost no headway toward political reconciliation. They cite a handful of gloomy progress reports trickling out of Washington that show some success in curbing violence, but little progress toward political power-sharing agreements.

Which, of course, ignores the fact that we have to win the war before political progress can be made.  But apparently, that’s their story and they’re sticking to it. 

Interesting site, LaborPains.ORG.

They make a few points, today:

• Union membership is down to 7.4 percent of private sector employees and down to 12 percent overall (government employees are highly unionized, at a rate of 36.2 percent) – that’s down from a high of 20.1 percent in 1983
• Union bosses continue to be criticized for their lavish salaries, even while their membership declines
• Even after several major unions split from the AFL-CIO to improve their growth, some have found little success
• The International Longshoremen’s Association had a $10 million operating shortfall last year, and union assets were down 34 percent from 2005 to 2006. Lawyers’ bills will do that. Meanwhile, the union’s president managed to pay himself more than $580,000, and his son grabbed another $292,000 last year.
• In the last couple of years, UNITE HERE officials have been found guilty of invading employees’ privacy by illegally running their license plates through the DMV so they could find where they live and make unannounced visits. And a jury ordered them to pay $17 million for defaming medical professionals after union officials falsely told expectant mothers their babies could be in danger at a hospital caught in the middle of a labor dispute. To top it all off, UNITE HERE may be liable for $75 million after union officials tried to steal life insurance benefits from their own retired staff. The staff sued the union when they saw their key retirement benefits cut by 95 percent.

Then there’s this.

Decades after organized labor came into its own by improving working conditions for Americans, the movement is adrift. It is reeling from decades of corruption, embezzlement, internal rifts and a record of customer service that makes the cable company look good.

Right now, labor is a mere shadow of its past. The kind of labor union that most of us grew up knowing just isn’t there anymore. Aside from the famous failed air traffic controllers strike in 1981, big work stoppages are fewer and farther between and involve fewer employees. Membership has been declining for decades, and with it labor leaders’ power to stave off economic realities like, say, competition.

In an effort to rebuild their former influence, union officials have drawn up a political agenda that should give all Americans shivers.

It centers around stealing rights from employees and rigging federal laws to monkey-wrench business operations.

Take a recent story from The New York Times, which could easily have been published decades ago. Union officials are petitioning the federal government’s labor board to re-allow “minority unionism.”

This scheme would force businesses — small or large — to deal with any number of employees who want to be represented by unions, even if a majority of employees don’t want the union in their workplace.

Think this development isn’t a big deal? Think again.

The union game plan is to organize employees in an area that is highly leveraged for power, like cooks in a restaurant’s kitchen. The idea is to organize the group, bargain to impasse, and then walk off the job (while being able to provide wage-replacement benefits for just a few people). Anyone familiar with labor relations can envision how the rest of the scenario plays out.

Business leaders would do well to keep better abreast of these threats. After all, fall asleep at this switch and you may wake up to find small unions of unhappy employees in key areas of your business.

It’s also time to take note of labor’s increasingly capable public relations machine.

Union leaders are reaching out to spread their propaganda to millions more. Unions enjoy endless connections to “community groups” — many funded by labor leaders — that rush to help attack employers. The AFL- CIO operates an organization called “Working America” for more than a million sympathetic individuals who aren’t actually union members.

That is a large number of politically

(ill-)informed voters who can be convinced to start changing laws to make America less competitive.

The biggest rule change of all would be the passage of the ridiculously misnamed Employee Free Choice Act.

Few voters have heard of it, and that’s just the way labor leaders want it.

After all, who would want to advertise the fact that they are holding a political gun to candidates’ heads to end the practice of people voting their union sympathy (or lack of it) in private? If politicians — especially Democrats — don’t drink the Kool-Aid, they will be denied their chance to gorge on a feast of forced dues dollars.

Given this below-the-radar campaign, it’s not surprising that most people don’t know that union bosses have shoved this atrocity through the House and received majority approval to move forward on the Senate floor. The other shoe drops if a Democrat is elected president in 14 months. All the leading candidates have pledged passage of this law and a newly elected president will have many cards to play with a new Congress.

Union officials are willing to take extreme measures to push this terrible bill precisely because they see it as a magical elixir to cure labor’s pains. They seem to be in denial of their real problem: few people want to buy their “services.”

In the labor world, more membership equals more dollar signs.

President James Hoffa of the Teamsters union predicts this law will help double his dues income. Conservatively estimated, EFCA’s financial impact would be an additional $5 billion to $10 billion in cash flow to unions each year. That slush fund would go largely toward supporting anti-business groups and lobbying for even more power.

Of course, wishing for the best is not a plan of action. Hoping union officials will restrain themselves from grabbing power at the expense of employees is futile: it just ain’t gonna happen.

It’s sad that as Americans celebrate the original labor leaders who gave us the weekend, today’s union officials are busy trying to stick it to the rest of us.

It’s as I’ve been saying for decades, people… Unions are KILLING America.

Addendum: (Bit)

I see Michelle noting the same site. She has more of the like from various sources.

Mexcan President Felipe Calderon declared that the United States of America does not exist as sovereign nation, and has not right to control her own borders.   Traci Carl, Associated Press:

“Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.”

Taking Calderon at his word, means that each  Mexican immigrant is not a civilian intruder but an enemy invader.   By Calderon’s logic, we should not only stop illegal immigration from Mexico, but all legal immigration as well.  For only way to negate Calderon’s claim on the United States, is to remove all Mexican nationals from our soil.

Calderon says that their can not be both a United States with Mexicans and a United States.  Sobeit.

Addendum:   Allah Pundit, Hot Air, cites the same paper, WaPo, but a different reporter and slightly different quote,  Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post Foreign Service

Wherever there is a Mexican,” he said, “that is Mexico.”

Calderon message is clear.  There is no United States, only Mexico.

?

Memo to Gateway Pundit, that is way we call them ‘Rats.  Gateway Pundit writes,

“Clearly there is a difference between the political parties”

You can not shame a democrat.

From Cox and Forkum, whom I really have to get to linking more often….

Ain’t it real, gang… ain’t it real.

The message to the Washington Post can perhaps be best asked in the words of Paul Simon :

There’s only one thing I need to know; whose side are you on?

It has a ring to it:

“By announcing via webcast, Fred is able to take his consistently mainstream conservative message directly to the voters, who are already responding to that message with a strong upwelling of grassroots support. The webcast and the following campaign tour will play to Fred’s strengths, a consistent record of conservatism, his ability to clearly spread his message, and his ability to work with and connect with Americans from all walks of life,”

Bill Lacy, I’m with Fred.

I like it.

Hat tip:  Haystack, Red State.

?

You knew this kind of thing was going to come up, eventually. Given enough time, idiot theories are bound to pop up from just about everywhere.  Kinda like the infinite monkeys theory in reverse.

(CNN)–The ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee says Idaho Senator Larry Craig should seek to withdraw his guilty plea, and possibly his resignation from the Senate.

“I’d like to see Larry Craig go back to court, seek to withdraw his guilty plea and fight the case,” Senator Arlen Specter said on ‘Fox News Sunday’. Drawing on his earlier experience as District Attorney of Philadelphia, Specter said, “On the evidence Senator Craig wouldn’t be convicted of anything. And he’s got his life on the line and 27 years in the House and Senate, and I’d like to see him fight the case because I think he could be vindicated.”

Attention, RNC: If we ever needed further proof that Arlen Specter needed to lose his senate seat years ago, we don’t anymore.

Captain Ed gets a second link from me today. The first was because of stout agreement.  This second one, not so much.

It’s doubtful that any newspaper outside of New York City could raise this question, but the Times asks whether we should set aside the anniversaries of 9/11 as a collective mourning date for the nation. How long should the remembrances dominate the day, and how many years should the city and nation conduct the familiar ceremonies of grief?

Each year, murmuring about Sept. 11 fatigue arises, a weariness of reliving a day that everyone wishes had never happened. It began before the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. By now, though, many people feel that the collective commemorations, publicly staged, are excessive and vacant, even annoying.”I may sound callous, but doesn’t grieving have a shelf life?” said Charlene Correia, 57, a nursing supervisor from Acushnet, Mass. “We’re very sorry and mournful that people died, but there are living people. Let’s wind it down.”

Some people prefer to see things condensed to perhaps a moment of silence that morning and an end to the rituals like the long recitation of the names of the dead at ground zero.

But many others bristle at such talk, especially those who lost relatives on that day.

“The idea of scaling back just seems so offensive to me when you think of the monumental nature of that tragedy,” said Anita LaFond Korsonsky, whose sister Jeanette LaFond-Menichino died in the World Trade Center. “If you’re tired of it, don’t attend it; turn off your TV or leave town. To say six years is enough, it’s not. I don’t know what is enough.”

It’s a difficult question, one framed responsibly and thoughtfully by N. R. Kleinfield. Some anniversaries stay in the national consciousness for decades, such as December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day, and June 6th, D-Day. Others tend to fade with time; as Kleinfield points out, no one recalls the date of the sinking of the Maine (February 15th) or the Kent State Massacre (May 4th). Is six years too soon to ask that the official grieving come to an end?

In this case, no, I don’t think so. Ed goes on…

Rick Moran has a long and thoughtful post on this question:

But 9/11 stands alone as a date that tears at our souls and requires us to re-examine uncomfortable truths. We are at war. Remembering or not remembering 9/11 won’t change that fact nor will denying the reality of that statement make it less true. The reason is simple. It takes two sides to make war. And our enemies will find ways to remind us that our denial is silly, stupid, and self defeating as often and as painfully as we let them.It may be a different kind of war but war it is and pushing the proximate cause of the conflict into the recesses of our memory because remembering is too painful, or too much a bother, or gives political advantage to one side or another is simply putting off the day of reckoning when those in denial will be forced once again to look 9/11 full in the face and realize the overwhelming truth that America is in danger. And if we are vouchsafed the time to allow the emotional scars of 9/11 to heal, we should also use that time to prepare for the next onslaught while doing everything in our power to prevent it.

I’ll disagree with Rick on his views about partisanship playing a role in attempting to tamp down the outrage over 9/11, and therefore the imperative of continuous memorialization. The questions over how long to continue the official grieving have more to do with the blessing and curse of American culture, partly as seen through the recitation of other anniversaries that faded away almost immediately. We are not a culture that tends to focus on the past. For better and worse, each generation discounts the past and focuses on the future, and part of that dynamic is letting go of anniversaries such as the firing on Fort Sumter, the Maine, and the sinking of the Lusitania.

However, 9/11 still has as much relevance to this generation as it did six years ago. The reminders of the deaths of thousands of Americans still have meaning as long as the same conditions that allowed them continue to exist today.

I’ll stoutly disagree with Ed, on this one. He is quite correct, when he suggests that it is vital for us to keep that memory alive, so long as the job is unfinished.  However, he’s got it wrong as far as what’s driving all of this.  The partisan politics are in the largest degree, what is driving these questions. It’s a question of which political party, and which political line of thinking, prevails, because so much of these activities bear on our national consciousness… Which party gets to choose what our national identity is, or will be.   Allow me to explain this point by drawing your attention to my comments of last week in one of the Nightly Rambles,, as regards Princess Dianna, and the continuous memorials surrounding her.

In that situation, I didn’t say to the time , but I was a little uncomfortable with Dalrymple,though not so much with Billy Beck. The reason, there, has to do with national identity.  There is an awful lot of national identity wrapped up in the royals.  On that basis, the kind of spectacle that has been going on over there this past week as regards the anniversary of her death is far more understandable, than it is here in America.  it was the British national identity that was delivered a blow that day, not Americas. Thus my objection to the wall to wall coverage that the mainstream media put up on the subject week.

The reverse side of that coin, is that the attacks an America, on 9/11 were an attack on not only the people of America, and her institutions, but her NATIONAL IDENTITY. Don’t think for a minute, that the targets chosen by the terrorists on that day were idle ones.  It’s not just the people that died that we’re memorializing, we are memorializing them also, and perhaps more importantly, why they died.

I submit that the very reason the left is trying to tamp down the memorializing of 9/11 is that they’re about trying to prevent the recognition of the damage done to the American soul on that day.  To acknowledge it, means that the attack must be taken seriously, and provides only one avenue of redress to the attackers.  The left does not like the answer that line of thinking gives us, so they try to ignore the damage done on that day.  And, as a natural extension of that, they tried to get the rest of us to ignore it as well.

Ironically, it is Ed himself who backs this line of thought:

. When we have defeated the jihadists and ended that threat, then we can allow 9/11 to slip slowly from our collective consciousness, but not until then. In fact, I’d argue that we have already watered it down too much, by shelving the footage of the attacks, of the people that plunged to their deaths before the collapse of the towers, and of the heroic final moments of United 93.

At this point, remembrance is crucial.  We cannot forget while the job is left incomplete.

I submit that this is precisely what the left is about; leaving the job incomplete.  The left is invested in our defeat… it is vital for them and their political survival that we fail in Iraq.  The only way they can get away with that, is if our remembrance goes away.

Trust me, dear reader, when I tell you that’s precisely what they’re hitting the prayer mats for every single evening… They want us to forget this scene to the left.

So, it still comes down to the question “Have You Forgotten ? “

Don Surber always has something of import. it’s why he’s won so many of these “Snark of the Day” awards. This one is no exception:

The line from the left is that we neo-cons so screwed things up that the world has turned against the United States; restoring American prestige overseas will require multiple terms by Jimmy Carter acolytes Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards — so hated is George Walker Bush.

Um, will someone please tell the French? They just elected the most pro-American Frenchman since LaFayette as their president. Nicolas Sarkozy campaigned as the American. He did something no Democrat has done in 30+ years: Sarkozy got a majority of the votes.

And what about the Germans? They elected the most pro-American German since Konrad Adenauer as their leader. Angela Merkel may not have been imprisoned by Hitler, but she and her East German leaders suffered 45 years of Russian occupation. That’s enough to turn anyone pro-American.

Stephen Harper, Canada’s new PM, is a fan of Bush as is Gordon Brown, the new British prime minister. We have disagreements with our friends but they remain, well, our friends.

The fact is, that over time, the remainder of the world follows our lead.  Which, I think, is the biggest fear of the left. Don gets into historical examples, too, suggesting that is exactly what happened with Reagan.

But guess what?  That following our lead, goes both directions.  Our world became a decisively more dangerous place because Bill Clinton occupied the white house for eight years, and squandered the goodwill we had built up around the world

Says Don, in what I will call the Snark of the Day,

Democrats might take a page out of Sarkozy’s book and run a candidate who is pro-American.

Yeah, they could… and it might even benefit them, but I doubt they will. They’re too far gone.

From the London Times, this morning:

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Yeah…. And?

Because we have plans on the books for invasion, means an invasion is imminent? I mean, don’t these people understand that we also have plans on the books for invasion of every other country on the planet, including Canada, for pity’s sake?

Of course, the lefty blogs are all over this one. They apparently don’t understand what strategic planning is, either.   Or perhaps they do, and it’s simply prudent to scream when the remainder of the idiots in the pack do.

Personally, I would consider such an attack prudent.  Iran has made their goals known.  They’ve told us repeatedly what they’re going to do with those nuclear weapons once they are developed.  Is there anyone outside of the usual not jobs in the democratic party, who think we should wait until they make good on that threat? How many of these will be screaming at whoever is in the White House, that they didn’t do their job of protecting the American people from such attacks , after the first few million die in the first attack?

Is there anyone who thinks that the Iranians can be negotiated with, given their current power structure?

Bottom line is I don’t think an invasion of Iran is forthcoming, in the immediate future.  That having been said, it is quite prudent to plan for it against the event of it being needful.  The white house, and the pentagon, would not be doing their job properly, if such a plan didn’t exist.

Captain Ed, this morning:

Earlier today, I noted Fred Thompson’s sponsorship of the Fox broadcast of the next Republican debate, and called it a “shrewd move”, which resulted in some, ahem, mixed reviews from CQ readers. It occurred to me that I hadn’t explained why I found Thompson’s tweak of the debate such a sound move, or at least not in quite a while.

Put simply, presidential debates are disasters waiting to happen to candidates. Good things almost never happen at them, and the format is calculated to play gotcha games with candidates in both parties. It forces a “lightning round” mentality onto complex policy issues that rewards simpletons and punishes the thoughtful.

What candidate in his or her right mind would want to participate in that exercise?

(Chuckle) No kidding.

This is precisely why , I think, Thompson decided not to enter the race until everybody else had already shot themselves in the foot several times.  The only thing that could come out of the race being as early as it is, this cycle, is a larger number of early victims, and larger campaign costs.  The utter uselessness of such debates, particularly this early on, (Ed does a fair job of pointing this out..) is getting to the point where it’s beyond debate, anymore…. to coin a phrase.

Granted, as the captain points out it filtered Ron Paul, leaving him wondering just what the hell hit him. It did the same thing to John McCain.  Anything that can do that is certainly an advantage.  But beyond that, I don’t know of any positive outcome of the earlier debates and early cycles.  As Ed says, correctly:

We don’t need to see the chorus line of candidates every two weeks, asked the same questions and delivering the same 60-second responses. It’s superfluous. No one watches these debates who don’t already have access to much more detailed and intelligent policy positions from these candidates.

Exactly so.
Let’s also examine another issue that nobody’s bothered bringing up; election fatigue.

At some point, the amount of attention being paid to elections by the voters… or at least by the consumers of news, whom stats say don’t vote, in majority… has to wane. A close parallel of the ever the earlier election cycles would be Christmas decorations going up before Halloween.  THe leaves aren’t down at the stores already have their Christmas displays up, and Christmas music blaring on the Musak.  By the time Christmas finally shows up, the 4000th playing of “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” has even the most ardent fan of the holiday season reaching for the Uzi, the extra ammunition, and the camouflage gear… resulting in the worst example of reverse anti-climax imaginable.
This so it is with this election cycle, which, let’s face it, started about fifteen minutes after George W Bush was declared the winner for his second term.  John Kerry had barely finished his concession speech when the leftists in the news media were already wondering who the next democrat candidate would be… would Al Gore run again, or would John Kerry try it again, and so on. The whole thing took on the quality of the media saying to the voters “Yeah?  Wait till next year”

Which of itself, raises the issue of whether or not this early push to the election season isn’t the democrats trying to get a leg up. if so, I suspect it is a plan that will backfire.  In some ways, I suspect it already has.  The reasons are simple enough;

At some point between then and next November, Americans are simply going to wink out. The timing of that event will certainly be hastened by the repetition of events that Ed describes. People will no longer care about minutiae such as Rudy Giuliani’s seventeen year old (And thereby non-voting) daughter listing her support on her Facebook account for Barrack Obama. (Gee, a 17 year old in a rebellious phase? Yeah, that’s news, huh?)

Though, I suppose that the voters will take some interest in the latest entry into the Prius Racing Team. (Quick; do you even know what I’m talking about here? If not, you’ve already winked out on this stuff.)
At the bottom line, the only group of people in America that benefits from this nonsensical rush to the White House this far in advance of the election provides is big money work for the usual Washingtonian political pundits, who otherwise would be more properly twiddling their thumbs until perhaps to June or July of next year.

Given the propensity of presidential candidates to destroy themselves with their own words over a given period of time, however, perhaps there is one advantage to all of this; we will likely have the opportunity come next summer to question the more ardent supporters of Americans surrender in Iraq why they were so willing to do that in the midst of what will be then, an obvious path to success.  Watching the Democrats trying to backpedal from that, will be the most amusing political spectacle in years, the most educational, and likely the most productive.
The advantage of that happening, of course, is that the democrats won’t be pushing their overly long election schedule on us in the next cycle.  They will be the ones on the front line to shorten it, thereby minimizing their exposure to damage in that next election.