Nightly Ramble:The Cracks are Showing; More

OK, before you start, it turns out there’s a lot of texture on those old historical markers, that make them a bear to touch up, and my graphic tools aren’t up to that drill.  At least one of you should recognize the real location… in Dryden, NY. I took this a few years ago. That said, let’s get to it.

• It’s amazing. Despite all of the facts, only part of which I laid out this monring, Nancy Pelosi still claims the Democrats are not at all responsible for the current financial situation. The Hill explains.  This woman needs to be gone. I mean, really.  A short memory, perhaps? In what has to be the most crass CYA move I’ve ever seen, she’s ordered a Wall Street Probe.
• Of course the current Senate leader, Harry Reid, also suffers from a short memory. He blames Phil Graham for the current meltdown… saying Graham wrote legislation deregulating the home loan industries… but it turns out it was legislation both Reid and Joe Biden supported, and voted for. I guess one might say “oops”… execpt that there seems a pattern developing.
• Obama’s showing signs of trouble. First, Virginia, then PA, as we mentioned this morning. Now, apparently, Harry Reid apparently asked Obama for financial help in the Senate.  Obama told him ‘no’. This tells me two things; Obama’s in trouble and knows it. So are the Democrats in the Senate. And Reid knows it, too. Is that blood in the water I smell? To quote the Bard, I think it be.
• Speaking of the Annointed One, Bob Owens has a nice peice up today on the bit with Obama trying to get the Iraqis to hold our troops for longer.
  

  According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in Amir Taheri’s op-ed in Monday’s New York Post, Obama used his trip to privately lobby Iraqi government officials to delay an agreement that would reduce the number of American soldiers in Iraq, while at the same time publicly calling for a unilateral withdrawal.The delay was a “key theme” of his discussions with Iraqi leaders according to Zebari, and Obama reportedly asked those leaders to delay an agreement until after the U.S. presidential election. Zebari claimed that in doing so, Obama attempted to argue that it was not in Iraq’s interest to negotiate with the current adminstration, and insisted that the U.S. Congress should be involved.

  During the same visit to Iraq, Obama may have also tried to convince a series of American commanders, including General David Petraeus, to offer a “realistic withdrawal date” to pull soldiers out of Iraq. All commanders reportedly declined.
  …
  If the claims in Taheri’s article are accurate, then Senator Obama is playing a dangerous and duplicitous game.

  It would mean Barack Obama attempted to pressure American military commanders to make a declaration that he would have used as a political tool during his presidential campaign to undermine both his opponent and the current president, perhaps undermining the credibility of the U.S. military as an apolitical group loyal to the United States instead of political parties.
  …
  Obama would have used any timeline offered to shore up Obama’s support on the far left wing of the Democratic Party, a fringe that advocates an immediate withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, regardless of the resulting security vacuum or the possibilities of political and security instabilities that would be the likely result.

  Many in this radicalized wing, while thankfully only a fraction of the overall party, openly desire a too-quick retreat in order to secure an American defeat and a failed Iraqi state. They would tout that as a failure of the “Bush doctrine,” specifically the part that justifies preemptive war to depose foreign governments that pose a threat to the security of the United States, even if that government is not an imminent threat.

  But even as Senator Obama may have been pandering to his anti-war base by trying to pressure U.S. commanders for a withdrawal date that would be used as a political tool, he was concurrently trying to keep his same core group of radicals stirred up by attempting to slow the signs of progress in Iraq by manipulating a key statistic progressive blogs and other anti-war activists keyed on the most heavily: the number of American forces in Iraq.

  If American forces began to withdraw significant numbers of soldiers from Iraq , it would undermine Obama’s core campaign message that to elect anyone else would result in the continuance of a war without end.

  Owens, smart guy that he is comes to the only conclusion possible:

  By lobbying Iraqi leaders to keep the status quo until after the U.S. presidential election, Senator Obama would have been attempting to undermine the foreign policy of a sitting president to shore up his own political base.

  Go and read. Obama is already in trouble in many areas of the country, even among Democrats. the expose of this kind of double-dealing, under-handedness is not going to set well, even with the far left he was attempting to sway with these moves.

• Schwarzenegger has managed to find his veto pen. What’s remarkable is that it’s the first time I can recall seeing such a veto of a state budget. If HE thinks it’s too large, you can pretty much bet the farm on it being totally whacked.
• The extended bit I wrote this morning on the Financial meltdown, as I suggested, is only part of the deal. Classical Values has more.
• Oil has fallen to $91/bbl. Look for it to go lower. Meanwhile gas spiked a little Ike fears, but watch for that to start falling again in a week or so.