Obama's Quagmire?

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Tuesday November 18, 2008 · 8:05 AM PST

2008/11/18 · 08:05

This is from the blog, Last Kaul.

Rick Perlstein, in Nixonland:

It was not as if American leaders hadn't been warned. It was "the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy," the World War II hero Omar Bradley had first observed in 1951. Such sage warnings tended to be ignored. When Undersecretary of State George Ball began criticizing the commitment to South Vietnam in the early 1960's, he was shut out of meetings. He managed to buttonhole the president nonetheless. "Within five years," he said, "we'll have three hundred thousand men in the paddies and jungles and never will find them again. That was the French experience." JFK came back, "George, you're just crazier than hell." Ball indeed misjudged: the actual number of troops at the end of 1966 was 385,300.

cakaul

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Monday November 17, 2008 · 3:24 PM PST

2008/11/17 · 15:24

This is from the blog, Last Kaul.

Much is being made of President-Elect Obama's admiration for Abraham Lincoln's Team of Rivals approach towards piecing together an administration. And, judging by his early actions, with good reason. He's moving deliberately, so most names are speculative at this point, but here's a look at the current playing field:

cakaul

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Tuesday September 30, 2008 · 1:50 PM PDT

2008/09/30 · 13:50

This is from the blog, Last Kaul.

One debate down, two to go. (I don't count Biden-Palin. That's not a debate, that's vaudeville.) Last week's first Obama-McCain debate was scheduled to cover foreign policy yet was dropped surreally into the middle of the nation's most pressing economic crisis since 1929. I don't mean to suggest they should have switched topics but let's just say that Waziristan has never seemed farther away than it did last week while watching the Dow do its impression of a lead balloon.

cakaul

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Tuesday September 16, 2008 · 4:58 PM PDT

2008/09/16 · 16:58

This is from the blog, Last Kaul.

The Dow dropped some five hundred points on Monday, losing 4.4% of its value between breakfast and high tea. Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch was snatched up by Bank of America and American International Group teetered on the brink of collapse. Contrary to John McCain's initial reaction, the very fundamentals of our economy (the mortgage market, access to credit, pension holdings) were being buffeted by the winds of deregulation.

cakaul

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Friday September 05, 2008 · 11:32 AM PDT

2008/09/05 · 11:32

This is from the blog, Last Kaul.

Every four years I promise myself I'm going to make it through an entire Republican Convention. Four nights, five-six hours each night . . . no big deal, right? I do it happily for the Democrats. From gavel to gavel, from invocation to acceptance, I am always interested and often thrilled by the spectacle of my party making sausage. If for no other reason than civic duty, I feel I should be able to do the same on the Republican side.

cakaul

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Tuesday September 02, 2008 · 12:00 PM PDT

2008/09/02 · 12:00

This if from the blog,Last Kaul.

Rrrrrring!

"Hello."

"Governor, Senator McCain is on the line."

"Awesome. Put him through."

"Sandra, it's John McCain. I hope I didn't wake you."

cakaul

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Thursday August 28, 2008 · 1:32 PM PDT

2008/08/28 · 13:32

This is from the blog, Last Kaul.

To call the Democratic National Convention conflicted would not do it justice -- it's positively bi-polar. Dems have spent the first three days alternating between celebration and hand-wringing. More time and energy is being spent dissecting the Clinton's role in the current state of Obama's campaign than in figuring out how to beat John McCain.

cakaul

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Tuesday July 29, 2008 · 4:13 PM PDT

2008/07/29 · 16:13

This is from the blog, Last Kaul.

What's it going to take to push Obama over the 50% mark?

He just completed a tour of the Middle East and Europe and was welcomed throughout as a conqueror, a liberator, as a breath of fresh . . . well, he wasn't George Bush. And that was good enough. Jordan's King Abdullah personally chauffeured Obama from dinner to O-Force 1. Sarkozy all but filled out an absentee ballot in making his preferences known for the upcoming election. 200,000 Germans waved American flags at Berlin's Victory Column as he assured them that this is their time as well as ours.

cakaul

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Tuesday June 24, 2008 · 5:13 PM PDT

2008/06/24 · 17:13

This is from the blog, Last Kaul.

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders . . . to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds . . . (and) . . . we are mired in a stalemate that could only be ended by negotiation, not victory."

That's not a quotation from Barack Obama. Or even Dennis Kucinich.

cakaul

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Thursday June 05, 2008 · 2:30 PM PDT

2008/06/05 · 14:30

This is from the blog,Last Kaul.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, runner-up in the race to be the Democratic presidential nominee, may want to be vice president. Or she may not. She may prefer to consider the prospects of Supreme Court justice, cabinet member, Senate Majority Leader or the pursuit of a distinguished legislative career as the junior senator from New York. All options are on the table and the world waits breathlessly.

Oh, and on Tuesday, a black man was presumptively nominated to be President of the United States.

cakaul

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Friday May 30, 2008 · 12:09 PM PDT

2008/05/30 · 12:09

This is from the political blog, Last Kaul.

In the 1978 classic comedy, Animal House, Dean Vernon Wormer, the tight-assed, ineffectual head of Faber college slowly loses control of the institution as the rowdy Delta House battles the elitist Omegas for campus supremacy. The chaos culminates with Delta's Bluto (played by John Belushi) popping out of a Homecoming Parade float in a pirate costume, to which Wormer can only stand impotently by, watching in horror and muttering, "Oh my God."

cakaul

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Monday May 19, 2008 · 4:04 PM PDT

2008/05/19 · 16:04

This is from the blog, Last Kaul.

I walked around all weekend with a bounce to my step and woke this morning with a song in my heart. I attribute my good cheer to the speech John McCain gave Thursday in Columbus, Ohio. Did you see it? If not, you really should read it in its entirety. He painted a picture of where America would be at the end of his first term as president.

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