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The headline on the website of German magazine Der Spiegel about Barack Obama's speech in Berlin: "Huge Crowds Left with Mixed Feelings." Two hundred thousand turned out for the speech, but CNN's Candy Crowley reported an "absence of euphoria" at the event. As Senator Obama went global with "Yes, we can" and "Change we can believe in" he left at least some of the horde in Berlin scratching their heads. Perhaps these Germans, out to hear what all the excitement was about, were looking for leadership and substance rather than kumbaya. What they got was the global version of "There...

Barack Obama denied yesterday that he was ignoring the concerns of ordinary Americans while he tours the world, amid signs that the adulation he is receiving abroad has alienated some US voters. After the Democratic presidential candidate holds meetings with Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron in London today, the last leg of his nine-day international tour, he returns home to a general election campaign with new polls showing him in a tightening race against John McCain, the Republican cand date. Mr McCain and his surrogates have spent the week seeking to build the impression that Mr Obama’s trip...

DENVER -- In the face of Barack Obama's overseas tour de force, rival presidential candidate John McCain struggled to be heard. Yet amid the awkward moments, he managed to campaign busily in key battleground states and to raise millions of dollars at fundraisers. Polls in many swing states are close, and some are tightening. The Arizona Republican sought to turn this to his advantage in what was clearly a difficult week to be a stay-at-home candidate. He repeatedly emphasized his long military and congressional background, scolded Obama from afar on foreign policy, and kept playfully fueling speculation that he was...

Presidential candidate Barack Obama has taken his pander machine on the road around the world in an effort to demonstrate two points vital to the success of his campaign for the office of Commander-in-Chief… * That he is willing to step into the hot zone and confront facts on the ground as defined by military and security experts before setting his official international security policy in stone. * That despite a nearly blank résumé, void of any military or security experience whatsoever, executive or otherwise, he has what it takes to become the next Commander-in-Chief of the last remaining super-power...

I can understand Obama traveling to Iraq and Afghanistan to meet with the troops, talk to military leaders, a listen and learn trip – so to speak, as the presumptive Democratic nominee and as Illinois Senator. Sure it is odd that he laid out his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan in an op-ed piece in the New York Times one week before he left, but I will not criticize him for that. I also do not mind his traveling to Israel, our closest ally in the region, knowing full well that he must garnish more support from the Jewish community...

Campaign '08: The New Yorker magazine thought it was doing Barack Obama a favor with its over-the-top right-wing caricature of the candidate. But the liberal publication underestimated his self-absorption.The unrestrained absurdity of the cartoon that graces the New Yorker's latest cover has to be seen to be believed. There's the soon-to-be nominated Sen. Barack Obama, dressed in Islamic garb in the Oval Office, Old Glory engulfed in flames in the fireplace and the portrait of George Washington on the wall above replaced by that of Osama bin Laden. The new president knuckle-bumps the new first lady, who sports a full...

Kosovo war commander and decorated Vietnam vet Wesley Clark was never shot down during war. Maybe that's why the retired general, ex-NATO war leader and former presidential candidate chose this aspect of John McCain's war record to carp about last Sunday, when he said, "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president." Yet McCain wasn't just shot down. He also was brutalized and tortured during five years of North Vietnamese captivity, a period during which McCain gallantly refused the early release his captors offered because he was an admiral's son....

"Given what later happened, California would have had more clout had it left its primary in June. One can only imagine the intensity that a June primary contest between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in California would have generated."

ELDORADO, TEXAS -- As officials haggled Friday over how to return more than 400 children to their parents, it was becoming increasingly clear that Texas' audacious attempt to rein in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had backfired -- and become a lesson in the difficulty of cracking down on the 10,000-member polygamist sect. .... The town also was abuzz over an anticipated mass voter registration by the FLDS. Hours after the court first ruled against the state, two members of the sect walked into the county clerk's office and requested 300 voter registration forms, a...

The lamestream media told you: Gun deaths and gun violence are a national scourge that must be met with strict common-sense gun laws, to prevent rampant violence in society. Everyone is affected, so everyone must be subject to controls. The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: In an effort to prove the “news” myth paraphrased above, The Baltimore Sun, which features standard anti-gun-rights bias in its reporting, published an interactive map of homicides in the Baltimore area. Unfortunately for its inventors, the map only confirms what rights advocates have been declaring for decades — it’s not a gun problem, it’s a...

President Bush’s election guru Karl Rove tells our correspondent in Philadelphia that she has left it too late to assail Barack Obama. . . WITH days to turn around her presidential campaign or face defeat, Hillary Clinton swung through Pennsylvania last week on a crash tour to squeeze every last vote out of the state after being outshone, outspent and outmanoeuvred by Barack Obama in a bloody campaign. For a moment, it appeared that the Clintons would stop at nothing to block the Illinois senator’s ascent to the nomination Hillary once regarded as rightfully hers. Chelsea Clinton appeared on a...

BERKELEY _ CodePink should be turning red. That seems to be the consensus of many who were on the receiving end of a bogus announcement Tuesday by the radical anti-war group that the embattled U.S. Marine Corps recruiting center in Berkeley was caving to the pressure of weekly protests and leaving town. ``If you want to be taken seriously as an organization of serious protest, then you don't play jokes _ even on April Fools' Day,'' said Robin Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written about the politics of language. CodePink and other...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6, 2008 – Al Qaeda’s acts of murder, extortion and kidnapping to raise money and intimidate Iraqi citizens is backfiring on the terrorist group, a senior military officer posted in Iraq said today. A recently released video shows Iraqi commandos rescuing an 11-year-old Iraqi boy during a Jan. 29 operation conducted northeast of Baghdad, said Air Force Col. Donald J. Bacon, chief of special operations and intelligence information in Multinational Force Iraq’s Strategic Communications Division. Three days earlier, the youth had been taken for ransom by al Qaeda agents, Bacon said. The kidnappers had demanded $100,000, then $80,000,...

Rush Limbaugh couldn't be clearer - supporting former Governor Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign is a really bad idea if you are a true Reagan Republican. In his opinion, Huckabee's nomination would mark the end of the Republican Party as he knows it. And Limbaugh isn't alone: Fellow talking head Sean Hannity and a whole host of conservative talk radio hosts love to pummel Huckabee and fellow candidate John McCain. The hate formerly reserved for Democrats Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and Howard Dean is now directed at Republicans like Huckabee and McCain. ADVERTISEMENT Why am I interested in the...

Rush Limbaugh couldn't be clearer - supporting former Governor Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign is a really bad idea if you are a true Reagan Republican. In his opinion, Huckabee's nomination would mark the end of the Republican Party as he knows it. And Limbaugh isn't alone: Fellow talking head Sean Hannity and a whole host of conservative talk radio hosts love to pummel Huckabee and fellow candidate John McCain. The hate formerly reserved for Democrats Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and Howard Dean is now directed at Republicans like Huckabee and McCain. Why am I interested in the Huckabee...

Most diversity training efforts at American companies are ineffective and even counterproductive in increasing the number of women and minorities in managerial positions, according to an analysis that turns decades of conventional wisdom, government policy and court rulings on their head. A comprehensive review of 31 years of data from 830 mid-size to large U.S. workplaces found that the kind of diversity training exercises offered at most firms were followed by a 7.5 percent drop in the number of women in management. The number of black, female managers fell by 10 percent, and the number of black men in top...

January 14, 2008 Biofuels 'do more harm than good to environment' says Royal Society Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter of The Times Biofuels will cause more harm than good to the environment unless strict controls are imposed on how they are grown, the Royal Society has cautioned. While they have the potential to help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change, biofuels will devastate forests and other habitats unless controlled, scientists said. The Royal Society report of a 14-month inquiry was published as the European Union announced that its targets for biofuels are to be re-examined because of...

Why were liberal Democrats so determined to get Attorney General Michael Mukasey to declare waterboarding a form of torture before he was confirmed to his post? It was another case of what Hillary likes to call "gotcha" politics. In this case, however, Senate Democrats were trying to lay a legal trap for President Bush. It has now backfired on them and their allies in the media. The Democrats, Alan Dershowitz noted in a November 7 Wall Street Journal article, were running the risk of coming across as pacifists not committed to winning the war on terrorism. And in a major...

When University of Delaware freshmen showed up at their dorms this semester, their orientation included an exercise aimed at bridging cultural divides. But the program backfired after they were told to write down stereotypes of different ethnic and religious groups and publicly give their views on issues such as gay marriage and affirmative action. "You have girls giving you hard looks because they're Jewish, and you just wrote something offensive, like they're cheap, even though you don't believe it," said Grace Banks, 18, of Smyrna. "It caused a lot of separations. . . . The whole situation was really uncomfortable."...

The MoveOn ad that accused General David Petraeus of possibly traitorous testimony before he even began speaking has alienated the majority of American voters -- and even a plurality among MoveOn's allies believed it harnful to their cause. A new Rasmussen poll shows that 58% of those polled disapprove of the accusatory ad in the New York Times, while only a paltry 23% approve (via Memeorandum): Twenty-three percent (23%) of Americans approve of an ad run in the New York Times “that referred to General Petraeus as General Betray Us.” A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 58% disapproved....

WASHINGTON - Democrats' momentum on their antiwar effort has stalled abruptly, ending weeks of hand-wringing by the White House. The reasons? A convincing four-star general, an activist group that overplayed its hand, and a plainspoken defense secretary who does not bother to defend the 2003 Iraq invasion. "I think it's better today," Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) said of the war. "I think we're on a better path than we were." While a longtime skeptic of President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq, Alexander joined his GOP colleagues in blocking each of the Democrats' three antiwar bills this week. The third...

The polling is in, and Hillary made a big mistake in her sharp disagreement with Obama over whether the president should meet with leaders of rogue nations. According to the Rasmussen Poll, Democrats agree with Obama over Hillary by 55 percent-22 percent. Without a poll to pretest her comments, Hillary instinctively took the "insider" position that the president should only meet with such leaders after extensive probing by subordinates to assure that the meetings would be productive. But she was wrong. Democrats want the president to meet with leaders of such nations without preset conditions. At the South Carolina...

The polling is in, and Hillary made a big mistake in her sharp disagreement with Obama over whether the president should meet with leaders of rogue nations. According to the Rasmussen Poll, Democrats agree with Obama over Hillary by 55 percent-22 percent. Without a poll to pretest her comments, Hillary instinctively took the "insider" position that the president should only meet with such leaders after extensive probing by subordinates to assure that the meetings would be productive. But she was wrong. Democrats want the president to meet with leaders of such nations without preset conditions. At the South Carolina Democratic...

Why U.S. Support for Palestinian President Abbas May Backfire Still, the Hamas challenge doesn't leave much of an alternative By Khaled Abu Toameh and Larry Derfner Posted 6/24/07 RAMALLAH, WEST BANK—He is the public face of Palestinian moderation, but President Mahmoud Abbas is a flimsy bulwark against the masked Islamist radicals of Hamas. Their quick, ruthless armed takeover of the impoverished Gaza Strip raised the specter that their "coup" will spread to the more populous West Bank, presenting a greater threat to neighboring Israel and to secular Arab leaders in places like Egypt and Jordan who fear the rise of...

Wednesday, May 23, 2007 The horrors facing a first offender locked up with hardened criminals in the nation's high-security federal prisons highlighted testimony Tuesday in the sentencing hearing of Stanislas Meyerhoff, the first of 10 defendants to be sentenced in the Operation Backfire prosecution of radical underground environmental activists. The hearing is expected to conclude today in Eugene before U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken, who will decide Meyerhoff's prison term and rule whether his crimes were acts of terrorism, a ruling that could bring a stiffer sentence. Through the day, prosecution and defense lawyers dueled over whether Meyerhoff was an...

WASHINGTON, April 24, 2007 – Recent suicide-bombing attacks against innocent Afghans indicate a changed Taliban strategy that is backfiring on the radical Islamic group, a senior U.S. military officer in Afghanistan told Pentagon reporters today. A spate of suicide bombings targeting residents of the city of Khowst and other areas in Afghanistan have turned Afghans against the Taliban, Army Col. Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team, said during a satellite-carried news conference. Schweitzer’s command operates in Paktika, Paktia, Lowgar, Ghazni and Khost provinces in the southeastern part of the country. “Khowst is a...

Pentagon's satellite-saving plan could backfire 16:37 15 August 2006 NewScientist.com news service Jeff Hecht Protecting hundreds of low-Earth-orbit satellites from destruction seems a laudable idea, and the US Pentagon wants to do just that. But the scheme could backfire, by shutting down civilian and military communications and impairing Global Positioning System signals. The Pentagon is concerned that a high-altitude nuclear explosion or an intense solar storm could fill near-Earth space with charged particles, crippling the operation of many satellites. It has proposed a plan called “radiation belt remediation” to clean it up. The idea is to orbit satellites that would...

North Korea’s missile launches in early July, despite repeated pleas by all, enraged an international community worried about a growing threat to global security. The launches even provoked North Korea’s longtime allies, China and Russia, prompting both parties to sign on to the UN resolution calling for sanctions. South Korea, which favored negotiations and reconciliation with the North, now stands at a policy crossroads. The sanctions include the ban on “transfer of any financial resources” to North Korea, which could significantly reduce South Korean aid to the North and affect trade with Russia, the Middle East and Africa. Analysts suggest...

A funny thing happened to Nancy Pelosi on her way to becoming Speaker. She had been kicking the old "culture of corruption" can down the road, when it suddenly became very heavy and began to hurt her toe. The fraud was working as long as the media was focusing on the tribulations of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a Republican representative from California jailed in March for corruption. Nevermind the fact that former Rep. Frank Ballance (D-N.C.) was carted off to jail three months earlier, also for corruption. Both Ballance and Cunningham currently reside in the Federal Correctional Complex in Butner. A...

How are the Democrats ever going to gain any traction with their “culture of corruption” message if they’re unable to keep from embarrassing themselves? Up until now, the Democrats’ problems were limited to a few rotten apples in the House. Representatives William Jefferson (D.-La.), Cynthia McKinney (D.-Ga.) and Alan Mollohan (D.-W.Va.) all had their share of problems, but none rose to the level of being a household name. That’s about to change. With the news that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) was bought off with front-row boxing tickets by the gaming industry, Democrats are left with no choice but...

TODAY'S MARCHES in the Bay Area and around the nation on behalf of immigrant rights have commendable goals. But it is also possible that the protests will backfire, and end up hurting the people they are intended to help. On this page, we have repeatedly called for greater rights for illegal immigrants -- including granting them driver's licenses, and strongly calling for an earned legalization program leading to citizenship. Yet today's call for a national work stoppage seems to be premature, one embraced without fully preparing for its possible negative consequences. Some have described the remarkable mobilization of immigrants in...

Recent images of seas of illegal aliens marching in cities across the U.S. are having a far greater negative than positive impact on the foreigners' cause, according to a new poll. A Zogby survey of nearly 8,000 people shows coast-to-coast protests against immigration proposals in Congress – particularly to make it a federal felony to be an illegal worker in the U.S. – have not persuaded a majority of likely American voters. Asked whether the protests have made likely voters more or less sympathetic toward undocumented workers, 61 percent said they're less likely to be sympathetic to the plight of...

The Protesters Have Killed The Amnesty Bill – I Want to Thank Every One of Them Many in the press continue to lie to the public by dropping the word ‘illegal’ from their headlines regarding these protests. Polls of legitimate sampling show that the overwhelming majority of Americans do not support amnesty at the expense of border security. The initial protests that included Mexican flags created such outrage among average legal citizens that Spanish radio along with leftist organizations have directed protesters to fake their support for America by waving American flags that have been handed to the for these...

Here's what now passes for "news gathering" at the NBC television network in the brave, and still relatively new, world of 24/7 electronic news broadcasting: Last weekend, a crew working for the NBC News magazine program "Dateline" showed up in Martinsville, Va. for the NASCAR stock car races. With the crew were some "Muslim-looking men" - whatever that means - as part of a "Dateline" effort to show how people in this country would react to "Muslims" in their midst. In a recent statement, NBC News said it was pursuing the issue because it was "intrigued by the results of...

The best thing that can be said about the call by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) to censure President Bush is that practically none of his colleagues is backing him up. Democrats are not, as he charges, "cowering" in the face of possible Republican allegations that they are pro-terrorist. Rather, they don't want to distract attention from the main Democratic assaults on Bush and the GOP - that he's "incompetent" and that Republicans are in "disarray."Moreover, as The New York Times reported Thursday, Feingold's move is being used by Republicans, right-wing talk show hosts and conservatives in general to motivate the...

Doesn't it strike you as ironic that one of the major architects of a legislative scheme that tramples all over the First Amendment had the gall to try to censure President Bush for the wireless surveillance of terrorists? At least with the Clinton impeachment, which many wanted to dilute to a censure and others to a mere verbal wrist-slap, there was no question that he committed multiple felonies. But now Sen. Russ Feingold demands that Bush be censured over a matter on which, to quote Al Gore, "there is no controlling legal authority," and which many believe is legal, proper,...

The Republican National Committee has made a remarkable discovery. U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long been thought to be an outsider in the Senate Democratic Caucus, is not a maverick at all. It turns out that Feingold is a "Democratic leader" who, according to RNC researchers, is pretty much setting the party's agenda. In one of a series of memos distributed from the Republican headquarters in Washington since Feingold proposed censuring the president, Feingold's photo appears next to a bold headline that declares: "THE DEBATE IS OVER: DEMS FIND THEIR AGENDA." A subhead reads: "Dem Leaders...

Trust overcame fear in the Canadian electorate last week. The negative attack-type campaign by Paul Martin’s Liberals, fomenting hatred and fear about Stephen Harper and his Conservatives, kept the Conservatives from a majority but the 124 seats they did achieve should provide stable government for several years. In the next election, the Liberals will not be able to use the politics of fear with any success since their false predictions about abortion and other social issues will not again be believed. A few illustrations: On Dec. 3, 2005 in the Toronto Star, Martin predicted, “We would see him (Harper) and...

AS THE SENATE moved this week toward the anticipated vote to confirm Samuel Alito, a resident of far-off North Dakota was likely to watch a heavily aired television ad. A female announcer read this: “Along with Democrats and Republicans, newspapers across America — the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the Fargo Forum — are endorsing Judge Samuel Alito for the U.S. Supreme Court. Yet, politically motivated liberal extremists like Ted Kennedy continue to attack Alito. Sen. Kent Conrad will soon cast his vote. Call Sen. Conrad and tell him to vote yes on Judge Alito and...

January 3, 2006 -- WHY have President Bush's poll ratings improved lately? Some say it is because he became more visible and vocal in defense of his policies. But I believe the Democrats drove voters back to his camp with their attacks on the Patriot Act and the administration's wiretapping policies.

This is ridiculous. Do you know that in the United States right now, there's this huge debate going on about the use of the word "Christmas"? Apparently some people thought it's offensive and inappropriate to say "Merry Christmas" in public. See, the USA is a multicultural society so there's a lot of Americans who do not celebrate Christmas by default. Initially, their government bodies and major shopping complexes decided to start using the more politically-correct and all-encompassing "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings", which I thought was fine.

Whom did the Valerie Plame leak hurt? Valerie, who went from undercover to on the cover when she posed for Vanity Fair? Joe Wilson, who got a best-selling book out of the deal? The current leak, however, of classified material relating to National Security Agency tactics in intercepting conversations between people abroad and those within the United States is a vastly serious proposition that may have materially compromised investigations in progress and tipped terrorists off to our methods so that they can hide among us undetected. This leak, far more than the Valerie Plame incident, deserves a full investigation to...

Whom did the Valerie Plame leak hurt? Valerie, who went from undercover to on the cover when she posed for Vanity Fair? Joe Wilson, who got a best-selling book out of the deal? The current leak, however, of classified material relating to National Security Agency tactics in intercepting conversations between people abroad and those within the United States is a vastly serious proposition that may have materially compromised investigations in progress and tipped terrorists off to our methods so that they can hide among us undetected. This leak, far more than the Valerie Plame incident, deserves a full investigation to...

Strong antiwar comments in recent days by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have opened anew a party rift over Iraq, with some lawmakers warning that the leaders' rhetorical blasts could harm efforts to win control of Congress next year. Several Democrats joined President Bush yesterday in rebuking Dean's declaration to a San Antonio radio station Monday that "the idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong." The critics said that comment could reinforce popular perceptions that the party is weak on military matters...

BERLIN -- A multimillion-dollar campaign to boost Germans' low self-confidence has backfired after it emerged that its slogan was coined by the Nazis. The $34 million "Du Bist Deutschland -- You Are Germany" -- campaign was devised to inspire Germans to stop moaning and do something good for their country. Beethoven, Einstein and the sports stars Franz Beckenbauer and Michael Schumacher have been cited in advertisements encouraging Germans to take more pride in their homeland. But a historian from Ludwigshafen has provoked an uproar with his discovery that the same "Du Bist Deutschland" cry was used at Nazi rallies in...

Roya Hakakian, writing in the Washington Post ("A Demonizing Call"), seems to think it might. For the first time in decades, opposition leaders, no longer afraid of taking an unpopular position, are challenging the assumption that Iran's official anti-Israel stance is sound foreign policy. There's some momentum behind the idea that in a region dominated by Sunni Arabs, Israel is Iran's most natural strategic ally. Writing about a recent trip to Iran in the New York Review of Books, historian Timothy Garton Ash pointed to developments like these as evidence of the Iranians' "friendly curiosity about Israel."

AFTER years of al-Qaeda terror attacks in which thousands have been killed, many of them Muslims - the people they wish to recruit - voices of dissent are starting to be heard in the Middle East. As moderate Muslims dare to protest at daily death tolls, even the prospect of one of Osama bin Laden's most feared cohorts, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, being handed over is being discussed. Faced with the unprecedented outburst of fury among Muslims over its latest atrocity, al-Qaeda's concern about reaction in the Middle East was evident last week when it came the closest yet to an...

AFTER years of al-Qaeda terror attacks in which thousands have been killed, many of them Muslims - the people they wish to recruit - voices of dissent are starting to be heard in the Middle East. As moderate Muslims dare to protest at daily death tolls, even the prospect of one of Osama bin Laden's most feared cohorts, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, being handed over is being discussed. Faced with the unprecedented outburst of fury among Muslims over its latest atrocity, al-Qaeda's concern about reaction in the Middle East was evident last week when it came the closest yet to an...

The Democratic party appears to have finally come up with a way to explain why so many of its elected leaders gave President Bush the authority to wage war in Iraq. Three simple words: "We were duped." A parade of top Democrats have contended in recent days that they would have been antiwar in 2002 had they known then what they now believe to be true: that the Bush administration manipulated the intelligence in order to build a bogus case for war. In pursuit of that theme, Senate Democrats on Tuesday successfully demanded that their GOP colleagues quit stalling and...

CIA Leak Will Blow Up in Democrat Faces November 3, 2005 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: As many of you know, I have been suspicious of this whole Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame Niger CIA story for a long time, and I wouldn't be surprised -- I can't make the allegation but I wouldn't be surprised -- if before this is all over we learn that the whole thing was an attempted coup, if you will, to send this guy Wilson over to Niger to purposely undermine the Bush war on terror and the Bush administration and hopefully have an effect on...