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just a nobody: Thank you for posting the DOSE . . . LOVE the photo of our ‘windshield’ cowboy (as Laura calls him)!
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MUST READ . . .

THE DEMOCRATS BLINK
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

Iraq: When Democratic leaders dropped their demand for a withdrawal timeline this week, it was more than being outmaneuvered in negotiations. They left the president in firm possession of the moral high ground.

Only a short time ago, Democrats were cockily promising they would send the president a pullout bill as many times as it would take, until finally he would have to relent. Just last Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were insisting on a timeline in negotiations with the White House on a war funding bull.

But the tables have now been turned on congressional Democrats. All of a sudden, it is they who face a deadline: If Congress does not manage to pass a war spending bill that the president is willing to sign before the Memorial Day recess, Democrats become vulnerable to the charge of refusing to fund our combat troops.

And so, faced with the president’s famous “stubbornness” (so often portrayed as a character flaw by liberal Democrats and the media establishment), Democratic leaders have been forced to blink, dropping their insistence that war funding be linked to a troop withdrawal timeline — even a nonbinding one.

You can read the entire commentary here:
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=264727642819830
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‘MALAISE’ MAESTRO
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, May 22, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Leadership: When it comes to economic performance, there’s no contest: Apart from the early years of the Depression, Jimmy Carter’s brief tenure as president was the worst in the 20th century.

Carter’s rather smug attempt to rank President Bush as the worst president ever wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t so wrong. The irony, of course, is that the peanut farmer from Plains, Ga., shares that distinction with a number of other presidential mismanagers of our nation’s economy.

Carter apparently has gotten so used to being called the “greatest living former president” that he’s forgotten to consult the record. And what the record shows is he inherited a bad economy and made it worse — much worse — before a man named Ronald Reagan came in and changed course.

Here’s where things stood in 1980, Carter’s last year in office, and in subsequent periods:

• Carter: Interest rate, 21%. Inflation, 13.5%. Unemployment, 7%. The so-called “Misery Index,” which Carter used to great effect in his 1976 campaign to win election, 20.5%.

• Reagan’s last year: Interest rate, 9%. Inflation, 4.1%. Unemployment, 5.5%. Misery Index, 9.6%.

• Bush today: Interest rate, 8%. Inflation, 2.6%. Unemployment, 4.5%. Misery Index, 7.1%.

You can read the entire commentary here:
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=264727202278115
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TO AMERICA’S GENERALS
TODAY’S COLUMNIST
By Daniel L. Davis
May 22, 2007

According to recently published reports, the Bush administration quietly approached several retired four-star generals last March about accepting a newly created position to coordinate military and political/diplomatic activity in Iraq. None accepted. One of those who refused was highly decorated retired Marine Corps Gen. John J. Sheehan, who was quoted in The Washington Post as saying, “So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, ‘No, thanks.’ “ How unreasonable indeed it was of the president of the United States to ask a retired Marine Corps four-star general — during a time of war — to do something hard, particularly at the risk of an upset tummy.

Gen. Sheehan’s comments and a commentary subsequently published on April 16th have been cited by numerous media outlets and various politicians as proof of the problems within the administration. As a member of the active duty military, however, I find his comments appalling and embarrassing. In his commentary, Gen. Sheehan wrote that to have accepted the job would have required “a great deal of emotional and intellectual energy” to coordinate the various governmental agencies, and ultimately, he wrote, “I concluded that the current Washington decision-making process lacks a linkage to a broader view of the region and how the parts fit together strategically.” To which I respond: How about using your ostensibly powerhouse resume (former supreme allied commander, commander-in-chief of U.S. Atlantic Command, etc), to bring order to the chaos you cite, to recommend policy revisions and use the immense reputation conferred upon a retired U.S. Marine Corps general to solve these longstanding problems? This position carried with it a direct line to the president; armed with such power, a capable man could surely have made a difference. But instead, the general only talks about the challenges — and his personal discomfort.

You can read the entire editorial here:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20070521-091720-6604r.htm