Gabriel Malor over at Ace of Spades HQ highlights what I think is Obama's most serious problem:  his apparent inability to accurately judge the character of his friends and associates.

Obama on Tony Rezko:

“I’m saddened by today’s verdict. This isn’t the Tony Rezko I knew, but now he has been convicted by a jury on multiple charges that once again shine a spotlight on the need for reform. I encourage the General Assembly to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent these kinds of abuses in the future.”

Obama on Rev. Wright:

"I've known Rev. Wright for almost 20 years. The person that I saw yesterday was not the person I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church."

Maybe, just maybe, Barack Obama bears some responsibility for the people he's chosen to associate with.  Just maybe.

On a recent rather unpleasant flight on that rather unpleasant low-cost airline called Airtran, I made the comment to Snookums that "it's obvious that air travel is too cheap."  This astonishingly elitist comment escaped my mouth inside the miserable (I could have said "rather unpleasant" but I'm trying to diversify) New York LaGuardia waiting to board our flight home . . . via Atlanta, of course.

This, then, demonstrates the principle "be careful what you wish for":

 DALLAS - If you're taking a nonstop flight to summer vacation, better pony up a lot more money or start unpacking.

In many cases, major carriers have more than doubled or even tripled their cheapest U.S. fares from last summer's fares. That's on top of the new fees for checking luggage and other services.

Tom Parsons, chief executive of the discount travel site Bestfares.com, looked at the lowest fares for nonstop travel in July -- the kind of tickets that usually must be bought long in advance and therefore appeal mostly to vacationers, not business travelers.

This Examiner story just makes you shake your head in disbelief.  "It Can't Happen Here" indeed.

Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate "Neighborhood Safety Zones." At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have "legitimate reason" to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.

Lanier has been struggling to reverse D.C.’s spiraling crime rate but has been forced by public outcry to scale back several initiatives including her "All Hands on Deck" weekends and plans for warrantless, door-to-door searches for drugs and guns.

Under today’s proposal, the no-go zones will last up to 10 days, according to internal police documents. Front-line officers are already being signed up for training on running the blue curtains.

Liberal Fascism, anyone?

Via BoingBoing and Reason Hit and Run.

Glenn Reynolds noticed this . . . Obama, in St. Paul last night, said this:

John McCain has spent a lot of time talking about trips to Iraq in the last few weeks, but maybe if he spent some time taking trips to the cities and towns that have been hardest hit by this economy -- cities in Michigan, and Ohio, and right here in Minnesota -- he'd understand the kind of change that people are looking for.

The only problem is that McCain has already done, in April, exactly what Obama mocks him for not doing--the "Forgotten America Tour":

McCain's trip, which seems a mix of Clinton's "listening tour" in her 2000 Senate race in New York and President George W. Bush's efforts to portray himself as a "compassionate conservative" in his presidential campaign the same year, is to take him to Appalachia; the economically depressed steel town of Youngstown, Ohio; and the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the area hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Oops.  But dammit all, it was a good line.  Hope!  Change!

This is the basic problem with Obama:  behind his deep baritone voice, his soaring rhetoric, his golden tongue, his lofty rhetoric about moving beyond partisan politics, is a man who is quite willing to play the same "evil heartless Republicans don't really care about you" politics that we've seen since the New Deal and what's more, to distort his opponent's record to do so.

The more things CHANGE! the more they stay the same.

Kansas City, Kansas, that is.  A big gasoline storage tank has reportedly been hit by lightning accompanying severe thunderstorms in the Kansas City area.

The tornado sirens went off in Lee's Summit, Missouri (where I am, about 20 miles from the storage tank) but the first bunch of storms appears to have passed by.

Christopher Hitchens, that is, on Douglas Feith's book War and Decision:

Without explicitly saying so, Feith makes a huge contribution to the growing case for considering the Central Intelligence Agency to be well beyond salvage. Its role as a highly politicized and bewilderingly incompetent body, disastrous enough in having left us under open skies before Sept. 11, 2001, became something more like catastrophic with the gross mishandling of Iraq. For these revelations alone, this book is well worth the acquisition. (I might add that, unlike McClellan, Feith is contributing all his earnings and royalties to charities that care for our men and women in uniform.)

Rapidly becoming one of my more favorite blogs (despite, or perhaps because, of the rather salty language), Ace of Spades HQ, where in this entry the eponymous Ace notes a universal truth:

The main annoyance of debating an unhinged partisan is that, if any premise is helpful to their argument, he asserts it must be true. After all, he knows he's right, he knows his cause is right, therefore he knows his argument is right, and therefore, QED, and necessary premise for proving his argument must be true. It's a "fact" because it must be a fact.

I try to be a hinged partisan (or, as I prefer, a rational human being).  With luck I succeed, more often than not.

I had intended to heartily ignore the whole Scott McClellan kerfluffle, but this Washington Post op-ed by McClellan's right hand man Trent Duffy simply proves that what's sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander:

Since you have set the standard that it's honorable -- indeed, that it's in the public interest -- to harshly critique one's former boss in public, allow me to refresh your memory if some of the above doesn't come quickly to mind.

Your recent assertion that you were becoming "disillusioned" and "dismayed" in the 10 months before your April 2006 departure is amazing. It does provide you with a neat excuse for suggesting that you left the White House on principle. But I'm having trouble believing it, as is most everyone who worked closely with you at the White House and in the press corps during this time. Yes, I know you were troubled over the Valerie Plame case, but you told me repeatedly you were gleeful about your job.

Remember?

You hired me as your deputy in October 2003 and said more than once that the typical tenure of a White House press secretary before burnout was about two years. After two years went by, we were about halfway into what you now call your period of disillusionment.

As Christmas approached, your mood was as festive as the White House eggnog. Seeing your delight, I suspected you might be having second thoughts about serving only two years or so. So I asked you. You said you weren't going anywhere, you loved the job, you were feeling good. Now, you say you were actually suffering through a gut-wrenching ordeal and were looking for the exits.

Personally, I think that Mr. McClellan is playing the role of useful idiot in this particular little Potomac farce.  What isn't yet clear is who is (to muddle metaphors beyond all reason) pulling McClellan's strings.

Hey, another church for Barack to quit--the Church of the Holy Surrender to Islam in Iraq, whose holy sacrements are "No Blood For Oil," "Bush Lied, People Died," "It's a Quagmire, I tell you!  A Quagmire!" and, of course, "The Surge Has Failed."  Or, as the Washington Post puts it, somewhat less derisively:

If the positive trends continue, proponents of withdrawing most U.S. troops, such as Mr. Obama, might be able to responsibly carry out further pullouts next year. Still, the likely Democratic nominee needs a plan for Iraq based on sustaining an improving situation, rather than abandoning a failed enterprise. That will mean tying withdrawals to the evolution of the Iraqi army and government, rather than an arbitrary timetable; Iraq's 2009 elections will be crucial. It also should mean providing enough troops and air power to continue backing up Iraqi army operations such as those in Basra and Sadr City. When Mr. Obama floated his strategy for Iraq last year, the United States appeared doomed to defeat. Now he needs a plan for success.

Gosh.  The S-word.  Success.  In reference to Iraq.  In a prominent mainstream media editorial which is not the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, or Investor's Business Daily.  Wow.

In keeping with the general theme of religion, the phrase "there are none so blind as those who will not see" comes to mind.

Study says that it's not always better to "express your feelings" after a traumatic event:

If the assumption about the necessity of expression is correct -- that failing to express one's feelings indicates some harmful repression or other pathology -- then people who chose not to express should have been more likely to experience negative mental and physical health symptoms over time, the researchers point out.

"However, we found exactly the opposite: people who chose not to express were better off than people who did choose to express," Seery says.

I think that this is simple group dynamics at work.  People tend to model their behavior after those around them--good and bad.  If you see someone else soldering on with a "stiff upper lip" you're more likely to do so as well.  If you see someone collapse into a blubbering dysfunctional pile of misery, you're more likely to do that, too.