Talking Points Memo Opposed to Interracial Relationships?

Looks like Josh Marshall has his panties in a twist again, this time over the Obama-the-Bimbo ad:

Continues Marshall: “the McCain campaign is now pushing the caricature of Obama as a uppity young black man whose presumptuousness is displayed not only in taking on airs above his station but also in a taste for young white women.”

That seems a stretch, but it also makes you wonder:

Is there something wrong with having a taste for young white women? Does Joshua Micah [insert series of silly middle names here à la Ace] Marshall think there’s something wrong with young white women? Or with a black man being attracted to young white women?

I think Mr. Marshall should look for racial subtext a bit closer to home.

UPDATE: I suppose, though, that he’s better off than this guy.

An hour a day?

Hey, Covert Bailey said I only needed 20 minutes 3 times a week. But now look at what they’re saying:

That 30 minutes of daily exercise you think you’re supposed to do to keep weight off? You need to step it up, people. As much as twice that amount may be needed to lose weight and keep it off.

An hour a day? Riiiiight. But wait, there’s hope:

A recent study found that overweight and obese women needed to exercise about an hour a day, five days a week to sustain weight loss.

Oh – it’s only women who need to exercise an hour a day. Whew!!

That would have cut into my beer time.

“We can’t possibly deport them all!”

That’s what we’ve heard, over and over, with respect to the problem of illegal immigrants. John McCain said it, Barack Obama said it, and even George Bush said it.

The implication being that because we can’t deport them, we must accommodate them. But it’s always been a strawman argument, because it ignores the mobility of immigrants themselves. And today we see a manifestation of that mobility:

The number of illegal immigrants in the country has dropped by as much as 1.3 million in the past year, an 11 percent decline since a historic peak last August, an immigration research group in Washington said in a report released Wednesday.

The report, by Steven A. Camarota and Karen Jensenius of the Center for Immigration Studies, found “strong indications” that stepped-up enforcement by immigration authorities had played a major role in the decline.

The article goes on to argue whether it is the suffering economy or enforcement that has led to the decline, but that’s irrelevant. The point is, when the incentives are removed, immigrants move. We’ve already seen shifts from one state to another as enforcement has increased, and now we’re seeing a massive shift from one nation to another.

We’ve never needed to deport the majority of the illegal population. If the conditions are right, they’ll move themselves.

Learning from Iraq

The media/punditry turnaround on the Iraq war has been nothing short of stunning. Whereas two months ago it was a well-kept secret from liberals and the MSM, today it’s being trumpeted by every media organ. Here’s Kissinger in today’s Washington Post:

Almost all objective observers agree that major progress has been made on all three fronts of the Iraq war: Al-Qaeda, the Sunni jihadist force recruited largely from outside the country, seems on the run in Iraq; the indigenous Sunni insurrection attempting to restore Sunni predominance has largely died down; and the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad has, at least temporarily, mastered the Shiite militias that were challenging its authority. After years of disappointment, we face the need to shift gears mentally to consider emerging prospects of success.

It’s great that this is happening, and great that it is being acknowledged. Finally.

The lesson of Iraq, though, should not be that the Surge worked, nor that Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy is outstanding. It should be, rather, that something would have worked.

What I mean is that back in December 2006, when casualties were appalling, atrocities were rampant, and stability seemed a dream, more than half the country wanted to walk away. They weren’t willing to say, “We’ll stick with this until something works. We’ll keep working until stability is achieved.”

Many pundits were claiming that nothing would ever work, short of dividing the country into 3 parts or allowing the Shi’ites to eradicate the Sunnis. It was a ridiculous position to take, claiming that “nothing” could ever work, but it was commonly accepted at the time. And the idea that by just persevering – learning from our mistakes and continuing to try new approaches – we might eventually prevail, was mocked as naive at best, and bloodthirsty at worst.

Now Al Qaedans are fleeing Iraq and heading to Afghanistan, which is rapidly becoming their primary battlefront. And I’m sure the same voices will be clamoring for our retreat from the “impossible” situation there, as well. In fact, they started last summer:

Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), a senior defense authorizer, wants the U.S. out of Afghanistan immediately, calling operations there “futile” in trying to effect political change in a country with a tangled history.

So the question is: what lesson will they take away from Iraq, and will that temper their negativism this time? The answer, I fear, does not bode well for Afghanis.