CALIFORNIA YANKEE

Obama Willing To Meet Dictators, Not Vets Or Commanders

On Friday, Vets for Freedom released a new web ad, “Senator Obama: Talk to Commanders or Meet with Dictators?” The ad features Iraq war veteran Sergeant Garrett Anderson. Sergeant Anderson points out that Senator Obama was unwilling to meet with Illinois veterans, has never met with General Petraeus, and hasn’t visited Iraq in over two years.

Today, Vets for Freedom released a second ad, featuring Iraq war veteran, Specialist Kate Norley. Specialist Norley, who served 16 months on the front lines as a combat medic, asks Senator Obama two simple, but important, questions:

1. Senator Obama, when will you finally decide to go back to Iraq, to see the progress first hand?
2. When will you finally decide to meet one-on-one, unconditionally, with General Petraeus?

Since Obama last visited Iraq in January 2006 much has changed:

Violence down 70%.

Al Qaeda in Iraq has been decimated.

Political progress is occurring.

The Iraqi Army is taking on rogue militias throughout the country.

The fact is—the surge has worked, and has moved America closer to overall success in Iraq.

So why does Obama continue to insist he would meet with Ahmadinejad, but not Petraeus?

Why is Obama willing to meet with other American enemies such as Castro but not veterans?

Why is Obama unwilling to visit Iraq to see the progress?

Perhaps it is because, like his story about his uncle liberating Auschwitz and Treblinka, the facts can't support his position.

Jim Geraghty, also wonders whether it is wise for Obama to continue to refuse to see the progress in Iraq:

I suppose one can argue about the value of seeing the situation on the ground with one's own eyes, but wouldn't the architect of a withdrawal want to see some of the circumstances himself? Even if Obama didn't want to travel with McCain, is it really wise to suggest that a tour of post-surge Iraq is unnecessary? Wouldn't scheduling a visit defuse criticism like this from Vets for Freedom PAC?

And isn't Obama vulnerable to the argument that a man who's pledged to meet unconditionally, one-on-one, face-to-face with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad really ought to meet at least once one-on-one with Gen. David Petraeus?

So do I.

Mars Orbiter Captures Phoenix Descent To Mars

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped a picture of NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander descending through the Martian sky dangling beneath its parachute.

The image was captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is the first time that a spacecraft has imaged the final descent of another spacecraft onto a planetary body.

The picture was taken on Sunday by by the Orbiter was passing overhead just as Phoenix was floating through Mars' thin atmosphere. The 9-foot-wide (2.6-meter-wide) Phoenix spacecraft as well as its 30-foot-wide (10-meter-wide) parachute and cords were clearly visible, even though the orbiter was about 475 miles (760 kilometers) away.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The Next Right

There is a new force in the conservative blogosphere.

Three of my favorite new media political activists, Patrick Ruffini, Jon Henke, and Soren Dayton, have started a new project called The Next Right.

In case you aren't familiar with these online gurus, you can get a very brief bio of each courtesy of Marc Ambinder here.

The Next Right is designed to foster political activism using technology such as blogs and other Web 2.0 structures.

Patrick Ruffini has noted the conservative blogosphere has been content just being pundits or media critics, while the left has used the internet more forcefully:

Netroots activists on the left have built critical mass around an idea that regular people on the Internet can get their hands dirty and remix Democratic politics. They not only raise money. They recruit candidates. They fund full-time investigative journalism to ambush Republicans. They act as a party whip, creating consequences for Democrats who, in their view, don’t act like Democrats. They volunteer and flock to states with key races.

Working toward more activism to go along with the reporting, analysis and punditry offered at RedState and like-minded blogs, the addition of The Next Right provides the potential opportunity for tremendous synergy in the conservative blogosphere. Check it out.

Touring The Pentagon Memorial

On Friday, family members of 9/11 victims were allowed to tour the Pentagon Memorial site scheduled to open on September 11, 2008. Jim Miklaszewski reports in the following video:

NASA's Phoenix Spacecraft Lands Safely On Mars

NASA is celebrating The Memorial Day Weekend with the successful landing of Phoenix spacecraft on Mars.

Images: A false-color image taken by the Phoenix spacecraft on Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Calech/University of Arizona.

Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed that the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. In the intervening time, those signals crossed the distance from Mars to Earth at the speed of light. The confirmation ignited cheers by mission team members at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver; and the University of Arizona.

As planned, Phoenix stopped transmitting one minute after landing and focused its limited battery power on opening its solar arrays, and other critical activities. About two hours after touchdown, it sent more good news. The first pictures confirmed that the solar arrays needed for the mission's energy supply had unfolded properly, and masts for the stereo camera and weather station had swung into vertical position.

This is the first successful landing in a polar region of Mars. The successful landing is no mean feat. Only five of our planet's 11 previous attempts to land on the Red Planet have succeeded.

The landing ends a 422-million-mile journey from Earth and begins a three-month mission that will use instruments to study the northern polar site's soil and ice.

Happy Memorial Day 2008

Please take the time today to remember all those that sacrificed so that we are able to live in freedom.

Observe the National Moment of Remembrance at 3 p.m., local time, today. Pause for a minute in an act of national unity to honor those who died for our freedom. Ask others to remember, to observe the Moment wherever you are.

Or do as Ralph Kinney Bennett suggests in his phenomenal "Go and find a soldier's grave." Go and find a soldier's grave and think about what it means; what it really means to give your life, in its prime, for your country. Make this Memorial Day truly memorable.

The image above is from the National Cemetery in the Presidio in San Francisco. The image to the left is an arial view of the World War II Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, which is situated on a cliff overlooking Omaha Beach and the English Channel in Colleville-sur Mer, France.

President Abraham Lincoln found the most appropriate words:

The Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Feinstein Backs Obama/Clinton Ticket

Senator Feinstein, a Hillary supporter, backs the Democrats so-called dream ticket - Obama/Clinton -- saying if Sen. Barack Obama becomes the Democratic nominee he should pick Hillary as his running mate:

"I think as this race has emerged each one of them has garnered a different constituency and different states, and therefore when you put the two of them together it forms, I believe, the strongest ticket," Feinstein, D-Calif., told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

"Women feel very strongly about Hillary and African-Americans feel very strongly about Barack, and the election results show that, and the young versus old, the higher educated versus the working person ... All these things are sort of separated out into one or the other so there is a logic in combining the two constituencies."

Feinstein didn't rule out Hillary winning the nomination:

She also said that if Clinton becomes the nominee, she should pick Obama as her running mate.

Bill Clinton is also suggesting that Hillary should be offered the vice presidency:

In Bill Clinton's view, she has earned nothing short of an offer to be Obama's running mate, according to some who are close to the former President. Bill "is pushing real hard for this to happen," says a friend.

You can watch John Heileman discuss the dream ticket on the Morning Joe in the following video [the dream ticket discussion starts at 6:40 into the clip]:

Democrats "Stretched The Facts," Misled America

"We sort of stretched the facts...and people ate it up."

Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) has an honesty problem. He was publicly honest about the intentional dishonesty of Congressional Democrats (and Democrat candidates) in the run-up to the 2006 election -- particularly with regard to the War in Iraq:

Transcript:

"I'll tell you my impression. We really in this last election, when I say we...the Democrats, I think pushed it as far as we can to the end of the fleet, didn't say it, but we implied it. That if we won the Congressional elections, we could stop the war. Now anybody was a good student of Government would know that wasn't true. But you know, the temptation to want to win back the Congress, we sort of stretched the facts...and people ate it up."

My friend and esteemed RedState colleague Jeff Emanuel has more on the Democrats' fact stretching about the war.

McCain Healthy And Vigorous

John McCain made his health records available to the press yesterday.

Dr. John Eckstein, McCain's physician at the Mayo Clinic's Scottsdale campus since 1992 said McCain is in excellent health:

"All I can say is that, at the present time, he is healthy, he is vigorous and he could fulfill the obligations of any job, including the presidency of the United States," the doctor said.

After the kerfuffle, during which the New York Times tried to extort its way onto the press pool invited to review the records, Elisabeth Bullimer and Lawerence K. Altman wrote a fair article about what the records revealed, calling McCain's health "robust:"

Senator John McCain, 71, is in excellent health and shows no evidence of the recurrence of the melanoma skin cancer that led to extensive head and neck surgery in 2000, Mr. McCain’s doctors said Friday.

NBC's Dr. Nancy Snyderman reports in the following video:

So when is Obama going to make his medical records available?

Go Find A Soldier's Grave

As we prepare to celebrate the Memorial Day weekend, I ask you to consider the suggestion of Ralph Kinney Bennett, who in 2006, posted a phenomenal article at TCS Daily about how to make Memorial Day truly memorable.

Go and find a soldier's grave.

It shouldn't be too hard. If you're not near a military cemetery, just about any cemetery will do.

Look for the little American flags fluttering by the stones or the little bronze markers placed by the veterans' organizations.

Or walk the rows and look for those stones that impart terse histories of short lives -- "Killed in Action on the Island of Iwo Jima," or "KIA Republic of Viet Nam," or "Iraq 2003."

I know, I know. You do plan to watch that short parade, and the ceremony at the flagpole. But then relatives are going to be over for that big cookout. There's baseball and auto racing on TV, not to mention the "Memorial Day Mattress Event" or the "Memorial Day SUV Salesathon."

Look, just take an hour away from all that. An hour. Go out early in the morning if you have to.

Go and find a soldier's grave.

Put some flowers there. Or just pause and say a prayer. Nothing elaborate. "Thanks" will do.

Or just stop and think about what it means; what it really means to give your life, in its prime, for your country. Look at that name there on the stone. Think what might have been... and what was.

Some of these men and women were in uniform by choice. Some because they had no choice. Some were heroes. Some were not.

But they were there where all hell was breaking loose. They probably had no idea they were giving "the last full measure of devotion." They just had some instant, desperate job to do. In a cockpit or a turret or a hole in the ground.

Did they grasp the "policy implications" of their presence on the high seas, in the air or on some foreign soil? Did they have time for a curse or a prayer when they saw the muzzle flashes or heard that rushing sound, or when the bomb sent the Humvee into the air?

Go and find a soldier's grave.

You can have that hamburger and beer later, and maybe relax in the hammock and not give a thought to that one whose life span is now an incised line in stone -- that one who represented you, like no Congressman could.

Go and find a soldier's grave.

Remember what duty costs.

Then just bow your head and, as Gen. George S. Patton said, do not mourn that such men died, but thank God that such men lived.

Make this Memorial Day really memorable. Go find a soldier's grave.