Oh, my – that is freaking HILARIOUS! Here is part of the article:

The cyber-warfare operation was launched by MI6 and GCHQ in an attempt to disrupt efforts by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular to recruit “lone-wolf” terrorists with a new English-language magazine, the Daily Telegraph understands.

When followers tried to download the 67-page colour magazine, instead of instructions about how to “Make a bomb in the Kitchen of your Mom” by “The AQ Chef” they were greeted with garbled computer code.

The code, which had been inserted into the original magazine by the British intelligence hackers, was actually a web page of recipes for “The Best Cupcakes in America” published by the Ellen DeGeneres chat show.

Written by Dulcy Israel and produced by Main Street Cupcakes in Hudson, Ohio, it said “the little cupcake is big again” adding: “Self-contained and satisfying, it summons memories of childhood even as it’s updated for today’s sweet-toothed hipsters.” [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Isn’t that, um, rich, that they used a recipe from the Ellen Degeneres Chat show? C’mon, that is FUNNY! Use a recipe in a magazine for Al Qaeda Would-Be Terrorists from an out-lesbian’s show? That is fabulous! You know that had to make their little terrorist heads explode. Gotta love MI6! Well done!

Speaking of Al Qaeda, here’s an interesting little tidbit that slipped by. Guess who invited the Libyan “rebels” new National Transitional Council to open an office in Washington, D.C.? Did you guess Obama? Well, then, you would be right. Yes, these are the same people whose connections are still unclear, though they CLAIM none of the people on the council have ties to Al Qaeda…Uh huh. Oh, and this is the same group that demanded Qatar return a rape victim, Eman al-Obeidy, to them, which Qatar did:

[snip] She said that, besides beating her and forcing her onto the plane, the Qataris had taken everything from her and her parents, including cell phones, her laptop, and money.[snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Oh, yes – I can see why President Obama would offer to allow the NTC to open an office in DC. Oh, wait, no I can’t. It is ludicrous. It is obscene.

Speaking of obscene, now it is time for a PSA from Monica Hesse of the Washington Post: Listen up, fellas: Naked man-parts? Not so sexy. Ms. Hesse is referring, of course, to the alleged tweet from Rep. Weiner (oh, wow) a leading Democrat from NY of a, well, um, how shall I say this – weiner. Weiner, of course, denies any such allegation, though – and this is just one of those, WTH kind of moments – he cannot say with certainty that the photo is NOT him.

Whaaaa? I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell would know if somehow there was a photo traveling around of my private parts. How in the hell cannot he NOT KNOW FOR SURE??? I think that says a lot, and what it says is: EWWWWWWWWWWWW.

Back to Hesse’s article. She has some suggestions from women in America about what they WOULD like to see:

[snip] “I would like a photo of a made bed,” says Kathryn Roberts, who works at a law firm in Washington. “I would take rose petals, but I want them on top of a made bed.” And not that fake kind of made, either, where the comforter is smooth but the sheets are a jumbled mess.

“Or laundry,” adds her friend Andrea Neurohr.

“Folded laundry,” elaborates Roberts. “Maybe in a wicker basket.”

Over the years, a handful of famous men — and a boatload full of unfamous, Craigslisty men — have landed in the news for sending women photos of their artfully framed packages. Brett Favre allegedly had a special delivery for Jenn Sterger, a sideline reporter for the New York Jets. Kanye West allegedly provided some of his female MySpace friends with some extra-friendly pictures. There are entire Web sites, aimed at men, teaching them the etiquette for public displays of private parts.

Men! Broaden your seduction techniques!

How about you move away from the below-the-waist close-up? How about you try going naked from the waist up? How about a picture of you, sweaty, cleaning out the storm drain? How about a photograph of you gently caressing the yogurt, as you rotate the soon-to-expire food to the front of the refrigerator? So sexy!

“The refrigerator,” says Gretchen LeMaistre. “That’s a big scenario.” LeMaistre is a San Francisco-based photographer who has worked on the “Porn for Women” series, tongue-in-cheek books purporting to tap into women’s most intimate pleasure zones. In the yet-unpublished “Porn for Working Women,” an attractive man cleans out the office fridge and asks, “Am I the only one who cares if we have a clean breakroom?” [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Uh, yeah. I am guessing that would work.

I suppose at some point we will get to the, uh, bottom of all of this, though so far, for my money, Weiner seems a bit creative in his deflections. I’m thinking he did SOMETHING he shouldn’t have. Oopsy daisy.

Speaking of someone who did something he shouldn’t have, it looks like former NC Senator, VP candidate, and presidential candidate, John Edwards can anticipate criminal charges being filed against him. Again, oopsy daisy. I reckon that’s what happens when you funnel campaign cash to your mistress and your love child. Seems that’s against the law. You’d think an attorney would know that. Apparently not:

[snip] Edwards, a trial lawyer who represented North Carolina in the Senate before his 2004 and 2008 runs for the White House, met last week with benefactor Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, the donor believed to have funded Edwards’s attempt to cover up his affair and child with Rielle Hunter, ABC News reported. Mellon is said to have given Edwards $700,000 for the purpose. [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Holy moley, that’s a lot of green. I guess Ms. Hunter likes the finer things in life, huh?

I doubt that will be the color of the jumpsuit Edwards will be wearing if convicted. Ahem. I’m thinking orange. Sure hope it was worth it…

Oh, ick. I feel the need for a metaphorical shower, don’t you? Hey, it is Friday, after all. Here is something just for fun. I hope it brings a smile to your face:

Thank Goodness It’s Friday…

All the conjecture and today’s meeting reminded me of Truthteller’s excellent piece on March 22, “Chávez Calls Obama an ‘Ignoramus’,” which we’re reprinting for your amusement:

No Quarter is a loose but raucous chorus of discordant voices. Some of us are centrists, others are hawkish Democrats, some view themselves as reformers, a few are resolutely independent and others are unabashed Leftists. Consider me one of the latter. In this essay I will not criticize Chávez, and I will not repeat all the threadbare rhetorical bludgeons such as socialist, communist, totalitarian or dictatorial many use to dismiss Chávez and his democratically elected government. If that is what you are seeking, I recommend you take your dossier and go somewhere else.

But at least consider this before you rush for the exit: the candidate who claimed “negotiations without preconditions” would yield amicable and cooperative relations with Iran, Cuba and Venezuela has literally had his Ferragamo shoe shoved squarely in his programmed mouth by Hugo Chávez. I quote Reuters:

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama was at best an “ignoramus” for saying the socialist leader exported terrorism and obstructed progress in Latin America.

“He goes and accuses me of exporting terrorism: the least I can say is that he’s a poor ignoramus; he should read and study a little to understand reality,” said Chavez, who heads a group of left-wing Latin American leaders opposed to the U.S. influence in the region.

Negotiations with Chávez and the Leftist Latin American coalition are now foreclosed as a result of Obama’s garrulity and glibness. How else would one expect a country to react if one claims its largest export is terrorism? Here is one effect:

Chavez said Obama’s comments had made him change his mind about sending a new ambassador to Washington, after he withdrew the previous envoy in a dispute last year with the Bush administration in which he also expelled the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela.

Obama really is the Democratic incarnation of Bush: so much for change, and so much for meaningful negotiations. Not only are our relations with our neighbors Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Paraguay, El Salvador and Brazil strained; the Mexican government has raised tariffs on our exports, and we are the subject of much ridicule in the British press.

Venezuela, many of you may recall, is an ally of Iran, and Chávez will visit that and other countries in the Middle East in a few days for a summit of leaders from South American and Arab countries. Iran just rebuffed Obama’s recent attempt at negotiations with television and teleprompter, dismissing the staged spectacle as so many “slogans.” Democrats in the US may be duped by Obama’s empty rhetoric, media simulations and other mass ornaments, but true Leftists are always ones to lift the hood and investigate the true operations of the apparatus power utilizes against them. Unlike Andrew Sullivan, they are not mesmerized by brands and “faces;” they need a bit more than just images and surfaces. No wonder why Chávez calls Obama an “ignoramus.” I imagine he thinks that term also applies to all of Obama’s easily duped supporters.

What can one expect now that Obama has alienated Iran, Venezuela and all their allies in the Middle East and South and Central America? Oil prices will rise, trade agreements will become increasingly strained, tariffs on exports will probably increase, the price of imports will increase, and all the populist movements in countries wherein impoverished citizens are demanding something that resembles a suitable standard of living will be hostile instead of receptive to the United States’s particular version of democracy and global unity. With our economy spiraling into bankruptcy this can only engender more problems abroad, especially if our European allies feel we are exacerbating the distrust many countries have for what can broadly be defined as the West. Here is Russia admonishing the US in the wake of Obama’s failed attempt to engage Iran:

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there was no proof that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon and urged the West to respect and reach out to the Islamic republic.

While I opposed Obama during the primaries for his lack of an ideological compass and his lack of a bold domestic agenda that would expand social services and thereby provide more Americans with equal access to power and resources, I thought his foreign policy, however vaguely defined, however utterly naïve, however hopelessly optimistic, would enable the United States to marshall the energy generated by all the New Social Movements, populist upheavals and new articulations of ethnic identity occurring throughout the world and funnel it toward a global understanding wherein difference and empathy would be celebrated and cultivated. Instead, we have more of the strained relations that were aggravated under Bush. Chávez, who is the face of some Leftist and New Social Movements, views us as antagonists to be shunned, as colonizers to be ousted, as representatives of a late capitalist hegemony that for him and his followers is the latest iteration of enslavement to the West. Obama promised to change this perception with his “negotiations without preconditions,” but instead all he did was reinvigorate it.

That Obama and his staff are reproducing the errors of Bush does not surprise me. Hopefully Hillary will help Obama out of this latest problem he has created for us. After all, it takes a Clinton to clean the mess created by a Bush. And Obama, to be sure, is nothing more than the Democratic Party’s version of George W. Bush. Indeed, he is nothing more than an ignoramus.

People go bankrupt all the time. Companies do, too. But countries?
Iceland was on the verge of doing exactly that on Thursday as the government shut down the stock market and seized control of its last major independent bank. That brought trading in the country’s currency to a halt, with foreign banks no longer willing to take Icelandic krona, even at fire-sale rates.

As the meltdown in the Icelandic financial system quickened, with the government seemingly powerless to do anything about it, analysts said there was probably only one realistic option left: for Iceland to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund.

“Iceland is bankrupt,” said Arsaell Valfells, a professor at the University of Iceland. “The Icelandic krona is history. The IMF has to come and rescue us.”

Read the rest ->
The Guardian (UK) had this to add:

Gordon Brown has told the Icelandic prime minister that he is considering legal action against the country over the collapse of its national banks.

The prime minister said tonight that Iceland’s decision not to recompense those with savings in the bank was “completely unacceptable” and the British government would do “whatever is necessary to recover the money”.

“I’ve spoken to the Icelandic prime minister, I have told him this is effectively an illegal action that they have taken. We are freezing the assets of Icelandic companies in the UK where we can. We will take further action against the Icelandic authorities where necessary to recover the money.

While Britain, like the US, insures individual depositors up to a point, large depositors don’t necessarily have the same protections.

But up to 20 UK councils who banked with Icesave could lose millions of pounds because wholesale deposits are not protected. The Tories have estimated that up to £1bn may be at stake.

I expect the recriminations are just starting to fly and as governments try to protect themselves and their citizens, it’s going to get a lot uglier. I hope we elect someone strong enough and pragmatic enough to do what needs be done.

2) The NYT has an article on the financial crisis, saying Bush and other European leaders will meet this weekend to look at a more coordinated response to the global crisis.

The British and American plans, though far from identical, have two common elements according to officials: injection of government money into banks in return for ownership stakes and guarantees of repayment for various types of loans.

Both remedies will be center stage on Saturday, when President Bush meets with finance ministers from the world’s richest countries at an unusual White House meeting to swap ideas.

Mr. Bush’s invitation to finance ministers from Britain, Italy, Germany, France, Canada and Japan came on a day of phone calls and letters between European leaders and with Washington.

Adding to the urgency, the Japanese stock market plunged more than 10 percent Friday morning, after having dropped 9 percent on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, the NYT must feel that flogging the “troopergate” story is critical for national attention. It still devoted 3 (online) pages to that. With the global financial crisis and people starting to use the “d” word, this manufactured “scandal” is an indefensible waste of time.

3) Also in the NYT today is an article about Russia and Iran. There is some thought that a Russian scientist has been helping Iran develop nuclear weapons.

International nuclear inspectors are investigating whether a Russian scientist helped Iran conduct complex experiments on how to detonate a nuclear weapon, according to European and American officials. As part of the investigation, inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency are seeking information from the scientist, who they believe acted on his own as an adviser on experiments described in a lengthy document obtained by the agency, the officials said.
————————-
Asked about the potential contribution of the Russian scientist in detonator experimentation, a senior Russian official who has long followed Iran’s nuclear program said, “It is difficult for me to add anything.”

Ah, global financial crisis and Iranian nukes. And you thought today was going to be dull?

4) Charles Krauthammer writes today about the character question and Obama.

Convicted felon Tony Rezko. Unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. And the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It is hard to think of any presidential candidate before Barack Obama sporting associations with three more execrable characters. Yet let the McCain campaign raise the issue, and the mainstream media begin fulminating about dirty campaigning tinged with racism and McCarthyite guilt by association.

But associations are important. They provide a significant insight into character. They are particularly relevant in relation to a potential president as new, unknown, opaque and self-contained as Obama. With the economy overshadowing everything, it may be too late politically to be raising this issue. But that does not make it, as conventional wisdom holds, in any way illegitimate.
Krauthammer faults McCain for not going after the character issue much earlier. However, given all the vitriol at even the hint that Obama’s character and pals are less than absolute sterling, I’m not sure McCain could have reasonably done otherwise.

Why are these associations important? Do I think Obama is as corrupt as Rezko? Or shares Wright’s angry racism or Ayers’ unreconstructed 1960s radicalism?
No. But that does not make these associations irrelevant. They tell us two important things about Obama.

First, his cynicism and ruthlessness. He found these men useful, and use them he did. Would you attend a church whose pastor was spreading racial animosity from the pulpit? Would you even shake hands with — let alone serve on two boards with — an unrepentant terrorist, whether he bombed U.S. military installations or abortion clinics?

Most Americans would not, on the grounds of sheer indecency. Yet Obama did, if not out of conviction then out of expediency. He was a young man on the make, an unknown outsider working his way into Chicago politics. He played the game with everyone, without qualms and with obvious success.
————-
Second, and even more disturbing than the cynicism, is the window these associations give on Obama’s core beliefs. He doesn’t share Rev. Wright’s poisonous views of race nor Ayers’ views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond.

Well, that IS the point some of us have been making for several months now. Before today’s news cycle is over, you’ll hear more screams of “racism.”

5) Today’s WSJ has a sarcasm-laced op-ed about the wonderful magic of Obama. Here’s a snippet:

We’re back now. And just watch the Great Obama perform a feat never yet managed in all history. He will create that enormous new government health program, spend billions to transform our energy economy, provide financial assistance to former Soviet satellites, invest in infrastructure, increase education spending, provide job training assistance, and give 95% of Americans a tax (ahem) cut — all without raising the deficit a single penny! And he’ll do it in the middle of a financial crisis. And with falling tax revenues! Voila!

Now will I be called a racist if I say that’s an Obama fairy tale??

6) Even the NYT now has a “fake donors for Obama” story. Who’d a thunk it?

It appears that campaign finance records for Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, contain far fewer obviously false names, although he has taken in about $200 million in contributions, less than half Mr. Obama’s total. Mr. McCain did collect about $173,000 from donors who appear in campaign finance records with only a name and have no other identifying information. Mr. Obama collected about $314,000 from such donors.

Although campaigns have long wrestled with questionable donations, Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, said the record-setting number of new donors Mr. Obama has drawn, many of them online, presents new challenges to a compliance system that remains stuck in the past.

Ms. Krumholz pointed out, however, that it would take an extraordinary amount of coordination to pull off widespread fraud.

Yeah, but isn’t ACORN in trouble in several states now? Couldn’t one reasonably call that “widespread?”

But even a contributor who used the name “Jgtj Jfggjjfgj,” and listed an address of “thjtrj” in “gjtjtjtjtjtjr, AP,” was able to contribute $370 in a series of $10 donations in August.

A pair of donors named “Derty West” and “Derty Poiiuy,” who listed “rewq, ME” as their addresses and “Qwertyyy” or “Qwerttyyu” as either their employer or occupation, contributed a combined $1,110 in July.

Hey!!! It’s Derty Poiiuy! I wrote about him in yesterday’s roundup. Didn’t know he had a brother, though. Derty West DEFINITELY sounds like a porn star. Maybe BO has the porn industry demographic locked up. Yeah, it’s part of Hollywood, so that makes sense.

The questionable donations to the Obama campaign, most of which appear to have been given in small increments online, are bolstering the contentions of some campaign finance groups that additional disclosure requirements are needed for contributions of $200 or less.

Federal candidates are not required to itemize such contributions to the F.E.C. unless the donor’s cumulative total adds up to more than $200. Roughly 70 percent of these contributions to Mr. Obama are not reported, compared with more than 75 percent of Mr. McCain’s.

“Mr. Obama” has an aversion to reporting and paperwork, as we know. And this is the third story I’ve done recently on fake donors.

Uh, remember what I snarked earlier about Obama potentially having the porn industry on his side? Well, ask and ye shall receive. . . .

From the NYPost:

ONE of the “bundlers” who has raised $50,000 to $100,000 for the Barack Obama presidential campaign is Terrence Bean, who once controlled the biggest producer of gay porn in America.

Bean, the first gay on Sen. Obama’s National Finance Committee, is the sole trustee of the Charles M. Holmes Foundation, which owned Falcon Studios, Jock Studios and Mustang Studios, the producers of about $10 million worth of all-male pornography a year

7) In “Your Daily Racism” Time has yet another version of the “it must be racism” theme.

Does that mean race doesn’t matter this year? Hardly. It just matters in a different way. In the past, Republicans often used race to make their opponents seem anti-white. In 2008, with their incessant talk about who loves their country and who doesn’t, McCain and Palin are doing something different: they’re using race to make Obama seem anti-American.

To grasp the difference, imagine if the Democrats had nominated Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. Republicans would have slammed them as profligate, divisive and militant but not as foreign. Even racists couldn’t deny that Jackson and Sharpton are fully American. In fact, because slavery ruptured ancestral ties of language and culture, African Americans often have fewer transnational connections than Americans whose forebears traveled voluntarily to these shores. Our national vernacular is filled with antiblack euphemisms, but cosmopolitan isn’t one of them.

Yet when critics attack Obama, that’s the word that keeps popping up. Rudy Giuliani mentioned it in his convention speech. So has Rush Limbaugh, along with several national conservative columnists. Ever since the primaries, Obama’s detractors have tried to depict him less as threatening to white America than as distant from America itself.

You see, it’s a subtle thing. Making Obama seem “anti-American” is strictly about race and not a fairly typical political gambit. Nah. Politics has NEVER BEFORE had candidates accused of being anti-American. Well, except for Ronald Reagan’s race against Jimmy Carter. And except for some of the ’92 Clinton references to GWHB. Oh yeah, and the JFK race where people wondered if the Pope would be giving the US President orders. Nah, I guess BO is the first politician to EVER be attacked as “distant from America.” MUST BE RACISM.

8 ) The Washington Times encapsulates some of the recent BO stories.

Something odd is going on. The Obama campaign boasts of a landslide in the making even as his polling lead slips a point or two, and there’s anger bordering on rage when John McCain and Sarah Palin raise questions about Barack Obama’s judgment in his unexplored past in Chicago.

An investigation of ACORN, a cabal of “political activists” hired to register voters in the neighborhoods where few friends of John McCain abide has now spread to 10 states. Investigators discovered that the entire offensive line of the Dallas Cowboys had signed up to vote in Las Vegas, unless it turns out that someone forged their signatures to make a quota. The rules for this game were written in Chicago.

The senator’s campaign only wants to talk about the economy, and who can blame him? Wall Street is tanking to uncharted depths, banking is at a standstill and fear stalks Main Street and all the avenues and boulevards running across it. But Sen. Obama wants certain questions about the economy, and how it got this way, declared off-limits. Harry Reid, the leader of the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, declares questions about Franklin Raines, his stewardship of Fannie Mae and his relationship with the senator to be racist because both men “are African-American.”
————–
The unanswered questions are not about crimes, but about his judgment. Just as Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn have never repented for terrorism against their country, the senator has never expressed repentance for his association with them.

After all this time we still don’t know a lot about Sen. Obama’s murky Chicago past, and maybe we won’t until he’s in the White House for a while and the mainstream media looks to actual reporting for its orgasmic thrills.

Yep, yep, yep, and yep.

9) Also in the Times is another piece questioning what Obama said to Iraqi officials during his visit some months ago.

At the same time the Bush administration was negotiating a still elusive agreement to keep the U.S. military in Iraq, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to convince Iraqi leaders in private conversations that the president shouldn’t be allowed to enact the deal without congressional approval.
Mr. Obama’s conversations with the Iraqi leaders, confirmed to The Washington Times by his campaign aides, began just two weeks after he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in June and stirred controversy over the appropriateness of a White House candidate’s contacts with foreign governments while the sitting president is conducting a war.

Of course, the BO campaign says he was speaking strictly as a US Senator, while the Iraqi official (Mr. Zebari) with whom he spoke got a different impression. But it’s all “he said, he said.”

10) Now for your second helping of “Your Daily Racism.” The NY Post does a long piece on the race card. It claims Democrats have embraced using the race card as part of overall strategy.

It was bound to happen, and so it has: Democrats and their allies are playing the race card.

Big time.
—————-

As for the party itself, no less a luminary than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid yesterday lit into a radio host who had the temerity to note that former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines has been an adviser to Barack Obama’s campaign.

“The only connection that people could bring up about Raines and Barack Obama,” said Reid, “is that they both are African-American. Other than that there is nothing.”

Actually, The Washington Post has reported that the Obama campaign sought advice from Raines “on mortgage and housing policy matters.”

That may not be the end of the world, but it’s sure not “nothing.”

Then there’s Democratic luminary Barney Frank – a fellow most accomplished at diverting attention from his own sins by indulging in some old-fashioned demagogy.

Which is precisely what he did this week when he charged that GOP criticism of subprime mortgage loans being made to those who couldn’t afford them – a practice he most emphatically encouraged – is racially motivated.

Michelle Malkin(I know, I know) covers some of the same ground, listing some of the new definitions of racism. Here’s the first:

How many racial bogeymen have Obama operatives and sympathetic journalists discovered lurking in “coded language” and attire? Let us count the ways:

* During Tuesday’s presidential debate, John McCain referred to Obama as “that one.” Official Obama press agitator Bill Burton sent off an e-mail blast to reporters: “Did John McCain just refer to Obama as ‘that one’?” Horrors.

Taking their cue from Burton, spooked Obama supporters hyperventilated like teens on the film set of “The Blair Witch Project.” “The racial undertones were subtle but unmistakable,” declared Maya Wiley of the leftist Center for Social Inclusion. “McCain was tapping into a current of superiority among white voters. It was an attempt to ‘otherize’ Obama.”

“Otherize”? Sounds like something you do to your car tires to prepare for winter. UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff was also haunted by “That One”:

“The phrase was meant to say, ‘You and I are in the same area, but he’s the outsider.’ ”

Memo to McCain: Next time, call him “The One.”

Hey, watch your finances today and get an extra cup of coffee. You’re gonna need it.

This letter contains sensitive judgements. Please limit copying, and protect the contents carefully.

1. Ahead of Senator Obama’s visit to London next week, I thought it would be useful to give you a snapshot of his personality, politics and emerging policies.

Background and Personality

2. The key themes which are important in understanding Obama’s political makeup are the following:

>

- His personal makeup drives his view of politics. Obama talks of wanting to reach out to all Americans (“no red states or blue states, only the United States”). “I will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible. It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story which has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many we are truly one.” The race issue is present in the campaign – the debate continues to rage over how much. Obama wanted to avoid it as much as possible until the Reverend Wright videos forced him to make his elegant speech on race in March and then, when this was clearly not enough for the latest Wright outburst, to disown him completely and leave his church;

- Star quality. Obama has always had it, at least since his arrival at Harvard. A friend in the progressive Chicago establishment said, “I honestly don’t remember what it was about him, but I was absolutely blown away. I said to several people that this guy, who is now 30 years old, is some day going to be President. He will be our first black President”. That was in the 1990s. His rise has been meteoric. He first came to the notice of the national political establishment when he won the Illinois Democratic primary for the US Senate in early 2004. But it was his mesmerising speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston which propelled him to stardom, at a low point for his party. He is the only black member of the Senate. He is already the most successful black elected politician in American history, to the discomfort of Jesse Jackson and others;

- The promise of post-partisanship. Throughout his career, from the time he won over the conservative board of the Harvard Law Review to today, Obama has succeeded in crossing traditional boundaries, and making a virtue of it. His political personality is much more difficult to define than McCain’s. His campaign has the features of a movement, but he has himself said that “without organisation, without policy, without plans”, movements will dissipate. He uses Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign as his example. More broadly, he is a mixture of idealism and progressive politics on the one hand and pragmatism and disciplined organization on the other. He resists pigeon-holing. People disagree about how sincere his post-partisanship is, and how successful his attempts to reach across the aisle would be, given his mixed record in the Senate;

- Obama is highly intelligent. Not just savvy – which most people at this level of American politics have to be. But intellectually smart; cerebral. His manner is frequently interrogative. He is a quick learner. He has the confidence to surround himself with bright people, and is said to listen carefully to and weigh their views. This can have its downsides – he can seem to sit on the fence, assiduously balancing pros and cons. He can talk too dispassionately for a national campaign about issues which touch people personally, eg his notorious San Francisco comments about small-town Pennsylvanians “clinging” to guns and religion. The charge of elitism leveled by both Clinton and McCain was rich coming from them, but not entirely unfair. Despite his blue-collar upbringing. Obama does betray a highly educated and upper middle class mindset;

- He is a supreme organiser and networker. Obama has 20 years’ experience of organising from the grassroots up. He has surrounded himself with experienced, creative campaign organisers, particularly David Axelrod and David Plouffe. He has broken all the financial records, especially for donations via the internet and from younger people. His campaign has been a brilliant combination of the strategic and emotional on the one hand (“change you can believe in”) and state-by-state organisation on the other. The latter, as much as the former, beat Hillary Clinton; and that remains in place against McCain;

- He is tough and competitive. That is of course the Chicago school. You don’t beat Clinton without being resilient (but, like her, his energy levels do dip and he can be uninspiring e.g. in debates). He loves basketball and poker. He demands loyalty.

- Ambition. Of course. He has talked at least since the 1980s about a shot at the Presidency. He plans each move carefully, and incrementally. The 1995 book was a very clever platform.

- Obama is cool. He looks cool, tall, slim. He is temperamentally cool (by any standards, not just in comparison with the more impetuous McCain). And maybe aloof, insensitive – see above. Friends like Tom Daschle told me that he demands calm and “no dramas” from those around him. That will, I think, be an important criterion for his choice of running mate;

- Luck. Obama has had his fair share, but also made his own. He was certainly lucky in having Democratic and Republican opponents for the US Senate in 2004 who were tarnished. He was lucky that Hillary Clinton had such a bad organisation in the primary campaign, and took so long to respond to Obama’s threat.

Policies

3. Obama’s politics and policies are still evolving. His Illinois and US Senate careers give us only a few clues as to his likely priorities in office. In the Senate he took a low profile in 2005-6, but was a diligent member of the Foreign Relations Committee, respectful and friendly to the veteran Republican Senator Lugar, with whom he travelled to London in 2005. His voting record was decidedly liberal. But the main impression is of someone who was finding his feet, and then got diverted by his Presidential ambitions. Obama’s positions and policies emerging from the campaign are a better guide to a future Presidency, but “The Audacity of Hope” (2006) does of course set out the broad themes. If elected, Obama would have less of a track record than any recent President. Carter would be the nearest, but even he had four years as a Governor.

Domestic Policy

4. Since clinching the nomination in June, Obama (as is traditional at this stage) has tacked towards the centre. He has seemed to move on foreign policy (see below), intelligence (his decision to vote for the compromise legislation on interception, having initially threatened to filibuster), gun control (after the Supreme Court ruling on the Second Amendment), the death penalty (after the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana capital law for child rape) and more moderate comments on trade (again, see below). Most of these changes are not outright “flip-flops” but they do reflect a decision not to leave himself vulnerable to attacks from the right. They unsettle some Democrats.

5. Obama’s policies will continue to evolve during the campaign. Some of his positions on domestic policy are highly detailed, even as on others (such as energy policy) he is less specific in some areas than McCain. We have sent back detailed reports on Obama’s economic policy (in June) and trade policy (this week), so I will avoid detail here. The key overall domestic theme is Obama’s view that US economic policy, particularly during the Bush Administration, has benefited the few, not the many. He is concerned about the stagnation of real median wages while the costs of food, healthcare, education, pensions and fuel have soared. He talks of restoring the American dream to Middle America.

6. President Obama would reverse many of Bush’s economic policies. He wants to cut taxes on the middle-classes but would increase taxes on the rich. Instead of rolling back the state, he stresses the enabling role that government can play in improving the economy. He complains that outdated infrastructure, low levels of education, and a failing social safety net are hampering the economy’s ability to compete in a globalised world. He would invest heavily in all three.

7. Obama’s flagship economic policy is a plan for universal healthcare. This would build on the current employer-based system to expand cover. It would not create a single national health service, but would seek to fill the gaps in the current system. Help would be provided for those too poor to buy insurance. The self-employed and small employers would be able to use a government-administered scheme. Unsurprisingly, there is a lively debate about how much all this would cost.

8. As our parallel report makes clear, Obama’s position on trade is shifting. One senses three basic factors at work: an instinctive belief in the economic opportunities of free trade; an equally instinctive sympathy for those losing their jobs; and lastly a political calculation about handling the various special interest groups, particularly those (eg the unions) active during the primary campaign.

9. In recent weeks, Obama has repositioned himself somewhat towards free trade. But his advisers are adamant that he does intend to shift towards a “smarter” approach to trade and globalisation. The exact meaning of this is unclear, but it could mean relieving popular economic anxieties through measures such as healthcare, retraining and trade adjustment assistance before pursuing a broadly liberal trade agenda. Or it could mean doing that and pursuing a more “balanced” trade policy, with greater commitments to labour and environmental standards. The next (probably more protectionist) Congress will be a big factor. The choice for Obama looks like being, in practice, in the middle of the Democratic spectrum, not at the extremes – ie no return to Clinton liberalism but not the trades union agenda either. But there are few domestic political drivers for Obama to engage early on the DDA.

10. Obama has a progressive position on climate change and supports an economy-wide cap-and-trade system with permits being mainly auctioned. He and his campaign know that this will be an international priority in 2009, because of Copenhagen, but it is not clear how far an Obama Administration would try or be able to get with domestic leglislation early in his term. Other domestic priorities would probably take precedence eg healthcare and tax, possibly housing and energy. Obama is not a nuclear power enthusiast, and opposes drilling off the coast of the US. We will be writing a more detailed report on the two candidates’ environmental policies later this month.

11. Obama has a mainstream team of youthful economic advisers, with strong credentials. His director of economic policy, Jason Furman, comes fresh from a centrist Washington think tank. His chief economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, was plucked from relative obscurity in the University of Chicago by Obama (mainly because Clinton had sewn up the Democratic establishment). These two (and his other advisers) approach policy with refreshingly few prescriptions. They have drawn on a range of new thinking (eg behavioural economics) and are willing to challenge traditional Democrat ways of thinking. For example, they emphasise the need for government to be easy to use (so-called iPod government) and to help people to make the right decisions (automatic opt-in pensions, easy-to-compete tax returns). They are less keen on mandates and top-down regulation.

Foreign policy and national security

12. Although he has been a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for four years, and a regular attender of meetings in his first two, there is little Obama track record to refer back to. On the other hand, he has – as he stresses on the campaign trail – a uniquely internationalist background – Kenyan father, childhood in Indonesia, Muslim forbears. One of his biggest assets in the primary campaign was his decision to oppose the Iraq war from the start, unlike most of the other Democratic candidates.

13. As with McCain, there are some potential conflicts within his campaign team. On McCain’s side, there are obvious tensions between the realists and the neocons, In the Obama camp there is less overt tension, but a potential fault line between progressives like Tom Daschle, Susan Rice and Samantha Power on the one hand and the more pragmatic advisers on the other (Nunn, Hamilton, Danzig, Brzezinski). Tony Lake hovers between the two.

14. My judgement is that – so far – Obama approaches these issues essentially pragmatically, case-by-case. He has adopted a balanced approach to the big security issues, taking a robust position after 9/11, but nevertheless opposing the Iraq expedition; supporting a broader-based US policy towards Pakistan, but also the right to initiate unilateral US strikes; willing directly to criticise Russia and China, but avoiding talk of boycotts. I would expect this pragmatic realism to continue, not least because he needs to show that he has the depth, authority and judgement for the Presidency. These are qualities that the McCain campaign will test, given his relative inexperience compared to their candidate.

15. Obama has several overarching international themes:

- the need to restore US leadership This gets a strong response from campaign audiences. He stresses his multilateralist credentials, his commitment to Nato and transatlantic partnership, and his support for strong international institutions (the campaign are sympathetic to the Prime Minister’s institutional reform ideas, but have focused little on them so far). Obama has said that he admires Bush Senior, JFK and even Reagan – this is no doubt meant to show a sort of “bipartisan realism”;

- the need for engagement with other governments, friendly or not. He talks about “tough-minded diplomacy backed by the whole range of instruments of American power – political, economic and military.” Under fire from McCain, he has qualified his earlier position that he would be prepared to meet Ahmadinejad and other “rogue leaders”, saying that any such meeting would need to be prepared carefully by officials. But defeault engagement rather than default isolation would be a significant shift compared with Bush, and with a prospective McCain Administration; and,

- a more nuanced approach on terrorism. This will need to be fleshed out, but Obama talks about a policy which “draws on the full range of American power, not just our military might…In the Islamic world and beyond, combating the terrorists’ prophets of fear will require more than lectures on democracy…To empower forces of moderation, America must make every effort to export opportunity — access to education and health care, trade and investment”. He talks a lot about winning the battle of ideas.

16. Obama’s big foreign policy/national security point, reiterated in his speech on 15 July, is that Bush’s Iraq adventure obscured the real tghreat from Afghanistan/Pakistan, which would be his No. 1 priority. He is strongly committed to doing more “militarily, economically and politically” in both countries, which he sees as the central front in the struggle against AQ. He promises two more combat brigades to Afghanistan after recuperation from Iraq, and $1 billion a year more in aid. He would ask the European NATO countries to do more. On Pakistan, Obama supports Biden’s proposal that the US should do more economic aid and institution-building, as well as traditional military assistance; in his speech he said he would triple non-military aid to Pakistan and make military aid more contingent on Palistani commitment on CT. he reserves the right to unilateral US strikes (McCain criticises this as bluster; Obama responds that he is simply articulating every Administration’s position). Beyond that there is a good deal of fleshing out needed to make Obama’s Afghanistan/Pakistan policy a reality.

17. Iraq will remain one of the major fault lines with McCain. Obama continues to argue that his decision to oppose the war from the outset was evidence of his sound judgement on national security issues. His pledge to end the war and withdraw all US combat forces within 16 months of taking office has proved popular in the Democratic primary. During the campaign itself he has come in for criticism for not acknowledging the success of the surge. He himself fuelled speculation that he was going to use his trip to Iraq to reposition himself when he said a fortnight ago that he would continue to refine his policy, promoting further accusations of flip flopping.

18. In his speech this week, Obama sought to address this, reiterating his commitment to end the war and withdrawn US combat forces within 16 months of taking office. In reality, his position that we need to be ‘as careful getting out as we were careless getting in”, leaves him some wriggle room. Even after his initial draw-down, he would leave behind a (large) residual force to target any remains of Al-Qaeda, protect US forces and diplomats and train and support Iraqi Security Forces. In practice, the positions of Bush, McCain and Obama are now starting to converge. Whatever the detail, our own proposed transition in south-east Iraq would be consistent with Obama’s likely approach. Obama’s ideas on a more expansive regional framework for Iraq would also fit well with our thinking.

19. Iraq remains difficult for Obama politically. Opinion polls consistently show that McCain polls as well, if not better than, Obama on Iraq, an area of policy where Obama would hope to score better given the unpopularity of the war. This reflects the success of the surge and American dislike of “defeat”.

20. Given that Iran is likely to be a major issue in real world politics this autumn, it is bound to continue to feature prominently in the campaign. Obama favours a twin track strategy of increased pressure, including tougher international sanctions, but also direct US engagement, which he hopes to trade for meaningful European, Russian and Chinese sanctions if Iran does not respond. Tony Lake made this clear in a recent interview in the Financial Times. During his European tour, Obama wants there to be no hint of difference between his own and the European approach on Iran – this is “a real red flag” according to one forign policy adviser. The next US President will face some difficult timing issues, with the Iranian Presidential election only a few months after his inauguration. If Obama wins, we will need to consider with him the articulation between (a) his desire for “unconditional” dialogue with Iran and (b) our and the UNSC’s requirement of prior suspension of enrichment before the nuclear negotiations proper can begin. Moves by the Bush Administration, however, may mean that these distinctions have blurred by January 2009.

21. On other subjects:

- the MEPP is unlikely to be a top priority for Obama, but he would pursue it reasonably vigorously, and with Clinton-style diplomacy, i.e. an envoy, engagement with Syria, and balanced pressure on both Israel and the Palestinians. Obama’s early position on Iran and his links with Reverend Wright and others raised some doubts about him in the American jewish community, although his speech to AIPAC did much to reassure;

- Russia: I would expect continuity with Bush’s approach. Some (though not all) of his advisers think Obama can trade deployment of BMD in Europe for meaningful Russian cooperation on Iran sanctions;

– China: he would continue, broadly, the “responsible stakeholder” approach;

- Non-Proliferation/Disarmament: he was an early supporter of the Kissinger/Nunn initiative, a strong supporter of the NPT and co-sponsored with Republican Dick Lugar legislation to secure loose nuclear materials. Now McCain has also embraced most of the Gang of Four agenda, there is little to differentiate the candidates, other than the Democrats’ general scepticism about BMD;

- Terrorism/Guantanamo: like McCain, Obama is committed to closing Guantanamo, and greater use of soft power, but couple with continued use of kinetic action where necessary;

- Africa/MDGs; his heart and mind tell him he should do more. He is committed to doubling the US aid budget by 2012, and says he will “capitalise a $2 billion Global Education Budget” to address the global education deficit. But he won’t want to be pigeon-holed as too focused on Africa; and this has not – despite Susan Rice’s influence – come through as a major campaign theme.

Glossary

AQ – Al Qaeda

BMD – Ballistic Missile Defence

CT – Counter-Terrorism

DDA – Doha Development Agenda

MDGs – Millenium Development Goals

MEPP – Middle East Peace Plan

NPT – Non-Proliferation Treaty

UNSC – United Nations Security Council

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