From the NY Times, via Sister Toldjah and Michelle Malkin:

Of all the early problems Bill Clinton faced as president, few stand out to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as more frustrating and avoidable than his rocky relationship with the military, her advisers say.

Mrs. Clinton, to use a phrase, has been practicing her salute. As a senator and now as a presidential candidate, she has cultivated relationships with generals and admirals, prepped herself on wartime needs and strategy, and traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I think eight years in the White House, traveling the world and seeing the United States military doing the nation’s business, and now her time in the Senate, has given her a significant appreciation of the military that maybe her husband didn’t have before the White House,” said Jack Keane, the retired general and former Army vice chief of staff who has become close to the senator.

Well, yes and no.  See more below.

For Mrs. Clinton, exhibiting a command of military matters is not just about learning from her husband’s experience. It could be vital to her, as a woman seeking to become a wartime commander in chief, to show the public that she is comfortable with military policy and culture — and with the weight of responsibility that accompanies life-and-death decisions.

It is also part of an effort to shed the image some voters hold of her as an antimilitary liberal, defined by her opposition to the Vietnam War and, now, by her criticism of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war in Iraq.

A Time magazine poll in July asked adults to assess whether Mrs. Clinton would keep the military strong. Asked how much that description fit Mrs. Clinton, 33 percent said a lot, 25 percent said a little, 15 percent said not much, 18 percent said not at all and 10 percent had no answer.

Some uniformed officers, too, said that the Clintons were more associated with a ’60s culture than a military one, and that only time would tell if Mrs. Clinton’s appreciation of the military would go beyond niceties and expressions of concern.

The democrats have a problem.  In winning their majority last November, many did so on an anti war agenda.  Now that they have the majority, many of their followers have grown in voice demanding they make good on their promises.

Now they are not exactly united on how to deal with the war.  The far left nutroots sponsored members seem to favor a pull the troops now approach, the Cut and Run solution.  The more moderate however like the support the war with a firm time line for withdrawal, the Slow Bleed solution.

Aside from a few cowardly RINOs, the republicans and a scant few democrats favor supporting the war on terror and achieving a victory.  They are a clear minority.

So since congress launched this session, they have wrangled on how to address the war so as to appease the angry voices like Code Pink and the Sheehanistas who demand action now.

Well, they finally managed to pull it off.  They had to find a solution to get the cut and runners to support the slow bleed tactic, as the cooler heads in congress know that an immediate pullout would never fly.  They finally found the solution.  A funding package that contains emergency funding, a non binding timetable for withdrawal…oh yes and a ton of Pork Spending to lure the reluctant nutroots in from the left.

 House passes spending bill with Iraq deadline

President Bush slammed Democrats on Friday after the House narrowly approved a supplemental war spending bill that includes an August 31, 2008, deadline for combat troops to leave Iraq.

“Today, a narrow majority in the House of Representatives abdicated its responsibility by passing a war spending bill that has no chance of becoming law, and brings us no closer to getting our troops the resources they need,” Bush said about an hour after the vote.

The House voted 218-212 to approve the $124 billion spending bill that includes the deadline.

Bush reacted fairly predictably:

Statistics are notoriously fickle and unreliable.  Some comedian once quipped that 97.3% of all statistics are meaningless.  Indeed.

So of course Global Warming is filled with statistics that both sides make their cases with.

Consider this one brought to us by the LA Times:

LAST YEAR, the National Journal asked a group of Republican senators and House members: “Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?” Of the respondents, 23% said yes, 77% said no.

Note that the breakdown by party is not mentioned.  Remember that for later.

In the year since that poll, of course, global warming has seized a massive amount of public attention. The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a study, with input from 2,000 scientists worldwide, finding that the certainty on man-made global warming had risen to 90%.

Of course that is untrue.  The panel said it is very likely that Global Warming is man made, the 90 percent figure is interpretive of what “very likely” means. 

So, the magazine asked the question again last month. The results? Only 13% of Republicans agreed that global warming has been proved.

Note the percent of Democrats is not listed, which makes using this as a comparative issue meaningless.  What if the percent in the initial study was also 13%?  What then?

The article goes on to point out that a few high placed Republicans, one of which it accuses of being an industry tool are making all the decisions and the average person is just a sheep following the flock.

It point out that non-conservatives “tend to defer to mainstream scientific wisdom” and further labels any non believing scientists as “a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus” even though said consensus does not exist.  Indeed, as recent months have shown, non-concurring scientist are on the rise, tired of being quashed for political consensus.

Of course the article dismisses this: