News...Good, Bad, and Indifferent. Plus: Plane Pr0n!

Good News/Bad News… First, the good:

House Democrats have pulled back from efforts to link additional funding for the war to strict troop-readiness standards after the proposal came under withering fire from Republicans and from their party's own moderates. That strategy was championed by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) and endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

[…]

Murtha doomed his own plan in part by unveiling it on a left-wing Web site, inflaming party moderates.

"Congress has no business micromanaging a war, cutting off funding or even conditioning those funds," said Rep. Jim Cooper (Tenn.), a leading Democratic moderate, who called Murtha's whole effort "clumsy."

Calling Murtha’s plan “clumsy” is way too kind. “Stupid” and “treasonous” are two adjectives that come to my mind, but then I’m not a Democrat like Rep. Cooper. Murtha might have made a go of it, if it wasn’t for his oh-so-idiotic crowing and pandering to the anti-war Left. In which case we can be thankful for his poor judgment, which I ascribe to advancing senility. But just because Murtha failed in this heavy-handed attempt to undercut the President’s prosecution of the war doesn’t mean he won’t stop trying. He’s nothing if not persistent.

And now the bad news:

Senate Democratic leaders intend to unveil a plan next week to repeal the 2002 resolution authorizing the war in Iraq in favor of narrower authority that restricts the military's role and begins withdrawals of combat troops.

Good luck on that idea, Senate Democrats. You might have a problem maintaining your majority status if you go that route.

Jules Crittenden gives us his take on the Good News/Bad News meme here. And Captain Ed holds forth on the unfolding Democrat strategies to end the war without victory.

Interesting times, these. Too damned interesting, if you ask me.

The World’s Finest Precision Aerial Demonstration Team has released their 2007 schedule. And El Paso is the closest they’ll come to me this year. But they are performing in Bulgaria and Romania… Ankara, Turkey, too. I used to live there once upon a time. Fat lot of good that does me now.

In other Air Force news… Air Force magazine has a pretty good piece on the F-22 titled The Raptor in the Real World. Yeah, it’s a puff-piece, but so? The F-22’s capabilities are the stuff fighter pilots’ wet dreams are made of…

A dozen F-22s, flown by a cadre of handpicked pilots and kept in shape by the 27th’s best maintainers, went to Northern Edge, a two-week joint-force wargame in Alaska. Participants included 5,000 troops in Army ground units, Marine Corps ground units, Navy Aegis cruisers and aircraft, and Air Force aircraft ranging from fighters and search and rescue helicopters to E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft.

Col. Thomas Bergeson, the 1st Operations Group commander, said it was the largest exercise for him in 20 or so years. In one Northern Edge engagement, USAF and its sister services put more than 40 fighters in the air at once, as well as E-2C Hawkeye and E-3 AWACS aircraft.

To confront the F-22-led “Blue Air” collection, the joint force mustered its best “Red Air” threat—front-line F-15s, F-16s, and Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets. The F-22’s team blitzed the opposition with a favorable 241-to-two kill ratio. What’s more, the two lost aircraft were F-15Cs, not F-22s. The Raptors came through the engagements untouched.

[…]

“They [the Red Air adversaries] couldn’t see us,” Tolliver said. This was true even when the opponents were assisted by AWACS. “And that’s what makes the F-22 special,” Tolliver went on. “I’m out there and I have weapons like an F-15C or an F-16, but ... I’m basically invisible to the other guy’s radar.”

The 241-to-two record was amassed over two weeks of air engagements. Tolliver noted that, in such battles, Red Air units were allowed to regenerate and return to the fight, but lost Blue forces could not. Even with such handicaps, in the largest single engagement, F-22-led forces claimed 83 enemies to one loss, after facing down an opposing force that had generated or regenerated 103 adversary fighters.

More at the link, including Plane Pr0n!!!

More “Red-on-Red” stupidity:

Should we Fox?

"Fox," as in partner with the Fox News Channel. Liberal bloggers and the online political powerhouse MoveOn.org launched a campaign Thursday to persuade the Nevada Democratic Party to boot Fox News as the broadcaster of the state's August Democratic presidential debate.

The reason, according to an online letter MoveOn sent to 2 million of its members Thursday, is that "Fox is a mouthpiece for the Republican Party, not a legitimate news channel. The Democratic Party of Nevada should drop Fox as its partner for the presidential primary debate." Joining the chorus Thursday was liberal filmmaker Robert Greenwald, the director of the anti-Fox film, "Outfoxed," who released a video online of Fox's coverage of Democratic candidates.

But the Nevada party organizers -- and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean -- said Thursday that while they may not think much of Fox's reporting, they want to reach out to viewers of the largest cable news network, one with double the number of prime-time viewers of CNN.

[…]

Bloggers like Matt Stoller of mydd.com are more worried about what the network's post-debate spin could be. When Fox broadcast a Democratic candidate debate in September 2003, Stoller noted that the network's post-debate story was headlined, "Democratic Candidates Offer Grim View of America." It cut away early from the show, Stoller said, giving conservative pundit William Bennett first crack at post-debate analysis.

Well, Matt…you can run, but you can’t hide. Your party’s view of America is grim, isn’t it? There is one thing about Fox: they tend to call a spade a spade. Lefties don’t like that. Nunh-unh. Not at all. So I can understand their angst. Kinda sorta.

Hey!! I got an idea!! Put the debate on Versus! Hasn’t that worked for the NHL? No? Well, hell. I thought that idea was at least as good as anything coming out of MoveOn…maybe better.

Austin Bay, writing in TCS Daily on “The Real News Behind the Surge:”

The relentless, focused targeting of Shia and Sunni extremist organizations is a far more important feature of what Iraqis are calling "the new security plan" than more U.S. troops. The coalition's effort to better integrate the economic and political development "lines of operation" with security operations could have greater long-term effects.

Part and parcel of “focused targeting” is keeping pressure on Mookie and the Mahdi Army. Col. Bay talks a lot about that, and brings up the relevant history, in case you may have forgotten. Would that Dubya had done this about a year ago. But… “better late,” eh?

Another quiz thingie, this time it’s Which Famous Guitarist are You?

That's a copy 'n' paste jpg... coz the tables in these thangs never show the bars as filled. At any rate, it's good to know I'd be more like Hendrix if I actually played the guitar!
To take the quiz go here: Which famous guitarist are you?