John McCain is starting to get specific about his plan for the presidency. I think this release signals a subtle shift in McCain’s campaign and I hope that he continues to add layers of detail as the race continues. This initial effort is not really a tactical plan but it does clearly lay out his objectives. More importantly, he uses fairly specific language that in essence tells the American people that he can and will be held accountable for his time in office. He covers a lot of ground but the national security portion is the most interesting piece:

After four years of a McCain administration, America will be more secure and working with its allies and partners around the world to make us safer. In 2013:

The Iraq War has been won, Iraq is a functioning democracy, violence is much reduced, and America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure.

The United States maintains a military presence in Iraq, but a much smaller one that does not play a direct combat role.

The threat from a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan has been greatly reduced.

There is a functioning League of Democracies that has effectively applied pressure on Sudan to agree to a multinational peacekeeping force to stop the genocide.

There is no longer any place in the world al Qaeda can consider a safe haven. An increase in actionable intelligence leads to the capture or death of Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants.

Through increased international cooperation and concerted use of American power, we have disrupted terrorist networks and exposed plots around the world.

The United States and its allies have made great progress in advancing nuclear security.

The size of the Army and Marine Corps has been significantly increased, and are now better equipped and trained to defend us. A substantial increase in veterans educational benefits and improvements in their health care has aided recruitment and retention.

Here he does what the Hillary, Edwards, and Obama cannot. He offers a realistic, and honest, way forward in Iraq and the greater war on terror. He knows that many people will not like what they hear but McCain is the only adult in the race. He’ll do what needs to be done and say what needs to be said even if it is difficult.

He touches on economic, healthcare, and other issues as well. You can read the entire statement on his site.

Peggy Agar’s priceless response pushed Obama into some damage control:

Obama apologized in a voicemail he left on Agar’s cell phone at 3:16 p.m:

“Hi Peggy. This is Barack Obama. I’m calling to apologize on two fronts. One was you didn’t get your question answered and I apologize. I thought that we had set up interviews with all the local stations. I guess we got it with your station but you weren’t the reporter that got the interview. And so, I broke my word. I apologize for that and I will make up for it.

“Second apology is for using the word ’sweetie.’ That’s a bad habit of mine. I do it sometimes with all kinds of people. I mean no disrespect and so I am duly chastened on that front. Feel free to call me back. I expect that my press team will be happy to try to make it up to you whenever we are in Detroit next.”

He’s a repeat offender too.

Ron Stone was the last local anchor that I watched on a regular basis. He retired in 1992 shortly before local television news ceased being relevant or even watchable:

He may be best remembered by longtime listeners for his familiar signoff: “That’s our news. Good night, neighbor.”

“He was of a period that, I think, was probably the golden age of local news,” said Ann Hodges, the Chronicle’s longtime television critic. “He was a perfect choice for Houston with his personality and his delivery and his professionalism.”

His contemporaries included news anchors Steve Smith, now retired from Channel 11, and Dave Ward, the veteran anchor at KTRK (Channel 13), weathercaster Doug Johnson and sports anchors Bill Worrell and Ron Franklin.

“He (Stone) set the standard,” Ward said. “He would say `Good night, neighbor,’ and people felt as if he was their neighbor. There was nothing pretentious about him.”

Ward said Stone realized that his longtime tenure in Houston was a unique gift in the changing world of local television news.

“We were talking a few years ago about how many years we had been here, and Ron turned to me and said, `You know, Dave, we’re dinosaurs. This is not going to happen again. The industry has changed so much that the fresh new faces come in, but they don’t stay. They move on. You and I are just dinosaurs.’ And he may have been right.”

This Thursday Senator Cornyn (blog) will be hosting his first ever “live-blog” on the campaign’s official blog. The campaign is asking for questions to be left for the Senator in this thread. Sen. Cornyn will answer as many questions as possible during a live blogging session from 10-11 CT on Thursday. I urge all Blogs of War readers, especially those of you in Texas, to participate.

The Commonwealth Club of California hosted this event:

A movie star as governor? No way! Planes hitting skyscrapers? The stuff of horror films! Forecasters struggle to anticipate an ever-stranger geopolitical reality. In this moment of unprecedented uncertainty and change, says Saffo, it is tempting to conclude that forecasting is as dangerous as it is futile.

In fact, connecting short-term policy to long-range forecasting is surprisingly easy - and absolutely crucial to meeting the challenges before us. All it takes is a simple shift in perspective and a few common-sense heuristics.

Saffo is a legendary technology forecaster, with over two decades of experience exploring long-term technological change and its impact on business and society.

More on Paul Saffo:

Paul Saffo (born in 1954 in Los Angeles) is a technology forecaster based in Silicon Valley. A Consulting Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, Saffo teaches courses on the future of engineering and the impact of technological change on the future. In 2008, Saffo was named Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Stanford Media X research network.

He is also a board member of the Long Now Foundation[1]. He has degrees from Harvard College, Cambridge University, and Stanford University.

Politrickin’ is my new favorite word and that Geico lizard line is just damn funny. I’d almost consider voting for the man if he really campaigned like this.

Play Video

Set aside an hour to watch this video. Trust me. The hour flies by as Mark Steyn systematically dismantles the purely emotional arguments of his critics in an unplanned live debate on Canadian television. Host Steve Paikin (who handled the whole event extremely well) wrote a follow up piece on his blog:

Steyn challenged the three complainants to allow him to join the debate. After considering his request (on live TV no less), they insisted they have time alone (as he did), after which they were content to have him join.

That seemed eminently reasonable to me, and so we made it so, all of it happening on the fly.

For what it’s worth, I think the “Maclean’s Three” made the right call by engaging in a debate with Steyn. They would have looked like hypocrites had they not, given that they’ve been calling for an open debate on the subject matter for weeks.

The program was certainly one of the most heated we’ve ever done, although I believe it stayed civilized almost all the time. We ensured at the outset there would be no shouting or name calling and our guests to their credit stuck to those rules.

What you didn’t see was that after we got off the air and the cameras and lights were shut off, all four participants stayed in the studio for another hour discussing the issues with Wodek and another producer, Navin Vaswani, who helped Wodek with the show.

To Steyn’s credit, he may have offered the first olive branch when he said as I was closing the show, “would you guys like to go for dinner?” One of the lawyers immediately said, “No!” They may not have broken bread, but they did continue the dialogue.

The only problem with the show is that there wasn’t much discussion about the ideas (and facts) presented in Steyn’s work. His opponents went there only briefly and apparently found the experience painful. They could not point to inaccuracies in his work and they did not present any data that offered a reasonable counterpoint to his conclusions. They simply wanted to be heard because their feelings were hurt. The result? Steyn cut through them like a buzzsaw.

Wikipedia has an extended entry on the Enigma machine:

The ‘”Enigma machine” was a cipher machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. More precisely, Enigma was a family of related electro-mechanical rotor machines, comprising a variety of different models.

The Enigma was used commercially from the early 1920s on, and was also adopted by the military and governmental services of a number of nations—most famously by Nazi Germany before and during World War II.

I’d prefer for this mess to drag on but Russert is probably right. It certainly is looking pretty hopeless for Hillary:

Late Tuesday, Clinton canceled her morning talk show appearances for today. She was expected to meet with superdelegates – top Democratic officials who can vote for whomever they want at the convention.

George Stephanopoulos and others are weighing in with the same verdict:

“This nomination fight is over,” ABC’s George Stephanopoulos said on “Good Morning America” Wednesday. “More superdelegates will come out today for Barack Obama –they will come three, four, five at a time, and this nomination will be locked up. . . . People close to her say that she’s more likely to stay in if she feels cornered in by the party leaders.”

Thomas Barnett from this year’s TED:

In this bracingly honest and funny talk, international security strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett outlines a post-Cold War solution for the foundering US military: Break it in two. He suggests the military re-form into two groups: a Leviathan force, a small group of young and fierce soldiers capable of swift and immediate victories; and an internationally supported network of System Administrators, an older, wiser, more diverse organization that actually has the diplomacy and power it takes to build and maintain peace.