1.  Consider them marked.  I agree that this issue is not yet resolved but Joe Biden has been walking around rewriting history of late so I need to have a record of his comments a year and a half ago.  Remember dividing Iraq into sections?  Remember no plan?

I agree that there have been blunders in this war and would agree with Biden that we should have had more troops in there at the beginning.  But Biden statements in 2007 aren't quite what they are today.  They aren't even close:



2.  Another emerging theme that I have picked up on over the past few days is the idea that Iraq should pay for their own reconstruction.  Read my previous post on this subject here.

3.  John Podhoretz makes a few minor corrections to Obama's O'Reilly interview:

"First, Bush proposed the surge after three and a half years, not five. Second, his description of what Bush was asking for is almost exactly the opposite of the case. The surge was a massive shift in strategy, not a continuation."

4.  The "fact-checkers" at FactCheck need to double-check their comments on Obama's tax proposal.  They completely ignore the "phase-outs" and effect of Obama's tax plan on marginal tax rates (the rate of taxation on each additional dollar of income earned).  I previously posted on The American's analysis of Obama's tax plan:

"What accounts for the higher rates? First, Obama expands the maximum child and dependent care credit for families with one young child from $1,050 to $1,500 and phases down the credit over a longer income range, from $30,000 to $58,000. Throughout this income range, the credit is phasing out at a rate of $30 per $1,000 of income, thus raising the effective tax rate by 3 percentage points. Obama also makes certain credits refundable, which introduces a tax penalty of 10 percent or 15 percent, depending on the income bracket. 

While Obama has publicly embraced a tax rate of 40 percent for couples earning over $350,000, his tax policies would result in a staggering 45 percent effective marginal rate in the $110,000 to $120,000 income range for this family. That is 11 percentage points higher than under current law."