OBAMA: OF COURSE THE SURGE SUCCEEDED:

Sen. Barack Obama, edging away from a long-held position, tacitly acknowledged the success of the Iraq troop-surge strategy during an appearance Tuesday before the country’s largest organization of combat veterans.

“Let’s be clear, our troops have completed every mission they’ve been given,” Mr. Obama said at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Orlando, Fla., where the likely Democratic presidential nominee courted military voters who are expected to play a pivotal role in several swing states. “They have created the space for political reconciliation.”

Well, he’s only a few months late in recognizing that.

UPDATE: Reader James Paternoster emails: “So the mission was accomplished? Time for a photoshop of Obama on the Lincoln with President Bush? That, too, marked the success of their first mission, which was to overthrow Saddam Hussein. I never expected Obama to recognize that. :)”

Heh.

THE OBAMA / BILL AYERS / ANNENBERG STORY has broken out into the Legacy Media now. Tom Maguire comments: “Hard to believe that with our aggressive national media covering a Presidential campaign that Obama and Daley could mange this cover-up in plain sight. Yeah, real hard.”

I caution those who are excited about getting into the archives, though: It probably won’t happen, and by now I’m sure that the files have been vacuumed of any seriously embarrassing matter anyway. This is Chicago.

UPDATE: What leaked out.

SCATTERED, SMOTHERED, COVERED IN LOVE: Study: Late Night Comedians Go Easy on Obama.

EVOLUTION IN ACTION, in politics: “The fact is that all Russian politicians are clever. The stupid ones are all dead. By contrast, America in its complacency promotes dullards. A deadly miscommunication arises from this asymmetry. The Russians cannot believe that the Americans are as stupid as they look.” Yeah, we find that hard to believe, too . . . .

UPDATE: Related thought: “We need to take the political parties back from the whacko activists.”

BRR: Farmers’ Almanac says cold winter ahead.

OUCH: 20%: TVA board approves largest rate hike in decades. People are talking about moving school start dates back to the traditional post-Labor Day realm to save on air conditioning. Not a bad idea; the Insta-Daughter is already finishing up her second week of school.

A MCCAIN-THOMPSON TICKET? Well, possibly.

JANE HAMSHER: “I have an elaborate nightmare where Joe Lieberman gets the VP nod, McCain wins, then dies — and we’re looking at a President Lieberman. At which point I and a host of others bloggers who supported Ned Lamont wind up in Guantanamo Bay.”

(Via Ace: “You probably think she’s kidding. You probably are quite wrong.”)

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Note that Hamsher’s response is very similar to those people who are for gun control because they know what they would do if they had a gun… Yep, think there is more than a little projection there.”

A LOOK AT the Tennessee blogosphere.

TOM MAGUIRE HAS MORE on the McCain / Obama / Bill Ayers dustup. “That will make it harder for the media to ignore this.”

ROB LONG reports from Azerbaijan.

UPDATE: An Azerbaijan report from Andrew Breitbart.

FAY’S COLOSSAL RAINFALL: And more, at Weather Nerd. Wish a few inches of that would make it up our way.

HOW BIG A THREAT IS PUTIN’S RUSSIA? Thoughts from Eric Posner and Ilya Somin.

Plus, some related thoughts at Outside the Beltway.

THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN A “DEBACLE”? That seems highly exaggerated to me. I do think a lot of the air that the media pumped into the Obama balloon is leaking out, but that just means that Obama has to step up, and get more specific beyond “hope, change, and opposing the Iraq War in 2002.”

I expect that the Hillary diehards will make one last push for her, though. Meanwhile, some thoughts on that Zogby poll.

UPDATE: Lindsay Beyerstein: “John McCain is gaining in the polls nationally, according to several independent measures. . . . As one of my colleagues pointed out, the Rasmussen daily tracking poll through the last week gives Obama a stable 1 to 2 point lead over the past two weeks. Still not good news, but also more reason to question the validity of the Zogby results.”

HMM: Schwarzenegger: ‘I’m Upset,’ Could Skip Republican Convention. He’s not upset with the GOP, but with the California budget impasse.

THE MCCAIN CAMPAIGN GOES AFTER OBAMA HARD over the Bill Ayers / Annenberg scandal.

MICHAEL TOTTEN files a report from Georgia.

UPDATE: Georgians mock Russian army. Russians hate being mocked as poor and uncultured, but it’s got to hurt more when it comes from Georgians.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A petition to take the 2014 Winter Games away from Russia. (Via M. Simon).

FOUR MILITARY ROBOT TEAMS. Just remember, more Bolo, less Terminator . . . .

NBC/WSJ POLL: “With just days before the vice-presidential announcements, the political conventions and the final sprint to Election Day, Republican Sen. John McCain has cut Democrat Sen. Barack Obama’s national lead in half, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.” Plus this: “Perhaps the biggest factor keeping the presidential race close has been Obama’s inability to close the deal with some of Hillary Clinton’s supporters.”

SCOTT KELBY on the art of being a good student.

INDEED: After Barack Obama hype, a backlash.

No human being can meet the wildly inflated expectations that accompany the rookie senator’s every move. It can’t help that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Obama “a leader that God has blessed us with at this time.”

That’s the kind of remark that can turn voters into problems. Most Americans famously resent being told an election is over months before the polls open or that God is taking sides. . . . While McCain has complained about media favoritism toward Obama, most recently about NBC News’ tilted coverage, maybe he ought to encourage it. Resentment over the media love affair with Obama might be McCain’s most powerful weapon. The fawning coverage exaggerates even routine Obama events, and when he fails to meet giddy expectations, the excuse machine warps into overtime. That, in turn, creates another unappealing layer of media-imposed conventional wisdom.

I think that’s right.

WELL, I COULD USE ONE OF THESE: An “undo” button for reality.

INTELLIGENT ROBOTS IN SPACE: “The existence of a race of sentient alien robots might be not just possible, but inevitable. In fact, we might be living in a ‘postbiological universe’ right now, in which intelligent extraterrestrials somewhere have exchanged organic brains for artificial ones.” They’re probably living in advanced virtual-reality universes, where they engage in the alien equivalent of sex with supermodels, which also explains why we never hear from them.

HMM: “Annenberg-Gate” – It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up. (Via Tom Maguire). I suspect that anything damaging has vanished by now anyway. It’s Chicago, after all.

HEH: “Oh, come on! If you want to people to be upset about waterboarding, don’t demonstrate it on lawyers.”