83 Days
Until Election Day

August 13, 2008

McCAIN BACK
IN MICHIGAN…today, to earn your votes while Obama vacations
in Hawaii. Michigan is a battleground state and the commitment from
both campaigns of staff and resources, as well as the polling that
shows the race in Michigan a virtual dead heat, makes your efforts
so much more important! 17 Electoral Votes!

RUSSIA’S
SLAUGHTER ON CEASE-FIRE IN GEORGIA…in an unprecedented show
of aggression, Russian troops have indiscriminately bombed and
killed thousands of civilians in it’s attempt to wipe out
U.S. ally Georgia. Russia said they had “punished”
Georgia enough?!?! The world in shock could only stand by and
watch, as the old, ugly Russian bear emerged, with KGB Colonel
Putin in charge.

GREAT ANALYSIS ABOUT
RUSSSIA’S MOTIVES…by Robert Kagan. A must read for
those interested in understanding the current conflict. http://migop.blogs.com/blog/2008/08/putin-makes-his.html

RUSSIA…HOW TO
RESPOND…let’s stop with the useless United Nations
resolutions and meetings. If we are unable or unwilling to help
defend our allies…at least lets help them defend
themselves…train the armies, sell them arms…make the
“cost” of attacking sovereign nations a consideration
for bullies like Russia. NATO, Taiwan, Ukraine and Isreal must be
feeling really nervous these days.

WHICH OBAMA IS
IT…I was able to provide a commentary on Michigan Matters
about “Which Obama is it?”…willing to say
anything to get elected. View it here.

http://migop.blogs.com/blog/2008/08/which-obama-is.html

MICHIGAN GETS
NATIONAL ATTENTION…for asking Speaker Pelosi to call back
the Democrat controlled Congress and vote on and energy package
that would include domestic drilling…rather than take a 5
week PAID vacation.

http://migop.blogs.com/blog/2008/08/pelosi-protest.html
http://migop.blogs.com/blog/2008/08/before-the-rall.html
http://migop.blogs.com/blog/2008/08/after-the-rally.html

REPUBLICAN JEWISH
COALITION EVENT IN MI…. Thursday, Aug. 14, the RJC
grassroots seminar we are having from 5:30pm to 7pm at Congregation
Bnai Moshe at 6800 Drake Road in West Bloomfield (the same venue as
the Oakland GOP convention).

WGVU TOWN HALL
DEBATE…public TV in Grand Rapids has offered to host a
60-minute debate between U.S. Senator Carl Levin and Republican
challenger Jack Hoogendyk…Jack’s in…waiting to
hear from Levin?

CHINA OLYMPICS KEEP
FAKING IT…first it was the firework footprints in the
sky…actually digitally pre-recorded…now the 9 year
old girl who stole the world’s heart…did it with
someone else’s voice!?! Some things never change?

MICHIGAN GOP STATE
CONVENTION INFO…here is the information on our upcoming
State Convention to take place Saturday, August 23rd. http://www.migop.org/inner.asp?z=108

MICHIGAN
POLITICS…in case you missed it… every Tuesday from
10am til noon on WWJ.com, Greg McNeilly, John Truscott, Kerry
Ebersole and Todd Cook talk politics on Eye on Michigan Politics. A
great show…check it out.

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COMMENTARY & INFORMATION:

Check…out…our…online
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THE REST OF THE
STORY:

No further
commentary today

TODAY’S TOP STORIES

The following stories and more are available at my
Articles of Interest online.

Russia calls halt to 5-day invasion of
Georgia

By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA and MISHA DZHINDZHIKHASHVILI

TBILISI,
Georgia (AP) – Declaring "the aggressor has been punished," the
Kremlin ordered a halt Tuesday to Russia’s devastating assault on
Georgia – five days of air and ground attacks that left homes in
smoldering ruins and uprooted 100,000 people.

Georgia said
the bombs and shells were still coming hours after the cease-fire
was declared, and its President Mikhail Saakashvili said Russia’s
aim all along was not to gain control of two disputed provinces but
to "destroy" the smaller nation, a former Soviet state and current
U.S. ally.

Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev, speaking in Moscow, said Georgia had
paid enough for its attack on South Ossetia, a separatist region
along the Russian border with close ties to Russia.

Russia May Turn
Focus to Pro-U.S. Ukraine After Beating Georgia

By Henry
Meyer Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) — Now that Russia has humiliated Georgia
with a punishing military offensive, it may shift its attention to
reining in pro-Western Ukraine, another American ally in the former
Soviet Union.

Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s first
order of business likely will be to try to thwart Ukraine’s bid to
join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“The Moscow
authorities will use this opportunity to remind Ukraine of the
damages of allying itself with NATO,” said Geoffrey Smith at
Renaissance Capital investment bank in Kiev.

Putin
Makes His Move

By Robert
Kagan

The details
of who did what to precipitate Russia’s war against Georgia are not
very important. Do you recall the precise details of the Sudeten
Crisis that led to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia? Of
course not, because that morally ambiguous dispute is rightly
remembered as a minor part of a much bigger drama.

The events
of the past week will be remembered that way, too. This war did not
begin because of a miscalculation by Georgian President Mikheil
Saakashvili. It is a war that Moscow has been attempting to provoke
for some time. The man who once called the collapse of the Soviet
Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century"
has reestablished a virtual czarist rule in Russia and is trying to
restore the country to its once-dominant role in Eurasia and the
world. Armed with wealth from oil and gas; holding a near-monopoly
over the energy supply to Europe; with a million soldiers,
thousands of nuclear warheads and the world’s third-largest
military budget, Vladimir Putin believes that now is the time to
make his move.

Georgia’s
unhappy fate is that it borders a new geopolitical fault line that
runs along the western and southwestern frontiers of Russia. From
the Baltics in the north through Central Europe and the Balkans to
the Caucasus and Central Asia, a geopolitical power struggle has
emerged between a resurgent and revanchist Russia on one side and
the European Union and the United States on the other.

Georgia
and the American Cowboy

By Claudia
Rosett

With
Russia’s military blasting its way into neighboring Georgia,
this sure seems like a moment when the world could use a democratic
super-cop.

Good luck.
Right now, we don’t have one.

America
effectively resigned from the much-reviled role of lone superpower
five years ago, after toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2002,
and defying the Oil-for-Food devotees at the United Nations to
overthrow the tyranny of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003. Since
then, President Bush, to his credit, has stuck with the fight in
Afghanistan and Iraq — a display of determination and
firepower which goes far to explain why almost seven years have
passed since September 11 without another major attack on U.S.
shores.

On Georgia Crisis,
McCain’s Tone Grows Sharper

By Michael
D. Shear and Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writers

Aides to
Republican Sen. John McCain were scrambling last Thursday morning
even as his plane was descending into Des Moines. Russia had
escalated its aggression in the bordering Republic of Georgia, they
told reporters, and McCain wanted to seize the moment.

On the
ground in Iowa, advance men raced to erect a podium on the tarmac,
just feet from McCain’s plane. The Republican nominee strode to the
microphone for the first of several blistering statements
condemning Russia’s moves, delivering his comments well before
President Bush spoke publicly about the incident.

"Russia
should immediately and unconditionally cease its military
operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian
territory," he said, interrupted by the sound of jets taking
off.

Debunking three ‘truths’ about offshore drilling

THE NATURAL
Resources Defense Council Action Fund has taken out full-page ads
in this newspaper and others to decry offshore drilling for oil as
"George W. Bush’s Gasoline Price Elixir" that is "100% Snake Oil."
The environmental group calls on supporters "to stop the giveaway
of our coasts." It is urging visitors to its Web site to send a
pre-written letter to their members of Congress that says, "I am
not buying the lie . . . that sacrificing the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge and America’s coastal waters to oil drilling would
make a real difference in gas prices — either today or twenty
years from today!" And the missive adds, "With just three percent
of the world’s oil reserves, our nation simply doesn’t have enough
oil to impact the global market or drill our way to lower prices at
the pump."

The NRDC’s
arguments above neatly encapsulate the position taken by
environmentalists and other opponents of offshore drilling. And
they include a couple of good points. Contrary to the baldly
political suggestions regarding lower gasoline prices by President
Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), drilling would make no impact
on today’s pain at the pump because it would be years before any
oil flowed from the Outer Continental Shelf. We agree that the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with its varied and sensitive
ecosystems, should be preserved. In the quest for new sources of
energy, there are trade-offs. That pristine area must remain
off-limits. But there are three "truths" masquerading as fact among
drilling opponents that need to be challenged:

Pelosi says open to
House vote on offshore drilling

By Tom
Doggett
Reuters

WASHINGTON
(Reuters) – House Republican Leader John Boehner on Tuesday urged
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to call lawmakers back into session to
pass a bill expanding drilling in federal waters, now that she was
willing to permit a vote on such a measure.

Reversing
her position, Pelosi said she was willing to schedule a vote in the
House of Representatives on legislation to expand offshore
drilling, if the bill addressed other energy issues, such as
extending tax credits for solar and wind energy and releasing oil
from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

"They
(Republican lawmakers and President George W. Bush) have this thing
that says drill offshore in the protected areas," Pelosi said
Monday night in an interview on "Larry King Live."

Governor’s Office
Issues Removal Plans

(WXYZ) The
Detroit City Council’s attorney William Goodman must provide
the names of all witnesses he plans to call at the removal hearing
of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick by August 15, according to an
order Governor Jennifer Granholm issued today.

Sharon
McPhail, Kilpatrick’s General Counsel, must submit their list
of witnesses on August 25.

Both sides
also must provide a list of exhibits they plan to introduce at the
hearing, which is scheduled for Wednesday, September 3, at 9:00 AM.
Granholm’s order says the hearings will continue “with
extended evening and weekend hours if necessary.”

Mich. board weighs how
to summarize ballot issues

By DAVID
EGGERT
The Associated Press

LANSING,
Mich. (AP) — Supporters and opponents of a constitutional
amendment to reshape state government clashed before an elections
board Tuesday over whether the measure can be explained to voters
in 100 words.

A lawyer for
Reform Michigan Government Now, which wants to put the sweeping
proposal to a statewide vote in November, read a draft summary
within the 100-word limit and said there is no requirement that
every detail be included in the explanation read by voters at the
polls.

The measure
would cut the number of lawmakers and appellate judges, reduce
their pay, alter how legislative seats are drawn and allow
no-reason absentee voting. It would make other changes that would
rewrite multiple parts of the state constitution, as well as adding
new sections.

Macomb residents may
face 25% tax hike

Jim Lynch /
The Detroit News

MOUNT
CLEMENS — Tax increases, large-scale layoffs and massive service
cuts are on the table as Macomb County commissioners try to prepare
for a larger-than-expected spike in the county’s
deficits.

To offset
projected operating deficits of $33 million in 2009 and $43 million
in 2010, commissioners on Tuesday weighed whether to increase the
county’s property tax levy as much as 25 percent.

The county
levies 4.2 mills out of the maximum allowable 4.56 mills. By
increasing the levy to the full amount, the county would increase
revenues by more than $11 million — only a third of what would be
needed in 2009.