He’s moving on to Commentary Magazine’s online blog Contentions.

As Iraq improves, so do recruiting numbers

The number of young people considering a military career has significantly increased for the first time in about five years, buoyed by more positive news out of Iraq.

Murdoc would guess that the national employment situation has even more to do with it than the situation in Iraq. Even during the darkest days, the military met recruiting goals nearly every month.

MSNBC.com front page: Obama to renew hunt for bin Laden

Headlines like this might give some the impression that the hunt has been shut down and now Obama is taking it upon himself to start things back up. I’m sure that the press wouldn’t want to give any false impressions.

For the record, I do believe that Afghanistan has not received the attention it should.

Also for the record, I’ve always thought there’s a better than 50-50 chance bin Laden has been dead since Tora Bora or shortly after, and nothing since then has done much to change my opinion. Rough audio tapes actually increase my suspicions.

USA Today: Airstrikes in Afghanistan increase 31%

An F-16 Fighting Falcon launches electronic countermeasure flares following an aerial refueling mission over Iraq.

Air missions to back U.S. troops on the ground have increased by 31% in Afghanistan this year, as fighting in the country spreads.

The growing reliance on air power raises the risk of injuring civilians and their property and reflects a shortage of ground forces needed to protect civilians and root out insurgents, ground commanders and military experts say.

“If we got more boots on the ground, we would not have to rely as much on” airstrikes, said Army Brig. Gen. Michael Tucker, deputy commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Ground commanders in Afghanistan have asked for an additional three combat brigades and an array of support forces, which could amount to about 20,000 more troops.

The air missions, called close air support, are airstrikes requested by ground forces engaged with the enemy.

This report makes it sound like the primary job of CAS is to help troops when there aren’t enough of them. CAS certainly performs that duty, of course, but it’s hardly the only time, or even the primary time, that it’s employed.

CAS will be employed heavily whenever possible wherever US troops are engaged. If we boosted troop numbers in Afghanistan, they’d be in combat more often and CAS missions would be even more numerous. Any slight reductions due to more plentiful troops would be more than offset by more engagements.

(This would be the best course of action, in Murdoc’s humble opinion.)

The higher CAS numbers reflect more combat due to a more-active enemy and more offensive missions by US and allied troops. This is what we saw in Iraq when the “surge” troops began arriving and the offensive-oriented and active patrol operations picked back up.

I couldn’t quickly find a list of CAS missions in Iraq by month to support my claim, but here are two stories from the summer of 2007 noting the increase in Air Force combat missions in Iraq.

USA Today: Under the radar: Air Force ramps up in Iraq (July 07)
NPR: U.S. Air Force Missions Increase in Iraq (September 07)

The timing coincides with the “surge” swinging into full gear. More combat = more CAS.

Sure, we could use more troops in Afghanistan. But the elevated CAS numbers will go up if and when they arrive, not down.

Not a lot of time this morning, but now that it’s all over but the shouting, I think most of us can admit that we aren’t terribly shocked. McCain wasn’t a very strong presidential candidate, but the fact that Obama beat him by relatively little anyway, given the situation, speaks volumes to the dearth of good political candidates.

Obama won’t ruin America. He might try, from Murdoc’s perspective, but America has weathered similar leaders before. More troubling than the election of Obama, as far as I’m concerned, are the gains in the Senate, the House, and the state governorships. Obama certainly should have an opportunity to implement some of his ideas.

I don’t think anyone would argue that Washington, DC, needs to be changed. Not necessarily because we need someone different than Bush, but because things are a mess, they’ve been a mess for a long time, and they’re on a road to an even bigger mess in the near- and long-term future. I don’t think Obama-brand politics is the change we needed, but I certainly will be glad to be proven wrong.

One thing that’s going to change, and I fear for the worse, is the nature of the dialogue surrounding racial issues. People who voted for Obama because he’s black won’t like to admit that they were acting racists the same as people who voted for McCain because he’s white. The charge of racism every time someone criticizes President Obama will get real stale real quick. I wonder if the storm of controversy that always surrounds the president will help or hurt so-called “race relations” in the long run.

One other thing all the rabid legions of Obama supporters should remember is that the Liberals haven’t had a President since the advent of the blogs and widespread internet journalism. They’ve always been the ones free to take potshots, not sit there and take it. They’re going to learn that many of the same criticisms leveled at Bush over the past eight years will apply equally to Obama, much like all the cries of change petered out once the Democratic congress took office after 2006.

One thing’s for sure. I’m going to be buying several more guns here before the end of the year.

Also, it’s pretty clear that the death knell of the mainstream press was premature. They played an amazingly critical part in this election, from openly beating the drum for Obama to hyping and contributing to the financial situation to suddenly ignoring the war. Despite claims to the contrary, their influence over America remains scarily strong.

Finally, I worry most about the war specifically and the military in general. I fear, now that Iraq is winding down, that there’s going to be pressure for some sort of “peace dividend” by scaling back the size and budgets of the military. This was disastrous in the 90s when America was at relative peace. More than anything, similar moves during the next four years could have unimaginable consequences.

Regardless, Obama will be my president.

We’ll see.

UPDATE: From Steven Den Beste, who I more or less consider the single biggest influence in my starting this blog:

It’s easy to let yourself go in despair and start thinking things like “We are well-and-truly fucked” or “This is the worst of all possible outcomes”. But it isn’t true.

I think this election is going to be a “coming of age” moment for a lot of people. They say, “Be careful what you wish for” and a lot of people got their wish yesterday.

That woman who was so excited that she won’t have to pay for her gasoline or her mortgage will be disappointed, of course. The lunatic fringe following always is. But a lot of the less-lunatic who are celebrating wildly today are going to quiet down a bit come March or April when they realize that Obama is just another politician.

In the same light, all the doom-and-gloom Conservatives will see that, though things might be bad, it’s not really the end of the world.

I’m removing the MSNBC.com widget. They called Kentucky for McCain with 10% in. Then I noticed this:

0%

This stuff is just retarded.

UPDATE: Then there’s this:

What?

McCain wins by trailing 57-42 with no precincts in?

Now, I sure hope they’re right. And I know that they’re using all sorts of exit polling and trends and expert opinion and such to make their calls. But with how absolutely awful exit polling has proven itself to be over and over again, why not wait a few minutes and make your calls when more real numbers are available?

UPDATE 2:

Ron Jones, Philadelphia Voter: “I decided to come back and vote a couple times.”
Brian Todd, CNN Reporter: “I think that’s against the law. But it’s okay.“

But it’s okay.

Noticed this in a comment thread over at Wizbang:

I think anyone who’s expecting an Obama win strictly based on the polls is not participating in reality. Actually, expecting anything specific, in either candidate’s favor, might be a bit of a reach in this polling climate.

Agreed.

It’s no secret. Murdoc’s voting for McCain. I’ve been a fan of most of what the man has done in the Senate (with a couple of major black marks against him, though) but I’m less than thrilled that he’s apparently the best the GOP can come up with.

However, Obama is very nearly the exact polar opposite of what I want when it comes to the issues that matter to me the most, and though McCain is obviously farther to the Left than Bush, Obama is farther to the Left than John Kerry. I agree with those who say the Republican party needs to be shook up a bit (or a lot), but I don’t think putting Obama behind the big desk is the way to do it. You don’t try to lose weight by injecting yourself with flesh-eating bacteria.

Yes, some will complain about Murdoc comparing Obama to flesh-eating bacteria. Murdoc’s long past worrying about the complainers.

Here’s what I see going in to the big day:

If the major news outlets start calling Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida with a lot of precincts not yet reported, I’ll figure that it’s damn close. If we hear about a lot of “voting irregularities,” especially involving electronic voting machines, I’ll suspect McCain is winning.

If they hold off calling them to “not interfere with voter perceptions” and to “make sure everyone’s vote counts,” or that it’s just “too close to call,” I’ll figure McCain is probably winning. Close races where Obama has a tiny lead will not be judged too close to call.

If McCain manages to squeak it out and win the big prize, I’ll figure the biggest loser on election day are the major news outlets. As in: They did everything they could think of to win the election for Obama and still failed. Their influence over the American people is mortally wounded. I hope I’m wrong, but I’ve not seen much evidence that I am.

I do think McCain has a solid chance. I also think that Obama has a solid advantage. The key is for every Republican and/or Conservative to get out there and vote. Even if things start looking bad as exit polls and early results from the east coast start trickling in. Even if all appears lost. Get out and vote. Get on the phone and make sure your friends and family do, too.

What if Steve Forbes Had Won the Election?

I voted for Forbes in the 2000 Michigan primaries. I would have voted for him over Gore if he had somehow won the nomination. And I’ve sometimes asked myself this same question:

What if Steve Forbes had won the primary and general elections in 2000? How would the world differ from the world we live in now?

Steve Forbes would not have negotiated away the supply side tax cuts in 2001. He would not have let the Democrats insist that only tax cuts for the poor and middle class be implanted immediately. He would not have agreed to defer the tax cuts of the entrepreneurial and investor class into the indefinite future. He would have (and did) recognize that we had already entered a recession before he entered the White House and would have used that fact to push the tax cuts through. The Forbes Boom would have started in 2001, not 2003. Two years of stagnation and jobs loss could have been avoided.

Here is a list of terms I quickly searched the article for using the ‘find’ function on my browser:

• 9/11
• september
• attack
• terrorist
• afghanistan
• iraq

None of them appeared in the article. I had to type in a word I could see just to make sure the ‘find’ function was working.

No conversation about this topic really has any point if the biggest issue he would have faced isn’t made the biggest issue of discussion. (via Instapundit)

The Economist magazine has endorsed Obama:

We do so wholeheartedly: the Democratic candidate has clearly shown that he offers the better chance of restoring America’s self-confidence. But we acknowledge it is a gamble. Given Mr Obama’s inexperience, the lack of clarity about some of his beliefs and the prospect of a stridently Democratic Congress, voting for him is a risk. Yet it is one America should take, given the steep road ahead. [emphasis Murdoc's]

That’s their definition of a “wholehearted” endorsement? I’d hate to see what they say about halfhearted endorsements.