Crossposted from Flopping Aces

Despite an all out effort by Obama and the Dems!

Georgia Sen. Chambliss wins re-election in runoff
By SHANNON McCAFFREY
Associated Press
Dec 2, 9:30 PM (ET)

ATLANTA (AP) - Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss handed the GOP a firewall against Democrats eager to flex their newfound political muscle in Washington, winning a bruising runoff battle Tuesday night that had captured the national limelight.

Chambliss’ victory thwarted Democrats’ hopes of winning a 60 seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. It came after a bitter month long runoff against Democrat Jim Martin that drew political luminaries from both parties to the state and flooded the airwaves with fresh attack ads weeks after campaigns elsewhere had ended.
…
Martin made the economy the centerpiece of his bid, casting himself as a champion for the neglected middle class. He also linked himself at every opportunity to Barack Obama and his message of change.
…
Former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore both stumped for Martin. President-elect Barack Obama recorded a radio ad for Martin and sent 100 field operatives, but he didn’t campaign in the state despite a request from Martin to do so.

Several ex-Republican presidential candidates made appearances for Chambliss, including GOP nominee John McCain, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Chambliss brought in Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain’s vice presidential pick, as his closer. She headlined four rallies for Chambliss across the state Monday that drew thousands of party faithful.

For a first hand report from the Chambliss-Palin rally in Savannah click here.

Georgia Senate race tests Obama
Democrats had asked for more visible support
By Sasha Issenberg
Boston Globe
December 2, 2008

ATLANTA - Jim Martin, the Democrat trying for the second time in a month to unseat Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss, was standing in one of Barack Obama’s old campaign offices the other day, circled by a staff paid for with Obama’s dollars, facing a large banner bearing Obama’s image.

The postcard-sized handbills stacked around the room were old door-knockers printed to promote the Obama-Martin ticket, crudely cut in half for their new purpose. “For President,” some of them still read, in Obama’s familiar Gotham typeface.
…
Today’s runoff election between Martin and Chambliss will offer the first test of whether Obama is able to bequeath more to local allies than merely the trappings of a presidential campaign. The results may offer a tentative answer to questions that will ghost American politics for at least the next four years: Is there a sustainable Obama coalition, and is the Obama machine durable? Has Obama created anything greater than himself?

“He has a political army that is truly impressive, but that kind of loyalty to a person rather than to an institution is not as transferable,” said Donald Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman. “Yet this is a new day and this is a new kind of organization: it is highly electronic and it might work.”

The Latest On The Mumbai Attack

The WSJ reports that the leader of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba is behind the attacks in Mumbai:

India has accused a senior leader of the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba of orchestrating last week’s terror attacks that killed at least 172 people here, and demanded the Pakistani government turn him over and take action against the group.

Just two days before hitting the city, the group of 10 terrorists who ravaged India’s financial capital communicated with Yusuf Muzammil and four other Lashkar leaders via a satellite phone that they left behind on a fishing trawler they hijacked to get to Mumbai, a senior Mumbai police official told The Wall Street Journal. The entire group also underwent rigorous training in a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, the official said.

And guess who gave them that “rigorous training?”:

As evidence of the militants’ links to Pakistan mounted, Mumbai police commissioner Hasan Ghafoor said ex-Pakistani army officers trained the group — some for up to 18 months — and denied reports the men had been planning to escape the city.

‘‘It appears that it was a suicide attack,’’ Ghafoor said, providing no other details about when the gunmen left Karachi, or when they hijacked the trawler.

The revelations came as a senior U.S. official said India received a warning from the United States that militants were plotting a waterborne assault on Mumbai. The Bush administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of intelligence information, would not elaborate on the timing or details of the U.S. warning.

And not surprisingly, Pakistan is refusing to hand over anyone India says is involved in the attack:

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari rejected India’s demand that Islamabad hand over some 20 suspects, believed to be in Pakistan, saying: “If we had proof, we would try them in our courts. We would try them in our land and we would sentence them.” Zardari said that he doubted India’s claim that the sole surviving terrorist in the Mumbai terror attacks, who was captured by Indian security forces, was a Pakistani.

“We have not been given any tangible proof to say that he is definitely a Pakistani. I very much doubt that he’s a Pakistani,” he said, appearing on Larry King Live programme on CNN on Tuesday night.

The president has strongly denied his country’s involvement in the audacious attacks in Mumbai, saying the terror strikes in the India’s financial capital were executed by the “stateless actors” who wanted to hold the “entire world hostage.” Zardari also ruled out any possibility of Pakistan and India going to war, saying “democracies do not go to war”.

Meanwhile India police discovered a bomb among the luggage left behind in the attack:

Police in Mumbai found explosives Wednesday hidden in a bag left behind last week at the city’s train station at the start of a three-day rampage by Islamist militants.

While searching 150 bags at the station, police found one that looked suspicious and called the bomb squad. They found two bombs of 8.8 pounds each inside and defused them, said Assistant Commissioner of Police Bapu Domre.

Weird that it took them this long to search the bags but I can only imagine the chaos going on in that city at the moment.

And finally, the US is sending signals that it will back India in any attack against Pakistan if that country does not root out the terrorists responsible:

The United States has set the stage for punitive internationally-backed strikes by India against terrorist camps in Pakistan if Islamabad does not act first to dismantle them by rejecting President Zardari’s alibi that non-state actors were responsible for the last week’s carnage in Mumbai.

The game-changer, outlined by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, among others, robs Islamabad of the fig leaf that Zardari used in his interview on Larry King Live that ‘’stateless actors'’ are holding the whole world hostage and Pakistan was not to blame. Rice said in effect that the excuse does not absolve Pakistan responsibility for terrorist acts that originate from its territory,“ Rice said.

Although US officials have not outright approved immediate punitive Indian strikes against terrorist targets in Pakistan, it is clear Rice has bought time for Islamabad to prove its bonafides. Pakistan has a ‘’special responsibility'’ and needs to act ‘’urgently'’ she said, even as India has indicated it will wait for a Pakistani response to its demands before any punitive action.

In Washington, experts pressed the administration to expand the scope of punitive strikes to an international level to avoid making it an India-Pakistan issue, particularly since the death toll included citizens of ten countries.

And as Scott noted a few days ago, Obama is backing that decision.

While it is sad that India was attacked, backing India when we need Pakistan cooperation (behind the scenes of course) in rooting out those who have attacked us, and plan to attack us again, is not the smartest thing to do.

Finally:

Obama Broken Campaign Promise #63: Not Gonna Tax Big Oil Companies

Pres-elect Obama isn’t even waiting to take office to throw away his campaign promises. He’s on track to get them all out of the way before he’s even sworn in. Smart move politically, but with each new broken promise, with each pledge to continue a Bush policy, he reveals himself to his voters as more and more of the empty hat that Republicans (and pre-nomination Democrats) claimed he has always been.

CHICAGO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama is not planning to implement a windfall profit tax on oil companies because prices have dropped below $80 a barrel, an aide said on Tuesday.

“President-elect Obama announced the policy during the campaign because oil prices were above $80 per barrel,” an aide on Obama’s transition team said. “They are currently below that now and expected to stay below that.”

Oil prices have fallen from a record $147 a barrel in July to under $50 this week.

Obama, who signaled early in his campaign for the White House that he would take an active approach to oil markets as president, had planned to use the revenue from a windfall profits tax to fund a tax rebate for low- and middle-income families struggling with high energy prices.

link