The up-to-date totals for Project Valor-IT are posted today at Blackfive:

The 2007 Annual Valour-IT Fund Raiser totals are coming in…however, mailed checks are not yet accounted for and could tip the scales. To date, the totals are:

Army: $53,023.00
Marines: $39,673.00
Air Force: $25,638.34
Navy/CG: $20,081.75
And non-team donations $29,954.82

And, as we’re waiting for the checks to come in and get processed we will probably surpass $200,000 this year in donations.

It is so heartwarming to see these totals and know there were so many who contributed so a wounded member of the US military could lead a more productive, normal life.

The following quote is taken from a long piece in The New Republic, a left-leaning publication.

On June 1, The New York Times published a front-page article titled, ONE PLACE WHERE OBAMA GOES ELBOW TO ELBOW. The feature detailed Barack Obama’s love for pickup basketball, his jersey-tugging style, even the time he hit a long game-winning shot after getting fouled.

The Obama camp clearly welcomed the humanizing glimpse at Obama’s life; his rivals, probably not so much. In an ordinary campaign, that might have been it. But this is no ordinary campaign–not when Hillary Clinton is a candidate. And so, the Clinton team let Times reporter Patrick Healy, who covers the Hillary beat, know about their “annoyance” with the story, as Healy later put it.

If grumbling about a basketball story seems excessive, it’s also typical of the Clinton media machine. Reporters who have covered the hyper-vigilant campaign say that no detail or editorial spin is too minor to draw a rebuke. Even seasoned political journalists describe reporting on Hillary as a torturous experience. Though few dare offer specifics for the record–”They’re too smart,” one furtively confides. “They’ll figure out who I am”–privately, they recount excruciating battles to secure basic facts. Innocent queries are met with deep suspicion. Only surgically precise questioning yields relevant answers. Hillary’s aides don’t hesitate to use access as a blunt instrument, as when they killed off a negative GQ story on the campaign by threatening to stop cooperating with a separate Bill Clinton story the magazine had in the works. Reporters’ jabs and errors are long remembered, and no hour is too odd for an angry phone call. Clinton aides are especially swift to bypass reporters and complain to top editors. “They’re frightening!” says one reporter who has covered Clinton. “They don’t see [reporting] as a healthy part of the process. They view this as a ruthless kill-or-be-killed game.”

Of course the article goes on to criticize President Bush for doing the same thing, but this coming from them is indeed strong medicine for Hillary to have to swallow.

And how do the Clintons always manage to get copies of books before they are published so they can put their own spin on them first?

Sally Bedell Smith, author of the recent Clinton biography For Love of Politics, says she was “thunderstruck” to learn from Clinton friend Terry McAuliffe, weeks before the book’s release, that Bill Clinton had already read it. “It was unnerving that he could have gotten a copy at that stage,” she says. (McAuliffe denies making this statement to Bedell Smith. A source close to him says he refutes the alleged comments from the “brief social conversation.”)

[Note: Here is a disclaimer by Terry McAuliffe's representative as published at the end of the column:]

Update: After this story appeared online a person close to Terry McAuliffe contacted TNR to convey McAuliffe’s denial of the claim by Sally Bedell Smith that McAuliffe told her Bill Clinton had seen a pre-publication galley of her book. (See here for more.) Contacted again, Bedell Smith said she stands firmly by her account. “It is a vivid memory for me,” she said

This woman and this couple will stop at nothing to regain their lost power.

Although the Democrats claim to have won the last election based on their anti-war stand, the fact remains Republicans were acting like Democrats in the spending arena and their base either stayed home or voted for their opponents, putting the Democrats in charge.

Nevertheless, after 40 votes on stopping the war in Iraq, 39 outright failures and one vetoed and not sustained the Democrats are finally now disillusioned with the limits put upon them by our Founding Fathers.

For sure they won’t accept the fact they pursued the wrong direction when they could have compromised, but others have noticed and now the war issue isn’t as big as it once was.

Why? Because the major news companies are not covering it as much. Why is that? Because the Surge is working.

But still the Democrats try to put lipstick on a pig, only to find it’s still a pig.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said the only strategic miscalculation Democrats might have made was “failing to grasp how much Republicans were willing to stick with the president.”

Still, he said Republicans pursued unity at their own peril.

“The Republicans own this thing, lock, stock and barrel.”

For the first time in years, Republicans are privately telling their members with a straight face that the war, in political terms, may be neutralized for next year’s election, which would have big ramifications for both sides.

A word of caution before we go into the numbers: Republicans remain broadly disliked, the war remains powerfully unpopular and opinion is prone to shift rapidly with events.

That said, 44 percent of Americans now believe the war is going “very” or “fairly” well, a high point in the past year, according to The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, a nonpartisan group.

At the same time, CBS News polling has found U.S. opposition to Bush’s troop surge softening a bit.

Yes, public opposition to the war remains high.

But there has been a small uptick even in the number of independents and Democrats who are optimistic the surge might work (though most remain pessimistic).

The Democratic base’s negative view of the war also has lessened of late.

This Congress has accomplished almost nothing and will have to run on that record next year. We are into November and still don’t have a budget for the president to sign. We have never gone this long without having a budget passed.

The leaders of Congress have allowed too much time to be taken up on show votes for the Iraq war, and not enough time to actually pass legislation that would benefit the citizens of the country.

Despite their outcries of being fair to the opposition if put into the majority, they have taken bills to the floor of the House without even going to committee or consulting the minority party. Therefore there has been no compromise.

Why compromise when it’s being shoved down your throats and will be the bill the majority party wants?

Congress has been ineffectual, and people are noticing. Whether that translates to more Republican votes in the next election remains to be seen, as memories still are strong of their loose-spending style.

Whatever it is, don’t look for anything meaningful until and unless the Democrats stop blaming the Republicans for everything that has gone wrong during this Congress, and start to reach across the aisle and work together for the best legislation possible.

This photo was taken by by a Japanese moon probe orbiting the moon.

Just look at the detail. You can see shadows and craters and of course, that beautiful marble-looking planet called Earth.