Summary: NBC’s Chuck Todd writes that if the object of 2012 Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney’s May 12 health-care speech was “to put the health issue behind him, then the address was an ‘un-Mitt-igated’ failure.” Research conducted at the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics under the direction of Aubrey Immelman, Ph.D., suggests that Massachusetts’ health law, enacted during Romney’s tenure as governor, may be the least of his problems as he vies for the Republican nomination in a crowded GOP field. In short, Romney lacks the personal charisma to sway non-base voters, as measured by the Personal Electability Index for presidential contenders, developed at the Minnesota-based political psychology research unit. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on May 12, 2010, Aubrey Immelman announced that Independence Party-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner scheduled a press conference at Stop Light Bait in St. Cloud, ahead of the weekend’s Minnesota’s fishing opener.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, an Iraqi defector who fled Iraq in 1995 and went by the codename “Curveball,” has publicly admitted for the first time that he made up stories about mobile bioweapons trucks and secret factories to try to bring down Saddam Hussein’s regime. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 15, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that the incendiary rhetoric of demagogues like Glenn Beck or Michele Bachmann is powerful because it slips through the cracks in our acculturated human rationality, with its biological substrates in the fontal cortex, to hit a lower nerve in the subcortical brain regions of the limbic system, the seat of emotion.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: Before his recent fall from grace, Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) blasted former Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) for their “dishonest, unpatriotic, hypocritical, and highly personal continuing attacks on President Obama.” … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 11, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that a suicide bomber struck tribal leaders touring a market in a Sunni area west of Baghdad killing as many as 33 people in the second major attack in the capital area in two days and raising fears that Sunni insurgents may be escalating operations even as the U.S. phases out its combat role in Iraq.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: The political movement of Iraq’s best-known anti-American cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, is emerging as a major contender in the March 7, 2010 national elections, raising the specter that the next prime minister of Iraq could be openly hostile to the United States and friendly toward Iran. Further complicating the situation, Iraq’s main Sunni party has said it is dropping out of the elections. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 25, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that four U.S. soldiers and an Afghan civilian working for them were killed in southern Afghanistan when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb, while in Iraq two policemen opened fire on U.S. soldiers visiting a police station, killing an American soldier and an Iraqi interpreter, wounding three Americans, and raising concerns about insurgent infiltration among the ranks of Iraqi police.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: In a new audiotape, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden calls for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 30, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Iraq denied North Carolina-based Blackwater Worldwide (Xe), which guards American diplomats in Iraq, an operating license because of a deadly shooting spree in Baghdad. Iraqi officials said the lingering outrage over a September 2007 shooting in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead led to its decision. The shooting strained relations between Washington and Baghdad and fueled the anti-American insurgency in Iraq, where many Iraqis saw the bloodshed as a demonstration of American brutality and arrogance.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: An unrepentant Tony Blair defended his decision to join the United States in attacking Iraq, invoking the discredited neocon argument before a panel investigating the war that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks made the threat of weapons of mass destruction impossible to ignore. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 29, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that suicide rates among active-duty U.S. military personnel continuing to rise even as the Defense Department dedicated more resources to identifying troubled service members and getting them the help they need. Preliminary figures confirmed at least 125 soldiers killed themselves in 2008, compared with 115 in 2007, 102 in 2006 and 87 in 2005.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: Rudy Giuliani falsely claims no domestic terrorist attacks under George W. Bush — Media Matters for America, a Web-based research and information center dedicated to monitoring, analyzing, and correcting misinformation in the U.S. media has good reporting and analysis of misguided attempts to rewrite history for political gain by erasing the Bush administration’s responsibility for failures leading up to 9/11. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 8, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Iraq remained the deadliest country for journalists in 2008, followed by India and Mexico.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: In the latest development in a political controversy that stemmed from the Bush White House’s failure to install a properly working electronic record-keeping system, computer technicians have found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush. The Bush White House e-mail archiving problems became publicly known in 2006, when federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald disclosed the irregularities during his criminal investigation of the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 14, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that a federal draft report depicted the U.S.-led reconstruction of Iraq as a $100 billion failure doomed by bureaucratic infighting, ignorance of basic elements of Iraqi society, and waves of violence. The report, “Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience,” was compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart Bowen Jr., a Republican lawyer.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: Similarities between George W. Bush’s troop surge in Iraq and Barack Obama’s surge plan for Afghanistan belie the fact that there are few commonalities between the two war theaters. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 5, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that the number of terrorist attacks against police in northwestern Pakistan’s tribal regions bordering Afghanistan had increased from 113 in 2005 to 1,820 in 2007, and that police are outgunned, out-financed, and fighting a losing battle against Taliban insurgents.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: Pointing to U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, Michael White of the British newspaper The Guardian says what troubles him about the U.S. today is that “public reaction to the Obama presidency is irrational, emotional, and ignorant.” Excerpts with sidebars, links, graphics, and video added. … Eric Roper reports in the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Hot Dish Politics blog (Nov. 28, 2009) that MSNBC’s Ed Schultz devoted more than a quarter of his Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2009 show to Rep. Michele Bachmann. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 30, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that the fallout from a three-day terrorist rampage that killed nearly 200 people in Mumbai threatened to unravel India’s improving ties with Pakistan and prompted the resignation of India’s security minister.

  ::  Read Comments (0)