A huge machine run efficiently...

There has never, in the history of US politics, been a campaign so big or so well organized, as Barack Obama's.

Add to that, so efficiently run.

Recent campaign disclosures highlight the disciplined budgeting -- and bargain hunting -- that allowed the Obama campaign to deliver maximum political payload for every dollar. While other campaigns, notably those of chief rivals Hillary Clinton in the primary and John McCain in the general elections, threatened to run off the rails from injudicious spending that, at times, brought their campaigns to the verge of bankruptcy as they spent -- and misspent -- big.

While candidate Obama put together the most successful campaign financing team in US history -- amassing a total that dwarfed all previous campaigns, much of that from small donors, while eschewing donations from professional lobbyists and PACs -- his team also made sure that it got the most political bang for its bucks, underspending his less-well-funded rivals for key expenses through shrewd -- and tightly disciplined -- penny pinching.

According to the New York Times:

Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has collected a record-shattering $640 million, but only two of his staff members are among the 15 highest-paid workers in the general election, according to campaign finance records. The rest, including the three highest paid, are employed by Senator John McCain.

The Obama campaign, despite having more than 700 field offices across the country, compared with fewer than 400 for Mr. McCain, has spent slightly less on rent than its counterpart.

And even though Mr. Obama has raised $400 million more than Mr. McCain, he has spent less on fund-raising consultants.

According to the Times, one of the single biggest campaign expenses for traditional campaigns has been the use of media consultants. Such consultants all but broke the McCain bank last year, nearly bankrupting the campaign.

In a typical campaign, the Times says media consultants suck down from 6 to 7 % of the advertising budget.

But the media consulting budget of the Obama campaign looks to come in at around only one percent of the huge amounts the campaign has spent on ad buys.

The Times writes about the disciplined penny pincher at the top of the Obama team, chief of staff, David Plouffle:

[Chief strategist David] Axelrod likes to joke that at the Obama headquarters, if someone waves a hand in front of the automated paper towel dispenser in the men’s room, a section of paper towel is dispensed; wave at it again and a note spits out, “See Plouffe.”

Iraq condemns US raid into Syria

The US's "host," the Iraqi government, has condemned Sunday's cross-border raid into Syria by US special forces apparently based in Iraq. According to the US government's Voice of America News:

An Iraqi government spokesman said Baghdad "rejects" the raid. He added that Iraq does not want its territory to be used for attacks on neighboring countries.

According to US sources, the raid targeted the head of a network smuggling arms and fighters into Iraq.

While criticizing the raid, the Iraqi spokesman also called on Damascus to crack down on insurgents who use Syria as a base to train and launch attacks on Iraq.

Baghdad has said that Sunday's helicopter raid targeted such an area.

Andrew Sullivan's Top 10 Reasons for Conservatives to vote for Obama

The Atlantic Monthly has reprinted prominent conservative Andrew Sullivan's essay, The Top Ten Reasons Conservatives Should Vote For Obama.

You'll have to read the Monthly to get the mostly brief explanations for each point but here they are in outline:

10. A body blow to racial identity politics.
9. Less debt.
8. A return to realism and prudence in foreign policy.
7. An ability to understand the difference between listening to generals and delegating foreign policy to them.
6. Temperament. Obama has the coolest, calmest demeanor of any president since Eisenhower.
5. Faith. Obama's fusion of Christianity and reason, his non-fundamentalist faith, is a critical bridge between the new atheism and the new Christianism.
4. A truce in the culture war.
3. Two words: President Palin.
2. Conservative reform. Until conservatism can get a distance from the big-spending, privacy-busting, debt-ridden, crony-laden, fundamentalist, intolerant, incompetent and arrogant faux conservatism of the Bush-Cheney years, it will never regain a coherent message to actually govern this country again.
1. The War Against Islamist terror. The strategy deployed by Bush and Cheney has failed. It has failed to destroy al Qaeda, except in a country, Iraq, where their presence was minimal before the US invasion. It has failed to bring any of the terrorists to justice, instead creating the excrescence of Gitmo, torture, secret sites, and the collapse of America's reputation abroad. It has empowered Iran, allowed al Qaeda to regroup in Pakistan, made the next vast generation of Muslims loathe America, and imperiled our alliances.

US confirms deadly military incursion into Syria; timing raises questions

According to the UK's Telegraph, a US military official has confirmed the military incursion into Syria from across the Iraqi border -- an attack condemned by the Syrian government as "serious aggression."

The raid was confirmed by a US official in Washington, who said it targeted elements of a network supplying foreign fighters to Iraq from North Africa and the Middle East.

Offering details previously unavailable, the Telegraph revealed:

The US official told the Associated Press that while there had been considerable success dealing with "rat lines" conveying militants into Iraq near the Euphrates River, the part of the network involving elements of the Syrian army had been out of reach.

"The one piece of the puzzle we have not been showing success on is the nexus in Syria," the official said. "We are taking matters into our own hands."

The Telegraph points out that the US had reported recent gains in border security:

The flow of foreign fighters into Iraq has been cut to an estimated 20 a month, a senior US army intelligence official said in July, a 50 per cent decline from six months earlier.

Prior to the reported US confirmation of the attack, the BBC had speculated as to the timing of such an attack, only 9 days before the US presidential elections, point out that the US had at that point not confirmed the raid:

But its timing is curious, coming right at the end of the Bush administration's period of office and at a moment when many of America's European allies - like Britain and France - are trying to broaden their ties with Damascus.

Whatever the local military factors involved in this US operation, it would be unthinkable to imagine that an incursion into Syria would not require a policy decision at a high-level.

The Telegraph points out that Washington has been resistant to efforts at a diplomatic breakthrough between the US and Syria:

Washington has even been lukewarm to Turkey's efforts to broker a peace deal between Israel and Syria.

All of this is in marked contrast to European efforts to engage the Syrians.

With French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the lead, a number of European countries have sought to bring Syria in from the cold.

But despite glimmerings of dissent from the State Department, the Bush administration has held firm to its policy of no substantive talks with Syria unless - as the Americans put it - Damascus decides to take a more "positive role" in the region.

The BBC ends on this note of speculation:

With the Bush administration on the way out, this US military incursion may represent something of a parting shot against the Syrians.

It's clear that if Senator Barrack Obama were to win the White House, his key advisers are among the strongest advocates of engaging with the Damascus across a broad spectrum of issues.

Ladies and gentlemen, the future of the Republican Party...

The blame game goes into weekend spin in the McCainosphere.

CNN came up with a juicy bit I had not yet picked up on, citing a McCain staffer complaining about their now-rebellious VP pick, Sarah Palin:

“Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic,” said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the “hardest” to get her “up to speed than any candidate in history.”

Still, as a knowing analysis in the Christian Science Monitor points out, she has more than a few defenders on the far right, not all of them denizens of the murky waters of talk radio. Fred Barnes complained about the McCain management's handling of Palin, writing in the Weekly Standard:

It should have been obvious she could handle the media. When I spent nearly two hours with Palin last year at the governor's house in Juneau, I was struck by three things. She's very smart, brimming with self-confidence, and not intimidated by the media.

This blogger read that Barnes comment not long after it was posted and had to laugh out loud. What reality is it, that the far right sees? The one in which George W. Bush is a great president, but simply misunderstood, and Sarah Palin is a star shining brightly in the future of the Grand Old Party... What sort of inversion of common sense and perception is required to hold views like that?