Obama Watch

2008-09-17T13:37:00.001+11:30

REDIRECTION

Google's "Help Obama" campaign

Heh! I have thought of an amusing response to Google's harassment of this blog. I have moved it not to another platform but to another blogspot address! It is now at http://dumbama.blogspot.com.

I call it DUMBama in reference to the fact that all Obababy seems able to do is spout Leftist boilerplate in a nice voice.

Google will probably delete this blog once I cease making requests to remove the spam flagging but that hardly matters. Being a cautious old conservative, I already have duplicate archives online elsewhere -- e.g. here.

2008-09-17T01:07:00.001+11:30

The gaffemeister 'Brags' About 'Negative Ads That Are Completely Unrelated to the Issues at Hand'

Ha!

"If we're going to ask questions about, you know, who has been promulgating negative ads that are completely unrelated to the issues at hand, I think I win that contest pretty handily," Obama said.

Just note that if McCain had said that, it would be seen as a sign of age and dementia. If Palin had said that, it would be a sign she's not ready for prime time. If Biden said that... well, that scenario presumes that a reporter would be around to notice, but if he did, it would mean that it's a Monday.

Source

OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS' IRAQ WITHDRAWAL

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence. According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July. "He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion." "However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.

Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate. While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a "realistic withdrawal date." They declined.

Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet. Supposing he wins, Obama's administration wouldn't be fully operational before February - and naming a new ambassador to Baghdad and forming a new negotiation team might take longer still.

By then, Iraq will be in the throes of its own campaign season. Judging by the past two elections, forming a new coalition government may then take three months. So the Iraqi negotiating team might not be in place until next June. Then, judging by how long the current talks have taken, restarting the process from scratch would leave the two sides needing at least six months to come up with a draft accord. That puts us at May 2010 for when the draft might be submitted to the Iraqi parliament - which might well need another six months to pass it into law.

More here

McCain Camp Demands Answers on Obama's Illegal Interference with US Foreign Policy

As CJ says, the media can't ignore this as they'd like. If McCain makes an issue out of it, it is an issue, whether they like it or not.*

At this point, it is not yet clear what official American negotiations Senator Obama tried to undermine with Iraqi leaders, but the possibility of such actions is unprecedented. It should be concerning to all that he reportedly urged that the democratically-elected Iraqi government listen to him rather than the US administration in power. If news reports are accurate, this is an egregious act of political interference by a presidential candidate seeking political advantage overseas. Senator Obama needs to reveal what he said to Iraq's Foreign Minister during their closed door meeting. The charge that he sought to delay the withdrawal of Americans from Iraq raises serious questions about Senator Obama's judgment and it demands an explanation.

* By the way, this dynamic mitigates McCain's sorta-annoying playing of the victim card of late. The MSM simply will not report on this stuff unless McCain pushes it out there. They will do all of Obama's dirty work without prompting (allowing Obama to sail above it), but they won't do the same for McCain.

Indeed, all the press wants to do now is dig up derogatory rumors about Sarah Palin. It's only by injecting other storylines into the media directly he can even hope to push the MSM off its singleminded focus on getting Palin.

Is McCain pushing some kinda silly stuff about lipstick and pigs of late? Yes. But it's not as if he's "distracting" the media from important issues. If they weren't covering silly shit like the lipstick thing (which was deliberate, but is still silly), the MSM would just be pushing others silly shit, like Sarah Palin taking expense per diems to which she was legally entitled, or somehow "misleading" the public into thinking she visited Iraq by consistently stating she'd visited Kuwait.

For those of you who want a debate on the "real issues" -- it's simply not possible right now. The MSM is on a Palin hunt and no story is too silly to smear her with.

Now this -- Obama directly and deliberately interfering with the foreign policy power entrusted by the Constitution to the sitting president only (with the advice and consent, and not interference and sabotage, of the Senate) -- is a very serious issue indeed.

Source

$126,000 From Fannie and Freddie? In Four Years?

Obama has two new ads up, both highlighting McCain advisers who have been employed as lobbyists.

If having a staffer who has worked as a lobbyist makes you "on the take," I wonder what it means when you take more money from companies like Fannie and Freddie than anybody except Chris Dodd. More than, say, 352 other lawmakers, going back to 1989. Seems like time for a response ad.

"When the highly-paid CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac felt reformers closing in, they needed a defender. They knew where to send their money. The Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd... and Barack Obama. They gave Obama more than $126,000, in less than four years. While Fannie and Freddie was running aground, Dodd, Obama, and Congress looked elsewhere. Ask yourself who can really bring change to Washington, and keep our financial system from running aground."

Source

Obama Needs a Tact Increase

His "computer" error continues a troubling pattern.

By JAMES TARANTO

"John McCain is mocked as an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate in a television commercial out Friday from Barack Obama as the Democrat begins his sharpest barrage yet on McCain's long Washington career," the Associated Pressreports. You can see the ad here. "He admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer," the narrator sneers. "Can't send an email."

There's just one problem: As the Boston Globereported in 2000 (hat tip: Jonah Goldberg), "McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes." Obama presumably did not intend to mock McCain for having his arms repeatedly broken by his communist captors in Vietnam. Chalk it up to carelessness--but it isn't the only example of such carelessness.

Consider the "lipstick on a pig" line last week. True, Obama did not explicitly call Sarah Palin porcine, as we noted Wednesday. It is quite possible his use of the idiom was totally innocent, as he claims. But any sensitive adult should have realized that a reference to a pig in connection with a woman might strike others as unchivalrous or sexist (interesting how much those two categories overlap, but that's a topic for another column).

Blogger "Jim Treacher" complies a list of other instances in which Obama has acted like--Treacher's word--a "jerk." He leaves out perhaps the costliest example: the New Hampshire debate in which Obama said to Hillary Clinton: "You're likable enough, Hillary." Karl Rove argued that this show of arrogance helped cost Obama the New Hampshire primary.

Does it matter? Remember when President Bush got pilloried when he referred to the war on terror as a "crusade"? He obviously did not mean to suggest that his goal was to impose Christianity on the Muslim world, but his critics were right to be concerned that he might have conveyed the wrong message internationally.

One of Obama's biggest selling points is if we elect him, the world will like America again. He also promises to meet directly, without preconditions, with adversaries of America such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez. It appears that he has a tendency to make foolish and aggressive statements--a weakness that now endangers only his campaign, but that could, if he were president, have serious consequences for U.S. foreign policy.

It is true, as Obama's defenders contend in rather harsher language than is warranted, that the McCain campaign and Obama's critics have interpreted Obama's various miscues in the harshest possible light. But would America's adversaries be any more charitable in responding to the words of a U.S. president?

Source

Comparing Obama and McCain On Public Service

Obama wants to turn the whole nation into government employees

Both John McCain and Barack Obama exhorted Americans to dedicate themselves to public service in an appearance at Columbia University on Thursday, to mark the seventh anniversary of 9/11. But Americans need no lectures from politicians to participate in their nation's civic life. They need them to stay out of the way. Between the two, Sen. Obama is far less likely to do so.

At first blush, the two candidates appear indistinguishable on the subject. Both have urged Americans to look beyond their individual, material pursuits and commit themselves to causes greater than themselves -- Sen. McCain arguably even more aggressively than Mr. Obama. The difference is that for Mr. McCain this is a moral ideal. For Mr. Obama, it is a governing mission. "Making that call to service will be a central cause of my presidency," he declared in an Independence Day address at the University of Colorado and elsewhere.

Mr. McCain certainly uses his bully pulpit to proselytize Americans about public service. But he more or less stops there, even repeatedly cautioning during the Columbia forum against federalizing public service, although that doesn't mean that he wouldn't throw taxpayer money at some of his pet service projects. However, his Web site offers nothing near what Mr. Obama is proposing.

Mr. Obama has laid out a 10-page vision statement that includes virtually every program proposed by the left and the right in recent memory and then some. President Bush's controversial faith-based initiative? He'll keep it. President Kennedy's Peace Corps? He'll double it. Even Mr. McCain's seven-year-old plan to raise a domestic civilian force to fight terrorism and triple enrollment in AmeriCorps gets a plug.

In addition, Mr. Obama would create several new corps of his own: a Classroom Corps to help teachers and students in underperforming schools; a Health Corps for underserved areas; a Clean Energy Corps to weatherize homes and promote energy independence. The last is separate from his Global Energy Corps, to promote low-carbon energy solutions in developing countries.

Mr. Obama calls all this his "Plan for Universal and Voluntary Citizen Service." It might live up to its "universal" billing, given that it would prod Americans of all age groups -- from preteens to retirees -- to sign up. But as to its voluntariness, the plan will make generous use of Uncle Sam's money -- and muscle.

By Mr. Obama's account, he will make federal education aid conditional on schools requiring that high-school and even middle-school students perform 50 hours of service each year. He will also offer college students $4,000 every year for doing 100 hours of public service. That works out to $40 an hour -- a deal that only the very wealthy could refuse. (The Obama campaign puts the price tag for this alone at $10 billion.) He promises to provide older Americans who perform civic service with "additional income security, including assistance with retirement and family-related costs, and continuation of health-care coverage." But a government that links benefits to service can take away benefits for nonservice.

The real issue is why Mr. Obama thinks it is necessary to take such extraordinary steps to push all Americans into service. Americans every year contribute close to $300 billion out of their own pockets to charities at home and abroad. This is the highest of any nation -- seven times more than Germans and 14 times more than Italians per capita. Americans are equally generous with their time. According to the Corporation for National and Community Service -- a federal agency -- last year Americans volunteered 8.1 billion hours of service valued at $150 billion to community organizations.

Mr. Obama doesn't think this kind of voluntary effort is sufficient, because it can't deliver social justice. In his memoirs and elsewhere, he distinguishes between community service and organization. Community service, he believes, can offer short-term relief to those temporarily down-and-out, through things like church food pantries or homeless shelters. It can also address concrete problems such as vandalism or crime through neighborhood watches.

However, Mr. Obama believes -- as he wrote in a 1990 anthology, "After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois" -- that this kind of service plays into the "individualistic bootstrap myth." It doesn't by itself help the disenfranchised trapped in inner cities.

For that, Mr. Obama wants collective political action, i.e., bottom-up mobilization, to help the disaffected extract resources from the powers-that-be to remake their communities. This is what Mr. Obama attempted to do during his years as a community organizer. And that's what he hopes all his cadres of social workers would also do.

Mr. Obama's moral vision presupposes that the key to individual advancement is securing a larger share of a fixed social pie from those who control it. This posture, relevant in premodern patronage systems, is profoundly at odds with the modern, market economy in which individuals don't have to wrest resources from others to prosper; they have opportunities to create their own. That requires a morality of independence and self-reliance -- precisely what Mr. Obama downplays with his comments about the "individualistic bootstrap myth."

Bolstering this morality is a complex task that will involve addressing social policies that have contributed to the breakdown of families, sapping crucial psychological resources from inner-city communities -- as Mr. Obama himself has acknowledged on occasion. It won't be accomplished by deploying federally funded armies of self-righteousness.

In his first memoir, "Dreams from My Father," Mr. Obama tells how he mobilized residents of a housing project to get the Chicago Housing Authority to clean up asbestos in their walls. The agency did, then ran out of funds for even more pressing problems like repairing leaky roofs, leaving residents even worse off.

Mr. Obama's take-away: more activism for more funds. One fellow activist, a diminutive, married woman, demurred. "Ain't nothing going to change, Mr. Obama," she told him. "We just gonna concentrate on saving our money so we can move outta here as fast as we can." She is the one who learned the right lesson.

Source

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . For readers in China or for when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-16T00:04:00.000+11:30

Obama misrepresents his past -- to make it seem more successful and prestigious than it was

Typical psychopathic lies

It has been noted by Charles Krauthammer and others that very few people have stepped forward to vouch for Barack Obama. Indeed, there would seem to be an especially conspicuous absence of witnesses to the years after graduated from Columbia and before he moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer.

Well, it turns out that one of his co-workers has in fact written about Mr. Obama during those days. And while he is an admitted fan of Obama’s, he claims that he has inflated his resume considerably. Others who worked with Obama at Business International have subsequently chimed in.

First, Mr. Obama’s version as presented in from Dreams From My Father, pp 55-6:

CHAPTER SEVEN

… And so, in the months leading up to graduation, I wrote to every civil rights organization I could think of, to any black elected official in the country with a progressive agenda, to neighborhood councils and tenant rights groups. When no one wrote back, I wasn't discouraged. I decided to find more conventional work for a year, to pay off my student loans and maybe even save a little bit. I would need the money later, I told myself. Organizers didn't make any money; their poverty was proof of their integrity.

Eventually a consulting house to multinational corporations agreed to hire me as a research assistant. Like a spy behind enemy lines, I arrived every day at my mid-Manhattan office and sat at my computer terminal, checking the Reuters machine that blinked bright emerald messages from across the globe. As far as I could tell I was the only black man in the company, a source of shame for me but a source of considerable pride for the company's secretarial pool. They treated me like a son, those black ladies; they told me how they expected me to run the company one day…

Nevertheless, as the months passed, I felt the idea of becoming an organizer slipping away from me. The company promoted me to the position of financial writer. I had my own office, my own secretary, money in the bank. Sometimes, coming out of an interview with Japanese financiers or German bond traders, I would catch my reflection in the elevator doors-see myself in a suit and tie, a briefcase in my hand-and for a split second I would imagine myself as a captain of industry, barking out orders, closing the deal, before I remembered who it was that I had told myself I wanted to be and felt pangs of guilt for my lack of resolve.

Then one day, as I sat down at my computer to write an article on interest-rate swaps, something unexpected happened. Auma called. I had never met this half sister; we had written only intermittently… [A] few months after Auma called, I turned in my resignation at the consulting firm and began looking in earnest for an organizing job…

We are supposed to believe that “something happened” and the rest is history. Here, however, is a somewhat different perspective on Obama’s halcyon days as a “spy behind enemy lines,” from a site called Analyze This:

Barack Obama Embellishes His Resume

July 9th, 2005
Dan Armstrong

Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of Barack Obama, the Illinois freshman senator and hot young Democratic Party star. But after reading his autobiography, I have to say that Barack engages in some serious exaggeration when he describes a job that he held in the mid-1980s. I know because I sat down the hall from him, in the same department, and worked closely with his boss. I can't say I was particularly close to Barack - he was reserved and distant towards all of his co-workers - but I was probably as close to him as anyone. I certainly know what he did there, and it bears only a loose resemblance to what he wrote in his book. Here's Barack's account:

Eventually a consulting house to multinational corporations agreed to hire me as a research assistant. Like a spy behind enemy lines, I arrived every day at my mid-Manhattan office and sat at my computer terminal, checking the Reuters machine that blinked bright emerald messages from across the globe. As far as I could tell I was the only black man in the company, a source of shame for me but a source of considerable pride for the company's secretarial pool.

First, it wasn't a consulting house; it was a small company that published newsletters on international business. Like most newsletter publishers, it was a bit of a sweatshop. I'm sure we all wished that we were high-priced consultants to multinational corporations. But we also enjoyed coming in at ten, wearing jeans to work, flirting with our co-workers, partying when we stayed late, and bonding over the low salaries and heavy workload.

Barack worked on one of the company's reference publications. Each month customers got a new set of pages on business conditions in a particular country, punched to fit into a three-ring binder. Barack's job was to get copy from the country correspondents and edit it so that it fit into a standard outline. There was probably some research involved as well, since correspondents usually don't send exactly what you ask for, and you can't always decipher their copy. But essentially the job was copyediting.

It's also not true that Barack was the only black man in the company. He was the only black professional man. Fred was an African-American who worked in the mailroom with his son. My boss and I used to join them on Friday afternoons to drink beer behind the stacks of office supplies. That's not the kind of thing that Barack would do. Like I said, he was somewhat aloof.

. as the months passed, I felt the idea of becoming an organizer slipping away from me. The company promoted me to the position of financial writer. I had my own office, my own secretary; money in the bank. Sometimes, coming out of an interview with Japanese financiers or German bond traders, I would catch my reflection in the elevator doors-see myself in a suit and tie, a briefcase in my hand-and for a split second I would imagine myself as a captain of industry, barking out orders, closing the deal, before I remembered who it was that I had told myself I wanted to be and felt pangs of guilt for my lack of resolve.

If Barack was promoted, his new job responsibilities were more of the same - rewriting other people's copy. As far as I know, he always had a small office, and the idea that he had a secretary is laughable. Only the company president had a secretary. Barack never left the office, never wore a tie, and had neither reason nor opportunity to interview Japanese financiers or German bond traders.

Then one day, as I sat down at my computer to write an article on interest-rate swaps, something unexpected happened…. I had never met this half sister; we had written only intermittently. .[several pages on his suffering half-sister] .a few months after Auma called, I turned in my resignation at the consulting firm and began looking in earnest for an organizing job.

What Barack means here is that he got copy from a correspondent who didn't understand interest rate swaps, and he was trying to make sense out of it.

All of Barack's embellishment serves a larger narrative purpose: to retell the story of the Christ's temptation. The young, idealistic, would-be community organizer gets a nice suit, joins a consulting house, starts hanging out with investment bankers, and barely escapes moving into the big mansion with the white folks. Luckily, an angel calls, awakens his conscience, and helps him choose instead to fight for the people.

Like I said, I'm a fan. His famous keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention moved me to tears. The Democrats - not to mention America - need a mixed-race spokesperson who can connect to both urban blacks and rural whites, who has the credibility to challenge the status quo on issues ranging from misogynistic rap to unfair school funding.

And yet I'm disappointed. Barack's story may be true, but many of the facts are not. His larger narrative purpose requires him to embellish his role. I don't buy it. Just as I can't be inspired by Steve Jobs now that I know how dishonest he is, I can't listen uncritically to Barack Obama now that I know he's willing to bend the facts to his purpose.

Once, when I applied for a marketing job at a big accounting firm, my then-supervisor called HR to say that I had exaggerated something on my resume. I didn't agree, but I also didn't get the job. But when Barack Obama invents facts in a book ranked No. 8 on the NY Times nonfiction list, it not only fails to be noticed but it helps elevate him into the national political pantheon.

As Mr. Armstrong suggests, if Obama would exaggerate about such things as this, what else has he exaggerated or made up out of whole cloth? The comments to this post are also quite intriguing:

Comment from Bill Millar

Time: October 30, 2007, 8:17 am
Cathy Lazere [another commentor] calls Barack self-assured? That's putting a nice spin on it. I found him arrogant and condescending. The thing is, I worked next to Barack nearly every day he was at Business International-on many days angling for possession of the best Wang word processing terminal. I had MANY discussions with Barack. I can tell you this: even though I was an assistant editor (big doings at this "consulting firm") and he was, well, he was doing something there, he certainly treated me like something less than an equal.

Funny thing. A journalism/political science major. Writing about finance. Pretending in his book to be an expert on interest rate swaps. I remember trying to explain the nuance of these instruments to him in the cramped three Wang terminal space we called the bull pen. In contrast to his his liberal arts background, I had a degree in finance and Wall Street experience, so I knew what I was talking about.

But rather than learn from a City College kid, the Ivy Leaguer just sort of rolled his eyes. Condescendingly. I'll never forget it. God forbid he leave the impression that a mere editor like myself knew more about something than did Barack. He was like that.

But know what? I can forgive him for being immature-which is probably all that was at the time. Don't we all believe we know everything at just around that age?

That said.he was a lot older when he wrote his book. Mature enough by this time to realize that his account of his time at Business International could be described as embellishment…

By the way, there should be no doubt as to Mr. Armstrong’s bona fides on this subject. Even the New York Times has cited him as an authority for an article on this period of Mr. Obama’s storied life.

More here

Michigan: Obama's old firm deep into voter fraud again

One of Obama's first jobs out of college as a "communitay organizer" was for ......... ACORN!

Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families. The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has a large voter registration program among its many social service programs. ACORN's Michigan branch, based in Detroit, has enrolled 200,000 voters statewide in recent months, mostly with the use of paid, part-time employees.

"There appears to be a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications," said Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State's Office. "And it appears to be widespread." Chesney said her office has had discussions with ACORN officials after local clerks reported the questionable applications to the state. Chesney said some of the applications are duplicates and some appear to be names that have been made up. The Secretary of State's Office has turned over several of the applications to the U.S. Attorney's Office. The U.S. Attorney's Office on Friday declined to confirm whether an investigation was taking place.

In recent years, ACORN's voter registration programs have come under investigation in Ohio, Colorado, Missouri and Washington, with some employees convicted of voter fraud. ACORN officials said they were looking into the problem. "We'll do an investigation to see what's happening," said David Lagstein, a spokesman for the Detroit office. "If it's really as many as that, it warrants further investigation."

In Pontiac, where several thousand applications have been submitted by ACORN in the last few weeks for the November election, the clerk's office is finding that numerous applications are sometimes filed under one name. "What it causes is a slowdown of our operations," said Pontiac City Clerk Yvette Talley. "They're steadily coming in, and we are finding a huge number of duplications." Talley said she could not provide an exact number.

Clerks are required to check their records against a statewide database of all registered voters within their jurisdiction, so it would be unlikely that duplications would allow voters to cast their votes more than once, Talley said. "We catch them all, but it's taking up a lot of our time," she said.

In Oak Park, clerk Sandra Gadd said they have been seeing "lots of duplication" from ACORN in recent months but were reassured by ACORN officials that the group was working to correct the problem. "They've been very cooperative," Gadd said. "I spoke with them this week. They called me, and they're willing to go door-to-door to do whatever they have to do to take care of this."

ACORN is the nation's largest community organization for low- and moderate-income families. Created more than 30 years ago, it has branches in 100 cities and claims 350,000 families as members. It works to help create affordable housing and health care, and to improve job conditions and neighborhood schools.

Lagstein said ACORN's Detroit office has hired dozens of employees for the voter registration program and that any problems likely stem from sloppiness or incompetence -- not an intent to let people vote more than once. "We're proud of our efforts to increase voter registration, and we have aggressive training for our staff to make sure the cards are filled out appropriately," he said. ACORN has a method to track the workers who filled out individual registration cards, which will allow investigators to question the workers, Lagstein said. "We certainly do our best to keep the duplications as low as possible, so we'll have to evaluate what's happening here," he said.

Source. (ACORN regularly use the "rogue employee" excuse)

Stasi tactics from Camp Obama

Andrew Bolt in Australia's HeraldSun entertainingly fisks the media's attempt to destroy Sarah Palin by pouncing upon her first TV interview on foreign affairs to find out whether she knows who Putin is. As Bolt shows, the joke however is on them.

As James Taranto writes on the WSJ blog, the Obamasphere is descending from hysteria to depravity by using Palin's decision actually to give birth to her son Trig as apparent proof of her unfitness for office. When they look at Trig, they don't see a small and vulnerable human being; they don't see the power of love triumphing over adversity; all they see is a handicapped thing that should never have been allowed to live.

Offensive and disgusting, indeed - and how revealing about the `liberal' conscience -- but what it also shows is that the chattering classes have understood that this election might just call a halt to the agenda of social and moral nihilism that masquerades as progressive politics. Hence the weeping and wailing and rending of garments, in between firing the poisoned darts at Sarah Palin, on both sides of the Atlantic. And that's why social conservatives everywhere - aka people who prefer truth over lies, right over wrong, morality over anarchy and the continuation of western civilisation over the forces of totalitarianism that threaten it - have suddenly raised their heads above the sandbags and seen a sign they never thought they'd see: that civilisation might just be fighting back.

Meanwhile Camp Obama, it seems, is in imminent danger of having a collective nervous breakdown. They've totally forgotten that The One is actually running against John McCain and have allowed themselves to become fixated instead by his running-mate. Obama looks and sounds rattled and knocked off his stride, a fact which in itself is deeply damaging: if he falls to pieces on account of a hockey mom from Alaska, what the hell would he be like faced with Ahmadinejad? Is Obama a man or a moose?

Apparently Camp Obama has parachuted dozens of operatives into Alaska to find the skeletons in the Palin closet that it just knows must exist. Unable to process the fact that the left might not come into its rightful inheritance of power, which as we all know is the natural order of the universe, it is behaving like an American Stasi.

And the more it behaves in this grotesque manner, the more counter-productive it all is. Palin is a kind of barium meal for the US body politic: as she is ingested deeper into the system, the nastiness and sheer malevolence of the Democratic party and its bullying cheerleaders in the media are being sickeningly illuminated all around her. As a result, the media and the Democrats are merely doing untold damage to themselves, particularly since the blogosphere is shredding the smears being hurled at Palin as fast as they are being produced.

But hey - this is the only way left-wingers know of dealing with `the right'. They characteristically flinch from engaging in proper argument with their political opponents by debating the issues. No, what they invariably do instead is to reach for the insult and the smear, the character assassination, the career-ending labels of `racist', `sexist', `homophobe', `Islamophobe', 'hard right', `fundamentalist' and all the rest of it. Because their aim is not to discuss but to destroy their opponent altogether and thus to shut down the argument before it can get going.

What does that tell us? That the totalitarian left is terrified of argument because it knows itself to be on very weak ground. It does not have the confidence of its own supposed convictions. For sure, it is fearful that its opponents might win the electoral battle; but much more urgently, it is absolutely terrified that they might be right. That's really why the left never wants to have the argument - in case it exposes the vacuity of its own position to itself.

A vital part of leftist thinking is the assumption that to be on the left is the only sensible/decent/principled position to hold and therefore cannot ever be wrong; and that is because to differ from the left is to be of `the right', and the right is irredeemably evil. (The idea that to be opposed to the left is not necessarily to be on `the right' or indeed to take any position other than to oppose ideology and its brutal effects is something that the left simply cannot get its head round). And so the true nightmare is that if `the right' turns out to be actually right on anything and the left to be wrong, by accepting this fact the left-winger will by his own definition turn into an evil right-winger. His entire moral and political identity will crumble and he will grow horns and a tail. So to prevent any possibility of this catastrophe occurring, the opponent has to be eliminated.

That is what is being done to Sarah Palin. That is why her interview is at this very moment being misreported and distorted even though millions of people watched and heard it. That is why she is being attacked with a fresh smear every second minute. That is why her entire family is being turned over while the media is totally silent on the genuinely disturbing questions about Obama's connections and views. This is fast becoming an election about the gross abuse of power. McCain should take this issue and run with it as loudly and as furiously as he can.

Source

SEEING THROUGH OBAMANOMICS

By Jeff Jacoby

All through the spring and summer, opinion polls tracked a growing confidence that Barack Obama could handle the economy better than John McCain. Just before the Democratic convention in August, Gallup had Obama leading McCain on the economy, 54-38 -- a 16-point margin. But now Obama's lead has nearly vanished. Gallup's latest numbers, released Sept. 10, show the candidates nearly tied. Just 48 percent say Obama would be more adept at superintending the economy; 45 percent choose McCain.

Looks like voters have started paying attention to Obama's economics. On Sept. 8, Fox News broadcast an interview between Obama and Bill O'Reilly that focused on taxation and the economy. Obama repeated his pledge to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans, while raising taxes on the tiny fraction who earn more than $250,000. "That's class warfare," O'Reilly objected. "You're taking the wealthy in America, the big earners . . . you're taking money away from them and you're giving it to people who don't. That's called income redistribution. It's a socialist tenet. Come on, you know that."

"Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill," Obama replied. "Teddy Roosevelt supported a progressive income tax." He acknowledged that he doesn't enjoy paying taxes either -- "you think I like writing the check?" -- but that "there are certain things we've got to do." His tax proposal, he explained, was really a matter of . civility: "If I am sitting pretty and you've got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can't, what's the big deal for me to say, I'm going to pay a little bit more? That's neighborliness."

If that is Obama's rationale for making the tax code even more steeply progressive than it already is, it's no wonder voters are having second thoughts about his economic aptitude.

"Neighborliness." Perhaps that word has a nonstandard meaning to someone whose home adjoined the property of convicted swindler Tony Rezko, but extracting money by force from someone who earned it in order to give it to someone who didn't is not usually spoken of as *neighborly.* If Citizen Obama, "sitting pretty," reaches into his own pocket and helps out the waitress with a large tip, he has shown a neighborly spirit. But there is nothing neighborly about using the tax code to compel someone else to pay the waitress that tip. Taxation is not generosity, it is confiscation at gunpoint. Does Obama not understand the difference?

Perhaps he doesn't. Eager though he may be to compel "neighborliness" in others, he has not been nearly so avid about demonstrating it himself. Barack and Michelle Obama's tax returns show that from 2000 through 2004, when their adjusted gross income averaged nearly a quarter of a million dollars a year, their annual charitable donations amounted to just $2,154 -- less than nine-tenths of 1 percent. Not until he entered the US Senate in 2005 and began to be spoken of as a presidential possibility did the Obamas' "neighborliness" become more evident. (In 2005-2007, they gave 5.5 percent of their income to charity.)

Obama claims his proposal would lower taxes for 95 percent of Americans, but well over 43 million tax returns, one-third of all those filed, already reflect an income tax liability of zero. In fact, Obama says, his plan would eliminate income taxes for an additional 10 million taxpayers. What he is really proposing, therefore, is not tax relief but a bald transfer of cash -- $1,000 per family, he pledges -- from the wealthiest Americans to everyone else. In 1972, George McGovern advocated something similar -- a $1,000 "demogrant" for every US citizen. Just last year, Hillary Clinton suggested that the government start off every new baby with a $5,000 savings account. Voters didn't take the bait when McGovern and Clinton offered it. Here's betting they won't take it now.

Why not? Because you don't have to be rich to be skeptical when a candidate argues that the top 1 percent of taxpayers, who earn 22 percent of the income in this country but pay 40 percent of the income taxes, aren't being taxed enough. Nor do you have to be an economist to wonder about the grasp of a nominee who tells 95 percent of the public that they can have something for nothing. Obamanomics may look pretty at first glance. But voters are focusing more closely now, and they can see beyond the lipstick.

Source

Tax Cuts, Real and Imaginary: Obama's spending programs in disguise

by Newt Gingrich & Peter Ferrara

Thirty years of Republican tax policy have now completely eliminated federal income taxes on the poor and lower middle-income Americans, and almost eliminated them on middle America.

The latest data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Internal Revenue Service show that the lowest 40 percent of income earners as a group actually receive net payments from the federal income tax system. (They get 3.8 percent of total federal income tax revenues instead of paying any income taxes.) The middle 20 percent of income earners pay 4.4 percent of federal income taxes. Thus the bottom 60 percent of income earners together, on net, pay less than 1 percent of all federal income taxes. (These workers earn 26 percent of national income.)

The data show that the top 1 percent of income earners now pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes, which is almost double their share of the national income. The top 10 percent pay 71 percent of federal income taxes, though they earn just 39 percent of the nation's pretax income.

This is a result of the across the board income tax rate cuts adopted by Ronald Reagan and the current President Bush, plus the Earned Income Tax Credit first proposed by Reagan in the 1970s, and the child tax credit enacted into law as part of the 1994 Contract With America.

Barack Obama claims to be proposing income tax cuts for low and moderate income and middle class workers, but Reagan Republicans have already eliminated most of their income tax liability. What

Obama is calling tax cuts for the middle class is really a slew of refundable federal income tax credits that would primarily go to those who are paying little or no federal income taxes now. Such credits would primarily not reduce tax liability, but instead be checks from the federal government for child care, education, housing, retirement, health care, even outright giveaways. These are not tax cuts. They are new federal spending programs hidden in the tax code.

When Obama says that he will cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans, he is talking about his proposal for a $500 refundable income tax credit for all but the top 5 percent of income earners. For the bottom 40 percent of income earners, this will be just another check from the federal government rather than a reduction in tax liability. It is another sharp increase in government spending rather than any sort of tax cut. An arbitrary cash grant does not, moreover, do anything to improve the economy or incentivize productive business. That only comes from cutting tax rates. What Obama is proposing here is really quite similar to George McGovern's 1972 plan to send everyone a $1,000 check, which voters rightly saw as a crass vote-buying scheme rather than serious policy.

Obama also proposes to increase the top marginal tax rates for virtually every major federal tax. These increases would not come remotely close to financing the trillion dollars of increased direct federal spending Obama is promising--including a new national health insurance entitlement that would be bigger than any of the massive entitlement programs we already have and already have trouble paying for. Indeed, if the tax rate increases cause a serious enough economic decline, they will lose revenue on net.

More here

Obama losing the independents

Independent voters - the largest and fastest-growing segment of the American electorate - were always going to determine the winner of this election. And in contrast to past contests like 2004, where independents viewed the choice between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry as a vote for the candidate they disliked least, independents had a dream campaign in `08: two compelling nominees who ran against the polarizing establishments of their own parties with explicitly post-partisan appeals. It was a year in which Karl Rove's play-to-the-base politics seemed to be on the ash heap of history.

In the wake of Sarah Palin, John McCain has opened up a 15-point lead among independents, according to a new Gallup Poll - and Barack Obama has a real problem.

Since the GOP convention and his selection of the Alaska governor as his running mate, McCain has changed a months-long tie among independents into a 52 to 37 percent advantage. Support for McCain among self-described "conservative Democrats" has jumped 10 points, to 25 percent, signaling the shift among swing voters to McCain.

The candidate's surge tracks the script the campaign had written for the party convention. Joe Lieberman's sleepy but substantively centrist speech was the preamble to McCain reframing the Republican Party around national security, fiscal conservatism and corruption reform. The result: he elevation of the independent maverick.

This is more good news for McCain, but you would think it would result in a larger lead, which is now hovering around three to four points. I think the problem is that the polls are still reflecting part identification numbers that are out of sync with the current alignment which has been moving toward the GOP ever since the convention. That is why the likely voter totals give McCain a larger lead.

Source

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . For readers in China or for when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-15T00:14:00.000+11:30

If You Like Michigan's Economy, You'll Love Obama's

Despite the federal government's growing economic dominance, individual states still exercise substantial freedom in pursuing their own economic fortune -- or misfortune. As a result, the states provide a laboratory for testing various policies.

In this election year, the experience of the states gives us some ability to look at the economic policies of the two presidential candidates in action. If a program is not playing in Peoria, it probably won't work elsewhere. Americans have voted with their feet by moving to states with greater opportunities, but federal adoption of failed state programs would take away our ability to walk away from bad government.

Growth in jobs, income and population are proof that a state is prospering. But figuring out why one state does well while another struggles requires in-depth analysis. In an effort to explain differences in performance, think tanks have generated state-based economic freedom indices modeled on the World Economic Freedom Index published by The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation.

The Competitiveness Index created by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) identifies "16 policy variables that have a proven impact on the migration of capital -- both investment capital and human capital -- into and out of states." Its analysis shows that "generally speaking, states that spend less, especially on income transfer programs, and states that tax less, particularly on productive activities such as working or investing, experience higher growth rates than states that tax and spend more."

Ranking states by domestic migration, per-capita income growth and employment growth, ALEC found that from 1996 through 2006, Texas, Florida and Arizona were the three most successful states. Illinois, Ohio and Michigan were the three least successful.

The rewards for success were huge. Texas gained 1.7 million net new jobs, Florida gained 1.4 million and Arizona gained 600,000. While the U.S. average job growth percentage was 9.9%, Texas, Florida and Arizona had job growth of 18.5%, 21.4% and 28.9%, respectively.

Remarkably, a third of all the jobs in the U.S. in the last 10 years were created in these three states. While the population of the three highest-performing states grew twice as fast as the national average, per-capita real income still grew by $6,563 or 21.4% in Texas, Florida and Arizona. That's a $26,252 increase for a typical family of four.

By comparison, Illinois gained only 122,000 jobs, Ohio lost 62,900 and Michigan lost 318,000. Population growth in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois was only 4.2%, a third the national average, and real income per capita rose by only $3,466, just 58% of the national average. Workers in the three least successful states had to contend with a quarter-million fewer jobs rather than taking their pick of the 3.7 million new jobs that were available in the three fastest-growing states.

In Michigan, the average family of four had to make ends meet without an extra $8,672 had their state matched the real income growth of the three most successful states. Families in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois struggled not because they didn't work hard enough, long enough or smart enough. They struggled because too many of their elected leaders represented special interests rather than their interests.

What explains this relative performance over the last 10 years? The simple answer is that governance, taxes and regulatory policy matter. The playing field among the states was not flat. Business conditions were better in the successful states than in the lagging ones. Capital and labor gravitated to where the burdens were smaller and the opportunities greater.

It costs state taxpayers far less to succeed than to fail. In the three most successful states, state spending averaged $5,519 per capita. In the three least successful states, state spending averaged $6,484 per capita. Per capita taxes were $7,063 versus $8,342.

There also appears to be a clear difference between union interests and the worker interests. Texas, Florida and Arizona are right-to-work states, while Michigan, Ohio and Illinois are not. Michigan, Ohio and Illinois impose significantly higher minimum wages than Texas, Florida and Arizona. Yet with all the proclaimed benefits of unionism and higher minimum wages, Texas, Florida and Arizona workers saw their real income grow more than twice as fast as workers in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois.

Incredibly, the business climate in Michigan is now so unfavorable that it has overwhelmed the considerable comparative advantage in auto production that Michigan spent a century building up. No one should let Michigan politicians blame their problems solely on the decline of the U.S. auto industry. Yes, Michigan lost 83,000 auto manufacturing jobs during the past decade and a half, but more than 91,000 new auto manufacturing jobs sprung up in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Texas.

So what do the state laboratories tell us about the potential success of the economic programs presented by Barack Obama and John McCain? Mr. McCain will lower taxes. Mr. Obama will raise them, especially on small businesses. To understand why, you need to know something about the "infamous" top 1% of income tax filers: In order to avoid high corporate tax rates and the double taxation of dividends, small business owners have increasingly filed as individuals rather than corporations. When Democrats talk about soaking the rich, it isn't the Rockefellers they're talking about; it's the companies where most Americans work. Three out of four individual income tax filers in the top 1% are, in fact, small businesses.

In the name of taxing the rich, Mr. Obama would raise the marginal tax rates to over 50% on millions of small businesses that provide 75% of all new jobs in America. Investors and corporations will also pay higher taxes under the Obama program, but, as the Michigan-Ohio-Illinois experience painfully demonstrates, workers ultimately pay for higher taxes in lower wages and fewer jobs.

Mr. Obama would spend all the savings from walking out of Iraq to expand the government. Mr. McCain would reserve all the savings from our success in Iraq to shrink the deficit, as part of a credible and internally consistent program to balance the budget by the end of his first term. Mr. Obama's program offers no hope, or even a promise, of ever achieving a balanced budget.

Mr. Obama would stimulate the economy by increasing federal spending. Mr. McCain would stimulate the economy by cutting the corporate tax rate. Mr. Obama would expand unionism by denying workers the right to a secret ballot on the decision to form a union, and would dramatically increase the minimum wage. Mr. Obama would also expand the role of government in the economy, and stop reforms in areas like tort abuse.

The states have already tested the McCain and Obama programs, and the results are clear. We now face a national choice to determine if everything that has failed the families of Michigan, Ohio and Illinois will be imposed on a grander scale across the nation. In an appropriate twist of fate, Michigan and Ohio, the two states that have suffered the most from the policies that Mr. Obama proposes, have it within their power not only to reverse their own misfortunes but to spare the nation from a similar fate.

Source

Barack Obama under fire for ignoring advice on how to beat John McCain

Barack Obama and his senior advisers are under fire for ignoring the advice of Democratic senators and governors who are concerned that they do not know how to beat John McCain

The Democratic presidential candidate's slump in the polls has sparked pointed private criticism that he is squandering a once-in-a-generation chance to win back the White House. Party elders also believe the Obama camp is in denial about warnings from Democratic pollsters that his true standing is four to six points lower than that in published polls because of hidden racism from voters - something that would put him a long way behind Mr McCain.

The Sunday Telegraph has learned that senators, governors and union leaders who have experience of winning hard-fought races in swing states have been bombarding Obama's campaign headquarters with telephone calls offering advice. But many of those calls have not been returned. A senior Democratic strategist, who has played a prominent role in two presidential campaigns, told The Sunday Telegraph: "These guys are on the verge of blowing the greatest gimme in the history of American politics. They're the most arrogant bunch Ive ever seen. They won't accept that they are losing and they won't listen." After leading throughout the year, Mr Obama now trails Mr McCain by two to three points in national polls.

Party leaders and commentators say that the Democrat candidate spent too much of the summer enjoying his own popularity and not enough defining his positions on the economy - the number one issue for voters - or reaching out to those blue collar workers whose votes he needs if he is to beat Mr McCain. Others concede that his trip to Europe was a distraction that enhanced his celebrity status rather than his electability on Main Street, USA.

Since Sarah Palin was unveiled as Mr McCain's running mate, the Obama camp has faced accusations that it has been pushed off message and has been limp in responding to attacks. A Democratic National Committee official told The Sunday Telegraph: "I really find it offensive when Democrats ask the Republicans not to be nasty to us, which is effectively what Obama keeps doing. They know thats how the game is played."

Mr Obama tried to answer that critique on Friday when he responded in kind, issuing an attack advert depicting his Republican opponent as out of touch and mocking the 72-year-old Mr McCain's confession that he does not know how to use email. He rammed home the point during a rally in New Hampshire, pointing out Mr McCains recent admission that he was divorced from some of the challenges of ordinary Americans. Mr Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, called it the first day of the rest of the campaign.

But that was the fourth time in the last nine months that Mr Obamas team have been forced to declare that the gloves are coming off. And Mr Plouffe's dismissal of Democratic doubts as hand-wringing and bed-wetting only served to reinforce the growing doubts about what some see as a bunker mentality among Obama's inner circle - where outside advice, even from highly experienced people, is not welcomed. The Democratic strategist told The Sunday Telegraph: "They think they know best. They don't return calls. There are governors and senators calling them up with ideas. They don't get back to them. "These are senior people from the border states and the South who know how to beat Republicans, and they're being ignored. They ignored everyone during the primaries and they came through it, so they think they can do the same again."

Mr Obama has never won an electoral contest against a strong Republican candidate. David Axelrod, his chief strategist has been hailed as a political genius for beating the Clinton machine, but Democrats now point out that he has never run a successful campaign in the heartland states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Virginia, which will decide the election. His expertise is in mobilising young, educated and black voters in urban areas.

Mark Cunningham of the New York Post summed up the private views of many: "If it suddenly seems like the Obama campaign doesn't have any idea what it's doing, maybe that's because it doesn't."

Party elders are also studying internal polling material which warns the Obama camp that his true standing is worse than it appears in polls because voters lie to polling companies about their reluctance to vote for a black candidate. The phenomenon is known in the US as the Bradley effect, after Tom Bradley, a black candidate for governor of California who lost after leading comfortably in polls. The strategist said: "I've seen memos where they've been told to factor in four to six points for the Bradley effect, but they're in denial about it. They say the polls also underestimate the enthusiasm of young voters and African Americans and they believe that balances things out. But that's a wing and a prayer stuff. There's previous evidence for the Bradley effect."

Other Democrats are openly mocking of Mr Obama's much vaunted "50-state strategy", in which he spends money campaigning throughout the US in the hope that it will force Mr McCain to divert funds to previously safe states. Critics say a utopian belief in bringing the nation together has trumped the cold electoral calculus that is necessary to triumph in November. Doug Schoen, a former pollster for Bill Clinton, last week declared it insanity not to concentrate resources on the swing states. The Democratic strategist said: "My Republican friends think its mad. Before Sarah Palin came along we were investing money in Alaska, for Christ's sake, that could have been spent in Ohio and Pennsylvania. "It assumes Republicans are stupid and, when it comes to winning elections, they're not."

The one thing everyone agrees the Obama camp have woken up to is the toxic effect on their chances of Mrs Palin's arrival on the national scene. Polls show that white women voters, attracted to her down home virtues, now support Mr McCain by a margin of 12 points, the same lead among white women that George W. Bush enjoyed over John Kerry in 2004. Until recently, Mr Obama led among that group of voters by six points.

A senior aide to one of the most powerful Democrats in the House of Representatives voiced the fears of many: "Palin doesn't just play to the Republican base. She has much broader appeal." The aide said that her repeated mockery of Mr Obama's boasts about his time as a community organiser in Chicago are "the most effective criticisms of Barack Obama we have yet seen." He said: "Americans in small and medium size towns dont know what the hell a community organiser is. Real Americans graduate from high school or college and get a job that pays a wage. Campus radicals go off and organise a community."

Peggy Noonan, the former Reagan speechwriter, blamed the defection of women voters from Mr Obama on the atom bomb of ritual abuse by left-wing bloggers and Democratic officials, painting Mrs Palin as a bad mother and religious weirdo. Ms Noonan wrote: "The snobbery of it, the meanness of it, reminded the entire country, for the first time in a decade, what it is they don't like about the Left."

The Republican strategist Dan Schnur said that the effect was to repel blue collar, family-oriented voters. "They didn't like Obama in the primaries and voted for Hillary. And they still don't like him now so they're voting for Palin. "Obama can still win these voters over, but his difficulty in establishing an emotional connection with them is probably his greatest challenge between now and election day."

On Thursday Mr Obama did take advice from Bill Clinton, who is understood to have suggested ways to show those workers that he cares, an area where the former president excelled. But it is a measure of his plight that the man who derailed the ambitions of Mrs Clinton, the most powerful woman in Democratic politics, now needs help from her husband to overcome the popularity of another alpha female who may be an even greater risk to his White House ambitions.

Source

Obama investment in Florida not paying off

Barack Obama could be on the verge of falling out of contention in Florida. Despite spending an estimated $8-million on campaign ads in America's biggest battleground state and putting in place the largest Democratic campaign organization ever in Florida, Obama has lost ground over the summer. Florida has moved from a toss-up state to one that clearly leans toward John McCain, fueling speculation about how much longer the Democratic nominee will continue investing so heavily in the state.

... Obama allies say he has about 350 paid staffers in the state and about 50 field offices, including in places not known as fertile ground for Democrats, such as Sun City Center, Lake City and Sebring.

But for all the attention to Florida from the Obama campaign, there's little tangible evidence it's paying off. He is farther behind in the state than John Kerry was at this point in 2004, even though McCain began buying Florida TV ads only last week. By this time in 2004, the Bush-Cheney campaign had spent $13-million on Florida TV. In the rolling average of Florida polls compiled by the Web site RealClearPolitics.com, Obama has never taken the lead over McCain in Florida, and the latest average shows him behind by 5 percentage points. They were tied in early August. Four Florida polls came out this week, with one showing a tied race, the others showing McCain leading by 5 to 8 percentage points.

"They've had everything going for them - momentum, enthusiasm, money, a complicit national press, a stiff wind at his back for a long time, and he hasn't been able pull ahead in Florida,'' said Republican strategist Alberto Martinez of Tallahassee. "I think Florida is one of those states that's taken off the board pretty soon, as they start focusing resources on states they can win."...

Democrats are still whistling past the graveyard putting on a competitive face on a bad situation. In some ways Florida is like a lot of states where Obama spent a lot of money and still lost in the primaries. His ads are not buying votes. With McCain finally devoting some resources in Florida he should be able to plant his flag there in November.

Source

Ohio Slipping Away from Obama?

The latest polls in Ohio show that John McCain is establishing a consistent lead in the state. Ohio is a bellwether; no Republican has won the White House without it. If McCain can take Ohio, as well as Florida (where he also leads), he probably comes very close to re-creating the winning Bush map of 2004.

Beyond the poll numbers, former Democratic House and Senate candidate Paul Hackett thinks Obama may already have lost the state. The reason? Racism:

While the polling is close I believe it is far worse than the numbers reflect given social apprehension of middle of the road uncommitted respondents to appear racist by not supporting Obama. There has been much speculation across America regarding this phenomenon and as such can impact the accuracy of polling by at least 5 points. Thus instead of being down in Ohio by 3 or 4 points I would argue that for planning purposes the working assumption should indicate that Obama is down in Ohio by roughly 10 points. That's a lot of ground to make up in less than 60 days, and as such there must be an aggressive offense to cover such a distance.

If you think that Hackett isn't doing the Obama campaign any favors by accusing Ohio voters of racism, wait until you hear his advice for turning the race around:

The solution rests with local surrogates on the ground spreading the attack face to face coupled with an air campaign via radio and TV. The message is simple and the professionals can refine it but essentially it should contain these elements:

"Sarah Palin? Can't keep her solemn oath of devotion to her husband and had sex with his employee. Sarah Palin? Accidentally got pregnant at age 43 and the tax payers of Alaska have to pay for the care of her disabled child. Sarah Palin? Unable to teach her 16 year old daughter right from wrong and now another teenager is pregnant. Sarah Palin? Can you trust Sarah Palin and her values with America's future? John McCain? Divorced from his first wife one month and marries a billionaire influence peddler and convicted felon. John McCain, a record of rash and impulsive decisions. That's not change that's more of the same."

Stay classy, Democrats. It's clearly working great so far.

Source

Obama locked into past while McCain sprints by him

Barack Obama knows it. The election he had in the bag is slipping away. The selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate has so thrown him off stride, as it has most other Democrats, that all the momentum he had has vanished. He's getting panicky advice from everywhere. He intends to launch more and sharper attacks, abandoning any pretense of a new and different, more civil campaign.

Democrats know something, and desperation is setting in. They have a novice campaigner who wanders off message. With every advantage in the primaries, Obama couldn't win the big states - New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania - against Hillary Clinton, even when he got to define the rules for running against him. She could never risk alienating the base she'll need in 2012; John McCain and Sarah Palin have no such constraints - hence the panic.

For a "change" candidate, Obama appears to be a man locked in time, unable to move past criticism, unable to move from the grip of the Democratic left, unable to adapt to the changed reality that the campaign is not the referendum on the war in Iraq or on the administration of George W. Bush that he'd envisioned.

He's begun to sound dated. Last week, for example, he devoted valuable campaign days - less than two months remain - into explaining a silly "lipstick on a pig" line. The McCain campaign had reacted, accusing him of making the reference to Palin. "I don't care what they say about me," Obama responded. "But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and `Swiftboat politics.' Enough is enough," he said. (The Swiftboat reference is from the 2004 campaign of John Kerry).

The Democratic left is still seething from the Kerry campaign's loss and is determined to see Bush expelled from the White House in disgrace - the reason it is locked in to making this a referendum on the administration now ending.

It barely worked when the maverick McCain, no darling of the Bushites, got the nomination. With Palin, the Washington outsider, the "third term" argument is plainly absurd. But Obama can't let go, just as the lefties can't let go of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth defeat of Kerry. He can't move on.

Obama has the habit, too, of reminding voters of their doubts about him, as he did in reminding a Detroit audience that he's been accused of being less interested in protecting you from terrorists than reading them their rights. And, when he professes love of country as his basis for refusing to allow the McCain campaign to attack his words, he raises questions about why he finds the affirmation of love necessary....

Obama got this far by winning small states and Southern states he has no chance of carrying in November. In Georgia, for example, the latest Insider Advantage poll has McCain pulling 56 percent of the vote to 38 percent for Obama, numbers that are not likely to change more than 4 percentage points in November. The undecideds and those who intend to vote for third-party campaigns are at 6 percent....

The MoveOn Democrats who gave Obama the nomination are also locked into the past on Swiftboating and on Iraq. It is the latter problem that has cost Obama his credibility on the war issue and not some perceived slight to his patriotism. He was dead wrong on one of the central issues of our time and he is trying to win an election based on his superior judgment.

Source

The left denigrates the surge to help Obama

There is a recent trend in the mainstream media now that it is clear that we are winning in Iraq to say that the surge was not that important to our success. Here is Tim Rutton in the LA Times:

The Times' story confirms the most sensational revelation contained in Bob Woodward's new book, "The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2007," which was published this week. Woodward revealed the technology's existence but, heeding requests from intelligence officials, declined to describe its operations except to say that it had allowed U.S. forces to locate and kill decisive numbers of senior Al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi insurgents. In what may be the book's most controversial claim, Woodward argues that the secret technology and the so-called Anbar Awakening -- in which counterinsurgency techniques developed by the Marines won over tribal leaders in that crucial Sunni-dominated province -- had as much or more to do with stabilizing Iraq as the "surge" in U.S. troop numbers.

Beyond the purely military considerations, there are potentially significant political implications. First and most obvious is the question of the surge's efficacy. The answer matters, particularly to John McCain, who has been one of the surge's most resolute supporters. If it turns out that it was only one -- and, perhaps, the least consequential -- in a confluence of successful American initiatives, then McCain could go from steadfast to stubborn in voters' minds.

This is liberal rationalization to try to cover the fact that McCain was right about the surge and Obama was dead wrong. The surge was just one aspect of a policy that Obama and most liberals opposed in Iraq--winning. The liberal alternative was not to introduce high tech efficiency to the Predators, it was to cut and run--retreat. This new narrative of the left on the surge falls on its face when you compare it to the liberal insistence on withdrawing forces.

Source

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . For readers in China or for when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-14T00:37:00.001+11:30

Obama Can't Win Against Palin

By Karl Rove

Of all the advantages Gov. Sarah Palin has brought to the GOP ticket, the most important may be that she has gotten into Barack Obama's head. How else to explain Sen. Obama's decision to go one-on-one against "Sarah Barracuda," captain of the Wasilla High state basketball champs? It's a matchup he'll lose. If Mr. Obama wants to win, he needs to remember he's running against John McCain for president, not Mrs. Palin for vice president.

Michael Dukakis spent the last months of the 1988 campaign calling his opponent's running mate, Dan Quayle, a risky choice and even ran a TV ad blasting Mr. Quayle. The Bush/Quayle ticket carried 40 states. Adlai Stevenson spent the fall of 1952 bashing Dwight Eisenhower's running mate, Richard Nixon, calling him "the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, and then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation." The Republican ticket carried 39 of 48 states.If Mr. Obama keeps attacking Mrs. Palin, he could suffer the fate of his Democratic predecessors. These assaults highlight his own tissue-thin resume, waste precious time better spent reassuring voters he is up for the job, and diminish him -- not her.

Consider Mr. Obama's response to CNN's Anderson Cooper, who asked him about Republican claims that Mrs. Palin beats him on executive experience. Mr. Obama responded by comparing Wasilla's 50 city workers with his campaign's 2,500 employees and dismissed its budget of about $12 million a year by saying "we have a budget of about three times that just for the month." He claimed his campaign "made clear" his "ability to manage large systems and to execute." Of course, this ignores the fact that Mrs. Palin is now governor. She manages an $11 billion operating budget, a $1.7 billion capital expenditure budget, and nearly 29,000 full- and part-time state employees. In two years as governor, she's vetoed over $499 million from Alaska's capital budget -- more money than Mr. Obama is likely to spend on his entire campaign.

And Mr. Obama is not running his campaign's day-to-day operation. His manager, David Plouffe, assisted by others, makes the decisions about the $335 million the campaign has spent. Even if Mr. Obama is his own campaign manager, does that qualify him for president? A debate between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Palin over executive experience also isn't smart politics for Democrats. As Mr. Obama talks down Mrs. Palin's record, voters may start comparing backgrounds. He won't come off well.

Then there was Mr. Obama's blast Saturday about Mrs. Palin's record on earmarks. He went at her personally, saying, "you been taking all these earmarks when it is convenient and then suddenly you are the champion anti-earmark person." It's true. Mrs. Palin did seek earmarks as Wasilla's mayor. But as governor, she ratcheted down the state's requests for federal dollars, telling the legislature last year Alaska "cannot and must not rely so heavily on federal government earmarks." Her budget chief directed state agencies to reduce earmark requests to only "the most compelling needs" with "a strong national purpose," explaining to reporters "we really want to skinny it down." Mr. Obama has again started a debate he can't win. As senator, he has requested nearly $936 million in earmarks, ratcheting up his requests each year he's been in the Senate. If voters dislike earmarks -- and they do -- they may conclude Mrs. Palin cut them, while Mr. Obama grabs for more each year.

Mr. Obama may also pay a price for his "lipstick on a pig" comment. The last time the word "lipstick" showed up in this campaign was during Mrs. Palin's memorable ad-lib in her acceptance speech. Mr. Obama says he didn't mean to aim the comment at Mrs. Palin, but he deserves all the negative flashback he gets from the snarky aside.

Sen. Joe Biden has now joined the attack on Mrs. Palin, saying this week that her views on issues show she's "obviously a backwards step for women." This is a mistake. Mr. Obama is already finding it difficult to win over independent women and Hillary Clinton voters. If it looks like he's going out of his way to attack Mrs. Palin, these voters may conclude it's because he has a problem with strong women.

In Denver two weeks ago, Mr. Obama said, "If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from." That's what he's trying to do, only the object of his painting is Sarah Palin, not John McCain.

In Mrs. Palin, Mr. Obama faces a political phenomenon who has altered the election's dynamics. Americans have rarely seen someone who immediately connects with large numbers of voters at such a visceral level. Mrs. Palin may be the first vice presidential candidate since Lyndon B. Johnson to change an election's outcome. If Mr. Obama keeps attacking her, the odds of Gov. Palin becoming Vice President Palin increase significantly.

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Democrats Need to Shake The 'Elitist' Tag

By Lynn Forester de Rothschild

If Barack Obama loses the presidential election, it may well be the result of a public perception that he is detached and elitist -- a politician whose expressions of empathy for hard-working Americans stem more from abstract solidarity than a real connection to the lives of millions of citizens. Suggestions that Sen. Obama has failed to relate to working- and middle-class voters in swing states have dogged his campaign for months. His choice of Sen. Joseph Biden as his running mate only marginally corrects the problem.

While Obama supporters attempt to dismiss the charges about their candidate's perceived hauteur, they confuse privilege and elitism. Elitism is a state of mind, a view of the world that cannot be measured simply by one's net worth, position or number of houses. Throughout American history, there have been extremely wealthy figures who have devoted themselves to genuinely nonelitist principles. (Franklin Delano Roosevelt is probably the best-known example.) At the same time, many from modest backgrounds, like Harry Truman's foil, Thomas Dewey, personified elitism.

I'm a longtime Democrat. I worked for Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and supported Sen. Hillary Clinton in her presidential campaign. But I must face the uncomfortable truth that liberal elitism has been a weakness of the Democratic Party for more than half a century. In 1952 and 1956, for example, Adlai Stevenson emerged as the presidential candidate of the party's "new politics" wing. But while Stevenson's stylish, articulate, high-brow manner thrilled the nation's intellectuals, he could never connect with large numbers of working-class Democrats who found him aloof and aristocratic.

The "new politics" Democrats have found their new, improved Stevenson in Mr. Obama. In spite of his lofty liberal rhetoric, Mr. Obama is not connecting to millions of middle- and working-class voters, as well as women voters of all classes. Not only is his legislative record scant on issues that make a difference in their lives, but his current campaign is based mainly on an assumption of his transcendence.

Despite Mr. Obama's assertions that his campaign is about "you," much of his campaign is, in fact, all about him. In the months since the primaries ended, his creation and display of a mock presidential seal with his name on it, his speech at a mass rally at the Prussian Victory Column in Berlin, and his insistence on delivering his acceptance speech in front of fabricated Greek columns in a stadium holding 80,000 chanting supporters have crossed the thin line that separates galvanizing voters and plain old demagoguery. In this context, it should come as no surprise that Sarah Palin, mother of five, hockey mom turned governor and maverick reformer, would instantly zero in on the inherent weakness in Mr. Obama's candidacy, and contrast it with her own compelling life story.

It is ironic that the candidate who comes from a more privileged background -- John McCain -- can genuinely point to at least one crucial moment in his life when elitism went by the boards. Because John McCain's father was a high-ranking Navy Admiral, he was offered freedom from a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp. He refused, saying that he would leave only when every prisoner who had been captured before him was also released. Mr. McCain can truthfully tell the story of when he refused to be treated as special, and stood unflinchingly beside less-privileged Americans. It is a story that suggests the way he would govern as president of the United States.

Mr. Obama cannot point to any analogue to Mr. McCain's service. As he talks of himself, and his supporters talk about the amazing Obamaness of Obama, it is no wonder that millions of Americans, including loyal Democrats, still question whether his presidency would reinforce the splendor of Barack Obama rather than protect them and enhance their lives.

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Obama's Lost Years

Barack Obama makes his first campaign visit today to his alma mater, Columbia University. Just don't ask the prolific self-diarist to talk about his undergraduate days in Morningside Heights. The Columbia years are a hole in the sprawling Obama hagiography. In his two published memoirs, the 47-year-old Democratic nominee barely mentions his experience there. He refuses to answer questions about Columbia and New York -- which, in this media age, serves only to raise more of them. Why not release his Columbia transcript? Why has his senior essay gone missing?

Now in our view, the college years shouldn't normally be used to judge a politician's fitness for office. We're not sure the transcripts of Al Gore, John Kerry and George W. Bush -- which showed them to be C students -- illuminated much for voters. The McCain campaign won't release his records, but we know he graduated at the bottom of his Naval Academy class.

But Mr. Obama is a case apart. His personal story, as told by him, made possible his rise from obscurity four years ago to possibly the White House. He doesn't have a long track record in government. We mainly have him in his own words. As any autobiographer, Mr. Obama played up certain chapters in his life -- perhaps even exaggerating his drug use in adolescence to drive home his theme of youthful alienation -- and ignored others. What's more, as acknowledged in "Dreams From My Father," Mr. Obama reconstructed conversations and gave some people pseudonyms or created "composite" characters.

Voters and the media are now exercising due diligence before Election Day, and they are meeting resistance from Mr. Obama in checking his past. Earlier this year, the AP tracked down Mr. Obama's New York-era roommate, "Sadik," in Seattle after the campaign refused to reveal his name. Sohale Siddiqi, his real name, confirmed Mr. Obama's account that he turned serious in New York and "stopped getting high." "We were both very lost," Mr. Siddiqi said. "We were both alienated, although he might not put it that way. He arrived disheveled and without a place to stay." For some reason the Obama camp wanted this to stay out of public view.

Such caginess is grist for speculation. Some think his transcript, if released, would reveal Mr. Obama as a mediocre student who benefited from racial preference. Yet he later graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude, so he knows how to get good grades. Others speculate about ties to the Black Students Organization, though students active then don't seem to remember him. And on the far reaches of the Web can be found conspiracies about former Carter national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who became the candidate's "guru and controller" while at Columbia in the early 1980s. Mr. Brzezinski laughs, and tells us he doesn't "remember meeting him."

What can be said with some certainty is that Mr. Obama lived off campus while at Columbia in 1981-83 and made few friends. Fox News contacted some 400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him. He had transferred from Occidental College in California after his sophomore year because, he told the Boston Globe in 1990, "I was concerned with urban issues and I wanted to be around more black folks in big cities." He got a degree in political science without honors. "For about two years there, I was just painfully alone and really not focused on anything, except maybe thinking a lot," he told his biographer David Mendell. Put that way, his time at Columbia sounds unremarkable. Maybe that's what most pains a young memoirist and an ambitious politician who strains to make his life anything but unremarkable.

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Palin has a dig at Obama over No.2 pick

Republican vice-presidential pick Sarah Palin has picked at the scars of the Democratic primary fight, saying Barack Obama must now be sorry he did not name Hillary Clinton as his running mate. The Alaska governor, who is trying to enlist vast numbers of women voters to John McCain's Republican ticket, is tilting at history by trying to become America's first female vice-president.

"I think he's regretting not picking her now, I do. What, what determination, and grit, and even grace through some tough shots that were fired her way - she handled those well," Palin told America's ABC News. Palin's comments came after polls in battleground states Ohio and Pennsylvania found that she was winning growing support among the crucial demographic of white women voters. Clinton has so far not overtly attacked Palin on the campaign trail, but will venture out to stump for Obama in the key state of Ohio this weekend.

When McCain sent shockwaves through the political establishment by picking Palin two weeks ago, Clinton issued a statement congratulating her on her "historic" nomination. "While their policies would take America in the wrong direction, governor Palin will add an important new voice to the debate," Clinton said. Later, at the end of the Republican convention, the former first lady issued a new statement amending her one-liner condemning McCain at the Democratic convention. "No way, No How, No McCain-Palin," she said.

Clinton's own historic quest, to become America's first woman president, fell just short after a gruelling six-month coast-to-coast nominating duel with Obama. But the Obama campaign pounced on video footage of Palin in March, when she said Clinton's "perceived whine" during the primary campaign "doesn't do us any good - women in politics, women in general wanting to progress this country". "Sarah Palin should spare us the phony sentiment and respect," Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who vocally backed Clinton during the primaries, said in an Obama campaign statement.

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By 5-to-1 Public Thinks Most Journalists Trying to Help Elect Obama

A week after a Rasmussen Reports survey discovered that by a ten-to-one margin the public believes the media are trying to hurt Sarah Palin, a new Rasmussen poll of 1,000 likely voters, briefly highlighted Wednesday night on FNC's Hannity & Colmes, determined "69 percent remain convinced that reporters try to help the candidate they want to win, and this year by a nearly five-to-one margin voters believe they are trying to help Barack Obama." Specifically, "50 percent of voters think most reporters are trying to help Obama win versus 11 percent who believe they are trying to help his Republican opponent John McCain" with 26 percent saying "reporters offer unbiased coverage."

Even amongst Democrats, more think journalists are aiding Democrat Obama than Republican McCain: "While 83 percent of Republican voters think most reporters are trying to help Obama, 19 percent of Democrats agree, one percentage point higher than the number of Democrats who believe they are trying to help McCain." Most telling, "unaffiliated voters by a 53 percent to 10 percent margin see reporters trying to help Obama."

Matching the overall public perception of a pro-Obama media, "45 percent of Democrats say most reporters are providing unbiased coverage in the current presidential campaign, but only 20 percent of unaffiliateds and nine percent (9%) of Republicans agree." For Rasmussen's full summary of the poll taken on September 8 and released on September 10, see: "69% Say Reporters Try to Help the Candidate They Want to Win." An excerpt with other findings:

....Voters from both parties...are skeptical of media bias in general. Eighty-six percent (86%) of Republicans think reporters try to help the candidate they want to win, and a plurality of Democrats (49%) believe that, too. Seventy-four percent (74%) of unaffiliated voters agree. Only 21% of voters overall say reporters try to offer unbiased coverage....

Among all voters, 57% believe Obama has received the best treatment by the media, while 21% say McCain has been treated best. Only nine percent (9%) believe the media has been most favorable to Senator Hillary Clinton, who was Obama's closest rival for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Forty-two percent (42%) think reporters would hide information that hurts the candidate they want to win, but 34% do not agree. But there's a partisan divide here: While 63% of likely McCain voters believe reporters would hide information harmful to the candidate they favor, 52% of potential Obama voters do not agree....

The new Rasmussen survey echoes two other recent polls, one by Rasmussen and one by Fox News. My September 4 NewsBusters item, "Poll: By 10-to-1 Public Says Reporters 'Trying to Hurt Palin,'" recounted:

"Over half of U.S. voters (51%) think reporters are trying to hurt Sarah Palin with their news coverage, and 24% say those stories make them more likely to vote for Republican presidential candidate John McCain in November," Rasmussen Reports announced Thursday in posting survey results which determined "just five percent (5%) think reporters are trying to help her with their coverage, while 35 percent believe reporters are providing unbiased coverage." In Thursday's "Grapevine" segment, FNC's Brit Hume highlighted the findings from the poll of 1,000 "likely voters."
By wide margins, more Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters see the media as trying to hurt rather than trying to help Palin. For Republicans it's 80 to 6 percent, for Democrats 28 to 4 percent (with 57 percent believing reporting is unbiased) and for unaffiliated voters it's 49 to 5 percent.

And my July 25 posting, "Fox Poll: Two-Thirds Recognize Journalists Want Obama to Win," reported:

Just days after a Rasmussen Reports survey was released showing more than three times as many likely voters "believe most reporters will try to help Obama with their coverage" than help John McCain, a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll taken July 22-23 of 900 registered voters discovered six times as many think "most member of the media" want Obama to win than wish for a McCain victory. On Thursday's Special Report, FNC's Brit Hume relayed: "67 percent of the respondents think most media members want Obama to win. Just 11 percent think most in the media are for McCain."
A FoxNews.com article added this damning finding: "Only about 1 in 10 (11 percent) volunteers the belief that the media is neutral on the race to become the 44th President of the United States." Those polled recognize the tilt in action: "When asked to rate the objectivity of media coverage of the campaigns, Americans feel Obama gets more of a positive spin by a better than 7-to-1 margin (46 percent more positive toward Obama; 6 percent more positive toward McCain)."

The "How the Public Views the Media" section of the MRC's "Media Bias Basics" lists many more surveys of how the public perceive journalists and the news media

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Signs of trouble for Obama with working moms

Jessica Goral had pretty much made up her mind two weeks ago: she was going to vote for Barack Obama. Then John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running-mate. “She empowers a lot of women,” said Mrs Goral, a mother of two in Macomb County – a national bellwether in the battleground state of Michigan and an area rich in white, working-class swing voters who will play an important role in deciding the election in November.

“I like that she’s a brand new mother, and that she has the courage to stand behind her pregnant daughter. She relates to working women. For all of us who have children at home but have to go to work every day – she has given us a sense that we can still do it and can be an excellent mum,” she said. “Sarah Palin is a role model. She’s made me more likely to vote Republican.”

If Mr Obama should be in any doubt how gravely the vice-presidential nomination of the Governor of Alaska has imperilled his White House ambitions, then a day spent in Macomb County will make this clear: white women who voted for John Kerry in 2004 are suddenly deserting the Democratic Party.

This is Mount Clemens, in the heart of Macomb County, where the pollster Stan Greenberg first identified the phenomenon of the Reagan Democrats – the working-class, socially conservative, traditionally Democratic whites who deserted the party for Ronald Reagan in 1980. It is fair to say that this critical swing group now has a new name: Palin Democrats.

The Times spoke to dozens of women here – perhaps the key demographic in this election – in an area that is 88 per cent white, has one of the highest unemployment and home repossession rates in the country, and will play a big role in determining who wins Michigan in November. It is a crucial swing state that no Republican has won since 1988 but where Mr Obama is particularly vulnerable. Nearly all said that they were still undecided. Yet the disturbing fact for Mr Obama was how many said that they had been leaning towards him – until Mrs Palin entered the race. It lends new credence to a poll last week that showed white women fleeing from Mr Obama to Mr McCain.

Katherine Herman, 45, is a lifelong Democrat who has never voted for a Republican. Until now. “I have a friend who’s a Democrat, and like me, it’s Sarah Palin that’s caused her to lean in favour of McCain. Palin is tenacious. She’s sure of herself and would make good decisions for all Americans,” she said.

Stephanie Parker, 23, a single mother puffing on a Marlboro menthol cigarette in Main Street, Mount Clemens, voted for Mr Kerry and had been drawn to Mr Obama. “Palin’s made a big difference. I think she’ll do us great. What she stands for is fantastic,” she said. What does she stand for? “I couldn’t tell really. But I love her.”

Jennifer Zvara, 22, another single mother who voted for John Kerry, said: “I’m undecided but leaning more towards McCain because of Palin. It’s a women thing. She’s one of us. This race is about the running-mates – it’s not about Obama any more.”....

Michigan has been run into a ditch by Democrat energy policies and by a Democrat governor and legislature trying to tax their way out of a one state recession. There are plenty of reasons to vote against Democrats in Michigan and Palin is just one more for some.

Source

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . For readers in China or for when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-13T00:27:00.002+11:30

Barack Obama the speechmaker is being rumbled

A British commentator says that there is a yawning gulf between what the Democratic candidate says and how he has acted. That's why the race is so close

It's funny how the harder you look at something, the harder it can be to understand it. I can't recall a US presidential election that has attracted more attention. But neither can there have been a time when the world has watched what goes on in America with the nonplussed, horrified incomprehension it has now.

Travelling in Britain this week, I've been asked repeatedly by close followers of US politics if it can really be true that Barack Obama might not win. Thoughtful people cannot get their head around the idea that Mr Obama, exciting new pilot of change, supported by Joseph Biden, experienced navigator of the swamplands of Washington politics, could possibly be defeated.

They look upon John McCain and Sarah Palin and see something out of hag-ridden history: the wizened old warrior, obsessed with finding enemies in every corner of the globe, marching in lockstep with the crackpot, mooseburger-chomping mother from the wilds of Alaska, rifle in one hand, Bible in the other, smiting caribou and conventional science as she goes.

Two patronising explanations are adduced to explain why Americans are going wrong. The first is racism. I've dealt with this before and it has acquired no more merit. White supremacists haven't been big on Democratic candidates, whatever their colour, for a long time, and Mr Obama's race is as likely to generate enthusiasm among blacks and young voters as it is hostility among racists.

In a similarly condescending account, those foolish saps are being conned into voting for Mr McCain because they like his running-mate. Her hockey-mom charm and storybook career appeals to their worst instincts. The race is boiling down to a beauty contest in which a former beauty queen is stealing the show. Believe this if it helps you come to terms with the possibility of a Democratic defeat. But there really are better explanations.

One is a simple political-cultural one. This election is a struggle between the followers of American exceptionalism and the supporters of global universalism. Democrats are more eager than ever to align the US with the rest of the Western world, especially Europe. This is true not just in terms of a commitment to multilateral diplomacy that would restore the United Nations to its rightful place as arbiter of international justice. It is also reflected in the type of place they'd like America to be - a country with higher taxes, more business regulation, a much larger welfare safety net and universal health insurance. The Republicans, who still believe America should follow the beat of its own drum, are pretty much against all of that.

You can argue the merits of each case. But let me try to explain to my fellow non-Americans why Mr Obama's problems go well beyond that. Even if you think that Americans should want to turn their country into a European-style system, there is a perfectly good reason that you might have grave doubts about Mr Obama.

The essential problem coming to light is a profound disconnect between the Barack Obama of the candidate's speeches, and the Barack Obama who has actually been in politics for the past decade or so. Speechmaker Obama has built his campaign on the promise of reform, the need to change the culture of American political life, to take on the special interests that undermine government's effectiveness and erode trust in the system itself.

Politician Obama rose through a Chicago machine that is notoriously the most corrupt in the country. As David Freddoso writes in a brilliantly cogent and measured book, The Case Against Barack Obama, the angel of deliverance from the old politics functioned like an old-time Democratic pol in Illinois. He refused repeatedly to side with those lonely voices that sought to challenge the old corrupt ways of the ruling party.

Speechmaker Obama talks about an era of bipartisanship, He speaks powerfully about the destructive politics of red and blue states. Politician Obama has toed his party's line more reliably than almost any other Democrat in US politics. He has a near-perfect record of voting with his side. He has the most solidly left-wing voting history in the Senate. His one act of bipartisanship, a transparency bill co-sponsored with a Republican senator, was backed by everybody on both sides of the aisle. He has never challenged his party's line on any issue of substance.

Speechmaker Obama talks a lot about finding ways to move beyond the bloody battlegrounds of the "culture wars" in America; the urgent need to establish consensus on the emotive issue of abortion. Politician Obama's support for abortion rights is the most extreme of any Democratic senator. In the Illinois legislature he refused to join Democrats and Republicans in supporting a Bill that would require doctors to provide medical care for babies who survived abortions. No one in the Senate - not the arch feminist Hillary Clinton nor the superliberal Edward Kennedy - opposed this same humane measure.

Here's the real problem with Mr Obama: the jarring gap between his promises of change and his status quo performance. There are just too many contradictions between the eloquent poetry of the man's stirring rhetoric and the dull, familiar prose of his political record.

It's been remarked that the biggest difference between Americans and Europeans is religion: ignorant Americans cling to faith; enlightened Europeans long ago embraced the liberating power of reason. Yet here's an odd thing about this election. Europeans are asking Americans to take a leap of faith, to break the chains of empiricism and embrace the possibility of the imagination.

The fact is that a vote for Mr Obama demands uncritical subservience to the irrational, anti-empirical proposition that the past holds no clues about the future, that promise is wholly detached from experience. The second-greatest story ever told, perhaps.

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An Obama ad plays fast and loose with McCain's voting record on education and proposals

A new Obama-Biden ad includes misleading claims about McCain and education spending:

It says McCain "voted to cut education funding" and lists five votes. But one was a vote for increased education funding, although for fewer dollars than what Democrats may have wanted. And three others were votes against additional funding, not votes for funding cuts.

The ad says that "McCain's economic plan gives $200 billion more to special interests while taking money away from public schools." Not exactly. McCain has proposed a one-year freeze on discretionary spending in general. A freeze would mean that funds would not keep pace with inflation and population growth, but no dollars would be "taken away." The $200 billion for "special interests" refers to the cost of McCain's proposal to reduce the tax rate for all business corporations, not just a few "special" ones.

The ad says McCain proposed abolishing the Department of Education. He did once say in an interview that he "would certainly favor" abolishing both the departments of Education and Energy, but he hasn't pushed for either.

Much more here

More gaffes

Then there was someone named Carol Fowler, who evidentially runs the Democratic Party in South Carolina, opining that Sarah Palin's "primary qualification seems to be that she hasn't had an abortion." For a party trying to appeal suburban women (who according to the most recent Washington Post poll are leaving Obama in droves) I'm not sure Ms.Fowler is going to bring them under the tent. That's a nine on the Biden gaffe-o-meter. She later apologized for the remark, but it owned most of the news cycle today.

But credit Obama for the dumbest play of the day. Evidentially, during a taping with Letterman, he elaborated on his "lipstick on a pig" remark by commenting that Palin was meant to be the lipstick, and McCain's policies the pig. What on earth was he thinking? All he did was extend a bad news cycle for him for another 24 hours, and it's another day where McCain gets a free pass. Truth be told, McCain is the only candidate among the four that looks completely presidential.

It's baffling to see Obama continue to spend energy going after Palin while McCain floats above it all. The news cycle can only handle one or two headlines at a given time, and when candidates go off message it's the "off message" part that owns the coverage. I expected Biden to be off message almost all the time -- he's too long winded and arrogant to do otherwise -- but Obama had been good at staying on message. Not any longer. This Palin thing has really thrown team Obama off their game.

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The Foreign Policy Difference

By FOUAD AJAMI

The candidacy of Barack Obama seems to have lost some of its luster of late, and I suspect this has something to do with large questions many Americans still harbor about his view of the dangerous world around us. Those questions were not stilled by the choice of Joe Biden as his running mate.

To be sure, the Delaware senator is a man of unfailing decency and deep legislative experience; and his foreign policy preferences are reflective of the liberal internationalist outlook that once prevailed in the Democratic Party. To his honor and good name, Sen. Biden took a leading role in pushing for the use of American military power in the Balkans when the Muslims of Bosnia were faced with grave dangers a dozen years ago. Patriotism does not embarrass this man in the way it does so many in the liberal elite. But as Bob Woodward is the latest to remind us, it is presidents, not their understudies, who shape the destiny of nations.

So the Obama candidacy must be judged on its own merits, and it can be reckoned as the sharpest break yet with the national consensus over American foreign policy after World War II. This is not only a matter of Sen. Obama's own sensibility; the break with the consensus over American exceptionalism and America's claims and burdens abroad is the choice of the activists and elites of the Democratic Party who propelled Mr. Obama's rise.

Though the staging in Denver was the obligatory attempt to present the Obama Democrats as men and women of the political center, the Illinois senator and his devotees are disaffected with American power. In their view, we can make our way in the world without the encumbrance of "hard" power. We would offer other nations apologies for the way we carried ourselves in the aftermath of 9/11, and the foreign world would be glad for a reprieve from the time of American certitude.

The starkness of the choice now before the country is fully understood when compared to that other allegedly seminal election of 1960. But the legend of Camelot and of the New Frontier exaggerates the differences between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy. A bare difference of four years separated the two men (Nixon had been born in 1913, Kennedy in 1917). Both men had seen service in the Navy in World War II. Both were avowed Cold Warriors. After all, Kennedy had campaigned on the missile gap -- in other words the challenger had promised a tougher stance against the Soviet Union. (Never mind the irony: There was a missile gap; the U.S. had 2,000 missiles, the Soviet Union a mere 67.)

The national consensus on America's role abroad, and on the great threats facing it, was firmly implanted. No great cultural gaps had opened in it, arugula was not on the menu, and the elites partook of the dominant culture of the land; the universities were then at one with the dominant national ethos. The "disuniting of America" was years away. American liberalism was still unabashedly tethered to American nationalism.

We are at a great remove from that time and place. Globalization worked its way through the land, postmodernism took hold of the country's intellectual life. The belief in America's "differentness" began to give way, and American liberalism set itself free from the call of nationalism. American identity itself began to mutate.

The celebrated political scientist Samuel Huntington, in "Who Are We?," a controversial book that took up this delicate question of American identity, put forth three big conceptions of America: national, imperial and cosmopolitan. In the first, America remains America. In the second, America remakes the world. In the third, the world remakes America. Back and forth, America oscillated between the nationalist and imperial callings. The standoff between these two ideas now yields to the strength and the claims of cosmopolitanism. It is out of this new conception of America that the Obama phenomenon emerges.

The "aloofness" of Mr. Obama that has become part of the commentary about him is born of this cultural matrix. Mr. Obama did not misspeak when he described union households and poorer Americans as people clinging to their guns and religion; he was overheard sharing these thoughts with a like-minded audience in San Francisco.

Nor was it an accident that, in a speech at Wesleyan University, he spoke of public service but excluded service in the military. The military does not figure prominently in his world and that of his peers. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic Party convention, as was the case on the campaign trail, he spoke of his maternal grandfather's service in Patton's army. But that experience had not been part of his own upbringing. When we elect a president, we elect a commander in chief. This remains an imperial republic with military obligations and a military calling. That is why Eisenhower overwhelmed Stevenson, Reagan's swagger swept Carter out of office, Bush senior defeated Dukakis, etc.

The exception was Bill Clinton, with his twin victories over two veterans of World War II. We had taken a holiday from history -- but 9/11 awakened us to history's complications. Is it any wonder that Hillary Clinton feigned the posture of a muscular American warrior, and carried the working class with her?

The warrior's garb sits uneasily on Barack Obama's shoulders: Mr. Obama seeks to reassure Americans that he and his supporters are heirs of Roosevelt and Kennedy; that he, too, could order soldiers to war, stand up to autocracies and rogue regimes. But the widespread skepticism about his ability to do so is warranted.

The crowds in Berlin and Paris that took to him knew their man. He had once presented his willingness to negotiate with Iran as the mark of his diplomacy, the break with the Bush years and the Bush style. But he stepped back from that pledge, and in a blatant echo of President Bush's mantra on Iran, he was to say that "no options would be off the table" when dealing with Iran. The change came on a visit to Israel, the conversion transparent and not particularly convincing.

Mr. Obama truly believes that he can offer the world beyond America's shores his biography, his sympathies with strangers. In the great debate over anti-Americanism and its sources, the two candidates couldn't be more different. Mr. Obama proceeds from the notion of American guilt: We called up the furies, he believes. Our war on terror and our war in Iraq triggered more animus. He proposes to repair for that, and offers himself (again, the biography) as a bridge to the world.

Mr. McCain, well, he's not particularly articulate on this question. But he shares the widespread attitude of broad swaths of the country that are not consumed with worries about America's standing in foreign lands. Mr. McCain is not eager to be loved by foreigners. In November, the country will have a choice between a Republican candidate forged in the verities of the 1950s, and a Democratic rival who walks out of the 1990s.

For Mr. McCain, the race seems a matter of duty and obligation. He is a man taking up this quest after a life of military and public service, the presidency as a capstone of a long career. Mr. McCain could speak with more nuance about the great issues upon us. When it comes to the Islamic world, for example, it's not enough merely to evoke the threat of radical Islamism as the pre-eminent security challenge of our time. But his approach and demeanor have proven their electoral appeal before.

For Mr. Obama, the race is about the claims of modernism. There is "cool," and the confidence of the meritocracy in him. The Obama way is glib: It glides over the world without really taking it in. It has to it that fluency with political and economic matters that can be acquired in a hurry, an impatience with great moral and political complications. The lightning overseas trip, the quick briefing, and above all a breezy knowingness. Mr. Obama's way is the way of his peers among the liberal, professional elite.

Once every four years, ordinary Americans go out and choose the standard-bearer of their nationalism. Liberalism has run away with elite culture. Nationalism may be out of fashion in Silicon Valley. But the state -- and its citadel, the presidency -- is an altogether different calling.

Source

Autumn Angst: Dems fret about Obama

Polls showing John McCain tied or even ahead of Barack Obama are stirring angst and second-guessing among some of the Democratic Party's most experienced operatives, who worry that Obama squandered opportunities over the summer and may still be underestimating his challenges this fall. "It's more than an increased anxiety," said Doug Schoen, who worked as one of Bill Clinton's lead pollsters during his 1996 reelection and has worked for both Democrats and independents in recent years. "It's a palpable frustration. Deep-seated unease in the sense that the message has gotten away from them."

Joe Trippi, a consultant behind Howard Dean's flash-in-the-pan presidential campaign in 2004 and John Edwards' race in 2008, said the Obama campaign was slow to recognize how the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate would change the dynamic of the race. "They were set up to run `experience versus change,' what they had run [against Hillary] Clinton," Trippi said. "And I think Palin clearly moved that to be change [and] reform, versus change. They are adjusting to that and that threw them off balance a little bit."

A major Democratic fundraiser described it a good bit more starkly after digesting the polls of recent days: "I'm so depressed. It's happening again. It's a nightmare."

Adding to Democratic restlessness, McCain has largely neutralized some issue advantages that have long favored Democrats. This week's USA Today/Gallup poll reported a split on which candidate "can better handle the economy"; 48 percent chose Obama while 45 percent said McCain. In late August, Obama had a 16-point edge on the issue. Also this week, an ABC News/Washington Post poll reported that when voters are asked "who can bring about needed change to Washington," McCain still trails Obama by 12 points. But in June, McCain trailed by 32 points.

That shift in the public's perception of the issues, in Democratic pollster Celinda Lake's words, "tremendously concerns me." Lake joined other Democratic veterans, some speaking not for attribution, in emphasizing a classic liberal woe: that the Democrat let the Republican define him. "Obama needed to define himself," Lake said. "I do think that during the Democratic convention we should have done a better job of defining McCain."

Steve Rosenthal, a veteran field organizer for Democrats and organized labor, said that some entrenched Democratic vulnerabilities never receded this year. And in his view, Palin has reawakened those liberal weaknesses. "For some white, working-class voters who don't want to vote for Barack Obama but weren't sure about McCain, Palin gave them a good reason to take another look and consider supporting McCain," Rosenthal said. "On the one hand, it could be a temporary reshuffling of the deck," he added. "And on the other hand, it underscores the deep-seated problems we have in this race with race, class and culture.

More here

Obama Pitches Immigration Policy

Barack Obama spoke on Wednesday night about a subject that often gets short shrift on the 2008 campaign trail: immigration. The Democratic candidate made the speech to a crowd of Hispanic leaders at black-tie dinner capping the end of a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute gathering in Washington. After spending a few minutes talking about his opponent and his other policy proposals, Obama got his loudest cheers with these lines: "This election is about the 12 million people living in the shadows, the communities taking immigration enforcement into their own hand. They are counting on us to stop the hateful rhetoric filling our airwaves, and rise above the fear, and rise above the demagoguery, and finally enact comprehensive immigration reform."

Obama complimented John McCain for championing the comprehensive immigration package that died in the Senate last year - and that helped (temporarily) sink his primary campaign. The bill, which would have created a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, inflamed widespread anti-immigration sentiment. Congress was deluged with calls, emails and faxes expressing opposition.

Since then, most politicians have kept the issue out of the spotlight. McCain has even made a pledge to tackle border security before any other changes - a reversal Obama made sure to point out Wednesday. "Well, I don't know about you, but I think it's time for a president who won't walk away from comprehensive immigration reform when it becomes politically unpopular," he said.

Obama makes frequent mention of his healthcare and energy proposals on the stump, and his aides have said those will be the top priorities in the first year of his administration. A deal on immigration could still be elusive even with bigger Democratic majorities in Congress, given the success of Republican opponents who stopped two previous attempts to get the bill past the Senate in the summer of 2007. Those proposals had the support of President George W. Bush.

Obama pointed out that the Republican Party platform didn't include language on a comprehensive immigration deal, saying McCain didn't "stand up to opponents of reform at his own convention."

The McCain campaign took the unorthodox approach of not forcing his positions into the party's platform this year, but his campaign did make an effort to block one new proposal regarding immigration: a plan to deny U.S. citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.

Obama ended his speech with the words "si se puede," the Spanish version of his campaign chant "yes we can." His words were not so much a translation as much as a return to a native tongue - the phrase was used widely in Spanish before Obama adopted it, most often for protest marches and demonstrations.

Source

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . For readers in China or for when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-12T01:01:00.001+11:30

Obama without a teleprompter

He hasn't got a clue!

See HERE

The Big Man Takes on The Little People -- or so it seems from Newsweek Japan

(The small yellow caption beside McCain and Palin's photo roughly translates as: "Mysterious/Unknown Republican Party Woman -- Palin"

(Via Promethean Antagonist)

Barack Obama was run over as he took to middle of the road

Barack Obama is beginning to resemble the man who turns up to a fancy-dress party in a suit while criticising everyone for what they are wearing: lipstick, fish wrappers or, maybe, the mantle of change. At the end of the Democratic convention in Denver two weeks ago his campaign thought that they were dressed for every occasion. Chastened by the summer's sneers surrounding his celebrity status, they decided it was time to dim his dazzle a little by donning more sober and serious apparel.

Mr Obama chose Joe Biden as his running-mate rather than more exciting alternatives because he expected the Republicans to attack him over a lack of weight and experience. In place of all those glitzy mass rallies, there would be lots of worthy speeches on policy. The Democrats did not see Sarah Palin coming, have been caught badly off-balance and are still struggling to regain their stride. Mr Obama, who had taken it for granted that change is a word that should belong to him, appears bewildered by a turn of events that has left his campaign in danger of being outflanked on home turf.

For all his talk of the "Audacity of Hope", the only really audacious decision he has made was to launch a bid to become America's first black president. Since then his campaign - despite tactical brilliance in the Democratic primaries - has usually been strategically cautious. This tendency has been underlined in recent weeks as Mr Obama tracked back to the centre on policy issues, softened the sharper edges of his own exotic appeal and generally pursued a risk-averse front-running campaign.

In a year when polls indicate that four fifths of voters are yearning for a new direction this has left an enormous hole that Mrs Palin is filling in a way that no vice-presidential candidate has done before. The author and columnist Camille Paglia says that the Alaska Governor represents a "new style of muscular American feminism" with hints of Madonna's "dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich" and Annie "Get Your Gun" Oakley, a brash ambassador from the country's pioneer past. Mr Obama is now locked in the tightest of fights with the Republican self-styled "team of mavericks". By most objective criteria he is still favourite to win and there is little sign that his supporters' enthusiasm has significantly diminished or that this should be anything other than a Democratic year.

The largely synthetic row over whether he called Mrs Palin a pig or Mr McCain an old fish suggests that Mr Obama is not the type you would pick for a scrap. He is more at home pointing the audience towards a slightly emphemeral vision of the future or crafting the reflective paragraphs befitting a former constitutional law professor.

Sometimes he seems no more effective at attacking opponents than he was at pretending to be a man of the people by going to a bowling alley - where his first balls ended up in the gutter. At the very least, the lipstick-on-a-pig comments ensure that another day goes past when Mrs Palin dominates the stage and Mr Obama's efforts to switch the focus of voters to the "real choice" facing them prove to be in vain.

At worst, they may encourage the flight of more white women voters from the columns of undecided into the McCain-Palin ranks - a reason why Democrats were muttering again yesterday that Mr Obama should himself have picked a white woman as his running-mate: Hillary Clinton.

Source

Obama getting rattled

Barack Obama condemned rival John McCain for accusing him of a sexist jab at vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, the latest in a string of increasingly negative attacks. On a campaign stop Wednesday morning, the Illinois senator condemned the McCain campaign: "They seize on innocent remarks, try to throw then out of context," he told the mostly female supporters gathered in a high-school library. "I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and Swift Boat politics. Enough is enough."

His reference was to an outside group in the 2004 campaign, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which derailed John Kerry's run for the White House with controversial claims about the Democratic candidate's Vietnam record.

Sen. Obama has appeared at times flustered on the campaign trail this week as he tries to reclaim his message of change and defend himself against heated Republican attacks, all while trying to maintain his image as a new kind of candidate who takes the high road.

Supporters have hailed Sen. Obama for his cool approach in the face of often unfair criticism, but his critics point to sarcasm and a smugness that may not play well among undecided voters. During a town-hall style event in Farmington Hills, Mich., on Monday, Sen. Obama told the audience that Alaska Gov. Palin had had a compelling biography. "Mother, governor, moose shooter. That's cool," he said to laughter and applause.

During a town-hall style meeting in Lebanon, Va., Tuesday evening, Sen. Obama said-speaking about the economic policies of Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin-"You can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig." The comment was interpreted by some to have been a reference to Gov. Palin's quip to the Republican convention last week casting hockey moms as pit bulls with lipstick. But the Obama campaign said the comment had nothing to do with Gov. Palin and noted that Sen. McCain used the expression to refer to Sen. Hillary Clinton's health-care plan in 2007.

The McCain campaign and the Republicans jumped on the lipstick comment, convening its newly formed "Palin Truth Squad" to hold a conference call with reporters. Former Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift, the leader of the squad, insisted that "Sen. Obama owes Gov. Palin an apology."

During the prolonged battle for the Democratic nomination against Sen. Clinton, Sen. Obama largely ignored negative attacks. But over the past week he has shown a new urgency on the campaign trail to defend himself and turn the conversation back to Sen. McCain and the Bush Administration's "failed economic policies."

This approach was on full display Wednesday morning after the McCain campaign launched a new ad called "Lipstick" that directly accuses Sen. Obama of sexism. "They'd much rather have the story [be] about phony and foolish diversions than about the future," Sen. Obama said prior to delivering remarks about improving access to college education. "These are serious times and they call for a serious debate about where we need to take the nation."

But some pundits and voters say Sen. Obama will need to get tougher and adopt a more offensive stance if he is to withstand Republican scrutiny. On Wednesday the Obama campaign launched "Alaska Mythbusters," a group led by former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles and Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein designed to "set the record straight on Gov. Palin's Alaska record."

Going on the offensive could be tricky since Sen. Obama has tried to paint himself as a candidate who will bring a new type of more civil politics to Washington. "His talk of new politics is as empty as his campaign trail promises, and his record of bucking his party and reaching across the aisle simply doesn't exist," says McCain-Palin spokesman Brian Rogers.

During the question and answer session at the Norfolk event, a voter told Sen. Obama he was "scared" that the same tactics that led to Sen. Kerry's 2004 defeat could throw his candidacy off track. He asked Sen. Obama what he would do differently. The Democratic nominee responded by emphasizing issues like the faltering economy, education, health care the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This whole thing about lipstick. Nobody actually believes that these folks are offended," he said of the Republicans. "Everybody knows it's cynical. Everybody knows it's insincere. This is a game we play. It's a game. It's a sport and maybe if it wasn't such a serious time, that would be okay." Sen. Obama also took aim at the news media for running with the "made up controversy" over the lipstick comment. "It would be funny, but the news media decided would be the lead story yesterday," he said.

Obama aides say they are not adjusting their strategy based on slipping poll numbers and Republican attacks. But there are signs that they are regrouping. On Thursday, Sen. Obama will have a private lunch with President Clinton, the first session between the two Democrats since the primary. Clinton aides say the former president will talk to Sen. Obama about a range of issues including offering campaign advice if asked. Mr. Clinton is the last Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt to serve two consecutive terms as president and the only Democrat in recent years to capture the white working-class voters needed to take control of the White House.

Source

The Obama media think that "there's no such thing as right and wrong"

So a lie is as good as truth to them. So why check the truth of what you report? It's only those silly rednecks who think that truth is important. We smart Leftists know better, apparently. Stalin thought so too

A CNN reporter this week didn't seem to know or care that a fake photo showing a bikini-clad, rifle-toting Sarah Palin had been widely debunked days earlier as a fraud, the latest in series of incidents involving apparent misstatements or inaccurate reporting by the news network. "(John) McCain has been really good about painting (Barack) Obama as this lightweight . They don't want that to come back on Sarah Palin, and people say, yes, she looks good in a bikini clutching an AK-47, but is she equipped to run the country?" CNN's Lola Ogunnaike said in response to a question on the network's "Reliable Sources" show, which aired Sunday.

Ogunnaike's remarks, which came in response to a question by host Howard Kurtz about whether Palin's status as a political celebrity might undercut Republican efforts to portray the vice presidential nominee as a serious, reform-minded governor, were posted on CNN's Web site and have since been reported and discussed on numerous other independent sites.

CNN correspondents and analysts have also recently misrepresented Palin's stance on incorporating creationism into Alaska's school curriculum and falsely reported that she cut funds for people with special needs in the state budget. Regarding the doctored "bikini" photo, neither Kurtz, a "Washington Post" columnist, nor anyone else on the "Sources" discussion panel ever corrected Ogunnaike by pointing out that the picture was a fake.

The infamous fake bikini shot first appeared during the early days of the Republican convention. But it was widely debunked within 24 hours, with bloggers and others quickly exposing the fraud by finding the original shot, reportedly taken in 2004 in Athens, Ga., by an amateur photographer of his then-girlfriend. FOXNews.com was among the news outlets to report the fake.

During the show, Ogunnaike went on to compliment Us Weekly's coverage of Palin, which has been widely attacked as unfair by critics and reportedly thousands of Us Weekly readers. "I have to say," Ogunnaike said, "I read the `Us Weekly' story, and they were actually pretty good. They actually did some pretty good journalism there. . And this is a bigger story here. . They can't afford to ignore this story because this story drives magazine sales. And that's the bottom line, that's what they care about. So if you throw Palin on the cover and you have the words `Baby Scandal,' they know that's going to sell magazines."

Ogunnaike's remarks are among several apparent misstatements made recently by CNN reporters. On Monday night, senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Palin wants "to have creationism taught in public schools." But numerous stories -- including CNN's own reporting from last week - have noted that Palin has made no effort to try and include creationism in the state school curriculum. "I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class," Palin has said. "It doesn't have to be part of the curriculum."

The morning after Toobin's remarks on creationism, CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin reported that Palin vetoed funds not only for so-called "earmarks," but "even for people with disabilities." This was an apparent reference to a charge discussed during a Sept. 4 interview, in which CNN's Soledad O'Brien pressed a McCain spokeswoman on another accusation brought by Palin critics. O'Brien twice referred to the charge that while governor, Palin cut the state's special needs budget by 62 percent. "Those advocates have said, as a woman who is now a mother of a special-needs child, she's not fighting - she's cut the budget by 62 percent since she came into office, and doesn't that show a contradiction?" O'Brien asked McCain spokeswoman Nicolle Wallace, according to transcript available on CNN's Web site.

But Factcheck.org, a non-partisan group affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, is among those that have reported that Palin "did not cut funding for special needs education in Alaska by 62 percent." In fact, the group said in a posting published on Newsweek's Web site, "She didn't cut it at all. She tripled per-pupil funding over just three years."

Source

"Community organizer" is more sinister than it seems

In her game-changing convention speech, Sarah Palin took a swipe at Obama for having been nothing more in his life than a ‘community organiser’. This prompted the Obama campaign to issue a pained defence of community organisation as a way of promoting social change ‘from the bottom up’. The impression is that community organising is a worthy if woolly and ultimately ineffectual grassroots activity. This is to miss something of the greatest importance: that in the world of Barack Obama, community organisers are a key strategy in a different game altogether; and the name of that game is revolutionary Marxism.

The seditious role of the community organiser was developed by an extreme left intellectual called Saul Alinsky. He was a radical Chicago activist who, by the time he died in 1972, had had a profound influence on the highest levels of the Democratic party. Alinsky was a ‘transformational Marxist’ in the mould of Antonio Gramsci, who promoted the strategy of a ‘long march through the institutions’ by capturing the culture and turning it inside out as the most effective means of overturning western society. In similar vein, Alinsky condemned the New Left for alienating the general public by its demonstrations and outlandish appearance. The revolution had to be carried out through stealth and deception. Its proponents had to cultivate an image of centrism and pragmatism. A master of infiltration, Alinsky wooed Chicago mobsters and Wall Street financiers alike. And successive Democratic politicians fell under his spell.

His creed was set out in his book ‘Rules for Radicals’ – a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the ‘first radical’. It was Alinsky for whom ‘change’ was his mantra. And by ‘change’, he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through ‘people’s organisations’. Community organisers would mobilise direct action by the oppressed masses against their capitalist oppressors. In FrontPageMagazine.Com John Perazzo writes:

These People’s Organizations were to be composed largely of discontented individuals who believed that society was replete with injustices that prevented them from being able to live satisfying lives. Such organizations, Alinsky advised, should not be imported from the outside into a community, but rather should be staffed by locals who, with some guidance from trained radical organizers, could set their own agendas.

The installment of local leaders as the top-level officers of People’s Organizations helped give the organizations credibility and authenticity in the eyes of the community. This tactic closely paralleled the longtime Communist Party strategy of creating front organizations that ostensibly were led by non-communist fellow-travelers, but which were in fact controlled by Party members behind the scenes...

Alinsky viewed as supremely important the role of the organizer, or master manipulator, whose guidance was responsible for setting the agendas of the People’s Organization... Alinsky laid out a set of basic principles to guide the actions and decisions of radical organizers and the People’s Organizations they established. The organizer, he said, ‘must first rub raw the resentments of the people; fan the latent hostilities to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act.’[40] The organizer’s function, he added, was ‘to agitate to the point of conflict’[41] and ‘to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a “dangerous enemy.” ‘[42] ‘The word ‘enemy,’ said Alinsky, ‘is sufficient to put the organizer on the side of the people’;[43] i.e., to convince members of the community that he is so eager to advocate on their behalf, that he has willingly opened himself up to condemnation and derision.

Obama’s connection with Alinsky, whom he never met but whom he reportedly idolised, was through two bodies promoting the Alinsky model of community organisation, ACORN and the Gamaliel Foundation. John Perazzo again:

Obama was trained by the Alinsky-founded Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in Chicago and worked for an affiliate of the Gamaliel Foundation, whose modus operandi for the creation of ‘a more just and democratic society’ is rooted firmly in the Alinsky method. As The Nation magazine puts it, ‘Obama worked in the organizing tradition of Saul Alinsky, who made Chicago the birthplace of modern community organizing...’ In fact, for several years Obama himself taught workshops on the Alinsky method.

But Obama brought a special slant to Alinsky’s radicalism.Far from being – as he has been painted – a ‘post-racial’ politician, Obama’s politics are all about promoting the cause of black people and achieving ‘reparations’ from white society (a perspective through which his whole welfare redistribution agenda is framed). Accordingly, he saw his three-year role as a community organiser in Chicago as mobilising black people for action against their white oppressors. Finding himself hampered in creating an activist network among black churches, he decided to join such a church to give himself more credibility. That’s why he joined the infamous black-power Trinity Church of Christ – a move, it seems, that had less to do with any spiritual quest than as a radical tactic for mobilising the black proletariat.

According to Stanley Kurtz in National Review (subscription required), as a trainer for Gamaliel and ACORN Obama used his influence to secure a major increase in funding for both groups. Kurtz writes of Gamaliel, one of the least known yet most influential national umbrella groups for church-based community organizers:

Gamaliel specializes in ideological stealth, and Obama, a master student of Gamaliel strategy, shows disturbing signs of being a sub rosa radical himself. Obama's legislative tactics, as well as his persistent professions of non-ideological pragmatism, appear to be inspired by his radical mentors' most sophisticated tactics. Not only has Obama studied, taught, and apparently absorbed stealth techniques from radical groups like Gamaliel and ACORN, but in his position as a board member of Chicago’s supposedly nonpartisan Woods Fund, he quietly funneled money to his radical allies -- at the very moment he most needed their support to boost his political career.

Kurtz also quotes Rutgers political scientist Heidi Swarts who, in her book Organizing Urban America: Secular and Faith-based Progressive Movements, lays out the strategy of stealth:

Swarts calls groups like ACORN and (especially) Gamaliel ‘invisible actors,’ hidden from public view because they often prefer to downplay their efforts, because they work locally, and because scholars and journalists pay greater attention to movements with national profiles (like the Sierra Club or the Christian Coalition). Congregation-based community organizations like Gamaliel, by contrast, are often invisible even at the local level. A newspaper might report on a demonstration led by a local minister or priest, for example, without noticing that the clergyman in question is part of the Gamaliel network. ‘Though often hidden from view,’ says Swarts, ‘leaders have intentionally and strategically organized these movements that appear to well up and erupt from below.’

Although Gamaliel and ACORN have significantly different tactics and styles, Swarts notes that their political goals and ideologies are broadly similar. Both groups press the state for economic redistribution. The tactics of Gamaliel and ACORN have been shaped in a ‘post-Alinsky’ era of welfare reform and conservative resurgence, posing a severe challenge to those who wish to expand the welfare state. The answer these activists have hit upon, says Swarts, is to work incrementally in urban areas, while deliberately downplaying the far-Left ideology that stands behind their carefully targeted campaigns.

To avoid seeming like radicals or ‘hippies left over from the sixties,’ Gamaliel organizers are careful to wear conventional clothing and conduct themselves with dignity, even formality. Since liberal social movements tend to come off as naïve and idealistic, Gamaliel organizers make a point of presenting their ideas as practical, pragmatic, and down-to-earth. When no one else is listening, Gamaliel organizers may rail at ‘racism,’ ‘sexism,’ and ‘oppressive corporate systems,’ but when speaking to their blue-collar followers, they describe their plans as ‘common sense solutions for working families.’

If anyone should doubt Obama’s debt to Saul Alinsky, they might ponder this encomium from no less an authority than Alinsky’s own son. In a letter to the Boston Globe, L. David Alinsky wrote of his father’s influence at the Democratic Convention:

All the elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situation and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd’s chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people.

Barack Obama's training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

Obama’s questionable links to various radicals are now well-known: the black power racists Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Fr. Michael Pfleger, the former Weather Underground terrorism supporters Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn.

More here

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . For readers in China or for when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-11T01:10:00.000+11:30

DISASTER!... Obama Gets Chewed Up & Spit Out On O'Reilly

Post below recycled from Gateway Pundit. See the original for links

Holy False Prophet!... This was awful! Barack Obama went into the No Spin Zone and came out battered and bloody tonight. This interview with Bill O'Reilly was a DISASTER! It was so bad you almost felt sorry for him.

Obama had nothing-- He had no answers. He could not defend or explain his associations with terrorists, racists, and Leftist nutjobs. He couldn't defend his decision to appease the Daily Kooks. He compared Sean Hannity and FOX News to the vile nutroots radicals.

He excused Bill Ayers' terrorist attacks. He could not name one example where FOX News smeared him. He could not name one conservative friend. Obama was so bad that O'Reilly started laughing. It was horrible.

Tonight was the beginning of the end. No, actually the Sarah Palin announcement was the beginning of the end for Obama. Tonight was just more proof.

Obama's Muslim Past Dogs Campaign

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has launched a tirade against John McCain, claiming he and his campaign are behind reports tying him to the Muslim faith. Obama, a committed Christian today, was born to the Muslim faith and raised as a Muslim in his early youth, though he did not actively practice his religion.

Obama began his broadside last Friday at a campaign stop in Scranton, Pa. "When they say this isn't about issues, it's about personalities, what they're really saying is, 'We're going to try to scare people about Barack. So we're going to say that, you know, maybe he's got Muslim connections, or we're going to say that, you know, he hangs out with radicals, or he's not patriotic,'" Obama told his audience.

McCain's campaign chairman quickly responded to Obama, calling his comment "a cynical attempt to play the victim."

On Sunday, Obama again tried to connect McCain to questions being raised about his faith. "These guys love to throw rocks and hide their hand," Obama said on ABC's "This Week." He then claimed McCain's campaign is working behind the scenes, saying the Islamic talk is "being promulgated on Fox News ... and Republican commentators who are closely allied to these folks." "What I think is fair to say is that coming out of the Republican camp there have been efforts to suggest that perhaps I'm not who I say I am when it comes to my faith," Obama said, which he described as "my Muslim faith" in apparent verbal gaffe.

Obama's campaign clearly is concerned about the persistent discussion of matters involving him and Islam, and it even has paid search ads on Google when words like "Obama Muslim" are plugged in. One Obama search ad is headlined "Barack Obama Muslim Myth" with the following statement: "Barack Obama is a Christian. Get the facts at his official site. BarackObama.com." Obama's media offensive over the Muslim issue suggests he wants any discussion of his religious past taken off the table as the campaign enters its most heated period after the convention.

Obama's ties to Islam are hereditary. His father was a Muslim, though Obama claims he was nonpracticing. According to Islamic law, Obama was born a Muslim, as religion is passed paternally. (Judaism, for example, passes religious identification maternally.) Apparently in deference to his father, his full name, Barack Hussein Obama, is an Arabic name. The name Barack is a derivation of "Barak" -- the horse that took the prophet Muhammad on his flight into heaven.

Though Obama's biological father disappeared from his son's life soon after he was born and returned to his native Kenya, he was raised by his Kansas-born mother and her second husband, an Indonesian who was also a Muslim. Obama has described his mother as a Christian, but Newsweek recently noted she had eschewed her parents' faith in favor of secular humanism....

"In sum: Obama was an irregularly practicing Muslim who rarely or occasionally prayed with his stepfather in a mosque," Pipes writes on his blog DanielPipes.org. "This precisely substantiates my statement that he 'for some years had a reasonably Muslim upbringing under the auspices of his Indonesian stepfather.'"

Obama's campaign is clearly worried that his ties to Islam could become a major problem for swing voters. A Newsweek poll taken in mid-July found that 26 percent of American believe he was raised a Muslim. A survey by Fox News/Opinion Dynamics conducted when Mitt Romney, a Mormon, was a Republican presidential candidate found that 32 percent of voters said they would be less likely to vote for a presidential candidate who is Mormon -- while 45 percent said they would be less likely to vote for a Muslim. And a poll by the Pew Research Center disclosed that 35 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Muslims.

More here

Why Isn't Biden More Popular?

Extreme Mortman posed the question about Biden yesterday: "Geez, after 36 years in the Senate, shouldn't more people like you?"

Um, could it be insensitive and boneheaded statements like this? It occurs to me the last prominent Republican to speak to the issue was Sarah Palin. In the end all he did was smear the Mother of a special needs child. Way to go, Joe. No doubt you're going to go down in history as not just the dumbest man in the Senate but the dumbest VP choice ever as well. That Obama sure has some judgment, huh?

Was Joe Biden referring to Sarah Palin, a mother of a child with Down syndrome, when he made this comment? "I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy, because there's joy to it as well, the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect. Well guess what folks? If you care about it, why don't you support stem cell research?"

Not to mention that scientific advances have pulled the carpet out from under his alleged argument.

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Slow Joe Hits New Low

Slow Joe Biden's assertion today that people who support unlimited stem cell research care more about special needs children than those who don't is a new low even for Joe. Team McCain's response:

"Barack Obama's running mate sunk to a new low today launching an offensive debate over who cares more about special needs children. Playing politics with this issue is disturbing and indicative of a desperate campaign." - Ben Porritt, McCain-Palin Spokesman

Perhaps because of the spanking Biden got from Archbishop Chaput yesterday, Joe has made it his mission to single-handedly insult every pro-life voter in America, and decided to make sure parents of special needs children had to follow his lead on stem cell research or understand themselves to be uncaring.

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Obama rattled as media coverage slips away

Barack Obama tried to present a picture of perfect poise yesterday in the face of evidence that Sarah Palin is transforming the presidential race, insisting that he was less concerned about polls and newspaper headlines than "what I can do for the country". With Democrats asking if the familiar sight of a Republican resurgence is a trend or merely a post-convention bounce, Mr Obama's mask of calm has, at times, slipped to reveal him as uncertain - even disorientated - about how to tackle the unexpected phenomenon of Mrs Palin.

Although he made two weighty policy speeches in Ohio about Iraq and education policy, he now spices campaign appearances with spluttered outrage at how Mrs Palin and Mr McCain are portraying themselves as agents of change - or fulmination over the failure of the media to ask them tough questions. "This is a party that's been in charge for eight years and now they're trying to run against themselves," he told one rally. "These folks are shameless."

While acknowledging that Mrs Palin had a compelling personal story to rival his own - "mother, governor, moose-shooter, I mean, I think that's cool, that's cool, that's cool stuff" - he said that the convention last week "didn't talk about the issues".

Mr Obama's campaign is running television advertisements accusing his Republican rivals of lying about their records, including the belated opposition of Mrs Palin to the so-called Bridge to Nowhere.

If Bill Clinton once accused the media of sanitising coverage of Mr Obama, the boot is now firmly on the other foot. The Democratic nominee complained that the Republicans were "working the refs" in the press and, consequently, getting "little scrutiny" for their claims. Asked if he was getting angrier, Mr Obama said: "With two months to go, I think everybody needs to feel a sense of urgency."

The extent to which he has been overshadowed was underlined by a report from the Pew Research Centre showing Mrs Palin was a significant factor in 60 per cent of campaign stories last week and Mr McCain in 52 per cent, compared with 22 per cent for Mr Obama and only 2 per cent for his running-mate, Joe Biden.

Mr Obama is beginning to experience his first financial worries, with reports suggesting that, having turned down public subsidies, he may not meet an ambitious summer fundraising target of $300 million (œ170 million) for the campaign and a further $150 million for the party....

Obama is trying to recapture the media attention by making remarks about pigs and lipstick. It is an old expression but it is pretty clear who the target was and I think it will backfire as even more women move away from him.

He has been the media darling for so long he probably feels abandoned as Palin coverage goes into overdrive. She is pulling in big crowds for the McCain campaign and generating the excitement that will only drive more coverage.

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Obama's "Lipstick On A Pig" Smear

Either Obama's dim as can be, or he is angry at having been thrown backwards week after week. When Obama denies having targeted Palin, keep in mind that everyone instantly made the connection. Is Obama really that clueless? An angry outburst does less damage than his pleading he didn't mean it that way. Remember the raised finger?

Keep in mind as well that Obama has been telling us his genius at running his campaign is evidence of his fitness to be president. Some genius. We are watching a crack-up under pressure. His Chicago handlers might be able to put the wheels back on, but we now have a glimpse of "glass jaw" Obama in a crisis.

UPDATE: Callers and e-mailers are furious with Obama. Beyond furious, really. MSM is ignoring this tsunami of a story thus far, but it has traveled around the globe and back and will keep traveling. Millions of women will never forget and they won't forgive.

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You Can Put Lipstick On A Pig And Obama Will Marry It

Barack Obama, for all his gifts (and he has many) is prone to revert back to being a thug from Chicago when times get tough. We saw this in the primaries when he did the dust off on Hillary and when he said when they bring a knife you bring a gun (though I agree with that when it is a real fight). Ordinarily Obama is pretty cool and collected and he does not let things get to him and when they do he sends out surrogates to make attacks. Sarah Palin seems to have shaken the Chicago thug and he has begun to come unglued. He is down in the polls, his money raising efforts are not what he thought they would be and the PUMAs are against him (Hillary supporters are not sending him much money).

Today Obama was giving a stump speech and said "You can put lipstick on a pig but it is still a pig." He also said "You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink."

Now the pig statement is an old saying and people can draw the conclusion that this is what he meant. If that is the case then he is not as bright as everyone thinks. You see, Palin made her lipstick comment during her speech so Obama's statement is naturally going to be linked to her. I know that Obama knew it would be but that he could use the other meaning to mask the fact that he called Sarah Palin a pig. Anyone who believes that Obama could not have known the connection would be drawn is a moron. Obama is a smart and calculated man and he knew exactly what he was saying. The fact that Palin is a woman would be a clue as to whom people though he was referring. This is an extension of the sexism he displayed in the primary and that his surrogates and media branch have been demonstrating since Palin was announced.

As for the fish comment. Was he saying old fish as a jab at McCain's age but disguising it as a reference to policy? Was it a slam at Palin as a vulgar reference to a certain part of the female anatomy? Obama has enough of the hood in him to be that vulgar and to be that crass. For all of his gifts, Obama is nothing more than a two bit thug from Chicago when he gets riled. He acts like he is in the hood and he ghettos it up when he is under attack.

Obama is afraid of Palin and he has already whined about being picked on by a girl. I think that Saracuda will hit him even harder and have him crying uncle. If anyone should know about pigs in lipstick I assume it would be Obama. Michelle wears lipstick, does she not? What is it about Democrats and kinky lipstick fetishes? First you had Bill Clinton with lipstick on his dipstick and now we have Obama putting lipstick on a pig. That is probably how he got a date for the prom. Yeah, you can take the boy out of the hood but you can't take the hood out of the boy.

Offended by the word boy? It is just a variation of a common saying.

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(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . For readers in China or for when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-10T01:24:00.000+11:30

ObamaTax 3.0

He concedes that tax increases do hurt the economy

The good news is that Barack Obama said on ABC Sunday that he might not go through with his plans to increase taxes. The bad news is that the economy has to be mired in recession to avoid the largest tax increase in the nation's history.

Our check of the Dow Jones Factiva database suggests that other than viewers of ABC's "This Week," only three or four newspapers carried an account of Senator Obama's amended tax plan. While it's possible that the story of a deferred tax increase could shock the media into paralysis, we take it as an encouraging sign. The education of Barack Obama continues apace. For the record, here is what he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

Mr. Stephanopoulos: "So even if we're in a recession next January, you come into office, you'll still go through with your tax increases?"

Senator Obama: "No, no, no, no, no. What I've said, George, is that even if we're still in a recession, I'm going to go through with my tax cuts. That's my priority."

Mr. Stephanopoulos: "But not the increases?"

Senator Obama: "I think we've got to take a look and see where the economy is. The economy is weak right now. The news with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, I think, along with the unemployment numbers indicates that we're fragile. I want to accelerate those tax cuts through a second stimulus package, get more money into the pockets of ordinary Americans, see if we can stabilize the housing market, and then we're going to have to reevaluate at the beginning of the year to see what kind of hole we're in."

Even individuals staring down the barrel of Mr. Obama's tax increases should not wish for an economic recession to give them a reprieve. The relevant point is that it was early last year, when the "Bush economy" was still humming, that Senator Obama first proposed pushing taxes sharply upward on "the wealthy," while giving what he calls "tax cuts" (actually they are credits, not rate reductions) to "the middle class."

At the time, Mr. Obama was the long shot in the Democratic Presidential sweepstakes, and it made some political sense to reassure the party's intensely liberal primary voters with class-war boilerplate on taxes. Under ObamaTax 1.0, he would have repealed all the Bush tax cuts, lifted the cap on wages subject to the payroll tax, put the top marginal rate up to 39.8% and raised the rate on capital gains and dividends to at least 25% from 15% now. The official campaign line was that tax rates really don't matter to economic growth.

Summer arrived, the Clinton challenge was history and with the general election ahead came ObamaTax 2.0. It posited that the top rate on capital gains now would be 20%, described on this page August 14 by economic advisers Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee as "almost a third lower than the rate President Reagan set in 1986." This was progress.

Now with the big vote less than 60 days off and John McCain pounding him as a tax-raiser and pulling ahead in some polls, the Democratic nominee has decided to release ObamaTax 3.0, the most interesting upgrade so far. If the economy is still weak in January, a President Obama might defer all of the planned increases.

Several interpretations of this shift are possible, none of which reflect badly on Senator Obama's political learning curve. At the bloodless level of simply wishing to win, the Obama camp may have concluded that in the sprint to November it is a losing strategy to be the election's only doctrinaire tax raiser. A tight race tends to focus political minds, and none forget Walter Mondale's catastrophic promise in his 1984 acceptance speech: "Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."

Beyond this lies the economic reality of jacking up income, investment and payroll taxes on "the wealthy" amid a flat or falling economy. In the standard narrative, these taxpayers exist as fat cats atop hedge funds, banks and megacorporations. Let's toss into the vat the top-tier managers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Beltway's own fat-cat sinecure.

The reality is that the creators of new jobs in the economy are more likely to be rising entrepreneurs or filers under Subchapter S, who typically pay taxes at individual rates. Hanging three or four tax millstones around their productive necks in January if the economy is weak will likely produce unimpressive growth and job numbers in the first year of the new Obama Presidency, and likely beyond. That in turn could drag down the Democrats in Congress who will get credit for voting these higher taxes into law.

Thus Mr. Obama's unambiguous answer Sunday to whether he'd insist on his tax increases if the economy is in an official recession: "No, no, no, no, no." It seems Mr. McCain is right that taxes do matter. Mr. Obama's most ardent primary supporters may not like it, but we'll take the five "Nos" as evidence that Senator Obama may be learning the difference between liberal doctrine and sensible governance.

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Obama swings Right on schools

Embraces charter schools, ouster of bad teachers in bipartisan approach to education. Sarah has sure got him spooked

Barack Obama is promising to double funding for charter schools and replace inferior teachers, embracing education reform proposals normally more popular with Republican candidates. The Democratic presidential nominee says both parties must work together to improve education, according to remarks prepared for delivery Tuesday at a suburban high school gymnasium. The pitch was an appeal to moderate voters in this presidential election swing state, where the fight over education reform has been the focus of a longtime partisan battle.

"There's partisanship and there's bickering, but there's no understanding that both sides have good ideas that we'll need to implement if we hope to make the changes our children need," Obama said in excerpts provided by his campaign before the speech. "And we've fallen further and further behind as a result. If we're going to make a real and lasting difference for our future, we have to be willing to move beyond the old arguments of left and right and take meaningful, practical steps to build an education system worthy of our children and our future."

The federal government spends about $200 million a year on charter schools, privately run institutions that receive public money. Obama's proposal would take that up to over $400 million.

Obama recognized that charter schools have been a source of debate in Ohio. Past Republican administrations used charter schools and private school vouchers to offer families a way out of troubled public schools. But Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland has been trying to scale back the programs to focus taxpayer money on more traditional public schools.

The Ohio Federation of Teachers has complained about the management of some charter schools, which has moved money away from the schools where its members work. The union has asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate for-profit charter school operator White Hat Management for allegedly violating the terms of the tax-free status assigned to some of its schools.

"I'll work with all our nation's governors to hold all our charter schools accountable," Obama said in the excerpts. "Charter schools that are successful will get the support they need to grow. And charters that aren't will get shut down."

While teachers unions typically oppose the idea of performance-based merit pay, Obama is embracing the idea along with demands that teachers who don't meet standards are removed from the classroom. Obama's campaign said teacher performance could be judged by peer review, student test results, classroom evaluations or other processes. "We must give teachers every tool they need to be successful, but we also need to give every child the assurance that they'll have the teacher they need to be successful," Obama said. "That means setting a firm standard - teachers who are doing a poor job will get extra support, but if they still don't improve, they'll be replaced."

At the same time he's calling for bipartisan cooperation, Obama is accusing Republican rival John McCain of failing to do anything to improve the quality of public education during nearly three decades in Washington. "Not one real proposal or law or initiative. Nothing," Obama said.

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Obama's career as a "community organizer"

By TARANTO

Last week we wrote that " 'community organizer' is to Barack Obama what 'war hero' was to John Kerry." We didn't know the half of it. Kerry staked his claim to the presidency on the pretense that he was a war hero, notwithstanding his showy repudiation decades earlier of the war and his fellow veterans. According to a new expos‚ in the liberal New Republic, Obama, before embarking on a career in politics, similarly, albeit quietly, repudiated "community organizing," only to re-embrace it decades later, apparently out of political expediency.

TNR's John Judis tracked down Jerry Kellman, who in 1985 "hired Obama to organize residents of Chicago's South Side." Kellman describes a conversation the two "community organizers" had at a conference on "social justice" in October 1987:

"[Obama] wanted to marry and have children, and to have a stable income," Kellman recalls. But Obama was also worried about something else. He told Kellman that he feared community organizing would never allow him "to make major changes in poverty or discrimination." To do that, he said, "you either had to be an elected official or be influential with elected officials." In other words, Obama believed that his chosen profession was getting him nowhere, or at least not far enough. . . . And so, Obama told Kellman, he had decided to leave community organizing and go to law school.

Another way of putting this might be that Obama left community organizing because he wanted a job in which he had actual responsibilities (and, of course, earned more money).

But Obama did not decide only that "community organizing" was not for him. Judis reports the future senator took part in a September 1989 symposium in which he "rejected the guiding principles of community organizing: the elevation of self-interest over moral vision; the disdain for charismatic leaders and their movements; and the suspicion of politics itself." Later, Obama "would begin to construct a political identity for himself that was not simply different from his identity as a community organizer--but was, in fact, its very opposite."

Judis offers the closest thing we've heard to a job description for "community organizers." What they do, he writes, is "unite people of different backgrounds around common goals and use their collective strength to wring concessions from the powers that be." To help illuminate this rather vague description, Judis also enumerates some of the tasks Obama and his colleagues undertook.

Before Obama's arrival in Chicago, Kellman and his "partner," Mike Kruglik, set out "to revive the region's manufacturing base--and preserve what remained of its steel industry--by working with unions and church groups to pressure companies and the city; but those hopes were quickly dashed." Apparently the presence of "community organizers" is not a strong selling point for companies making location decisions. Go figure.

Obama set his sights lower, but still missed the mark. He "got community members to demand a job center that would provide job referrals, but there were few jobs to distribute." Then "he tried to create what he called a 'second-level consumer economy' . . . consisting of shops, restaurants, and theaters. This, too, went nowhere." These efforts at economic development having failed, Obama "began to focus on providing social services for Altgeld Gardens," a government-owned and -operated apartment complex:

"We didn't yet have the power to change state welfare policy, or create local jobs, or bring substantially more money into the schools," [Obama] wrote. "But what we could do was begin to improve basic services at Altgeld--get the toilets fixed, the heaters working, the windows repaired." Obama helped the residents wage a successful campaign to get the Chicago Housing Authority to promise to remove asbestos from the units; but, after an initial burst of activity, the city failed to keep its promise. (As of last year, some residences still had not been cleared of asbestos.)

It is both funny and scary that one of America's major political parties would offer this record of sheer futility as its nominee's chief qualification to be president of the United States. Even more striking, though, is how alien the world in which Obama operated was by comparison with the world in which normal Americans live. Reader, when your toilet breaks, do you wait around for some Ivy League hotshot to show up and organize a meeting so that you can use your collective strength to wring concessions from the powers that be? Or do you call a plumber?

As a "community organizer," Obama toiled within a subculture of such abject dependency that even home repairs were "social services," provided by government (or, in Obama's Chicago, not provided). It was an utterly bizarre intersection between the cultural elite and the underclass. By Judis's account, Obama's Columbia degree was useless. He would have been more helpful if he'd gone to vocational school instead.

Judis quotes an Altgeld resident as telling Obama, "Ain't nothing gonna change. . . . We just gonna concentrate on saving our money so we can move outta here as fast as we can." Certainly no one can fault Obama for doing the same thing. But what did Obama move outta there do to? To become a politician--specifically, an "idealistic" politician who wants "to make major changes in poverty." Guys like that created this mess in the first place.

In his political career, has Obama done or even said anything to suggest that he has a different approach to "poverty," one that would reduce dependency rather than promote it? His recent rediscovery of the glories of "community organizing" certainly isn't an encouraging sign.

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Obama: Palin as mother, governor, moose hunter may be cool, but she's just another politician

Listening to Barack Obama, it can seem like Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is the main person standing between him and the White House instead of John McCain. Obama is putting as much heat on Palin as he is on the man at the top of the GOP ticket, objecting to the Republican Party's portrayal of her as a reformer who can bring change to Washington. That is supposed to be Obama's distinction, and he's not taking kindly to Palin trying to claim it. Especially when it appears the new star on the GOP ticket is helping boost its standing: McCain has jumped to a dead heat or narrow lead over Obama in the latest national polls since choosing Palin as his running mate.

Obama said last week's Republican National Convention did a good job of highlighting Palin's biography - "Mother, governor, moose shooter. That's cool," he said. But he said Palin really is just another Republican politician, one who is stretching the truth about her record. "When John McCain gets up there with Sarah Palin and says, `We're for change,' ... what are they talking about?" Obama said Monday, arguing that they aren't offering different ideas from President Bush and they are just trying to steal his campaign theme because it seemed to be working. "It was just like a month ago they were all saying, `Oh, it's experience, experience, experience.' Then they chose Palin and they started talking about change, change, change," he said.

Obama's campaign seemed to be caught off guard by McCain's surprise pick of Palin on Aug. 29. Obama's spokesman initially blasted her as a former small-town mayor with zero foreign policy experience who wants to continue Bush's policies. But Obama quickly walked the statement back with more congratulatory words about Palin as a compelling addition to the ticket.

Voters, particularly women, seem to agree, according to new polls. An ABC News-Washington Post survey showed white women have moved from backing Obama by 8 points to supporting McCain by 12 points, with majorities viewing Palin favorably and saying she boosts their faith in McCain's decisions.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said there's no doubt Palin is helping excite the GOP base, but what remains to be seen is how she plays with swing voters over the remaining two months of the campaign. "There's no question they believe Governor Palin has given them a surge of energy in the short term," he said. "We'll see where we stand eight weeks from now."

With Palin out on the campaign trail every day blasting Obama, it became increasingly clear he had to respond and try to undermine her credibility. He was careful with his approach, declining in an interview on MSNBC's "Countdown" on Monday to respond directly to a question about whether she's too inexperienced to be next in line to the presidency.

But Obama's campaign saw an opening when the McCain-Palin campaign released a new ad Monday called "Original Mavericks" that included the claim that Palin stopped the so-called Bridge to Nowhere, a nearly $400 million proposal to build a bridge to an island in Alaska occupied by just 50 residents and an airport. Obama called the claim "shameless." Palin voiced support for the bridge during her campaign to become Alaska's governor, although she was critical of the size, and later abandoned plans for the project. She used the federal dollars for other projects in Alaska.

"A bunch of heat started generating because people were thinking, `Why are we building a bridge to nowhere?'" Obama said to laughter from a packed gymnasium of supporters in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills. Some booed at the mention of her name. "So a deal was cut where Alaska still got the money. They just didn't build a bridge with it, and now she's out there acting like she was fighting this thing the whole time," he said, jabbing his fist in the air like a boxer. He released his own ad in response to the GOP spot that says McCain and Palin are "politicians lying about their records." [Obama forgot to mention that he himself voted for the bridge!] At an earlier stop Monday in Flint, Obama said of the bridge claim: "I mean, you can't just make stuff up. You can't just re-create yourself. You can't just reinvent yourself. The American people aren't stupid. What they are looking for is someone who has consistently been calling for change."

On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that Palin has billed Alaska taxpayers for more than $43,000 in travel and lodging expenses for her children and husband during the 19 months she has been governor. Sharon Leighow, a spokeswoman for the Alaska governor's office, told the Post that many of the invitations Palin receives also request that she bring her family. And the newspaper pointed out that Palin's travel expenses are far less than those of her predecessor, Frank Murkowski.

McCain-Palin spokesman Tucker Bounds said Obama's negative attacks show he is increasingly desperate. "Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin have shook up the establishment and delivered real reforms," Bounds said. "Barack Obama has a speech he gave in 2002."

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Woman Who Was Dumb Enough to Call America 'Just Downright Mean' Implies Sarah Palin Isn't All That Bright

Poor Sarah, the country bumpkin only has a lowly journalism degree from the University of Idaho. She didn't quite have what it took to get an affirmative action gig at Princeton like certain people.

Little noticed over the weekend, but while the Community Organizer was hob-nobbing at the Jon Bon Jovi soiree in Jersey, the lovely and gracious Michelle Obama was the star attraction at a LGBT event in Beverly Hills, where she took a cheap shot at Palin.

Obama then moved on to politics, where she first brought up her husband's vice-presidential choice. "I think it was a really good pick-Senator Joe Biden," she said, and later added, "People say they have amazing chemistry, and it's true." Obama continued with talk about Biden when she said, "What you learn about Barack from his choice is that he's not afraid of smart people." The crowd softly chuckled.

So what are we saying, Michelle, Greasy Joe is the intellectual superior or Sarah Palin? We'll see about that come debate time. And who exactly is saying your husband and Joe Biden have amazing chemistry?

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Democrats must learn some respect

This article is not the first to note the cultural contradiction in American liberalism, but just now the point bears restating. The election may turn on it. Democrats speak up for the less prosperous; they have well-intentioned policies to help them; they are disturbed by inequality, and want to do something about it. Their concern is real and admirable. The trouble is, they lack respect for the objects of their solicitude. Their sympathy comes mixed with disdain, and even contempt.

Democrats regard their policies as self-evidently in the interests of the US working and middle classes. Yet those wide segments of US society keep helping to elect Republican presidents. How is one to account for this? Are those people idiots? Frankly, yes - or so many liberals are driven to conclude. Either that or bigots, clinging to guns, God and white supremacy; or else pathetic dupes, ever at the disposal of Republican strategists. If they only had the brains to vote in their interests, Democrats think, the party would never be out of power. But again and again, the Republicans tell their lies, and those stupid damned voters buy it.

It is an attitude that a good part of the US media share. The country has conservative media (Fox News, talk radio) as well as liberal media (most of the rest). Curiously, whereas the conservative media know they are conservative, much of the liberal media believe themselves to be neutral.

Their constant support for Democratic views has nothing to do with bias, in their minds, but reflects the fact that Democrats just happen to be right about everything. The result is the same: for much of the media, the fact that Republicans keep winning can only be due to the backwardness of much of the country.

Because it was so unexpected, Sarah Palin's nomination for the vice-presidency jolted these attitudes to the surface. Ms Palin is a small-town American. It is said that she has only recently acquired a passport. Her husband is a fisherman and production worker. She represents a great slice of the country that the Democrats say they care about - yet her selection induced an apoplectic fit.

For days, the derision poured down from Democratic party talking heads and much of the media too. The idea that "this woman" might be vice-president or even president was literally incomprehensible. The popular liberal comedian Bill Maher, whose act is an endless sneer at the Republican party, noted that John McCain's case for the presidency was that only he was capable of standing between the US and its enemies, but that should he die he had chosen "this stewardess" to take over. This joke was not - or not only - a complaint about lack of experience. It was also an expression of class disgust. I give Mr Maher credit for daring to say what many Democrats would only insinuate.

Little was known about Ms Palin, but it sufficed for her nomination to be regarded as a kind of insult. Even after her triumph at the Republican convention in St Paul last week, the put-downs continued. Yes, the delivery was all right, but the speech was written by somebody else - as though that is unusual, as though the speechwriter is not the junior partner in the preparation of a speech, and as though just anybody could have raised the roof with that text. Voters in small towns and suburbs, forever mocked and condescended to by metropolitan liberals, are attuned to this disdain. Every four years, many take their revenge.

The irony in 2008 is that the Democratic candidate, despite Republican claims to the contrary, is not an elitist. Barack Obama is an intellectual, but he remembers his history. He can and does connect with ordinary people. His courteous reaction to the Palin nomination was telling. Mrs Palin (and others) found it irresistible to skewer him in St Paul for "saying one thing about [working Americans] in Scranton, and another in San Francisco". Mr Obama made a bad mistake when he talked about clinging to God and guns, but I am inclined to make allowances: he was speaking to his own political tribe in the native idiom.

The problem in my view is less Mr Obama and more the attitudes of the claque of official and unofficial supporters that surrounds him. The prevailing liberal mindset is what makes the criticisms of Mr Obama's distance from working Americans stick.

If only the Democrats could contain their sense of entitlement to govern in a rational world, and their consequent distaste for wide swathes of the US electorate, they might gain the unshakeable grip on power they feel they deserve. Winning elections would certainly be easier - and Republicans would have to address themselves more seriously to economic insecurity. But the fathomless cultural complacency of the metropolitan liberal rules this out.

The attitude that expressed itself in response to the Palin nomination is the best weapon in the Republican armoury. Rely on the Democrats to keep it primed. You just have to laugh.

The Palin nomination could still misfire for Mr McCain, but the liberal reaction has made it a huge success so far. To avoid endlessly repeating this mistake, Democrats need to learn some respect.

It will be hard. They will have to develop some regard for the values that the middle of the country expresses when it votes Republican. Religion. Unembarrassed flag-waving patriotism. Freedom to succeed or fail through one's own efforts. Refusal to be pitied, bossed around or talked down to. And all those other laughable redneck notions that made the United States what it is.

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Bookstore battle showdown: Obama vs. Obama expose

'Audacity of Deceit' challenging candidate's 'Change We Can Believe In'

On the same day Barack Obama is releasing a new book touting his appeal for change, bookstores are bracing for the impact of another book's release: "The Audacity of Deceit: Barack Obama's War on American Values," an expose that promises to reveal just how Obama's proposed changes would radically redefine American life and government. "The Audacity of Deceit," by Brad O'Leary and released by WND Books, hits the nation's largest bookstores today in a head-to-head clash with Obama's release of his campaign book, "Change We Can Believe In." Printers have produced 100,000 copies of "Audacity" already and 31,000 have been shipped to retailers and book clubs.

"Brad O'Leary has written a book that will shed new light on a public figure who's enjoyed a meteoric rise with little scrutiny," says Eric M. Jackson, president of WND Books. "We're thrilled that it will debut head-to-head against Senator Obama's own book. When the dust settles, we think 'The Audacity of Deceit' will be the defining book on his candidacy."

Challenging O'Leary will be Obama himself, with his book "Change We Can Believe In." The book is described on bookseller websites as outlining Obama's "vision for America" with the promotional line, "At this defining moment in our history, Americans are hungry for change."

O'Leary, former president of the American Association of Political Consultants, is the author of 11 books, a former talk radio host with millions of listeners and the award-winning television producer of "Ronald Reagan: An American President."

O'Leary's book suggests Obama's vision for change, if exposed, would not come close to what Americans are hoping for. "Obama has written multiple books and no major legislation, but that's not a coincidence" says O'Leary. "He's tried to hide his true beliefs from the American people behind soaring oratory promising 'hope' and 'change,' but that's just a smokescreen, and one that's been very effective. Until now."

More here

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . For readers in China or for when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-09T00:33:00.000+11:30

Obama acknowledges his Muslim faith

It could be just another of his almost daily gaffes but maybe it is a Freudian slip too. A "slip of the tongue" can be revealing. Obama's 20 year attendance at a church of hate (where black Muslims were praised) is more reminiscent of Islam than of the God of Love. More commentary and background here.

Obama says he wanted to join the army but there wasn't a war on!

Tom Maguire's skeptical given that he's conspicuously failed to mention it until now, but I'll take Barry at his word simply because there's no way to prove he's lying - a point which didn't give a moment's pause to our nutroots betters in their hot pursuit of the shocking truth behind McCain's cross-in-the-dirt story a few weeks ago. (The shocking truth: Two other POWs remember Maverick talking about it in the early 70s.) I trust Sullivan will be taking a breather from his 24-hour Palin baby watch to track down the facts behind this dubious, politically self-aggrandizing personal anecdote. As for the e-mails I'm getting pointing out that he couldn't have registered for the selective service in 1979 because it wasn't reinstated until 1980, yes, that's true - he simply spaced on the date. His registration went through in September of the following year.

That's the first clip. Below that you'll find The One floating the argument that there is indeed a candidate trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq - and it ain't him. Which, in fairness, earns him an extra smidgen of respect from me just for having the sheer balls to attempt it. Even Ace, who can pop out a 5,000-thousand-word rant effortlessly, is left well-nigh speechless at the thought of Captain Withdrawal accusing someone else of fumbling the ball out of bounds on the way to the end zone. A golden moment.

Update: "Vote for Barack Obama - It is only due to bad timing he didn't get to kill livestock, cut off ears, ravage villages, blow up bodies, and behave in a fashion reminiscent of Jenjhis Khan."

Source

With A Straight Face And A Pure Heart

NY Times Public Apologist Clark Hoyt explains the Times' role as an earnest servant of a curious public in these parlous times, with their coverage of Sarah Palin as a launch point:

In our instant-news and celebrity- obsessed culture, Palin went from Sarah Who to conservative rock star in less than a week. In less than two months, she could be elected vice president to serve under the oldest president, at 72, ever elected to a first term, and one with a history of recurring melanoma. Intense, independent scrutiny by The Times and the rest of the news media of Palin's background, character and record was inevitable and right.

Intense and independent! This from the Public Editor of the paper that has yet to use the phrase "Annenberg Challenge" in a story noting that Barack Obama and Bill Ayers worked together on education reform while with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, disbursing roughly $160 million in a venture ultimately judged by the Annenberg Foundation itself as having "limited impact".
Why isn't this news fit to print? The Times did report on the Ayers/Obama connection when George Stepanopolous brought it up during the Philadelphia debate last April. And they intensely and independently probed the right wing group that aired an ad linking Obama and Ayers, almost reporting on the Obama/Ayers link in the process. This is what they let slip:

Mr. Ayers, now a professor of education in Chicago, was a founder of the Weather Underground, which bombed government buildings in the early 1970s. He was indicted on conspiracy charges that were thrown out for prosecutorial misconduct. He served with Mr. Obama on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a charitable organization, and, along with his wife, the former Weather Underground member Bernardine Dohrn, hosted Mr. Obama at his home in 1995 when he was running for state office. Mr. Obama has called Mr. Ayers "'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old."

Fox News Channel and CNN declined to run the spot amid legal questions. But the commercial, a minute long, has run at least 100 times since Saturday, heavily in East Lansing and Pittsburgh.

Saying that Mr. Obama's supporters had sent 93,000 e-mails to the Sinclair broadcasting company for carrying the advertisement, Tommy, a campaign spokesman, said, "Other stations that follow Sinclair's lead should expect a similar response from people who don't want the political discourse cheapened with these false, negative attacks." The fight may move to another front this week.

The University of Illinois at Chicago is in the process or releasing documents detailing Mr. Obama's involvement with a non-profit education project started by Mr. Ayers.

That last sentence is the newspapers entire coverage of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge controversy. As I recall, they also had one post at The Opinionator blog. And their mention that Obama worked with a group Ayers founded hardly captures the fact that Ayers worked closely with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge for several years while Barack was the chairman approving funding proposals. Obama did not merely work at a group Ayers founded - he almost surely worked closely with Ayers, and is concealing that now.

Sarah Palin is running for Vice President. Obama is running for President. Maybe it is time for an independent look at his record. Or maybe a candidate's history and experience with public school reform (and current cover-up of same) is simply not as newsworthy or relevant to the average voter as a story about a candidate's pregnant daughter.

Source

Roster of Hate: Guide to Barack Obama's Extremist Ties

Post below recycled whole from Doug Ross. Pay him a visit to thank him for the huge amount of work in it

These are the documented connections -- using attribution from mainstream media sources -- that should have people thinking twice before they consider voting for Barack Obama.

The Los Angeles Times ("Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama") reports that in 2003 controversial academic Rashid Khalidi was toasted at a going away party by Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced "about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife... and conversations that were 'consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." Who is Khalidi, now an academic at Columbia? MSNBC reported that Khalidi is a virulent opponent of the Jews and "Zionists", stating that "Israel is a 'racist' state with an 'apartheid system' and that America has been 'brainwashed' by Israel." Khalidi also served as a spokesman for the PLO. In 2000, the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama's unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, a group headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama served on its board of directors.

The Jewish Press ("Obama Served On Board That Funded Pro-Palestinian Group") reports that Mona Khalidi's group -- a pro-Palestinian organization called the "Arab-American Action Network" (AAAN) received a total of $75,000 from the Woods Fund during the time Obama served on its board.

The AAAN "considers the fact that Israel exists a 'catastrophe' and supports initiatives for illegal aliens to obtain driver's licenses and education benefits." It promotes open borders immigration policies and favors giving illegal aliens who attend Illinois high schools (dubbed "undocumented students" by AAAN) "the opportunity to pursue higher education".

The Wall Street Journal ("Obama's Muslim-Outreach Adviser Resigns") wrote in August that Barack Obama's choice for Muslim outreach resigned after his affiliations to radical extremists were revealed. Mazen Asbahi is a frequent speaker before several groups in the U.S. that scholars have associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Egyptian group whose credo reads Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. Mr. Asbahi also briefly served on a board with Jamal Said, the imam at a fundamentalist-controlled mosque in Illinois, who the Justice Department named an unindicted co-conspirator in a 2007 racketeering trial of several alleged Hamas fund-raisers.

The Los Angeles Times ("Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama") reports that the Anti-Defamation League is concerned about Obama's 20-year relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose racist and anti-Israel rhetoric recently came to light.

Wright's church bulletin reprinted a Times op-ed written by a leader of Hamas that advocated violence against Jews. "In the context of spending 20 years in a church where now it is clear the anti-Israel rhetoric was there, was repeated, . . . that's what makes his presence at an Arab American event... a greater concern."

The Los Angeles Times ("Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama") reports that in 1998 Obama attended a speech by Edward Said, a leading Palestinian advocate, who called for a "campaign against settlements, against Israeli apartheid."

Said wrote numerous position papers that pilloried America and Israel for its maltreatment of the Palestinian people: "For the American Zionist, therefore, Arabs are not real beings... To submit supinely to a Zionist-controlled Middle East policy... will neither bring stability at home nor equality and justice in the US."

The Atlantic ("Obama on Zionism and Hamas") stated that Hamas leader Ahmed Yousef did not aid Barack Obama's cause in May when he endorsed the senator.

"We like Mr. Obama and we hope that he will win the election."

Why? "He has a vision to change America." Of course, Hamas' preference for American presidents may not sit well with some. Yousef described Jimmy Carter as a "noble man" who "did an excellent job as President."

Israel National News ("Arab-American Activist Says Obama Hiding Anti-Israel Stance") states that Ali Abunimah -- a Palestinian activist who runs the website Electronic Intifada -- says he knows Obama well and met him during many pro-Palestinian meetings. Abunimah said he knew his state senator for many years and that Obama "used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time." At a 2004 dinner gathering, Abunimah said, Obama greeted him warmly and said privately that he needed to speak cautiously about the Middle East: "that he was sorry he wasn't talking more about the Palestinian cause, but that his primary campaign had constrained what he could say."

Investor's Business Daily ("Barack Obama - Magna Cum Saudi?"): New York's Inside City Hall recently featured an interview with Percy Sutton, a one-time candidate for mayor of New York. Sutton stated that an associate, Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, asked him to write a letter of reference for Barack Obama who was applying for admittance to Harvard Law School. Sutton said al-Mansour "is the principal adviser to one of the world's richest men. He told me about Obama." al-Mansour reportedly represented Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a nephew of Saudi King Abdullah.

The question that comes to mind is: why?

ABC News reports that Minister Louis Farrakhan recently endorsed Barack Obama as president. "I like him very much. I like him, he has a fresh approach," the Nation of Islam's leader said. "And I'm fearful, because there's a structure in our government that no matter who sits in the seat of power, there are forces that one has to contend with if one is able to attract the masses of their votes... If avoiding me would help him to become president, I'd be glad to stay in the background, because of the taint that's on the minister." Said taint includes accusing whites of being devils created by an evil scientist, describing Judaism as a gutter religion and referring to the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler as "wickedly great."

The Chicago Reader ("What Makes Obama Run?") notes that Obama was a key figure in Farrakhan's Million Man March. Biography states that Obama and Al Sharpton were among the prominent leaders who participated. Jeremiah Wright, who CBS said was "for over two decades a sort of intellectual father figure" to Obama, also "helped organize the 1995 Million Man March on Washington" with Farrakhan.

Wright, of course, was the controversial and divisive preacher of Trinity United Church during Obama's long association with the man and the church.

The New Republic ("The Agitator - Barack Obama's unlikely political education") noted that Wright's background is unique for a preacher. Wright is, in fact, a former Muslim and current black nationalist who instilled in Trinity a guiding principle called the "Black Value System" -- included a "Disavowal of the Pursuit of 'Middleclassness.'" Among Wright's bizarre actions: reprinting an op-ed by Mousa Abu Marzook, a leader in the terrorist group Hamas. Hamas' charter is straightforward: it calls "for the death of all Jews." Marzook was deported in 1997 when Federal Judge Kevin Duffy wrote "Abu Marzook engaged in and intended to further the aims of [a terrorist] conspiracy by his membership in and support of the Hamas organization... [and] probable cause exists that Abu Marzook knew of Hamas's plan to carry out violent, murderous attacks, that he selected the leadership and supplied the money to enable the attacks to take place, and that such attacks were, therefore, a foreseeable consequence of the conspiracy."

* * *
MSNBC ("Obama under fire for comment on Palestinians") states that Iowa Democrats were troubled after a 2007 campaign stop in which Obama stated that "nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people." His campaign later recanted, saying the statement had been misinterpreted.

The Washington Post ("Obama Backs Away From Comment on Divided Jerusalem") reported that Obama acknowledged that the status of Jerusalem would need to be negotiated, reversing a statement made days earlier to AIPAC that the city "must remain undivided." After Palestinian leaders complained, Obama "quickly backtracked yesterday in an interview with CNN."

* * *
Jim Hoft offers the best summary I've read.

Anyone who believes that Barack Obama, who spent 20 years in a Jew-hating church, with a Jew-hating pastor, and hung around Jew haters, is going to be a friend of Israel is a fool.

Corsi rebuts Obama's 'Unfit for Publication'

'Attack piece' targeting 'The Obama Nation' reveals campaign doesn't want people to read it

"Unfit for Publication" - The Cover

The cover of the 41-page Obama rebuttal to "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality" is entitled "Unfit for Publication." The cover appears to be an imitation of the cover for "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out against John Kerry," which I co-authored in 2004. A seal on the cover proclaims, "Brought to You by: Bush/Cheney Attack Machine."

The mocking tenor of the cover characterizes the Obama rebuttal not as a piece of serious scholarly or legal analysis of "The Obama Nation," but as a political attack piece. What proof is there that "The Obama Nation" is a product of the "Bush/Cheney Smear Machine"? What proof is there that a Bush/Cheney "smear machine" even exists? Even more fundamentally, what do we mean by a "Bush/Cheney smear machine" in the first place, since the term is asserted but never defined.

A quick examination of my prior book entitled "The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger of Mexico and Canada" (Jerome R. Corsi, The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada (Los Angeles, CA, WND Books, Published by World Ahead Media, 2007) involved a sharp criticism of the Bush/Cheney Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP. That book argued the Bush administration was leading the U.S. on a similar path to that taken in Europe over the now more than 50 years since 1957, where trade agreements led to the formation of a regional government complete with a regional currency.

By placing "Unfit for Publication" as the title of the mock-book, does the Obama rebuttal mean to suggest an Obama administration might have a censorship department in which a book critical of a President Obama might be banned from publication? Then, the bottom bar on the cover reads, "An Investigative Report on the Lies in Jerome Corsi's 'Obama Nation.'" This statement presumes as true I have lied in writing "The Obama Nation," when whether or not I have lied remains to be proved by the body of the document.

In other words, the point of writing a legitimate rebuttal would be to prove that I have lied in writing "The Obama Nation," not simply to assert so. As we shall see, asserting as true that what is not yet proved is only one of the many glaring logical errors made in the Obama rebuttal. "Unfit for Publication" is so defective on logic, argumentation and evidence we wonder if the Obama campaign ever reviewed the piece before the Obama operatives rushed it into print.

Finally, a bar from Time Magazine proclaiming "The Obama Nation" is "Trash" and "Poisonous Crap" is insulting, but not proof. Placing this bar on the mock-cover's upper right corner only emphasizes that "Unfit for Publication" is a political attack piece aimed at a book the Obama campaign would prefer no one would read.

First Page of "Unfit for Publication"

The first page of "Unfit for Publication" is titled "Setting the Record Straight on the Lies in Jerome Corsi's 'The Obama Nation.'" Again, we repeat the logical error here is to assert with out proof that there are lies in "The Obama Nation."

The political bias of this page is apparent. My name is introduced as "bigoted fringe author Jerome Corsi," an intentionally derogatory statement that is asserted without proof. Launching such abuse on critics would be beneath the dignity of most presidential political campaigns at the highest level, but hurling insults seems the modus operandi of the Obama campaign in their reaction to "The Obama Nation." The first page next asserts "claims" never made in "The Obama Nation."

"The Obamas never gave a million dollars to a Kenyan politician," the first page asserts. Yet "The Obama Nation" never made this claim. "The Obama Nation" notes a memorandum is circulating in Kenya that "Friends of Senator BO" gave approximately $1 million to the presidential campaign of Raila Odinga, but "The Obama Nation" noted the authenticity of that document is still in question.

The first page asserts "Obama has no secret plan to destroy the military." Again, "The Obama Nation" made no such claim. "The Obama Nation" claimed instead that an Obama presidency would leave the United States a militarily weakened nation.

Following a heading in bold print entitled, "The author: a discredited, fringe bigot," the Obama rebuttal mocks as a "conspiratorial view" that "He [Corsi] believes that President Bush is trying to merge the United states (sic) with Mexico and Canada." As I documented in my last book, "The Late Great USA," the SPP created 20 bureaucratic trilateral working groups dedicated to "integrating and harmonizing" a wide range of U.S. administrative laws and regulations with Mexico and Canada. Does the Obama campaign deny the existence of the SPP working groups as documented on the government's own website at www.spp.gov.?

The Obama campaign would also be well advised to consult Christopher Booker and Richard North's 2003 book entitled "The Great Deception," (Christopher Booker and Richard North, The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union (London and New York, Continuum, 2003) in which they argue an elite in Europe executed an agenda never fully disclosed to the European people, with the aim of creating an European Union out of a series of economic agreements beginning with the coal and steel agreement reached in 1957. The argument of North American integration has historical precedent in Europe and is not an argument that rational thinkers can dismiss without debate.

Next, the Obama rebuttal asserts, "He [Corsi] believes that there is a literally unending supply of oil beneath the ground." This is not a necessary corollary of the abiotic theory of the origin of oil which I argue in my book co-authored with Craig Smith, entitled "Black Gold Stranglehold." (Jerome R. Corsi and Craig R. Smith, Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil (Nashville: WND Books, an Imprint of Cumberland House Publishing, Inc., 2005) As we demonstrated in this book, the Russian-Ukrainian theory of abiotic oil has predominated in the Russia and the Ukraine since the end of World War II. Russia is now the world's second largest producer of oil, despite U.S. geologists driven by the organic theory of the origin of oil telling the Soviet Union at the end of WWII that the country's potential for finding oil was minimal. The book predicted correctly oil would hit $100 a barrel and that new deep-earth finds of oil would be made, such as the discoveries recently made in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil. Even if oil is made on a continuing basis by chemical processes occurring in the mantle of the earth, that alone would not necessarily imply the supply of oil is "unending."

Then, the Obama rebuttal claims, "And in perhaps the gravest sign that his views can't be trusted, he [Corsi] alleges a government cover-up of the 9/11 attacks and denies that airplanes were to blame for the towers' collapse." The Obama campaign can find nothing I have ever published to substantiate those claims. I did publish, however, an article in WorldNetDaily on Feb. 29, 2008, that examined a test conducted at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The video accompanying my article showed a F4 jet vaporizing on impact with a 700-ton concrete block. (Jerome R. Corsi, "Sept. 11 redux: Video shows jet vaporizing," WorldNetDaily, Feb. 29, 2008.) The test was conducted to demonstrate whether a proposed Japanese nuclear power plant could withstand the impact of a heavy airliner. As I noted in the article, the video of the F-4 being pulverized on impact with a hardened target provides evidence to answer 9/11 skeptics who question why so little identifiable airplane debris remained after the hijacked American Airlines Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon.

Let me state categorically here that I continue to support the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission that the cause of the 9/11 attacks were the hijackers who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I see no credible evidence that the U.S. government was involved or complicit in causing the 9/11 attacks.

Next, the front page references comments I wrote anonymously on FreeRepublic.com. I have repeatedly apologized for these comments and stated the comments did not reflect my true beliefs then or now. Yet, the Obama rebuttal reports these comments as if the campaign found them for the first time in 2008, neglecting the extensive vetting of the comments that has occurred since they were first discovered in 2004.

As noted before, "Unfit for Publication" is an attack piece that makes no claim of fairness or even accuracy in asserting their one-sided presentation of half truths. Finally, even if the arguments of "The Late Great USA" and "Black Gold Stranglehold" were false, that alone would not prove false what is written in "The Obama Nation." Logically, the argument that statements made in "The Obama Nation" are "lies" is not proven by reference to other works, including books I have written on totally unrelated topics. Nor are the "lies" proven by reference to my unrelated and now disavowed comments on FreeRepublic.com. Proving "lies" in "The Obama Nation" demands proving the statements cited by the Obama rebuttal from "The Obama Nation" itself are false, without reference to any of my other writings.

More here

Election `08: Coming down to Authenticity?

Bill Whittle, writing at NRO, nails it; he explains why the left is having so much trouble "getting" Palin. And why, when CNN uses the spectacularly unsympathetic son-tasing "poor fired trooper" to hurt Palin, it backfires on them. The elites don't understand how much every part of her story resonates with us in one way or another.

She is so absolutely, remarkably, spectacularly ordinary. I think the magic of Sarah Palin speaks to a belief that so many of us share: the sense that we personally know five people in our immediate circle who would make a better president than the menagerie of candidates the major parties routinely offer. Sarah Palin has erupted from this collective American Dream - the idea that, given nothing but classic American values like hard work, integrity, and tough-minded optimism you can actually do what happens in the movies: become Leader of the Free World, the President of the United States of America. (Or, well, you know, vice president.)

The thing is, Palin knows she is ordinary. She knows that her story is quite a lot of "our" stories, and she knows that we know she's authentic. There is something really healthy in all of that. Contrast it with this 1998 audio of Sen. Obama suggesting that his salvation is wrapped up in our "collective" salvation.

".my individual salvation is not going to come about without a collective salvation for the country. Unfortunately I think that recognition requires that we make sacrifices, and this country has not always been willing to make the sacrifices necessary to bring about a new day and a new age."

Obama may be taken out of context, so I don't want to overdo, but in listening to Obama, here, what I'm getting is a sense of man who is looking to satisfy something inside himself, and his satisfaction (or validation) cannot be found within, so he is looking externally - and taking action externally - to bring it about. He needs to "save" the whole country, to "save" himself.

People do this all the time on a small scale, but to want do it on a large scale - a "world-changing" scale, complete with grandiose pageantry - suggests an appetite that cannot be sated in "ordinary" and "authentic" ways. And that is a little troubling. Most Americans will tell you they don't need Barack Obama to help them with their salvation, thank you, very much; much less "the whole country."

I don't want to be unfair. This audio is ten years old. But nothing Sen. Obama is saying today - and I'm talking about his alarming "service" program that is not getting much scrutiny in the press, and his wife's warning that "Barack is going to make you work." - sounds markedly different.

Yesterday, a Obama-supporter asked me, why I responded more positively to McCain's invitation to volunteerism over Obama's. A fair question. The difference, I think, is the understanding of the words "service" and "volunteerism."

I used to volunteer at a local hospital, working with patients recovering from brain accidents, and also at a local Alzheimer's facility. I did that because I wanted to, I was not compelled to do it (except, perhaps by the Holy Spirit). Because it was truly voluntary, it was real, authentic service. When McCain said, "nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself," I understood what he was saying.

But the thing is, you have to want to do it. You have to be serving with a willing heart, with a "servants heart" as Palin would say, otherwise, it is not "service" to something "greater than yourself" but mere "working." And if the cause "greater than yourself" is some socialist ideal, well, history has not shown that equalizing endeavor to be a bearer of great happiness.

More here

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . For readers in China or for when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-08T00:03:00.000+11:30

Obama believes he can do miracles

The ignoramus thinks he can come up with a law that will keep guns out of the hands of criminals! He mustn't know that the States have been legislating to achieve that for decades -- without success. How come he doesn't know that? Too busy writing multiple autobiographies about his non-achievements, I guess. He really is an empty vessel

Barack Obama wanted to talk about the economy Friday as he campaigned in Pennsylvania, especially in light of that morning's government report showing unemployment increasing to 6.1% in August. But at least one person wanted to talk instead about gun rights -- an issue Obama can't seem to avoid in the Keystone State. It was an issue that plagued him during the primaries because of his comment about "bitter" small-town Americans who "cling" to guns.

And campaigning Friday near Scranton, the Democrat was asked whether -- as some foes keep insisting -- he would take guns away if elected president. The Times' Noam Levey was on the scene at a factory in Duryea, and he reported that Obama fiercely denied any such intention, and then explained his position:

"Here's what I believe: that the 2nd Amendment is an individual right and it means something; that people have a right to bear arms." But Obama had some choice words for the National Rifle Assn., which plans to unleash a major ad campaign opposing him this fall: "Their general attitude is . . . if you even breathe the word gun control or gun safety, then you must want to take away everybody's guns. Well, that's just not true.

"But what we have to understand is that there are two realities about guns in this country. There's the reality of people who are lawfully and safely using guns for hunting and skeet shooting and protecting their families. And you've got illegal handguns being dumped in Philadelphia, in the hands of teenage gang-bangers and drug dealers who are wreaking havoc and killing people. And surely we can come up with a system that protects lawful gun owners but at the same time tries to do something about kids getting shot."

Many have thought so in the past. But so far, as Obama well knows, that's proved a challenge.

Source

Dear Mr Obama

An important message for the empty vessel below:

Nobody is saying they are unpatriotic...

The modern-day Left only pretend at patriotism. They just have not got that instinct of respect for their country and its symbols

Actions do speak louder than words. Democrats tossed 12,000 American flags in the garbage following their convention. This sort of thing takes the breath away. How much do you have to hate America to do such a thing? Have they never heard of the fine people of the VFW and American Legion who proudly help dispose of worn and otherwise useless flags with dignity? David Harsanyi of the Denver Post caught wind of the story:

This morning, Republicans tell me that a worker at Invesco Field in Denver saved thousands of unused flags from the Democratic National Convention that were headed for the garbage. Guerrilla campaigning. They will use these flags at their own event today in Colorado Springs with John McCain and Sarah Palin.

(Lots of pics of the trashed flags here)

As well they should. All Americans need to understand the kind of people running the Democratic Party.

The callous, disrespectful disposal of some 12,000 handheld American flags left behind at Invesco Field following the Barackopolis speech is being skillfully manipulated by the McCain campaign, which rescued them before they could be dumped at a landfill and is now in the process of redistributing them to attendees at a McCain/Palin rally in Colorado Springs.

There are federal rules for the disposal of flags, rules which do not include hauling 12,000 of them off to a landfill in plastic garbage bags. But then, isn't that just so Liberal, waving thousands of flags for the network cameras then tossing them as soon as the lights go down?

One thing to be alert for here is how Barack Obama will respond to this colossal blunder. If history is any guide, Obama will try to divert responsibility to his staff, but then wasn't it Barry who just this week has been reminding the world that he is the executive responsible for running his giant campaign organization?

Update: The Democrats' response, and more, via Fox News:

"The vendor supposedly found trash bags full of flags in and near garbage bins, and turned them over to the McCain campaign. "Boy Scouts were sorting through 84 bags of flags in Colorado on Saturday, before a McCain supporter had veterans distribute them to the audience. "Damon Jones, spokesman for the Democratic National Convention Committee, released a statement saying McCain should applaud the fact that thousands of American flags were 'proudly waved' at their convention. "'But instead his supporters wrongfully took leftover bundles of our flags from the stadium to play out a cheap political stunt calling into question our patriotism,' he said."

Right. To paraphrase Monty Python: Those flags weren't in garbage bags because they were garbage. They were just resting..."

Source

Obama behind in funding

His decision to refuse Federal funding now looks as foolish as his VP pick. When has he made a good decision?

In three posts here, here, and here, I raised questions about the fundraising totals reported by the Obama campaign for June and July, pointing out that IMO, while the numbers were impressive, they were not enough to fund the vast campaign apparatus they were creating. I argued that McCain acceptance of public financing, which would be available to him the first day of the general election campaign - today - combined with the fundraising advantage the RNC had over the DNC, would put McCain in a seriously advantageous position at the start of the campaign.

This Bloomberg article today says the McCain campaign, with its $84 million in public financing, along with the RNC and its $120 million in cash, start the general election cycle with $200 million, and hopes to raise another $100 million before election day - hopes that were buoyed by the enthusiastic embrace of Palin as the VP pick. That gives the GOP side $300 million to spend over the next 60 days, only $100 million of which it needs to raise during that time. That is a spending clip of $150 million a month.

Obama, on the other hand, reported having $68 million in cash at the beginning of August, having raised $52 million in contributions in July. But he spent $57 million in July so he actually had less money in August than he had in June. It's certain he enjoyed a bump in his fundraising in August connected to the Convention, but he would have had increased expenses as well - and his campaign has been burning through large amounts of cash on a large organization for months. So let's give him a generous $75 million in donations in August and $65 million in expenditures. That would leave him with about $80 million in cash to start the general election campaign.

Though the DNC did better in its fundraising in July than it had all year, it still lagged far behind the GOP in money-on-hand, reporting only about $28.5 million in cash-on-hand to start August. Assuming it also raised big money at the Democratic convention - yet with big expenses to go along with staging it - let's say the DNC has twice as much cash at the end of August as it had at the beginning - $60 million.

Combining Obama's $80 million with the DNC's $60 million, they would be $60 million behind the McCain/RNC total of $200 million - a 30% funding disadvantage. If Obama hope to merely match the McCain/RNC spending over the next 60 days, he needs to raise $160 million in that time frame - $80 million a month. But even if he matched the GOP, a much larger share of his expenses merely goes toward feeding the campaign monster they have created and not for things like GOTV and paid advertising.

McCain and the GOP will have much more flexibility because less of their money will be tied up in hard costs of running a campaign - office space, staff salaries, equipment leases, automobiles, etc. Unless a candidate shuts down those kinds of campaign operations, the money budgeted for those expenses can't be quickly shifted to other priorities.

And I wonder just how effective Obama will be able to raise money in the context of a Fall campaign, where a candidate on a campaign plane might make 6-8 campaign stops in any given day, mostly at smaller events in towns dotted across the maps of Virginia, Penn, Ohio, Michigan, Wisc, Minn, Iowa, Missouri, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. It's not like the Spring primary where only 2-3 states needed to be tended to at a time with elections spread out over several weeks, leaving lots of time to attend fundraisers at night and on the weekends.

In one of Obama's first decisions as the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party, he drank his own Kool-Aid and decided that his fundraising well was bottomless. That may be the decision that, in the end, gets him beat.

Source

Obama's training program described as 'Big Brother'

Critic says plan would herd 'American youth into government-funded re-education camps'

The tax-funded Chicago organization cited as a probable model for programs to integrate youth into the social and political world under an Obama tenure in the White House is the epitome of "Big Brother" that shovels impressionable youth through a course of brainwashing, according to critics. The organization is called Public Allies and Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of directors in 1992. He later resigned and his wife became executive director of the group.

According to an editorial in Investor's Business Daily, Obama plans to use the non-profit, which is funded partly by the federal government and is featured on Obama's campaign website, as the model for a national service corps, called the "Universal Voluntary Public Service."

WND reported earlier when Obama asserted in a Colorado Springs speech that the U.S. needs a "civilian national security force" that would be as powerful, strong and well-funded as the half-trillion dollar Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force. In the July 2 speech in Colorado Springs, Obama insisted the U.S. "cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set." He continued, "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

"Big Brother had nothing on the Obamas," said IBD. "They plan to herd American youth into government-funded re-education camps where they'll be brainwashed into thinking America is a racist, oppressive place in need of 'social change.'" The organization itself doesn't seem that alarming. It describes itself as serving communities "while developing better leaders for tomorrow." Young adults are placed in "community leadership" posts with various agencies and given weekly "training." They get $1,800 plus health and child care.

But IBD warns the real mission is something else. That, the editorial said, "is to radicalize American youth and use them to bring about 'social change' through threats, pressure, tensions and confrontation - the tactics used by the father of community organizing, Saul 'The Red' Alinsky."

Dr. Jerome Corsi, a WND columnist and the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-seller "The Obama Nation," agreed. He said the overall intent of the program is much the same as the goals of William Ayers, an Obama acquaintance who spent the 1970s and 1980s as an unrepentant radical, during his various programs regarding public education. "Remember, Obama has followed Saul Alinsky's ultimate advice," Corsi explained. "Saul Alinsky said radicals like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman could not organize a picnic. Alinsky told his radicals to cut their hair, buy business suits and run for public office," he said.

"Ayers and Obama are both aimed at producing radical socialist change from within - working today to radicalize our institutions, instead of bombing them. Alinsky considered this approach to be much smarter because it was more likely to produce lasting 'change' and less likely to produce a backlash. In other words, the Alinsky-trained radical could apply more easily the Machiavellian technique of lying by denying they were pursuing radical goals if they appeared to be members in good standing of the establishment they were trying merely to 'change,'" he said.

IBD cited statistics from Public Allies itself, in which it boasted, "our alumni are more than twice as likely as 18-34 year olds to . engage in protest activities." The organization explains it already has dispatched 2,200 community organizers to agitate for "justice" and "equality" in Chicago, Cincinnati, Los Angeles and other cities. "I get to practice being an activist," and get paid for it, Cincinnati recruit Amy Vincent said, according to IBD.

The organization boasts more than two-thirds of its recruits are "people of color," and 15 percent of "LGBT." When they're not out protesting, IBD said, "they're staffing AIDS clinics, handing out condoms, bailing criminals out of jail and helping illegal aliens and the homeless obtain food stamps and other welfare." The Allies' own website confirms it has volunteers working for Planned Parenthood, LGBT centers and Boys & Girls Clubs.

Obama has encouraged individuals to shun the "money culture." "If you commit to serving your community," he pledged in Denver while accepting the Democratic nomination for president, "we will make sure you can afford a college education."

The IBD said the sales pitch is finding supportive listeners among today's youth. "I may spend the rest of my life trying to create social movement," it quotes Brian Coovert, of the Cincinnati Allies chapter saying. "There is always going to be work to do. Until we have a perfect country, I'll have a job."

IBD said taxpayers already fund half of Public Allies' expenses through President Clinton's AmeriCorps, and Obama wants to fully fund it and expand it into a national program that some see costing $500 billion.

The organization notes that it is a non-partisan organization so it does not endorse candidates. However, it has a lengthy description of the involvement by the Obamas with the organization. "Under Michelle's leadership, Public Allies Chicago pioneered many elements of Public Allies' program model. To identify and develop the next generation of Chicago leaders, she recruited young people from housing projects and youth centers as well colleges and universities. Her emphasis on indigenous leadership and belief that all people have potential to lead became a core value of our leadership philosophy. When she left, Public Allies Chicago had a cash reserve, a committed board, a talented young staff, and a network of diverse, talented young leaders in Chicago who continue to serve the community today. Michelle was also a pioneer in the social entrepreneur movement -leaders who create new approaches and organizations to provide new solutions to social problems," the organization said.

"Michelle was an amazing leader and role model for all of us. As a very young staff in the early years, we all emulated Michelle's incredible combination of professionalism, compassion, critical thinking and commitment to her community. For all of her immense talents, she was also one of the most down-to-earth, inclusive, and authentic leaders I've ever worked with. She really did believe that everyone could contribute to their communities and that leaders come from all backgrounds and all parts of the community. The Chicago program she pioneered really created the template we all work from today. We are proud of our colleague and wish her well," wrote Paul Schmitz, CEO of Public Allies.

Source

Obama finally realizes that he needs Hillary

It seems only yesterday that Hillary Clinton was battling against Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. But when she hits the campaign trail in Florida tomorrow Clinton's target will be Sarah Palin, a new threat to her ambition to be the first woman elected to the White House. Clinton lost no time, attacking Palin moments after John McCain delivered his presidential acceptance speech in St Paul, Minnesota, last week. Reporters' BlackBerrys buzzed with her verdict. "No way, no how, no McCain-Palin," she said.

Officially, Clinton will not go head-to-head with Palin, a self-proclaimed hockey mom and "pitbull in lipstick". The Obama camp wants to keep the focus on McCain's supposed continuation of the Bush years and his skimpy policies for reviving the economy and improving healthcare, rather than on his running mate.

Nor does Clinton want to appear ungenerous to the Republicans' first female vice-presidential candidate, even if she does resent Palin's startling emergence. A Clinton insider, said: "We're not going to be anybody's attack dog against Sarah Palin." The New York senator, 60, knows, however, that Palin represents the biggest obstacle to Democratic victory in November.

A prominent Democratic strategist, Tad Devine, said: "The strategic imperative right now is to do something about Palin and prevent her cutting through the race. She is practising the same slash and burn politics of division of the Bush years. Hillary Clinton can make the charge that Governor Palin represents the far right."

Palin has taken aim squarely at the 18m voters who preferred Clinton to Obama during the primary campaign. It is a delicate mission for the New York senator to persuade them, after all her harsh words, that Obama is the right candidate for president.

But attacking Palin represents an even more slippery challenge for Obama. At a fundraiser where diners paid $30,800 (œ17,400) per plate at the house of the rock star Jon Bon Jovi on Friday - not the best place to compete with a frontier woman - he said: "We won't be bullied, we're not going to be smeared, we're not going to be lied about. I don't believe in coming second." For that he needs Clinton's help more than he ever thought possible. Just before Palin's selection, David Plouffe, Obama's astute campaign manager, looked at the electoral map of America and declared the national polls less important than the 18 battleground states where Obama had the ground troops, enthusiasm and money to win.

Palin's emergence has upset those calculations and forced the Obama campaign for the first time to reexamine its extraordinarily successful campaign tactics. Obama now has a great need to drive up voter turnout among black people and the young, while staunching defections to McCain from blue-collar workers and women. Clinton has been asked to concentrate on the working-class districts of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, where Palin will be competing fiercely for votes, and Florida, where women and Jewish voters may reject the Alaska governor's Christian, conservative, anti-abortion message.

Clinton, who has lived through the women's movement, intends to frame the race in terms of a double-barrelled McCain-Palin threat to issues that women care about such as the right to an abortion, equal pay and universal healthcare, according to the Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. As such, she will be joining the roster of prominent women deployed by Obama to such good effect against Clinton herself during the primary campaign. Politicians such as Kathleen Sebelius, the governor of Kansas, Claire McCaskill, the Missouri senator, and Janet Napolitano, the governor of Arizona, have made the case that women could in good conscience vote for Obama rather than Clinton.

Now they are using the same tactics against Palin. Sebelius regards herself as every bit as authentically all-American as the governor of Alaska. "I live in the American heartland. I don't know of any mayor in any small town in Kansas who hires a lobbyist and goes after earmarks [congressional funding for projects] the way Sarah Palin did," she said. If Clinton is uncertain about going for Palin's jugular, she may like to recall the words of a woman delegate at the Republican convention who described Palin as "more of a woman than Hillary and more of a man than Hillary".

If Clinton fails to stop her now, she could get trampled.

Source

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . For readers in China or for when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-07T00:59:00.000+11:30

Obama: "We're Not Going to be Bullied"

Oh for Christ's sake call a waaahmbulance already, Buttercup. How is this sissy going to stand up to someone a bit more menacing than Sarah Palin?

"We're not going to be bullied, we're not going to be smeared, we're not going to be lied about," Obama said. "I don't believe in coming in second."

Don't worry, Princess. You'll be coming in third, Joe Biden in fourth.

He said this while attending a fundraiser hosted by long-haired ex-prettyboy Bon Jovi, incidentally. Then they went out shopping for "outfits."

He's smeared her in the most vile ways through his surrogates, and claimed she was a fluffybrained muffinheaded chillbilly bumpkin beauty queen from "Wasilly" Alaska, and now he's up there resolutely swearing he won't let a 110 pound woman "bully" him?

What are you afraid she's going to do to you, Stacy? Adorable you to death? Oh, and by the way, Candace, you are going to be bullied:

Slublog comments: "This guy has to have the most acute martyr complex I've ever witnessed. And to answer with bluster and faux bravado? He's about as tough as a whimpering puppy." Indeed.*

The endless caterauling and whiiiining and poor-me-ing. Oh Mommy MSM, please save me from the bad lady. God have mercy, sack up if you've got a sack at all. Hat tip to Allah for "chillbilly."

* Well, the second-most acute martyr complex at least, after Shrieking Sullivan.

Incidentally, I have to say something. It's mean, but it's dead on. If you are familiar with Sullivan's oevure, you know he only has three modes of emotion, and they're readily apparent in his writing.

1) gushing infatuation and crush-diary excess,

2) deranged, nearly psychopathic anger and viciousness when either he or the current object of his borderline personality disorder fixation is threatened;

3) dark, dark blues of deep depression, when his posts become brief, shrill, disbelieving, and sounding notes of despairing futility.

He had been in Mode 2 earlier in the week. Since Palin spoke, he's trying to rally some Mode 2, but mostly he's in Mode 3.

Source (See the original for links)

Why Obama's `Community Organizer' Days Are a Joke

By Michelle Malkin

Rudy Giuliani had me in stitches during his red-meat keynote address at the GOP convention. I laughed out loud when Giuliani laughed out loud while noting Barack Obama's deep experience as a "community organizer." I laughed again when VP nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin cracked: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a `community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Team Obama was not amused. (Neither were the snarky left-wingers on cable TV who are now allergic to sarcasm.) They don't get why we snicker when Obama dons his Community Organizer cape.

Apparently, the jibes rendered Obama's advisers sleepless. In a crack-of-dawn e-mail to Obama's followers hours after Giuliani and Palin spoke, campaign manager David Plouffe attempted to gin up faux outrage (and, more importantly, donations) by claiming grave offense on the part of community organizers everywhere.

Fumed Plouffe: "Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed. Let's clarify something for them right now. Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies."

Let me clarify something. Nobody is mocking community organizers in church basements and community centers across the country working to improve their neighbors' lives. What deserves ridicule is the notion that Obama's brief stint as a South Side rabble-rouser for tax-subsidized, partisan nonprofits qualifies as executive experience you can believe in.

What deserves derision is "community organizing" that relies on a community of homeless people and ex-cons to organize for the purpose of registering dead people to vote, shaking down corporations and using the race card as a bludgeon.

As I've reported previously, Obama's community organizing days involved training grievance-mongers from the far-left ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). The ACORN mob is infamous for its bully tactics (which they dub "direct actions"); Obama supporters have recounted his role in organizing an ambush on a government planning meeting about a landfill project opposed by Chicago's minority lobbies.

With benefactors like Obama in office, ACORN has milked nearly four decades of government subsidies to prop up chapters that promote the welfare state and undermine the free market, as well as some that have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and voter fraud. Since I last detailed ACORN's illicit activities in this column in June (see "The ACORN Obama knows," June 19, 2008), the group continues to garner scrutiny from law enforcement:

Last week, Milwaukee's top election official announced plans to seek criminal investigations of 37 ACORN employees accused of offering gifts to sign up voters (including prepaid gas cards and restaurant cards) or falsifying driver's license numbers, Social Security numbers or other information on voter registration cards.

Last month, a New Mexico TV station reported on the child rapists, drug offenders and forgery convicts on ACORN's payroll. In July, Pennsylvania investigators asked the public for help in locating a fugitive named Luis R. Torres-Serrano, who is accused "of submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registration forms he collected on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now to county election officials." Also in July, a massive, nearly $1 million embezzlement scheme by top ACORN officials was exposed.

ACORN's political arm endorsed Obama in February and has ramped up efforts to register voters across the country. In the meantime, completely ignored by the mainstream commentariat and clean-election crusaders, the Obama campaign admitted failing to report $800,000 in campaign payments to ACORN. They were disguised as payments to a front group called "Citizen Services, Inc." for "advance work."

Jim Terry, an official from the Consumer Rights League, a watchdog group that monitors ACORN, noted: "ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain. Now it looks like ACORN is using the same type of convoluted accounting scheme for Obama's political gain." With a wave of his magic wand, Obama amended his FEC forms to change the "advance work" to "get-out-the-vote" work.

Now, don't you dare challenge his commitment to following tax and election laws. And don't you even think of entertaining the possibility that The One exploited a nonprofit supposedly focused on helping low-income people for political gain.

He was just "organizing" his "community." Guffaw.

Source

In his own words

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama on being a community organizer: "Organizing is always a lost cause." After 2 years of community organizing, young Obama had enough of it, he told fellow Chicago community organizer, Jerry Kellman, according to John Judis of the New Republic:

But Obama was also worried about something else. He told Kellman that he feared community organizing would never allow him "to make major changes in poverty or discrimination." To do that, he said, "you either had to be an elected official or be influential with elected officials." In other words, Obama believed that his chosen profession was getting him nowhere, or at least not far enough. Personally, he might end up like his father; politically, he would fail to improve the lot of those he was trying to help.

Let me repeat that: "You either had to be an elected official or be influential with elected officials." You know, like a councilman. Or a mayor. Or a governor.

Being a community organizer was, um, well as Obama described it .

"We didn't yet have the power to change state welfare policy, or create local jobs, or bring substantially more money into the schools. But what we could do was begin to improve basic services at Altgeld - get the toilets fixed, the heaters working, the windows repaired."

So as a community organizer in 1987, he helped schedule the plumbers. Obama: Plumber's helper. Change. Hope. Flush.

Source

Phony racism charges by Obama supporters

We read:

A day after Sarah Palin's big night, I was standing outside the hotel when I witnessed the impact of her barbed speech at the Republican convention. A waitress who had hours earlier cheerfully served me breakfast came through the rear door and ran up to the first woman she saw wearing a McCain/Palin pin and gushed. "It was wonderful," she exclaimed. "I got so excited I had to put down my beer."

Given the way this election is heading, McCain risks being overshadowed by his running mate. And that would be a bad thing. I may not agree with the Republican nominee's policies, but I've never doubted for one minute that he is an honorable man. After hearing Palin speak, I'm afraid she's going to take McCain someplace he doesn't really want to go.

During her debut, Palin electrified the Republicans, but she also shook up every registered voter in the 'hood. Besides mocking the historic breakthrough of Barack Obama emerging as the Democrats' nominee, Palin was relentless in her use of language that reinforces divisions among black and white voters -- particularly pitting small-town people against the rest of us. That's unfortunate, especially since McCain has tried to reach out to black leadership despite Obama's solid hold on the black vote....

Let me get this straight. The Obama campaign attacks Palin because of her experience as mayor of a small town. She responds with a mildly sarcastic comparison to Obama's old job, and some hyper sensitive people who evidently are black suggest that is racism. These guys don't sound as tough as most people and crying wolf or racist when it clearly is not is going to lose credibility and make their candidate look like a wimp.

The fact is that she got a good rejoinder in to comments by the Obama team denigrating her resume. She did whine about people being mean to her or call them names. She made fun of them to devastating effect and some of Obama's friends are insulting our intelligence by suggesting the comment was racist.

It is time for these people to grow up and quit blaming every disappointment on racism. It is holding them back from achieving their true potential. There is a debate going on and both sides get to put their point of view before the voters and let them choose. Don't try to shut down the debate. Join it. Would these people respect this kind of whining on the basketball court?

Source

Breaking News: New Intelligence Discovered

Last night, September 4, on CNN's Larry King Live Show, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo announced a startling scientific discovery that is sure to capture the attention of anthropologists and biological scientists around the world. The announcement came as the talk show personality interviewed a panel of independent political commentators summarizing their observations at the close of the Republican Convention.

The experts included: Robert Gibbs, Senior Advisor, Obama Campaign; Sen. Evan Bayh (D), Indiana; Mayor Gavin Newsom (D), San Francisco; Terry McAuliffe, Former Chair of the Clinton Campaign; Michael Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee and former governor of Massachusetts; Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor, Huffingtonpost; Katrina Vanden Huevel, editor of The Nation; and, of course, Mario Cuomo, Former Governor of New York, who broke the startling news. Former President Jimmy Carter was not on the panel. Without any warning of what was to come, Cuomo said,

He's many things, McCain, but he is not change. He's been around a long time. He's been a hero a long time. God bless him. He's done a lot of wonderful things. But he is not change.

Obama is. He's a new kind of intelligence. He's young and bright. He has a different attitude toward the world, a more cosmopolitan attitude. He's all the things we need. Most of all, those 80 percent of American people are right. We need change. These people are not change. Whatever else they are, they're not change.

This astonishing revelation of "a new kind of intelligence" was apparently substantiated by Vanden Huevel, who added,

But I think we need to move beyond 9/11. John McCain seems uniquely ill qualified. We need somebody who needs to understand, as the Rand Corporation, a bipartisan group, said a few weeks ago, to talk about the war on terror is counterproductive. We need smart intelligence, policing, diplomacy. And John McCain is someone who is militaristic. That is his first instinct, by temperament, by career, by personal history.

Although Governor Cuomo did not provide a descriptive adjective to the newly discovered intelligence, like Artificial Intelligence or Emotional Intelligence, Ms. Vanden Huevel seemed to suggest that is was "Smart" Intelligence. This discovery has not been confirmed by any reputable researcher or scientist. Developing.

Source

Weedy dreams

A letter from a Leftist:

This man will be a great leader. Who is this quiet gentleman? This man who came from ashes and dust, from the bowels of the universe to bring hope, dignity and respect back to our country.

Who is this man, who with one single stroke gave us a chance to become a zillion times better, to try to reach where we have never reached before as a nation?

Who is this man with the controlled voice of dignity? Who is this man who paved the right path for us to follow? Who is this man who was given the ability to inspire and teach about truth and justice, freedom and peace for all?

Who is this man that is larger then life and possesses an even smaller sense of self? Who is this man who can believe that we can, as a nation, bring back family values, morals and faith in God, country and flag?

Who is this man who can stand for freedom for all and not just a few? Who is this man who sees no color, race or creed? Who is this man who keeps his promise, gives his word and stands by what he says?

Who is this man who is so humble in self and so poised to act with no thought to his safety? Who is this man, who helped so many in need when he had so little to give as a younger man? Who is this man who has divined the future as a golden rule not to be broken? Who is this man who comforts, cares and is riddled with kindness?

Who is this man? He is the epitome of all who truly believe. He is the man whom I was taught about, heard about as a young girl, a teenager, a young adult, an adult and as a senior citizen.

His name is the Great Spirit, the golden eagle, who will soar us to unimaginable heights. His name is presidential candidate Obama.

Barbara Weed

Source

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . For readers in China or for when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-06T00:03:00.001+11:30

Who Vetted Obama?

The Washington Post reported that John McCain's vetting process for picking Governor Sarah Palin included an FBI background check. Other reports dispute this. But when did the FBI investigate Obama? Who vetted him? We are living witnesses to an incredible media double standard, whereby a Republican vice-presidential candidate's personal life is being torn apart, while the Democratic presidential candidate continues to get a free ride. Obama has a 30-year history of associating with unsavory characters, beginning with communist Frank Marshall Davis and continuing with Jeremiah Wright and communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, which should disqualify him from getting a security clearance in the government that he wants to run.

But the media would rather talk about Republicans and sex. The leftist DailyKos website started digging into Palin's past and claimed that her fifth child wasn't really hers. The charge fell apart when pictures surfaced of the governor pregnant with the child. Nevertheless, the media, which have been so quick to ignore questions about Obama's background, joined in the inquiry into Palin's private family matters and forced the governor to disclose that one of their daughters is pregnant out of wedlock. This is what passes for investigative reporting these days.

A daughter's pregnancy, of course, has nothing to do with whether Palin is fit for the job of vice-president or even president and is entitled to a security clearance. But one's associations with communists who hate the United States might emerge as a cause for concern.

It is worth noting that the DailyKos site is the same site that a liberal blogger named Lee Stranahan says banned his comments about Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards needing to answer reports that he had had an extramarital affair. Those reports, which came from the "tabloid" National Enquirer and not from any "respectable" major media outlet, turned out to be true.

It also turns out that the DailyKos got the leak from the Obama campaign of the candidate's alleged birth certificate, an announcement intended to put to rest all of the questions about whether Obama is a natural-born citizen and passes the basic constitutional requirement to be president. Is the document real? I have not seen any investigative reporters from the major media assigned to this story. Instead, they're sniffing around Palin's family, which is something they had no desire to do while John Edwards was cheating on his cancer-stricken wife.

In contrast to the Palin story, which will probably continue for weeks, the Obama birth certificate controversy has been left alone by the major media. They have simply assumed?because they favor his candidacy?that Obama, with a history of being moved from country to country under different names, is a legitimate U.S. citizen. A lawsuit has been filed challenging Obama's qualifications to be president and some bloggers say the birth certificate is a fraud. But it's not an issue for the major media. They would rather examine photos of Bristol Palin's tummy.

An FBI investigation of Obama might get at the truth about the Democratic candidate. But an FBI background check is something that the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party has not been forced to undergo. How many people even know that? But whether the FBI investigated Palin is now becoming a controversy.

In contrast to the focus on Palin and her family, the Post on August 24 ran a 10,000-word piece about Barack Obama's growing-up years in Hawaii that completely ignored the role of his acknowledged mentor, communist Frank Marshall Davis. There was not one word devoted to an identified communist, who also stands accused of drug use, alcohol abuse, and child molesting, being in intimate contact with the Democratic presidential nominee for about nine years of his young life.

The author of that Post story, David Maraniss, told us that he didn't think Frank Marshall Davis was worth even one mention in that 10,000-word story. He even said that Obama's own book was incorrect in ascribing a significant role to Davis in mentoring the candidate. As the facts show, Davis became Obama's father-figure when his real father abandoned the family. The mystery is why Obama only referred to Davis as "Frank" in his book and concealed his true identity. But the Post doesn't want its readers to know anything about it. But we do have a right to know that Bristol Palin is pregnant.

It will be coming out that Obama's mentor, Davis, was the subject of an FBI investigation for 19 years and that his FBI file is 600 pages long. Davis was included in the FBI's "security index," meaning that he could be arrested and detained in the event of a national security emergency. But the young person he sent off to college, who would admittedly attend socialist conferences and pick Marxist professors as his friends, doesn't have to undergo an FBI background check and will run the FBI should he become president.

In contrast to the coverage of Palin, the major media have not highlighted that, for all of his "experience" in foreign affairs, Senator Joseph Biden, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, is an exposed and admitted plagiarist. I have watched countless hours of coverage of the campaign on the cable and broadcast networks and haven't seen one detailed story about Biden's history of plagiarism. But can you imagine the outcry if it came out that Palin, who graduated from college in journalism and became a sportscaster, had been caught plagiarizing?

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is already claiming to have found a skeleton in Palin's closet. An Obama spokesman, Mark Bubriski, charged that Palin once supported Pat Buchanan for president because she was spotted years ago wearing a Pat Buchanan button. And since Buchanan has been charged by some with being a "Nazi sympathizer," that means that Palin is tainted and has to explain herself. Buchanan, a commentator on MSNBC and columnist, has exposed this as nonsense. But he is not the main target, of course. It is Palin and McCain. It is a campaign dirty trick designed to smear the Republican ticket and hurt its chances with Jewish voters. Assuming that this is a legitimate topic, when will Obama explain his association with a Moscow-line Communist for nine years of his life? And his failure to come clean about that relationship in his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father? This seems to be more serious than wearing a button.

For the record, it is reported that Palin actually supported Steve Forbes and wore the Buchanan button as a courtesy to the candidate when he visited Alaska. In a related development, pro-Israel bloggers claim to have seen photos and video of an Israeli flag on Palin's left lapel and an Israeli flag in her office. So it would appear that she is a supporter of Israel, the exact opposite of what the Obama campaign was trying to imply. Now that this is out of the way, how will Obama explain Davis? Or will he ever be asked to?

For its part, the Washington Post has assigned at least two reporters to dig up dirt on Palin. One controversy is that Palin is under investigation for trying to fire a state trooper who threatened members of her family. On two straight days, August 30 and 31, Post reporters James V. Grimaldi and Kimberly Kindy authored articles about whether this trooper should have been fired or not, and what role Palin played in the controversy.

Since trying to fire a trooper who threatened your family doesn't strike most people as improper or illegal, the Post now seems to be taking a new direction. The Tuesday paper carries a page one story about how, when Palin was mayor of a town in Alaska, she sought federal grants. Tomorrow it will be something else.

McCain has a blogger, Michael Goldfarb, who is supposed to be an attack dog when it comes to media misdeeds. He calls a report by Elisabeth Bumiller of the Times "fiction" and offers her a link to the McCain press line. This is said to be tough stuff from the McCain campaign. They obviously don't understand what they're up against.

Source

Obama Questioned by Invitation-Only Crowd

(New Philadelphia, Ohio) Yesterday, 300 selectees attended an invitation-only Obama campaign rally at Kent State University - Tuscarawas. Here's an excerpt from the news report.

Gabrielle Neavin, 24, a single mother and student at Kent State's Tuscarawas campus, introduced Obama, saying she works multiple jobs, has significant credit-card debt and worries about quality child care. ''I believe this man, Barack Obama, has an understanding of my struggles,'' Neavin said. ''I've heard he has a plan to help women like me.''

Generally, women who have children out of wedlock are destined for lives of need. Couple that with irresponsible use of credit and you've got a situation that is entirely based on behavior. It's ludicrous to expect the President of the United States to provide a fix for irresponsible behavior other than simple nanny-state giveaways which don't actually address the real problem.

By the way, one wonders how many new supporters will result from Obama's invitation-only event. I'm guessing the list of invitees contained nothing but Obama supporters.

Nevertheless, Obama followed Neavin by talking about how he was going to help her. Taxes will be cut, tuition credit will be made available for community service and affordable health care will be provided. And, two million jobs will be created in Ohio through rebuilding roads and bridges. Of course, he said nothing about personal responsibility for negligent behavior. Not did he mention how he could marry a tax cut with massive giveaways. Then, there's this.

Obama said the country is spending $10 billion a month in Iraq. ''I think we should spend that money here -- in New Pennsylvania,'' he said, misstating the name of the city where he was speaking.

I take that to mean he wants to deprive the military for the sake of New Philadelphia. When Obama is with the military, he pledges his rock-solid support. When he is away from the military, he pledges to pilfer its resources.

Frankly, I don't think anyone should trust anything that Obama says. If you really want to know what the guy thinks, you have to look at his long-time associates because, generally speaking, he's flavor-of-the-day in what he says.

Source (See the original for links)

Obama Had Close Ties to Top Saudi Adviser at Early Age

New evidence has emerged that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was closely associated as early as age 25 to a key adviser to a Saudi billionaire who had mentored the founding members of the Black Panthers. In a videotaped interview this year on New York's all news cable channel NY1, a prominent African-American businessman and political figure made the curious disclosures about Obama. Percy Sutton, the former borough president of Manhattan, off-handedly revealed the unusual circumstances about his first encounter with the young Obama.

"I was introduced to (Obama) by a friend who was raising money for him," Sutton told NY1 city hall reporter Dominic Carter. "The friend's name is Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas," Sutton said. "He is the principal adviser to one of the world's richest men. He told me about Obama."

Sutton, the founder of Inner City Broadcasting, said al-Mansour contacted him to ask a favor: Would Sutton write a letter in support of Obama's application to Harvard Law School? "He wrote to me about him," Sutton recalled. "And his introduction was there is a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few friends up there because you used to go up there to speak. Would you please write a letter in support of him?"

Sutton said he acted on his friend al-Mansour's advice. "I wrote a letter of support of him to my friends at Harvard, saying to them I thought there was a genius that was going to be available and I certainly hoped they would treat him kindly," Sutton told NY1. Sutton did not say why al-Mansour was helping Obama, how he discovered him, or from whom he was raising money on Obama's behalf. A Sutton aide told Newsmax that Sutton, 88, is ailing and is unlikely to do additional TV interviews in the near future. The aide could not provide additional comment for this story.

As it turned out, Obama did attend Harvard Law School after graduating from Columbia University in New York and doing a stint as a community organizer in Chicago. The New York Times described how transformative his Harvard experience became for the young Obama: "He arrived there as an unknown, Afro-wearing community organizer who had spent years searching for his identity; by the time he left, he had his first national news media exposure, a book contract and a shot of confidence from running the most powerful legal journal in the country."

The details of Obama's academic performance are well known: At Harvard, Obama rose to academic distinction becoming the editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduating magna cum laude. Less known are the reasons al-Mansour, an activist African-American Muslim, would be a key backer for a young man from Hawaii seeking to attend the most Ivy of the Ivy League law schools.

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax from his home in San Antonio, Texas, al-Mansour said he would not comment specifically on the statement by Percy Sutton because he was afraid anything he said would get "distorted." "I was determined I was never going to be in that situation," he said. "Bloggers are saying this is the new Rev. Wright - in drag! - and he is a nationalist, racist, and worse than Rev. Wright. So any statement that I made would only further this activity which is not in the interest of Barack."

But in the lengthy interview, al-Mansour confirmed that he frequently spoke on university campuses, including Columbia, where Percy Sutton suggested he met Obama in the late 1980s, and confirmed his close relationship with Prince Alwaleed. "I am not surprised to learn about this," said Niger Innis, spokesman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). "It is clear that Barack Obama's ties to the left are familial, generational, and have lasted for several years." Innis is scheduled to address the Republican Convention in St. Paul, Minn at 7:43 PM Eastern time on Thursday.

Although many Americans have never heard of Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour (his full name), he is well known within the black community as a lawyer, an orthodox Muslim, a black nationalist, an author, an international deal-maker, an educator, and an outspoken enemy of Israel. A graduate of Howard University with a law degree from the University of California, al-Mansour sits on numerous corporate boards, including the Saudi African Bank and Chicago-based LaGray Chemical Co. LaGray, which was formed to do business in Africa, counts former Nigerian President General Abdusalam Abubakar on its advisory board.

He also sits on the board of the non-profit African Leadership Academy, along with top McCain for President adviser Carly Fiorina, and organized a tribute to the President of Ghana at the Clinton White House in 1995, along with pop star Michael Jackson. But his writings and books are packed with anti-American rhetoric reminiscent of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's disgraced former pastor. In a 1995 book, "The Lost Books of Africa Rediscovered," he alleged that the United States was plotting genocide against black Americans.....

Much more here

Fiorina presser: Democrats for McCain

Earlier today, I attended a press conference held by Carly Fiorina to introduce the Citizens for McCain Coalition, a group of Democrats and independents who plan to vote for John McCain in November. Six prominent Democrats joined Fiorina for the conference, including a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, two elected Democrats, and a former Clinton-era ambassador to OPEC. One by one, they explained how the campaign of Barack Obama disillusioned them and drove them to support McCain.

* Ambassador Mark Erwin

* John Coale, former fundraiser for both Clintons

* Silver Salazar, Hispanic community leader in Colorado

* Brian Golden, former state representative from Boston and an Iraq War veteran

*Jennifer Lee, a Hillary Clinton campaign worker from California

* Cynthia Ruccia, women's rights activist and former Congressional candidate from Ohio.

This was an interesting concept, and it certainly could help the McCain campaign with centrists and independents, but the reasons these people have crossed the aisle won't necessarily thrilll the base. Most of them talked about the untested nature of Barack Obama, and how unhappy Coale, Lee, and Ruccia were specifically about the sexism of the Obama campaign and the Democrats in general.

While those topics won't give the base any problems at all, the rest of the reasons might. Most of them praised McCain's moderation, and one or two specifically mentioned immigration as a reason. On the other hand, Ambassador Erwin gave a great response to my question at the end about foreign policy and how Obama is hopelessly naive. It'll make a great soundbite.

More here

Trust Obama With State Secrets?

In view of the media uproar over whether GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was properly vetted, Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid has called on the media to investigate why Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama was given a high-level intelligence briefing on Tuesday without an FBI investigation of his mysterious and controversial background.

In fact, Kincaid writes that, "Because of his 30-year association with people who hate the United States, including communist Frank Marshall Davis, anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright, and communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, it is highly doubtful that Obama could get a security clearance in the U.S. government he wants to lead." But none of this seems to matter to the liberal media, he notes. Instead, Kincaid says the major media are fixated on such issues as Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and her husband's driving record.

Kincaid's column, "Bush Gives State Secrets to Obama," available today on the AIM website at www.aim.org, criticizes the Bush White House for giving Obama access to classified information without safeguards being put in place to prevent its release into the hands of foreign and hostile interests. "We are witnessing an incredibly strange situation in which Obama can avoid a background check and get access to national security information, but the people he appoints to high-level government positions?if he becomes president?may be subject to an FBI probe," Kincaid reports.

Kincaid argues that "simple common sense dictates that America's state secrets should not be given away willy-nilly to a security risk who just happens to be running for president and captured the nomination of a major political party."

Source

Biden Was Wrong On the Cold War

The choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has electrified many conservatives and strengthened John McCain's claim that his administration would be far more reform-minded than Barack Obama's. At the same time, it has triggered accusations that Gov. Palin is far too inexperienced to be vice president, and has little knowledge of national security issues.

Mrs. Palin's lack of mastery of national security issues is often contrasted with Mr. Obama's vice presidential pick, Joseph Biden Jr. Mr. Biden has served in the Senate since 1973, is currently chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and is often described as a "statesman." In fact, decade after decade and on important issue after important issue, Mr. Biden's judgment has been deeply flawed.

In the 1970s, Mr. Biden opposed giving aid to the South Vietnamese government in its war against the North. Congress's cut-off of funds contributed to the fall of an American ally, helped communism advance, and led to mass death throughout the region. Mr. Biden also advocated defense cuts so massive that both Edmund Muskie and Walter Mondale, both leading liberal Democrats at the time, opposed them.

In the early 1980s, the U.S. was engaged in a debate over funding the Contras, a group of Nicaraguan freedom fighters attempting to overthrow the Communist regime of Daniel Ortega. Mr. Biden was a leading opponent of President Ronald Reagan's efforts to fund the Contras. He also opposed Reagan's efforts to send military assistance to the pro-American government in El Salvador, which at the time was battling the FMLN, a Soviet-supported Marxist group.

Throughout his career, Mr. Biden has consistently opposed modernization of our strategic nuclear forces. He was a fierce opponent of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. Mr. Biden voted against funding SDI, saying, "The president's continued adherence to [SDI] constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft." Mr. Biden has remained a consistent critic of missile defense and even opposed the U.S. dropping out of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty after the collapse of the Soviet Union (which was the co-signatory to the ABM Treaty) and the end of the Cold War.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and, we later learned, was much closer to attaining a nuclear weapon than we had believed. President George H.W. Bush sought war authorization from Congress. Mr. Biden voted against the first Gulf War, asking: "What vital interests of the United States justify sending Americans to their deaths in the sands of Saudi Arabia?"

In 2006, after having voted three years earlier to authorize President George W. Bush's war to liberate Iraq, Mr. Biden argued for the partition of Iraq, which would have led to its crack-up. Then in 2007, Mr. Biden opposed President Bush's troop surge in Iraq, calling it a "tragic mistake." It turned out to be quite the opposite. Without the surge, the Iraq war would have been lost, giving jihadists their most important victory ever.

On many of the most important and controversial issues of the last four decades, Mr. Biden has built a record based on bad assumptions, misguided analyses and flawed judgments. If he had his way, America would be significantly weaker, allies under siege would routinely be cut loose, and the enemies of the U.S. would be stronger.

There are few members of Congress whose record on national security matters can be judged, with the benefit of hindsight, to be as consistently bad as Joseph Biden's. It's true that Sarah Palin has precious little experience in national security affairs. But in this instance, no record beats a manifestly bad one.

Source

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . For readers in China or for when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-05T00:35:00.000+11:30

Palin mocks Obama in her convention speech

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin claimed her historic spot on the Republican ticket Wednesday night, uncorking a smiling, sarcastic attack on Barack Obama and winning cheers of acceptance and approval after a tumult-filled first week on the national stage. She vowed to help presidential nominee John McCain bring real change to Washington, saying "he's a man who's there to serve his country and not just his party."

McCain joined her on stage, to even bigger cheers, and then the delegates went about the business of formally awarding the nomination he had sought for nearly a decade. At 72, the Arizona senator is the oldest first-time nominee in history.

The 44-year-old Palin, scarcely known a week ago, had top billing on the third night of the convention. The first woman vice presidential candidate in party history, she spoke to uncounted millions of viewers at home in her solo national debut after days of tabloid-like scrutiny of her and her family.

Some of the biggest roars were for her barbs aimed at Democratic presidential nominee Obama. "Victory in Iraq is finally in sight; he wants to forfeit," she said of Obama. "Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America; he's worried that someone won't read them their rights."

To the delight of the delegates, McCain strolled unexpectedly onto the convention stage after the speech and hugged his running mate. "Don't you think we made the right choice" for vice president? he said as his delegates roared their approval. It was an unspoken reference to the convention-week controversy that has greeted her, including the disclosure that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter was pregnant. The packed convention hall exploded in cheers as McCain stood with Palin and her family - including mother-to-be Bristol and the father, 18-year-old Levi Johnston.

She had top billing at the convention on a night delegates also lined up for a noisy roll call of the states to deliver their presidential nomination to McCain. Palin drew cheers from the moment she stepped onto the convention stage, hundreds of camera flashes reflecting off her glasses. If McCain and his campaign's high command had any doubt about her ability at the convention podium, they needn't have. With her youthful experience as a sportscaster and time spent in the governor's office, her timing was flawless, her appeal to the crowd obvious. "Our family has the same ups and downs as any other, the same challenges and the same joys," she said as the audience signaled its understanding.

In her solo debut on the national stage, she traced her career from the local PTA to the governor's office, casting herself as a maverick in the McCain mold, and seemed to delight in poking fun at her critics and her ticketmate's political rivals. Since taking office as governor, she said she had taken on the oil industry, brought the state budget into surplus and vetoed nearly one-half billion dollars in wasteful spending. "I thought we could muddle through without the governor's personal chef - although I've got to admit that sometimes my kids sure miss her."

Not surprisingly, her best-received lines were barbs at Obama. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities," she said, a reference to Obama's stint as a community organizer. "I might add that in small towns we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't," she said. That was a reference to Obama's springtime observation about some frustrated working-class Americans.

By contrast, she said of McCain: "Take the maverick out of the Senate. Put him in the White House. "He's a man who's there to serve his country, and not just his party." "In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers," she said in another cutting reference to Obama's campaign theme. "And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change."

A parade of party luminaries preceded Palin to the convention podium, and Republicans packing the hall cheered every attack on Obama. "He's never run a city, never run a state, never run a business, never run a military unit. He's never had to lead people in crisis," said former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani of McCain's rival. "This is not a personal attack ... it's a statement of fact - Barack Obama has never led anything. Nothing. Nada."

Palin also jabbed at the news media, which have raised convention week questions about her background and her family. "Here's little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country."

McCain arrived in the Republican National Convention city earlier in the day to accept the prize of a political lifetime. Instantly, defended his choice of a running mate, saying she was ready to serve as commander in chief after less than two years as governor of Alaska. "Oh, absolutely," he said in an ABC interview. "Having been the governor of our largest state, the commander of their National Guard, she was once in charge of their natural resources assets actually, until she found out there was corruption and she quit. ..."

McCain's remarks dovetailed with an effort by his campaign to depict Palin's critics as out to destroy the first female running mate in party history. While she readied the speech of her career, McCain's top strategist, Steve Schmidt, complained about a "faux media scandal," generated, he said, by "the old boys' network that has come to dominate the news establishment."

Little is known nationally of her views, although a video surfaced during the day of a speech she made at her church in June in which she said U.S. troops had been sent to Iraq "on a task that is from God." .....

While McCain himself appeals to independents, strategists said they hoped Palin's presence on the ticket would gain a second look from conservative Democrats who sided with New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton during her failed candidacy earlier in the year.

Source

Juan Williams Asks the Impossible

by Steven D. Laib

As is the case with the vast majority of modern Democrats Senator Obama is counting on the vote of racial minorities to get himself elected. He does this in the tried and true manner of a telling these voters that they need him to lift them out of their underprivileged position and that he will provide them with government handouts to do so. Because of this, he cannot truly address race as a candidate of unity

The opinion page of the Wall Street Journal for August 28, 2008 headlined a piece by Juan Williams, a respected figure in the world of political reporting and analysis. The piece was entitled "Obama Needs to Take a Stand on Race and Other Issues." I agree with Mr. Williams that it would be great if Senator Obama did so, however this is asking the impossible. Senator Obama cannot do so without shattering the image he has so carefully crafted from day one of his political ambitions; an image that exists because virtually no one is willing to look behind it to see the real man; a man who is not interested in the vast majority of what he speaks about. In short a man who is seeking personal power and prestige for its own sake, and who would throw the entire nation "under the bus" to get it.

In the middle of the first column appears a squib in large type: "The senator has been too evasive for us to judge the content of his character." This is largely correct. Senator Obama does not want us to judge the content of his character because if we did so we would discern the truth; that he is just another corrupt politician from Chicago who will do anything to get what he wants; a man with excellent achievements in the college classroom, but little or nothing else. However, this has not stunted his ego. Unlike the Mayors Daley, Chicago isn't big enough for him; he needs not only the whole state of Illinois and every other state as well to satisfy his ego.

But more to the point, as is the case with the vast majority of modern Democrats he is counting on the vote of racial minorities to get himself elected. He does this in the tried and true manner of a telling these voters that they need him to lift them out of their underprivileged position and that he will provide them with government handouts to do so. All the while he knows that this will breed more dependence on handouts for the next generation of candidates; dependence they will use as bait for more votes from people who have not yet realized that they have enslaved themselves to a political party that sees them only as a tool to stay in office; a captive electorate that votes for them as if there was no choice.

Juan Williams addresses two of the issues squarely: Failing public schools and "Affirmative Action" that is irrelevant to minorities who achieve, but which has failed to eliminate the 25% poverty rate in the Black population. But if the schools weren't failing then it would eliminate the inner city islands of poverty that Senator Obama and others like him depend on for votes. Further, to do so would require taking on the teacher's unions whose management cares little for the students and more about the power their unholy alliance with a political party has created. While 90% of the teachers probably do care about their students, those teacher's sensibilities can be damned where political power is concerned.

As for the poverty level, again, the unspoken liberal viewpoint is that they need to maintain it in order to maintain their power base. Otherwise, armed with the knowledge that they can take matters into their own hands, these "urban poor" might rise up, engage in hard work, learn what it takes to be successful, and horror of horrors, discover that it isn't found in the pages of a government handout program.

Senator Obama is caught in a dilemma. He can either call out African-American and Liberal politicians for their failings to truly address issues that they should, or he can pursue his own desire for political power. If he speaks the truth he will forfeit the backing of liberal politics. He will also likely lose the backing of the African-American power structure that feeds on its own while claiming that it seeks to liberate them. He can tell the members of the inner city culture that they are their own worst enemies when they depend on government handouts instead of on their own abilities, or he can be elected to office.

For one so wedded to a desire for personal power, there is only one choice and Mr. Obama will take it. He will hide his involvement in corrupt Chicago politics as much as possible. He will pose as the candidate of racial unity, all the while knowing that in order for him to be elected he must continue the policies of disunity symbolized by Jeremiah Wright.

A related concept that Juan Williams and others have mentioned on many occasions is "racial justice;" something that is supposed to figure prominently in this election. However justice does not demand that someone be given something they have not earned. Rather, it demands that people be given their proper due. As Patrick Buchanan put it, "No candidate has ever been nominated by a major party with fewer credentials or a weaker claim to the presidency." I rarely agree with Buchanan. Here I must. Hilary Clinton was right when she said that Obama only had a speech he made in 2002. Racial justice and justice in and of itself demands that the first Black President of the United States be someone who has truly distinguished himself and has the knowledge, experience and capability to be Commander in Chief.

It is not enough to say that it would be good for our children to see an African-American in the office of president. We must show them that he has earned the job and that he is capable of doing it once he is elected. Otherwise we risk teaching them that having a particular ancestry or skin color entitles them to preferences. Finally, racial justice, or any other concept of justice will not be served by putting a man in the oval office that will fail miserably in the job and make America a laughing stock or worse.

Source

A Tale of Two Resumes: Barack Obama versus Sarah Palin

by Dean Barnett

Having spent over a decade as a headhunter for lawyers in another life, I've seen many resumes. And every resume tells a story. The stories told by Barack Obama's and Sarah Palin's resumes could hardly be more different for two people of roughly the same age and aspirations.

WHAT STORY DOES Barack Obama's resume tell? Obama became the head of the Harvard Law Review in 1990 and graduated Harvard Law magna cum laude in 1991. These accomplishments suggest great intelligence and strong interpersonal skills. They also suggest limitless potential.

So what did Obama choose to do with his limitless potential after leaving Harvard? Not much. His first two years out of law school, he began writing a book, commenced lecturing at the University of Chicago Law School and returned to his old vocation of community organizing. Obama's resume would probably advertise the fact that he eschewed big money options to better serve humanity in these various capacities. Many members of the legal community would view these claims of selflessness with skepticism. Some cynical readers of his resume would infer that he spent the time "trying to find himself," and perhaps think of the old Bill Cosby crack that after two years of searching, he should have been able to find not just himself but a couple of other people as well.

All readers of his resume circa 1993 would ask what Obama accomplished at his serial vocations. And there the story gets grim. He didn't finish his book during the two years in

question. He didn't pursue any scholarship at the University of Chicago, so his career there stalled at lecturer and never advanced to the professor level. And as is ever the case with something as nebulous as community organizing, pointing to tangible accomplishments would be impossible.

Thus begins a pattern of under-achievement, or more specifically non-achievement, that has followed Obama since law school. In later years, Obama practiced law for a few years and then he had enough of that. His 1995 book, Dreams From My Father showed much promise, yet Obama didn't further explore his skills in this area until over a decade later with the best forgotten campaign tome, The Audacity of Hope. Similarly, Obama was a part time state legislator of minimal accomplishments. When Obama went to the United States Senate, he impressed his colleagues with his potential. But he again never attempted to tap that potential, beginning a run for president shortly after his arrival in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body.

Unlike Obama, one wouldn't look at the early years in Sarah Palin's resume and necessarily see unlimited potential. A 1987 graduate of the University of Idaho, Palin's greatest accomplishments from her youth would come in the "Miscellaneous Information" portion of the r‚sum‚. The fact that she had won a beauty contest would impress some people. Her sinking of a critical free throw on a broken ankle in her high school state championship would impress others. Still, there would be nothing in Palin's resume from her younger years that would suggest potential like Obama's.

And yet throughout her adult life Palin, again unlike Obama, overachieved. In 1992, she got elected to the Wasilla, AK city council. In 1996 she became mayor. She was by all accounts a very successful mayor. Her r‚sum‚ entry for her mayoral years would have all sorts of bullet points for tangible accomplishments like reducing city property taxes by 40 percent. Similarly, Palin's time as governor has been distinguished. Both would starkly contrast with the various stops in Obama's career where he occasionally held impressive titles but accomplished little.

Two things would leap out from Sarah Palin's resume--a pattern of overachievement and a pattern of actually getting things done. Two things would also leap out from Barack Obama's r‚sum‚--an undeniable wealth of talent and an equally undeniable dearth of accomplishments.

While it has become almost a cliche on the right to belittle Obama as a talker rather than a doer, his resume suggests just that. Obama does have the requisite brain power to be president; it's unlikely that the intellectual demands of the job would overwhelm him. But his past work experience is unnerving. Obama had ample talent to excel at all the other positions he has held, and yet he accomplished little at each. So what would he do as president? Would his efforts in the Oval Office be as indifferent and irresolute as they've been at every other stop along his professional path? Could one imagine him making the political sacrifices and showing the fondness for bold action that characterized Harry S. Truman?

As for Palin, she lacks Obama's glittering Ivy League credentials. While that fact scandalizes vast portions of the Bos-Wash corridor, the scandalized neglect the most common purpose for an education--to develop one's abilities to such a point that one can actually begin accomplishing things. And there again is where Palin shines--she has gotten a tremendous amount done everyplace she has been.

In truth, Sarah Palin is the kind of employee virtually every enterprise seeks--the kind who gets things done. And Barack Obama is the kind of employee a company hires only when it's in the mood for taking a risk and willing to wager that the candidate's past performance isn't predictive of his future efforts.

Source

Obama Is the Anti-Thatcher

The Democratic Party Convention in Denver has been called political theater, but it was really a masquerade ball. Again and again, speakers invoked the language of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan -- stressing the value of hard work and responsibility for self and family -- while advancing a set of pro-union and collectivist economic policies. If today's Democrats had their way, they would put the United States in the same approximate position as pre-Thatcher Britain, when the streets of London were choked with garbage because of a strike by sanitation workers and Britain was known around the world as "the sick man of Europe."

The most overworked word at the Democratic Convention was "work" itself. Barack Obama used the word 35 times in his address. Joe Biden mentioned it 22 times. Both told stories of parents and grandparents who worked their fingers to the bone in realizing the American dream of building a better life. Mr. Biden's speech included a touching vignette about his father, who told him, "Champ, when you get knocked down, get up. Get up."

But the real thrust of the message that Mr. Obama and he gave to the cheering multitudes in Denver was: You are entitled to your job. If you are hit by a foreign competitor who is leaner and hungrier and less coddled than you, get down and stay down, and expect the government to put you back on your feet.

When Mrs. Thatcher became Britain's prime minister in 1979, she assumed leadership of a country that had been devastated by several decades of ruinous economic and social policies. This was due to the same aversion to competition and international trade, and the same misplaced faith in the ability of government to act as the engine of progress and the guarantor of jobs.

In her speech to the Conservative Party in 1981, Mrs. Thatcher said: "We have to earn a living in a world that can choose between the goods that we produce and those of other countries. . . . And here let me say plainly to the trade union leaders: You are often your own worst enemies. Why isn't there more? Because too often restrictive practices rob you of the one thing you have to sell -- your productivity. . . . When two men insist on doing the work of one, there is only half as much for each."

In his speech to the Democratic convention, Mr. Obama said: "I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy -- wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced."

One has to wonder who Mr. Obama thinks he is to suppose he'd be able to make so many correct calls in directing investment flows in one industry after the next while sitting in the White House. But his presumptuousness is not unprecedented. The Labour Party politicians in Britain who came to power at the end of World War II shared the same enthusiasm for government direction and micromanagement of the economy.

Like the Democratic Party of today, the Labour Party of yesteryear was obsessed with the issue of job security and fearful of competition from abroad. However, by the mid 1970s, having seen the country's fortunes decline for three consecutive decades, even the Labour Party could see the futility of its centralized, interventionist approach. Labour's Jim Callaghan, the last prime minister before Mrs. Thatcher, admitted in Parliament: "Let me say that of course there has been a fall in peoples' standard of life. It has fallen this year and will fall again next year."

In revitalizing the British economy, Mrs. Thatcher lightened regulation, reduced trade barriers, privatized a raft of publicly owned companies, lowered taxes (especially for the most highly taxed, which is to say those at higher income levels), and went to battle against the powerful trade-union bosses in order to establish greater democracy within the unions. She outlawed the closed shop and required ballots before strikes and ballots in the election of trade-union leaders.

One thing she did not do was to set a goal of full employment -- insisting that "jobs (in a free society) depend not on government but upon satisfying customers." Contra Mr. Obama, she also stated: "The fact is that in a market economy government does not -- and cannot -- know where jobs will come from: If it did know, all those interventionist policies for 'picking winners' and 'backing success' would not have picked losers and compounded failure."

Due to the success of the United Auto Workers in making unreasonable demands over an extended period of time, what the Iron Lady might drily refer to as "an increase in wages and benefits out of proportion to any increase in output or productivity" has clearly crippled today's domestic U.S. auto makers. An Obama presidency would give a huge and unwarranted boost to union power and privileges.

The misnamed and undemocratic Employee Free Choice Act -- co-sponsored by Mr. Obama and almost certain to pass into law if he becomes president -- would go a long way in extending union power over a far greater number of private-sector companies by taking away the right to a secret ballot in union elections. It would give union organizers the time and opportunity to badger and intimidate workers who refused to sign union cards.

If, under an Obama presidency, the unions succeed in organizing Wal-Mart -- now the biggest target in their sights -- it will have one entirely predictable result: not the protection of jobs but the destruction of jobs by slowing or stopping Wal-Mart's growth. Nor will it help U.S. consumers if Wal-Mart is forced to hang out new signs saying "Everyday High Prices."

Source

Obama Launches Ad Campaign Attacking McCain for Pro-Life Policy

The Obama campaign threw their vehemently pro-abortion stance into relief by investing in radio ads attacking pro-life Sen. McCain for threatening to take away women's "right to choose." The ads feature the voice of a "nurse-practitioner with Planned Parenthood" warning her listeners that McCain will seek to have Roe v. Wade overturned and ban abortion. "I know abortion is one of most difficult decisions a woman will ever make," says the woman's voice. "Let me tell you - if Roe v Wade is overturned, the lives and health of women will be put at risk. That's why this election is so important. John McCain's out of touch with women today. McCain wants to take away our right to choose."

The ad then plays a sound byte from an interview on Meet the Press with John McCain, confirming his support of a constitutional ban on abortion. "We can't let John McCain take away our right to choose," the woman concludes. "We can't let him take us back."

The ad campaign signals a shift in strategy by the Obama campaign, which until now has skirted the abortion issue in favor of other issues of interest to women, such as healthcare and workplace discrimination. According to Politico.com, the campaign decided to change its tone under pressure from women's rights groups who are demanding Obama to clearly identify himself as the pro-abortion candidate. The ads will air in at least seven swing states; readers of Politico reported hearing the ad in Florida, Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and Colorado.

The McCain campaign has made no secret of the Republican presidential nominee's rejection of "abortion rights." His surprise choice of pro-life and pro-family Gov. Sarah Palin for his running mate offered values voters even more reason to trust the Republican leader to champion the rights of the unborn upon election to the White House. Some have even suggested that the Obama ad will help McCain, whose unapologetic stance on the issue is considered a strength by many in the conservative camp.

Meanwhile, Sen. McCain has launched his own ad campaign arguing that Sarah Palin, whom some have deemed under qualified for the vice-presidency, is more qualified for executive office than Obama. The campaign announced: "The McCain campaign will launch a television ad directly comparing Gov. Palin's executive experience as a governor who oversees 24,000 state employees, 14 statewide cabinet agencies and a $10 billion budget to Barack Obama's experience as a one-term junior senator from Illinois."

Source

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-04T00:41:00.000+11:30

A perspective on experience

You couldn't get a job at McDonalds and become district manager after 143 days of experience.

You couldn't become chief of surgery after 143 days of experience of being a surgeon.

You couldn't get a job as a teacher and be the superintendent after 143 days of experience.

You couldn't join the military and become a colonel after a 143 days of experience.

You couldn't get a job as a reporter and become the nightly news anchor after 143 days of experience.

BUT....

'From the time Barack Obama was sworn in as a United State Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a Presidential exploratory committee, he logged 143 days of experience in the Senate.

That's how many days the Senate was actually in session and working.

After 143 days of work experience, Obama believed he was ready to be Commander In Chief, Leader of the Free World, and fill the shoes of Abraham Lincoln,FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan. 143 days?

We all have to start somewhere. The senate is a good start, but after 143 days, that's all it is - a start. We wouldn't accept this in our own line of work, yet some are OK with this for the President of the United States of America? Come on folks, we are not voting for the next American Idol.

The above has been going the rounds on the message boards but I have not checked its origins or anything else about it. There is however no doubt that it is broadly true

How Obama lost the election

By Spengler

Senator Barack Obama's acceptance speech last week seemed vastly different from the stands of this city's Invesco Stadium than it did to the 40 million who saw it on television. Melancholy hung like thick smog over the reserved seats where I sat with Democratic Party staffers. The crowd, of course, cheered mechanically at the tag lines, flourished placards, and even rose for the obligatory wave around the stadium. But its mood was sour. The air carried the acrid smell of defeat, and the crowd took shallow breaths. Even the appearance of R&B great Stevie Wonder failed to get the blood pumping.

The speech itself dragged on for three-quarters of an hour. As David S Broder wrote in the Washington Post: "[Obama's] recital of a long list of domestic promises could have been delivered by any Democratic nominee from Walter Mondale to John Kerry. There was no theme music to the speech and really no phrase or sentence that is likely to linger in the memory of any listener. The thing I never expected did in fact occur: Al Gore, the famously wooden former vice president, gave a more lively and convincing speech than Obama did."

On television, Obama's spectacle might have looked like The Ten Commandments, but inside the stadium it felt like Night of the Living Dead. The longer the candidate spoke, and the more money he promised to spend on alternative energy, preschool education, universal health care, and other components of the Democratic pinata, the lower the party professionals slouched into their seats. The professionals I sat with were Hillary Clinton people, to be sure, and had reason to sulk, for an Obama victory might do them little good in any event.

The Democrats were watching the brightest and most articulate presidential candidate they have fielded since John F Kennedy snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And this was before John McCain, in a maneuver worthy of Admiral Chester Nimitz at the Battle of Midway, turned tables on the Democrats' strategy with the choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Speaking to Obama supporters on the periphery of the big event, I was startled by the rapturous devotion elicited by the junior senator from Illinois. He is no symbol for identity politics, no sacrifice on the altar of white guilt, but the most gifted persuader of individuals that I have encountered in any country's politics, as well as a powerful orator on the grand stage. This is not a crowd phenomenon nor a fad, but the response of hundreds of people to an individual.

I sat in on a session with three leaders of Veterans for Obama, a group of retired young officers who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, courtesy of the New Republic's writer on the scene, David Samuels. With passion and enthusiasm, these young people spoke of their hopes for nation-building in Iraq. The George W Bush administration should have put twice the resources into the beleaguered country, they harangued me - not just soldiers, but agronomists, traffic cops, lawyers, judges, and physicians. The Department of Agriculture should have mobilized, along with the Department of Justice.

Nation-building? Doubling down on the US commitment to Iraq? Isn't that trying to out-Bush the Bush administration, while Obama campaigned on getting out of Iraq and spending the money on programs at home? Unblinking, one of the soldiers said, "That's what we think Barack will do." They believed in a more expensive version of the administration's program, and faulted Bush for half measures - and somehow they believed that Obama really agreed with them, all the public evidence to the contrary. And they believed in Barack with perfect faith.

Gandalf's warnings about the irresistible voice of the wizard Saruman in J R R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings come to mind. If these battle-hardened veterans of America's wars fell so easily under the spell of Obama's voice, who can withstand it? Obama's persuasive powers, though, are strongest when channeled through the empathy of his interlocutor. Everyone believes that Obama feels his pain, shares his dream, and will fight his fight and heal his ills. But that is everyone as an individual. Add all the individuals up into a campaign platform, and it turns into three-quarters of an hour worth of promises that echo all the ghosts of conventions past.

Obama will spend the rest of his life wondering why he rejected the obvious road to victory, that is, choosing Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential nominee. However reluctantly, Clinton would have had to accept. McCain's choice of vice presidential candidate made obvious after the fact what the party professionals felt in their fingertips at the stadium extravaganza yesterday: rejecting Clinton in favor of the colorless, unpopular, tangle-tongued Washington perennial Joe Biden was a statement of weakness. McCain's selection was a statement of strength. America's voters will forgive many things in a politician, including sexual misconduct, but they will not forgive weakness.

That is why McCain will win in November, and by a landslide, barring some unforeseen event. Obama is the most talented and persuasive politician of his generation, the intellectual superior of all his competitors, but a fatally insecure personality. American voters are not intellectual, but they are shrewd, like animals. They can smell insecurity, and the convention stank of it. Obama's prospective defeat is entirely of its own making. No one is more surprised than Republican strategists, who were convinced just weeks ago that a weakening economy ensured a Democratic victory.

Biden, who won 3% of the popular vote in the Democratic presidential primary in his home state of Delaware, and 1% or less in every other contest he entered, is ballot-box poison. Obama evidently chose him to assuage critics who point to his lack of foreign policy credentials. That was a deadly error, for by appearing to concede the critics' claim that he knows little about foreign policy, Obama raised questions about whether he is qualified to be president in the first place. He had a winning alternative, which was to pick Clinton. That would have sent a double message: first, that Obama is tough enough to make the slippery Clintons into his subordinates, and second, that he is generous enough to extend a hand to his toughest adversary in the cause of unity.

Why didn't Obama choose Hillary? The most credible explanation came from veteran columnist Robert Novak May 10, who reports that Michelle Obama vetoed Hillary's candidacy. "The Democratic front-runner's wife did not comment on other rival candidates for the party's nomination, but she has been sniping at Clinton since last summer. According to Obama sources, those public utterances do not reveal the extent of her hostility," Novak wrote. If that is true, then Obama succumbed to the character weakness I described in a February 26 profile of (Obama's women reveal his secret). His peculiar dependency on an assertive and often rancorous spouse, I argued, made him vulnerable, and predicted that Obama "will destroy himself before he destroys the country".

Alternately, Obama might have chosen a rising Democratic star like Virginia's 50-year-old governor Tim Kaine. A weaker choice than Hillary, Kaine (or someone like him) would have made a bold statement of self-confidence. Obama could have said with credibility that he would bring to Washington a new generation of outsiders who would change the old system. Instead, Obama saddled an old and unpopular Washington warhorse.

Curiously, Obama ignored the rising stars of his own party, offering the prime time speaking slots to familiar faces, including Senator Edward Kennedy and Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as his own wife, the first prospective First Lady to take the keynote spot in the history of American party conventions.

McCain doesn't have a tenth of Obama's synaptic fire-power, but he is a nasty old sailor who knows when to come about for a broadside. Given Obama's defensive, even wimpy selection of a running-mate, McCain's choice was obvious. He picked the available candidate most like himself: a maverick with impeccable reform credentials, a risk-seeking commercial fisherwoman and huntress married to a marathon snowmobile racer who carries a steelworkers union card. The Democratic order of battle was to tie McCain to the Bush administration and attack McCain by attacking Bush. With Palin on the ticket, McCain has re-emerged as the maverick he really is.

The young Alaskan governor, to be sure, hasn't any business running for vice president of the United States with her thin resume. McCain and his people know this perfectly well, and that is precisely why they put her on the ticket. If Palin is unqualified to be vice president, all the less so is Obama qualified to be president.

McCain has certified his authenticity for the voters. He's now the outsider, the reformer, the maverick, the war hero running next to the Alaskan amazon with a union steelworker spouse. Obama, who styled himself an agent of change, took his image for granted, and attempted to ensure himself victory by doing the cautious thing. He is trapped in a losing position, and there is nothing he can do to get out of it.

Obama, in short, is long on brains and short on guts. A Shibboleth of American politics holds that different tactics are required to win the party primaries as opposed to the general election, that is, by pandering to fringe groups with disproportionate influence in the primaries. But Obama did not compromise himself with extreme positions. He did not have to, for younger voters who greeted him with near-religious fervor did not require that he take any position other than his promise to change everything. Obama could have allied with the old guard, through an Obama-Clinton ticket, or he could have rejected the old guard by choosing the closest thing the Democrats had to a Sarah Palin. But fear paralyzed him, and he did neither.

In my February 26 profile, I called Obama "the political equivalent of a sociopath", without any derogatory intent. A sociopath seeks the empathy of all around him while empathizing with no one. Obama has an almost magical ability to gain the confidence of those around him. Perhaps it was the adaptation of a bright and sensitive young boy who was abandoned by three parents - his Kenyan father Barack Obama Sr, who left his pregnant young bride; his Indonesian stepfather Lolo Soetero; and by his mother, Ann Dunham, who sent 10-year-old Obama to live with her parents while she pursued her career as an anthropologist.

Combine a child's response to serial abandonment with the perspective of an outsider, and Obama became an alien species against which American politics had no natural defenses. He is a Third World anthropologist profiling Americans, in but not of the American system. No country's politics depends more openly on friendships than America's, yet Obama has not a single real friend, for he rose so fast that all his acquaintances become rungs on the ladder of his ascent. One human relationship crowds the others out of his life, his marriage to Michelle, a strong, assertive and very angry woman.

If Novak's report is accurate, then Michelle's anger will have lost the election for Obama, as Achilles' anger nearly killed the Greek cause in the Trojan War. But the responsibility rests not with Michelle, but with Obama. Obama's failure of nerve at the cusp of his success is consistent with my profile of the candidate, in which I predicted that he would self-destruct. It's happening faster than I expected. As I wrote last February:

It is conceivable that Barack Obama, if elected, will destroy himself before he destroys the country. Hatred is a toxic diet even for someone with as strong a stomach as Obama ... Both Obama and the American public should be very careful of what they wish for. As the horrible example of Obama's father shows, there is nothing worse for an embittered outsider manipulating the system from within than to achieve his goals.

By all rights, the Democrats should win this election. They will lose, I predict, because of the flawed character of their candidate

Source

The Regressive Left

Did anyone notice it took liberals (barely a day) to stoop so low as to question a woman's ability to have a high profile career and still be a good mother?

DO LIBERALS DISCRIMINATE AGAINST MEN IN THE SAME WAY THAT THEY DISCRIMINATE AGAINST WOMEN WHO ARE SUCCESSFUL, because the Republican party and John McCain doesn't! We hope that women who choose to have a career and a family come over to the Rep. party - we respect you and your ability to do both, if you choose to!

We also know Gov. Palin is capable of having a family life and a successful career as the V.P. of the U.S. She's an entirely capable woman - or perhaps that's EXACTLY what Dems. and liberals are afraid of! Obama certainly didn't want Hillary as a running mate!

Did they ever ask how Obama is going to raise his two little girls if anyone voted him into office? Doesn't the Mrs. work? Leave it to the liberals to take it upon themselves to determine how everyone else should live, and if their child care is adequate, and if the person doing the care should or should not be doing it, and if they're doing enough of it or not, and if they are doing it properly or improperly. Of course, they can't "gage" this based on one another and their own "families", because being pro-choice often means they have no children to care for, but regardless, they're more than willing to tell Republicans and conservatives how to parent!

The moment a woman finally, after decades of "woman's suffrage" "breaks the glass ceiling" it's the liberals who are complaining she's not a stay at home mom! They wasted no time in issuing this decree!

Apparently, liberals and the Dem. party's version of "hope and change" is as follows:

Let's get out our washboard ladies, and start scrubbin' because we ain't gunna be able to get outa this place to work where we can get paid somethin' to be somethin more than a mammy to them there little ones! Don't you leave this house now, ya' hear, ta go anywhere where ya' all think ya gunna make somethin' out o youself, now, ya hear! Now come on, ya' all, let's get them there youngins dressed and fed!

How pathetic is the Dem. party when they show their true colors! Beyond words! Who in their right mind would want to be a part of such a regressive group of individuals?

They absolutely can't stand the thought of a successful working woman who is capable in taking the office of the V.P. of the U.S.A.... because she's a CONSERVATIVE woman!!

The irony is beyond believable, considering that if it was a liberal who was faced with a pregnancy, particularly knowing it was a child with a disability, they would likely, with Obama's support, either have rid themselves of that child via abortion or have the baby left him for dead in the hospital utility room if for some reason (God's grace) that child was born-alive, because no one else's rights matter to a liberal as much as their own, not even their own child's right to life!

I guess since Obama supports INFANTICIDE, then his sheepish followers do to.

How completely self-centered are liberals and the Dem. Party and how absolutely WITHOUT hope they are, but yet they have the AUDACITY to feign interest in the well being of Gov. Palin's son, who is named Trig Paxson Van Palin. This is despicable and deplorable, but typical behavior on their part, as usual.
How much do they care about the well being of Gov. Palin's child, and any they might ever almost have had! Well, Gov. Palin's is useful to them if they can use that child to ridicule Gov. Paulin's position as the first woman V.P. of the U.S.A. What absolute LOSERS the LEFT are! And day by day, as they continue their support for abortion, they kill their own, so their party will die, right along with them! They are Godless, hopeless and helpless, and their leader is Obama!

Source

The Failures of Government-Run Healthcare

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, in a rare moment of honesty on what he'd really like to do about health care reform, recently asserted that if we were starting from scratch he would probably choose a single-payer health care system. That's a system in which people pay higher taxes and the government pays most medical bills. Obama's not alone in that opinion. Filmmaker Michael Moore took his "Sicko" audience to England, among other places, where we learned that doctors in that single-payer system made good salaries, had nice homes and cars, and patients were very satisfied.

But anyone who reads the English press will find a different message, including waiting lines, angry patients, rationed and often subquality care. Consider these recent news stories about England's National Health Service (NHS) quoted directly from the British press.

Twice Katie asked for a [Pap] smear test, but was told she was "too young" to need one. Now 24, she is dying from cervical cancer, one of many young women who have fallen victim to a scandalous change in health policy. (London's Daily Mail, June)

A man with terminal cancer has been refused a drug by the NHS that could extend his life - despite offering to pay part of the cost himself. . . . David Swain's offer to meet the monthly $4,000 cost of Erbitux was refused, he said, because the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence [a government body] ruled it was too expensive. (Yorkshire Post, March, emphasis added)

Health service dentists have been forced to go on holiday or spend time on the golf course this month despite millions of patients being denied dental care. . . . Many [dentists] have fulfilled their annual work quotas allotted by the National Health Service and have been turning patients away because they are not paid to do extra work. This is despite the fact that more than 7m[illion] people in Britain are unable to find an NHS dentist. (The Times of London, March)

Does that sound like your idea of a great health care system? The British press - as well as the Canadian press and other countries - regularly runs stories like these about patients who are denied treatment because they are too old, too young, too sick or too costly. Indeed, The Times of London ran a story in 2006 asserting: "Patients are being denied appointments with consultants in a systematic attempt to ration care and save the NHS money, The Times has learnt. . . . Leaked documents passed to The Times show that while ministers promise patients choice, a series of barriers are being erected limiting GPs' [general practitioners] rights to refer people to consultants."

If you want to read these stories and others like them for yourself, just go to the "Health Care Horror Stories" at BigGovhealth.org, which regularly posts the negative press coming from those government-run health care countries (which has to be a full-time job!).

The fact is that every government-run health care system struggles to make ends meet. Money for health care in those systems has to compete with money for other government programs like education, defense and pension programs. That's why other countries spend less on health care. It's not that their systems are better or more efficient; it's because politicians control the funds and have to make trade-offs. That often means the more expensive treatments, the marginal members of society, and even preventive care and screening can get axed.

Yes, many people in those countries are satisfied with their care. And yes, everyone in those countries is "insured" - the apparent goal in the current health care reform debate. But having coverage doesn't count for much if patients can't get quality care in timely manner.

Health care reformers often claim or imply that the U.S. health care system is terrible, while countries like England provide quality care for everyone, and for less money. That's simply not a balanced assessment. U.S. health care is excellent, but it can be very expensive and, a not unrelated fact, too many people are uninsured. But copying other government-controlled systems isn't the solution. They have their problems; we have ours. Let's fix ours problems without importing theirs.

Source

Obama's slippery stand on guns

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign just won't let the gun issue rest. Mr. Obama and his campaign surrogates continue to assure gun owners that he is on their side, and it appears to be paying off. John McCain only leads Mr. Obama among hunters by 14 percentage points, just about half the 27-point lead that President Bush held over John Kerry in 2004. If Mr. McCain had a similar lead, he would be ahead in most polls, particularly in many battle ground states. Yet, despite all the Democratic claims to the contrary, Mr. Obama is undoubtedly the most anti-gun candidate ever nominated by a major party for president.

A couple of weeks ago, Brian Schweitzer, Montana Democratic governor, told national reporters that Mr. Obama "Ain't ever going to take your gun away." An Obama adviser, Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig, said recently on Hugh Hewitt's national radio show that "I think that he has always been an individual rights person on the Second Amendment." Another advisor, Professor Cass Sunstein at Harvard, told Time Magazine in June: "Obama has always expressed a belief that the Second Amendment guarantees a private right to bear arms." The list goes on.

The day the Supreme Court struck down Washington, D.C.'s gun ban, Mr. Obama claimed the court's decision merely ratified his own position. He told Fox News he had "said consistently that I believe that the Second Amendment is an individual right, and that was the essential decision that the Supreme Court came down on." So, has Mr. Obama consistently supported individuals' rights to own guns and opposed the D.C. handgun ban? Last November, Mr. Obama's campaign told the Chicago Tribune that "Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional." After the Illinois senator's statement supporting the Supreme Court striking down the ban, the campaign quickly disowned the Chicago Tribune quote as a staffer's "inartful attempt" to characterize his position.

Yet, Mr. Obama personally voiced support for the D.C. ban at other times. In February, he did this himself, not something that he could blame on a staffer. ABC New's local Washington, D.C. anchor, Leon Harris, asked Mr. Obama: "One other issue that's of great importance here in the district as well is gun control ... but you support the D.C. handgun ban." Mr. Obama's simple response: "Right." When Mr. Harris said "And you've said that it's constitutional," Mr. Obama again says "right" and is clearly seen on tape nodding his head "yes."

But this is not new. Mr. Obama has a long history of supporting city gun bans. The Associated Press described his 2004 vote on a gun control bill: "He also opposed letting people use a self-defense argument if charged with violating local handgun bans by using weapons in their homes. The bill was a reaction to a Chicago-area man who, after shooting an intruder, was charged with a handgun violation."

A candidate questionnaire shows that Mr. Obama supported a ban on handguns in 1996. In 1998, he backed a ban on the sale of all semiautomatic guns (a ban that would encompass the vast majority of guns sold in the U.S.) In 2004, he advocated banning gun sales within five miles of a school or park (essentially a ban on all guns sold in almost all the states). Possibly, even more importantly, he served on the board of the Joyce Foundation, probably the largest private funder of anti-gun and pro-ban groups and research in the country.

The Obama campaign "flatly denied" the 1996 statement supporting a ban on handguns, blaming it instead on a staffer from his state senate race who they said had incorrectly filled out the candidate questionnaire. But the Politico obtained a copy of the statement and found Mr. Obama's own handwritten notes on it indicating that he had personally checked and corrected answers.

His newfound support for gun ownership raises serious questions; not only where he stands on the gun issue, but also how trustworthy he is. With new legal cases being filed against Chicago's gun ban over the last couple of weeks, will some reporter finally ask Mr. Obama why he has not only never spoken out against Chicago's ban, he actively supported it? The release of the new Democratic National Platform's discussion of "what [gun control] works in Chicago" implies Mr. Obama still supports Chicago's gun ban. The platform also wants to take away so-called "assault weapons." Also unclear is what his position means for who he would nominate to the Supreme Court. Mr. Obama's recent comments to Rick Warren, pastor of the evangelical Saddleback Church, showed he opposed nominating those members of the Supreme Court who voted that the Second Amendment is an individual right.

Mr. Obama doesn't even admit that he has changed his position on guns. In a July interview on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," the senator admitted that there has been a "shift in emphasis" on various issues, but on guns he held firm: "There wasn't a shift there." Mr. Obama's campaign can ill afford the opposition that gun owners showed toward John Kerry. Yet, when did Mr. Kerry ever support a ban on handguns or all semi-automatic guns?

Source

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-03T16:15:00.000+11:30

Obama promoting homosexuality, report card reveals

Assessment outlines stark difference in leading candidates' positions

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has a long and established record of promoting homosexuality in contrast to the presumptive GOP candidate, Sen. John McCain., according to a new report card issued by a pro-family organization in California. The report card, which has been posted online, was produced by the Campaign for Children and Families, which said it isn't taking a position on the political candidates but wanted people to see the "unrepudiated positions" of the candidates on issues including homosexual "marriage," teaching homosexuality to school children and adoption by homosexuals.

"Let the record show that John McCain and Barack Obama are polar opposites on partial-birth abortion, parental notification of abortion, marriage protection on the ballot, homosexual indoctrination of schoolchildren, gay adoptions, gun-owner rights, activist judges, and raising taxes," said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families. "No one should base their vote on personality or mere feelings. Our carefully researched report card shows you exactly where Obama and McCain stand on issues of importance to voters, their families, and our nation's future."

Obama in June told a homosexual activist group he opposes the "divisive and discriminatory efforts" to install in the California constitution a definition of marriage limiting that status to one man and one woman, the report card says.

His wife, Michelle, told the Democratic National Commmittee's "Gay" and Lesbian Leadership Council, "Barack has made crystal clear his commitment to ensuring full equality for LGBT couples . that's why he opposes all divisive and discriminatory constitutuional amendments, whether it's a proposed amendment to the California and Florida constitutions or the U.S. Constitution."

McCain has said he supports California's marriage amendment proposal, which voters put on the November ballot. Obama also has supported teaching school children to think favorably about homosexuality, the report card said. During a Democratic presidential debate at Dartmouth last year, former Sen. John Edwards, responding to a question, said he would want children exposed to positive portrayals of homosexuality in the second grade. "You know, I feel very similar to John," Obama said. "That . you know, the fact is my nine-year-old and my six year olds, I think are already aware that there are same-sex couples. And my wife and I have already talked about it." Meanwhile, McCain voted against federal funding for schools that promote homosexuality to school children.

On a third issue, Obama opposes a ban on adoptions based solely on sexual orientation, according to his response to a questionnaire from the Human Rights Campaign. He said in a letter to the Family Equality Council "we have to extend equal treatment in our family and adoption laws" to LGBT families. McCain, who with his wife has an adopted daughter, said, "I don't believe in gay adoption."

The report card reveals additional opposite positions on allowing local governments to ban gun ownership, with Obama supporting a District of Columbia handgun ban that later was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. McCain has affirmed the 2nd Amendment "guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms. And to argue anything else is to reject the clear meaning of our founding fathers."

Obama also has affirmed he would select judges because of their "heart" and "empathy" as well as their ability to have a "broader vision of what America should be." McCain has stated his desire for candidates with "a proven commitment to judicial restraint."

On taxes, the report card said Obama will raise them, while McCain "has pledged to veto any tax increase and says he supports making existing tax cuts permanent."

The two remaining assessments involve abortion, an issue that has enveloped the Obama campaign in recent days as reports have confirmed his statements as a state lawmaker appeared to express concern about the "burden" of offering medical assistance to a baby who survives an abortion. The report card said Obama has opposed government regulation of even partial-birth abortions, while McCain has sponsored a ban on the procedure he described as "odious." Obama also has opposed notifying parents before an abortion can be peformed on their minor daughters, while McCain co-sponsored legislation to prohibit taking minors across state lines to circumvent parental notification laws. "The American people have come together to say that partial-birth abortion offends our national conscience, that taxpayers should not be forced to pay for elective abortions, and that states should be allowed to enact parental notification laws," McCain told the National Right to Life convention in July.

The CCF, a leading California-based organization representing children and families in California and America, says it stands for marriage and family, parental rights, the sanctity of human life, religious freedom and back-to-basics education. The group said it provided the report to document candidates' positions "that matter to families."

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Obama's "lost" Thesis

Barack Obama wrote his senior thesis at Columbia University on Soviet nuclear disarmament. Inquiring people have sought a copy of this thesis to no avail. Columbia says it cannot be found; Barack Obama says he lost it.

How likely is that a person so impressed with himself that he writes an autobiography just a few years later would "lose" his senior thesis? After all, a Presidential Library must be filled. And as Jim Geraghty at National Review and others have noted there are a lot of blank spots -- missing records and the like -- having to do with Barack Obama.

But one question remains. If Barack Obama devoted a year researching and writing about Soviet nuclear disarmament, how could he fail to get the facts down about the Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting in Vienna?

Maybe there are good reasons he wants to bury this thesis. Did he get it wrong there,too? Did he just coast at Columbia on his interesting background and personal charm?

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Obama 'would drag US into depression'

JOHN McCain's White House campaign today dragged rival Barack Obama back to the domestic fray, scorning his economic plan as a recipe to plunge the US into a 1930s-style depression. Top aides to the Republican senator vied to steal the thunder from an illustrious panel of economic advisers being convened by Senator Obama - and recapture some of the headlines after the Democrat's much-acclaimed foreign tour. But with fewer than 100 days now to go before the November 4 election, Senator Obama had opened up a nine-point lead in the latest Gallup poll released yesterday - 49 per cent to 40 for Senator McCain.

Carly Fiorina, a key lieutenant to Senator McCain and former boss of computing giant Hewlett-Packard, said a recession triggered by the 1929 Wall Street crash became a depression through the imposition of higher taxes and trade barriers. "The reality is when an economy is slowing, if you raise taxes and you curtail free trade through isolationist policies, bad economic times become worse," she said. "We know this from history... and that is precisely the proposal that Barack Obama is making," Ms Fiorina said. "And that is why I say as a businesswoman, I hope Barack Obama continues to consult with experts because I think his understanding of the economy leaves a great deal to be desired."

Senator Obama, basking in the afterglow of his triumphant tour of Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East and Europe, was to pivot from that security-themed week to addressing the gathering cloud engulfing the world's largest economy. His high-powered panel of advisers meeting later today includes former treasury secretary Robert Rubin, ex-Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, billionaire investor Warren Buffett and Google chairman Eric Schmidt. Campaign aides said two former top members of President George W. Bush's administration - treasury secretary Paul O'Neill and Securities and Exchange commissioner William Donaldson - were joining the Obama panel. "Participants in today's meeting will discuss how to restore balance to the economy so that entrepreneurship is encouraged and hard work is rewarded," a campaign memo said.

The Democratic senator from Illinois has laid out proposals for middle-class tax cuts while levying higher taxes on the rich, new federal stimulus spending, and additional measures to prop up the stricken housing market. The Obama campaign accuses Senator McCain of fuzzy arithmetic on his own vows to cut taxes across the board, balance the budget and sustain a hefty US military presence in Iraq. And it has ridiculed Senator McCain's admission in December that he knows more about national security than about the economy.

The Arizona senator suffered a setback just over a week ago with the resignation of his own top economic adviser, Phil Gramm, after the former senator had called the US a "nation of whiners" over the economy. "What is driving people all across the country right now are worries and concerns about inability to pay the gas bill, inability to buy food because prices have gone up so high," Senator Obama told NBC television. "We've got to fundamentally shift how we approach economic policy," he said, with polls giving Senator Obama a commanding lead over Senator McCain on the bread-and-butter issues that are now the top concern to US voters.

Despite Senator McCain's calls for a hands-off approach from the government, there is a new appetite for intervention in Congress as voters reel from job losses, home seizures and rocketing fuel prices. The Senate on Sunday approved a housing rescue plan designed to help thousands of homeowners avert foreclosure and bolster mortgage finance giants at risk of collapse. Mr Bush is set to sign the bill into law this week.

Source

Biden Backs US Oil & Islands to Russians

Senator Joseph Biden has supported for many years the giveaway of 8 American Alaskan islands and their oil-rich seabeds to the Russians. Senator Biden on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee favorably received the proposed giveaway maritime boundary treaty that the State Department had secretly negotiated with Russia. The maritime boundary puts eight American islands and their 200-mile exclusive economic zones on the Russian side: Wrangell, Herald, Bennett, Jeannette, and Henrietta Islands in the Arctic Ocean, and Copper Island, Sea Lion Rock, and Sea Otter Rock in the Bering Sea. Congress, the State of Alaska, and the American public were excluded from the negotiations.

Senator Ted Steven of Alaska presented the proposed giveaway treaty at the Senate hearing. Biden chaired the hearing and voted for it. He noted the giveaway feature in his question, ''can you think of any circumstance anywhere in the world where there is a maritime boundary where one of the countries that it is a party to that boundary has sovereign jurisdiction over a piece of land that is on the other side of the maritime boundary?' (Senate Hearing 102-190, 'U.S. Soviet Maritime Boundary Agreement', Treaty Document 101-22, p. 42., June 13, 1991)

Carl Olson, Chairman of State Department Watch, testified at the hearing, presenting numerous resolutions of opposition from the Alaska Legislature, the California Legislature, and many national organizations. 'Fortunately the giveaway treaty has not been put into force, but the underlying State Department giveaway maritime boundary agreement with Russia is being enforced. It could be reversed by a stroke of the pen of the President. Congress should be investigating.' Olson stated.

Source

Biden' convenient "illness"

Not a man but a mouth. And I CAN talk. I DID join the army in the Vietnam era and I DID volunteer for service in Vietnam -- JR

Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden received five student draft deferments during the Vietnam War, the same number of deferments received by Vice President Dick Cheney, and later was disqualified from service because of asthma as a teenager.

Officials with Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's campaign released Biden's Selective Service records at the request of The Associated Press. Less detailed records were available from a National Archives facility in Philadelphia.

According to the documents, Biden, 65, received several deferments while he was an undergraduate at the University of Delaware and later as a law student at Syracuse University. A month after undergoing a physical exam in April 1968, Biden received a Selective Service classification of 1-Y, meaning he was available for service only in the event of national emergency. "As a result of a physical exam on April 5, 1968, Joe Biden was classified 1-Y and disqualified from service because of asthma as a teenager," said David Wade, a campaign spokesman.

In "Promises to Keep," a memoir that was published last year and became an instant best-seller after he was tapped as Obama's running mate, Biden never mentions his asthma, recounting an active childhood, work as a lifeguard and football exploits in high school. The Obama campaign pointed to media interviews from 1987, when Biden was making his first bid for the presidency, that mention his asthma.

Military service and questions about which presidential ticket would be stronger on national security are intertwined in the presidential race. Republican John McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent 5 years in a Vietnamese prison, has argued that he has stronger background to be commander in chief. Democratic nominee Barack Obama counters that McCain would continue a wrong-headed foreign policy from the Bush administration.

Biden has had extensive experience with national security issues in the Senate. McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, has been Alaska governor for two years and before that was a small-town mayor.

Biden's five student deferments equal the number given to Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been quoted as saying he had "other priorities" than military service in the 1960s.

According to records AP obtained from the National Archives, Biden registered Feb. 15, 1961, with the Selective Service, when he was an 18-year-old student at Archmere Academy in Wilmington. The archives documents do not include any information about his classification or physical exam.

Documents provided by the Obama campaign indicate Biden received a classification questionnaire in October 1963, when he was enrolled at the University of Delaware, and received his first 2-S student deferment a month later. Additional deferments were granted in roughly 12-month intervals, the last coming in January 1968, shortly before he graduated from law school at Syracuse University.

Then in April 1968, when he was 25, Biden was disqualified from service due to asthma.

Source

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-02T00:57:00.002+11:30

Giuliani: Palin More Qualified Than Obama

Speaking on Face The Nation Sunday, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani said that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who was announced Friday as presumptive GOP nominee John McCain's running mate, is more qualified to be president than Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. "You know why? She had to make decisions," Giuliani told Face The Nation anchor Bob Schieffer. "All Senator Obama has had to do is talk. That's all he does."

Palin, who is 44 years old, has been the governor of Alaska for less than two years. Previously, she served two terms as mayor of the town of Wasilla, Alaska, whose population in 2000 was 5,470.

Citing her executive experience, the Republican National Convention keynote speaker called Palin "somebody of accomplishment" because "she's vetoed legislation, she's taken on corruption, and in her party, and won. She took on the oil companies and won. She administered a budget successfully." He also said Obama "is the least experienced candidate for president in the last 100 years." "I mean, he's never run a city, he's never run a state, he's never run a business, he's never administered a payroll, he's never led people in crisis," Giuliani said.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with Democrats but supports McCain, told Schieffer that McCain's decision to add Palin to the ticket "is a little bit like opening a door and letting some fresh Alaska air into Washington. "I think here he wanted to send the message, get somebody fresh, somebody really who represents the other America outside of Washington where people don't care whether you have an 'R' or a 'D' after your name, they just want you to get something done to help them deal with the problems they have," Lieberman said. "And Sarah Palin comes from that other America."

Carly Fiorina, a senior McCain advisor, called Palin "a person of great accomplishment" and suggested she excites women because she is "a woman trying to balance her work life and her family life, not to mention her incredible track record of reform and taking on, as she said, the good old boy network." Fiorina said Palin's anti-abortion rights position would not keep former Hillary Clinton supporters from backing a McCain-Palin ticket. "I think, frankly, the Democratic Party has done a disservice to women by trying to hold women hostage to the issue of Roe v. Wade," she said. "The truth is the most important issue to women, all the polls say this, is the economy. Women are not single issue voters. Yes, there are some women for whom the issue of reproductive rights trumps everything else. But the truth is most women are not that way."

Also appearing on Face The Nation, New York Times columnist David Brooks suggested McCain chose Palin to shift the focus from Obama to his ticket. "You can see why McCain took her," he said. "She risked her political career to take on the special interests in her own party, she took on the oil companies. She's like McCain. McCain wants to change this campaign from change to, from left to right, he wants to make it, 'I'm going to clean out the stables.'

More here

How to snooker Mr. Vagueness

McCain needs to get serious - and warn about a global tempest

Hurricane Gustav roars toward the Gulf coast of America and brings with it an extraordinarily appropriate metaphor for the Republican National Convention. If the message of the Obama Democrats last week was "change", then the prevailing theme of the Republican gathering this week should be "danger".

John McCain, when asked whether the arrival of the hurricane would affect his convention, said that it might well be inappropriate to hold a "festive event" at such a time. I hope that his people extrapolate from that and decide that festivity should not be the order of the day anyway. The tempest that is now threatening New Orleans with yet more devastation is an uncanny analogue of the perfect Russian storm that is confronting America and the rest of what we must once again call the "free world".

By some terrifying logic, Vladimir Putin has clearly decided that his country's destiny will be fulfilled by becoming a rogue superpower. That is the new reality in which the United States presidential campaign will be conducted. So the outcome of this election is likely to be determined by the contest between those who claim that internal "change" is the biggest challenge facing America, as opposed to those who see external threat and the collapse of world order as the first priority.

Where Barack Obama offers moral absolution for the original sin of racism (which is no inconsiderable matter for decent Americans of all political persuasions), John McCain can present confidence and proven courage in the face of an aggressor. Interestingly, Mr Putin can see quite clearly how this might work out. In an interview with CNN last week, he made one of his more bizarre claims: that the US government had actually engineered the war in Georgia in order to help McCain's campaign.

This statement rests on two wildly inaccurate premises: the first, which Putin himself would repudiate in his more lucid moments, is that Russia's actions (such as the invasion of Georgia) can be manipulated by the US, and the second is that the Bush administration and the McCain campaign are in close communion. The latter, I can tell you, is anything but the truth. I have friends in the US who have been close to the Bush White House from its earliest beginnings. Their utter loathing for McCain is so palpable that I find myself (as a McCain supporter) having to tread carefully in conversation for fear of creating a breach in our relations. I cannot remember a time when the incumbent team has so viscerally detested its prospective successor. The picture that the Democrats are attempting to present of McCain being Bush by other means ("another four years of the same") is simply risible.

If the Republicans do as I suggest they might - that is, take their cues from the sombre mood created by Hurricane Gustav and the looming Russian threat - then the logic of the campaign will be established so firmly that it will affect our retrospective view of what has already occurred. Obama's triumphal party in Denver could come to seem like a happy-clappy exercise in self-congratulation by comparison with the sober gravity of a McCain warning about global instability. The vice presidential running mates could be re-examined too: not so much the people chosen, but the manner of the choice.

The pick of a vice-presidential candidate is made under advice but is also deeply personal: often, it is the first real indication of how a future president will behave in office. What are we to make then of the fact that Obama went for the safe, defensive option and McCain the daring one? It is being said that Sarah Palin is a risk, but maybe that is the whole point.

The electorate may come to feel that this is a time for a leader who is unafraid of risk. (Then again, as Aristotle advised, there is a fine line between courage and foolhardiness.) But if McCain should make a grave, very grown-up acceptance speech centred on the realities of global volatility, how will Obama's acceptance extravaganza hold up in contrast?

His speech was said to be modelled on that of John Kennedy in 1960, also held in an open-air stadium to which the general public could be admitted.

Well, maybe I am being sentimental here - as one tends to be about the formative events of one's youth - but I (a preternaturally political schoolgirl) was present in the Los Angeles Coliseum when Kennedy made that speech.

It introduced the concept of the New Frontier - the future challenges for America at home and abroad with specific reference to the Russian threat - and posited what he believed to be the central question of the era: could a nation "organised and governed" as America was, endure? His peroration, "Give me your help, give me your hand, give me your voice", was humble and hugely moving. There was no stage set: just Kennedy himself flanked by the key party figures, past and present.

When it was over, he did a lap of honour round the stadium sitting on the back of an open-top car - which, now that I recall it, seems like an uncanny foreshadowing of the circumstances of his death. The event did not begin with a rock concert and it did not end with fireworks. Politics was a serious business in those days. It had not yet become a part of the entertainment industry. We were in the midst of the Cold War. The counterculture of the Sixties had not yet happened. (In fact, as Norman Mailer always claimed, Kennedy's assassination had a hand in creating it by precipitating a "national nervous breakdown".)

It will be for Americans to decide whether Obama is a saviour who will purify the past evils of slavery and segregation, or simply another very ambitious politician whose instincts are most reminiscent of Jimmy Carter - that other thoughtful, idealistic liberal who thought that you could negotiate constructively with the Iranian regime while it held a gun to the heads of your hostages. And they will have to decide whether McCain's startling choice of running mate constitutes audacity or recklessness.

If I were advising the Republicans on the conduct of this crucial convention, I would say: don't compete with the show business glamour and the pyrotechnics of last week. Take your cue from the potential tragedy of Hurricane Gustav: go serious, go grave, go grown-up. Talk about what a dangerous world it is out there. It will be nothing more than the truth.

Source

Hillary-Voting Readers Respond to Palin

It seems everyone at NRO has been getting happy e-mails from readers since Palin is picked. Perhaps because of this piece, I've become something of an Ambassador to Hillaryland, and the ones who read me are pretty impressed with her, too. Obviously, Hillary supporters who read NRO are a self-selecting sample, but here's some of the responses coming in... From a New York reader:

Hi, Jim. I'm one of your readers who is a Clinton-supporter and I was still sitting on the fence as of this morning... but now... now things are getting interesting! Clinton's speech on Tuesday night had made me consider voting for Obama, but Obama's speech last night convinced me that I don't want to. I was assuming McCain would pick someone safe and boring - but he hit it out of the park today! Talk about shaking things up! She seems terrific - the sharpest of the four - and will complement McCain's wisdom with energy and passion. I don't even mind that I disagree with most of her positions - she's a real person, and she seems to have heart. She seems to be in politics to help people and to change things, not just to get to the next higher office!

Clinton would have given me hope for the future. Obama, the "Hope" candidate, fills me with dread. Now I've got some hope again - maybe we can really can see some change in this country. And with this choice, McCain's stock went up enormously in my book (in the same way Obama's went further down when he picked Biden over Hillary Clinton). Talk about good judgment - McCain could have played it safe like Obama, but he was bold and historic - he IS a maverick. Bravo, McCain!

One that arrived Sunday:

I cannot tell you how upset I am while listening to these misogynists on TV talk about Governor Sarah Palin. I am about to blow! Suddenly, she isn't qualified. Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Mark Christ, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, etc. were all eminently qualified according to these same people...

I will do everything I can to get this woman elected. So will my twin sister, who was a Hillary delegate in Texas. And we have NEVER agreed on anything political!

One reader objected to the way the media was defining "feminist":

At the outset, let me note that I am THRILLED that McCain picked Palin. But, I'm extremely disappointed in the media coverage and the assertions that feminists won't support her. Such statements show a total misunderstanding of what a feminist truly is.

In the mid 1990s, Christine Hoff Sommers (a Democrat) wrote Who Stole Feminism? She opines, and I believe correctly so, that there are two types of feminists-equity feminists, who want women treated equally, and gender feminists, who basically dislike the other gender and always claim victim status. I am one of the former-I want to be treated equally and judged on merit, not on my gender. I am also pro-choice (not pro-abortion, but pro-choice). And, I have always been a Republican. I think Palin was a perfect choice. She had made it on her own-not because she is a woman and not by claiming victim status. She was judged on her merits and has basically lived the American dream. I am also greatly impressed by her decision to remain pro-life in light of the information that her fetus had Down syndrome. She was allowed to make her choice and she stood by her principles.

The gender feminists who supported Hillary would never vote for McCain-regardless of who his VP selection turned out to be. Likewise, there are pro-life women who would never vote for Obama, whether or not he picked Hillary. But, there are a great number of women, equity feminists, who will be proud of the choice that Palin made and be proud that she made it-and not because of her sex. I think those females, whether Republican or independent, will turn out in great numbers because of McCain's choice of Palin.

The McCain camp was spotlighting these responses from Team Hillary:

Geraldine Ferraro: "I have to tell you, I got a phone call from my family too, and my daughter - the immediate thing was, 'Wow! McCain picked a woman.' I thought it was stunning when it happened, because it is so historic. The other thing I must say this is the first time that anybody who is in a national position, has publicly thanked me in 24 years." (FOX's "Fox & Friends," 8/30/08)

Former Hillary Clinton Campaign Adviser Ann Lewis: "Well, first, the John McCain campaign definitely served notice that they intend to compete hard for the support of women voters. Of course, I appreciate the reference to Hillary Clinton, who did such a magnificent job in her campaign." (CNN, 8/29/08)

Former Clinton Adviser Howard Wolfson: With Palin Pick, "You Are Going To Have A Lot Of Women Voters Wondering Why Senator Obama Didn't Tap Senator Clinton As His Running Mate." "To that end, consider the immediate reaction of Clinton adviser Howard Wolfson, who writes today in a short piece titled 'I'll See Your Biden and Raise You a Palin,' that 'you are going to have a lot of women voters wondering why Senator Obama didn't tap Senator Clinton as his running mate.'" (Jake Tapper, "A White Shade Of Palin," ABC News, 8/29/08)

One reader predicted more comments from Obama and Biden that will be interpreted as sexism:

He's not going to be able to help himself. The petty [initial] response stands in stark contrast to McCain's gracious ad that ran last night.

Frankly, if Hillary's supporters were paying attention during Obama's speech, they ought to be even more angry. His statement that Hillary is inspiring to "my daughters and to yours" was, in my opinion, an insult. What does that mean exactly? That a woman making a serious run at the presidency isn't as significant as an African-American making the same run? That a woman can't inspire men? That only little girls could find Hillary inspiring?

I loathe identity politics but can't deny the historical significance of Hillary's run.

He's been condescending and patronizing to Hillary and her supporters throughout the campaign. Combined with his underpayment of female staffers and the "sweetie" incident, I don't see how any but the most rabid of single issue abortion rights feminists can vote for him. So I'm not sure he'll lock up the PUMAs, now that Palin is in the mix.

Not every Hillary backer was on board to vote McCain-Palin, obviously:

I supported Hillary in the primaries and voted for her in SC. I thought she got a really raw deal from the press and to a lesser extent from Obama. I'm a die hard liberal and plan to vote for Obama though. I was excited when I saw that McCain was picking a woman - I just said to my husband last night while watching Obama that I guessed I never would see a woman give that speech. (I'm 40).

Having said all that, are you kidding me? I might have given McCain a second look if he had picked Kay Bailey Hutchinson (who I voted for a long time ago when I lived in Texas and she first ran there) or Christie Todd Whitman. But this lady? Talking about running for the PTO? Is she running for city council? Hillary Clinton has more gravitas in her little toe than this lady. If McCain thinks that women are so shallow that we are willing to vote for a woman just because she is a woman, he is going to have a rude awakening.

The same way that African American voters never voted in huge numbers for Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or Alan Keyes, women are not going to vote for Sarah Palin. We want a qualified woman to run.

BTW, I will give her props for having a Down Syndrome baby. I don't agree with her on abortion, but she at least lives up to her convictions.

The thing is, McCain doesn't need all the Hillary voters and PUMAs. He just needs... enough.

Source

Now We Can Have A Real Culture War!

Thank goodness for Maureen Dowd. If she didn't exist, and the New York Times hadn't found her, we'd have had to invent her in order to have a proper mouthpiece for the haughtily condescending, superior, superciliously snide view our bi-coastal betters have of us benighted (and if conservative, evil) middle Americans who live in small towns. But she does exist, and her emblematic liberal snobbery is on display in full force in her column today, which discusses Sarah Palin's selection as worthy of a "hokey chick flick." First, note the now seemingly mandatory invocation of "uppity" (as just discussed here):

It's easy to see where this movie is going. It begins, of course, with a cute, cool unknown from Alaska who has never even been on "Meet the Press" triumphing over a cute, cool unknowable from Hawaii who has been on "Meet the Press" a lot.

Americans, suspicious that the Obamas have benefited from affirmative action without being properly grateful, and skeptical that Michelle really likes "The Brady Bunch" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show," reject the 47-year-old black contender as too uppity and untested.

Query 1: Is it unreasonable, or maybe even racist, to suspect "that the Obamas have benefited from affirmative action without being properly grateful"? If that is unreasonable, at least with regard to Barack, is it unreasonable to suspect, and hence resent, that many professional blacks have benefitted from affirmative action?

Enthusiastic Republicans don't see the choice of Palin as affirmative action, despite her thin r‚sum‚ and gaping absence of foreign policy knowledge...

Query 2: Could part of the enthusiasm Democrats have for Obama be based on his color, on the fact that their enthusiasm for him is an advertisement for their own moral superiority?

Query 3: If those who regard Obama as unqualified because of his lack of experience are racist because what they are "really" saying (unbeknownst to themselves) is that he is "uppity," are those Dowding Thomasinas who regard Palin as unqualified because she is "untested" (everyone knows you can't be tested in small towns or even as governor of a small state) really sexist? But let's move on to Dowd's cultural critique.

Obama may have been president of The Harvard Law Review, but Palin graduated from the University of Idaho with a minor in poli-sci and worked briefly as a TV sports reporter....

Palinistas, as they are called, love Sarah's spunky, relentlessly quirky "Northern Exposure" story from being a Miss Alaska runner-up, and winning Miss Congeniality, to being mayor and hockey mom in Wasilla, a rural Alaskan town of 6,715, to being governor for two years to being the first woman ever to run on a national Republican ticket. (Why do men only pick women as running mates when they need a Hail Mary pass? It's a little insulting.)

Sarah is a zealot, but she's a fun zealot. She has a beehive and sexy shoes, and the day she's named she goes shopping with McCain in Ohio for a cheerleader outfit for her daughter.

As she once told Vogue, she's learned the hard way to deal with press comments about her looks. "I wish they'd stick with the issues instead of discussing my black go-go boots," she said. "A reporter once asked me about it during the campaign, and I assured him I was trying to be as frumpy as I could by wearing my hair on top of my head and these schoolmarm glasses."

So, in (or from) a nutshell: the Republicans have insulted all proper upper East-and West Side women (and their sisters in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and university towns everywhere) by having the nerve to select a pretty University of Idaho graduate (not even from a good college, much less a prestigious law review editor), small town soccer mom mayor, and small state governor who also hunts when she's not looking after her five kids and who, in addition to her bad taste in not attending an Ivy League school also sports "a beehive and sexy shoes."

Her hair doesn't look to me like a beehive, nor have I noticed her shoes, but what do I know. I do know she took on her own party in Alaska, routed it, and has been cleaning house ever since. She didn't simply give lip service to "reaching across the aisle"; she all but obliterated the aisle. Which is more than can be said of a time-serving state senator whose only accomplishment after being elevated to the U.S. Senate has been to write the second volume of his autobiography.

Source

Synopsis of the interview with Stanley Kurtz that the Obama campaign tried to suppress

The University of Illinois released documents yesterday that propelled this conversation forward. Barack Obama and Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers, who spent a number of years on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List, were the leading powers behind a massive educational reform for the city of Chicago. Then Secretary of Education, William Bennett stated that the Chicago educational system was the worst in the Nation.

William Ayers prepared the proposal that got the seed money for the education reform program that would become the Chicago Annenberg Challenge - some $50M from the Annenberg Foundation, which was then matched by philanthropists and business interests - to total over $100M for Chicago's failing school system.

With the money came the need for a organization - hence the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) was formed. The Chairman of the Board was Barack Obama. William Ayers was an ex-officio board member. The two attended meetings together...how often is not yet known.

Obama and Ayers presided over a very powerful political duo: The CAC headed by Obama and The Collaborative, co-chaired by Ayers.

It allegedly worked like this: "Programs" would apply to the CAC for an educational grant. Some programs were chosen, and others were not. Before the CAC was disbanded, almost all, if not all, of the monies were spent.

Kurtz, reading from yesterday's released documents, gave these examples of who or what received the grants:

Chosen to receive a grant:

The South Shore African Village Collaborative for their "Celebrate African-American Holiday of Juneteenth" (celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation). Some African-Americans celebrate Juneteenth instead of the Fourth of July (a report fromTexas). Kurtz commented that in his reporting of Obama's previous church, Trinity United Church of Christ, some members told him that Juneteenth was their Independence Day, not Fourth of July (Kurtz did not say that all members held this view).

Turned down to receive a grant:

*The Chicago Algebra Project: goal to increase student achievement

*The District 5 Math Initiative: goal to aid Hispanic students in the process of learning English, to further learn math and science.

Kurtz characterized the information he viewed as showing grant preferences for ethnic identity projects. The grants were evidently not given to schools, but rather to "external partners," to which schools sought to attach themselves - such as a South Shore African Village Collaborative.

In the meantime, after "external partners" received millions, ethnic identity didn't help math and science scores. It is interesting to note that this Chairman of the Board position was Obama's first "executive" experience.

There's more: Obama's connections to the Gamaliel Foundation, Kurtz says has a "core point" advocating for a form of" liberation theology." He further states that his research shows that Jeremiah Wright's Black Liberation Theology preaching is not an anomaly.

Kurtz refers to a book written by Dennis A. Jacobsen, Doing Justice - Congregations and Community Organizing. This book, according to Kurtz, embodies the views of the Gamaliel Foundation. Further he asserts that Greg Galluzo, "the most important figure" in the Gamaliel Foundation, approves Jacobsen's book, and is also an Obama mentor. Kurtz believes that Obama was a teacher at the Gamaliel Foundation before Jacobsen wrote the book. Kurtz does not know whether Obama has read the book.

The last portion of the interview was given to callers and emails, most of which were angry that Kurtz was allowed radio time. One emailer confused Kurtz with Weekly Standard editor, Bill Kristol, referring to "the vile traitor Bill Kristol." Another asked about FCC oversight of the "unbalanced" station.

It was striking that few callers had anything to say more than the email's talking points. Some pulled out the constant whine that Obama was only eight years old when the Weathermen were bombing our U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, the State Department building, etc. They further pointed out Obama has "denounced" William Ayers. He did not, however, denounce him until he was forced to for the sake of his political campaign, and he wasn't eight years old when he and Ayers began their educational reform.

More background here

Changes happen anyway

By Thomas Sowell

One of the few political cliches that makes sense is that "In politics, overnight is a lifetime." Less than a year ago, the big question was whether Rudolph Giuliani could beat Hillary Clinton in this year's presidential election. Less than two months ago, Barack Obama had a huge lead over John McCain in the polls. Less than a week ago, the smart money was saying that Mitt Romney would be McCain's choice for vice president. We don't need Barack Obama to create "change." Things change in politics, in the economy, and elsewhere in American society, without waiting for a political messiah to lead us into the promised land.

Who would have thought that Obama's big speech at the Democratic convention would disappoint expectations, while McCain's speech electrified his audience when he announced his choice of Governor Sarah Palin for his running mate? Some people were surprised that his choice was a woman. What is more surprising is that she is an articulate Republican. How many of those have you seen?

Despite the incessantly repeated mantra of "change," Barack Obama's politics is as old as the New Deal and he is behind the curve when it comes to today's economy. Senator Obama's statement that "our economy is in turmoil" is standard stuff on the left and in the mainstream media, which has been dying to use the word "recession." Not only has the economic slowdown failed to reach the definition of a recession, the most recent data show the U.S. economy growing at a rate exceeding 3 percent-- a rate that many European economies would die for, despite our being constantly urged to imitate those countries whose end results are not as good as ours.

Barack Obama's "change" is a recycling of the kinds of policies and rhetoric of the New Deal that prolonged the Great Depression of the 1930s far beyond the duration of any depression before or since. These are the same kinds of liberal policies that led to double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates and rising unemployment during the Carter administration. These are "back to the future" changes to economic disasters that need repeating.

Make no mistake, the political rhetoric of FDR was great. For those who admire political rhetoric, as so many of Barack Obama's supporters seem to, FDR was tops. For those who go by actual results, FDR's track record was abysmal. Although the Great Depression of the 1930s began under Herbert Hoover, unemployment during Hoover's last year in office was not as high as it became during each of the first five years under FDR. During the eight years of FDR's first two terms as president, there were only two years in which unemployment was lower than it had been under Herbert Hoover-- and not by much.

World War II has been credited by some with getting the United States out of the Great Depression. What the war did was put an end to the New Deal, as national survival became the top priority and replaced FDR's anti-business and class warfare rhetoric.

Senator Obama's rhetoric today is the anti-business and class warfare rhetoric that worked so brilliantly in a political sense for FDR in the 1930s. But Obama is following an opposite course from FDR when it comes to recognizing threats to American national security. Senator Obama has repeatedly tried to deal with national security threats with rhetoric. He tried to dismiss the threat of a nuclear Iran with because Iran is "a small nation"-- even though it is larger than Japan, which launched a devastating attack against the United States at Pearl Harbor.

FDR had the good sense to begin urging greater military preparedness in 1940, more than a year before the United States was attacked. He said, "If you wait until you see the whites of their eyes, you will never know what hit you." Cutting the military budget and taking foreign policy problems to the United Nations are Obama's version of "change." That is change that we dare not believe in. It is the audacity of hype.

Source

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

2008-09-01T00:03:00.000+11:30

Zogby Poll: Equilibrium in the POTUS Race!

McCain pick of AK Gov. Palin neutralizes historic Obama speech, stunts the Dems' convention bounce

Republican John McCain's surprise announcement Friday of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate - some 16 hours after Democrat Barack Obama's historic speech accepting his party's presidential nomination - has possibly stunted any Obama convention bump, the latest Zogby Interactive flash poll of the race shows. The latest nationwide survey, begun Friday afternoon after the McCain announcement of Palin as running mate and completed mid-afternoon today, shows McCain/Palin at 47%, compared to 45% support for Obama/Biden. In other words, the race is a dead heat.

The interactive online Zogby survey shows that both Obama and McCain have solidified the support among their own parties - Obama won 86% support of Democrats and McCain 89% of Republicans in a two-way head-to-head poll question not including the running mates. When Biden and Palin are added to the mix, Obama's Democratic support remains at 86%, while McCain's increases to 92%.

After the McCain "Veep" announcement on Friday, Palin was almost immediately hailed as a strong conservative, and those voters have rallied to the GOP ticket, the survey shows. Republicans gather in St. Paul, Minnesota this week to officially nominate McCain and Palin as their presidential ticket.

Overall, 52% said the selection of Palin as the GOP vice presidential nominee helps the Republican ticket, compared to 29% who said it hurt. Another 10% said it made no difference, while 10% were unsure. Among independent voters, 52% said it helps, while 26% said it would hurt. Among women, 48% said it would help, while 29% said it would hurt the GOP ticket. Among Republicans, the choice was a big hit - as 87% said it would help, and just 3% said it would hurt.

Pollster John Zogby:

"Palin is not to be underestimated. Her real strength is that she is authentic, a real mom, an outdoors person, a small town mayor (hey, she has dealt with a small town city council - that alone could be preparation for staring down Vladimir Putin, right?). She is also a reformer." "A very important demographic in this election is going to be the politically independent woman, 15% of whom in our latest survey are undecided."

"In the final analysis, this election will be about Obama vs. McCain. Obama has staked out ground as the new JFK - a new generation, literally and figuratively, a new face of America to the world, a man who can cross lines and work with both sides. But McCain is the modern day Harry Truman - with lots of DC experience, he knows what is wrong and dysfunctional with Washington and how to fix it, and he has chosen a running mate who is about as far away from Washington as he could find. "This contest is likely to be very close until the weekend before the election - then the dam may break and support may flood one way or the other."

The interactive survey shows that 22% of those voters who supported Democrat Hillary Clinton in their primary elections or caucus earlier this year are now supporting John McCain.

Among those who said they shop regularly at Wal-Mart - a demographic group that Zogby has found to be both "value" and "values" voters - Obama is getting walloped by McCain. Winning 62% support from weekly Wal-Mart shoppers, McCain wins these voters at a rate similar to what President Bush won in 2004. Obama wins 24% support from these voters.

Other demographic details are fairly predictable, showing that the McCain/Palin ticket heads into its convention on Monday with numbers that may fuel an optimism they may not have expected, and that many would not have predicted, especially after Obama's speech Thursday night.

More here

Playing his cards brilliantly

BARACK Obama is a fraud. But he is a very familiar kind of fraud: a politician pretending to be something he's not. He is not the post-partisan, post-ideological seeker of a new politics and leader of a broad social movement to redeem the soul of America. Rather, he is a brilliantly gifted, traditional, self-seeking politician who has sought for a long time to get to the top. He is also a traditional left-liberal, obsessed, at least in his public life, with race. He has built the momentum of his campaign on the most dubious basis that can exist in a democracy for garnering political support, racial identity.

But if he wins the US election in November, as he well might, he will have a chance to be a good president. The ruthlessness of his politics is the most encouraging suggestion that a desire to be re-elected will keep him near the middle ground. That Obama is such a brilliant politician is evident in the fact that he came from nowhere to win the Democratic nomination. In that he confounded all the smartest judges of American politics, whether liberal or conservative.

He certainly confounded President George W. Bush. Now it is customary in polite circles to regard Bush as a gibbering idiot or the devil incarnate. But Bush twice won the governorship of Texas and the presidency of the US, so he must know something.

On September 5 last year, Bush was visiting Sydney for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum summit. That night he had dinner with John Howard and a few others at Kirribilli House in Sydney. The discussion covered Australian politics and Howard's difficulties, but naturally it also turned to the forthcoming US presidential election. Bush thought the Republican primary contest was wide open. When someone made a critical remark about former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who would eventually lose the nomination to John McCain, Bush pushed back forcefully in defence of Romney. Although Bush wasn't endorsing one Republican over another, people had the impression he favoured Romney.

On the Democratic contest, Bush was much more certain. Hillary Clinton would be the nominee. He did not rate Obama's chances. The Australian diplomatic and intelligence establishment went one step further than Bush. They believed strongly that Clinton would win the Democratic primary and the subsequent election. No serious analyst predicted an Obama-McCain contest or that, going into the Democratic convention, the two candidates would be neck and neck in the polls.

All data points to an enormous Obama win. The list is overwhelming: most Americans think the country is on the wrong track; Bush is highly unpopular; Iraq is unpopular; only twice since World War II (1948 and 1988) has an incumbent party won a third consecutive term in the presidency; the American economy is hit with financial crises and crippling oil prices; Obama is 47 and charismatic, McCain is 72 and can't lift his arms above shoulder height; and the generic identification of voters heavily favours Democrats over Republicans. Finally, the mainstream media is overwhelmingly pro-Obama and anti-Republican.

If the Democratic candidate doesn't win in these circumstances, it's a miracle. So what's making a miracle possible, especially given, as I believe, that Obama is a brilliant politician? It seems the American people still harbour doubts about him. The best guide to who Obama is politically comes not from the millions of hagiographic and densely uncritical words penned by adoring media across the world but from Obama's autobiographies and his legislative record as an Illinois state senator.

After he secured his party's nomination, Obama moved sharply to the centre, ditching previous positions such as opposition to free trade deals and the like. But that left the main ground of difference between him and McCain the question of racial and cultural identity. That, in a sense, has been the subtext of much of Obama's maddeningly vague uplift rhetoric: "Change we can believe in, yes we can, we are the ones we've been waiting for." These soaring lines are content free. But they've allowed an obvious subtext to play out in Obama's campaign. Blacks should vote for him because they're black and whites should vote for him so they can feel good about their nation for having elected a black president.

That more than 90 per cent of black Americans support Obama, and did so throughout the Democratic primaries, is profoundly unhealthy. I am an old-fashioned liberal on race. I don't believe race should matter. If it is wrong, as it surely is, to oppose any candidate on the grounds of race, then logically it must be wrong to support any candidate on grounds of race. Racial solidarity is one of the most toxic dynamics in any society, certainly in any electoral contest.

The US has been electing and appointing racial minorities to high office for decades. There are black governors and senators, Hispanic governors and senators. The Republican governor of Louisiana is Punjabi and the Republican Governor of California is Austrian.

But in no case before has the toxic politics of identity been so much the heart of a candidate's appeal. Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre has written an important analysis of Obama's record as a state senator in Illinois. Obama has no real record in the national Senate. He is a first-term senator and has often avoided taking a position on key issues by voting "present". But Kurtz shows that in the Illinois Senate, Obama was a predictable left-liberal who injected a high degree of race consciousness into his politics, appealing to people to vote on grounds of racial solidarity, supporting all discriminatory affirmative action and set-aside programs, demanding voting discipline from the black caucus rather than legislators pursuing their individual agendas.

On crime and government spending he took a left-liberal line. He favoured racial gerrymandering, commenting to a Chicago newspaper: "An incumbent African-American legislator with a 90 per cent district may feel good about his re-election chances, but we as a community would probably be better off if we had two African-American legislators with 60 per cent each."

It is important to emphasise there is nothing inherently wicked in the positions Obama was arguing. They are legitimate positions within the democratic debate. But they are a million miles from the post-racial, post-partisan figure that he wants to project. Fair enough. No doubt he's changed. But the Obama narrative doesn't say he's changed, it just ignores all his previous positions.

Obama has written two volumes of autobiography. By far the most interesting is the first, Dreams from My Father, published when, at 33, he first ran for statewide office in Illinois. It is very well written and Obama is obviously a capable guy. The memoir works at lots of different levels but is best seen as a campaign document. One of the most notable things about it is how obsessed Obama is with the question of race. He is technically a member of generation X, born just too late to be a baby boomer. Yet his consciousness is quintessentially that of the baby boomer. Obama's background is unusual: African father and white mother. But he had a wonderful childhood, full of opportunity.

His maternal grandparents, who mostly brought him up, doted on him and organised their lives around him. His grandmother was vice-president of a bank, his grandfather a furniture store manager and later an insurance salesman. Obama went to the best high school in Hawaii and the family took holidays in the mainland. Later he went to a good college in California, followed by Columbia University in New York and Harvard in Massachusetts.

We middle-class baby boomers are the most privileged generation in human history. Nothing has been asked of us and everything has been given to us. All we have been required to do is live lives of unparalleled affluence and not go mad. Yet throughout Obama's admittedly beautifully written memoirs, on numerous occasions he claims to be fighting off despair. This tone captures the whining self-pity and utter self-obsession of the archetypal baby boomer.

Obama's gloomy introspection finally finishes on a note of hope, as is essential for any aspiring politician. But the endless flirtation with existential despair is perfectly pitched to appeal to the self-indulgence and baseless vanity of the baby boomer generation.

The autobiography is a striking contrast to Colin Powell's memoir, which begins with the bracing sentence: "I have had a great life, and this is the story so far." Powell lived through infinitely more racial discrimination than what has touched Obama, but his memoir is full of gratitude to America and to life. Not the gratitude of a cringing minority but simply of a proud and happy man who understands the great opportunities American society offers.

A similar tone infuses McCain's memoir, Faith of My Fathers, the best written of them all. McCain, who was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five years and was tortured nearly to death, actually had something to despair over but was sustained by faith.

It is no criticism of Obama that he has not been to war. But his confected existential angst is similar to Hillary Clinton's fictional landing in Bosnia under imaginary sniper fire. It is the device, brilliantly executed by Obama, very clumsily by Hillary, of a politician desperate to self-dramatise. Oddly, it is the very cynicism and skill of this exercise that suggests to me Obama could yet make an effective president.

Source

And Now a Moment of Realism

Barack Obama during his acceptance speech played a riff on Phil Gramm's impolitic remarks about a "mental recession" and a "nation of whiners." Like a succession of Democrats at the podium, he painted the economy in the darkest, most hopeless of colors -- never mind that the economy is actually growing and unemployment is still lower than it was during much of the Clinton presidency.

But here's the bad news for the dour Democrats in Denver -- most Americans don't share their economic pessimism. That's the finding of public opinion expert Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute. "Most Americans are feeling pretty good about their jobs and their personal lives," she says after investigating the fine details of recent polls. Her report goes right to Mr. Gramm's concern about the gap between actual economic performance and the dreary negativity of politicians and the media.

She finds that 76% of Americans say they are actually optimistic about the direction of their own lives and their personal economic situations -- even though only 18% are optimistic about the country. That's the big disconnect. "These numbers haven't changed much over time," Ms. Bowman tells me.

Job security and job satisfaction are both high in America too. "In Gallup's August 2008 survey, 48% working Americans said they were completely satisfied, and another 42% somewhat satisfied. Only 9% were dissatisfied with their jobs." And sorry, Lou Dobbs, that war on the middle class and the outsourcing of America that you complain about every night? Americans aren't buying it. Only 8% worry about their jobs being outsourced to foreign competition. Scott Hodge of the Tax Foundation tells me this squares with the economic data. "Very few jobs are lost each year to companies moving jobs offshore," he says.

What's the No. 1 economic worry for Americans? Gas prices. Some three-quarters of Americans in Gallup's July 2008 survey blame high gas prices for financial hardship, compared to 40% eight years ago. Mr. Obama last night offered a vague but dramatic promise to "end our dependence" on Middle East oil within a decade. (The AP candidly led its report by pointing out this "goal likely would be difficult -- perhaps impossible -- to achieve and flies in the face of how global oil markets work.") Voters don't seem to buy that either. Repeated polling has shown that, with their mantra of "drill, drill, drill," Republicans seem to be offering a solution voters find more credible.

I asked Ms. Bowman what accounts for the gap between people's attitudes about their own lives and the economy in general. Her answer is no big surprise: "The relentless negativity of the media."

The Democratic message in Denver was about all that is wrong in America, though any balanced perspective would notice how resilient the U.S. economy has been amid the housing bust and surging oil prices. Former Clinton economist Brad DeLong noted in his blog recently: "If you had asked me a year ago whether this degree of financial chaos was consistent with a domestic U.S. economy not clearly in recession, I would have said no."

Given all this, John McCain might want to sound a more Reaganite note next week. As the Gipper proved in the 1980s, the economic optimist is likely to win in November.

Source

Obama Should Come Clean On Ayers, Rezko And the Iraqi Billionaire

Even as Barack Obama gave his soaring speech Thursday night, his campaign was playing hardball with its critics. Team Obama has launched an offensive against WGN, the Chicago Tribune's radio station, for interviewing Stanley Kurtz. Mr. Kurtz is a conservative writer who this week forced the University of Illinois to finally open its records on Sen. Obama's association with William Ayers, the unrepentant 1970s Weather Underground terrorist.

An Obama campaign email to supporters called Mr. Kurtz a "slimy character assassin" whose "divisive, destructive ranting" should be confronted. WGN producer Zack Christenson says the outpouring of negative calls and emails is "unprecedented." He also notes that it is curious -- because "we wanted the Obama campaign's take" on Mr. Kurtz's findings, but the campaign declined to put anyone on air.

Separately, Mr. Obama's lawyers have also demanded that the Justice Department prosecute an organization called the American Issues Project for running an ad about ties between their candidate and Mr. Ayers.

Obama aides believe John Kerry lost in 2004 because he failed to respond to the "Swift Boat" ads attacking him, and they are lashing out. Sometimes the Obama objections have merit, as when they exposed errors in Jerome Corsi's sensationalized Obama biography. But sometimes they are designed to shut down legitimate questions. "They're terrified of people poking around Obama's life," one reporter told Gabriel Sherman at the New Republic. "The whole Obama narrative is built around the narrative that Obama and [campaign strategist] David Axelrod built, and, like all stories, it's not entirely true." The stakes are high. If the full story of Mr. Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright had been revealed before the Iowa caucus, he wouldn't have won.

Aides claim Mr. Obama "has taken voluntary transparency steps" that allow "his constituents, the media and his political opponents to fully examine him." In reality, anyone questioning the approved story line is liable to be ignored, misled or even bullied. This isn't what reporters expected when Mr. Obama began campaigning for a "new politics" that would bring honesty and openness to government.

Walking the rows of media outlets at the Denver convention, I had no trouble finding reporters who complained the campaign was secretive and evasive. Ben Smith of Politico.com has written about Team Obama's "pattern of rarely volunteering information or documents, even when relatively innocuous." Politico asked months ago if Mr. Obama had ever written anything for the Harvard Law Review as a student. The Obama campaign responded narrowly, with a Clintonesque statement that "as the president of the Law Review, Obama didn't write articles, he edited and reviewed them." This month it turned out Mr. Obama had written an article -- but it was published a month before he became president.

Chasing the rest of Mr. Obama's paper trail is often an exercise in frustration. Mr. Obama says his state senate records "could have been thrown out" and he didn't keep a schedule in office. No one appears to have kept a copy of his application for the Illinois Bar. He has released only a single page of medical records, versus 1,000 pages for John McCain.

Then there's the house that Mr. Obama bought in 2005 in cooperation with Tony Rezko, his friend and campaign fund-raiser -- a move the candidate concedes was "boneheaded." Rezko was convicted in June of 16 counts of corruption. (Mr. Obama was not implicated in Rezko's crimes.)

Rezko's trial raised a host of questions. Was Mr. Obama able to save $300,000 on the asking price of his house because Rezko's wife paid full price for the adjoining lot? How did Mrs. Rezko make a $125,000 down payment and obtain a $500,000 mortgage when financial records shown at the Rezko trial indicate she had a salary of only $37,000 and assets of $35,000? Records show her husband also had few assets at the time.

Last April, the London Times revealed that Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi-born billionaire living in London, had loaned Mr. Rezko $3.5 million three weeks before the day the sale of the house and lot closed in June 2005. Mr. Auchi's office notes he was a business partner of Rezko but says he had "no involvement in or knowledge of" the property sale. But in April 2004 he did attend a dinner party in his honor at Rezko's Chicago home. Mr. Obama also attended, and according to one guest, toasted Mr. Auchi. Later that year, Mr. Auchi came under criminal investigation as part of a U.S. probe of the corrupt issuance of cell-phone licenses in Iraq.

In May 2004, the Pentagon's inspector general's office cited "significant and credible evidence" of involvement by Mr. Auchi's companies in the Oil for Food scandal, and in illicit smuggling of weapons to Saddam Hussein's regime. Because of the criminal probe, Mr. Auchi's travel visa to the U.S. was revoked in August 2004, even as Mr. Auchi denied all the allegations. According to prosecutors, in November 2005 Rezko was able to get two government officials from Illinois to appeal to the State Department to get the visa restored. Asked if anyone in his office was involved in such an appeal, Mr. Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times last March, "not that I know of." FOIA requests to the State Department for any documents haven't been responded to for months.

After long delays, Mr. Obama sat with the editorial boards of the Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune in March to answer their questions about his connection to Rezko. He had no recollection of ever meeting Mr. Auchi. He also said he didn't understand a lot about house buying, and gave vague answers to other questions. Since then, he has avoided any further discussion of the Rezko matter.

Some inquiries could be cleared up if the Obama campaign were forthcoming with key documents. Mr. Obama claims that in buying his house in 2005 he got a low mortgage rate from Northern Trust bank because another bank made a competitive bid for his business, but his campaign won't reveal from which bank. While he has released 94 pages of documents relating to the Rezko sale, they don't include the single most important one -- the settlement statement that shows the complete flow of funds that were part of the house sale. When asked why that last key document isn't being released, the Obama campaign issued a boilerplate statement saying, "we have released documents that reflect every one of the final terms of the senator's purchase of the home." But key data are still being withheld.

The Obama campaign didn't hesitate to criticize Hillary Clinton for not revealing the names of donors to the Clinton Library, or John McCain for releasing only two years of tax returns as opposed to Mr. Obama's 10 years. Those were proper questions. But so too are requests for information from Mr. Obama, a man whose sudden rise and incompletely reported past makes him among the least-vetted of presidential nominees.

Reporters who decline to press Mr. Obama for more information now, whether it be on William Ayers or the Rezko-Auchi partnership, may be repeating an old mistake. Most reporters failed to dig deep enough into the Nixon White House's handling of Watergate before the 1972 election. The country was soon consumed with that scandal. Most reporters pooh-poohed questionable Whitewater real-estate dealings of the Clintons before Bill Clinton's 1992 election. Within months of his inauguration a tangled controversy led to the appointment of a special prosecutor and an endless source of distraction for the Clinton White House.

All presidential candidates resist full examination of their records. But it should be the job of reporters not to accept noncooperation, stonewalling or intimidation when it comes to questions about fitness for the nation's highest office.

Source

Obama's Friend, America's Enemy

Have you ever been a friend or business associate of a terrorist? Not someone who, to your shock and horror, turned out secretly to have bombed government buildings. No, the question is whether you've ever befriended an unreconstructed radical whose past was well known to you when you entered his orbit and walked through doors he opened for you. Have you been chummy with an unapologetic terrorist who, years after you'd known and worked closely with him, was still telling the New York Times he regretted only failing to carry out more attacks - and that America still "makes me want to puke"?

Barack Obama has.

An organization called the American Issues Project, backed by Dallas investor Harold Simmons, is running a campaign ad which highlights Obama's troubling relationship with William Ayers. Ayers is a former member of the Weathermen terrorist organization that bombed the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, various police headquarters, and other targets in the early 1970s.

The Obama campaign's rejoinder is three-pronged: The first shot was an Obama response ad, which fails to offer any substantive explanation of why Obama maintains ties to Ayers. Obama's second move was to launch a heavy-handed effort to pressure television stations into rejecting the ad by promising financial retaliation against the stations and their advertisers - which effort has apparently succeeded in intimidating Fox and CNN. The capper is a desperate call for the Justice Department to muzzle political speech through the prospect of a criminal investigation - a demand that provides a disturbing sneak peak into what life would be like under an Obama Justice Department.

Needless to say, none of this is justified. If Obama has a good explanation for his ties to Ayers, he ought to give it. In the meantime, raising questions about that relationship is entirely legitimate.

Obama's campaign has acknowledged that the candidate and Ayers are friends. Though Obama has more recently minimized Ayers as "just a guy who lives in my neighborhood," it is clear that the relationship was much deeper than that. Ayers and his fellow-terrorist wife, Bernadine Dohrn (who has spoken admiringly of the infamous Manson Family murders), are icons in Chicago's hard-left circles, to which Obama sought entr‚e as a young "community organizer." In 1995, they hosted a fundraiser that helped launch his career in Chicago politics.

Ayers has never abandoned his indictment of America as an imperialist hotbed of racism and economic exploitation. He has merely shifted methods from violent extortion to academic indoctrination. Through his perch as a professor of education at the University of Illinois, he has been a ceaseless critic of the criminal-justice system (he is essentially opposed to imprisoning even the most violent criminals) and a proponent of what he calls "education reform" but what is actually the use of the classroom to proselytize for the Left's political agenda.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune in 1997, Obama called A Kind and Just Parent, Ayers' polemic on the Chicago court system, "a searing and timely account." Michelle Obama, then a dean at the University of Illinois, invited Ayers to participate in a panel with her husband, then a state senator who, the program explained, was "working to block proposed legislation that would throw more juvenile offenders into the adult system."

Obama apologists dismiss all this as "guilt by association" based on a single joint appearance. But it was far from the only one.

In fact, by 1997 Obama and Ayers were collaborators on a far more significant level. They sat together for several years on the board of the Woods Fund, a left-wing Chicago charitable organization. There, they doled out tens of thousands of dollars to such beneficiaries as the Trinity Church (where Obama was a longtime member and where another Obama mentor, Jeremiah Wright, preached a radical, anti-American brand of Black Liberation Theology) and the Arab American Action Network (co-founded by Rashid Khalidi, a Yasser Arafat apologist who has supported attacks against Israel and now directs Columbia University's notorious Middle East Institute, founded by Edward Said).

Even more intriguing, in 1995 Ayers won a $49.2 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation - matched two-to-one by public and private contributions - to promote "reform" in the Chicago school system. He quickly brought in Obama, then all of 33 and bereft of any executive experience, to chair the board. With Ayers directing the project's operational arm and Obama overseeing its financial affairs until 1999, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge distributed more than $100 million to ideological allies with no discernible improvement in public education.

Until this week, moreover, the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Ayers works, was blocking access to the project's files (examination of which was being sought by frequent National Review contributor Stanley Kurtz), until finally relenting under public pressure. Less than three months from Election Day, analysis of the records from Barack Obama's only significant executive experience is just beginning.

The mainstream media has been derelict on the Obama/Ayers relationship. Perhaps now, finally, it will get the scrutiny it deserves.

Source

Obama camp seeking 'totalitarian' state?

Ad maker criticizes attempts to shut down information

Ed Martin, co-founder of the American Issues Project, which made a television and Internet ad questioning Sen. Barack Obama's ties to William Ayers, is wondering whether the Democratic presidential nominee actually wants a "totalitarian" state. "The attacks . from the Obama camp on the American Issues Project calling upon the Justice Department to shut us down and calling on stations to succumb to boycotts reminds me of a kind of place we've been blessed not to know - a kind of a totalitarian, or worse, state," Martin said.

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor has characterized the ads, which raise questions about Obama's links to Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground organization responsible for bombings at the U.S. Capitol and Pentagon, as "false, despicable and outrageous."

Martin says, however, the ad's accuracy was checked carefully. "We took the time and effort to back it all up - 168 pages of research documents backing up every word in the ad about William Ayers, his past, the bombs he built, the people who died because of his efforts. He actually had a terrorist group he formed and some of the people that he trained, that he helped, became part of the Weather Underground who went on and actually killed police officers. And you really get a sense this isn't a guy who kind of smoked a little weed and was upset about the draft. This was a guy who said 'I'm going to bomb the Capitol, bomb police stations, I'm going to kill people.' He was a fugitive from justice, in part because he had planned a big bombing of an Army office in New Jersey and the bomb blew up and killed three of his own gang, so he had to go on the lam for ten years. It just goes on and on, it reads like a movie," Martin said.

The controversy that erupted as the result of the TV ad placed by the American Issues Project is now in legal hands. WND has reported Obama has warned TV stations and asked the Justice Department to intervene in an attempt to block the ad from airing.

Martin said he and his board members didn't take that action lightly. "You can't just blow it off, so we had our lawyers write back and say 'Look, as to whatever is being said, we've seen the letter, it's not true and here's why and we're happy to discuss it.' Frankly, this kind of slash and burn tactic where the Obama campaign is threatening boycotts - first of all, that's a page out of John Kerry's book, he did that in 2004 where they're going to threaten boycotts and complaints. That's one thing.

"But the Department of Justice letter, we responded and said we're doing everything according to the law, we've been very careful, spent a lot of time and a lot of resources to comply with what are very difficult, sometimes complicated-beyond-belief laws around these things and we're just going to plow ahead," he said.

"If these aren't going to be discussed in any meaningful way by the media, issues like William Ayers and ones we're going to bring up, then we think we're doing a service, and again our goal is to get as much information out there as possible so that people can make informed decisions. We're paying to put the ad on in places like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, other key states. We're also talking to the press and getting lots of calls, lots of interest in spreading the message.

"We have yet to decide if we're going to continue to run the ad, do some more of that ad in other states, or if we're going to stop and decide to do a different ad. We're moving slowly but we're moving methodically, and again hopefully getting lots of people talking about important issues like this one," Martin said.

The questions arose over Obama's links to Ayers and whether that sheds light on his character or judgment. "The facts are simply this - and no one has disputed these facts," Martin said. "Sen. Obama began his career not 50 years ago, not 30 years ago, not 20 years ago, but maybe in the last five or 10 years.

His career began with an unrepentant terrorist named William Ayers in Chicago. Now, I'm not from Chicago, I'm from St. Louis, Missouri. Maybe in Chicago you have to get a sponsor to get into politics that includes unrepentant terrorists or mobsters, I don't know. But in this case, William Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist who bombed the Capitol and helped bomb police stations and killed police officers. And not only did Sen. Obama have his opening kick-off for his state senate campaign in this guy's home, but then the guy gave him money, he served on a board with him for years.

"If I served on a board with a guy that said things on 9-11 like, 'I wish we'd done more when I was a terrorist like in the '70s', I wouldn't stay on that board. I would have turned to my fellow board members and said 'Guys, what are we doing here? I got a reputation. I got a wife and kids I care about'."

Ayers told the New York Times at one point several years ago, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." He is married to fellow Weather Underground founder Bernadine Dohrn, who once was on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted List and described by J. Edgar Hoover as the "most dangerous woman in America."

"No one has said from the Obama campaign, 'Ed Martin from the American Issues Project, your facts are wrong, this isn't true.' And maybe there are worse parts of this story that we're not hearing yet. So, it's a very strange response from the Obama campaign, but I'm very grateful because it's created an incredible amount of interest across the country, and that was our goal from the beginning." ....

The Obama campaign's response to the TV ad triggered more reaction in the press than the ad initially did, resulting in even greater exposure than originally anticipated, despite the refusal of two cable news networks to air it. "We're running the ad in a lot of the battleground states. We actually went to two of the national stations - CNN and FOX to run the ad and both refused. Now, we didn't get a straight answer why, but it seemed like they were disinclined to run it during the conventions, although I can't say we got a straight answer. But it's running in all those local stations that run Fox and CNN in the local buys.

"A lot of the press wanted to look the other way which is frankly, what the media has done on a lot of issues for a long time. But the Obama response, which was threatening Department of Justice action and boycotts, caused people to sort of say 'Well, now it's news. The fight is news. Let's cover it.'

"I love America and I love these moments," Martin reflected. "We're very pleased that Sen. Obama has overreacted and gotten a little hysterical about the charges, because we think this will get a lot of attention on the issue and we'll be able to talk a lot about who William Ayers is and why Sen. Obama thinks its OK to spend time and work with the guy who's an admitted terrorist.

He said Obama could calm the issue down quickly, if he chose. "He could say, 'I was young. I hung out with a guy who was my mentor. Then I realized he was wrong and I walked away. But he didn't walk away, or he hasn't answered that, so we're going to find out." "And there are more things to come, I suspect," he said.

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Some Speeches are Better Than Others

By Alan Caruba

Some speeches are better than others. Sen. Barack Obama knows how to deliver a speech, but his acceptance speech was familiar stuff to anyone who has been listening to politicians as long as I have. Permit me a bit of cynicism because sometimes it allows you to separate the wheat from the chaff.

It is a bit of luck that Barack Obama's acceptance speech was given on the forty-fifth anniversary of Dr. King's famed 'I've got a dream' speech. That speech brought people together to build a better America, to fulfill its promise of equality.

I not only lived through the Civil Rights era, but I actually met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was brief, but memorable for me. Dr. King could deliver an inspirational sermon or speech. I often wonder if the civil rights movement would have been as successful if there had not been a Dr. King to lead it. Things might have turned out differently for Barack Obama.

I thought it interesting that Barack Obama did not hew that closely to Dr. King's oratorical style in his acceptance speech, but then it occurred to me that he is striving to get people to believe he is just like you and I. He is not.

He is the child of an imperfect mother who twice married Muslim men and whose child was literally rescued by two extraordinary grandparents. He is not like you or I.

He is half black and half white. He is not like you or I.

His intellect opened doors to elite universities, earned scholarships. He is not like you or I.

He has never served in the military, nor has he ever held a job that did not require a suit and tie. He is not like a lot of Americans.

He was imbued from an early age with the sophistry of Marxism that seeks to impose a government that promises all things to all people from cradle to grave and delivers only a soul-killing slavery to the state.

His speech had a central theme and it was jobs. In Obama's world most Americans are out of work. They are not.

In Obama's world, corporations are the enemy, not the engine of the economy.

In Obama's world, the nation can free itself in ten years from its dependence on oil. No nation on Earth can do that. And $150 billion of your money and mine to the charlatans offering wind and solar power will not produce much more than the one percent of electricity these limited sources of energy currently represent.

What America needs is more drilling for oil for our transportation needs, more coal-fired and nuclear plants for the electricity we require, and more natural gas for its many benefits.

The other theme of his speech was that the last eight years of the Bush administration were a failure. Is it a failure that we have not been attacked since 9/11? Is it a failure that unemployment remains at a bare five percent, among the lowest in generations? Is a $14 trillion economy a failure?

Never mind. Obama is not addressing facts. He is in the business of generating promises like the one to reduce taxes for 95% of working families. That is not going to happen.

He promises 'a world class education' for every child, but Teddy Kennedy's failed 'No Child Left Behind Act' is guaranteeing a failed education for the nation's children. He promises higher wages for already well-paid and pensioned teachers despite the fact they are turning out students who cannot spell, cannot do arithmetic, and have no idea of America's real history.

Promises are what politicians make. Speeches are what politicians give, but Barack Obama is no Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. For one thing, Dr. King was a registered Republican.

Some speeches are better than others. I give this one a C.

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(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)