Barack Obama's black pastor plunged back into the foaming currents of the Democratic presidential race today with a defiant and aggressive performance in front of the media in which he refused to recant any of his most bitterly contested views. Instead, the Rev Jeremiah Wright declared that the wave of hostility towards his sermons in the past weeks represented "an attack on the black church", whose traditions are still "invisible" to most Americans. Mr Obama has condemned Mr Wright's most incendiary remarks, but declines to disavow the Chicago preacher who for the past 20 years has been responsible for kindling his Christian faith, as well as marrying him and baptising his children.
David Axelrod, Mr Obama's chief strategist, did little to conceal his dismay at the re-emergence of Mr Wright into the spotlight with three high-profile appearances in as many days. "We don't have any control over Reverend Wright," he said. "There's not a thing we can do about it. Obviously, I don't think we would have encouraged him to go on a media tour."
Selectively edited video clips of Mr Wright's sermons circulating widely on television and the internet show him screaming into the microphone "God damn America!" or suggesting that the 9/11 attacks were an instance of "chickens coming home to roost". These have already surfaced in a Republican attack advertisements labelling Mr Obama as an extremist and are certain to feature in a general election campaign if he succeeds in becoming the Democratic nominee.
Republican nominee-elect John McCain said yesterday that he accepted Mr Obama's assurances that he did not share the pastor's opinions, but added: "I also understand why millions of Americans may...view this as a political issue."
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington this morning, Mr Wright said that the firestorm he had ignited was because white people did not understand the tradition of black preaching, which was neither "bombastic" nor "controversial" - just "different". If God intended Mr Obama to be president then "no white racist and no political pundit will get in the way", he added.
Asked to explain his 9/11 comments, he bristled and suggested that people focusing on his remarks had never listened to the entire sermon. "You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back to you," he said. "Those are Biblical principles." He similarly rejected accusations that he was unpatriotic. "I served six years in the military," he said. "How many years did [Vice-President] Cheney serve?" At several points, he was greeted with whoops and standing ovations from supporters in the audience, which added to the discomfort of the overwhelmingly white journalists present for the breakfast event.
On Sunday Mr Wright had spoken in front of a 10,000-strong NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ) audience in Detroit where he also proclaimed a message that there were only "differences", not "deficiencies" between ethnic groups. But he then went on to mimic the Boston accent of President Kennedy, who he said had pronounced "ask" as "ear-sk", and the Texas drawl of President Johnson - "ma follo Om-oricans" - adding: "It was only African-American children who were told they could not speak English properly."
Today he declared: "The Christianity of the slaveholder is not the same as the Christianity of the slave," before pointing out "this country has never apologised" to America's blacks. "I'm not going to forgive you for stepping on my foot if you're still stepping on my foot." He ended this remark by turning to his questioner, saying: "Understand? Capiche?" Asked about his claim that the US Government invented the HIV/Aids virus "as a means of genocide against people of colour", he replied: "I believe our Government is capable of anything."
A new Associated Press poll suggested for the first time in weeks that Democratic voters now believe that Hillary Clinton is more electable than Mr Obama, leading Mr McCain by 50 to 41 per cent.
Mr Obama, who chose to appear at a largely white Indianapolis church yesterday, is facing criticism from Democratic strategists for failing to anticipate the row over his pastor. One said: "I don't think any senior member of his staff had ever set foot in a black church." Oprah Winfrey, the TV talk show host who is also based in Chicago and has backed Mr Obama strongly, abruptly stopped attending Mr Wright's church a few years ago.
Mr Wright suggested today that he did not take Mr Obama's criticism of him very seriously, saying: "Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on soundbites, based on polls - preachers have a different person to whom they are accountable." He then added, to laughter: "I am not running for office; although I'm open to being vice-president."
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, explaining this morning why he had waited so long before breaking his silence about his incendiary sermons, offered a paraphrase from Proverbs: "It is better to be quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." Barack Obama's pastor would have been wise to continue to heed that wisdom.
Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment that doomed Obama's presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club. It was then that Wright, Obama's longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about race from which Obama had only recently recovered - and added lighter fuel.
Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks ("God damn America") and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.
In front of 30 television cameras, Wright's audience cheered him on as the minister mocked the media and, at one point, did a little victory dance on the podium. It seemed as if Wright, jokingly offering himself as Obama's vice president, was actually trying to doom Obama; a member of the head table, American Urban Radio's April Ryan, confirmed that Wright's security was provided by bodyguards from Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.
Wright suggested that Obama was insincere in distancing himself from his pastor. "He didn't distance himself," Wright announced. "He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American." Explaining further, Wright said friends had written to him and said, "We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected." The minister continued: "Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls."
Wright also argued, at least four times over the course of the hour, that he was speaking not for himself but for the black church. "This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," the minister said. "It is an attack on the black church." He positioned himself as a mainstream voice of African American religious traditions. "Why am I speaking out now?" he asked. "If you think I'm going to let you talk about my mama and her religious tradition, and my daddy and his religious tradition and my grandma, you got another thing coming."
That significantly complicates Obama's job as he contemplates how to extinguish Wright's latest incendiary device. Now, he needs to do more than express disagreement with his former pastor's view; he needs to refute his former pastor's suggestion that Obama privately agrees with him.
Wright seemed aggrieved that his inflammatory quotations were out of the full "context" of his sermons -- yet he repeated many of the same accusations in the context of a half-hour Q&A session this morning. His claim that the September 11 attacks mean "America's chickens are coming home to roost"? Wright defended it: "Jesus said, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles."
His views on Farrakhan and Israel? "Louis said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion. He was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter's being vilified for and Bishop Tutu's being vilified for. And everybody wants to paint me as if I'm anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago. He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century; that's what I think about him. . . . Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn't make me this color."
He denounced those who "can worship God on Sunday morning, wearing a black clergy robe, and kill others on Sunday evening, wearing a white Klan robe." He praised the communist Sandinista regime of Nicaragua. He renewed his belief that the government created AIDS as a means of genocide against people of color ("I believe our government is capable of doing anything").
And he vigorously renewed demands for an apology for slavery: "Britain has apologized to Africans. But this country's leaders have refused to apologize. So until that apology comes, I'm not going to keep stepping on your foot and asking you, does this hurt, do you forgive me for stepping on your foot, if I'm still stepping on your foot. Understand that? Capisce?" Capisce, reverend. All too well.
Democratic front-runner Barack Obama was supposed to unite the country, overcoming racial and even partisan division. How's that working out? As far as bridging the partisan divide, one may give him credit, but only in a backhanded way. His not-quite-insurmountable lead for the Democratic nomination has had the consequence of creating a tactical alliance between Hillary Clinton and Republicans, so that Mrs. Clinton has, at least for the moment, joined the vast right-wing conspiracy, as we noted last month. Mrs. Clinton even got the endorsement of Richard Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary.
But a corollary to this is that his own party is divided--among other ways, along racial lines. The New York Times has some evidence:
The third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives and one of the country's most influential African-American leaders sharply criticized former President Bill Clinton [Thursday] afternoon for what he called Mr. Clinton's "bizarre" conduct during the Democratic primary campaign. Representative James E. Clyburn, an undeclared superdelegate from South Carolina who is the Democratic whip in the House, said that "black people are incensed over all of this," referring to statements that Mr. Clinton had made in the course of the heated race between his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Senator Barack Obama. . . .
In an interview with The New York Times late Thursday, Mr. Clyburn said Mr. Clinton's conduct in this campaign had caused what might be an irreparable breach between Mr. Clinton and an African-American constituency that once revered him. "When he was going through his impeachment problems, it was the black community that bellied up to the bar," Mr. Clyburn said. "I think black folks feel strongly that that this is a strange way for President Clinton to show his appreciation."
We were initially inclined to see this Clyburn's way; there months ago, we opined that it was invidious for Mr. Clinton to liken Obama to Jesse Jackson after the South Carolina primary. But this was before we learned of Obama's relationship with "spiritual mentor" Jeremiah Wright, a practitioner of "black liberation theology" who has called America the "U.S. of KKK A." Hugh Hewitt has unearthed another sermon, in which Wright declares that America is doing "the same thing al Qaeda is doing under a different colored flag."
Although Obama has denounced some of Wright's remarks, he has not specified which ones, and he has said, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." In fact, Politico's Ben Smith reported last week that Obama's campaign distributed a handbill in Philadelphia before the primary that touted the candidate's relationship with Wright.
Wright himself resurfaced last week, sitting for an interview with PBS's Bill Moyers. It was an embarrassing softball affair in which Moyers at times was even less sensible than Wright. At one point Wright rightly observed that "we have the freedom here in this country" to denounce our government, "whereas [in] some other places, you're dead if [you] say the wrong thing about your government." To which Moyers replied, "Well, you can be almost crucified for saying what you've said here in this country."
Which is true, if being "almost crucified" means being subjected to harsh criticism. By that definition, Wright has almost crucified America on many a Sunday. During the interview, Wright had this to say about Obama:
He's a politician, I'm a pastor. We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. Those are two different worlds. I do what I do. He does what politicians do.
Yet at the beginning of the interview, Wright explained that from the start, he has taken a political approach to the ministry:
Wright: Actually a good friend of yours, I believe, and one of my professors, got me in the predicament I'm in today, Dr. Martin Marty, one of my professors at the University of Chicago--
Moyers: One of the great distinguished historians of religion in America.
Wright: He put a challenge to us in 1970, late '69, early '70, I'll never forget. He said, "You know, you come into the average church on a Sunday morning and you think you've stepped from the real world into a fantasy world. And what do I mean by that?" He said pick up the church bulletin. You leave a world, Vietnam, or today you leave a world, Iraq, over 4,000 dead, American boys and girls, 100,000, 200,000 depending on which count, Iraqi dead. Afghanistan, Darfur, rapes in the Congo, Katrina, Lower Ninth Ward, that's the world you leave. He said, "How come our bulletins, how come the faith preached in our churches does not relate to the world in which our church members leave at the benediction?" . . . What do we do in ministry that speaks to the community and the world in which we sit? That's Martin Marty. That's Martin Marty.
Needless to say, Moyers did not confront Wright about this contradiction. Politico's Smith has another charming example of unifying rhetoric coming from the Obama campaign:
[Obama campaign manager] David Plouffe tells [National Journal's] Linda Douglass that real racists are probably voting Republican in any case: "The vast, vast majority of voters who would not vote for Barack Obama in November based on race are probably firmly in John McCain's camp already," he says.
We agree with Wright on one thing: Obama is a politician, and "he does what politicians do." By the standards of politics--that is, besting opponents at the ballot box--Obama has done quite well, a lot better than most people expected when Mrs. Clinton was inevitable. But by the standards his supporters have set for him--transcending the differences that divide the country--one would be hard-pressed to say he's been even modestly successful.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright said Monday that he will try to change national policy by "coming after" Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) if he is elected president. The pastor also insisted Obama "didn't denounce" him and "didn't distance himself" from Wright's controversial remarks, but "did what politicians do." Wright implied Obama still agrees with him by saying: "He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was [portrayed as] anti-American."
Wright, who was Obama's pastor for 20 years and performed his wedding, made the explosive comment during a chaotic question-and-answer session at the National Press Club in Washington, following the pastor's remarks about the black church in America. "I said to Barack Obama last year, `If you get elected, November the 5th I'm coming after you, because you'll be representing a government whose policies grind under people,' Wright said.
The minister was speaking as part of a tour that is drawing heavy news coverage and causing a huge headache for Obama's presidential campaign. Obama, seeking to distance himself from remarks by Wright that some have taken as anti-American, has emphasized that Wright has retired. But Wright talks of their relationship in the present tense. "I'm a pastor; he's a member," he said. "I'm not a `spiritual mentor.' "
In the Democratic debate on April 16, Obama referred to Wright as "somebody who is associated with me that I have disowned," then clarified that to say he had disowned the comments. But Wright objected to a question saying Obama had denounced him. "Whoever wrote that question doesn't read or watch the news," Wright said. "He did not denounce me. He distanced himself from some of my remarks, like most of you, never having heard the sermon, all right? . "He didn't distance himself. He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was [portrayed as] anti-American. . He did, as I said, what politicians do."
In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, Barack Obama again fabricated the background of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to try to excuse his longtime pastor's denunciations of America and of whites. Referring to racial discrimination, violence, and segregation, Obama said Wright "went through experiences that I never went through." In his speech on race in Philadelphia, Obama made similar claims. He described a "lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family . . ."
Obama said this was "the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up . . . For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years." But as detailed in an April 13 Newsman article, "Obama's Rev. Wright Mythology," Obama's characterization of his mentor's upbringing is untrue. Wright grew up in a racially mixed, middle-class section of Philadelphia called Germantown, which consisted of homes on broad tree-lined streets. Both his parents had good jobs: His father was a pastor; his mother was vice principal of Philadelphia High School for Girls.
Wright was privileged to attend the elite Central High School, which admits only the most highly-qualified applicants from all over the city. When Wright attended Central High, the student body was 90 percent white, according to students who attended at around the same time. Wright's classmates clearly respected him. The 211th class yearbook described him as the "epitome of what Central endeavors to imbue in its students."
In contrast to Wright, Bill Cosby, who also attended Central High, has denounced the black culture of victimhood that Wright has promoted in his sermons, a culture that Cosby says sets up blacks for failure.
Since the Newsmax story on Wright's background ran, only Fox News' Bill O'Reilly has picked up on the fact that Obama's characterization of his preacher's upbringing is fiction.
Meanwhile, the coverage resurgence of Wright over the weekend spotlights the fact that, by suppressing any mention of Wright until mid-March, the media in effect selected Obama as the Democrats' nominee. Wright appeared in a Bill Moyers interview on Friday, gave a talk to the NAACP in Detroit on Sunday, and spoke to the National Press Club this morning. As a result, clips of Wright denouncing America and claiming the country introduced the AIDS virus to kill off blacks have been blanketing the airwaves. Moreover, at the NAACP, Wright in effect ratified the black culture of failure by saying African-Americans' brains are different than those of whites: If they speak differently from whites, they are not wrong - just different, he said, implying that they should not be corrected.
If the Obama-loving media had picked up on stories that Newsmax started running in January before the primaries began about Obama and his relationship with his pastor, Hillary Clinton undoubtedly would be ahead today in delegates and votes. After the media finally ran the stories, Obama's double-digit lead over Clinton in national polls vanished. At the same time, John McCain shot up in the polls. As Ken Blackwell, a black columnist, recently wrote, the media have covered Obama "as if he were in a beauty pageant." In doing so, they have done a disservice to Democrats by not telling the truth about Obama and his pastor until most of the primaries were over. By not reporting how Obama is using bogus claims about Wright's upbringing to excuse his "God damn America" tirades, the media are continuing the coverup.
"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." ---Barack Obama
For most of the Democratic campaign, hardly anyone has had any idea what Barack Omama is all about. He introduced himself to the nation by saying that he was in favor of change. But he never made it clear what kind of change. For month after month, every speech out of his mouth was full of vapid cliches. But there is something about an American Presidential campaign. It is too intense. There is too much at stake. A candidate may start with an intent to deceive. He may have a carefully planned program of lies. But somewhere along the way the truth breaks through.
Let us examine Obama's views on the white Pennsylvanians whose votes he was seeking. There is a half truth in his words; it is the half truth of over-generalization, the half truth which represents every member of a group by its worst elements; it is the half truth we call racism. There are some white men who are bitter, who are excessively religious and prone to violence. But if you talk to such people, then this is exactly what African-Americans appear as to them: violent, religious, angry.
In short, Barack Obama is a racist. He sees white people through the prism of hate. He sees them in cliches. His perception is so distorted that he missed the fact that Pennsylvania was on the side of the North in the Civil War and fought against slavery. The ancestors of those Pennsylvanians he condemned gave their lives so that African-Americans could be free. And he has been keeping a lid on his views because he does not dare to let people know what he really thinks.
So now we know what the election of 2008 is really about. The Democrats may nominate a racial bigot who hates the large majority of the people in the country he is trying to lead. The campaign will be very simple. The Democrats probably won't come right out and say it, but their position will be, "We hate America."
I first met these people at Harvard in the late 1950s. The issue has nothing to do with black or white. They hate America because America is the country based on freedom. They are not liberals. Neither are they democrats (with either a lower or upper case "D"). The formal name of these people is Social Democrat. This was a movement founded in 1875 in Germany to prevent the ideas of freedom and democracy from advancing across the continent of Europe. In 1912, the Social Democrats took control of Germany and fomented W.W.I. Then another Social Democrat, named Adolph Hitler, fomented W.W. II.
The history of human societies up to approximately the 17th century is, with only rare exceptions, one unmitigated horror story after another. We never had sheer mass murders like that of the Holocaust for the simple reason that there just weren't that many human beings alive.
But then in one human society, in one small corner of the earth, human beings found the way to live with each other. The answer was the concept of rights. Respect the rights of others, and insist that they respect yours. This idea was born in 17th century England. It gradually became stronger and infused the entire society. By 1689, England declared a Bill of Right (the ancestor of the American Bill of Rights of 1789). And through the 18th and 19th centuries the concept of rights spread through the world....
And here in the 21st century we are rushing as rapidly as we can to throw all of this away. At this moment down on the banks of the great grey-green, grassy Limpopo River, Africans are streaming out of Zimbabwe into South Africa at the rate of a thousand a week because the country is heading for Civil War. Soon these people will be killing each other. And with the world short of food, it is not difficult to pick the next point in the crisis. If there is not enough food to keep everyone alive, then the incentive to be decent and humane suffers quite a setback.
The fact that Barack Obama is an African-American merely highlights the tragedy of what is happening. The concept of rights knows no race. It applies to all human beings at all times and all places. Those who live by it succeed and prosper. Those who do not fail. Because of historical circumstance pretty much the entire continent of Africa remains ignorant of rights, and that is why the Limpopo River (made famous by Kipling) is playing a crucial role today.
Barack Obama does not care about rights. With his wife and his pastor, assuming he wins the Democratic nomination, we can look forward to a very sorry few months in which the media repeat every current (academic) lie intended to discredit America. As this issue plays itself out, do not fall into the trap of thinking that it has anything to do with African-Americans. It was born in Germany in 1875, and its motive is hate for America.
Jeff Jacoby notes the vicious "mainstream" that Obama drifts in
Should voters care that Barack Obama is friendly with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, two onetime leaders of the Weather Underground terrorist group that committed dozens of bombings and other violent crimes between 1969 and 1975? That question came up during the recent Democratic debate in Philadelphia, and scorn by the bucketful was heaped on the ABC moderators who asked it.
The Washington Post's Tom Shales, for example, was appalled that Obama should be confronted with "such tired tripe" as the fact that he "once associated with a nutty bomb-throwing anarchist." Michael Grunwald of Time derided the "extremely stupid politics" responsible for questions like the one about the "obscure sixties radical" with whom Obama "was allegedly 'friendly.' " Other commentators were even more outraged.
The chorus of protests echoed Obama's own defense. When George Stephanopoulos challenged him to explain his relationship with the unrepentant former terrorists -- "I don't regret setting bombs," Ayers told The New York Times. "I feel we didn't do enough" -- the senator dismissed the issue as irrelevant. "This is a guy," Obama said, "who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that [my] knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George." His links to the ex-Weathermen he brushed aside as "flimsy," saying he was sure "the American people are smarter than" to think he shares the terrorists' radical views.
Obama didn't leave it there. His campaign issued a 1,300-word "fact check" pooh-poohing his connection to Ayers and Dohrn as "phony," "tenuous," "a stretch" -- but simultaneously defending them as "respectable fixtures of the mainstream in Chicago." Yet Obama's ties to Ayers and Dohrn aren't nearly as trifling as he suggests, and their views -- today, not 40 years ago -- are about as "respectable" and "mainstream" as those of, say, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama's incendiary minister.
The key facts, reported by Ben Smith in Politico.com, are these: Barack Obama's political career was launched in Ayers's and Dohrn's home, when a group of "influential liberals" gathered in 1995 to meet the young organizer who was Illinois lawmaker Alice Palmer's chosen successor. In the years that followed, Obama and Ayers would serve together as (paid) board members of the Woods Fund, a leftist Chicago foundation, and appear jointly on academic panels, at least one of which was organized by Michelle Obama. Ayers would even donate money to one of Obama's political campaigns.
Arguably, none of this would matter if Ayers and Dohrn had long ago repudiated their violent extremism. But they have always refused to apologize for their monstrous behavior. "We weren't extreme enough in fighting against the war," Ayers avowed to the Chicago Tribune in 2001. In a memoir published that year, he exulted: "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon." America, he said after Sept. 11, "is not a just and fair and decent place. . . . It makes me want to puke." Is this really Obama's idea of "respectable" and "mainstream" political thinking? And if so, doesn't that tell voters something important about his judgment and standards?
In Chicago the other day, radio producer Guy Benson discovered video recordings of Ayers and Dohrn speaking at a reunion of antiwar radicals in November 2007. To live in the United States, Dohrn told the group, is to be "inside the heart of the monster" that is such a "purveyor of violence in the world." Ayers denounced America as an imperial warmonger steeped in "jingoistic patriotism, unprecedented and unapologetic military expansion, white supremacy . . . attacks on women and girls, violent attacks, growing surveillance in every sphere of our lives, on and on and on." (Audio clips have been posted at the indispensable PowerLine blog.)
Even if Obama doesn't personally believe these things, is it really "tired tripe" to ask why he seems so comfortable in the company of people who do? Is it, in fact, "extremely stupid politics" to wonder whether such people might play a role in an Obama administration? Rather than slamming the few journalists who raise such questions, might it not behoove others in the media to consider following suit?
The Obama campaign contends that John McCain has " broken his word to the American people and rendered hollow his promise of a respectful campaign" ... and apparently by his did this by agreeing with Barack Obama that Jeremiah Wright is a legitimate issue. The statement that got Team Obama so riled up?
"Senator Obama himself says it's a legitimate political issue, so I would imagine that many other people will share that view and it will be in the arena," McCain said at a news conference. "But my position that Senator Obama doesn't share those views remains the same."
Apparently the Obama campaign expected John McCain to argue with Obama that his relationship with Wright wasn't a legitimate issue. Also, note that McCain... okay, more likely somebody on his campaign... reads the Campaign Spot and/or listens to Hugh Hewitt, because McCain is now quoting the recently-discovered new recordings of Wright's sermons.
I saw yesterday some additional comments that have been revealed by Pastor Wright, one of them comparing the United States Marine Corps with Roman Legionnaires who were responsible for the death of our Savior, I mean being involved in that. It's beyond belief. And then of course saying that Al Qaeda and the American flag were the same flags. So I can understand, I can understand why people are upset about this. I can understand why Americans, when viewing these kinds of comments, are angry and upset. Just like they view Senator Obama's statements about why people turn to their faith and their values. He believes that it's out of economic concerns. We all know it's out of a fundamental belief, a fundamental faith in this country and its values and its principles. Again, Senator Obama, out of touch. I can't control, and will not in future, control. I will voice my opinion. And I will continue to say that I think that ad should not be run. But I won't continue to try to be the referee here."
Heh. By the way, if I were on the North Carolina GOP, I would re-edit that controversial ad to include the audio of Wright declaring, "what we are doing is the same thing al-Qaeda is doing under a different color flag." If video of this sermon is not available, I would just use a photo of Wright - North Carolinians already know who he is by now.
Barack Obama says he will vote in the Senate for General Petraeus' confirmation as commander for US forces in the Middle East and Central Asia.
"I think Petraeus has done a good tactical job in Iraq.."I will listen to General Petraeus given the experience that he has accumulated over the last several years," Obama said. "It would be stupid of me to ignore what he has to say."
Needless to say, those who recall Obama's opposition to the "surge" and Obama's continued demand that US forces be quickly withdrawn from Iraq are not befuddled:
"Obama also said it would be 'stupid' to ignore commanders on the ground in Iraq, yet his withdrawal strategy does exactly that," Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant said in an e-mail. "If Obama isn't ready to answer tough questions, how can he be ready to be commander in chief?"
Also, Obama's willingness to abandon Iraq may not sit well with Russia either. The Russian Foreign Minister says, according to Novosti:
There can be no question of foreign troops being withdrawn from Iraq at present, Russia's foreign minister said on Tuesday. "Iraq's law enforcement structures are not in a position to assume complete responsibility for ensuring security in the country and to effectively counter terrorist groups," Sergei Lavrov told an international conference on Iraq in Kuwait City.
He said that although some successes had been achieved in the security sphere, the situation remained volatile. "Positive changes are yet to be irreversible. Consider the recent fighting in Basra and Baghdad, the echo of which is still resounding [throughout the country], and the latest bomb attacks in the country's central provinces, which have claimed dozens of lives," he said.
Obama's willingness to surrender to terrorists parallels his willingness to surrender his few remaining crumbs of honesty. Even Russia, not a paradigm of integrity in its governance, recognizes how obtuse Obama may be if elected.
On June 9, 1970, Jane Alpert and Weatherman accomplices bombed the New York City Police headquarters in response to "police repression." Paul Ragonese, a victim from this Weathermen bomb attack, spoke out about the bombing on Hannity's America. He also blasted Barack Obama for being friendly with known unrepentant terrorists Willian Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn:
"If that's the standard for New York city cops, that you can't be associating with known criminals, that should be the minimum standard, I believe, for the president of the United States."
I'm sitting here watching CNN's coverage of Jeremiah Wright's speech at the Detroit NAACP convention and am struck by what's being attempted here. Defenders are quick to jump on his critics, basing that defense on the notion that snippets of his many words spoken (or written) over the years are being used to twist who he really is. And so what are they now attempting? The. Very. Same. Thing.
They take snippets of words spoken most recently (today on CNN, the other day on PBS), words shaped by the knowledge that every syllable will be dissected and reviewed, words influenced by that knowledge, words purposed in taking advantage of that knowledge and they attempt to tell us that these words, and not those used by his critics, define the man. Snippets that criticize are wrong. Snippets that defend are right.
We're watching the rehabilitation, the reconstruction, the rebuilding, the remaking of a man... from bigoted hate-monger to enlightened social critic. Old Media will defend despite his many words over the years because Old Media and Jeremiah Wright are ideologically entwined and connected.
It'll be up to New Media to counter that defense. Not just because New Media is opposed ideologically though that can't be denied but because New Media remains enamored with truth-telling. Old Media used to be. Now they're into truth-creation. And now they're into creating a new truth about Jeremiah Wright, led by Jeremiah Wright himself. How quaint. How convenient. How deceptive.
Jeremiah Wright can't go back now and re-tape the videos so many of us have seen. He can't go back and erase the relationships he and his church have nourished. He can't go back and rewrite the church bulletins that have been published and many of them still available on the church's website. Neither can Old Media. New Media won't allow it.
Maybe I've been reading too many stories about the fad of teenage vampire chick lit, worlds filled with parasitic aliens and demi-human creatures, but there's something eerie going on in this race. Hillary grows more and more glowy as Obama grows more and more wan. Is she draining him of his precious bodily fluids? Leeching his magic? Siphoning off his aura?
It used to be that he was incandescent and she was merely inveterate. Now she's bristling with life force, and he looks like he wants to run away somewhere for three months by himself and smoke. Hillary is not getting much sleep or exercise, and doesn't, like the ascetic Obama, abstain from junk food and coffee and get up at dawn to work out on the road. She's still a long shot and she's 14 years older than her rival.
Yet she's the one who is more energetic and focused and beaming, and he's the one who seems uneven and gauzy, often fatigued and unable to disguise being fed up with the slog. Even his speeches don't have the same pizazz. A man at a sports bar in Latrobe, Pa., advised Obama, "Get some sleep, Barack, you look like you're tired, man." When the candidate noted he's been running for president for 15 months, the guy offered another tip: "You need a drink."
Obama disdains convention and touts his new politics, but on Friday, he had a news conference in an uninspired setting - a gas station emptied out by his Secret Service detail. He doesn't emulate Bobby Kennedy, who defied political tropes and underscored his concern about the poor by taking reporters on treks to rural Appalachia or odysseys to roiling inner cities for speeches on street corners.
With Indiana polls showing the Democratic combatants in a dead heat, and 21 percent of Democrats undecided, this is a perilous time for Obama to lose his fizz. He tried to recapture the magic - and erase the bowling debacle - by shooting hoops with kids in Kokomo on Friday night. As a basketball player, he should know he's in overtime in his race with Hillary - and overtime is not the period to indulge in whining. Instead of jokingly complaining that babies have learned to walk and talk since he first got in the race, he should remind voters that, if Hillary prevails, some people will slouch toward middle age having never known a White House without a Bush or a Clinton.
Even some Obama fans find Hillary's toughness and shameless shape-shifting compelling. Having lost the White House twice to brass-knuckled pols, the Dems may be drawn to a woman who thinks like Karl Rove.
James Clyburn, the influential black congressman from South Carolina, says that some blacks are buying into the 2012 Tonya Harding conspiracy theory: that the Clintons know they can't beat Obama this time, so they are "hell-bound," as Clyburn put it, to shred him so he'll lose to McCain and Hillary will be able to try again in 2012 - when McCain is 76. In interviews, Clyburn called the tactics of the Clintons and their henchmen "bizarre," "disingenuous" and "scurrilous."
Obama is burdened by Jeremiah Wright's inflammatory remarks on race and his comment to Bill Moyers that Obama "does what politicians do." And Hillary is burdened by her husband's inflammatory remarks on race and her own willingness to burn the party to save the party. The Nixonian Hillary has a ravenous hunger that Obama lacks. Literally - at a birthday party in Philly for her photographer, she was devouring the chips and dip with two hands - and viscerally.
At Joe's Junction gas station in Indianapolis, Obama did his best to shoo away the pesky elitist label. Accused by an Indianapolis reporter of looking like a GQ cover, he said he has only four pairs of shoes and buys "five of the same suit and then I patch them up and wear them repeatedly." But his campaign refused to reveal the brand, presumably because it's not J. C. Penney.
He dutifully enthused about carbs, assuring reporters that when he had dinner as a child with his Kansas grandparents, the food "would have been very familiar to anybody here in Indiana. A lot of pot roast, potatoes and Jell-O molds." But then he resumed wry whingeing about his 37 bowling score, explaining that he finished only seven frames, including two that "were bowled by a 10-year-old" and another by a 3-year-old. "I don't want to go out of my way to sort of prove my street cred as a down-to-earth guy," he said, after going out of his way. "People know me." Not yet, but we will, one of these years.
Joe Klein of Time Magazine, who was not a Weatherman but is a weathervane of liberal Democratic opinion, blasts the irresponsibility of the mainstream media! Discussing what the Pennsylvania primary did to Obama, "who entered the primary as a fresh breeze and left it stale, battered and embittered," Klein writes:
In the course of six weeks, the American people learned that he was a member of a church whose pastor gave angry, anti-American sermons, that he was "friendly" with an American terrorist who had bombed buildings during the Vietnam era, and that he seemed to look on the ceremonies of working-class life - bowling, hunting, churchgoing and the fervent consumption of greasy food - as his anthropologist mother might have, with a mixture of cool detachment and utter bemusement. All of which deepened the skepticism that Caucasians, especially those without a college degree, had about a young, inexperienced African-American guy with an Islamic-sounding name and a highfalutin fluency with language. And worse, it raised questions among the elders of the party about Obama's ability to hold on to crucial Rust Belt bastions like Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Jersey in the general election - and to add long-suffering Ohio to the Democratic column.
Since all of that "new" information was old, had long been available to anyone who would look at it, the fact that it lay in plain sight but unseen by our guardian watchdogs in the mainstream media is a clear and telling indictment of the press's irresponsibility.
Now, it's true that Klein himself doesn't see that he's indicting himself and his colleagues, but that's nothing new. He doesn't see many things, such as the relevance of "so-called character issues" in a presidential campaign. No matter that Klein would no doubt say (actually, he did say) that none of this "new" information speaks to character and judgment, that it is merely "sludge," "caricature," "scurrilous trash." He either doesn't see or doesn't attach any significance to Obama's elitist attribution of xenophobia, racism, etc., to the bitter clinging of the angry rubes, at least in part because he shares it. Re-read the following:
[All the sludgy trash slung by ABC] deepened the skepticism that Caucasians, especially those without a college degree, had about a young, inexperienced African-American guy with an Islamic-sounding name and a highfalutin fluency with language.
Well, sure. Only poor, dumb whites would entertain any reservations about Obama.
When Barack Obama first decided to run for state senator in Illinois, the long serving incumbent in his district graciously supported his early efforts - even going so far as to introduce him to liberals in his Hyde Park district (including a former terrorist named William Ayers). Alice Palmer was a legend in the community - a civil rights organizer and a power in Springfield. She was retiring to run for Congress.
But a few months after giving Obama a nice head start, Palmer changed her mind. She then asked Obama to withdraw so she could have her old seat back.
How did Obama repay this gracious political gesture? He sicced his lawyer on every other candidate in the primary - including Palmer - by challenging signatures on the nominating petitions. In the end, he successfully got Palmer and everyone else thrown off the ballot so that Obama was running all by himself. I guess this was before he became the messiah of the "new politics."
And Alice Palmer? Obama's former friend is campaigning for Hillary Clinton in Indiana:
One bonus for Barack Obama (D-IL) as he campaigns in Indiana is that so many friends from his home state can just drive across the state line to help him out. Then again, it's also a short trip for the occasional hometown pol who has been crossed by Obama, such as one featured guest doing the Hoosier tour today.
Joining Chelsea Clinton and other women leaders to campaign for Hillary Clinton today is Alice Palmer, the former state senator who picked Obama to be her successor back in the mid-90s. When she tried to reclaim her spot, though, Obama got her booted from the ballot.
The day of campaigning culminates tonight with a "Women for Hillary" rally in New Albany. The women plan to talk about Clinton's plans for the economy, job creation and the middle class. Palmer's story is more familiar in our town it is in Indiana, even in the northwest section of Hoosierland that consumes so much of the Chicago news media. Still, the national press has shown an interest in the early account of Obama playing hardball, and Palmer's presence may remind some of them of the story.
A hardened conservative political operative has launched the first no-holds-barred Republican "attack ad" against Barack Obama, painting him as soft on crime and terror. Floyd Brown, a veteran of America's often brutal presidential battles, told The Telegraph that the "Victims" advertisement marked the start of an all-out campaign to portray the expected Democratic nominee as a dangerous liberal.
"Our polling shows that Obama's positives with many Republican voters are much higher than we think they should be," he said. "He is the overwhelming favourite for the Democratic nomination and our intention is to give Republicans a true picture of him."
The 60-second slot relates the fate of three Chicago residents murdered by gangs in 2001. The female narrator then records the opposition of Mr Obama, an Illinois state senator at the time, to expanding the death penalty to cover gang-related murders. "So the question is: can a man so weak in the war on gangs be trusted in the war on terror?" she asks ominously.
The advertisement was posted online on YouTube and emailed to 7 million conservative supporters last week accompanied by a fundraising appeal for Mr Brown's National Campaign Fund and its exposeobama.com website. The on-screen message accompanying the appeal illustrated the strength of the onslaught that awaits Mr Obama if he secures his party's nomination.
Deploying his politically-detrimental middle name and a barrage of capital letters, it declared: "What really makes 'President Barack Hussein Obama' the scariest four words in the English language is the fact that HE CAN BECOME THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!"
Mr Obama will be dogged by adverts highlighting his long-standing ties to Rev Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor and spiritual mentor. Rev Wright put those links back in the headlines last week when he emerged from his temporary silence to defend his outspoken sermons and tell interviewers that Mr Obama was acting like "a politician" when he distanced himself from the pastor's comments. The "Victims" spot is apparently the start of an attempt to "swift boat" Mr Obama.
I guess I was not among the "7 million conservatives" who got the message. Thanks to the Telegraph, though it will have wider distribution as they cluck about "swift boat" attacks. I am not sure how effective this ad will be about an obscure vote in the Illinois senate. It does seem to play into the liberal stereo type of conservative politics. I am sure there will be other ads unfavorable to Obama by independent groups. I am sure that Brown does not represent the RNC or the McCain campaign. Brown's claim to fame is the Willie Horton ad, also done by an independent group. I am not sure this will be as effective.
Barack Obama has a thing for Marxists. He befriends them, listens to their counsel, and he even hires them to work in his campaign. And they seem to feel the warmth. President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, who led a revolution there in 1979, says Barack Obama's presidential bid is a "revolutionary" phenomenon, and Americans are "laying the foundations for a revolutionary change." A captured computer revealed that an unknown person chatted with Marxist FARC guerillas on Obama's behalf (they believed), stating he would be the next President and US policy towards Columbia would change. Frank Marshall Davis, a dear Obama friend and mentor was as a member of the Communist Party USA. Barack Obama just seems to attract Marxists.
If the people he surrounds himself with are any indication of his core beliefs, a higher capital gains tax to punish the rich, even if it diminishes actual tax revenue, may be only the beginning. Obama's Official campaign blogger, Sam Graham-Felsen, a former writer for the leftist Nation magazine and a contributor to the Socialist Viewpoint, is certainly a believer in class warfare.
The capitalist ruling class of the United States exercises a virtual dictatorship not only over American society, but also over the entire world. This capitalist class rule is the basic cause of the poverty, wars and the degradation of the natural environment.
After being expelled from Socialist Action in 1999, we formed Socialist Workers Organization in an attempt to carry on the project of building a nucleus of a revolutionary party true to the historic teachings and program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.
Socialist Viewpoint
The product of a Harvard education, Sam is an admirer of anti-American academic Noam Chomsky, a hypocrite and fraud masquerading as a political philosopher. Mr. Chomsky, perhaps admired by Obama as by his official blogger, is fond of visiting dictators and terrorists and giving speeches blaming all the worlds' ills on America. All while accepting defense department contract dollars as a linguist. Chomsky was an ardent supporter of Pol Pot, and to this day denies a holocaust occurred in Cambodia (1.67 million died). He is unrepentant about the horrors his vile ideology encouraged and supports Hamas and Hezbollah with the same willful blindness today.
In an article in the Harvard Crimson, Sam writes of his hero:
For me, hearing Chomsky speak for the first time was a life-changing experience. His ability to take preconceptions and destroy them-to completely remodel one's understanding of reality with cold, hard facts-blew me away. When I left what was then the ARCO Forum last fall, I felt as though I had been through the Matrix and back. Chomsky really has this effect because he bombards you with evidence and logic, not empty rhetoric. It is nearly impossible to hear him or read him-once you've actually checked his facts yourself (he even cites page numbers in public addresses)-and deny what he's saying.
For anyone who has actually endured one of Chomsky's muddled rants or tried to verify the claims in his books, young Sam's praise is comical; and a clear indication he has never actually read one. You find very quickly Chomsky is not overly concerned with "facts," as he fabricates them with abandon. He cites page numbers, to his own books, which recycle themselves with astonishing success. Hardly an example of a towering intellect, his tired canards are sufficient to impress the worshipful Sam Graham-Felsen, and endear himself to the same leftist academics that so easily embraced dictators such Ho Chi Min and Pol Pot, idolize Chavez and Castro and legitimized terrorists like Yasser Arafat. Chomsky is the master of post-modern moral relativism, quick to excuse atrocity with obfuscation.
On the day after 9-11, Chomsky wrote:
"The terrorist attacks were major atrocities. In scale they may not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and killing unknown numbers of people."
It may be simple self-aggrandizing hypocrisy that inspires Mr. Chomsky's comments, though I suspect, more likely he mistakes the accolades of twenty year old activists as confirmation of his own genius. He plays what works with the crowd. Here are some other nihilistic gems gleaned from his pedantic and incomprehensible writing:
"If the Nuremberg laws were applied today, then every Post-War American president would have to be hanged."
"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."
"Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media."
"The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - "indoctrination," we might say - exercised through the mass media. "
"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."
"I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system."
Sam Graham-Felsen, hired to run Obama's blog, writes about Noam Chomsky in a Marxist publications that openly calls for revolution against the American government. This is a Presidential candidate's choice to run the on-line portion of his campaign. That speaks volumes of his character and worldview. Contradicting what he says in public, Obama is surrounding himself with poeple who never seem to learn that their absurd ideologies end in misery and ruin.
Sam is young and has much to learn, so we can forgive his silly hagiographies, the ones about Chomsky and the ones about Obama. His hero worship is eager and emotional and completely without substance, much as Obama's campaign promises are without substance. Obama is a community organizer in the Saul Alinsky mold, and knows where to get people like Sam who have energy and drive. His staff is nothing if not energetic. He even cut his activist teeth in Chicago, the stomping grounds of Alinsky and so many others in the "progressive" community. One wonders why the windy city still has a murder rate higher than Baghdad, after so many years of enlightened activism.
The adults in the Obama campaign expect us to believe that a campaign staff filled with Marxists and radicals does not reflect the candidate. We are supposed to believe that ideologues who distain America and Americans can improve the system that has brought humanity more prosperity and well-being than any nation before it. Speaking out of both sides of their mouths, they tell us we are great, and then insist we must change because we are responsible for all the bad things that happen in the world. That alone should anger the electorate enough to defeat them. The change Obama will bring will not be the change America needs or expects. It will be the change of naive adolescents, who think Noam Chomsky wise.
Karl Rove, who masterminded the last two Republican victories in presidential elections, is gazing with undisguised relish at the giant target being painted on Barack Obama's back before the next one. In an interview with The Times yesterday, he described the likely Democratic nominee as a "frail" candidate, who represents the values of an out-of-touch liberal social elite and demonstrates "tone deafness" to the concerns of ordinary Americans. "You have probably seen this kind of guy at London parties, trailing ash from a fashionable cigarette into the carpet and making snide remarks about someone `being an abominable bore'," Mr Rove said.
He suggested that voters have not heard the last of Mr Obama's recent comments at a San Francisco fund-raiser, where he suggested small town Pennsylvanians were clinging to guns and religion because they were "bitter". The candidate sounded, Mr Rove said, as if he was following in the footsteps of his anthropologist mother "reporting on the exotic species of voter he had encountered in some dark corner on the opposite side of the globe".
All this is a far cry from just a few short weeks ago when Mr Obama's soaring oratory - his promise to heal racial divisions or transcend the partisan politics of an older generation - had Republican strategists regarding him with shock and awe.
It is now the Democrats' turn to worry. Mr Obama's decisive defeat in this week's Pennsylvania primary has been followed by whispers of alarm that they may end up with a candidate who is listing badly - even holed below the water line - just as he is about to cross the finishing line in his race with Mrs Clinton. His failure to win white working-class voters in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania - both certain to be important battlegrounds in November's general election - has raised doubts about his fitness for the fight against John McCain. He sometimes appears drained by his fight with Mrs Clinton, a woman 14 years older than him, taking time off the campaign trail this week and setting himself a light schedule for the coming days.
Whereas he once energised rallies with the chant, "Fired up! Ready to go!" he now complains about feeling tired and the length of primary season, or says he wants to go home to see his young family.
If Mr Obama loses again in Indiana on May 6, then panic will spread through the party. His campaign spent much of yesterday explaining to the Democratic super-delegates - who could yet wrest the nomination away from him, why he remains the best candidate to beat the Republicans. Mr Obama himself was busy shoring up his battered Everyman credentials by holding a press conference at an Indianapolis petrol station. But Mr Rove said that "unless something extraordinary happens", Mr Obama's lead among elected delegates still means that he will be the Democratic nominee.
And, although it may be unwelcome right now, Mr Rove even had some advice for him. First, he cease making attacks on Mrs Clinton and Mr McCain, which are "corrosive of his fundamental message about representing a new kind of politics". Mr Rove also pointed out that Mr Obama cannot stand on a platform promising post-partisan politics when he has virtually nothing to show on this front from sitting in the Senate for three years. "He should spend less time on the campaign trail between now and September and more time in the Senate" trying to get such an achievement under his belt, Mr Rove said. "The best way to prove a message is to live it."
Mr Obama has also been embarrassed in recent weeks by his black liberationist pastor Jeremiah Wright, who returned to the airwaves yesterday to denounce the media for portraying him as "some sort of fanatic". Unhelpfully, he explained that one of the differences between him and Mr Obama is that he "goes out as a politician and says what he has to say as a politician". It is a treacherous, racially-charged subject, and Mr McCain has been careful this week to disassociate himself from Republicans who have launched a TV advert attacking Mr Obama's links with the pastor.
But Mr Rove suggested that race, far from hurting Mr Obama probably works in his favour by attracting white voters who regard the prospect of a black president as a "hopeful thing". A bigger problem for Mr Obama, he said, is winning industrial states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania with a voter base that resembles "George McGovern's coalition of college students and white wine sippers".
Mr Rove cited polls showing that as many as 26 per cent of Mrs Clinton's supporters will vote Republican if Mr Obama is the nominee, saying even though such numbers were likely to come down before November, "there are going to be significant numbers of defections in this contest". His scorn for Mr Obama was almost palpable as he described how the candidate had developed a habit of "parsing" when faced by criticism or complaining about rough treatment as he did after last week's TV debate against Mrs Clinton. This makes him look like a whiner, Mr Rove said. "She has been getting tough with him - but it's not as tough as it will get from all sorts of places in a general election."
"Real change has never been easy. . . . The status quo in Washington will fight. They will fight harder than ever to divide us and distract us with ads and attacks from now until November" -- Barack Obama
With that, Obama identified the new public enemy: the "distractions" foisted upon a pliable electorate by the malevolent forces of the status quo, i.e., those who might wish to see someone else become president next January. "It's easy to get caught up in the distractions and the silliness and the tit for tat that consumes our politics" and "trivializes the profound issues" that face our country, he warned sternly. These must be resisted.
Why? Because Obama understands that the real threat to his candidacy is less Hillary Clinton and John McCain than his own character and cultural attitudes. He came out of nowhere with his autobiography already written, then saw it embellished daily by the hagiographic coverage and kid-gloves questioning of a supine press. (Which is why those "Saturday Night Live" parodies were so devastatingly effective.)
Then came the three amigos: Tony Rezko, the indicted fixer; Jeremiah Wright, the racist reverend; William Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist. And then Obama's own anthropological observation that "bitter" working-class whites cling to guns and religion because they misapprehend their real class interests.
In the now-famous Pennsylvania debate, Obama had extreme difficulty answering questions about these associations and attitudes. The difficulty is understandable. Some of the contradictions are inexplicable. How does one explain campaigning throughout 2007 on a platform of transcending racial divisions, while in that same year contributing $26,000 to a church whose pastor incites race hatred?
What is Obama to do? Dismiss all such questions about his associations and attitudes as "distractions." And then count on his acolytes in the media to wage jihad against those who have the temerity to raise these questions. As if the character and beliefs of a man who would be president are less important than the "issues." As if some political indecency was committed when Obama was prevented from going through his latest -- 21st and likely last -- primary debate without being asked about Wright or Ayers or the tribal habits of gun-toting, God-loving Pennsylvanians.
Take Ayers. Obama makes it sound as if the relationship consists of having run into each other at the DMV. In fact, Obama's political career was launched in a 1995 meeting at Ayers's home. Obama's own campaign says that they maintain "friendly" relations. Obama's defense is that he was 8 when Ayers and his Weather Underground comrades were planting bombs at the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol and other buildings. True. But Obama was 40 when Ayers said publicly that he doesn't regret setting bombs. Indeed, he said, "I feel we didn't do enough." Would you maintain friendly relations with an unrepentant terrorist? Would you even shake his hand? To ask why Obama does is perfectly legitimate and perfectly relevant to understanding what manner of man he is.
Obamaphiles are even more exercised about the debate question regarding the flag pin. Now, I have never worn one. Whether anyone does is a matter of total indifference to me. But apparently not to Obama. He's taken three affirmative steps in regard to flag pins. After Sept. 11, he began wearing one. At a later point, he stopped wearing it. Then last year he explained why: because it "became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security."
Apart from the self-congratulatory fatuousness of that statement -- as if in this freest of all countries, political self-expression is somehow scarce or dangerous or a sign of patriotic courage -- to speak of pin-wearing as a sign of inauthentic patriotism is to make an issue of it yourself. For Obamaphiles to now protest the very asking of the question requires a fine mix of cynicism and self-righteousness.
But Obama needs to cast out such questions as illegitimate distractions because they are seriously damaging his candidacy. As people begin to learn about this just-arrived pretender, the magic dissipates. He spent six weeks in Pennsylvania. Outspent Hillary more than 2 to 1. Ran close to 10,000 television ads -- spending more than anyone in any race in the history of the state -- and lost by 10 points. And not because he insufficiently demagogued NAFTA or the other "issues." It was because of those "distractions" -- i.e., the things that most reveal character and core beliefs.
The ex-Weatherman is now a radical educator with influence
Barack Obama complains that he's been unfairly attacked for a casual political and social relationship with his neighbor, former Weatherman Bill Ayers. Obama has a point. In the ultraliberal Hyde Park community where the presidential candidate first earned his political spurs, Ayers is widely regarded as a member in good standing of the city's civic establishment, not an unrepentant domestic terrorist. But Obama and his critics are arguing about the wrong moral question. The more pressing issue is not the damage done by the Weather Underground 40 years ago, but the far greater harm inflicted on the nation's schoolchildren by the political and educational movement in which Ayers plays a leading role today.
A Chicago native son, Ayers first went into combat with his Weatherman comrades during the "Days of Rage" in 1969, smashing storefront windows along the city's Magnificent Mile and assaulting police officers and city officials. Chicago's mayor at the time was the Democratic boss of bosses, Richard J. Daley. The city's current mayor, Richard M. Daley, has employed Ayers as a teacher trainer for the public schools and consulted him on the city's education-reform plans. Obama's supporters can reasonably ask: If Daley fils can forgive Ayers for his past violence, why should Obama's less consequential contacts with Ayers be a political disqualification? It's hard to disagree. Chicago's liberals have chosen to define deviancy down in Ayers's case, and Obama can't be blamed for that.
What he can be blamed for is not acknowledging that his neighbor has a political agenda that, if successful, would make it impossible to lift academic achievement for disadvantaged children. As I have shown elsewhere in City Journal, Ayers's politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America's future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students.
Indeed, the education department at the University of Illinois is a hotbed for the radical education professoriate. As Ayers puts it in one of his course descriptions, prospective K-12 teachers need to "be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation." Ayers's texts on the imperative of social-justice teaching are among the most popular works in the syllabi of the nation's ed schools and teacher-training institutes. One of Ayers's major themes is that the American public school system is nothing but a reflection of capitalist hegemony. Thus, the mission of all progressive teachers is to take back the classrooms and turn them into laboratories of revolutionary change.
Unfortunately, neither Obama nor his critics in the media seem to have a clue about Ayers's current work and his widespread influence in the education schools. In his last debate with Hillary Clinton, Obama referred to Ayers as a "professor of English," an error that the media then repeated. Would that Ayers were just another radical English professor. In that case, his poisonous anti-American teaching would be limited to a few hundred college students in the liberal arts. But through his indoctrination of future K-12 teachers, Ayers has been able to influence what happens in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of classrooms.
Ayers's influence on what is taught in the nation's public schools is likely to grow in the future. Last month, he was elected vice president for curriculum of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association (AERA), the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. Ayers won the election handily, and there is no doubt that his fellow education professors knew whom they were voting for. In the short biographical statement distributed to prospective voters beforehand, Ayers listed among his scholarly books Fugitive Days, an unapologetic memoir about his ten years in the Weather Underground. The book includes dramatic accounts of how he bombed the Pentagon and other public buildings.
AERA already does a great deal to advance the social-justice teaching agenda in the nation's schools and has established a Social Justice Division with its own executive director. With Bill Ayers now part of the organization's national leadership, you can be sure that it will encourage even more funding and support for research on how teachers can promote left-wing ideology in the nation's classrooms-and correspondingly less support for research on such mundane subjects as the best methods for teaching underprivileged children to read.
The next time Obama-the candidate who purports to be our next "education president"-discusses education on the campaign trail, it would be nice to hear what he thinks of his Hyde Park neighbor's vision for turning the nation's schools into left-wing indoctrination centers. Indeed, it's an appropriate question for all the presidential candidates.
Obama Delegate Admits the Obvious: 'Bitter' Was Indeed a Big Deal
Reading the analysis of Dan Wofford (son of former Pennsylvania Senator Harris Wofford) on "What Went Wrong" for Obama in the last primary is a rather reassuring experience. When Obama offered that Rosetta Stone of Condescension at the San Francisco fundraiser, you (well, probably) and I thought that ought to be a big deal. The coverage suggested it could be a big deal. But Obama's cheerleaders in the press insisted it wasn't a big deal, and the polls didn't give us instant confirmation that it was a big deal.
We were told his explanation of his remarks was "sensible and refreshing." The Obama campaign actually emailed out a CNN segment where Gloria Borger, Jack Cafferty, and Jeffrey Toobin all defended the comments. Even ordinarily sensible race watchers declared, "The word "bitter" wasn't the best choice in the context he used it in but he was trying to make a broader point. I guess those are the pitfalls of being really smart. But to say that these comments are "elitist" or are "demeaning" seems to be a big time stretch. It's hard to paint Obama as an "elitist" while at the same time he's described as hip, cool and relates to the younger generation. That makes no sense."
So it's reassuring to hear an Obama supporter - an Obama delegate, no less! - come out and say, "yup, it was a big deal." And to point out that elitism and snobbery are toxic in American politics, even in Democratic primaries...
You ask "what went wrong"... Here's my hangover-colored answer: He visited San Fransisco [sic] two weeks ago. That's what happened.
* Message to all Democratic Candidates: Never to go San Francisco, unless incognito;
* Message to Barack: Don't think out loud at fundraisers in San Francisco if you're stupid enough to go there.
* Message # 3: If someone in SF asks you about those "strange rural people in PA"...don't indulge their liberal, latte drinking bull [poop]...Just tell them if they want to understand rural and ethnic PA that they should get in the Prius's and drive down to Bakersfield or any of the other mid state towns in California where there are people who actually lead ordinary lives and care about God and own guns....
Bittergate hurt a lot - bc is slowed down and then with the poor debate performance stopped what was truly real closing momentum. No question had he not gone to SF or said those comments, we lose by 3-4 pts.
As somebody mentioned weeks ago, "if, as current polls predict, Barack Obama loses Pennsylvania by a double-digit margin on April 22, the truly ominous omen will not be the loss itself, but his campaign's catastrophic inability to tailor its message to vital demographics."
Barack Obama knows about audacity. He learned it from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, perfected it in Chicago and dazzles Democrats from Sioux City to Skagway and smaller places between. Fresh from his triumphs with the Audacity of Hope, he's eager to aim the Audacity of Bloviation at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who dreams of making a Hiroshima of Tel Aviv. Well, why not? His audacity has kids, babes, Hollywood stars, Manhattan ladies who lunch, celebrities of stage, screen and old-time radio and even Colin Powell in thrall. How could a mere Persian rug merchant resist him?
Continuing to play games with words, Mr. Obama says he wants to make a "diplomatic surge" with talks with Iran to stabilize the situation in Iraq. This is odd, because on the one hand he insists the "surge" that everybody else recognizes as working has been a bust. Now he wants the diplomats to emulate a bust.
There's something of Democratic surge in meddling, too, though we must audaciously hope that it is not coordinated. On the very day that Mr. Obama went surging through Iraq and Iran, the known world (or at least the worlds of Arabia and a precinct or maybe two in southwest Georgia) was rocked by the news that The Hon. Jimmy Carter would soon be on his way to Syria to break bread and nibble on sheep's eyes with Khaled Meshal, the exiled leader of Hamas, which the State Department regards as one of the foremost terrorist organizations in the world. Like Khaled Meshal, Jimmy Carter will be a guest of President Bashar al-Assad, though they won't necessarily share the same rug. Mr. Jimmy will be the first Western leader of his rank to greet the terrorist chief.
"It's about par for the course from President Carter, demonstrating a lack of judgment typical of what he does," says John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "To go to Syria to visit Hamas at this point is just an ill-timed, ill-advised decision on his part."
Ibrahim Hooper, the spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, was, as you might expect, euphoric. He says Mr. Carter's efforts demonstrate that he's "a true partner" of peace. "I think President Carter would only undertake such a mission if he believed that something could be achieved in terms of peace and reconciliation in the region." Any friend of Hamas is a friend of "peace," as suicide bombers define "peace."
Jimmy Carter's adventures no longer agitate anyone very much, but the prospect of Barack Obama - green, na‹ve and inexperienced in the ways of the world beyond the south side of Chicago - rushing off to charm despots and dictators with smooth talk sends shivers down the backbones, such as they may be, of everybody in a pair of striped pants. Summits look like fun to prospective presidents, with flags flying from the front fenders of long black limousines and self-important aides scurrying about with learned papers and cold coffee. Older men have learned to be wary.
"Summits have all too often been a gamble, the experience nerve-wracking and the results unsatisfactory," said Dean Acheson, who was Harry S. Truman's secretary of State. He recalled the advice given to Woodrow Wilson on the eve of the first Wilson journey to Europe: "The moment President Wilson sits down at the council table with these prime ministers and foreign secretaries, he has lost all the power that comes from distance and detachment. He becomes merely a negotiator dealing with other negotiators." When the quarterback, i.e., the president, fumbles, the goal line is open behind him.
Sending the inexperienced Barack Obama, the ultimate salesman armed only with a smile, guile and a shoeshine, off to parley with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-il or even the man in charge in Moscow and Beijing is enough to send shivers down anyone's spine. Sen. Obama can't wait to try out the Audacity of Bloviation that has worked so well on gullible Democrats at home. This is the second time he's talked about how he's eager to substitute easy verbosity for hard-won experience. We must have the audacity to hope for better than that.
Post below recycled from Taranto. See the original for links
Is Barack Obama the next George McGovern? John Judis of The New Republic thinks so, and the Pennsylvania primary results bear him out:
If you look at Obama's vote in Pennsylvania, you begin to see the outlines of the old George McGovern coalition that haunted the Democrats during the '70s and '80s, led by college students and minorities. In Pennsylvania, Obama did best in college towns (60 to 40 percent in Penn State's Centre County) and in heavily black areas like Philadelphia.
Its ideology is very liberal. Whereas in the first primaries and caucuses, Obama benefited from being seen as middle-of-the-road or even conservative, he is now receiving his strongest support from voters who see themselves as "very liberal." In Pennsylvania, he defeated [Hillary] Clinton among "very liberal" voters by 55 to 45 percent, but lost "somewhat conservative" voters by 53 to 47 percent and moderates by 60 to 40 percent. In Wisconsin and Virginia, by contrast, he had done best against Clinton among voters who saw themselves as moderate or somewhat conservative.
Obama even seems to be acquiring the religious profile of the old McGovern coalition. In the early primaries and caucuses, Obama did very well among the observant. In Maryland, he defeated Clinton among those who attended religious services weekly by 61 to 31 percent. By contrast, in Pennsylvania, he lost to Clinton among these voters by 58 to 42 percent and did best among voters who never attend religious services, winning them by 56 to 44 percent. There is nothing wrong with winning over voters who are very liberal and who never attend religious services; but if they begin to become Obama's most fervent base of support, he will have trouble (to say the least) in November.
Judis's colleague Jonathan Chait has a rebuttal in which he notes that Judis's own book, "The Emerging Democratic Majority" (Ruy Teixeira, co-author), "argues that the elements of the McGovern coalition have expanded to the point where they can form the base of a politial [sic] majority."
Yet Judis's numbers suggest that since the last pre-Pennsylvania primaries--that is, since the revelations about Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and Obama's "bitter" comment--Obama has increasingly become the candidate of blacks and academia. His appeal has become more selective, and that may not serve him well in November.
Another Unsavory Obama Associate, Official Blogger a Communist?
The list of Barack Obama associates that hold views that clash with mainstream America is getting longer every day and now we can add another notch in the "anti-American" column of Obama campaign workers and supporters. This time we find that the Obama campaign's official blogger, Sam Graham-Felsen, has spent time in France participating in labor riots, has written for a socialist magazine, hung a communist flag in his home, and was a fan of Marx while at Harvard.
Is this a case of the media not vetting another Obama associate? Why have we not heard of this man before and why is the media silent on him? After the stories of John Edwards' anti-Catholic bloggers, you'd think that the media would have been on the lookout for campaign blogger related stories. Yet, this guy and his questionable past has been ignored by the same media that tried to give Edwards' bloggers a pass.
A fellow that blogs at a site called "Common Ills" did a lot of leg work to dig up some of the publicly known utterings of Mr. Graham-Felsen prior to his elevation as the Obama campaign's official blogger, so he deserves the credit for raising a "red" flag on this one.
What we know for sure is that in May of 2006, Sam Graham-Felsen wrote a short piece in the socialist magazine Socialist Viewpoint describing his participation in some French labor riots. Then, back in 2003, Graham-Felsen also wrote a piece for the Harvard Crimson praising Noam Chomsky, known for blaming the United States instead of the terrorists for the attacks on 9/11, and advising him to "tone it down" in order to fool people enough to get his anti-American message out.
Graham-Felson praised Chomsky for having "taken on (what he perceives as) the ultimate bully - the United States," and gives Noam some unsolicited Graham-Felson advice.
Barack Obama's meteoric rise on the political scene is built on the premise that he, more than any other candidate, can unite the nation's divisions and bridge the gap between black and white, Republican and Democrat, poor and rich. In South Carolina, The State echoed other endorsements, "Sen. Obama's campaign is an argument for a more unifying style of leadership. ..American unity - transcending party - is a core value in itself."
His promise of unity rings hollow when he discounts a significant segment of the voting population. What a surprise it must be to America's white workers that Obama's campaign manager David Axelrod writes them off because "[t]he white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years." Aren't they included in the great national healing.
Obama's dismissal of a group of Americans which he hopes to serve brings to mind another "healing" predecessor, Jimmy Carter. Bob Shrum, former presidential speech writer, recounted that in the 1976 presidential campaign, Carter was convinced that Jewish voters were favoring Henry ("Scoop") Jackson. "Jackson has all the Jews anyway," Shrum quoted Carter as saying. "We get the Christians." Who will be the next group excluded by the great "uniter"?
Barack Obama caused quite a stir a fortnight ago when he told a suburban San Francisco fund raiser that small-town Pennsylvania voters were "bitter" about their economic plight. As a consequence, he added, "they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them..." As political comments go, it was a self-inflicted "twofer". Not only was Obama's sociological analysis delivered in a place synonymous with permissive liberalism, but also it raised questions about the candidate's sensitivity to the lives of the hard-working, small-town voters that he was so intensively trying to woo.
Yet as controversial as they were, Obama's remarks basically have reflected the contours of his vote-getting appeal. By and large, he has succeeded thus far by rolling up the vote in urban areas with their large minority population, and penetrating populous white-collar suburbs and the growing exurbs beyond. Yet in many places where new subdivisions give way to countryside, the Obama vote noticeably begins to ebb. There, his only consistent support has come from the occasional oases of academe that dot the rural landscape.
Al Gore showed back in 2000 that a Democrat can narrowly win the fall popular vote with the cities and a fair chunk of the suburbs. Yet to win the electoral vote, their nominee needs to do a bit better. In short, the party has become quite expert at winning 48 percent of the vote, but it takes a special Democrat able to draw votes in small-town America to bring that extra 3 percent that would ensure victory. Quite possibly, Obama has the political skills to do it. But his tepid primary showings in rural parts of key battleground states such as Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania places the burden of proof on him to demonstrate that he can do it.
To be sure, Obama has run quite well in the rural areas of caucus states, where turnouts are low and his impassioned group of supporters can dominate. He also has run well in the rural portions of many Southern primary states from Louisiana to Virginia that boast a significant African-American population. And he has held his own in rural sectors of other primary states where a less partisan, even libertarian brand of politics is practiced, as in upper New England and many sparsely populated states west of the Mississippi River.
But as the Democratic primary campaign has moved into the key battleground states of the industrial Frost Belt, Obama has hit a brick wall in his bid for rural votes. In Missouri, Obama took only six of 116 counties (including the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City). In Ohio, he carried just five of 88; in Pennsylvania, only seven of 67.
In Missouri, his votes were very well placed, enabling him to win the Democratic primary by a margin of barely 10,000 votes. He won the state's two major cities (St. Louis and KC), populous suburban St. Louis County, two counties in the center of the state that include the state capital of Jefferson City and the large academic community in Columbia (home of the University of Missouri), and one rural county in the northwest corner of the state. That was it. Hillary Clinton swept the rest of Missouri.
In Ohio, Obama's vote was even more contained. He carried only the urban counties that include Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton, plus one county on the outskirts of Columbus. Not a single county in the broad swath of rural Ohio went his way, as he lost the primary to Clinton by 10 percentage points.
In Pennsylvania, the Clinton margin was similar and so was the political geography. Obama won big in Philadelphia, with its large African-American population, carried two of its four suburban counties, and took a pair of counties on the outer orbit of greater Philadelphia. The two other counties that he carried were in the center of the state, and each contained a major academic institution. As for the rest of Pennsylvania, it was essentially a vast wasteland for Obama.
One can only speculate as to why small-town Democrats in these states have so completely turned their backs on him. It could be pronounced racial attitudes; cultural differences with the liberal Obama; deep sentiment for the Clintons; horror at the sight of his poor bowling skills. Whatever it is, rural resistance to Obama seems particularly strong in these states that are so critically important to the Democrats come November.
Yet Obama's problems are not new for the modern Democratic Party. Rarely in recent years has it nominated a candidate with much small-town appeal. Since the current primary-dominated era of presidential politics began almost 40 years ago, the Democrats have selected only one candidate capable of winning a majority of the nation's 3,100 or so counties -- Jimmy Carter in 1976. And only one other Democratic nominee since then has even come close to carrying a majority of counties, Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996.
Their common denominators: Both hailed from small towns in the South with the simplest of names, Plains and Hope; both served as governors of their states before running for president. And not coincidentally, they were the only two Democrats to have won the White House since 1968. Winning the cities and many of the suburbs can get Democrats close to the Oval Office. But only the candidates who can show appeal in rural America have had the key to open the door.
"Jimmy" and "Bubba" brought an understanding of small-town America to their campaigns that transcended their regional roots. They were able to win hundreds of rural counties across the country that Democratic presidential candidates normally do not carry, enabling each to mount winning presidential campaigns that included key battleground states such as Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The challenge for Obama, and indeed for Hillary Clinton as well if she is the nominee, is to find a way to relate to these "God and guns" voters. It won't be easy for the former, a longtime resident of Chicago, or for the latter, a product of the nation's burgeoning suburbs. But for either, it could be the key to winning the White House this fall.
Obama's now-famous remark: "Why can't I just eat my waffle?" has been much noted. Google has over 19,000 mentions of it. And the message taken from it has generally been that Obama is a haughty elitist who does not like to be questioned. I think that there is much more than that to it, however. Read the following report from last month to put it in context:
Early morning trainers and exercisers at the Greenville, Miss., YMCA on Mississippi primary day last Tuesday got a taste of Sen. Barack Obama's reclusiveness, which the traveling press corps has learned to accept.
After speaking at Tougaloo College on Monday night, Obama went to the "Y" at 6:30 a.m. for a workout. He greeted nobody and did not respond when people there called out to him. That aloofness has been the pattern in the Democratic presidential candidate's behavior toward reporters who cover him.
After finishing his workout, Obama returned to his gregarious campaign mode with a visit to black-owned Buck's restaurant in Greenville before leaving the state. He won Mississippi comfortably against Sen. Hillary Clinton.
The above quote and the waffle remark are both telling us the same thing: That Obama has difficulty keeping up his "nice guy" image. Keeping it up quite simply wears him out. It is not who he really is so keeping up that image tires him and he just HAS to rest from it. It is not who he really is.
And as someone who has studied psychopathy (I have a couple of academic journal articles on the subject) that is very familiar. Psychopaths also typically present a "nice guy" image -- something that sucks in the females wholesale. The psychopath says and does all the right things and people promptly put their trust in him. And then when they least expect it, he "goes bad" on them. "Why did he do that?" is the typical distressed response, "He was so nice and then he went and did ....".
The sucker in the story gets very thoroughly betrayed and has no clue as to why the psychopath suddenly changed. The answer, of course, is that the nice guy act was all a pretense in the first place and because it was not genuine the psychopath just could not keep it up for long. The "change" that distressed the sucker was the mask being dropped and the psychopath reverting to his true type.
And that is what we see in both reports of Obama's behaviour above. By the time he got to his waffle he just could not keep up his act, even under the full glare of media scrutiny. He HAD to have a rest from acting. So the Obama we see on the campaign trail is just a false front for the very dismal soul that lies beneath it. If America elects Obama, it will not get what it voted for. It will get a horror. An entire nation will have been conned.
Bill Clinton is a psychopath too. He too is known for suddenly "losing it" at times. But Slick Willy was led around by his penis. Obama will probably be led around by the hate that he sucked up in listening to 20 years of Jeremiah Wright's preaching.
Pitifully Biased Media Stung Again By Clinton Win in Pennsylvania
As our InsiderAdvantage polling showed over the past week, there was never any doubt that Hillary Clinton would win the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary by a margin of between 7 and 10 points. That, my friends, is a big win. But to hear the pundits on most of the news networks in their coverage early Tuesday night -- excepting at least FoxNews and MSNBC -- Hillary Clinton was a dead duck.
Of course, some of their comments were based on these absolutely absurd exit polls. As I have said many times, exit polls are garbage. Why the networks waste their sponsors' money on this rubbish is beyond me. Regardless, the endless refrain of "Hillary Clinton must face up to the facts and get out of the race" has been postponed at least another week or two.
Now that the rose-colored glasses have been at least temporarily knocked off of those who live and comment from within the self-referential cocoon of the Washington, D.C. bubble, let's get some facts straight. First, Barack Obama is not going over well with mainstream, older working Democrats. He does go over well with liberal Democrats. (Don't misunderstand. I'm not one of those analysts who uses the "L" word as if it is a scarlet letter. I'm being descriptive only.) More, Obama is losing a portion of women over the age of 45, whose resentment of his candidacy grows with each new contest.
Second, Hillary Clinton is increasingly despised by white Democratic elites, both from within the political ranks, among the very wealthy and among academicians. And her family's onetime hold on black America is gone for the foreseeable future.
The Democrats finally have reached the point at which they have a true mess. So, too, do the many journalists and analysts who have tried every sly word mix possible to, in essence, destroy the hopes of Clinton as she doggedly fights to the finish of the nominating process, which is starting to draw nearer.
Face it. Clinton has won every big state so far, save Obama's home of Illinois. She is humiliating the likely Democratic nominee and making Sen. John McCain the presidential frontrunner when he and his Republican Party should be running for the hills. It is virtually inconceivable that Obama has a chance of defeating McCain in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, so long as McCain keeps his distance from George W. Bush.
And should Clinton win the nomination, marginal states where large black turnouts are necessary for a Democratic victory -- including several of the states listed above -- will be impossible for Clinton to win. Again, McCain, absent a "Four More Years" perception by the public, wins.
So how do the Democrats survive? The only hope is a shotgun wedding. Hillary becomes Obama's vice presidential nominee, should he regain his momentum; or Barack runs as Clinton's VP if she continues knocking him off in states such as Indiana or Kentucky. In either instance, it will be painful and forced, and it still might not work. But it is likely the Democrats' best hope. Otherwise, the loser takes his or her toys and goes home mad -- really mad. And John McCain waltzes -- OK, maybe he soft-shoes -- his way into the White House.
Just how excited the Republican establishment may or may not be about such a McCain victory is a story for another day. Meanwhile, we will sit back and watch much of America's fumbling and bumbling national media continue its not-so-hidden effort to stack their stories in Barack Obama's favor. They are doing him irreparable harm by creating lasting resentment that he otherwise has not earned on his own.
After being pummeled 55% to 45% in the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama was at a loss for explanations. The best he could do was to compliment his supporters in an email saying, "you helped close the gap to a slimmer margin than most thought possible." Then he asked for money.
With $42 million in the bank, money is the least of Sen. Obama's problems. He needs a credible message that convinces Democrats he should be president. In recent days, he's spent too much time proclaiming his inevitable nomination. But they already know he's won more states, votes and delegates. His words wear especially thin when he was dealt a defeat like Tuesday's. Mr. Obama was routed despite outspending Hillary Clinton on television by almost 3-1. While polls in the final days showed a possible 4% or 5% Clinton win, she apparently took late-deciders by a big margin to clinch the landslide.
Where she cobbled together her victory should cause concern in the Obama HQ. She did better - and he worse - than expected in Philadelphia's suburbs. Mrs. Clinton won two of these four affluent suburban counties, home of the white-wine crowd Mr. Obama has depended on for victories before.
In the small town and rural "bitter" precincts, she clobbered him. Mr. Obama's state chair was Sen. Bob Casey, who hails from Lackawanna County in northeast Pennsylvania. She carried that county 74%-25%. In the state's 61 less-populous counties, she won 63% - and by 278,266 votes. Her margin of victory statewide was 208,024 votes.
Mrs. Clinton's problem remains that she's behind in the delegate count, with 1,589 to Mr. Obama's 1,714. Neither candidate will get to the 2,025 needed for nomination with elected delegates. But the Democratic Party's rules of proportionality mean it will be hard to close that margin among the 733 delegates yet to be elected or declared. Mrs. Clinton will need to take 58% of the remaining delegates. Thus far, she's been able to get that or better in just four of the 46 contests.
Her path gets rougher. While Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and Puerto Rico are good territory for her, Oregon and Montana may not be. And Mrs. Clinton will be outspent badly. She entered April with $9.3 million in cash, but debts of $10.3 million. Mr. Obama had $42.5 million but only $663,000 in unpaid bills.
In Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama's money could only wipe out half a purported 20% deficit, but the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls shows Mr. Obama behind by 2% in Indiana and ahead in North Carolina by 16%. Those states will vote in two weeks. The financial throw weight he will have in the Hoosier State could more than erase Mrs. Clinton's lead there, while keeping North Carolina solidly in his column. His money could give him a double knockout on May 6, which would effectively end her bid for the presidency.
If she wins Indiana, however, she will surely go forward - and Democrats run the risk of a split decision in June. Mr. Obama could have more delegates, but she could have more popular votes. In fact, on Tuesday night she actually grabbed the popular vote lead: If you include the Michigan and Florida primary results, Mrs. Clinton now leads the popular vote by a slim 113,000 votes out of 29,914,356 cast.
Mr. Obama will argue he wasn't on the ballot in Michigan and didn't campaign in Florida. But don't Democrats want to count all the votes in all the contests? After all, Mr. Obama took his name off the Michigan ballot; it isn't something he was forced to do. And while he didn't campaign in Florida, neither did she.
And what about the Michigan and Florida delegates? By my calculations, she should pick up about 54 delegates on Mr. Obama if they are seated (this assumes the Michigan "uncommitted" delegates go for Mr. Obama). If he is ahead in June by a number similar to his lead today of 125, does he let the two delegations in and make the convention vote even closer? Or does he continue to act as if two states with 41 of the 270 electoral votes needed for the White House don't exist?
The Democratic Party has two weakened candidates. Mrs. Clinton started as a deeply flawed candidate: the palpable and unpleasant sense of entitlement, the absence of a clear and optimistic message, the grating personality impatient to be done with the little people and overly eager for a return to power, real power, the phoniness and the exaggerations. These problems have not diminished over the long months of the contest. They have grown. She started out with the highest negatives of any major candidate in an open race for the presidency and things have only gotten worse.
And what of the reborn Adlai Stevenson? Mr. Obama is befuddled and angry about the national reaction to what are clearly accepted, even commonplace truths in San Francisco and Hyde Park. How could anyone take offense at the observation that people in small-town and rural American are "bitter" and therefore "cling" to their guns and their faith, as well as their xenophobia? Why would anyone raise questions about a public figure who, for only 20 years, attended a church and developed a close personal relationship with its preacher who says AIDS was created by our government as a genocidal tool to be used against people of color, who declared America's chickens came home to roost on 9/11, and wants God to damn America? Mr. Obama has a weakness among blue-collar working class voters for a reason.
His inspiring rhetoric is a potent tool for energizing college students and previously uninvolved African-American voters. But his appeals are based on two aspirational pledges he is increasingly less credible in making. Mr. Obama's call for postpartisanship looks unconvincing, when he is unable to point to a single important instance in his Senate career when he demonstrated bipartisanship. And his repeated calls to remember Dr. Martin Luther King's "fierce urgency of now" in tackling big issues falls flat as voters discover that he has not provided leadership on any major legislative battle.
Mr. Obama has not been a leader on big causes in Congress. He has been manifestly unwilling to expend his political capital on urgent issues. He has been only an observer, watching the action from a distance, thinking wry and sardonic and cynical thoughts to himself about his colleagues, mildly amused at their too-ing and fro-ing. He has held his energy and talent in reserve for the more important task of advancing his own political career, which means running for president.
But something happened along the way. Voters saw in the Philadelphia debate the responses of a vitamin-deficient Stevenson act-a-like. And in the closing days of the Pennsylvania primary, they saw him alternate between whining about his treatment by Mrs. Clinton and the press, and attacking Sen. John McCain by exaggerating and twisting his words. No one likes a whiner, and his old-style attacks undermine his appeals for postpartisanship.
Mr. Obama is near victory in the Democratic contest, but it is time for him to reset, freshen his message and say something new. His conduct in the last several weeks raises questions about whether, for all his talents, he is ready to be president.
The Democrats are tottering at the edge of the abyss. They are about to nominate someone who cannot win, despite vastly out-spending his opponent, any of the key large states - CA, NJ, NY, OH, PENN, TX, etc. - that will determine the fall election. And yet not to nominate him will cause the sort of implosion they saw in 1968 or the sort of mess we saw in November 2000.
Hillary won't quit, since she knows that Obama, when pressure mounts, is starting to show a weird sort of petulance, and drops the "new politics" for snideness. And at any given second, a Rev. Wright outburst, an Ayers reappearance, another Michelle 'never been proud' moment, or another condescending Obamism can cause him to nose dive and become even more snappy.
They won't be able to force Hillary out since she still has strong arguments - the popular vote may end up dead even, or even in her favor; while he won caucuses and out-of-play states, she won the critical fall battlegrounds - and by plebiscites; she is the more experienced and more likely to run a steady national campaign; she wins the Reagan Democrats that will determine the fall election; and by other, more logical nomination rules (like the Republicans' fewer caucuses, winner-take-all elections) she would have already wrapped it up. There seems something unfair, after all, for someone to win these mega-states and end up only with a few extra delegates for the effort. The more this drags out, the more Obama and Hillary get nastier and more estranged from each other - at precisely the time one must take the VP nomination to unite the party.
On the plus side, Hillary is showing a scrappy, tough blue-collar talent that is critical for November - but apparently it will be all for naught, or worse, cause lots of these Middle America "clingers" to go over to McCain.
More and more, McCain will want to run against Obama and his far weaker coalition of elite whites, African-Americans, students - and closets of skeletons.
The political operative behind the Willie Horton ad that helped defeat Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential race is releasing a new ad this week targeting Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama. Floyd Brown, a longtime conservative strategist who heads the conservative National Campaign Fund, said he is launching the ad to expose Obama's weakness on gang violence. "The ad draws a parallel between Obama's weakness on gang violence and the war on terror," said Brown. Brown is the former head of Citizens United, which claims to be the largest political action group for conservatives in the United States.
In his new ad Brown tells of a woman leaving church choir practice who was killed by gang gunfire while shielding her 6-year-old daughter, a 15-year-old boy beaten with bricks after a gang member crashed into his car, and a 14-year-old boy shot five times in the back for refusing to flash a gang hand sign. "They all died in 2001. In Chicago," the voice-over declares.
That same year, Barack Obama - then an Illinois state senator - voted against expanding the death penalty for gang-related murders, the ad points out. The ad concludes, "When the time came to get tough, Obama chose to be weak. So the question is: Can a man so weak in the war on gangs be trusted in the war on terror?" Brown says the ad will run in targeted states beginning on Tuesday.
During the early part of Barack Obama's political career he opposed the death penalty. In recent years, however, he has modified his position to support the death penalty in cases involving the "most heinous" of crimes. In 2001 as an Illinois state senator, Obama did vote against a proposed law that would have widened the scope of the death penalty to include some gang activity. The bill passed the legislature but was later vetoed by then Republican Gov. George Ryan, who imposed a moratorium on death penalty executions.
Obama defended his opposition to the gang death penalty bill because, he argued, it would unevenly apply to minorities. "There's a strong overlap between gang affiliation and young men of color . . . I think it's problematic for them to be singled out as more likely to receive the death penalty for carrying out certain acts than are others who do the same thing," Obama said at the time.
Whether this highly partisan ad will stick as Obama's "Willie Horton" is yet to be seen. Massachusetts inmate Willie Horton was serving a life sentence for murder, without parole, when he was released as part of a weekend furlough program in June 1986. He did not return, and in April 1987 he twice raped a woman in Maryland after pistol-whipping and knifing her fiance. Michael Dukakis was the governor of Massachusetts at the time of Horton's release. He supported the furlough program as a method of criminal rehabilitation, and when the Massachusetts legislature passed a bill prohibiting furloughs for first-degree murderers, Dukakis vetoed the bill.
Beginning in September 1988, an organization headed by Floyd Brown backed George H.W. Bush in his race against Dukakis. Brown's group produced and aired an ad detailing the Horton case and Dukakis' role. To conservatives, the name Willie Horton became synonymous with soft-on-crime liberalism. Liberals said the ad was nothing more than veiled racism. Horton was an African-American. The ad is widely thought to have played a significant role in helping Bush win the presidency.
NYT editorial below. Note that to them, Hillary's victory was "inconclusive". Only when something suits their agenda is it conclusive
The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.
Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.
If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead.
On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad - torn right from Karl Rove's playbook - evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen," the narrator intoned.
If that was supposed to bolster Mrs. Clinton's argument that she is the better prepared to be president in a dangerous world, she sent the opposite message on Tuesday morning by declaring in an interview on ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president: "We would be able to totally obliterate them."
By staying on the attack and not engaging Mr. Obama on the substance of issues like terrorism, the economy and how to organize an orderly exit from Iraq, Mrs. Clinton does more than just turn off voters who don't like negative campaigning. She undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Mr. Obama.
Mr. Obama is not blameless when it comes to the negative and vapid nature of this campaign. He is increasingly rising to Mrs. Clinton's bait, undercutting his own claims that he is offering a higher more inclusive form of politics. When she criticized his comments about "bitter" voters, Mr. Obama mocked her as an Annie Oakley wannabe. All that does is remind Americans who are on the fence about his relative youth and inexperience.
No matter what the high-priced political operatives (from both camps) may think, it is not a disadvantage that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton share many of the same essential values and sensible policy prescriptions. It is their strength, and they are doing their best to make voters forget it. And if they think that only Democrats are paying attention to this spectacle, they're wrong.
After seven years of George W. Bush's failed with-us-or-against-us presidency, all American voters deserve to hear a nuanced debate - right now and through the general campaign - about how each candidate will combat terrorism, protect civil liberties, address the housing crisis and end the war in Iraq.
It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind when they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box. Mrs. Clinton once had a big lead among the party elders, but has been steadily losing it, in large part because of her negative campaign. If she is ever to have a hope of persuading these most loyal of Democrats to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs.
Post below recycled from Taranto. See the original for links
North Carolina Democrats hit the primary polls in two weeks, and CBS News was to have hosted a debate this Sunday between front-runner Barack Obama and underdog Hillary Clinton. Alas, it was not to be. A press release from the North Carolina Democratic Party says that the party has decided to spend more time with its family:
We regret to inform you that the proposed Democratic Presidential Debate scheduled for April 27 has been cancelled due to time constraints and logistical issues associated with such a large, national event. . . . There were also growing concerns about what another debate would do to party unity.
CBS News has what almost certainly is the real story:
Hillary Clinton had accepted the invitation to Sunday's proposed debate but Barack Obama's campaign had not. In an interview with the Charlotte Observer earlier this month, Obama voiced skepticism about participating in too many debates. "I will tell you, after the 21st debate," Obama told the paper (in advance of last week's 21st debate), "all of which have been nationally televised . . . North Carolinians have had ample opportunity to watch these debates. . . . I don't know that they are ending up being more informative than the kinds of town hall meetings that we've scheduled."
Of course, after last week's debate--which turned out to be highly informative--Obama has got to be wishing he had stopped at 20. Given that he seems to have the nomination nearly locked up anyway, it makes tactical sense for him to run out the clock and stay far away from anyone who may ask him a tough question.
But does it make strategic sense? It strikes us that Obama may be setting a trap for himself. Consider the experience of John Kerry in 2004: He won nomination easily, with the media largely buying into his "war hero" story and not asking tough questions. One notable exception was ABC's Charlie Gibson, who almost exactly a year ago confronted Kerry about his shifty behavior vis-…-vis his medals.
Once Kerry was past the convention, the questions that should have been asked much earlier began coming out. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ended up doing the media's job for them. If Obama succeeds in avoiding the tough questions now, someone will end up asking them in the fall. Will he be prepared?
The Hotline reports from Scranton, Pa., on an unsubtle effort by Barack Obama to avoid a tough question:
Chomping down on sausage and waffles at Glider's Diner today with Sen. Bob Casey at his side, Barack Obama declined, in a sense, to comment on Jimmy Carter's meeting with Hamas.
Asked if he had heard that Carter reported a positive outcome from the meeting, Obama looked at the reporter who questioned him and said, "Why can't I just eat my waffle?" Asked again by the reporter, Obama bit. Not at the question but into a butter-covered bite of Glider's specialty over-size Belgian waffles. With a wink this time he said, "Just let me eat my waffle."
Obama, who has the support of Hamas honcho Ahmed Yousef, henceforth will be known as the waffle man, joining other food-associated politicians such as Ronald Reagan (jellybeans), George H.W. Bush (pork rinds), Michael Dukakis (endive), Dan Quayle (potatoes) and Bill Clinton (McDonald's french fries).
Globaloney, Obama-Style
Barack Obama appears to be America's first homegrown global candidate. His core constituency is the New Age tribe of the Internet, which promotes the illusion that we can now start to live in "a world without borders." A posting by an African from Italy on the official Obama '08 website, featured under the headline "For a Cosmopolitan Humanism," reads: "In this Global Era, we need a new vision for a cosmopolitan humanism, that ingredient necessary for peace and justice: Barack Obama embodies this hope."
Similar sentiments abound in the blogosphere. Senator Obama received an A-plus rating from Citizens for Global Solutions, which "envisions a future in which nations work together to abolish war, protect our rights and freedoms, and solve the problems facing humanity that no nation can solve alone. This vision requires effective democratic global institutions." On Care2, a blog devoted to "green living, health, human rights [and] protecting the environment," a self-described Kiwi woman living on the Isle of Man writes: "It should be Barack Obama for the world, not just the USA. We are a global society now."
At his enormous rallies, the distinction between American politician and global celebrity comes close to breaking down. Obama merges the roles. As America's first global candidate, he has about him the aura of a millenarian figure, the leader of a mass movement. In its early stages, the Obama movement was heavily campus-driven, resembling student upheavals like the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s and the antiglobalization movement of more recent years.
Like them, Obama '08 wants to "heal this nation" and "remake this world as it should be." To that end, Obama promises a "new kind of leadership," devoid of the grubby wheeling-dealing of ordinary politics. That is why his campaign rhetoric consists largely of abstract nouns like hope, peace, change, and dialogue, generalities that everyone is for. At times, he verges on fantasy, as in his belief that he can work out America's differences with Iran through direct talks with Iranian president Ahmadinejad without preconditions. By the same token, people all over the world with leftist leanings see in Obama just such a global savior, as if his mere election could alleviate poverty and injustice everywhere.
His closest predecessor in American politics is not the hawkish cold warrior John F. Kennedy, with whom he shares little beyond a youthful vigor and bodily grace, but Jimmy Carter, who also tended to believe that talking to America's foes would be enough to bring peace and that America itself was too often the chief source of the world's problems. Both men share a taste for Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who believed that politics should be an act of penance for America's sins at home and abroad. Obama's willingness to abandon one ally overnight (Iraq) while invading another (Pakistan) also savors of -Carter's tendency to think America's allies or beneficiaries were more deserving of reproach than its open enemies.
Social scientists and political activists are agog at what they hail as the "new global civil society," and Obama's core constituency is the American branch of this new International. His most fervent follower is the kind of Democrat, affluent and conventionally well educated, who sees himself as belonging less to his own country than to an emerging global community of the enlightened, believers in world peace, the environment, and "talking" to others, including lethal enemies, all in the conviction that the nation-state is an outmoded product of global capitalism, greed, and shabby compromise. In this view of things, America, as the world's most powerful nation-state, is the chief impediment to the flowering of a new world order.
Obama's penchant for cheerleading slogans reminiscent of a 12-step program ("Yes we can!") is in tune with his appeal to young people, who have little experience of life's ironies, who may not have noticed how often the sweep of history frustrates good intentions. They are, after all, the product of an educational system that has increasingly abandoned the teaching of narrative history and the distinction between democracy and tyranny in favor of a fuzzy globalism that casts us all as citizens of a coming world community of the ecologically conscious and antimaterialistic.
Many of Obama's followers know no better and are already awash in the sentimentality of "global solutions" that will end poverty and violence everywhere, so long as the world's worst offender, their own country, is finally shackled and defanged by "the international community." Obama's path has been smoothed by several decades of naive one-worldism, the kind that only affluent citizens of a democracy insulated from the horrors of the Mugabes and Assads who rule much of the world could entertain. His most authentic forebears are countercultural movements harking back to the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" or John Lennon's assertion that the world can have peace right now "if you want it."
Seen in this light, Senator Obama's attachment to his pastor, Reverend Wright, resonates with a broad swath of Obama's supporters, not just a segment of African-American opinion. For, stripped of its bumptious rhetoric, Reverend Wright's view of America as a capitalistic oppressor at home and abroad is shared by American leftists of every ethnic hue. Millions of young people have watched the online documentary Loose Change, which debates whether the Bush administration carried out the 9/11 attacks itself or merely allowed them to happen in order to have an excuse to launch unjust wars. Reverend Wright's view that 9/11 was payback time for American imperialism merely echoes the contention of William Blum, author of Rogue State, that 9/11 was "direct retaliation for decades of American foreign policy in the Middle East." Such views are heard daily in lecture halls, not just in dorm rooms and caf,s, on campuses across the country; they are corollaries of the tireless teaching of Noam Chomsky. And, to the extent (as yet unclear) that Obama shares them, he is not so much the candidate of the Louis Farrakhan wing of black opinion as he is the candidate of Michael Moore Nation.
When it comes to style, Obama is a princely candidate, the latest and most effective in a line going back to Carter and Bill Bradley who say, in effect: "I am making you the gift of my gracious person. Don't ask what I will do. Trust me." To follow him is the politics of "hope." To seek details or challenge his credentials is the politics of "cynicism." He has gone further than anyone else in merging the realms of politics, celebrity, and New Age tribalism through the elixir of his golden voice and supple presence. Of course, it is possible that much of this is just a winning rhetorical formula for gaining the presidency. But that's the problem--we don't know.
If Obama were, upon election, to prove less than sincere about the rhetoric, many of us would find it reassuring. Our reassurance, however, would come at the cost of an enormous Monday morning hangover for followers who had thought he really would lift us all to a higher reality. After the soaring promises, such disillusionment could damage young people's faith in the democratic process.
On the other hand, if he is sincere and he becomes president, we are in for a very rocky ride. Obama's idealistic globalism clashes with the reality of a world containing forces whose hostility to the West is often a matter of deep conviction, and rarely the result of a simple failure to communicate.
Traveling the country the past few months, I have encountered habitual Republican voters so entranced by Barack Obama's potential to lead the nation that they plan to vote for him in November. Once Hillary Clinton's defected supporters return to loyalty, Obama Republicans could produce a Democratic presidential landslide. But Obama's current missteps jeopardize their support and imperil his election.
These apostate Republicans never were deluded into considering him anything other than a doctrinaire liberal who wants a more intrusive government with higher taxation and tougher regulation. But they have leaned toward him as an exceptional candidate in the mold of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, a post-partisan leader and a welcome contrast to George W. Bush's failed presidency. That impression is threatened by Obama's performance the last 10 days, climaxed by Wednesday night's debate with Hillary Clinton.
Obama's new resemblance is less to Kennedy or Reagan than to leftist author Thomas Frank, whose 2004 book, "What's the Matter With Kansas?" answered the liberal conundrum: Why do ordinary Americans vote against their own economic interests to support Republicans? Frank explained that "deranged" and "lunatic" Kansans were led away by Republicans from material concerns to social issues. Obama similarly described small town Americans turning to guns and the Bible in frustration over government's failure to take care of them -- a more genteel version of Frank. That raises the question, "What's the matter with Obama?"
Almost everybody I encounter in politics is familiar with Frank's best-seller. Democrats are united in embracing his theory but are divided about its rhetoric. While sophisticated Democratic politicians regard the book as condescending to lower-income Americans who have voted for Ronald Reagan, grass-roots activists in the party consider it gospel. They tell me Obama should not back away from what got him in trouble: his declaration to a closed-door fund-raiser in San Francisco that "bitter" small-towners in Pennsylvania and elsewhere "cling to guns or religion."
Obama and his advisers know better. Though he revealed political inexperience by thinking what he said in San Francisco would stay in San Francisco, he is savvy enough to apologize profusely for "gaffes" and "errors." But he considers his blunder one of style not of substance. Actually, while seeming to be anti-gun or anti-church is self-destructive for a candidate, even raising Frank's thesis is dangerous.
The trick is for Obama to distance himself from the rhetoric while holding to the theory, as restructured in last week's debate: "Yes, (the American people) are in part frustrated and angry" by "manufactured" issues. Indeed, he said, beating "to death" this issue is "not helping that person ... trying to figure out how to pay the bills at the end of the month."
Clinton's effort to brand Obama as elitist has failed to move the polls, probably because Democratic primary voters agree with Frank. Nevertheless, Democratic pros feel that the San Francisco incident halted an Obama surge in Pennsylvania that might have won him the state and ended Clinton's campaign tomorrow. What really worries them, however, is the impact on independents and Republicans who had been entranced by the young man from Chicago. Now, they wonder whether the appealing unifier is really a divider.
Obama is trying to change the subject, but he lost his cool demeanor when ABC News questioners Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos returned to his San Francisco statement (among other difficult issues) in Wednesday's debate. In watching campaign debates dating back to Kennedy-Nixon in 1960, I never before had seen a candidate criticize the moderator or challenge his premises so often (on at least eight occasions). "Look, let me finish my point here, Charlie," said Obama, after Gibson had interrupted him following a 126-word answer.
The other unprecedented element was the deluge of abuse heaped on the two ABC moderators by reporters on the media, television critics and political writers. They object to prolonging what amounts to a debate on "What's wrong with Obama?" Exploring whether Barack Obama is a modified Thomas Frank does not depend on television talking heads or Hillary Clinton. Supporters of John McCain, seeking to reel back the Obama Republicans, will press the issue from now to November.
Nothing in the hysteria over last week's Democratic debate - including the unprecedented opprobrium press critics heaped on the ABC moderators - should have come as any surprise. That doesn't make it any less fascinating a guide to current strange notions of what is and is not a substantive issue in a presidential contest, or any less striking an indicator of the delicate treatment Mr. Obama's media following have come to consider his just due. Moderators Charles Gibson's and George Stephanopoulos's offense was to ask questions Mr. Obama didn't want to address. Worse, they'd continued to press them even when the displeased candidate assured them these were old and tired questions.
- "Akin to a federal crime . . . new benchmarks of degradation," The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg declared, of the debate.
- "Despicable. . . . slanted against Obama," Washington Post critic Tom Shales charged.
- A "disgusting spectacle," the New York Times's David Carr opined.
- The questions had "disgraced democracy itself," according to columnist Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News.
The uproar is the latest confirmation of the special place Mr. Obama holds in the hearts of a good part of the media, a status ensured by their shared political sympathies and his star power. That status has in turn given rise to a tendency to provide generous explanations, and put the best possible gloss on missteps and utterances seriously embarrassing to Mr. Obama.
The effort and intensity various CNN panelists, for instance, expended on explaining what Mr. Obama really meant by that awkward San Francisco speech about bitter small towners clinging to their guns and religion - it seems he'd been making an important point if one not evident to anyone listening - exceeded that of the Obama campaign itself.
Still, no effort in helpful explanations was more distinguished than that of David Gergen, senior CNN commentator, who weighed in just after the first explosion of reports on Mr. Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright. About this spiritual leader - whose sermons declared the September 11 attacks to be America's just desserts, who instructed his flock that the United States had set forth on a genocidal program to kill black Americans with the AIDS virus, who held forth as gospel every paranoid fantasy espoused by the lunatic fringe about America's crimes - Mr. Gergen said, "Actually, Rev. Wright may love this country more than many of us . . . but we've fallen short."
It was an attempt at exculpation, as regards Rev. Wright, that no one has equalled, though many have come close. Not least Mr. Obama, who spends considerable time arguing that the press has focused on a few "snippets" taken from years of sermons.
Mr. Obama's apparent inability to confront, forthrightly, the pastor's poisonous pronouncements and his own relationship with him is, of course, the cause of all the continuing questions on the subject. It had not been in him, for instance, to say publicly that for a pastor to have preached that the U.S. government had embarked on a project to inject blacks with AIDS was an outrage on truth and decency. He delivered a celebrated speech on race, one generally hailed as a masterwork, that was supposed to have explained it all. It was a work masterly, above all, in its evasiveness. Even its admirers, prepared to swallow his repeated resort to descriptions like "controversial" for the pastor's hate-filled rants, couldn't quite give Sen. Obama a pass when it came to his beloved white grandmother, or to the not so beloved Geraldine Ferraro, both of whom he suggested were racists in their own right.
These issues - the unanswered, the suspect - which outraged press partisans have for days attempted to dismiss as trivia and gossip, largely forgotten by the public, are unlikely to be forgotten, either today or in the general election, nor are they trivial. This, Messrs. Gibson and Stephanopoulos clearly understood when they chose their questions. Mr. Obama's answers told far more than he or his managers wished.
Offered a chance to explain the meaning of his remarks about the reasons people living in small towns cling to guns and religion, he went on to repeat them all over again in different words. What there was in those remarks, what attitudes shown, that had offended people, he had still not grasped. In short, what he had said that day he'd meant to say. "What you are, picks its way," as Walt Whitman told us.
The way has been a long one for the candidates, and what they are is, indeed, picking its way on the campaign trail and during events like that instructive debate. About which, we now learn, there is to be a protest campaign against ABC and the moderators, mounted by assorted journalists and bloggers.
We are at the beginning of a contest likely to repeat itself through November: between that part of the press prepared to put hard questions equally, and all the rest, including those who'll mount the barricades when their candidate is threatened with discomfiture. Let the wars begin.
When Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer decided to retire in 1995, she hand-picked local left-winger Barack Obama as her successor. In order to introduce Obama to influential liberals in the district, she held a function at the home of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. This was, really, the beginning of Obama's political career, and it linked him forever with Ayers and Dohrn, with whom, as his campaign has acknowledged, he continues to have a friendly relationship.
Ayers and Dohrn were famous radicals, and fugitives from the law, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Dohrn, actually, was the more famous of the two; she was the head, as I recall, of Students for a Democratic Society or one of its factions. Dohrn was crazy. She is the only public figure, to my knowledge, to approve publicly and enthusiastically of the Charles Manson murders.
Ayers was a would-be murderer of soldiers and policemen, but he wasn't a very good terrorist. He had the ill fortune to choose September 11, 2001, as the day on which to publish an op-ed in the New York Times, in which he said that he didn't regret his attempted murders and only wished that he had planted more bombs.
In last week's Pennsylvania debate, Barack Obama was finally asked about his friendship with, and the political support he has accepted from, Ayers and Dohrn. Obama replied that Ayers had done reprehensible things forty years ago, when Obama was eight years old, and scoffed at the idea that Ayers's ancient history could be relevant. That was disingenuous, of course, given Ayers's 2001 regrets.
It turns out that we don't have to go back as far as 2001 to find that Obama's friends are as unrepentant as ever. Just last year, Ayers and Dohrn attended a reunion--no kidding--of what must have been the tiny remnant of SDS members who still haven't figured out that they were wrong about everything. Listen to what Bill Ayers, who hosted Barack Obama's first fundraiser, has to say about the United States. Not when Obama was eight years old, but in 2007:
At the same event, Obama's friend and supporter Bernadine Dohrn described the United States as "the monster." Obama was 47 years old at the time:
Barack Obama has declined to repudiate or distance himself from his neighbors, supporters and friends, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. There is a certain consistency of perspective among Obama's friends and mentors, which can be summed up in Jeremiah Wright's memorable phrase: "God damn America."
PAUL adds: Michelle Obama also takes a fairly dim view of America. But with all those student loans to pay off, I guess it's understandable. Much more to come, tomorrow.
Maybe if ABC had made the 26th Democratic presidential debate this election season drag on for another couple of hours (on top of the two endless hours), someone would have gotten around to answering this question: When did households earning $200,000 and change become middle class? Moderator George Stephanopoulos asked both Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama if they would make "an absolute, read-my-lips pledge" that, if elected, there will be "no tax increases of any kind for anyone earning under $200,000 a year." Clinton pledged not to raise "a single tax on middle-class Americans, people making less than $250,000 a year." Obama answered he would make a similar pledge, "it depends on how you calculate it (the income level), but it would be between $200,000 and $250,000."
Last weekend, the big campaign flap concerned whether Obama's remarks about "bitter" small-town Pennsylvanians were "elitist." On Wednesday, when the candidates described $200,000-a-year earners as middle class, no one batted an eye. Hello. I'm a Republican, and I think a family that earns more than $200,000 is rich. In the world of Democrats Clinton, Obama and Stephanopoulos, however, you have to be among the top 3 percent of wage earners to qualify for that club.
Some stats: In 2006, the median annual household income in America was $48,201. The median income for two-earner families was $78,994. When I asked Gerald Prante of the nonpartisan Tax Foundation if he thought $200,000 a year was a middle-class income, he noted, "It isn't even middle income in Manhattan," where 14.2 percent of households make more than $200,000. The median income in a household headed by someone with a master's degree is about $88,000. Ergo, it would take the income of 2 1/2 master's-degree-headed households or more than four median households for one family to transcend middle-class status chez Obama and at casa Clinton.
To the apparent glee of Clinton, ABC anchor Charlie Gibson assailed Obama for his proposal to raise the cap on Social Security payroll taxes beyond $97,500 a year. (Actually, the cap is now $102,000.) "But that's a tax on people (earning) under $250,000," Gibson said. Like that's a bad thing in the formerly soak-the-rich Democratic Party. Obama replied that he would "look at potentially exempting those who are in-between." Huh?
Robert Bixby of the fiscal watchdog group the Concord Coalition figured that Obama is proposing a "doughnut hole" - wherein only earnings below $100,000 or above $250,000 would be taxed. And: "Campaign rhetoric and sensible budgeting are incompatible creatures."
Also nonsensical is Clinton's call for a special commission to deal with the pending Social Security and Medicare crises - to wit, $53 trillion in unfunded retirement and medical promises, which amount to $175,000 for every American. A commission would be a grand idea, if Clinton had not already knee-capped it with a no-new-taxes-except-on-the-very-very-rich pledge.
Republican John McCain's campaign rhetoric also has strayed from his fiscally conservative record, but today, I focus on the Democrats. Their soak-the-rich approach has always been a problem, because overtaxing productive people can hurt the job market. So what do Democrats do? Pander more. Both Clinton and Obama are promising big new programs, middle-class tax cuts and an end to deficit spending - paid for by raising a tax of "the highest volatility," as Prante put it. Which means that the minute the economy is in trouble, revenue will dry up. This is a formula for fiscal pain.
With a realistic view of affluence, there are not enough rich people to close the federal deficit or the pending entitlement crisis - even if a Democrat actually ends the war in Iraq. When Democrats redefine rich to cover only the really, really rich, they make their unrealistic promises all that much more unattainable.
Clinton and Obama keep telling Americans that they have these wonderful plans to create vital programs that will make this country a better place to live. Too bad their programs are never so important that Americans should have to pay for them. They are not even so important that well-heeled high-def flat-screen TV Democrats should have to pick up part of the tab. Call it the new American idealism. Ask not what you can do for your country. Make someone else pay for it.
In his first run for public office in 1996, Barack Obama faced an unexpected obstacle. A liberal black incumbent had encouraged him to run for the Illinois state senate seat she intended to vacate. Then she changed her mind, deciding to run again. Mr. Obama hired a fellow Harvard Law School graduate, challenged the validity of signatures on her nominating petitions, and got her thrown off the ballot. He eventually ran unopposed, launching the career that has made him the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president.
In his books and speeches, Mr. Obama has cast himself as an underdog and an unconventional politician -- a stance that has spawned criticism in advance of Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary that he lacks the political skill and stamina to get elected. A look at his years in Chicago, based on interviews with friends, advisers, rivals and political strategists, reveals a shrewd combatant from one of the nation's toughest political arenas.
After he was criticized as arrogant by some fellow Illinois state legislators, he forged alliances with establishment Republicans and Democrats in meetings and at poker games. After he was trounced in a congressional race by a former Black Panther, he barnstormed black churches to build support for a Senate run. His subsequent victory was helped along by newspaper disclosures of embarrassing material from the divorce papers of a Democratic opponent. It was during his Chicago years, too, that Mr. Obama struck up friendships with a pastor and a real-estate developer that have since opened him to criticism. And back then, during his only losing campaign, he first faced the kind of criticism that has resurfaced in Pennsylvania: that he is an elitist who is out of touch with the working class and the poor.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, of course, has also come under political attack and has developed a reputation for toughness. In last week's debate in Philadelphia, she said she was "better able and better prepared" to defeat Sen. John McCain "in large measure because of what I've been through."
For many decades, Chicago has been one of the nation's most distinctive political landscapes. Under the longtime leadership of Mayor Richard J. Daley, it became synonymous with one-party rule. Loyal Democrats were rewarded with jobs and services. Neighborhoods seen as politically disloyal sometimes faced problems such as unplowed winter streets. Many blacks felt shut out of the system altogether.
When Mr. Obama arrived in 1985 at the age of 23, the city's political and racial landscape was changing. The city of Mayor Daley and his predominantly white Democratic machine was becoming the city of Michael Jordan and Oprah Winfrey. Harold Washington became the first black mayor in 1983 by reaching out to white voters. When Mayor Daley's son, Richard M. Daley, was elected mayor in 1989, he appointed numerous blacks to high positions, including Mr. Obama's girlfriend and future wife, Michelle. "Chicago was his Harvard of politics," says Don Rose, a longtime political strategist here. "Had he gone to Cleveland or New York or Atlanta, it might have been a different path."
Mr. Obama declined to be interviewed for this article. But he often points to his Chicago roots as proof that he can take the "sharp elbows" of politics. "I'm from Chicago. I know politics," he said at an outdoor rally in Harrisburg, Pa., on Saturday night. "I'm skinny, but I'm tough."
When Mr. Obama arrived in Chicago a year after graduating from Columbia University, community organizer Gerald Kellman hired him to work in a poor and working-class black neighborhood. He was "very na‹ve politically," says Mr. Kellman. "He was looking for the civil-rights movement, but the civil-rights movement was over. He was trying to figure out what the equivalent would be."
While attending Harvard Law School, Mr. Obama decided on a Chicago political career. Returning to the city for a summer law-firm internship, he met his future wife, Michelle. She had grown up in a black neighborhood on the South Side. Her father had been a precinct captain for the first Mayor Daley's political machine, and she knew the families of many black politicians, including Jesse Jackson's.
When Mr. Obama moved back to Chicago in 1991, he settled in Hyde Park, which had a college-town ambience and a history of liberal political activism. The late Mayor Washington had lived in Hyde Park; so did Carol Moseley Braun, elected in 1992 as the first black woman U.S. senator. Many Chicago law firms courted Mr. Obama. He joined a boutique firm specializing in housing and civil rights. Judson Miner, who had been a close ally of Mayor Washington, headed the firm. Ms. Moseley Braun had worked there before her Senate run.
Mr. Obama next set his sights on the 2004 Senate race. Several white Democrats were planning to run. If Mr. Obama could win the black vote and attract liberal whites, he figured he could get 30% of the vote, enough to win in a crowded field, according to his aides on that campaign. Learning from his prior defeat, he visited three black churches every Sunday, delivering his stump speech in the cadence of black preachers. He raised money furiously.
Most importantly, Mr. Obama persuaded Mr. Axelrod, one of Chicago's most powerful political strategists, to run his campaign. Mr. Axelrod specialized in electing black candidates who could cross over and win white votes, emphasizing themes of unity and change. He also worked for Mayor Daley.
Mr. Obama was running third, behind two white candidates. Throughout the campaign, rumors swirled that Blair Hull, the Democratic front-runner, was involved in a messy divorce. The Chicago Tribune filed a lawsuit seeking to unseal Mr. Hull's divorce papers. Under pressure, Mr. Hull released the papers, which revealed that his ex-wife had alleged that he had physically and verbally abused her. No charges were ever filed, and Mr. Hull said at the time that voters should look at "my total reputation in my life." A spokesman for the Obama presidential campaign says that his senate campaign "was not responsible for the release of the records."
Mr. Axelrod, who had been holding money back, unleashed a flurry of Obama television ads. They made no mention of the Hull matter, but focused on Mr. Obama's biography. Mr. Obama won the primary with 53% of the vote. Mr. Obama's Republican opponent, Jack Ryan, then withdrew after his divorce papers revealed that his ex-wife had made an allegation connected to what she said were trips she took with Mr. Ryan to sex clubs. Mr. Ryan denied the allegation.
Mr. Obama sailed to victory. By the end of the campaign, his aides were sending workers into Iowa, the first Presidential caucus state, to begin developing contacts among Democrats there, according to Al Kindle, an Obama campaign aid at the time.
A few months later, Sen. Obama entered into a real-estate deal that would later come to haunt him. He and his wife bought a mansion in Hyde Park for $1.65 million, $300,000 below the asking price. The wife of a longtime friend and donor, real-estate developer Tony Rezko, paid full price for an adjacent lot that was listed at the same time by the seller. Six months later, the Rezkos sold Mr. Obama a strip of their land so he could have a bigger yard. At the time, newspapers were reporting that Mr. Rezko was under investigation for corruption and influence peddling involving the Illinois governor's office. He was subsequently indicted and is currently standing trial.
Sen. Obama, who hasn't been named in connection with that case, has since called his decision "boneheaded" because it gave the impression Mr. Rezko was trying to curry favor. Mr. Axelrod says Sen. Obama never discussed the house purchase with his political team. If he had, Mr. Axelrod says, they would have told him not to do it.
On Tuesday morning, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that Iran was busily installing 6,000 new centrifuges for development of nuclear material. Further, Ahmadinejad stated, Iran would begin testing a new type of centrifuge that works five times faster than ordinary centrifuges.
On Tuesday afternoon, Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., declared that the U.S. should engage in a "diplomatic surge" in Iraq. In particular, he said, America should embrace talks with Iran. "I do not believe we are going to be able to stabilize the situation without that," Obama told Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker. "I continue to believe that the original decision to go into Iraq was a massive strategic blunder, that the two problems you pointed out -- al-Qaida in Iraq and increased Iranian influence in the region -- are a direct result of that original decision."
Never mind the unbelievable arrogance of a foreign policy boob like Barack Obama, lecturing the two most knowledgeable on-the-ground figures in Iraq on the best military strategy for Iraq.
Barack Obama's scariest characteristic isn't his ego, though its sheer size threatens to shift the globe out of orbit. Obama's scariest characteristic is his puerile belief that everything can be solved by talking with dictators. He seems to believe there's nothing to be lost by sitting across the table from murderers, thugs, Holocaust deniers and genocidal maniacs. "I will meet not just with our friends but with our enemies, not just with those we agree with but those we don't," he blustered in February.
Obama, more than any politician of the past fifty years, should understand the power of words and gestures -- his entire campaign is based on them. Yet, he doesn't seem to understand the simple truth that America's enemies see negotiation as a sign of weakness.
Evil leaders always see negotiations without preconditions as surrender. Neville Chamberlain's shilly-shallying at Munich emboldened Hitler. Yitzhak Rabin's agreement to the Oslo Accords encouraged Yasser Arafat. April Glaspie's statement to Saddam Hussein that "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait" gave Hussein the green light to touch off the first Gulf War.
Obama likes to compare himself to Ronald Reagan. Reagan, Obama says, negotiated with the USSR. Naturally, Obama neglects to mention that Reagan only negotiated with the USSR after placing missiles in Europe, funding Star Wars, joking about bombing the Soviets and calling the USSR an "evil empire." Obama's meetings would be more like an Oprah interview than a Reagan negotiation.
It's not surprising Obama is willing to have coffee with those who hate America. After all, he allowed an America-hater to preside over his wedding. He sat in the pews while his spiritual mentor railed against Israel. He's used to Ahmadinejad-like rhetoric -- he went to a church full of it for two decades.
Obama has no problem chatting with the world's bloodiest butchers or sitting in racist churches because he "understands" everyone. Back in November, I wrote that Obama was running as "The Man Who (SET ITAL) Understands (END ITAL)."
"I know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless," he writes in "Dreams From My Father." That understanding leads him to excuse Islamic terrorism as a function of poverty; it leads him to compare black teens on the South Side of Chicago to jihadis in Indonesia. It leads him to excuse scumbag preachers and to kowtow to sadistic tyrants.
There's clearly one thing Barack Obama doesn't understand: the nature of evil. That's why he continues to coddle evil men in both his personal life and his politics.
Barack Obama's presidential campaign has worked to assure uneasy gun owners that he believes the Constitution protects their rights and that he doesn't want to take away their guns. But before he became a national political figure, he sat on the board of a Chicago-based foundation that doled out at least nine grants totaling nearly $2.7 million to groups that advocated the opposite positions.
The foundation funded legal scholarship advancing the theory that the Second Amendment does not protect individual gun owners' rights, as well as two groups that advocated handgun bans. And it paid to support a book called "Every Handgun Is Aimed at You: The Case for Banning Handguns."
Obama's eight years on the board of the Joyce Foundation, which paid him more than $70,000 in directors fees, do not in any way conflict with his campaign-trail support for the rights of gun owners, Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Obama's presidential campaign, asserted in a statement issued to Politico this week. LaBolt stressed that the foundation, which has assets of about $935 million, doesn't take "detailed policy positions," but rather uses its grants to "fuel a dialogue about how to address public policy issues like reducing gun violence."
As with most foundations, Joyce did not record how individual board members voted on grants, but former Joyce officials told Politico that funding was typically approved unanimously. LaBolt said Obama, an Illinois senator, "does not remember each of the over 1,500 individual grant requests and his assessment of their merits, but he considered all requests in light of the foundation's goal of developing a robust public dialogue around reducing gun violence."
Obama joined the board in the summer of 1994 as a 32-year-old lawyer who had yet to run for public office, but he already had a reputation in Chicago as an up-and-comer, particularly on issues related to low-income communities - a key foundation focus. By the time he left the board in the winter of 2002, as he was gearing up for his 2004 U.S. Senate bid, Obama had served six years in the Illinois state Senate and had also considered leaving politics to become the group's full-time president, by his own acknowledgment.
Obama's service on the board of the Joyce Foundation and a few other Chicago-based nonprofits including the Woods Fund of Chicago remains one of the least scrutinized parts of his career. But it's one that could hamper his efforts to woo populations of rural pro-gun voters in Pennsylvania, which votes April 22, and in a general election match-up with the presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.
In his appeal to gun owners, Obama has not emphasized his own legislative record, which includes supporting a ban on semiautomatic weapons and concealed weapons, and a limit on handgun purchases to one a month. He has blamed his staff for indicating on a questionnaire filled out during his 1996 state Senate bid under his name that he supports banning "the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns." ....
Pressed to clarify his stance during a debate Wednesday evening in Philadelphia, Obama told ABC News anchor Charles Gibson, "I have never favored an all-out ban on handguns. What I think we can provide is common-sense approaches to the issue of illegal guns that are ending up on the streets."
Seems that Barack Obama has weighed the "time constraints and logistical issues" of answering simple questions that really have only a yes or no answer and chickened out of the North Carolina debate.
Fine. We all know he's got a REAL problem with answering questions now, even going to blame his inability to tackle questions on his waffles (What it about liberals and waffles anyway?)
But once he grabs the nomination all bets are off when he's running against McCain and then it will be either answer the questions or get back to writing books and going on Oprah, or smoking a bong.
The Obama phenomenon is very much like 1930s Germany all over again. Grand visions have a hypnotic fascination for many dissatisfied people, particularly young and inexperienced ones
By Rick Moran
The primary campaign became something of a Salvador Dali painting this past week as the canvas on which this surreal process has been rendered revealed an image that has lost all touch with reality and descended into a miasmic dreamworld where up is down, black is white, and consequences are divorced from actions - especially in the case of Barack Obama.
Dali once famously said "The difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad." Something similar could be said for the differences between the Obama on the stump and Obama the real person. This became abundantly clear last night when the largest campaign crowd yet - more than 35,000 by most estimates - thronged to the park in front of Independence Hall to hear the probable/potential/possible next President of the United States chant his "hope and change" mantra while totally ignoring the reality of a man whose past associations include an incredible group of hate mongering anti-Americans, racist pastors, crooked "fixers," and "politics as usual" politicians who give the lie to his pretty words and noble sentiments:
"In four days, you get the chance to help bring about the change that we need right now," Obama said. "Here in the city and the state that gave birth to our democracy, we can declare our independence from the politics that's shut us out, let us down, and told us to settle."
And he blasted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, his rival for the party's nomination, even as he called her "a tenacious opponent and a committed public servant." She is the front-runner in Pennsylvania, as Obama acknowledged last night, even though he leads her nationally. "She's taken different positions at different times on issues as fundamental as trade and even war to suit the politics of the moment," Obama said. "And in the last few months, she's launched what her campaign calls a `kitchen sink' strategy of negative attacks, which she defends by telling us that this is what the Republicans would do."
The crowd - the estimate of 35,000 came from officials at the Independence Visitors Center - began assembling early, filling Independence Mall and spilling into the surrounding streets. They waited with relative patience, chanting "O-ba-ma" whenever the music stopped, until 8:45, when the rally finally started. They gave him a thunderous greeting and cheered often throughout a speech that was crafted with the setting in mind.
That's only the half of it. Marc Ambinder reports on what happened after the rally was over:
It wasn't so much that Barack Obama had real fight in him tonight, or that more people attended his rally in front of Independence Hall than any other event since he announced his candidacy. It was the spontaneous demonstration of support that happened when it ended.
5,000 people (at least) had nowhere to go but up Market Street. Obama's charge of the night: "Declare independence!" was with them. They started with the familiar "O-Bam-A." By 7th and Market, they had graduated to "Yes we can!" By 10th and Market, with hundreds streaming in between cars on the road, they were just cheering. At first, a few Philly cops, killjoys, tried to rough the crowd to the sidewalks. It didn't work. The cops retreated to the sidewalks. By the time I ducked into my hotel, a full mile away from Independence Park, the Obama crowd was still marching.
Have we become so cynical that despite all the evidence to the contrary - his lack of any track record in effecting change (even eschewing opportunities to do so when the presented themselves), his accepting help from politicians who practice the very kind of politics he rails against, his association with people who have no desire to "unite" the country, only tear it down - that so many would become besotted with "Obamamania" that they deliberately look the other way at this hypocrisy coming from their candidate?
This disconnect became all too visible the last few days as left wing blogs supporting Obama were beside themselves over the efforts by ABC debate moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephenopolous to pull back the curtain and reveal Obama as the hypocrite he truly is. Their primary beef with ABC? The moderators asked questions the candidate didn't want to answer and his supporters didn't want to hear. As long as the press coverage limits itself to the "issues," only the Obama on the stump will be highlighted. As long as the press reports on the incredible crowds, the adoring fans, the candidate's rhetorical gifts (not "issues" in any sense of the word but hey! - no one ever accused the left of being consistent about anything), Obama's Legions are satisfied.
But let the press actually do their jobs and ask the candidate why he is on a first name basis with someone who is "proud" he tried to blow up the Pentagon and the crap hits the fan in Obamaland. Any attempt to reveal the life Obama has led outside of politics isn't relevant. Not because it has nothing to do with why someone would cast their vote for their candidate - an incredibly stupid assumption that bespeaks an ignorance of why people vote - but simply because they don't want to know and more importantly, they don't want the rest of us to know. The candidate himself pushes this idea that the press should only ask questions he wants to answer in North Carolina on Thursday:
With a voice dripping with sarcasm, Barack Obama offered a eulogy yesterday from Raleigh, N.C. "I will tell you [the campaign] does not get more fun than these debates," he said. "They are inspiring debates. I think last night we set a new record [note to the wordsmith: all records are new when set] because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters most to the American people. It took us 45 minutes - 45 minutes before we [were allowed to regurgitate what we've been saying for months] about health care, 45 minutes before we [got to repeat everything we've been saying for months] about Iraq, 45 minutes before we heard [a reprise of the tedious argle-bargle] about jobs, 45 minutes before we [got to harangue everybody for the 12th time] about [how we can't do anything about] the price of gasoline."
Indeed, Wes Pruden is on to something here. Any discussion of "issues" at this late date in the campaign would have put people to sleep. Now ABC, as you might have guessed, is a for-profit outfit that was horrified at the thought that people might find the candidates' spouting for the umpteenth time their bullet points about Iraq, health care, jobs, and the price of gasoline so intensely boring that they would flip over to watch a playoff hockey game or perhaps "Deal or no Deal." Better to make both Hillary and Obama squirm a little by having to answer questions that inquiring minds want to know - like why did you allow a self confessed, unapologetic terrorist hold a fundraiser at his house for you Senator Obama?
Obama's answer has been recycled time and time again, given when he has been confronted with questions about Wright, Rezko, Daley, Jones, and all the other personalities from Obama's real life away from the stump that define who he is as a man and not the messianic candidate on the stump who promises so ardently to change things:
Sen. Obama was briefly put on the spot with a question about still another of his shady friends in Chicago, but he was allowed to dance away without the obvious follow-up. What was the extent of his friendship with Bill Ayers, an ex-con and unrepentant member of a ring of cop-killers from the `60s? This could have been a fastball but was only a floater, and the Illinois Kid sent it back sharply for a Texas Leaguer. "The notion that somehow, as a consequence of me knowing someone in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, that somehow that reflects on my values, is crazy."
But that's not quite the point of the question. The senator knew that Bill Ayers was more than "just a guy who lives in my neighborhood" and was once a member of the Weathermen when they served together on the board of the Woods Fund, a small but radical Chicago foundation of suspicious provenance. At the behest of the unrepentant Bill Ayers - who boasts that he and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, who both served time after years on the run, didn't do enough to plant bombs to kill innocents when they had the chance - the foundation awarded $6,000 to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church "in recognition of Barack Obama's contributions." Messrs. Obama and Ayers voted to award a generous grant to the Arab-American Action Network, to finance "actions" (not otherwise specified).
Obama's catch-all excuse for the Wrights, Ayers, Rezkos, Auchis, Daleys, and other less than stellar characters in his past is the same for each; everyone has a Wright/Ayers/Rezko/Auchi/Daley et. al. in their past so what's the big deal? Wright is everyone's "crazy uncle." Ayers is just some guy who "lives in the neighborhood." Rezko is "one of thousands of contributors" to his campaign. In each case, Obama tries to portray himself as everyman, asking his supporters (who don't need much urging) to imagine all the characters from their past who are less than upstanding. My friend Shaun Mullen does the same thing:
I'll get this turdball rolling by noting that I knew several members of the Weather Underground back in the day and am a longtime friend of one whom I invited into my home when he was a fugitive. But even in the context of those crazy times, the Weathermen were a bunch of zonked-out wannabe revolutionaries who ultimately diverted attention from their occasionally worthy causes by doing a lot of really bad stuff.
All that so noted, I had a hard time getting behind President Clinton's pardon of two members of the Weather Underground for some very serious criminal acts on the eve of George Bush's 2001 inauguration but have a whole lot less of a problem with Bill Ayers, a former but never arrested Weatherman and present-day University of Illinois professor who hosted a fundraiser in his home for Barack Obama when the presidential candidate was running for the Illinois Senate.
Allow me to channel Salvadore Dali; "The difference between Barack Obama and Shaun Mullen is that Shaun is not Barack Obama." Shaun is not running for president. Shaun does not get up in front of 35,000 people and say he is better than every other politician out there because by jing, he's for a "new" kind of politics while they aren't. Shaun does not lie through his teeth about the nature and extent of his past associations.
The band plays on, ignoring the discordant chords coming from outside the bandshell because that would disturb their ideal of perfect harmony, perfect syncopation, perfect togetherness. For most of Obama's supporters, tuning out the sour notes is easy. They hear what they want to hear - Obama on the stump - and ignore the music being made by the candidate in his real life - complete with beautiful melodies as well as dark, minor key atonal counterpoints that for many of us has begun to dominate our opinion of the candidate. Will they ever gather the courage to hear the entire composition?
Obama Tech Advisor Introduces Video of Gay, Singing Jesus Who Gets Hit by a Bus
Erick Erickson over at RedState tells us all of an anti-Christian video recently introduced with great frivolity by Internet philosopher and Obama technology advisor Larry Lessig. The video introduced at a Google Author series seminar shows Jesus singing the Gloria Gaynor tune "I Will Survive" in a very effeminate, theatrical way. As the song ramps up, Jesus throws off his robe and strips down to a diaper-like covering, then he sashays through a modern city until he gets hit by a bus in an intersection.
The worst thing about this is that this is also another scandal involving a Barack Obama campaign associate showing his disdain for the American mainstream, this time a disdain of Christianity. It turns out that Lessig is a somewhat secretive Obama campaign advisor, serving to assist the campaign on Internet and technology policies. As Erickson points out, Lessig hosts Obama's tech policy on his own lessig.org website.
At the conference, the Google employees can be heard laughing and enjoying the show. The clip ends with Lessig claiming that we shouldn't worry because a sequel shows that Jesus survives being run over by the bus. How comforting, eh?
Again, as Erickson points out, "Barack Obama's campaign has regularly cited Lessig as a key supporter on technology issues (see here too) and made sure Lessig was quoted when listing Obama's technology endorsers."
Aside from his attacks on Jesus, Lessig is also an advocate of the concept of digital communism, a belief that there should be no such thing as intellectual property rights, that all creations of art or technology should be free for the taking.
So, what we have here is another close Obama supporter and advisor that seems to hate the things that the average American holds dear. The list of America hating Obama associates is getting longer every day, and now we can add a Christian hating, communist to that list.
It's really hard to believe that any real American can support a man for president of the United States of America who surrounds himself with people who so hate this country and all it stands for.
Today's Chicago Tribune carries a frontpage article titled, "Michelle Obama's mission: Show voters humble roots." Mrs. Obama's recollections of how she and her husband not so long ago were deluged with bills and calls from collection agencies have become a major component of the campaign, designed to demonstrate that Senator Barack Obama understands financial difficulties and the folks encountering them. He feels their pain. The article reports that Barack Obama "by all accounts, rose from humble beginnings and isn't that far removed from financial hardship in his own life."
But who's providing all those accounts on which the Tribune relies? The tenth paragraph, buried on page 23, notes that Mrs. Obama "doesn't come with documentation to back up her story about financial hardship. Asked to provide evidence of the Obamas' recent debt or contact from bill collectors, a campaign aide said the family was trying to find the records in response to a Tribune request last week but could not do so immediately."
It may take a while. To his credit, Senator Obama released his tax returns going back to the year 2000. On their joint 2000 return, the Obamas reported an adjusted gross income of more than $240,000. Their following year's AGI was over $270,000. In the past eight years, the Obama's worst was in 2004, when their AGI was a pitiful $207,000. Thank goodness for that wonderful child care tax credit, which the Obamas routinely took.
So here's a couple making over $200,000 annually and in most years quite a lot more. Yet they still had to sweat opening the mail and were plagued by calls from collection agencies. It's little wonder that it was only recently that Michelle (finally!) was proud to be an American.
In the meantime, I know we can depend on the Chicago Tribune and other mainstream media outlets to confirm all those accounts proving that the Family Obama actually experienced the difficult challenges they're now claiming.
Thanks to American Thinker's Rick Moran and his analysis of a video from an LA Times blog, even better displayed in another camera angle posted by the Baltimore Sun, it's clear that Senator Obama delivered a common obscene gesture in Senator Clinton's direction as he spoke to a crowd of his loyal followers in North Carolina the day after the Philadelphia debate. He shot Hillary the bird, only slightly surreptitiously. Visit the links above to see it happen.
Obama's explanation of how the debate questions represented "Washington" playing "gotcha politics" is telling by itself. Whining does not become anyone who aspires to be the President of the United States of America, as Obama likes to voice the complete title of the job he wants. And his assurances that he was unfazed by the perceived attacks he received from the ABC moderators resemble the braggadocio of the boxer who climbs up from the canvas on a nine count, nose bleeding with one eye swollen shut, saying "Hey, he never laid a glove on me." We could read Obama's body language in the debate. We saw him take heavy leather. So what is this video all about, and what does it tell us about Barack Obama?
At its basest level, it displays his immaturity. Why in the world would a U.S. Senator use an obscene gesture to send a marginally subtle message to his inter-party opponent in a nomination campaign? That's just not smart. He will, if challenged on it, deliver an incredible denial alleging that such an interpretation is itself another effort of gotcha politics. But that will hang by a shred of cloth, at most. Only children below middle school (hopefully) and the visually impaired can miss his intention. This is the act of one who would be President that displays a remarkable level of immaturity.
It was also act of arrogance. As Forest Gump would say, "Arrogance is as arrogance does." This was Obama arrogance on display. His followers saw it, too, and they cheered. That is nearly as disturbing. This guy is not running for a seat on the City Council of a small town. In mine, and most small towns, giving the bird to an opponent would seal defeat in a close election. The obvious fact that his followers liked what he did, and that he enjoyed them liking it, should give us sober pause. Collectively, those in that audience also lack humility.
It was an act of self-defeating stupidity for a politician at his level. If you're a Hillary Clinton supporter and you see this, what impact does it have on you? The best coached athletic teams will not run up the score on their opponents at the end of the game when they're ahead. Why? Two reasons: they respect their opponent, and they know a humiliated opponent will be motivated to seek revenge. In a voting public evenly divided between the two major political parties, Obama as the nominee will need support from all of Hillary's backers. If you're one of them, will you forget the "finger" moment? Not likely. His was the behavior of a divider, not the uniter he claims to be.
Lastly, it was an act of someone who is being seduced by the adulation of those he has seduced. The questions he objects to pertain to his character. We care more about that, as Americans, than the inside-the-Beltway wonkishness of programs and policies that he says we want to hear about. The literate among us have gotten those points already, thank you. Besides, most of what candidates promise never see reality after they get elected anyway. After a point reached relatively soon, we're more interested in knowing the person than their platform.
Obama has been lulled into a sense of invincibility by his cheering, fainting, fawning crowds. Until the CBS debate, that adulation was being propelled by the MSM. But for some reason, Charlie and George decided to join Tim's brief moment in that shining light of the journalistic maturity he displayed in a previous debate, and they actually asked tough questions! It shocked us. But Obama - he was offended. This is the same man who wants to sit down with our adversaries and reason with them?
Here are things Obama clearly does not know. Never ridicule your opponent -- not before, during or after the contest. Never assume the contest if over until there is absolutely no possible way for your opponent to take the lead in the remaining time. If you win, treat the defeated with utmost respect, regardless of how well they played the game. Perhaps this is old fashioned sportsmanship in the era of ball spikes and trash talk. But it did govern the way we dealt with the losers of World War II and it worked well in that venue. It works in politics, too. By his offensive behavior toward Hillary Clinton, Obama offended her followers. That's not good for him.
Obama easily walked into the U.S. Senate after his opponent was sabotaged by an angry ex-wife who destroyed his political career by getting sexually bizarre sealed court records re-opened. Obama's eleventh hour opponent, Alan Keyes, is an articulate and honorable man who never had a prayer of winning that election. Keyes was political cannon fodder. Consequently, Obama is in the first real fist fight of his short political career and he's getting arrogant because he's betting the former First Lady of an impeached President. He should be on guard. Pride goeth before the fall.
Assume for a moment: It's January, 2009, and Barack Obama has just been inaugurated as President of the United States. Ahmadi-Nejad explodes his first Bomb; he now has that itchy finger on the button as long as the mullahs stay in power. The Middle East goes wild --- with abject fear among the Saudis, and loud celebrations among terror supporters. The day of revenge against the Jews and the Crusaders has finally arrived. What would President Obama do? He has only two basic options.
Option One
Stick with his electoral promises, fly to Tehran, and "talk to the mullahs." What will the mullahs wish to talk about, after talking up the glory of martyrdom warfare for thirty years? For three decades the daily chant was "Death to America! Death to Israel!" The Left is sure the Khomeini cultists can't possibly mean that. But now they are faced with a 15-minute warning time if the mullahs do mean what they've been telling us since 1979.
Maybe the mullahs will ask President Obama how high the US will jump? How quickly will the Saudi royals get out of Arabia and give it to the Khomeini cult, which is convinced that it has the historic right to the two holy cities of Mohammed? How long until the price of oil doubles? And, Mr. President, you get those US Navy ships out of the Gulf of Imam Khomeini, right now. Or else we will swarm your Navy ships with fleets of gunboats and see who blinks first. Martyrdom is glorious.
Call Option One the Jimmy Carter option. With Carter's advisor Zbig Brzezinski back in favor, President Obama will be hearing a lot about that one.
If you think the price of oil is high today, wait 'til the Middle East catches fire. The Caliphate of Iran wants every other nation to "bow down to the greatness of Iran," as Ahmadi-Nejad likes to put it. With a Bomb, they can sway the OPEC monopoly. Would the Saudis resist Iranian pressure, 50 miles from their shore? Europe will try to feed the hungry crocodile lots of goodies, hoping it will eat them last. But Israel may not be inclined to become croc food, and they have an estimated 200 nukes. Thirty years ago Prime Minister Golda Meir was prepared to use them as a last resort. With their backs against the wall, they may have no choice. So Option One means trouble.
The Saudis don't have nuclear weapons (yet), but they can buy them from Pakistan. If they are afraid of Iran's itchy finger, they will, and who can blame them? Arab and Sunni pride will demand a Bomb for Egypt and Syria. If everybody else can have one, why not Libya again? If the US is not willing to protect Arab nations against Iranian aggression, they will find a more bloody-minded protector like Russia. Vladimir Putin will be happy to oblige, for a price. So let's hope your advisors have read up on the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1964, Mr. President, because soon we're going to see it again.
Option Two
Flip the bird to your lifelong friends on the Left and reverse all their foreign policy ideas. Send several battle groups within striking distance of Tehran. Beef up our forces next door, in Iraq, the Gulf and Afghanistan. Get serious with the Russians to pull their engineers out of Iranian nuclear plants. Block North Korean help for A'jad's Bomb. Stop German companies like Siemens from selling advanced electronic gear to the mullahs. Turn Syria around, to isolate Iran's proxy armies in Lebanon and Gaza. Mount more state-of-the-art missile defenses on Aegis war ships --- we have 82 of them, a formidable world-wide missile defense if we ever decide to use them. Finally, build up US troop numbers. And then let the New York Times go into hysterics.
Call Option Two the "George W. Bush strategy." Or if you don't like that, it also happens to be the Wilson-FDR-JFK-LBJ-Truman strategy. It used to be standard Democrat foreign policy, before the Dems turned hard left after 1968.
So which one -- the Carter Option or the W Option -- do you think President Obama will choose? With Iran pointing a loaded gun at the world, and thousands of Basiji marching in the streets, all praying to become martyrs, there is not much ground for coming together and finding hope. Presidents have to make real decisions with real consequences. So far, Obama hasn't shown any willingness to make hard choices, even in his political campaigns. He wants to be the messiah, but without renouncing bad characters like Rezko or Wright or Ayers. Like Bill Clinton, he's great at having his cake and eating it, too.
Since the Left has been completely wrong about foreign policy since Jimmy Carter, they are very poorly equipped even to think about an Iranian Bomb. That's why they keep denying that there's any real problem with nuke proliferation. And yet it's rushing straight at us, like that roaring locomotive in the tunnel.
I'm just curious. Charles Krauthammer just pointed out that the Left has made it impossible to act preemptively against rogues with nukes. When Iran explodes its Bomb, will the Left apologize for being wrong about national security for decades? Will the CIA apologize for its wretched failures, one after the other, to warn about life-threatening dangers? I don't go around the world asking for apologies, but the Left does. Thank you, Democrats. Thank you, Europeans. And let's not forget the corrupt and incompetent UN and our friends in the Leftist media. We are now standing at the precipice, and we have you to thank for it.
So if A'jad gets his Bomb next year or thereafter, will you apologize for crucifying George W. Bush, who was foolish enough to think that Saddam Hussein might be developing nukes, too? Will the Left admit its suicidal foolhardiness in sabotaging anti-missile defenses for the last thirty years? For blocking anti-proliferation efforts in the "international community"? And for trashing anyone who saw reality and told the truth?
You know the answer. The Left is never wrong. We won't ask you to apologize for being wrong, Mr. or Mrs. President. Just recognize reality, please, and be ready to live with all the bad choices that are left. Or you can try sending Madeleine Albright to waltz with Ahmadi-Nejad. Look how well that worked with Kim Jong-Il.
Pennsylvania sportsmen aren't "bitter" about their guns and balk at what they call Sen. Barack Obama's double-talk in courting their support. In a state that boasts one of the country's highest per capita rates of membership in the National Rifle Association (NRA), Mr. Obama's stance that Second Amendment gun rights are compatible with new tough gun laws falls flat. And it didn't help when he said the state's "bitter" small-town voters hurt by the economy were not supporting him because they "cling" to religion, guns and anti-immigrant views.
"It just tells me he is anti-gun," said Debbie Schultz, owner of Schultz's Sportsmens Stop in Apollo, Pa., about 40 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. "We don't need more gun laws and we don't need tougher gun laws, the ones we've got are pretty stringent," said Mrs. Schultz, 53, who has been selling sporting and target firearms for 39 years. "You can't keep a thug from getting a gun [unless] you try to take all the guns from every gun owner and that will never happen in the United States."
Rocco S. Ali, president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs, said the two viewpoints embraced by Mr. Obama are incompatible. "He's tried to satisfy both sides [but] they don't go together," said Mr. Ali, whose organization represents about 95,000 hunters and outdoorsmen in more than 350 clubs. He said Mr. Obama's pledge to go after "straw purchasers" who dump guns in crime-plagued urban neighborhoods is a pretext for new restrictions that make it harder for everyone to buy firearms. Existing federal and state laws, he said, authorize law-enforcement agencies to investigate any firearm purchase.
Both Mr. Obama and his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, have shied from riling gun owners on the campaign trail, especially in this divergent state where inner city politicians' desire for stricter gun rules clash with its hunting history. Neither has taken a position on the historic case before the U.S. Supreme Court over whether the District's ban on handguns violates the Constitution's Second Amendment. The court, taking up the Second Amendment "right to keep and bear arms" for the first time in 69 years, is expected to rule in June.
Likewise, the two candidates did not sign a bipartisan amicus curiae brief filed in the Supreme Court that supported the amendment's guarantee of individual gun rights and opposed the District's law. The "friend of the court" brief was signed by 250 House members and 55 senators, including presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain. And both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, despite talking up her support of gun rights, say they would reinstate the assault-weapon ban, which the Republican-led Congress allowed to expired in 2004.
"They think they can disguise their real position," NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said of the Democratic contenders. "The campaign rhetoric doesn't match [Mr. Obama's] voting record at all. ... He's not pro-Second Amendment." The NRA gave an "F" grade to Mr. Obama's and Mrs. Clinton's voting records, which include votes to ban certain types of ammunition and to make firearm manufactures liable for gun violence. Mr. McCain got a "C."
Although Mr. McCain has a strong gun rights voting record, he supports campaign-finance laws that limit political advocacy by issue groups, such as the NRA, and supports tighter firearms sales regulations at gun shows.
The gun issue regained prominence following Mr. Obama's "bitter" comment at a private fundraiser in San Francisco. Criticized for his elitist tone, Mr. Obama apologized for offending gun owners and churchgoers but said people are frustrated with Washington and seek reassurance in these traditions....
In a debate here Wednesday, Mr. Obama pledged to "bridge this divide [between gun rights and gun control laws], which I think has been polarizing and, frankly, doesn't reflect the common sense of the American people." Earlier this week, he told newspaper executives at the Associated Press annual luncheon in Washington that respecting "deeply held traditions" of gun ownership in rural America didn't preclude strict laws to keep handguns out of embattled cities.
Mr. Obama said the country must "acknowledge the importance of gun ownership in huge swaths of the country and recognize the Second Amendment actually means something," and also "recognize that for us to put in place strong, tough background checks, to close the gun-show loophole, to be able to trace guns that have been used in crimes to the gun dealers who sold those guns to see if they're abiding by the law, making sure that they're not working with straw purchasers to dump illegal handguns into vulnerable communities - that those two visions are compatible, that they're not contradictory."
The Obama campaign the next day touted an endorsement by the American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA), a national group that promotes some new gun control measures and describes itself as an alternative to the NRA's "radical" gun rights views. Critics say the group is a front for the gun control lobby because it promotes outlawing some caliber of guns and certain types of ammunition and the abolition of firearm sales at gun shows...
232 years ago, a group of bitter men clung to their guns and religion, driven by their antipathy towards people who weren't like them. It the end, I think it worked out OK.
Guns and God? Hell, yes: Obama attacks two of the things that elevate the U.S. above places like Europe
By Mark Steyn
Sen. Obama's remarks about poor dumb, bitter rural losers "clinging to" guns and God certainly testify to the instinctive snobbery of a big segment of the political class. But we shouldn't let it go by merely deploring coastal condescension toward the knuckledraggers. No, what Michelle Malkin calls Crackerquiddick (quite rightly - it's more than just another dreary "-gate") is not just snobbish nor even merely wrongheaded. It's an attack on two of the critical advantages the United States holds over most of the rest of the Western world. In the other G7 developed nations, nobody clings to God 'n' guns. The guns got taken away, and the Europeans gave up on churchgoing once they embraced Big Government as the new religion.
How's that working out? Compared with America, France and Germany have been more or less economically stagnant for the past quarter-century, living permanently with unemployment rates significantly higher than in the United States.
Has it made them any less "bitter," as Obama characterizes those Pennsylvanian crackers? No. In my book "America Alone," I note a global survey on optimism: 61 percent of Americans were optimistic about the future, 29 percent of the French, 15 percent of Germans. Take it from a foreigner: In my experience, Americans are the least "bitter" people in the developed world. Secular, gun-free big-government Europe doesn't seem to have done anything for people's happiness. Consider by way of example the words of Keith Reade. He's not an Obama speechwriter, he's a writer for the London Daily Mirror. And the day after the 2004 presidential election he expressed his frustration in an alarmingly Obamaesque way:
"Were I a Kerry voter, though, I'd feel deep anger, not only at them returning Bush to power, but for allowing the outside world to lump us all into the same category of moronic muppets. The self-righteous, gun-totin', military-lovin', sister-marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', nonpassport ownin' rednecks, who believe God gave America the biggest d*** in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land 'free and strong.'"
Well, that's certainly why I supported Bush, but I'm not sure it entirely accounts for the other 62,039,073 incontinent rednecks. Reade, though, does usefully enumerate some of the distinctive features that separate America from the rest of the West. "Self-righteous"? If you want a public culture that reeks of indestructible faith in its own righteousness, try Europe - especially when they're talking about America: If you disagree with Eutopian wisdom, you must be an idiot.
Obama and far too many Democrats have bought into this delusion, most thoroughly distilled in Thomas Frank's book "What's The Matter With Kansas?", whose argument is that heartland voters are too dumb (i.e., "moronic muppets") to vote for their own best interests.
Europeans did "vote for their own best interests" - i.e., cradle-to-grave welfare, 35-hour workweeks, six weeks of paid vacation, etc. - and as a result they now face a perfect storm of unsustainable entitlements, economic stagnation and declining human capital that's left them so demographically beholden to unassimilable levels of immigration that they're being remorselessly Islamized with every passing day. We should thank God (forgive the expression) that America's loser gun nuts don't share the same sophisticated rational calculation of "their best interests" as do Thomas Frank, Obama, too many Democrats and the European political establishment.
As for "gun-totin'," large numbers of Americans tote guns because they're assertive, self-reliant citizens, not docile subjects of a permanent governing class. The Second Amendment is philosophically consistent with the First Amendment, for which I've become more grateful since the Canadian Islamic Congress decided to sue me for "hate speech" up north. Both amendments embody the American view that liberty is not the gift of the state, and its defense cannot be outsourced exclusively to the government.
I think a healthy society needs both God and guns: It benefits from a belief in some kind of higher purpose to life on Earth, and it requires a self-reliant citizenry. If you lack either of those twin props, you wind up with today's Europe - a present-tense Eutopia mired in fatalism.
A while back, I was struck by the words of Oscar van den Boogaard, a Dutch gay humanist (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool). Reflecting on the Continent's accelerating Islamification, he concluded that the jig was up for the Europe he loved, but what could he do? "I am not a warrior, but who is?" he shrugged. "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it." Sorry, it doesn't work like that. If you don't understand that there are times when you'll have to fight for it, you won't enjoy it for long. That's what a lot of Reade's laundry list - "gun-totin'," "military-lovin'" - boils down to. As for "gay-loathin'," it's Oscar van den Boogaard's famously tolerant Amsterdam where gay-bashing is resurgent: The editor of the American gay paper the Washington Blade got beaten up in the streets on his last visit to the Netherlands.
God and guns. Maybe one day a viable society will find a magic cure-all that can do without both, but Big Government isn't it. And even complacent liberal Democrats ought to be able to look across the ocean and see that. But, then, Obama did give the speech in San Francisco, a city demographically declining at a rate that qualifies it for EU membership. When it comes to parochial simpletons, you don't need to go to Kansas.
Post below recycled from Just one minute. See the original for links
Even Bob Herbert of the Times can concede the obvious regarding the issues swirling in the Democratic steel cage death match campaign:
Senator Obama, for his part, seems to have lost sight of the unifying message that proved so compelling early in his campaign and has stumbled into weird cultural predicaments that have caused some people to rethink his candidacy.
While some of those predicaments raise legitimate concerns (his former pastor, his comments in San Francisco) and some do not (stupid questions about wearing a flag pin), he has allowed them to fester unnecessarily. The way for a candidate to eventually change the subject is to offer policy prescriptions so creative and compelling that they generate excitement among the electorate and can't be ignored by the press.
Voters want more from Senator Obama. He's given a series of wonderful speeches, but he has to add more meat to those rhetorical bones. He needs to be clear about where he wants to lead this country and how he plans to do it. That's how a candidate defines himself or herself. Instead, Mr. Obama is allowing the Clintons and the news media to craft a damaging persona of him as some kind of weak-kneed brother from another planet, out of touch with mainstream America, and perhaps a loser.
Wednesday night's debate in Philadelphia may have been a sorry exercise in journalism, but even many of Senator Obama's own supporters were disappointed with his lackluster performance.
Wow. Obama has been thumped recently by MoDo, Brooks, Krugman, and now Herbert. OK, MoDo is insane, Brooks is a righty, and Krugman has been pushing Hillarity's health care plan for months, but what is Herbert's excuse? I am troubled that Obama is not sweeping the Times editorial board. How dare they be distracted from the real issue, which is America's yearning for hope. And change, too.
Why the Madrassa? And Why "Hussein"?
Earlier today, when posting about opinion polls in Afghanistan and Somalia, I was forced to mention the current presidential campaign. Since I had to bring it up, I decided to have a little fun at the expense of the candidates, particularly the Democrats. I'm not a party-line voter, but - to paraphrase South Park's Matt Stone - I hate Republicans, but I really f***ing hate Democrats. I'd sooner vote for a rabid tree shrew for national office than pull the lever for a Democrat.
We have a sometime commenter here who goes by the nickname "The Poster Formerly Known as Gordon", or - to those who knew him in his LGF days - "Nodrog". Nodrog is unhappy when I let my loathing of the Democrats show, and he takes me to task for it. In my recent post he mentioned my use of "the Barack HUSSEIN Obama angle, new, but also pathetically trite." He also said this:
As for the "madrassa" angle, I would refer you to the source for such internet-based smears. The Muslim school Obama attended for part of the time he was a child was not a Madrassa. According to the free dictionary online, a madrassa is defined as A building or group of buildings used for teaching Islamic theology and religious law, typically including a mosque. Websters online dictionary has a more broad definition, a Muslim school, college, or university that is often part of a mosque. So, of course Baron, you will now crow that you are technically correct to say that Barack Obama attended a madrassa in Indonesia. But, given the popular understanding of a madrassa as an al qaeda nest, the characterization of Obama's Indonesian school as such is nothing more than another cheap smear.
Nodrog isn't the only person on the Left who objects to formulations such as these, and his comment made me wonder what all the fuss might be about. Here's my response to him.
Nodrog - While it may or may not be "technically correct" to refer to the school that Barack Obama attended in Indonesia as a "madrassa", mentioning it is not a "cheap smear". Considering that the young BHO - according to the testimony of his sister - did what all the other children at his school did, that is, he memorized and chanted the Koran in Arabic, it's not a trivial piece of information. It deserves to be mentioned, since it's unlikely to get much coverage in the MSM.
I freely acknowledge that referring to the next President of the United States as "Barack Hussein Obama" is a dig, and that I enjoy doing it. So tell me: what is it about my doing so that bothers you? I presume it wouldn't disturb you if I referred to "John Fitzgerald Kennedy", or "Lyndon Baines Johnson", or "James Earl Carter Jr.", or "William Jefferson Clinton", or "Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton". So what's wrong with "Barack Hussein Obama"?
There's nothing wrong with his having a Muslim background, right? So why be concerned about my referring to it? Is it because the average American, if allowed to become aware of it, would become suspicious of BHO, and thus less likely to vote for him? If so, why would the average American, despite all the years of incessant televised propaganda that tries to convince him that Islam is a religion of peace, be suspicious of someone with a Muslim background?
Do you think that somehow, against all odds, the truth has gotten through to Joe Sixpack and Suzie Bighair, and that they realize there's something fishy about most devotees of the Prophet? Are you perhaps afraid that the truth will in fact sink your candidate? If so, let truth reign!
ABC Debate Obama Flag Pin Question `Planted from the Right'? Nutrooters REALLY losing it now!
Houston Chronicle blogger Bob Cavnar needs to take some time off, or lay off the caffeine, or maybe someone should gently tell him that the black helicopters aren't following him after all. Whatever the case, Cavnar used his April 19th posting to go off on a wild eyed rant that is so twisted that it ends up blaming Republicans and Mickey Mouse for the fact that Barack Obama isn't patriotic enough to wear an American flag lapel pin! This is just another hilarious example of the overheated far left's panty bunching extravaganza that we've seen since the ABC debate aired.
During the last Democratic presidential debate, a woman from Pennsylvania was shown on videotape pointing out that Barack Obama refuses to wear an American flag lapel pin unlike most of the other candidates who do from time to time and Cavnar has decided that some dark, Obama hating conspiracy at ABC pushed this woman into the debate. Here was her question at the ABC debate:
Senator Obama, I have a question, and I want to know if you believe in the American flag. I am not questioning your patriotism, but all our servicemen, policemen and EMS wear the flag. I want to know why you don't.
As Cavnar points out, the woman, Pennsylvanian Nash McCabe, was quoted as concerned about that very question by The New York Times on April 4th. So, because this woman's point against Obama was known before the debate, Cavnar claims that McCabe being presented as a "typical voter" by ABC is somehow a lie.
Cavnar also points out that Philadelphia Daily News columnist Will Bunch agrees that McCabe's question was unfair and more proof of the "travesty of a mockery of a sham of a presidential debate" that ABC perpetrated on the nation. Bunch was just as peeved as Cavnar and said, "So Nash McCabe wasn't located at random at all. Instead, someone at ABC News decided that they wanted to go after Obama on the patriotism issue, and they actively sought a Pennsylvanian who they knew wanted to bring it up."
But, it all amounts to a big "so what?" Did ABC ever SAY that McCabe was chosen at random? No would be the answer to that. Both the Houston Chronicle's Cavnar and the Philly Daily News' Bunch set up a nice strawman that they could then easily knock down. Of course, it is true that ABC sought out this woman and that she wasn't found "at random," but I'm not aware that anyone at ABC DID say she was found by accident in the first place.
ABC did look for this woman to pose this question, without question. But it was not an ABC hit job at all. It was a substantive question on an issue that Obama himself made into an issue. Cavnar and Bunch's absurd claims of ABC's malfeasance aside, it was Obama himself that we can blame for the lapel flag issue.
Americans are interested in why Obama won't wear his American flag pin. It's just that simple.
Back in Iowa, Barack Obama promised to be something new - an unconventional leader who would confront unpleasant truths, embrace novel policies and unify the country. If he had knocked Hillary Clinton out in New Hampshire and entered general-election mode early, this enormously thoughtful man would have become that. But he did not knock her out, and the aura around Obama has changed. Furiously courting Democratic primary voters and apparently exhausted, Obama has emerged as a more conventional politician and a more orthodox liberal.
He sprinkled his debate performance Wednesday night with the sorts of fibs, evasions and hypocrisies that are the stuff of conventional politics. He claimed falsely that his handwriting wasn't on a questionnaire about gun control. He claimed that he had never attacked Clinton for her exaggerations about the Tuzla airport, though his campaign was all over it. Obama piously condemned the practice of lifting other candidates' words out of context, but he has been doing exactly the same thing to John McCain, especially over his 100 years in Iraq comment.
Obama also made a pair of grand and cynical promises that are the sign of someone who is thinking more about campaigning than governing. He made a sweeping read-my-lips pledge never to raise taxes on anybody making less than $200,000 to $250,000 a year. That will make it impossible to address entitlement reform any time in an Obama presidency. It will also make it much harder to afford the vast array of middle-class tax breaks, health care reforms and energy policy Manhattan Projects that he promises to deliver.
Then he made an iron vow to get American troops out of Iraq within 16 months. Neither Obama nor anyone else has any clue what the conditions will be like when the next president takes office. He could have responsibly said that he aims to bring the troops home but will make a judgment at the time. Instead, he rigidly locked himself into a policy that will not be fully implemented for another three years. If Obama is elected, he will either go back on this pledge - in which case he would destroy his credibility - or he will risk genocide in the region and a viciously polarizing political war at home.
Then there are the cultural issues. Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News are taking a lot of heat for spending so much time asking about Jeremiah Wright and the "bitter" comments. But the fact is that voters want a president who basically shares their values and life experiences. Fairly or not, they look at symbols like Michael Dukakis in a tank, John Kerry's windsurfing or John Edwards's haircut as clues about shared values.
When Obama began this ride, he seemed like a transcendent figure who could understand a wide variety of life experiences. But over the past months, things have happened that make him seem more like my old neighbors in Hyde Park in Chicago. Some of us love Hyde Park for its diversity and quirkiness, as there are those who love Cambridge and Berkeley. But it is among the more academic and liberal places around. When Obama goes to a church infused with James Cone-style liberation theology, when he makes ill-informed comments about working-class voters, when he bowls a 37 for crying out loud, voters are going to wonder if he's one of them. Obama has to address those doubts, and he has done so poorly up to now.
It was inevitable that the period of "Yes We Can!" deification would come to an end. It was not inevitable that Obama would now look so vulnerable. He'll win the nomination, but in a matchup against John McCain, he is behind in Florida, Missouri and Ohio, and merely tied in must-win states like Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. A generic Democrat now beats a generic Republican by 13 points, but Obama is trailing his own party. One in five Democrats say they would vote for McCain over Obama.
General election voters are different from primary voters. Among them, Obama is lagging among seniors and men. Instead of winning over white high school-educated voters who are tired of Bush and conventional politics, he does worse than previous nominees. John Judis and Ruy Teixeira have estimated a Democrat has to win 45 percent of such voters to take the White House. I've asked several of the most skillful Democratic politicians over the past few weeks, and they all think that's going to be hard.
A few months ago, Obama was riding his talents. Clinton has ground him down, and we are now facing an interesting phenomenon. Republicans have long assumed they would lose because of the economy and the sad state of their party. Now, Democrats are deeply worried their nominee will lose in November. Welcome to 2008. Everybody's miserable.
The Radicals in Barack Obama's World, LA Times Hides the Facts
According to the LAT: "Evidence linking him to the ex-leaders of the Weather Underground is thin"
The circulation losing LA Times is again trying to hid the friends and views of Barack Obama. Could this be why fewer people read this newspaper? These must be novice reporters. Left out of their story, claiming Ayres and Barack are just acquaintances is the following:
1. they live five houses apart 2. they BBQ together 3. They have served on Boards of Directors together 4. They served on panels together 5. Their children go to the same school
There is more, but you get the point. The evidence is "thin" when you refuse to print the evidence. These reporters would get an "F" in high school journalism for this press release for the Obama campaign. Obviously this is not a world class story. Even a local throw away would be embarrassed by this propaganda piece.
Just as the Times had to apologize for its piece on the the murder of a hip hopper, the Times needs to immediately apologize for this non revenue producing ad for the Obama campaign. Any wonder the Times is losing revenues, readers and credibility?
Post below recycled from Just One Minute. See the original for links
The new politics of hope and change sure looks a lot like the old politics of smear and distort. Here we go:
John McCain's campaign is crying foul over what it characterizes as repeated distortions from Barack Obama, saying on Friday the Illinois senator is "recklessly dishonest."
The most recent dustup comes after Obama criticized McCain earlier Friday for comments the Arizona senator made in an interview on Bloomberg Television. "John McCain went on television and said that there has been quote "great progress economically over the last seven and a half years," Obama told a Pennsylvania crowd. "John McCain thinks our economy has made great progress under George W. Bush. Now, how could somebody who has been traveling across this country, somebody who came to Erie, PA, say we've made great progress?"
The McCain campaign immediately took issue with the comment, noting the Arizona senator also said he knows families are facing "tremendous economic challenges." "American families are hurting and Barack Obama is being recklessly dishonest," McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said. "It is clear that Barack Obama is intentionally twisting John McCain's words completely out of context. Obama is guilty of deliberately distorting John McCain's comments for pure political gain, which is exactly what Senator Obama was complaining about just yesterday."
Let's interject a bit of reality so that the reality based side can see for themselves just what some of them are foisting on us. Here is the McCain interview in question, my excerpt:
MR. COOK: I'm going to ask you a version of the Ronald Reagan question. You think if Americans were asked, are you better off today than you were before George Bush took office more than seven years ago, what answer would they give?
SEN. MCCAIN: Certainly, in this time, we are in very challenging times. We all recognize that. Families are sitting around the kitchen table this evening and figuring out whether they're going to be able to keep their home or not. They're figuring out whether they're - why it is that suddenly and recently someone in their family or their neighbor has lost their job. There's no doubt that we are in enormous difficulties.
I think if you look at the overall record and millions of jobs have been created, et cetera, et cetera, you could make an argument that there's been great progress economically over that period of time. But that's no comfort. That's no comfort to families now that are facing these tremendous economic challenges.
But let me just add, Peter, the fundamentals of America's economy are strong. We're the greatest exporter, the greatest importer, the greatest innovator, the greatest producer, still the greatest economic engine in the world. And, by the way, exports and free trade are a key element in economic recovery. But these are tough times, tough times, and nobody knows that more than American families including in small towns of Pennsylvania. They haven't lost their fundamental religious beliefs, their respect for the Constitution, their right to bear arms. They are still - keep America as a beacon of hope and freedom throughout the world.
For Obama to extract one sentence and argue that McCain is out of touch is shameless. And by way of comparison, here is McCain when asked about Jeremiah (God DAMN America) Wright:
SEN. MCCAIN: Well, in the case of Reverend Wright, I have expressed in the past that I am sure that Senator Obama does not share the extremist statements that Reverend Wright made.
And he moved on the the "cling to their guns and religion and racism" controversy, which he does think is legitmate. Obama is a liar and a punk - should make for an interesting race. The Times has more fawning coverage. THINGS TO DO: If we are allowed to extract just one sentence and claim it is the candidate's view, I bet we can have fun with Barry. Any takers?
Obama Bitter About Free Markets
"In America, we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams, are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations." - Barack Obama, Chicago Reader, Dec. 8, 1995.
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was not only the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate in 2007, according to the National Journal, but if he becomes the Democratic Party's nominee, he will probably be the most liberal politician to ever to get it. Obama's past stands, including opposing the death penalty under any circumstances, believing that people should not be able to own handguns, talking about doubling the capital gains tax or opposing free trade are not the only things that get him classified as a liberal.
Nor is it just his statements that paint an elitist, snobby, liberal view of the world. For example, as most people now know, on April 6 in a fundraiser to extremely wealthy donors in San Francisco, Obama said people living in "these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest ... cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." But, while his left-wing economic views are much less well known, they show a similar pattern.
Obama also never seems to have found a market that can work without extensive government regulation. During Obama's big economic address at the very end of March, little attention was given in the American press to his deep distrust of the free market and his laundry list of failures of deregulation. From telecommunications to electricity to banking to accounting, he blamed the failures as a product of markets out of control, with not enough government regulations to rein in "an ethic of greed, corner cutting, insider dealing, things that have always threatened the long-term stability of our economic system."
According to Obama, deregulation, even under the Clinton administration, produced an "'anything goes' environment that helped foster devastating dislocations in our economy." The proper government regulation can prevent the ''chaotic, %20%20%20%20%20''chaotic" _extended="true"unforgiving" nature of capitalism.
For almost 30 years, Republican and Democratic administrations realized that mergers might create monopoly power, but that they often make it possible for firms to be run more efficiently - allowing firms to survive and grow and providing customers with lower cost products. Obama's view is that even the mergers the government did allow were largely not about making the economy better off, they were allowed because lobbyists successfully pushed through mergers that benefited firms at the expense of others. He implies that the firm's gains were even smaller than the damage inflicted on consumers.
To Obama, the mortgage market problems arise because of unscrupulous lenders forcing fraudulent loans on unsuspecting customers. But why adjustable rate mortgages are fraudulent or so difficult to understand is never really explained. Do people not really understand that if interest rates go down, their monthly payments go down? If interest rates go up, the payments go up? If interest rates go down and lenders lost money, would politicians be talking about unscrupulous borrowers instead of unscrupulous lenders?
Unfortunately, Obama thinks that he is not just running for president, but for America's chief banker. He is so much smarter than the bankers, who have their jobs and money at stake, and who he thinks have messed up the mortgage market. He never even acknowledges that government regulations might be responsible. But a solution that he claims will prevent "larger losses" to the lenders requires that lenders must voluntarily "offer workouts and reduce the principal on mortgages in trouble."
If accepting lower mortgage payments was such a clear solution, wouldn't one think that even if the companies hadn't seen this solution to begin with, you could just offer them the advice? Would it really be necessary to pass a law forcing them to do it?
Obama's faith in the government to solve problems could also be seen earlier this month in Pennsylvania. Obama was asked about whether universal government health care insurance would result in the type of rationing that can be seen in other countries, but Obama claimed that a government run system would be much less expensive than a private system. If true, it would be a first. From exploring the Arctic to providing education, government provision has consistently proven to be much more costly than private operations.
He blames the U.S. health care system for any differences in life expectancy with other countries, but fails to acknowledge that people's own behavior involving diet, exercise, use drugs and weight also affect how long people live. Nor does he acknowledge that people in countries such as Britain are much more likely to die from the same surgery as those in the U.S.
What was most disturbing was the end of his answer to the question: "I'm not advocating a government-run system, right now."
Possibly, Obama's approach for government to solve everything is what people are looking for. But it will cost them. People work harder and figure out solutions better when their own money is at stake. Hopefully, the lesson won't be too costly.
Barack Obama has made no bones about it. He is going to eliminate the cap on payroll taxes to save the Social Security/Medicare programs. Those making over $97,000 a year will be hit with an additional 15.3% in payroll taxes for anything they make over $97,000.
Let's assume you are a $20 million a picture actor and you make two pictures a year. Obama is going to ask you for an additional $6,130,000 of new taxes over and above the $14,000,000 you pay at 35%. In other words he wants you to pay a 44% increase in your taxes to compensate for Congress's irresponsible use of the pay-as-you-go method of funding those programs over the years and promising more than they could afford - to be precise $45 trillion more and counting.. .
Now if you are a run-of-the-mill celebrity and only make an extra million above the $97,000 cap it is only going to cost you an extra $153,000 in new taxes over the $350,000 you pay to the IRS. Assuming you are a Hollywood liberal the price of being one has just gone up - thanks to your new liberal political idol.
The tragedy of such liberal philosophy is that raising taxes on the rich never makes the poor wealthy. Raising taxes on the rich will merely reduce the capital in the private sector used to keep the economy humming. Obama's raising the cap won't make the poor wealthy, it merely covers up the screw-ups of Congress and keeps massively inadequate retirement programs called Social Security and Medicare from being scrapped for better ones.
Welcome the new aesthetic of Barack Obama, the left wing ideologue. The signs have long been there, for those with the eyes to see them.
It is no accident that Obama has become the candidate of the Democrats' left wing fringe, typified by the Daily Kos crowd, despite his continuing efforts to sound a centrist note. The kind of people who are comfortable working with a poster of Che Guevara
looking over their shoulders have been attracted to Obama because they read the little signals belying his centrist pose.
Of course, it may be unfair to hold a candidate responsible for all the actions of any of his supporters, but when a campaign itself indulges in the aesthetic of leftism, it may actually mean something. Take the striking posters of the candidate created by left wing artist Shepard Fairey and sold by the online Obama store run by his campaign. The entire run of the Fairey posters has sold out, so popular are they among the leftist cognoscenti whose aesthetic tastes run to nostalgic socialist realism.
Of the Fairey posters, the "Progress" poster is the most interesting. "Progressive" is, of course, the favorite euphemism for the hard left today.
Take a close look at the Obama campaign emblem placed on the "progress" poster. It is placed almost as if it were a medal worn on his lapel. And in place of the ordinary Obama campaign "O" seen on the "Change" poster, the "Progress" poster features a five pointed star in the middle. Look at it close up:
The symbol is almost reminiscent of the Soviet medal the Order of the Red Star [hat tip to reader Mark Roth]:
This is not to suggest that Obama is some Manchurian Candidate controlled by a conspiracy from the vanished USSR, but rather that his campaign is choosing to cultivate a hard left constituency via semiotic means. There is in America a substantial faction of the hard left which waxes nostalgic for the good old days of Soviet art and culture, and members of this group have been cultivated by the Obama campaign.
Of course, the smug in-group nostalgia for an evil and murderous ideology is not only repellant to most Americans, it is easily mocked.
Barack Obama has been able to preach racial harmony while attending and donating to Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church for two decades. He has been able to masquerade as a centrist while hobnobbing with the radical chic activists and unrepentant terrorists of Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He has been able to pose as a centrist while believing in the necessity of punsihing owners of capital. But with Hillary Clinton and her minions aggressively pursuing him, and an awakened press chagrined at giving him a pass for so long, those days may be numbered.
The parsons of the press corps are furious with Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, which means the pair must have done a pretty good job moderating Wednesday's Democratic debate in Philadelphia. Barack Obama had an off-night, so his media choir wants to shoot the questioners.
We thought the debate was one of the best yet, precisely because it probed the evasive rhetoric we've heard from both Democratic candidates throughout the campaign. Nowhere was this more apparent than during the exchanges between Mr. Gibson and Mr. Obama over taxes.
Time and again, the rookie Senator has said he would not raise taxes on middle-class earners, whom he describes as people with annual income lower than between $200,000 and $250,000. On Wednesday night, he repeated the vow. "I not only have pledged not to raise their taxes," said the Senator, "I've been the first candidate in this race to specifically say I would cut their taxes."
But Mr. Obama has also said he's open to raising - indeed, nearly doubling to 28% - the current top capital gains tax rate of 15%, which would in fact be a tax hike on some 100 million Americans who own stock, including millions of people who fit Mr. Obama's definition of middle class.
Mr. Gibson dared to point out this inconsistency, which regularly goes unmentioned in Mr. Obama's fawning press coverage. But Mr. Gibson also probed a little deeper, asking the candidate why he wants to increase the capital gains tax when history shows that a higher rate brings in less revenue.
"Bill Clinton in 1997 signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20%," said Mr. Gibson. "And George Bush has taken it down to 15%. And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased. The government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28%, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?"
Mr. Obama answered by citing rich hedge fund managers. Raising the capital gains tax is necessary, he said, "to make sure . . . that our tax system is fair and that we are able to finance health care for Americans who currently don't have it and that we're able to invest in our infrastructure and invest in our schools. And you can't do that for free."
But Mr. Gibson had noted that higher rates yield less revenue. So the news anchor tried again: "But history shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up?" Mr. Obama responded that this "might happen or it might not. It depends on what's happening on Wall Street and how business is going." And then he went on a riff about John McCain and the housing market.
This is instructive. The facts about capital gains rates and revenues are well known to our readers, but we'll repeat them as a public service to the Obama campaign. As the nearby chart shows, when the tax rate has risen over the past half century, capital gains realizations have fallen and along with them tax revenue. The most recent such episode was in the early 1990s, when Mr. Obama was old enough to be paying attention. That's one reason Jack Kennedy proposed cutting the capital gains rate. And it's one reason Bill Clinton went along with a rate cut to 20% from 28% in 1997.
Either the young Illinois Senator is ignorant of this revenue data, or he doesn't really care because he's a true income redistributionist who prefers high tax rates as a matter of ideological dogma regardless of the revenue consequences. Neither one is a recommendation for President.
For her part, Hillary Clinton said that she, too, was open to hiking the capital gains tax rate, just not by as much as her rival. "I wouldn't raise it above the 20% if I raised it at all," she said. Of course, she too promised during Wednesday's debate not to raise "a single tax on middle-class Americans, people making less than $250,000 a year."
Both candidates would have voters believe that taxes on investment income only affect the rich. But that's not what Internal Revenue Service returns show. The reality is that the Clinton and Obama rate increases would hit millions of Americans who make well under $200,000. In 2005, 47% of all tax returns reporting capital gains were from households with incomes below $50,000, and 79% came from households with incomes below $100,000.
By the way, a higher capital gains tax rate isn't the only middle-class tax increase that Mr. Obama is proposing. He also wants to lift the cap on wages subject to the payroll tax. That cap was $97,500 in 2007 and is $102,000 this year. "Those are a heck of a lot of people between $97,000 and $200[,000] and $250,000," said Mr. Gibson. "If you raise the payroll taxes, that's going to raise taxes on them." Ignoring the no-tax pledge he had made five minutes earlier, Mr. Obama explained that such a tax increase was nevertheless necessary.
In other words he dodged the question, as he so often does with impunity. But thanks to Mr. Gibson's persistence, for 90 minutes Wednesday night Mr. Obama didn't get away with it. The voters learned a lot about Mr. Obama, who needs to learn a lot more about taxes and revenue.
Hillary Clinton knows exactly what Barack Obama is feeling as he struggles to contain his San Francisco faux pas. Her moment came during the 1992 campaign in an appearance on "60 Minutes" when she suddenly said: "I'm not sitting here as some little woman, 'standing by my man' like Tammy Wynette." Why she said that doesn't matter now. What matters is that every Tammy Wynette cooking dinner in a mortgaged house for three kids and a working man in some small town rose up to say, "You're not me, Hillary."
So it came to pass last Saturday night, in what is surely the most preposterous photo-op in campaign history, Hillary Rodham Clinton of Wellesley and Yale was pounding down Crown Royal whisky from a shot glass at Bronko's bar in Indiana. A friend emailed that if she really wanted to win Pennsylvania, she would have drunk some of the draft beer in her left hand, dropped the shot glass into the mug and slammed that back. But hey, her heart was in the right place.
For those of us who monitor the political currents to discern direction in the nation's life, this was one of the biggest weeks in the campaign. Remember the culture wars? This week the Democrats sued for peace.
On Friday evening, email queues lit up everywhere with people reacting to Barack Obama's thoughts on life being nasty, bitter and short in small-town America. Time was not long ago that a Democratic candidate could have said such folk cling to guns and religion and are hostile to "diversity" with nary a peep from his party. Not now. Obama was repudiated. Crushed. Media analysis suggested the damage could last til November.
Before midnight, Hillary was paddling down Whiskey River with the boys at Bronko's. Then on Sunday evening, the white flag really went up over the culture war's battlefield. Hillary and Obama were both at an event in Grantham, Pa., in Cumberland County. That's south of Mechanicsburg and east of Boiling Springs. John Kerry took Pennsylvania by 2.5% in 2004, but Cumberland gave George Bush 64% of its vote. Hillary and Obama were appearing on a CNN event called the "Compassion Forum." They were at a place called Messiah College. Connect the dots.
Campbell Brown to Sen. Clinton: "And you have actually felt the presence of the Holy Spirit on many occasions. Share some of those occasions." Hillary Clinton: "I have had the experiences on many, many occasions where I felt like the Holy Spirit was there with me as I made a journey . . . You know, it could be walking in the woods. It could be watching a sunset."
Hit rewind on the tape of history. It is 1992, the Republican Convention in Houston, at the Astrodome. This was the moment of arrival for the "Christian right." Dan Quayle, George H.W. Bush's VP nominee, spoke to a huge throng of evangelicals about "family values." Pat Buchanan delivered his "culture wars" speech. The press corps, for whom all this was alien ground, was openly hostile to the GOP.
Shelves bend beneath the weight of books analyzing the "war" between religiously oriented cultural conservatives and secular libs. "Piss Christ" and all that. Abortion. Robert Mapplethorpe's erotic photographs banned in Cincinnati. Abortion. Gun control. Michael Moore mocking Charlton Heston. Hollywood's endless Babylon. Home schoolers. Abortion. Though vilified, these people wouldn't go away. The exit polls for George W. Bush's victory in 2004 revealed that the No. 1 issue for most voters was "moral values." Liberal analysts furiously attacked Karl Rove for "exploiting" these sentiments. But even Karl Rove couldn't invent God, and God and faith were everywhere in Grantham Sunday evening.
Sen. Clinton: Faith "is everything that makes life and its purpose meaningful as a human being . . . We want religion to be in the public square. If you are a person of faith, you have a right and even an obligation to speak from that wellspring of your faith . . . Our obligation as leaders in America is to make sure that any conversation about religion is inclusive and respectful. And that has not always happened, as we know."
Sen. Obama: "Religion is a bulwark . . . Somebody like myself whose entire trajectory, not just during this campaign, but long before, has been to talk about how Democrats need to get in church, reach out to evangelicals, link faith with the work that we do . . . There is a moral dimension to abortion, which I think that all too often those of us who are pro-choice have not talked about or tried to tamp down. I think that's a mistake . . . A comprehensive approach where we focus on abstinence, where we are teaching the sacredness of sexuality to our children."
Some bloodless analysts have said for several years that Democrats had to say this to win because, you know, a lot of people "go to church." And yes, what candidates seeking votes say may be false, faked or fantastic. What remains is the fact that these two, in competition for votes, have conferred political legitimacy and respect on this swathe of America.
Set aside the controversies over the name-brand religious-right leaders. Whatever one calls these people - Reagan Democrats, the religious right, values voters - their main beef was not with the election returns but with the manifest evidence that the big-city elites thought their beliefs and their lives were stupid. That is what died this week. Whatever he meant to say, Barack Obama's small-town "cling to" statement was the Final Condescension. Hillary's trip from Bronko's bar to Messiah College ratified drinkin' on Saturday night and prayin' on Sunday morning.
Certainly, both as president would stock the judiciary from the liberal flock. Conservatives should still pocket the fact that the awful culture war has been replaced by a legitimate political competition whose locus has moved rightward. What's left of the rancid war are guerrillas in the Hollywood foothills, pot-shotting at Pat Robertson and other bogeymen. But at the big-league level of presidential politics, it's over. Say good-bye to the Michael Moore Mockathon. Say hello to the spirit in the sky.
Post below excerpted from Discriminations. See the original for links
Regular readers will know that I have criticized Obama's various pronouncements on affirmative action as waffling obfuscation, muddled, lacking any commitment to his own announced vision, to name a few of my reservations. Thus I was quite interested in his attempt at "clarifying his views" last night in the Philadelphia debate with Sen. Clinton.
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Obama, last May we talked about affirmative action, ad you said at the time that affluent African Americans like your daughters should probably be treated as pretty advantaged when they apply to college, and that poor white children -- kids -- should get special consideration, affirmative action. So, as president, how specifically would you recommend changing affirmative action policies so that affluent African Americans are not given advantages, and poor, less affluent whites are?
SENATOR OBAMA: Well, I think that the basic principle that should guide discussions not just on affirmative action but how we are admitting young people to college generally is, how do we make sure that we're providing ladders of opportunity for people? How do we make sure that every child in America has a decent shot in pursuing their dreams? And race is still a factor in our society. And I think that for universities and other institutions to say, you know, we're going to take into account the hardships that somebody has experienced because they're black or Latino or because they're women --
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Even if they're wealthy?
SENATOR OBAMA: I think that's something that they can take into account, but it can only be in the context of looking at the whole situation of the young person. So if they look at my child and they say, you know, Malia and Sasha, they've had a pretty good deal, then that shouldn't be factored in. On the other hand, if there's a young white person who has been working hard, struggling, and has overcome great odds, that's something that should be taken into account.
So I still believe in affirmative action as a means of overcoming both historic and potentially current discrimination, but I think that it can't be a quota system and it can't be something that is simply applied without looking at the whole person, whether that person is black or white or Hispanic, male or female.
What we want to do is make sure that people who have been locked out of opportunity are going to be able to walk through those doors of opportunity in the future.
Well, I'm glad we finally got that cleared up. For those of you who are still not sure you've got a firm grip on Obama's opposition to/support for racial preferences, you might re-take the quiz I suggested you take after reading his equally clarifying interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education. Here's the quiz, as relevant now as then:
Does Obama believe it is wrong to burden some and benefit others because of their race? Always? Usually? Sometimes? Never?
Are "qualities such as leadership, motivation, teamwork, and ability to effectively communicate" found primarily among disadvantaged blacks? If race were not a factor, would placing more weight on those qualities increase the proportion of blacks who are admitted to selective colleges?
How can affirmative action programs that treat race in a preferential manner be "properly structured" so that they give additional opportunities to blacks without "without diminishing opportunities for white [or Asian] students"?
What is the nature of the "diversity" provided by blacks and Latinos in math and science, and why is it important?
How would "a scholarship program for minorities interested in getting advanced degrees in these fields ... broaden the pool of talent that we need to prosper in the new economy" more than a scholarship program that was not racially restrictive? If such a program were racially restrictive, why would it not "keep white [and Asian] students out of such programs" who could not attend without a scholarship?
Does Obama believe [as I've already asked, here and here] that all minority applicants who, like his daughters, "are pretty advantaged" should receive no preferential treatment?
Would Obama award preferences to those "who are still struggling, ... who are in the middle class [but] may be first-generation as opposed to fifth- or sixth-generation college attendees" only if they are "African-American kids," or would he "take into account" those facts equally for all applicants, regardless of their race?
In short, does Obama support or oppose preferences based on race? If he opposes them, why did he make ads opposing their abolition in Michigan?
I'm afraid that what I said then is also still relevant: Done? Good. Now you'll have to grade your own quizzes, since I don't know the correct answers.....
It seems to me that what Obama is doing is expanding affirmative action, not restricting it in a meaningful way. He acknowledges that taking race into account continues to be useful as a way to combat "potentially current discrimination." Moreover, as long as race is considered a proxy for hardship, as it would be in practice by the current generation of admissions officers, the best that could be squeezed out of the emanations and penumbra of Obama's tentative suggestion is something like the new "holistic" admissions program at UCLA, which appears to be little if anything more than racial preferences with a pretty new name. (On UCLA's "holistic" review, see here, here, here, here, and here.)
Thus the position that Obama seemed to announce (can you tell for sure what he meant?), it seems to me, is no different from what he's said before, including having the same ambiguity. Kaus also, I believe, misreads Hillary's comments, writing that "If Hillary said [what Obama said], there would be a firestorm from the civil rights lobby, I think." She didn't say what Obama said, but what she did say was much more at variance with her earlier statements than his statements were. As Peter Schmidt notes on a Chronicle of Higher Education blog:
Asked by Mr. Stephanopolous whether she supported the sort of approach advocated by Mr. Obama, Ms. Clinton said, "Here's the way I'd prefer to think about it," and then gave an answer that did not touch on the issue of race-conscious admissions policies. "We've got to have affirmative action generally to try to give more opportunities to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds - whoever they are," she said. She then described such affirmative action as support for early childhood education and universal pre-kindergarten, scrapping the No Child Left Behind law as it is currently operating in favor of other approaches to improving elementary and secondary education, and various steps to make college more affordable, including the expansion of aid programs.
Ms. Clinton has not been as reticent to take up the issue in the past. In a question and answer session with The Chronicle last fall, she said she "will support strong and sensible affirmative action" - but not quotas - and said she was "distressed" by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions striking down the race-conscious student-assignment policies many public school systems use to promote integration.
No doubt with an eye to those important white voters in Pennsylvania, Hillary kept her previous unqualified endorsement of racial preference policies carefully under wraps.
Inside the Obama Campaign
I've received plenty of email from both supporters and critics of rookie United States Senator and presidential hopeful Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Obama supporters who email me usually are as crude and crazed as Obama's spiritual mentor, Rev. Jeremiah A. "God damn America" Wright, Jr.," as shown on those "controversial" excerpts from his sermons proudly put on a DVD and offered for sale at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois. Susan O'Donnel is an exception. Referring to Obama, Ms. O'Donnel emailed me as follows:
"I feel like the media just takes his press releases or statements at face value, who does that? I say that because I have worked on presidential campaigns as an advance person. This week I read that he only hires great people and refuses to have any drama. I don't know where that information came from or why it wasn't questioned because I did one trip for his campaign, and there are few ways to get to see how a campaign works better than doing advance for one.
"It was the worst week of my life (professionally). Averyl Bailey was the lead and made everyone cry -- every day. There was a person who was at least as experienced as her and I talked to her most days because this woman made me so unsure of myself and the job I was doing. If you look into who did advance for the campaign last spring, you will see that she had 80% of the teams she led fired from the campaign. When they do that they don't tell you. they just never call you again. That's what happened to me and seven other people on the team. She left hundreds of people in her wake and created nothing but drama. My family loves Senator Obama but won't vote for him because of the way they treat people -- and I know people who work on the campaign and Ms. Bailey is still there and not liked by anyone. Being unpopular is not a big deal if you do a good job or are effective but she is neither.
"I just don't understand why the press takes his word for everything. You shouldn't take mine, you should research this the same way you should research things he says. Feel free to email me any questions you have."
I emailed Ms. O'Donnel an invitation to write more for me to share with readers. The result is "The politics of personal destruction and Barack Obama," which is much more illuminating and insightful than the promotional material passed on as news in the pro-Obama press.
"In 2007 I went to the DNC winter/spring meetings in Washington, DC to see all the presidential candidates speak. I didn't know who to support. All looked good and bad at the same time. Then I saw Senator Barack Obama. His speech was everything his 2004 convention speech was and more. More importantly, I got to meet him after. If someone tells you they can meet him and not like him, they are lying. He was down to earth and nice and everything people had said. When I talked to him I felt like I was talking to the next president of the US.
"I spent the next few months trying to get on the road for him. I called every person I have ever met in politics and told them what I was trying to do. It took some work but they finally sent me out, and I agreed to go out for a small fee for my first few trips. They have to test out new people and I was virtually unknown to most of their staff. My first few trips went well, or at least well enough to be asked to do more. I thought I would be on the road through November 2008 and was looking forward to a longer campaign experience.
"Then I met Averyl Bailey. Every advance team has a 'lead' who is really your boss for that trip. She was harsh when I first met her but advance leads come in all shapes, sizes, colors and personalities. I heard she was tough but that if you did a good job it would be fine. I did and it wasn't.
"You can learn a lot about a campaign doing advance. You get a window into how they view the world and treat people or events. The lead's job is to make sure everyone else does theirs and that nothing is overlooked. It's a stressful gig for sure. Averyl's approach was to be as mean as possible. In any campaign people will be mean, arrogant, abusive, disrespectful and unprofessional. None of that bothers me because it's kind of a "been there, got the t-shirt" kind of thing. She was all those and more. We have daily meetings in advance and hers started with a 20 minute speech about how many ways we could mess up, all of which would lead to our dismissal, and all the ways she had seen people screw up, who were now gone. We were berated nightly for sins other advance people had committed on other trips.
And she was paranoid. We were told if the Senator needed food and we used his name in ordering it, we'd have to eat a bite to make sure it wasn't poisoned. As part of the RONs on my last campaign, I got food for the Kerrys all the time and never tasted it. I often had to say where I was from so I got it in time. I saw most people on that team cry "every day". Nothing any of us did was right. It started to break my heart after the third day because our meetings were like watching someone beat puppies. We all left them dejected and defeated.
"Every campaign is different. Every lead is different. Every trip is different. I wanted Averyl to like me, because she was my boss, to be asked by her for feedback. She hated "dumb questions" and all of mine were. I apologized and said I just wanted to do the best job I could but nothing anyone did seemed right. I had worked with one other person and we talked about it and she thought if we just made sure there were no mistakes on "game day" (the day of all your events) there should not be a problem. To be sure I talked to people I knew on the campaign and they said that I should just do my best and wait it out; the next trip would be better. Well, our game day way flawless but it was my last trip. Advance can be like dating, the guy never calls to say what you did wrong, he just never calls again.
"It would nice to say she had a bad week. We all have them. I called around and out of the ten people on my trip, eight were never called again. Before I left I had been told to "pack for a long time" because they wanted to keep me on the road and I got my check and not the occasional fundraising letter but no calls. I have since learned that many teams Averyl headed up went the same way and she is still out there; loved by the candidate and hated by everyone else. This week I read that Senator Obama has a "zero tolerance policy for drama" and I don't get it. Averyl is brilliant at showing him a different side of her than what the world sees. Don't take my word for it, look into it.
"Words matter. One person can make a difference. Every vote should be counted. I was raised to, and do, believe these things are more than sayings. I have never missed voting since I turned 18 but I am going to sit this one out. I just can't vote for another Clinton, though I loved voting for Bill Clinton (1996 was my first presidential election that I could vote in). I don't like the idea of dynasties. I'd vote for Mr. Obama but you only get to break my heart once."
It took more than a year for the media to note what Obama must have had in mind for "disinviting" Rev. Wright after inviting him to speak at the announcement of his presidential campaign, on account of "rough" sermons. Will the media investigate and expose what happens behind the surface of the Obama campaign or merely show the public what the Obama campaign wants them to see?
In that fairy tale about the Emperor, the truth was that the Emperor was not wearing any clothes, but, like the Emperior, his foolish subjects had been successfully made to think otherwise. The truth about Obama and his campaign is not nearly as attractive as the fairy tale of a young man, half-black and half-white, becoming the President of the United States, transcending race and ushering in an era of world peace, prosperity and only wonderful weather. The idealistic Ms. O'Donnel wants every vote to count, but the wily Obama makes exceptions (currently voters in Florida and Michigan--he blocked revotes).
Whether we deserve it or not, we need much better than a hypocrite being hyped by the biased media who thinks that babies born as a result of botched abortions should be denied the same Fourteenth Amendment protections afforded to people in America without permission (aka "illegal immigrants"), to whom Obama wants to give driver's licenses.
The NYT's Dowdy one normally attacks conservatives
I'm not bitter. I'm not writing this just because I grew up in a house with a gun, a strong Catholic faith, an immigrant father, brothers with anti-illegal immigrant sentiments and a passion for bowling. (My bowling trophy was one of my most cherished possessions.) My family morphed from Kennedy Democrats into Reagan Republicans not because they were angry, but because they felt more comfortable with conservative values. Members of my clan sometimes were overly cloistered. But they weren't bitter; they were bonding. They went to church every Sunday because it was part of their identity, not because they needed a security blanket.
Behind closed doors in San Francisco, elitism's epicenter, Barack Obama showed his elitism, attributing the emotional, spiritual and cultural values of working-class, "lunch pail" Pennsylvanians to economic woes.
The last few weeks have not been kind to Hillary, but the endless endgame has not been kind to the Wonder Boy either. Obama comes across less like a candidate in Pennsylvania than an anthropologist in Borneo.
His mother got her Ph.D. in anthropology, studying the culture of Indonesia. And as Obama has courted white, blue-collar voters in "Deer Hunter" and "Rocky" country, he has often appeared to be observing the odd habits of the colorful locals, resisting as the natives try to fatten him up like a foie gras goose, sampling Pennsylvania beer in a sports bar with his tie tight, awkwardly accepting bowling shoes as a gift from Bob Casey, examining the cheese and salami at the Italian Market here as intriguing ethnic artifacts, purchasing Utz Cheese Balls at a ShopRite in East Norriton and quizzing the women working in a chocolate factory about whether they could possibly really like the sugary doodads.
He hasn't pulled a John Kerry and asked for a Philly cheese steak with Swiss yet, but he has maintained a regal "What do the simple folk do to help them escape when they're blue?" bearing, unable to even feign Main Street cred. But Hillary did when she belted down a shot of Crown Royal whiskey with gusto at Bronko's in Crown Point, Ind.
Just as he couldn't knock down the bowling pins, he can't knock down Annie Oakley or "the girl in the race," as her husband called her Tuesday - the self-styled blue-collar heroine who reluctantly revealed a $100 million fortune partially built on Bill's shady connections. Even when Hillary's campaign collapsed around her and her husband managed to revive the bullets over Bosnia, Obama has still not been able to marshal a knockout blow - or even come up with a knockout economic speech that could expand his base of support.
Even as Hillary grows weaker, her reputation for ferocity grows stronger. A young woman in the audience at a taping of "The Colbert Report" at Penn Tuesday night asked Stephen Colbert during a warm-up: "Are you more afraid of bears or Hillary Clinton?" Even though Democratic elders worry that the two candidates will terminally bloody each other, they each seem to be lighting their own autos-da-fe.
At match points, when Hillary fights like a cornered raccoon, Obama retreats into law professor mode. The elitism that Americans dislike is not about family money or connections - J.F.K. and W. never would have been elected without them. In the screwball movie genre that started during the last Depression, there was a great tradition of the millionaire who was cool enough to relate to the common man - like Cary Grant's C.K. Dexter Haven in "The Philadelphia Story."
What turns off voters is the detached egghead quality that they tend to equate with a wimpiness, wordiness and a lack of action - the same quality that got the professorial and superior Adlai Stevenson mocked by critics as Adelaide. The new attack line for Obama rivals is that he's gone from J.F.K. to Dukakis. (Just as Dukakis chatted about Belgian endive, Obama chatted about Whole Foods arugula in Iowa.)
Obama did not grow up in cosseted circumstances. "Now when is the last time you've seen a president of the United States who just paid off his loan debt?" Michelle Obama asked Tuesday at Haverford College, referring to Barack's student loans while speaking in the shadow of the mansions depicted in "The Philadelphia Story." But his exclusive Hawaiian prep school and years in the Ivy League made him a charter member of the elite, along with the academic experts he loves to have in the room. As Colbert pointed out, the other wonky Ivy League lawyer in the primary just knows how to condescend better.
The Democrats' "Fake-Out America" adviser, Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff, must be beside himself. Despite Lakoff's years spent training Democrats to "frame" their language to stop scaring Americans, B. Hussein Obama was caught on tape speaking candidly to other liberals in San Francisco last week. One minute Obama was bowling in Pennsylvania with nice, ordinary people wearing "Beer Hunter" T-shirts, and the next thing you know, he was issuing a report on the psychological traits of normal Americans to rich liberals in San Francisco.
Obama informed the San Francisco plutocrats that these crazy working-class people are so bitter, they actually believe in God! And not just the 12-step meeting, higher power, "as you conceive him or her to be" kind of God. The regular, old-fashioned, almighty sort of "God." As Obama put it: "(T)hey get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
The rich liberals must have nearly fainted at the revelation that the denizens of small towns in Pennsylvania have absolutely no concern for the rich's ability to acquire servants from Mexico at a reasonable price.
We don't know much about Obama's audience, other than that four fundraisers were held on April 6 at the homes of San Francisco's rich and mighty, such as Alex Mehran, an Iranian who went into daddy's business and married an IBM heiress, and Gordon Getty, heir to the Getty Oil fortune. It is not known whether any of Getty's three illegitimate children attended the Obama fundraiser - which turned out to be more of a McCain fundraiser - but photos from the event indicate that there were a fair number of armed (and presumably bitter) policemen providing security for the billionaire's soiree. In 1967, Gordon sued his own father to get his hands on money from the family trust - and lost. So Gordon Getty knows from bitter. It's a wonder he hasn't turned to guns, or even to immigrant-bashing. God knows (whoever he is) there are enough of them working on his home.
These are the sort of well-adjusted individuals to whom Obama is offering psychological profiles of normal Americans, including their bizarre theories about how jobs being sent to foreign countries and illegal-alien labor undercutting American workers might have something to do with their own economic misfortunes.
It's going to take a lot of "framing" for Democrats to recast Obama's explanation to San Francisco cafe society that gun ownership and a belief in God are the byproducts of a psychological disorder brought on by economic hardship. It is an article of faith with the Democrats that they must fool Americans by simulating agreement with normal people. The winner of the Democratic primary is always the candidate who does the best impersonation of an American. But then, after all their hard work making believe they're into NASCAR and God, some Democrat invariably slips and lets us know it's all a big fake-out. They're like a gay guy trying to act straight who accidentally refers to Brad Pitt as "yummy!"
The Democrats' last phony American (or perhaps I should say "faux American") was John Kerry, who famously said that if "you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." Kerry claimed this was not an accurate reflection of his feelings about the troops, despite a four-decade record of contempt for them, including accusing American troops of being baby-killers during the Vietnam War. Rather, he said, it was a "botched joke." (In Kerry's defense, he was the opening act for Randi Rhodes' stand-up comedy show at the time.) But as with his military records, Kerry refused to allow his joke-writer to release any of the jokes cut from that speech.
In case there was any confusion, other Democrats immediately clarified their position by going on television and saying - as Rep. Charlie Rangel did - that our troops are people who don't have the option of having "a decent career."
These Democrats can't even pull off attending a NASCAR race without embarrassing themselves. In August 2004, Kerry exclaimed: "Who among us does not love NASCAR?" And then, about six months ago, Democratic congressional staffers to Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., sent out a memo urging aides going to NASCAR races to get inoculated before attending.
Obama had been so careful until now, "framing" his message as "change" - rather than partial-birth abortion, driver's licenses for illegal aliens, tax hikes, socialized medicine and abandoning mandatory minimum prison sentences for federal crimes. His message is "change" - not that his wife has not been proud to be an American for most of her life. He is for "change" - and don't mind the crazy racist loon who has been Obama's spiritual mentor for two decades. One can only hope that Obama got his shots before bowling in Altoona, Pa.
Keeping the score card, there's no way Obama could have fared worse. Nearly 45 minutes of relentless political scrutiny from the ABC anchors and from Hillary Clinton, followed by an issues-and-answers session in which his anger carried over and sort of neutered him. But Hillary Clinton has a Reverse-Teflon problem: her negatives are up, and when she's perceived as the attacker, the attacks never seem to settle on Obama and always seem to boomerang back on her. So it would be unwise to declare that Hillary "won" the debate in the dynamic sense just yet. (How much money will Obama raise off this debate? $3m million? $4 million?)
A lot of stuff that Obama doesn't want Pennsylvanians to think about were the subject of fairly detailed questions. Obama's supporters are already blaming the "establishment" -- that is, the powerful institution of the mainstream media -- for the tone of the debate. This sets up a blowback scenario wherein his supporters will rally to his defense and lash out at the media very loudly. But Obama's going to be the next president of the United States, maybe. The most powerful person in the world. And questions about his personal associations, his character, his personal beliefs, his statements at private fundraisers -- the answers to these questions tell us a lot. Sometimes the questions are unfair (( -- nothing about Colombia and Mark Penn -- )), but this ain't Pop Warner; the artificial distinction between politics, personality and policy doesn't exist in this league, and if you're uncomfortable with it, then change the rules or don't run for office.
But let's stipulate, for a moment and for the sake of argument only, that the ABC moderators were tone-deaf: that doesn't excuse Obama's performance. (If you think the MSM is ornery, wait until president Obama confronts Congress!) Obama's supporters like to see him fight back against the Man... witness his quick response to "bittergate".....; tonight, it seemed as if he was surprised by the pace of the questions and all the air was gone from his answers. There was no fight. Unless you paid attention, you might have missed a few firsts: the first time the candidates debated gun control. The first time that Obama attacked Clinton about her husband's pardon. Obama's floating the idea that he would exempt workers who make between $97,000 and $200,000 from his payroll tax hike.
The introduction of ex-Weatherman William Ayers into the mainstream of the debate (wasn't that Sean Hannity's question). Tax pledges by Clinton and Obama. Insinuations by both Democrats that they would not accept the advice of generals and admirals who urged them to keep troops in Iraq. My guess is that the debate helps Clinton marginally in Pennsylvania ... and is a mixed bag outside of Pennsylvania... where many Dems will be troubled by Obama and his performance... and others troubled by the attacks against Obama and what they say about the media....
Forty-five Minutes of Pummeling Before a Wonky Cooldown
I don't like Hillary Clinton. But I respect her as an adversary. And every once in a while, when she demonstrates she has the guts to "go there" in front of a Democratic audience that want their debates to be criticism-free lovefests, I'm tempted to say, "I like the cut of your jib, Senator." It's like watching a linebacker perfectly execute a blitz and flatten a quarterback from the blind side. It's brutal, and tough to watch when it's your guy being hit, but it's within the rules and almost artistic when it's perfectly executed.
Tonight, she had her stumbles. Her answer on the Bosnia sniper tales really didn't help her out that much; she needed to explain something bewildering to the average Joe, which is remembering things that didn't happen. She made a lame joke about not getting enough sleep, but oddly, Obama didn't jump in by mentioning her "3 a.m." ads.
But she tore into Obama on all of his weak spots. Relentlessly. For the most part, she avoided looking nasty while she did it. She focused on the `cling' comment in the context of not understanding the role of religion in people's lives. She repeated what Wright actually said the Sunday after 9/11, and probably introduced Wright's blaming of America to a lot of people who had only heard Wright's sermons through a media filter. She twisted the knife when she noted that people don't choose their families, but they choose their pastor. When Obama tried to downplay his relationship to William Ayers, she brought up the Woods Foundation.
After about forty-five minutes, David Axelrod probably should have thrown in the towel and stopped the fight.
Obama got a little better as the night wore on, but the damage was done. He looked terrible tonight. He said he disowned Wright - contradicting his speech line about being no more able to disown Wright than his own grandmother - then backed away and said he only disowned his comments. When Hillary brought up Wright's 9/11 comments, he merely lamented that some of his comments had been "objectionable." He never quite explained why he stopped wearing the American flag pin, and he kept digging in deeper on William Ayers. He dismissed the question, then described Ayers as an "English professor." He completely downplayed Ayers' terrorist past, and said they didn't exchange ideas "on a regular basis." Then he compared his relationship to Ayers to his relationship with Senator Tom Coburn! Way to chase away the last of the Obamacans, Senator.
Hillary closed by saying she's a fighter. She proved that tonight; if I were on Team McCain, tonight might have convinced me to hope for a showdown with Obama.
UPDATE: During the night, I wondered if Democrats would conclude she was too nasty and negative. But I don't think she ever came across as shrill or sneering in her delivery, like when she did with the "slumlord Rezko" line a few debates ago. But I suppose it's possible that tonight's performance backfires, that Democrats see her as tearing down their Obamessiah. But my first gut instinct is that she's knocking him off his pedestal with all of this...
What a horrible night for Barack Obama, and for the Democrats in general. George Stephanopoulos, along with Charlie Gibson, conducted a great debate on substance, showing any American willing to look that neither Democratic candidate is ready for the West Wing, and that John McCain clearly is.
In an exchange that will be played all through the general election season, Senator Obama was asked about his connections to unrepentent anti-war bomber/terrorist/Weather Ungerground member Bill Ayers. Obama was clearly flustered by the question, and in responding, compared Ayers to Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn's views on doctors who perform abortion.
The last time I checked, Doc Coburn neither advocated, participated, nor had a need to repent from any terrorist activity, unlike Bill Ayers, who to this day is proud of his activities forty years ago. If Obama wanted to unify America, he took another large step in achieving half of that goal with conservatives, who are not going to take this slander on Coburn lightly.
Both Clinton and Obama stumbled on taxes, especially capital gains taxes, on guns, and on foreign policy. Obama was clearly uncomfortable on the Wright issue that hasn't been put behind him yet.
The other exchange that's going to come back and bite Obama is him doubling down once again on the bitterness comment that has caused him so much grief this past week.
When people feel like Washington's not listening to them, when they're promised year after year, decade after decade that they're economic situation's going to change, and it doesn't, then politically, they end up focusing on those things that are a constant, like religion. They end up feeling this is a place where I can find some refuge. This is something that I can count on. They end up being much more concerned about votes around things like guns, where traditions have been on from generation to generation.
So if the economy is going great, especially if it's caused by action in Washington, people have no need to focus on things like religion or votes on guns? It sounds to me like he didn't walk back from what he said to the elites in San Francisco a week and a half ago. Instead, Obama's answer came out sounding something like, "I made a mistake about what I said in San Francisco, so let me be clear about what I really meant then, and mean today. When small town people get bitter, it sometimes drives them to guns and God. Hopefully, I cleared that up."
As has been said around the blogosphere, there was only one clear winner tonight, and that is John McCain.
Obamas grow ever richer during Bush administration
Senator Barack Obama released his 2007 tax return on Wednesday evening, reporting a household income of $4.2 million last year due to a sharp increase in the sale of his books during the first year of his presidential campaign.
That was a substantial jump from the roughly $1 million in income the Obamas reported in 2006, much of that also from book deals. Earlier this month, the Clintons released their tax returns over eight years, showing they earned $109 million over that period, with a substantial portion likewise coming from book sales.
In the returns released Wednesday, Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, reported a $3.9 million net profit from books, a sum that dwarfed their combined salaries of $260,735. They paid nearly $1.4 million in federal taxes last year and contributed $240,370 to various charities....
For the third year in a row, royalties from the sale of Mr. Obama's books dramatically elevated their wealth. His annual Senate salary was $157,102 and her salary at the University of Chicago hospitals was $103,633 - less than the previous year because she dropped to part-time status to spend more time on the presidential campaign.
Their contributions to charity have increased exponentially since he started running for president. Among their largest gifts were donations of $26,270 to Trinity United Church of Christ; $50,000 to the United Negro College Fund; $35,000 to the global poverty charity CARE. In terms of investments, the Obamas reported just $1,442 in taxable interest income in 2007....
That is pretty good pay for a part time job for Michelle, considering that it is more than 95 percent of the country make working full time. It is really incredible that she whines so much about how hard life is. It is also clear that Obama attempt to mislead the country into believing we are in hard economic times is a fraud.
Another thing of note here is it appears he has had no experience with investing despite his robust income. That is probably why he has such screwball ideas about taxing investment income and capital gains.
Obama has apologized for his phrasing while defending the substance of his statement. And why not? He was retailing an article of left-wing orthodoxy going back centuries: that the working class is distracted by religion and other peripheral concerns from focusing on its economic interests and embracing socialism. Versions of Obama's insight have been expounded by a world-famous 19th-century economist (Karl Marx), by a 1960s New Left philosopher (Herbert Marcuse) and by a best-selling contemporary liberal writer (Thomas Frank, author of "What's the Matter With Kansas?"), among many others. It's so commonplace that Bubba-friendly Bill Clinton wrote in his memoir that Republicans wanted to undermine confidence in government so voters would be more receptive to "their strategy of waging campaigns on divisive social and cultural issues like abortion, gay rights and guns."
At bottom, this is a profoundly insulting point of view. Consider Obama's formulation. He makes it sound like no one would be a hunter or a Christian absent economic distress, that economic circumstances drive people into such atavistic habits. Has he considered that some people simply enjoy hunting? And view the right to bear arms as a guarantor of American liberty? As they used to say, "God made men, but Sam Colt made them equal."
The assumption is that only liberal attitudes are normal and well-adjusted: If only these small-town people could earn more income, get an advanced degree and move to a major metropolitan area, they could shed their chrysalis of social conservatism.
Obama prides himself on his civility, but it has to go much deeper than dulcet rhetoric. A fundamental courtesy of political debate is to meet the other side on its own terms. If someone says he cares about gun rights, it's rude to insist: "No, you don't. It's the minimum wage that you really care about, and you'd know it if you were more self-aware." But Democrats have an uncontrollable reflex to do just that. Since the McGovernite takeover of their party, they have struggled to work up enthusiasm for Middle American mores. (Since 1980, only Bill Clinton managed it, which is why he was the only Democrat elected president in three decades.)
When the liberal reflex is coupled with a Ivy League-educated candidate who seems personally remote and uncomfortable with everyday American activities, it's electoral poison. After the likes of Al Gore and John Kerry, Republicans had to be wondering, "Could Democrats possibly nominate yet another candidate easily portrayed as an out-of-touch elitist?" With Obama, Democrats appear to be responding with a resounding "Yes, we can!"
Obama brings a special measure of arrogance to the standard liberal critique of Middle America. His candidacy has always been characterized by two paradoxes. How can he be so hopeful at the same time he and his wife, Michelle, portray America as a sink-pit of despair? And how can he claim to be a uniter when he's an orthodox liberal who has risked little or nothing for bipartisan outreach?
Now, we know. Obama defines hopefulness as liberalism, specifically liberalism as embodied by himself. Only with Obama's election will America be redeemed from its harrowing false consciousness. We will be unified, not by Obama reaching out to conservatives to hammer out compromises, but by conservatives shedding their bitterness and becoming Obama liberals. This is the underside of hope: arrogance fading into a secular messianism based on the fallenness of everyone who disagrees with Barack Obama.
Post below recycled from Powerline. See the original for links
Reverend Jeremiah Wright is back in the news, denouncing the Founders and Fox News. (Fox is in good company, I guess.) In honor of Wright's retirement, Barack Obama should consider buying him a ticket to some place far away.
Wright's return comes on the heels of Obama's self-revelation in San Francisco. This should remind us that Obama's selection of Wright as his spiritual mentor was also an act of self-revelation. Obama grew up in a secular family, and converted to Christianity as an adult, specifically because he was drawn to Reverend Wright and the theology that Wright preached.
So it is rather stunning to hear Obama explain, in his own words and in his own voice, what it was about Wright that he found so compelling. In fact, it was Wright's denouncing Hiroshima and teaching that the world's problems are caused by "white men's greed" that, by Obama's own account, brought him to tears. Listen to it:
Barack Obama is an extraordinarily divisive figure, not because of who he is, but because of what he says. Does he still find the claim that the "world in need" is caused by "white men's greed" to be credible? No Presidential candidate has run for office on an explicitly racist platform since the Democrats of the mid-19th century. But if Obama still endorses references to "white men's greed," as he did when he wrote Dreams From My Father, he is disqualified from office on grounds of racial divisiveness alone. Can you imagine what would happen to a white candidate who said that he selected a church and attended it for twenty years because he liked the fact that the minister said the world's problems are caused by "black men's [fill in a vice]"?
Barack Obama has a great deal of explaining to do, not just to the voters of small-town Pennsylvania, but to all voters across the United States.
By the way, the audio clip is from Obama's audio book of Dreams From My Father, and is duplicated under the doctrine of fair use. Anyone is free to download or copy it, to put it up on another web site, email it, or whatever.
Candidate on a High Horse
By George Will
Barack Obama may be exactly what his supporters suppose him to be. Not, however, for reasons most Americans will celebrate. Obama may be the fulfillment of modern liberalism. Explaining why many working class voters are "bitter," he said they "cling" to guns, religion and "antipathy to people who aren't like them" because of "frustrations." His implication was that their primitivism, superstition and bigotry are balm for resentments they feel because of America's grinding injustice.
By so speaking, Obama does fulfill liberalism's transformation since Franklin Roosevelt. What had been under FDR a celebration of America and the values of its working people has become a doctrine of condescension toward those people and the supposedly coarse and vulgar country that pleases them.
When a supporter told Adlai Stevenson, the losing Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, that thinking people supported him, Stevenson said, "Yes, but I need to win a majority." When another supporter told Stevenson, "You educated the people through your campaign," Stevenson replied, "But a lot of people flunked the course." Michael Barone, in "Our Country: The Shaping of America From Roosevelt to Reagan," wrote: "It is unthinkable that Roosevelt would ever have said those things or that such thoughts ever would have crossed his mind." Barone added: "Stevenson was the first leading Democratic politician to become a critic rather than a celebrator of middle-class American culture -- the prototype of the liberal Democrat who would judge ordinary Americans by an abstract standard and find them wanting."
Stevenson, like Obama, energized young, educated professionals for whom, Barone wrote, "what was attractive was not his platform but his attitude." They sought from Stevenson "not so much changes in public policy as validation of their own cultural stance." They especially rejected "American exceptionalism, the notion that the United States was specially good and decent," rather than -- in Michelle Obama's words -- "just downright mean."
The emblematic book of the new liberalism was "The Affluent Society" by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. He argued that the power of advertising to manipulate the bovine public is so powerful that the law of supply and demand has been vitiated. Manufacturers can manufacture in the American herd whatever demand the manufacturers want to supply. Because the manipulable masses are easily given a "false consciousness" (another category, like religion as the "opiate" of the suffering masses, that liberalism appropriated from Marxism), four things follow:
First, the consent of the governed, when their behavior is governed by their false consciousnesses, is unimportant. Second, the public requires the supervision of a progressive elite which, somehow emancipated from false consciousness, can engineer true consciousness. Third, because consciousness is a reflection of social conditions, true consciousness is engineered by progressive social reforms. Fourth, because people in the grip of false consciousness cannot be expected to demand or even consent to such reforms, those reforms usually must be imposed, for example, by judicial fiats.
The iconic public intellectual of liberal condescension was Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, who died in 1970 but whose spirit still permeated that school when Obama matriculated there in 1981. Hofstadter pioneered the rhetorical tactic that Obama has revived with his diagnosis of working-class Democrats as victims -- the indispensable category in liberal theory. The tactic is to dismiss rather than refute those with whom you disagree.
Obama's dismissal is: Americans, especially working-class conservatives, are unable, because of their false consciousness, to deconstruct their social context and embrace the liberal program. Today that program is to elect Obama, thereby making his wife at long last proud of America.
Hofstadter dismissed conservatives as victims of character flaws and psychological disorders -- a "paranoid style" of politics rooted in "status anxiety," etc. Conservatism rose on a tide of votes cast by people irritated by the liberalism of condescension. Obama voiced such liberalism with his "bitterness" remarks to an audience of affluent San Franciscans. Perfect.
When Democrats convened in San Francisco in 1984, en route to losing 49 states, Jeane Kirkpatrick -- a former FDR Democrat then serving in the Cabinet of another such, Ronald Reagan -- said "San Francisco Democrats" are people who "blame America first." Today, they blame Americans for America being "downright mean."
Obama's apology for his embittering sociology of "bitterness" -- "I didn't say it as well as I could have" -- occurred in Muncie, Ind. Perfect. In 1929 and 1937 Robert and Helen Lynd published two seminal books of American sociology. They were sympathetic studies of a medium-sized manufacturing city they called "Middletown," coping -- reasonably successfully, optimistically and harmoniously -- with life's vicissitudes. "Middletown" was in fact Muncie, Ind.
An e-mail from a reader said that, while Hillary Clinton tells lies, Barack Obama is himself a lie. That is becoming painfully apparent with each new revelation of how drastically his carefully crafted image this election year contrasts with what he has actually been saying and doing for many years. Senator Obama's election year image is that of a man who can bring the country together, overcoming differences of party or race, as well as solving our international problems by talking with Iran and other countries with which we are at odds, and performing other miscellaneous miracles as needed.
There is, of course, not a speck of evidence that Obama has ever transcended party differences in the United States Senate. Voting records analyzed by the National Journal show him to be the farthest left of anyone in the Senate. Nor has he sponsored any significant bipartisan legislation -- nor any other significant legislation, for that matter. Senator Obama is all talk -- glib talk, exciting talk, confident talk, but still just talk.
Some of his recent talk in San Francisco has stirred up controversy because it revealed yet another blatant contradiction between Barack Obama's public image and his reality. Speaking privately to supporters in heavily left-liberal San Francisco, Obama let down his hair and described working class people in Pennsylvania as so "bitter" that they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."
Like so much that Obama has said and done over the years, this is standard stuff on the far left, where guns and religion are regarded as signs of psychological dysfunction -- and where opinions different from those of the left are ascribed to emotions ("bitter" in this case), rather than to arguments that need to be answered.
Like so many others on the left, Obama rejects "stereotypes" when they are stereotypes he doesn't like but blithely throws around his own stereotypes about "a typical white person" or "bitter" gun-toting, religious and racist working class people.
In politics, the clearer a statement is, the more certain it is to be followed by a "clarification," when people react adversely to what was plainly said. Obama and his supporters were still busy "clarifying" Jeremiah Wright's very plain statements when it suddenly became necessary to "clarify" Senator Obama's own statements in San Francisco. People who have been cheering whistle-blowers for years have suddenly denounced the person who blew the whistle on what Obama said in private that is so contradictory to what he has been saying in public.
However inconsistent Obama's words, his behavior has been remarkably consistent over the years. He has sought out and joined with the radical, anti-Western left, whether Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers of the terrorist Weatherman underground or pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli Rashid Khalidi.
Obama is also part of a long tradition on the left of being for the working class in the abstract, or as people potentially useful for the purposes of the left, but having disdain or contempt for them as human beings. Karl Marx said, "The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing." In other words, they mattered only in so far as they were willing to carry out the Marxist agenda.
Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw included the working class among the "detestable" people who "have no right to live." He added: "I should despair if I did not know that they will all die presently, and that there is no need on earth why they should be replaced by people like themselves." Similar statements on the left go back as far as Rousseau in the 18th century and come forward into our own times.
It is understandable that young people are so strongly attracted to Obama. Youth is another name for inexperience -- and experience is what is most needed when dealing with skillful and charismatic demagogues. Those of us old enough to have seen the type again and again over the years can no longer find them exciting. Instead, they are as tedious as they are dangerous.
Post below recycled from Blue Crab. See the original for links
An interesting look at political gaffes in Pennsylvania and the effect they have had on the candidates who made them is over at Real Clear Politics. Dr. G. Terry Madonna and Dr. Michael Young look back through history and point out that Pennsylvania has a way of punishing political pratfalls - many less severe than the recent "small town" comments made by Barack Obama.
What these candidates or their handlers did-and what now places them in historical parallel to Obama - was to say things in public that revealed in them political flaws that ultimately undermined their candidacies.
Each did this in his or her own way. For Thornburgh it was his campaign manager who in the heat of the campaign-overcome apparently by a rush of candor- referred to Thornburgh as "the salvation of this sorry-ass state" thereby assuring that the seemingly hopeless underdog Harris Wofford would defeat Thornburgh and retain his Senate seat. Barbara Hafer's version was to dismiss her opponent, then Governor Robert P Casey, as a "red necked Irishman," thus hastening him onto one of the most lopsided landslide victories in state history.
U.S. Senate candidate Lynn Yeakel's sin is illustrative of the genre-for it was not so much what she said as what it said about her. Running in the so called "year of the women," against Arlen Specter and in the aftermath of the Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill controversy, she was thought by many to be the one to retire Specter. But her candidacy collapsed after she made herself seem like an out of touch elitist by mispronouncing the name of a Pennsylvania county when visiting there.
Finally the latest example of state politicians' succumbing to an advanced stage of lapsus linguae came during the 2006 gubernatorial contest. Locked in a tense GOP nomination fight with Lynn Swann, the African-American all-pro former Pittsburgh Steeler wide receiver, the campaign manager for former Lt. Governor Bill Scranton described Swann as "the rich white guy in this race." Scranton fired his manager and soon withdrew from the race.
Their judgment of the Obama remarks accusing small town Americans of bitterly clinging to guns, religion, xenophobia and (Obama's favorite policy of) anti-trade rhetoric: Obama has himself a real problem in Pennsylvania. Historically, this is true, obviously. Will it derail Obama? Maybe, maybe not. The fact is that Clinton is just not very well liked by an awful lot of people. So Obama may limp across the finish line yet and be the nominee. In the general election, he's in very bad shape, indeed.
On Cuba-- In 2004, Mr. Obama told an audience at Southern Illinois University that trade with Communist Cuba was a good thing:
"I think it's time for us to end the embargo with Cuba... It's time for us to acknowledge that that particular policy has failed."
On Colombia-- On April 3, 2008, Barack Obama said that trade with capitalist pro-American Colombia was bad:
"I will oppose the Colombia Free Trade Agreement if President Bush insists on sending it to Congress because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements."
The latest Democratic objection to the trade agreement with US ally Colombia is that Bogota isn't doing enough to protect labor activists. But the murders of trade unionists have fallen by almost 80% since 2002.
Post below recycled from KBJ. See the original for links
Marx:
Religious suffering is the expression of real suffering and at the same time the protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people. (Karl Marx, "Toward the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law: Introduction," in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, trans. and ed. Loyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat [Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1967], 249-64, at 250 [italics in original] [essay written in 1843])
Kai Nielsen:
For Marx all pre-communist societies are class societies, driven by class struggles, where the class structures are epoch-specific and are rooted in the material conditions of production. Religions, in his conception, and also Engels's conception of things, function principally to aid the dominant class or classes in mystifying and, through such mystification, controlling the dominated classes in the interests of the dominant class or classes. Members of the dominating classes may or may not be aware that religion functions that way. But, whether they are aware of it or not, it so functions. Religion, as ideology, serves to reconcile the dominated to their condition and to give them an illusory hope of a better purely spiritual world to come, after they depart this veil [sic] of tears[.] This works, in the interests of the dominant class or classes, as a device to pacify what otherwise might be a rebellious dominated class, while at the same time "legitimating" the wealth and other privileges of the dominating class or classes. In this peculiar way-definitely an ideological way-religion works to "unify" class society, while at the same time giving expression to distinctive class interests. It serves, that is, both to "unify" class society and to sanction class domination, while giving the dominated class an illusory hope, though, of course, not one seen by them to be illusory, of a better life to come after the grave. . . . (Kai Nielsen, "Naturalistic Explanations of Theistic Belief," chap. 51 in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, ed. Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro [Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1997], 402-9, at 406)
Obama:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Interesting, no?
Obama's memory problem
Post below recycled from Prairie Pundit. See the original for links
When the Rev Wright CD's first started circulating Barack Obama said he did not recall hearing the hateful messages before. From my hearing of them they were pretty memorable. I have forgotten many a sermon in my time, but I am pretty sure I would remember one where the minister asked God to damn America.
With the testimony today in the Rezko trial indicating that Obama attending a dinner with Iraqi billionaire Auchi, who was also a friend of Saddam, Obama in his March 14 interview with the Chicago Sun Times says he has no recollection of the meeting. Considering Auchi's indirect funding of his subprime loan that let Obama buy his house, I find that lack of memory not credible.
Democrats had hoped to capitalize on John McCain's age and inflate any memory lapse into an election issue, but at this point it looks like Obama is the one with the most convenient lapses into senility. We will know people are noticing when the late night comedians start their I don't recall jokes about Obama. Rush Limbaugh may have to revise his Hillary ClintonClinton-and-Obama-Economic-Plans Mar-08 parody tune about "I don't recall." Obama may need one of his own.
Would Obama Get "Crushed?"
Post below recycled from Riehl World. See the original for links
Via The Politico, allegedly Hillary told someone she thinks Obama will get "crushed" in the Fall against McCain:
Here is why: She and Bill Clinton both devoutly believe that Obama's likely victory is a disaster-in-waiting. Naive Democrats just don't see it. And a timid, pro-Obama press corps, in their view, won't tell the story. But Hillary Clinton won't tell it, either.
It is beginning to look that way, what with him supposedly dropping big in PA before the pending primary, though I would take the ARG Poll with a big grain of salt.
Putting aside the race issue, Obama has several problems. He's young, inexperienced, and far better working with a teleprompter, than working on his feet. McCain is somewhat the opposite of that. Also, while some do, personally, I don't think whites will vote for Obama out of some sense of guilt, or desire to show their lack of bias.
In the end, he's never held an executive position, is starting to look rather brash - more ego, than substance - and for now I'm thinking he'll lose on the merits, even if the media will make the race all about race. In the end, it may not be so.
Becoming the nation's first black president is enough of a challenge for someone to overcome. Doing it when you lack the qualifications and experience is probably too much to ask. I don't believe that many Americans really believe in Affirmative Action, anyhow. And it's starting to look like that's precisely what an Obama nomination by the Dems would be.
Obama hitting back
Barack Obama sought to turn the tables on Hillary Clinton yesterday over his controversial remarks that small town Americans "cling" to guns and religion. In separate appearances before an audience of steelworkers in Pittsburgh, a week before Pennsylvania's primary, the Democratic rivals attacked each other aggressively, with one new poll showing Mrs Clinton opening up a formidable 20-point lead in the State.
The American Research Group survey comes after polls last week showed him pulling to within five points of Mrs Clinton in Pennsylvania. Yesterday's poll, taken since the "guns and religion" controversy erupted, puts Mrs Clinton ahead 57 per cent to 37, and leading among white voters 64 points to 29. The ARG polls can be unreliable and another survey, by Temple University in Philadelphia, gave Mrs Clinton a nine-point lead.
Last week Mr Obama, at a fundraiser in San Francisco, tried to explain why he has trouble attracting white, working-class voters, a large voting bloc in Pennsylvania. He said that, frustrated with their economic plight, "it's not surprising they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them . . . as a way to explain their frustrations".
Mrs Clinton has spent the past three days calling Mr Obama "elitist" and "out of touch", and told the steelworkers audience that his remarks were "offensive". John McCain, in Washington, echoed that criticism. Later, in a speech in Washington, a defiant Mr Obama said he was a person of "deep faith", went after Mr McCain, and said: "Contrary to what my poor word choices may have implied or my opponents have suggested, I've never believed that these traditions or people's faith has anything to do with how much money they have."
Speaking to the steelworkers earlier, Mr Obama accused Mrs Clinton of being a dishonest panderer. He conceded that the words he used in his "bitter" remarks were badly chosen, then rounded on his rival. "Around election time, the candidates [will] promise you anything . . . and even come around, with TV crews in tow, to throw back a shot and a beer," Mr Obama said to loud laughter. Mrs Clinton did just that in an Indiana bar on Saturday.
Turning to the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Mrs Clinton backed in 1993 but now opposes, Mr Obama said: "You can't spend the better part of two decades campaigning for Nafta . . . and then come here to Pennsylvania, and tell the steelworkers you've been with them all along." At a union hall on Sunday night, Mr Obama said that Mrs Clinton seemed more interested in guns and hunting. "She is running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsmen . . . she is talking like she is Annie Oakley," Mr Obama said, mockingly comparing her to the legendary American sharpshooter.
Most steelworkers questioned by The Times said that the furore was an irrelevant distraction. Indeed, in a part of Pennsylvania that should favour Mrs Clinton, Mr Obama's speech was far more warmly received.
It's basic to him. It's what he does. There can no doubt that it was a gospel of hate -- a Satanic gospel -- that sustained Obama for 20 years
Rev. Jeremiah Wright told a congregation in Norfolk, Va., on Sunday that reporters sneaked into a private funeral service a day before, in which he blasted America's founding fathers for slavery and white supremacy and received standing ovations for attacking FOX News for covering his anti-American sermons. Barack Obama's retiring pastor delivered a sermon at Bank Street Memorial Baptist Church, where his late uncle had been the pastor, about overcoming trouble. The public appearance was his first since news broke that the Democratic presidential candidate's pastor frequently rails on the United States. "Some troubles that come up in your life come up out of nowhere," Wright said. At the end of the two-hour-plus service, about two dozen ministers gathered around Wright and his daughter to pray for them. One of the ministers asked God to give Wright courage as "the world tries to demonize him."
Though Wright said nothing about Obama or the uproar itself, he alluded to the controversy while briefly back in the pulpit Saturday to deliver a eulogy for a late congregant of Trinity United Church of Christ - former appellate judge R. Eugene Pincham. Wright, who is on sabbatical before retiring from Trinity United, said America's mistreatment of blacks is the result of the founding fathers, who "planted slavery and white supremacy in the DNA of this republic."
First reported by The Chicago Sun Times, Wright told mourners at the funeral that Thomas Jefferson, who partook in "pedophilia," would also be considered unpatriotic these days because he wrote, "God would punish America for the sin of slavery." He also quoted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said that the U.S. has a "congenital birth defect."
Speaking of the seven lessons Pincham taught him, Wright said the judge's faith "was not the jingoistic, chauvinistic `you're either with us or against us' demonizing kind of faith." "FOX News can't understand that," Wright said to rousing cheers and applause. "[Bill] O'Reilly will never get that. Sean Hannity's stupid fantasy will keep him forever stuck on stupid when it comes to comprehending how you can love a brother who does not believe what you believe. [Pincham's] faith was a faith in a God who loved the whole world not just one country or one creed."
Geraldine Ferraro wasn't quite right: It's not just Obama's race that has made him the frontrunner on the Left. It's his chic-ness. It helps that Senator Obama is "international" and half black, but don't ignore his youth, his sonorous voice and skinniness: He's the fashion icon of the age. Shortly after Obama announced, he captured the gay vote with one photo op in a bathing suit. If Senator Obama looked and talked like Charlie Rangel he would not be adored by millions of lovelorn liberals.
Have our greatest presidents have been chic just like Obama? There is George Washington with his wooden teeth, Abe Lincoln with his ole' prairie lawyer drawl, and Ronald Reagan with this 1950s haircut. Still, there is someth8ing about Obama that casts a magic spell over those of a certain mindset. At Salon magazine, Walter Shapiro gushed,
"Unlike most presidential Dems in recent memory, the Illinois senator is at ease with himself -- even while bowling gutter balls in Pennsylvania."
Even flubbing a couple of bowling ball tries reflects on the man's cool. This man can do no wrong.
I have a friend who ran into Bill Clinton in the 90s one day, shook hands with the great man for a few seconds, and came away transformed. I asked him what came over him. "You don't understand!" he said. "He loved me!" So my friend voted for the Slick One, and wouldn't listen to a critical word in spite of all the scandals. True story. That's what a celebrity handshake and five seconds of sincere vibes can do to certain folks when dealing with a charismatic pol.
I thought it was degrading to be so easily suckered by an flaming con artist. But maybe that's the secret of the Democrats: they know their followers are looking for love. Like any good sales outfit they play to whatever their customers dream about: I care for you, yes you, personally, it's love, baby, sitting in front of your TV with 200 million other viewers. It's like the old radio preacher asking all the listeners to place both hands on their RCA Victor, bow their heads, and pray with him in person, one to one. Bill Clinton made "I care for you" work at the polls. Obama is doing it right in front of our eyes. Hillary doesn't have the mojo, no matter how hard she tries.
You have to admit that black Democrats have a point. If you are looking for a crowd charmer to mesmerize millions of gullible folks, why not choose a black guy? After all, could Obama be worse than Bill?
With the New Media finding out more about the real Obama, we are learning a lot that doesn't quite fit the manufactured image. Such as Senator Obama's notion of compassion toward white small-town Pennsylvanians and their well-known racial rage and hatred.
"... So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations..."
Oops. When Hillary and McCain promptly jumped on that remark as showing contempt for and ignorance about the voters, Obama dug himself a deeper hole:
"No, I'm in touch. I know exactly what's going on. I know what's going on in Pennsylvania, I know what's going on in Indiana, I know what's going on in Illinois," Mr. Obama said, his voice rising. "People are fed up, they're angry, they're frustrated, they're bitter and they want to see a change in Washington. That's why I'm running for president of the United States of America."
It's funny, those are feelings a lot of average Americans may have never noticed themselves --- it's unconscious racism, you you --- but the libs are sure that everybody is a racist out there. It's a miracle how Obama can read all those typical white minds with absolute, metaphysical certainty.
"I know exactly what's going on. I know what's going on in Pennsylvania, I know what's going on in Indiana, I know what's going on in Illinois."
Call it omniscient mind-reading. It's a liberal faith that surpasseth human understanding. They and only they can see right through false consciousness of the masses.
If the media have their way, Obama chic will put all those oddities to rest. The elites yearn for an avatar of human perfection, and Hillary is just so Nineties, and simply not slender. Recognizing a great opportunity, they have switched from Slick Willie to Slick Barry, and are hammering poor Mrs. Clinton for just a few of the old lies -- while letting Obama get away with a bumper harvest of whoppers. Senator Clinton is correct. It's not fair!
Given that the Dems are now wedded to Obama, the new line is that "experience" doesn't matter to for a president. With Obama's brilliance, three years in the Senate is plenty of time to learn how to govern America in a time of war and economic fever. If you were hiring a Starbucks manager you'd look for experience. But President of the United States? Commander in Chief? Captain of the Ship of State? Leader of the Free World? Who cares about experience? (Am I the only one who thinks that's certifiably insane?)
Even Camille Paglia has fallen for Obama chic. Normally one of the most level-headed people on the Left, she now thinks Obama's magic outweighs any doubts about his substance, character, or racially charged Leftism. Paglia is making the case for Obama's purity of heart is what really matters.
"... I plan to vote for Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary because he is a rational, centered personality who speaks the language of idealism and national unity. Obama has served longer as an elected official than Hillary. He has had experience as a grass-roots activist, and he is also a highly educated lawyer who will be a quick learner in office. His international parentage and childhood, as well as his knowledge of both Christianity and Islam, would make him the right leader at the right time. And his wife Michelle is a powerhouse. "The Obamas represent the future, not the past."
Senator Obama is very slick indeed, a Bill Clinton for the 21st Century. Like Bill, he is good at prettifying his dubious personal associations, politicians and influence peddlers who helped him get where he is today. He is also dexterous in skating through tricky questions.
But Obama has stumbled repeatedly on basic foreign policy knowledge, where he is absolutely Carteresque. Not exactly a man for the times, as Carter's most famous foreign affairs blunder, letting Ayatollah Khomeini overthrow the Shah of Iran in 1979, is now leading to nuclear panic all over the Middle East. Carter himself is adding a new catastrophe to all the old ones by promising to shake hands with Hamas. Is this a foretaste of Barack Obama's compassionate foreign policy? He has certainly not criticized Jimmy Carter's newest desperate grab for the spotlight.
Still, we're not supposed to be looking for flaws. Let's all pretend we didn't hear Senator Obama's off-the-cuff idea of invading nuclear Pakistan, or his notion of trying to charm A'jad out of his race for nukes by being really, really nice to him. We know how susceptible the Mullahs are to sweet reason. Carter showed us how that works in 1979.
Freud said that love is a kind of madness -- you're totally convinced that your adored one makes the world go 'round. Well, liberals have done it again. They fell in love with Adlai Stevenson; they tumbled head over heels for JFK, and then Bill Clinton. Now it's Obama's turn. The only question is, how many voters will surrender to the celebrity parade? That may decide the presidential election. It all goes to show that Finley Peter Dunne's Mister Dooley had it right: "God protects orphans, drunkards, and the United States". At least, we better hope so.
Why, ask many Democrats and media commentators, won't Hillary Rodham Clinton see the long odds against her, put her own ambitions aside, and gracefully embrace Barack Obama as the inevitable Democratic nominee? Here is why: She and Bill Clinton both devoutly believe that Obama's likely victory is a disaster-in-waiting. Naive Democrats just don't see it. And a timid, pro-Obama press corps, in their view, won't tell the story. But Hillary Clinton won't tell it, either.
A lot of coverage of the Clinton campaign supposes them to be in kitchen-sink mode - hurling every pot and pan, no matter the damage this might do to Obama as the likely Democratic nominee in the fall.
In fact, the Democratic race has not been especially rough by historical standards. What's more, our conversations with Democrats who speak to the Clintons make plain that their public comments are only the palest version of what they really believe: that if Obama is the nominee, a likely Democratic victory would turn to a near-certain defeat. Far from a no-holds-barred affair, the Democratic contest has been an exercise in self-censorship.
Rip off the duct tape and here is what they would say: Obama has serious problems with Jewish voters (goodbye Florida), working-class whites (goodbye Ohio) and Hispanics (goodbye, New Mexico).
Republicans will also ruthlessly exploit openings that Clinton - in the genteel confines of an intraparty contest - never could. Top targets: Obama's radioactive personal associations, his liberal ideology, his exotic life story, his coolly academic and elitist style.
This view has been an article of faith among Clinton advisers for months, but it got powerful new affirmation last week with Obama's clumsy ruminations about why "bitter" small-town voters turn to guns and God. There's nothing to say that the Clintonites are right about Obama's presumed vulnerabilities. But one argument seems indisputably true: Obama is on the brink of the Democratic nomination without having had to confront head-on the evidence about his general election challenges. That is why some friends describe Clinton as seeing herself on a mission to save Democrats from themselves. Her candidacy may be a long shot, but no one should expect she will end it unless or until every last door has been shut.
Skepticism about Obama's general election prospects extends beyond Clinton backers. We spoke to unaffiliated Democratic lawmakers, veteran lobbyists, and campaign operatives who believe the rush of enthusiasm for Obama's charisma and fresh face has inhibited sober appraisals of his potential weaknesses. The concerns revolve around two themes.
The first is based on the campaign so far. Assuming voting patterns evident in the nominating contest continue into the fall, Obama would be vulnerable if McCain can approximate the traditional GOP performance in key states.
The second is based on fear about the campaign ahead. Stories about Obama's Chicago associations with 1960s radicals Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayers landed with barely a ripple. So, too, did questions about whether he once backed a total ban on handguns (he says no but in a 1996 state legislative race his campaign filled out a questionnaire saying yes). Obama's graceful handling of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy may have turned that into a net positive against Clinton.
But all this was in a Democratic contest. What about about when Obama's running against a Republican? Let's take the first point: Obama's electoral coalition. His impressive success to date comes predominately from strong support among upscale, college-educated whites and overwhelming support from African-Americans. Assuming he is the Democratic nominee, it seems virtually certain he would bring turnout of these groups to historic levels.
But there is reason to question whether he would be able to perform at average levels with other main pillars of the traditional Democratic coalition: blue-collar whites, Jews and Hispanics. He has run decently among these groups in some places, but in general he's run well behind her.
Obama lost the Jewish vote by double-digits in Florida, New York and Maryland - and that was before controversy over anti-Israel remarks of Wright. An undecided Democratic superdelegate told us many Jewish voters are itching for a reason to break with the party and side with Republicans, who have embraced the Israeli cause with passion. A small shift could swing swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania, which have significant Jewish populations.
Obama won only about one-third of Hispanic votes on Super Tuesday - and did even worse a month later in Texas. A Democratic nominee needs big margins with Hispanics to win states like New Mexico, California, Colorado and Arizona. In the fall, Obama would be running against a Republican with a record on immigration that will resonate with Hispanics.
Then there's the lower-income white vote. Does it seem odd that a woman with a polarizing reputation would be rolling up enormous margins among some of the country's most traditional voters? Three out of every four blue-collar whites in small towns and rural areas of Ohio voted for Clinton over Obama on March 4. The reality is, this is already an electorate with deep cultural divisions - and that's in the Democratic Party.
Cornell Belcher, Obama's pollster, says most of these voting blocs will unite when the Democratic fighting is done. "You get a snapshot at the height of a battle within the family but after the family squabbles history shows that the family does come back together," he said. Fair enough. But McCain would be challenging Obama on a range of issues that would complicate this coming together - issues that Clinton did not use or used minimally because they were not particularly effective in a Democratic campaign.
McCain, by contrast, would have a free hand to exploit a paper trail showing Obama's evolution - opponents would say reversals - over the past decade from liberal positions on gun control, the death penalty and Middle East politics. He would exploit Obama's current position in favor of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants and beginning diplomatic talks with U.S. adversaries like the dictators of Iran and Venezuela.
Post below recycled from Blue Crab. See the original for links
Joe Klein at Time will doubtless raise even more fury than he usually does over on the hard left with his latest post. He makes a number of points contradicting the analysis today by The Politico which pretty well savaged Obama as unelectable, but Klein's final point shows the real problem here.
A few weeks ago, I surmised that if the two Democratic candidates continued on their downward trajectories, the party could turn to Al Gore. Obama proceeded to have a pretty strong couple of weeks while Clinton had to duck some fairly intense sniper fire. Now, Obama is on his (Achilles) heels.and Democrats can envision his candidacy as the latest installment of the Adlai Stevenson-George McGovern-John Kerry trajectory of high-minded candidates who can't scare up the votes necessary to win. As I said, there are some strong counter-arguments to the Obama Disaster scenario. But is there anyone out there who can argue that these Democratic candidates are getting stronger as this thing proceeds?
I'd point out that the folks who will undoubtedly attack Klein probably believe just that. Personally, I think Obama has really - deeply - wounded himself with his latest gaffe. There are a lot of people who are not at all amused with Obama's condescending dismissal of small town America. Just as there were a lot of people seriously angered by Obama's pastor and his anti-America screeds. The latter was not quite as personal as Obama's disdain for average Americans. The personal slight are harder to get around. The media is generally not letting Obama off the hook on this one, either, despite a few efforts to do so, the actual quote from Obama's own mouth is still being reported.
Which is why Klein will again be treated harshly. He's right.
The Other Obama
This has been a long Presidential campaign, but often usefully so. The Democratic Party fight is helping us learn that there's more to Barack Obama than the eloquent, post-partisan, disciplined purveyor of "hope" that he typically projects. There's also the Barack Obama who attended Rev. Jeremiah Wright's ("God d--- America") church for 20 years, the one who emerged from the Chicago Democratic machine with friends like Tony Rezko, the one with the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate, and now we learn the one with a Harvard-eye view of American angst.
At an April 6 fund-raiser in San Francisco, this Obama explained to his non-blue-collar donors: "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive Administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
As political psychoanalysis, this is what they believe in Cambridge and Hyde Park. Guns and God are the opiate of the masses, who are being gulled by Karl Rove and rich Republicans. If only they embraced their true economic self-interest, these pure saps wouldn't need religion and they wouldn't dislike non-white immigrants.
Mr. Obama's unreflective condescension is reminiscent of the famous 1993 Washington Post article that described evangelical Christians as "poor, undereducated and easy to command." And the fact that he said it so naturally in front of a San Francisco crowd suggests that this is what he may truly believe. This is Mr. Obama's inner Mike Dukakis.
The Senator went into damage-control mode on the weekend, initially defending his comments as what "everybody knows is true," then later saying he "deeply" regretted if his words "offended" some. He also tried to suggest that he really meant to say that economic anxiety prods people to focus on cultural and social issues at the polls. "So I said, 'Well, you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community," Mr. Obama told a crowd in Indiana. But that still diminishes the convictions of those voters who care more about the right to bear arms, or faith in God, than they do about the AFL-CIO's agenda.
Mr. Obama's comments are a gift to Hillary Clinton, who pounced on his "demeaning remarks," presenting herself as more in tune with Pennsylvania values - even reminiscing about how her father taught her to shoot a gun. Mrs. Clinton may have earned an "F" from the National Rifle Association for her Senate voting record, but she'll take any opening she can. Senator Obama has had a mostly charmed Presidential run, but the truth is there's much that Americans still don't know about him or what he believes.
“I Like Obama. So I Am A Good, Racism-Free Person”
Post below recycled from Discriminations. See the original for links
According to Andrew Kohut, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that people who supported Obama did so in part because he made them feel good about themselves. His article was titled “That’s What I Like About Me,” and the findings he reports remind me of those bumper stickers proclaiming that “My Child Is An Honor Student At [Whatever] Middle School.” Those bumper stickers are implicitly, or perhaps explicitly, parents patting themselves on the back for a job well done.
At the start of his run for the presidency, Barack Obama would explain the positive reaction he was getting from admirers by saying “this is more about you than about me.” Now that Mr. Obama is the front-running Democratic candidate, an in-depth look at how voters are reacting to him — and the reasons for those reactions — lends considerable credence to his characterization of public opinion....
While Mr. Obama’s positive personal image plays an important role in his high favorable ratings, the polling found that his ratings are more influenced by how he makes voters feel than by specific characteristics they attributed to him. In particular, views that Mr. Obama inspires hope and pride are the strongest determinants of a person’s opinion of him. In other words, he is a charismatic candidate who has made large numbers of Democratic voters feel good, and this is even more important to them than specific perceptions of him.
As Jim Geraghty concludes:
I can't help but suspect that some people believe that their support of Obama is proof that they're a good person. (How many people believe their Obama bumper sticker irrefutably disproves any accusation of racism?)
Obama's elitist remarks to a group of rich donors is only part of the disconnect between a man who inspires millions on the stump and the coldly calculating careerist whose ambition has led him to the brink of success.
Until today, Barack Obama was something of a cipher - a sphinx-like candidate who was so new to the national spotlight that the press, the pundits, and the voters had little to go on as far as the true nature of the man and his attitudes toward America, its traditions and history, as well as its citizens.
Obama assisted in keeping this mystery deliberately. His carefully crafted speeches were, at first, little more than "change and hope," pep talks delivered with the practiced care and calculated effect of a master propagandist. Never saying anything offensive about anyone, never going "off message" in an attempt to appeal directly to the anger and unease Democrats feel about the direction of the country, Obama's rhetoric soared and touched the deepest longings of the American soul for unity, community, and most of all, change.
The fact that he has never given more than a thumbnail's description of how he intends to achieve these miracles didn't matter to the press or his adoring supporters. It was a tonic to hear an American politician so optimistic about the future, so capable of arousing in even the most cynical of breasts feelings of hope and happiness. Obama had a gift that allowed people to believe in him despite scant evidence that he had the ability or even the temperament to battle the special interests and reform Washington, or ram national health insurance legislation through a reluctant Congress, or bring prosperity to all.
But the campaign season is long and a candidate is tested as for no other elective office in the world. Eventually - finally - there would be some kind of reckoning; a revelatory episode that would show the press and the voter the man behind the pretty words, silken voice, and bountiful charisma.
The realization that Obama is an elitist who lacks a basic understanding of how the majority of Americans live and what is important to them will no doubt have far reaching consequences for his candidacy. But beyond the immediate problem for Obama's disconnect from ordinary people is the seeming contradiction between his rhetoric on the campaign trail and how he has conducted himself throughout his career in seeking to achieve high office. Ultimately, it goes back to the fundamental question we ask of all candidates.
Who is Barack Obama? We have had hints of the man who resides within Obama - the inner voice that talks to him, shapes his thoughts, animates his view of the world. But these hints have been from those close to him, those the candidate himself has relied on for advice, friendship, and mentoring. His wife, whose comment about her husband's candidacy making her proud about America for the first time in her adult life as well as her contention that America is a profoundly "mean" country inhabited by "cynics, sloths, and complacents" was shocking because it opened up a line of questioning into Obama's own beliefs.
Michelle Obama's casual confession about lacking pride in America was the first time people paused in mid-jump on the Obama bandwagon to ask themselves some serious questions about the tangle of thoughts in the candidate's mind. Just what does this guy really believe? What is the core of his personal, most intimate thoughts about America and her people?
Then along came Reverend Jeremiah Wright and suddenly, the questions started to pile up. Along with revelations about his relationship with unrepentant domestic terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn as well as a shady Chicago Machine fixer Tony Rezko, people were starting to ask "Will the real Barack Obama please stand up?" How could this bright, optimistic, sincere youngish politician be associated with these characters who represented the worst of America when the candidate himself was appealing to the best in all of us? It is a mystery until you examine the contours of Obama's life and see a man who for a very long time has had his eyes on high office. There's nothing wrong with that, of course - unless the ambition takes over and your principles are tossed out the window, your life becoming a slave to career advancement.
This is the seeming disconnect between Obama on the stump and Obama the careerist. Where the Obama on the stump preaches racial healing, the careerist Obama embraces a Reverend Wright whose church was one of the most visible in the African American community in Chicago and Wright himself a nationally renowned minister. For more than 20 years Obama sat in the pews of a church run by an admirer of Louis Farrakhan and believer in AIDS conspiracy theories. And yet, his attendance also brought him respect in the African American community - as it was fully intended to do.
The episode with Wright is instructive: the idea that the Obama we see on the stump could believe in anything the wild eyed, bigoted, America hating Wright believed in was so farfetched, that all it took to dispense with Wright as a campaign issue (temporarily anyway) were some soothing words about race delivered before a nation willing to forgive the initial falsehoods the candidate told about not knowing of Wright's bigotry. Other, more troubling questions about why anyone who loved this country continued to attend services at a church whose statement of beliefs was so at odds with what most of the rest of us believe were answered with the incredible notion that the candidate believed Wright was dispensing a message of hope.
More disconnect from the speechifying Obama came from the continuing revelations regarding his long time friend and political patron Tony Rezko. Obama on the stump talked of reforming politics, of being a champion against special interests. But Obama the careerist shunned the political reform movement in Chicago to lie down with the likes of Rezko, who not only raised more than a quarter of a million dollars for his campaigns but introduced him to other fat cat donors who would prove valuable when the time came to run for the US senate. How can someone spouting political reform on the stump be tied up with Rezko, Mayor Daley, and others while endorsing for office proven crooks like Cook County Commissioner the late John Stroger and other Chicago Machine politicians?
A similar "What was he thinking" question could be raised when discussing his association with perhaps the most grotesque of all the characters that have emerged this campaign season; former Weather Underground bombers William Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn. One can only shake the head in disbelief that the potential next president of the United States is on a first name basis with someone who is proud of bombing the Pentagon. Again, it isn't so much what Ayers stood for as much as what Ayers could do for an ambitious liberal seeking his first public office. Ayers was very well respected in the far left circles of the Senate district Obama was running in. An introduction to Ayers from the retiring incumbent was necessary if Obama were to win the seat. If the relationship had stopped there, no one would blame Obama for doing what was necessary to win. But over the years, Obama kept up with the association by appearing in forums with Ayers and even serving on the board of a left wing foundation with him.
Again, it seems impossible that the Obama of the stump could find anything about Mr. Ayers remotely appealing. But Ayers has a certain cachet with the far left in this country - the shock troops who promote and work for liberal causes and staff the campaigns of liberal Democrats. The careerist Obama found that Ayers name opened doors that may have been normally shut to a young African American politician positioning himself for a US senate run.
Obama has clearly been an opportunist in his political career. All good politicians are. And the best ones seize their opportunities without hesitation and run as far as luck and brains can take them. Obama has been lucky. He has also been as calculating a politician as we have seen since Lyndon Johnson ruled the senate. Both men proved to have towering ambition and enormous political gifts.
But Johnson also suffered from this apparent disconnect - a down home country politician who played hardball on the Hill as well as it can be played. Johnson had problematic associations and connections also, men that made one wonder what kind of a man was this whose friends wheeled and dealed their way through Washington while Johnson railed against their kind on the Senate floor.
In the end, the answer to the riddle is that both men set a goal early in their careers and never let anything get in the way of achieving it. This includes principles espoused in their public speeches which for both men had a nasty habit of contradicting what they were doing in the political trenches. We are just finding this out about Obama - as we are discovering that the candidate is also an elitist of the first order. Last Sunday in San Francisco, in off-the-cuff remarks before a group of rich donors, Obama let his true feelings about average Americans be known:
But - so the questions you're most likely to get about me, `Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is - so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing - close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points.
But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
By trying to diagnose what is wrong with the Rust Belt middle class, Obama reveals a shockingly cartoonish understanding of white people - in its own way as ignorant as Reverend Wright's clownish demonizations of whites. This is an Obama out of touch with regular folks, speaking in disparaging tones about people who take their religion seriously or have an abiding love of the outdoors represented by their owning a firearm (hunting being a second religion in Pennsylvania). It was a dumbfounding moment, showing a candidate who views about half of America as victims of their own bitter frustrations. Obama later issued a "clarifying statement" after his campaign tried to plead ignorance about what he said:
"Senator Obama has said many times in this campaign that Americans are understandably upset with their leaders in Washington for saying anything to win elections while failing to stand up to the special interests and fight for an economic agenda that will bring jobs and opportunity back to struggling communities. And if John McCain wants a debate about who's out of touch with the American people, we can start by talking about the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans that he once said offended his conscience but now wants to make permanent,"
Trying to shift the focus to McCain is a weak move. He did not address what has everyone up in arms - the disconnect between Obama on the stump who would never denigrate working people as he did, and the Obama talking to liberal elitists - apparently like himself - explaining his understanding of how the rubes live and what's wrong with them.
This revelation has a chance to do more damage to his candidacy than 10 Reverend Wrights. It is doubtful that Obama could find a venue to give a speech trying to explain the naked elitism he revealed in just a few sentences to a group of mega rich contributors. Even if he did give a speech, what could he say? Just about anything he came up with would sound even more condescending.
The more we learn about Obama, the wider the gap grows between the messianic character on the stump whose golden voice and pitch perfect rhetoric has inspired millions of people and the coldly calculating careerist politician whose elitism has blinded him to the struggles and hopes of ordinary people. The two Obamas are irreconcilable. And the confusion felt by many will almost certainly translate into a loss of support for the candidate in these final primaries that will determine the Democratic nominee for president.
Obama Channels Marx on Masses' Reverence for Religion
Religion is the opiate of the masses. -- Karl Marx, 1843
It's not surprising that they get bitter, they cling to . . . religion . . . as a way to explain their frustrations. -- Barack Obama, 2008
Has anyone else pointed out the striking similarity between Barack Obama's recent statement about tough economic times driving people to religion and that of another person who preached change: Karl Marx?
Obama added guns and xenophobia to his list of proletarian elixirs for bitterness. But the fundamental point remains: Barack apparently doesn't take religion, his own or anyone else's, too seriously. It's not a search for truth or an attempt to live in accordance with God's word. It's just a way to get by, a stupefacient that helps proles endure the pain of living in an economy unfairly dominated by the "haves." Karl would concur.
Of course there was no suggestion at Today that Obama might have been channeling Marx. But is the notion outlandish? Consider what Ace of Spades has uncovered about Frank Marshall Davis, the mentor Obama almost surely describes in his book Dreams from My Father:
Barack Obama is very vague about his actual politics and few have bothered asking. Now comes a well-nigh conclusive case that the "Frank" referred to in Dreams From My Father is in fact Frank Marshall Davis, a noted member of the Communist Party USA.
Horne, a history professor at the University of Houston, noted that Davis, who moved to Honolulu from Kansas in 1948 "at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson," came into contact with Barack Obama and his family and became the young man's mentor, influencing Obama's sense of identity and career moves. Robeson, of course, was the well-known black actor and singer who served as a member of the CPUSA and apologist for the old Soviet Union. Davis had known Robeson from his time in Chicago.
As Horne describes it, Davis "befriended" a "Euro-American family" that had "migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago." ...
Dr. Kathryn Takara, a professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who also confirms that Davis is the "Frank" in Obama's book, did her dissertation on Davis and spent much time with him between 1972 until he passed away in 1987.
If it's relevant that some Republicans have belonged to the Federalist Society -- or even done as little as show up for the debates they host -- how can it not be relevant that Barack Obama's political education, paternal, "spiritual," and now academic as well, is all straight out of Karl Marx?
Will the MSM get around to exploring Obama's radical roots and abiding ideology? A few more candid statements from the candidate along the lines of his "clinging to religion" remark, might just force the media's hand.
Obama: "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State"
-- As Mussolini said
Over at Powerline, there is an interesting post on how Barack Obama backtracked in his Indiana speech yesterday to counter "his elitist disparagement of `small town' voters" in an earlier speech in San Francisco. In San Francisco, Obama had said: "So it's not surprising then that [when voters] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." In Indiana, he polished this, so that it came out:
People don't vote on economic issues because they don't expect anybody is going to help them. So people end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. They take refuge in their faith and their community, and their family, and the things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington.
While Obama is indeed engaging in spin, there is a far more disturbing aspect to his interpretation. He misses the essential nature of modern culture. People don't end up focusing on issues like the right to bear arms, gay marriage, faith-based and family-based issues, and the like, because of bitterness against Washington or a sense that they can't effect change there. People focus on these issues because modern American political culture is, effectively, about subcultures, variety, pursuing parochial aims, and shaping one's identity and personal agendas independently of the state.
What Obama implicitly regards (in both his statements) as signs of disintegration, as reflections of popular frustration, are in fact examples of a thriving culture. Exceptions to this, of course, are anti-immigration sentiment and bigoted protectionism, both of which Obama conveniently dropped in his Indiana comments. Yet Obama's approach betrays a very suffocating vision of the state as the be-all and end-all of political-cultural behavior. Outside the confines of the state there is no salvation, only resentment. This is nonsense, but it also partly explains why Obama is so admired among educated liberals, who still view the state as the main medium of American providence.
A roundup below recycled from Just one minute. See the original for links
Jiminy, Obama unleashes his inner Michelle:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
They will make a lovely First Couple.
A BIT MORE THAN A SOUPCON: The eerily prescient Bill Kristol, last Monday:
And an experienced Democratic operative e-mailed: "Finally, I think [McCain's] going to win. Obama isn't growing in stature. Once I thought he could be Jimmy Carter, but now he reminds me more of Michael Dukakis with the flag lapel thing and defending Wright. Plus he doesn't have a clue how to talk to the middle class. He's in the Stevenson reform mold out of Illinois, with a dash of Harvard disease thrown in." In a close race, that "dash of Harvard disease" could be the difference.
Uhh, "dash" of Harvard disease? Obama just emptied the dump truck.
PILING ON:
HALP US BROK O'BOMBA-- WE R STUCK HEAR N ALTOONA.
TRYING TO HELP: Where are those laminated cards Mickey suggested during the Wright debacle?
"All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn."
Maybe Barack can just pretend he didn't hear his controversial comments. Wait, I was kidding...
WORK THAT SHOVEL: Barack keeps digging in this video from Hot Air. Slightly scary but mostly funny bit - his big applause line, twice, is (roughly) "People are bitter, and they ought to be." Yeah, let's hear it for bitter! Sounds like a winning platform - Mourning in America. That'll nail down the Nutroots, as if they weren't already nailed down... now if only the rest of the country could get on board the Bitterness Express.
IT'S ABOUT JUDGMENT: Barack routinely lauds his good judgment in wanting to stay out of Iraq. Now let's see if he stays out of Pennsylvania.
HELPFUL, BUT NOT: Marc Ambinder psychoanalyzes Obama and tells us what he really meant. Well, fine, but no matter how well-intentioned and sincere Obama may have been, when a big government Harvard lib explains to working class people that they are bitter because government has failed them and consequently they have taken refuge in guns, religion, and racism, it sounds condescending. Mainly because it is.
ANOTHER EGGHEAD HEARD FROM: Mickey Kaus:
I used to think working class voters had conservative values because they were bitter about their economic circumstances--welfare and immigrants were "scapegoats," part of the false consciousness that would disappear when everyone was guaranteed a good job at good wages. Then I left college. ...
P.S.: Because Obama's comments are clearly a Category II Kinsley Gaffe--in which the candidate accidentally says what he really thinks--it will be hard for Obama to explain away. [He could say he was tired and it was late at night?--ed But he was similarly condescending in his big, heartfelt, well-prepared "race speech." Better to embrace them. Let's have a national dialogue about egghead condescension!]
We have a choice in this country. We can tackle egghead condescension only as spectacle - as we do with Paul Krugman's columns - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of the Kerry campaign - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
ON THE GROUND IN PA: The man in the street (that would be a mud-splattered, litter strewn working class street) reacts to Obama's insight:
"By cracky, it's like the man sees into my soul! "Thirty years ago, I had a good job in the mill in Pittsburgh. I was bringing in a good income, going to jazz clubs, discussing Proust over white wine and brie, with my gay friends of all colors. I was all for free trade, so that we could sell the steel overseas, and I never bothered to go to church, let alone actually believe in God.
"But then, the plant closed down, and I couldn't get another job. I went on unemployment, and found odd jobs here and there, but they barely paid the rent in the loft, and the payment on the Bimmer. I couldn't afford the wine and brie any more, and had to shift over to beer and brats. "Of course, as a result, I started hanging out with the wrong crowd--the beer drinkers.
The downward spiral continues...
DEAD MAN RUNNING: John of Powerline thinks this ends Obama's Presidential chances, as does the Captain, who also opines that it will not resurrect Hillary. My view? This ices the Wright cake - I don't think Hillary can stop him, but Obama is not electable. Well, listening to six months of lefties defending Barry and patiently explaining that rural whites really are bigoted gun nuts and religious fanatics should be amusing. Too soon to credit Karl Rove?
MORE: Some excerpts from the New Yorker profile of Michelle Obama:
Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we're a divided country, we're a country that is "just downright mean," we are "guided by fear," we're a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. "We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day," she said, as heads bobbed in the pews. "Folks are just jammed up, and it's gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone it, I'm young. Forty-four!"
From these bleak generalities, Obama moves into specific complaints. Used to be, she will say, that you could count on a decent education in the neighborhood. But now there are all these charter schools and magnet schools that you have to "finagle" to get into. (Obama herself attended a magnet school, but never mind.) Health care is out of reach ("Let me tell you, don't get sick in America"), pensions are disappearing, college is too expensive, and even if you can figure out a way to go to college you won't be able to recoup the cost of the degree in many of the professions for which you needed it in the first place. "You're looking at a young couple that's just a few years out of debt," Obama said. "See, because, we went to those good schools, and we didn't have trust funds. I'm still waiting for Barack's trust fund. Especially after I heard that Dick Cheney was s'posed to be a relative or something. Give us something here!"
Dick Cheney's dad worked for the USDA; Cheney himself flunked out of Yale before getting a degree at the University of Wyoming.
'Terrorist' link puts Barack Obama under fire
Another dubious contact is dogging the Democrat hopeful
A PAST association with a former terrorist has returned to haunt Barack Obama as the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination nears its end game. Republicans are turning on Obama for his connection with William Ayers, once a member of the Weather Underground, a terrorist group that bombed the Capitol, the Pentagon and the State Department in the 1970s.
Ayers was loosely involved in Obama's election as an Illinois state senator in the late 1990s, when he was introduced to local activists at a meeting in his house. He also donated $200 to Obama's reelection campaign in 2001. Obama served with Ayers on the board of the Woods Fund, a philanthropic foundation, for three years and shared a platform with him at two academic conferences.
Republicans believe they have found new evidence that Obama lacks judgment and patriotism just as the controversy over the Rev Jeremiah Wright, his pastor, who said, "God damn America", is dying down.
The Weathermen, a small band of extreme leftists who got their name from lines in a Bob Dylan song - "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" - conducted a bombing campaign against targets such as police headquarters, prisons and courthouses for three years to "bring the [Viet-nam] war home". Two police officers were killed in 1981, when members of the Weathermen and Black Liberation Army stole $1m from an armoured car. It was their last action. Ayers, 63, turned himself in to police that year, when charges against him were dropped because of mishandled FBI surveillance. He is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago and is admired in progressive political and educational circles.
He wisely remained silent as stories about his connection with the 46-year-old presidential candidate began to circulate - until he was goaded into the open last week by repeated taunts from Sean Hannity, the conservative Fox News television host, who described him as an "unrepentant terrorist".
Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House, joined in the controversy on Hannity's show. "It's part of a general pattern in which Senator Obama is very comfortable with the hard left and the people who are in many ways fundamentally antiAmerican and certainly anti-American-government," he said. Karl Rove, President George W Bush's former election guru, said the connection with Ayers was troubling. "There's been talk in the past about friendship," he said. "They made speeches together. He was a supporter of him in his race for the state senate. It would be interesting to know how close the links are." John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, was asked what he thought about Ayers and declined to offer an opinion. It was Hannity's questioning of McCain, though, that provoked Ayers to respond.
In a lecture to college students in North Dakota last week, Ayers said: "I was trying to go to sleep, flipping through the channels real quick, and Hannity said, `Stay tuned. John McCain and I will talk about William Ayers.' And I said, damn, I will have to stay tuned for an hour." Ayers went on to tell the students: "People ask, `Do you regret anything you did against the government in those days?' And my answer is: no, I don't."
In an interview in The New York Times on the day of the September 11 attacks, when he was promoting Fugitive Days, his book on the Weathermen, Ayers said: "I don't regret setting bombs," and added: "I feel we didn't do enough." He defended the comments on his blog www.billayers.org last week by claiming: "I'm sometimes asked if I regret anything I did to oppose the war in Vietnam and I say: no, I don't regret anything I did to stop the slaughter of millions of human beings by my own government. "Sometimes I add: I don't think I did enough. This is then elided: he has no regrets for setting bombs and thinks there should be more bombings."
The Obama campaign believes a very slender connection with Ayers is being used to smear their candidate. Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman, said: "Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of criminal violence. But he was an eight-year-old child when the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect him with events of almost 40 years ago is patently ridiculous."
Sam Ackerman, a Chicago political activist and neighbour of Ayers, said: "The whole thing is preposterous. I held the first fundraiser for Obama, when he ran for the state senate, in my house. A lot of people held little coffee meetings. It wasn't a big deal." He added: "In the past 20 years Bill Ayers has become a nationally renowned educator and is a highly respected professor at the University of Illinois. I think Barack Obama should tell people, `I'm not in the renouncing business'."
The controversy comes at a sensitive time for Obama. Joe Klein, writing in Time magazine, described patriotism as "sadly, a crucial challenge for Obama now" and advised him to be "corny" about America.
Obama has just finished a four-day swing through Indiana, a conservative-leaning state, which will hold its primary on May 6. Prayers and the pledge of allegiance were said. As the son of a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas, Obama has emphasised: "I owe what I can to this country, this country that I love, and I will never forget it."
Larry Johnson, a former counterterrorism official at the CIA said: "They're going to kill him with this. The guy is an unrepentant terrorist, so please, Barack Obama, explain why you aligned yourself with him. It is a fundamental question of judgment. By the time he [Obama] was hanging around with Ayers, his position was well known. He [Ayers] was not a freedom fighter; he belonged to a violent terrorist group."
David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, said earlier this year that the two were "friendly" but in the sense that "their kids attend the same school", but Ayers' children left long ago. A campaign aide later clarified that the connection was with Bernadine Dohrn, Ayers's wife, who was still involved with the school. Dohrn is another former leader of the Weather Underground, who also went on the run in the 1970s and served just under a year in jail.
Spouting Leftist boilerplate about rural people is not always wise if you want their vote
Obama, back from the hinterlands, reports on the aboriginals:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them.And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations
There's always the possibility that these backward hicks like their guns and their religion, and don't like strangers, regardless of who is or was in Washington. But he's the anthropologist who did the field work, so we'll have to take his word for what's going on in deepest, darkest Pennsylvania.
It's pretty rough stuff. Here's the sugar-coated Mr. Rogers version, compliments of the Huffington Post. Mayhill Fowler takes us on a charming ramble far from her California home, then addresses the regretable condescension:
Obama made a problematic judgment call in trying to explain working class culture to a much wealthier audience. He described blue collar Pennsylvanians with a series of what in the eyes of creamy Californians might be considered pure negatives: guns, clinging to religion, antipathy, xenophobia. I'm not sure this is what at least this lot of Californians needed to hear about Pennsylvanians. Such phrases can reinforce negative stereotypes among Californians, who are a people in a state already surfeited with a smug sense of superiority and, as an ironic consequence, a parochialism and insularity at odds with the innovation, prosperity and openness for which California is rightly known.
She wants creamy, surfeited Californians to understand the hardscrabble, backward Pennsylvanians are poor as dirt and hung up on the past. At least, I think that's what she was trying to avoid saying. She goes on to report that Obama plans to invite everyone to a big table to celebrate their differences.
"I'll have the biggest chair, because I'll be President," he added. One of the roles of host is making introductions. Just as Californians need to learn a few things from Pennsylvanians, the reverse is also true. California is the, most racially tolerant and ethnicity-tolerant state in the Union. California has found a way to bring strict environmental standards to prosperity's table. Californians celebrate entrepreneurship, open-mindedness and creativity.
While celebrating their differences, perhaps the West Coast sophisticates can teach the Appalachian throwbacks not to be such simple-minded beercan-tossing bigots. At least I think that's what she's trying not to say.
Most of the comments I have seen on this talk about how he is being condescending toward a group of voters that are going for his opponent for the most part. That is certainly true, but the thing that struck me was his acknowledgment of the inability of government to change their circumstances whether Democrat or Republican. Certainly what he is offering in specific "changes" will not change their circumstances. Those changes have to come from within for the most part. They need the entrepreneurs who can develop products and services that people want who will in turn need to hire more people to provide those products and services.
The problem is that in these states Democrats have made the economy unattractive to those people who create jobs and opportunities. That is why Toyota built its pickup truck plant in San Antonio instead of the region Obama is complaining about. Labor unions have also made the area unattractive for new business. They have saddled old business with built in costs which make them uncompetitive.
His lack of understanding of the values of those Pennsylvania voters will also hurt him this fall. Personally I like Pennsylvania. I enjoy the history associated with Philadelphia and I think the countryside around Pittsburgh is some of the prettiest I have ever seen. I know why some have those whistle gadgets on their bumpers of their pickups to shoo the dear off the road and why they don't want anyone messing with their right to hunt them.
Many of the people he was describing are Scots-Irish whose forefathers came there 200 years ago and spread through Appalachia in West Virginia and down into Tennessee and Alabama as well as the Carolinas.
They do not take kindly to people looking down their noses at them. This description of why he is behind in Pennsylvania is not likely to turn the situation around.
"Instead of apologizing to small town Americans for dismissing their values, Barack Obama arrogantly tried to spin his way out of his outrageous San Francisco remarks. Only an elitist who attributes religious faith and gun ownership to bitterness would think that tax cuts for the rich include families who make $75,000 per year. Only an elitist would say that people vote their values only out of frustration. Barack Obama thinks he knows your hopes and fears better than you do. You can't be more out of touch than that." -Tucker Bounds, Spokesman John McCain 2008
In the Senator's opinion Small Town America is nothing but a bunch of KKK-joining goobers who sit on their porches all day, with a shotgun slung over one shoulder, screaming obcenities to immigrants (except for Sunday when they go to Church).
Even though I have lived in or near a big city my entire life, I have visited rural America enough to truly appreciate it. You see Senator, when people talk about American Values, those values were formed in the Rural parts of the US. Rural America is where people still believe in the goodness of hard work, its where families still get together for dinner and a man's word is still his bond. Rural America is where people still have 4th of July parades and still stop to salute the flag of the nation that gives them a home.
Do people in rural America think differently than in the big city--YOU Betcha! In the small towns that you put down so easily, people think to bring food over to their neighbors who may be a little under the weather, they still take their hats off when they go inside and still believe that it is worthwhile to listen to an old person because you can learn from their experience.
Many of the people in rural America not only look after their own kids, but aren't afraid to "report" bad behavior of other kids to their parents. You see, more than any other place in this country, in rural America they believe in doing the right thing, EVEN if it doesn't make you popular.
And yes many people in small town America are Church-goers. They aren't too cynical to say they believe in God, just the way they are not to cynical to say that they live in the best damned country in the world.
That is the problem with Obama, all he talks about is change. He should be thanking God every day for Small Town America, because it is one of the very many things in the United States that should not change.
Back in February Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden endorsed Barack Hussein Obama for President of the United States. He looked into Obama's heart, and what he found there seemed so similar to his own party's policies that he had no choice but to get behind B. Hussein. It's a bit, shall we say, inappropriate for the head of an elected government to make campaign endorsements for a candidate and party of a different country. But leave that little indelicacy aside for a moment, and consider the fact that Barack Hussein Obama (and certain members of the United States Congress) have returned the favor by expressing their admiration for Sweden's immigration policies. Ah, yes - Sweden the Model.
And all this just after the Swedish MSM has begun a public debate about the wisdom of the country's current immigration practices. What had been hitherto all but unsayable is now out in the open, and ordinary Swedes - who know all too well that the light of Multiculturalism has failed - can read in their newspapers actual heresy, journalists questioning the rationale behind mass importation of Third World immigrants into the country. And now the American lawmakers choose this particular historical moment to admire Sodertalje. Great timing, guys. From The Local:
US Congress praises Sodertalje mayor
Sodertalje mayor Anders Lago received praise while in Washington this week from US presidential candidate Barak [sic] Obama and other members of congress for how well his city has handled its influx of Iraqi refugees. Lago had a chance to speak with Obama on Tuesday ahead of the Swedish mayor's scheduled appearance on Capitol Hill Thursday to discuss the Iraqi refugee crisis.
"He said word for word that he was ashamed that the United States didn't take greater responsibility for Iraqi refugees. Then he praised Sweden and Sodertalje for how we've dealt with the issue," Lago told the TT news agency.
Sodertalje, a town of 80,000 residents, has taken in more Iraqi refugees that the United States and Canada combined, a fact which has come to light in several US media recently, and the motivation behind Lago's invitation to testify before the Congressional panel. "The senators posed questions about how we in Sodertalje can take in so many Iraqi refugees," he told the news agency TT.
How can Sodertalje take in so many Muslim refugees? Did it never occur to the esteemed gentlemen from the United States Congress that it might be because the Swedes are fools, or deluded, or on crack, or some combination of all three? No, it must be because they are morally superior to the rest of us. 'Twas ever thus.
Joining Lago at the hearing organized by the US Helskinki [sic] Commission were representatives from the US government responsible for refugee issues, as well as the Washington director of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
"I explained that Sweden will continue to have a generous asylum policy and that we need immigration, but I also discussed the difficulties with arranging housing, employment, and schooling when so many refugees come at the same time," said Lago.
Not to mention the difficulties with restraining the newcomers from stealing, mugging, raping, attacking ambulance drivers, and burning schools. But now is not the time to discuss such trivial concerns.
The Helsinki Commission is US government agency that monitors human rights and security issues of concern to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and includes members from the US Senate, and the House of Representatives, and US government agencies. According to Lago, the senators were impressed that Sweden had taken in more refugees than the United States. "They promised during the hearing to try to increase the number of refugees received to 12,000 this year," he said.
You hear that, Sweden? You don't have enough Multiculture, so more is on the way!
Sweden received around 19,000 asylum seekers from Iraq last year. Although Obama was not a member of the US Helsinki Commission, Lagos's thoughts returned to his meeting earlier in the week with the senator from Illinois, whom Lagos calls his "favourite candidate". "He even tried to pronounce `Sodertalje'," said Lago.
It looks like Obama and the EU are going to get along just fine. He and Blair and Fogh and Barroso can gather in the gilded palaces of Brussels and Strasbourg and set the world to rights.
What Obama and co. did not know:
Actually the town of Sodertalje has fared so well because the immigrants there are mostly Christian Assyrians/Syriacs that are fleeing Islamic persecution from Iraq/Turkey etc. Demographically the town is probably something like 70% Christian Syriacs. These people share common religious beliefs as the west and are not there to cause trouble. If the town was 70% Muslim I think we would have a completely different story here.
In Levittown, Penn., today, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, was asked about his church's magazine giving an award to Rev. Louis Farrakhan. "This was done by a magazine that was connected to the church," Obama explained. "I would have never done it. It was primary focused on the rehabilitation work that they do for ex-offenders in Chicago. That doesn't excuse it, that just explains it."
The first time Obama said this, I could believe he was misinformed [update: indeed, the first time he said this, he only said he "assumed" this was the reason]. The second time, perhaps that he was caught offguard and didn't have his story straight. Now, I can only conclude that he is intentionally choosing to blatantly lie about this, hoping that no one will notice and call him on it.
Let's recall the facts: The magazine explicitly explained in the video it prepared for the banquet at which Farrakhan was honored that it was honoring Farrakhan for his purported dedication "truth, education, and leadership." [Surprise, surprise, the video seems to have been pulled from YouTube.] Obama spiritual mentor Rev. Wright, meanwhile praised Farrakhan in the magazine for his "astounding and eyeopening" analysis of the "racial ills of this nation," a "perspective" that is "helpful and honest." I even got ahold of the interview the magazine did with Farrakhan. No mention was made in any of these sources of "rehabilitation work for ex-offenders."
This is just plain disturbing. Paging William Safire...if Hillary is a "congenital liar," what might we call Obama?
Disgrace in Detroit
By JAMES TARANTO
The NAACP has been known as a venerable civil rights organization--so venerable that the "CP" stands for "Colored People," and everyone understands that is a relic of a time when that phrase provoked no offense. Founded on Feb. 12, 1909, the centenary of Lincoln's birth, the organization fought Jim Crow laws and segregation. It was NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall who successfully argued the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court, a court Marshall himself would join 13 years later as the first black justice.
If you respect the NAACP's heritage, you will be disgusted to learn that the organization's Detroit chapter plans to honor a man who says that AIDS is a U.S. government plot to kill black people and that the Sept. 11 attacks were "America's chickens . . . coming home to roost," and who declares: "God damn America." As the Detroit Free Press reports:
Controversial minister Jeremiah Wright will speak at the Detroit branch of the NAACP 53rd Annual Fight for Freedom Fund dinner. . . . The Fight for Freedom dinner, which annually attracts about 10,000 people, will be held April 27 at Cobo Hall. The gathering is a key fund-raiser for the Detroit Branch NAACP, and is billed as the largest sit-down dinner in the country.
This appears to be a case of circling the wagons: Wright, a black man, is under attack, so the NAACP, an organization that seeks the advancement of black people, is defending him. In doing so, the NAACP is committing an analytical and moral error. Wright is under attack not for the color of his skin, but for the content of his ideas. To defend him is to countenance those ideas. Through its actions, the NAACP is in effect arguing that anti-Americanism is acceptable, so long as its source is black. The association is sanctioning both invidious ideas and an invidious racial double standard.
Over the past few weeks, we have received several emails accusing us of racism for criticizing Wright's ideas and for noting their disturbing prevalence among the black community. This accusation is nonsense. It is no more antiblack to oppose ugly views that are common among blacks than the NAACP was antiwhite in opposing the racism and anti-Americanism that were once common among Southern whites.
For a century, Southern white politicians were effective in preserving segregation, but they were marginalized in national politics. Between the end of the Civil War and the passage of the Civil Rights Act, no Southerner was elected president (with the partial exception of Woodrow Wilson, a Southerner by birth who moved North). In order to enter the American political mainstream, Southern whites had to give up defending segregation--or rather they had to be forced by a series of legislative, judicial and executive actions to give it up.
Although white supremacy is morally distinguishable from black separatism, there is this similarity: Ideas like Jeremiah Wright's contribute to the political marginalization of blacks. Barack Obama would be a much more attractive presidential candidate were he not the spiritual prot‚g‚ of a man who declares, "God damn America."
In his famous "race" speech last month, Obama declared of Wright, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." This was supposed to sound like a statement of personal loyalty, but given the way that community has rallied behind Wright, in retrospect it seems more a cynical assessment of what Obama had to do to keep his electoral base from disintegrating.
Obama is already the most successful black presidential candidate in American history, and he is more likely than not to become the first black major-party nominee. He claims to be interested in racial reconciliation, and he has a great opportunity to promote it by taking a clear stand against the extreme views that are depressingly common in the black community and that have been espoused by his own "spiritual mentor." So far, though, Obama has displayed a lot more ambition than courage.
Some of Barack Obama's foreign policy advisors have caused controversy. In a bid to assuage the concerns of millions of Americans regarding his foreign policy plans, the campaign has been engaged in a bit of a shell game, spinning the roles of various advisers. More significantly, the campaign has been adding to its roster of "experts". The latest headliner to come on board is Daniel Kurtzer, former American Ambassador to Egypt (1997-2001) and Israel (2001-2005). As an ex-ambassador to Israel, perhaps it is felt his presence will reassure friends of Israel who vote. However, his views -- once they become more widely known -- may create further unease.
Ambassador Kurtzer has signed onto the campaign, appears before Jewish audiences to vouch for his candidate, and provides "foreign policy advice" regarding the Middle East to the campaign. Presumably, he will be rewarded with a top foreign policy post if Barack Obama becomes President. That is how Washington works. But what type of policies would Kurtzer work toward? What does he believe is the way forward? He does have a record, and it may displease many supporters of the American-Israel relationship.
Daniel Kurtzer earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University. In his dissertation he blamed the Israeli response to terror attacks for "the radicalization of those Palestinians to violence". He does not characterize the perpetrators as terrorists but as "guerillas". As Joseph Farah has written, Kurtzer accepts a false premise: that the Palestinian problem is the core of the conflict in the Middle East (see more on this concept below). Furthermore, writes Farah,
Probably more than any other State Department official, Kurtzer has been instrumental in promoting the goals of the Palestinians and in raising their grievances to the center of the U.S. policymaking agenda. It was Kurtzer who, as a speechwriter for former Secretary of State James Baker, coined the term "land for peace." Kurtzer has never been a popular figure in Israel. Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir referred to Kurtzer and two colleagues as "Baker's little Jews."
Kurtzer was also a key figure in the decisions that led to the recognition of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat as the legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian people. A decision that has brought about much violence and despair and is a source of many of the problems that that still roil the region.
Fortunately, Kurtzer has provided a contemporary guide to his views in a recently-published slim volume on the history of Middle East policy making since the end of the Cold War, Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East (co-written with Scott Lasensky, who has also signed onto the Obama campaign). The book looks backward to examine the performance of previous Presidents, and is also proscriptive, concluding with a list of proposals that Kurtzer and Lasensky advocate as guidelines for the future. In essence, a new Road Map for the next President.
Broadly, the authors are laudatory about only one President: George H.W. Bush, crediting him for having the `clearest sense of strategy" that was "pursued in a highly disciplined, effective and committed manner". The book also offers praise for Secretary of State James Baker.
This alone might create unease. Both these leaders had noticeably contentious relationships with Israel and with American supporters of Israel. Former President Bush notably threatened to prohibit loan guarantees to Israel to express his displeasure regarding Israel's policies on settlements. Bush and Baker also compelled Israel to negotiate and empower Yasser Arafat, who was a beaten and defeated figure in the wake of his Lebanon debacle. Both Bush and Baker also complained about the efforts of pro-Israel Americans to register their views with Congressmen.
Conversely, Kurtzer and Lasensky are highly critical of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush: two president who, despite their political differences, are very popular with supporters of the American-Israel relationship. They fault Clinton for lack of discipline and lack of strategic foresight. Bush, in turn, is faulted for lack of involvement and, similar to Clinton, lack of strategic vision (this despite the fact that he was the first American President to commit to the establishment of a Palestinian state and who saw democratization, as rocky as it may be in its establishment, as a key to future Middle East peace).
They are critical of Bush 43 for being too attentive to Israeli domestic politics and not attentive enough to the Palestinian leaders' political constraints. In their view, Bush 43
proved overly deferential to the stated political problems of the Israeli government while tending to turn a blind eye towards domestic constraints on the Arab side. (page 34).
Their view of the posture that America should take in the Middle East may generate some unease as well. At various points in the book, Kurtzer and Lasensky take American policymakers to task for not trying to balance what they describe as "asymmetries" between the relative power of the Palestinians and Israelis. In their view, America should apparently apply more pressure toward Israel in order to counter perceived Israeli strength vis-…-vis the Palestinians, and thereby facilitate peace-making efforts. Presumably this would be accomplished by compelling Israeli acquiescence to American policy
They are often critical toward Clinton and Bush 43 for being too sensitive toward political dynamics in Israel and too receptive to arguments made by the Israelis (and the Palestinians) that their own political difficulties prevent them from following American plans. Repeatedly, they emphasize that American policy towards the region should be made in Washington. Of course, it should be but the repetition of this point throughout the book might create some discomfort. They also hold that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the key to restoring peace throughout the region. According to Kurtzer and Lasensky,
The perpetuation of the conflict increasingly bedevils our ability to build alliances for other critical challenges facing the region, such as the situations in Iran and Iraq. It also fuels instability and violent conflict in neighborhood arenas, such as Lebanon. Finally, the conflict complicates the campaign for social and political reform in Arab societies" (page 27).
Then, disconcertingly, the authors seek to tie attacks on America to the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When addressing the issues of militant Islam and the determination of some to attack America, they write,
The Arab-Israeli conflict has not been immune to it, and in some ways has incubated and stimulated it. (page 77).
Not only do many people take exception to this view (after all, it ignores Sunni-Shiite schisms, dynastic problems, militant Islam and the history of jihad), but it seems to put the onus on Israel to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians that would miraculously solve the problems that beset the region and the world. The authors rely on the Iraq Study Group for the view that
reviving the peace process should be part of an overall strategy to revive U.S. influence, bolster moderate forces in the region, and stabilize the situation in Iraq. (page 50).
As noted, the authors see an asymmetry between the powers of Israel and the Palestinians and call upon America to monitor and address key asymmetries. Then they look at the region as a whole and how the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has inflamed tensions in the Muslim world. Yet, paradoxically, they fail to see how Israel might view the issue of asymmetry: the Israelis are surrounded by oil rich nations with populations that dwarf their own, nations that are led by a mix of autocrats, theocrats, and dictators. That sort of asymmetry is not addressed by the authors but certainly bears upon the peace process.....
Questions have been raised about Barack Obama and his foreign policy views. Supporters point out that he has compiled a generally good voting record regarding the American-Israel relationship during his three years in the Senate. Nevertheless, he is relatively inexperienced and his record is a short one.
He will need to rely on the advice of his advisers -- the advisers who have come to cause him a variety of political problems over the last few months. By landing a former American Ambassador to Israel as one of his advisers, the campaign clearly hoped that such a high profile figure would help to defuse questions and soothe tensions. They might be mistaken once the voters become more aware of the views and policy proposals of Daniel Kurtzer.
Well...not quite. But if Obama is allowed to spout hyperbole, why not the rest of us?
Obama reminded the crowd that he'd denounced his church's praise of Farrakhan, saying, "I've been very clear about saying that was wrong. And nobody has spoken out more fiercely on the issue of anti- Semitism than I have."
Really? No one? Elie Wiesel? Simon Wiesenthal? Alan Dershowitz? Obama, as Ed Morrissey points out, is getting into the nasty habit of stretching the truth once he gets off script:
First off, when has Obama spoken out at all against anti-Semitism outside of generic "hope and change" rhetoric about the tone and tenor of politics? He hasn't been an activist for anti-Semitism even in his own church. He claims he didn't agree with Jeremiah Wright's honoring Farrakhan, but he didn't speak out against it until people pressed him for a reaction to it. How about when his church reprinted Hamas propaganda in its bulletins? Did his fierce opposition erupt in protest? Uh, no.
And now "nobody has spoken out more fiercely on the issue of anti-Semitism" than Obama? That's not just absurd, it insults the intelligence of everyone who heard it. Many people have spoken out eloquently on anti-Semitism on many more occasions than Barack Obama, which isn't a difficult threshold to meet.
Pretty soon, the Democratic primary is going to resemble one of those bars where patrons try to outdo each other in making up stories about their exploits. Between Hillary's Bosnia caper and Obama's assertion that he has stood up for the Jews, one might begin to wonder is it possible for either of them just to tell the truth about something.
Obama's Fancied the Terror Gang in Chicago-- Partied With Bombers & Former PLO Operative
Barack Obama, terrorist Bill Ayers and former PLO operative Rashid Khalidi were good friends and even partied together in Chicago.
Both terrorist Ayers and former PLO operative Khalidi have held fundraisers for Obama in the past. Rashid Khalidi and Barack Obama were close friends in Chicago. Rashid was also a former PLO operative who often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization when he lived in Beirut. Tom Maguire posted on Rashid Khalidi yesterday and pointed out this report from the LA Times on Barack Obama's Palestinian allies:
CHICAGO -- It was a celebration of Palestinian culture -- a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.
A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases... It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."
...While teaching at the University of Chicago, Khalidi and his wife lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood near the Obamas. The families became friends and dinner companions.
In 2000, the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama's unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, a social service group whose board was headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from a local charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama served on the fund's board of directors.
At Khalidi's going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. "You will not have a better senator under any circumstances," Khalidi said.
The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.
Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis' daughter.
Columbia University got a twofer when they hired Rashid Khalidi-- Both Rashid and his wife Mona were strong Palestinian sympathizers. And... Guess who else was at the Khalidi going away party in Chi-town? Campus Watch reported:
In bringing professor Khalidi to Morningside Heights from the University of Chicago, Columbia also got itself a twofer of Palestinian activism and advocacy. Mr. Khalidi's wife, Mona, who also served in Beirut as chief editor of the English section of the WAFA press agency, was hired as dean of foreign students at Columbia's SIPA, working under Dean Anderson. In Chicago, the Khalidis founded the Arab American Action Network, and Mona Khalidi served as its president.
A big farewell dinner was held in their honor by AAAN with a commemorative book filled with testimonials from their friends and political allies. These included the left wing anti-war group Not In My Name, the Electronic Intifada, and the ex-Weatherman domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. (There were also testimonials from then-state Senator Barack Obama and the mayor of Chicago.)
As far as his connections with Obama, Khalidi has not been forthright in recent interviews, via the Jewish Press:
Concerning Obama's role in funding AAAN, Khalidi claimed he "never heard of the Woods Fund until it popped up on a bunch of blogs a few months ago." He terminated the interview when pressed further about his links with Obama. Contacted by phone, Mona Khalidi refused to answer questions about AAAN's involvement with Obama.
World Net Daily reported that as director of the Woods Fund board in Chicago Barack Obama, along with William Ayers, granted Khalidi's controversial anti-Israel group the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, $40,000 in 2001 and $35,000 in 2002.
Bill Ayers: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Republicans are reviewing Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's friendship with fellow member of the radical chic in Chicago, Bill Ayers, who said in a book, "Fugitive Days," that he participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972. Far from being repentant, Ayers brazenly told the New York Times: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." The interview was published on Sept. 11, 2001.
Ayers lived on the lam for about 7 years before turning himself in and instead of going to prison, Ayers landed a cushy job teaching at the University of Chicago. The radical chic take care of their own.
When Obama landed in Chicago, he did not just join the influential Trinity United Church of Christ, headed by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a former Marine, former Muslim and former black nationalist. Obama also moved into the same circles that Ayers was well-established in, Ben Smith reported.
"But Obama's relationship with Ayers is an especially vivid milepost on his rise, in record time, from a local official who unabashedly reflected a very liberal district to the leader of national movement based largely on the claim that he can transcend ideological divides," wrote Smith. Questions about what fueled Obama's meteoric rise - Wright, Ayers, Emil Jones and Tony Rezko - may be his downfall. Karl Rove said Obama's friendship with Ayers is a potential opening for Republicans this fall
Media idolatory of Obama? Sure. Now we even get idolatory of his mother!
I am not going to reproduce it all as I don't want to make anybody ill
Each of us lives a life of contradictory truths. We are not one thing or another. Barack Obama's mother was at least a dozen things. S. Ann Soetoro was a teen mother who later got a Ph.D. in anthropology; a white woman from the Midwest who was more comfortable in Indonesia; a natural-born mother obsessed with her work; a romantic pragmatist, if such a thing is possible.
"When I think about my mother," Obama told me recently, "I think that there was a certain combination of being very grounded in who she was, what she believed in. But also a certain recklessness. I think she was always searching for something. She wasn't comfortable seeing her life confined to a certain box."
Obama's mother was a dreamer. She made risky bets that paid off only some of the time, choices that her children had to live with. She fell in love - twice - with fellow students from distant countries she knew nothing about. Both marriages failed, and she leaned on her parents and friends to help raise her two children.
"She cried a lot," says her daughter Maya Soetoro-Ng, "if she saw animals being treated cruelly or children in the news or a sad movie - or if she felt like she wasn't being understood in a conversation." And yet she was fearless, says Soetoro-Ng. "She was very capable. She went out on the back of a motorcycle and did rigorous fieldwork. Her research was responsible and penetrating. She saw the heart of a problem, and she knew whom to hold accountable."
Today Obama is partly a product of what his mother was not. Whereas she swept her children off to unfamiliar lands and even lived apart from her son when he was a teenager, Obama has tried to ground his children in the Midwest. "We've created stability for our kids in a way that my mom didn't do for us," he says. "My choosing to put down roots in Chicago and marry a woman who is very rooted in one place probably indicates a desire for stability that maybe I was missing."
Ironically, the person who mattered most in Obama's life is the one we know the least about - maybe because being partly African in America is still seen as being simply black and color is still a preoccupation above almost all else. There is not enough room in the conversation for the rest of a man's story.
But Obama is his mother's son. In his wide-open rhetoric about what can be instead of what was, you see a hint of his mother's credulity. When Obama gets donations from people who have never believed in politics before, they're responding to his ability - passed down from his mother - to make a powerful argument (that happens to be very liberal) without using a trace of ideology. On a good day, when he figures out how to move a crowd of thousands of people very different from himself, it has something to do with having had a parent who gazed at different cultures the way other people study gems.
It turns out that Obama's nascent career peddling hope is a family business. He inherited it. And while it is true that he has not been profoundly tested, he was raised by someone who was.
In most elections, the deceased mother of a candidate in the primaries is not the subject of a magazine profile. But Ann Soetoro was not like most mothers.
More nausea here. Dave at Ace is having difficulty holding down his breakfast too.
Obama is no moderate: His radical position on 'abortion' after birth
Recently, Hillary Clinton presciently warned that she would be the best Democrat presidential candidate because she's already been "vetted." Now, that's not necessarily a good thing for Mrs. Clinton considering her (and her husband's) checkered past. But she does have a point when it comes to Barack Obama, the new, fresh, moderate-sounding, wildly popular-and largely uninvestigated-frontrunner candidate. And, as it turns out, pro-abortion radical.
We all know Obama's style, his regal, visionary bearing, his above-the-fray persona, his inspired - and, give him his due, inspiring - performances, his "Audacity of Hope," and his hypnotic, upbeat, unifying message. He is skilled. If we were voting for a chief motivational speaker or a political "American Idol," even I'd be on the bandwagon.
But for a candidate for Chief Executive, Commander-in-Chief of the US military, and leader of the free world, we need more. We need some record or some history. His soaring rhetoric aside, it's long-past the time to ask: just who is this guy? What's at his core? Where is his moral compass? Do we share the same basic values? Is he as moderate in deed as in word? Apparently not, at least judging by his record on a key sanctity-of-life issue. It is beyond extreme; it is jarring.
Reasonable people may differ in their opinions regarding abortion and thorny questions of precisely when life begins. Jewish doctrine, with its focus on the health of the mother, may differ from Christian or other religious positions over the circumstances under which abortion may be permitted. But once a baby is born, even prematurely, there is across-the-board agreement that a new human life exists. Certainly, there is no longer any threat to the health of the mother. Abortion is no longer an option, as there is no longer a pregnancy to terminate.
So, what are we to make of Obama's votes against protecting the right to life for living babies who have survived attempted abortions? Such babies are sometimes born alive as a result of late-term induced labor abortions, often sought when babies are believed (sometimes in error) to have genetic defects such as Down syndrome.
Earlier this decade, such living, breathing, babies who survived labor were "shelved" - left to die and disposed of with other medical waste, or were "aborted" - killed outside the womb. The practice was ultimately banned by unanimous Congressional votes, as even the most pro-abortion Senate Democrats - including every defender of partial-birth abortion - recognized that killing these breathing babies is no longer abortion in any real sense. It crosses the line; it is infanticide. Yet, incredibly, Obama repeatedly worked to deny these living babies any right to life.
Jill Stanek, an Illinois nurse, testified in the US Congress in 2000 and 2001 - and before Obama's Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee - about how induced labor abortions were handled at her hospital, relating this story: "One night, a nursing co-worker was taking an aborted Down syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have the time to hold him. I couldn't bear the thought of this suffering child lying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived." Powerful stuff. Obama, however, was reportedly "unfazed" by her testimony.
Various state and federal attempts ensued to curb the gruesome practice, including the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, passed unanimously by both the House and Senate in 2002 (It did not immediately become law.)
In essence, these acts state that, whether wanted or not, once a baby is fully born, it is recognized as fully human and is entitled to equal protection of the law under the 14th Amendment. Even pro-abortion Democrats supported the BAIPA because it contained explicit language that it would not infringe on any abortion rights. Democrat Barbara Boxer, arguably the Senate's most zealous pro-choice advocate, agreed that, with this language, the "amendment certainly does not attack Roe v. Wade."
But not Obama. In March of 2001, Obama's Illinois Judiciary Committee considered a law substantially identical to the BAIPA. It passed the Committee, with Obama voting against. In front of the full Illinois Senate, Obama was the only senator to speak against the bill, arguing that life protection extended to any (!) preterm babies (ponder that) could jeopardize abortion rights. He voted "present," tantamount to a "no" vote. In March of 2002, Obama's Committee passed the Induced Birth Liability Act, requiring medical care for babies who survive induced labor abortions - Obama again voting "present," arguing that the Act would "create one more burden on women, and I can't support that."
In 2003, the Democrats took control of the Illinois Senate, and Obama became Chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee. A Committee member sponsored an Amendment that would adopt the exact same language in Illinois's proposed BAIPA that Senator Boxer was satisfied did not curtail any abortion rights in the federal BAIPA. But as Chairman, Obama unilaterally killed the bill by never allowing a Committee vote, thereby preventing it from being voted on by the full Senate and becoming law.
Obama's position essentially boils down to this: a woman who contracts for an abortion is entitled, one way or another, to a dead baby. A dead baby must result, even if that baby had already been a distinct living being. The killing of some live babies is just part of the price we must pay in order to keep the sacred right to an abortion supreme and absolute, beyond any shadow of a doubt.
What kind of principle is this? What core value is Obama expressing? What extremist doctrine or interest is he defending? And how doctrinaire must one be to defend actual infanticide? This goes well beyond any reasonable advocacy of a woman's "right to choose;" it attacks a living baby's right to life. His position is not simply "pro-choice;" it is radically anti-life. It is, in fact, pro-death. Whatever one may make of the doctrines of his America-bashing, anti-Israel, Farrakhan-honoring pastor (or why a "uniter" would belong to his church for over 20 years), Obama professes to be a practicing Christian; so, what in the life-affirming Judeo-Christian value system could possibly give license to kill live babies?
In the coming years, the United States Supreme Court is likely to decide landmark cases dealing with life-sanctity issues of eugenics, euthanasia, and abortion. Is mainstream, centrist America ready to put Court appointments in the hands of a far-left candidate with such a radical, ghoulish record?
Perhaps most disappointing is that Obama's handling of the issue suggests he is actually just another slippery politician - more "spin" than substance. For all the supposed integrity he projects, Obama has not even shown the courage to honestly defend his votes.
In 2004, during a campaign debate, Republican US Senate candidate Alan Keyes challenged Obama on his opposition to the 2003 Illinois BAIPA. Obama replied: "At the federal level there was a similar bill that passed because it had an amendment saying this does not encroach on Roe v. Wade. I would have voted for that bill." What a marvelously Clintonian answer! As noted above, that language did not make it into the Illinois bill because Obama himself blocked It. Now that is first-rate Audacity. But it doesn't inspire much Hope.
Obama Funneled Cash to Former PLO Operative's Anti-Israel Foundation
In 2000, Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO operative who justified Palestinian terrorism as contributing to "political enlightenment," threw a fundraiser for his friend Barack Obama. Rashid Khalidi today is a professor at Columbia University and is a close associate of Barack Obama. Free Republic member No Quarter reported more on this relationship:
Khalidi has direct ties to Obama. These are not imagined. Before getting his job at Columbia University Rashid Khalidi was a Middle East professor at the University of Chicago, where he befriended none other than US presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama. In 2000 Khalidi held a successful fundraiser for Barack. I am not saying or inferring or suggesting that Obama did anything wrong in letting Khalidi hold a fund raiser. But I am willing to bet that it will become an issue in the general election. Barack also played a role in getting funding for Khalidi's Arab American Action Network during his tenure on the board of the Woods Fund. That is another unexplored black hole.
Although he is described as a former PLO operative, via Free Republic, this is what Rashid Khalidi has to say about Palestinian terrorism against Jews:
On Palestinian violence. Khalidi glorifies anti-Israel violence as contributing to "political enlightenment"[vii] and unsurprisingly admires those who carry it out. His loyalty to Palestinian terrorist groups run so deep that he actually dedicated his 1986 valentine to the PLO, Under Siege, to "those who gave their lives . . . in defense of the cause of Palestine and independence of Lebanon."[viii] The book whitewashes PLO violence against Israelis and Lebanese, as well as the Syrian occupation.
A couple of weeks back Atlas Shrugs posted information that Obama and former Weather Underground honcho William Ayers, who sat with Obama on the board of the Woods Fund, funneled money to Khalidi's foundation:
A top official at the Pentagon during former-President George H. W. Bush's Administration and a former CIA intelligence officer maintains that Barack Obama and former Weather Underground honcho William Ayers funneled money to Professor Rashid Khalidi, a known terrorist sympathizer.
Khalidi serves on the faculty of Columbia University in New York and is best known as the professor who invited Iranian President Ahmedinejad to visit Columbia University after he finished his speech at the United Nations. According to confidential sources, Khalidi has direct ties to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), a group on the US State Department's list of known terrorist groups. "One source for this information was once a top military figure in the 1990s. He doesn't take making allegations lightly. If he says something happened, believe me, it happened," said syndicated radio talk show host Laurie Roth. "Another source is a former agent for the Central Intelligence Agency, who is an expert in counterterrorism," said Roth, who broke the story on her show Friday night.
World Net Daily reported that as director of the Woods Fund board in Chicago Barack Obama granted Khalidi's controversial anti-Israel group the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, $40,000 in 2001 and $35,000 in 2002. This news seems to fit with what we are getting to know about the Illinois senator.
Obama should apologize for insulting millions of armed citizens
Democrat Barack Obama on Tuesday insulted millions of legally-armed American citizens when he told a Pennsylvania newspaper that concealed carry poses a threat to innocent people, and he should immediately apologize for that remark, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today. Senator Obama, quoted by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, admitted, "I am not in favor of concealed weapons. I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations."
"American citizens have been responsibly carrying concealed handguns for years in 48 states," said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, co-author of America Fights Back: Armed Self-Defense in a Violent Age, published by Merril Press. "These citizens go through background checks, and in some states complete required training courses. Statistically, these armed citizens are far less likely to ever be involved in a crime than average citizens. They have stopped crimes. They have sometimes aided police officers.
"Senator Obama," he continued, "should not confuse legally-armed, law-abiding Americans with inner-city thugs, gang-bangers and other criminals who carry guns illegally. Thanks to a revealing 1996 questionnaire bearing Mr. Obama's handwriting from his days as a candidate for the Illinois Senate, it's clear he has the good guys confused with the bad guys."
That controversial questionnaire, which Obama originally claimed he never saw, contained answers to questions that indicates he opposes capital punishment and criminal prosecution of juveniles as adults, is against mandatory sentencing and supports "alternative sentencing." He supported a ban on handguns and semiautomatic sport-utility rifles, and mandatory waiting periods before Americans could exercise their constitutional right to own a firearm.
"Barack Obama ignorantly believes that legally-armed Americans are as reckless and irresponsible as the criminals with whom his political sympathies evidently lay," Gottlieb said. "He has been insisting for months that he supports the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, but here he is now campaigning in Pennsylvania, stating essentially that he would prefer Americans not exercise that right. "Legally-armed citizens are also voters, Mr. Obama," Gottlieb stated, "and you have outrageously insulted every one of them. You owe these good citizens an apology."
Dreams from my father, lame excuses from my grandfather
By Ann Coulter
Since a Chinese graduate student at Columbia University, Minghui Yu, was killed last Friday when black youths violently set upon him, sending him running into traffic to escape, I think B. Hussein Obama ought to start referring to the mindset of the "typical Asian person." As of Wednesday, police had no motive for the attack, and witnesses said they heard no demand for money or anything else. The Associated Press reports that the assailant simply said to his friend, "Watch what I do to this guy" before punching Yu.
Meanwhile, let's revisit the story about Obama's grandmother being guilty of thinking like a "typical white person." As recounted in Obama's autobiography, the only evidence that his grandmother feared black men comes from Obama's good-for-nothing, chronically unemployed white grandfather, who accuses Grandma of racism as his third excuse not to get dressed and drive her to work.
His grandmother wanted a ride to work at 6:30 in the morning because, the day before, she had been aggressively solicited by a homeless man at the bus stop. On her account, the panhandler "was very aggressive, Barry. Very aggressive. I gave him a dollar and he kept asking. If the bus hadn't come, I think he might have hit me over the head."
Even Obama's shiftless grandfather didn't play the race card until pretty far into the argument over whether he would drive Grandma to work. First, the good-for-nothing grandfather told Obama that Grandma was just trying to guilt him into driving her, saying, "(S)he just wants me to feel bad." Next, he complained about his non-work routine being disrupted, saying: "She's been catching the bus ever since she started at the bank. ... And now, just because she gets pestered a little, she wants to change everything!"
Only after Obama had offered to drive his grandmother to work himself and it was becoming increasingly clear what a selfish lout the grandfather was, did Grandpa produce his trump card. The reason he wouldn't get his lazy butt dressed and drive Grandma to work was ... she was a racist! As Obama recounts it, on Grandpa's third try at an excuse, he told Obama: "You know why she's so scared this time? I'll tell you why. Before you came in, she told me the fella was black. That's the real reason she's bothered. And I just don't think that's right." So I guess I'll be heading back to the sack now! That makes sense. It certainly never bothers me when crazy white people harass and threaten me.
This is Obama's own account of what happened, which - as anyone can see - consisted of his slacker grandfather making a series of excuses to avoid having to drive the sole bread-earner in the family to work. But Obama says, "The words were like a fist in my stomach, and I wobbled to regain my composure." (It was as if he had been punched by an aggressive panhandler at a bus stop!) And not because his grandfather's sorry excuse reminded him that he came from a long line of callow, worthless men, both black and white. No, Obama swallowed his grandfather's pathetic excuse hook, line and sinker, leading Obama to a reverie about his grandparents: "I knew that men who might easily have been my brothers could still inspire their rawest fears." That's true - assuming his brothers and sisters were menacing people at bus stops.
How deranged would you have to be to cite this incident as evidence that your grandmother thought like a "typical white person" - as opposed to your grandfather being worthless and lazy? For those keeping score, Obama is aghast at his grandmother's alleged racism, but had no problem with Jeremiah Wright's manifest racism. If Obama is sent reeling by the mere words of an elderly white woman, how is he going to negotiate with a guy like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? What if Ahmadinejad calls him "booger-face"? Will he run crying from the table?
Your grandmother wasn't a racist, Barack. Your grandpa was just a loser. Can we wrap up our national conversation about race now? I think we'd like to move onto questions about your stupid plan to hold talks with Iran.
Oprah ratings way down after supporting Barack Obama
Most of the attention on the O2 effect -- Obama and Oprah -- has been focused on how much the daytime TV cult leader helped her home state senator by endorsing him and appearing at all those rallies in Iowa and South Carolina with Barack and Michelle. The 54-year-old Chicago TV hostess certainly helped raise a hefty chunk of change by loaning out her estate for that Obama fundraiser last summer.
Oprah Winfrey has long enjoyed an immense popularity tied to her long-running daytime TV show, which started in 1986, and helped give her favorable ratings around 78% by 1996. So well known is she that one name will suffice, as in our headline.
In one 1999 survey of the most admired and respected 20th-century women, Oprah (26%) came in only second to Mother Teresa (33%), who didn't have her own TV show. And in 2003 a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll found that 60% thought Oprah was a more powerful woman than someone named Hillary Clinton, a former first lady and senator, who drew only 28%. Fourteen months ago, a Gallup/USA Today poll found 74% of Americans had a favorable view of the TV personality.
Then on May 1 last year, Oprah announced during.... the Larry King show that she was, for the first time, going to throw her considerable weight behind a political candidate -- Obama. King's suspenders nearly snapped. "I think," she told old Lar, "that my value to him, my support of him, is probably worth more than any check." Although, to be honest, her estimated $2.5 billion in wealth could buy an awful lot of TV ads in Indiana. It might even be able to purchase the Hoosier State.
But little attention has been paid to the effect of Obama on Oprah. Now along comes Costas Panagopoulos, an assistant professor of political science at New York's Fordham University, to ask and answer just that question. Writing at Politico.com, he suggests the aging empress of TV has paid a price for getting into the dirty business of politics with and for her man Barack. By August last year, a CBS poll found her favorable rating had plunged from 74% to 61%, still twice as good as the president but nearly a 20% drop.
Around Thanksgiving she announced that not only was she supporting Obama, but she would campaign with him and we'd see if her political recommendation carried as much weight as her book recommendations. Oprah's political travels produced a media feeding frenzy and a publicity bonanza with women routinely fainting in the front row. The campaign said her rallies produced 10,000 new volunteers.
Winfrey campaigned for Obama in Iowa, which he won, in South Carolina, where he won, and in New Hampshire, where he lost. We haven't heard much about Winfrey since the voting started. Did she realize something we're just getting? We heard only that she left the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ several years ago, reportedly over some of his more militant sermons that Obama says he never heard. But 10 days after the campaign media explosion her favorable rating had dropped further to 55% and her unfavorable ratings for the first time climbed to 1 in 3.
A December ABC/Washington Post poll of Democrats found 8% were persuaded by her Obama endorsement, 82% said it wouldn't matter either way and 10% said her recommendation had turned them off Obama. Now, Panagopoulos has discovered an AOL TV popularity survey of 1.35 million Americans that found 46% said the daytime TV host who "made their day" was Ellen DeGeneres while only 19% chose Winfrey. Forty-seven percent said they'd like to have dinner with Ellen, while only 14% chose Oprah. Apparently, neither Ellen nor Oprah were asked who they'd like to dine with.
Panagopoulos draws the conclusion that in these days of pervasive media, in reality, celebrity endorsements run the real risk of costing the celebrity more than they benefit the endorsee. So celebs may want to think twice before hitting the stump. But then how many hundred million dollars a year does an assistant professor at Fordham pull down?
A Barack Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention was "ticketed for calling her neighbor's African-American children 'monkeys,' " reports the Chicago Sun-Times. (We didn't realize this was against the law, but the Chicago Tribune explains that the charge was disorderly conduct.) Here is what happened, according to the Sun-Times:
[Linda] Ramirez-Sliwinski "came outside and told the children to quit playing in the tree like monkeys. The tree was not on Ramirez-Sliwinski's property," Carpentersville Police Commander Michael Kilbourne said.
Ramirez-Sliwinski admitted she used the word "monkeys," but said she did not intend racism. She said she was only trying to protect them from falling out of the tree. "Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski said she saw the kids playing in the tree and didn't want them falling out of the tree and getting hurt. She said she calls her own grandchildren 'monkeys,' " Kilbourne said. The mother of one of the children did not see it that way, noting she and Ramirez-Sliwinski have clashed before. "She felt it was racist because of the fact the children were African-American," Kilbourne said.
Told of the incident Monday by the Sun-Times, Obama's campaign called Ramirez-Sliwinski and persuaded her to step aside as a delegate because the campaign felt her remarks were "divisive and unacceptable."
Finally, someone Barack Obama can disown! Let this be a lesson for other Obama delegates: If someone is bothering you, shout at the top of your lungs, "God damn America!" You know Obama will stand by you then.
Because his central claim to be a "uniter" is so at variance with the far-Left policies that he supports, the sincerity of Obama is very much in question. For that reason, one has great doubts about what he really believes. Enquiries that throw some light on what he really believes are therefore of great interest. And something that would seem to be revelatory would be the sort of person he has closely associated with over the years and the milieu in which he he has moved. The post below is therefore of considerable interest
Writing in Slate, Christopher Hitchens notes that Jeremiah Wright isn't the only problematic pulpiteer to be associated with Barack Obama. Hitchens--who, it should be noted, is hostile to all religion--notes that another Obama "adviser" is Father Michael Pfleger, "a white Catholic preacher who has a close personal feeling for the man he calls (as does Obama) Minister Farrakhan." David Kopel of the Volokh Conspiracy does some research into Pfleger, starting with an April 5, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times article on then-Senate candidate Obama:
Friends and advisers, such as the Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Roman Catholic Church in the Auburn-Gresham community on the South Side, who has known Obama for the better part of 20 years, help him keep that compass set, he says. "I always have felt in him this consciousness that, at the end of the day, with all of us, you've got to face God," Pfleger says of Obama. "Faith is key to his life, no question about it. [It is] central to who he is, and not just in his work in the political field, but as a man, as a black man, as a husband, as a father. . . . I don't think he could easily divorce his faith from who he is."
So who is Michael Pfleger? Kopel notes that he is indeed a strong defender of Louis Farrakhan:
Ambushed by a Bill O'Reilly camera crew, Pfleger stated: "He has--first of all, he has not called Judaism a gutter religion of blood suckers. That is not what he has said because I have heard that talk. I stick up for Louis Farrakhan because he is another person that the media has chosen to define how they want to do it. And they demonize how they want to demonize somebody. I know the man, Louis Farrakhan. He is a great man. I have great respect for him, he has done an awful lot for people and this country, black, white, and brown. He's a friend of mine."
Kopel reports that Farrakhan spoke at Pfleger's church last May, and Jeremian "God Damn America" Wright was also "recently an invited speaker at Rev. Pfleger's church." Kopel notes two troubling incidents involving Pfleger. One is described in a March 2006 report from Chicago's WMAQ-TV. It seems that Gov. Rod Blagojevich established a Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes and appointed to it one Sister Claudette Marie Muhammad, the "minister of protocol" for Farrakhan's Nation of Islam:
She was under the radar until she invited other commissioners to attend a Farrakhan speech last month. Criticism of Muhammad mounted after the speech, which included references to "Hollywood Jews" promoting homosexuality and "other filth."
Four members of the hate-crimes commission resigned. Blagojevich, for his part, claimed he hadn't realized Muhammad was an official of the Nation of Islam. But Pfleger blasted the commissioners who quit:
Callers to Tuesday's radio show included the Rev. Michael Pfleger, the white pastor of a mostly black Chicago church and a friend of Muhammad's. Pfleger said "good riddance" to the people who had left the commission. "Leave, go ahead and go on out, we don't need that kind of a spirit or mentality and a narrowness on that kind of commission. I'm glad they're gone," Pfleger said.
Pfleger also has a tendency to get overzealous in his moral crusades: He "is known for climbing ladders to deface liquor billboards," Crain's Chicago Business reported in 2004. More disturbingly, CNSNews.com reported last year that Pfleger participated in a Rainbow/PUSH Coalition demonstration against a gun shop outside Chicago, where he issued this threat:
"He's the owner of Chuck's. John Riggio. R-i-g-g-i-o. We're going to find you and snuff you out . . . you know you're going to hide like a rat. You're going to hide but like a rat we're going to catch you and pull you out. We are not going to allow you to continue to hide when we're here."
According to Kopel, Pfleger later claimed he hadn't realized that "that 'snuff out' means to 'kill.' Rather, the determination to 'snuff out' Riggio was a determination to find out his home address."
We'd be hesitant to jump to any conclusions about Obama based on his association with Pfleger, which by no accounts is as deep as that with Jeremiah Wright. Pfleger's story does, however, tend to reinforce our view that the South Side of Chicago is, to put it charitably, a rather unusual subculture, one that Americans elsewhere--even in New York, where this columnist lives--may have trouble understanding, never mind embracing.
Obama, 2000: Not A Lot Of "Ideological Differences" With Black Panther Bobby Rush
In yesterday's conversation with Time's Joe Klein (transcript here) I noted that when then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama ran against incumbent Congressman Bobby Rush in the 2000 Democratic primary for the 1rst Congressional District, Obama announced there wasn't much difference between the two candidates when it came to beliefs. "I don't think there are a lot of ideological differences," Obama declared after a television debate between Rush, himself and a third candidate Donne Trotter.
Obama had positioned himself for the run against Rush by introducing a bill aimed at racial profiling that was supported by the left ("Flanked by officials from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Obama said the measure..." read the write up in the December 7, 1999 Chicago Tribune) and by deploring the situation that found "[m]any seniors are having to decide between milk and bread or paying for their prescription drugs."
He blasted Rush for doing little as a Congressman. "Seniority without vision doesn't get you much," Obama declared. "And that's what this campaign is about --framing the debate with leadership and vision." The rhetoric we have grown used to got a workout in the fall of 1999 and winter of 2000. "Part of what we are talking about is a transition from a politics of protest to a politics of progress," Obama declared.
For his part, Rush dismissed Obama as one of the "Johnny-come-latelys only interested in getting elected," and crushed Obama easily, 61%-30%. What do we learn from that race in 2000? Most importantly, that there were not, in Obama's words, "a lot of ideological differences" between the former Blank Panther Rush and the Obama of 2000. In 2004, (the latest year recorded in the 2006 Almanac of American Politics), Rush scored a 100 from the ADA and the ACLU, and a 0 from the ACU. By his own admission in 2000, we have to conclude that Barack Obama is from the far left of American politics, just like Rush.
Is Obama committed to Israel's survival as a Jewish state? The question is serious and the answer may be chilling. The senator himself has not spoken ill of Israel nor has he made anti-Semitic statements, but it is quite unlikely that a candidate as clever as he would tip his hand on something that vital. Consider, though, all the influences on the life of Barack Obama.
He has felt comfortable in the company of angry blacks who form the core of anti-Semitism in modern America. Jeremiah Wright is symptomatic of the sort of aggrieved, irrational black agitator who seriously believes that Jews are a major obstacle to the advancement of blacks and other oppressed minorities around the world. But Reverend Wright is only one example. Cynthia McKinney seriously proposed that Jews did not show up for work in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 because of some prior cabalistic warning. Nurtured black rage led to the 1991 murder in Crown Heights of an Australian Jew, Yankel Rosenbaum, whose sole offense was being a Jew in the wrong part of New York. Louis Farrakhan, of course, has spread lies about Jews, but even more "mainstream" black leaders like Jesse Jackson have shown clear dislike of Jews.
For a black presidential candidate like Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Michael Steele or J.C. Watts, the question of loyalty to our loyalist ally in the world would not be an issue. These black leaders have clearly and emphatically rejected the sort of hatred that Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan embrace. It is doubtful whether those radical blacks would endorse Rice or Steele or Watts for president, if Republicans nominated them. But Obama has chosen to associate himself with the embittered and resentful branch of black politics. Unless he believes its calumnies about America and Israel, why did he link himself to this sort of hatred?
But it is not just the black rage school of politics that raises questions about Obama and Israel. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, is another piece of the Obama puzzle. Although much has been made of his middle name, Hussein, over which Obama has no control, more important is the fact that Obama's mother chose to marry two Muslim husbands both of whom were from Third World nations. Considering that she was a champion of women's rights and that Islam is notoriously misogynist, this is extraordinary.
We hear of Muslim women seeking asylum in America and the West, but not of Western feminists marrying Muslim men and then living in the Muslim world. What could have motivated her except the conscious rejection of Western values, something that Obama's mother had very much in common with Jeremiah Wright? Is it worth noting that among the outrageous statements of Wright, one was that Islam and Christianity had much more in common than most people thought? (A preposterous lie, but one that conforms to a minister who could blame Israel for being a racist state.)
Obama also chose to marry a woman who seems to be filled with rage and anger at America. Those who hate America irrationally almost also hate Israel irrationally, and vice versa. The same resentment at successful peoples, the same rejection of Judeo-Christian values, the same nursing of past wrongs into a sort of fetish or cult draws people into the maelstrom of hating America, hating Israel, hating Christians and hating Jews.
The involuntary influences in the life of Obama, having a mother attracted to Muslim men and who initially sent her son to a Madrasah, and the choices that he made as an adult, marrying an angry black woman who feels America is bad and attending a church where the preacher excoriates Israel from the pulpit and honors odious anti-Semites - these together paint a very worrisome picture of Obama and Israel.
What would President Obama do if the survival of Israel were threatened? In the past the question was not as crucial as today. Europe, cowed by its growing and militant Muslim communities and removed by more than six decades from the horrors of the Holocaust, seems truly indifferent to Israel. In 1973, when the oil boycott smacked Europe, the Dutch, whose citizens remembered what had happened to Dutch Jews twenty-eight years earlier, rode bicycles to demonstrate their independence from Arab threats. In 2008, does anyone believe the Dutch would do the same?
Not only has Europe lost its nerve, but the threat to Israel is no longer an Arab threat but rather a Muslim threat. In 1973, the last time Israel faced a very serious threat, the Shah of Iran was in power, and his nation had good relations with Israel. Radical Islam, with its attendant hatred of Jews and Christians, was not ascendant in the Indian Ocean basin as it is today. Today, more than any time in the last sixty years, the two real allies against radical Islam are its principal victims - Israel and America. If America does not play its role in this alliance seriously, then the fate of Israel is in genuine peril.
Today, unlike yesterday, America and Israel cannot afford a president whose support of Israel is not complete and absolute. We cannot afford a president who thinks that chatting with governments whose official media spews the most absurd and despicable lies about America and Israel is a serious exercise in diplomacy. We must, instead, have a president certain that America and Israel are the good guys and that the triumphant of these nations - with as little violence as possible - is the only sure answer to peace. Is Obama this sort of president? Nothing suggests he is and everything suggests he is not.
OBAMA'S PASTOR AN EX- MUSLIM AND FATHER A COMMUNIST
Islamanazi had it here and Infidels are Cool picks up this disturbing development in Obama's increasingly troublesome background. Everyone this man is tied to works feverishly against everything we hold so dear in America. Frankly, it's all bad and the media is ignoring it. Wright's hate speech against whites against America, against the Jews and Israel, hislove of Farrakhan ............ isn't particularly Christian-like. This is Obama's idol, his inspiration. I am not buying how Wright did great things for the community. Hezb'Allah and Hamas do community work to. It's a cover.
It's is hard to imagine that a Presidential candidate who is deceitful about his Muslim upbringing, wants to surrender Iraq, appease dictators who want to destroy America, and work within an increasing Islamic and shariah compliant United Nations and the illiberal blocs who dominate that institution has the best chance of winning the Whites House.
A reader from Free Republic has dug up an old article last year (March 07) From TNR about Obama. It was written by Ryan Lizza, Senior editor at The New Republic. It's a biographical piece, but in the article, it explicitly states that Jeremiah Wright is a former Muslim.
From Wright and others, Obama learned that part of his problem as an organizer was that he was trying to build a confederation of churches but wasn't showing up in the pews on Sunday. When pastors asked him the inevitable questions about his own spiritual life, Obama would duck them uncomfortably. A Reverend Philips put the problem to him squarely when he learned that Obama didn't attend services. "It might help your mission if you had a church home," he told Obama. "It doesn't matter where, really. What you're asking from pastors requires us to set aside some of our more priestly concerns in favor of prophesy. That requires a good deal of faith on our part. It makes us want to know just where you're getting yours from."
After many lectures like this, Obama decided to take a second look at Wright's church. Older pastors warned him that Trinity was for "Buppies"-black urban professionals-and didn't have enough street cred. But Wright was a former Muslim and black nationalist who had studied at Howard and Chicago, and Trinity's guiding principles-what the church calls the "Black Value System"-included a "Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness.'"
The crosscurrents appealed to Obama. He came to believe that the church could not only compensate for the limitations of Alinsky-style organizing but could help answer the nagging identity problem he had come to Chicago to solve. "It was a powerful program, this cultural community," he wrote, "one more pliant than simple nationalism, more sustaining than my own brand of organizing."
As a result, over the years, Wright became not only Obama's pastor, but his mentor. The title of Obama's recent book, The Audacity of Hope, is based on a sermon by Wright. (It's worth noting, however, that, while Obama's book is a coolheaded appeal for common ground in an age of political polarization, Wright's sermon, "The Audacity to Hope," is a fiery jeremiad about persevering in a world of nuclear arms and racial inequality.) Wright is one of the first people Obama thanked after his Senate victory in 2004, and he recently name-checked Wright in his speech to civil rights leaders in Selma, Alabama.
So the question is, why hasn't anyone mentioned the fact that he's a former Muslim? Could this be why Obama's church posted a Hamas manifesto in the Trinity Church program last year? It obviously explains Wright's affinity with Louis Farrakhan. It also explains more why Rev. Wright got his Masters degree in "Islam in West Africa"
AND OBAMA HAD A COMMUNIST FATHER
There's a big mystery at the heart of Barack Obama's Dreams For My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. What was Barack Obama doing seeking out Marxist professors in college? Why did Obama choose a Communist Party USA member as his socio- political counselor in high school? Why was he spending his time studying neocolonialism and the writings of Frantz Fanon, the pro-violence author of "the Communist Manifesto of neocolonialsm", in college? Why did he take time out from his studies at Columbia to attend socialist conferences at Cooper Union?
And there is more mystery in the book. Why does Obama consider working in a consulting house for international business like being "a spy behind enemy lines?" Why does he repeatedly find it so hard to explain his political views to others? Why was he driven to become a left-aligned political organizer? It's a question Obama again and again can't seem to answer to the satisfaction of the interlocutors in his own memoir.
If there is a mystery at the heart of Barack Obama's Dreams For My Father, one thing is not left a mystery, the fact that Barack Obama organized his life on the ideals given to him by his Kenyan father. Obama tells us, "All of my life, I carried a single image of my father, one that I .. tried to take as my own." (p. 220) And what was that image? It was "the father of my dreams, the man in my mother's stories, full of high-blown ideals .." (p. 278) What is more, Obama tells us that, "It was into my father's image .. that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." And also that, "I did feel that there was something to prove .. to my father" in his efforts at political organizing. (p. 230)
So we know that his father's ideals were a driving force in his life, but the one thing that Obama does not give us are the contents of those ideals. The closest he comes is when he tells us that his father lost his position in the government when he came into conflict with Jomo Kenyatte, the President of Kenya sometime in the mid 1960s; when he tells us that his father was imprisoned for his political views by the government just prior to the end of colonial rule; and when he tells us that the attributes of W. E. B. DuBois, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela were the ones he associated with his father and also the ones that he sought to instill in himself. (p. 220) This last group is a hodge podge, perhaps concealing as much as it reveals, in that it contains a socialist black nationalist, a Muslim black nationalist, a civil rights leader, and (at the time indicated in the memoir) an imprisoned armed revolutionary
PrestoPundit acquired a copy of a seminal paper authored by Barack Obama (the elder) for East Africa Journal. In it, Obama criticizes a pro-Western policy for being insufficiently socialist. The 1965 paper -- entitled Problems Facing Our Socialism -- advocated an almost unbelievable agenda for Kenya.
1) Communal ownership of land including forced confiscation of privately held land.
2) Nationalization of "European" and "Asian" businesses with control handed over to the "indigenous" population.
3) Tax rates up to 100%: "...there is no limit to taxation if the benefits derived from public services by society measure up to the cost in taxation which they have to pay..."
4) A rejection of socialism for communism.
5) Price controls to ensure the middle class can afford to tour Kenya.
6) Government-owned and -operated "model farms" similar to those of the Soviet Union.
And how does Barack Obama the younger deal with his father's communist leanings in his book? He obfuscates and disguises them -- as well he should.
Obama's site: "Jews owe Africa and Africans everything they have today because if Africa did not shelter them when they were homeless and starving"
It's getting ugly in Obamaland. Talking about those ungrateful Jews and all that the Black people did for them. Well, those ungrateful Jews have a chance to make up for their wretched selfishness and indebtness to the Black people..... no, no, not by going down south and getting murdered for having the audacity of hope to fight for the civil rights of Black folks down south ............ no, they can make it up to Black Americans by voting for Baraka Hussein. Here's a "gem" from a blog on the Barack Obama web site.
OBAMANISM IS THE CURE FOR CLINTONITIS AND MIDDLE EAST STRIFE
Obamanism is the cure for Clintonitis that has devastated America and I hope Jews all over US rally around Obama and support him to win both the nomination and the Presidency because after he wins, he would help the Jews and Israel as well as settle the Middle East problems.
However, if Jews betray Obama and he loses, Africans worldwide would consider it a betrayal to the whole African people and will never forgive world Jewry.
In retaliation, (eye for eye, remember!) Africa would consider expelling all Jews from Africa who have been mining African Gold and Diamond and enriching themselves for many centuries.
It was African gold and diamond that built international finance, trade and banking that the Jews (Rothschild, Warbug, Rockefeller and others) dominate.
It seems to me that Obama interprets patriotism not that differently from Joe Klein--or perhaps Klein has created a new definition of patriotism that better suits this particular Democratic candidate. Either way, in this view patriotism hinges on a general optimism about the power of government to fix all of our problems. From a speech Obama gave in Montana this weekend:
That is the country I love. That is the promise of America. And in this election, if we can shed our cynicism and our doubts and our fears; if we remember that we rise or fall as one people, and that we can meet any challenge that comes our way if we meet it together, then I believe that this generation will do its part to perfect our union and keep our promise alive in the twenty-first century. Good night, God Bless, and as they say here in Butte, "tap `er light."
Again, Obama believes government can do anything...except secure victory, stability, and democracy in Iraq. To believe that the government could do that is false patriotism, like wearing a lapel pin.
Hope is useless by itself. You need some means of getting to where you want to go
And hoping that a bus will come along will not make it arrive
In the week prior to opening his presidential bid, Senator Barack Obama was quoted in the New York Times:
Mr. Obama went so far as to tell Democrats in Washington last week that voters were looking for a message of hope, and disparaged the notion that a presidential campaign should be built on a foundation of position papers or details. "There are those who don't believe in talking about hope: they say, well, we want specifics, we want details, we want white papers, we want plans," he said then. "We've had a lot of plans, Democrats. What we've had is a shortage of hope."
Yet, what is Senator Obama selling? If hope is wanting something that can be had, events that will turn out for the best or a wish for something with an expectation of fulfillment, how does hope turn to reality?
Blogger extraordinaire Pat Santy writing in Dr. Sanity and regarding the many Democrats that have abandoned Hillary for Obama stated: ".the left, who willy-nilly have jumped the Clinton ship and climbed aboard the Obama `vessel of hope'." [emphasis added] And so have hundreds of thousands of non Hillary enthused Democrats, independents and not a few Republicans. all looking for "hope" and thinking they have found it.
And, maybe they have! From perhaps a psychoanalytic point of view, hope can be said to deliver someone from feelings of hopelessness or helplessness. Certainly there are hundreds of thousands citizens that feel hopeless and/or helpless given the pounding the MSM has made on the economy raising specters of recession, even to the point that congressmen and a certain president, who ought to know better, believe that pumping billions of dollars into the economy, borrowed from the future, and the reckless spending of congress (both Republican and Democrat led congresses) that created much of the problem in the first place.
Eric Erikson, a psychoanalyst famed for his disagreements with Freud and his psycho-social developmental model, defines hope as: ".the belief that even when things are not going well, they will work out in the end." Things will work out in the end! Well, one may legitimately ask how will they work out. Is hope shorn of work towards a goal, or is hope something that is only based on wish fulfillment? Can hope, in and of itself, create a new reality and change the current one?
I would guess not. In fact, I would state that given nothing but hope, than nothing will change. Obama is in fact counting on those that do not understand what he is saying will be in his corner come election time. There are those who might go further and state that his entire campaign is based on the "hope" that he can convince enough people that words, uttered in the most sincere and uplifting manner will overcome a dearth of experience.
So, what is a voter supposed to, who is the average voter supposed to back? I suggest that it is the candidate that tells you things you don't want to hear, the one that tells you that you are going to have to roll up your sleeves and make some effort to change things. We haven't elected a U.S. senator for president with no experience at the national (presidential or vice-presidential) level since John Kennedy, and now, regardless of who wins the Democratic race, the next president will be a U.S. senator baring some unforeseen candidate entering the race and capturing the imagination of the public.
Kennedy sold hope, but he also stated that work was necessary for the fulfillment of the promise of America. In his Inaugural Address he proclaimed: "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." He also stated:
" Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
Kennedy had it right, we must be prepared to "bear any burden, meet any hardship" and roll up our sleeves if we are to overcome the problems that currently beset our nation. And this cannot be done on the basis of hope alone.
Eli Sanders went to yesterday's second-round Democratic district caucus in Washington's 43rd. It's too early in the day for popcorn (no popcorn before Mass!), but this is just the sort of thing I hope to see at the convention: grouchy participants, "Hussein" oversensitivity, and boos for the Pledge of Allegiance. Sean Astin (yes, that Sean Astin) delivered Clinton's surrogate speech, trying to rally delegates to her camp. He stuck a foot in it when he referred to "Barack Hussein Obama," which the mostly pro-Obama crowd were not pleased about hearing.
I don't think anyone can be surprised--given that we are talking about a group of Obama supporters--that they were also less than enthusiastic about the Pledge of Allegiance:
There was some time to kill as multiple tallies of the delegates and alternates were done, and when the time-killer of taking audience questions had run its course and the idea of teling jokes had been nixed, someone suggested doing the Pledge of Allegiance to pass the time. (Are you listening, right-wing bloggers? This is going to get good.) [I'm a simple creature of simple pleasures -GM]
At the mere mention of doing the pledge there were groans and boos. Then, when the district chair put the idea of doing the Pledge of Allegiance up to a vote, it was overwhelmingly voted down. One might more accurately say the idea of pledging allegiance to the flag (of which there was only one in the room, by the way, on some delegate's hat) was shouted down.
Don't you think that they would have figured out that if they want their guy to win they're just going to have to fake it until November 4th?
Obama and capital gains: The economic ignoramus spouts again
Barack Obama recently released his tax records, and it was notable how little he and his wife appear to invest in the stock market. That may explain the Senator's odd belief that a significant hike in the capital gains tax rate won't matter to shareholders or harm the economy.
Or so Mr. Obama's replied to CNBC's Maria Bartiromo when she asked how much he'd increase the cap-gains tax, something he's said is necessary to restore "fairness" to the tax code. Thanks to the 2003 tax cuts, the top rate is currently 15%. "When I talk to people like Warren Buffett or others and I ask them, you know, what's - how much of a difference is it going to be if it's 20 or 25%, they say, look, if it's within that range then it's not going to distort, I think, economic decision making," he said. He concluded that a higher rate would boost federal receipts, which would allow the government to redistribute "relief to middle class and working class families."
With apologies to economists Buffett and Obama, the history of this tax isn't on their side. The capital gains rate is crucial to investment decisions; higher rates make capital more expensive, dampening incentives to invest and reducing economic growth. John F. Kennedy understood this, as he proposed a capital gains tax cut. Bill Clinton joined with Republicans in 1997 to sign legislation lowering the rate to 20% from 28%.
Critics howled this would reduce tax revenues, and they howled when Republicans cut the rate to 15% in 2003. What followed in both cases was an enormous "unlocking" effect, as investors sold more stock and assets to take advantage of the lower rate. Capital gains realizations soared to an estimated $729 billion in 2006 from $269 billion in 2002. This goosed Treasury receipts from capital gains, to an estimated $110 billion in 2006 from $49 billion in 2002.
Mr. Obama doesn't have to guess what sort of "distortion" would come from significantly raising the cap-gains rate. In 1986, the tax rate jumped to 28% from 20%, a 40% increase. Tax revenues spiked briefly in anticipation of the hike (as investors moved to cash in at the lower rate), then dropped precipitously. Four years later, in 1990, the federal government was still taking in 13% less revenue at the 28% rate than it did in 1985 at the 20% rate.
As for Mr. Obama's implication that capital gains remain the privilege of the wealthy well, that's yesterday. In recent decades, the U.S. has become a shareholder society, and average Americans increasingly rely on investment income to save for retirement or even to pay bills. In 2005, according to the most recent data from the Internal Revenue Service, 8.5 million households paid taxes on capital gains. A hefty 47% of those tax filers reported income of less than $50,000, while 79% had income under $100,000. Keep in mind that capital gains themselves count as income and often are a one-time windfall from the sale of a small business or long-held stock. These working families would suffer a double whammy, both with a higher tax rate and lower stock prices - because financial markets factor higher taxes on stock profits into lower stock valuations.
With the economy weak, this is an especially poor time to be talking up tax hikes. A higher rate, and its devaluing of U.S. assets, would hammer U.S. competitiveness, making it harder to attract global capital. America is increasingly isolated in taxing capital gains. Many industrialized competitors publicize a lower rate, and many (Germany, Switzerland, Austria, New Zealand) have no levy at all.
If Mr. Obama really wants to lift the economy - and those middle-class American shareholders - he'd advocate cutting the rate, or indexing it to inflation so investors aren't taxed on phantom gains. That would violate the Democratic left's faith that tax rates don't matter to growth and that raising taxes on capital and "the rich" is good politics. We doubt members of America's politically astute investor class agree.
Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York catches her opponent in a lie. And she is right:
"We both voted against early deadlines. I actually starting criticizing the war in Iraq before he did. So I'm well aware that his entire campaign is premised on a speech he made in 2002 and I give him credit for making that speech, but that was not a decision. And I think it is fair to say as he said in 2004 he wasn't sure how he would have actually voted had he had to cast a vote. I think we ought to be as fair and accurate in comparing apples to apples about various records and decisions."
Indeed, Obama was for the war after he was against the war but before he was against the war again. Or something like that. From my March 22 column:
"As Ed Lasky of the American Thinker pointed out, while Obama opposed the war resolution in 2002, in 2004, he wrote: "I began to suspect that I might have been wrong [about the war]." And in July 2004, Obama told the Chicago Tribune: "There's not that much difference between my position [on the war] and George Bush's position at this stage."
It is pretty bad when a congenital liar calls you out like that. I guess just like it takes a thief to catch a thief, it takes a Clinton to catch an Obama.
The normally brilliant team at Hot Air seems inclined to give Obama a pass for indulging in the ocassional cigarette and then lying about it:
What right does a presidential candidate have to lie to a nosy reporter about something that's totally irrelevant to the election and therefore none of his business?
Well, if it were totally irrelevant to the campaign I probably couldn't find "Quit Smoking With Obama" at his campaign website. If it were totally irrelevant to his campaign I probably couldn't find him trying to score "family guy" points on the talk-show circuit (here with Ellen D on YouTube). And if it were totally irrelevant to his campaign I probably couldn't find a spate of stories from early 2007 in which Obama made a big deal out of this in a bit of pre-announcement publicity.
Look, Obama is performing delivering a valuable public health service by getting up in the face of Jeremiah Wright's message that cigarettes were invented by Virginia plantation owners in order to enslave black men. But if he is lying to us and to his wife, not to mention whiny reporters, well, that is modestly newsworthy.
When criticized for being soft or wrong on national security, Democrats routinely respond that their patriotism is being questioned. In fact, they're rarely if ever accused of being unpatriotic. But to the paranoid, that's immaterial. John Kerry went so far in 2004 as to insist he knew how the Bush crowd would respond even before he delivered a foreign policy speech. "I know what the Bush apologists will say to this--that it is unpatriotic to question, to criticize, or to call for change," he said. Of course, Bush and his allies said nothing of the kind.
There's method in the Democrats' paranoia. They've figured out how to use it to their advantage: Blame someone for calling you unpatriotic, and you may blow off their legitimate criticism, even stigmatize them as smear artists, while you're seen responding more in sorrow than in anger.
Now Barack Obama has picked up the I'm-being-called-unpatriotic theme. Practically no one has questioned his patriotism, aside from a few bloggers and a stray TV commentator or two. Nonetheless, he declared after the Texas and Ohio primaries, "In this campaign, we will not stand for the politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon." A few weeks later, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe chimed in: "Questioning patriotism is something we don't think has a place in this campaign."
Obama has taken what he calls "the patriotism thing" a step further. He's suggested the patriotism of his political opponents pales in contrast with his "true patriotism." At least that was how he explained his decision to remove his American flag lapel pin. "You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin," Obama said. "Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest." In effect, Obama turned the patriotism issue on its head. If anyone was unpatriotic, it was his critics and foes, certainly not Obama.
The patriotism issue has also spread to liberal commentators. Kirsten Powers, writing in the New York Post, offered the conventional (paranoid) wisdom among Democrats. Insinuations of a lack of patriotism are what "the Obama campaign can expect in the future." It's the Republican way of campaigning.
There's a difference--a significant one--between being falsely called unpatriotic and having what Joe Klein of Time defines as a problem with patriotism. "Patriotism is, sadly, a crucial challenge for Obama now," Klein wrote. Why? Not because of Republicans, but because the Jeremiah Wright flap and Michelle Obama's comments and the flag pin incident "have fed a scurrilous undercurrent of doubt about whether he is 'American' enough." Absent the "scurrilous undercurrent" bit and Klein's silly notion that the "liberal message" is more patriotic than the "innate" pessimism of conservatism, Klein is on to something.
And it's not just Obama who has a problem with patriotism. "This is a chronic disease among Democrats, who tend to talk more about what's wrong with America than what's right," Klein said. Blaming Republicans is not the cure, especially since you've got to be paranoid to believe they're the problem in the first place.
Senator Obama's association with Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ has easily become the campaign's biggest vulnerability. The famous fiery indictments and conspiracy theories dealt from the pulpit to a nation watching YouTube are being pinned and repinned to Obama, as he continues to try and brush them off.
Now there's a new and even uglier twist, if you can believe that. Obama is being linked to the radical group International Solidarity Movement (ISM), as reported in the Canada Free Press on Tuesday. Ali Abunimah, Vice President of the Arab American Action Network in Chicago and co-founder of the Electronic Intifada, a website of the ISM, posted an article on Monday in which he outlines why he believes Obama is really very in tune with the Reverend's views on Israel. He even quotes Obama's remarks to a group of Jewish leaders in Cleveland to comfort his fellow anti-Semites that "Obama implicitly admitted that Wright's views were rooted in opposition to Israel's deep ties to apartheid South Africa, and thus entirely reasonable." Read on.
Of course, you may think it is unfair to link the Senator and the ISM activist, but Kaplan lays out the extensive connections. Just to be clear what we are talking about, the ISM is a movement comprised of Neo-nazis, anarchists, Arab militants, communists, and other radical elements originally set up to support the PLO in efforts toward the ultimate destruction of Israel. In Lee Kaplan's words, they are "a subversive organization out to destroy western-style democracies." In this excerpt from the article Kaplan adds:
"Ali Abunimah is more than just some 'Palestinian activist' based in Chicago, the same location as Reverend Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ. He is, in fact, one of the founders of the fiercely anti-Semitic ISM Arab group Al Awda, the Palestine Right of Return Coalition. Abunimah is a high level international leader of the ISM for the Arabs who travels extensively between Chicago, Europe and Ramallah."
Abunimah cites a past working relationship with the Senator in his wink-wink, nudge-nudge to anti-Semites, but Kaplan points out that relationship is not the only connection between the two.
"Obama's association with the ISM through his church and lobbying in Chicago goes even deeper than just his past links to Al Awda and Ali Abunimah. His pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and the Trinity Union Church of Christ in Chicago, are both equally involved with the ISM."
"Since 2001, the ISM has been tasked by the PLO and other Arab irredentist groups with getting new generations of American college kids to consider democratic Israel as somehow a violator of human rights, all the while as the Palestinian Arabs who practice open anti-Semitism, honor killings, and the murders of their own people as well as Jews, as commendable practices."
"Now, it has become the ISM's time to deconstruct religious dogma of Israel belonging to the Jews as is preached in US churches and to increase the number of black churches in America that are working in "solidarity" with this program. Jeremiah Wright's church is one of them. Even though the national synod of the United Church for Christ rescinded a boycott and divestment plan against Israel, a wing of the UCC church keeps trying to get it reinstated. That wing includes Reverend Wright's Trinity UCC Church in Chicago."
Intifada is rebellion based on the breeding of hatred and the propagating of low-level terrorism. Israel Matzav notes that the ISM has been linked to armed support of Palestinian terrorists, and Gateway Pundit points out that they are even linked to the despicable Easter Sunday "protest" two weeks ago.
The picture of anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and zealous conspiracy-theorizing evident from the pulpit and bulletins of Barack Obama's self-proclaimed religious inspiration and spiritual guide is a gruesome tableau. It's a tableau that Barack can't bring himself to disown, and which he believes is so integral to the black community as to be indistinguishable. "I can no more disown [Reverend Wright] than I can disown the black community," he professes.
Intifada is rebellion, and Senator Obama has a cozy twenty-year relationship with the rebellious Wright and other intifada bedfellows. The question is whether the American voters are ready to let that relationship become their own.
Margaret Carlson contends that Barack Obama has made two big errors in his campaign. One was failing to recognize the impact of Rev. Wright's incendiary language The other was his failure at bowling. She makes a good case that, in working-class, primarily white suburbs, Obama "is having a hard time passing himself off as ordinary folk" and his 37 (a really abysmal score) just made it worse.
One might argue, as many of us here have, that his association with Wright was more than a failure to anticipate public reaction: it was a moral and intellectual failing. (Juan Williams, as he has before, explains this in today's Wall Street Journal with searing clarity.) Yet she has a point: does Obama lack a "feel" for ordinary voters' sensibilities?
Well, of course. His life experience is utterly unlike the average voter's. On his journey from Hawaii to Indonesia to Hawaii to Harvard, he probably ran into a lot of critiques of
ey a
nd sold by the online Obama store run by his campaign. The entire run of the Fairey posters has sold out, so popular are they among the leftist cognoscenti whose aesthetic tastes run to nostalgic socialist realism.
Of the Fairey posters, the "Progress" poster is the most interesting. "Progressive" is, of course, the favorite euphemism for the hard left today.
