Barack Obama ManiaWASHINGTON POST If Democrats ignore health-care polls, midterms will be costly By Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen Friday, March 12, 2010 Excerpts: In "The March of Folly," Barbara Tuchman asked, "Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests?" Her assessment of self-deception -- "acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts" -- captures the conditions that are gripping President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership as they renew their efforts to enact health-care reform. Their blind persistence in the face of reality threatens to turn this political march of folly into an electoral rout in November. In the wake of the stinging loss in Massachusetts, there was a moment when the president and the Democratic leadership seemed to realize the reality of the health-care situation. Yet like some seductive siren of Greek mythology, the lure of health-care reform has arisen again. As pollsters to the past two Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, respectively, we feel compelled to challenge the myths that seem to be prevailing in the political discourse and to once again urge a change in course before it is too late. At stake is the kind of mainstream, common-sense Democratic Party that we believe is crucial to the success of the American enterprise. Full article By Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen Washington Post BARACK OBAMA IS NOW SELLING JUDGESHIPS TO GET HEALTH CARE VOTES--MAKES THE BROTHER OF AN UNDECIDED HOUSE DEMOCRAT, A JUDGE Read MoreJohn McCormack Weekly Standard Rasmussen Polling Barack Obama's Ethics---VIDEO Investor's Business Daily Rebuttals To Ryan? We're Still Waiting Posted 02/26/2010 07:02 PM ET Rep. Paul Ryan's pointed questions went conspicuously unanswered at the big health care summit. Excerpts: Politics: Many viewers were wowed by the president's performance at the health care summit, his command of facts and ability to rebut every point the Republicans made. We must have been watching another channel. 'Obama dominates the room at health care summit" was the headline on a Reuters dispatch that found the president "always in command not only of the room but also the most intricate policy details, as he personally rebutted every point he disagreed with." In a Washington Post column titled "Professor Obama schools lawmakers on health care reform," Dana Milbank marveled at how the president "controlled the microphone and the clock, (using) both skillfully to limit the Republicans' time, to rebut their arguments and to always have the last word." Read More Investor's Business Daily 1ST Anniversary of So-Called Stimulus Homeless Soars Under Barack Obama As He Brags About How Much The Stimulus Package Has Worked Feb 16 02:53 PM US/Eastern By FRANK ELTMAN Associated Press Writer Excerpts: ROOSEVELT, N.Y. (AP) - Homelessness in rural and suburban America is straining shelters this winter as the economy founders and joblessness hovers near double digits—a "perfect storm of foreclosures, unemployment and a shortage of affordable housing," in one official's eyes. "We are seeing many families that never before sought government help," said Greg Blass, commissioner of Social Services in Suffolk County on eastern Long Island. "We see a spiral in food stamps, heating assistance applications; Medicaid is skyrocketing," Blass added. "It is truly reaching a stage of being alarming." With absolute power, Team Obama grows stupid By: Michael Barone February 10, 2010 How could such smart people do so many stupid things? That question, or variations on it, is being asked in Washington and around the country about the Obama administration. The same people who directed the campaign that defeated Hillary Clinton and routed John McCain, a campaign that raised far more money and attracted far more volunteers than any before it, have within a year come up with a legislative program that is crashing in ruins and that, to judge from recent polls, has left the Democratic party weaker than I have seen it in almost 50 years of closely following politics. The 2008 campaign was an impressive achievement. So, in a negative way, is the 2009 legislative program that has left the Democrats in such woeful shape in 2010. Some in Washington say that the problem is that Barack Obama has chosen to rely on his campaign staff rather than the wise old heads in Washington. But Obama and his team have had the benefit of advice from those wise old heads and from the smartest political strategist the Democratic party has produced in the past half-century, Bill Clinton. Read more at the Washington Examiner: Full article Michael Barone Washington Examiner Obama, Democrats, Hit Lowest Approval Numbers Yet Hotline On Call February 8, 2010 Excerpts: Independent voters see Pres. Obama in a negative light by a nearly 2-1 margin, according to a new Marist College survey, while almost half of voters say he has failed to meet their expectations. The poll, conducted Feb. 1-3, showed just 44% of registered voters approving of Obama's job as president. 47% disapprove. But among indie voters, Obama's approval rating sits at a terrible 29%, while his disapproval rating is at 57%. Obama's 44% job approval rating is the lowest he has scored in any non-internet poll since moving into the WH, according to a review of data compiled by Pollster.com. And while GOPers strive to avoid attacking Obama personally, for fear of offending voters who see him in a favorable light personally, even that aura of invincibility is wearing off. Independent voters view Obama negatively, too, by a 39% favorable to 52% unfavorable margin. All registered voters still see Obama favorably by a 50%-44% margin, but that's down 5 points in just 2 months. Full article Hotline On Call O's 'blank screen' PREZ. OBAMA'S FIRST YEAR NUMBERS First Year nos. AP Why he's losing credibility By LYNN FORESTER DE ROTHSCHILD Last Updated: 4:37 AM, October 17, 2009 Posted: 12:14 AM, October 17, 2009 Excerpts: IN "The Audacity of Hope," Barack Obama described himself as "a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." This is a powerful tool in elections and explains why liberals, moderates, Democrats, Independents and Republicans joined together to give him 53 percent of the vote last November. Since his election, this "blank screen" has been an asset, allowing the new president to maintain an illusion of progress, even as he has avoided the hard choices necessary for progress. But, as Americans ponder the unavoidable consequences of the president's policies -- particularly health-care reform -- the illusion is wearing thin. The government has spent $3 trillion to prop up Wall Street and take over the big insurance and auto industries -- yet the middle class and small businesses continue to suffer. Fifteen million workers remain without jobs; 32 percent of Americans' homes are worth less than their mortgages -- and a whopping 61 percent of Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck.
For these reasons, the American people have begun to judge President Obama on his record, not his rhetoric; on his policies, not his narrative -- and on his ability to govern, not on his campaign machine. The cool and reasonable candidate who gave hope to his voters, who promised to rise above the ugly politics and big money of Washington, is turning out to be as conventional a politician as any other. Indeed, as he runs a permanent campaign from the White House, he is proving to be more committed to protecting the vested interests of his party than standing up for actual change. Full article Lynn Forester DE Rothschild NEW YORK POST  Custom Search THE NATION. The Beat Whiner-in-Chief posted by John Nichols on 10/12/2009 @ 8:08pm Excerpts: The Obama administration really needs to get over itself. First, the president and his aides go to war with Fox News because the network maintains a generally anti-Obama slant. Then, an anonymous administration aide attacks bloggers for failing to maintain a sufficiently pro-Obama slant. These are not disconnected developments. An administration that won the White House with an almost always on-message campaign and generally friendly coverage from old and new media is now frustrated by its inability to control the debate and get the coverage it wants. Full article John Nichols The Nation President Obama has directed the United States Postal Service to REMEMBER and HONOR the EID MUSLIM holiday season with a new commemorative 42 Cent First Class Holiday Postage Stamp.. USPS New 42-Cent Stamp!!! Celebrates Muslim holiday. If there is only ONE thing you forward today... let it be this!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of Pan Am Flight 103! REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993! REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon ! REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the military Barracks in Saudi Arabia ! REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the American Embassies in Africa ! REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the USS COLE! REMEMBER the MUSLIM attack on 9/11/2001 ! REMEMBER all the AMERICAN lives that were lost in those vicious MUSLIM attacks! Now President Obama has directed the United States Postal Service to REMEMBER and HONOR the EID MUSLIM holiday season with a new commemorative 42 Cent First Class Holiday Postage Stamp.. REMEMBER to adamantly & vocally BOYCOTT this stamp, when you are purchasing your stamps at the post office. All you have to say is "No thank you, I do not want that Muslim Stamp on my letters!"
To use this stamp would be a slap in the face to all those AMERICANS who died at the hands of those whom this stamp honors. REMEMBER ~Pass this along to every Patriotic AMERICAN that you know and let's get the word out !!! SOCIALIZED MEDICINE The Horrors of Canada's Health (Eventual) Care--Video
Custom Search "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," BARACK OBAMA AUGUST 2008 Custom Search A Rousing Ovation For This Bunch of Baloney The Limits of Charisma Mr. President, please stay off TV. Published Sep 26, 2009 Excerpts: If ubiquity were the measure of a presidency, Barack Obama would already be grinning at us from Mount Rushmore. But of course it is not. Despite his many words and television appearances, our elegant and eloquent president remains more an emblem of change than an agent of it. He's a man with an endless, worthy to-do list—health care, climate change, bank reform, global capital regulation, AfPak, the Middle East, you name it—but, as yet, no boxes checked "done." This is a problem that style will not fix. Unless Obama learns to rely less on charm, rhetoric, and good intentions and more on picking his spots and winning in political combat, he's not going to be reelected, let alone enshrined in South Dakota. The president's problem isn't that he is too visible; it's the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words "I" and "my." (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story. There is only so much political mileage that can still be had by his reminding the world that he is not George W. Bush. It was the winning theme of the 2008 campaign, but that race ended nearly a year ago. The ex-president is now more ex than ever, yet the current president, who vowed to look forward, is still reaching back to Bush as bogeyman. Full article Howard Fineman Newsweek WASHINGTON TIMES He's spending your future After the president taxes the rich, you're next By Mark Steyn (Contact) Monday, August 24, 2009 Excerpts: The other day, wending my way from Woodsville, N.H., 40 miles south to Plymouth, I came across several "stimulus" projects -- every few miles, and heralded by a two-tone sign, a hitherto rare sight on Granite State highways. The orange strip at the top said, "Putting America Back to Work" with a silhouette of a man with a shovel, and the green part underneath informed readers that what they were about to see was a "Project Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act." There then followed a few yards of desolate, abandoned scarified pavement, followed by an "End of Road Works" sign, until the next "stimulus" project a couple of bends down a quiet rural blacktop. I don't know why one of the least fiscally debauched states in the union needs funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to repair random stretches of highway, especially stretches that were perfectly fine until someone came along to dig them up in order to access "stimulus" funding. I would have asked one of those men with a shovel, as depicted on the sign. But there were none to be found. Usually in New Hampshire, they dig up the road and regrade or repave it while flagmen stand guard until it's all done. But here a certain federal torpor seemed to hang in the eerie silence. Still, what do I know? Evidently, this has stimulated the sign-making industry, putting America back to work by putting up "Putting America Back to Work" signs every 200 yards across the land. At $300 a pop, the signage alone should be enough to launch an era of unparalleled prosperity, assuming America's gilded sign magnates don't spend their newfound wealth on Bahamian vacations and European imports. Full article Mark Steyn Washington Times REAL CLEAR POLITICS August 22, 2009 Obama's Health Care Whopper is Bigger By Robert Robb Excerpts: Health care reform supporters claim they are losing public support because of lies and distortions told by opponents designed to scare people. There's some of that going on. But the most consequential misrepresentation in the health care debate is actually being told by President Barack Obama and other supporters. The lie supporters most resent, and with good reason, is that the health care reform bills have death panels or provisions to encourage euthanasia for the old and infirmed. Instead, there was a provision to provide end-of-life counseling services. Full article Robert Robb Real Clear Politics Obama Snares Palin, Media in Wide Blame-Game Net: Caroline Baum BLOOMBERG Commentary by Caroline Baum Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) Excerpts: When the political winds shift -- when a party is voted out of power or a policy is panned by the public -- Washington turns to its favorite pastime: the blame game. And so it is with President Barack Obama, who tripped on his sprint to the health-care-reform finish line. Voters, it seems, want to understand a little more about what ObamaCare will mean for them, what it will do to the doctor-patient relationship, and what it will cost future generations in higher taxes and, yes, rationed supply. Rather than examine the public’s concerns, the plans’ inconsistencies or the sheer irresponsibility of trying to ram something this big and complicated through Congress without a small-scale trial, the Obama administration is pointing fingers. Lots of them. Most of the targets are just plain silly. National Review Online NRO Sunday, August 16, 2009 Obama’s Health-Care Mess Victor Davis Hanson Excerpts: Ironies abound in the health-care debate. Bush was pilloried by the Obamanians for (1) not planning for the postwar occupation of Iraq; and (2) not being able to articulate the ends and means of the administration’s war. Yet in the hubris of high ratings, Obama apparently felt that he neither had to present a comprehensive finished blueprint of health-care reform, nor that he or his associates should have to sum it up succinctly and clearly. The result is that most Americans not only do not know what the administration plan is, but sense that their president does not either. Health care is stalled and insidiously undermining the presidency of Obama precisely because the public senses he has not leveled with the American people. Of the uninsured, how many millions are young people who feel no need right now to buy insurance, how many million are illegal aliens, how many millions chose to use their optional income for things other than a low-cost catastrophic health plan, how many millions still find care outside the insurance system? Nor do most Americans feel their system is broken. They worry about redundant care, frivolous procedures, and lawsuits, but sense that all in all it can be improved rather than scrapped. They know that Americans with cancer and heart disease survive longer than anywhere else due to superior American care. And they know that longevity is influenced by factors well beyond medical care. The president just as easily could tackle the epidemic of homicides and youth violence, as well as automobile accidents, if his concern really were to ensure that Americans on average lived longer than any others. Full article Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online REAL CLEAR POLITICS July 20, 2009 The Squandered Stimulus By Robert Samuelson Excerpts: WASHINGTON -- It's not surprising that the much-ballyhooed "economic stimulus" hasn't done much stimulating. President Obama and his aides argue that it's too early to expect startling results. They have a point. A $14 trillion economy won't revive in a nanosecond. But the defects of the $787 billion package go deeper and won't be cured by time. The program crafted by Obama and the Democratic Congress wasn't engineered to maximize its economic impact. It was mostly a political exercise, designed to claim credit for any recovery, shower benefits on favored constituencies and signal support for fashionable causes. As a result, much of the stimulus' potential benefit has been squandered. Spending increases and tax cuts are sprinkled in too many places and, all too often, are too delayed to do much good now. Nor do they concentrate on reviving the economy's most depressed sectors: state and local governments; the housing and auto industries. None of this means the stimulus won't help or precludes a recovery, but the help will be weaker than necessary. How much is hard to determine. By year-end 2010, the package will result in 2.5 million jobs, predicts Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com. But as Zandi notes, all estimates are crude. They involve comparing economic simulations with and without the provisions of the stimulus. The economic models must make assumptions about how fast consumers spend tax cuts, how quickly construction projects begin and much more. Full article Robert Samuelson Real Clear Politics FORBES.COM Uncommon Sense Obama's Top Five Health Care Lies Shikha Dalmia, 07.01.09, 12:01 AM EDT TonySopranoCare. Excerpts: President Barack Obama walked into the Oval Office with a veritable halo over his head. In the eyes of his backers, he could say or do no wrong because he had evidently descended directly from heaven to return celestial order to our fallen world. Oprah declared his tongue to be "dipped in the unvarnished truth." Newsweek editor Evan Thomas averred that Obama "stands above the country and above the world as a sort of a God." But when it comes to health care reform, with every passing day, Obama seems less God and more demagogue, uttering not transcendental truths, but bald-faced lies. Here are the top five lies that His Awesomeness has told--the first two for no reason other than to get elected and the next three to sell socialized medicine to a wary nation. Lie One: No one will be compelled to buy coverage. During the campaign, Obama insisted that he would not resort to an individual mandate to achieve universal coverage. In fact, he repeatedly ripped Hillary Clinton's plan for proposing one. "To force people to buy coverage," he insisted, "you've got to have a very harsh penalty." What will this penalty be, he demanded? "Are you going to garnish their wages?" he asked Hillary in one debate. Full article Forbes.Com Lying and Spinning Has Been Rampant Regarding The Cap & Tax bill. Added To This Enormous Deceit Comes The Administration's Cover Up Of This Destructive Legislation POWER LINE Obama's EPA Quashes Climate Change Science June 28, 2009 Posted by John (Hinderaker) at 7:28 AM The Competitive Enterprise Institute has obtained an EPA study of the "endangerment" to human well-being ostensibly caused by carbon dioxide emissions, together with a set of EPA emails indicating that the study, which concludes that carbon dioxide is not a significant cause of climate change, was suppressed by the EPA for political reasons. You can read the comments that the CEI submitted to the EPA on EPA's proposed endangerment finding here, along with the emails. The censored report, by Alan Carlin and John Davidson, is here. In their report, Carlin and Davidson point out that the EPA has not done its own evaluation of the global warming theory. Rather, it has relied on analyses by others, mostly the U.N.'s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. That report, however, was a political document, not a scientific one. Knowing that current scientific research disproves the anthropogenic global warming theory, the U.N. ordered that no recent research be considered in the IPCC report. This is a scandal of which too few people are aware. As science, the U.N. report is a bad joke. Carlin and Davidson go on to recite the scientific work that shows rather clearly that human activity is a minor factor, at most, in climate change--which has, of course, been occurring from the beginning of Earth's history to the present. Their report is a useful summary of the evidence for those who are not familiar with it. Full article John Hinderaker Power Line Blog Kiplinger.Com Obama Likely to Curb Tire Imports from China Don't expect the president to risk alienating organized labor, not when he needs its support for his congressional agenda.
By Andrew C. Schneider, Associate Editor, The Kiplinger Letter June 19, 2009 Organized labor is setting a test for Obama on trade with China. The United Steelworkers (USW) union is asking for protection against a surge of imported tires, calling for a reduction to the 2005 level of 21 million, down from 46 million in 2008, with an increase of no more than 5% per year through 2012. The union blames such imports for a string of plant closures since 2004, eliminating 7000 jobs. The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has already sided with the union. Odds are that it will ultimately advise the White House to impose safeguards and that U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk will concur. Obama will then have a 15-day window to accept or reject the recommendation. That window will close in mid-September -- at the tail end of the legislative calendar, when Obama will need union support for his agenda the most. "You're looking at a lot of political pressure after Labor Day," says Lewis E. Leibowitz, a partner with the law firm of Hogan & Hartson. Full article Andrew C. Schneider Kiplinger.Com ABC NEWS Study: 19 Ambassador Nominees Bundled $4.8 Million for President's Campaign, Inauguration June 19, 2009 10:49 AM Jake Tapper If all goes according to plan, Colorado businessman Vinai Thummalapally will soon be moving to a Central American tourist paradise to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Belize. Thummalapally was President Obama's roommate at Occidental College in 1979. As Barbara and Vinai Thummalapally described it to the Colorado Springs Gazette, they "used to party with (the president) in college. He was the guy who'd drink a few beers, maybe take a toke, stay up until 4 a.m. then excuse himself to crank out an 'A' paper due that morning. ... He was Barry, the mellow guy in the leather jacket, dragging on a cigarette." Of course, friendship only goes so far in the world of ambassadorships. It's Thummalapally's fundraising for -- not partying with -- President Obama that is more characteristic of his fellow ambassador nominees. The Coloradan bundled between $100,000 and $200,000 for the Obama campaign and has personally contributed $13,375 to Mr. Obama's various campaigns since 1999. And according to Federal Election Commission records, Thummalapally's "not employed/student" children Vishal and Sharanya donated $2,300 and $2,275 to the president. The information comes from the Center for Responsive Politics, which in a recent study concluded that the president's new nominees for ambassadorships to Belize, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Romania and Switzerland "brought in at least $1.1 million for Obama's presidential bid as bundlers, and at least another half-a-million as bundlers for his inauguration. To date, this brings the contribution histories of Obama's ambassador nominees to roughly $1.8 million in donations since 1989. The 19 ambassadors that CRP has found in our campaign contribution database, along with their spouses and children, have given more than $98,200 to Obama personally, bundled at least $3.4 million for his 2008 presidential run and bundled another $1.4 million for his inauguration." Full article Jake Tapper ABC News President Obama's Tyranny, Deception, Redistribution, Orwellian "Newspeak" Continues Washington Examiner.Com By: Byron York Chief Political Correspondent 06/14/09 7:00 PM EDT Gerald Walpin speaks: The inside story of the AmeriCorps firing Dispute that resulted in firing involved stimulus money ALSO: See UPDATE below; Grassley protests, demands information, including any role of First Lady NEW: House Republicans raise questions about Walpin firing AND: Will Democrats cover up the AmeriCorps Mess? AND: First Democrat questions Obama over AmeriCorps IG firing The White House's decision to fire AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin came amid politically-charged tensions inside the Corporation for National and Community Service, the organization that runs AmeriCorps. Top executives at the Corporation, Walpin explained in an hour-long interview Saturday, were unhappy with his investigation into the misuse of AmeriCorps funds by Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star who is now mayor of Sacramento, California and a prominent supporter of President Obama. Walpin's investigation also sparked conflict with the acting U.S. attorney in Sacramento amid fears that the probe -- which could have resulted in Johnson being barred from ever winning another federal grant -- might stand in the way of the city receiving its part of billions of dollars in federal stimulus money. After weeks of standoff, Walpin, whose position as inspector general is supposed to be protected from influence by political appointees and the White House, was fired. Walpin learned his fate Wednesday night. He was driving to an event in upstate New York when he received a call from Norman Eisen, the Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform. "He said, 'Mr. Walpin, the president wants me to tell you that he really appreciates your service, but it's time to move on,'" Walpin recalls. "Eisen said, 'You can either resign, or I'll tell you that we'll have to terminate you.'" At that moment, Walpin says, he had finished not only a report on the Sacramento probe but also an investigation into extensive misuse of AmeriCorps money by the City University of New York, which is AmeriCorps' biggest program. Walpin says he told Eisen that, given those two investigations, neither of which was well-received by top Corporation management, the timing of his firing seemed "very interesting." According to Walpin, Eisen said it was "pure coincidence." When Walpin asked for some time to consider what to do, Eisen gave him one hour. "Then he called back in 45 minutes and asked for my response," Walpin recalls. Full article Byron York Washington Examiner The author, Lou Pritchett, is a well-known public speaker who retired after a successful 36-year career as the VP World Sales for Proctor and Gamble. Lou Pritchett Foremost Leader in Change Management Lou Pritchett is one of corporate America's true living legends- an acclaimed author, dynamic teacher and one of the world's highest rated speakers. Successful corporate executives everywhere recognize him as the foremost leader in change management. Lou changed the way America does business by creating an audacious concept that came to be known as "partnering." Pritchett rose from soap salesman to Vice-President, Sales and Customer Development for Procter and Gamble and over the course of 36 years, made corporate history.
AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA Dear President Obama: You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me. You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you. You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.
You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American. You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll. You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.. You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others. You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail. You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad. You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector. You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.
You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves. You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world. You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations. You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals. You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people. You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient. You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do. You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view. You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing. Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years. Lou Pritchett THE ECONOMIST Piling on May 28th 2009 In his zeal to fix capitalism, Barack Obama must not stifle America’s dynamism DEFENDING American capitalism these days is a thankless job. Reckless lending by American financiers produced a crisis that has pushed the world into its worst recession since the 1930s. Tales of greed and fraud during the boom years abound. Small wonder that although Americans still prefer their government neat and local, they are a little less hostile to federal activism these days (see article). Such sentiments, last November, helped propel Barack Obama into the White House and his Democratic Party to bigger majorities in both houses of Congress. As Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, says, Mr Obama does not want to waste this crisis. He is using it to create a bigger role for government throughout the economy, from education and health care to banking and energy. He, and Congress, risk overreaching. America has experienced a failure of finance, not of capitalism. Its broader economy remains an astonishing Petri dish of creative destruction. Even in boom times, 15% of American jobs disappear each year. Their places are taken by new ones created by start-ups and expansions. This dynamism remains evident today, amid the most crushing economic conditions most businesses have encountered (see our special report in this issue). As icons of consumer excess like Starbucks and Neiman Marcus stumble, purveyors of frugality like Burger King and Wal-Mart prosper. Americans are adept at finding opportunity in adversity.Where government helps The American economy is dynamic because Americans like it that way, even now. A Pew poll released on May 21st found that 76% of Americans agree that the country’s strength is “mostly based on the success of American business” and 90% admire people who “get rich by working hard”. These proportions have changed little in two decades, and they tend to produce government policies that make America, according to the World Bank, consistently one of the best places to do business. Full article The Economist THE WASHINGTON TIMES Obama ducks promise to delay bill signings Complete bills not on Web for pledged 5 days By Stephen Dinan (Contact) | Tuesday, May 26, 2009 Excerpts: It seemed among the easiest of his transparency pledges and is entirely under his control, but President Obama is finagling his promise to post bills on the White House Web site for comment for five days before he signs them. Mr. Obama last week signed four bills, each just a day or two after Congress passed and sent it over to him. The White House said it posted links from its Web site to Congress' legislative Web site about a week before Mr. Obama signed the measures, but transparency advocates say that doesn't match the president's pledge to give Americans time to comment on the final version he is about to sign. Full article Stephen Dinan Washington Times Yahoo News! Telegraph.co.uk Posted By: Toby Harnden at May 21, 2009 at 23:21:41 [General] Posted in: Foreign Correspondents Excerpts: The spectacle of two duelling speeches with a mile of each other in downtown Washington was extraordinary. I was at the Cheney event and watched Obama's address on a big screen beside the empty lectern that the former veep stepped behind barely two minutes after his adversary had finished. So who won the fight? (it's hard to use anything other than a martial or pugilistic metaphor). Well, most people are on either one side or the other of this issue and I doubt today will have prompted many to switch sides. But the very fact that Obama chose to schedule his speech (Cheney's was announced first) at exactly the same time as the former veep was a sign of some weakness. Full article Toby Harnden Daily Telegraph UK White House: Budget deficit to top $1.8 trillion, 4 times 2008's record Andrew Taylor, Associated Press Writer Excerpts: WASHINGTON (AP) -- With the economy performing worse than hoped, revised White House figures point to deepening budget deficits, with the government borrowing almost 50 cents for every dollar it spends this year. The deficit for the current budget year will rise by $89 billion to above $1.8 trillion -- about four times the record set just last year. The unprecedented red ink flows from the deep recession, the Wall Street bailout, the cost of President Barack Obama's economic stimulus bill, as well as a structural imbalance between what the government spends and what it takes in. As the economy performs worse than expected, the deficit for the 2010 budget year beginning in October will worsen by $87 billion to $1.3 trillion, the White House says. The deterioration reflects lower tax revenues and higher costs for bank failures, unemployment benefits and food stamps. Full article Andrew Taylor AP Townhall.Com GOVERNMENT DECEPTION April 8, 2008 Excerpts: Most Americans accept the continuing attack on tobacco companies and smokers, but how do they feel about the massive government deception? In 1998, 46 state attorneys general and major tobacco companies signed the Master Settlement Agreement. The major tobacco companies agreed, among other things, to give states $240 billion over 25 years to provide for smoking cessation programs and cover the health costs associated with using their product. In return state attorneys general promised tobacco companies that they wouldn't sue them and would use their lawmaking power to protect the major tobacco companies from competition from small tobacco companies. Of the $80 billion extorted so far, states have spent about 30 percent on health, not all tobacco-related, and less than 6 percent on smoking cessation programs. Instead, state legislatures spent the bulk of their tobacco money for items such as museum building, tax relief, rainy-day funds and other expenditures having nothing to do with tobacco or health. The U.S. Congress' deception was, and continues to be, a major player in our financial meltdown. In congressional hearings, before the meltdown, on the soundness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Rep. Maxine Waters said, "Through nearly a dozen hearings, we were frankly trying to fix something that wasn't broke. Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and particularly at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Franklin Raines." Rep. Barney Frank, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, said, "These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing." Other congressmen gave similar assurances. Unfortunately for our nation, the forces pushing for "affordable" housing won the day and saddled us with today's unprecedented financial disaster. How stupid is it of us to ask those who brought us "affordable" housing to now turn their attention to bringing us "affordable" health care? Congressional deception about government finances means today's children will face a financial disaster that will make today's mess seem like a walk in the park. What's called the public debt stands at $11 trillion and growing. That pales in comparison to the federal government's unfunded liability -- obligations that are not covered by an asset of equal or greater value. Full article Walter E. Williams Townhall.Com WASHINGTON EXAMINER White House puts UAW ahead of property rights By: Michael Barone Senior Political Analyst 05/05/09 7:11 PM Excerpts: > Last Friday, the day after Chrysler filed for bankruptcy, I drove past the company’s headquarters on Interstate 75 in Auburn Hills, Mich. As I glanced at the pentagram logo I felt myself tearing up a little bit. Anyone who grew up in the Detroit area, as I did, can’t help but be sad to see a once great company fail. But my sadness turned to anger later when I heard what bankruptcy lawyer Tom Lauria said on a WJR talk show that morning. “One of my clients,” Lauria told host Frank Beckmann, “was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight.” OBAMA ADMINISTRATION MIAMI HERALD A lot of talk, too little clarity By GLENN GARVIN May 5, 2009 Full article Glenn Garvin Miami Herald Excerpts: You know what they say about monkeys, typewriters and Shakespeare. My question is, if you sat an infinite number of Joe Bidens at an infinite number of microphones, would any of them ever say anything that wasn't infinitely stupid? From his reminiscences about Franklin Roosevelt's famous White House television address on the day of the 1929 stock market crash (that is, three years before Roosevelt was president and 20 years before Americans bought TVs) to his campaign-rally exhortation to Missouri state Sen. Chuck Graham to ''Stand up, Chuck, let 'em see ya!'' (Graham's in a wheelchair), Biden's serial stupidities have become a national mortification. Listening to Biden's gaffeprompter running full speed ahead on the subject of swine flu last week -- he warned Americans that airplanes, subways and classrooms are microbiologic deathtraps, then promptly took a train to Delaware -- my first thought was, who in the world made this guy vice president? My second was, oh, right. And my third was, no wonder people are always calling Barack Obama the smartest guy in the room. At most White House meetings, it's probably literally -- if dishearteningly -- true. Consider Lisa Jackson, Obama's EPA boss, explaining market economics during an NPR interview. ``The president has said, and I couldn't agree more, that what this country needs is one single national roadmap that tells automakers, who are trying to become solvent again, what kind of car it is that they need to be designing and building for the American people.'' INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Not Much To Show For 'First 100 Days' By LARRY ELDER Posted Thursday, April 30, 2009 4:20 PM PT Full article INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Excerpts: Aided by an eagerly compliant, Democratic-controlled Congress, a sycophantic media and a bunch of squishy Republicans, President Obama has taken the country on a radical, mind-boggling leap into collectivism. Obama — to use one of his favorite expressions — doubled down, no, tripled and quadrupled down on Bush's "stimulus" and "rescue" packages, spending trillions of dollars to "bail out" financial institutions, too-big-to-fail businesses and even deficit-running states. Obama promises to use taxpayer money to rescue "responsible homeowners" — whatever that means — from foreclosure, thus artificially propping up prices that shut out renters who would love to buy now-much-cheaper houses. New York Post April 28, 2009 Full article NEW YORK POST Excerpts: 1. "Obama criticized pork barrel spending in the form of 'earmarks,' urging changes in the way that Congress adopts the spending proposals. Then he signed a spending bill that contains nearly 9,000 of them, some that members of his own staff shoved in last year when they were still members of Congress. 'Let there be no doubt, this piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing business, and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability,' Obama said." -- McClatchy, 3/11 2. "There is no doubt that we've been living beyond our means and we're going to have to make some adjustments." -- Obama during the campaign. 3. This year's budget deficit: $1.5 trillion. Cato Institute Issue #124 April 13, 2009 by Jim Harper Full article Jim Harper Cato Institute President Obama promised on the campaign trail that he would have the most transparent administration in history. As part of this commitment, he said that the public would have five days to look online and find out what was in the bills that came to his desk before he signed them. It was his first broken promise, and it's the promise that keeps on breaking. He has now signed 11 bills into law and gone, at best, 1 for 11 on his five-day posting promise. The Obama administration should deliver on the Web-enabled transparency he promised and post bills for five days before signing. To the thrill of technology and transparency advocates, candidate Obama promised sunlight before signing: "As president," his campaign website said, "Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days." But nine days after taking office, he signed a bill into law without posting it on Whitehouse.gov for five days. Since then, 10 more bills have become law over the president's signature, and only one has been posted online for five days — and that was for five days after it cleared Congress, not after formal presentment. Two bills have been held by the White House for five days before signing — but they weren't posted online! REAL CLEAR POLITICS Obama's Budget Follies By George Will April 23, 2009 Full article REAL CLEAR POLITICS Excerpts: WASHINGTON -- Monday morning the government braced for austerity, as the government understands that. Having sent Congress a $3.5 trillion budget, the president signaled in advance -- perhaps so his Cabinet members could steel themselves for the new asceticism -- that at the first meeting of his Cabinet he would direct the 15 heads of departments to find economies totaling $100 million, which is about 13 minutes of federal spending, and 0.0029 percent -- about a quarter of one-hundredth of 1 percent -- of $3.5 trillion. If the Department of Agriculture sliced the entire $100 million, that would be equal to 0.1 percent of its fiscal 2008 budget. The president, peering from beneath his green eyeshade at the secretary of agriculture, might remember this from The Washington Post of Jan. 24: "Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack ... learned that his new workplace contains a post office, fitness centers, cafeterias and 6,900 employees. But he remained uncertain about exactly how many employees he supervises nationwide. 'I asked how many employees work at USDA, and nobody really knows,' he said." President Obama has arrived at the point, where it has become a virtual certainty, that anything he tells the public about believing in free markets, or economic growth, or deficit reduction, will be followed by actions that take us toward a huge expansion of the nanny-state, more entitlements, more debt, and a larger deficit. His words suggest solutions to these problems; his actions are a cruel deception in the opposite direction. Are There Any Remaining Issues, Free Of Obama's Deceit? TODAY'S DECEPTIONS WHAT HE SAYS: He Will Go Line by Line Through Every Federal Agency To Cut Out Waste WHAT HE DOES In just days, he increased the budget 22%, 10 times the projected rate of inflation for the entire year. Signs off on the upcoming budget of $3.7 trillion, then makes a great big deal of shaving $100 million dollars off of certain parts of it. If the breadwinner of a family of 5 making $100,000 a year, gets laid off in this economy and the plan is for each family member to cut back proportionately, the equivalent savings to the Obama plan, applied to each family member's reduction would be $2.70, for the entire year. So were supposed to be taken in by government spending increases astoundingly higher than the country has ever see, a huge expansion of government power and reach and be taken in by this measly amount of savings, even if it actually happens, which I doubt. It might cost the Democrat Party 1 vote, somewhere down the line. The president continues to think his deceit is not transparent.
TODAY'S DECEPTIONS WHAT HE SAYS: “If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.” WHAT HE DOES The SCHIP law, which was paid for in part by a cigarette tax hike of 61 cents a pack is another out and out deception. Most smokers are lower income individuals. They will pay. There is no question, just as there is no question of his deceit. This is not interpretative. Examples given here show FACTUALLY that the man is constantly doing precisely the opposite of that which he tells us. also put the lie to a pledge Obama repeated after its passage in his first address before a joint session of Congress. “Let me be perfectly clear,” he said on February 24, with less than perfect clarity. So not only the smallest incomes going to pay the bulk of this tax, but it takes a higher percentage of their income And it’s hardly the only tax Obama will levy on those not yet in the quarter-million club. In that same speech, and also in Then in the president's budget proposal to Congress the president called for a cap-and-trade system for companies that emit carbon. That would mean a price increase on every gallon of gasoline sold in the United States. This will clobber household budgets of all working-class, persevering Americans. Many United States Senators are millionaires. What do they care? TODAY'S DECEPTIONS WHAT HE SAYS: Obama promised 1. President Obama's tax cuts are in many cases, not cuts at all, e.g. the cuts already accounted for, regarding the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). 2. The Congressional Budget Office-CBO-projects his deficits to total $2.3 trillion more than he claims. 3. After spending this massive amount of money, he projects a deficit cut in half to $523 billion, by 2013. Prediction here. It will be at least double that at over $1 trillion dollars, by 2013.
TODAY'S DECEPTIONS WHAT HE SAYS: "I strongly believe in a free market system," WHAT HE DOES OR PROPOSES: He's pushing to create a government-run health insurance program, open to all Americans, to compete with private insurers. He's already taken over General Motors and fired their CEO Rick Waggoner. Charitable donations will only be partially allowed for higher wage earners, which is sure to reduce charitable giving and create more dependency on government, something else, all Democrats want more of--long-term dependency. TODAY'S DECEPTIONS WHAT HE SAYS: Obama describes himself as a fierce supporter of capitalism. "I strongly believe in a free market system," he said last week in London after the G20 conference. As for the rich, he likes them too. "In America, at least, people don't resent the rich," he said. "They want to be rich. And that's good." WHAT HE DOES (OR IS GOING TO DO) Moves the government into our lives in more ways and less time, than it took FDR. Picks an entire cabinet of big government/nanny-state lovers. Gives us the largest so-called stimulus package of spending, (better named porkulus), the largest budget, the largest amount of debt in our history. Let the Bush tax cuts expire Raise the tax on capital gains Raise the tax on dividends Barack Obama These are recurring themes of the president. If they are lip service, they are frequently invoked lip service. His "stimulus" program was designed to spur economic growth, capitalism's primary goal. He based his request for authority to take over any financial institution on the need to prevent a collapse "that could bring down the financial system." And he wants to "make sure" American businesses offer "good products and good services that they believe they can market to the rest of the world." He's a free market guy. FREE MARKET GUY 1. Non stop blaming of Bush policies 2. Violates Nafta "trucker agreement 3. Not signing Columbia Free Trade Pact, because unions don't want it. 4. Let's the Washington D.C. voucher program. Barack Obama’s, George Orwell "newspeak" came during his first week as president. On his first day of work, he signed an executive order prohibiting lobbyists from holding highranking administration jobs. This was done to live up to a campaign promise to “close the revolving door” between K Street and government via “the most sweeping ethics reform in history.” Two days later, he utterly and blatantly broke this promise by granting a “waiver” to install Raytheon lobbyist William Lynn as second in command in the Pentagon. Compared to what was to immediately follow, this was outdone, with plenty to spare. The pattern is so established now, the president, has possibly broken more promises in less than 3 months than most president's break during their entire presidency. Barack Obama So candidate Obama furher promised us the “most transparent administration in history,” saying the American people would have at least five days to read each proposed non-emergency law before the president signs it. Unbelievably, in his first month, President Obama signed three laws that the Liberal movement has pushed for years. 1. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) 2.The Lily Ledbetter Fair Play Act. 3. The $787 billion “stimulus” package—in less than five days. “We will be implementing this policy in full soon.…Currently we are working through implementation procedures.” Can you believe he actually uttered these words??? His deficits, as far as the eye can see are truly mind-boggling. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) numbers confirm this. The CBO enjoys a large majority of Democrats, so this could hardly be distorted against the president, by the CBO. His budgets will also triple the national debt in just 5 years. According To Michael J. Boskin, writing in the Wall Street Journal March 6, 2009 ...The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, [adding more to the debt than all previous presidents -- from George Washington to George W. Bush -- combined.[emphasis mine] Barack Obama It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs. "We make hard choices to bring our deficit down," He also has had the gaul to say his budget "leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest." Invest means expand entitlements, through redistributing from those who earn, to the welfare recipients (in one form or another) who voted so overwhelmingly for him and will do so again. When he forced out the CEO at General Motors, he said he was "merely helping the company get through a rough patch." "Let me be clear," he said. "The United States government has no interest or intention of running GM." Rather, his aim is to give GM "an opportunity" to restructure itself and become "a stronger and more competitive company." Barack Obama This is pure deception. Unions gave Democrats $465 million campaign dollars. Unions own Mr. Obama and the Democrat Party. He is also forcing GM to make green cars, which is a bow to the environmental extremist movement. This is more anti-capitalism and no one is going to buy these cars, so more harm will be done to free markets, average workers, consumers and badly needed government revenues, to cover the enormous debt he has already created. WALL STREET JOURNAL GM Bankruptcy? Tell Me Another The president isn't serious about reform for Detroit. By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR. Full article Holman Jenkins WALL STREET JOURNAL Excerpts: President Obama rightly says "sacrifices" must be made if GM is to emerge as a viable company. But there's one sacrifice he won't make: his re-election chances, by leaving the fate of the UAW truly up to a bankruptcy judge. Keep that in mind amid the defenestration of Rick Wagoner, who was not as popular with UAW Chief Ron Gettelfinger as Mr. Wagoner's replacement, Fritz Henderson. Keep that in mind amid reports the administration favors a "quick and surgical" bankruptcy. It's a bluff. The same administration that inserted itself into GM's corporate governance to order the resignation of a CEO is hardly likely to defer to the prescribed legal order for a failing company, namely bankruptcy. Even a "prepackaged" filing runs too much risk of a judge imposing more "sacrifice" on the UAW than the administration is prepared to tolerate. GM bondholders understand this: They've been intransigent precisely because they calculate the UAW is too important to Democratic electoral politics for Mr. Obama to risk losing control of the reorganization process to a bankruptcy judge. THE WEEKLY STANDARD--THE BLOG Obama in Trouble March 20, 2009 Full article WEEKLY STANDARD Excerpts: At his bizarre town hall last night, President Barack Obama joked that "Washington is in a tizzy" over AIG and the $165 million in bonuses to be paid to its executives. The New York Times yesterday quoted White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel complaining that the whole affair was a "distraction." At Tuesday's press briefing, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs could not even provide a rough timeline of the administration's handling of the AIG affair. Yes, it's true that the bonuses represent less than one percent of the total bailout money that has gone to AIG. And yes, there are legitimate points to be made about retention bonuses in general and (though less persuasive) retention bonuses for these AIG employees. But it has been clear for a while that something -- an event, a comment, a cable news tirade, a speech -- was going to focus the growing public anger over bailouts and government giveaways. Barack Obama This is it. And if the White House doesn't understand that, Congressional Democrats certainly do. “I think in general the administration is underestimating the rage and frustration that people are feeling about the shenanigans on Wall Street,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told Politico. “I think they need to be more aggressive in standing up to Wall Street and representing the taxpayers.” From CNBC'S SQUAWK BOX ...The negative reviews started this morning when Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett, an early supporter of Barack Obama, delivered a sobering edict on Geithner's performance. During a three-hour appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box," the Oracle of Omaha said the economy "has fallen off a cliff" and that so far, the message from the U.S. government has been "muddled."... The economy "has fallen off a cliff." Buffett again compares economic situation to the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. America put aside "partisan stuff" then and should do so again. "We knew if we stuck together and followed leadership, we would prevail." Buffett criticizes Democrats for adding "earmarks" and pet spending to economic recovery legislation. Republicans need to work for the common good and Democrats need to stop themselves from trying to "jam in" a lot of spending. There should be "no finger pointing at all." "No vengeance, just look forward." BLOOMBERG.COM ‘Manchurian Candidate’ Starts War on Business March 9, 2009 Commentary by Kevin Hassett Full article Kevin Hassett BLOOMBERG.COM Excerpts: March 9 (Bloomberg) -- Back in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson gave us the War on Poverty. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs. Now that we have seen President Barack Obama’s first-year legislative agenda, we know what kind of a war he intends to wage. It is no wonder that markets are imploding around us. Obama is giving us the War on Business. Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a “Manchurian Candidate” to destroy the U.S. economy once elected. What policies might that leader pursue? Barack Obama He might discourage private capital from entering the financial sector by instructing his Treasury secretary to repeatedly promise a brilliant rescue plan, but never actually have one. Private firms, spooked by the thought of what government might do, would shy away from transactions altogether. If the secretary were smooth and played rope-a-dope long enough, the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could demand action. Dark Dark Dark By MAUREEN DOWD Published: February 21, 2009 The New York Times Full article Maureen Dowd The New York Times Excerpts: Barack Obama’s grandmother told him to smile more. Bill Clinton tells the new president to strut more. As the country takes a bullet train to bankruptcy, the last Democratic president urged the current one to “embody” that old American spunk. That spirit of — as they sing in “Oklahoma” — “We know we belong to the land and the land we belong to is grand! A-YIP-I-O-EE-AY!” “It’s worth reminding the American people that for more than 230 years everyone who bet against America lost money,” Clinton told Chris Cuomo on “Good Morning America.” “I just want him to embody that and to share that.” It’s rich. The Man from Hope whose Missus castigated Candidate Obama for raising “false hopes” is now criticizing President Obama for not peddling more gauzy hope. The WEEKLY STANDARD Obama's First Month Early reflections on the Obama Revolution. by Fred Barnes 02/20/2009 12:00:00 AM Fred Barnes The Weekly Standard Excerpts: It only seems like Barack Obama has been president forever. Actually, as of today, he's been in office for exactly one month. Granted, with 47 months to go in his term, it's too soon to render a verdict on the Obama presidency. But surely a few early reflections on the Obama Revolution in Washington are apt. Here are five of them. 1. Campaigning is governing. Does Obama loathe Washington? It sure looks that way. In the midst of an economic crash, he's spent a surprising number of days away from the White House, delivering speeches to stir support for his stimulus and housing programs and, at least once, to denounce Republicans. In his first month, his trips covered 11 days, including four days in his hometown of Chicago. And that's not counting the two days he spent at Camp David and his visit to Springfield, Virginia, to talk up his stimulus bill. Not that there's anything wrong with this, but it does represent a different presidential style. Okay, all modern presidents travel a lot. The difference here is one of degree. Obama's job is less the shaping of policies than the promoting of them. The stimulus, after all, was largely produced by congressional Democrats. Was his promotion effective? Yes and no. Support for the stimulus grew to 59 percent (Gallup poll), but an initial bounce in consumer confidence quickly vanished and only 38 percent (Rasmussen poll) now think the stimulus will help the economy. Obama's efforts failed to put pressure on Republicans THE WASHINGTON TIMES Mark Steyn Feb. 16, 2009 Mark Steyn THE WASHINGTON TIMES Excerpts: Few pieces of political “wisdom” are more tediously recycled than a well-retailed bon mot of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Asked what he feared most in the months ahead, he gave an amused Edwardian response — “Events, dear boy, events.” In other words, you can plan all you want but next month, next year some guy off the radar screen will launch a war, or there'll be an earthquake, or... something. Governments get thrown off course by “events.” It requires a perverse kind of genius for the 44th president not to have waited for a single “event” to throw him off course. Instead, he threw himself off: “Is Obama tanking already?” (Congressional Quarterly) “Has Barack Obama's presidency already failed?” (the Financial Times). Whether or not it's “already” failed or tanked, the monthly magazines still gazing out from their newsstands with their glossy Inaugural covers of a smiling Barack and Michelle waltzing on the audacity of hope seem like musty historical artifacts from a lost age. WAll STREET JOURNAL Obama's Rhetoric Is the Real 'Catastrophe' In 1932, automobile production shriveled by 90%. By BRADLEY R. SCHILLER FEBRUARY 13, 2009, 11:43 P.M. ET Full article Bradley R. Schuller WAll STREET JOURNAL Excerpts: President Barack Obama has turned fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package.[Commentary] AP In his remarks, every gloomy statistic on the economy becomes a harbinger of doom. As he tells it, today's economy is the worst since the Great Depression. Without his Recovery and Reinvestment Act, he says, the economy will fall back into that abyss and may never recover. This fearmongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics. It is bad history because our current economic woes don't come close to those of the 1930s. At worst, a comparison to the 1981-82 recession might be appropriate. Consider the job losses that Mr. Obama always cites. In the last year, the U.S. economy shed 3.4 million jobs. That's a grim statistic for sure, but represents just 2.2% of the labor force. From November 1981 to October 1982, 2.4 million jobs were lost -- fewer in number than today, but the labor force was smaller. So 1981-82 job losses totaled 2.2% of the labor force, the same as now. REAL CLEAR POLITICS February 11, 2009 Our Clever President By Tony Blankley Full article Tony Blankley REAL CLEAR POLITICS Excerpts: President Barack Obama's first presidential news conference was performed feebly by the once-ferocious White House press corps and shrewdly -- if deceptively -- by the president. In the six years I did communications on former President Ronald Reagan's White House staff, I don't recall a single news conference in which there were no follow-up questions, no challenges to anything the president had said recently, no assertions of fact that the president was challenged to deal with. In fact, I don't remember former President Bill Clinton, either, ever getting a full 45-minute prime-time news conference pass. Yet Monday night, all the questions but one were of the "please, sir, could you tell us how you plan to deal with x?" variety. Only Major Garrett of Fox News raised even a slightly embarrassing question: What was Vice President Joe Biden referring to when he said the administration had a 30 percent chance of failing at some initiative? And I must confess that if I had been the vice president, I would not have been happy with the president's answer, which was, in essence: I don't know what Biden was talking about, but that sounds like him. It can't be good that the president is making his vice president the public butt of his snickering after only three weeks in office. Not that it is Biden's fault. Along with a fair amount of blarney, Joe Biden also makes more honest and candid observations in an afternoon than many politicians make in a lifetime. One comes away from a conversation with Biden with at least one truthful nugget. WASHINGTON TIMES CBO: Obama stimulus harmful over long haul Stephen Dinan (Contact) Wednesday, February 4, 2009 Full article Stephan Dinan Washington Times Excerpts:
Buzz up! President Barack Obama speaks to the House Democratic Issues Conference on Thursday in Williamsburg. Associated Press President Obama's economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing. CBO estimates that by 2019 the Senate legislation would reduce GDP by 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent on net. [The House bill] would have similar long-run effects, CBO said in a letter to Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican, who was tapped by Mr. Obama on Tuesday to be Commerce Secretary. REAL CLEAR POLITICS January 30, 2009 Obama's Unnecessary Apology By Charles Krauthammer Full article Charles Krauthammer REAL CLEAR POLITICS Excerpts: WASHINGTON -- Every new president flatters himself that he, kinder and gentler, is beginning the world anew. Yet, when Barack Obama in his inaugural address reached out to Muslims with "to the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect," his formulation was needlessly defensive and apologetic. Is it "new" to acknowledge Muslim interests and show respect to the Muslim world? Obama doesn't just think so, he said so again to millions in his al-Arabiya interview, insisting on the need to "restore" the "same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago." Astonishing. In these most recent 20 years -- the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Islamic world -- America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved -- and resulted in -- the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq. The two Balkan interventions -- as well as the failed 1992-93 Somali intervention to feed starving African Muslims (43 Americans were killed) -- were humanitarian exercises of the highest order, there being no significant U.S. strategic interest at stake. In these 20 years, this nation has done more for suffering and oppressed Muslims than any nation, Muslim or non-Muslim, anywhere on earth. Why are we apologizing? COMMENTARY A Surprising Vote Jennifer Rubin - 01.29.2009 - 7:29 AM Wednesday’s House vote on the stimulus plan was a bit of a shocker. This report explains: Full article Jennifer Rubin COMMENTARY Excerpts: The 244-188 vote was not what Mr. Obama had hoped for. A week of presidential wooing — including a visit to the Capitol, a return visit to the White House by moderate House Republicans and a bipartisan cocktail party Wednesday night — did not yield a single Republican vote. The president also lost 11 Democrats. House Republican leadership aides said the vote should force Democrats to compromise in the Senate, but White House aides were more sanguine. They said the package in the Senate has already moved toward Republican positions on key issues, making GOP votes more likely. Mr. Obama has said he wants a final compromise version by Feb. 13. By providing enormous sums for social programs and changing many of the rules to allow more people to take advantage of the programs, the Obama plan has prompted some Republicans to complain that the bill is becoming a back-door way to expand social-welfare programs. The long-lasting nature of some of the items, say Republicans, has as much to do with pent-up policy demands of a Democratic Congress and White House as reviving a flailing economy. THE WEEKLY STANDARD The Republicans' Best Weapon It's Obama himself. by Fred Barnes 02/02/2009, Volume 014, Issue 19 January 26, 2009 Full article Fred Barnes The Weekly Standard Excerpts: In 1994, congressional Republicans carried laminated copies of their Contract With America (tax cuts, term limits, etc.) in their pockets. They may now want to laminate President Obama's inaugural address and carry it around. This is not as silly as it sounds. Republican leaders believe the speech pleased them more than it did House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid. Obama's "new era of responsibility" echoed the "Personal Responsibility Act," the third of the ten planks in the Contract With America. Obama also said that it's not the size of government which matters but whether it works. Newt Gingrich coined that thought years ago. Obama lauded "risk-takers." Democrats want to tax them to death. For the foreseeable future, attacking Obama will be counterproductive for Republicans. He's both enormously popular and the bearer of moral authority as the first African-American president. So the idea is for Republicans to make Obama an ally by using his words, from the inaugural address and speeches and interviews, against Democrats and their initiatives in Congress. REAL CLEAR POLITICS January 23, 2009 No Idea What He's Doing By Robert Tracinski Full article REAL CLEAR POLITICS Excerpts: The theme of Barack Obama's inaugural address Tuesday was supposed to be "a new era of responsibility," or something like that. There was no actual sign of that theme in the speech itself. Sure, "responsibility" was mentioned a few times--but the comments were too few and too fragmentary to amount to any kind of "theme." Instead, most of the speech was padded out with clichés and bromides. The New York Times ran a rotating selection of lines from the speech at the top of its home page, and what struck me most was the contrast between the reverential placement of these lines and their forgettable dullness. For example, Obama boldly came out in favor of "hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism"--the most superficial and anodyne list of traditional American values one could possibly compile. I had expected Obama to crib from Lincoln or Roosevelt. Instead he cribbed from Dorothy Fields: "Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America." Or take this deathless line: "Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter." Is there any phrase more painfully overused in Washington than "our children's children"? REAL CLEAR POLITICS The Obama Presidency: Here Comes Socialism By Dick Morris JANUARY 21, 2008 Full article Dick Morris REAL CLEAR POLITICS Excerpts:
2009-2010 will rank with 1913-14, 1933-36, 1964-65 and 1981-82 as years that will permanently change our government, politics and lives. Just as the stars were aligned for Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan, they are aligned for Obama. Simply put, we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden -- a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes. Obama will accomplish his agenda of "reform" under the rubric of "recovery." Using the electoral mandate bestowed on a Democratic Congress by restless voters and the economic power given his administration by terrified Americans, he will change our country fundamentally in the name of lifting the depression. His stimulus packages won't do much to shorten the downturn -- although they will make it less painful -- but they will do a great deal to change our nation. In implementing his agenda, Barack Obama will emulate the example of Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Not the liberal mythology of the New Deal, but the actuality of what it accomplished.) When FDR took office, he was enormously successful in averting a total collapse of the banking system and the economy. But his New Deal measures only succeeded in lowering the unemployment rate from 23 percent in 1933, when he took office, to 13 percent in the summer of 1937. It never went lower. And his policies of over-regulation generated such business uncertainty that they triggered a second-term recession. Unemployment in 1938 rose to 17 percent and, in 1940, on the verge of the war-driven recovery, stood at 15 percent. (These data and the real story of Hoover's and Roosevelt's missteps, uncolored by ideology, are available in The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes, copyright 2007.) The Weekly Standard The Only Thing We Have to Fear . . . is Obama. by Fred Barnes 01/26/2009, Volume 014, Issue 18 Full article Fred Barnes The Weekly Standard Excerpts:
Barack Obama is the apostle of hope. But he also arouses the flipside of hope--fear. And while the fear he stirs may turn out to be unfounded, it's not irrational. People don't know who Obama really is or where his ideological center of gravity rests, to the extent it rests anywhere. He was a liberal in the Senate and the campaign, a centrist in the transition, and who knows what he'll be as president. He's elusive. I count four separate fears. Whether he's a crypto-Marxist is not one of them. Neither is the absurd fear that he's secretly a Muslim, even a closet jihadist. Nor is the groundless claim Obama was actually born outside the United States and isn't really an American citizen. Forget all those. They're nonstarters. He doesn't know what he's talking about. This is a legitimate fear. Obama throws around numbers like confetti. In the campaign, he said he would create 1 million jobs. After the election, he put out a plan he said would produce up to 3 million jobs. Then in a radio address on January 10, he said the number could reach 4.1 million and said 500,000 would be jobs in the alternative energy field, 200,000 in health care. Does he really believe he can achieve this? The fear is that he might. NEW YORK POST December 30, 2008 President-elect Barack Obama may be about to make a big mistake: raising taxes in the middle of a recession. Full article NEW YORK POST Excerpts: That's what his top political aide, David Axelrod, hinted Sunday: The Bush tax cuts are "something that we plainly can't afford, moving forward," Axelrod said. "Whether it expires, or whether we repeal it a little bit early, we'll determine later. But it's going to go." Either way, of course, would deal a significant blow to the economy. But moving up the hit to a time when the nation is struggling to recover from a brutal downturn would simply intensify the pain - and jeopardize any possible recovery. NEW YORK POST Kirsten Powers December 16, 2008 Full article Kirsten Powers NEW YORK POST Excerpts: Barack Obama is experiencing the first "scandal" of his presidency before he's taken office - or so sayeth the media. Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is accused of (among much else) conspiring to sell or trade Obama's Senate seat for personal benefit. Obama is accused of . . . well, nothing. In fact, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said specifically that the president-elect is not under investigation or accused of any wrongdoing. Heck, an Obama staffer is on tape offering the furious Blago no more than "appreciation" for giving the seat to Obama's preferred candidate. THE AUSTRALIAN Bjorn Lomborg Dec. 14, 2008 Full article Bjorn Lomborg The Australian Excerpts: IN one of his first public policy statements as America's president-elect, Barack Obama focused on climate change, and clearly stated both his priorities and the facts on which these priorities rest. Unfortunately, both are weak, or even wrong.Obama's policy outline was presented via video to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Governors' Global Warming Summit, and has again been shown in Poznan, Poland, to leaders assembled to flesh out a global warming road map. According to Obama, "few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change". Such a statement is now commonplace for most political leaders across the world, even though it neglects to address the question of how much we can do to help America and the world through climate policies v other policies. Consider, for example, hurricanes in America. Clearly, a policy of reducing CO2 emissions would have had zero consequence on Katrina's devastating effect on New Orleans, where such a disaster was long expected. Over the next half-century, even large reductions in CO2 emissions would have only a negligible effect. POLITICO Doves keep the faith as Obama team tilts right By JONATHAN MARTIN 11/27/08 6:58 AM EST Full article Jonathan Martin Politico Excerpts: President-elect Barack Obama at a news conferenceLeading opponents of the war have mostly been silent as Obama assembles a group of national security hands that is anything but a team of doves.Photo: AP Leading opponents of the war have mostly been silent as president-elect Barack Obama, who first built his national image on the foundation of his early opposition to the Iraq war, assembles a group of national security hands that is anything but a team of doves. It's a disorienting moment for the peace wing of the Democratic Party, at once elated America selected a new president opposed to the Iraq war and momentarily disoriented by the imminent removal of a commander-in-chief whose every action they've opposed for the past eight years. “Shock has paralyzed them for the moment,” said Steven Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation who writes The Washington Note, a popular foreign policy blog. “We are in an Obama bubble now. And it’s tough to step out and be first to deflate the bubble.” Townhall.com Dick Morris and Eileen McGann Hillary Nomination Would Be An Obama-Nation Sunday, November 23, 2008 Full article Dick Morris and Eileen McGann Townhall.com Excerpts: REAL CLEAR POLITICS Jay Cost November 20, 2008 Electoral Polarization Continues Under Obama Full article Jay Cost Real Clear Politics Excerpts: In 2000, George W. Bush campaigned as a "uniter, not a divider." It didn't pan out that way. In four years time, the electorate was evenly divided, with about half the country favoring his reelection and the other half opposing it. This year, President-elect Obama campaigned on moving the country past its political divisions to focus on what unites it. The results from this month's election suggest he might have his work cut out for himself on this front. While his popular vote and Electoral College victories were decisive, there are indications that the electoral polarization we have seen in the Bush years persists. To begin, we need a way to measure polarization, which is simply the accentuation of differences. So, the greater the differences among factions in the electorate, the more polarized we can say the whole electorate was. We'll put forth two ways to measure this concept. REAL CLEAR POLITICS November 18, 2008 Auto Bailouts Will Give Us Detroitsky By Robert Tracinski Full article Robert Tracinski Real Clear Politics Excerpts: He hasn't even been sworn in yet, and Barack Obama is starting to reveal what his mantra about "change" really means. It means that we will reject the discredited old model of free-market capitalism and embrace the very promising, progressive new model of Soviet-style central planning. That is the upshot of Obama's proposal for a $50 billion bailout of the Detroit automakers. It is actually a plan for de facto nationalization which will turn the Big Three into permanent wards of the state whose purpose is not to make a profit but to serve the "social goals" set by government. Obama is backing a plan to pump $50 billion into the big American automakers, while also establishing "a czar or board to oversee the companies"—call it Gosplan—which will supervise "a restructuring of the auto industry." That's exactly what Detroit needs to recover: the benefit of government central planning. CATO@LIBERTY Chris Edwards OBAMA'S TAX PROMISES November 10, 2008 Full article Chris Edwards CATO@LIBERTY Excerpts: President-elect Obama has made a slew of tax promises. Some of them are tax increases, some of them are tax cuts, and many of them are actually spending increases. Let’s try to sort them out. Here I classify tax changes in comparison with the taxes that Americans are paying this year. I am mainly working from this excellent Urban/Brookings study. Note that many of Obama’s proposed tax breaks are “refundable,” meaning that much of the effect is to increase federal spending, not to cut taxes. Refundable tax breaks involve cash hand-outs to many people who do not pay any federal income taxes. Obama Called Out for Comments About Bankrupting Coal Fired Power Plants WSAZ.Com Posted: 7:27 PM Nov 2, 2008 Last Updated: 10:45 PM Nov 2, 2008 Reporter: Michael Wooten Email Address: michael.wooten@wsaz.com Full article Michael Wooten WSAZ.Com Excerpts: CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- With only hours before election day, coal has become a major topic of Decision 2008. Sunday comments surfaced from a taped interview Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama did with the San Francisco Chronicle in January. In the interview, which has been available online for months, Obama talks about the importance of coal. He went on to talk about his cap and trade proposal to help curb global warming Full article Michael Wooten WSAZ.Com Excerpts: WALL STREET JOURNAL October 30, 2008 The True Meaning of 'Historic Vote' By Daniel Henninger Full article Daniel Henninger WSJ Excerpts: The most basic explanation for why Barack Obama may win next Tuesday is that voters want economic deliverance. The standard fix for this in politics everywhere is to crowbar the old party out and patch in the other one. It is true as well that the historic nature of the nation's first African-American candidacy would play a big role. Push past the historic candidacy, however, and one sees something even larger at stake in this vote. One sees what Joe (The Plumber) Wurzelbacher saw. The real "change" being put to a vote for the American people in 2008 is not simply a break from the economic policies of "the past eight years" but with the American economic philosophy of the past 200 years. This election is about a long-term change in America's idea of itself. I don't agree with the argument that an Obama-Pelosi-Reid government is a one-off, that good old nonideological American pragmatism will temper their ambitions. Not true. With this election, the U.S. is at a philosophical tipping point. NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE Bill Whittle October 27, 2008 Full article Bill Whittle NRO Excerpts: ...Barack Obama, in 2001: You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil-rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [It] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil-rights movement was because the civil-rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that... OrlandoSentinel.Com Obama campaign cuts off WFTV after interview with Joe Biden posted by halboedeker Oct 24, 2008 11:12:15 AM Full article Hal Boedeker Excerpts: WFTV-Channel 9's Barbara West conducted a satellite interview with Sen. Joe Biden on Thursday. A friend says it's some of the best entertainment he's seen recently. What do you think? West wondered about Sen. Barack Obama's comment, to Joe the Plumber, about spreading the wealth. She quoted Karl Marx and asked how Obama isn't being a Marxist with the "spreading the wealth" comment. "Are you joking?" said Biden, who is Obama's running mate. "No," West said. THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR The Unholy Triumvirate George Neumayr 10.22.08 Full article George Neumayr The American Spectator Excerpts: If Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid had to write the Declaration of Independence and Constitution from scratch, what would those documents say? Would they read like the current ones? No, they would read like the platform of the Democratic Party. Barack Obama's America started not in 1776 but around 2006. By letting slip the comment, "For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country," Michelle Obama said as much. The only question that remains is: If Obama wins, will the Democrats have the courage of their convictions? Will they hold a sort of ongoing constitutional convention and transform America into the liberal country of their dreams -- the America in their minds which they identify now as the source of true patriotism? WALL STREET JOURNAL OCTOBER 21, 2008 Get Ready for the New New Deal Obama is much more dangerous to economic freedom than FDR. By PAUL H. RUBIN FULL ARTICLE Paul H. Rubin WSJ Excerpts: In 1932, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president as the nation was heading into a severe recession. The stock market had crashed in 1929, the world's economy was slowing down, and all economic indicators in the U.S. showed signs of trouble. The new president's response was to restructure the economy with the New Deal -- an expansion of the role of government once unimaginable in America. We now know that FDR's policies likely prolonged the Great Depression because the economy never fully recovered in the 1930s, and actually got worse in the latter half of the decade. And we know that FDR got away with it (winning election four times) by blaming his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, for crashing the economy in the first place... ...Barack Obama is one of the most liberal members of the Senate. His reaction to the financial crisis is to blame deregulation. He even leverages fear of deregulation onto other issues. For example, Sen. John McCain wants to allow consumers to buy health insurance across state lines. Mr. Obama likens this to the financial deregulation that he alleges got us into the current mess... Searching for Obama's 95 Percent Posted by Philip Klein on 10.16.08 @ 8:23AM October 20, 2008 Full article Philip Klein American Spectator Excerpts: HEMPSTEAD. N.Y. -- "We are going to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans," Barack Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, said in the spin room here at Hofstra University following the final debate of the 2008 presidential election. Plouffe was repeating one of the boldest claims made by the Obama campaign. It's a claim that the Wall Street Journal editorial board dubbed "Obama's 95% Illusion," noting that more than a third of Americans don't pay any income taxes, and that what Obama's plan does do is offer a raft of subsidies and government payments to individuals and families that he redefines as "tax cuts." His proposal looks more like a redistribution scheme than an honest effort to reduce taxes -- as he revealed on Monday when he told a now famous Ohio plumber that his plan aimed to "spread the wealth around." So when Plouffe reiterated the 95 percent claim, I asked him a simple question aimed at clarifying whether Obama's tax plan was about cutting rates, or merely handing out government checks. "What rates would actually go down"? I asked. ACORN's Bad Seed INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Tuesday, October 14, 2008 Election '08: As a major voting fraud scandal explodes, the mainstream media seem intent on ignoring it. Given the seriousness of the charges, maybe a formal federal investigation is in order. Full article INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Excerpts: The charges involve ACORN — the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now — for which Barack Obama once served as a lawyer and as a trainer. In recent months, a picture has emerged of ACORN as a group run amok — with ACORN accused of registering thousands of bogus voters using such names as Mickey Mouse, Veronica Mars and Pat Tillman, plus names from the Dallas Cowboys. Why care? As documented by Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center, Obama has ties to ACORN that are numerous, irrefutable and go back years. Initial denials by the Obama campaign of links to ACORN have been shown to be false. Obama's Magic WALL STREET JOURNAL October 10, 2008 By Kimberley Strassel Full article Kimberly Strassel WSJ Excerpts: And now, America, we introduce the Great Obama! The world's most gifted political magician! A thing of wonder. A thing of awe. Just watch him defy politics, economics, even gravity! (And hold your applause until the end, please.) To kick off our show tonight, Mr. Obama will give 95% of American working families a tax cut, even though 40% of Americans today don't pay income taxes! How can our star enact such mathemagic? How can he "cut" zero? Abracadabra! It's called a "refundable tax credit." It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing checks to those who don't. Yes, yes, in the real world this is known as "welfare," but please try not to ruin the show. For his next trick, the Great Obama will jumpstart the economy, and he'll do it by raising taxes on the very businesses that are today adrift in a financial tsunami! That will include all those among the top 1% of taxpayers who are in fact small-business owners, and the nation's biggest employers who currently pay some of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. Mr. Obama will, with a flick of his fingers, show them how to create more jobs with less money. It's simple, really. He has a wand. CNN: Obama’s lying about William Ayers posted on October 7, 2008 by Ed Morrissey ..."You’ll want to double-check the logo at the bottom left corner during this report. It really is CNN and Anderson Cooper fact-checking Barack Obama’s claims to have barely known William Ayers — and calling it dishonest. Stanley Kurtz even gets to make an appearance on a network other than Fox for this report (via Dirty Harry’s Place): Drew Griffin runs down most of the salient points raised by people like Kurtz, David Freddoso, Jerome Corsi, and others. Obama’s admission in a debate that he briefly served on “a board” with Ayers with little contact gets shot down. CNN followed up on Kurtz’ work with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and debunks that notion. They also — amazingly — report on the nature of the grants made by the CAC while Obama ran it to Ayers’ favored schools with radical agendas."... The Boston Globe Seeing through Obamanomics By Jeff Jacoby Globe Columnist / September 14, 2008 Full article Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe Excerpts: ALL THROUGH the spring and summer, opinion polls tracked a growing confidence that Barack Obama could handle the economy better than John McCain. Just before the Democratic convention in August, Gallup had Obama leading McCain on the economy, 54-38 - a 16-point margin. But now Obama's lead has nearly vanished. Gallup's latest numbers show the candidates nearly tied. Just 48 percent say Obama would be more adept at superintending the economy; 45 percent choose McCain. Looks like voters have started paying attention to Obama's economics. On Sept. 8, Fox News broadcast an interview between Obama and Bill O'Reilly that focused on taxation and the economy. Obama repeated his pledge to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans, while raising taxes on the tiny fraction who earn more than $250,000. Tough Truths About Obama's Character INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Friday, September 12, 2008 4:20 PM PT Election '08: Barack Obama's campaign is crying foul over John McCain's new hard-hitting ads. But the Democratic nominee has no one but himself to blame for his statements and his behavior. Full article INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Excerpts: One new spot slams Sen. Obama for riling up a crowd with his "lipstick on a pig" jibe on Tuesday, just days after GOP running mate Gov. Sarah Palin brought the house down at the Republican convention in St. Paul with her line about lipstick being the only difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull. Another ad hits the former community organizer for voting when a state senator for sex education for kindergarteners. A third commercial compares dozens of Democratic Party operatives sent to Alaska looking for dirt on Gov. Palin to ferocious wolves on the hunt in the Alaskan wilderness. Obama has accused the McCain camp of "lies." But a careful look at the video of the full Obama lipstick statement to a rally in rural southwestern Virginia indicates that it was not innocent, but exactly what Sen. McCain is accusing it of being.
Senator Biden’s Delaware Funding Requests for FY 2009
Assessment of Juvenile Violence and Substance Use in Delaware Center for Drug and Alcohol Studies, University of Delaware, Newark, DETo supplement one of the most comprehensive state youth social indicator sources in the country, the Delaware School Survey, with the ability to report on new developments (e.g., prescription medication abuse, youth gambling, internet drug access), investigate and track emerging trends in youth substance use.Request: $65,000. • Center for Sensitive Optical Detection TechnologiesDelaware State University, Dover, DelawareThis multi-year project will develop a Center to research the sensitive detection of specific proteins, biomarkers, fluorescent labels, and/or atomic and molecular traces, all of which play crucial roles in characterizing complex samples and detecting early signs of dangerous diseases or other potential threats to national security.Request: $1,000,000 • Crime Scene and Evidence Tracking ProjectDelaware State University, Dover, Delaware,To continue work on the Crime Scene and Evidence Tracking Project which leverages the use and integration of several emerging and current technologies, products and solutions focused on homeland security, critical incidents and emergency response.Request: $2,000,000 • Downtown Video Surveillance CamerasCity of Newark Police Department, Newark, Delaware,For video surveillance cameras in the downtown area to assist in crime prevention, detection, and the identification and apprehension of suspects.Request: $115,420 • Gunshot Locator SystemDelaware State Police, Dover, DelawareFor the purchase of a mobile gunshot locator system that utilizes technology to detect weapons-fire over large, complex environments and instantly identify, locate and give a visual of the location of a gunshot event.Request: $1,500,000 For the purchase, installation and implementation of a High Power Voice and Siren System in the boundaries of the City of Newark. The goal of the project is to implement an extremely effective option for warning the public that will enable Newark to effectively communicate during events which may threaten the health and safety of the citizens and visitors, including over 20,000 University of Delaware students.Request: $300,000 • In-Car Cameras and Digital StorageDelaware State Police, Dover, Delaware,For the purchase and installation of in-car cameras and related equipment.Request: $512,000 • Incident Command Vehicle ProjectDelaware State University’s Department of Public Safety, Dover, DelawareFor an incident command vehicle to be used as a mobile command center for large incidents and events.Request: $240,000 • Message Switcher UpgradesDelaware State Police, Dover, DelawareTo perform preliminary engineering assessments for upgrading the state portal to The National Crime Information Center in response to FBI upgrades to the system and new security standards.Request: $100,000 • Utility of Technology License Plate Scanning InitiativeNew Castle County Police Department, New Castle, DelawareTo enhance information sharing capabilities and assist law enforcement by upgrading the current mobile data terminals in the field and implement the Automated License Plate Recognition System.Request: $896,000 Building Opportunities for Delawareans • Delaware Aerospace Education FoundationDelaware Aerospace Education Foundation, Smyrna, DEFor earth and space education using two unique outdoor exhibits as a focal point for school programming, professional development and public outreach.Request: $545,000 • Delaware Art MuseumDelaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DETo establish a program that ensures access to the museum for youth and adults by integrating museum visits into school curricula and increasing outreach to underserved communities in Wilmington.Request: $250,000 • Delaware Biotechnology InstituteDelaware Biotechnology Institute, Newark, DETo support Delaware’s growing life sciences industry by acquiring state-of-the-art research instrumentation.Request: $1,400,000 • Delaware Children’s MuseumDelaware Children’s Museum, Wilmington, DE Supply-Side Slip By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Monday, September 08, 2008 4:20 PM PT Obama On Taxes: The candidate now suggests he might not start squeezing the "rich" until the economy's in better shape. If only he would follow that logic further. Full article INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Excerpts: "My tax cuts will create jobs. His tax increases will eliminate them." So said John McCain last week in accepting the Republican presidential nomination, and — get this — Barack Obama agrees with him. Not that Obama would ever admit as much. But consider this exchange between Obama and ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. We pick up where Obama has just explained that he wants to "stabilize" the deficit and "give a tax break to middle-class families" to get the economy growing again: Stephanopoulos: "So even if we're in a recession next January (and) you come into office, you'll still go through with your tax increase?" REAL CLEAR POLITICS September 05, 2008 Why Obama's "Community Organizer" Days Are a Joke By Michelle Malkin Full article Michelle Malkin RCP Excerpts: Rudy Giuliani had me in stitches during his red-meat keynote address at the GOP convention. I laughed out loud when Giuliani laughed out loud while noting Barack Obama's deep experience as a "community organizer." I laughed again when VP nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin cracked: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities." Team Obama was not amused. (Neither were the snarky left-wingers on cable TV who are now allergic to sarcasm.) They don't get why we snicker when Obama dons his Community Organizer cape. Apparently, the jibes rendered Obama's advisers sleepless. In a crack-of-dawn e-mail to Obama's followers hours after Giuliani and Palin spoke, campaign manager David Plouffe attempted to gin up faux outrage (and, more importantly, donations) by claiming grave offense on the part of community organizers everywhere. Fumed Plouffe: "Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed. Let's clarify something for them right now. Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies." Barack Obama is still trying to explain his relationship with the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist bomber William Ayers. In an April debate, Obama clained Ayers was a casual acquaintance. But some recent data from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge education program seem to tie Obama much closer to Ayers. The Obama campaign has tried to get the ads discussing the relationship off the air. There is also Obama's 2003 vote against a bill, "virtually identical" as the Obama campaign admits, to one that passed the U.S. Senate 98-0, banning the killing of fetuses who have survived abortions. In one example of this horrible practice a baby lived for 45 minutes after the procedure. The bill supported by Barack's bill would necessitate killing the baby even after it's born. CATO@LIBERTY Obama Tax Proposals Full article CATO@LIBERTY Excerpts: Candidate Obama has introduced an array of tax proposals, which he discusses in various places on his campaign website. There are four overlapping themes in the Obama tax proposals the way I see it: 1. Social engineering. 2. Discrimination. 3. Economic micromanagement. 4. Empty populism. Under social engineering, I would put Obama’s plan to greatly increase the dependent care tax credit. That would further encourage parents to find institutional day care for their children, rather than providing care themselves. Under discrimination, I would put Obama’s proposed special tax break for the elderly. The federal fiscal system is already heavily tilted in favor of the elderly, thus it is unclear why Obama would want to further discriminate against the young. REAL CLEAR POLITICS August 26, 2008 Obama Needs to Explain His Ties to William Ayers By Michael Barone Full article Michael Barone RCP Excerpts: It doesn't help the Obama campaign that William Ayers is back in the news. Ayers, you'll recall, was the Weather Underground terrorist in the late 1960s and '70s whose radical group set bombs at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol. During the April 16 Democratic debate, Barack Obama explained his past association with Ayers by saying he was just a guy "in my neighborhood," meaning the University of Chicago enclave known as Hyde Park. But is that end of it? This is, after all, Chicago we're talking about; where political patronage and nepotism are the only ways one moves up the power ladder. Decades after his radical youth, Ayers was one of the original grantees of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school reform organization in the 1990s, and was co-chairman of the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, one the two operational arms of the CAC. Obama, then not yet a state senator, became chairman of the CAC in 1995. Later in that year, the first organizing meeting for Obama's state Senate campaign was held in Ayers's apartment. You might wonder what Obama was doing working with a character like this. And you might wonder how an unrepentant terrorist got a huge grant and cooperation from the Chicago public school system. You might wonder--if you don't know Chicago. For this is a city with a civic culture in which politicians, in the words of a story often told by former congressman, federal judge, and Clinton White House counsel Abner Mikva, "don't want nobody nobody sent." August 28, 2008 The Devils in His Details By George Will Full article George Will Real Clear Politics Excerpts: DENVER -- When Barack Obama feeds rhetorical fishes and loaves to the multitudes in the football stadium Thursday night, he should deliver a message of sufficient particularity that it seems particularly suited to Americans. One more inspirational oration, one general enough to please Berliners or even his fellow "citizens of the world," will confirm Pascal's point that "continuous eloquence wearies." That is so because it is not really eloquent. If it is continuous, it is necessarily formulaic and abstract, vague enough for any time and place, hence truly apposite for none... ...Russia, a third-world nation with first-world missiles, is rampant; Iran is developing a missile inventory capable of delivering nuclear weapons the development of which will not be halted by Obama's promised "aggressive personal diplomacy." Yet Obama has vowed to "cut investments in unproven missile defense systems." Steamboats, railroads, airplanes and vaccines were "unproven" until farsighted people made investments. Furthermore, as Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute notes, Democrats will eventually embrace missile defense in Europe because they "will have nowhere else to go short of pre-emptive strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities." Obama, who might be the last person to learn that schools' cognitive outputs are not simply functions of financial inputs, promises more money for teachers, who, as usual, are about 10 percent of the Democrats' convention delegates and alternates. He waxes indignant about approximately 150,000 jobs sent overseas each year -- less than 1 percent of the number of jobs normally lost and gained in the creative destruction of America's dynamic economy. U.S. exports are fending off a recession while he complains about free trade. He deplores NAFTA, although since it was implemented in 1994 the U.S., Mexican and Canadian economies have grown 50 percent, 46 percent and 54 percent, respectively. August 25, 2008 It's Joe Biden Sunday, August 24, 2008 Biden [Yuval Levin] Full article Yuval Levin NRO Excerpts: For me, the most striking line in Obama’s introduction of Biden today was: “Joe Biden is what so many others pretend to be — a statesman with sound judgment who doesn't have to hide behind bluster to keep America strong.” Hmmm…now who do we know who pretends to be a statesman? The entire event made roughly the same point: boy, Obama is inexperienced and light. The Biden pick is obviously meant to compensate for precisely that worry, but it seems far more likely rather to exacerbate it. Biden, after all, is not in fact some kind of celebrated statesman, and not a single person in America (except perhaps Joe Biden) thinks he is. But even he might appear that way in comparison with Obama.
on the Internet-Learn More-Click Photo August 19, 2008 INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Thursday, August 14, 2008 Obama's Radical Roots And Rules Election '08: Most Americans revile socialism, yet Barack Obama's poll numbers remain competitive. One explanation: He's a longtime disciple of a man whose mission was to teach radicals to disguise their ideology. Excerpts: The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's choice of the word "change" as his campaign's central slogan is not the product of focus-group studies, or the brainstorming sessions of his political consultants. One of Obama's main inspirations was a man dedicated to revolutionary change that he was convinced "must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, nonchallenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future."Saul Alinsky, circa 1946: Like Obama, he wanted "change." Saul Alinsky, circa 1946: Like Obama, he wanted "change." Sen. Obama was trained by Chicago's Industrial Areas Foundation, founded in 1940 by the radical organizer Saul Alinsky. In the 1980s, Obama spent years as director of the Developing Communities Project, which operated using Alinsky's strategies, and was involved with two other Alinsky-oriented entities, Acorn and Project Vote. REAL CLEAR POLITICS August 13, 2008 The Galbraith Effect? By Thomas Sowell Full article Thomas Sowell RCP Many years ago, when I was a college student, I took a course from John Kenneth Galbraith. On the first day of class, Professor Galbraith gave a brilliant opening lecture, after which the students gave him a standing ovation. Galbraith kept on giving brilliant opening lectures the whole semester. But, instead of standing ovations, there were now dwindling numbers of students and some of them got up and walked out in the middle of his lectures. Galbraith never got beyond the glittering generalities that marked his first lecture. After a while, the students got tired of not getting any real substance. Senator Barack Obama's campaign this year reminds me very much of that course from Professor Galbraith. Many people were ecstatic during the early primaries, as each state's voters heard his glittering generalities for the first time. REAL CLEAR POLITICS August 11, 2008 The Obama/Wright/Kilpatrick Collision By Steve Mitchell Full article Steve Mitchell Excerpts: Two percent. That's the percent of voters outside the "Motor City" that have a favorable impression of embattled Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. You don't have to be a pollster to understand how strongly disliked Kilpatrick is throughout Michigan. Sit in any restaurant or bar, and all you hear is people talking about Kilpatrick's troubles. Indicted in March on eight felony counts for committing perjury during a whistleblower trial that eventually cost the city about $9 million, the Mayor spent one night in jail on August 7th for violating his bond and then was arraigned the next day for a new crime. In the latest charges, Kilpatrick is accused of assaulting two sheriff's deputies as they were trying to serve one of his close friends with a subpoena. And, what does this have to do with Barack Obama? Although Kilpatrick has distanced himself from Obama and Obama has distanced himself from Kilpatrick, they are both inextricably linked to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And, that is Obama's problem. UnionLeader.Com Drew Cline School Choice For Me, But Not For Thee Saturday August 02nd 2008, 8:05 am Filed under: Blog Posts I know you’ll be shocked to learn this, but Barack Obama sends his two daughters to an extremely expensive (elite!) private school run by the University of Chicago. The tuition bill for both kids: $38 grand a year. And, oh yes, Obama opposes school choice. Can’t have people abandoning the public schools. As Obama says, we must devote our resources to improving them, not abandoning them. Like, um, he did. By “we,” he means, “you.” His kids are outta there. Yours are stuck there. Good luck to them. Saturday August 02nd 2008, 8:05 am NEW YORK POST BARACK LOWERS HIS WORTH WITH CHEAP 'DOLLAR' SHOT By CHARLES HURT BARACK LOWERS HIS WORTH WITH CHEAP 'DOLLAR' SHOT By CHARLES HURT August 1, 2008 WASHINGTON - Barack Obama committed the worst blunder of his campaign by wrongly accusing President Bush, John McCain and other Republicans of trying to make voters fear him because he's not "like all those other presidents on the dollar bills." This racial calumny is completely unfair, diminishes his own campaign, and certainly is the worst possible way to win over those blue-collar white Democrats in Ohio and Pennsylvania who picked Hillary Rodham Clinton over him in the primary. And it's certainly not how he's gotten this far. REAL CLEAR POLITICS Poof! The Bounce is Gone br> Posted by TOM BEVAN Full article Tom Bevan RCP Excerpts: Is the bounce gone, or was there ever a bounce to begin with? After the Gallup tracking poll came out last Friday afternoon showing Obama's lead widening to 6 points from two points, I noted that we were seeing the first signs of what might be considered a "bounce" for Obama. Coupled with an up tick in Rasmussen's tracking poll on Friday, Obama's lead in the RCP National Average moved up to 4.8%. Obama's lead extended to 5.0% in the RCP Average over the weekend as Gallup's track went from 6 points on Friday to 7 points on Saturday and 9 points on Sunday, while Rasmussen ticked up to 6 on Saturday and back down to 5 on Sunday. What a difference 48 hours makes. With the release of the Gallup/USA Today shocker yesterday afternoon showing McCain leading by 4 points among likely voters, coupled with Rasmussen tightening down to just a 1-point Obama lead today and Gallup's tracking poll falling back to 6-points, Obama's lead in the RCP National Average is back down to 2.5% - the tightest it's been since June 7. From The Sunday Times July 27, 2008 American Account: Obama plays into the hands of the protectionists Irwin Stelzer Full article Irwin Stelzer The Sunday Times Excerpts: He came, he saw, and as they say in showbiz — for that was what Barack Obama’s European trip was all about — he knocked them dead. Having given the Germans an opportunity to adore him; traded views with Tony Blair on the plight of less charismatic politicians in the Middle East and, dare it be said, in Britain; heard Gordon Brown extol the virtues of the British healthcare system; and compared views on the role of individual responsibility with David Cameron, Obama returns to the United States to continue to persuade voters that he has the answers to their economic malaise. He starts with a real advantage. Although unemployment remains low and the economy continues to grow, voters are worried. A bank has failed, the financial news channels pump out dark tales of foreclosures and write-offs, petrol prices are crushingly high, and food prices are soaring. Most Americans say the economy is the most important issue in this election, and three out of four think we are in recession. Add that the Republicans are no longer in a position to chide Democrats for being wild-eyed spenders, for subverting the free-market system and for favouring heavy-handed regulation. President George W Bush has presided over the most expensive expansion of the welfare state since the days of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programmes, acquiesced in elaborate plans to bail out troubled financial institutions rather than leave their fates to the market, and along with his Treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, has rolled out myriad regulations covering short-selling, capital requirements and conduct of mortgage brokers, to mention only a few. Bush has also approved a stimulus package designed to shore up consumer spending, proving that Richard Nixon was on to something when he said “We’re all Keynesians now”. LOS ANGELES TIMES One world? Obama's on a different planet The senator's Berlin speech was radical and naive. By John R. Bolton July 26, 2008 Full article John R. Bolton Los Angeles Times Excerpts: SEN. BARACK OBAMA said in an interview the day after his Berlin speech that it "allowed me to send a message to the American people that the judgments I have made and the judgments I will make are ones that are going to result in them being safer." If that is what the senator thought he was doing, he still has a lot to learn about both foreign policy and the views of the American people. Although well received in the Tiergarten, the Obama speech actually reveals an even more naive view of the world than we had previously been treated to in the United States. In addition, although most of the speech was
substantively as content-free as his other campaign pronouncements, when substance did slip in, it was truly radical, from an American perspective. Guardian.co.uk Obama, too at home in Berlin Barack Obama's unmemorable speech in the German capital may reinforce the idea that he's out of touch with AmericaAll comments July 25, 2008 Full article Guardian.co.uk Excerpts:
There's a famous story in American media and politics told by Lesley Stahl, the longtime CBS television reporter. During the Reagan administration, she did a very tough piece on the effect of Reagan's budget cuts to nursing homes and facilities for children with disabilities. After it aired, she got a call from Dick Darman, a Reagan official. She was braced for a blast of criticism, but lo and behold Darman told her the segment was great. Stahl asked: what are you talking about? He explained that the segment's visuals had consisted of pictures of Reagan smiling while cutting ribbons at healthcare centres and nursing homes, and the visuals were all that mattered: "Nobody heard what you said." I'm not sure that's quite as true today as it was in 1984. I think people are somewhat savvier news consumers now. But assuming it's mostly still true, then Barack Obama probably got what he needed today out of the much-hyped Berlin speech. REAL CLEAR POLITICS July 21, 2008 Obama's Iraq Spotlight By Robert Novak Full article Robert Novak RCP Excerpts: WASHINGTON, D.C. -- I asked one of the Republican Party's smartest, most candid heavy hitters this week whether John McCain really has a chance to defeat Barack Obama in this season of Republican discontent. "No, if the campaign is about McCain," he replied. "Yes, if it's about Obama." That underlines the importance of Obama's visit to Iraq, beginning weeks of scrutiny for the Democratic presidential candidate under a GOP spotlight. Four years ago nearly to the day, I asked the same question to the same Republican leader about George W. Bush and John Kerry, and he gave the same answer. He proved prophetic because Bush's campaign made Kerry the issue, and the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate flunked the test. Obama is a far more interesting personality and an incomparably more appealing candidate than Kerry. But why then, in a year where the nation clearly has rejected the GOP as a party, does McCain have a real chance to be elected? Why does Obama have trouble breaking the 50 percent barrier, nationally and in battleground states? The Boston Globe Joan Vennochi July 20, 2008 The audacity of ego Full article Joan Vennochi Boston.com Excerpts: JUST LIKE the Obama girl, Obama has a crush on Obama. Barack Obama always was a larger-than-life candidate with a healthy ego. Now he's turning into the A-Rod of politics. It's all about him. He's giving his opponent something other than issues to attack him on: narcissism. REAL CLEAR POLITICS July 19, 2008 Obama's CEOs By Robert Novak Full article Bob Novak RCP Excerpts: WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Sen. Barack Obama has been meeting secretly with heavy industry CEOs in Washington to discuss issues that he would face as president. On the campaign trail, Obama has been highly critical of corporate executives and promised them nothing but tougher regulation and higher taxes. But the unannounced, small evening sessions with them since he clinched the Democratic nomination have been non-confrontational and cordial. Obama scheduled the meetings without any hopes of winning the captains of industry over from Sen. John McCain, but to show them they would be able to do business with him in the White House and that the president's door would be open to the corporate leaders. Their consensus was that he has largely succeeded in that purpose. ST. PETERSBURG TIMES Don't dare disagree with Obama Bill Maxwell Thursday, July 17, 2008 Full article Bill Maxwell ST. PETERSBURG TIMES Excerpts: You had better mind your manners with regard to Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. You can't disagree with him. You can't question the legitimacy of his many platitudes and promises. And you had better watch it when you offer a litany of his flip-flops or point out his crass opportunism. Be forewarned: If you say, sing, write, draw, paint or sculpt anything unflattering about Obama, expect the Spanish Inquisition. The salvational fervor and unfiltered euphoria surrounding the man have cast a halo around his head. A halo, as you know, suggests something otherworldly. NEW YORK TIMES May We Mock, Barack Maureen Dowd July 16, 2008 Full article Maureen Dowd New York Times Excerpts: When I interviewed Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for Rolling Stone a couple years ago, I wondered what Barack Obama would mean for them. “It seems like a President Obama would be harder to make fun of than these guys,” I said. “Are you kidding me?” Stewart scoffed. REAL CLEAR POLITICS July 15, 2008 Planning to Ignore the Facts By Rich Lowry Full article Rich Lowry RCP Excerpts: At some point, Democrats decided that facts didn't matter anymore in Iraq. And they nominated just the man to reflect the party's new anti-factual consensus on the war, a Barack Obama who has fixedly ignored changing conditions on the ground. It's gotten harder as the success of the surge has become undeniable, but -- despite some wobbles -- Obama is sticking to his plan for a 16-month timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. He musters dishonesty, evasion and straw-grasping to try to create a patina of respectability around a scandalously unserious position. Obama spokesmen now say everyone knew that President Bush's troop surge would create more security. This is blatantly false. Obama said in early 2007 that nothing in the surge plan would "make a significant dent in the sectarian violence," and the new strategy would "not prove to be one that changes the dynamics significantly." He referred to the surge derisively as "baby-sit(ting) a civil war." NEWSWEEK Is Obama's Glow Fading July 12, 2008 Jonathan Darman Full article Jonathan Darman Newsweek A month after emerging victorious from the bruising Democratic nominating contest, some of Barack Obama's glow may be fading. In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, the Illinois senator leads Republican nominee John McCain by just 3 percentage points, 44 percent to 41 percent. The statistical dead heat is a marked change from last month's NEWSWEEK Poll, where Obama led McCain by 15 points, 51 percent to 36 percent. Obama's rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate. Having vanquished Hillary Clinton in early June, Obama quickly went about repositioning himself for a general-election audience--an unpleasant task for any nominee emerging from the pander-heavy primary contests and particularly for a candidate who'd slogged through a vigorous primary challenge in most every contest from January until June. Obama's reversal on FISA legislation, his support of faith-based initiatives and his decision to opt out of the campaign public-financing system left him open to charges he was a flip-flopper. In the new poll, 53 percent of voters (and 50 percent of former Hillary Clinton supporters) believe that Obama has changed his position on key issues in order to gain political advantage. More seriously, some Obama supporters worry that the spectacle of their candidate eagerly embracing his old rival, Hillary Clinton, and traveling the country courting big donors at lavish fund-raisers, may have done lasting damage to his image as an arbiter of a new kind of politics. This is a major concern since Obama's outsider credentials, have, in the past, played a large part in his appeal to moderate, swing voters. In the new poll, McCain leads Obama among independents 41 percent to 34 percent, with 25 percent favoring neither candidate. In June's NEWSWEEK Poll, Obama bested McCain among independent voters, 48 percent to 36 percent. REAL CLEAR POLITICS July 11, 2008 Obama's Changes Raise Issue: Can You Believe in Him? By Mort Kondracke Full article Mort Kondracke RCP Excerpts: Maybe the biggest question of the 2008 presidential campaign is "Who is Sen. Barack Obama really?" Of late, the mystery is deepening. It's customary for presidential candidates to move to the center for the general election after they've pandered to their party's base in the primaries -- but the Illinois Democrat has claimed not to be your customary candidate, but someone who was going to usher in a new politics. He has eloquently promised "change we can believe in," but lately he's changing his tune on so many issues it's becoming a legitimate question: Can voters really believe in him? ECONOMIST.COM Jul 10th 2008 Full article THE ECONOMIST Excerpts: The only problem with Barack Obama’s move to the centre is that he’s not moving far enough THE reaction to Jesse Helms’s death on July 4th is a reminder of how bipolar American politics has become. The right praised him as a man of principle who also overflowed with the milk of human kindness. The left retorted—rightly, in our view—that he was also a bigot and a bully (see article). But at least conservatives and liberals have discovered one thing they can agree on: that Barack Obama is a cynical opportunist, a flip-flopper and a shape-changer, a man who brushes aside his principles with the same nonchalance that lesser mortals reserve for their dandruff. Bob Herbert of the New York Times worries that Mr Obama is “not just tacking gently to the centre. He’s lurching right when it suits him, and he’s zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.” Some 22,000 people have protested on his website about his change of heart on wiretapping. A group called “Recreate68” promises to complain about his move to the centre at the Democratic convention in Denver in August. For its part, the right has discovered that Mr Obama is not a “hard left” liberal, as it had previously thought, but a standard-issue politician who will “say and do anything to get elected”. Charles Krauthammer calls him a “man of seasonal principles”. Bo Snerdley, Rush Limbaugh’s sidekick, describes him as “the first black Clinton”. “Has there ever in recent political memory been so much calculation and bad faith by a politician who has made so much of eschewing both?”, asks Rich Lowry, the editor of the National Review. REAL CLEAR POLITICS July 09, 2008 Obama Would, In Fact, Govern From Left By Dick Morris Full article Dick Morris RCP Excerpts: The list of issues on which Barack Obama has flipped now that the primaries are over is long and growing rapidly. He says he believes in a Second Amendment right to bear arms. He now opposes late-term abortion. He suddenly is a devotee of using faith-based institutions to deliver public services. He now says that he won't raise Social Security taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. In the primary, he said he'd eliminate the threshold entirely, including on people making as little as $100,000. He recently opposed the Fairness Doctrine for talk radio. Now he says he's going to consult with the military before pulling out of Iraq. But so extensive a list of flip-flops, all in the past few weeks, begs the basic question: Was he lying before when he was a liberal, or is he prevaricating now? THE WEEKLY STANDARD THE BLOG Barnes: Obama's Tack To The Center Full article Fred Barnes Excerpts: Barack Obama's tack to the center is quite clever for three reasons (and maybe more, but three is all I could think of). One, it may cause moderate and centrist voters to feel more comfortable about voting for him. That's the big one. Two, he's better off being attacked by John McCain as a flip-flopper than as an unrepentant liberal. And three, he gave up practically nothing in the process. The tack to the middle has been mostly a fuzzy feint that didn't lock him into any new positions. Start with Iraq. He says he'll consult the generals before ordering troop withdrawals. No kidding! Any president would do that. The only new thing in his formulation on ending the war is that "stability" would be a consideration. But of course "stability" is a vague concept. Stability in Iraq in January 2009 will be in the eye of the beholder. Obama's Iraq problem will come later in the campaign after his promised visit to Iraq. He'll find, contrary to his assurances last year that the surge would fail militarily and politically, that the civil war is over, al Qaeda largely beaten, and the Maliki government considerably less sectarian and dysfunctional than it had been. That's likely to be the reality that Obama will have to adjust to. REAL CLEAR POLITICS July 06, 2008 Obama Strikes First By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann Full article Dick Morris and Eileen McGann RCP Excerpts: The campaign of 2008 started on July 1 when Obama launched his first national advertising buy of the season. How McCain responds and whether or not he does, will have a big impact in determining whether Obama can solidify or expand his current lead in the polls. As always, the media fails to cover the significant events of the campaign -- but this is one of the most critical. The Obama ad, which introduces him as someone who worked his way through college, fights for American jobs, and battles for health care also seeks to move him to the center by taking credit for welfare reform in Illinois which, the ad proclaims, reduced the rolls by 80%. But there's one problem - Obama opposed the 1996 welfare reform act at the time. The Illinois law for which he takes credit, was merely the local implementing law the state was required to pass, and it did, almost unanimously. Obama's implication -- that he backed "moving people from welfare to work" -- is just not true. REAL CLEAR POLITICS July 04, 2008 A Man of Seasonal Principles By Charles Krauthammer Full article Charles Krauthammer RCP Excerpts: You'll notice Barack Obama is now wearing a flag pin. Again. During the primary campaign, he refused to, explaining that he'd worn one after Sept. 11 but then stopped because it "became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism." So why is he back to sporting pseudo-patriotism on his chest? Need you ask? The primaries are over. While seducing the hard-core MoveOn Democrats that delivered him the caucuses -- hence, the Democratic nomination -- Obama not only disdained the pin. He disparaged it. Now that he's running in a general election against John McCain, and in dire need of the gun-and-God-clinging working-class votes he could not win against Hillary Clinton, the pin is back. His country 'tis of thee. In last week's column, I thought I had thoroughly chronicled Obama's brazen reversals of position and abandonment of principles -- on public financing of campaigns, on NAFTA, on telecom immunity for post-Sept. 11 wiretaps, on unconditional talks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- as he moved to the center for the general election campaign. I misjudged him. He was just getting started. Last week, when the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, Obama immediately declared that he agreed with the decision. This is after his campaign explicitly told the Chicago Tribune last November that he believes the D.C. gun ban is constitutional. ABC NEWS Obama Shifts on Welfare Reform July 01, 2008 12:19 AM Full article Teddy Davis and Gregory Wallace ABC News Excerpts: ABC News' Teddy Davis and Gregory Wallace Report: Barack Obama aligned himself with welfare reform on Monday, launching a television ad which touts the way the overhaul "slashed the rolls by 80 percent." Obama leaves out, however, that he was against the 1996 federal legislation which precipitated the caseload reduction. "I am not a defender of the status quo with respect to welfare," Obama said on the floor of the Illinois state Senate on May 31, 1997. "Having said that, I probably would not have supported the federal legislation, because I think it had some problems." Obama's transformation from critic to champion of welfare reform is the latest in a series of moves to the center. Since capturing the Democratic nomination, the Obama campaign has altered its stances on Social Security taxes, meeting with rogue leaders without preconditions, and the constitutionality of Washington, D.C.'s, sweeping gun ban. WASHINGTON TIMES Obama's America is Canada Sunday, June 29, 2008 Full article Washington Times Excerpts: What kind of "change" does Barack Obama want? He seeks to transform America into Canada. Mr. Obama is not proposing "new politics," but is a champion of the well-known, already enacted policies in the Great White North. His proposals are more reflective of Canadian values than American national ideals. For example, Mr. Obama's economic plan consists of attempting to redress the disparities of wealth in the United States. He also wants to help the middle class, whom he states has been "squeezed" in the last decade. He rails against overpaid CEOs and an economy that is "out of balance." He will therefore impose higher taxes on those who make more than $250,000 per year, he will increase the capital-gains tax, he will cut taxes for the middle class and ensure that low-income seniors pay no tax. In other words, he will make America a more temperate nation — one in which the lows for those who do not succeed on their merits are not so low, and the highs for those who soar, are not so high. Mr. Obama's policies will result in stifling initiative and rendering America less meritocratic. This economic plan will have detrimental long-term effects, as has occurred in Canada. Canada suffers from a large "brain drain": Every year, many of the most talented, dynamic and enterprising individuals flock to America in order to escape the stagnation and limitations imposed on them by their government. WASHINGTONPOST.COM Pretzel Logic By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 27, 2008; 9:31 AM Full article Howard Kurtz Washington Post Excerpts: Barack Obama is under hostile fire for changing his position on the D.C. gun ban. Oh, I'm sorry. He didn't change his position, apparently. He reworded a clumsy statement. That, at least, is what his campaign is saying. The same campaign that tried to spin his flip-flop in rejecting public financing as embracing the spirit of reform, if not the actual position he had once promised to embrace. Is this becoming a pattern? Wouldn't it be better for Obama to say he had thought more about such-and-such an issue and simply changed his mind? Is that verboten in American politics? Is it better to engage in linguistic pretzel-twisting in an effort to prove that you didn't change your mind? WALL STREET JOURNAL It's All About Obama By KARL ROVE June 26, 2008; Page A13 Full article WSJ Excerpts: Many candidates have measured the Oval Office drapes prematurely. But Barack Obama is the first to redesign the presidential seal before the election. His seal featured an eagle emblazoned with his logo, and included a Latin version of his campaign slogan. This was an attempt by Sen. Obama to make himself appear more presidential. But most people saw in the seal something else – chutzpah – and he's stopped using it. Such arrogance – even self-centeredness – have featured often in the Obama campaign. Consider his treatment of Jeremiah Wright. After Rev. Wright repeated his anti-American slurs at the National Press Club, Mr. Obama said their relationship was forever changed – but not because of what he'd said about America. Instead, Mr. Obama complained, "I don't think he showed much concern for me." WALL STREET JOURNAL Obama's Social Security Fine Print By DONALD L. LUSKIN June 25, 2008; Page A15 Full article WSJ Excerpts: Last week, Barack Obama revealed his plan to shore up Social Security's shaky finances by raising the income level on which the payroll tax is applied. Currently, incomes above $102,000 are exempt, with that threshold rising every year indexed to wage inflation. Mr. Obama would keep that limit in place, but then assess payroll taxes on incomes above $250,000, which his campaign claims would apply to only the richest 3% of Americans. Mr. Obama angered liberals last year when he admitted that there was a "Social Security crisis." But at least Mr. Obama's base should be appeased now that his solution to the "crisis" is to soak the rich. One liberal columnist actually noted with glee the fact that this would take us back to top tax rates not seen since the 1970s. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Mr. Obama's new tax would siphon off 0.4% of gross domestic product annually. Combined with Mr. Obama's other tax-hike initiatives, "the total tax on labor would be close to 60 percent. In high-tax states like California and New York, the top rate would be even higher." FORTUNE What Obama means for business He slammed big companies and free trade in the primaries, but Barack Obama insists he just wants to show corporate America some tough love. We go behind the scenes to see how he plans to make the U.S. a land of opportunity once again. By Nina Easton, Washington bureau chief Last Updated: June 23, 2008: 11:22 AM EDT Full article Nina Easton Fortune Excerpts: (Fortune Magazine) -- Barack Obama is shaking his head. "No, no, no, no, no." His slim figure had been bent forward in a folding chair (prime position to radiate outsized charm). But my question - does he consider corporate America a destructive force? - prompts him to bolt upright to a more defensive pose. It's a purposely provocative query, but a fair one: When Obama talks about business, it's usually to complain about corporate tax breaks or trade deals or jobs shipped overseas. High-paid CEOs are the familiar villains in his stump speeches, including the one he has just given on this Raleigh fairground. Free-market critics look at his varied plans to raise taxes and pronounce him hostile to wealth creation and market growth. And in a small but telling episode during the Indiana primary, his campaign used a 2007 Fortune cover story - "Business Loves Hillary" - to attack Clinton, as if "business" were a dirty word, not the nation's economic engine. WALL STREET JOURNAL Obama Turns FDR Upside Down By LAWRENCE B. LINDSEY June 20, 2008; Page A13 Full article Lawrence B. Lindsey WSJ Excerpts: Sen. Barack Obama has a bad idea for "extending the life of Social Security." He has proposed applying the Social Security tax to incomes above $250,000, in addition to the current tax on incomes up to $102,000. It's unfair, he explained, for middle-class earners to pay Social Security tax on "every dime they make" while the very rich pay on "only a very small percentage of their income." Reporters cited the Obama statement without asking for the logic behind having someone making $100,000 pay on every dime and someone making $250,000 pay on just 41% of income, while someone making $10,000,000 would pay on 98.5% of income. There is no economic principle or theory of tax law that would endorse such a result. Sen. Obama's logic is fairly obvious, although it hardly makes him an exemplar of the "new politics." The $100,000 to $250,000 group is a targeted voter demographic, and he really didn't want to sock them with a 12.4 percentage point hike in their tax rate. But, as Sen. Obama himself noted in his June 13 announcement, just 3% of workers make more than a quarter-million. NEW YORK POST EVER-CHANGING 'CHANGE' Full article New York Post Excerpts: June 21, 2008 -- Awash in campaign cash, Barack Obama this week announced that he's opting out of the public-financing system for presidential campaigns. He'll be the first general-election candidate to do that since the system was set up. This gives new meaning to the notion of "politics of change." "In February 2007, I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public-financing system in the 2008 election," he wrote in November. "My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fund-raising truce, return excess money from donors and stay within the public-financing system for the general election." So much for that. NEW YORK POST Obama Vs. Osama Ralph Peters Full article Ralph Peters New York Post Excerpts: June 19, 2008 -- NAME-BRAND journalists have let Barack Obama make any claim he chooses about Iraq, Afghanistan or coping with terrorism without pinning him down for details. Yet many of his comments and positions seem stunningly naive about national security. Given that this man may become our next president, shouldn't he explain how he'd do the many impressive things he's promised? This week, Obama claimed, again, that he'd promptly capture Osama bin Laden. OK, tell me how: Specifically, which concrete measures would he take that haven't been taken? How would he force our intelligence agencies to locate bin Laden? And he can't just respond, "That's classified." REAL CLEAR POLITICS June 13, 2008 Why Won't Obama Agree to Townhalls? By Mort Kondracke Full article Mort Kondracke RCP Excerpts: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) got an answer from Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) Tuesday on his proposal for 10 town hall-style debates: Not going to happen. That's too bad - and, the fewer there are, the more Obama should suffer for it politically. The town halls not only would give ordinary citizens a chance to ask the candidates some pointed questions (see suggestions below), but - because they would be nationally televised - they would let voters nationwide see how the candidates handle challenges from across the political spectrum. When Obama was debating Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and - in the distant past - when McCain debated his GOP rivals, the Democrats rarely got tough questions premised from the right, or the Republicans, from the left. Obama doesn't want to give deductions against those who actually pay "net taxes". You don't have to pay taxes to get the "Unearned Income Tax Credit." Bill Clinton also did this and called it middle class tax cuts. They were nothing but increased welfare payments NATIONAL JOURNAL MAGAZINE The Democratic Gamble by Ronald Brownstein Sat. Jun 7, 2008 Full article Ronald Brownstein National Journal Magazine Excerpts: It’s difficult to overstate Barack Obama’s achievement in wresting the Democratic presidential nomination from Hillary Rodham Clinton—or the magnitude of the gamble he represents for his party. Obama is the first true insurgent to win either major party’s nod since Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976. In the modern primary era, the only other insurgents to capture nominations were Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Democrat George McGovern in 1972. And none of those three defeated a front-runner as formidable as Clinton. Obama’s campaign will likely be remembered as the most successful primary insurgency ever. That itself defines some of the Democratic gamble. An insurgent campaign inherently upsets existing arrangements and assumptions. It trades the comfort of the familiar for the exhilaration and unpredictability of the new. Obama’s campaign is no exception. He offers Democrats new electoral opportunities with the enormous passion and activism he inspires. But his hold on some voting blocs and states that the party traditionally targets looks shakier than Clinton’s might have been. Obama almost certainly presents Democrats with a better chance to redraw the electoral map and expand their coalition if all goes well. But, in a year so tilted toward Democrats, Clinton might have represented a safer bet to accumulate the bare minimum of 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. Compared with Clinton, “Obama has a much bigger upside,” says Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America’s Future. “And a much bigger risk.” The Democratic Gamble WALL STREET JOURNAL The Obama We Don't Know June 4, 2008; Page A20 Full article Wall Street Journal Excerpts: With Barack Obama clinching the Democratic Party nomination, it is worth noting what an extraordinary moment this is. Democrats are nominating a freshman Senator barely three years out of the Illinois legislature whom most of America still hardly knows. The polls say he is the odds-on favorite to become our next President. Think about this in historical context. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were relatively unknown, but both had at least been prominent Governors. John Kerry, Walter Mondale, Al Gore and even George McGovern were all long-time Washington figures. Republican nominees tend to be even more familiar, for better or worse. In Mr. Obama, Democrats are taking a leap of faith that is daring even by their risky standards. No doubt this is part of his enormous appeal. Amid public anger over politics as usual, the Illinois Senator is unhaunted by Beltway experience. His personal story – of mixed race, and up from nowhere through Harvard – resonates in an America where the two most popular cultural icons are Tiger Woods and Oprah. His political gifts are formidable, especially his ability to connect with audiences from the platform. WASHINGTON POST.COM Lou Cannon Reagan's Choice From 1976, a Question for Obama and Clinton June 3, 2008 Full article Lou Cannon Washington Post Excerpts: Gerald Ford went to his grave believing that Ronald Reagan's challenge for the Republican presidential nomination cost him the White House in 1976. In truth, Reagan sharpened Ford as a candidate, much as Hillary Clinton's campaign has sharpened Barack Obama in 2008. What damaged Ford in his effort to overtake Democrat Jimmy Carter was not what Reagan did to him in the spring of 1976 but what he failed to do in the fall. Similarly, the question now is what role Clinton will play after Obama has formally secured the nomination. The roller-coaster nature of this year's marathon contest for the Democratic nomination has many echoes of the GOP race of 1976. While Ford had the advantage of incumbency, he was to the GOP's conservative wing an accidental president who held the office only because Richard Nixon had been forced to resign. These conservatives favored Reagan, who was expected to win the first primary, in New Hampshire. But Ford upset Reagan, as Obama upset Clinton in this year's Iowa caucuses, and he parlayed his victory into a string of primary wins. Ford's nomination seemed assured until Reagan climbed off the mat and won the North Carolina primary. That began a protracted struggle, as Clinton's comeback win in New Hampshire did in this year's Democratic race. Reagan won a slew of primaries in important states, as Clinton has, without ever quite catching Ford, who was nominated at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City by little more than a hundred votes. By the time he became the nominee, Ford was a better candidate than he would have been without the Reagan challenge, much as Obama has benefited from Clinton's challenge. In 1976, Ford had never run for office beyond his Grand Rapids congressional district; while an estimable human being and an underrated president, he was a plodding campaigner and often a dreadful public speaker. His speechwriters once tried to improve his delivery by writing the words "WITH EMPHASIS" in the margin of his text. Ford, denouncing something or other as "nonsense," incorporated the notes into his speech and told a startled audience: "I say to you this is nonsense with emphasis!" ChicagoTribune.COM Originally posted: May 30, 2008 Pfleger's vile sermon You can read the Tribune's Saturday editorial regarding the news surrounding Rev. Michael Pfleger here. Full article Michael Phleger Excerpts: When Barack Obama announced his campaign for president, you could anticipate that ugly racial stereotypes would rear up. You probably couldn’t anticipate that some of his strongest supporters would promote the worst of it. That’s what the nation saw as video surfaced of a sermon Rev. Michael Pfleger gave last Sunday from the pulpit of Obama’s church in Chicago. Pfleger talks of exposing “white entitlement and supremacy wherever it raises its head, and then theatrically mocks Sen. Hillary Clinton. NEW YORK POST Adam Brodsky May 30, 2998 BAM'S LAND OF LOSERS HIS PATHETIC ADVICE TO GRADS Full article Adam Brodsky NY Post Excerpts: FOR all his soaring, hopeful rhetoric, Barack Obama chose an odd message this week to send Wesleyan's graduating seniors. Face it, kids - he basically said - Americans are losers. Pathetic, needy dependents who can't make it without help. So forget your dreams, dear graduates. Go forth and aid your fellow deadbeats. Never mind "The Audacity of Hope." Obama was trumpeting "The Ubiquity of Failure." "The Equality of Need." "The Endlessness of the Dole." REAL CLEAR POLITICS May 29, 2008 Obama's Woes: A Tale of Three States By Richard Baehr Full article Richard Baehr RCP Excerpts: If you want evidence that the Democrats are taking a huge gamble by nominating Barack Obama as their Presidential candidate, you need look no further than the current state of the race in three Southern/border states. In 1992 and 1996 Bill Clinton won Kentucky, West Virginia and Arkansas. In 2000 and 2004, George Bush won all three states. In the current Democratic Party nominating contest, Hillary Clinton won all three states by huge margins -- 30 points or more in each case. West Virginia (3%), and Kentucky (7%) have relatively small black populations. Arkansas is just over 15% African American (in the same range as Florida and Tennessee). The three states have 19 Electoral College votes among them, almost as many as Ohio (20). In 2004, Bush won the Electoral College by 286-252. Had he lost Ohio, Kerry would have been elected. In 2008, Ohio will undoubtedly be a battleground again. May 29, 2008 Obama's Need for a Loyal Caucus By David Broder Full article David Broder Excerpts: WASHINGTON -- A year after Jimmy Carter lost his re-election race to Ronald Reagan, Hamilton Jordan, his former White House chief of staff, sat down for a lengthy interview with scholars at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Last week, after hearing the news of Jordan's death, friends at the center sent me a transcript of that 27-year-old interview. As they predicted, it was of intense interest for current politics, and particularly on the challenge facing Barack Obama. The main theme of Jordan's interview was this intriguing observation: "Only because of the fragmentation that had taken place" in the Democratic Party and its allied groups was Carter able to be nominated and elected in 1976. But that same fragmentation made the challenge of governing so difficult that he was almost doomed to fail. TOWNHALL.COM Tuesday, May 27, 2008 Obama's WWII Uncle Flap By Amanda Carpenter Full article Amanda Carpenter Townhall.Com Barack Obama’s campaign staff is scrambling to explain a family story Obama told on the campaign trail that rivals say is untrue and warrants explanation. At a Memorial Day campaign stop Obama told a story about his WWII veteran uncle who allegedly liberated Auschwitz. Upon returning to the United States, according to Obama family lore, the uncle spent months alone in his attic. “Now obviously, something had really affected him deeply, but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain,” Obama said. “That’s why this idea of making sure that every single veteran, when they are discharged, are screened for post-traumatic stress disorder and given the mental health services that they need – that’s why it’s so important.” The trouble is, the Red Army liberated Auschwitz and Obama’s mother is an only child. (His father left him at a young age, so it was unlikely the uncle in question was related to his father.) REAL CLEAR POLITICS May 27, 2008 Mascot Politics By Thomas Sowell Excerpts: Years ago, when Jack Greenberg left the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to become a professor at Columbia University, he announced that he was going to make it a point to hire a black secretary at Columbia. This would of course make whomever he hired be seen as a token black, rather than as someone selected on the basis of competence. This reminded me of the first time I went to Milton Friedman's office when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago back in 1960, and I noticed that he had a black secretary. This was four years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and there was no such thing as affirmative action. NEWSWEEK CAMPAIGN 2008 Obama’s Lobbyist Connection By Michael Isikoff Jun 2, 2008 Issue Full article Michael Isikoff Excerpts: When Illinois utility Commonwealth Edison wanted state lawmakers to back a hefty rate hike two years ago, it took a creative lobbying approach, concocting a new outfit that seemed devoted to the public interest: Consumers Organized for Reliable Electricity, or CORE. CORE ran TV ads warning of a "California-style energy crisis" if the rate increase wasn't approved—but without disclosing the commercials were funded by Commonwealth Edison. The ad campaign provoked a brief uproar when its ties to the utility, which is owned by Exelon Corp., became known. "It's corporate money trying to hoodwink the public," the state's Democratic Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn said. What got scant notice then—but may soon get more scrutiny—is that CORE was the brainchild of ASK Public Strategies, a consulting firm whose senior partner is David Axelrod, now chief strategist for Barack Obama. Last week, Obama hit John McCain for hiring "some of the biggest lobbyists in Washington" to run his campaign; Obama's aides say their candidate, as a foe of "special interests," has refused to take money from lobbyists or employ them. Neither Axelrod nor his partners at ASK ever registered as lobbyists for Commonwealth Edison—and under Illinois's loose disclosure laws, they were not required to. "I've never lobbied anybody in my life," Axelrod tells NEWSWEEK. "I've never talked to any public official on behalf of a corporate client." (He also says "no one ever denied" that Edison was the "principal funder" of his firm's ad campaign.) But the activities of ASK (located in the same office as Axelrod's political firm) illustrate the difficulties in defining exactly who a lobbyist is. In 2004, Cablevision hired ASK to set up a group similar to CORE to block a new stadium for the New York Jets in Manhattan. Unlike Illinois, New York disclosure laws do cover such work, and ASK's $1.1 million fee was listed as the "largest lobbying contract" of the year in the annual report of the state's lobbying commission. ASK last year proposed a similar "political campaign style approach" to help Illinois hospitals block a state proposal that would have forced them to provide more medical care to the indigent. One part of its plan: create a "grassroots" group of medical experts "capable of contacting policymakers to advocate for our position," according to a copy of the proposal. (ASK didn't get the contract.) Public-interest watchdogs say these grassroots campaigns are state of the art in the lobbying world. "There's no way with a straight face to say that's not lobbying," says Ellen Miller, director of the Sunlight Foundation, which promotes government transparency. THE AUSTRALIAN Greg Sheridan Foreign editor May 24, 2008 Full article Greg Sheridan The Australian Excerpts: SO now it's all but official. November's presidential election will be a historic bout full of symbolism and substance and the clanging bells of history.The first black candidate for a major party, Barack Obama for the Democrats, will confront the oldest non-incumbent to run for the presidency, John McCain. The historic firsts are everywhere and full of meaning. They are also full of weird synchronicities. This will be the first presidential race in which the two main candidates have both lived in Southeast Asia. Obama spent several years in Indonesia as a child, and McCain spent five years in Vietnam as a prisoner of war. It is all set as a battle royal between two of the most appealing candidates in presidential history. No one could be blind to what it means to have a black candidate with a good shot at the presidency. Similarly, no one with a heart could fail to admire the heroism McCain displayed as a prisoner of war, tortured and in solitary confinement for years, declining an offer of early release out of solidarity with his fellow prisoners. BLOOMBERG.COM Icahn Says Obama Would Be `Terrible' U.S. President (Update1) By Michael McKee May 22, 2008 Full article Michael McKee Bloomberg.Com Excerpts: Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said Barack Obama would be a ``terrible'' U.S. president whose election would bring higher interest rates and a loss of international confidence in the dollar. ``I don't normally get involved in politics, but this time I am,'' Icahn told an investors conference in New York last night. ``I don't think Obama really understands economics.'' The Obama campaign referred a request for comment to UBS Americas Chairman Robert Wolf, a fundraiser. ``Senator Obama has a very smart plan to help our nation come out of and recover more quickly from our economic downturn,'' Wolf said in an e-mail. INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Obama's Social Insecurity Plan May 20, 2008 Full article INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Excerpts: Entitlements: In trying to tie John McCain to the third rail of American politics by pandering to seniors, Barack Obama shows the only thing he's consistent on is his desire to raise our taxes. We suspected that the No. 1 liberal in the U.S. Senate would get around to playing the granny card as he shook Hillary off and focused on John McCain. That moment came in Gresham, Ore., on Sunday when he promised to protect "the promise that FDR made" and "preserve the Social Security Trust Fund." He warned that McCain would raise the retirement age and privatize Social Security a la President Bush. How does he demagogue the issue? Let us count the myths. Fact is, Social Security is all trust and no fund. There's no stash of your cash in an account with your name on it that nobody can touch. The money beneficiaries get comes from the paychecks of their children, grandchildren, friends and neighbors. But with private accounts there would be cash in an account. ORANGE COUNTY OC REGISTER Saturday, May 17, 2008 Obama an appeaser? How dare you By MARK STEYN Full article Mark Steyn OC REGISTER Excerpts: "That's enough. That – that's a show of disrespect to me." That was Barack Obama, a couple of weeks back, explaining why he was casting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into outer darkness. It's one thing to wallow in "adolescent grandiosity" (as Scott Johnson of the Powerline Web site called it) when it's a family dispute between you and your pastor of 20 years. It's quite another to do so when it's the 60th anniversary celebrations of one of America's closest allies. President Bush was in Israel the other day and gave a speech to the Knesset. Its perspective was summed up by his closing anecdote – a departing British officer in May 1948 handing the iron bar to the Zion Gate to a trembling rabbi and telling him it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to the gates of the Jerusalem was in the hands of a Jew. In other words, it was a big-picture speech, referencing the Holocaust, the pogroms, Masada – and the challenges that lie ahead. Sen. Obama was not mentioned in the text. No Democrat was mentioned, save for President Truman, in the context of his recognition of the new state of Israel when it was a mere 11 minutes old. Nonetheless, Barack Obama decided that the president's speech was really about him, and he didn't care for it. He didn't put it quite as bluntly as he did with the Rev. Wright, but the message was the same: "That's enough. That's a show of disrespect to me." And, taking their cue from the soon-to-be nominee's weirdly petty narcissism, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Co. piled on to deplore Bush's outrageous, unacceptable, unpresidential, outrageously unacceptable and unacceptably unpresidential behavior. Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies. Here's what the president said: INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Thursday, May 15, 2008 Hitting A Nerve Full article IBD Excerpts: Foreign Policy: Barack Obama claims he's not an appeaser. But when President Bush attacked those who "seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists," why was the senator sure he was talking about him? Read More: Election 2008 "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" is the famous Hamlet quote referring to pleas of innocence that actually indicate guilt. Did Obama, the near-certain Democratic Party nominee for president, "protest too much" in complaining about Bush's speech to Israel's Knesset on Thursday? Addressing lawmakers in Jerusalem in a special session of the legislature commemorating the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel, the president made comments with which few Americans could find fault. REAL CLEAR POLITICS Obama: "I Will Raise Taxes" By Amanda Carpenter Thursday, May 8, 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama flatly promised to raise taxes in a television interview Thursday afternoon. “I will raise CEO taxes,” Obama told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room.” Full article Amanda Carpenter Excerpts: US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) speaks at his North Carolina and Indiana primary election night rally in Raleigh, North Carolina May 6, 2008. REUTERS/Chris Keane (UNITED STATES) US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN 2008 (USA)Related Media:VIDEO: Obama, Clinton Split Primaries “If you’re a CEO in this country you’ll probably pay more taxes,” Obama said. Obama speculated his CEO tax rates “won’t be prohibitively high, you’ll pay roughly what you did in the 90’s when they were doing fine.” Obama also said he would eliminate the Bush tax cuts and install what he called a “middle class tax cut.” May 03, 2008 Obama, Clinton vie in Guam Democratic caucuses Obama Gets Slight Win The Associated Press Full article Real Clear Politics Excerpts: Barack Obama defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton by seven votes in the Guam Democratic presidential caucuses Saturday. The count of more than 4,500 ballots took all night. Neither candidate campaigned in the U.S. island territory in person, but both did long-distance media interviews and bought campaign ads for the caucuses. Results of the count completed Sunday morning Guam time show delegates pledged to Obama with 2,264 votes to 2,257 for Clinton's slate. That means they'll split the pledged delegate votes. Obama's slate won in 14 of 21 districts.The New York Times May 1, 2008 Op-Ed Columnist Desperately Seeking Street Cred By MAUREEN DOWD Published: April 27, 2008 WASHINGTON Full article Maureen Dowd NY Times Excerpts: 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? NATIONALREVIEWONLINE April 25, 2008 4:30 PM Not Everything Is About Race A wrong and reckless approach. By Peter Wehner
Full article Peter Wehner NRO Excerpts: In his Friday column, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post writes this: Republicans clearly know that they can find ways to play on racial feeling while fully denying they are doing so. On Wednesday, the North Carolina Republican Party released a television ad showing Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, giving his now-famous sermon in which he declared, "God damn America." Of course Wright's comments were offensive, but to pretend that the ad does not have racial undertones would be to deny the obvious. After all, why didn't North Carolina Republicans focus instead on attacking Obama's alleged "elitism" or his foreign policy views? But the ad in question doesn’t mention race anywhere; rather, it includes a clip of Reverend Wright’s incendiary words. Wright happens to be black — but his race is not the reason he’s in the ad. His words are — and if Wright were white, his words and picture would still be used. Dionne argues that racism has to be the motivation of the North Carolina Republican party because the ad showed Wright’s comments instead of focusing on Obama’s foreign-policy views. But perhaps the reason for that is that Wright’s words insisting that God “damn America” — which Dionne himself concedes are “offensive” and has elsewhere described as “anti-American,” “lunatic,” “pernicious,” and ones we should “loathe” — are far more troubling to many Americans than Obama’s stand on the U.N. or the E.U. April 26, 2008 Full article Pete DuPont Wall Street Journal Every Voter In America Should Read This Article Obama's America He promises higher taxes, more regulation, less trade and less opportunity. By PETE DU PONT April 23, 2008 10:18 p.m. Excerpts: Nine months from now, the 44th president will be inaugurated. Looking at the debates, votes cast and money raised in this year's presidential primary races, the next president may not only be a Democrat, but Barack Obama, the most liberal of the 100 members of the U.S. Senate. Add the announced retirement of six Republican senators and 29 Republican House members (compared with just seven House Democrats) and the Democrats are likely to control both the House and the Senate with much bigger majorities than they do today. So both the next president and the new congressional majorities will be much more liberal than the officeholders they have replaced, and that will result in a broad-reaching, socialist-leaning, greatly expanded American government. ### SALON.COM Joan Walsh Thursday April 24, 2008 07:30 EDT Looking past Pennsylvania Full article Joan Walsh Salon.Com Excerpts: As I continue to think about the lessons of the Pennsylvania primary, and their relevance to the races ahead, I found myself thinking about the hours I spent last Saturday watching CNN's "Ballot Bowl" -- long live clips of John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton out on the campaign trail, rarely mediated by cable chatterers. I was also reading angry letters about my post on the ABC debate and recovering from three college visits in a week with my daughter. I share that TMI because the context was important. I was tired and a little bit cranky (I know, that makes me Clinton's demographic!), but I had an epiphany about the race between Clinton and Obama that stayed with me. I was multitasking and not paying that much attention to the TV in the background, but Clinton is just a campaign jackhammer, shattering your resistance with detail. I tried to tune her out, but I found myself listening to her long lists of what she'd do to solve the healthcare crisis, the mortgage crisis, the college education affordability crisis. And suddenly, hey! She's talking to me! She told me she'd do away with FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid! Everyone hates FAFSA! She doesn't want me to take money out of my house to pay for college, either. I felt like I was watching Suze Orman (another one of my guilty zone-out TV pleasures). Clinton said she would solve problems I didn't even know I had. Then I watched Obama. I love listening to Obama. Once again, I really got his theory of change: His campaign is not about cobbling together a laundry list of policy-wonk solutions and then trying to squeak them through Congress; it's about thoroughly changing the terms and conditions of our political debate. His dream coalition includes decent Republicans and independents, along with young people, African-Americans and lots of new voters who've been turned off by the polarization of the Clinton-Bush years. His speeches are heavily about process, and they're inspiring. If you think our process is corrupt and broken, he's your man. If you're either fine with the process or too busy to think about it (filling out your FAFSA, trying to save your house from foreclosure, breaking up your kids' latest fight), he might lose you. WASHINGTON POST.COM Obama's Gloves Are Off -- And May Need to Stay Off By Jonathan Weisman Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, April 23, 2008; A01 Full article Jonathan Weisman Excerpts: Unable once again to score a knockout, Sen. Barack Obama is likely to make his new negative tone even more negative -- with a sharp eye on trying to end the Democratic presidential nomination fight after the May 6 primaries in Indiana and North Carolina. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's victory yesterday in Pennsylvania has only accentuated the quandary that Obama faces: Stay negative and he risks undermining the premise of his candidacy. Stay aloof and he underscores Clinton's argument that he will not be able to beat a "Republican attack machine" sure to greet him this summer. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe indicated last night which of those options they would take. "We've done a lot of counterpunching. We've been swift and effective," he said. "For Democrats judging how we're going to perform as the nominee, we have been relentless." REAL CLEAR POLITICS April 22, 2008 Is Obama JFK or Adlai Stevenson? By E. J. Dionne Full article E.J. Dionne Real Clear Politics Excerpts: DOWNINGTOWN, Pa. -- The result of the 2008 election may come down to how voters decide to define Barack Obama. Is he Adlai Stevenson or John F. Kennedy? Is he a detached former law review editor or a passionate agent of change? Is he an upscale reformer focused on process or a populist who will turn Washington and the country around? One of the central lessons of the Pennsylvania primary campaign is that Obama's personality is now far more important than either Hillary Clinton's or John McCain's. That's true not only because voters have a longer history with Clinton and McCain, but also because so much of the energy and novelty of 2008 is the product of Obama's rapid breakthrough to wide acclaim. As a result, almost all of the turns in this contest have been driven by how Obama presented himself and how voters perceived him. The Senator has said repeatedly he would not raise taxes on middle-class earners-his definition-"people with annual income lower than between $200,000 and $250,000." On Wednesday night, he reiterated that pledge. "I not only have pledged not to raise their taxes," he said, "I've been the first candidate in this race to specifically say I would cut their taxes." Barack Obama contradicts that by saying "he's open to raising the current top capital gains tax rate of 15%, to 28%", almost doubling it. This would be a tax hike on approximately 100 million Americans who own stock, tens of millions of whom fall within Mr. Obama's definition of middle class. Mr. Gibson reminded Obama a second time that cuts in the capital gains rate have consistently increased revenues while increases in those rates have decreased revenues. Irresistible Democratic Class Warfare Kicks In Showing that Democrats can never control their class warfare rhetoric, Barack cited hedge-fund managers suggesting their making too much money and suggesting that what we could get from them would pay for his health care proposals. This answer was as evasive as it was dishonest. Taxing hedge fund managers at that higher rate would possibly bring no extra revenue but if it did, would be a trickle. Its effect would not be much more than something like giving one dollar a day toward reducing the $9.41 trillion dollar debt. Will Bunch a Leftist, says this on his blog-Attytood. I believe Mr. Bunch writes regularly for The Philadelphia Daily News Here is his headline and some excerpts: "An open letter to Charlie Gibson and George Stephanapoulos Dear Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, It's hard to know where to begin with this, less than an hour after you signed off from your Democratic presidential debate here in my hometown of Philadelphia, a televised train wreck that my friend and colleague Greg Mitchell has already called, quite accurately, "a shameful night for the U.S. media." It's hard because -- like many other Americans -- I am still angry at what I just witnessed, so angry that it's hard to even type accurately because my hands are shaking. Look, I know that "media criticism" -- especially when it's one journalist speaking to another -- tends to be a genteel, collegial thing, but there's no genteel way to say this. With your performance tonight -- your focus on issues that were at best trivial wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods, punctuated by inane "issue" questions that in no way resembled the real world concerns of American voters -- you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes. But it's even worse than that. By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself. Indeed, if I were a citizen of one of those nations where America is seeking to "export democracy," and I had watched the debate, I probably would have said, "no thank you." Because that was no way to promote democracy. You implied throughout the broadcast that you wanted to reflect the concerns of voters in Pennsylvania. Well, I'm a Pennsylvanian voter, and so are my neighbors and most of my friends and co-workers. You asked virtually nothing that reflected our everyday issues -- trying to fill our gas tanks and save for college at the same time, our crumbling bridges and inadequate mass transit, or the root causes of crime here in Philadelphia. In fact, there almost isn't enough space -- and this is cyberspace, where room is unlimited -- to list all the things you could have asked about but did not, from health care to climate change to alternative energy to our policy toward China to the deterioration of Afghanistan to veterans' benefits to improving education. You ignored virtually everything that just happened in what most historians agree is one of the worst presidencies in American history, including the condoning of torture and the trashing of the Constitution, although to be fair you also ignored the policy concerns of people on the right, like immigration issues. Real Clear Politics-From: WASHINGTON TIMES Full article Walter E. Williams Washington Times Foreign trade angst By Walter E. Williams April 16, 2008 Excerpts: Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, pandering to anti-trade activists, suggest should they become president they will restrict trade agreements. Before you buy into their promised paradise, you might consider a few trade questions. Suppose you were choosing a country to live in. Would you prefer a country the world is champing at the bit to put its money into or one where the world is unwilling to invest? Let's look at the numbers. The United States is the world's largest recipient of foreign direct investment. According the Economic Report of the President, in 2004, foreigners owned $5.5 trillion in U.S. assets and had $2.3 trillion in sales. They produced $515 billion of goods and services, accounting for 5.7 percent of total U.S. private output, and employed 5.1 million workers, or 4.7 percent of the U.S. work force in 2004. According to the Congressional Research Service, in 2006 alone, foreign investors spent $184 billion investing in U.S. businesses and real estate, the highest amount foreign investors have spent since 2000. My question to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and the anti-trade lobby: Would Americans be better off if there were no foreign investment in our country? Data separate from Mr. Williams article, but see much more related data if you click through to the remainder of his article. In addition to the jobs mentioned above 40% of the entire U.S. workforce is employed by export-related jobs at a wage 13-18% higher than the national average. By Charlie Cook, NationalJournal.com © National Journal Group Inc. Tuesday, April 15, 2008 Summary: "For Clinton, the odds are the incident is too late to save her candidacy. But more Bittergates would increase her chances of drawing enough support in the April 22 Pennsylvania primary to justify, or even guarantee, her continued run. There are likely to be more gaffes for each of the candidates as this campaign progresses, but in a race like this, each one is exceedingly costly and, cumulatively, can become fatal. As of now, I still believe that Barack Obama has about a 95-percent chance of clinching the Democratic nomination. The only way Clinton can win is to get enough pledged delegates through the remaining primaries and caucuses so that superdelegates can perceive the race as a virtual tie and vote for her. However, the window for that is pretty much closed. She can't win the remaining contests by sufficiently large-enough margins to appreciably close the gap, and superdelegates appear to be breaking more toward Obama. So again, short of a Rev. Jeremiah Wright-level embarrassment visiting Obama each week for four or five more consecutive weeks, this thing is over." Several quotes from Barack: "Around election time, the candidates can't do enough for you. They'll promise you anything, give you a long list of proposals and even come around, with TV crews in tow, to throw back a shot and a beer," "Here's what you can't do. You can't spend the better part of two decades campaigning for NAFTA and PNTR for China, and then come here to Pennsylvania, and tell the steelworkers you've been with them all along," Obama said. "You can't say you are opposed to the Colombia Trade deal, while your key strategist is working for the Colombian government to get the deal passed." It's Most famous slogans were: War is peace Ignorance is strength Education is slavery See what Victor Davis Hanson has to say about Obama's speech and revised comments NationalReviewOnline Sunday, April 13, 2008 Why Orwell Matters [Victor Davis Hanson] Here is what Sen. Obama said: Full article Victor Davis Hanson Excerpts: "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." Here is what Sen. Obama now says he said: "So I said, 'Well, you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on,' " he continued. "So people they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country or they get frustrated about, you know, how things are changing. That's a natural response." April 11, 2008 6:00 AM The Company He Keeps Meet Obama’s circle: The same old America-hating Left. By Andrew C. McCarthy Full article Andrew C. Mc Carthy National Review OnLine Excerpts: Why is Barack Obama so comfortable around people who so despise America and its allies? Maybe it’s because they’re so comfortable around him. He presents as the transcendent agent of “change.” Sounds platitudinous, but it’s really quite strategically vaporous. Sen. Obama is loath to get into the details of how we should change, and, as the media’s Chosen One, he hasn’t had to. MICHELLE So, instead, we get glimpses. The most profound influence in his life, his wife Michelle, is notoriously less circumspect than her careful husband about where she’s coming from. Her college thesis, which Princeton tried to keep under lock and key, testifies to a race-obsessed worldview. She may have refined it, but she’s never grown out of it. Does Barack deserve praise for an honest assesment? Will he be criticized for saying what he believes? 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. Apr 10 01:39 PM US/Eastern By NEDRA PICKLER Associated Press Writer "Republican Sen. John McCain has erased Sen. Barack Obama's 10-point advantage in a head-to-head matchup, leaving him essentially tied with both Democratic candidates in an Associated Press-Ipsos national poll released Thursday. The survey showed the extended Democratic primary campaign creating divisions among supporters of Obama and rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and suggests a tight race for the presidency in November no matter which Democrat becomes the nominee. McCain is benefiting from a bounce since he clinched the GOP nomination a month ago. The four-term Arizona senator has moved up in matchups with each of the Democratic candidates, particularly Obama." The last two presidential elections have followed almost identical patterns as far as red states and blue states. Forty-seven of the 50 states voted the same way in both elections. New Mexico and Iowa voted Republican in 2004 after having voted Democrat in 2000. New Hampshire did the opposite. This pattern has been fairly consistent for close to 60 years, except for landslides in 1984, Ronald Reagan over Walter Mondale and 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson over Barry Goldwater and a fairly decisive win in 1972 for Richard Nixon over Hubert H. Humphrey. Many states show a pattern that follows the popularity of the candidate, so if either one is strong enough to win the overall election by a wide margin, the chances of carrying states that often go the other way becomes much more possible. "Obama's dance on gun rights is part of his evolution from a radical young state legislator a few years ago. He was recorded in a 1996 questionnaire as advocating a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns (a position since disavowed). He was on the board of the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, which takes an aggressive gun control position, and in 2000 considered becoming its full-time president. In 2006, he voted with an 84 to 16 majority (and against Clinton) to prohibit confiscation of firearms during an emergency, but that is his only pro-gun vote in Springfield or Washington. The National Rifle Association (NRA) grades him (and Clinton) at "F." There is no anti-gun litmus test for Democrats. In 2006, Ted Strickland was elected governor of Ohio and Bob Casey U.S. senator from Pennsylvania with NRA grades of "A." Following their model, Obama talks about the rights of "Americans to protect their families." He has not yet stated whether that right should exist in Washington, D.C." Quotes and comments on Barack's followers Eleanor Clift: ...'his media halo has "tarnished" a bit, pundits and political operatives remain at a loss to explain what Hillary Clinton herself referred to, in a Feb. 26 interview on Pat Robertson's The 700 Club, as the Obama "phenomenon." Of the Obamaniacs and Obamabots some are calling them "glassy-eyed, brainwashed cult worshippers," who chant "mantra-like" slogans and "swoon with euphoria." New York Times columnist David Brooks has likened them to Hare-Krishna people and to Moonies — "Soon they'll be selling flowers at airports and arranging mass weddings." Picking up on the hysteria theme, syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker has dismissed their "New Age glossolalia" as spiritual hunger gone terribly wrong, seduced by Obama's rhetoric, which "drips with hints of resurrection, redemption, second comings." MSNBC's Chris Matthews, going Parker one better, was quoted in Australia's The Age as saying, "I've never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. Obama comes along and he seems to have the answers. This is New Testament." The AFL-CIO is holding its convention at the Sheraton Philadelphia City Center Hotel. Pennsylvania has 830,000 union members, the fourth-largest total among the states. About 850 delegates are in attendance Guesstimates are that one-third of the convention's 40 to 50 locals have endorsed Clinton. One-third seem to be for Obama, with one-third undecided, according to AFL-CIO spokesman Jim Degan. The Service Employees International Union,s president of Harrisburg's local 668 heard Obama speak. Her union, which has 65,000 members statewide, backs the Illinois senator. On January 9, 2008 Nevada’s Culinary Workers Union officially endorsed Obama in Las Vegas. On March 15, 2008 the Oregon Council of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has endorsed Barack Obama for president. “The union took action prior to the upcoming Oregon primary because Obama has a history of standing up and fighting for working people,” Oregon AFSCME Executive Director Ken Allen said in a statement. “In Illinois, Sen. Obama fought alongside AFSCME to keep vital public services open, including mental hospitals and prisons. He also worked to help organize thousands of workers at Resurrection Hospital, and supported card check recognition for other workers seeking to unionize in their workplace.” Barack has cut Hillary's lead in Pennsylvania from 20 % in January to 6.6% in the latest Real Clear Politics polling. Yesterday we learned the Obama campaign raised $40 million in cash in March, whereas Hillary's campaign raised half of that. He was already outspending her by a nearly 4 to 1 margin, which will likely grow as we move closer to the April 22, primary vote. Recently Barack has been hitting spots that are considered serious strengths of Mrs. Clinton's. Presently Mrs. Clinton is considered the clear favorite to win, but it could possibly be closer than most expected. Some, probably give Barack an outside chance of winning. Similar to the Demagoguery of Hillary Clinton, Barack was promising single mothers and laid off workers in Pennsylvania how much consideration they would get from an administration led by him. Single mothers by the score are also unwed mothers. Among the group of unwed mothers, many would also be high school dropouts. The United States already provides benefits to these individuals too numerous to mention. One of these benefits should be highlighted for the scandal it has become, the badly misnamed Earned Income Tax Credit. No one has ever earned one penny from this program. Recipients receive it by having a job, like the rest of us who work, then qualify through means testing, the basic qualifier used for all welfare programs. Some of the horrors of this boondoggle which now costs taxpayers more than $40 billion dollars every year and has sent out fraudulent payments, which over the years has reached the hundreds of billions since its inception in 1972, will be explained in detail starting on Friday April 4, 2008 TOWNHALL.COM The Wright Questions For Obama By Michael Medved Wednesday, April 2, 2008 Full article Michael Medved Townhall.com Excerpts: Barack Obama continues to face controversy over his association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright because his comments about the provocative pastor have been contradictory, evasive, misleading and unsatisfying. The issue will begin to dissipate only when the Senator gives better answers to better questions. Here are some of the Wright (and right) questions for Obama to address: 1. You’ve recently suggested that Pastor Wright has already acknowledged that he spoke inappropriately from the pulpit, and this acknowledgment allowed you to continue as a member of his church. On ABC’s “The View” (March 28, 2008) you commented: “Had the Reverend not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people, and were inappropriate, and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn’t have felt comfortable staying at the church.” Since Wright’s made no public statements of apology or regret concerning his controversial sermons and articles, does your comment indicate that he’s apologized privately to you? Would you urge him to make a public apology or correction or clarification? If not, is it because you believe his misstatements weren’t serious enough to demand it? 2. You’ve repeatedly spoken of Wright’s “outrageous” or “offensive” remarks, but never specified which specific comments you had in mind. Where, precisely, did Wright go wrong? Regarding sex education at an event in Pennsylvania the senator said, that he will educate his young daughters but “if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby. I don’t want them punished with an STD at the age of 16.” Andrea Helmer was paying close attention to Barack Obama but seems less interested now. "As things came out regarding some of the things his pastor has said, I got concerned," said Helmer, a respiratory therapist and mother of two in Evansville, Indiana. Interviews with many other Democrats which has a strong contingency of whites in this are and which votes on May 6th, suggests the flap over pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright is still a concern among a significant number of white voters. "Senator Obama says he doesn't take campaign contributions from oil companies but the reality is that Exxon, Shell, and others are among his donors," Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said. It is true. Obama, Clinton and John McCain do not take money from oil companies. It is illegal for corporations to give money to politicians. None of the three accept money directly from the corporations. The political action committees, of those corporations, however, do collect voluntary donations from employees and then donate them to candidates. Oil company executives, are among, two of Senator Obama's fundraisers. Through the end of February, Obama's presidential campaign had received nearly $214,000 from oil and gas industry employees and their families. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics reports that Hillary Clinton had received nearly $307,000 from industry workers and their families. Republican Sen. John McCain, received nearly $394,000. Barack Obama is a truly great orator. Although he does not have the charisma of John F. Kennedy, but because liberal white guilt is so pervasive of those nanny-state practictioners, the idolatry for the young senator is almost boundless and so for these bleeding hearts, Barack is close to being the Messiah. This creates perfect circumstances for him to further the notion that America has large amounts of victims, which of course is pure nonsense. Every nation has a certain amount of people who have really caught bad breaks, who could be thought of along the lines of being victims. Overall though there is no country like the U.S. in which all of us are exactly where we put ourselves. Democrats and other liberals use terms likeworking Americans, or working families or middle-class Americans, to try to pull as many as possible into the category of victims. When the rhetoric moves to down to a lower level, terms like disadvantaged, disenfranchised, and phrases like "level playing field", and "those without a voice", take over. Democrats’ use of this broad terminology leads into moving against hard working successful people who work and persist." Dems want to make it look like they get rich off of others and are just lucky enough to victimize liberals' cherished "victims". It is believed that on the day Edwards dropped out of the race, he met with Obama and suggested that Obama move at least somewhat closer to Edwards' platform in the area of poverty, but that Obama was largely inflexible and maybe even somewhat haughty in attitude. Mrs. Clinton on the other hand is said to have paid close attention to Edwards, not once but twice. It is believed that Mrs. Clinton even made headway with Mrs. Edwards who it has been stated detested the first lady prior to those two meetings. The main players in the Democratic Party are hoping for a quick resolution that will yield the nominee and start the endgame strategy. Presently no end is in sight. BEN SMITH'S BLOG March 27, 2008 Categories: Barack Obama Obama talks cap-gains rate with CNBC Full article Ben Smith Politico Excerpts: BARTIROMO: "How do you plan to change the tax code when it comes to capital gains? How high will that 15 percent rate go?" Sen. OBAMA: "Well, you know, I haven't given a firm number. Here's my belief, that we can't go back to some of the, you know, confiscatory rates that existed in the past that distorted sound economics. And I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton, which was the 28 percent. I would--and my guess would be it would be significantly lower than that. I think that we can have a capital gains rate that is higher than 15 percent. If it--and if it, you know--when I talk to people like Warren Buffet 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 percent, they say, look, if it's within that range then it's not going to distort, I think, economic decision making. On the other hand, what it will also do is first of all help out the federal treasury, which is running a credit card up with the bank of China and other countries. What it will also do, I think, is allow us to make investments in basic scientific research, in infrastructure, in broadband lines, in green energy and will allow us to give us--give some relief to middle class and working class families who have been driving this economy as consumers but have been doing it through credit cards and home equity loans. They're not going to be able to do that. And if we want the economy to continue to go strong, then we've got to make sure that they're getting a little relief as well." Obama will win North Carolina with its large black population and concentrations of upscale professional voters, and Oregon, home to large numbers of educated, higher-income voters with a younger electorate. Also, expect Obama to win the primaries in both South Dakota and Montana. He does not predict a clear winner in Indiana, and guesstimate the final result will be: Obama will have won more pledged delegates, more states (29-19), and slightly more popular votes when the voting ends in early June 2000 Adjusted Gross Income-$240,505---Contributions-$2350=1% (.097) 2001 Adjusted Gross Income-$272,759---Contributions-$1470=1/2% (.053) 2002 Adjusted Gross Income-$259,934---Contributions-$1050=1/2% (.04) 2003 Adjusted Gross Income-$238,327---Contributions-$3400=1% (.014) 2004 Adjusted Gross Income-$207,647---Contributions-$2500=1% (.012) 2005 Adjusted Gross Income-$1,165,106---Contributions-$77,315=7% (.066) 2006 Adjusted Gross Income-$983,286---Contributions-$60,307=6% (.061) 2000 Adjusted Gross Income-$240,505---Contributions-$2350 2001 Adjusted Gross Income-$272,759---Contributions-$1470 2002 Adjusted Gross Income-$259,934---Contributions-$1050 2003 Adjusted Gross Income-$238,327---Contributions-$3400 2004 Adjusted Gross Income-$207,647---Contributions-$2500 2005 Adjusted Gross Income-$1,165,106---Contributions-$77,315 2006 Adjusted Gross Income-$983,286---Contributions-$60,307 "I don't want to just end the war," he said, "but I want to end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place." "It's time to reject the counsel that says the American people would rather have someone who is strong and wrong than someone who is weak and right," "if he had actionable intelligence on the whereabouts of al-Qaeda's leadership in Pakistan but no cooperation from the Pakistani government, he would take out the jihadists." "he would be willing to meet with leaders of rogue states in his first year as president." Agree or disagree with some or all of these statements? The last 20 years of elections show certain patterns, that may or may not apply to the upcoming presidential election. One argument claims that there is a relationship between primary wins in states and the ability to win those states in the November election. Michael Barone who might know more about each district, in all 50 states, than anyone in the country, says that most of the districts Hillary won in Ohio were the same ones carried by John Kerry and would again likely be won by any Democrat in the general election It is more likely there is no relationship between primary success in any given state and November success in those states. In addition, allowing for record turnouts, so far in the primaries, only a small segment of the public goes to vote in the nomination process. Estimates suggest between 25 million and 35 million people will vote in the Democratic nominations In November, probably 120 million to 135 million will vote. In 2000, George Bush won Iowa in the primary but lost it in November. Mr. Bush was trounce in New Hampshire in the primary, but then won it in the general election. There are many other examples like the ones above. Mrs. Clinton needs some way to persuade the super delegates to pick her. Her argument sounds at least slightly persuasive, until the facts come under close scrutiny. Has that happened once or twice before with the Clintons? March 23, 2008 The Real Value of Obama's Speech By David Broder Full article David Broder Real Clear Politics Excerpts: In the days following Barack Obama's address on race last week in Philadelphia, there was broad agreement among politicians and journalists that "A More Perfect Union," as he titled his speech, was the most important he has delivered since his keynote at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. It was much more than that. It was a politically ambitious, intellectually impressive and emotionally compelling argument -- ironically, one that may fall short of achieving two of its objectives but still be of great benefit to Obama and the country. The immediate purpose -- and the urgent need that prompted him to schedule the appearance -- was to douse the controversy that had erupted over the repeated TV and YouTube showings of inflammatory excerpts from the sermons of Obama's longtime friend, mentor and former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. Comments about Hillary "routinely misleading voters for political gain." "asserted that Clinton had been untruthful about her foreign policy resume, her position on the North American Free Trade Agreement, her involvement in the 1993 passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act, and her views on the renegade primaries in Michigan and Florida." "The American people are simply not going to elect someone they think is not being honest and trustworthy," said Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, pointing to what he called a "character gap" revealed in a new Gallup poll, which found that 53 percent of voters do not perceive Clinton as "honest and trustworthy," while more than 60 percent believe both Obama and McCain are. "She would be a deeply flawed nominee," Plouffe said. In his endorsement Bill Richardson reverted to the disgusting practice of race warfare by saying in effect he joins with Barack because, in behalf of Hispanics, he too can fight the nasty racism being forced upon Hispanics. There is no racism against Hispanics Bill. Have you not heard of the word ILLEGAL. Most Americans don't want people rewarded for being lawbreakers. WHEN WILL YOU GET ONE OUNCE OF OBJECTIVITY INTO YOUR SYSTEM??? Then Richardson when on to say the route of the whole problem is the drastic circumstances created by the Bush economy. This tactic right out of George Orwell?s 1984 has fooled millions of Americans. Several months back two polls one showing 65% who said they were doing fine financially, the other where 88% said they were doing good, shows that individually people were doing well. When asked about the economy overall, they gave it low scores. The Nanny-State mainstream media has brainwashed millions. The latest national Gallup tracking poll shows Hillary Clinton regaining her lead over Mr Obama for the first time in a month. Mrs. Clinton now leads 49 per cent to 42, a sizable 13-point swing to the former First Lady in less than two weeks. Mrs Clinton also holds a 16-point lead over Mr Obama in Pennsylvania. Among independents Mr Obama has lost his lead to John McCain, the Republican nominee, in a new CBS poll. In that survey Mr McCain leads over both Democrats. It seems likely that their battle may be hurting both nominees. Barack Obama reminded his audience that Hillary Clinton only began opposing the war when she entered the race for president. Obama went on to say that "the war has emboldened al-Qaida, the Taliban, Iran and North Korea." Obama said to the crowd, "Who do you trust to end a war: someone who opposed the war from the beginning, or someone who started opposing it when they started preparing a run for president?" Obama declared himself to be the only true anti-war candidate, one who openly opposed the invasion as a state lawmaker. He reminded the audience of the fact that Clinton voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq. Dennis Prager suggests and says some of the following: "We know he is bright, eloquent and charismatic. But if he were elected president of the United States, he would be the least known man to be elected in modern American history, perhaps in all of American history." That his own statements reveal that his wife Michelle and Reverend Wright are the two most important people in his life. The way they think and possibly influence Barack takes on great significance as a result. Some Americans are not to pleased that Mrs. Obama said "For the first time in my adult lifetime I am really proud to be an American." To read the full article Dennis Prager Townhall.Com According to RASMUSSEN REPORTS, Pastor Wright's comments are viewed favorably by just 8%, while they are viewed unfavorably by 58%. Seventy-Three percent believe that the pastor's comments are racially divisive. Less Likely 56% More Likely 11% Chicago Tribune.com John Kass "Obama spoke at length about wanting to emerge clean from the cesspool of Chicago politics." "He tells us that Rezko helped him scope out his dream house, yet Obama never thought he'd get a call from Tony saying his back was itchy." "At issue is the purchase of the Obama dream house on the South Side in 2005. The Rezkos bought the lot next door from the same owners on the same day, even as Tony was leprous with federal subpoenas. The Obamas paid $300,000 less than the asking price. The Rezkos paid the full list for the lot. Everybody was happy until Tony got indicted. Was it a favor, with a bigger payout intended for later? "No," Obama said again, reiterating that I was wrong for writing that he needed Rezko's help to buy his home." Full article John Kass Chicago Tribune "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme." A portion of Barack's response: "The pastor of my church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently preached his last sermon and is in the process of retiring, has touched off a firestorm over the last few days. He's drawn attention as the result of some inflammatory and appalling remarks he made about our country, our politics, and my political opponents. Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue. Because these particular statements by Rev. Wright are so contrary to my own life and beliefs, a number of people have legitimately raised questions about the nature of my relationship with Rev. Wright and my membership in the church. Let me therefore provide some context." Full response: Barack's Response at Real Clear Politics By Alex Johnson Reporter MSNBC Full article Alex Johnson MSNBC Excerpts: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., condemned racially charged sermons by his former pastor Friday and urged Americans not to reject his presidential campaign because of “guilt by association.” Obama’s campaign announced that the minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., had left its spiritual advisory committee after videotapes of his sermons again ignited fierce debate in news accounts and political blogs. Obama did not clarify whether Wright volunteered to leave his African American Religious Leadership Committee, a loose group of supporters associated with the campaign, or whether the campaign asked him to leave. Hillary probably would not accept the VP post because, accepting second place also means accepting defeat and Hillary would not likely do so. Also, if Barack were on top and won two terms, that would take things to the 2016 election. At that time, Hillary would be 69 years old. There is also some discussion, that there are two great options for Hillary. If she goes back to the Senate, she would have a good chance to become Senate Majority Leader or now with the Spitzer scandal, possibly even Governor of New York in 2010. Barack Obama has the same options, although he probably would not seek the majority leader position, but the race for Governor in Illinois will also be coming up in 2010. It is generally believed that Barack would be the odds-on favorite against any opponent in that scenario. For Barack, there would also be the problem of Bill moving back in to the White House. Enough said on that matter. National Review Online (NRO) Wednesday, March 12, 2008 The Obama-Clinton-McCain Paradoxes Full article NRO Victor Davis Hanson Excerpts: Part of the problem with discussing race, Obama’s middle name, his wife’s astounding proclamations, and all the rest is perhaps remembering that there are two different constituencies, his base and the country, that require an Obama two-step. No doubt having a middle name like Hussein was ‘cool’ at Columbia and Harvard where it might solidify one’s ethnic or exotic fides. By the same token, a well-paid, Ivy-League-educated African-American woman like Michelle Obama, of course, had considerable success in lecturing upscale elite liberal audiences on their sloth, or cynicism, or why one should not heretofore have pride in the United States, or why America was a mean place. And a bumper-sticker African-American identify was advantageous in the Ivy League for Obama, and essential for success in local districted Chicago politics. But once one slowly metamorphosizes from a state politician to a liberal Illinois Senator to the purported Democratic nominee, then all of those self-embraced identities that deliberately emphasize, rather than play down, race and culture can become polarizing to a wider constituency — and must be as muffled by the candidate as they are emphasized by his opportunistic opponents. From: Real Clear Politics Obama Camp Responds To Ferraro Comments Posted by KYLE TRYGSTAD Full article Kyle Trygstad Real Clear Politics Excerpts: In a conference call with reporters today, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), an Obama supporter, responded to Geraldine Ferraro's recent comments about Obama. "I have the highest respect for former Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro," Schakowsky began. "As the first woman on a presidential ticket, she understands the obstacles of women and minorities." However, she continued, "any and all remarks that diminsih Senator Obama's candidacy because of his race are out of line. We need to come together to celebrate the progress our party has made. ... And I urge Senator Clinton to call on her advisers and supporters to change the tone of her campaign." It is considered a near certainty that the Democratic nomination will not be settled till the convention. Although it's a guess, Obama's chances are probably better than 2 to 1, that he will be on top at the end. Some are asking if all the infighting continues as expected, will Al Gore enter the race at convention time. Bob Beckel keeps insisting the deal is already done, Barack Obama the presidential nominee, Hillary the vice-president. How does this past week rate for Barack and Hillary Very good for Hillary, very bad for Barack. Since she openly declared to throw the kitchen sink at Barack and did, the question is does he strike back or will he be able to continue what has been a high-minded campaign. Hillary seems to need a massive victory in Pennsylvania, just to give her a very, very outside chance, but we do know nothing is settled as of this moment. It now seems more than improbable that Hillary Clinton can overtake Barack Obama in pledged delegates, i.e. delegates who were won from voters in either a primary or caucus vote. In fact, Democratic spokesman Bob Beckel, is predicting outright that the ticket is already Barack as presidential nominee and Hillary Clinton as Vice-President. So it looks like her "throw the kitchen sink" philosophy at Barack will continue. So her route to victory is to convince super-delegates, the members of Congress, party officials and other honchos who control roughly 800 seats at the convention. Hillary's ad, about a foreign crisis seemed to helped her, especially with late deciders and raising questions about his dealings with Tony Rezko. Will Barack Obama now devise a Clinton strategy and get down and dirty So far she has not published her tax returns? She says she will but will it include not just 1977, which during the campaign season should be quite clean. The 1976 return is what's significant because of Bill's income, and where the $5 million Hillary lent to her campaign came from. Hillary has much dirt and sleaze in her background but her followers don't want it touched and Bill and Hillary have been highly successful at turning their scandals against others. Even lately, a man of lifetime integrity right up to this minute, Ken Starr, is painted as worse than they were, all from doing the job, in which his authority and directive to do that job, came from Bill Clinton's Attorney General, Janet Reno. So it looks as though Barack Obama must fight back, but carefully against two who are used to indulging in gutter politics and yet have constantly succeeded in turning against those who try to shed light on it for any reason. Senator Obama seems to have developed a wise strategy that has put him in a near commanding lead. He concentrated on smaller states not normally Democratic and not with a heavy concentration of delegates. Those high delegate states like California and New York were won decisively by Hillary Clinton but the lopsided number of victories for Senator Obama in smaller states has provided a lead for Mr. O that should be almost impossible to overcome. Even big wins by Hillary Clinton are divided such, that the maximum amount of delegates she can win will still not offset Mr. O's lead in pledged delegates, i.e. those won by actual votes, either primary votes or caucus votes. When the race in all the states is finished, about 800 super delegates will cast their votes. If they cast their vote in favor of Hillary and against Barack, even though the voters voted for him, things will likely become most fractious among Democrats. One writer suggested some of the following that Barack must do to regain momentum. Obama must hit Clinton hard on being a "Big D" Democrat who doesn't really care about the "Little D" Democrats. Remember how she essentially brushed aside Obama's wins in Utah, Idaho, Washington state and other places as nothing but red states they have no way of capturing in the fall? He must hit her hard on caring about the big wheel Dems because of brushing aside his wins in Utah, Idaho and Washington, seeming to show little respect for those states because Dems can't win them. He should jump on her foreign policy arguments. He has mildly done so but not forcefully. It is my opinion that she has virtually no experience in this area and both Cintons have always taken credit for many things they should't and they've always dodged blame or passed it on to someone else for mistakes. They are famous for hanging people out to dry, in their own interests. He also must fight back on the economy. Again, she must be convincing voters more than he is about the miracles she is going to bring about with her many promises short of guaranteeing Nirvana. March 06, 2008 Tough Math on the Democratic Side By Marie Cocco Full article Marie Cocco Real Clear Politics Excerpts: WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton is not the only Democrat with a math problem. But the arithmetical difficulty that Barack Obama faces is fundamentally different from Clinton's: She doesn't have the numbers that plot a clear path to the nomination. He doesn't have the numbers that plot a clear path to a Democratic victory in the fall. The spin-of-the-day from the Obama campaign on the morning after Clinton's victories in three of the four states holding primaries on Tuesday is that the New York senator cannot possibly overtake her rival's lead in "pledged" delegates -- that is, those won in primaries and caucuses -- and therefore has no chance of winning the Democratic nomination. The arithmetic conveniently leaves out an essential part of the equation: Neither Obama nor Clinton can secure through the primaries and caucuses the 2,025 delegates necessary to win at the Denver convention without the votes of the superdelegates. And Clinton's stunning performance on Tuesday, particularly in Ohio, makes Obama's argument that superdelegates should automatically back the will of the voters -- and not use independent political judgment about who can best compete against Republican John McCain in November -- look like an awfully simplistic calculus. Morris points out that the strategy of hope was great while it lastet, but now the gloves are off and the time is here for the "rough-and-tumble" world of modern politics. He points out correctly that Hillary's special interest groups would be good to go after, citing Hillary's obligations to those interests and their lobbyists. Morris suggest Barack must insist she "release her tax returns for 2007 and 2006 to show the source of her new-found wealth.", and that he must learn to stand toe to toe with her in their clashes. He believes the right moves by Barack will stop Hillary's momentum to get things back in his favor. David Brooks, writing in the New York Times has a great article today about what he feels was the turning point that has electrified followers of Senator Obama. He refers to the evening of Nov. 10, 2007, as the night that really started turning things around for the young Senator. It was the day the Democratic Party of Iowa held its Jefferson-Jackson dinner and invited the candidates to speak. Thousands of top Democrats were in attendance. Hillary's speech came first and David Brooks describes it as rousing, and mentions the fact that she use the word "fight" 15 times. Brooks goes on to describe a speech that did not have a great deal of innovation from Hillary. He then goes on to discuss Barack's speech after Hillary was finished. The following describes it: From Brooks: "His first big subject was belief itself. Instead of waging a partisan campaign as Clinton had just done, he vowed to address “not just Democrats, but Republicans and independents who’ve lost trust in their government but want to believe again.” Then he made a broader attack on the political class, and without mentioning her, threw Clinton in with the decrepit old order. “The same old Washington textbook campaigns just won’t do,” he said, in a now familiar line. He said it was time to “finally tackle problems that George Bush made far worse but that had festered long before George Bush ever took office — the problems that we’ve talked about year after year after year.” Obama sketched out a different theory of social change than the one Clinton had implied earlier in the evening. Instead of relying on a president who fights for those who feel invisible, Obama, in the climactic passage of his speech, described how change bubbles from the bottom-up: “And because that somebody stood up, a few more stood up. And then a few thousand stood up. And then a few million stood up. And standing up, with courage and clear purpose, they somehow managed to change the world!" To read the article David Brooks New York Times From: The American Conservative Obama’s Weaker Support With Democrats Posted on February 29th, 2008 by Daniel Larison Full article Daniel Larison The American Conservative Excerpts: A year ago, or even six months ago, I would never have thought that the more antiwar Democratic candidate would have a harder time shoring up the party base than one who voted for the war, but that is what the latest Pew survey shows happening with Obama. Not only do Democratic defections nearly double in a McCain v. Obama race, but Obama loses a fifth of white Democrats to McCain, and he runs seventeen points behind Clinton among <$30K earners, reflecting continuing weakness with downscale voters. He loses 17 points among the quarter of Democrats who want to stay in Iraq, despite the fact that his and Clinton's positions on Iraq policy right now are virtually indistinguishable (apparently these people believe in Hillary's insincerity enough to know that she won't actually end the war), but he also loses five points compared to Clinton among those who want to bring our forces out of Iraq. He draws slightly less support from liberals and slightly more from conservatives than Clinton, which is rather baffling. Compared to Clinton, he also loses 14 points among Democratic women, which is a much larger figure of disgruntled women voters turning away from the Democrat and backing McCain than the three-point difference between Clinton and Obama among black Democratic voters. The story of the Clintons' permanently alienating black voters sounds good, but on the whole it doesn't seem to be true. Meanwhile, Obama's nomination definitely appears to alienate a lot of Democratic women, who perhaps resent the "upstart" (as he called himself the other day) taking Hillary's crown away from her. Most remarkable of all is that Obama is weaker among Democrats in all age groups than Clinton. He is four points weaker, and McCain five points stronger, among Democratic voters aged 18-49 than in a Clinton v. McCain race. The losses are even greater among Democratic voters 50-64 and 65+. Democratic defections increase across income groups as well. Obama does much better in the younger age groups among independents, but if the Democratic numbers are any indication this seems to have less to do with age than with style. Probably the same thing that makes Obama attractive to independents (he doesn’t always sound like a regular Democrat) is what is undermining him with Democratic voters. All eyes on Rezko power ties CORRUPTION TRIAL Obama, governor among big names to be dropped February 26, 2008 BY NATASHA KORECKI, CHRIS FUSCO, DAVE MCKINNEY AND TIM NOVAK Staff Reporters Full article To Staff Reporters Chicago Sun Times Excerpts: There's a strong chance White House hopeful Barack Obama's name will surface at indicted political fund-raiser Tony Rezko's trial, which is to begin next week. In a ruling released Monday, a federal judge also made clear that Gov. Blagojevich, too, stands to come up at trial, as she made public what Blagojevich has long denied: that the governor is the "Public Official A" who's repeatedly referenced in Rezko court documents. Obama's name was not mentioned, but U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve said she would allow prosecutors to present evidence about a portion of a $375,000 finder's fee that a Rezko associate, Joseph Aramanda, obtained through an alleged kickback scheme orchestrated by Rezko. ### Feb. 24, 2008 Barack Obama Jr. was born August 4, 1961 Barack’s father was a Kenyan, his mother. American. Most of his childhood was spent in Honolulu, Hawaii. At age six to ten, he moved to Jakarta, living there with his mother and stepfather who was Indonesian. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School. Before running for public office, Obama worked as a community organizer, university lecturer, and civil rights lawyer. From 1997 to 2004, he served in the Illinois Senate. In 2000 he had an unsuccessful run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. By 2003, he decided his chances were very good to win a U. S. Senate seat in the 2004 race for that seat. The following year, 2004, while still an Illinois state legislator, Barack Obama had the distinction of delivering the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. This helped propel him to an overwhelming victory for that same U.S. Senate seat in November of that same year. In that race, he captured 70% of the vote He was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 with 70% of the vote. Obama announced his intention to run for president in February of 2007.Among his pledges: Ending the war in Iraq, increasing energy independence, providing universal health care At of today Feb. 19, 2008, he leads the popular vote for the presidential nomination, ahead of the only remaining Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton by about 1million votes. He also leads in the Delegate race by about 100 votes. Mr. Obama positioned himself as the clear front runner on Super Tuesday, winning smashing victories in Wisconsin, Hawaii and Washington. It is generally believed that if Hillary Clinton does not win both Texas and Ohio by wide margins, then later Pennsylvania, she will have virtually no chance of securing the nomination. A January 31st finding by National Journal put Obama at the top of the list of most liberal senators in 2007. The year before, the Journal found Obama was found to be the 10th most liberal senator. In 2005, his first year in the Senate, he was voted the 16th most liberal. He had pledged that he will make a great effort to work with Republicans and the tone of his campaign seems to be very much in that spirit. A good question seems to be, how will he accomplish bi-partisanship with the base of the Democratic Party having become what many believe to be, radicalized? Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996 from the 13th District. In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee. He resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the U.S. Senate. As a state legislator, Obama was credited with gaining bipartisan support for being among the leaders reforming ethics and health care laws. He sponsored a law enhancing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare. ### A Commentary by Lawrence Kudlow Thursday, February 28, 2008 Full article To Lawrence Kudlow Rasmussen Reports Excerpts: Sen. Barack Obama is very gloomy about America, and he's aligning himself with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party in hopes of coming to the nation's rescue. His proposal? Big-government planning, spending and taxing -- exactly what the nation and the stock market don't want to hear. Obama unveiled much of his economic strategy in Wisconsin this week: He wants to spend $150 billion on a green-energy plan. He wants to establish an infrastructure investment bank to the tune of $60 billion. He wants to expand health insurance by roughly $65 billion. He wants to "reopen" trade deals, which is another way of saying he wants to raise the barriers to free trade. He intends to regulate the profits for drug companies, health insurers and energy firms. He wants to establish a mortgage-interest tax credit. He wants to double the number of workers receiving the earned-income tax credit and triple the benefit for minimum-wage workers. The Obama spend-o-meter is now up around $800 billion. And tax hikes on the rich won't pay for it. It's the middle class that will ultimately shoulder this fiscal burden in terms of higher taxes and lower growth.
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