NY Post.com

 

As Congress slogged toward an appar ent financial-market rescue bill over the weekend, the time arrived for a closer look at the roots of the crisis.

 

Who were the culprits?

 

Obama spent many years cultivating ties with, working with - and even funding - the very folks who pushed for the risky lending that underlies the current mess.

 

That is, "community organizer" groups like ACORN.

 

ACORN is especially noteworthy, not only because of its prominence in the drive to relax mortgage requirements, but also because of its shady tactics.

 

And its links to Obama.

 

Various ACORN chapters across the country, led by folks like Chicago's Madeline Talbott, staged in-your-face protests in bank lobbies and filed complaints meant to hold up mergers sought by targeted banking firms.

 

Unless the banks agreed to ACORN's terms.....and Obama was right there by ACORN's side all along.

 

"I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career," he told the group last November. Read article.

James Simpson, American Thinker.com

 

Washington struggles to bring the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster. But many of those same politicians caused the crisis, and if left to their own devices will do so again.

 

Despite the mass media news blackout, a series of books, talk radio and the blogosphere have managed to expose Barack Obama's connections to his radical mentors -- Weather Underground bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and others. David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks.org have also contributed a wealth of information and have noted Obama's radical connections since the beginning.

 

Yet, no one to my knowledge has yet connected all the dots between Barack Obama and the Radical Left. When seen together, the influences on Obama's life comprise a who's who of the radical leftist movement, and it becomes painfully apparent that not only is Obama a willing participant in that movement, he has spent most of his adult life deeply immersed in it.

 

But even this doesn't fully describe the extreme nature of this candidate. He can be tied directly to a malevolent overarching strategy that has motivated many, if not all, of the most destructive radical leftist organizations in the United States since the 1960s. Read article.

Robin Givhan, NY Post.com

 

Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's style is exceptionally ordinary. Nothing about it connotes authority. No detail announces that she is in charge. And that's what makes it so powerful.

 

Her clothes don't have the aura of sophistication like that of Michelle Obama's sheaths and pearls. They do not have a patina of glamour like Cindy McCain's heiress wardrobe. And they do not announce themselves with the confidence, assertiveness and listen-to-me-ness of Sen. Hillary Clinton's bold pantsuits. Palin's clothes are common. Everyone knows someone who dresses like her, which is partly why so many folks seem to think that they know her.

 

Despite what every optometrist with a publicity agent has to say, there is nothing remotely striking about her eyeglasses. It's only notable in an age of contact lenses and Lasik surgery that anyone in the public spotlight regularly wears them at all -- except, perhaps, when they're trying to make a point, such as when television interviewers keep a pair of reading glasses perched on the tip of their nose in a way that makes them look like professors skeptical of a student's ability to withstand their Socratic interrogation.

 

Palin is the girl next door. And yes, much about her attire emphasizes youthfulness. Read article.

 

J. Robert Smith, American Thinker.com

 

After Senator McCain lifts his campaign suspension, it's time for him to unshackle Sarah Palin. In a close presidential election, giving Palin the green light to meet people where they live and work every day may prove to be the edge that bumps Senator McCain over the finish line.

 

The Alaska governor and former Mayor of Wasilla is darn good from a podium in front of a big crowd, but her greater strength lies in her untapped gift for connecting with voters one-on-one and in small groups. The pros call it "retailing."      

 

The best hunch is that the McCain campaign is keeping Governor Palin close for a couple of important reasons. First, it benefits Senator McCain to campaign with Palin. No need to delve into her popularity with conservatives and the GOP's base. Or to discuss her appeal to moderate to conservative independents.  

 

The woman is flat out charismatic, but not in the Obama-from-Olympus style, but in a much more powerful way: she's got the common touch. She's average folk with an above average talent for politics. She is performing superbly in an arena that's beyond most pay grades, to borrow from Barack Obama, but is doing so without forgetting where she came from or who she is: a small-town gal, wife, a hockey mom, a friend and a neighbor. Read article.

 

CNN.com

 

Now that Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain have their first presidential debate out of the way, the focus turns to their running mates.

 

Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin will face off Thursday at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

 

There's a lot of anticipation surrounding the VP debate because Palin has remained largely on script in her first month on the campaign trail.

 

Although Biden has a reputation for impetuous and brutally honest remarks, he's also a long-time senator with decades of experience in the public eye.

 

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the 65-year-old Delaware senator is well versed on foreign policy.

 

Biden has done nearly 100 interviews since being picked as Obama's VP on August 23.

 

Palin, on the other hand, did her third interview with a national television network last week. On Wednesday, she held her first media availability with her traveling reporters.

 

The Republican VP candidate has received less than stellar reviews in the few interviews that she has done. Read article.

 

Jerry Molen, BSimmons.wordpress.com

 

We are about to make the Mother-of-All-Mistakes. We just experienced an overhyped, positively outrageous primary election season that has left me cold and wondering where the heads of our citizens are hiding out.

 

In the event the junior Senator from Illinois becomes President - and especially if the House and Senate are veto proof, we can expect:

 

1). Strict new gun laws will be enacted even though he promised he would not.

2). The phrase “In God We Trust” will be removed from all currency.

3). He will back away from his pledge to Israel and leave them to the wolves of Islam.

4). Hillary Clinton will be named to the Supreme Court.

5). Tax rates will return to their highest levels in 30 years.

6). The capital gains tax will be at least double current levels.

7). Retired Army General Wesley Clark will be named Secretary of Defense.

8). The borders will be ‘basically open’ to all comers. Especially those from the Middle East and South America.

9). Amnesty will be granted to all illegals now in the U.S

10). The war in Iraq will be brought to an abrupt end and the results will be tragic and the consequences to our military will be devastating.

 

I realize that my predictions may not sit too well with some people and the best we could all hope for is that I am totally wrong. Read article.

 

Austin Hill, Townhall.com

 

Is racism causing some Americans to reject Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy? Or is it possible that some of us who oppose Obama, simply don’t like his ideas?

 

In recent weeks, much has been said about the notion that Senator Obama has not adequately secured his own Democratic voter base, and has not adequately made inroads with independent voters, as many analysts believe he should have done by now.

 

This reality began to set-in a few days after the Democratic National Convention when, even with the closing night’s Super Bowl-styled nomination acceptance speech, Obama received virtually no “bump” in the tracking polls.

 

As of now, the Palin excitement has dissipated a bit (although she continues to energize conservative Republicans). Economic news is worsening. Read article.

Mona Charen, JWR.com

 

Appearing on C-SPAN last weekend I mentioned that Barack Obama had opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act when he was an Illinois state senator — a position he has attempted to deny or obfuscate ever since. The liberal blogger who appeared on the program with me erupted with indignation. She didn't deny that Obama had opposed the bill. She denied, hotly, that babies are ever born alive after an attempted abortion. Since I have actually met Gianna Jessen, who survived an attempted abortion, I invited viewers to contact me directly if they wanted evidence. My inbox has been bursting.

 

The denial goes very deep. Any number of e-mailers expressed their contemptuous certainty that "born alive" infants were an invention of pro-life activists. OK, enter "abortion survivors" into your browser and see what you get. Or, if you prefer a traditional media source, consult the Daily Mail in Britain. The Mail has reported that in just the past year 66 infants had been left to die after abortions in Great Britain.

 

When Congress was considering the Born Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA), a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee heard testimony from Jill Stanek and Allison Baker, two nurses at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill. They described several instances in which babies who were moving and breathing after induced abortions were left to die. Read article.

 

Erin Brockovich, Brocovichblog.com

 

When it comes to politics, I'm not about attacking someone because they are on a Republican ticket or a Democratic ticket. Let’s look at the person, their ideas and what they might represent for us humans. After seeing Sarah Palin's acceptance speech, I came away with several thoughts, one of them that it looks like Palin-speak is going to mean plain-speaking.

 

Okay, I know she sniped at Obama a little bit, but she did it with an admirable, graceful semi-scary pit-bull/hockey-mom tenacity that is as natural as breathing; and she stood up to all the media pressure without a semi-casual hair out of place. It doesn't matter whether you are Republican or Democrat, or Independent... (which is about the way I am ready to turn because both parties are acting foolish and judgmental and attacking.) Some of the comments about Sarah Palin have been unfair and I don’t say that because blogs say she is “Sarah Brockovich” or "half Ronald Reagan half Erin Brockovich” or “The Erin Brockovich of Alaska.”

 

More importantly, beaming with pride, she unapologetically brought out her entire family, including her expecting teenage daughter. (And in the history of the presidency, Republican OR Democrat, I don't think there's been a candidate who had the gonads to do that. ) She was so proud of them it was coming off of her in waves--and rightly so. Frankly, I didn't see a waiver or a weak spine in the whole crew. That's an impressive show of family solidarity. I feel certain the best candidates for office never ran because they kept their secrets in their closets. Sarah Palin seems like her closets are all opened up, and she's right out there saying "Here I am. Let's get to work." Read article.

 

Ann Woolner, Bloomberg.com

 

Barack Obama campaigns as if only Thomas Jefferson could match his devotion to free speech and open government. And yet, when trying to squelch debate about the more troubling aspects of his candidacy, any Jeffersonian instincts evaporate.

 

When WGN-AM Radio in Chicago scheduled a two-hour interview last week with David Freddoso, who wrote ``The Case Against Barack Obama,'' the campaign sent out an alarm to supporters, sparking an avalanche of angry phone calls to the station.

 

The case against Freddoso, according to the Obama Wire Alert, was that he's a ``card-carrying member of the right-wing smear machine.'' And by hosting him, WGN was giving a wider audience for Freddoso's ``baseless lies.''

 

The proper response in a democratic society isn't to scream at those who give an author a podium, to call the man names or jam a radio station's phone lines with angry callers.

 

If you value free speech, the proper response is to say yes, thanks, when the radio host invites your campaign to send someone to debate the enemy on the air.

 

Obama's campaign declined. Read article.

 

Mark Davis, RCP.com

 

We all have breathless questions about how the next five weeks will unfold. But with the vast majority of the 2008 presidential campaign behind us, the ink is drying on three lasting lessons no matter who wins:

 

1. Attempts to change the nature of campaigning are futile.

 

The two things that everyone complains about - the costs of campaigns and their negativity - will be with us for the foreseeable future. I recommend embracing one and shrugging about the other.

 

2. In an irony for the ages, liberal bias in the media culture's ivory towers grew to its shameful worst, and it didn't even matter.

 

This is the year a Republican convention crowd mocked NBC with derisive chants because that proud network allowed its MSNBC brand to pass off the hateful spewage of Keith Olbermann and others as fair commentary. Read article.

 

Todd Gitlin, LA Times.com

 

This election campaign is about more than its issues, slogans, proposals, strategies, tactics, attacks or counterattacks. Like most presidential elections, it represents a collision of myths.

 

In July, Barack Obama took some criticism for saying that "the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have just become a symbol." Some people thought that sounded a bit arrogant, but he was right. It was not a boast, it was a fact. People look at the candidates and project onto them something they value.

 

The candidates become, in a sense, walking archetypes. To warm to a candidate is to align not just with a person but with a myth, an ideal.

 

McCain himself invokes Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Rider who, despite his New York origins, ranched in South Dakota and hunted throughout the West. Those who admire McCain tend to believe that it was men of this sort. In this image of the Old West, history belongs to the man who takes charge, the warrior in command who knows how to shoot and how to lead others to shoot as well. Read article.

 

Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard.com

 

John McCain, restless and emotional, couldn't resist the temptation to join the battle to rescue our financial markets and save the economy. It was the biggest and most important fight around, bigger and more important than his campaign scrap with Barack Obama. Being engaged in the action--in the arena--is where McCain always wants to be. So he cast his presidential campaign aside, temporarily, and headed back to Washington. The campaign could wait. It might even benefit.

 

Obama, placid and professorial, had a different reaction to the fight over the bailout. Even before McCain's maneuver he'd rejected the idea of putting his campaign on hold and joining the legislative battle. He'd be available if needed. An abrupt change in plans, a sudden shift, is not his style. His campaign would go on. He returned to Washington reluctantly. If he hadn't, his campaign might have suffered.

 

The contrast in style between McCain and Obama is a significant dividing line in the campaign--and not just in last week's bailout battle. In electing a president, Americans choose a person, not a party leader. Personal traits--character, likeability, temperament, public style--matter.The contrast here is not only dramatic. It's unusually revealing about the two candidates and how they might act as president. There's an analogy that captures the difference: the warrior and the priest. McCain the warrior, Obama the priest. Read article.

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