Editorial, NY Post.com

 

Joe Biden wonders whether Barack Obama is qualified to be commander-in-chief.

 

"Mark my words," Biden warned Sunday at a Democratic fund-raiser. "It will not be six months [after the inauguration] before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy."

 

Then he added, "Watch. We're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

 

Now, here's where it gets scary.

 

Obama's "gonna need your help to use your influence within the community to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

 

He's going to need help?

 

Terrific.

 

What's particularly disturbing is Biden's Kennedy analogy.

 

For those who don't recall, it was a scant five months after JFK became president that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev took his measure. Read article.

James Taranto, Online WSJ.com

 

If the prospect of an Obama presidency doesn't make you nervous, Joe Biden's latest comments, reported by ABC News, may change the way you feel:

 

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

 

As Commentary's Jennifer Rubin notes, this adds up to a pretty good argument for electing a president who is experienced and tough--i.e., John McCain. "This is material for an ad that's a lot more credible than Hillary Clinton's '3 a.m.' ad," observes Rubin. "That one came from his arguably frantic opponent–this one is from his running mate."

 

Which brings us to Sunday's Obama endorsement from Colin Powell on "Meet the Press." Read article.

 

Claudia Rosett, NRO.com

 

Colin Powell is the current darling of the media, for crossing party lines on Meet the Press to endorse Barack Obama for “ability to inspire …steadiness...intellectual curiosity...depth of knowledge...intellectual vigor...a definitive way of doing business...reaching out all across America…exceptional,” and numerous other virtues, too many to list here. In sum, Powell embraced Obama as a “transformational figure.”

 

But transformation to what?

 

On this vital matter, Powell was short on specifics. He spent most of his remaining time on camera slamming John McCain and lamenting the “narrowing” of the Republican party. One need not love the Republicans to notice that Powell seems strangely blind to the failings of a Democratic party which has gone so overboard in its broadening that its Obama ticket is attracting the endorsement not only of Powell, but of the terrorist group, Hamas.

 

But Powell has had his blind spots before. Powell had more than enough documentation at his command to challenge — credibly — the motives of Security Council members Russia and France, for blocking U.S. efforts to try to enforce 17 Security Council resolutions against Saddam. [Oil for Food corruption at the U.N.]

 

Yet Powell, when it came to that showdown on the world stage of the U.N., apparently either missed or dismissed as irrelevant the abundant signs — to which he had privileged access — that the U.N. Security Council itself had been corrupted by the same Iraqi regime whose fate they were debating. Powell raised no public alarm; he made no visible mention of this pivotal problem. If anyone was going to raise hell about this matter at the time, call it to the attention of President Bush, and pursue it as the highly germane matter that is surely was, it should have been Powell, secretary of State. Did he not notice? Did he not care? Read article.

Matthew Continetti, Weekly Standard.com

 

Is there something about chilly weather that makes the media jump to conclusions? Does the changing of seasons make pundits eager to pronounce Barack Obama a sure thing? Because fall has finally arrived in Washington, and suddenly it seems like we're back in January.

 

You remember January. That's when Obama trounced Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses, and more or less every commentator on the planet pronounced the Democratic primary a done deal. After Iowa, polls showed Obama in the lead in New Hampshire. And when Obama won New Hampshire, we were told, the primary would be over. Except the primary wasn't over. It wasn't over at all. Clinton won New Hampshire, and the primary lasted until early June. Clinton won every big state except Obama's home state of Illinois. She positively trounced Obama in states like Pennsylvania and Kentucky and West Virginia. She won Ohio by nine percentage points.

 

This is a close race and McCain is a wily underdog. More important, perhaps, he's an underdog who is often helped by outside events. The success of the surge strategy in Iraq helped McCain win the GOP nod. Over the last month, the financial crisis and McCain's haphazard response to it all but torpedoed his chances to win the presidency. But now, thanks to a global effort, the immediate crisis seems to have passed, and the worst seems to have been avoided. Yes, we are probably in a recession, and there are tough economic times ahead. But the sense of impending economic collapse has faded. And that helps McCain.

 

Obama won the debates, but the debates are finished. Obama has a lot more money, but money does not determine elections. President Bush is still incredibly unpopular, but McCain is finally telling audiences that he's not President Bush. Obama has almost every advantage--but it ain't over yet. Read article.

 

Morris & McGann, Vote.com

 

Ronald Reagan's most important contribution to the American political dialogue was his ability to move the tax issue from an economic-populist issue into a populist, blue-collar one. Under George W. Bush, however, the issue has switched back to one of class warfare, as increasing numbers of Americans have paid no taxes at all and the rates on those who did pay taxes fell. Now, a chance encounter with "Joe the Plumber" has afforded the Republicans the chance to use taxes as a blue-collar issue.

 

The opening Joe provided and John McCain skillfully exploited in the third presidential debate gives the GOP ticket its first long shot at victory since McCain punted on the terrible, pork-laden, corporate-giveaway "rescue" bill Congress passed and Bush signed. Obama's tax plans and spending programs have emerged as the key point of difference between the campaigns. And the Democrat's comment to Joe that he saw his tax policy as a "way to spread the wealth around" underscores the motive behind his program: to redistribute income. Obama might as well have told Joe, "I want to take the hard earned money you make fixing pipes and give it to other people."

 

If the Republican Party concentrates its fire on the tax issue and the redistributionist impulse behind Obama's plans, it can close the Democratic lead point by point, day by day, until the election. McCain's campaign must resist the temptation to take random shots on other issues and zero in on the tax-and-spend issue, stressing how taxes penalize those who work hard and live right. Read article.

 

James Piereson, Weekly Standard.com

 

With just two weeks left before the election, John McCain faces a difficult test in overcoming the lead established by Barack Obama over the past month. An ever-growing number of national polls showed Obama with a lead last week of somewhere between 3 and 14 points--though few people outside the Obama camp gave much credit to the latter margin, reported in a CBS News/New York Times poll. Most polls were in a cluster with an estimated Obama lead of 5 to 7 points. The race thus remains surprisingly close, especially in view of the headwinds blowing against McCain from the financial turmoil that erupted into public view in mid-September.

 

Notwithstanding this fact, however, many pundits, pollsters, and public figures have rushed forward to declare the race over and Obama the presumptive winner. Liberal columnists, such as E.J. Dionne and Harold Meyerson, have declared that Obama's pending victory will mark the end of the conservative era and doom for the low tax and free market policies favored by Republicans since the late 1970s. House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid are already developing a legislative agenda that they will introduce in Congress in January in cooperation with the new Democratic administration. Senator Obama himself is said to be making plans for an election night victory celebration.

 

The premature gloating on view among liberal columnists and the postelection plans being made by Obama and his allies might be turned by McCain to his own advantage. If there is anything voters do not like, it is being taken for granted by politicians.

 

There is some precedent in the elections of 1948, 1968, and 1976 for the kind of late in the game comeback that McCain must now try to engineer. Read article.

WND.com

 

In an exclusive interview tonight, a senior Hamas official heaped praise on Sen. Joe Biden, calling him a "very nice" person and a "great man" whose record "speaks volumes" and who can be counted on by the terror group to engage in the "right policy" toward the Middle East.

 

During the interview with WND's Aaron Klein and WABC Radio's John Batchelor, the Hamas figure also expressed hope regarding Sen. Barack Obama's "vision for change," announcing Hamas will send Obama a letter of congratulation "the moment he will win the election."

 

Ahmed Yousef, Hamas' chief political adviser in the Gaza Strip, called Biden a "very prominent figure when it comes to the politics of the region." Read article.

Andrew C. McCarthy, NRO.com

 

‘Out of one, many.” That was how Al Gore famously botched “E Pluribus Unum,” the motto chiseled on the great seal of the United States.

 

Barack Obama’s Latin may not be any better than Gore’s — he did have to admit being an English-only kinda guy this summer . . . after complaining that Americans embarrass him with their lack of language proficiency. Understand this, though: If we hear the Democrats’ standard-bearer saying, “Out of one, many,” it won’t be a mistranslation. It will be a succinct statement of his ideology. It’s the “fundamental change” he has in mind for America.

 

Obama professes a love for this country. One needn’t doubt his sincerity to grasp that what he loves is a vision of America, not America as she is. The object of his affection is not our Unum, the glorious inheritance we Many cherish through generations past, present, and (one prays) future. For The One, that One earns only disdain. Eroding it has been his life’s work.

 

Move through Obama’s career as a community organizer, his embrace of ACORN, his radical associations: the common denominator is a purpose to break down the Unum at its foundations, what he calls the “grass-roots.” For America, he plans an atom bomb.

 

Or, to be precise, an atoms bomb: countless communities in cities and towns across the land, organized along the Marxist principles of Saul Alinsky into socialist enclaves. Each atom smothers the individual freedom and enterprise that have defined the American character, replacing them with welfare states that prize dysfunction and reward the rabble-rousers. Read article.

Sam Schulman, Weekly Standard.com

 

Pour yourself a Johnnie Walker Black and remember. The presidential campaign was going to be about sex--the sex of the inevitable winning candidate. Then it was going to be about race. We dreamed we would atone for slavery and the Berlin Airlift, impress Europe and charm the Arab world. But the undecided voters who will determine the winner are no longer interested in race or sex. They are looking at social class. Which ticket best expresses the values and tastes of the upper-middle-class--and captivates the rest of us who follow the lead of the upper-middles?

 

The class argument is why the Bill Ayers strategy won't do. In the sex and race eras, it would have worked nicely. Obama's longtime working collaboration with the radical educational theorist and retired terrorist would dramatize his carefully but hastily discarded political radicalism. But no longer. The anti-Ayers publicists are quite right about Ayers's malignity and Obama's connivance.

 

Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn became Sixties royalty not because of the status of the Ayers family in Chicago, but because of their relish for violence. They attempted to kill, and celebrated the killings of others (like Charles Manson's victims and the murder of any number of cops), to set an example for the less privileged. "We've known that our job is to lead white kids to armed revolution. .  .  . Tens of thousands have learned that protest and marches don't do it. Revolutionary violence is the only way," said the future Mrs. Ayers in 1970. Read article.

 

Andrew McCarthy, NRO.com

 

For nearly 20 years, Obama and ACORN have been attached at the hip. And now he rides to ACORN’s rescue.

 

This is rich.

 

Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign is complaining to the Justice Department about the attention being focused on the determined effort by ACORN, Obama’s wholly owned vote-fraud division, to steal the 2008 election. Adding ignorance to gall, the campaign demands that what it calls a “Special Prosecutor” must investigate not ACORN but — you guessed it — the McCain campaign and the Bush administration.

 

The art form to which chutzpah has been raised in this instance is a letter from the Obama campaign’s top lawyer, Robert Bauer of the Perkins Coie law firm in Washington. Of course these days, due to the intricate web of traps for the unwary known as “campaign finance regulations” — for which Sen. McCain has no one but himself to blame — all candidates for high office need legal teams. Obama, though, is a special case. Read article.

 

Tom Barrett, Conservative Truth.org

 

Oh, yes. Obama’s been lyin’ for sure. Since ACORN has been in the news recently due to a twelve-state investigation for voter fraud, he has been lying fast and furiously about his close relationship with ACORN. This profitable association began in 1992.

 

There is a multitude of documentation that, in addition to representing ACORN in a suit against Illinois (the only relationship he admits to), he has served as a trainer for them every year since 1992, and directed a voter registration campaign for them which delivered 50,000 new voters (many of them fraudulent).

 

Obama claims that he was never a trainer for ACORN. But the photo below shows a young Obama teaching in a conference room at ACORN’s Chicago headquarters. It accompanied an article in a frankly Socialist magazine written by ACORN “Community Organizer” Tony Foulkes in which she admits that, although ACORN’s voter registration are supposed to be non-partisan by law (since they receive 40% of their funding by way of your tax dollars), that “in some elections we get to have our cake and eat it too: work on nonpartisan voter registration and GOTV, which also turns out to benefit the candidate that we hold dear.”

 

Foulkes goes on to describe how ACORN delivered the Illinois Senate seat for Obama, “the candidate that we hold dear.” And she states in the 2004 article that “We have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office. Thus, it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign.” Read article.

 

Wes Vernon, RenewAmerica.us

 

"Our time has come...I can see a role for the Communist Party USA in the next period." Those words from Libero Della Piana, an operative speaking at the headquarters of the Communist Party USA and eagerly anticipating an Obama presidency.

 

In an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP), Piana (viewing the Obama campaign, coupled with the economic crunch) declares, "We can afford to be less defensive for the first time since Ronald Reagan, and we can say our word in rebuilding America on a new basis, rebuilding a better world, instead of the greed of the few." (Thus echoing the age-old Marxist theme of class hatred — often mimicked by Obama and others in prominent ranks of today's Democrat Party.)

 

A veteran intelligence professional and expert, whose insight is from time to time consulted by this column, offers us this perspective on the Communist Party USA's endorsement of Barack Obama's quest for the White House:

 

"The Communist Party itself will not have influence, but those whom they influence will — the new left, the terrorists from the Weather Underground, the Committees of Correspondence — all are involved in the Obama campaign one way or another. The Communist Party itself has very few members [estimated at 3,000 to 3,500] most of them quite old. But the influence they've had in the past on the so-called progressive movement still continues." Read article.

Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com

 

Apparently there is something about Sarah Palin that causes some people to think of her as either the best of candidates or the worst of candidates. She draws enthusiastic crowds and provokes visceral hostility in the media.

 

The issue that is raised most often is her relative lack of experience and the fact that she would be "a heartbeat away from the presidency" if Senator John McCain were elected. But Barack Obama has even less experience-- none in an executive capacity-- and his would itself be the heartbeat of the presidency if he were elected.

 

Sarah Palin's record is on the record, while whole years of Barack Obama's life are engulfed in fog, and he has had to explain away one after another of the astounding and vile people he has not merely "associated" with but has had political alliances with, and to whom he has directed the taxpayers' money and other money.

 

Sarah Palin has had executive experience-- and the White House is the executive branch of government. We don't have to judge her by her rhetoric because she has a record. Read article.

 

Maureen Callahan, NY Post.com

 

If the polls hold, and Democrats heed Barack Obama's warning to not "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory," the question is: What will an Obama presidency be like?

 

The initial test will be the first 100 days, a challenge for every president, and for which the ideal is FDR, who spent the time working to push through reams of legislation, with Congress passing every single one of Roosevelt's proposals.

 

Obama's first act as President will likely be passing the additional $300 billion stimulus package Congress is putting together now; the bill is reported to include an extension of unemployment benefits and monies for improvements in infrastructure.

 

This all sounds about right to Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute (known in the '90s as "Bill Clinton's idea mill"). Read article.

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