Exclusive:Saturday, June 14

by PRESIDENTIAL WATCH June 14, 2008

See latest RCP electoral map - CLICK HERE.

The Energy Non-Crisis. Why don't our presidential candidates know this? GO HERE.

Gone, but Not Forgotten: Barack Obama and Rev. Wright.

Victor Davis Hanson, NRO.com

There is a general sense - after Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Indiana - that the white working class is somehow illiberal, and so now the Obamiacs discuss, ponder, and fret over the "race question" ahead. But the problem is not, and has never really been, race, at least any more than it was in having a black secretary of state or Supreme Court justice or chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but simply the question of grievance.

When Obama bought stock in the Trinity race industry, he sent a message that grievance-blaming America, the country's past, whites, and present bias - not behavior or values of a black underclass - explains almost all problems in the black community. That deeply offended poor whites who haven't had anything handed to them, recent immigrants whose ancestors had nothing to do with Wright's rogue's gallery of evil white men, and Hillary's women supporters whose glass-ceiling argument was out-victimized.

So here we have the Obama paradox: The more he poses, and is praised, as the post-racial healer, the more 25 years of his career belie the rhetoric. In short, he now talks far more humanely than most about race, but the way in which he started and nourished his career proves that he was also far more cynical and divisive than most. Read article.

Obama's Middle East Education

Amil Taheri, NY Post.com

In his address to the American Israeli Political Action Committee last week, Sen. Barack Obama discarded some of his most dangerous positions.

Of Iran, for example, he said: "The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat."

Except for the politically correct phrase "violent extremists" instead of the more accurate "terrorists," those words could have come from President Bush.

All who've supported the Bush Doctrine should welcome this dramatic change. No longer does Obama claim that talk of a threat from Iran is an "obsession instead, he

recognizes the danger of nuclear proliferation - and acknowledges the Islamic Republic as something more than a "tiny" challenger.

He has also "evolved" on Iraq. He no longer shares Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's belief that America has already lost the war. And he's discarded his pledge to pull US troops out in the first year of his presidency. He now talks of "a responsible and phased withdrawal" - exactly what Bush is committed to.

More important: He no longer says "there are no good options in Iraq now, "there are not many good options" - which means there are some.

In the Middle East, many see this transformation as a bid to woo the Jewish vote. Unlikely: American Jews always vote Democrat by three to one.

Perhaps the change simply reflects the shift from the primaries, which Obama won in part by courting the virulent anti-war groups, to the general-election campaign, when he must appeal to the electorate at large. Read article.

Obama's Presidency: Victory in the Culture Wars

Mary Grabar, Townhall.com

An Obama presidency would signal the final salvo by the Left in the culture wars. Obama's advance troops have already taken over our college campuses, have bound and gagged our conservative professors, have ravished our virgins, have pillaged our stores of wisdom, and have ensconced themselves in the thrones of power in deans', presidents' and department heads' offices.

The victory cry is heard across the land in the cheers of Obama's constituency on college campuses.

The increasingly popular business school major offers little in terms of appreciation for the hallmarks of our Western civilization.

For decades, teachers have been inculcating an alternative tradition and belief system. The beliefs may be based on such amorphous and sophistical ideas as "social justice," "tolerance," and "multiculturalism," the traditions may lead back to the communist ideology of the nineteenth century and then through the heyday of radicalism in the sixties, but the means for inculcation are entrenched.

The conservative traditions and beliefs, in contrast, are rarely to be found in college syllabi and high school textbooks. Obama connects with audiences because they have been primed for him and his message. Obama, with his scantly resume, is an affirmative action candidate. But his record as a "community organizer" places him at an advantage with those who believe in "social activism" in the classroom.

So when a war hero enters, most college students great him with a collective shrug.

John McCain on June 3 suggested that he shared certain similarities with Barry Goldwater, but there was no resounding invocation of heroes the way Obama does with Kennedy and King. The tone is almost apologetic; we are on the defensive, reflexively holding back lest we be misinterpreted by the guardians of political correctness.

In 1957, with the threat of communism looming, conservatives had passion. But recently I had some college sophomores ask me during class discussion what communism is. Where to begin with such a question? Read article.

Modern Liberals, Whine Connoisseurs - An introductory class from Barack & Michelle Obama.

Peter Schweizer, NRO.com

We now are down to two presidential candidates. One went to the Ivy League and Harvard Law School as a young man. The other spent years of his youth in a Vietnam Prisoner of War camp and suffered lifelong injuries. Guess which one whines more about his hardships?

Barack Obama is many things - a senator, a gifted orator, and a charismatic figure. But he's also a whiner.

In recent months he's complained about the questions during the ABC News debate with Hillary Clinton because they were not to his liking and whined that the media coverage of McCain wasn't harsh enough. (Pretty rich coming from Obama.) He whines that scrutiny of his wife's statements are mean and "low class" and that media scrutiny of his connection to convicted felon Tony Rezko is unfair because he was poorly served by his staff. He claims he is a victim in the Rev. Wright controversy and that the black church is being harshly attacked. Then there is the non-whine whine in the NBC News debate, in which he said that Hillary Clinton "has consistently sent out negative attacks on us, email, robo-calls, flyers, television ads, radio calls, and we haven't whined about it"

Michelle Obama whines about the burdens of paying for piano lessons and summer camp for the kids, and the paying off the student loans for her two Ivy League degrees. Read article.

Swallow Anything and Ignore Everything

Dick McDonald Blogspot.com

Barack Obama is the perfect messenger to bring Americans to their collective feet. His message of unity and change and tax relief for ordinary Americans is reverberating throughout the land. His promise to clean out special interests and lobbyists in Washington and to reject their funding mirrors the remedies most Americans would embrace. Young, good-looking and razor thin, Obama exemplifies the hopes and dreams of most Americans.

However, most Americans will swallow anything and ignore everything to get their fix in the form of a promise by a politician to deliver the American Dream. Obama has found that magic bullet. He tells people that after 232 years America has failed as a nation in many, many ways and he is going to single-handedly straighten out politics and deliver more power and money to ordinary people - and the people swallow it.

To say that the majority of Americans ignore everything is not such a stretch. They believe George Bush is the devil incarnate, Al Gore's business venture called Global Warming is a scientific fact, that Social Security is a retirement pension, America can't win the war in Iraq and the Democrat Party is the party of the "common good" which will lift the poor out of poverty.

The reason we have this dilemma in America is solely traceable to the fact we no longer have an investigative press .that uncovers truth and tells it to the American people. We have a monolithic monster called the media that treats Americans like mushrooms. They keep us in the dark and feed us manure. Read article.

Change He Should Believe In: Obama needs to recognize the improved situation in Iraq.

Alexander Benard, NRO.com

Barack Obama for years accused President Bush of stubbornly refusing to acknowledge changing realities in Iraq. Today, however, Sen. Obama is the stubborn one. In his failure to recognize the substantial progress that has occurred in Iraq, Obama undercuts several of the most compelling themes of his campaign.

In May 2008, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq was the lowest since the beginning of the war.Meanwhile, Sunni Arab countries like the United Arab Emirates are finally sending ambassadors to Baghdad; the Iraqi army has proven that it is capable of defeating Shia militias in battle; and oil output has risen to its highest level since early 2003. Additionally, in an important sign that Iraq's political system is functioning, the country's parliament recently passed a comprehensive law against oil smuggling that will help increase the Iraqi government's revenues from the sale of oil.

Sen. Obama has billed himself as a truth-telling leader who is above partisan politics and who will do what is right even when politically inconvenient. That kind of leader would adapt his rhetoric to reflect the successes achieved in Iraq. He would become a responsible voice within his party by challenging his constituents to embrace progress in Iraq. Using his considerable influence to rein in the reflexive and poisonous antiwar rhetoric that has become the Democratic party's standard rallying cry against Republicans, he would seek to alleviate the bitter divisions that plague our country.

Unfortunately, Sen. Obama has not been that kind of candidate. Read article.

Can Obama Pull It Off?

Morris & McGann, NewsMax.com

The doubts Barack Obama faces are far more existential than the more superficial questions raised about most candidates. They go to his very core as a person and call into question his values, his worldview, and even his patriotism.

He is a bit of a reach for the average American voter.

Hard racial divisions have softened in America, but unfounded fears persist. Obama has a strange name. He grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. He had a Muslim Kenyan father who left when he was a baby. He made his political career in the cesspool of American politics - the traditionally corrupt Chicago Democratic machine.

His pastor of 20 years, after whose sermons he entitled his book, seems to hate white people in general and America in particular (despite getting $15 million in federal funding for his church). His wife says she is now proud of America for the first time in her adult life - and she's in her mid 40s.

If he were white, with similar associations, he would be suspect. But he comes from a world few white voters know or understand, and the fear lingers that he is some kind of latter-day Manchurian candidate, a sleeper agent, poised to take control of the United States government. Read article.

Would prominent Islamists be turning non-violent if violence hadn't failed so spectacularly in Iraq?

Jack Kelly, JWR.com

"Notable progress" has been made in Iraq, said UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon at a conference in Stockholm May 29.

"I have a feeling that things are better," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in a surprise visit to Iraq last weekend. "The Iraqis themselves, with their army, their administration, are taking charge of their own problems."

If the UN and the French can see progress in Iraq, why can't Sen. Barack Obama? Maybe because he hasn't been there in more than two years. Sen. Obama's ignorance is understandable if he's been relying for his information on reporting from the "mainstream" media.

We've seen two trends in Iraq since all the troops in the troop surge arrived in August of last year. U.S. and Iraqi civilian casualties have plummeted, and so has news coverage of the war.

In May, U.S. military deaths in Iraq plunged to their lowest level (21) since February of 2004 (20), a decline of nearly 60 percent from April. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported this on the bottom of Page A-4, beneath a lengthy feature on the increasingly irrelevant Moqtada al Sadr.

"For long stretches over the past 12 months, Iraq virtually disappeared from the front pages of the nation's newspapers and from the nightly network newscasts," writes Sherry Ricchiardi in the current issue of American Journalism Review.

According to a report issued in March by the Project for Excellence in Journalism of the Pew Foundation, news from Iraq filled 23 percent of network newscasts during the first ten weeks of 2007. That fell to 3 percent in the first ten weeks of this year. On cable networks, coverage of Iraq fell from 24 percent of the news hole to 1 per cent.

The presidential primaries, shrinking news holes, and the high cost of maintaining correspondents in Baghdad are the chief reasons for the decline, news executives told Ms. Ricchiardi.

Others suspect success in Iraq is not a story most journalists wish to emphasize: "Coverage is down on Iraq because American troops are bleeding less, and for no other reason," wrote Iraq war veteran Jason Van Steenwyk on his blog. "If American troops were bleeding more, it would be right back on the front pages." Read article.

MRC/NB's Bozell on New Poll on Media Bias; Media Disinterest in Obama's Gaffes

Newsbusters.org

MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the June 10 "Fox & Friends" to discuss yet another poll noting that the public perceive what the MRC has documented for nearly 21 years: the media are not only biased ideologically, they tailor campaign coverage in a way that goes softer on candidates they favor, such as Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

For example, Bozell noted, the Illinois Democrat's numerous gaffes have received widespread play in blogs and on video-sharing sites like YouTube, yet are virtually ignored by the MSM:

Barack Obama has a long history of gaffes on this campaign trail, Bosnia sniper type of gaffes. We've documented them. Others have documented them. But you won't see them on the news media. So you just can't say, I mean it's, what Ed has said is true, Hillary did stumble and did make mistakes and Bill did make mistakes but so did Barack Obama and they weren't covered. Read article - View Bozell video HERE.

Obama's Women Problem

Amanda Carpenter, Townhall.com

If Barack Obama wants to make inroads with Hillary Clinton's disaffected female voters, he has work to do.

Primary race exit polling showed white female voters have supported Clinton by 24 more points than Obama and his favorability ratings among white women suffered a 13-point drop-- from 56 percent to 43 percent-- since last February, according to a May 29 Pew Research polling report. The same poll showed Obama losing that demographic by eight points to his GOP general election opponent John McCain, 41 to 49 percent.

The gap was also apparent in a private poll conducted last month by McLaughlin & Associates last month. It found McCain had a 49 to 38 percent edge over Obama among white women nationwide. Pollster John McLaughlin told Townhall in a phone interview he believed some of the most important demographic battles for voters in the general election would be for Hispanic and white women. "That's what they'll be fighting over," McLaughlin said. Read article.