May 22, 2012
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Exclusive: Saturday, July 26
by PRESIDENTIAL WATCH July 26, 2008
Old-World Embrace: Ancient lessons for Obama.
Thomas F. Madden, NRO.com
Barack Obama is about to receive a great, big hug from the people of Europe. He is their candidate and they love him to death. Not only are his approval ratings sky high there, but in Germany, France, and Italy he is favored over John McCain by more than a 50-percent margin. Europe’s newspapers and airwaves are filled with giddy anticipation for the event. As the London Observer summed it up “The world is waiting to love America again.”
There is no doubt that the throngs of adoring fans who will pour out to see the freshman senator from Illinois will make for good TV. But how will it play in Peoria? Four years ago I was living in Italy when Teresa Heinz Kerry gave her convention speech studded with European languages. The Italians (whose language was among the included) were beside themselves with admiration. At last, they thought, the Americans would reject their cowboy president and choose someone who cared about them. John Kerry’s proficiency in French only made it that much better. European public-opinion polls showed Kerry defeating Bush by double-digit margins.
But Europeans can’t vote — and the love affair between Europe and John Kerry did not go over well with many Americans. Undoubtedly, Obama’s campaign managers are discerning the historical lessons of the Kerry defeat. But they might want to look a bit further back as well. Read article.
Who Are the Iraqis? - Victory will be measured by whether they are friend or foe.
Andrew C. McCarthy, NRO.com
What to make of this week’s theater in Iraq?
To recap briefly, the country was going to hell in a hand-basket in 2006 when President Bush decided to just say “no” to the Democrat Surrender Chorus. With John McCain’s support, the commander-in-chief directed a “surge” in U.S. combat forces under the brilliant leadership of General David Petraeus. The results could not have been better: Al-Qaeda has been routed, Shiite militia activity is diminished, violence is down throughout the country, and Iraqis are making progress toward political stability.
To recap briefly, the country was going to hell in a hand-basket in 2006 when President Bush decided to just say “no” to the Democrat Surrender Chorus. With John McCain’s support, the commander-in-chief directed a “surge” in U.S. combat forces under the brilliant leadership of General David Petraeus. The results could not have been better: Al-Qaeda has been routed, Shiite militia activity is diminished, violence is down throughout the country, and Iraqis are making progress toward political stability.
So this week Barack Obama, the Democrats’ presidential candidate, made a ballyhooed “fact-finding” tour of the same Iraq he wanted Americans to retreat from in defeat two years ago. And Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki, despite owing his job to Bush and McCain, presented Obama with a big fat bouquet. His assertion, in an interview with Der Spiegel, that American forces should leave Iraq “as soon as possible,” and preferably on the 16-month timeline proposed by Obama, was just what the messiah ordered — effectively tossing McCain under one of those metaphorical buses the 2008 campaign seems to produce by the fleet. Read article.
Obama Faking It
Maggie Gallagher, Townhall.com
Obama has a problem: What do you do when you're a lightly accomplished one-term senator, a former state legislator from Illinois, a Harvard law graduate who has no substantive record of accomplishments, and you are running against a war hero whom polls show that Americans overwhelmingly view as far more fit to be commander in chief?
Pose, of course.
What else can a guy like Obama do?
So the man who would be president of the United States of America flies around the world in the middle of a political campaign, enlisting the U.S. military and the Berlin Wall as free campaign commercial backdrops, to lend him the emotional weight and substance -- the aura as a commander -- that he hasn't yet earned on his own. Read article.
Obama's Trip: Some Questions Katie, Brian and Charles Should Ask
Larry Elder, Townhall.com
Q: Before your trip to Iraq, you said that you intend to give the military a "new mission" -- all of the combat troops withdrawn within 16 months. Why bother traveling to Iraq and consulting with commanders on the ground, if you've already decided on a new mission?
Q: In 2004, you called it unwise to announce a timetable. By 2008, however, you announce a 16-month timetable. Only a few days ago, your top campaign strategist stated that you were "not wedded" to that timetable. The next day, you reiterated your 16-month timetable, but added it's important not to "undo" our gains. Isn't this confusing?
Q: On Iran, you criticized Bush for leaving all options on the table up to and including a "military option." And during the campaign season, you criticized Sen. Clinton for voting to call the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terror organization. But you later said that, as to Iran, all military options are on the table, and said that you consider the Revolutionary Guard a terror organization. Did the facts change or the politics change?
Q: You announced support for a two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians, with Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. The next day, you reversed course, leaving the disposition of Jerusalem a matter to be negotiated between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Can you clarify? Read article.
Is ‘The One’ Cocky or Commander in Chiefy?
Maureen Dowd, NY Times.com
The One, as McCain aides sardonically call Obama, glided through Afghanistan, Iraq and Jordan, girding his messianic loins for the inevitable kvetching he would face in Israel as skeptical Jews “try to get a better sense of what’s in Obama’s kishkes.” So said Nathan Diament of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, in The Daily News, defining “kishkes” as Yiddish for gut.
The king of Jordan personally drove the prince of Chicago from the palace to the airport on Tuesday night to catch his flight to Israel, leading a motorcade in his slate Mercedes 600 across the tarmac and right up to O-Force One, as The Chicago Sun Times mockingly calls the candidate’s freshly branded 757, with the captain’s chair embroidered with “Obama-’08/President.” As the senator got out of the passenger seat, King Abdullah jumped out to chat some more, as though the two, who had only met in passing on the Hill, were old pals.
The king of Jordan personally drove the prince of Chicago from the palace to the airport on Tuesday night to catch his flight to Israel, leading a motorcade in his slate Mercedes 600 across the tarmac and right up to O-Force One, as The Chicago Sun Times mockingly calls the candidate’s freshly branded 757, with the captain’s chair embroidered with “Obama-’08/President.” As the senator got out of the passenger seat, King Abdullah jumped out to chat some more, as though the two, who had only met in passing on the Hill, were old pals.
Obama finally found a Muslim with whom he’s willing to be photographed. Read article.
What Obama Could Learn on Vacation
David Harsanyi, RCP.com
The Barack Obama "Change Is Coming" World Tour touches down in Europe this week after a triumphant jaunt through the Middle East.
The trip is significant in more than one respect. After all, there is genuine (if incremental) "change" budding in European politics -- most of it an attempt to turn back the kinds of stifling economic controls and regulations that the presumptive Democratic nominee seems to support here at home.
Obama will visit Germany, France and England this week. It just happens that those Western European nations have turned to right-of-center coalitions to remedy corrosive welfare systems, never-ending entitlements, unchecked union power and overregulation of industry. Read article.
Obamamania Fades on Capitol Hill
Charles Lemos, No Quarter USA.net
Perhaps they are just out of the loop, the Chicago loop, that is. What could you have expected when he moved operational control of the DNC from Washington DC to Chicago? And if you think it will get better, it won’t. You keeping on seeing what you want to see in Barack Obama and not what is really there. Obama can change his policies with the wind, he can’t change who he is, at least not without a lot of therapy.
I have long argued that Obama is the political reincarnation of Richard Nixon. Sure their politics are different, but their personae are not. Richard Nixon was a control freak, so is Barack Obama. Nixon would do whatever it took to win, lying and pandering his way into office, Barack is no different.
Nixon broke into a psychiatrist’s office to get dirt on his opponent’s, while innuendo that likely emanated from within the Obama campaign undid the candidacies of Blair Hull (domestic abuse allegations) and Jack Ryan (sexual impropriety allegations). Nixon was a narcissist, Obama is hardly any less of one.
I see a very different Obama. I see one who threw four people off a ballot so he could run unopposed. I see someone who played the race card over and over again. I see someone who has been nothing but duplicitous. Read article.
The Party of Defeat
Richard Baehr, FrontPageMag.com
David Horowitz has written many books and articles that deal with the topic of American political warfare. Horowitz has often argued that the left is much more resolute, serious, and focused in its efforts, which has enabled it to win political victories over an often dispirited, and less focused conservative opposition. Horowitz's new book Party of Defeat, co-written with Front Page Magazine managing editor Ben Johnson, offers chapter and verse in how this fight between an aggressive anti-war left, and the Bush administration and its allies, played out over the Iraq war.
The book has, of course, not been reviewed by the New York Times or the Washington Post, but surprisingly, has also been ignored by the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal as well. This is unfortunate, since the message this book delivers is an important one in the current run-up to the Presidential election in November. In essence, the Democratic Party, and its allies on the left have chosen to win a political war at home, at the expense of winning wars in which the country was engaged overseas.
In fact, the political success of the effort by the "Party of Defeat" was tied to creating a story, repeated constantly by members of Congress, former political figures (e.g Al Gore) and cooperative journalists, that the Iraq war was a mistake, that it was sold" to the country with hyped ("bogus") intelligence, and that the war proved a diversion from the "real war on terror" in Afghanistan).
One of the fascinating aspects of the Horowitz and Johnson book is the way the authors document the various charges leveled at the Bush Administration by the Democrats and the media and demonstrate how in each case they were either false or greatly exaggerated, often using as evidence the reports of various independent or Congressional committees appointed to examine the charges. Each time one slander was knocked down, the left was back with more. But the news stories that got the attention were the charges, not the acquittals. Read article.
What Would Obama Die For?
David Paul Kuhn, Online WSJ.com
Since securing the Democratic Party's nomination in June, Barack Obama has been busy redefining himself.
He has come out for a government surveillance bill he once opposed. He's expressed support for funding religious programs with tax dollars. He reversed his stance on accepting public financing. He reversed his view of the D.C. gun ban. And he hinted that he will "refine" his position on Iraq, only to push back against himself this week and reiterate his Iraq withdrawal plan.
Mr. Obama's position shifts are clumsy and ill-timed. He has built his franchise on the concept that he is a new kind of politician. But of late, he has become the reincarnation of Clintonian triangulation.
That does not mean his repositioning is wholly foolish. The timing is foolish. At some point the most liberal Democratic nominee since at least 1984 had to consider the center. Too bad for Mr. Obama that he waited until it appeared politically expedient. Read article.
Obama's Acorn: A Leftist Social Reform Group
No Quarter USA.net
On July 5th, I wrote an article outlining Obama’s connection to a group called ACORN. New information has recently come to light about more of ACORN’s illegal activities. ACORN has now been connected to money laundering, misuse of taxpayer funds and embezzlement as well as the voter fraud. The original three states I wrote about in Part I of this story turns out to be three of at least a dozen states in which ACORN has apparently committed voter fraud.
ACORN’s continued fraudulent behavior does highlight a problem within our federal government. It shows that we don’t hold organizations like ACORN up to the light. No doubt things need to be changed. ACORN does need to be investigated. Are these the things Obama wants to change?
I am left with some questions after exposing so much more about ACORN. How much does Obama know about ACORN? Did Obama use ACORN in his bid for the presidency? If Obama did use ACORN, how much money did he pay them and to whom was it paid? ACORN has 74 subsidiaries. Which subsidiary did Obama pay? Read article.
Five Dollar DemocratsAnd Other Liars
Steve Bussey, 2 Sisters From the Right.com
Democrat Senators Barack Obama and Harry Reid, as well as other five dollar Democrat politicians and environmentalists, are liars when it comes to oil and gas prices and our national energy policy.
In responding to President Bush’s announcement to lift the executive order banning off-shore oil exploration on Monday, Senator Barack Obama released a statement through his spokesman in which he said, “. . . It would merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for thirty years.” That cannot even be characterized as a legitimate opinion or difference of opinion – it is simply a lie.
In responding to President Bush’s announcement to lift the executive order banning off-shore oil exploration on Monday, Senator Barack Obama released a statement through his spokesman in which he said, “. . . It would merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for thirty years.” That cannot even be characterized as a legitimate opinion or difference of opinion – it is simply a lie.
Senator Obama lied because our national energy policy of the past thirty years was to do everything in the extreme environmentalists’ and Democrats’ powers to bring an entire free people and national economy to their knees so as to force them to demand government subsidies for pie-in-the-sky liberal panacea of “alternative” energy. Don’t believe me?
Former vice president Al Gore, mild mannered movie producer, author and college professor by day and world-saving Eco-Man, global warming Chicken Little on the weekend, as well as other $5 Democrats have long advocated $5 per gallon gas in order to “encourage” conservation. Senator Obama even recently said that the high price of gas is not the problem, but the speed with which it escalated was the problem. Read article.
Judges, taxes may not make McCain's case
Bruce Bartlett, Politico.com
In conversations with my conservative friends, I almost never hear any real support for John McCain. Between the utter disgust most conservatives feel these days for the party of George W. Bush and the disdain that many feel for McCain personally because of his long record of deriding conservative policies ranging from taxes to stem cells, there simply isn’t much to excite a conservative this political season.
Lacking any positive reason to vote for McCain, conservatives have fallen back on two tactics. The first is to try to portray Barack Obama as a wild-eyed Marxist intent on delivering America to its enemies and destroying the economy. However, this approach appeals only to the stupid, the gullible and fanatics prepared to believe the worst about any Democrat.
The second approach is to argue that whatever else one thinks about McCain, he will at least be better on two key issues: taxes and judges. Read article.
What McCain Economic Policy?
Harold Meyerson, Washington Post.com
"Government is not the solution to our problem," Ronald Reagan told his fellow Americans in his first inaugural address. "Government is the problem."
For modern American conservatism, Reagan's words may as well have been inscribed on the tablets handed down at Mount Sinai. The market was god and Reagan was its Moses, and Republicans have sworn fealty to both for the past quarter-century. One invariable feature of the 2007-08 Republican primary debates was the effort of each candidate to cast himself as Reagan's one true heir. John McCain proudly recounted how he enlisted as a foot soldier in Reagan's revolution. How was he to know that government was about to become a solution again? Read article.
Tax Rates For New Yorkers Would Top 50% Under Obama
Julie Satow, NY Sun.com
New York tax filers reporting more than $375,000 a year in earned income may end up paying nearly 60% of their wages in taxes to the government under a Barack Obama presidency, economists who have analyzed his plan
The Democratic presidential candidate is proposing not only raising the federal income tax, but also adding a Social Security tax for those Americans earning more than $250,000 a year. For New Yorkers, that could mean that if the current Social Security rate is applied, the marginal tax rate, or rate on every extra dollar earned, could rise to 58%.
"This is a very eye-popping number," a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Alan Viard, said. Read article.
John McCain: The return of the reformer
John McCain: The return of the reformer
Kenneth P. Vogel, Politico.com
The Republican reformer is back.
After a primary in which John McCain sought to avoid talking about his fight to reduce the role of money in politics — an issue that put him at odds with many GOP activists — the Arizona senator is once again embracing his campaign finance reform credentials.
It’s a central part of McCain’s political identity, the genesis of his national profile as a reformer, a fact highlighted by the attacks he endured during the nomination fight over the sweeping 2002 campaign finance overhaul that bears his name. Many Republican activists and small-government conservatives revile the McCain-Feingold reforms as the epitome of big government infringement on free speech, and as a result they remain leery of McCain today.
But the McCain campaign believes that by carrying the reform mantle in the general election, he will appeal to independent voters — and potentially undercut presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s change theme. Read article.
Busted!
Powerlineblog.com
It shouldn't come as a surprise, but Americans have noticed that our media are trying to drag Barack Obama across the finish line in November. Rasmussen documents the trend:
The idea that reporters are trying to help Obama win in November has grown by five percentage points over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey, taken just before the new controversy involving the Times erupted [Ed.: The Times' refusal to run McCain's op-ed, which we discuss below], found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help the Democrat with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.
Just 14% believe most reporters will try to help McCain win, little changed from 13% a month ago. Just one voter in four (24%) believes that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage.
Most of those 14% are Democrats who know better, but are trying to offer reporters cover.
The lack of trust in reporters documented by this survey is striking.
Family Security Matters does not endorse any candidate for any public office. Our Contributing Editors’ opinions are their own, and do not reflect those of FSM.
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The #twittergulag saga continues: @gopfirecracker suspended, others still trapped
May 21, 2012 11:54 PM
#freegopfirecracker #freegopfirecracker #freegopfirecracker #freegopfirecracker— Dale Holt (@DaleHolt8) May 22, 2012 Come on conservatives! Everyone rallied around @ChrisLoesch when he was suspended! Now its @gopfirecracker so stand up! #freegopfirecracker— Schmoop (@RGSchmoop) May 22, 2012 Hey @twitter and @support – #FreeGOPfirecracker's account has been suspended. Please fix this mishap. Thank you.— Gabriella Hoffman (@Gabby_Hoffman) May 22, 2012 [...]
Cory Booker tweets #IStandWithObama; Hashtag hijackers flood the zone
May 21, 2012 11:39 PM
Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker, the Democrat who defended Bain from the Obama campaign's attacks yesterday morning, has been backpedaling more furiously than a clown on a high wire. Tonight, in an effort to mollify his critics on the Left, he posted four tweets that included the hashtag #IStandWithObama. Conservatives immediately took over the #IStandWithObama hashtag to mock President Obama, and within an hour it became a trending topic.
Cory Booker tries to clear up his position on Bain attacks
May 21, 2012 10:25 PM
Cory Booker continued his quest to run screaming away from the apparently too candid comments he made on Meet the Press on Sunday. Despite attempts earlier today to #FreeCoryBooker from those trying to force him to apologize Booker went on the Rachel Maddow show to do everything he could to walk back what he said. Que the mockery.
Obama's 'When you're president' picture spawns hashtag
May 21, 2012 09:59 PM
"When you're president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot." -Barack Obama
Cue #WhenYouArePresident
Obama takes anti-Romney rant to Twitter
May 21, 2012 09:49 PM
It started off this morning with a video of a woman named Valerie from Indiana posted by Barack Obama’s official Twitter account. 12 hours, 12 tweets and a failed hashtag later, Obama’s reelection team took the day to tweet ongoing misinformation about Mitt Romney’s record in the private sector, specifically Bain Capital’s work with the [...]
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