May 22, 2012
FSM HOT TOPICS
Exclusive: Monday, July 28
by PRESIDENTIAL WATCH July 28, 2008
One world? Obama's on a different planet - The senator's Berlin speech was radical and naive.
John R. Bolton, LA Times.com
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.
These troubling comments were not widely reported in the generally adulatory media coverage given the speech, but they nonetheless deserve intense scrutiny. It remains to be seen whether these glimpses into Obama's thinking will have any impact on the presidential campaign, but clearly they were not casual remarks. This speech, intended to generate the enormous publicity it in fact received, reflects his campaign's carefully calibrated political thinking. Accordingly, there should be no evading the implications of his statements. Read article.
Obama wins the week, but McCain's still in the race
Steven Thomma, McClatchy DC,com
"The race is tightening," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Connecticut University's Polling Institute. "McCain's doing a little better because Obama's post-primary bounce is wearing off."
Nationally, two daily tracking polls showed Obama getting a bounce of support by Thursday night. The Rasmussen poll found Obama leading 49-44 percent, gaining five points from earlier in the week. The Gallup poll found Obama leading 47-41 percent, a four-point gain from earlier in the week.
But short-term bounces often disappear. In fact, Obama had a six-point lead in the Gallup poll a week ago as he started his well-publicized trek.
"The drop-off in Obama's support earlier this week . . . suggests caution in assuming that the trip will have any lasting impact on the structure of the race," said Gallup editor Frank Newport. "The jury is still out." Read article.
'08 Still a Race
Linda Chavez, NY Post.com
The professional odds-makers favor Barack Obama two-to-one to win the election. It's no wonder.
Americans overwhelmingly believe the country is on the wrong track. They can't stand President Bush. The economy is weak and shows little sign of getting stronger before the election. The country is fighting an unpopular war. And Obama, as he reminds us every time he opens his mouth, is all about "change."
So why hasn't Obama closed the deal? Most national polls show him ahead - but by margins so thin it can hardly give comfort to the putative front-runner. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll of registered voters puts Obama up only six points overall, while the more reliable polls of likely voters put it at a statistical tie within the margin of error.
And Obama is losing his advantage in key battleground states.
A new Quinnipiac poll of likely voters found Obama losing eight points over a month earlier in Minnesota, dropping five points in Colorado and two points in both Michigan and Wisconsin.
John McCain has pulled ahead of him in Colorado, is within the margin of error in Minnesota, and is in striking distance in Michigan. Only in Wisconsin is Obama comfortably ahead (11 points).
Perhaps most surprising is that Obama has been getting nonstop media attention over the past week with his high-profile visits to the Mideast and Europe. No presidential candidate of either party has been treated to such fawning coverage in the past, with network anchors accompanying them on their overseas trips and cameras everywhere. Read article.
Mixed metaphors and soggy logic
David Frum, National Post.com
Obama's vague language is the product of an unrealistic mind.
An American presidential candidate travels to the very centre of Europe and draws a huge cheering crowd. George W. Bush obviously could never do that. Nor could John McCain.
For the many Americans sick to death of eight years of confrontation and quarrelling with friends and allies, Barack Obama's visit to Berlin presented an exciting and hopeful picture. This is how things should be!
It was a great moment -- so long as you viewed it with the sound off.
But if you listened to the speech, you heard an ominous and disturbing statement, one that raises the same unsettling question Hillary Clinton raised: Is this man really capable of meeting the responsibilities of commander-in-chief? Read article.
Media is for Obama, but Voters are Split
Morris & McGann, Vote.com
If you read, watch and hear the media describe the campaign of 2008, it appears to be the most one-sided contest since Reagan trounced Mondale in 1984. McCain always comes across as borderline senile, lethargic, and pitiful while Obama is awash in media heroics and theatrical flourishes.
But the race is still basically tied according to the polls.
While Obama has gotten a four point bounce, according to the latest Rasmussen poll, from his European trip and the adulatory response of the left-leaning German crowds, the two candidates have been within one or two points of each other for the past three weeks.
Never has the disjuncture between coverage and reality loomed quite so large as it does in this race. You get one image from the media and a totally different one from the polling.
Behind this gap between perception and reality lies the more fundamental reality: Voters are worried about Barack Obama. Recent national polls show Obama with just a 40% favorable ratio among white voters. He is clearly hitting up against some substantial sales resistance, particularly among middle aged and older white women. Read article.
Neither A Kennedy Nor A Reagan
IBD Editorials.com
Presidents Kennedy and Reagan both visited Berlin to champion freedom against its 20th century enemies. Barack Obama just showed Berliners no understanding of the 21st century's threats to liberty.
At nearly 3,000 words, the most hyped speech in the long history of American political campaigns, delivered by Sen. Obama before Berlin's Victory Column on Thursday evening, was longer than both John F. Kennedy's and Ronald Reagan's Berlin speeches. Yet in content and import it was almost meaningless by comparison.
"I speak to you not as a candidate for president, but as a citizen," Obama claimed to the massive crowds. Yet if that were true, why was his every word in English? Both JFK and Reagan found a few moments to speak to Berliners in their language.
"Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen," the young Democrat memorably declared in June of 1963. And in June of 1987, the Great Communicator reminded his German audience that "there were a few things the Soviets didn't count on — Berliner Herz, Berliner Humor, ja, und Berliner Schnauze" — the Berliners' strong-heartedness, sense of humor and their sharp-witted tongue.
More importantly, unlike Obama, neither JFK nor Reagan went to Berlin to call on the world to join hands in some giant peace chain. Both Reagan and Kennedy came to Berlin to condemn Russia's Communist empire, and their words shaped the history that followed, eventually liberating East Germany.
Yet without mentioning either president, Obama besmirched their memories before throngs of Berliners. Read article.
He ventured forth to bring light to the world
Gerard Baker, Times Online.co.uk
And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.
The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.
When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”
In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.
And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world. Read article.
The Politics of Showmanship
Alan Caruba, Capitol Hill Coffee House.com
For political theatre, there is no denying that the speech Sen. Barack Obama delivered in Berlin drew a huge, adoring crowd and was filled with the kind of talk intended to impress, not just Berliners, not just Europe, not just America, but the entire world that a new leader has appeared on the scene to work miracles…
Chuck Todd, the NBC News political director summed it up best when he pointed out that the same speech could have been delivered by Sen. John McCain because its content was ideologically the same in many ways. The critical difference is that McCain is imbued with the values of a family that has fought to protect American values, American freedoms for generations.
Both believe that industrialization and modern society is contributing to a climate apocalypse of melting Arctic ice and rising sea levels. Both believe the free world must defeat Islamofascist terrorism. The former is a corruption of science. The latter is the single most important issue of our times. At one point, Obama sounded a call for Iran to relinquish its nuclear weapons ambitions.
“People of the world, this is our moment, this is our time…”, said Obama, followed by an echo of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, citing freedom from fear and freedom from want. The other freedoms Roosevelt cited on January 6, 1941 were freedom of speech and expression, and freedom to worship as one chooses. Islam opposes both.
The date of the Roosevelt speech is worth noting because eleven months later, on September 7, 1941, the United States suffered a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan, plunging it into World War Two. Read article.
Iraq Didn't Help Obama
A Soldier's Perspective.us
A lot has been made of Obama's trip to the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. While the media salivates all over his coattails, they are missing serious flaws in his logic and policy decisions.
Our country has long had a military strategy that allows us to fight on two fronts with reserves to defend the homeland. While this was made more difficult to achieve under the Clinton drawdowns and reduction in defense dollars, we've been able to do the job.
While in Afghanistan, Obama asserted that the war in Iraq was depleting our capacity to wage what he called the more important war (Afghanistan). Did the media call him on this? Did they ask tough questions? No. The war in Iraq is not depleting anything. We're more than able to send troops into both battlefields if we want.
The problem is that politics has become so engrossed in military operations that our military has been hamstrung into allowing Soldiers specified and ever-increasing amounts of dwell time. Our military is not so weak that we could not sustain combat operations and deployments beyond 12 to 15 months, but our politicians want the American people (and our military) to think it's not possible.
Obama was adamant that the troop surge was not going to work. He even went so far as to loudly proclaim that it would do the exact opposite of its intended goal and would actually increase violence and lead to more casualties. In fact, the surge has done the exact opposite and Obama still hasn't openly admitted he was wrong.
He's quick to point out that changes need to be made in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but won't pontificate beyond "pull out". He has yet to lay out a long term strategy for success. Instead, he has fallen prey to the Moveon.org assertion that this war is "unwinnable." Why is it that a man who's call to arms is "Yes, we can" when all he keeps telling troops is "No, we can't"? His mantra to the American voter is that we have lost and will not be able to win. That doesn't sound like the optimist the presidential candidate wants us to believe he is. Read article.
Swooning over Princess Obama
Melanie Phillips, Melanie Phillips.com
There’s been nothing like it since Beatlemania. As the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama arrives in Britain tomorrow on the last leg of his world tour, Obamania seems to be sweeping across the Atlantic and carrying all before it.
In giant rallies across the U.S., Obama induces hysteria among his adoring multitude, with women fainting from the effects of his soaring oratory and rock-star charisma.
On both sides of the Atlantic the media are swooning over him. Like Berlin and Paris, he is expected to receive a rapturous reception here.
Labour MPs are urging Gordon Brown to emulate him, while a third of Tory MPs are said to support him rather than his Republican opponent, John McCain.
The U.S. election may not take place until November, but in Europe Obama has already won by a landslide.
Nor does he do anything to disabuse people of the view that he is ‘the One’. He is going to win the war in Iraq. He’s going to break the deadlock in the Middle East.
In the U.S., he declared his presidency would be seen as ‘the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal’.
Doubtless as the water recedes he will walk on it. His tour is supposed to be merely a fact-finding exercise for an election candidate — but it is being treated as a cross between a coronation and the Second Coming. Read article.
Why Obama snubbed the troops: no photo op allowed
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air.com
NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube get the skinny on the abrupt cancellation of Barack Obama’s visit to Landstuhl and Ramstein yesterday. The campaign tried to excuse it by claiming that it wouldn’t be appropriate to visit while on a campaign-funded portion of his trip, but that wasn’t the real problem. When Obama found out he couldn’t use the visit as a photo op, he canceled:
One military official who was working on the Obama visit said because political candidates are prohibited from using military installations as campaign backdrops, Obama’s representatives were told, “he could only bring two or three of his Senate staff member, no campaign officials or workers.” In addition, “Obama could not bring any media. Only military photographers would be permitted to record Obama’s visit.”
This makes the decision track very clear. Obama and his team set up the visits to military installations before going overseas. After seeing how the media got excluded in Iraq and Afghanistan, they decided it wasn’t worth traveling to Ramstein and Landstuhl to visit the severely wounded troops because they couldn’t bring the campaign and get the photo ops they wanted. Instead, Obama went shopping in Berlin.
As I wrote yesterday, that’s certainly a revealing set of priorities for a man who wants to lead these troops as Commander in Chief. Read article.
Obama on the Surge: Nonsense and Nonsense on Stilts
Keith Pavlischek, EPPC.org
"Presidential Candidate Obama's statements in and about Iraq in the past 24 hours have been nothing less than shameless and disgraceful."
So says Steve Schippert at Threats Watch.org, and I couldn't have said it better.
Schippert was reacting to Senator Obama's disingenuous comments on the "Surge" in Iraq. On Tuesday's ABC World News Tonight, he said that despite the improved situation in Iraq, he would still not support it even if he had to do it over again.
That's bad enough, but Obama proceeded to suggest that the new counterinsurgency strategy implemented by General Petreaus was merely incidental to the undeniably improved security conditions in Iraq. Schippert, a former Marine, knows something about counterinsurgency. And one of the things he knows about counterinsurgency is that Obama knows nothing about counterinsurgency. I encourage you to read the article here.
Obama wants us to believe that the undeniable progress in security in Iraq can be credited entirely to the "Anbar Reawakening," the Sunni revolt against Al Qaeda in western Iraq that emerged prior to the Surge. Read article.
An Innocent Abroad
Cal Thomas, JWR.com
This week, Europe will cheer Barack Obama as if he were Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the commander of Allied troops that liberated Europe from Hitler; or John F. Kennedy before the Brandenburg Gate near the beginning of the Berlin Wall; or Ronald Reagan in the same place near its collapse.
Obama is no Eisenhower, Kennedy, or Reagan. He might be more like the Pied Piper, leading Europeans to their doom. Does Europe believe that if it follows Obama he will lead them away from world conflict? Blind faith in Obama won't save Europe from war.
Like the wise monkeys of the old Japanese maxim, Europe neither sees nor hears evil. It sees no evil in Iraq or Afghanistan; it sees no evil in the tide of immigration from countries that believe freedom and pluralism are offensive. Twice Europe had to be rescued by the United States and protected from the Soviets because it failed to hear the thundering hoofs of approaching evil.
Will Europeans respond if Obama asks them to supply their fair share of troops for NATO or expand their participation from mostly non-combat roles? Do Obama supporters think he can sweep Europeans off their feet, as he has done to so many Americans? Read article.
Obama's Experience Doesn't Match Up
Richard V. Allen, Online WSJ.com
How does Mr. Obama's foreign policy résumé compare with the preparation of past presidential candidates?
Richard Nixon gathered vast international experience in extensive travels as vice president under Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Lyndon Johnson traveled far and wide in his years in the Senate and as majority leader. He was a strong proponent of a bipartisan foreign and national security policy.
Gerald Ford spent a quarter century in the House of Representatives, always in the minority. He too gained solid experience in his travels around the globe.
Jimmy Carter assumed the presidency at a tumultuous moment in American political history, but with no significant foreign experience. In April 1980, he approved a disastrous, failed plan to rescue the hostages in Iran.
Reagan's preparation prior to 1980 was methodical: There were 1978 trips to Japan and Taiwan, where he met quietly with leaders and others at length, to Iran and a meeting with the shah, and later that year to England, France and Germany.
Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, had experience in Congress, then as U.N. ambassador, U.S. representative in Beijing and director of Central Intelligence.
Bill Clinton had studied at Oxford and traveled widely. As governor of Arkansas he made overseas trips and met with foreign businessmen and leaders.
John McCain has "hands-on" military, foreign policy and national security experience, starting in 1954 as a midshipman at Annapolis, seven years before Barack Obama was born. He has been in Congress since 1982.
So, when we hear about Barack Obama's extensive "experience" in foreign affairs, most of which will be recently acquired in a mere week of travel amid media fanfare, it should be judged in the context of the experience quotients of his predecessor candidates for the presidency. Read article.
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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