May 22, 2012
FSM HOT TOPICS
Exclusive: Tuesday, July 29
by PRESIDENTIAL WATCH July 29, 2008
See VIDEO of Barack Obama in 2004 explaining how he lacks experience to become POTUS - CLICK HERE.
Missing From That Berlin Speech
Jeff Jacoby, Boston.com
"People of the world," Obama declaimed, "look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one." But the world *didn't* stand as one during the Cold War; it was riven by an Iron Curtain. For more than four decades, America and the West confronted an implacable enemy on the other side of that divide. What finally defeated that enemy and ended the Cold War was not harmony and goodwill, but American strength and resolve.
Obama's speech was a paean to international cooperation and unity. "Now is the time to join together," he said. "It was this spirit that led airlift planes to appear in the sky above our heads." No -- it was a Democratic president named Truman, who had the audacity to order an airlift when others counseled retreat, and the grit to see it through when others were ready to withdraw.
Sixty years later, it is a very different kind of Democrat who is running for president. Obama may have wowed 'em in Berlin, but he's no Harry Truman. Read article.
Stalking, Sniffing, Swooning
Maureen Dowd, NY Times.com
Even for Sarkozy the American, who loves everything in our culture from Sylvester Stallone to Gloria Gaynor, it was a wild gush over a new Washington crush.
Sarko is right and Barack is left. One had a Jewish grandfather, the other a Muslim one. The French president is a frenetic bumper car; the Illinois senator is, as he said of the king of Jordan’s Mercedes 600, “a smooth ride.”
But the son of a Hungarian, who picked a lock to break into the French ruling class, embraced a fellow outsider and child of an immigrant who had also busted into the political aristocracy with a foreign-sounding name.
After 200,000 people thronged to see Obama at the Victory Column in Berlin, christening him “Redeemer” and “Savior,” it turned out Sarko was also Obamarized, as the Germans were calling the mesmerizing effect. Read article.
Political Messiah in the Holy Land
Q & A, NRO.com
Kathryn Jean Lopez: What's the best-case President Obama scenario from where you sit? Worst-case?
Caroline Glick: The best-case scenario is that Obama will be willing to learn from the Bush administration's mistakes in attempting to appease the Palestinians, the Iranians, and the North Koreans. Such an Obama administration would recognize that its liberal formulations are fundamentally misguided and abandon them in favor of reality-based policies. Given Obama's stubborn refusal to admit he was wrong about the surge and his insistence that he can strike a deal with Ahmadinejad, the likelihood of this happening is about zero.
The worst-case scenario is that Obama actually bases his foreign policy on his ideological beliefs. If he does that, he will leave Iraq prematurely and so enable Iran's effective takeover of the country through its Shiite proxies.
He will botch up Afghanistan and end up enabling an open jihadist takeover of nuclear-armed Pakistan.
He will negotiate with Ahmadinejad, giving Iran the time and political cover to complete its nuclear program and test its nuclear weapon, and he will then refuse to assist Israel in attacking the Iranian nuclear program thus escalating the threat of an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel and Iranian nuclear blackmail of the Middle East and Europe.
He will press Israel to curtail its counter-terror activities towards the Palestinians and so enable a Hamas-Iranian takeover of the West Bank. This in turn will precipitate the expansion of the missile war against Israel from Gaza to the West Bank and so place Israel's major urban centers and its international airport at risk.
While he will simply roll over a left-leaning Israeli government like the current one while protesting his enduring commitment to Israel's security, if a Likud-led government is installed during his tenure and tries to extricate Israel from the failed "land-for-peace," policy paradigm while gearing up to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, he will treat the government with hostility and strengthen the position of Israel's enemies in his administration. This in turn will weaken the social and political standing of American Jews who will find themselves under unprecedented and unjustified suspicion of disloyalty due to their support for Israel.
As in all things, the reality of an Obama presidency is difficult to predict and may well fall somewhere between these two extremes. Read entire interview here.
Obama, "The Vast Majority Of Muslims," And The Rest Of Us
Austin Hill, Townhall.com
What are we to make of this? For nearly seven years, the United States has called upon Europe to join us in combating terrorism and the ideology that drives it. President Bush has made it clear to Europe - - and to the rest of the world - - that we will wage this fight, and win, with or without the help of other nations. This is something which Mr. Obama and his fellow Democrats have pejoratively decried as Bush’s “cowboy diplomacy” and his “go it alone” approach.
But notice the structure of the last sentence: “If we ('we' presumably meaning the U.S. and what was then 'Western Europe') could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.” Who is it, exactly, that “we” - - citizens of the U.S. and modern-day Europe - - are supposed to stand with? The implication is that “the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism” already have some kind of well-developed movement going on, and the rest of us non-Muslims just need to get on board with it.
But where is this “vast majority of Muslims?” Do they have a website? Can I sign-up for their newsletter, or attend a rally? And who speaks for this “vast majority?” Is it President Ahmedinejad of Iran? Or would it be the two hijab scarf-wearing Muslim women who were denied their “rights” to sit on the platform behind Obama’s podium last month in Detroit, and who pitched a fit and eventually coerced an apology from him? Are they the examples of the “vast majority” who reject “extremism?”
Mr. Obama may find camaraderie with this elusive, mystical “vast majority.” But the rest of us Americans must remain vigilant, lest we fall prey to not merely “hate,” but to beheadings and suicide bombings as well. Read article.
Top Ten Reasons Barack Obama Should Not Be President
David M. Huntwork, Poliwatch.org
.Are in fact all provided by quotes from the candidate himself. Read article.
Barack Obama: He came. He saw. He, er, left
Richard Woord, Times Online.co.uk
The presidential candidate’s European tour stopped in in Downing Street yesterday and left our man feeling a little underwhelmed.
In the heat of the summer morning, a throng waited. The prophet of hope was on his way and the believers were eager for his blessing.
Hope, dreams, freedom, a world made new. Those are Barack Obama’s watchwords, and yesterday in Downing Street all manner of camera teams, scribblers, acolytes and stargazers had assembled for an audience with His Expectancy.
For Obama the road had been long, not just from his father’s goat herd roots in Kenya to US presidential candidate but these last few days via Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany and France.
In Berlin he had roused 200,000 to cheers at the Tier-garten. “This is our moment to give our children back their future,” he declaimed. “This is the moment to stand as one” - and was in Paris before anyone in the delirious crowd could work out what he meant.
For a candidate carrying a mountain of expectations, Obama is an unassuming figure. He lopes. He takes his time. He’s so calm he belies the buzz. He has that Blairite thing: the poise, the cadences, the core of self-confidence that quietly says I am the chosen one. But only, of course, if you, the people, wish it so. Read article.
Who is the REAL Obama?
Laurie Roth, NewsWithViews.com
Aren’t’ you relieved that Obama showed such good judgment as the wanna be next President to get rid of that pesky, annoying American flag painted on his 757 campaign plane? He had his crew do a month long makeover and paint his “O’ symbol on the tail where the flag had been.
When is the American Public going to stop the Obama worship train? When are we going to finally notice, not the ‘sound bites’ but the real and endless connections that do nothing but create endless questions as to his real loyalties? Just a mini review of some of these: Remember the William Ayres connection, (weather underground fund raiser and friend), Professor Kalidi, PLO sympathizer who brought the President of Iran over (also a big fund raiser for Obama), Toni Resko (Fund raiser, colleague who was indicted and convicted this year), Reverend Wright scandal: mysterious birth certificate; Where is the real one??? Read article.
Citizen of the World?
Editorial, New York Sun.com
So Barack Obama, whose father is from Kenya and who attended school in Indonesia, now appears before a crowd of 200,000 cheering Germans in Berlin to proclaim himself a "citizen of the world." It makes you wonder whether he's running for president of America or secretary general of the United Nations, and it is reminiscent of Senator Kerry's ill-fated 2004 debate pledge to subject American policies to a "global test."
Not that these columns are against a judicious internationalism. Mr. Obama's turn toward the idea of global responsibility is actually a welcome note coming from someone who spent the primary campaign demagoguing Senator Clinton on the charge that free trade deals her husband signed were sucking American jobs from Ohio to Mexico and Canada. If you are really a "citizen of the world," why should it matter?
It is also a welcome turn for a candidate who spent the primary campaign complaining that the War in Iraq was costing too much money that should be spent on American roads, bridges, education, and health care. If you are really a "citizen of the world," Iraqi infrastructure is as good an investment as American infrastructure.
We'd settle for a president who is a citizen of America, thank you very much. Or at least one with the humility to recognize that the president is elected by Americans, not Germans. In the meantime, it is hard to take Mr. Obama's speech as anything more than the pandering to which he is prone. Read article.
Obama now seen as an ordinary pol
Jonathan V. Last, JWR.com
Why isn't Obama further ahead?
Since he clinched the Democratic nomination last month, Barack Obama has consistently led John McCain in the polls. But his lead has been generally modest. He never received a bounce from becoming the nominee, and today his lead is almost paper-thin - generally about four points in most polls.
The electoral environment is still tilted heavily toward Democrats. In generic congressional ballot polls, Democrats maintain a steady double-digit lead over Republicans. Which means that Obama is running behind the Democratic Party in general.
The other important metric is the right-track/wrong-track poll number, where respondents are asked if they believe the country is generally moving in the right, or wrong, direction. Today, only 15 percent say right track; 78 percent say wrong track.
Since Obama began his ascendancy in January, the wrong-track numbers have actually increased. But strangely, Obama, whose entire campaign has been centered on the promise of "change," hasn't been helped by this increasingly pessimistic view of the future. Read article.
Arrogance Will Not Help Get Obama Elected
Susan Estrich, Fox News.com
Now that Barack Obama has completed his beyond much-publicized overseas trip, it’s hard to argue that the trip wasn’t everything his strategists hoped for.
The point of the trip, of course, was to give Obama gravitas on foreign policy issues, to help voters forget that he is only six years removed from the Illinois State Senate and only eight years from having his credit card declined when he tried to rent a car at the 2000 Los Angeles convention (a story he used to tell on himself). So there he was, looking, acting, being treated, like he is already president, walking in the footsteps of John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan in Berlin, even borrowing their words. Every Obama supporter I know was in heaven.
Problem is, there aren’t enough Obama supporters yet to carry the election. It’s the folks in the middle, the folks who haven’t deecided, the folks who need convincing or are inclined not to like him, or are still smarting from the defeat of Hillary Clinton, who will decide this election. Did the foreign trip move them?
In the prayer he left at the Western Wall, Senator Obama asked the Lord to protect him from pride and despair. Maybe he should have added something about protecting his campaign from the related danger of arrogance. It might be the biggest threat to Obama’s success. Read article.
Voter Unease With Obama Lingers Despite His Lead -
Poll Finds Background, Experience Are Advantages for McCain
Gerald F. Seib & Laura Meckler, Online WSJ.com
Midway through the election year, the presidential campaign looks less like a race between two candidates than a referendum on one of them -- Sen. Barack Obama.
With the nominations of both parties effectively settled for more than a month, the key question in the contest isn't over any single issue being debated between the Democrats' Sen. Obama or the Republicans' Sen. John McCain. The focus has turned to the Democratic candidate himself: Can Americans get comfortable with the background and experience level of Sen. Obama?
This dynamic is underscored in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. The survey's most striking finding: Fully half of all voters say they are focused on what kind of president Sen. Obama would be as they decide how they will vote, while only a quarter say they are focused on what kind of president Sen. McCain would be.
The challenge that presents for Sen. Obama is illustrated by a second question. When voters were asked whether they could identify with the background and values of the two candidates, 58% said they could identify with Sen. McCain on that account, while 47% said the same of Sen. Obama. More than four in 10 said the Democratic contender doesn't have values and a background they can identify with. Read article.
McCain’s Cult of Teddy Roosevelt: The Sage of Sagamore Hill was not a conservative.
Michael Knox Beran, NRO.com
Asked recently by the New York Times to name a conservative model, John McCain cited Theodore Roosevelt.
Teddy, of course, had no shortage of virtues. Conservatism, alas, wasn’t one of them.
It’s one thing for a conservative to admire T. R.’s style and gallantry, the charge up San Juan Hill, the rounding up of crooks in the Badlands. It’s something else for a conservative to identify Roosevelt as a fellow reformer, as Sen. McCain did in the Times interview.
Far from allaying conservative fears, McCain can only add to them by trying to make a conservative of a man who, largely for reasons of expediency, embraced a host of dubious reforms, and who ended his public career by embracing the Progressive dream of a state strong enough to command the industry and commerce of the nation.
True, as a young man T. R. resisted the Progressive agenda. In the New York State Assembly he opposed attempts to monkey with the free flow of goods and services, and he voted down a minimum-wage bill. But he was eager to advance himself, and he soon discovered which way the winds were blowing. Read article.
The skeleton in Obama’s money closet
Judi McLeod, Canada Free Press.com
Robert Wolf, CEO of UBS Americas, who has bundled more than $370,850 for Barack Obama so far this year, is one of the most embarrassing skeletons in BO’s money closet, now that the financial institution Wolf heads up in America has been outed in The Nation’s Attack of the Global Pirate Bankers.
“…This crowded docket, combined with the UBS mea culpa, almost distracted us from the sordid details of the Levin Committee’s actual findings,” investigative journalist James S. Henry, wrote in The Nation on Tuesday.
It’s not as if Wolf is just another number in the contribution side of the ledger paying for Obama’s race to the White House.
Among the groupies pushing Obama’s rock star-status, Wolf stands at the front of the line. Read article.
Can Obama Attract Enough White Votes To Put Him Over The Top?
Charlie Cook, National Journal.com
The dog days of summer are doubling as an intermission in the presidential contest.
The presidential nomination contests are over, but the general election campaign has yet to begin in earnest. The nominees are busy raising money, vetting running mates, planning for the fall campaign, and this week Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the Democratic nominee-in-waiting, is burnishing his foreign policy bona fides abroad.
For Sen. John McCain of Arizona, his GOP counterpart, the challenge is simply to remain in the news and not be overshadowed by the plethora of attention given to Obama's travel.
For the general election, Obama stands to benefit from what is almost certain to be a record high turnout and support among blacks. In addition, despite suggestions of a rivalry between blacks and Hispanics that might hurt him, he is running a bit ahead of the approximately 60 percent of the Hispanic vote Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., won in 2004, though the exact percentages that year are in dispute. Thus, Obama stands to do very well among minority voters.
Thom Riehle of RT Strategies, the polling firm that conducts surveys for The Cook Political Report, estimates that Obama needs between 40 percent and 42 percent of the white vote to win in November, and perhaps between 31 percent and 37 percent of the vote of white voters over 50 years of age, a group that has been a challenge for him. Read article.
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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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