Exclusive: Tuesday, May 13

by PRESIDENTIAL WATCH May 13, 2008

Did you KNOW that there are "57 states" in Obama's America? SEE HERE.

View list of radicals, tyrants, terrorists and anti-American groups who are rooting for Obama - CLICK HERE.

Hoover's Institution - Anecdotes from the FBI crypt

Laurence H. Silberman, Online WSJ.com

Only a few weeks before the 1964 election, a powerful presidential assistant, Walter Jenkins, was arrested in a men's room in Washington. Evidently, the president was concerned that Barry Goldwater would use that against him in the election. Another assistant, Bill Moyers, was tasked to direct Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater's staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers' memo to the FBI was in one of the files.

When the press reported this, I received a call in my office from Mr. Moyers. Several of my assistants were with me. He was outraged; he claimed that this was another example of the Bureau salting its files with phony CIA memos. I was taken aback. I offered to conduct an investigation, which if his contention was correct, would lead me to publicly exonerate him. There was a pause on the line and then he said, "I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?" And then he rang off. I thought to myself that a number of the Watergate figures, some of whom the department was prosecuting, were very young, too. Read article.

Jeremiah Wright's 'Trumpet' - The content of the magazine produced by Barack Obama's pastor reveals the content of his character.

Stanley Kurtz, Weekly Standard,com

To the question of the moment--What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it?--I answer, Obama knew everything, and he's known it for ages. Far from succumbing to surprise and shock after Jeremiah Wright's disastrous performance at the National Press Club, Barack Obama must have long been aware of his pastor's political radicalism. A careful reading of nearly a year's worth of Trumpet Newsmagazine, Wright's glossy national "lifestyle magazine for the socially conscious," makes it next to impossible to conclude otherwise.

Wright founded Trumpet Newsmagazine in 1982 as a "church newspaper"--primarily for his own congregation, one gathers--to "preach a message of social justice to those who might not hear it in worship service." So Obama's presence at sermons is not the only measure of his knowledge of Wright's views. Glance through even a single issue of Trumpet, and Wright's radical politics are everywhere--in the pictures, the headlines, the highlighted quotations, and above all in the articles themselves. It seems inconceivable that, in 20 years, Obama would never have picked up a copy of Trumpet. In fact, Obama himself graced the cover at least once (although efforts to obtain that issue from the publisher or Obama's interview with the magazine from his campaign were unsuccessful). Read article.

It's Obama who is "losing his bearings"

Judith Apter Klinghoffer, HNN.us

Barack Obama accuses John McCain of "losing his bearings" for simply telling the truth. After all, a top Hamas political adviser Ahmed Yousef said as much: ". . . we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win) the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy. . . ."

Respect is something Barack demands but does not extends. He is a man who dismissed his grandmother as a "typical white person," his mentor and spitirual advisor(?) as an "old uncle" nobody takes seriously and those who fail to vote for him as bitter individuals who cling to their "guns and religion."

"You call that a respectful campaign?" Read article.

John McCain's "Reverend Wright Moment"

Christopher G. Adamo, MichNews.com

As the Hillary/Obama melee continues, America is increasingly able to see their politically fatal flaws. Polling of recent weeks has clearly shown that, despite all of the pathetically transparent media hype for Barack Obama, the public would gladly opt instead for a candidate who could be counted on to uphold the values and mores of traditional America.

By this reason alone can the sudden surges in John McCain's polling numbers be explained. Bearing little or no correlation to his campaign activities, they receive a boost with each ensuing clash between Clinton and Obama. Yet it is apparently beyond the Arizona Senator's comprehension that his current "popularity" has absolutely nothing to do with him.

As it was in the aftermath of the Pennsylvania Primary two weeks ago, the latest results from both the Indiana and North Carolina Primaries leave sufficient wiggle room for both candidates to claim legitimacy, momentum, or some similar basis on which to continue the fight. This should be good for Republicans. This should pave the way for a GOP "slam dunk" come November. But John McCain seems determined for it to be otherwise. Read article.

Give ‘em Hell, Dubya - The long-suffering President Bush.

Victor Davis Hanson, NRO.com

We are in one of the longest presidential campaigns in modern memory - and haven't even started focusing on the general election.

It's been enough to drive most of us mad, but if there's one person in particular suffering the most, it may be President Bush.

It's been noted here before that we have not had an election since 1952 in which an incumbent president or vice president was not running in at least partial defense of an existing administration's record.

That means Bush is not just a lame duck but an easy target for all three current candidates - none of whom have any investment in the president's legacy.

Consider that the last president in a similar position was Harry Truman. He left office with an approval rating in the 20s, and it took years before historians revised the standard negative and mostly unfair view of him.

When there is no incumbent in a long race, almost everything of the last four years becomes fair and uncontested game. Read article.

Barack Obama: In Search of a Savior?

Heather Robinson, Political Mavens.com

In all the discussion of Barack Obama as the potential savior of our nation, there's been relatively little attention to the idea that, rather than behaving like a person of strong leadership, Barack Obama seems to have been acting like a real follower for the past twenty years.

Analyses of Obama's relationship with his controversial minister Jeremiah Wright seem to focus more on the question of whether or not Obama shares any of Wright's zany beliefs and less on the question of how Obama could have possibly chosen this man as a mentor, to have stuck with him for twenty years, and to have failed to have any sort of moderating influence on him.

Put simply, if Barack Obama is a person of such remarkable leadership and character that he will be able to diplomatically influence the world's worst demagogues (Ahamdinejad, Kim Jon Il,) towards better behavior, how could he possibly have endured being preached to by this domestic demagogue in what appears to have been a very one-way power relationship, with Obama the follower? Read article.

The Florida House of Cards Starts to Collapse: Clinton Can't Survive the Coup

Matt Towery, Townhall.com

It was over a year and a half ago that I wrote the first story suggesting that a move in the date of the Florida presidential primary, then just a rumor in Tallahassee, would likely shake up the entire presidential race.

It did.

Consider the impact Clinton's win in New Hampshire, combined with a huge victory in Florida, might have had on the Obama "train" to victory.

But Howard Dean and the Democratic National Committee were determined to put the days of Bill and Hillary Clinton into history's rearview mirror. The party brass knew darn well that denying Clinton her biggest and most likely early prize would turn things upside down. She was doomed before she started. The one thing that is clear to me is that Hillary Clinton has been finished off by a Democratic establishment, long based in the Northeast, that never liked her husband very much anyway, and that couldn't stand the thought of her serving as president. They got their way, as they knew they would.

The one thing that is clear to me is that Hillary Clinton has been finished off by a Democratic establishment, long based in the Northeast, that never liked her husband very much anyway, and that couldn't stand the thought of her serving as president. They got their way, as they knew they would. Read article.

Obama, no

Adolph Reed, Jr., Progressive.org

I've never been an Obama supporter. I've known him since the very beginning of his political career, which was his campaign for the seat in my state senate district in Chicago. He struck me then as a vacuous opportunist, a good performer with an ear for how to make white liberals like him. I argued at the time that his fundamental political center of gravity, beneath an empty rhetoric of hope and change and new directions, is neoliberal.

It may be instructive to look at the outfit where he did his "community organizing," the invocation of which makes so many lefties go weak in the knees. My understanding of the group, Developing Communities Project, at the time was that it was simply a church-based social service agency. What he pushed as his main political credential then, to an audience generally familiar with that organization, was his role in a youth-oriented voter registration drive.

The Obama campaign has even put out a misleading bio of Michelle Obama, representing her as having grown up in poverty on the South Side, when, in fact, her parents were city workers, and her father was a Daley machine precinct captain. This fabrication, along with those embroideries of the candidate's own biography, may be standard fare, the typical log cabin narrative. However, in Obama's case, the license taken not only underscores Obama's more complex relationship to insider politics in Daley's Chicago; it also underscores how much this campaign depends on selling an image rather than substance. Read article.

Beyond Unity - What Barack Needs Now

Peter Feld, NY Post.com

Obama doesn't need to worry about healing his party. Most of Hillary Clinton's sizeable base is not itching to punish him for beating her.

When her voters tell pollsters they might vote for McCain, it's not that they're mad. They're just not yet convinced Obama would make a good president - possibly because he hasn't tried to show that he would.

Obama also needs to worry about the much larger group of not-so-political Democrats who skipped the primaries entirely - but will vote by the tens of millions in November. Less loyal to the party, these folks are prime targets for McCain. And they, too, will decide on the simple basis of who seems likely to make the better president.

In short, Obama can't solve his core problem by putting Clinton on his ticket. Nor can she fix it for him by campaigning her heart out. He needs to make the case that he'd actually do a good job.

So far, Obama has shown little interest in doing that. His campaign has at times seemed to suggest that the nuts and bolts of governing are beneath him, much like his Senate seat was. He told one Nevada newspaper, "I'm not an operating officer," and said that running the bureaucracy is "not my job."

After the Katrina and Iraq debacles, and up against a seasoned foe, Obama won't gain by looking like too much of a visionary to care about actually running the government. Read article.

A Defeated Hillary's Best Bet

Michael Weiss, Pajamas Media.com

Pat Buchanan and Richard Mellon Scaife, who once accused Hillary's husband of murder, have warmed to her Rasputin-like resilience in the face of imminent defeat. Noemie Emery captured, with tongue firmly implanted in cheek, the right's newfound affection for Clinton in the pages of the Weekly Standard: "She is becoming a social conservative, a feminist form of George Bush." Yes, a regular God-fearing, buckshot-hunting, good ole gal who takes her coffee black, her Pabst extra cold, and thinks arugula is the name of one of Obama's daughters.

What she can do is stay in the picture long enough as an off-color liberal commentator, the beaten but unbowed grand dame, ever with the ready opinion on every foible of the Obama campaign. She can present herself to voters as the missed opportunity, the jilted ex-lover for whom they all still secretly pine.

The conservative talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, who did her such a favor with "Operation Chaos" in Indiana, can invite her on the air to expatiate at length about what her erstwhile rival is doing wrong and why he still fails to "connect" with her old core constituency - those diligent Caucasians without college degrees, especially the ones who think Obama might be Muslim and now tend toward McCain.

Yes, this strategy will make the Tammany bosses angry and perhaps even "bitter," but if it works or helps unhorse the golden boy with the nutty preacher and oily ties to the Chicago demimonde, what choice will they have in four years? Adlai Stevenson didn't get them anywhere, maybe it's time to revisit Richard Nixon in a pantsuit After all, the only thing that exceeds the Clintonian immunity to defeat is the Democratic willingness to forgive all Clintonian sins for the sake of victory. Read article.

McCain's Veepstakes: Michael Steele

John Gizzi, Human Events.com

A former lieutenant governor tapped to run for Vice President two years after losing a U.S. Senate race? the idea seems outlandish. But, sure enough, Michael Steele -- Maryland's lieutenant governor, the state's second-highest elected official from 2002-06 -- is quite often mentioned on lists of potential running mates for John McCain. And to those who point to Steele's 55%-to-45% loss to Democrat Ben Cardin in Maryland's nationally watched Senate race in '06 as a bar to his being on a national ticket, Steele enthusiasts counter that, among others, Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon lost races for statewide office before winning the Republican nomination for President.

At 52, Steele remains one of the most prominent African-American Republican spokesmen. This is significant, since the GOP has no blacks in either the House or Senate and only one member of the Republican National Committee is African-American. An attorney and businessman who once studied for the priesthood, Steele was GOP chairman of Maryland's Prince George's County, and then went on to serve as state party chairman before becoming the Free State's first Republican lieutenant governor since the office was created. Read article.

Bill Clinton funds at issue - Ex-President Clinton's loans to his wife's presidential campaign have raised questions about the sources and use of his income.

Greg Gordon, Miami Herald.com

Hillary Clinton's decision to lend her presidential campaign $6.4 million from assets she holds jointly with her husband is rekindling questions about millions of dollars that Bill Clinton has been paid for speeches and other work since he left the White House.

In tapping some of that cash, ''the Clintons have effectively bypassed campaign finance reform in a manner that's ingenious -- using Bill Clinton effectively as a front for the fundraising,'' said Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political science professor.

Beginning days after he left the White House in 2001, the ex-president has been crisscrossing the globe, speaking about 250 times on tours that brought him more than $40 million in six years.

The sponsors have included investment banks that later suffered billions of dollars in losses in the subprime mortgage debacle and now have a big stake in any regulatory changes; an insurance group with an interest in any overhaul of the nation's healthcare system; a group that favors the reunification of Taiwan with mainland China; a Colombian business development group that backs a free-trade agreement; and more than two dozen Jewish groups, synagogues and museums.

Clinton campaign spokesman Jay Carson dismissed such concerns, saying: ``There are no conflicts of interest, and every dollar either of them [the Clintons] have made is all publicly available.''

However, said Jacobs, the director of the university's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance: ``There appear to be a number of prominent, wealthy corporations in the financial services sector, the healthcare sector and others that stand to gain considerably from the election of Hillary Clinton as president. If all of these groups were giving to her directly, there would be all sorts of questions raised.'' Read article.

Obama Really Is (Ted) Kennedyesque

James Pethokoukis, US News.com

"It turns out Obama really is the black Kennedy-but he's not Jack, he's Teddy," is how one economic conservative, in a chat with me, riffed on the common description of Barack Obama as the "black JFK."

What did he mean by that crack?

For a while there, people were touting Obama as the "Democratic Reagan," a liberal candidate who could fundamentally change the direction of the country while also bringing in voters who might disagree with him on policy but liked his optimism and "American-do" attitude.

Indeed, many Republican activists I talked to worried greatly a few months back that Obama could win a huge victory next fall if he captured the nomination this spring. Those folks still think John McCain has an uphill battle in the general, but fears of an Obama deluge have greatly dissipated. Read article.