May 15, 2008

Exclusive: Thursday, May 15

Presidential Watch

See an explosive new video on the Clinton "legacy." CLICK HERE.

Check analysis of whether Hillary should stay.....or get out. GO HERE.

Obama magically unstained by grime of Chicago Way

John Kass, Chicago Trib.com

Will Barack Obama's presidential candidacy serve his state and city by finally drawing national attention to the sleazy and corrupt politics of Illinois and Chicago?

It is all about context. The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate's politics were born in Chicago. Yet he is presented to the nation as not truly being of this place, as if he floats just above the political corruption here, uninfected, untouched by the stain of it or by any sin of commission or omission. It is all so very mystical.

Perhaps viewing Obama as a Chicago political creature would conflict with the established national media narrative of Obama as a reformer. Actually, there's no "perhaps" about it.

"I think I have done a good job in rising politically in this environment without being entangled in some of the traditional problems of Chicago politics," Obama told reporters and editors at a Tribune editorial board meeting several weeks ago.

Yes, an excellent job. Except for his dalliance with his indicted real estate fairy, Tony Rezko, a relationship Obama considers a mistake, the senator has not played the fly to Mayor Richard Daley's spider. Almost, but not quite. Read article.

Is Obama Smarter Than A 5th Grade Jaywalker?

Doug Patto, GOP USA.com

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has an indicted, Syrian-born Chicago shyster named Tony Rezko for a financial mentor. He has a screwball, race-baiting, America-hating pastor named Jeremiah Wright for a spiritual mentor. He has an unrepentant domestic terrorist named William Ayers for a political mentor. And he has one of the angriest wives ever to aspire to the position of First Lady.

Obama refuses to wear a flag lapel pin because he thinks it is more patriotic to criticize his country than to support it, or even to wear a symbol of its support.

Obama thinks those of us out here in flyover country are all a bunch of bitter, gun-toting, Bible-thumping bigots furious at "those who don't look like us."

That really should be enough to sink this lightweight candidacy filled with vague language about "hope" and "change" -- what George Will has called "rhetorical cotton candy."

But wait. There's more. Just when we thought Obama had shot himself in the last foot he had available, he presents us with another gift. Read article.

Obama to Campaign in 57 Islamic States

Rush Limbaugh, Rush Limbaugh.com

RUSH: Hey, folks, you want to tweak the Drive-By Media with me right now? Want to participate in tweaking the Drive-By Media? You are aware, probably, that Barack Obama lost his bearings recently and said that he was going to campaign in all 57 states. You heard this? And everybody chalked it up to, "Well, he's tired." You know, this is a Dan Quayle moment. I mean, Dan Quayle goes out there and misspells potato, and we still get jokes about it. Barack Obama says he's gonna go out and campaign in 57 states, he was just tired, you know, it's been such a long campaign, he's been so many places, he probably thinks there are 57 states.

We're participating here in a tweak of the media. Obama said he's going to campaign in 57 states, and it turns out that there are 57 Islamic states. There are 57 Islamic states. "Every year from 1999 to 2005, the organization of the Islamic conference representing the 57 Islamic states," this is from the International Humanist and Ethical Union. And the title of the piece here is, "How the Islamic states dominate the UN human rights council," and there are 57 of them. So did Obama just lose his bearings, or was this a more telling slip, ladies and gentlemen? Obama's 57 states, not just a simple gaffe. He might have been thinking of the 57 Islamic states when he said he was going to campaign in all 57 states. Read article.

The change we can believe in?

Joan Vennochi, Boston.com

The presidential candidate who promises to change Washington raced into Washington's arms right after the media crowned him as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

During a Thursday visit to the nation's Capitol, Barack Obama was fawned over by those he critiqued two days earlier: "Washington didn't give us much of a chance," he said during his North Carolina victory speech.

Clearly, that's no longer the case.

But, being hailed as a winner is different from being hailed as the change agent Obama pledges to become.

Obama changed the rhetoric and style of the 2008 contest and would make history if he becomes the first African-American president. A Democrat in the White House would change the dogma. But what else, besides the face of Washington, will he change?

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright called him out as a politician, a description that angered Obama as much as any other declaration by his former pastor because it exposed an unflattering truth. Obama held Wright close when it was politically advantageous and cut the controversial minister loose when it was politically advantageous.

The senator from Illinois walks a delicate line. He's the newcomer who crashed the 2008 campaign and changed the script from Clinton's inevitability to his own. He argues that he's best suited to challenge Washington's political culture because he isn't steeped in it. Today, Clinton is scorned by Democratic insiders and McCain is more maverick than darling of the GOP. Read article.

Obama Can't Win in November

Bob Lonsberry, Lonsberry.com

Obama can't win.

It's not that complex, really. He just can't win.

A candidate who can't win over his own party certainly can't win over the country.

The traits and flaws which make him an unacceptable candidate to roughly a third of Democrats will make him an unacceptable candidate to a majority of Americans.

And that's how you lose elections.

This isn't meant to bash him, it's just meant to be honest and lay the cards on the table. The nagging question from the Clinton camp -- Why can't he close the deal? -- is legitimate and haunting, and it gets to the point. Barack Obama has fared poorly in big, electorally rich states in his quest for the Democratic nomination. The reasons for that are only going to be exacerbated when he faces independents and Republicans.

And here are those reasons.

Barack Obama is a black nationalist with a condescending attitude toward people who are different from him and, just for good measure, he has the most liberal voting record in the United States Senate. His viewpoints on taxation are confiscatory, his attitudes toward entitlement are socialist, his thoughts on the war are defeatist.

And he doesn't seem to like white people who live in small towns, own guns or go to church.

And those attitudes don't win many friends across the electorate. Read article.

Wright story: What took so long?

Don Campbell, USA.com

The controversial reverend's 20-year relationship with Obama was left to simmer for a year. In our 24/7 media age, how could this have happened?

Barring some really strange math or a lot of second thoughts, the Democrats seem poised to nominate for president a man with the fewest credentials and least familiarity to the American people of anyone in modern history. It's just one more way that Barack Obama is breaking the mold, and barring a major shift, he should give some of the credit to the news media.

Presidential nominees have almost always been people who have run before and lost, or who have served as vice president or who have had years of experience as members of Congress or as prominent governors.

The only one I can remember who came close to Obama in the slim résumé department is Jimmy Carter, and his rise predated YouTube, ideological talk radio, the Internet and millions of bloggers. He also emerged at a time when political journalists still had and acted upon the instincts of a bloodhound.

The vetting of presidential and vice presidential candidates has long been a responsibility that journalists took seriously - but not with Obama. Why? Read article.

Stop Believing Obama

Philip Klein, Spectator.org

Last week, Obama described it as a "smear" that John McCain, in response to a question, correctly noted that a spokesman for the terrorist group publicly expressed support for Obama. But on Friday, McCain was further vindicated when the Times of London reported that Obama adviser Robert Malley had to sever ties with the campaign, because the newspaper was about to report that the prominent critic of Israel had been regularly engaging in talks with Hamas.

The Obama campaign has suggested that Malley's role with the campaign was "informal." But this is the same campaign that tried to downplay Obama's 20-year relationship with Jeremiah Wright (who, among other incendiary remarks, referred to Israel as a "dirty word").

Why was there a need to sever ties if none really existed? And if Obama is so utterly opposed to dealing with Hamas, as he has stated publicly, then why would he have an adviser, even an "informal" one, who was doing just that? Read article.

Keep Obama Safe by Keeping him out of the White House

Julia Gorin, Political Mavens.com

As rapper 50 Cent and others have said, they worry that if a black man becomes president, "he'll probably be killed." Considering that most black victims are targets of black-on-black crime, and considering that Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright is pretty pissed at him right now, I think that between Wright and the first black president Bill Clinton, Obama should know whom to watch out for. In fact, check out Wright's phrasing in the following sentence just last week:

Wright said he's told Obama that if he is elected in November and is inaugurated in January, "I'm coming after you." Read article.

Why Jews Vote the Way They Do

Burt Prelutsky, Townhall.com

If I am asked one question by my readers far more frequently than any other, it's why do so many American Jews insist on aligning themselves with the far left. Believe me, being Jewish myself, it's the question I most frequently ask myself.

It's certainly not because Jews are stupid, evil, unpatriotic or dependent on government handouts for their survival, four reasons that certainly explain why millions of my fellow Americans will eagerly line up to vote for any political crackpot so long as he or she is running as a Democrat.

Having given it a great deal of thought, I believe the explanation is to be found in the way we tend to be raised. It's not so strange if you think about it. After all, most people are Catholics or Protestants, Mormons or Muslims, because that was the religion practiced in their homes. Well, for most Jews, liberal politics played an essential role in their upbringing. It's why a much higher percentage of us vote for Democrats than attend synagogue regularly or keep kosher.

Furthermore, we are raised to think of ourselves as victims or at least potential victims. Read article.

Obama and the Jewish Vote

Richard Baehr, Republican Jewish Coalition.org

The Jewish vote in the coming presidential election is up for grabs to an extent unseen for almost three decades, assuming Barack Obama wins his party's nomination. And that has got Jewish Democrat activists worried.

An email is circulating in the Jewish community in Chicago from a Democratic Party operative, containing an article written last year about why his party is where Jews belong. Some of the arguments that are used make the case are that both parties are good for Israel, so Jews need to look at other things, such as that Democrats "care" more for people in need. Republican Jews, the author claims, are either greedy or scared.

Such rhetoric flies in the face of the alleged unity-inducing quality that is often trumpeted as a key appeal of Obama. By demonizing Jews who support Republicans, Democrat partisans are merely revealing their insecurities about the bona fides of their presumptive presidential candidate.

And crime of crimes, the article asserts that the GOP is the party that brought the Terry Schiavo case to a vote in Congress, thereby mixing church and state. I have my doubts that the Terry Schiavo case is an issue that will resonate at the moment with Jewish voters, given Iran's nuclear program nearing completion. Read article.

Jimmy Carter's Second Term

Jeffrey Lord, Spectator.org

You have to admit it takes guts. Audacity, even.

Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive nominee of the Democrats, has in essence just defeated the heiress of the Clinton era by campaigning as the heir-apparent of the Carter era.

The question for the rest of the year is this: Are there enough voting Americans who survived the disastrous odyssey through the late 1970s that was led by blessedly now ex-president Jimmy Carter? While Ronald Reagan is rated in poll after poll by Americans as a great president, (most recently he rated second only to Lincoln), are there enough people who recall that Reagan's election came about because of Carter's...ahhh..."performance" in the Oval Office? And will they be able to make the Obama-Carter connection for younger voters hearing terms like "windfall profits tax" for the first time? More to the point, can Senator John McCain do this?

The greatest charade of the year thus far is the idea that something "new" is being said in this campaign. By anybody. To be bluntly accurate, the only thing new is that one of the final two candidates is black. It seems to escape some that in a country even as young as America, 55 presidential elections (2008 is the 56th) covers just about all the ground there is to cover in debating any given next four years in the life of the United States. Consider. Read article.

Navy Releases McCain Military Record

NewsMax.com

From his five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp to his tenure as the Navy's liaison to the Senate, John McCain's Navy record boils down to a series of unadorned paragraphs that bestow upon him some of the nation's top military honors.

The Navy recently released McCain's military record _ most of it citations for medals during his Navy career _ after a Freedom of Information Act request by The Associated Press.

McCain was awarded a Silver Star Medal for resisting "extreme mental and physical cruelties" inflicted upon him by his captors from late October to early December 1967, the early months of his captivity, according to the citation. The North Vietnamese, according to the Navy, ignored international agreements and tortured McCain "in an attempt to obtain military information and false confessions for propaganda purposes."

Read article.

Clinton's records vanished after warning of 'very serious' problems

Jerry Seper, Washington Times.com

Hillary Rodham Clinton's Rose Law Firm billing records, found in the White House residence in January 1996 two years after they had been subpoenaed by government regulators, disappeared shortly after the first lady was warned that the firm's billing problems were "very serious" and the then-ongoing Whitewater investigation could result in criminal charges, newly obtained records show.

More than 1,100 pages of grand jury testimony, investigative reports, memos, charging documents, chronologies, narratives and draft indictments, previously undisclosed but now being "processed" at the Library of Congress, say Mrs. Clinton knew considerably more about the firm's billing problems and their potential ramifications than she publicly acknowledged at the time.

While Mrs. Clinton told the public at the time that Mr. Hubbell's March 14, 1994, resignation as associate attorney general involved an "internal billing dispute" with his Rose partners that "likely would be resolved," three months earlier she had been advised by another Rose partner, Allen Bird, that the "billing problems were very serious," according to the newly disclosed records. Read article.

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