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May 19, 2008

Exclusive: Monday, May 19

Presidential Watch

Is Obama planning to diasarm America? CLICK HERE.

Ninny Pity Party: That Democratic twitch.

Mark Steyn, NRO.com

‘That's enough. That - that's a show of disrespect to me."

That was Barack Obama, a couple of weeks back, explaining why he was casting the Reverend Jeremiah Wright into outer darkness. It's one thing to wallow in "adolescent grandiosity" (as Scott Johnson of "Powerline" called it) when it's a family dispute between you and your pastor of 20 years. It's quite another to do so when it's the 60th-anniversary celebrations of one of America's closest allies.

Last week, President Bush was in Israel and gave a speech to the Knesset. Its perspective was summed up by his closing anecdote - a departing British officer in May 1948 handing the iron bar to the Zion Gate to a trembling rabbi and telling him it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to one of the gates to the Old City of Jerusalem was in the hands of a Jew.

In other words, it was a big-picture speech, referencing the Holocaust, the pogroms, Masada - and the challenges that lie ahead. Senator Obama was not mentioned in the text. No Democrat was mentioned, save for President Truman, in the context of his recognition of the new State of Israel when it was a mere 11 minutes old.

Nonetheless, Barack Obama decided that the president's speech was really about him, and he didn't care for it. And, taking their cue from the soon-to-be nominee's weirdly petty narcissism, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden, and co. piled on to deplore Bush's outrageous, unacceptable, unpresidential, outrageously unacceptable, and unacceptably unpresidential behavior.

Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies. Read article.

Obama & Israel: Why So Defensive?

Republican Jewish Coalition.org

Responding to Sen. Barack Obama's comments today about President Bush's speech in Jerusalem, the Republican Jewish Coalition released the following statement:

"Why when Barack Obama hears the word 'appeasement' does he think it applies to him? Why when it comes to standing with Israel is Barack Obama so defensive? It is Barack Obama's promise to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that causes great nervousness in the Jewish community. Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush agree -- Barack Obama's policies of direct presidential negotiations with hostile regimes, without precondition, is naïve and irresponsible.

Barack Obama's shaky grasp of Middle East policy and repeated vows to meet with state sponsors of terrorism are alarming. Read article.

None Dare Call It 'Appeasement'

David Limbaugh, David Limbaugh.com

Let me get this straight. It's perfectly fair for Barack Obama and his cohorts to repeatedly disparage President Bush's foreign policy as "cowboy diplomacy" but unspeakably horrific for Bush to analogize the Democrats' approach to foreign policy to appeasing Hitler?

When Obama compared Hillary Clinton's threats against Iran to President Bush's threatening "bluster" and "cowboy diplomacy," no one batted an eye.

But when Mr. Bush, in addressing Israel's Knesset, compared those who want to negotiate with today's terrorists and tyrants to an American senator in 1939 who lamented that Hitler's march into Poland might have been avoided "if only I could have talked to Hitler," Obama, other Democrats and the mainstream media went ballistic.

What's wrong with the president assuring our major Middle East ally that, under his watch at least, America will stand by it against our common enemies, such as the Holocaust-denying Iranian regime?

Well, plenty, if you listen to Democrats and the MSM. Read article.

Barack Obama's America: Fast forward to 2012.

Michael Novak, NRO.com

One of the wisest American former officials I know asked me a few nights ago: "Michael, put on your thinking cap, and tell me where the United States will be four years from now, if Barack Obama is president."

I had been trying to avoid that question in my own mind. I have tried to tell myself the old proverb (told me by my father), "God takes care of children, drunks, and the United States of America." I have tried to imagine that Obama will not be president.

But I should try to do the responsible thing: follow the trail from Obama's announced principles and policies to their probable effects, based on how we have learned that the world actually works.

The number one issue, orders of magnitude greater than others, is what will happen in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other sources of worldwide terrorism - suicide bombers, haters of Israel, and would-be destroyers of the United States and her allies. What will happen in Iraq? What will happen in Iran? What will happen in Pakistan?

Our Democratic party ever since George McGovern's candidacy in 1972 has wished and wished, like an undisciplined child, for a benevolent world of peace, in which we could "talk to" and "reason with" those leaders whom earlier administrations had learned they could neither trust nor deal with as rational, benevolent partners.

On the domestic front, neither Obama nor his party seems to understand how incentives motivate human behavior - not force, not coercion, not mockery, not nursery-school regulation, but real possibilities of good fruits up ahead for free and responsible actions. They do not understand the wellsprings of a virtuous, free, and prosperous society. They are still entangled in the fantasies of the European Left of 150 years ago.

Thus, Obama is now the creature and the prisoner of the American far Left, which has learned nothing from the failures of socialist and statist and anti-capitalist ideas during the past hundred years. Many leftists learn nothing, know nothing, and propel themselves not with practical wisdom, but with outrage and contempt and a desire to punish those who do not agree with them. Read article.

For pro-Israel voters, Obama's middle name should be the least of their concerns

Jonathan Mark, JWR.com

Pro-Hamas advisor may be gone, but senator has more radical backers press is ignoring.

Recent weeks have seen a considerable amount of coverage focusing on whether Sen. Barack Obama has too many friends with an anti-American bias, notably his longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright, whom Obama has finally renounced, and William Ayers, a Chicago professor who was a 1960s radical with the Weathermen terrorist group, a friendship Obama dismissed as casual.

But if Wright and Ayers have been thoroughly explored in primary debates and interviews, Obama's other relationships with radicals have been relatively unexplored. For example, the Los Angeles Times devoted a lengthy front-page story (April 10) by Peter Wallsten headlined, "Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama."

Wallsten writes, the Obama-Khalidi relationship "have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say."

They base that belief on his presence at "events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed," not unlike those who wonder about Obama's truest self after his relationship with Wright and his anger. Read article.

What's Eating Jeremiah Wright?

Julia Gorin, Political Mavens.com

Could Wright be too white?

I think I figured out Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I think he may be a case study of the phenomenon I recently wrote about regarding light-skinned blacks over-identifying with their blackness. Just look at him. He's lighter than Obama, and Obama is half white.

So here's what likely happened:

Poor Jeremiah didn't fit in with the brothers, or with Whitey. So what could he do? Light bulb: out-black and out-anti-white EVERYONE by peddling the darkest kind of dark and becoming the uber-black leader of the blacker blacks. I would bet money that this is what formed the "reverend" Jeremiah Wright.

Jeremiah Wright, sufferer of the Barely Black syndrome. Read article.

Boredom with balloons, or: The campaign that won't end

Paul Greenberg, JWR.com

You can feel the tedium by now. It hangs over the country like a wool blanket in August. Even if it's masked by the kind of pointless commotion signifying nothing that only a hopeless political buff would stay interested in. Normal people tuned out long ago in search of something, anything, more intellectually challenging. Like gin rummy.

But this campaign just won't quit. It just goes on and on, like the drone of Fox and CNN. The endless speeches and speculation bring to mind HEAD-ON, the headache remedy whose pounding commercials are sure to give you what they claim to cure.

The oh-so-dramatic coverage on television has much the same effect when applied directly to the forehead. Boring but excruciating. All the more so when dressed up with fancy electoral maps and basso profundo, capital-A Analysis. Anything to fill up all that dead air.

As one primary comes after another, election nights begin to sound like replays. The pundits have given the nomination to Barack Obama, but Hillary Clinton insists on waiting for the delegates to decide. How technical. At last report, the two Great Thinkers in the Democratic race have been reduced to debating whether the federal gasoline tax should be lifted for the summer. That's the Big Issue between them now. This is what the republic of Jefferson and Adams, Washington and Hamilton, has come to. Read article.

Government stifles the wisdom of crowds

John Stossel, JWR.com

Who will be our next president? If you want an accurate guess, don't ask the pundits. Go where people put their money where their mouths are.

Intrade.com, for example.

It's a prediction market, basically a futures market like those where people bet on the future price of oil, gold and pork bellies. But at Intrade, people bet mostly on politics.

The prices on Intrade have been highly accurate predictors of the future. On TV, political "experts" make pronouncements on what they think will happen, but crowds of bettors on sites like Intrade are right more often.

In 2004, TV experts like James Carville said John Kerry would win the presidency. In 2006, they said the Republicans would keep control of Congress. But the crowds on Intrade bet against Kerry, and in 2006, "the bettors at Intrade collectively called every single race in the Senate right," James Surowiecki, author of "The Wisdom of Crowds", told me for last week's "20/20." Read article.

The Big, Bad, Right-Wing Wolf

Brent Bozell III

In the last presidential election, leftist special interest groups and socialist billionaires like George Soros waged war with an unprecedented tsunami of negative TV attacks on the Republican incumbent, suggesting he was a draft dodger that knowingly lied us into war. Adding fuel to the fire, Hollywood uncorked nasty -- and equally distorted -- documentaries like "Fahrenheit 911." The Bush-bashing wave was so big Byron York wrote a whole book about it called "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy." This year, our "objective" media turned their eyes on the November race, but they're seeing only one negative side of the street -- a right-wing conspiracy to lie, cheat, and smear their beloved Barack Obama.

A truly fair and balanced media might foresee a really tough election contest -- on both sides. But instead, we have a partisan chorus, whining in four-part harmony. They're not waiting for Hillary Clinton to discover her Titanic has sunk. They are getting their general-election assault on the "Republican attack machine" under way. Read article.

"Operation Chaos" Fueled by Realities of Liberalism

Christopher G. Adamo, MichNews.com

Chris Matthews, host of the MSNBC program "Hardball," (a venue which rivals "Air America in popularity) was on his high horse last week castigating conservatives who followed Rush Limbaugh's directive to cross party lines and vote for Hillary Clinton in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. According to Matthews, they should be "ashamed of themselves" for ostensibly sullying the alabaster institution of American democracy which, he reminded us, was bought by "the Founding Fathers and all of the soldiers who fought for this country's freedom" etc. and should not be thus trivialized.

In truth, it is Matthews and his kind who ought to be ashamed, first for his sanctimony, but even more so for his hypocrisy. Matthews is able to conduct his program as he does because those same "Founding Fathers and soldiers" secured for the citizens of this Republic the rights of a free press. The Founders well understood the critical importance of information in the hands of the public as the ultimate check on government action.

Yet Matthews, perhaps more than any other modern pundit, thoroughly trivializes this great institution by supplanting any serious consideration and discussion of the current issues with his rapid-fire rudeness.

It is a crying shame that, in the face of what should be such a momentous opportunity for the GOP, John McCain is squandering it by conducting his own "Operation Chaos" within the Republican Party. Read article.

Getting Bubba

Kathleen Parker, Townhall.com

"A full-blooded American."

That's how 24-year-old Josh Fry of West Virginia described his preference for John McCain over Barack Obama. His feelings aren't racist, he explained. He would just be more comfortable with "someone who is a full-blooded American as president."

Whether Fry was referring to McCain's military service or Obama's Kenyan father isn't clear, but he may have hit upon something essential in this presidential race.

Full-bloodedness is an old coin that's gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.

Who "gets" America? And who doesn't?

The answer has nothing to do with a flag lapel pin, which Obama donned for a campaign swing through West Virginia, or even military service, though that helps. It's also not about flagpoles in front yards or magnetic ribbons stuck on tailgates.

It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Josh Fry's political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically -- and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century -- there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity. Read article.

The End of Jewish Support for the Democratic Party

Jewish Democratic Support Blogspot.com

Senator Barack Obama's credibility gap resulting from his policies and disturbing pattern of association with anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American friends and advisers is raising alarm throughout the Jewish community. The Democratic Party risks losing electoral and financial support from the Jewish community should Senator Barack Obama be the Party's presidential nominee.

Rank and file Democrats are telling pollsters that they will vote for Senator John McCain if Barack Obama is the Democrat's choice, and major Jewish donors have already withheld support to the Democratic National Committee and other party efforts.

While record sums are being given to candidates themselves, donors are reluctant to give to efforts working against the Republicans, because these same donors may end up endorsing John McCain over the Democratic nominee. One effort designed specifically to define and attack John McCain has failed to meet its fundraising goals and is relying on George Soros - an avid Obama supporter - as its principle backer.

Given the geographic concentration of Jewish communities in large and critical swing states, and their tendency to get out the vote in large blocks, the Jewish community stands to make a substantial impact on this year's election. Should the Democratic Party nominate Barack Obama, the Party can end up with significant losses instead of large gains. Read article.

Pity Party - The Big Picture

Peggy Noonan, Online WSJ.com

The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

The headline Wednesday on Drudge, from Politico, said, "Republicans Stunned by Loss in Mississippi." It was about the eight-point drubbing the Democrat gave the Republican in the special House election. My first thought was: You have to be stupid to be stunned by that. Second thought: Most party leaders in Washington are stupid - detached, played out, stuck in the wisdom they learned when they were coming up, in '78 or '82 or '94. Read article.

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