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June 10, 2008

Exclusive: Tuesday, June 10

Presidential Watch

See interesting video comparing Dem '04 candidate with Dem '08 - CLICK HERE.

Note informative website on Barack Obama - CLICK HERE.

How we haven't seen the back of the Clintons yet

Christopher Hitchens, Mirror.co.uk

I have detested the Clintons ever since I covered the New Hampshire primary in 1992. The man I saw was not the silver-tongued charmer who seems to have bewitched so many people.

Up close, he seemed like a red-cheeked, piggy-eyed bully with a mean streak a mile wide.

And when he lied - which he more or less did for a living - he had a hard-faced little spouse to step into the TV studios to cover up for him.

This woman put up with A LOT from Bill over the years but could always tell herself it was worth it because in the long run the experience would give her the presidency she so obviously deserved.

Over the years I watched this gruesome drama - the Clintons using and abusing the democratic process as marital therapy - until, the morning after this year's Iowa caucuses, it finally seemed to be over.

A good friend of mine wrote an exultant article saying Barack Obama had done us the huge favor of moving America into a "post-Clinton" era.

No more would the happy couple be able to inflict themselves on us. We were free from Lanny Davis and Harold Ickes and Howard Wolfson and Hillary's ghastly brothers and all the easy money riff-raff who had benefited from Clinton's last minute pardons.

As I read it I was hit with the queasy realisation I didn't believe a word of it. Read article.

Hillary, they just don't like you

Times Online.com

It's not race or age or gender. It's simply that American voters have turned from the Clinton past to new hope in Obama.

I'm not sure how I'd feel if I were a black man watching Barack Obama win the Democratic presidential nomination and reading the eulogies pouring in from whitey. I have the suspicion that I would take myself off to the bathroom sharpish. Obama's victory has been cheered much as one might cheer a labrador that can balance rich tea biscuits on its nose - and with that slightly sickly tone you get from news reports of the Paralympic Games. Oh, didn't he do well! And he's, you know, black! Bless him!

Obama's blackness is the least remarkable thing about him. Indeed he spent much of the campaign insisting that race was a non-issue, of no consequence, and being hawkish on immigration. Unlike his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, who at certain opportune moments during the campaign blacked up as if she were about to break into a rendition of My Mammy.

Such is politics, I suppose. Obama ran a good campaign but he was helped by the fact that he was pitched against an opponent who had nothing whatsoever to commend her except for her gender. None of Bill's magic washed off on her; she appeared shrill, stiff, disingenuous and even vicious. Read article.

Women's Group to Claire McCaskill - Save Your Breath

River Daughter.Wordpress.com

Jeez, Claire, where were you before now? I guess it was Ok to let all of the intimidation and caucus manipulation and voter suppression and misogyny go on while your guy was winning. You have allied yourself with a man whose enablers sat on Hillary Clinton's delegates in Florida and Michigan. You are with the man who cut the voters' voices in half in those two states and stole four of her delegates. The RBC gave him HER delegates using the most ridiculous rationale imaginable. We saw it. The whole country was watching this travesty that was played out like the antics of a high school student council handing the election over to the popular BMOC.

This isn't high school, Claire. This is the most powerful nation in the world. The time to speak out, to get your forces under control, to listen to us was before it all went down. That was when it was important to behave responsibly, to act ethically with all voters in mind, to not piss off your biggest voting bloc.

You and the other Obama superdelegates have zero credibility with us. ZERO. We won't listen to you. We can't be "reasoned" with. We aren't stupid people who need to now be soothed. We're adults. You had your chance to make your case to us and you blew it. You and your media can have a summer long lovefest for all I care. I'm not listening to you. I have more important things to do that make sure your hollow prop of a candidate gets enough votes to push him over the finish line in November. Read article.

Hillary, Albatross

George F. Will, NY Post.com

An axiom: When voters watch a presumptive presidential nominee considering this or that running mate, they think: What if the president dies? When the presumptive nominee considers this or that running mate, he thinks: What if I live?

Which brings us to the dotty idea that Barack Obama should choose to have Hillary Clinton down the hall in the West Wing, nursing her disappointments, her grievances and her future presidential ambitions while her excitable husband wanders in the wings of America's political theater with his increasingly Vesuvian temper, his proclivity for verbal fender benders and his interesting business associates.

Behind the idea that Obama should run in harness with Clinton is this wobbly theory: Because the Republican Party is in such bad odor, if you unify the Democratic Party, that will suffice to win the election, and she is a necessary and sufficient catalyst of unity.

But she is neither. She'd be a potent unifier of John McCain's party, thereby setting the stage for exactly what the nation does not need, another angry campaign of mere mobilization rather than persuasion. Read article.

Over the Hill With Bill

Kathleen Parker, Townhall.com

Hope. Change. Hope and change. Hope 'n' change. Say the words often enough and they begin to take hold, attaching themselves lichen-like to the psyche.

Soon they take on a life of their own and assume human form. He is the one Democrats have been waiting for -- the agent, the beacon, the Everyman who can change the culture of Washington and restore hope to the disenfranchised.

He even comes from Hope. Arkansas, that is.

Or was.

How quickly time passes, how urgently things stay the same.

Not so long ago, Bill Clinton was the man of the moment, the one who was going to put Democrats back in power and baby boomers in charge. His defeat of George H.W. Bush

with 43 percent of the vote wasn't just a changing of the guard. It was a baton passing from one generation to the next.

The rest you know: the triangulating, the interning, the squandering. Then came Hillary's turn. And then, apparently, it went.

The primaries finally are over, and Hillary Clinton seems to have missed her date with destiny.

And she missed it in no small part because of that man from Hope. Contrary to the braying of the wounded sisterhood, Clinton's defeat hasn't been the result of misogyny.

She was defeated by her husband, by her own party and, definitively last weekend, by the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee.

Because she's a woman? No, because she's a Clinton. Read article.

The unraveling of Hillary Clinton

Ramesh Thakur, The Daily Yomiuri.com

When the U.S. primary campaign began, there was great excitement among Americans and foreigners about the history-making potential of the first viable black or woman presidential candidate for the Democratic Party. The primary contest is effectively over.

Clinton began with the biggest brand name in Democratic politics, household name recognition, a party machine and electoral organization in thrall to the Clintons, a 100 million dollars war chest, a network of operatives and loyalists across the country, and the priceless asset of a spouse who was hero-worshipped by the party's base. None of this was proof against the lethal mix of hubris, arrogance, incompetence and misjudgments.

As the preordained nominee, Clinton was anticipating a coronation, not a contest with a junior, younger, African-American upstart who bested her in organization, mobilization and fund-raising. Her campaign morphed from enthusiasm to bitterness, pettiness, pandering, and race-baiting that has generated Clinton fatigue. When her team conducts a group postmortem, they should ask: If Obama is so deeply flawed and weak, how come we lost? Read article.

What does Obama's victory mean?

Larry Elder, JWR.com

"I intend to proudly vote for Obama," said a caller to a National Public Radio show, "because I want to show the world what America is all about - that a person of color can become president of the United States."

Let's put aside whether the caller would express the same enthusiasm were Obama a tax-cutting, Iraq-war-supporting Republican. And let's put aside what, if anything, America needs to "prove" to the rest of the world.

Obama - bright, sharp, a solid speaker - ran an incredible, come-from-nowhere campaign to topple a front-runner who, at one time, led by some 30 points. But as Obama once said in criticizing his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the caller acts as if America, as regards race, were "static."

What of the last 40 or so years?

Today, if black Americans' gross domestic product were measured separately, it would be the 16th-richest country in the world.

A black man served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Two blacks have served as members of the United States Supreme Court.

The largest association of doctors - the predominately white American Medical Association - elected a black physician as leader.

The largest association of lawyers, the American Bar Association, elected a black president.

So, what does Obama's candidacy mean? Read article.

A large crowd under the bus

Wesley Pruden, JWR.com

Barack Obama learns a lot of things from the newspapers. He only learned yesterday that Hillary plans to concede tomorrow by reading about it in the papers.

He famously learned that his pastor - the man who he says led him to the Lord, presided at his wedding and baptized his two daughters - was a hateful old bigot who had been preaching racist nonsense only when he read about it in the newspapers. (He dozed through all 20 years of the preacher's sermons at Trinity United Church of Christ.)

If it hadn't been for the newspapers, the senator might never have known that Bill Ayers, in on the organization of his first political campaign and with whom he sat on the board of a charity dispensing money and favors to left-wing troublemakers, was an unreformed member of a cop-killing cell of 60s radicals.

He learned that Tony Rezko, his one-time fundraiser and accommodating pal who was convicted by a Chicago jury this week of 16 counts of fraud and money laundering, was a crook and a slumlord only by reading about it in the newspapers.

Mr. Obama, truly a pigeon among the cats, is a man badly served by his friends. They don't tell him about the bad stuff they're up to. He's the last man on the South Side of Chicago who still doesn't know where babies come from, or how they get here.

His Rezko connection may turn out to be the most interesting connection of all. Read article.

Obama in Plain View

The Editors, NRO.com

The Democrats have gone all the way. They have nominated arguably the most left-wing major party presidential nominee ever, certainly the most left-wing since George McGovern.

Obama's victory is a repudiation not just of the Clintons personally, but of Clintonism. Bill Clinton won the presidency based on the Democratic Leadership Council model of a new kind of Democratic politics that pivoted toward the center.

Obama not only has had no Sister Souljah moment, he initially embraced his Sister Souljah (in the form of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, introduced to the American public in videotaped rants). He has made no creative policy departure on par with Bill Clinton's advocacy of welfare reform in 1992 - in fact, has made no creative policy departure at all. He is the old wine of McGovernite liberalism poured into the alluring wineskin of "hope" and "unity."

Democrats have done Republicans the favor of nominating one of the few Democrats this side of Dennis Kucinich who could lose this year. But he still has to be slightly favored over John McCain. Political conditions are grim for Republicans. Their two-term incumbent president is scorned, many of their policies are unpopular, and people have been departing their party in droves, if polling of party ID is to be believed. On top of this, there are Obama's formidable personal talents. Not just an inspirational speaker, he ran a campaign in the primaries that was well-organized and strategically deft. He is not to be underestimated.

If he wins with the kind of larger Democratic majorities he is likely to see in the House and Senate, he will be in the strongest position of any Democratic president since LBJ in 1964. It will not be a replay of the Clinton presidency. Read article.

Obama saving the world, with humility

Mark Steyn, OC Register.com

The short version of the Democratic Party primary campaign is that the media fell in love with Barack Obama but the Democratic electorate declined to.

"I felt this thrill going up my leg," said MSNBC's Chris Matthews after one of the senator's speeches. "I mean, I don't have that too often." Au contraire, Chris and the rest of the gang seem to be getting the old tingle up the thigh hairs on a nightly basis. If Obama is political Viagra, the media are at that stage in the ad where the announcer warns that, if leg tingles persist for more than six months, see your doctor.

Out there in the voting booths, however, Democrat legs stayed admirably unthrilled. The more the media told Hillary she was toast, and she should get the hell out of it and let Obama romp to victory, the more Democrats insisted on voting for her. The more the media insisted Barack was inevitable, the less inclined the voters were to get with the program. On the strength of Chris Matthews' vibrating calves, Sen. Obama raised a ton of money - over $300 million - and massively outspent Sen. Clinton, but he didn't really get any bang for his buck. In the end, he crawled over the finish line. The Obama Express came a-hurtlin' down the track at 2 miles an hour.

But what does he care? Sen. Obama has learned an old trick of Bill Clinton's: If you behave like a star, you'll get treated as one. So, even as his numbers weakened, his rhetoric soared. By the time he wrapped up his "victory" speech last week, the great gaseous uplift had his final paragraphs floating in delirious hallucination along the Milky Way. Read article.

McCain Poised for Obama Take Down

Bill O'Reilly

Cutting through all the fog, there are two primary reasons behind Barack Obama's stunning victory over the Clinton machine: authenticity and the war in Iraq.

As amply demonstrated, there is simply no comparison between Obama and Hillary Clinton as far as public speaking is concerned. He is eloquent and natural, talking directly to the folks. She is more stilted and rehearsed, talking at the listener. Sen. Clinton comes across as the typical politician, while Sen. Obama seems like a genuine human being.

He also outflanked her on the Iraq war. In the beginning of the campaign, Obama bolted from the starting gate flashing his anti-war cred. From the jump, he had been against the action. And now he was the guy who would pull the United States out of the Iraq swamp.

Clinton was immediately put on the defensive, as she initially supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein. Also, her entire outlook on confronting Islamic fascism was far too bullish for far-left America. So the Net roots, as they call themselves, flocked to Obama and provided him with vast amounts of money via the Internet.

By the time Hillary rallied Democratic moderates, it was too late.

Now Obama has achieved the nomination, but his winning primary strategy on Iraq could come back to haunt him in the general election, when the far left becomes rather insignificant. Already John McCain is painting Obama as a terror appeaser who would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq.

And McCain has some heavy ammunition to back up his attack. Read article.

Party of Defeat

David Horowitz, FrontPageMagazine.com

Most conversations about the coming elections focus on the question of which candidate is most suited to lead the nation as it confronts the challenges and threats ahead. A better question would be to ask whether there is one party- the Democratic Party -- which has demonstrated in word and deed that it is unfit to lead the nation in war at all. Criticism of government policy is essential to a democracy. But in the last five years the Democratic Party has crossed the line from criticism of war policy to fundamental sabotage of the war itself, a position no American party has taken until now.

Starting in July 2003, just three months into the war in Iraq, the Democratic National Committee ran a national TV ad whose message was: "Read his lips: President Bush Deceives the American People. This was the beginning of a five-year, unrelenting campaign to persuade Americans and their allies that "Bush lied, people died," that the war was "unnecessary" and "Iraq was no threat." In other words, for five years, the leaders of the Democratic Party have been telling Americans, America's allies and America's enemies that their country was an aggressor nation, which had violated international law, and was in effect the "bad guy" in the war with the Saddam Hussein regime.

The first principle of psychological warfare campaigns is to destroy the moral character of the opposing commander-in-chief and discredit his nation's cause. Yet this is a perfect summary of the campaign that has been waged for the length of this war by the entire Democratic Party leadership, Joe Lieberman being an honorable exception who was driven out of his party as a result. Read article.

The Obama We Don't Know

Review & Outlook, WSJ.com

With Barack Obama clinching the Democratic Party nomination, it is worth noting what an extraordinary moment this is. Democrats are nominating a freshman Senator barely three years out of the Illinois legislature whom most of America still hardly knows. The polls say he is the odds-on favorite to become our next President.

Think about this in historical context. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were relatively unknown, but both had at least been prominent Governors. John Kerry, Walter Mondale, Al Gore and even George McGovern were all long-time Washington figures. Republican nominees tend to be even more familiar, for better or worse. In Mr. Obama, Democrats are taking a leap of faith that is daring even by their risky standards.

No doubt this is part of his enormous appeal. Amid public anger over politics as usual, the Illinois Senator is unhaunted by Beltway experience. His personal story - of mixed race, and up from nowhere through Harvard - resonates in an America where the two most popular cultural icons are Tiger Woods and Oprah. His political gifts are formidable, especially his ability to connect with audiences from the platform.

Above all, Mr. Obama has fashioned a message that fits the political moment and the public's desire for "change." At his best, he offers Americans tired of war and political rancor the promise of fresh national unity and purpose. Young people in particular are taken by it. But more than a few Republicans are also drawn to this "postpartisan" vision. Read article.

Messiah In Our Midst - The One, the Anointed.

Jonah Goldberg, NRO.com

Is Barack Obama the Messiah?

Before we answer that question, let me vent for a moment. In 2000 I was cruelly denied the Pulitzer despite being the only columnist in America to ask the pressing question: Is Al Gore an alien? The evidence was there for all to see. He was born nine months after the mysterious alien sighting at Roswell, N.M. His weird syntax and verbal rhythms are otherworldly. He often refers to "earth" or "this planet" as if he's just passing through, and he once angrily complained to the Washington Post that it had printed a picture of the earth from outer space "upside down."

There is no "upside down" in space - unless Gore had his childhood view in mind.

At least I'm not in the wilderness this time. Lots of people have pondered the possibility that Barack is our Divine Redeemer. There are websites dedicated to the question "Is Barack Obama the Messiah?" Google that question and you'll get more than 35,000 hits. (Enter just the words "Messiah" and "Obama" and you'll get nearly 10 times that.)

But there's more concrete evidence. Since Obama declared his candidacy, there have been remarkably few biblical plagues. And lions and lambs seem open to bilateral negotiations.

Obama's apostles are hard to dismiss. Oprah simply calls him "The One," because "we need politicians who know how to be the truth." (Jesus says in John 14:6 "I am the way, the truth ...") Oprah goes on to say Obama will help us "evolve to a higher plane," which would put Obama in the role of our Intelligent Designer. Read article.

Obama The Savior?

Don Irvine, AIM.org

ABC News' Jake Tapper has noticed an alarming trend by the media to make Barack Obama out to be some kind of Savior.

General election project for Political Punch readers: Let's keep track of how many Holy images of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, make their way into print.

(And bad ones, if any. And of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., let's keep track as well -- photos of him looking heavenly or, conversely, old and feeble.)

To anyone who thinks I am mocking God or religion with this post. I am not. I am mocking the images some in the media are using to portray Sen. Obama. Such as the Reuters photo above. Or this DaVincian New York Magazine image. Or this cover of Rolling Stone. No disrespect towards God or persons of faith intended at all. The jesting is not aimed at religion, God, or Sen. Obama -- but rather those pushing these Holy Images of the Illinois senator who is, after all, but a man.

If he is a Savior what does that make Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Father Pfleger? Apostles? Read article.