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June 12, 2008

Exclusive: Thursday, June 12

Presidential Watch

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Feds: Bomb-maker talked of Obama, Clinton assassination

Jason Cato, Pittsburgh Live.com

A Clearfield County man caught with several homemade bombs told undercover federal agents how he would hope to see Sens. Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama assassinated if either of them reaches the White House, according to an affidavit unsealed today.

Bradley T. Kahle, 60, of Troutville was arrested Sunday by the Pittsburgh Joint Terrorism Task Force on a charge of unlawful import or manufacture of firearms.

Kahle unwittingly discussed his ominous desires with undercover FBI agents in April, according to federal authorities.

"Kahle said words to the effect of, that 'if Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama, get elected, hopefully they will get assassinated, if not they will disarm the country and we will have a civil war,'" FBI Special Agent William B. Weiss wrote in an eight-page affidavit. Read article.

Who is Behind $5 Gas?

John Hindraker, Director Blue.Blogspot.com

For several decades, the Democratic Party has pursued policies designed to drive up the cost of petroleum, and therefore gas at the pump. Remarkably, the Democrats don't seem to have taken much of a political hit from the current spike in gas prices. Probably that's because most people don't realize how different the two parties' energy policies have been. GO HERE.

Crashing Canards

Rich Tucker, Townhall.com

In the last week, story after story informed us that our nation had passed a critical milestone because of the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama. And indeed, Americans have been taking great leaps forward.

But the crashing sound you may have heard wasn't the shattering of a glass ceiling -- it was the sudden collapse of several liberal canards.

The first thing to go is the idea that liberals stand for democracy. Well, no.

Liberals stand for winning (and there's nothing wrong with that in politics) through any means necessary. Back in 2000, when Al Gore needed Florida's electoral votes to become president, the liberal mantra was "count every vote." But Gore supporters were more than happy to toss out absentee ballots from overseas military personnel, since those were, presumably, votes for George W. Bush.

Then-TIME magazine columnist Margaret Carlson sounded the perfect liberal note when she told the Imus in the Morning radio show that it would be a shame if military ballots were a factor, because "Here we will have possibly a bunch of tax dodgers deciding the election."

Tax dodgers, eh? Well, that's one way to describe our men and women serving overseas. Read article.

Obama's Plan To Disarm The U.S.

IBD Editorials.com

In the middle of a war on two fronts, Barack Obama plans to gut the military. He also wants to dismantle our nuclear arsenal. And he wants to keep you in the dark about it.

The Obamatons of the mainstream media have failed to report one of the most chilling campaign promises thus far uttered by the presumptive Democrat nominee for president.

He made it before the Iowa caucus to a left-wing pacifist group that seeks to reallocate defense dollars to welfare programs. The lobbying group, Caucus for Priorities, was so impressed by Obama's anti-military offering that it steered its 10,000 devotees his way.

In a 132-word videotaped pledge (still viewable on YouTube), Obama agreed to hollow out the U.S. military by slashing both conventional and nuclear weapons.

The scope of his planned defense cuts, combined with his angry tone, is breathtaking. He sounds as if the military is the enemy, not the bad guys it's fighting. Read article.

Obama's associations may haunt bid

Washington Times.com

Who's Tony Rezko? William Ayers? Few Americans know, but they probably will by Election Day.

Both men have ties to Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and may well show up in even more anti-Obama ads than they already have.

These days, presidential candidates can expect to have every personal relationship, new or ancient, investigated, and if there's political hay to be made, a version of the details is quickly out. All candidates have their associations questioned, but it's especially true for Mr. Obama, still a newcomer to the national scene. Voters haven't had years to form impressions based on what he has said or the legislation he's supported.

Associations already have produced one crisis for Mr. Obama - the furor over the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his spiritual mentor. Here are brief descriptions of some other people who may show up in ads, debate questions and Internet chatter over the coming months.

Antoin Rezko, William Ayers,Emil Jones, Jr., Rashid Khalidi, The Reverands Jeremiah Wright & Michael Pfleger..... Read article.

John McCain and Barack Obama have much in common in presidential race

Anne Applebaum, Telegraph.co.uk

And now, at last, we've got to the interesting part: the race between two candidates seemingly so different from one another that their opposing presidential campaigns can actually be described in large, sweeping metaphors. Obama v. McCain: Innocence v. Experience, Youth v. Age, Rhetoric v. Action, Hip v. Fogey, Dove v. Hawk.

Perhaps it is not surprising that these two men, so physically as well as temperamentally different, are being treated as if they were, well, black and white. Indeed, to judge by what is already being written about this race, it is a contest between a pacifist and a Vietnam vet, a tax-and-spender and a free-marketeer, a conservative's conservative and a liberal's liberal.

Except, of course, that it isn't. In fact, one of the deeply weird things about this already extremely weird campaign is that the two candidates have, both, in the past, appealed to precisely the same group of people: moderates, independents, non-partisan voters, whatever you want to call them. Whereas the past two or three presidential races have pitted Establishment Republicans (Bush, Dole) against Establishment Democrats (Gore, Kerry), both McCain and Obama have made their names by being something different. Read article.

McCain and Obama Square Off

Ericka Andersen, Human Events.com

John McCain's national campaign finally has an identified adversary: Barack Obama, despite Hillary Clinton's last-minute pleas for a reprieve -- will be the Democratic nominee this fall. And McCain is already seizing on the most obvious Obama weakness: his inability to think quickly and answer questions for which he isn't prepared.

McCain seems to thrive in person-to-person debates. Obama is uncomfortable unless he is speaking prepared remarks to an adoring crowd. The two -- in this and so many other ways -- are polar opposites.

Wednesday, McCain said he wants joint town hall meetings across the country with his presidential opponent. He hopes they will promote a "pure form of democracy" and force Obama to "respond directly to the specific questions and concerns that people have" instead of pandering to audiences in eloquent but long, vague speeches. As any good pol would want to, McCain seeks to apply his strength to Obama's weakness. Read article.

Let the Debates Begin

David Broder, Washington Post.com

Because the Clinton speculation consumed so much of the oxygen, a genuinely important development drew much less sustained attention than it deserves. I am referring to the challenge from John McCain to Barack Obama to hold a series of 10 joint town meetings starting this month and continuing perhaps until Election Day.

Bypassing the TV networks, the presidential debate commission and all the other muckety-mucks who have seized control of the campaign dialogue, McCain simply dropped the newly nominated Obama a note saying, in effect, let's get it on.

The Obama camp said it found the notion "appealing," and with that, what may be the largest step toward improving the content of the presidential election became a genuine possibility.

Most years, the autumn debates were the main events of the campaign, drawing the largest audiences and having the maximum impact. But over time, these debates have become more and more ritualistic and less and less useful to voters.

The candidates rehearse so intensely, calculating what topics are likely to be raised and delivering their answers so often that they seem scripted. Campaign aides critique each run-through, suggesting words or phrases that "test" the best.

The stakes are so high that all the life and spontaneity are drained out of the occasion; often, irrelevancies -- Al Gore sighing or George H.W. Bush glancing at his watch -- dominate any of the substance. Read article.

Voters Say ‘Drill' - Neither candidate gets it.

Larry Kudlow, NRO.com

The recent spike in oil prices and unemployment is dramatically changing this presidential campaign - virtually overnight. The near $20 jump in oil to $140 a barrel, the unexpected half-point increase in the jobless rate to 5.5 percent (the biggest monthly increase in 20 years), and the resulting 400-point plunge in stocks has created a new campaign issue right before our eyes.

Public worry number one is now oil, jobs, and the economy, with the inflationary woes of the U.S. dollar right underneath. The candidate who can connect with these issues will win in November. But so far neither Obama nor McCain are dealing with the new political reality.

In fact, it's all about oil right now. The price has doubled over the past year while the economy has slumped.

But here's an eye opener. Recent polling data from Gallup show the percentage of voters blaming oil companies for skyrocketing gasoline prices has dropped from 34 percent to 20 percent over the past year. At the same time, support for more drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas has increased to 57 percent from 41 percent.

And the candidates remain blind to these shifts. Read article.

The Real World: Iran and U.S. elections

Ariel Cohen, Middle East Times.com

Iran is emerging as a key issue in the U.S. 2008 presidential campaign. In his speech to the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee - AIPAC - Democratic Sen. Barack Obama pushed all the right buttons, from keeping Jerusalem united as the capital of Israel, to calling for resurrection of the Jewish-African-American coalition from the 1960s.

Yet, Obama did not budge from his diplomatic strategy on dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat. He confirmed that he will sit down with the ayatollahs despite the fact that every diplomatic effort to stop the Iranian nuclear program has failed so far.

But while Obama knew that he needs to talk tough, the senator from Illinois is not likely to out-tough John McCain.

To use the phrase from the X-Files, a hugely popular sci-fi TV series, many American Jews "want to believe" that Obama miraculously turned pro-Israel.

Despite pledging support for Israel's security, Obama has a credibility gap among many voters in the American Jewish and pro-Israel Evangelical communities - important constituencies which may help determine the election's outcome in key states, such as Florida, Michigan, and California. Read article.

McCain Needs ‘Vision' to Beat Historic Odds Favoring Obama in '08

Mort Kondracke, RCP.com

A new scholarly analysis confirms that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has to perform miracles to win the 2008 election. So far, he is far short of doing that.

McCain's speech in Louisiana Tuesday night fell embarrassingly short of matching Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) eloquence, vision and delivery - demonstrating the distance McCain has to go to have a chance of winning in November.

In the absence of a big step-up in his performance, McCain will have to rely on Obama's self-destruction - which could happen, in view of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) evident effort to force him to name her as his running mate.

He may actually decide on his own that he needs her to guarantee carrying her constituencies - white workers, Hispanics, Jews and Catholics - but to accept her under threat will make him look weak, hardly commander-in-chief material in a dangerous world.

And yet, McCain can't bank on Democratic disarray. Despite polls showing him doing surprisingly well against Obama, historical patterns show he's in perilous territory. Read article.

McCain Should Run Against Congress

Kimberley A. Strassel, Online WSJ.com

When House Minority Leader John Boehner is asked whether his party needs to distance itself from George W. Bush, he likes to point out the president isn't on the ticket this fall. True. Several hundred incumbent GOP members of Congress are, however, and don't think John McCain hasn't noticed.

With Congress's approval rating at record lows, the time is ripe for a slam campaign. Barack Obama won't do it, since his Democratic colleagues are running the joint. But it's a huge opportunity for Mr. McCain, who could play Congress's failings off his promises for reform. Even as Republicans sagely warn their nominee to distance himself from the president, they're beginning to see that his more productive option might just be to throw them - and Congressional Democrats - under the Straight Talk bus.

Mr. McCain could take encouragement from history. Harry Truman managed a 1948 victory by trashing the "Do Nothing Congress." Upstart Barry Goldwater in 1952 told Arizonans that Majority Leader Ernest McFarland represented the mess in Washington, and snatched the Democrat's seat. Tom Daschle followed McFarland, after being pilloried for turning the Senate into a dead zone. Read article.

"Media Reform" Activists Cheer Obama

Cliff Kincaid, AIM.org

Dropping any pretense of objectivity and non-partisanship, the "National Conference for Media Reform" on Saturday night turned into a Barack Obama-for-President rally, as left-wing media figure Arianna Huffington denounced Senator and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain as a "Trojan horse for the right" who had "sold his soul" to become president.

Several speakers, including Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps, used the Obama campaign slogan, "Yes, we can," as they urged the thousands of "progressives" in the audience to bring "change" to Washington, D.C.

One speaker, Sylvia Rivera, who runs a Mexican art museum, had the audience saying "Yes, we can" in Spanish. "Forty years from now," she said, "we will marvel at how we elected our first black president."

Huffington, who runs the far-left Huffington Post website, said that Obama would win the White House in November as long as "the fear-mongering of the right" on national

security affairs was kept in check and "zero tolerance" was practiced for attacks on Obama's patriotism and loyalty to the U.S. Another problem, she stated, was that "the media are still in love with John McCain" and it is imperative to make sure the media "fall out of love" with him.

If all of this is done, she predicted a "landslide" for Democrats in November.

Meanwhile, a Canadian, Naomi Klein, who writes for the British Guardian and The Nation magazine, told the conference that Hillary Clinton's endorsement of Obama was "a partial victory for the forum gathered here tonight." She said that Clinton was the candidate of the establishment and that her "coronation" had been derailed.Read article.

A Bleak Future

IBD Editorials.com

Imagine an America where the government decides what profits are acceptable. Imagine our country with the oil industry nationalized. Impossible? Not with Democrats in control of Washington.

One California Democrat, saying out loud what many on her side of the aisle have been thinking for some time, has threatened to seize the oil industry.

"This liberal will be all about socializing, uh, uh . . . would be about . . . basically taking over and the government running all of your companies," Rep. Maxine Watters told oil executives on May 22 during yet another show-trial congressional hearing.

Socializing, nationalizing - the term doesn't matter. But the result is the same. Oil industry takeovers are disastrous. Does Watters really want the U.S. to go the way of Venezuela, Iran, Bolivia or Mexico? Those nations that have nationalized their domestic oil operations and have suffered economically because of it.

And as wretched as their situations are now, their economic prospects are even poorer as long as their corrupt governments continue to control their oil industries.

Meanwhile, Watters' colleague from Pennsylvania's 11th district, Rep. Paul Kanjorski, is proposing a federal "Reasonable Profits Board." Its members would be charged with determining when oil and gas companies' "profits are in excess."

Like many in his party - including Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has threatened to seize oil company profits for her political projects - Kanjorski believes the laws of economics are malleable to someone as smart as he. He's apparently deluded himself into thinking the mere threat of taxing oil companies' windfall profits will encourage them to keep their prices low. Read article.