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July 1, 2008

Exclusive: Tuesday, July 1

Presidential Watch

Obama Just Defined Himself As Unpatriotic

Bruce Kesler, Democracy-Project.com

Not having Boone Pickens' millions, I wager a dollar to your dime if you can prove, by Barack Obama's own definition, that he is patriotic.

At his Independence, Missouri speech (live stream here, or text here or AP report here) today on patriotism, Obama says:

I also believe that patriotism must, if it is to mean anything, involve the willingness to sacrifice - to give up something we value on behalf of a larger cause.

All you have to do is prove that Barack Obama ever personally sacrificed anything tangible "on behalf of a wider cause" instead of just benefiting and personally profiting.

That includes working in the various social services he mentions.

Here's a partial list of how Obama might make himself truly patriotic, by his own definition. Read article.

Arrogance: Offensive display of superiority or overbearing pride

2 Sisters From the Right.com

Arrogance is always a good word to apply to Barack Obama, and many critics have been using it to account for his display last week of that blue campaign logo that looked way too much like the official presidential seal. How his admirers and supporters can overlook his offensive display of narcissism is beyond our understanding, but at least he had the decency to heed the advice of his own campaign aides and get rid of it pronto. Much has been said and written about the seal fiasco, but we really liked what MSNBC's Chuck Todd had to say, perhaps because it captures the essence of Obama's sense of self-importance:

".....There is an image here that I think the McCain people think they are going to be able to paint of Obama.

And that is there is a sense of arrogance. Think about that Presidential seal debacle of last week where somehow Obama's campaign thought they should make their own seal. It's this idea that somehow the whole campaign is about him. That it's not about other people."

The man has not been elected, and the public has already been subjected to his hubris on more than one occasion. Any other candidate would find it hard to survive the firestorm of criticism from the media if they pulled a similar stunt, but Obama's faux pas is already forgiven, forgotten, and on its way to oblivion. McCain is going to have to watch every step he takes and every word that comes out of his mouth during the next few months, but with the media's compliance, Mr. Arrogance can probably get away with much more before November. Read article.

The ever-malleable Mr. Obama

Charles Krauthammer, JWR.com

"To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."

- Obama spokesman Bill Burton, Oct. 24, 2007

That was then: Democratic primaries to be won, netroot lefties to be seduced. With all that (and Hillary Clinton) out of the way, Obama now says he'll vote in favor of the new FISA bill that gives the telecom companies blanket immunity for post-Sept. 11 eavesdropping.

Back then, in the yesteryear of primary season, he thoroughly trashed the North American Free Trade Agreement, pledging to force a renegotiation, take "the hammer" to Canada and Mexico and threaten unilateral abrogation.

Today the hammer is holstered. Obama calls his previous NAFTA rhetoric "overheated" and essentially endorses what one of his senior economic advisers privately told the Canadians: The anti-trade stuff was nothing more than populist posturing.

Nor is there much left of his primary season pledge to meet "without preconditions" with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Read article.

The Jihad Candidate

Rich Carroll, Two Sisters From the Right.com

Conspiracy theories make for interesting novels when the storyline is not so absurd that it can grasp our attention. ‘The Manchurian Candidate' and ‘Seven Days in May' are examples of plausible chains of events that captures the reader's imagination at best-seller level. ‘What if' has always been the solid grist of fiction.

Get yourself something cool to drink, find a relaxing position, but before you continue, visualize the television photos of two jet airliners smashing into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and remind yourself this cowardly act of Muslim terror was planned for eight years.

How long did it take Islam and their oil money to find a candidate for President of the United States? As long as it took them to place a Senator from Illinois and Minnesota? The same amount of time to create a large Muslim enclave in Detroit? The time it took them to build over 2,000 mosques in America? The same amount of time required to place radical wahabbist clerics in our military and prisons as ‘chaplains'?

Find a candidate who can get away with lying about their father being a ‘freedom fighter' when he was actually part of the most corrupt and violent government in Kenya's history. Find a candidate with close ties to The Nation of Islam and the violent Muslim overthrow in Africa, a candidate who is educated among white infidel Americans but hides his bitterness and anger behind a superficial toothy smile. Find a candidate who changes his American name of Barry to the Muslim name of Barack Hussein Obama, and dares anyone to question his true ties under the banner of ‘racism'.

Nurture this candidate in an atmosphere of anti-white American teaching and surround him with Islamic teachers. Provide him with a bitter, racist, anti-white, anti-American wife, and supply him with Muslim middle east connections and Islamic monies. Allow him to be clever enough to get away with his anti-white rhetoric and proclaim he will give $834 billion taxpayer dollars to the Muslim controlled United Nations for use in Africa. Read article.

It's Over, Lady

Maureen Dowd, NY Times.com

Unity was spared the banality of unanimity.

Carmella Lewis, with her Hillary T-shirt and Hillary placard, came all the way from Denver to make sure there would be plenty of ambiguity, duality and ferocity in Unity.

Just as Hillary was testing out the unfamiliar familiarity "Barack and me" Friday and talking about "his grace and his grit," Carmella began loudly booing and waving her sign.

"We want Hillary!" screamed the 57-year-old retired ad saleswoman and Clinton delegate.

"It's over, lady!" yelled some Obama supporters a few yards away.

Standing between the Sharks and the Jets, David Axelrod took pity on an older friend of Carmella's who was suffering from aridity in the Unity humidity. The chief Obama strategist fetched a glass of water and brought it to the woman, who was wearing five Hillary buttons.

This amenity did not stop the disunity. Carmella and her friends continued to cry, "Nobama!" "We love you, Hillary!" and "We need Hillary!" as Barack Obama sat onstage on a stool behind his former rival, his finger studiously at his lips.

Carmella was not impressed with all the kissing, laughing and whispering that Hill and Bam were diligently doing for the cameras, so that the moment could produce, as Obama press aide Robert Gibbs put it on "Larry King Live," "a great picture."

When it was Obama's turn to speak, Carmella announced loudly, "I wish I had ear plugs." Then, as Obama tried to ingratiate himself with the Hillary partisans in the crowd by saying that because of the New York senator, his daughters "can take for granted that women can do anything that the boys can do and do it better and do it in heels," Carmella put her fingers in her ears. Read article.

It's Only About Winning

David Limbaugh, David Limbaugh.com

The Washington Post reports that Sen. Barack Obama is aggressively trying to reintroduce himself to voters, echoing the spin of Obama's advisers that not everyone knows him yet. In reality, Obama's major campaign challenge will not be to reveal, but to conceal his true identity.

Obama is not trying to introduce himself to unreached voters, but is engaged in damage control with many he's already reached -- and insulted and disillusioned.

As long as he was soaring above the fray with the lofty rhetoric of hope, change and unity, Obama could masquerade as a quasi-messiah figure. But once forced into the nitty-gritty of contested issues and debates, his false visage began to crack. Those cracks expanded into campaign-threatening fissures when voters learned about Obama's sordid associations and left-wing elitist snobbery toward small-town America.

The Post says that in his reintroduction, Obama has "offered a clear road map for the kind of candidate he is likely to become...: an ambitious gamer of the electoral map, a ruthless fundraiser and a scrupulous manager of his own biography in the face of persistent concerns about how he is perceived."

What the Post left out is that Obama has also shown himself to be an unscrupulous master of the politics of calculation and expedience. Read article.

Not-So-Straight Talk - Obama, McCain: Pols After All

Kirsten Powers, NY Post.com

When John McCain and Barack Obama became the presumptive nominees, many mused that Americans had opted for the most "straight talking" candidates in each party.

That was a testament to the power of branding. In fact, voters opted for the two candidates who best impersonated a straight-talker.

Obama took a huge hit to his brand in the media this week when he announced he's opting out of public financing, which he'd previously talked up as central to reform.

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth among commentators - many seemed truly surprised. Clearly, they hadn't noticed that Obama is, gasp, a politician.

And a pretty good one at that. To stay with public financing would have been political malpractice.

Disappointed? Get used to it. Read article.

Evolving Nonsense

Editors, NRO.com

In his opinion Wednesday for a five-justice majority in Kennedy v. Louisiana, Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishments" forbids imposition of the death penalty for the rape of a child. Or, rather, he ruled that the Court's modern rewriting of the Eighth Amendment as a license for the Court to impose its "independent judgment" of "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" yields that result. If any further evidence were needed that the Supreme Court's death-penalty decisions have become entirely unmoored from the actual Eighth Amendment - as well as from the good sense of the American people - Kennedy's opinion provides it.

Even apart from the fact that the "evolving standards" framework is not faithful to the meaning of the Eighth Amendment, it is hopelessly malleable, especially in the hands of Kennedy and the four liberal judicial activists - Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer - who joined his opinion.

John McCain has said that he would appoint judges who will respect the popular will, overturning it only in response to clear constitutional commands and not to their own preferences. Although he has spoken in opposition to Kennedy, Barack Obama has indicated that he falls on the other side of the jurisprudential debate. Too many of our justices are evolving away from democracy. Let's not elect a president who will encourage them - and appoint more of them. Read article.

But Can He Find Iran on a Map?

Russ Vaughn, American Thinker Blog.com

In a CQ Politics column, David Korn snidely asks, "Can a Guy (McCain) Who Doesn't Know How To Use a Computer Become President?"

Reading the column my first thought was, "Can A Harvard Educated Lawyer Who Doesn't Know Elementary School Level Geography Become President?" My second was, "Can A Harvard Educated Lawyer Who Doesn't Know How Many States Are In The Country He Wants To Govern Become President?"

Considering their candidate's demonstrated disregard for the finer points of geography and history, the Democrats and their media minions might want to think twice before poking fun at McCain for lack of knowledge. Personally I find it far less disturbing that McCain, in his seventies, has little knowledge of computers than the fact that a supposed young genius in his forties is so evidently ignorant of basic geography. I will wager that a lot of other senior voters share my feeling that a president can perform his duties quite well without computer skills. It's like asking, "But can he type?"

Of more concern to folks like us is, "But can he find Iran on a map?"

My personal experience with the Internet has taught me that this medium, especially on the liberal side, is heavily populated with technical whizzes who are long on computer skills but very short on judgment. Shallow, in other words.

And guess who their candidate is... Read article.

Bam Dodges Passion Trap

Leonard Greene, NY Post.com

Barack Obama saw it coming.

When the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee got a question on what he thought about Wednesday's US Supreme Court decision outlawing executions of people convicted of raping children, the father of two of the cutest little girls you'll ever see knocked it out of the park.

"I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstances for the most egregious of crimes," Obama said at a news conference.

"I think that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime. And if a state makes a decision that - under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances - the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that that doesn't violate our Constitution."

Obama is no fool. Clearly, he's watched the tape of another Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis, and how he swung and missed at a hanging curve of a question about rape and capital punishment.

By expressing some support for capital punishment, even in the most narrow of circumstances, Obama walked the fine line that always exists between reason and emotion.

Now if he can just avoid any pictures in an Army tank. Read article.

How Can a "Fellow Black Republican" Oppose Obama?

Larry Elder, Townhall.com

Mr. Elder,

I am shocked that you oppose Barack Obama and belong to the Republican Party. We must get over ourselves and realize there is room at the top for everyone and we must get there by helping each other -- instead of agreeing with policies and old politics that are proven not to work.

To endorse John McCain, a person who will not make it easier for the underprivileged, is just too much. How can a fellow black American feel this way?

Your Former Supporter

Dear Former Supporter,

Do you have any Republican friends, let alone black ones? If so, how many of them want to make it harder "for the underprivileged"?

You also might want to familiarize yourself with the history of the Democratic and Republican parties, and see which party has stood up longer for the rights of people of color. Do you know that Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution -- abolishing slavery, granting citizenship rights to newly freed slaves, and guaranteeing the right to vote (at least on paper) to blacks, respectively? Do you know that most of the politicians who stood for segregation were Southern Democrats? Do you know that the Ku Klux Klan was founded by Democrats, one of whose goals was to stop the spread of the Republican Party? Do you know that, as a percentage of the party, more Republicans than Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Read article.

Is Sour News Good News for the Dems?

Daniel Henninger, Online WSJ.com

It is written everywhere that the public is in a sour mood. Further, that a sour nation is swell news for the election chances of Barack Obama and the Democrats. Hard to disagree.

The bad economy may put Barack Obama in the White House. The remarkable enthusiasm for him, though, has more to do with the demoralizing loss of confidence in major institutions. This, more than his fairly conventional policy ideas, is the appeal of his "change" candidacy. Barack Obama is the Hey-Jude candidate, the man who somehow will "make it better."

Earth to Obama belief system: Don't hold your breath.

The sour mood in search of better is real enough. But the belief that Barack Obama has come among us as the angel of change looks to be a mile wide in intensity and a quarter-inch deep in reality. Many institutions are caught between a divided politics pulling hard at opposite ends of the rope. The public's sourness is just a symptom of this tension. Peace of mind - assuming people truly want that - won't come until voters decide whether the future direction of their country should be set mainly by the institutions of the private sector or by institutions of the public sector. Read article.

Obama's Vision for Government-Run Childhood

Terence P. Jeffrey, CNSNews.com

One of the most dramatic changes in American life in the years since World War II involves the way we raise our children.

We used to do it ourselves. Now, convinced we have better things to do, many of us leave the job to others.

Encouraging this flight from parenthood, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has proposed what he calls his "Zero to Five" plan. It is a collection of programs aimed at getting the government involved in the raising of your children from the moment they are born.

"The first part of my plan focuses on providing quality affordable early childhood education to every child in America," Obama said in a November speech. "As president, I will launch a Children's First Agenda that provides care, learning and support to families with children ages zero to five."

Obama, of course, will also continue to defend your "right" to hire a physician to kill your child in utero so you won't have to raise the child at all. Read article.

Obama's Social Security Fine Print

Donald L. Luskin, Online WSJ.com

Last week, Barack Obama revealed his plan to shore up Social Security's shaky finances by raising the income level on which the payroll tax is applied. Currently, incomes above $102,000 are exempt, with that threshold rising every year indexed to wage inflation. Mr. Obama would keep that limit in place, but then assess payroll taxes on incomes above $250,000, which his campaign claims would apply to only the richest 3% of Americans.

Mr. Obama angered liberals last year when he admitted that there was a "Social Security crisis." But at least Mr. Obama's base should be appeased now that his solution to the "crisis" is to soak the rich. One liberal columnist actually noted with glee the fact that this would take us back to top tax rates not seen since the 1970s.

According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Mr. Obama's new tax would siphon off 0.4% of gross domestic product annually. Combined with Mr. Obama's other tax-hike initiatives, "the total tax on labor would be close to 60 percent. In high-tax states like California and New York, the top rate would be even higher."

Would it help Social Security's financing problems? Mr. Obama has no idea. Read article.

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