Redstate

Posted at 8:01pm on Jul. 3, 2008 Watch out for all those bitter folks in the crowd, Barry -- they tend to cling to things [Open Thread]

By Jeff Emanuel

Courtesy of Roll Call($) comes this wonderful report:

Obama May Campaign at NASCAR Races

Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) in the coming weeks may become the first Democratic presidential nominee to attend a NASCAR stock car race in 16 years, his campaign confirmed today.

“We would love to make it to a NASCAR race if the schedule permits,” Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki told Roll Call Thursday afternoon. “In the meantime, we plan to continue campaigning in communities across the country including small towns and rural communities where people are dissatisfied with the leadership of the last eight years and looking for a new direction for the country.”

The sight of Barack Obama attempting to mingle with a demographic he so publicly despises and looks down on should be an interesting one indeed. Further, the entertainment value provided by liberal elites who try to do "normal people" things is practically endless, as the two scenes below from the 2004 campaign remind us.

By the way, anybody remember the wonderfully eloquent attempt to blend in just before the hunting trip chronicled above by asking, "Can I get me uh huntin' license here?"

Delicious. I can't wait to see what Obama tries to do to blend in with these bitter hayseeds who are always clinging to guns and religion.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Liberal elites trying to blend in with the unwashed masses | NASCAR | Obamafiles — Comments (78)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:02pm on Jul. 3, 2008 Democratic Party contemplating cutting a day off of convention schedule.

For a Party so supposedly loaded down with cash, they're doing a lot of austerity programs.

By Moe Lane

I can't seem to avoid the front page today. Via Hot Air:

A short but sweet gathering
July 3, 2008

Barack Obama's campaign and the Democratic National Committee are toying with a convention scheduling change that has been broached before in theory but never seriously considered: cutting the party's conclave in Denver short by one day to give Obama an extra day of post-nomination bounce in the crowded August calendar.

For the last several decades -- when conventions became forums that merely rubber-stamp a presumptive nominee -- they have traditionally run from Monday through Thursday. Increasingly, both parties have struggled to offer something of interest during the first couple of convention nights, and the television networks have responded by dramatically reducing live coverage. The only truly significant event has been the nominee's acceptance speech, delivered during prime time on Thursday evening.

But Obama aides have floated the idea of ending the Denver convention on Wednesday, Aug. 27, instead of Thursday, Aug. 28.

You'll notice - although the LA Times didn't - that the aforementioned Obama aides completely overlooked the fact that their blithe suggestion would muck up network lineup schedules. The time to do that was four months ago, guys. Springing it on them seven weeks out isn't very nice.

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | DNC | Obamafiles | Things to Do In Denver When You're Broke — Comments (46)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 9:38am on Jul. 3, 2008 And so we wait for the Great Obaman Reversal on Iraq.

We also wait for everyone's June fundraising numbers, but that's a different issue altogether.

By Moe Lane

Like Glenn Reynolds, I am nigh-breathless from waiting to see how long it'll take for Senator Obama to finally integrate objective reality into his Iraq position, which is slowly but surely looking more and more absurd every day. As Brother Soren notes, Obama's surrogates are already doing an admirable job of muddying the waters, but the IDB/TIPP poll referenced (but not linked to) in the link above is grim news to anybody wanting to cut and run. When you have half of independents and 45% of Democrats now disagreeing that the war is lost, you have a problem with being a Democrat running on a campaign that the war is lost.

So... we wait for him to cave on his most fundamental, bedrock policy position. I expect that it'll be right after that trip to Iraq and Afghanistan that the VRWC shamed him into making. And when he does, the derision and mockery that will ensue over this last, best betrayal of the progressive netroots will make our reaction to the Democratic cave on FISA look like an Elks Club Amateur Comedy Night.

Just thought that I'd share.

Moe Lane

PS: Exit question, as Allahpundit would say: Do you think that the netroots support the Democratic Party in the same way that I was a New York Mets fan, growing up? Because damned if I can see how they're getting any practical return on their money, particularly when it comes to foreign policy.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Iraq | Obamafiles | The Great Netroots Betrayal — Comments (12)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 5:47pm on Jul. 2, 2008 Strange Women Lying In Ponds Distributing Swords is No Basis for a System of Government

The Obama Campaign Employs 'Monty Python Defense'

By absentee

If you listen to the noise machine on the left, you have developed a picture of John McCain's military service. From a comfortable position, feet up, in the passenger seat of a jet orbiting the earth, John McCain coldly and safely pushed buttons to dispense laser death on unsuspecting Vietnamese civilians. After some sort of emergency landing, John McCain stayed at a Hilton, from which he distributed communist propaganda videos for five or so years. When he returned home, he had an adminstrative authority over a group of planes. Later, he used a racial slur regarding the staff at that Hilton and highlighted the episode to pretend he was in the military.

It was only weeks ago that Max Cleland, in an interview with the New York Times, said "McCain is my friend and brother, and I love him dearly, but I think you learn something fighting on the ground, like me and John Kerry and Chuck Hagel did in Vietnam." They learned something, you see, which you do not learn coasting safely above or in bamboo cages below. The Democrats' service counts, McCain's doesn't. The article Cleland was quoted in, by the way, was about how "some" of McCain's "fellow veterans" thought his "different" Vietnam was responsible for his being so misguided on Iraq. You know, misguided like being right about the surge, supporting the war throughout, visiting the troops, that sort of thing. Obviously, he's out of touch.

How about Senator Jay Rockefeller a few weeks earlier? "McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit," he said. "What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn’t know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues." McCain didn't care who he was indiscriminately destroying. He was just some white guy with electronics who likes killing people.

Rockefeller was really just doing exactly what you'd expect a Democrat politician to do: echoing the left media. Remember what Bill Maher said? "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly."

Read On ...

Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles | Smearing And Sliming John McCain — Comments (37)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 7:05am on Jul. 2, 2008 Either Obama is full of it, or he is ineffectual and weak

By Erick

There is a pattern out there. Jim Webb, Jay Rockefeller, Rand Beers, Wesley Clark, Tom Harkin, and a host of others are trying to discredit John McCain's most natural strength, at least a strength that polls very well.

All are making the case that because McCain was a prisoner of war and missed out on the action in Vietnam he really has no military experience to make himself competent in that arena.

Clark is a campaign surrogate for Obama. Rand Beers is an advisor. The others support Obama and are in various ways connected to the campaign.

I am not going to express outrage at the Obama campaign. This can be no surprise to any of us. The man is a compulsive befriender of dirtbags. His campaign excels at having dirtbag surrogates.

Likewise, Obama has no core principles. That the man had to give a speech defending his patriotism is generally proof that most most people recognize he has no patriotism except as a matter of convenience. His whole goal is to get elected President. He will say, do, and lie about anything to get there. It is his ambition. Just as his need to take issue against his country helped him with the far left voters who first sent him into office in Illinois, now he needs to embrace his country in toto to get to the next office.

We cannot be surprised at this.

But we can point something out.

When Obama said the Democrats would no longer take lobbyist money, the DCCC ignored him. The DNC itself is using lobbyist money to pay for its convention in total defiance of Barack Obama's orders.

Therefore, in this case, we are left with only two conclusions. Either this effort to diminish John McCain's service in the military is an intentional, willful strategy of the Obama campaign using surrogates while purportedly giving Obama plausible deniability, or Obama cannot tell them to stop because he is too weak and ineffectual for anyone in his party to take him seriously enough to listen to him.

The first is a disgusting trait of his character that should give one pause if they wish to vote for him. It is also, given what we already know about Obama, the most likely conclusion.

The second is a sign that in office, Obama would be a figurehead unable to stop or influence the leftists he would no doubt bring into office with him. The claims of moderate policy he wants would be ignored in favor of the radical advancement of liberalism his core supporters demand.

Either case makes Obama a bad choice for President.

Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles — Comments (19)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 3:30pm on Jul. 1, 2008 A New Kind of Sleaze

Clark was Put up to it

By Mark I

The Obama campaign officially says that Gen. Wesley Clark was not officially speaking for Obama when on CBS's Face the Nation this past Sunday, he denigrated Sen. John McCain's military experience. "I don't think that riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president, " Clark sniffed. Besides hinting that McCain was a substandard pilot-good ones do not get shot down-that remark necessarily discounts everything that came afterwards, McCain's five and a half years of voluntary confinement. Voluntary because the North Vietnamese, after learning that McCain was the son of a top U.S. Admiral, offered him early release, ahead of others who had been captured before McCain. McCain refused, not wanting to hand his captors a propaganda victory and undermine the morale of his co-prisoners. McCain never had to endure the debilitating torture, the beatings, the psychological torment, and the spirit-breaking confinement. He did it out of love of country and dedication to duty.

This is not to try and make McCain into a Christ-like figure, willingly suffering for the nation's sins. But it does illuminate just how egregious and despicable Clark's comments were. To boil McCain's entire military record down to the singular event of the loss of his plane while flying bombing missions over Hanoi, the most dangerous duty for an aviator in the Vietnam War, is so callous and dismissive that it had to have been intentional.

Read on...

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | John McCain | Liberals | military service | Obamafiles | Same as the Old Politics — Comments (32)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:48am on Jul. 1, 2008 *Becoming* Bill Clinton is no way to get his support, Senator Obama.

I don't think that you could pull it off anyway.

By Moe Lane

By all accounts, former President Clinton was and is one of those people who, five minutes after you've met him, you wonder why on earth you were ever infuriated with the man in the first place*. You seem to have a more, ah, ethereal charm.

Anyway, let's discuss welfare reform. You put up a nice little ad (H/T: Hot Air) where you talked about dignity, work, so on, so forth; and in the process, you had your people do a nice little rhetorical whirl that suggested that the legislation you signed reduced welfare rolls by 80%. A little fib, that, but we'll tentatively allow it for right now. At least you're pleased that the rolls were cut.

Yeah. About that.

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Gregory Wallace Report: Barack Obama aligned himself with welfare reform on Monday, launching a television ad which touts the way the overhaul "slashed the rolls by 80 percent." Obama leaves out, however, that he was against the 1996 federal legislation which precipitated the caseload reduction.

"I am not a defender of the status quo with respect to welfare," Obama said on the floor of the Illinois state Senate on May 31, 1997. "Having said that, I probably would not have supported the federal legislation, because I think it had some problems."

Oops.

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | Bill Clinton | Obamafiles | Welfare Reform — Comments (11)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 4:19pm on Jun. 30, 2008 Just words.

Just words.

By Moe Lane

Just words.

"For those who have fought under the flag of this nation -- for the young veterans I meet when I visit Walter Reed; for those like John McCain who have endured physical torment in service to our country -- no further proof of such sacrifice is necessary," said Obama. "And let me also add that no one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign, and that goes for supporters on both sides."

Just words.

Dem Guru: McCain Limited by POW Years

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Molly Hunter Report: While Barack Obama was urging supporters not to devalue the military service of rival John McCain, a top Democratic voice on foreign policy argued Monday that the former POW's isolation during the Vietnam war has hobbled the Arizona senator's capacity as a war-time leader.

Rand Beers, an Obama supporter who served as Sen. John Kerry's, D-Mass., top national security adviser during his 2004 presidential run, said that because McCain was in an unfortunate state of "isolation" during much of the Vietnam War, he missed the domestic turmoil which took place in the United States and his national security experience is "sadly limited" as a result.

Posted in 2008 | Just Words | Obamafiles — Comments (37)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:57pm on Jun. 30, 2008 Barack Obama, Male Chauvinist Pig.

Do as he says, not as he does.

By Moe Lane

Hey, Senator: if the oink fits, squeal it.

On average, women working in Obama's Senate office were paid at least $6,000 below the average man working for the Illinois senator. That's according to data calculated from the Report of the Secretary of the Senate, which covered the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007. Of the five people in Obama's Senate office who were paid $100,000 or more on an annual basis, only one -- Obama's administrative manager -- was a woman.

On average, women working in Obama's Senate office were paid at least $6,000 below the average man working for the Illinois senator. That's according to data calculated from the Report of the Secretary of the Senate, which covered the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007. Of the five people in Obama's Senate office who were paid $100,000 or more on an annual basis, only one -- Obama's administrative manager -- was a woman.

The average pay for the 33 men on Obama's staff (who earned more than $23,000, the lowest annual salary paid for non-intern employees) was $59,207. The average pay for the 31 women on Obama's staff who earned more than $23,000 per year was $48,729.91. (The average pay for all 36 male employees on Obama's staff was $55,962; and the average pay for all 31 female employees was $48,729. The report indicated that Obama had only one paid intern during the period, who was a male.)

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | feminism | John McCain | Obamafiles | sexism — Comments (47)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:55am on Jun. 30, 2008 Barack Obama's ACORN Connection

By Vladimir

The defeat that stings the worst is when you feel like you've been beaten at your own game. The narrow defeats of the Presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 have energized the lunatic base of the Democratic Party. Images of Diebold-rigged voting machines, minority voter intimidation and The Political Anachronism That Is the Electoral College have haunted the activists' dreams for eight years. We can expect the Dems to pull out all the stops to make sure it doesn't happen in 2008.

One need not look to the Book of Revelation to find reason to be troubled by the presumptive Democratic nominee. The "Unholy Trinity" -- Barack Obama, Chicago politics and the radical "community development" organization that goes by the acronym ACORN -- should be troubling enough.

Read on....

Posted in 2008 | ACORN | Barack Obama | Obamafiles | Vote Fraud — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:58pm on Jun. 29, 2008 Slightly cheesy: but then, so is Senator Obama.

Nice to see that they're as unimpressed with the man himself as I am.

By Moe Lane

Via Glenn Reynolds:

By the way: note that I said "man" in the subtitle, not "election." The difference is one of those "small, yet profound" things.

Moe Lane

PS: Oh, yes, rest assured that I'll be happy to go after the junior Senator from Illinois on matters of substance. Well, just as soon as he ever does anything substantial.

Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles — Comments (7)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:27am on Jun. 29, 2008 The New York Times does its part to ensure John McCain's election.

You know, I have *no idea* whether or not that was the intent.

By Moe Lane

We're in Here Be Dragons territory now, folks, and it isn't even July yet. Via Hot Air Headlines, take a gander:

Obama Supporters Take His Middle Name as Their Own

Emily Nordling has never met a Muslim, at least not to her knowledge. But this spring, Ms. Nordling, a 19-year-old student from Fort Thomas, Ky., gave herself a new middle name on Facebook.com, mimicking her boyfriend and shocking her father.

“Emily Hussein Nordling,” her entry now reads.

With her decision, she joined a growing band of supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who are expressing solidarity with him by informally adopting his middle name.

Because - as all men know - nothing says "normal, mainstream behavior" like "symbolically taking on the middle name of your guru."

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama is like Jesus but cooler | Obamafiles | The New York Times — Comments (146)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 4:22pm on Jun. 27, 2008 Obama's Real Record: Public Housing

Obama helps rich friends but hurts communities

By Kevin Holtsberry

Need proof that Obama's Hope and Change rhetoric is all symbolism and no substance? Look no farther than this devastating Boston Globe investigation:

As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.

But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama's former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.

Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama's close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama's constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.

Shockingly it all comes back to friends and money. Read on.

Posted in 2008 | 2008 Presidential Campaign | Barack Obama | Obamafiles — Comments (17)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:07pm on Jun. 27, 2008 Barack Obama Voted Four Times To Allow Criminal Charges Against Homeowners Who Defend Their Person and Home With a Gun

By Erick

In a victory for individuals across the nation, whether they know it or not, the Supreme Court has decided the 2nd amendment does do what it says -- give the people the right to keep and bear arms. Barack Obama's rapid reversal from opposition to agreement on the issue would make mere mortals snap in half under all the G-forces.

Despite Obama's propensity to say and do anything to get elected, just like with Kennedy v. Louisiana, Obama's record does not match his rhetoric.

In fact, Barack Obama specifically voted four times in the Illinois Legislature to allow criminal charges against a homeowner who used a firearm in self-defense of their person and home -- specifically what the Supreme Court says is a constitutional right. Obama may say he supports it, but his record says exactly the opposite.

Read on . . .

Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles — Comments (15)/ Email this page » / Read More »