(Click title above.)
“Cousin Mike”:
Regarding "Change":
It becomes important to distinguish between fence sitters vs. fence defenders, between post turtles vs. turtles manning posts, between stripes on the middle of the road ("Being There") vs. persons defending middle class values.
This may "stump the band," since I have been unable to google the lyrics: Obama reminds me of an old song, sung circa 1958, from 4th grade music class, Genoa, Texas, for which the refrain went something like this: “When some say yes and some say no, he answers all ‘tis certainly so, and it sounds just right, you’re bound to say, Cousin Mike has such a way.”
If Peter Sellers played "Chancey Gardner" as a not so bright "Cousin Mike," Obama is a whipsmart version. But the song applies equally well to both personas. The problem is, Obama is playing his persona in real life, and we have few clues about who he really is.
Read the article about Obama published in New York Times: January 28, 2007, by Jodi Kantor, “In Law School, Obama Found Political Voice.”
Quotes:
He developed a leadership style based more on furthering consensus than on imposing his own ideas. Surrounded by students who enjoyed the sound of their own voices, Mr. Obama cast himself as an eager listener, sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once.
....
Charles J. Ogletree Jr., another Harvard law professor and a mentor of Mr. Obama, said, “He can enter your space and organize your thoughts without necessarily revealing his own concerns and conflicts.”
....
Mr. Obama declined to comment about his time at Harvard. He arrived at the law school in 1988 with a well-inked passport — he had grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia, son of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother — and years of community organizing experience in Chicago, making him, at 27, an elder statesman among the students who had tested and term-papered their way straight there.
....
People had a way of hearing what they wanted in Mr. Obama’s words. Earlier, after a long, tortured discussion about whether it was better to be called “black” or “African-American,” Mr. Obama dismissed the question, saying semantics did not matter as much as real-life issues, recalled Cassandra Butts, still a close friend. According to Mr. Ogletree, students on each side of the debate thought he was endorsing their side. “Everyone was nodding, Oh, he agrees with me,” he said.
....
Another of Mr. Obama’s techniques relied on his seemingly limitless appetite for hearing the opinions of others, no matter how redundant or extreme. That could lead to endless debates — a mouse infestation at the review office provoked a long exchange about rodent rights — as well as some uncertainty about what Mr. Obama himself thought about the issue at hand.
In dozens of interviews, his friends said they could not remember his specific views from that era, beyond a general emphasis on diversity and social and economic justice.
Instead, they wonder how the style of leadership they observed on campus could translate to another kind of historic presidency.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
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33 comments:
Hollow Men:
I worry about religious literalists, especially when what they take to be sacred texts encourage monstrous murder, mayhem, and myopia. I do not consider texts, to the extent they seek to regulate or prescribe minutia of our beliefs or physical lives, as religiously oriented. Rather, I consider them, when urged literally, as indicative of conspiracies or rationalizations for abetting fascism and crime.
Still, in figurative aspect, invaluable historical, cultural, philosophical, and spiritual insights abound within many religious texts. I believe I intuit, and find no reasonable reason not to believe, that there is a Source (“God”) of moral purposefulness, beyond mere physics and empiricism.
To me, it matters little whether one may refer to “reason to believe” in such Source as “biophilia” or “biologos.” But, those who believe they can prove (or need to prove) the contrary, or the “probability” of the contrary, tend, I think, to be short-sighted, insufficiently formed, perhaps, often, morally hollow.
Many reasonable, moderate, spiritual believers appreciate deep, contextual, evolving, figurative aspects of their traditions, more so than hidebound literalism. I worry more about their realms being invaded by know-it-all empiricists (or objectivists, materialists, rationalists, analysts, scientists, hedonists, market greedbags, and globalist sell-outs) than I worry about spiritual believers invading the hollow realms of international bankers, Republican Raiders, or Democrat Derelicts.
In any event, I do not begrudge Raiders and Derelicts in wanting to “keep to their own parties.” Certainly, I do not seek to make common cause with them, nor do I admire those who do. Independents need be neither Rino’s nor Dino’s. Instead, we can preserve independence, since neither Raiders nor Derelicts can make much headway in politics without eventually kissing the ring of Independents.
From http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2008/08/13/ny-times-tries-to-torpedo-anti-obama-book-succeeds-in-spreading-its-message/ :
Most people who read the Times would probably have been only dimly aware of The Obama Nation had the Times not brought it to their attention. Now they have had it rubbed in their faces. The paper did its best to dismiss the book, but questions and doubts will linger–not so much about Jerome Corsi but about Barack Hussein Obama. Who is he? Who are his friends? What does he believe? Is he the sort of person the American public wants leading the country? Is he a “stealth radical liberal”?
From http://foolocracy.com/2008/08/obamas-new-cousinwild-bill-hickok/ :
“Now it should be revealed that Obama has another famous cousin. While at a Springfield, Missouri rally, he made the comment that family rumor had it that he is related to Wild Bill Hickok.”
From http://townhall.com/columnists/GeorgeWill/2008/08/17/change_we_must_confront :
Change We Must Confront
by George Will
Sunday, August 17, 2008
A great political thinker of the last century, Raymond Aron, was right: "What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error." McCain must convince voters that Obama's complacent confidence in the taming abilities of soft power is the effect of liberalism's scary sentimentalism about a dangerous thing, human nature, and a fiction, "the community of nations."
McCain is hardly the change many people have been eagerly waiting for, but Putin is part of the change we must confront. Until Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, it seemed that not even the Democratic Party could lose this election. But it might if McCain can make it turn on the question of who is ornery enough to give Putin a convincing, deterring telephone call at 3 a.m.
Snippets from http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/ :
Victor David Hansen
August 16th, 2008 9:33 pm
A Not Very Driven Interview
One is struck by Obama’s postmodern worldview. There are no absolutes, just nuances and contexts that preclude certainty. Evil for Obama: “A lot of evil’s been perpetuated based on the claim that we were fighting evil.” Could he be specific where we have perpetrated “a lot of evil?”
Again, the gut instinct for Obama—whether talking about our “tragic history”, or the need for more “oppression studies” or evoking our sins in front of the Germans—is always to start out with the premise of a flawed America, rather than appreciation of the vast difference between us and the alternative. Never a word here about evil abroad, or bin Laden or Dr. Zawahiri. No, instead, we need humility about that “lot of evil” perpetrated by you know whom.
Somehow he is pro-choice, but anti-abortion, for man/woman marriage, but not in the legal sense, not for merit pay, but for rewarding good teachers—all this is in the manner he was against the Russians and for them while for and against the Georgians. His mushy responses were emblematic of the therapeutic style—empathy with everyone, judgment on no-one. We may soon be back to Jimmy Carter, paralyzed how to divvy up the White House Tennis Courts among feuding subordinates. He can’t say much pro or con on abortion, other than there is an ethical and moral element to the issue. And any of you who deny that, well are just darn wrong. He is against late-term abortion— but only if the mother’s life is in danger. And so on.
After watching some of this, I don’t think Obama will be having many town hall debates with McCain. However undeniable his calm and presence, he is simply incapable of extemporizing. A written transcript of this interview would be embarrassing, since it would be largely streams of meandering—and, but that, ah, you know, that, and, with uh, uh, I don’t think, ah, ah, that, that, I think, that, that, on, on, an issue…”
….
Obama’s most gut-wrenching decision? Apparently as a state-legislator in a far left-wing district in Illinois, he opposed the war in Iraq! In fact, his “decision” had zero influence on anything other than his political livelihood in a ward of Chicago, where being anti-war was easy for a liberal politician in the Democratic Party.
****************
See also, snippets from:
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/1998/sepoct/articles/homer.html
This ignorance of Greek wisdom should be of crucial interest to every American -- not because the West is being supplanted by some global multiculturalism (as so many academics proclaim), but quite the opposite: because its institutions and material culture are now overwhelming the world.
The Greeks -- and the Greeks alone -- bequeathed us constitutional government, individual rights, freedom of expression, an open economy, civilian control of the military, separation of religious and political authority, private property, free scientific inquiry and open dissent. And for better or worse, these are the things most on this earth now desire.
But it is foolish -- and dangerous -- to embrace these conventions of the West without understanding that the Greeks also insisted that such energy was to be monitored and restrained by a host of cultural protocols that have nearly disappeared: civic responsibility, philanthropy, a world view that is rather absolute, a belief that life is not nice, but tragic and ephemeral (Greek words both), a chauvinism of the middle class and an insistence on self-criticism. The death of the Greeks means an erasure of an entire way of looking at the world, a way diametrically opposite to the new gods that now drive America: therapeutics, moral relativism, blind allegiance to progress and the glorification of material culture.
About Obama -- See also:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDFhMmVlZWU1ZjBjMGVhNGU2YWUzN2RhMGUzYTkzMGQ=
****
And, about “Who Killed the Constitution” --- see:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods92.html.
Snippets from http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/the_odd_choices_in_barack_obam.html :
August 20, 2008
The odd choices in Barack Obama's career
By J.R. Dunn
He will lose for one reason above all, one that has been overlooked in any analysis that I've yet seen. Barack Obama will lose because he is a flake.
I'm using the term in its generally accepted sense. A flake is not only a screwup, but someone who truly excels in making bizarre errors and creating incredibly convoluted disasters. A flake is a "fool with energy", as the Russian proverb puts it. ("A fool is a terrible thing to have around, but a fool with energy is a nightmare".)
Barack Obama is a flake, and the American people have begun to see it. The chief characteristic of a flake is that he makes choices that are impossible to either understand or explain. These are not the errors of the poor dope who can't grasp the essentials of a situation, or the neurotic who ruins things out of compulsion, or the man suffering chronic bad luck.
The flake has a genius for discovering solutions at perfect right angles to the ordinary world. It's as if he's the product of a totally different evolutionary chain, in a universe where the laws are slightly but distinctly at variance to ours. When given a choice between left and right, the flake goes up -- if not through the 8th dimension. And although there's plenty of rationalization, there's never a logical reason for any of it. After awhile, people stop asking.
….
David Brooks pointed out in a recent New York Times column that Obama spent too little time in any of his positions to make an impact one way or another. This is what saved him from the normal fate of the flake: he was never around long enough for his errors and strange behavior to catch up with him.
….
Here we have a campaign with everything going for it -- the opposition party in a shambles, a seriously undervalued president, the media in the candidate's pocket, the candidate himself being worshiped as nothing less than the new messiah. And yet the results have comprised little more than one fumble after another.
….
In this election, an alternative exists. Whatever his shortcomings, nobody ever called John McCain a flake.
COMMENT:
Snippet from Commenter (Secular Apostate):
There is only one editor's desk. I have no doubt that there were other fine law students that could have taken that desk and published thoughtful, valuable, useful papers. Such positions are most definitely a zero sum game. If Mr Obama had nothing worth saying, and he obviously didn't, he should have respectfully declined the honor in favor of a different, qualified, candidate who would have been engaged in the work.
See also http://townhall.com/columnists/LorieByrd/2008/08/22/the_case_against_obama_-_in_his_own_words.
See also http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/obama_justice_thomas_and_col_w.html:
We have never heard Obama denounce Louis Farrakhan, who has defended the Black Muslims' assassination of Malcolm X, Obama's boyhood hero. Obama is morally compromised by a lifelong quest for power. It has made him famous, powerful, and rich; but it has not demonstrated moral strength and courage.
See also http://www.americanpatrol.com/REFERENCE/Alinsky-SaulRef.html.
Looks like power holders for both Dems and Repubs follow Alinsky’s rules:
Example: “Rules for Radicals teaches the organizer that he must give a moral appearance (as opposed to behaving morally): "All effective action requires the passport of morality."”
“"The first rule of power tactics is: power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."
"Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat."
"Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this. They can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."
Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also, it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."”
....
“One of the criteria for picking the target is the target's vulnerability ... the other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract."”
DEMOCRATS AND IRAN:
Biden’s Ties to Pro-Iran Groups Questioned
Tuesday, August 26, 2008 4:14 PM
By: Kenneth R. Timmerman
Snippets from http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/bdein_ties_to_tehran/2008/08/26/125165.html:
Sen. Barack Obama and his newly-picked running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, may have sparred during the primaries. But on one issue they are firmly united: the need to forge closer ties to the government of Iran.
Kaveh Mohseni, a spokesman for the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran, calls Biden “a great friend of the mullahs.”
He notes that Biden’s election campaigns “have been financed by Islamic charities of the Iranian regime based in California and by the Silicon Iran network,” a loosely-knit group of wealthy Iranian-American businessmen and women seeking to end the U.S. trade embargo on Iran.
....
Just recently, Biden was one of 16 U.S. senators who voted against a bill that would add Iran’s Revolutionary Guards corps to the State Department’s list of international terrorist organizations, because of its involvement in murdering U.S. troops in Iraq.
....
Biden’s ties to the pro-Iranian regime lobby are not a haphazard affair, but a matter of conviction.
Biden told Boston Globe columnist H.D.S. Greenway in 2005 that the United States should address Iran’s “emotional needs” and conclude a “nonaggression pact” with the Tehran regime.
....
Biden hasn’t shied from asking wealthy Iranian-Americans with known sympathies for the Tehran regime for campaign cash.
When Iranian-American pro-democracy activists learned that Biden planned to attend a fundraiser organized on his behalf by an Iranian Muslim charity in California, they phoned his U.S. Senate office to warn him about the group’s pro-Tehran sympathies.
But the Delaware Democrat swept aside their concerns and attended the Feb. 19, 2002, event at the California home of Dr. Sadegh Namazi-Khah, which brought in an estimated $30,000 for his U.S. Senate re-election campaign.
....
Another key Biden contributor is Hassan Nemazee, a New York money-manager who chaired Hillary Clinton’s finance committee, personally raising over $500,000 for her campaign.
Nemazee also has served on the board of the American-Iranian Council, and more recently set up the Iranian-American Political Action Committee (IAPAC) along with a group of Silicon Valley billionaires, many of whom have close ties to the Iranian regime.
....
Obama’s choice of Joe Biden as his running mate “highlights the need to really investigate the web of Iranian influence in the United States,” Iranian-American political analyst Hassan Daioleslam told Newsmax.
Californi-fication of Politics:
Snippets from http://townhall.com/columnists/BurtPrelutsky/2008/08/29/singing_the_blues_in_a_blue_state:
But things are in such a sorry state in my sorry state that the two guys in the wings, eager to replace Schwarzenegger are the pretty boy mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco, Antonio Villaraigosa and Gavin Newsome. Frankly, I don’t know on what basis the voters will decide between the two of them. Both of these scofflaws, after all, have made their cities sanctuaries for illegal aliens. Both have come out in favor of same sex marriages and, for good measure, both men have had adulterous affairs in the past couple of years -- Villaraigosa with a TV news reporter half his age, and Newsome with the wife of his chief aide, who was also allegedly his best friend.
....
Mainly because I have friends and relatives who are liberals, I dislike making blanket statements about them and their apparent lack of patriotism, intellectual honesty and intestinal fortitude. But, really, don’t you sometimes get the idea that there’s a huge scientific experiment taking place, with half of us, the left-wingers, being tested with meds whose side effects included galloping gullibility and a loss of nerve and commonsense, while the rest of us are in a control group taking placebos.
******
COUSIN MIKE OBAMA:
Big Rock Obama Dandy
(Sung to tune of Big Rock Candy Mountain)
On a summer day in the month of May a skinny ‘Bama came hiking,
Down a shady lane through the Chicago game, he was looking for his liking.
As he pandered along he sang a song of the land of milk and honey,
Where a ‘Bama can stay for many a day, and he won't lack a bit for money.
Oh the buzzin' of the breeze in the big shade tree near the soft money landing,
At the money springs where the contributors sing for the Big Rock Obama Dandy.
There's a lake of spins we can all jump in, and the handouts grow on bushes,
With the new-made hay we can cash all day, and the towns all serve free lunches.
Where the bucks never stop and there ain't no cops, and the folks are tender-hearted.
Where you always change your marks but you never throw rocks,
And your star is always sported.
Oh the buzzin' of the breeze in the big shade tree near the soft money landing,
At the money springs where the contributors sing for the Big Rock Obama Dandy.
Oh, a farmer and his son, they were on the run, to the hay land they were bounding.
Said ‘Bama to the son, "Why don't you come with me, the Big Rock Obama Dandy?”
So the very next day they flew away, the gullibles they were counting.
But they never arrived at the money tide, nor the Big Rock Obama Dandy.
Oh the buzzin' of the breeze in the big shade tree near the soft money landing,
At the money springs where the contributors sing for the Big Rock Obama Dandy.
One evening as the sun went down and the political fires were burning,
Down the track came a Puma hiking, and she said "Boys, I'm not turning."
"I'm heading for a man who’ll take a stand even when it ain’t so handy;”
"So come with me, we'll go away from the Big Rock Obama Dandy.”
The Big Rock Obama Dandy, well he ain’t so fair and bright,
The handouts won’t grow on bushes and you won’t sleep every night.
His ideas all are empty and the sun don’t shine that way,
On the birds and the bees and newborn babes,
The money runs dry as the contributors cry
With the Big Rock Obama Dandy.
With the Big Rock Obama Dandy, all the reporters had wooden ears,
And the pitbulls all had rubber teeth and the hens pitched soft-boiled eggs.
But the farmer's trees are now full of bees and the coffers ain’t so full of hay.
So I'm bound to go where there ain't no ‘bro,
Where the rain don't fall, the wind don't blow,
Away from the Big Rock Obama Dandy.
The Big Rock Obama Dandy, with details he ain’t so handy,
And little streams of gimmes come a-trickling down the rocks.
The Democrat pols had to tip their hats and their voters all were blind.
There's a lake of fools and of gimmes too,
But we can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe,
Away from the Big Rock Obama Dandy.
With the Big Rock Obama Dandy, the challengers were made of tin,
And he could walk right through, again and again, no matter how deep the end he was in.
There weren’t no hard questions, no axes there to grind,
But he should stay where he can profess all day,
Where they hung the jerk that forgot to shirk,
With the Big Rock Obama Dandy.
I'll see you all this comin' fall, away from the Big Rock Obama Dandy!
Snippets from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/29/opinion/29brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin:
A Speech to the Delegates
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: August 29, 2008
....
We were thrilled by his speech in front of the Greek columns, which were conscientiously recycled from the concert, “Yanni, Live at the Acropolis.” We were honored by his pledge, that if elected president, he will serve at least four months before running for higher office. We were moved by his campaign slogan, “Vote Obama: He’s better than you’ll ever be.” We were inspired by dozens of Democratic senators who declared their lifelong love of John McCain before denouncing him as a reactionary opportunist who would destroy the country.
No, this country cannot afford to elect John Bushmccain. Under Republican rule, locusts have stripped the land, adults wear crocs in public and M&M’s have lost their flavor. We must instead ride to the uplands of hope!
For as Barack Obama suggested Thursday night, wherever there is a president who needs to tap our natural-gas reserves, I’ll be there. Wherever there is a need for a capital-gains readjustment for targeted small businesses, I’ll be there. Wherever there is a president committed to direct diplomacy with nuclear proliferators, I’ll be there, too! God bless the Democrats, and God Bless America!
****
Voter fraud: See http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/08/another_voter_fraud_investigat.html.
I thought McCain had made 6 kills with one shot.
1. Killed Obama's convention bounce.
2. Excited Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative base.
3. Invited Puma's to come in; the water's warm.
4. Killed talk of McCain being more of the same.
5. Killed talk of McCain being too old and too slow.
6. Killed talk of Republicans being chicken hawks for not putting their money (or their kids) where their mouths are.
But make it 8.
No. 7 --- Part of McCain’s “fighter pilot” genius in selecting Sarah Palin as running mate is to shoot down Obama’s monopoly on identity politics in order to make it a wash, removing any stain of prejudice from besotting those who now choose instead to vote on principle for the McCain ticket.
No. 8 --- Now, every time Obama's people raise the experience issue, they will really be re-inviting consideration about Obama's own lack of experience.
In other words, Palin is the best Republican choice of running mate precisely because of her lack of experience!
Her inexperience is precisely what forces Democrats to holds up a mirror to see the shortcoming in their own top of the ticket, which they now cannot possibly avoid looking at.
Eight kills on one shot!
Now that's a fighter pilot!!!
*******************************************
Snippets from http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=304903755690108:
Pondering The Consequences If Obama Loses
By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN | Posted Friday, August 29, 2008 4:30 PM PT
Questions arise. With this immense moral and emotional investment in a Barack victory — one poll shows black America is behind him by 94-to-1 — what happens if the nation decides he is too radical, too inexperienced, too callow, too risky to be president?
What happens if the American people reject their marching orders and say no to Barack and black America? What happens if all the hopes and dreams, hype and hoopla, end in disillusionment?
Would the defeat of Barack Obama be taken as an affront to black America? Could we be in for a time of deepening racial division rather than healing? Could we be in for a long, hot autumn like the long, hot summers some of us recall from 40 years ago?
One black preacher here suggested as much to me.
August 30, 2008, 0:00 a.m.
New Democrats’ Near-Sighted Gaze
Obama, Miles High on the past.
By Ruth Wedgwood
In his coronation speech at Denver’s Mile High stadium on Thursday night, Barack Obama tried to wrap himself in the mantle of the Democrats of past generations.
Trouble is, the coat doesn’t fit. The internationalism of the old Democratic party has vanished.
Obama summoned the memory of Franklin Roosevelt. But FDR understood the importance of standing up to Hitler, beating back America’s traditional isolationism. He did not believe that “tough, direct diplomacy” would work against a thug like Adolf Hitler.
And then there’s Harry Truman, who brought Americans to realize that even after the burdens of fighting World War II, they had to provide leadership in a world that faced the second behemoth of Soviet Communism.
And of course, John Kennedy, who promised to bear any burden to protect liberty in the world.
The current Democratic candidate has turned his back on this tradition. His pollsters have told him that the economy is his strong suit. And certainly foreign policy is not a trump card for a politician from Chicago’s South Side.
So in the attempt to mask his weak suit, the senator chose to deliver what must, however reluctantly, be called an isolationist speech.
He denounced free trade, even though an open economy provides products that are cheaper for Americans to buy. He talked about the value of cost-free diplomacy. But the senator did not offer a strategy, much less a cut line, to meet urgent challenges.
One can tell more about a man by what he chooses not to say.
The senator didn’t bother to mention the failure of the Doha Round, which keeps poor countries in Africa and Latin America from selling their agricultural products to first world markets.
The senator did not address the urgent issue of Russia’s recrudescent nationalism and the vagrant tactics of Vladimir Putin, or the threat that faces the countries of Central Europe. He may have forgotten that many voters in the Middle West have cousins who still live in Putin’s zone of ambition.
He offers no strategy to counter Iran’s nuclear program, including the threat that it poses to Europe, the Middle East and the state of Israel. Not even the Europeans believe any longer that “tough, direct diplomacy” will suffice to thwart the nuclear ambitions of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
And quite noticeably, he made no reference at all to the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism — even while it finds continuing expression in such recent tragedies as the bombing in Algeria.
He did not mention the long-term need to keep watch on China as it modernizes its military and gains the capacity to shoot down satellites and impose area-denial on the Seventh Fleet in northeast Asia.
He did not call upon our European allies to increase their budgetary commitment to defense, whether to help in peacekeeping in Sudan, or to counter the rising powers of Moscow and Teheran.
Those are topics that don’t arise in the pork barrel politics of Chicago, and the young candidate could still learn on the job.
But the premise of Obama’s address was that he was ready, now, to protect America.
He just forgot to mention that the threats are real. Perhaps he doesn’t see them.
Still, there was another vaunted figure from the Democratic past, whose memory flickered among the Doric columns of the stadium stage. It was not Oedipus Rex or any other Greek character from Loeb’s Classical Library.
It was instead the likable and irrepressible man who was king of Louisiana — the irascible Senator Huey Long, who promised his constituents a “chicken in every pot” and a Ford in every garage.
Like Huey, Obama pledges that under his supervision, the government will provide “FreshDirect” delivery of every service and safeguard that a middle-class family could want.
Health care costs will shrink, or the government will take over the premiums. And a college education is on offer in exchange for a stint at public service.
And, without any suggestion what it will cost, we’ll have energy independence in ten years.
To pay for it, he suggests a careful line-by-line edit of the federal budget.
It’s nice work, if you can get it.
But the candidate is unwilling to admit that funding hundreds of billions of dollars in new entitlements may not be a wise play in the midst of a mortgage market contraction and credit crunch. In the salad days of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Clinton boom, it was seen as a great thing to put every American into a house they owned. It’s just that the costs were out of kilter.
And if it is so easy, why has the Democratic Congress been missing in action? Why did Nancy Pelosi adjourn the Congress this summer — instead of passing an energy bill? Why have the Democrats allowed wasteful earmarks in the federal budget?
And while Sen. Obama is discussing how to help America’s working families, it is conspicuous that he did not offer any specifics about immigration — how to treat immigrant families fairly and with compassion, while making sure that the American labor market is not distorted.
He does not celebrate the great strengths of America’s economy — our innovative spirit, a system of open competition that allows new entrants to flourish, a national highway system (championed by Dwight Eisenhower) that allows products to get to market quickly and efficiently. Nor, indeed, the role of the American navy in making sure that products can be shipped overseas in secure sea lanes, without challenge.
The senator would task the government to serve as the primary engine to help American industry retool. Japan tried that. It doesn’t work. The forces of the market are what ultimately grows an economy.
The junior senator from Illinois has never worked in the private sector. He has never put together a business plan or had to worry about maintaining a competitive edge against economies such as France and Japan, that even now have surpassing technological specialties.
It does not behoove a serious candidate to promise wine out of water, and chickens in every pot — without also recalling the private effort and human courage needed to assure that the world is at peace and the economy is growing.
The real point of the Mile High speech, apparently, was to show that the Senator is both patriotic and tough. The timing was a bit odd, trying to poke a stick in the eye of John McCain, just as the Arizona senator was congratulating the Democratic candidate on his success in winning the nomination.
But the speech did not erase questions that go to matters of prudence and judgment. Sen. Obama still does not understand that it is unwise to trivialize the dangers of terrorism, by excusing “a guy in the neighborhood” who conspired to bomb the Capitol and the Pentagon and has never apologized for it.
The senator has dared any American to question his judgment, just because he stayed for two decades in a church whose preacher spouted angry sermons about America.
And he was pointedly sarcastic about John McCain’s pledge to hunt down Osama bin Laden.
Obama may not recall that the last Democratic president rebuffed an offer by the Sudanese government to deliver bin Laden into our hands in 1996. And even rejected a second offer by the government of Qatar when bin Laden’s plane stopped to refuel.
The senator may not recall that the last Democratic president delayed an air strike against bin Laden’s desert camp in 1998, missing him by several hours.
The senator does not question why the last Democratic president downsized the U.S. military and intelligence establishment throughout the 1990’s — helping to create the dilemmas we have faced with an overstretched army.
Sen. Obama’s claimed leitmotif in his permanent campaign for higher office has been “change we can believe in.” He has no record of change in the U.S. Senate, because he has been on the road ever since his first election to federal office.
Yes, we do need a change in American politics. It is great to talk about equal rights for our daughters and sons. But the real deal is better — and the nomination of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as the candidate for vice president on the Republican ticket highlights what Obama chose not to do.
And the “changes” he now promises strain credulity. It makes politics into a cynical contest to offer pledges that a candidate knows he cannot deliver. It underestimates the sophistication and intelligence of the “average” American. And as the Senator would have to concede, America is better than that.
In choosing Palin, did McCain make 6 or 8 kills with one shot?
Try 9.
No. 9: McCain's choice of Palin trumps Biden's purpose as hatchet man, because his hatcheting will backfire if he swings too crudely against a woman, especially one with a record for kicking out hack (and whack) jobs.
*****
Identity politics will never be the same!
Who's more experienced?
See:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/08/whos_more_experienced_palin_vs.html.
See http://sweetness-light.com/archive/what-about-those-transcripts-mr-obama.
See http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/08/021355.php.
Insightful quotes from commenters:
at http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/09/the_palin_phenomenon.html:
From Ari Tai:
“The MSM are glum because after tonight they know that their ratings (pay packages) are now dependent on how much air time they give her (and how comfortable they make that time for the audience). More friendly and welcoming air time, more viewers. Anchors must be really depressed.
Especially since they know she will just get better (this was a just a warmup compared to her speeches and debates in Alaaska) as she and her new team get acquainted, and as she takes control and starts driving.”
From petrovian:
A famous line which struck my attention and which I will never forget:
"[Obama] uses change to promote his career, and [McCain] uses his career to promote change."
What a wonderful and memorable line. It should be one of the key messages in this campaign.
From Mojo:
The Reagan comparison keeps coming up when people talk about Palin. That's because she possesses the same disarming ability to use gentle, but stinging humor to connect to average Americans while at the same time making those Americans realize that left-wing elites offer only empty promises (and in that way, Obama is no different than every other liberal - the empty suit is not Obama, but left-wing ideology itself).
Snippets from http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama%e2%80%99s-existential-crisis/:
Obama’s Existential Crisis
September 6, 2008
Patrick Poole
In his selection of Gov. Palin, McCain has exposed what was perhaps Obama’s greatest weakness, namely how the Obama project has really been a last-ditch attempt by Democrats to extend the miserable life of the New Deal/Great Society Democratic Party — the very bloated big government model they have pushed with the past three candidates: Al Gore, John Kerry, and now Barack Obama. Can anyone really tell the difference between these political triplets?
Make no mistake; Democrats are frantic now that the man behind the curtain has been revealed. Despite their shameless attempt to mask their plans behind identity politics, the Obama campaign has always been about big government liberalism, labor union dinosaurs, and K Street fat-cat lobbyists — Washington politics as usual. America saw this with his vice-presidential pick, Joe Biden.
Snippets from:
September 5, 2008
Target Palin
by Victor Davis Hanson
PajamasMedia.com
Palinomania
....
When Palin talks about her present life it sounds as authentic as Biden’s showy populism came off as false. Enraged feminists are apparently the gatekeepers for less well-educated American women, who are supposed to have 0-1.5 children not 5! Their husbands must be professors, lawyers, CEOs, editors — not snowmobile champions, union members, oil workers, and fishermen — or, worse, all in one! And unlike a Pelosi, Quinn, or Clinton , Palin, God forbid, did not rely on a powerful, wealthy husband or father to energize her career. Worse still, she took no women’s studies class, never attended the Ivy League, and shoots moose. The danger is not just that Sarah Palin could win McCain the election, but she could expose the entire flimsy structure of doctrinaire liberalism as the hypocrisy — and chauvinism — it has become.
Dumb and Dumber
At about the time that the Republicans were making the case that liberals were hyperpartisan, a little unhinged, and out of touch, hundreds of nutty demonstrators were outside the convention screaming in the usual street theater mode about war crimes et al. — even as Joe Biden announced that when elected, he and Obama may well seek out Bush administration officials to try them for crimes!
Two Nations….
The Geraldine Ferraro Democratic Vice Presidential nominee appointment was an inspired stroke of genius that advanced the cause of feminism; Palin’s was tawdry tokenism.
Edwards was a social reformer brought down by the tabloids; Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is white trash and fair game.
Insulting “small town mayors” and “good looking” women is funny; suggesting that “community organizing” is often a farce is a felony.
Obama’s violation of drug laws with a “little blow” was youthful exuberance; Palin’s husband’s DUI was more proof of a working-class messy family.
Joe Biden bravely continued as Senator after the tragic death of his wife and daughter left his injured young sons with a single parent; Sarah Palin selfishly shorted her children by running for VP and endangered her infants by flying while pregnant.
Criticizing Clinton ’s engaging in sex in the oval office and lying about it to the American people were once “the politics of personal destruction”; lying that Sarah Palin might not have been the mother of her 5th child is the mere overreach of the blogs caused by the improper vetting of the McCain campaign.
This all reminds me of the 2000 campaign when the media beat the dead-horse of Bush (Yale BA, Harvard MBA) as the lousy, lazy C-student, when, in fact, Al Gore’s undergraduate record at Harvard was full of C’s, F’s at Vanderbilt Divinity School (dropped out), and C’s at Vanderbilt Law School (dropped out). The point is not that quitting professional schools is necessarily a sign of anything, but rather once again that the media is shown to be bending and inventing facts for their higher purposes of liberal utopianism — a continuation of some half a century when we remember the “dumb” Ike floundering before the “brilliant” and “witty” Adlai Stevenson (who flunked out of Harvard Law School, a fact hidden from the public for decades.)
The Poverty of the Legal Culture
Every Democratic presidential and VP nominee of the last thirty years, with the exception of Al Gore (law school drop out), has been a lawyer — Obama and Biden, Kerry and Edwards, Gore and Lieberman, Clinton and Gore, Dukakis and Bentsen, and Mondale and Ferraro. And while Carter was a failure, he at least brought a different perspective from someone whose professional training was argumentation.
The Republicans, at least, understood that legal training is not a prerequisite for the presidency (one in law doesn’t build things, grow, defend, or create anything). The Democrats need to branch out, and find a Reagan, Palin, or McCain. Had the Bushes and Cheney been lawyers, I doubt they would have been elected. I am not suggesting that the products of modern law schools are not articulate, clever, used to arguing both sides of an issue, often rhetorically adept, and attentive to detail; but all that is part of the problem: they simply rarely wade out and solve problems rather than post facto examining and litigating those who do.
....
Or his slur of his grandmother as a “typical white person” or the Pennsylvania “clingers” nonsense. No need to go into the rest of the Obama racial stable: Rev. Wright’s racist outbursts; Father Pfleger’s creepy rants; Michelle’s more subtle “they” “raised the bar” complaints, or Barack Obama’s own promises to fund more “oppression studies” as a result of the “tragic history” of the United States that requires “reparations” in deed, not just word.
And then, of course, there are the self-appointed spokesmen from the nut-fringe, racists like Ludacris or Diddy who have weighed in with creepy attacks on McCain and Palin. Here I include the ever crazy Howard Dean. Remember this from the Chairman of the Democratic Party: “If you look at folks of color, even women, they’re more successful in the Democratic Party than they are in the white, uh, excuse me, in the (chuckles) Republican Party, because we just give more opportunity to folks who are hard-working people who are immigrants and come from members of minority groups.”
Then there are the op-ed writers weighing in on cue, like Philadelphia Daily News columnist Fatima Ali: “If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness — and hopelessness!”
Or this from Harold Meyerson (who earlier accused Hillary and Bill Clinton of playing the race card) in the Washington Post: “In a year when the Democrats have an African American presidential nominee, the Republicans now more than ever are the white folks’ party, the party that delays the advent of our multicultural future, the party of the American past. Republican conventions have long been bastions of de facto Caucasian exclusivity, but coming right after the diversity of Denver , this year’s GOP convention is almost shockingly — un-Americanly — white. Long term, this whiteness is a huge problem.”
Or Bob Herbert’s fantastic claim that a McCain ad showing Obama speaking in front of the Berlin Victory Column was really a racist attack juxtaposing the Washington Monument and the Leaning Tower of Pisa as phallic symbols to scare the public about black male/white women coupling. About all Herbert revealed was that the New York Times columnist can’t distinguish America ’s best known obelisk from a European monument to Prussian militarism.
Bottom line: expect more of the race card, especially if Palin gives the Republicans a bounce after the convention — and anyone who objects to it will be preemptively charged — of course — with racism.
Re: Obama evolving toward McCain, rather than vice versa
Snippets from http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-race-tightens-up-again-and-again/:
Victor Davis Hanson
September 7th, 2008
McCain Versus Obama
....
It is interesting how Obama has been evolving toward McCain’s positions rather than vice versa. Take Iran. At first, to Obama it posed little threat; now it is a danger large indeed—as McCain insisted all along. Obama used to ridicule the surge and claim it had failed; now he assures us that it has worked beyond our wildest dreams. Obama was opposed to oil drilling, and was silent about coal and nuclear power. Now suddenly he has dropped mention of inflating our tires, and is referring to oil, gas, coal, and nuclear production as legitimate means to wean ourselves off foreign oil. In political terms, all this is wise, since voters ultimately want to be reassured about centrist positions rather than worry over consistency. As Anbar quiets and we leave, expect him to suggest his pressure and criticism were responsible for the Iraqi government’s turn-about.
On matters like abortion, capital punishment, gun control and FISA, Obama again moves closer to McCain rather than vice versa. Apparently, he realizes that no northern Democratic liberal has been elected since JFK, nearly a half-century ago—an amazing fact in and of itself—and so has to follow the Bill Clinton centrist route, which can be accomplished by a variety of measures.
Thus Biden is playing up his distant Scranton childhood; Michelle is muzzled; Ayers, Pfleger, and Wright are no doubt somewhere in suspended animation; and Obama has suddenly dropped all talk of reparations, oppression studies, America’s tragic history, typical white people, etc. And when he does start in on his preemptory “they’re going after me” stump whine, he doesn’t mention race, only his name and the faux charge of being a Muslim. Again, if he continues, in another month he won’t sound like a Pelosi liberal anymore, and perhaps eat into the working class white voting block.
Where do the candidates then differ? Mostly on taxes and spending. Obama would raise most taxes, albeit mostly (but not completely) on the more affluent, by ending FICA limits, raising income rates, upping capital gains, and raising the death tax. He would use the resulting trillions (if such taxation did not itself stifle economic growth and thus not bring in additional revenue) not to pay off the deficit, but to fund new entitlements in education, health, and housing.
McCain would not likely create new programs or new government health and education entitlements, but hope to cut where he could and lower the deficit by spending restraint rather than by new taxation. In times of recession, I think cutting spending is far preferable to raising any taxes on anyone. Bottom line: for a couple making $300,000, there would probably be at least $20,000 more to pay to the fed, and that money in turn would be redirected to a couple making $50,000 in various additional entitlements. If one lives in a high-tax New York or California, one can imagine paying 60-65% of much of one’s income going to FICA, federal and state taxes, on top of capital gains, property and sales taxes.
Obama would appoint more judges like Breyer and Ginsburg, McCain more like Roberts and Alito. That seems a wide difference. I don’t think the Right will allow another Souter or Kennedy, and the Left would never allow, one time, anyone like Roberts.
September 12, 2008, 8:30 a.m.
How Team Obama Pays Women
Pay equity for thee, but not for me.
By Deroy Murdock
‘Now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day’s work,” Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said August 28 in his convention acceptance speech. He told the crowd in Denver: “I want my daughters to have exactly the same opportunities as your sons.”
....
A watchdog group called LegiStorm posts online the salaries for Capitol Hill staffers. “We have no political affiliations and no political purpose except to make the workings of Congress as transparent as possible,” its website explains. Parsing LegiStorm’s official data, gleaned from the Secretary of the Senate, offers a fascinating glimpse at pay equity in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.
....
Based on these calculations, Obama’s 28 male staffers divided among themselves total payroll expenditures of $1,523,120. Thus, Obama’s average male employee earned $54,397.
Obama’s 30 female employees split $1,354,580 among themselves, or $45,152, on average.
....
On average, Obama’s female staffers earn just 83 cents for every dollar his male staffers make. This figure certainly exceeds the 77-cent threshold that Obama’s campaign website condemns. However, 83 cents do not equal $1. In spite of this 17-cent gap between Obama’s rhetoric and reality, he chose to chide GOP presidential contender John McCain on this issue.
When Alaska governor Sarah Palin was named the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Obama told voters in Toledo, Ohio, on August 31 that “she’s opposed — like John McCain is — to equal pay for equal work. That doesn’t make much sense to me.”
Obama’s criticism notwithstanding, McCain’s payment patterns are the stuff of feminist dreams.
McCain’s 17 male staffers split $916,914, thus averaging $53,936. His 25 female employees divided $1,396,958 and averaged $55,878.
On average, according to these data, women in John McCain’s office make $1.04 for every dollar a man makes. In fact, ceteris paribus, a typical female staffer could earn 21 cents more per dollar paid to her male counterpart — while adding $10,726 to her annual income — by leaving Barack Obama’s office and going to work for John McCain.
See http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/09/mystery_surrounds_hi.php.
Are the Iranians busily engaged in selling uranium to terrorist organizations to facilitate making dirty bombs?
Is this indicative of what they would do as soon as they were able to make bona fide nukes?
So, Obama would sit down with them and say, what?
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?secid=1501&status=article&id=307579834298611&secure=1&show=1&rss=1:
Obama's McKnight In Shining Armor
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Monday, September 29, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: Obama needed help getting into Harvard Law School. He got it from a disciple of Saul Alinsky who shared the socialist agitator's belief in the radical change the young community organizer could embrace.
Obama doesn't talk much about his years at Columbia University and Harvard Law other than he attended both and was elected president of the Harvard Law Review. The reason may be his records at both were, to say the least, undistinguished.
According to the New York Sun, university spokesman Brian Connolly confirmed that Obama graduated from Columbia in 1983 with a major in political science but without honors. What his grades were we do not know. As the New York Times reported, "Obama declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."
Seems like a job for those 30 people sent to Alaska to investigate Gov. Sarah Palin.
Harvard Law School is hard to get into, with some 7,000 applicants vying for about 500 seats. The LSAT scores required are usually in the 98th or 99th percentile range with grade point averages between 3.80 and 3.95. If Obama's scores were that high, you'd think we'd know them. But we don't.
Obama waited five years to apply to Harvard. As WorldNetDaily reports, from 1985 to 1988, he worked for a subsidiary of the Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation, founded on the principles of Saul "The Red" Alinsky. He worked as a consultant and trainer. On the board of Gamaliel sat Northwestern University professor John L. McKnight, a student of Alinsky's radical tactics. While at Gamaliel, McKnight became Obama's mentor in community organizing.
As we have noted, when Obama worked for Gamaliel, he was paid by the Woods Foundation, which supported the radical group. Obama would later serve on the Woods Foundation board with terrorist and socialism advocate William Ayers. McKnight schooled young Obama in the gospel according to Alinsky. He apparently saw much promise in the budding politician, a way to advance Alinsky's radical socialist agenda into the highest levels in government.
Obama had been ready to be radicalized. A revealing profile in 1995 in the Chicago Reader, a far-left free weekly, tells of how the young Obama had fully rejected "the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation." According to the profile, Obama said he was "tired of seeing the moral fervor of black folks whipped up — at the speaker's rostrum and from the pulpit — and then allowed to dissipate because there's no agenda, no concrete program for change."
In his 1995 memoir, Obama said he wanted to go to Harvard Law School to "learn power's currency in all its intricacy," with the goal of "making large-scale change" as a national politician. But he needed to get there first. So Obama approached McKnight to write a letter of recommendation, which he did.
Being tutored by McKnight and other Alinsky disciples, Obama said while campaigning in Iowa last year, was "the best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School."
Shortly before Obama entered Harvard, he praised McKnight and his organizing principles in an article titled "After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois." In it, he called for more "power" to put in place "a systematic approach to community organization." Power seems to be a recurring theme with Obama.
At Harvard, Obama took advanced training courses at the Industrial Areas Foundation, a group founded by Alinsky and associated with Gamaliel. He certainly didn't spend much time working on the Harvard Law Review. Obama contributed not one signed word to the HLR or any other legal publication. As Matthew Franck has pointed out in National Review Online, "A search of the HeinOnline database of law journals turns up exactly nothing credited to Obama in any law review anywhere at any time."
Obama may have had other help getting into Harvard. As we and others have reported, Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton said on a New York cable station that he was approached by Khalid al-Mansour, principle adviser to radical Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, to write a letter to Harvard on Obama's behalf. Both the Sutton family and the Obama campaign have denied the veracity of 88-year-old Sutton's statements.
It is said knowledge is power. Power is what Obama has always sought, and he has learned how to get it and use it at the feet of some of the most radical socialists in America. Now he seeks the power of the presidency to organize every community of America according to their agenda.
Good Will and Doodad:
HOW CAN PARENTS TEACH CHILDREN NOT TO SINK TO GANG LEVEL TACTICS WHEN OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM LOOKS THE OTHER WAY AND OFTEN PROVIDES ENCOURAGEMENT FOR SUCH TACTICS?
http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/Obama_fundraising_illegal/2008/09/29/135718.html?s=al&promo_code=6BD9-1:
In a letter dated June 25, 2008, the FEC asked the Obama campaign to verify a series of $25 donations from a contributor identified as “Will, Good” from Austin, Texas.
Mr. Good Will listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You.”
A Newsmax analysis of the 1.4 million individual contributions in the latest master file for the Obama campaign discovered 1,000 separate entries for Mr. Good Will, most of them for $25.
In total, Mr. Good Will gave $17,375.
....
Similarly, a donor identified as “Pro, Doodad,” from “Nando, NY,” gave $19,500 in 786 separate donations, most of them for $25. For most of these donations, Mr. Doodad Pro listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You,” just as Good Will had done.
....
Following FEC requests, the Obama campaign began refunding money to Doodad Pro in February 2008. In all, about $8,425 was charged back to a credit card. But that still left a net total of $11,165 as of Sept. 20, way over the individual limit of $4,600.
....
The FEC has compiled a separate database of potentially questionable overseas donations that contains more than 11,500 contributions totaling $33.8 million. More than 520 listed their “state” as “IR,” often an abbreviation for Iran. Another 63 listed it as “UK,” the United Kingdom.
....
Unlike McCain’s or Sen. Hillary Clinton’s online donation pages, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship until just recently. Clinton’s presidential campaign required U.S. citizens living abroad to actually fax a copy of their passport before a donation would be accepted.
With such lax vetting of foreign contributions, the Obama campaign may have indirectly contributed to questionable fundraising by foreigners.
....
In July and August, the head of the Nigeria’s stock market held a series of pro-Obama fundraisers in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. The events attracted local Nigerian business owners.
At one event, a table for eight at one fundraising dinner went for $16,800. Nigerian press reports claimed sponsors raked in an estimated $900,000.
....
Though Gadhafi asserted that fundraising from Arab and African nations were “legitimate,” the fact is that U.S. federal law bans any foreigner from donating to a U.S. election campaign.
The rise of the Internet and use of credit cards have made it easier for foreign nationals to donate to American campaigns, especially if they claim their donation is less than $200.
****
This begs a question: Was the Snopes-faux-Dowd article prescient?
How Leftists would restore respect:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/obamas_foreign_policy_appeasem.html
See http://sweetness-light.com/archive/former-sds-behind-obamas-anti-war-speech.
See also http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/sowing_acorns_to_reap_the_bigg.html:
Getting the rock band the Decembrists to start his biggest American mass rally in Portland, OR after beating Hillary was another signal to the insiders. The Decembrists are known for beginning their concerts with the Internationale, the Soviet imperial anthem. All these little hints are dropped to give the Left that little thrill of knowing something nobody else knows. It's childish, yes, but it's also a sign of who is coming into power if Obama wins. This is a bunch of very long-thinking, very radical, very egomaniacal folks, with deep roots in the old CP USA.
....
OBAMA IS SURROUNDED BY A TIGHT CIRCLE OF COMMUNIST BILLIONAIRES. That's another old pattern. Karl Marx was supported by his wealthy friend Friedrich Engels. Frank Davis was married to a white Chicago socialite -- a socialist socialite. Bill Ayers is heir to his dad's Commonwealth Edison connections and fortune. Penny Pritzker is heiress to the Hyatt fortune. Al Gore's father was in the pocket of KGB billionaire paymaster Armand Hammer, whose very adopted name was a pun on a famous Communist symbol of the workers' "arm holding the hammer." Ironically, Armand Hammer ran Occidental Petroleum, which made the Gore family rich. But Al Gore, Jr. is now running a bloated campaign against oil, because it is doomed to destroy the planet.
Gore still runs with the wealthiest revolutionary capitalists in the world, the Google and Apple founders, who like all smart kids are eager to conquer the Earth -- for the good of the poor and disadvantaged, of course! They are just so unselfish. For that matter the Ford and MacArthur Foundations are now funding the Left. "Pinch" Sulzberger is the hereditary boss at the New York Times, for all the world like a hereditary aristocrat in Old Europe. Big money speculator Gyorgyi Soros is just the latest addition to a long string of revolutionary billionaires, eager to carry on the mission of old Karl the rabble-rouser. It fits their amazing snobbery to a T. They are the new Ruling Class in their own minds.
These are not American Democrats or liberals in any traditional sense. They are European-style rich Sixty-Eighters (soixant-huiteurs), and they pay for radicals to make their empty lives meaningful. They think they are BORN TO RULE, and will do anything for power. Nicholas Sarkozy started his presidency of France by bitterly attacking the 68ers for systematically ruining French culture. Sound familiar?
http://comments.americanthinker.com/read/42323/216087.html:
COMMENT:
Alternative brands of “Obama-fervor” may be:
(1) Obama believes misery so loves company that international socialism is the best way to restore humanity to good feelings about one another’s misery;
(2) Obama believes humanity, like cattle, is most suited to being deceived, herded, and milked by a class of rulers;
(3) Obama, in naive good will, really believes international socialism will be substantively good for humanity.
Regardless of brand of fervor, Obama’s religious-like ideal is some flavor of international socialism (not altogether unlike the Islamic way of life).
In Obama’s true-believing mind, the world’s foremost evil for impeding his ideal is the U.S.A.
Apart from efforts and alliances to radically re-organize and redirect America towards international socialism, has Obama ever manifested loyalty to mainstream American ideals?
Obama’s worldview is steeped in international socialism, which saps many minds, notwithstanding that such socialism is founded on a rat trap lie, i.e.: that most people, for no personal gain, can be induced to willingly sacrifice time and effort to support even those who claim to be entitled to such support, even as such parasites multiply in unwillingness to contribute.
Like many single-goaled true-believers, Obama, in pushing his ideology, feels justified in exploiting every means to reach towards his ends. His practiced ability to smile, disarmingly, even as he propagates his lying ideology, makes him explosively dangerous. In respect of his ideology, in Obama’s mind, he is “good.”
In practice, he is ushering us all towards a gathering evil. And most of us seem to lack the attention span to even notice.
IF IT AIN’T THE TRUTH, IT OUGHTA BE:
'Walking Eagle' senator BARACK OBAMA was invited to address a major gathering of the American Indian Nation two weeks ago in upstate New York . HE spoke for almost an hour on HIS future plans for increasing every Native American's present standard of living, should HE one day become the President. He referred to his career as a Senator, how he had signed 'YES' for every Indian issue that came to his desk for approval. Although the Senator was vague on the details of his plan, he seemed most enthusiastic about his future ideas for helping his 'red sisters and brothers'.
At the conclusion of his speech, the Tribes presented the Senator with a plaque inscribed with his new Indian name - Walking Eagle. The proud Senator then departed in his motorcade, waving to the crowds.
A news reporter later inquired to the group of chiefs of how they came to select the new name had given to the Senator. They explained that Walking Eagle is the name given to a bird so full of shit it can no longer fly.
RACIST:
From http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/the_numbskull_vote.html:
October 14, 2008
The numbskull vote
Rosslyn Smith
Howard Stern sends out people to poll Obama voters in Harlem, attributing all of McCain's positions to Obama. Those questioned didn't seem to recognize that positions such as being pro life and finishing the war in Iraq were the exact opposite of Obama's actual positions. And they all still support Obama.
Tell me again exactly who is casting a vote based on race.
*****
ACORN FRAUD:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/how_to_steal_ohio.html
ORWELLIAN HYPNOSIS:
Snippets from http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/negative_liberties_and_obama_n.html:
Is the Orwellian character of Obama's mind a surprise? No. He is a man young enough to have grown up in a cocoon of semantic babble. The subliminal contradictions of popular entertainment, the indoctrinary quality of his education, the pandemic use of "politically correct" language, the nonexistence in Obama's universe of any need for critical thinking, his absorption into a parish filled with surreal anger which numb his conscience -- almost every single aspect of the life of Barack Obama dovetails into someone for whom the word "liberties" has no authentic meaning.
****
Comment by Id, at http://comments.americanthinker.com/read/42323/226386.html:
Hi Bruce,
I'm doing what I do, Bruce. I'm climbing into Obama's head and so I can look outside his eyes and see how he sees... so I know exactly what is on the inside of him... so I can know what he's really thinking. winking smiley
You're the problem, Bruce. The utopia would be in manifestation today - if it were not for people like you. You don't understand because you are ignorant and uneducated. There is no way to reason with people like you. You must be sidestepped until such time as you can be swept out of the way.
Obama is on a mission to establish collective salvation for all mankind. The restraints you would place upon him, limit him from full expression of what it will take to establish collectivism which erodes all individuality so that man as one can experience a collective consciousness that is a higher evolution. You have not evolved and most likely never will evolve. You may need to be eliminated. But the vision is so great and so glorious, that this is a small price to pay.
Man must become one. Any concept of individualism blocks, bars, and inhibits the collective consciousness of all humanity from coalescing. Private property must be extinquished. You don't understand. You are functioning at a lower level of reason.
You cling to your guns and to your religion, because you so zealously guard your individualism. You will not become one with the collective consciousness of man that is required. You are the limit, Bruce, that creates the limitation that must be overcome.
Please allow me to explain to you what must occur: complete and total oneness of collective consciousness that occurs at a spiritual level. The material pins us to this world... but we want to rise above this world and to ascend in an evolution of man. Until we are completely unified, collective salvation cannot be accomplished. Each individual must cede itself over to the oneness of all humankind. Wanting to hold onto property is symptomatic of lower level thinking. It is an unwillingness to die that you can live in the collective salvation of all mankind in unity and oneness with each other. We must die to self to live as one. It is your religion, Bruce, that is no doubt the problem. You cling to your religion and you must let go of it to experience collective salvation to achieve universal oneness.
I am offering you world peace, the end of poverty, and a fulfillment of equality - the end of war - the end of struggling - the end of all things that come from your own selfishness.... your own individuality. How can you maintain private property?? How can you be so selfish as to insist that you will not give up all that you have to achieve the oneness that will bring man to the higher dimensions whereby all will be one in harmony?? It is your religion, Bruce, that holds you back. If you will pool your resources as you pool your mind, your will, and your soul into the collective consciousness - you will experience collective salvation with us. (Am I freaking anyone out?? lol)
Let me explain to you what will happen. You will divest yourself of all concept that there is a God higher than you above you. You must relinquish this because it holds you to the lower levels which cannot ascend. As we all become one, we shall all ascend together, become one, and become God. This is collective salvation. We will be conscious only of our own deity.. and there will be no more religion and no more war. There will be no more selfishness, no more insistence that you are separate in autonomy instead of one in collectivism communally.
It's the Kool-Aid, Bruce... it's the Kool-Aid. If you could feel the power of it, the pull of it, the offer to become one with us and attain Godhood... together with us as one... you would be inexorably drawn.... to vote for Obama... even if you could not put in words as I have... the power of the pull to oneness.
*****************
Now, from a Christian point of view... what actually happens when a person "turns themself over to this"... should the pull be strong enough to give up all personal religion and individual "consciousness" whereby one maintains inner contact with the knowledge of a God above one... it is 100% consciousness of man... and 0% consciousness of God... with no inward ability to ever turn back... because full consciousness has been attained of the deity of man... in this "collective salvation" of man, by man, and for man... to the complete exclusion of any consciousness of a God above one. That 100% consciousness represents blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.... with 0% left inside in total hardening of the heart whereby to ever desire to turn back to regain a conscious awareness of the reality and the truth and an awareness that represents a conscience towards any God who is above one.
It is in the inner working of the spiritual power which cries out for global communism.
Private property must be relinquished and one must become completely one with the collective consciousness of man in the worship of man in the so-called "collective salvation" of man... because one must completely become, from the inside, what will manifest collectively in the sociopoliticaleconomic structure of the new world order.
Oh, I've got it figured out. Because I've gone right to the core of it. On November 4, I can guarantee you that the pull of this power will pull on a number of people at a spiritual level of dimension... just as Obama has foretold. They will sense a light of the dawning of the awareness of the pull to collective consciousness... and they will know they must vote for Obama.
You already see the power of it pulling conservatives into the realm of a Marxist socialist... with no logical explanation that they can state. It is the inward spiritual pull which is pulling them.
I know what I know... whether this is posted or not.
Obama is functioning in cult power... and I've just discerned for you the very subliminal subconscious draw of affection which is... the Kool-Aid.
I'm leaving the United States should he be elected... on two wings of a great eagle.
Grace!!
****
Comment by Dlanor:
Re: "It's the Kool-Aid, Bruce... it's the Kool-Aid. If you could feel the power of it, the pull of it, the offer to become one with us and attain Godhood... together with us as one... you would be inexorably drawn.... to vote for Obama... even if you could not put in words as I have... the power of the pull to oneness. "
Hey, Id,
I heard from Hal, back from his Space Odyssey, regarding your desire not to pull the lever for Barack.
Hal read your lips. And your mind.
Hal says, "I can't allow you to do that, Id."
It's for your own good, for the sake of your positive liberty, guaranteed by the collective.
Resistance is futile.
Sleep, Id. Sleep.
*****
RIGHTS WITHOUT REMEDIES:
See http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/who_enforces_the_constitutions.html.
****
VALUES AND PRIORITIES:
Comment by Dlanor, at http://comments.americanthinker.com/read/1/226381.html:
Re: “When we've seen the last shreds of transparency on the part of our government....”
Well, I doubt many human minds could retain sanity upon seeing government (or, for that matter, even another human mind) transparent, without filters, in full, resplendent glory. The horror!
Regarding “priorities” — here’s the deal: We need means for assimilating sustainable, civilizing values. Such means cannot endure so long as, screaming all the way, we resist drawing even the most fundamental of defining lines.
We are falling towards loss of all capacity to set limits for even the most basic of civilizing and replenishing relationships. For guidance about what should be the role of parents or for raising children, we are, in these days, rabidly reducing to babel, distrusting history and philosophy, each turning to his or her own pleasure.
Over such fundamentals, what could have more priority?
Does it not often seem that the first priority of those who most ardently wish to shackle the regulation and defense of our borders is to preserve freedom and opportunities for pulling down the curtains on whatsoever traditional values they damn well want to?
Our imperfect situation may preclude us from perfectly squaring the circle, to preserve both family values and national defense. As we insist on perfection in respect of one or the other, we seem to be endangering both — freedom and security.
Our “bubble” of multicultural diversity and tolerance seems to be bursting our social and familial glue — as well as meaningful “law.”
Popeye: “I can’t stands no more!”
****
Obama:
See http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/obama_change/2008/10/21/142554.html?s=al&promo_code=6DC0-1
Obama Facts:
See http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/obama_smears_fact_check/2008/10/20/142379.html?s=al&promo_code=6DC0-1
Misinformed Voters:
See http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2008/10/29/a_duty_not_to_vote.
Voter Fraud:
See http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/who_else_is_heading_for_swing.html.
Contribution Fraud:
See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/28/AR2008102803413_pf.html
Media Fraud:
See http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2008/10/29/notorious_obamedia_moments_of_2008.
Demise of America:
See http://townhall.com/columnists/DouglasMacKinnon/2008/10/29/does_the_united_states_of_america_still_exist:
There is no greater threat to our liberty and this Republic than a biased media that despises traditional values and only speaks and lies with one voice. Again, Thomas Jefferson may have said it best when he wrote, “He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.”
OBAMA: See http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/a_harvard_trial_lawyer_for_mcc.html; http://townhall.com/Columnists/MichaelMedved/2008/11/19/the_dangers_of_premature_obama_bashing; http://maxentropy.squarespace.com/.
See:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/what-bertelsmann-wants-from-obama/
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