After the Dems decided to start a five-week vacation, about 40 or so House Republicans, led by Mike Pence, stayed in the House chamber after the Dems adjourned to make a point about the Republican’s determination to get a drilling bill up for a vote. On her way out San Fran Nan had the lights turned off, the microphones turned off, and the C-SPAN cameras to be turned off as well. Classy broad, that Pelosi!
The House Republicans sent a letter to President Bush to call the Congress back into session until a vote is taken. President Bush was busy around 12:10pm this afternoon calling in to the Rush Limbaugh Show, congratulating Maha Rushie on 20 years of broadcast excellence. Bush 41 and Jeb also got on the line.
The House Republicans are showing leadership, demonstrating good politics, all while looking like the victim of Pelosi’s hard-handed tactics which are getting in the way of the people’s business. I hope they can keep this up until Election Day; this is good stuff!
“So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky. That’s essentially the argument they’re making.”
Whether this was innocent or not, it reeks of racial politics. What could he have possibly meant by that? How could that bold statement have been taken any other way than to infer that McCain’s campaign is going to use race as an issue in this campaign?
Of course, Obama commits this inappropriate racial remark and all that anyone can talk about is the Britney/Paris ad that the McCain camp released the other day! (Well, if the MSM and Obama people can’t get over the ad, then maybe it’s working the way it’s supposed to — notice most critiques are about how petty it is, not that it’s wrong on the issues.) But already we know who the MSM is voting for. I don’t like the ad, but the Obama-as-Diva theme definitely should have been brought up by surrogates at some point.
However, all is not perfect in Obamaland. Even some African Americans are getting a little impatient with Obama, as a small protest in Florida got reported today. Obama isn’t used to dissent at his functions and handled it so-so. I completely disagree with people shouting and disrupting Q&A sessions for anyone involved in politics (it’s reminiscent of Fascist Black Shirt tactics of silencing opponents through fear, intimidation and – as it turns out – shouting them down at rallies so the opposition candidates could not speak).
It hasn’t been such a great week for Obama: Sunday he was up by 9 points in the Gallup Poll, six days later it’s tied at 44%!
As we know, Our Savior Barack Obama will be giving a much anticipated campaign speech today at 7pm local time in Berlin, Germany. Not only will the locals be flipping a $786,000 tab for the non-President’s visit (how nice of him to let the Germans pay for his campaign bills), Hot Air picked up that the campaign’s chosen site has a bit of a Nazi past!
The “Victory Column” (Siegessäule) was initially built to commemorate Prussia’s waylaying of Denmark, Austria and France back in the Otto Von Bismarck days whose expansionism united modern Germany and formed the Second Reich. Where the Nazi Third Reich fits in is the fact that Hitler moved the “Victory Column” to its current location, built a taller column, and celebrated German expansionist polices eventually led directly to World War II.
Obama’s not a Nazi (he’s much closer to a communist anyway), but a little sensitivity would be appreciated!
Nonetheless, let me get this straight: Obama went to the Wailing Wall on the same day he’s speaking to Germans at a site chosen by Hitler to represent the power of the Third Reich, while having the locals pay for his campaign speech which is designed not for them, but for an American audience: now that’s audacity!!!
UPDATE: Obama’s given the speech and it was pretty obnoxious: he pretended not be a candidate, but a “citizen of the world” (laugh — is that his version of an “international test”?); teaching the Germans his view of history without any real context; knocking America on race and torture (obligatory for Libs, of course); he all but admitted that he was the Chosen One to get the world together save us from misery; etc.
Either way, this exchange broke out between the ladies, mostly Whoopi and Sherri versus Elisabeth, about the use of the “n-word.” As usual, they seemed to gang up on Elisabeth, although I believe she has the moral high-ground in this argument:
In my opinion, either it’s a good word or a bad word, but playing the “it’s our word” game is not only a complete violation of the First Amendment if use of the word leads to legal repercussions (which it does in certain circumstances, sometimes even when the word itself is not even used!), but it’s simply not playing fair. Also, adding an “a” or an “er” to the end of the word should make no difference if in principle it’s a bad word either.
Yet, it does make a difference, at least to my students, their music, and some in the media. Should it, though? Elisabeth says no, and based on principle I’m in solidarity with her on this one. I wonder what Jesse Jackson would have to say about all this?
As if there was any doubt about the MSM’s Big Three network’s bias towards Barack Obama, this removes all suggestion to the contrary. Charlie Gibson, Brian Williams, and Katie Couric are all going along on the trip! John McCain’s been to Iraq three times since campaigning began last year (that sound you hear is crickets), and eight times total since the war began. The MSM isn’t even trying to hide the bias anymore!
Yet, Obama hasn’t been to Iraq since January 2006 and has never visited the “real war” in Afghanistan, so all Big Three anchors will follow their clinically narcissistic and vain Good Shepherd around Europe and the Mideast, drooling, fawning, basking. I guess that it should be big news that Obama was guilted and cornered into taking this trip… by John McCain of all people! No mention of that in front of the Savior. In fact, some in the MSM are blaming the McCain camp for making this a bigger story than it otherwise would have been! So, McCain controls the media now? Hmm.
This trip will strain one’s objective credulity worse than Greta Van Susteran’s hanging out in Aruba for months looking for Natalee Holloway — what a hard assignment that must have been: very few breaks in the story but lots and lots of sunshine! It’ll be like watching the Big Three have spontaneous orgasms every night on TV, as they swoon over their chosen savior. Get your V-Chips ready! Good thing I don’t watch those networks. I honestly don’t know anyone under 50 who does watch them more than once a week. I’ll hear what’s going on when Brit Hume lets me know.
What makes this whole affair worse is that Obama’s trip to Europe, Iraq and Afghanistan will probably be paid for by the taxpayers since the trip is being billed as a “fact-finding mission.” Belonging to a Union I know what it feels like to have your money going to a campaign of someone you do not like and would never vote for. I hope people take notice of this: that, in the words of Rush fill-in Jed Babbin, the MSM has become a very large and very powerful “527″ in Obama’s favor.
Well, updating one’s website is normal, but updating the basic premise of an issue that garnered countless thousands of kook-fringe voters in the primaries is another thing altogether! Obama is both insulting the rubes that voted for him, while giving McCain an opening to legitimately harp on the flip-flop motif of which the Republicans have been trying to tag Obama this last month to great effect: abortion, faith-based initiatives, Iraq itself, gun rights, etc. are all part of the evidence!
Furthermore, Obama’s people are making a really dumb political move by allowing this speech without protest. Insisting that he give an Iraq/Afghanistan speech before he visits the region traps him in a very high-profile political way, making his trip just a lens to justify his preconceptions, not the other way around which would give more political cover to take the exact same positions he lays out today but with more legitimacy. It’s a ridiculous move and McCain’s already hitting him on it! Even Christopher Hitchens, a super duper uber leftist, believes that Obama’s “zero-sum” attitude towards the two theaters is unfounded and small-minded.
Former White House Press Secretary, radio talk-show host, moderator of “Fox News Sunday,” and former speechwriter for Bush 41, Tony Snow finally succumbed to the colon cancer he had been battling for a few years now when he died at about 2am Saturday morning at Georgetown University Hospital. Although they had removed his colon a few years ago, the cancer nonetheless spread to his liver last year. He leaves behind a wife, three children and many friends and admirers.
I’d been watching Tony Snow ever since my local cable finally carried Fox News back in 2000. It was kind of awkward watching Chris Wallace take over for him as the moderator of “Fox News Sunday” a few years later. Also, I remember Tony Snow filling for Rush once in a while when I was in college (Sean Hannity would also fill in from time to time, which happened to be my first exposure to both Hannity and Snow — thanks Rush for recognizing talent!). As Press Secretary, it was so refreshing to see Snow strike back at the MSM who was unsuccessfully trying desperately to embarrass him and the White House like they did so effectively to Scott McClellan.
Like Tim Russert, this death is a huge loss to the media and culture as both were taken from us with so much potential left to be realized.
Wednesday, Phil Gramm, former Senator from Texas and Presidential candidate back in 1996, said the following in an interview with the Washington Times:
“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”
“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.
Gramm also happens to be John McCain’s top economic adviser. Calling the electorate “whiners” is not a good formula for victory, so McCain threw Gramm under the bus yesterday for the comments, which the MSM was gleeful in saturation reporting of this – plus, it got Jesse Jackson’s castration threat of Obama off the front page real fast!
On the merits, Gramm or anyone in politics needs to know that it’s much easier to understand how $4.50 at the pump hurts the average commuter rather than the technical definition of recession as two consecutive quarters of negative growth or economic contraction. Technically, we’re not in recession — so Gramm is right.
But, the electorate has the right to complain, don’t they? Right. So, Gramm clarified his statements later saying that he meant it is the MSM and our leaders who are being doom-and-gloomy, which is giving the public a false economic picture when looking at the facts. Again, Gramm is right about the fundamentals of his argument, but the MSM is not any Republican’s friend, and statements like this are giving the Dems another reason to use the age-old argument that Republicans are just a bunch of country-club blue-bloods out of touch with the average American.
Here’s a clip of an off-the-air comment uttered by Jesse Jackson the other day about Barack Obama’s faith-based initiative:
Jackson, of course, apologized for the remarks, but nonetheless he still said it in an unscripted moment when he thought the cameras were no longer recording. Obama’s done the same thing when he talked about bitter small town America! In the YouTube era, the cameras are always on and will be seen everywhere fast! Obama quickly accepted the apology ostensibly so that the story would die as quickly as possible.
On the larger point though, Obama’s faith-based initiative would not let faith-based organizations screen clients or workers based on religious or ethical standards, which essentially makes the faith-based organization simply another arm of the government, without any regard for the faith itself. I’d be upset too if I were Jackson, since the black community has been served very well through Bush’s faith-based programs as they are. I don’t think I’d say I want to “cut his nuts off,” but I would be upset about Obama’s incessant condescension to blacks and his planned reversal of Bush’s successful policy.
It’s been really entertaining lately watching Barack Obama pretend that he’s a moderate and hasn’t changed any of his positions despite all the YouTube and print-media evidence to the contrary. Today’s FISA reauthorization/clarification bill is a great example:
Senator Obama unequivocally opposes giving retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies…. Granting such immunity undermines the constitutional protections Americans trust the Congress to protect. Senator Obama supports a filibuster of this bill, and strongly urges others to do the same.
Pretty heavy stuff… however, today Obama voted for the bill which contained that very provision which give retro-active immunity to those telecom companies. McCain nailed him on the flip-flop, which Obama subsequently denied was a flip-flop.
As it turns out (just to stir things up), She Who Must Not Be Named voted against the bill! The Lefties are going nuts and Rush Limbaugh has even quietly initiated his “Operation Chaos, Phase II” in order to give SWMNBN a chance at the convention and place some plants at the DNC in an attempt to take advantage of the disorder on the Left, which is increasingly feeling alienated from Obama. Obama’s vote was the right vote, but maybe too “Right” for the kooks out there who thought he was different.
The US Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, was attacked today by four men in what the American and Turkish authorities are calling an act of terrorism. Three of the attackers were killed, but not before taking out three policemen, one point blank to the head. The fourth attacker unfortunately got away in a speeding car, as Turkish authorities are frantically looking for him and are currently reviewing video tape to help.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but this has put everyone in Turkey on high alert, especially Americans in Turkey. Aside from incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan, one hasn’t heard much from the War on Terror in Turkey — it’s been pretty quiet so to speak. The attack was small, probably cellular. That could mean the beginning of a new series of attacks, or that this attack was the best they could pull off. I hope it’s the latter.
The US Consulate was refitted after al Qaeda’s 2003 bombing of the British Consulate, bank and two synagogues. Yet, our rules of engagement forbid Americans to fire back at anyone outside the compound, hence, they ducked for cover rather than take out the assailants early. I think those rules needs to be renegotiated.
For the first time in the history of scientific polling, Congress, which happens to be controlled at present by Democrats, has reached a new all-time low of a 9% positive approval rating in the latest Rasmussen poll! Splitting it up, that’s 2% excellent and 7% good, 36% fair, and 52% poor.
Yet, for some reason on a generic ballot question, the Dems are still beating the Republicans by over 10 points! So even though likely voters loathe Congress’ inaction in dealing with gas prices and the war, they still seem to like Republicans less in their generic sentiment.
I wonder if some in the voting public believes that Bush and the Congress are both Republican-dominated? If so, Congress would at least be at 32%, right? Though this election is going to be tough, polls like this indicate an opening for Republicans this Fall.
All the Eighth Amendment “cruel and unusual” banter from Justice Kennedy (alas, a Reagan appointee gone loopy), doesn’t really take into account the effects on the victim. Here’s what Justice Alito had to say about this ruling in his dissent:
“[Alito] lament[ed] that the majority had ruled out executing someone for raping a child ‘no matter how young the child, no matter how many times the child is raped, no matter how many children the perpetrator rapes, no matter how sadistic the crime, no matter how much physical or psychological trauma is inflicted, and no matter how heinous the perpetrator’s prior criminal record may be.’”
Maybe Justice Kennedy thought that the perp, Patrick Kennedy (no joke), was a relative or someone he knew. Who knows? Liberals on the court since the 1950s have seen the perps as the one’s potentially hurt by laws, not their victims so much. I’m just waiting for the political branches of our government to assert themselves against the poorly devised judicial dictates from this court over the last few years.
The Obama campaign is preemptively trying to use the race issue to associate those Republicans who think he’s too inexperienced to become President with those who would use his “funny name” and his color against him.
Politics as usual from “Mr. Hope and Change” once again. Remember this one:
It looks like even though She Who Must Not Be Named won Puerto Rico, Obama’s on the verge of clinching the whole thing. Here’s how a SWMNBN supporter is reacting to this development:
The blogosphere is buzzing with news and facts about Barack Obama’s own statements that would have destroyed any Republican or She Who Must Not Be Named.
Malkin’s got great coverage of the most recent one: that Barry’s uncle was one of the first on the scene to liberate Auschwitz. I knew Obama had communist tendencies, but if his uncle really was in that first wave into Auschwitz, Poland, back in World War II, he would have been a Soviet! Perhaps Obama was ducking sniper fire while giving that statement.
Quayle couldn’t spell potato and was crucified, Dubya’s misunderestimated the OBGYN’s love for their patients became a constant gaffe theme, but Obama’s the second coming. Similar little gaffes would have destroyed other candidates or permanently altered how we think about them.
I think this will be one of those growing stories from behind the scenes that everyone will be talking about, which will finally get the MSM to report it in a few weeks or months.
To most, Memorial Day is the official kickoff to the summer season — pools, barbecue, the beach, movie marathons.
Lately, to more and more Americans its more solemn roots are revived. It was a day first commemorated as “Decoration Day” to put flags and other items at the graves of friends or relatives who died in the Civil War. Then, by World War I, it’s name had changed to Memorial Day and was honored on May 30. It wasn’t until 1971 that Memorial Day became the fourth Monday in May.
So, today we honor those who have died defending this country and her interests. Lincoln once said on an old battlefield during the dark days of the Civil War that “it is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”
Such is our charge as we enjoy the sales, the sun and the hot dogs, that we take a minute to remember who have died so that we might live the way we do.
President Bush was giving a speech to the Israeli Knesset commemorating the 60th birthday of Israel. One of the most traumatic events in the history of the Jews and an integral part of the history of the state of Israel was the Holocaust, which only happened because of the horrors of World War II. That war began as a result of years of appeasement towards Hitler and the Nazis. “Never again” has been the mantra from the Israelis and Jews all over the world ever since.
“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”
Somehow, Obama thought this was a swipe at Obama.
The campaign and the national Dems subsequently flipped out in an amazing knee-jerk fashion: calling these remarks a ”false political attack,” (Obama), ”bullsh*t” (from the intellectual Joe Biden), an “embarrassment to our country” (Dean), “outrageous and offensive” (She Who Must Not Be Named), and that “serious” people would distance themselves from the remarks (Pelosi), and so forth.
Jumping on the Dems’ knee-jerk reaction, here’s how McCain responded:
“I think Barack Obama needs to sit down and explain why he wants to talk with a man who is the head of a government that is a state sponsor of terror, that is responsible for the killing of brave young Americans, who wants to wipe Israel off the map, denies the Holocaust. That is what I think that Senator Obama ought to explain to the American people….
“It is a serious error on the part of Senator Obama that shows naiveté and inexperience and lack of judgment to say that he wants to sit down across the table from an individual who leads a country who says that Israel is a stinking corpse, that is dedicated to the extinction of Israel. My question is what does he want to talk about?”
Here’s the catch, though, which makes McCain’s point. This is quoted directlyfrom Obama’s website under the section “Renewing American Diplomacy”:
“Talk to our Foes and Friends: Obama is willing to meet with the leaders of all nations, friend and foe. He will do the careful preparation necessary, but will signal that America is ready to come to the table, and that he is willing to lead. And if America is willing to come to the table, the world will be more willing to rally behind American leadership to deal with challenges like terrorism, and Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs.”
Um. Right. That’s modern appeasement and naivete articulated perfectly. As if talking to radical jihadists will get them to suddenly stop hating Jews, they’d take off the suicide belt, and they’d stop planning to annihilate Israel in the name of Allah. Wow! That was easy!
Now I get it — the Dems are scared to death that people are going to pay attention to an actual policy position Obama has, couching it in “President Bush is bad and McCain should condemn him,” even though the real story here is not Bush (as the Dems would like), it’s Obama’s knee-jerk reaction which seems to have hit a nerve!
A little upset at the prospect of a President McCain not living up to conservative expectations (or worse, a President Obama targeting capitalism harder than the jihadists), I thankfully found this link from the Heritage Foundation called “What Would Reagan Do?” It has clips of President Reagan’s most important speeches. How refreshing and relevant Reagan still is today!
Sure, we’re not battling double-digit inflation, the Soviet Union, or the obscene growth of government nowadays, but Reaganism reminds us that we should keep this nation capitalist, we should defeat the radical jihadists who threaten our way of life, and that we should worry about the growth of government at the expense of individual liberty.
Some have suggested that Republicans and Conservatives “let go” and get over Reagan. However, the legacy of President Reagan is not that he was saying anything new, but he was reaffirming principles what we, as Americans, have running through our bloodstream: an optimistic, can-do spirit that played to our better angels in confronting our tasks with a clear mind and determination. He spoke of principles, ideals and pathways, not gloom, doom, and defeat.
In 2008 I believe that America would embrace that message and a conservative candidate that is willing to tackle the challenges of today’s world with a little dose of that can-do spirit with the government getting out of the way. We’re not looking for Ronald Reagan, just a politician ready to meet today’s challenges with Reagan’s time-tested measures and principles. Is that really so hard for our politicians to embrace?
Some other chickens have come home to roost, so to speak. One undercurrent about John Kerry’s run in 2004 was how sins of the past, when everybody was doing crazy things in the 1960s and 1970s, would come back to haunt some of those idiots.
The “Swift Vets and POWs For Truth” were a perfect example of this: if you lied about your military experience and run for President on your military experience, people will (and have the right to) call you out on it. Despite the MSM’s point of view, being “Swift Boated” means someone called you on your attempt to white-wash an important time in your life when you did something stupid that could hurt your current political ambitions.
Both Obama and She Who Must Not Be Named have connections to this time period: Obama’s got Bill Ayers and SWMNBN has her own radical statements and activism. This article from the Arizona Republic draws attention to this phenomenon in the current election cycle. And, by the way, what was John McCain doing back then? Oh, that’s right, he was being degraded, beaten, and tortured in a POW camp in Vietnam. Hence, as the article mentions, that’s is why he’s immune from the attacks about bad youth behavior.
Stemming the conversation away from Obama and the Democ-”Rat” Race has been tough lately, but this was too good to pass up!
Scott Rasmussen released a poll today which attempted to gauge the political fallout from the recent remarks on Obama’s old Reverend Wright debacle. A whopping 58% of respondents believe that Obama condemning Wright this week out of “political convenience,” rather than pure outrage!
Well, duh!
I think this is significant, not because Obama had any new damage done to him, but this poll increases the sense that the damage Reverend Wright has done to Obama’s campaign, image, and chances is deep, lingering, if not permanent.
What’s a superdelegate to do if this holds into the Fall, right about the time Obama’s Reverend releases his book? All Wright has to do is say that Barack was there during one of those classic tirades Obama said he knew nothing about and all bets are off.
With fewer friends nowadays after his tough double-digit loss last night Barack Obama can feel a bit better counting on solidarity from Hamas and FARC. She Who Must Not be Named, on the other hand can add the FALN (the radical Puerto Rican nationalist/terrorist organization) into her camp because of her husband’s pardons. However, both share the respect of the Weather Underground!
No word on which domestic terrorist organizations or anti-American third world, human-rights abusing, drug-dealing, tinpot dictators or bloody international terrorist organizations support the McCain candidacy thus far. We’ll bring any new information in that regard to you post-haste!
Last night, American Idol had their contestants close with a song called “Shout to the Lord.” Yet, in a song about Jesus, they replaced “Jesus” with “Shepherd!” Wow. The anti-Christian bias in the media is well-known and documented, but editing “Jesus” in a song about Jesus?!? Why choose the song in the first place?
It sounds like American Idol catering half-heartedly to letters and requests from Christian groups to get Christian Rock songs on the show while trying to avoid any unwelcome labels from secular critics. I’m very disappointed in the show for this. I personally don’t listen to Christian Rock so I didn’t understand the issue initially, but knowing that they omitted the word “Jesus” from a song about Jesus seems like a politically correct slap in the face.
In case you were wondering, Drudge linked to a post by the Politico’s Ben Smith that demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that Obama is a classic Lib, with typical condescension towards people they claim to represent and connect with.
Here’s Barry!
“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
And he wants to win Pennsylvania? That rhetoric might play to limosine liberals and urban-elite pinky-extended types, but the down-home people of “Pennsyltucky“ probably won’t appreciate being denegrated as such. We’ll see though — this year’s been pretty crazy.
…And that’s one reason why I hope he’ll lose in America!
I was thumbing through my usual cites for something to post this morning when this piece posted on RCP emerged and struck a very dissonant chord with me. Guy Sorman’s “Europe Loves Obama” piece was hard to read since I wasn’t too sure if he was being tongue-in-cheek or not. He’s definitely a Leftist Europhile and had a few outrageous things to say as to why Europe loves Obama:
Obama is a “good American” like Michael Moore, Robert Redford, Noam Chomsky, and Mia Farrow, not a “bad American” like Billy Graham, Dubya and Cheney.
Europe loves minorities while America oppresses our minorities, going as far as to say “whites started the war in Iraq.”
Europe infers that Obama is pro-Palestinian by the company he keeps and thereby might stick it to the Jews.
Obama’s a death-penalty abolitionist, he’s protectionist, and “reserved about his faith:” all things European elites love.
And finally Sorman states of European sentiment: “The good American is expected neither to trade nor to fight terrorism. If more Americans were good, in fact, there would be no terrorists, as the Left in both Europe and the U.S. often contends.”
Huh?
Having re-read the article several times, I’m still not sure if Sorman was trying to make a point about European elitist absurdity or laying out these points as pluses for Obama!
Nonetheless, I’m surprised that an article like this is appearing so early in the campaign cycle. Usually we get these kinds of stories closer to the general or even in the Fall as a last ditch effort for Europe to meddle in our affairs. Remember the Daily Mirror’s “How could 59 million people be so dumb?” post-2004 Election issue (strangely, after it was all said and done, John Kerry actually ended up with around 59 million votes to Bush’s 62 million)? If Europe was so awesome and advice-worthy, why aren’t we talking about who the American people would like to be the next leader of the EU? Exactly. I have tended to vote against whoever European elites want running America, and apparently will proudly continue to do so in 2008 as well.
She Who Must Not be Named’s minions have dug up this picture from Barry O’Bama’s trip to Kenya back in 2006. This is as race-baiting stereotypical dirty as politics can get! And the justification from her minions: “Wouldn’t we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were [SWMNBN]?” That’s really really poor, since funny pictures of her in foreign local garb are already public!
On the other hand, why should this be a smear? Why should this mean anything? Are both sides inferring that O’Bama is a Muslim and thereby Muslims can’t be our leader? What’s with the word “fear-mongering” in the critique of this photo? What’s so scary about Muslims, or Barry dressing like one in local traditional garb? It must be so difficult to be a liberal: both trying so hard to be nice to everyone, then in a second impulsively reverting back to ancient stereotypes that a Republican would not even dream of bringing up in such a high-profile way!
I have a feeling that if SWMNBN loses the nomination, there is no way she and her husband allow O’Bama to win this in the Fall. If he wins, her window is shut forever; if he loses to McCain, there’s always 2012. Whatever happens, the picture’s out there, the inference is out there and the unspoken psychological damage has been done.
Two years ago, there was an incredible outrage from European (then Middle Eastern) Muslims over some satirical cartoons based upon Mohammad. Michelle Malkin and 192 of her allied blogs participated in reprinting those very cartoons online. Though Axis of Right was not among those blogs on the list, AOR did deal with this issue in a different way, making a point that this outrage over the image of Mohammad is selective, and thereby hypocritical.
In Western Civilization, we have come to believe that free speech must be protected, especially the stuff we don’t like. If it’s insulting or lewd, people make choices as to what recourse they want to have: from a serious boycott to a proud blog-link. I may not like these cartoons, but violence should not result from their (re)printing. This is 2008, not 1208. One does not have to tolerate violence.
Just to stir up the pot, Drudge dug up this article from The Hill back in 2007 that tests McCain’s “Republican” credentials, especially in lieu of his new Super Tuesday ad. I remember back shortly after Jumpin’ Jim Jeffords left the party back in 2001, that the Dems were praying for a McCain defection as well. They approached Lincoln Chafee (big shock there!) as well, but apparently McCain’s people actually approached the Dems for talks!
The article recalls:
“Daschle said that throughout April and May of 2001, he and McCain ‘had meetings and conversations on the floor and in his office, I think in mine as well, about how we would do it, what the conditions would be. We talked about committees and his seniority … [A lot of issues] were on the table.’”
At the end of the day, McCain didn’t jump, but this doesn’t help him convince conservatives about anything.
