Do you ever get the feeling that John “Polly Prissy Pants” Edwards is Ann Coulter’s favorite target? I don’t if that has anything to do with the fact that the former Democrat Vice Presidential nominee is also one of the easiest targets out there, but she sure does seem to enjoy herself when he is the topic.
Today’s Coulter column is of course about the mainstream media’s silence over the story about John Edwards cheating on his cancer-stricken wife compared to their reactions to conservative scandals. According to Annie C., the media’s burning to desire to cover for the Silkster has caused them to refrain from reporting anything about the possible future Cabinet member. She even goes as far to proclaim:
Do you know what this means? At this precise moment in time, I could call Edwards a name that would send me to rehab, and the media wouldn’t be able to report it!
This woman is a genius. On the one hand, the media can’t report anything about Edwards because that would make him newsworthy again, thereby making it more difficult for them to ignore the obvious. On the other hand, here they have Ann Coulter hurling a politically incorrect insult at one of their favorite politicians. Now there’s a dilemma that won’t send a thrill up Chris Matthews’ leg.
This isn’t the first time Ann Coulter has battled John Edwards, but something tells me John won’t be able to hide behind his wife this time.
Word is buzzing that Dick Cheney may not be invited to speak at the Republican National Convention. A sitting two-term Vice President has never been snubbed by the incumbent party’s convention that I can think of in modern times. I know that if Cheney doesn’t go it’ll be spun as his “choice” to help McCain, but McCain’s people are probably spearheading the effort to snub him — McCain’s camp has not seemed to care about Conservative sympathies anyway.
Regardless, I know the McCain people are iffy about having the divisive liberal lightning rod, Dick Cheney, speak at the Convention, but c’mon!
I suggest giving Cheney a spot introducing McCain on September 4! I mean, no one is going to watch McCain’s acceptance speech since most Americans watching TV that night will catch the opening game of the 2008 NFL season as division rivals Washington Redskins play the Super Bowl Champion New York Giants instead!
Seventy-one year old actor Morgan Freeman was involved in a one-car accident late last night in Mississippi. He was airlifted to a nearby hospital and is in “serious condition” with injuries to his shoulder and arm.
In his latest work, Freeman plays Lucius in the blockbuster sequel The Dark Knight. He’s a major film icon, being in such films as Million Dollar Baby, Shawshank Redemption, Driving Miss Daisy, Deep Impact, Glory, Amistad, Batman Begins, Along Came a Spider, Lean on Me and numerous others. His politics is typical of Hollywood, as he has endorsed “The One” Barack Obama, but again, politics stops in instances like this. We hope he can continue to grace the screen with his supurb acting for years to come!
The McCain campaign has been awesome this week, tightening the polls while going on offense! I wasn’t too keen on the “Celeb” ad, but this new spot, “The One” is perfect. It uses Obama’s own words against him, making him sound delusional in a fun way which will really grind the “geahs” of Obama’s people:
Obama’s people called this ad simply “juvenile antics.” It is a well-known anecdotal fact that Libs do not have a sense of humor. It’s more likely that Obama’s people probably didn’t get the gag.
It’s also known that certain substances can make one feel like they’re on top of the world and can do anything. Remember, he was once a self-professed “junkie” who now can lower sea-levels by his mere presence…hmm. I’m just sayin’.
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%!
Former Senate Pro-Temp Alaska Senator Ted Stevens (R) was indicted today on seven counts of making false statements about gifts he received from an oil contractor seeking Washington’s help. It’s evident that from 1999-2006 Stevens was making false statements about this relationship. The issue is not bribery, however, just an 84 year old forgetting about gifts leading to about $250,000 worth of work done to his own house.
Since Stevens is a Republican, the mere indictment is probably enough to put pressure on Stevens to resign. Some already believe he should resign. Two issues help the Dems here: he’s a long-serving Republican indicted during an election year, plus the alleged beneficiary of this relationship was an evil Alaskan oil services firm, VECO and its founder Bill Allen, which will play into the Dems anti-Big Oil/Alaska drilling mantra this year.
At least Alaska has a Republican Governor. If Stevens doesn’t politically survive this, Governor Sarah Palin can always appoint another Republican to the seat without risking an election or recall in this uncertain election cycle. Nonetheless, term limits, anyone?
Apparently, a number of op-ed articles have hit the Internet regarding Christopher Nolan’s new film, the box-office shattering The Dark Knight, and how Batman allegorically plays the role of George W. Bush (some say Batman is Dick Cheney or a generic conservative hero)!
A friend tipped me off to this concept last night and I looked around the Internet finding that this notion has been proliferating, even to the WSJ Online! It makes a lot of sense to see The Dark Knight as an allegory of the War on Terror and about Batman as the man who few people like as the one who has to make the hard choice to blur the lines in order to achieve victory — aka GWB to some.
Leftist blogs are wicked upset that a movie with such a black-and-white treatment of morality like this one can make $300 million in just ten days while their beloved anti-war flicks quickly sputter and die quick deaths! In The Dark Knight, terrorists (The Joker’s crew) are the remorseless fiends who fight for no discernible reason beyond the joy of it, and the good people have very tough choice to make on how to defeat them. It mirrors reality.
Given the box office success of this film, perhaps the American people still yearn for a no nonsense ass-kicker rather than an international ass-kisser in their leaders. This bodes well for McCain down the stretch, with less than 100 left until my birthday, which happens to be Election Day this year. But will people make this connection and understand its implications? Will the baggage of the last eight years show up on Election Day and turn American into an Obama Nation? Who knows? If the allegory holds however, then it’s the Republicans and Bush who must take the hit for having made hard, sometimes unpopular, choices which have nonetheless made all of us safer.
The latest piece from Times Online editor, American Gerard Baker, first came to my attention about an hour ago and it’s a doozy!
His latest op-ed is absolutely awesome. Baker takes the media’s open desire to make Barack Obama the Savior/Messiah and completely pokes fun at those who have this view (he also calls Gordon Brown, Gordon the Leper!) through colorful and biblical-style language. I don’t think the New Yorker crowd will misunderstand this satire, but one never knows. Here’s a sample from the beginning:
“And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.
The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.”
I wish Obama would have “ventured forth” to the wounded troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, but that would have seemed “too political.” The Pentagon simply told him not to bring his media and campaign troglodytes, but he could go as an elected official, rather than a candidate. He chose not to go. However, he made it to the gym though.
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.
Word leaked out the other day from Robert Novak, that McCain may make public his selection for his Vice Presidential candidate this week.
I believe this would be a bad idea if McCain goes through with it: he wants to make a choice which counters Obama’s pick to ensure the strongest Republican ticket; with Obama overseas and the Olympics in less than two weeks, the story would get completely buried when it is designed to boost McCain; and waiting to select McCain’s Veep a day after Obama makes his choice would strategically stymie the “bounce” Obama would historically get from choosing his own Veep — we all know that Obama cannot sustain a bounce and is a very bad closer.
Some names that have been thrown around range from Mitt Romney, Tom Ridge, Jim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal (no dice on that one), to Joe Lieberman. There are others, but I think once we know the Democrat ticket, then a better choice can be made by McCain to counter that ticket. In my opinion, it’s simply too early for McCain to announce his selection!
One of the major themes of Obama’s trip abroad has been trying to make him look Presidential. In all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the trip, Obama’s people sometimes forget that he, in fact, is not yet President. Also, sometimes they have to be reminded of that little detail a second time on the same day.
What I’ve taken from Obama’s trip thus far is that it is just an elaborate campaign event, he openly disagrees with Petraeus which makes Obama on the record being on the wrong side of history, and he’s endorsed President Bush’s and John McCain’s plan to have a phased withdrawal based loosely on benchmarks and that we need to increase US troop presence in Afghanistan. Of course, that’s not how it’s being spun, since Obama adds the 16 month caveat, which he can rescind the moment he’s in office. He wants to have it both ways so he doesn’t have to take any real position at all that he’ll need to stand behind — very brave, Barry, but unless you decide to cancel this Fall’s debates, you’re going to be toast.
I certainly hope there’s some kind of noticable backlash to all of this trip’s media bias and Obama’s arrogant, presumptive behavior. He is naive, just plain wrong or elusive about national security, and isn’t good on his toes. This man thinks he’s President already. As they say the more inflated one’s ego, the harder the fall.
I’m absolutely shocked about the New York Slimes’ double standard when dealing with this year’s Presidential candidates!
Well, not really anymore. Obama gets an op-ed printed with ease last week, but McCain’s gets rejected with suggestions for improvement, including a suggestion to “mirror” Obama’s piece!!! Here’s an excerpt from the response letter sent to McCain:
“I’d be very eager to publish the senator on the op-ed page. However, I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written. I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft. Let me suggest an approach….
It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece….”
This was written to the campaign of a distinguished Senator and militarily decorated man running for President, not an 11th grader submitting a rough draft to his/her Social Studies teacher! This is a huge insult that the McCain campaign should completely take advantage of. They are getting some press over this, but I think they need to keep the drum beating until they pressure the Slimes to print the opinion editorial as is.
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.
There’s this story going around the AP this morning which indicates that some soldiers are longing to go to the “real war” in Afghanistan, as Iraq is becoming the more quiet of the two battlefields lately. With violence against Coalition troops in Iraq on pace to be the lowest in years and the Dems even having to accept the Surge’s success, this story reveals two major points in my opinion:
1. Our soldiers are awesome, ready for a fight wherever they happen to be sent, even longing for a chance to kill the bad guys. As professional soldiers, soldiering is their job, so I’m very glad they take pride and have enthusiasm for their work.
2. The AP and the MSM are essentially embracing the Democrat’s position on Iraq, that the “real” bad guys are in Afghanistan and that the fight there should be escalated quickly. This has been their narrative for five years, stating that Iraq was a distraction from the real War on Terror, even though Bin Laden himself believes that Iraq was the central front in the War on Terror. What does he know, right? Nonetheless, it’s a position designed to attack Bush and the Republicans on their strongest electoral issue historically, dealing with terrorism, and it’s obviously transparent and won’t work with flip-flop Obama as their spokesman.
Although Mitt Romney is refusing to speak about whether or not current talks with McCain’s camp are taking place or that background info has changed hands, his stock in the Republican Veepstakes is rising as the press needs a new political face to obsess over nowadays. We all know how the press influences McCain, so their buzz may have an actual affect on McCain’s eventual Veep choice. Romney was the most experienced candidate on either side of the primaries in regards to his knowledge of the private sector and the economy, which has become his greatest asset in the Veepstakes.
Now that the economy is the most important issue in this election, Romney’s a logical selection for McCain who unfortunately admitted in the primaries that the economy was not his strong suit. Yet, amongst all the others, we nominated McCain (sigh). Alas, Romney is articulate, energetic, and optimistic –characteristics that McCain sometimes lacks. Romney’s direct and aggressive and will be able to hit Obama in ways that McCain can’t (or won’t). I’m not sure how Romney helps McCain pick up any specific states other than Michigan perhaps, but I think it’ll strengthen the overall ticket down the road, potentially keeping Red states Red. At least adding Romney will pull the ticket and message toward the Right for a change.
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.
President Bush announced today that he is rescinding his father’s Executive Order which banned off-shore oil drilling. And it’s about time in my opinion! What’s interesting about this development is that Congress imposed it’s own separate ban, meaning that if off-shore drilling were to take place, both branches would have to agree. Now, it’s solely in the hands of Congress.
Come to think of it, President Bush is really gaining a number of important victories over the Dems ever since they took over Congress: Bush stopped the Dems from cutting-and-running in Iraq, securing Bush’s policy through the end of his term — a huge meaningful victory on the Homefront; Bush got his FISA bill through a hostile Congress with nearly all of his proposals in tact — not an easy task for any lame-duck; and now Bush has successfully outflanked the Dems by taking the drilling issue and put it on the laps of Pelosi and Reid!
Brilliant maneuvering from an “idiot” who still has the capacity to outflank his opponents on important issues during the last year of his tenure. This will expose the Dems’ weak and complex rhetoric about how the oil companies ”can already drill”, or the mantra “we can’t drill our way out of this” nonsense. They can try to blame Bush policies, but they will confuse the public who understands that gas comes from oil and securing domestic oil is a security issue. Bush has set things up for the Republicans to pound the message home. Will they take it?
Well, the first part of that isn’t entirely true, but I did spend fifteen months writing a rather long historiographical thesis on Theodore Roosevelt back in college. In that work I used some of John McCain’s campaign rhetoric from early 2000 as evidence of TR’s increasing influence amongst politicians of both parties today (I also quoted from BJ’s 2000 State of the Union Address where he name-drops TR). Back in February 2000 McCain unsuccessfully tried to make himself out to be the heir of both TR and Ronald Reagan, and he’s trying it again in 2008.
We can laugh at McCain’s “Reaganesque” boasts as shallow and empty, but why’s he stuck on TR? Most people only know a few things about TR: trust-buster, Mt. Rushmore, those teeth, the “Teddy bear,” conservation. Like his Reagan comparison, McCain is being very selective with how he chooses to connect himself to TR:
TR’s domestic policies laid the philosophical foundation for modern “big-government” in his cousin’s New Deal two generations later — not very Reaganesque in my opinion.
TR was a “conservationist” not a “preservationist”, meaning that TR would have been OK with drilling in ANWAR since the footprint is so small (preservationists, on the other hand, want humans completely out of undeveloped areas). McCain’s still being difficult on that issue.
TR was described as a ”maverick” for bucking the era’s MSM by not fitting their typical Republican stereotype. Yet, TR understood politics, alienated some, but still had most of his party enthusiastic about him and mostly adhered to the party’s platform. No conservative is enthusiastic about McCain and McCain doesn’t seem to care – he’s more interested in growing the party 1970s-style by making it resemble the Democrats. Plus, TR’s being a “maverick” eventually led to a party split in 1912 which gave Wilson the presidency. Why should any self-respecting Republican embrace a maverick like that today? McCain’s obviously being selective here.
Instead of trying to get along with fractious immigrant groups, TR firmly believed and articulated that “hyphenated Americanism” is un-American and unpatriotic. McCain wants to coddle 12-15 million illegals and still hasn’t proposed making English the official language of government, a highly popular position with the general public.
However, TR had an unabashed pro-American foreign policy like Reagan. Maybe that’s an area where McCain’s rhetoric can get away with the comparison. But don’t be fooled! McCain does not have the clear vision of a Ronald Reagan, nor the vigor or political climate that made TR such an influential politician. We have a Ford, not a Lincoln; we have a McCain, not a Reagan.
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.
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.
Finally some good news for McCain on the conservative front. Seeing as the choice in this year’s election is one between “meh” and “Oh God, NO!” a group of about 100 Christian Conservative leaders will support ”meh”.
Eventually, some Christian conservatives will come out to vote for McCain, but I still feel that voting for a candidate draws more enthusiasm and turnout than voting against becoming an Obama Nation. For McCain’s part, his campaign didn’t bother sending anyone to this potentially important meeting. Even though the recent string of Obama speeches, gaffes by surrogates like Clark, and the recent slate of Supreme Court decisions have made me a bit more jazzed about defeating Obama, I can’t get truly excited about this McCain. I think the message out of the Christian conservative meeting was pretty much the same.
Earlier today, I read Rush Limbaugh’s suggestion to the McCain campaign of how to rebut Weasel Wesley Clark’s bizarre claim that John McCain’s military experience is irrelevant to the Presidency. The gist of Limbaugh’s suggestion was that McCain should simply fight back. My first reaction was that McCain should not get into a spat with a failed General like Clark, but should leave the scathing rebuttals to his surrogates. That way, Obama and his minions could be exposed as the scum they are, and McCain could stay focused on Obama. Thinking about how this would play out led to my second reaction: the Republican Party sadly doesn’t have any effective surrogates.
As expected, this fact is not lost on Limbaugh. Earlier today, Limbaugh praised Bob Dole for jumping into the fray to defend McCain and then bemoaned the fact that Dole is probably our party’s most effective spokesman. This is probably true, although it should be noted that Haley Barbour has always been an effective surrogate. As the successful Governor of Mississippi who was praised for his leadership in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina without being blamed for the weather event, Barbour could also be much more than an effective surrogate. Although he isn’t my first choice, Haley Barbour would make an excellent running mate for McCain.
With an effective communicator at the bottom of the ticket to respond to Democrats crawling out from underneath their rocks, McCain could probably increase the stature gap over Obama. In the meantime, I hope the Anchoress is right when it comes to Clark:
Happily for McCain, the Obama team and their supporters keep popping up (daily, it seems) talking about John McCain and telling him to stop talking about his military service. They seem not to realize that doing this serves to remind voters that McCain is a real war hero with command experience and 21 years in the senate, and that Barack Obama…is not.
Democrats are always uptight about that whole “patriotism” thing, knee-jerking into a frenzy every time the word is uttered. Even when they see unabashed patriots like John McCain, some Dems (like former Presidential candidate and undistinguished General Wesley Clark) aren’t sure how to react, so they pick on them in ways that don’t make sense. It’s not like Clark said McCain’s unpatriotic, but any patriotism street cred he may have accumulated at the Hanoi Hilton won’t necessarily make him a better commander-in-chief than, say, Barack Obama, who’s mentor was a terrorist.
After Obama threw Clark under the bus for his remarks today, Obama had to give a speech on patriotism today. One of the most peculiar quotes was this:
“Of course, precisely because America isn’t perfect, precisely because our ideals constantly demand more from us, patriotism can never be defined as loyalty to any particular leader or government or policy.”
Not even leaders like Lincoln? Not even a government that got rid of slavery, promotes civil rights at home and around the world from before the Cold War through today? Not even a policy that once sought to end fascism, communism, and now terrorism? I know support may not equal patriotism, but does it exclude one from being a patriot? It sounds strange and awkward, especially when he delivered those lines. He’s such an insecure post-9/11 Democrat.
If patriotism is so ethereal, then why give a speech about it to calm critics? Why do we have to be told what patriotism is to believe that Obama is patriotic? I have no doubt he loves this country, but I am piqued by his overt insecurity on this issue.
We’ve all seen the video from February where Obama agreed wholeheartedly with the 32-year-old DC gun ban, then when the Supreme Court interpreted the 2nd Amendment to mean what it says last week, he was for that too even though it overturned the 32-year-old DC gun ban.
This incident recently reminded me of something my father once said about why on God’s Green Earth the American people voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976: aside for the Ford/Nixon pardon-thing, the American people found Carter affable because he was for everything they we for! Whenever he spoke to a new crowd, he told them what they wanted to hear, blurring the lines between what he really wanted to do. The result was a candidate, then President, who many people thought they agreed with, but in fact did not.
A recent Rasmussen poll indicates that 43% of the people think Obama disagreed with the Supreme Court’s ruling, while a full 41% think he did agree with the ruling! It seems like the Obama campaign is being effective at telling people what they want to hear when they want to hear it. It doesn’t really concerns me where Obama stands on this issue (we all know he won’t appoint anyone to the courts who would have voted to uphold the Constitution) but this is a potential problem for the Fall — saying whatever to whoever and getting away with it. Add that to the poor state of the McCain camp and we don’t have a prayer.
“With skyrocketing gas prices, it is clear that the American people can no longer afford the Republican rubber-stamp Congress and its failure to stand up to the Republican big oil and gas company cronies….
“Democrats have a common-sense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices by cracking down on price gouging, rolling back the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks and royalty relief given to big oil and gas companies, and increasing production of alternative fuels.”
That was when gas was at $2.91 a gallon. Well, gas is currently at $4.08 just 18 months into the Democrat control of Congress. There are many reasons why gas is high, the price of oil being one reason, but in the world of American politics, one takes credit when times are good, but also gets blamed when times are bad.
So, where are the Republicans hammering the Dems on this broken campaign pledge? Not only do Republicans have a definite edge on the drilling solution, but using the Dems own words against them would help to unify the RNC’s voice nationally on this issue: “Can we afford another Democrat Congress?” and so forth. The press isn’t going to call the Dems out on this issue so we have to do it — this is finally an issue that the Republicans poll better than Dems this year!
