TPM, Slime, Sarah and the Tea Parties

What's the difference between TPM Muckraker and Andy Sullivan when it comes to Sarah Palin? In terms of their obsession with sliming Palin - none. In terms of how they go about their attacks, about the only difference appears to be that TPM is not obsesessed with Palin's genitals.

TPM Muckraker is a left wing site that has long professed their love for Obama and hatred for the right. But they, like virtually all on the far left, hold a special place deep in their dark, dark souls for Sarah Palin - and the Tea Party movement, for that matter. Lacking any semblance of intellectual honesty, they are quite willing to go to great lengths to attack Gov. Palin and the Tea Party movement, while utterly ignoring the screaming cognitive dissonance that creates when one looks at their treatment of the home team.

First up from TPM yesterday was Man Charged With Stockpiling Weapons Was Tea Partier, Palin Fan. It is the story of an obviously mentally unbalanced man,Gregory Girard, who happened to support Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Movement - something upon which TPM focuses upon in this "guilt by association" hit piece.

But there was no indication that anyone in the Tea Party movement supported Girard, nor that Sarah Palin even knew of his existance. The same cannot be said of other murders and radicals who have associated with political figures that TPM seemed to have missed over the past two years.

There was of course the murderer and anti-America radical who quite literally launched Obama's political career in a fund raiser at his home:



Then let's not forget Obama's twenty year association with a virulent racist



And then there are the thugs Obama didn't associate with - but whom his administration did protect in their efforts to commit voter intimidation:



And what of his long association with - and his employment during the campaign of - an organization whose members have been found guilty of vote fraud in numerous states:



TPM Muckrakers hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty hardley ends there. They also ran another story the other day - "'Warning: Tea Party In Danger': Leader Slams Palin As 'Wolf In Sheep's Clothing'." They report that "Dale Roberston," a person they characteris as a "Tea Party leader," is complaining that "the movement 'is becoming nothing more than a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party,' and slamming Sarah Palin as representing 'a growing insider's attack to the heart of the Tea Party.'" The problem with this report is that it has long been known that Robertson is a con artist, he holds no leadership position in any recognized Tea Party organization, and indeed, the local Tea Party organizations have explicitly disowned any association with him.

That said, if TPM wanted to report on real rifts between party leaders and a party's titular head, they certainly could have reported on the criticism of Obama coming from Senator Rockefeller the other day - essentially calling Obama's promises worthless in the video below:



But doing something like that would take a bit of intellectual honesty. TPM Muckraker is all about the spin. And the screaming cognitive dissonance.

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AP Charges Gov. Palin With Racism (Updated)

AP plays their part as the MSM wing of the Democratic Party today. They recast substantive criticism of Obama as an ad hominem attack upon his race. The AP calls Gov. Palin's attacks on Obama as unready to lead and stating that his vision of America is fundamentally negative and out of the mainstream are "racially tinged" and "unsubstantiated."
___________________________________________________

The AP goes over the top today, playing the race card in an attempt to delegitimize Gov. Palin's attacks on the one:

By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and doesn't see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.

And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.

What, if anything in the above attacks, is a racially tinged subtext?

"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo. A deliberate attempt to smear Obama, McCain's ticket-mate echoed the line at three separate events Saturday.

"This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America," she said. "We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism."

A smear is a false or grossly overhyped accusation. The only smear here is AP's labeling of Palin's attack. Obama's whole life has been spent amongst people who see in America a nation that is inherently bad and in need of fundamental change. And that Obama and his spouse share that view regularly slips out into public view in unguarded moments. The most recent example that comes to mind is Obama's answer a few weeks ago to a nine year old child who asked Obama why he wanted to be President. Back to AP:

Her reference to Obama's relationship with William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground, was exaggerated at best if not outright false. No evidence shows they were "pals" or even close when they worked on community boards years ago and Ayers hosted a political event for Obama early in his career.

You can go to Stanley Kurtz to fact check the AP on this one. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was the brain-child of Ayers that he created to inject his radical views into the classroom. The person who was allowed to head up the board for this project, almost assuredly with the assent of Ayers, was Obama. And when Obama went on from that into politics, the first fundraiser was thrown by Ayers. The importance to all of this is that Obama shares Ayers views that America is not an exceptional nation, it is a bad one bordering on evil that needs to be changed fundamentally and radically to the left.

But all of this is meaningless in the AP's world, where to challenge this or any of Obama's associations on substantive grounds is simply racist:

"The four weeks that are left are an eternity. There's plenty of time in the campaign," said Republican strategist Joe Gaylord. "I think it is a legitimate strategy to talk about Obama and to talk about his background and who he pals around with."

Palin's words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee "palling around" with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn't see their America?

In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers' day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.

Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as "not like us" is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.

This last four weeks is going to get ugly. As Republican criticisms of Obama become more pointed and cutting, expect this insipid broadside from the AP to become the norm as the MSM tries to protect their candidate. Obama won't play the race card again - he does not need to. The MSM is holding decks of race cards and is starting to deal on Obama's behalf.

Update: Via Hot Air, the McCain camp responds:

“The last four weeks of this election will be about whether the American people are willing to turn our economy and national security over to Barack Obama, a man with little record, questionable judgment, and ties to radical figures like unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers. Americans need to ask themselves if they’ve ever befriended an unrepentant terrorist, or had a convicted felon help them buy their house — because those aren’t smears, those are true facts about Barack Obama.” —Tucker Bounds, spokesman McCain-Palin 2008

Obama and the MSM are clearly going to play 52 race card pick-up with the McCain camp between now and 4 Nov. With that in mind, there should be absoluteky nothing stopping the McCain camp from coming out swinging over the subprime crisis. Yes, race cards are going to come fast and furious - but, as the above clearly indicates, they are going to get played anyway.

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Radicalism In Soothing Tones

One of Obama's greatest strengths, it seems to me, is his ability make the radical sound perfectly reasonable to the uninformed. Joshua Muravchik, writing at the WSJ, thinks likewise. Mr. Muravchik examines the actions and ideology of The One, finding a man immersed in radicalism.

This from Joshua Muravchik writing at the WSJ:

. . . Throughout his Senate career, according to Americans for Democratic Action, the dean of liberal advocacy groups, Mr. Obama voted "right" 90% of the time. Actually this is misleading, since ADA counts an absence as if it were a vote on the "wrong" side. If we discount his absences, Mr. Obama voted to ADA's approval more than 98% of the time.

This touches directly on the question of what, beyond the platitudes of unity, hope and change, Mr. Obama himself believes in. His voting record is one indication. Another is his intellectual evolution.

Abandoned by his father when he was still too young to remember him and then sent at age 10 by his mother to live in Hawaii with her parents, who enrolled him in a prestigious prep school, Mr. Obama spent much of his teen years searching for his black identity. Late in his high-school career he found a mentor of sorts in Frank Marshall Davis, an older black poet. According to Herbert Romerstein, former minority chief investigator of the House Committee on Internal Security, FBI files reveal Davis to have been a member of the Communist Party not only in its public phase but also when it officially dissolved and went underground in the 1950s.

According to Mr. Obama, Davis told him that a white person "can't know" a black person, and that the "real price of admission" to college was "leaving your race at the door." Perhaps influenced by this, he reports that at college, "to avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets."

. . . Thanks to a grant from a left-wing foundation, he was hired by a small group of white protégés of Saul Alinsky, the original apostle of "community organizing." Alinsky's institutional base was the Industrial Areas Foundation, which he called a "school for professional radicals" and whose goal he announced to be "revolution, not revelation." As Mr. Obama himself would put it, there were "two roles that an organizer was supposed to play . . . getting the Stop sign [and] the educative function. At some point you have to link up winning that Stop sign . . . with the larger trends, larger movements." In other words, "community organizer," to Mr. Obama and his colleagues and mentors, was a euphemism for professional radical.

. . . Mr. Obama's turn to electoral politics signified no change in his basic ideological orientation. As his wife, Michelle, put it: "Barack is not a politician first and foremost. He's a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change." ("I take that observation as a compliment," Mr. Obama said as late as 2005.)

. . . In his campaign for the Illinois senate, Mr. Obama was endorsed by the New Party, a coalition of socialists, Communists and other leftists. According to the newsletter of the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, whose members were said to constitute 15 percent of the Chicago New Party, "Once approved, candidates must sign a contract with the NP [which] mandates that they must have a visible and active relationship with the NP." Apparently, Mr. Obama signed such a pledge. After winning the primary (unopposed because his lawyers had succeeded in knocking all three opponents off the ballot), he appeared at a New Party membership meeting to voice his thanks.

Entering the national political scene eight years later, Mr. Obama did not, to be sure, appear as a radical, but he still bore the earmarks of the world in which he had been immersed for 20 years. He called himself "progressive," a term of art favored by veterans of the hard New Left, like Tom Hayden, as well as by old-time Communists. Early this year his wife, Michelle, lacking his tact, would kindle controversy by saying that his success in the presidential primaries made her feel proud of her country for the first time. The comment, a faux pas that she was soon at pains to explain away, flowed logically from her view, expressed in her standard stump speech, that our country is a "downright mean" place, "guided by fear," where the "life . . . that most people are living has gotten progressively worse."

. . . [Other] radicals, soft and hard, rushed to embrace Mr. Obama, often waxing rapturous in their support. Robert Borosage and Katrina vanden Heuvel enthused in The Nation that Mr. Obama's was "a historic candidacy," from which "new possibilities will be born." Michael Lerner wrote in Tikkun that the "energy, hopefulness, and excitement that manifests [sic] in Obama's campaign" was reminiscent of "the civil-rights movement, the anti-war movement, the women's movement, the environmental movement, and the movement for gay liberation." Most remarkably, Tom Hayden himself joined the chorus by breaking a New Left taboo against "red-baiting" and laying bare some of Hillary Clinton's own far-left history—this, in retaliation for the Clinton campaign's revelations about Mr. Obama's radical background.

Even after declaring his candidacy, and despite a certain inevitable sidling rightward, Mr. Obama still reflected the presuppositions of a radical worldview. In one notable remark, he said of voters in economic distress that in their desperation they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them." Chastised for his condescension, he responded: "I said something that everybody knows is true." This was elitism of a very specific kind—the mentality of the community organizer, according to which people in the grip of "false consciousness" need to be enlightened as to the true nature of their class interests, and to the nature of their true class enemies.

The same suppositions are again evident in Mr. Obama's stances on international issues. Iraq, as he sees it, is only a symptom. "I don't want to just end the war . . . I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place." And what would that mindset be? In a 2002 speech that he frequently cites, he said the war resulted from

the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors . . . to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne . . . the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income . . . the arms merchants in our own country . . . feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.

In this litany of global perfidy, the issues of Saddam Hussein's murderous dictatorship, of American security, of the future of freedom, shrink to inconsequentiality next to the struggle of the oppressed against their American capitalist overlords.

When it comes to Iran, Mr. Obama has acknowledged that the regime presents a problem. But his actions—he opposed the Kyl-Lieberman amendment designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization—as well as his rhetoric imply that the greater danger emanates from George W. Bush (who is allegedly seeking "any justification to extend the Iraq war or to attack Iran"). Likewise on defeating terrorism, where he rejects the America-centric focus that Bush has given to the issue; instead, in the words of his aides, Obama's main goal is to "restore . . . our moral standing"—that is, to put an end to our aggressive ways.

Even the events of 9/11 could not shake Mr. Obama from the mindset that the enemy is always ourselves. The bombings, he wrote, reflected

the underlying struggle—between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together; and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us.

In this reading, the lessons to be learned from the actions of Osama bin Laden and Mohamed Atta are that we must accept multiculturalism at home and share our wealth abroad.

Read the entire article. There is much in there about Bill Ayers, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and Rev. Wright. I have pointed out many times before, using much the same reasoning as this author, that Obama sees the worlds problems and solutions through the naive and distorted lens of Karl Marx.

By this paradigm, he divides the world up into victim groups, America the victimizer, and economic concerns as the panacea for all ills. For example, in the wake of 9-11, Obama identified the primary cause of Islamic violence as "a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair." We know that is not true – the typical terrorist is just as likely if not moreso to be educated and middle class. Then there was his comment that the "bitter" folk of our nation, those who take principled stands on their religion and Constitutional rights, only do so because they lack economic opportunity. Obama has expressed a similar view of Iran, positing that between his dynamic personality and just the right economic incentives, the mad mullahs can be divested of their religious principles that now drive their world-wide mayhem and murder. Indeed, he even held out WTO membership as the economic key to defusing the mad mullahs, not realizing that Iran had rejected WTO membership in 2006. They value their religion and their revolution far more than they care about the Iranian economy. For all of his intelligence, it would seem that Obama views the world through a naïve and distorted prism that, in the current circumstance, would prove not merely ineffectual, but highly dangerous.

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Ayers & Obama

Stanley Kurtz has written at the WSJ on former terrorist turned Education PhD William Ayers and his relationship to Obama. What it boils down to is that Ayers sees education and teacher training as the keys for pushing his radical anti-American, anti-capitalist agenda. Bottom line, Obama played a major role in helping Ayers push that agenda. This from the WSJ:

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists. . . .

Read the entire article. Is this important in evaluating Obama's beliefs and the nature of his relationship to Ayers as something more than "some guy" who lived in his neighborhood? Look for this to get zero play in the MSM.

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A Pattern Of Associations

Here is another segment of Bill O'Reilly's interview of Barack Obama. According to Obama, Rev. Wright never displayed his vile racism or separatism during the 2 weeks out of every month that Obama sat in Wright's pews for ovr two decades. That strains credulity beyond the breaking point. And as O'Reilly, to his credit, notes - Obama's history shows that he regularly chooses to associate with radicals. Obama calls that guilt by association. Yet the wisdom that you shall know a man by the company he keeps is ancient. If anyone can give me examples of how it is inaccurate or tell me why it should be suspended when evaluating Obama, I'd love to hear the argument.

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Friends

As I said in the post below, the last thing Obama should want to do is to start attacking McCain's character or associations. TNOY points out why.



Heh.

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Desperation & Backfire

Obama is getting hammered by McCain over his lack of substance and his lack of judgement. Obama has not been faring well in the public eye. The polls continue to drop. What to do?

The far left is clamoring for Obama to attack McCain. I have yet to find a single instance where actually listening to the far left seemed like a good idea. To the contrary, the stupidest thing that Obama and the left could do would be to attack McCain on anything other than policy differences. Obama is far too weak a candidate and McCain has far too much experience and far too much character for Obama and the left to start inviting comparisons.

Yet panic and desperation have set in. Obama and the left are now throwing the kitchen sink at McCain, highlighting some of McCain's greatest strengths and putting character and associations directly at issue. Big, big, huge, gigantic, enormous mistake.

Trying to paint McCain as dishonest on incredibly small matters wholly ancillary to McCain strengths is just insane. Yet that is precisely what Obama supporters are trying to do.

McCain spent six years getting tortured in a POW camp. There is nothing whatsoever that Obama or the left can do to spin the substance of what happened to him as a negative. Yet we have a series of folks on the left focusing attention on one incredibly small anecdote from McCain's time in the Hanoi Hilton to suggest that McCain was untruthful - i.e., the cross in the dirt story that some on the left claimed came from Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelego, written in 1973.

McCain did not lift it from Solzhenitsyn's writings since it never appears therein, and McCain's story is verified by other POW's, but that does not matter. If you are on the left, the last thing you want the public dwelling upon is the incredible price McCain paid in the service of our country to score what would be, at most, an incredibly small point.

Then on to another unassailable McCain strength. McCain and his wife adopted a child with birth defects from an orphanage in Bangladesh run by Mother Theresa seventeen years ago. They have raised that little girl to adulthood and nursed her to health. This shows charachter, compassion and a willingness to give and to sacrifice on a level beyond most of us. My God, if you are on the left, why would you want to highlight anything at all about this?

Yet we have Andy Sullivan and others calling attention to this matter, claiming that McCain embellished the story of their adoption of this child by falsely claiming that Cindy McCain actually met with Mother Theresa when she was in Bangladesh. McCain never has, though his wife may have given that impression during one of several interviews during which she was asked about the adoption. But wow, to say that Sullivan and his brethern, in an effort to attack McCain, are missing the forest through the trees on this is an understatement of titanic proportions.

The last thing that Obama himself should do is to start making attacks on McCain's character or associations in any possible form. McCain is not perfect, but he has been thoroughly tested and come out of it on the very positive end of the scale. Obama on the other hand has a history of associations so thoroughly suspect and his own character so untested that inviting comparisons would be insane. Moreover, because there is more than a whiff of corruption, sleaze and quid pro quo to a plethora of major events surrounding Obama's rise in politics, it just raises the downsides for Obama on the character issue exponentially.

Obama's two saving graces on the character issue have been McCain, who has himself largely silenced the right, and the MSM who have played deaf and dumb. Let's face facts. In any other election involving any candidate but Obama, a person with his history of associations would not stand a chance of being elected dog catcher in any locality outside of Berkley. So between the MSM and McCain, Obama has gotten the absolute minimum exposure he could possibly hope for on all of this. These are not just sleeping dogs Obama should let lie, they are viscious sleeping pit bulls with an advanced case of rabies.

Yet the Obama campaign unveiled an ad in Georgia that I blogged about yesterday in which Obama slimes McCain for his association to Robert Reid. The McCain campaign fired a back with a shot across the bow, warning Obama that he did not want to make character an issue, and mentioning Bill Ayers. Obviously the Obama camp did not get the message.

Not only is Obama continuing with the ad, but now they are seeking to paint McCain as an elitist out of touch with the "bitter folk" because he is rich and, in answer to an interview question about the number of houses he owns, McCain answered that he did not know, but his wife Cindy would. It turns out he owns none, Cindy owns seven. Regardless, here is the ad



This is a mistake of just huge proportion. In response, the McCain camp announced today that the "gloves are off." Here is the responsive ad from the McCain camp, highlighting Obama's own very questionable housing problem.



That is just a small taste of what lies behind the floodgates for Obama.

And with the gloves off, there is this from the Atlantic:

A group called the American Issues Project said it launched a 2.8 million television ad buy highlighting Obama's ties to Ayres. The group calls itself "an organization representing a coalition of activists committed to raising conservative issues both during and after the election." It includes longtime Republican activists like Ed Failor, Jr. of Iowa. Failor was a McCain adviser in the state. The ad will air in Ohio and Michigan. Here's the script:

Narrator:

"Beyond the speeches, how much do you know about Barack Obama?
What does he really believe?

Consider this:
United 93 never hit the Capitol on 9/11.
But the Capitol was bombed thirty years before -


By an American terrorist group called Weather Underground that declared 'war' on the U.S. -

Targeting the Capitol, the Pentagon, police stations and more.

One of the group's leaders, William Ayers, admits to the bombings, proudly saying later:

'We didn't do enough.'
Some members of the group Ayers founded even went on to kill police.

But Barack Obama is friends with Ayers, defending him as, quote,
'Respectable' and 'Mainstream.'
Obama's political career was launched in Ayers' home.
And the two served together on a left-wing board.

Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol...and is proud of it?

Do you know enough to elect Barack Obama?

American Issues Project is responsible for the content of this ad."

Obama stands a real chance of winning this election if he concentrates solely on shoring up his weaknesses and engaging McCain on policy. But that isin't going to happen. Its panic time for the One. And the advice he is taking is clearly not of divine inspiration.

Update: The Battle of Elitisma. This is hilarious.

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Desperation

As I posted below, Obama, sliding in the polls, has promised to be much more aggressive in his attacks on John McCain. But Obama has to be truly desperate to go after John McCain on the basis of his associations. Given Obama's history of ties to radical after radical, this would seem a can of worms he would stay away from like its radioactive. Yet he is now preparing to run an ad criticizing McCain for associating with Rick Reid, an individual involved with Jack Abramoff scandal that McCain exposed.

Here is the ad the Obama campaign is now running:



The McCain campaign response, posted at NRO, is stinging:

Barack Obama’s ad is ridiculous. Because of John McCain, corruption was exposed and people like Jack Abramoff went to jail.

However, if Barack Obama wants to have a discussion about truly questionable associations, let’s start with his relationship with the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, at whose home Obama’s political career was reportedly launched. Mr. Ayers was a leader of the Weather Underground, a terrorist group responsible for countless bombings against targets including the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and numerous police stations, courthouses and banks. In recent years, Mr. Ayers has stated, ‘I don’t regret setting bombs … I feel we didn’t do enough.’

The question now is, will Barack Obama immediately call on the University of Illinois to release all of the records they are currently withholding to shed further light on Senator Obama’s relationship with this unrepentant terrorist?”

— McCain spokesman Brian Rogers

This is clearly an effort to slime McCain, but it is ill advised for Obama to say the least. All of the MSM effort to play down and ignore Obama's associations - ones that should have disqualified from running for the presidency in the first place - will go for naught if Obama opens up this can of worms himself.

That said, it is not enough for the McCain campaign to respond to this with a statement. They should be making an immediate demand that Obama pull the ad. If that fails, then the McCain camp should respond in kind. They are more than justified in doing so.

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The Obamamatons

Prepare to be amazed at their intellectual prowess. It is man (and woman) on the street interviews in NYC with individuals so smitten with The One that they wear his visage for all to see on their t-shirts. This from an article in the Guardian (our MSM would never dare run this) wherein the first person at bat gives away her political bent by comparing Obama to Che Guerva in terms of marketing appeal.

This from the Guardian:

Jordana Zeldin, 24, photographer

Obama has become like Che Guevara in terms of what his face represents on merchandising. . .

. . . Obama represents this uniting force. He is willing to address the fact that America is far from perfect, in fact wildly flawed, in the way that recent politicians haven't done. For America to be this beacon of democracy it always says it is, it needs to acknowledge its flaws, look to other countries as models and build up from there. In terms of his biological and cultural make-up, he represents what America is - this racially mixed melting pot. It speaks to a lot of people who have moved to America or come from mixed families.

I knew our nation was imperfect, but I had no idea that in comparison it had so many flaws that we need to become more like, well, I am not sure who Ms. Z has in mind. Perhaps we can take lessons in democracy from the EU, a government form that retains the terminology of democracy while dispensing with the popular vote? Or perhaps we can become more Soviet like, as we may if Sen. Obama and the far left have their way. And one has to love Ms. Z's moral relativism spoken without any context and plied with a healthy does of identity politics.

Unfortunately, the other interviewees get no better. Next up:

Kellam Clark, 30, furniture maker and artist

I was sceptical about Obama initially. . . .

But then during the period in which he was debating against Hillary and the Republicans, he came out on top. I thought, I'll support him - he felt like the only one available to me. I'm now supporting [independent presidential candidate] Ralph Nader since he jumped back into the race. But I don't see it as a contradiction to wear the T-shirt. I still see it as important to endorse Obama, as one of the politicians we have available to us as progressive Americans. I don't go for the dream stuff, but he represents a changing of the guard. . . .

Mr. C is very confused. No Republicans showed up at the Dem debates. To the contrary Obama has been ducking and running from any direct debates with McCain like a mouse running away from a cat. And if he thinks Obama is coming out on top, obviously he did not tune in to Saddleback.

Viola Afrifa, 24, Student

. . . I'm fascinated by Obama's eloquence, the way that he speaks, both in terms of rhythm and words. I'm studying political communications, the way people project themselves, and he uses all of the techniques. The academic interest alerted me to Obama at first, and then it became political.

Obama is happy to negotiate without conditions, or so he says. He has a new way of dealing with other countries without looking only at American self-interest. This is something quite revolutionary.

A woman smitten by Obama and his teleprompter. As to "a new way of dealing" with other countries, obviously Ms. Afrifa's history lessons did not reach the 1930's. Obama's plan is not new, and it has been thoroughly discredited by history, and even Obama has disowned it as a plan. As to not "looking only at American self-interest," that is likely an accurate assessment. Given the number of people in his past now clinging to the bottom of the bus and the number of principles Obama has once claimed only to toss under the bus, I fully expect that a President Obama would put his political needs above the needs of the country. He's sort of the anti-McCain that way.

Sei Smith, 18, Student

I'm wearing it partly because I like how it looks and partly because I support Obama. I'm not a political person but the other candidates didn't speak to me. I saw Obama on television saying that you don't necessarily need experience if you have belief, and that sometimes experience can cloud your vision. I thought that was interesting and cool. Obama is similar to Lincoln in that he is a visionary. He's not as extreme as most young people, but he is a bridge to more radical views. To be a politician in America you can't be extreme, but he is pretty radical as politicians go.

If we all tap our heels together three times and just believe. . . . This is the Disney culture gone wild. It is interesting that Mr. Smith accepts Obama's take on experience without any sort of intellectual analysis. Obviously he wants to 'believe.' It is of note also that Smith sees Obama as a "bridge to more radical views." Obama's past is littered with radicals from Bill Ayers to Jeremiah Wright to name but a few. And his views on abortion that allow for infanticide are as radical as one will find in or outside of Washington. So Mr. Smith's is probably a correct assessment. If Obama takes over, it will in fact mark the first time that the far left has actually been handed the keys to the White House. Even Carter and Clinton ran as centrists.

Tony Gabaton, 30, community organiser

I wear the T-shirt because I admire Obama's forthright and genuine rhetoric; he is just cut from a different cloth from most politicians. After everything that went down in Florida in 2001 I was very cynical about the whole political process. He has revived hope in me as well as others. . . .

You have to love this one. What Obama did to get his Illinois state senate seat makes Florida 2001 look pristine and non-controversial. Obama only won his U.S. Senate seat when supporters were able to get the Court records unsealed on his opponents divorce (from the lovely Jeri Ryan). He has tossed campaign finance reform to the wind, and now he is preparing to buy votes in Philly. There is nothing about Obama that smacks of respect for the democratic process. As to 'cynical' - look that word up in the dictionary, I will be surprised if you do not find Obama's picture. Or if not there, then next to the definitions of 'hypocrisy' and 'ambition.' Obviously, the facts matter far less to Mr. G than does the fact that Gore lost the 2001 election.

You can read the entire Guardian article here. In all fairness, these folk are young and thus have an excuse for their lack of intellectual rigor. Our MSM on the other hand . . .

(H/T Maggies Farm)

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The Central Issues Of Obama’s Candidacy

Obama is attempting to ride into the Presidency on an undefined promise of change and a claim to be able to magically heal the supposed divides of the nation, if not the world. He deflects reasonable concern about his lack of any substantive experience by proclaiming that he is possessed of "superior judgment." Thus, and as with all candidates, we need to take the measure of Obama’s judgment, his character, and his veracity in order to determine his fitness to lead us as President.

But as Obama and his supporters made clear today, they want all such topics off limits. Obama outrageously claims that these issues don’t matter:



It is the height of hypocrisy for Obama to call this "gotch’a politics" and unfair electoral tactics. Beyond the fact that these questions are central to assessing Obama’s fitness for the presidency, virtually Obama’s entire political career has been built on unfair electoral tactics and "gotch’a politics." His first foray into politics was won when he used his fellow lawyers to get his competition decertified and taken off the ballot. His subsequent elections have each been won only after huge "gotcha’" moments involving his competition. For Obama to claim the questions last night are either superfluous, unwarranted or unfair is hypocrisy and prevarication writ large.

(Update: Obama has now refused to take part in a CBS debate that had been scheduled before the North Carolina primary. It appears that he wants nothing to do with further debates.)

That said, let’s review what was raised last night and why it matters:
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Bittergate

Charles Gibson questioned Obama on Obama's recent comments made before a rich, liberal crowd gathered in an "off the record" venue in San Francisco:



Obama claimed that he misspoke, but then he immediately reaffirmed the substance of his "bittergate" comments. He tied people’s economic situation to whether they are overly concerned with their rights under the Second Amendment, as well as with moral, ethical and religious issues. He questions their judgment, stating in sum - albeit more tactfully than he did in San Francisco - that Americans concerned with these things are unable to distinguish what really matters. What does this say about how he will treat their concerns as President? What does his belittling of their values say of his judgment?

Are we to accept, just by way of example, gay marriage and severe regulation of our right to own weapons in return for socialized Obamacare and a few other middle class entitlement programs? Are our values and ethics for sale in Obama's view and, if so, what does that say about his own? When it comes to choosing Supreme Court judges, will Obama use his judgment to choose justices likely to uphold the traditions important to those small town people he calls bitter? Or will he choose judges with a socialist agenda who espouse the theory of a "living constitution?" - i.e., a theory that allows judges to act as a supra-legislature and create new rights - or gut old ones, such as the 5th Amendment limitation on government's ability to take private property - based on their personal beleifs. Obama's explanation of his "bittergate" remarks clarifies most, if not all of those questions.

Gun Rights, Obama’s Position On Handguns & The 1996 Survey –

As part of Obama’s claim to superior judgment, he asserted last night that he has "never" supported a ban on handguns - and that his "writing" never appeared on a 1996 survey indicating that he did support such a ban at the time. By making this claim in light of all the surrounding circumstances, Obama again asks us to make a blind leap of faith and accept, on his bald assertion, a counterintuitive conclusion. It raises questions of character and veracity that transcend the policy issue of restriction on gun ownership.

In 1996, when he was first running for elected office, an influential local political organization asked Obama to complete a survey on his positions as an integral part of their process to determine which candidate to endorse. The completed survey ascribed to Obama a series of very far left positions on a variety of hot button issues, one of which was support for a total ban on handguns. After the survey came to light, Obama’s aides said he "never saw or approved" the questionnaire. They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who "unintentionally mischaracterize[d] his position." That was plausible.

But then additional facts emerged. Obama, it turned out, had met with the organization and was interviewed directly upon the basis of his answers to the survey. Further, the day after the interview, Obama filed an amended survey with a hand-written comment in the margins. Once this came to light, according to the Politico, "[t]hrough an aide, Obama, . . . did not dispute that the handwriting was his. But he contended it doesn’t prove he completed, approved — or even read — the latter questionnaire." That is the type of legalistic defense that Bill Clinton could appreciate. As several members of that local political organization admit today, Obama’s claims in this regards are simply "unbelievable."

Now in the latest twist, Obama not only disclaims any knowledge of the answers on which he was quizzed, but even claims now that the handwriting isn’t his on the amended survey.

The important point here is not that 12 years ago Obama supported a total ban on handguns, though it is of some significance. The critical aspect of this whole situation is that Obama is prevaricating to keep his carefully created reputation for "superior judgment" from being called into question. And by taking this tack, he calls not only his judgment into question, but adds issues of veracity and character.



Rev. Jerimiah Wright

Once it came to light that Obama, the would-be great uniter, was heavily influenced by, spent twenty years with, and donated substantial sums of money to a virulenty racist, anti-American preacher, it created a cognitive dissonance of epic proportions. It was of a magnitude that, were it a white candidate in the same scenario, his candidacy would have been crushed within days of the matter becoming public – no questions asked by anyone of any race. It is a dissonance that so clearly goes to Obama’s character and judgment that it must be answered. And it is a measure of the hypocrisy of our left wing media that no one has yet vetted Obama’s frankly unbelievable claims of ignorance in regards to Rev. Wright.

Once a few of Rev. Wright's racist sermons were made public - what we saw on Fox was in fact a highlights reel sold by Rev. Wright's Church - Obama tried an ever changing litany of excuses to quell the issue. Only after these excuses failed and his poll numbers were tanking did Obama decide to give a speech on the "larger issue" of race in America. He started that speech by referring to slavery as "original sin" - thus tagging every white now alive in America and all yet to come with responsibility for slavery. That is not a particularly uniting theme. Indeed, it is the theme at the heart of race baiters and seperatists. The remainder of Obama's speech got little, if any, better.

Our left wing press proclaimed the speech historic and asserted that Obama had fully put to rest the issue of Rev. Wright. But for those of us with critical faculties not predisposed to the vacuity of identity politics, Obama's speech was in no way a reasonable explanation of why he adopted Wright as his mentor and supported him with church attendance and donations for twenty years. It did not explain how Obama was so moved by a blatantly racist sermon condemning "white greed" that he chose it for the central theme of his book, the Audacity of Hope, published in October, 2006. Nor was his speech in any way a larger dialogue on the issue of racism. It was a series of excuses buttressed with a completely unbelievable claim that he had no idea Wright was a racist during his 20 years he sat with his family in Wright's pews. Contradicting earlier assertions, Obama now admitted that he had heard a few "controversial" remarks from Rev. Wright over the many years. Obama caveated that by saying that he completely disagreed with the remarks and that the remarks were excusable becasue of Wright's background and public works.

Hillary Clinton hit the nail on the head in her response to Obama on this issue. And if Obama wants us to accept his incredibly unbelievable excuses, he needs to have Rev. Wright release his transcripts for 20 years of sermons - the whole sermons, not merely the sanitized versions.



William Ayers

Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse fully explores the extent and the importance of Obama’s voluntary association with the unrepentant anti-American terrorist, William Ayers. As Rick presciently asks:

What would any other politician have done when he or she discovered that a terrorist was sitting on the same board as they? Wouldn’t just about anyone else have said “no thank you” to such an invitation?

Moreover, Obama displayed a very skewed sense of moral relativism, equating Ayers, a man who bombed government buildings and is proud of his past terrorist acts, with Senator Tom Colburn, a doctor who believes abortion is morally wrong and has sponsored a bill to treat doctors performing abortions as murderers.



Tony Rezko

Obama’s extensive relationship with a major fundraiser-cum-felon Tony Rezko didn’t even make it into the questioning last night, but it is yet another issue that goes to Obama’s judgment and veracity. Again, see Rick Moran for the full explanation.

Flag Pin and Patriotism

I would consider this a non-issue had Obama not made it one. In October, 2007, Obama told a reporter:

. . . right after 9/11 I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest, instead I'm gonna try to tell the American people what I believe what will make this country great and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism."

That is not Obama's only act that seems to smack of a disdain for patriotism. Several months ago, Obama refused to put his hand over his heart while our national anthem was being played. Admittedly, these are mere symbolic acts. But symbolism is used to make a point. Taken together, it would be reasonable to infer that Obama sees some things very fundamentally wrong with our country and its 200 plus years of traditions. That is quite troubling in a man who wants to "change" this country in some undefined way. Under these circumstances, it is quite valid to raise these issues and test those inferences. In other words, if Obama is going to make symbolic acts, than we as a nation have every right to find out the meaning he is trying to convey by those symbolic acts.

Here is the anthem video:



And here is Obama last night:



Conclusion

One’s character is determined by how one habitually responds to things within one's environment. To put it in the words of P.B. Fitzwater, "character is the sum and total of a person's choices.” It is only by looking at character and veracity that we can judge how a man is likely to act in the future – whether in accordance with deeply held principles that define his character, or with prevarication and expediency that define a weak and self-serving character. And it is only by reviewing a person’s past acts as well as their current beliefs that we can get a feel for the soundness of their judgment. Character and judgment are the crucial considerations in choosing a leader who will face a myriad of challenges, many we cannot forecast today, over the period of the next four years as President.

The questions Obama was asked last night are central to assessing his character and judgment. It tells us volumes about his fitness to lead us as President that he does not want us to ask anymore questions on those issues.

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Obama Takes A Nose Dive In Philly

Finally, at a debate, Obama gets asked some difficult questions - though with minimal follow-up - and he stumbles badly. He was on the defensive most of the night and not only was his performance weak, but some of his answers will very likely come back to haunt him.

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The far left is screaming this morn that the questions asked of Obama in last night’s debate were grossly unfair. You can find the high decibel round-up at Instapundit. They absolutely do not want a spotlight shown on Obama’s history from which we can infer the measure of the man. To ABC’s credit, they did ask questions about some of the major issues surrounding Obama’s character. That said, they did so without the follow-up questions to Obama’s facile attempts to sweep them away. Nonetheless, Obama looked bad and on the defensive throughout the night.

The lowest of the low points for Obama during last night’s debate came on the issues of “bittergate” and gun rights. Almost right out of the gate, Charles Gibson asked Obama about bittergate:

[You said] small town Pennsylvanians who have had tough economic times in recent years. And you said they get bitter and they cling to guns or they cling to their religion or they cling to antipathy toward people who are not like them. . . . Do you understand that some people in this state find that patronizing and think that you said actually what you meant?

Obama seems to have really fumbled his answer. He claims he misspoke, but then went on to say:

. . . when people [are] like promised year after year, decade after decade, that their economic situation is going to change and it doesn't, then, politically, they end up focusing on those things that are constant like religion. They end up feeling this is a place where I can find some refuge. This is something I can count on. They end up being much more concerned about votes around things like guns, where traditions have been passed on from generation to generation. And those are incredibly important to them. And, yes, what is also true is that wedge issues, hot-button issues, end up taking prominence in our politics.

Didn’t he just repeat the bittergate remarks, substituting the word “focusing” for the word cling? That is certainly what it seems to me. Just as it seems that he is saying is that its economic concerns that drive concerns about Second Amendment rights and moral issues. So if we only had enough money in our pockets, we would be unconcerned with such things as efforts to restrict gun ownership and moral issues such as gay marriage, abortion and the role religion should play in society. Its pretty clear Obama said exactly what he meant in the “bittergate” remarks to San Francisco’s elite left.

Then on gun rights issues, Obama sidestepped a question about where he stood on the highly restrictive D.C. gun laws, stating that he had not read the legal briefs before the Supreme Court. How that keeps him from forming his own opinion on the matter is beyond me – and his refusal to answer this question appeared very weak. Indeed, he has sponsored incredibly restrictive gun legislation while in the Illinois State Senate (see here), though Gibson did not ask him about that legislation.

Obama did give an answer that could have real long-term problems for him. He stated that he had “never favored a total ban on hand-guns.” Asked about a 1996 survey filled out by his campaign that clearly stated the opposite, Obama disclaimed any knowledge of the survey in the debate, stating “No, my writing wasn't on that particular questionnaire . . .” I blogged in detail about this questionnaire here. Obama was quizzed on the questionnaire the day after his campaign submitted it. The day after that, he submitted an amended questionnaire with both the answer about a ban on hand guns unedited and with what, until yesterday, his campaign acknowledged were Obama's own handwritten comments in the margins. This is not the last we have heard of this issue, by any means.

On his association with Rev. Wright, Obama claimed that he had already fully addressed this issue and again trotted out the frankly unbelievable assertion that he never heard Rev. Wright’s racist screed throughout his entire twenty year attendance at the church. The truth is we have yet to hear a Rev. Wright sermon that is not racist. I am waiting for someone to request copies of the Rev. Wright’s sermons over the past twenty years – and to ask Obama whether he will demand Rev. Wright make them available. And Gibson did not ask Obama about his reference to “white greed” in his book Audacity of Hope – an inclusion that clearly shows Obama not only heard such vile screed over his twenty year association, but that he adopted it. Be that as it may, Clinton had the right take on this:

I think in addition to the questions about Reverend Wright and what he said and when he said it, and for whatever reason he might have said these things, there were so many different variations on the explanations that we heard.

And it is something that I think deserves further exploration because clearly, what we've got to figure out is how we're going to bring people together in a way that overcomes the anger, overcomes the divisiveness and whatever bitterness there may be out there. You know?

It is clear that, as leaders, we have a choice who we associate with and who we apparently give some kind of seal of approval to. And I think that it wasn't only the specific remarks but some of the relationships with Reverend Farrakhan, with giving the church bulletin over to the leader of Hamas, to put a message in.
You know, these are problems. And they raise questions in people's minds. And, so, this is a legitimate area, as everything is, when we run for office, for people to be exploring and trying to find answers.

And on his long association with the unrepentent terrorist bomber William Ayers, Obama had the audacity to liken Ayers to conservative Senator Tom Colburn, a man who is virulently anti-abortion but who has certainly never advocated violence against the pro-abortion crowd, let alone carried out such an act. Gateway Pundit has more on this.

Both Obama and Clinton were allowed to repeat their ‘out of Iraq now' canard to softball questioning. Both said they would ignore the advice of Petraeus and Crocker, but neither were questioned on the explicit premise articulated by Petraeus and Crocker that such a precipitous drawdown would be a disaster that would open Iraq to being dominated by Iran and reinfiltrated by al Qaeda.

On the issue of a nuclear armed Iran, when asked whether the U.S. should put Israel under its umbrella of nuclear protection, while Clinton answered forcefully, Obama danced around the answer, never answering with a clear “yes.”

Obama was asked about his plans to nearly double the capital gains tax rate. When he was told that each time the capital gains tax rate has been cut, it has brought in more revenue, Obama responded by justifying his sophmoric class warfare on the grounds of “fairness.”

Obama continues to favor affirmative action and considerations of race in college admissions to overcome “current discrimination.” I was floored by that. The group most being discriminated against in college admissions today, according to the most recent surveys, are white male gentiles. How Obama’s support for affirmative action in regards to that reality portends to unite America across the vast racial divide we hear exists from the far left and from race baiters such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton – and you can add Rev. Wright to the list – is an issue that Obama needs to explain in detail.

You can find the entire debate transcript here. This was not only a poor performance by Obama, it is likely one that will - and very much should - resurface often between now and November. The more I see of Obama, the less I trust this man's judgment to hold any elected office.

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