Barack Obama

1 Comment Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

barack and michelle’s excellent adventure

If you want to read Barack’s Berlin speech, go here.  No average citizen of the world gets to make that speech.  I can’t call Chancellor Merkel and book time to speak to the people of Germany in a historic place.  So it’s somewhat disingenuous of Obama to insist that he has this opportunity to speak in Berlin and that it has nothing to do with being a candidate for President. There are a few problems with what Obama had to say,  but the bigger problem I have is with his whole European tour.   The Obama campaign is taking a huge risk by keeping their candidate off of the domestic campaign trail to meet with all of these world leaders and to press the flesh with his European fans and his buddies in the media.  No doubt there is huge press that goes with a world tour, as well as much adulation from foreigners because they know he won’t be a “cowboy” like George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.  But is this the way to win an American election?

Greatness and legacy are not borrowed by copying phrases or words.  They are earned, and Barack has done nothing to claim the mantle of either Ronald Reagan or JFK.  That’s why the comparison of Barack’s speech to similar speeches made by these two men is inaccurate.  Both Reagan and JFK said stuff that was unpopular at the time, and didn’t apologize for it.  When was the last time Barack said something unpopular that he hasn’t apologized for?   He doesn’t admit mistakes very often. (Does this sound like anyone the left has consistently hammered the past 7 years or so?)  Most importantly, both men had been elected by the people of the United States to speak on their behalf and to shape the foreign policy of this country.    Barack Obama has no such mandate from us.  He hasn’t been elected yet, and he and his advisors would do well to remember this.

For the must-read of the weekend, check out Gerard Baker’s absolute skewering and mockery of Barack Obama.  It’s hilarious.

4 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Republicans

demint to obama: you’ve got mail

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Senator DeMint?

Senator Jim DeMint writes to Obama requesting hearings on Afghanistan(pdf here — h/t Sister Toldjah):

Dear Senator Obama,

In the coming days, I understand you will travel to Afghanistan for the first time and visit with a few of our European partners.  Like my travels to these regions, I trust this trip will afford you a unique opportunity to see the facts on the ground firsthand and witness the work of our brave men and women who sacrifice so much to secure our freedom.

In February, I had the privilege of visiting and talking with our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.  These brave Americans serve their country with incredible passion, pride and courage.  As you know, NATO’s International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) plays an integral part in the current operations and reconstruction of Afghanistan.

There are concerns about the imbalance between some European nations, their level of commitment to the fight in Afghanistan, and caveats these nations place on their forces in theater.  I trust you will become well acquainted with these issues.  The Bush Administration has worked hard to maintain and increase the level of forces our European allies have committed to the fight.

However, despite these successes, I am concerned our Subcommittee has not held any hearings on these issues over the last two years.  With oversight of NATO relations and its role in Afghanistan, I believe it is time for us to focus closely on these issues. As Ranking Member of your Subcommittee on European Affairs, I would welcome a chance to hold a hearing on NATO’s mission in Afghanistan upon your return.

The success of Afghanistan is critical to the future of NATO and vital to our efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban.  As the situation in Afghanistan grows more tense, it is time for us to hold a hearing on the mission there. I look forward to working with you to schedule this hearing.

While it’s nice to see that Senator Obama recognizes the importance of sending more troops in to stabilize Afghanistan, it’s also fair to point out that he hasn’t exactly made Afghanistan a top priority until now. Senator DeMint draws attention to this without being nasty about it, and the indirect reply to DeMint’s letter is that his letter was “politically motivated“.   If DeMint is on McCain’s VP shortlist, that’s news to all of us.  (I wish that this was true, but it’s probably not.)  He raises a legitimate question and Obama should give a straight answer to it.  I can buy the argument that Obama’s subcommittee might not be the most appropriate venue for Afghanistan hearings, but why not just say that, instead of taking a shot at DeMint?

Senator Joe Biden attempts to rescue Obama by pointing that out, and he is unsuccessful. As Sister Toldjah points out in her post,  Senator Biden’s defense of Obama falls flat because Biden himself had previously criticized Obama for not holding hearings on Afghanistan. Oops.

Biden does deserve some credit here — he has been consistent in requesting a “surge” of troops for Afghanistan.  That’s one thing that the press release quoted by Politico brings into sharp focus.  I’m surprised that Joe Biden hasn’t brought this up very often.  Why are Barack Obama and the rest of the Democrats so convinced that adding additional military personnel in Afghanistan would achieve the desired objective?  After all, they aren’t even sure that that the Bush-Petraeus-McCain strategy of sending additional troops worked in Iraq.  Afghanistan is far less stable than Iraq.  Might they want to focus more on the all-important political objectives before sending in the brute force?  It’s a puzzler.

Posted on '08 Election, Illegal Immigration

same difference

Senator Obama to the National Council of La Raza:

That’s what’s at stake this November. This election is nothing less than a test of our allegiance to the American Dream. And it’s a test of our commitment to all those who are counting on us to keep that Dream alive – the people you serve every day.

The 12 million people in the shadows, the communities taking immigration enforcement into their own hands, the neighborhoods seeing rising tensions as citizens are pitted against new immigrants…they’re counting on us to stop the hateful rhetoric filling our airwaves – rhetoric that poisons our political discourse, degrades our democracy, and has no place in this great nation. They’re counting on us to rise above the fear and demagoguery, the pettiness and partisanship, and finally enact comprehensive immigration reform.

There’s nothing wrong with requiring local, state, and federal governments to enforce existing immigration laws.  While there will always be those who oppose all immigration due to their own racial prejudices, that doesn’t represent the majority of those who support border enforcement and the rule of law.  Both McCain and Obama tend to blur the lines here by using the word immigrants instead of illegal immigrants. Those two terms are not the same.  I’m all in favor of legal immigration.  Most Americans support legal immigration.  We oppose people breaking the law to enter this country.  No apology should be necessary for that.

He continues:

Now, I know Senator McCain used to buck his party on immigration by fighting for comprehensive reform – and I admired him for it. But when he was running for his party’s nomination, he abandoned his courageous stance, and said that he wouldn’t even support his own legislation if it came up for a vote.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I think it’s time for a President who won’t walk away from something as important as comprehensive reform when it becomes politically unpopular. And that’s the commitment I’m making to you. I marched with you in the streets of Chicago. I fought with you in the Senate for comprehensive immigration reform. And I will make it a top priority in my first year as President. Not just because we need to secure our borders and get control of who comes into our country. And not just because we have to crack down on employers abusing undocumented immigrants. But because we have to finally bring those 12 million people out of the shadows.

Yes, they broke the law. And we should not excuse that. We should require them to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for citizenship – behind those who came here legally. But we cannot – and should not – deport 12 million people. That would turn American into something we’re not; something we don’t want to be.

Both John McCain and Barack Obama are skilled at telling groups like La Raza what they want to hear about comprehensive immigration reform.  McCain may have fooled Barack Obama when he said all that stuff about securing the borders first, but everyone who was paying attention knew McCain didn’t really change his position on this.   You don’t co-sponsor a comprehensive immigration bill with Ted Kennedy, knowing the political fallout from that, without buying into the concept.

We can’t deport 12 million people.  No one is saying that we can.  But we should start by strengthening existing laws and tightening employer verification rules.  Those are good first steps.  Which of these men would support these provisions without adding the path to citizenship part to their new comprehensive immigration plan?  My guess is that neither man would.  If Senator Obama is serious about making enforcement of current laws part of his strategy to combat illegal immigration, then he might want to lay off some of his own derogatory rhetoric toward ICE — who he accused of “terrorizing communities” earlier in his remarks to La Raza  — because he will need their help with that.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

stubborn

I’ve said from the very beginning that I don’t believe that John McCain ever changed his mind about comprehensive immigration reform, so Byron York’s column in The Hill doesn’t surprise me.  McCain is quoted as saying that he learned his lesson from the immigration fight.  On the other hand, he still says that he’s glad he proposed the reform and would do it again.  We should be perfectly clear where McCain stands on this because he still believes that he was right on this issue.  Don’t be fooled.

That said, Barack Obama might want to reconsider attacking McCain on this issue. There’s no way Barack can say he’s to the right of McCain on illegal immigration — although he might be able to claim credit for not writing any comprehensive immigration reform bills. He hasn’t demonstrated any ability to improve upon McCain’s sad record, and at one point even supported driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.  In addition to that, he voted for McCain-Kennedy before he supported some “poison pill” amendments to kill it.  Any discussion of McCain’s record on immigration would bring counter-attacks from the McCain camp about Barack’s record — and he might not want to go there.  John McCain and Barack Obama sometimes say the right things about securing the borders first, but I don’t believe either one of them, and there’s no reason to, based on their record in the Senate.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Random Musings

misdirection

We all want to believe in something greater than ourselves.  That’s a natural human desire.  When we see the imperfect world around us, and the struggles we face as Americans, we want to believe that it can be resolved in the striving of mere human effort — by electing politicians who share our desire to improve this country.  This is where the myth of Barack Obama started — that he wasn’t just any other politician.   We were asked to believe that Barack Obama, in addition to being a historical transformative figure as the Democratic nominee, was some kind of savior.   Who could forget Michelle Obama’s comment about our souls being broken, and her solution to those broken souls being her husband Barack?  Senator Clinton was right to mock this kind of talk.  No elected official will ever be a saint, much less a savior of all of us.   It’s interesting that so many people believe that this kind of spiritual void can be filled by a politician.

In the process of a campaign, we put our faith in a human being, who is just as imperfect as the rest of us (although possibly more photogenic).  Idealism gets shattered once in a while.  That’s just the nature of the game.  It’s unfortunate, but we all need a little bit of healthy skepticism when it comes to politicians, because even the good ones disappoint us on one issue or another.  If you want someone who can represent you well on policy matters,  do your homework and vote for the best candidate.  If you want someone to fix your soul, that’s beyond the ability of human politics.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Random Musings

oh ye of little faith

Fear not, liberals progressives.  Barack hasn’t abandoned you.  He still believes in all those progressive ideas he started out believing at the beginning of his primary campaign.  Pay no attention to the appearance of centrism you may think that you see.  The progressive Barack is the real Barack…and you can trust him on that.  For the record, I believe him. I think that all these attempts to paint Obama as a flip-flopper on Iraq are misguided, because his position has always been somewhat nuanced…except for the times he implied that he supported immediate withdrawal from Iraq.  This was the position progressives liked very much and many of them supported him over Hillary because they thought he was for immediate withdrawal.  Joke’s on them I guess.  It’s an unusual talent some of these Democrat politicians have — to convince each person that the politician actually shares their values.  Barack is especially good at doing this, and it shouldn’t come as a shock that he hasn’t been exactly what progressives expected him to be.

Those who bought into Barack’s promise of a new kind of politics must not have been around the game long enough to be cynical about promises like that.  It’s still hard to condemn the idealism that all these young voters have brought to the process.  We would all like to believe a candidate that we work for has the ability to be transformative and bring needed change to the Washington establishment.  When we find out that the guy or gal we campaign for isn’t everything we expected, it does cause some to be disallusioned with the process. But in this case, did these progressives believe that Barack was going to continue to speak their language going into the general election against John McCain?  Surely they know deep down Barack is still one of them, no matter what he’s saying right now. If not, they should believe it.  It’s far more likely that Barack will stay left once elected than it is that he will embrace some kind of new centrism that is closer to George W. Bush than it is to Bill Clinton.

5 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

silly democrats

Let me get this straight — John McCain’s military service doesn’t qualify him to be commander in chief, but John Kerry’s does?  That’s the unusual logic employed by Obama supporter, failed presidential candidate, and retired military guy General Wesley Clark.   Surely General Clark remembers his glowing comments about Senator Kerry and his war record, and let’s be absolutely clear about this — Kerry ran on that record until he was derailed by the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth.  The Democrats seem conflicted about whether military service matters to presidential candidates.  Clinton = No.   Kerry=Yes.  McCain = Absolutely not.  Curious how military service only adds to your qualifications for commander-in-chief if you are a Democrat.

That’s ok though.  This is a debate I’m comfortable having with the Democrats all day long.  While it’s true that having military service doesn’t automatically qualify you to be President of the United States, McCain’s long record of public service, including serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee,  speaks to much more experience than Senator Obama has.   So Senator Obama’s surrogates like Clark want to question McCain’s experience. Ha.  Go ahead.    Do you really want to compare Obama and McCain on overall experience?  Good luck.

1 Comment Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

funny stuff i read today

Rich Lowry on the plight of Sens. Dodd and Conrad and their involvement with Countrywide Financial:

It’s not easy being a U.S. senator. People trick you into taking special favors you didn’t even know existed. Shame on these unscrupulous people!

Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad, both Democrats, fell victim to the machinations of Countrywide Financial, which gave them breaks on mortgages as part of the “Friends of Angelo” program; the “Angelo” in question is Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo.

Of course they are just innocent bystanders in this whole thing, and totally clueless about any additional benefit they would be receiving.  Right.

Michael Graham mocks Mr. Hope and Change.

But I, for one, am hopeful that Obama will at least go through the motions of an election before he seizes power and institutes a new regime of lower tides, healed souls and 53 percent federal marginal tax rates.

Heh.   Whatever you may think of the Bush administration or the possibility of McCain continuing some of the Bush policies, it’s hard to believe that a President Obama could meet these staggeringly high expectations he and his campaign have set in front of the American people.  This difficulty is entirely Obama’s own fault.  He should start smaller and work up to the lower tides and healed souls.  Just my opinion. It also might be a good idea to stop giving the right so many easy targets.

10 Comments Posted on Random Musings

random acts of verbiage

If you’re someone who wants your candidate to be taken seriously on foreign policy, you probably shouldn’t say stuff like Obama advisor Richard Danzig said, “Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security”.  Yes, I’m sure that there was a deeper, broader point to it, because this guy is considered by some to possibly be the National Security Advisor in an Obama administration.  Putting the national security discussion in terms of children’s stories and fictional Star Wars characters might not be the best way to demonstrate a deep level of understanding on that subject.

Meanwhile, the move to end the ban on offshore drilling is picking up steam.   Both President Bush and presidential candidate John McCain have announced that they support ending that ban.  This is a change of position for McCain, but he is not a stupid man, and he knows that the majority of Americans want to start drilling to reduce the price of oil.  According to Rasmussen Reports, 67% of those they polled support ending the ban on offshore drilling.  The poll also said that a significant percentage of those people also believed that offshore drilling was somewhat likely to reduce gas prices.  The American people have now reached the point where their own financial interests are conflicting with their general desire to care about the environment and conservation of resources and so forth.  They are seeing the tradeoff and deciding that cheaper gas is more important than the environment — if being environmentally friendly means $4 + gasoline, that’s where they recognize the insanity of our current policies.  This is important, because all we seem to be hearing from the Democrats is that we can’t drill our way out of this mess, and some Democrats have even suggested that the government should take over all the refineries (!!!).

Offshore drilling won’t completely solve the problem, but it will provide temporary relief while we continue to work on a more comprehensive energy policy.  I know that many Democrats owe their careers to the environmentalists, but surely they don’t want to be seen as opposing anything that has so much public support. As long as there are appropriate safeguards in place, why not do everything we can to mitigate the pain Americans are suffering at the pump?

As far as what we should do to get this elusive energy independence, we could start with producing more of our own oil.  It makes no sense to beg the Saudis to increase production when we refuse to use the resources we already have.  There should be incentives for oil companies to re-invest profits into research into alternative energy sources — not increased taxation for failing to meet some benchmark set by a government bureaucrat. Then we should look into nuclear power and coal.  As far as government oversight goes, I have no problem with that, but we should draw the line way before we get to nationalizing refineries.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

smart move

Barack Obama and his team of advisors don’t really want to pick Hillary as VP.  We all know this.  So how does he deny her a spot on the ticket without alienating her supporters?  Simple.  Jackie Calmes reports in the Wall Street Journal that they would ask Bill to disclose donors to his presidential library, and both of them would have to go through a thorough vetting process (that could potentially disclose more skeletons in the Clinton closet) in order for her to even be considered as a potential VP.   Looks like a deal-breaker to me. Genius move.