August 1, 2008
THE ONLY REAL QUESTION...:
Barack Obama's Wife Michelle to Join Hillary Clinton at Pro-Abortion Dinner (Steven Ertelt, August 1, 2008, LifeNews.com)
During the Democratic convention in Denver where pro-abortion presidential candidate Barack Obama will be coronated as the party's nominee, a leading pro-abortion group will put on a big shindig. Emily's List will unite failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Obama's wife Michelle.That Barack Obama's wife would attend a gala for a pro-abortion group that supports partial-birth abortions and taxpayer-funded abortions is no surprise.
Michelle Obama came under fire in May for a letter she wrote defending partial-birth abortions. The 2004 letter, written to help Obama in his campaign for his U.S. Senate seat, opposes the ban on the abortion procedure.
...is whether the dinner menu includes fetus. How's that outreach to the religious going?
PETROPANIC SQUARED (via Bryan Francoeur):
Obama shifts on offshore oil drilling (MIKE GLOVER, 8/01/08, Associated Press)
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Friday he would be willing to support limited additional offshore oil drilling if that's what it takes to enact a comprehensive policy to foster fuel-efficient autos and develop alternate energy sources.Shifting from his previous opposition to expanded offshore drilling, the Illinois senator told a Florida newspaper he could get behind a compromise with Republicans and oil companies to prevent gridlock over energy.
Republican rival John McCain, who earlier dropped his opposition to offshore drilling, has been criticizing Obama on the stump and in broadcast ads for clinging to his opposition as gasoline prices topped $4 a gallon. Polls indicate these attacks have helped McCain gain ground on Obama. [...]
``The Republicans and the oil companies have been really beating the drums on drilling,'' Obama said in the Post interview. ``And so we don't want gridlock. We want to get something done.''
You can almost feel sorry for his true believers, because by the end of the campaign he'll have tossed every issue they care about overboard and he'll still lose. Sad that he resorted to racist terminology to defend himself.
WHO DARES PIE THE UNICORN RIDER?:
Why the McCain Ad Works (Evan Tracey, 08.01.08, AdAge)
There has been a lot of hand-wringing about the recent McCain ad that compares Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. I have read numerous sources and watched talking heads who have panned the ad as over-the-top and in poor taste. I have to say as a non-partisan ad analyst, I think the ad is pure genius.The reason I like the ad is simply that it works. It takes a pie-in-the-face approach to advertising. The ad shocks the viewer by asserting that Obama is the political equivalent of a party girl, inciting viewers to reconcile this charge and not turn off the ad, forcing them to stay tuned for the punch line: Obama will raise your taxes and import more foreign oil.
PETROPANIC:
Shaheen Reverses Herself on Oil Drilling (Patrick Hynes, 08/01/2008, NH Now)
How rapidly has the pendulum swung on the issue of domestic drilling for oil?So fast that former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen is rapidly dialing back her rhetoric on the issue, even distributing an e-mail to supporters in which senior advisor Judy Reardon insisted, “The fact is Jeanne Shaheen supports more domestic drilling.”
The facts are not flattering to the former governor in this regard, however.
Senator Sununu closing the gap has got her jumpy, eh?
A DEMOCRAT THE PRESS CAN HATE:
President Obama Continues Hectic Victory Tour (Dana Milbank, July 30, 2008, Washington Post)
Barack Obama has long been his party's presumptive nominee. Now he's becoming its presumptuous nominee.Fresh from his presidential-style world tour, during which foreign leaders and American generals lined up to show him affection, Obama settled down to some presidential-style business in Washington yesterday. He ordered up a teleconference with the (current president's) Treasury secretary, granted an audience to the Pakistani prime minister and had his staff arrange for the chairman of the Federal Reserve to give him a briefing. Then, he went up to Capitol Hill to be adored by House Democrats in a presidential-style pep rally.
Along the way, he traveled in a bubble more insulating than the actual president's. [...]
The 5:20 TBA turned out to be his adoration session with lawmakers in the Cannon Caucus Room, where even committee chairmen arrived early, as if for the State of the Union. Capitol Police cleared the halls -- just as they do for the actual president. The Secret Service hustled him in through a side door -- just as they do for the actual president.
Inside, according to a witness, he told the House members, "This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," adding: "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."
As he marches toward Inauguration Day (Election Day is but a milestone on that path), Obama's biggest challenger may not be Republican John McCain but rather his own hubris.
Some say the supremely confident Obama -- nearly 100 days from the election, he pronounces that "the odds of us winning are very good" -- has become a president-in-waiting. But in truth, he doesn't need to wait: He has already amassed the trappings of the office, without those pesky decisions.
SOME CANCERS ARE OPERABLE:
Sox pay a heavy price to trade Manny, get Bay (Sean McAdam, August 1, 2008, Providence Journal)
General manager Theo Epstein was working with a mandate from within his own clubhouse. After his team’s dispiriting loss to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim on Wednesday night, Epstein met with a handful of Red Sox veterans, all of whom delivered the same message: Manny had to go.If his antics weren’t directly responsible for the team’s slide — the Sox have lost five of six on the current homestand, their worst stretch of play at Fenway all season — they were certainly serving as a distraction.
Worse, the players feared that if Ramirez remained with the Sox for the rest of the season, he couldn’t be counted upon in the middle of a pennant race. In their minds, there were no guarantees that Ramirez wouldn’t engage in further petulant displays that could sidetrack the team’s playoff push.
In the past, teammates had advised against just such a deal, reminding management that, whatever his faults, Ramirez’s skills as a run producer were too valuable.
But in the last week or so, Ramirez lost the clubhouse and the equation was turned on its head: No matter how good he was as a hitter, it wasn’t enough to outweigh the negatives.
Teammates were tired of answering questions about him, tired of rationalizing his selfish behavior, and frankly, tired of him.
Armed with that knowledge, Epstein set out to make a trade — any trade.
WHAT IF GOD WEREN'T ONE OF US?:
In White House Race, Twice As Many Voters Uncommitted Compared to Four Years Ago (Rasmussen Reports, July 30, 2008)
[W]hile much has been made of John McCain’s struggles with his party’s conservative base, 33% of the uncommitted voters are Democrats while only 19% are Republicans. Forty-eight percent (48%) are not affiliated with either major political party. [...]This year, 37% of the uncommitted voters plan to vote for a Democratic Congressional candidate while 22% say they’ll vote for the GOP. But, when asked which way they’re leaning in the race for the White House, 26% say McCain and 19% say Obama. Twenty percent (20%) say they still prefer a third-party candidate.
Uncommitted Republicans are far more likely to lean towards McCain than uncommitted Democrats are to lean towards Obama.
THE LIBERATING EFFECT OF BEING AT 1%:
McCain at the National Urban League (John McCain, 2008 National Urban League Annual Conference, Orlando, Florida, 8/01/08)
You'll hear from my opponent, Senator Obama, tomorrow, and if there's one thing he always delivers it's a great speech. But I hope you'll listen carefully, because his ideas are not always as impressive as his rhetoric. And this is especially true in the case of the Urban League's agenda of opportunity. Your Opportunity Compact speaks of the urgent need to reform our public schools, create jobs, and help small businesses grow. You understand that persistent problems of failing schools and economic stagnation cannot be solved with the same tired ideas and pandering to special interests that have failed us time and again. And you know how much the challenges have changed for those who champion the cause of equal opportunity in America.Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? Equal employment opportunity is set firmly down in law. But with jobs becoming scarcer -- and more than 400,000 Americans t hrown out of work just this year -- that can amount to an equal share of diminished opportunity. For years, business ownership by African Americans has been growing rapidly. This is all to the good, but that hopeful trend is threatened in a struggling economy -- with the cost of energy, health care, and just about everything else rising sharply.
As in other challenges African Americans have overcome, these problems require clarity of purpose. They require the solidarity of groups like the Urban League. And, at times, they also require a willingness to break from conventional thinking.
Nowhere are the limitations of conventional thinking any more apparent than in education policy. After decades of hearing the same big promises from the public education establishment, and se eing the same poor results, it is surely time to shake off old ways and to demand new reforms. That isn't just my opinion; it is the conviction of parents in poor neighborhoods across this nation who want better lives for their children.
Just ask the families in New Orleans who will soon have the chance to remove their sons and daughters from failing schools, and enroll them instead in a school-choice scholarship program. That program in Louisiana was proposed by Democratic state legislators and signed into law by Governor Bobby Jindal. Just three years after Katrina, they are bringing real hope to poor neighborhoods, and showing how much can be achieved when both parties work together for real reform. Or ask parents in the disadvantaged neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. whether they want more choices in education. The District's Opportunity Scholarship program serves more than 1,900 boys and girls from families with an average income of 23,000 dollars a year. And more than 7,000 more families have applied for that program. What they all have in common is the desire to get their kids into a better school.
Democrats in Congress, including my opponent, oppose the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. In remarks to the American Federation of Teachers last month, Senator Obama dismissed public support for private school vouchers for low-income Americans as, "tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice." All of that went over well with the teachers union, but where does it leave families and their children who are stuck in failing schools? [...]
Under my reforms, parents will exercise freedom of choice in obtaining extra help for children who are falling behind. As it is, federal aid to parents for tutoring for their children has to go through another bureaucracy. They can't purchase the tutoring directly, without dealing with the same education establishment that failed their children in the first place. These needless restrictions will be removed. If a student needs extra help, parents will be able to sign them up to get it, with direct public support.
Some of these reforms, and others, are contained in a Statement of Principles drafted by a group dedicated to finally changing the status quo in our education system. The Education Equality Project has brought together leaders from all across the political spectrum, including school Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City. Chancellor Klein is a strong supporter of charter schools, because he understands that fundamental reform is needed. As he puts it, "in large urban areas the culture of public education is broken. If you don't fix this culture, then you are not going to be able to make the kind of changes that are needed." Among others who share this conviction are Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, Chancellor Michelle Rhee of Washington, and Harold Ford, Junior. You know that a reform movement is truly bipartisan when J.C. Watts and Al Sharpton are both members. And today I am proud to add my name as well to the list of those who support the aims and principles of the Education Equality Project.
But one name is still missing, Senator Obama's. My opponent talks a great deal about hope and change, and education is as good a test as any of his seriousness. The Education Equality Project is a practical plan for delivering change and restoring hope for children and parents who need a lot of both. And if Senator Obama continues to defer to the teachers unions, instead of committing to real reform, then he should start looking for new slogans.
BUT WHY IS HE BEING MEAN TO THE UNICORN RIDER?:
The Curious Mind of John McCain: Ambition and Emotion Color the Complex Intellect of the Candidate (Robert G. Kaiser, 8/01/08, Washington Post)
That record reveals a complicated man whose approach to the world cannot be summed up in an aphorism or two. He is a striver and a combatant, often at war with himself, who has conducted a lifelong struggle "to prove to myself that I was the man I had always wanted to be," as he has written. Multiple influences have shaped his thinking, from his famous grandfather and father, both four-star Navy admirals, to his travels and his extensive reading of history and literature.On many points, the thinking is clear and consistent. For example, McCain believes in a muscular mission for America. As he has put it: "Our nation has a unique place in the world. We are the greatest force for good on earth. We chart history's course. Yes, we must be involved in the destiny of other nations." His favorite president is Theodore Roosevelt, reformer at home, activist wielder of a big stick abroad. He has read Edward Gibbon's six-volume "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" -- twice. But his favorite book is Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls," whose protagonist, Robert Jordan, has been McCain's hero since he was 13.
In the novel, Jordan, an American volunteer on the anti-fascist side of the Spanish Civil War, finds love, then chooses death in service to a hopeless cause he believes in. In last week's interview, conducted in the leather-covered first-class seats of his campaign plane, McCain was asked if he, like Jordan, is a "romantic fatalist." McCain answered quickly and forcefully: "Yes, yes." Salter described his boss's fatalistic philosophy: "Life sucks, but it's worth doing something about anyway."
McCain is a figure from an old-fashioned America that is out of fashion in our most cosmopolitan precincts -- the America of "Gunsmoke" and Gary Cooper, not "The Daily Show" and George Clooney. For McCain, "Duty, Honor, Country" isn't patriotic pablum but a credo to live by. And he has worked out a way to apply the credo to politics. He summarized it in a commencement address at Johns Hopkins in 1999, when he gave the graduates this advice:
"Enter public life determined to tell the truth; to put problem-solving ahead of partisanship; to defend the public interest against the special interests; to risk your personal ambitions for the sake of the country and the ideals that make her great. Keep your promise to America, and you will keep your honor. You will know a happiness far more sublime than pleasure."
"That's what it's all about," McCain said in the interview.
There's a flurry of horrified articles on the Left, by folks who loved Maverick when he was the anti-Bush, wondering how he can be so anti-Obama, but just look at that description of "what it's all about" and stack Senator Obama up against it and you realize why Mr. McCain has such contempt for him.
WISHING WHITES FELT GUILTY WON'T MAKE IT SO:
Race issue moves to center of campaign (JONATHAN MARTIN & BEN SMITH, 8/1/08, Politico)
Behind the accusations from both sides in the last 24 hours lies a furious battle to frame the racially charged conflict many in both campaigns have been girding for and to find effective ways to blame the other campaign for any unpalatable racial subtext to a race that — in theory — could actually show the better angels of America’s nature.Both sides face risks and opportunities: Obama's pioneering status is inspiring to some voters and discomfiting to others, and the way in which race is discussed may push voters toward or away from him. McCain could benefit from discomfort with race or he could — like Hillary Rodham Clinton, his predecessor in battling Obama — be distracted and ultimately diminished by constant charges of racism, accurate or not.
McCain aides say their goal is to pre-empt what they believe is Obama's effort to paint any conventional campaign attacks as race-based.
Obama’s aim, in the view of the McCain camp: "to delegitimize any line of attack against him," said McCain aide Steve Schmidt. He said he saw that potential trap being sprung when Obama predicted in Missouri Wednesday that the GOP nominee would attack the Democrat because he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills." [...]
To campaign watchers, in fact, Obama's warning Wednesday seemed less a direct attack on McCain than as part of a running effort to cast all attacks on Obama in the worst possible light: as products of ignorance at best and bigotry at worst.
But Schmidt said McCain had learned the lesson of Clinton's campaign, which began by taking her and her husband's affinity with African-American voters for granted but wound up seeing days and weeks consumed by racially charged gaffes and allegations, ranging from a New Hampshire supporter's suggestion that Obama had dealt drugs to Bill Clinton's own comparison of Obama's campaign to the Rev. Jesse Jackson's.
Remarkably, in fact, Schmidt sees a sort of political soul mate in Bill Clinton. "Say whatever you want about Bill Clinton," Schmidt said, "but it's deeply unfair to suggest his criticism of Obama was race-based. President Clinton was a force for unity in this country on this subject. Every American should be proud of his record as both a governor and president. But we knew it was coming in our direction because they did it against a President of the United State of their own party."
A former chief strategist to Hillary Clinton, Howard Wolfson, echoed Schmidt's comparison.
"I think the McCain camp watched our primary on the Democratic side very carefully and they know that any accusation of racial divisiveness can be very, very harmful for a candidate's prospects," Wolfson said on Fox News Thursday, adding that the allegations against Clinton were unfair. "They heard something that Senator Obama said and they felt they had to respond quickly to make sure that nobody got the impression that they were engaged in those kind of racial politics."
The problem is that the Senator from Cook County and those around him come from an academic and political culture that both assumes that all whites should be consumed with guilt over the historic treatment of blacks, women, Native Americans, etc. and where you can indeed shut someone up just by accusing him of using racist tropes. But the election isn't occurring in that cloistered intellectual setting--it's happening in the broader country, in a cultural setting that hasn't felt much guilt since the urban riots of the late sixties and that deeply resents it when you attribute rather mainstream attitudes to racism. So when the Obama camp tries to make race an issue between its candidate and Maverick it is making race an issue between its candidate and the voters.Now, were it the case that Maverick were a racist and/or using racist themes to attack the One, then Americans would react against Mr. McCain because of their simple sense of fairness. But when you're compared to two white bubbleheads like Britney and Paris and you say that's racial you not only seem silly but desperate in your retreat to the racial defense.
Of course, the final nail in Senator Obama's coffin is that he doesn't have an actual defense to the charge that he's a vacuous pop star rather. There is no substance, no record of achievement, no nothing to answer with. And if you take away his Mau-Mau option there's nothing he can do but saddle up the Unicorn and charge into the incoming fire.
MORE:
GOP Lumps Obama With Madonna and Clooney in New Quiz (Jake Tapper, August 01, 2008, Political Punch)
Barack's "Tragic" Emphasis (Ben Johnson, 8/01/08, FrontPageMagazine.com)
Backlash over John McCain’s “Celebrity” advertisement and Obama’s playing the race card (who would have seen that coming?) drowned out far more significant words from the lips of The Anointed One this week. “There's no doubt that when it comes to our treatment of Native Americans as well as other persons of color in this country, we've got some very sad and difficult things to account for,” he said. “I personally would want to see our tragic history, or the tragic elements of our history, acknowledged.” The media’s favorite candidate then underscored his belief in reparations: “I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it's Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds.”
Seeking to further push the notion that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, is an out-of-touch empty-headed celebrity, the Republican National Committee this morning launched a new interactive website --
-- where users can guess whether Obama or a member of the glitterati uttered a particular quote.For instance: "You have only a short period of time in your life to make your mark, and I'm there now."
Was that said by Obama, Madonna, David Beckham or George Clooney?
Race is one thing, comparison to soccer players may be below the belt, not that you could hurt a soccer player by hitting him there...
AND THE STRIPED-PANTS SET...:
U.S. Officials: Pakistani Agents Helped Plan Kabul Bombing (Joby Warrick, 8/01/08, Washington Post)
U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that elements of Pakistan's military intelligence service provided logistical support to militants who staged last month's deadly car bombing at the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan's capital, U.S. officials familiar with the evidence said yesterday.The finding, based partly on communication intercepts, has dramatically heightened U.S. concerns about long-standing ties between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, and Taliban-allied groups that are battling U.S. forces in Afghanistan, according to two U.S. government officials briefed on the matter.
...still doesn't get that W bringing India into the Anglospheric alliance is the most important foreign policy development since the end of the Cold War.
WE KEEP TELLING THEM TO VOTE PURE REASON...:
Will Culture War Overshadow Real War in 2008? (Ira Chernus, 8/01/08, TomDispatch)
Pundits and activists who oppose the war in Iraq generally assume that the issue has to work against McCain because they treat American politics as if it were a college classroom full of rational truth-seekers. The reality is much more like a theatrical spectacle. Symbolism and the emotion it evokes -- not facts and logic -- rule the day.In fact, the Pew Center survey found that only about a quarter of those who say they'll vote for McCain base their choice on issues at all. What appeals to them above all, his supporters say, is his "experience," a word that can conveniently mean many things to many people.
The McCain campaign constantly highlights its man's most emotionally gripping experience: his years of captivity in North Vietnam. Take a look at the McCain TV commercial entitled "Love." It opens with footage of laughing, kissing hippies enjoying the "summer of love," then cuts to the young Navy flier spending that summer of 1967 dropping bombs on North Vietnam and soon to end up a tortured prisoner of those he was bombing.
McCain believed in "another kind of love," the narrator explains, a love that puts the "country and her people before self." Oh, those selfish hippies, still winning votes for Republicans -- or so McCain's strategists hope.
Obama agrees that the symbolic meanings of Vietnam and the "love generation" still hang heavy over American politics. The debate about patriotism, he observed, "remains rooted in the culture wars of the 1960s… a fact most evident during our recent debates about the war in Iraq."
Obama is right -- sort of. The so-called culture wars have shifted away from social issues to war, terrorism, and national security. The number of potential voters who rate abortion or gay rights as their top priority now rarely exceeds 5%; in some polls it falls close to zero. Meanwhile, Republicans are nine times as likely as Democrats, and far more likely than independents, to put terrorism at or near the top of their most-important list. And Republican voters are much more likely to agree with McCain that Iraq is, indeed, the "the central front in the war on terrorism."
Sociologists tell us, however, that the "culture wars" so assiduously promoted by conservatives are mostly smoke and mirrors. Despite what media pundits may say, the public is not divided into two monolithic values camps. Voters are much less predictable than that. And few let values issues trump their more immediate problems -- especially economic ones -- when they step into the voting booth. The almighty power of the monolithic "values voters" is largely a myth invented by the media.
Yet, the "culture war" story does impact not only debates about the war in Iraq, as Obama said, but all debates about national security. Beyond the small minority who are strict "values voters," there are certainly millions of "values plus" voters. Though they can be swayed by lots of issues, they hold essentially conservative social values and would like a president who does the same. This time around, it's a reasonable guess that they, too, are letting war and security issues symbolize their "values" concerns. Put in the simplest terms: They are the McCain campaign's only chance.
So just how much of a chance does he really have? At this point, only two-thirds of those who say they trust him most on Iraq plan to vote for him. That means less than 30% of all voters are solidly prowar and pro-McCain. But another 12% or so who do not trust McCain on Iraq say they'll vote for him anyway, keeping him competitive in polling on the overall race. Most of them are surely part of the huge majority who, whatever they think of his Iraq specifics, trust McCain most to protect us from terrorism and see him as the person most desirable as commander-in-chief. (There's that "experience" again.)
The crucial voters are the 10% to 20% who want troops out of Iraq soon, won't yet commit to McCain, but "trust him" most to do the right thing on Iraq and terrorism. They are choosing the man, not the policy position, on the war. A lot of them fall among the 5% to 20% -- depending on the poll you pick -- who won't yet commit to either candidate.
McCain can swing the election if his campaign can only convince enough of them to vote with their hearts, or their guts, for the "experienced" Vietnam war hero, the symbol of the never-ending crusade against "Sixties values." So he and his handlers naturally want to turn the campaign into a simple moral drama: Sixties values -- or the nation's security and your own? Take your pick.
...and the bastards keep voting values....