• *

The Obama campaign was quick to respond to John McCain’s surprise selection of Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) as his running mate, releasing this statement this morning:

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Governor Palin shares John McCain’s commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies. That’s not the change we need, it’s just more of the same.

This statement was nothing if not laughable.

The current Governor and former mayor tapped to be the GOP number 2 boasts at least as much experience as the Democrats’ number 1, a current freshman Senator and former community organizer and state senate back-bencher whose entire foreign policy resume consists of a “courageous” speech he gave against the Iraq war, to Iraq war opponents, in 2002 — and more executive experience than anybody on either ticket.

Further, if the Obama campaign really wants to try to use the “more of the same” Washington-insider argument against the Governor of Alaska, and in favor of their #2, who is a 36-year veteran of the U.S. Senate whose son is a lobbyist — well, I guess that’s both their prerogative and their own electoral funeral.

(Incidentally, while the language “John McCain put [Palin]… a heartbeat away from the presidency” is supposed to instill fear — you know, the Politics of Fear the Ds accuse Republicans of campaigning on, while dropping Fear Words like “Rove” and “Bush” like candy — the phrase itself almost sounds as though he is conceding the election to McCain; after all, Palin isn’t a heartbeat away from anything at all right now, nor will she be unless JMC comes out ahead on November 4.)

Read More →

The McCain store is selling stickers and buttons, seen at right (click for larger image), for the newly announced 2008 GOP ticket. Sharp, eh? I especially note the fact that McCain and Palin’s names are in the same font and the same color, representing their team attitude with regard to the campaign. The only thing that differentiates them is vertical positioning — as the presidential nominee, McCain’s name is above his running mate’s.

Now, contrast that with the Obama-Biden logo seen at left (pulled in from the top left corner of Obama’s web site; see below for why I had to go there to get it).

As we’ve chronicled before, Barack Obama seemed to seriously resent the fact that he had to pick a running mate at all (Erick called him “Constitutionally-required window dressing”) — and, when he finally settled on Joe Biden (someone whose 36 years in the Senate made Obama’s attempts to continue a “Bringing Change from Without Washington” theme for his campaign a laughingstock), he had the elder statesman’s name tacked on to the bottom of his stickers in a blend-in-with-the-background-like-an-afterthought shade of blue, in part to ensure the focus of this campaign remained squarely where he wanted it: on himself.

You can hit the McCain campaign store at http://store.johnmccain.com/ to get a McCain-Palin sticker or button for yourself. Likewise, you can hit http://store.barackobama.com/ to pick up an Obama-and-Afterthought stick…..wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

Where’s the Biden?

Not one single page of the Barack Obama store web site has anything with Biden’s name on it!?

Wow. Just wow. I mean, I knew Obama was in this entirely for himself, but you’d think he’d have room somewhere for a piece of paraphernalia with his running mate’s name on it — like, you know, a sticker or something, right?

I guess not. So…it’s the GOP team of rugged individuals against the ambitious Individual Himself, who wants to take your money to pay for votes through promised handouts.

Credit to Obama, I suppose, for having the cojones to make it so obvious.

With a hat tip to RCP’s Tom Bevan, Democrats Ken Salazar and James Clyburn are testing out lines of attack against McCain’s apparent Veep nominee, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) — and, quite frankly, if this is the best they can do on a Friday morning, (a) they don’t have much to go on, and (b) their heads must still be spinning from the masterful job the McCain folks did of holding this pick close to their vest until the last possible moment.

From RCP:

Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina attacked Sarah Palin on South Carolina ETV Radio this morning, comparing her unfavorably to both Dan Quayle and Geraldine Ferraro:

I do believe that McCain has to do something to reshuffle the cards, shake up the establishment, do something unexpected and Governor Palin…has all the kinds of things that McCain might see as a way to shake things up. I think (her selection) would be something similar to Dan Quayle…

Dan Quayle proved to be sort of an embarrassment as a campaigner. Being thrust on a national stage like that could be very tough.

Now Mondale tried to shake things up by going with Geraldine Ferraro…she proved to be a disaster as a running mate. And as a campaigner, she was absolutely awful. And so I just think that it is very risky for McCain to do this, but it may be all he has left.

All he has left? He clowned you with a surprise pick whose experience, appearance, and gender make her a formidable opponent at very least, and you try to play it off as an act of desperation? How weak.

Further, appearing on CNN this morning, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO) said the pick was “impulsive” and “risky.” The fact that McCain picked someone no one has ever heard of before this morning shows the “kind of judgment he’d bring to the White House,” Salazar said.

So let me get this straight: now that they’re topping their ticket with a celebrity who has never managed a thing in his life, and whose entire resume consists of student/community organizer/state senator/speech giver/4-year U.S. Senator, experience (like being a mayor and a Governor) doesn’t matter as much as being famous does?

By the way, I continue to note — with a hearty laugh — that they still appear to have the word “judgment” in their campaign vocabulary, even with their nominee’s history of associations (*cough* Rezko, Ayers, Wright, Jones, Dohrn, Johnson, etc. *cough*).

Isn’t that cute (and detached from reality). But I digress — the point here is that they’ll have to do a lot better than the above to take on McCain’s vice presidential pick. We’ll see if they have it in them to do so convincingly; personally, I have my doubts.

From The Hill:

Several members of the media were seen cheering and clapping for Barack Obama as the Illinois senator accepted the Democratic nomination Thursday.

Standing on the periphery of the football field serving as the Democratic convention floor, dozens of men and women wearing green media floor passes chanted along with the crowd.

[...]

Several others nearby screamed “woo” during some of Obama’s biggest applause lines.

h/t Adam C

Let’s take a look at a few images to see if we can figure out just what it is the DNC is going for with their pseudo-Classical facade on Obama’s stage tonight.

Now, anybody who paid attention for more than five minutes in ancient history class can spot several defects in the facade if the intent was to make an architecturally correct Greek temple. The Oβαμειον pictured above (click to view larger image) features four Doric columns — two on each end — with a series of triglyphs (though the metopes, which span the gaps between the triglyphs, are undecorated here) above the architrave.

The image below is a sketch of the facade of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. As you can see, the Doric columns and triglyphs of the Denver Oβαμειον contain great similarities to this design.

Likewise, the Propylaia (the facade that spanned the top of the staircase and ramp Athenians ascended when visiting the Akropolis), pictured below (click to view larger images), possessed a similar Doric column/triglyph facade (though the metopes were not blank as they are in the DNC’s construction).

Read More →

We have long spoken of Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy as a Rorshach of sorts — a blank slate, if you will, upon which his supporters and opponents (yes, good faith ones do exist) project their own thoughts, feelings, and desires.

Some see Obama’s candidacy as a chance for a new sort of politics made up of hope and change, which can earn back some international respect for an America they think desperately needs it.

Some see him as a power-hungry megalomaniac, willing to say or do anything to win.

Some see the Obama candidacy as a coming of the Messiah; as “the New Testament” in modern times.

Some simply see a slick marketing campaign designed around an inexperienced, inarticulate, cookie-cutter Chicago-machine politician.

Views around the country and around the world vary. However, it has become increasingly clear in recent weeks, days, and hours what it is that Obama himself views his hope/change/etc. candidacy as:

A means to an end.

From this Yahoo! news report:

A senior Obama adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, said his boss has expressed impatience with what he calls a “reverence” inside his campaign for his message of change and new politics. In other words, Obama is willing — even eager — to risk what got him this far
if it gets him to the White House.

Sorry, folks. Did you really think this was about anything genuinely new?

The promised Text Message from Barack, which was purported to be a way of having supporters be “the first to know” who he was “introducing to the world” as the campaign’s VP pick (funny, I’d heard of Joe Biden before this — several times, in fact, like when he said Obama was a dangerous candidate for POTUS because he’d need “on the job training,” when he observed that 7/11s always seem to be run by Indians, and when he called his new boss a “clean, articulate” black man), arrived at 2:22am CDT.

With the Friday night reporting being done by ABC’s Jake Tapper, the RedState crew, and others, those who waited for that text message were among the last to find out who the Veep pick was, running ahead only of (a) those who locked themselves in their bomb shelters or panic rooms, avoiding all television and internet contact with the outside world until the precious text message from Barack could arrive, and (b) Helen Keller (though Annie Sullivan may have let her in on the secret before the die-hard Obamanites ever found out).

As Ben pointed out below, “All he’s done now is piss off the morning papers by making them miss their deadline, and given the networks a scramble for Saturday morning. How very throwback to think you could avoid the internet attention.”

Indeed, for a campaign that was built upon a foundation of online outreach and internet communication, the decision-makers within the Obama camp seem to have forgotten all about the potency the internet possesses as a grassfire communications tool. Whoops.

Then again, the manner in which the entire conduct of this Vice Presidential buildup and announcement was handled was shoddy at best. As Erick pointed out yesterday, the delays and game-playing really made it seem as though Obama really didn’t want a VP at all.

I don’t know that I can blame him; after all, he’s had the stage — and the adoring German crowds — all to himself for months, and now he has to share that spotlight with somebody who, it will be assumed, has been chosen because he brings to the ticket those things which Barack himself cannot — like “gravitas,” adulthood, and even the tiniest bit of experience actually dealing in the policy realm with the world outside America’s borders.

As far as the text messaging fiasco goes, what ObamaCo really wanted out of this entire gambit was the personal — the most personal possible, in fact — contact information of millions more people, which they got. The suckers who signed up for it thinking that the campaign was actually telling the truth about making sure they were the “first to know” about Obama’s VP pick?

They came out of this ordeal as the big losers — but that’s no surprise to anybody already familiar with them.

Update: While Obama’s die-hards were locked in their storm cellars staring longingly at their cell phones, Team McCain was paying attention to events, and cutting the first of what should be an incalculable number of effective Obama-Joe Biden ads.

Video below the fold.

Read More →

Obama and Biden together can be the “Split Iraq into Three Unsustainable and Indefensible States and Withdraw All U.S. Troops by March 2008″ ticket.

One word for that:

FAIL.

h/t Mark Hemingway

From a New York Times magazine piece on Obama:

“If you talk to Warren [Buffett], he’ll tell you his preference is not to meddle in the economy at all — let the market work, however way it’s going to work, and then just tax the heck out of people at the end and just redistribute it,” Obama said. “That way you’re not impeding efficiency, and you’re achieving equity on the back end.” He continued by saying that he thought there was some merit in Buffett’s argument. But, he said: “I do think that what the argument may miss is the sense of control that we want individuals to have in determining their own career paths, making their own life choices and so forth. And I also think you want to instill that sense of self-reliance and that what you do will help determine outcomes.”

I think, given Obama’s history, we can safely ignore the paean to “self-reliance” and self-determination and can focus not only on his agreement with Buffet’s unfortunate “tax the heck out of people” and “redistribute” that money, but also on his emphasis on government’s determining outcomes — something that is in vogue with the modern left, and that flies in the face of the rugged individualism and emphasis on equality of opportunity that have made this country what it is today.

According to a Denver Fox affiliate, Democrat conventioneers are such potheads that enforcing state anti-weed laws would create an extremely volatile atmosphere in Denver next week (as though more fuel was needed for the current Democratic brushfire).

Democrat Mayor John Hickenlooper and several of his cronies on City Council and in the “only enforce the laws other people break” crowd had hoped the influx of Democrat potheads would “convince police to relax their enforcement” of state marijuana laws, with some even going so far as to call for a total “suspension of marijuana enforcement during the DNC.”

Is that all you need to know about your Modern Democrat Party, or what?

The Obama campaign sent an email yesterday that contained the following passage:

From the beginning, this campaign has depended on ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

Grassroots supporters like you have brought us this far, but after the convention, we’ll be heading into the final stretch.

That’s why on Labor Day Weekend, right after the convention, we need everyone to take part in a nationwide Weekend of Action.

Barack Obama just returned from a week-long vacation in the tropical paradise of Hawai’i, while millions of regular Americans were working 9-to-5 or longer every day, just like they do the rest of the year.

In fact, according to Obama, America’s economic situation is so poor right now, and people are so “stung by the impact of higher prices for food, gas and health care,” that working families are putting in more and more hours to barelt be able to make ends meet.

However, allowing these regular Americans to enjoy their first chance not at a vacation, but at a three-day weekend since early July, appears to be against the New Order that Barack Obama is trying to impose on America; after all, the cause of electing this New Politician, who will turn us all into New Obamian Men, is too great to allow for people to rest, or take a well-earned break from the grind. That is only for the Leader himself; “everyone” else is directed “to take part in a nationwide Weekend of Action.” Now that sounds relaxing.

This should not come as a surprise to those who have been following the Obamas’ words on the campaign trail. “Barack Obama will require you to work,” Michelle Obama promised us in February. “He is going to demand that you…move out of your comfort zones…and that you engage.

Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual…“

Clearly this transformation is to begin earlier than we ever expected. Americans already work the first three and two-thirds months of the year just to provide tax money to the government (though to the Democrats’ leading Senator, that tax payment is entirely “optional”).

Apparently for the New Obamian Man, weekends are to be “voluntarily donated” to The One, as well.

Let’s raise a glass to our own Erick Erickson, who just PWN3D Alan Colmes and some former Gephardt staffer on the issue of Barack Obama’s support of infanticide.

Video will be here as soon as it’s available…and it’s here!

Part 1:

Part 2:

In its never-ending quest to appear “objective” and “unbiased,” the MSM — this time in the form of the AFP — is reprising its popular saddling of the term War on Terror with “quotes” (you know, to make it clear that they‘re not weighing in on whether this actually is, you know, a War on Terror) by referring to the Russian invasion of Georgia in the same fashion.

Exhibit A, from this morning’s AFP headlines:

Cameron in Georgia slams ‘invading’ Russia

The story begins:

[British] Opposition leader David Cameron on Saturday became the first top British politician to visit Georgia since the conflict with Russia began and slammed Moscow for “invading” the country.

How nice of the AFP to remind us of the veneer of “objectivity” they supposedly maintain when “reporting” the “events” of the “world.”

I know, I know — some of you will doubtless look at the above excerpt and say, “Clearly, the AFP writer was quoting Cameron in that title and excerpt, so the quotation marks were fine if not necessary!”

I hear you, but consider this: if the AFP were actually reporting the news, rather than trying so hard to appear “unbiased” that they tripped over their own feet taking the other side, they would have had no problem using the term “invasion” without feeling obligated to justify it by making extra sure all readers knew it was a quote, not a term that originated with their staff.

Sometimes good reporting simply means calling a spade a spade. That can be done effectively without dropping the Potemkin veneer of objectivity these “journalists” cling to so dearly.

Poor Jake Tapper. The guy is one of the hardest-working reporters out there this election season, and how does he get thanked for his efforts?

With comments like this one:

When are you going to go after McCain’s lies in his new 2 new ads, and the other lies released in his previous ads? Or every other minor statement that McCain makes, or his questionable donors like from a Palestinian named Abdullah?? You seem to cover every detail of Obama’s ads and statements very well. Shouldnt we expect better of McCain? Or are journalists just going to throw their hands back and say that this election is about Obama? What about my brothers in Iraq and Afghanistan? What about healthcare? What about education?

No. Everyone wants to hear themselves opine and analyze Obama’s candidacy and the horse race and not McCain positions, and the only foreign policy issue they’ve managed to discuss at length was not even a discussion but just a bunch of commentators who wanted to hear themselves blabber about their new unfounded theories of a new cold war in only less than a week since the Georgia conflict began.

Read More →

Update-8/16@1004CDT: Don’t you hate it when you have a great idea for a title or sub after you’ve already published a post/column/article? I realized this morning I should have subtitled this post, “Set the Obama Reality Distortion Field to ‘Bush Hater=Bush Ally’.” Now that would have been clever

As my friend and colleague streiff detailed Friday morning, the Obama campaign was apparently so spooked by the case Jerome Corsi makes against The One in his book “Obama Nation” that they released a 40 page rebuttal to the work.

Streiff wrote:

Even if everything in Corsi’s book is correct, it certainly isn’t something that a politician who sees himself as less than a deity, if not The Deity, should concern himself with. His 40-page rebuttal provides a good reminder of the immensely flawed character of Obama, himself, rather than addressing any substantive issue.

That a major newspaper would take up the cudgel on Obama’s behalf, especially given its shameful cooperation with various smear books directed against President Bush, indicates that Corsi has found a chink in Obama’s carefully crafted persona and if they don’t silence Corsi, Obama is finished.

In fact, the Obama Nation was in such a hurry to issue their rebuttal to Corsi’s book that they appear to have employed their characteristic bypassing of any detail-or-fact-checking in the process (or, perhaps equally likely, they simply thought reality would shift to match whatever they published in their shoolyard retort-level response to the book).

As Jake Tapper points out:

[T]he Obama campaign got a little greedy in their refutations.

First of all, on the front of the response, is a labeled stamped “Brought to you by Bush/Cheney Attack Machine.”

Corsi has actually called for the impeachment of President Bush. Corsi’s a 9/11 Truther who thinks the Bush administration is covering up what “really” happened at the World Trade Center. It’s not fair to blame this nasty screed on the President.

Never mind that teensy little detail, though. After all, it interferes with the Obamans’ Reality™ — and we all know how desperately they want to believe they control that.

Ross Douthat at The Atlantic posits that our current obligations in the War on Terror should at very least cause policymakers and military authorities to think very carefully before wading into the Russo-Georgian conflict in any meaningful way.

One side effect of entering into a “proxy war with Russia,” says Douthat, is that we would run the risk of the Bear “mak[ing] things harder for us where Tehran’s quest for nukes is concerned.”

With all respect to Mr. Douthat, it would be very difficult for Russia to be even less helpful to us vis-à-vis Iran — or to be more helpful to the Persian state — than they are already being, with regard both to the nuclear situation and to Iran’s conventional buildup.

In fact, moving to counter Russia’s latest attempt to expand its sphere of influence and dominion once again would not ignite a new conflict, but would demostrate our acknowledgment of Russia’s proxy efforts to work against the U.S. worldwide, which have been ongoing for years, including in the Middle East.

More detail below the fold.

Read More →

Rasmussen released a poll yesterday that found 61% of Americans say Congress “should vote on offshore drilling [for oil] right now.”

The report said:

Six out of 10 Americans (61%) say Congress should return to Washington immediately to vote on lifting the ban on offshore oil drilling, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. But voters overwhelmingly expect Congress to adjourn this year without taking action.

Even more (67%) recognize that Republicans are the ones pushing for offshore drilling, and 77% say the issue is important to them in terms of how they will vote for Congress this November. Forty-five percent (45%) of voters say it is Very Important. Voters see a clear difference between the political parties on this issue as 61% perceive that congressional Democrats oppose offshore drilling.

While their leaders in Congress oppose a vote on drilling, half of Democratic voters(48%) think the Democratic-led Congress should return right away to deal with it. Just 40% of Nancy Pelosi’s party disagree. Seventy eight percent (78%) of Republicans and unaffiliated voters, by a two-to-one margin, believe Congress should return to vote immediately.

Emphasis added. Rasumussen also released a report Monday that said 64% of Americans believe offshore drilling should commence immediately.

With such a clear WIN on this issue for Republicans, it’s a mystery to me why we have Republican Senators who wish to undermine their own party on the GOP’s best issue in years with this ridiculous “Gang of 10″ farce.

I can’t help but wonder if the author wandered out of the theater during the penultimate scene, considering it disproves at least half of his thesis, which appears to consist of “This movie is terrible because there is a nihilistic villain and everybody gives up their principles.”

I wonder if this guy made it through Star Wars Eps. IV thorough the first 95% of VI without attempting suicide over the darkness of the unredeemable Darth Vader.

Rep. Mike Conaway checks in from the Capitol, where he is participating in the Republican refusal to go on paid vacation while America is in a growing energy crisis.