Monday, August 18, 2008

Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, More than Meets the MSM Eye

I am not even going to try to summarze this issue, since it is complicated. Tom Maguire has been on it for weeks now. Today’s post sums up much of the previous ones, so I highly recommend that you read it and follow all his links. Domestic terrorist Bill Ayers is more than just a guy in the neighborhood.

• The Chicago Annenberg Challenge - The Fog Thickens

Honor and Remember Flag

• Press Release - NATIONAL FLAG FOR FALLEN WARRIORS UNVEILED

New Emblem Will Serve to Honor and Remember the Sacrifice of Military Men and Women Who Died in Service.

Click for details on the flag’s design.

Mission: To create, establish and promote a nationally recognized flag that would fly continuously as a visible reminder to all Americans of the lives lost in defense of our national freedoms. All Military lives lost not only in action but also in service, from our nation’s inception.

Rationale: In our over 200 year history there has never been an official national symbol that recognizes in gratitude and respect the ultimate sacrifice made by members of the United States military in service to our nation. The Honor and Remember Flag was created for that purpose. 

RELATED:

• Subject: New National Flag

3 Million Shiites Mark Pilgrimage In Karbala, Iraq

More than three million Shiites marked a revered annual pilgrimage to the Iraqi holy city of Karbala amid tight security to thwart attacks. More than three million Shiites marked the annual pilgrimage to Karbala amid tight security and attacks on the way to the holy city that killed dozens of people. (AFP/Mohammed Sawaf)

Gateway Pundit has the details.

Padding the Resume or Why Obama Makes Things Up

• Abraham katsman and Kory Bardash , THE JERUSALEM POST

One of the knocks on Barack Obama is that his résumé is, so to speak, paper-thin. But that is not entirely accurate. Obama, in fact, has held some major job titles which are noteworthy all by themselves: United States Senator, Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Harvard Law Review President-each of these titles puts him in rarefied company. Tack on a few Illinois State Senate terms, and his resume actually appears solid. Yet, in spite of these prestigious positions, Obama has increasingly resorted to making claims of accomplishment that are so patently inflated that even his cheerleaders at CNN and the New York Times are taking notice. Why?

It seems that Obama recognizes that while his résumé titles are impressive, his actual accomplishments are weak. It’s as if he were jockeying to be the next company CEO with little to show for his prior high-profile management positions. So, he does what anyone else does who has spent years coasting on charisma without doing any heavy work: he pads his résumé–stretching the truth here, stealing credit there, and creating the illusion of achievement during his lackadaisical, undistinguished tenure in previous jobs.

A few examples? Take Obama’s first general election ad. We are told that Obama “passed laws” that “extended healthcare for wounded troops who’d been neglected,” with a citation at the bottom to only one Senate bill: The 2008 Defense Authorization Bill, which passed the Senate by a 91-3 vote. Six Senators did not vote-including Obama. Nor is there evidence that he contributed to its passage in any material way. So, his claim to have “passed laws” amounts to citing a bill that was largely unopposed, that he didn’t vote for, and whose passage he didn’t impact. Even his hometown Chicago Tribune caught this false claim. It’s classic résumé-padding–falsely taking credit for the work of others.

Or take one of Obama’s standard lines: his claim of “twenty years of public service.” As pundit Michael Medved has pointed out, the numbers don’t add up. Shall we count? Three years in the US Senate (two of which he’s spent running for President), plus seven years in the Illinois State Senate (a part-time gig, during which time he also served as a law professor) equals, at most, ten. Even if we generously throw in his three years as a “community organizer” (whatever that means, let’s count it as public service), that still adds up to just thirteen.

Obama’s other activities since 1985 have included Harvard Law School, writing two autobiographies (including several months writing in Bali), prestigious summer law firm jobs, three years as an associate at a Chicago law firm, and twelve years part-time on the University of Chicago Law School faculty. As Medved notes, it takes quite the ego to consider any of those stints “public service.” Which of them is Obama including?

Obama made yet another inflated boast last month during his visit to Israel. At his press conference in Hamas rocket-bombarded Sderot, Obama talked up “his” efforts to protect Israel from Iran:

“Just this past week, we passed out of the US Senate Banking Committee - which is my committee - a bill to call for divestment from Iran as way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon.” (Emphasis added.)

Nice try. But as even CNN noted, Obama is not even on that committee. That is one peculiar “mistake” to simply have made by accident. Again, his claiming credit for the work of others just looks like clumsy, transparent résumé embellishment.

Would someone with Obama’s stellar list of job titles resort to making stuff up? He seems to think he has to. In spite of the many impressive positions he’s held, he’s done almost nothing with them. If he wants to claim specific, relevant accomplishments, his only resort is to stretching the truth.

Look at his record: he’s now completed over half of a Senate term; yet, is there even one signature issue he has taken hold of, other than his own presidential run? Similarly, as the New York Times recently pointed out, Obama spent twelve years on the University of Chicago Law School faculty–singularly famous for its intellectual ferment and incubator of scholarship–and produced not even a single scholarly paper. He was President of Harvard Law Review, but wrote nothing himself. Even as a state legislator for seven years-or community organizer for three years, there is little that shows his imprint. OK, to be fair, he did write two books. About himself.

For all his glowing job titles, Obama has never gotten much done. Is it any wonder that his spokesmen respond with sweeping generalities when asked what Obama has actually accomplished relevant to the presidency?

Obama has held several serious positions from which a serious man could have made a serious impact. But Obama made none. He remains a man of proven charisma, but unproven skill–and not for lack of opportunity. He’s treated his offices as if they were high school student council positions-fun to run for, fun to win, affirmations of popularity, heady recognition from superiors, good resume-builders for stepping up to the next position of power, and…well, that’s about it-actual accomplishments are not expected; heavy lifting is never on the agenda.

Obama’s record of accomplishment is thin not because of lack of opportunity, but in spite of it. For twenty years, Obama has walked the floors of the most prestigious institutions in the nation, but has left no footprints other than those from his runs for whatever office came next.

It’s been said that some people want to be President so they can do something; and some want to be President so they can be something. Obama has accomplished nothing noteworthy despite the golden opportunities and positions he’s had; why should we believe he’d be a different man in the White House?

No company would hire anyone with Obama’s empty track record, pattern of underachievement and padded résumé to be CEO. Is America really ready to hire him as President?

Gag of the Day - Pelosi on Obama, Obama on Obama

Via Ben Smith at Politico:

A confident Barack Obama raised an extraordinary $7.8 million Sunday at three California fundraisers, most of it in large checks to a Democratic Party committee.

“I will win. Don’t worry about that,” he said to the crowd of about 1,300 at his third event of the evening, according to the pool report.

He was warmly received by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who called him “a leader that God has blessed us with at this time.”

And Obama asks why bother with all this campaigning and elections, after all, I’m the “One.” Gag, gag, gag.

“Now, you want to win. And saying it doesn’t make it so,” he told the crowd. “It would be nice to think that after eight years of economic disaster, after eight years of bungled foreign policy, of being engaged in a war that should never have been authorized and should never have been waged, that cost us a trillion dollars and thousands of lives, that people would say, let’s toss the bums out. Toss the bums out, we’re starting from scratch, we’re starting over. This is not working.”

“So I understand why a lot of folks are saying, this should just happen. Why are we having to run all these television commercials? Why do we have to raise all this money? Just read the papers. These are the knuckleheads who have been in charge. Throw ‘em out. But American politics aren’t that simple,” he said.

“The fact of the matter is, at a certain point, when government has not been serving the people for this long, people get cynical. They tune out. And they start saying to themselves, a plague on both your houses. They are willing to consume negative information more frequently than positive information, for good reason. They’ve seen how promises haven’t been kept,” he said.

Yuval Levin comments:

It seems that San Francisco fundraisers are where Obama really speaks his mind. No clinging to God and guns in this one, but surely something of the same basic condescending attitude is on display here: the election should just be handed to the Democrats, but because voters are cynical and bitter, the Democrats have to work for it. Poor dears.

Monday Morning Link Roundup #2

Did you watch the Saddleback Forum broadcast featuring Barack Obama and John McCain with Pastor Rick Warren? If you didn’t, you missed a good one. I wasn’t going to bother with it until I started to read some live blogging of the event. I quickly switched from the Olympics over to the broadcast and watched a disaster in the making for Obama. The format was one hour each of questions asked by Pastor Rick and answers by each candidate. I really liked the format. Obama was all over the place, rambling, ambiguous, some calling it “nuanced,” but let’s face it, nuanced is synonymous with “what’d he say?” John McCain, OTH, hit one right out of the park. So much so that I remembered why I used to like him back in 2000. The afteraction reports are so embarrassing for the “One” that his in the tank reporters and commentators are crying foul and accusing John McCain of cheating.

Politics

• McCain protests NBC coverage

McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis asked Sunday for a meeting with Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, to protest what the campaign called signs that the network is “abandoning non-partisan coverage of the Presidential race.”

...

In this case, the campaign is objecting to a statement by NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on “Meet the Press” questioning whether McCain might have gotten a heads-up on some of the questions that were asked of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who was the first candidate to be interviewed Saturday night by Pastor Rick Warren at a presidential forum on faith.

...

August 17, 2008
Mr. Steve Capus
President, NBC News
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112

Steve:

We are extremely disappointed to see that the level of objectivity at NBC News has fallen so low that reporters are now giving voice to unsubstantiated, partisan claims in order to undercut John McCain.

Nowhere was this more evident than with NBC chief correspondent Andrea Mitchell’s comments on “Meet the Press” this morning. In analyzing last night’s presidential forum at Saddleback Church, Mitchell expressed the Obama campaign spin that John McCain could only have done so well last night because he “may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.” Here are Andrea Mitchell’s comments in full:

Mitchell: “The Obama people must feel that he didn’t do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because what they are putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama. He seemed so well-prepared.” (NBC’s “Meet The Press,” 8/17/08)

Make no mistake: This is a serious charge. Andrea Mitchell is repeating, uncritically, a completely unsubstantiated Obama campaign claim that John McCain somehow cheated in last night’s forum at Saddleback Church. Instead of trying to substantiate this blatant falsehood in any way, Andrea Mitchell felt that she needed to repeat it on air to millions of “Meet the Press” viewers with no indication that 1.) There’s not one shred of evidence that it’s true; 2.) In his official correspondence to both campaigns, Pastor Rick Warren provided both candidates with information regarding the topic areas to be covered, which Barack Obama acknowledged during the forum when asked about Pastor Warren’s idea of an emergency plan for orphans and Obama said, “I cheated a little bit. I actually looked at this idea ahead of time, and I think it is a great idea;” 3.) John McCain actually requested that he and Barack Obama do the forum together on stage at the same time, making these kinds of after-the-fact complaints moot.

Indeed, instead of taking a critical journalistic approach to this spin, Andrea Mitchell did what has become a pattern for her of simply repeating Obama campaign talking points.

This is irresponsible journalism and sadly, indicative of the level of objectivity we have witnessed at NBC News this election cycle. Instead of examining the Obama campaign’s spin for truth before reporting it to more than 3 million NBC News viewers, Andrea Mitchell simply passed along Obama campaign conspiracy theories. The fact is that during Senator Obama’s segment at Saddleback last night, Senator McCain was in a motorcade to the event and then held in a green room with no broadcast feed. In the forum, John McCain clearly demonstrated to the American people that he is prepared to be our next President.....

We are concerned that your News Division is following MSNBC’s lead in abandoning non-partisan coverage of the Presidential race. We would like to request a meeting with you as soon as possible to discuss our deep concerns about the news standards and level of objectivity at NBC.

Sincerely,

Rick Davis
Campaign Manager
John McCain 2008

Mark Hemmingway nails it:

• McCain As Good As Obama Was Bad

By that standard, McCain did extremely well and Obama did very poorly. McCain’s answers were direct, confident and, most importantly, serious. When asked about what leaders he would consult as president, he first suggested Gen. Petraeus, architect of the surge, who he correctly praised as one of America’s all-time great military leaders. By way of contrast, Obama suggested he would seek out the advice of a typical white person, er, his grandmother and his wife Michelle, who’s still trying to decide whether she’s proud of her country.

When asked “At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?,” McCain answered “At the moment of conception.” Obama’s answer here was flaming-dirigible bad: 

Whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity is, you know, above my pay grade. 

That spectacularly inept metaphor is going to haunt Obama throughout the rest of the campaign. News flash: There’s not a job on the planet above the pay grade of the President of the United States. If you can’t solve every problem and are humble about it, that’s fine — but you can’t get away with being unsure about the most defining moral issue in politics. Of course, he didn’t put down the shovel:

But let me speak more generally about the issue of abortion. Because this is something, obviously, the country wrestles with. One thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is that there is a moral and ethical element to this issue. And So I think that anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue is not paying attention.

So after completely hedging on the question and declining to give a specific answer — he wants to speak “more generally” about the issue? And, lo and behold, speak more generally he does: “I’m absolutely convinced of is that there is a moral and ethical element to this issue.” In related news, Obama is also “absolutely convinced” that the sky is blue, water is wet and puppies are adorable. None of this, however, tells me a thing about his judgment and moral worldview.

But what bowls me over about how craptacular his answer here is, did no one on his campaign ever anticipate that he would have to talk about abortion, such that he could come up with a better answer than this? Surely they would have had to expect it at this forum in particular.  

Transcripts:

PART 1: MS Word Format  |  Text-only Format

PART 2: MS Word Format  |  Text-only Format

PART 3: MS Word Format  |  Text-only Format

PART 4: MS Word Format  |  Text-only Format

PART 5: MS Word Format  |  Text-only Format

PART 6: MS Word Format  |  Text-only Format

Ed Morrissey weighs in:

• There are a lot of things above Obama’s “pay grade”

First, the entire issue of abortion involves determining when a baby becomes a person. If Obama thinks this is above his pay grade, then he probably shouldn’t be running for political office. If a baby is a person at conception, then abortion is murder. If Obama doesn’t believe that abortion is murder, then he can’t believe in the personhood, the humanity, of an embryo or fetus — not unless he’s some kind of monster.

As President — even as Senator — Obama is expected to have an answer for this.  Quite literally, there is no higher pay grade in the US government, and abortion is one of the issues he has to face.  If he can’t face it, then he should go back to community organization and leave politics for people who can.  John McCain had no trouble answering the same question. Obama dodged it — and for good reason: his answer would have exposed his radical views.

And did Obama really call Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas too dumb and inexperienced to be appointed to the court? Why yes he did. Who is the racist now, Barack?

• Obama on Clarence Thomas

Barack Obama likes to portray himself as a centrist politician who wants to unite the country, but occasionally his postpartisan mask slips. That was the case at Saturday night’s Saddleback Church forum, when Mr. Obama chose to demean Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

...

Mr. Obama took a lower road, replying first that “that’s a good one,” and then adding that “I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don’t think that he, I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretation of a lot of the Constitution.” The Democrat added that he also wouldn’t have appointed Antonin Scalia, and perhaps not John Roberts, though he assured the audience that at least they were smart enough for the job.

So let’s see. By the time he was nominated, Clarence Thomas had worked in the Missouri Attorney General’s office, served as an Assistant Secretary of Education, run the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and sat for a year on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation’s second most prominent court. Since his “elevation” to the High Court in 1991, he has also shown himself to be a principled and scholarly jurist.

Meanwhile, as he bids to be America’s Commander in Chief, Mr. Obama isn’t yet four years out of the Illinois state Senate, has never held a hearing of note of his U.S. Senate subcommittee, and had an unremarkable record as both a “community organizer” and law school lecturer. Justice Thomas’s judicial credentials compare favorably to Mr. Obama’s Presidential résumé by any measure. And when it comes to rising from difficult circumstances, Justice Thomas’s rural Georgian upbringing makes Mr. Obama’s story look like easy street.

And isn’t this special. Bias, what bias?

• Washington Post Ombudsman: ‘3 to 1’ Obama Front Page Advantage

Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell reviewed how many stories the newspaper put on the front page about John McCain and Barcak Obama over the past ten weeks and discovered a wide gap in favor of Obama, a “disparity,” she declared, “so wide that it doesn’t look good.” Howell, the Washington Bureau chief and editor of Newhouse News from 1990 until 2005, outlined in her weekly Sunday column what she determined:

This is getting to be a habit, when cornered, Obama outright lies:

• Obama Facing Attacks From All Sides Over Abortion Record

The presumptive Democratic nominee responded sharply in an interview Saturday night with the Christian Broadcast Network, saying anti-abortion groups were “lying” about his record.

“They have not been telling the truth,” Mr. Obama said. “And I hate to say that people are lying, but here’s a situation where folks are lying.”

He added that it was “ridiculous” to suggest he had ever supported withholding lifesaving treatment for an infant. “It defies common sense and it defies imagination, and for people to keep on pushing this is offensive,” he said in the CBN interview.

At issue is the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, a bill in the Illinois state Senate that sought to protect against bungled abortions by requiring that a fetus that survived an abortion be defined as a person. Fearing that the legislation could be interpreted more broadly to protect fetuses that were not yet viable — thus threatening Roe v. Wade, abortion rights advocates pushed for an amendment that explicitly limited the scope of the bill to infants “born alive.”

...

The dispute flared again last week when a leading opponent of legalized abortion, the National Right to Life Committee, posted records from the Illinois Legislature showing that Mr. Obama, while chairman of a Senate committee, in 2003, voted against a “Born Alive” bill that contained nearly identical language to the federal bill that passed unanimously, including the provision limiting its scope.

The group says the documents prove Mr. Obama misrepresented his record.

Indeed, Mr. Obama appeared to misstate his position in the CBN interview on Saturday when he said the federal version he supported “was not the bill that was presented at the state level.”

His campaign yesterday acknowledged that he had voted against an identical bill in the state Senate, and a spokesman, Hari Sevugan, said the senator and other lawmakers had concerns that even as worded, the legislation could have undermined existing Illinois abortion law. Those concerns did not exist for the federal bill, because there is no federal abortion law.

Document evidence:

• Wow!!… Obama Admits His Record On Abortion Is the Most Liberal Of ANY Washington Politician!!

More specialness for the “Chosen One.”

• DNC Convention Credentials Feature Upside-Down Flag

The credential appears to show an upside-down American flag on both sides. What’s worse, the front makes it appear as if Obama is cloaked in the flag, as the stars are almost visually equivalent to his shirt. In fact, Matt Chandler speaking on behalf of the Obama campaign states:

“...it is a stylized flag designed to blend the stars on Senator Obama’s shirt with the flag blowing in the wind.”

The first question that arises is why would a man who once refused to wear the American flag on his lapel, be interested in sporting a patriotic shirt, overflowing with stars?

Second question, despite the following denial from the Democratic National Convention Committee…

“The DNCC community credentials incorporate patriotic design elements. They do not depict an actual American flag.”

… How did the designer of the credentials not realize that perception might lead people to believe this is indeed a representation of an upside-down flag?

Monday Morning Link Roundup

Good morning all. Lots to catch up on from the weekend. On a personal note, I had a really good Sunday with the lowest pain level in 5 weeks. I had to shut the computer down and take advantage of feeling relatively good for a change. No, I didn’t go anywhere, but I did join family and a few friends for an impromptu pool and backyard BBQ party and then overdosed on a full day of Olympics.

Olympics

Congratulations Michael Phelps! on his 8th Gold Medal.

A combination photo shows Michael Phelps holding each of his eight gold medals in the swimming competition at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. The medals were won in: (Top row L-R) 400m individual medley (August 10), 4x100m freestyle relay (August 11), 200m freestyle (August 12), 200m butterfly (August 13). (Bottom row L-R) 4x200m freestyle relay (August 13), 200m individual medley (August 15), 100m butterfly (August 16), and 4x100m medley relay (August 17). (Reuters)

(H/T Gateway Pundit)

Nastia Liukin tied China’s He Kexin for the Gold on the Uneven Bars in the Individual gymnastics competition, but due to a complicated scoring system and the fact that they no longer give dual medals in gymnastics, she had to settle for the Silver.

Terrill/AP - Angelo Taylor (r.) leads American sweep of the 400-meter hurdles along with teammates Kerron Clement (l.) and Bershawn Jackson.

DAY 9: 41 year old Dara Torres of the United States reacts after winning the silver medal in the Women’s 50-meter freestyle final. - Credits: Pretty/Getty. Published: 08/17/2008 11:51:43

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Do You Know Your Racial History - Take the Quiz

• Here’s Today’s Racial Quiz For Howard Dean and the Dems

The Week that Was

I’m glad this week is almost over. It has suck, suck, sucked to be me this week. The back was in pain overdrive and that is why I have been pretty much phoning it in here on the blog.

But, last night at the Olympics was sumpthin’, wasn’t it?