Posts Tagged ‘Obama’

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Protesting too much ?

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

David Axelrod has a rather defensive interview on HuffPo today, which concerns Obama’s seeming refusal to go to Iraq again. He also brings up the lobbying issue, which they have bashing McCain with.

“What does all his experience get us?” asked Obama’s strategic guru. “What do all those visits [to Iraq] get us?” He continued: “The fact that he goes to Iraq and gets a tour apparently does little to provoke the kinds of questions that should be asked, and what Sen. Obama has been asking since the beginning. So it is not a question of longevity in government. It is a question of judgment, it is a question of a willingness to challenge policies that have failed. And he seems just dug in.”

Well, it can give you some information. One would think a candidate for president would be interested in information although this candidate seems to prefer watching ESPN on TV. As far as changing policies is concerned, it was McCain who kept telling Bush to change his policies and, when they were changed, things improved. I suspect Obama does not wish to see this as it conflicts with his theme of withdrawal regardless of consequences.

On Iran, Axelrod says:

Axelrod also lambasted McCain for accusing Obama of being naive in his willingness to meet with world leaders both friend and foe. “I guess the question is, if you had a chance to make progress on some of these issues that go to the security of our country and the world, why would you say you would never be willing to? It is an odd thing to say. What Sen. Obama is saying in essence is that we need to use all the tools in our toolbox when we are working and fighting for our security, including for aggressive diplomacy, which has been shunned by the Bush administration to our detriment.”

That, of course, ignores the issue of preconditions and preparation, which the Obama camp has been desperately spinning the past week. I don’t think they are convincing anyone. I have predicted that Obama will be hurt by YouTube and I seem to be correct.

Axelrod has been exposed as a lobbyist in Chicago, which undercuts the theme of McCain and his lobbyist friends. And, of course, the Rezko trial proceeds. We may hear some more about that, too.

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Posted in History, military, politics, terrorism | Comments Closed

Condi Rice is not a good Sec State

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

A year ago, there was some activity about convincing Condaleeza Rice to run for President or VP. You don’t hear much of that lately and this may be why. There has been considerable disappointment in the Bush foreign policy since 2004, with the exception of Iraq. We had hoped for support of Iranian dissident groups and pressure on North Korea, although the only country that matters to NK is China. Nothing has happened.

Stephen Hayes has a lengthy essay on the subject.

Christopher Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and the government’s chief negotiator on North Korea’s nuclear program, met privately in Beijing with Kim Gye Gwan, North Korea’s deputy foreign minister. The meeting itself was a major concession. Although Hill’s boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, had given him wide latitude for his negotiations she had not authorized a one-on-one meeting. The North Koreans had been pushing for bilateral negotiations with the United States since the beginning of the Bush administration. The president had repeatedly and categorically rejected any direct talks with the North Koreans.

This followed the 2006 test of a nuclear weapon by NK. Christopher Hill has been the subject of a fawning profile this week in the Washington Post.

“If you just let me go to Pyongyang, I’ll get you a deal,” the career Foreign Service officer said, prompting others to roll their eyes and move on.

In the twilight of the Bush presidency, the nuclear agreement that Hill has tirelessly pursued over the past three years has emerged as Bush’s best hope for a lasting foreign policy success. In the process, Hill has become the public face of an extraordinary 180-degree policy shift on North Korea, from confrontation to accommodation.

If the Washington Post says this, you know Hill is in the wrong administration. Maybe he should be advising Obama.

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Posted in History, politics, terrorism | 2 Comments »

Obama gaffe-of-the-day

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

UPDATE #2: Uh Oh. Great-uncle Charles was in the navy in WWII. How did they get to Buchenwald ? Up the Rhine ?

UPDATE: Somebody liberated Auschwitz, we just don’t know who. I think it’s a Tuzla moment but you won’t hear as much about it as Hillary’s embellishment.

I decided to include a new feature in the blog. Obama is a walking, talking gaffe machine. Here is one of the gaffes from yesterday.

Obama also spoke about his uncle, who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz. He said the family legend is that, upon returning from war, his uncle spent six months in an attic. “Now obviously, something had really affected him deeply, but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain,”

Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on January 25, 1945. The US Army was not yet across the Rhine having just fought the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium. Maybe Obama’s uncle served in the Red Army.

Now that I think about it ….

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American history, Obama style

Monday, May 26th, 2008

UPDATE: Here is more on ACORN and their agenda, and more on Obama’s association with it. We will learn a lot more about ACORN this fall. If we don’t, we are in serios trouble.

Victor Davis Hanson points out a feature of Obama’s speeches; they are about one narrow view of US history. The American system was not built by protesters and “community organizers.”

When I was a boy, I saw movies about “Young Tom Edison” and Paul Erlich. There was a sense that business was not immoral. The Depression gave new energy to the criticisms of the “Muckrakers” of the early 20th century but movies like “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” showed the world of business to be dull but worthy of a man’s time and energy. Now, we have dishonest movies like “Wall Street”, produced by the weird Oliver Stone and starring the execrable Charlie Sheen, that declares all of American economic life to be corrupt and unworthy.

It is no surprise that we now have a presidential candidate who has the same attitude toward the American economy. His views mesh well with ACORN, the radical group for which he worked as an organizer. This history, by an obscure group but pretty well footnoted, will be the focus of intense interest this fall. This is the most leftist politician since FDR dropped Henry Wallace as Vice-President in 1944. Wallace would run for president against Harry Truman in 1948 with communist party assistance. He’s back as Barack Obama 60 years later.

Arthur Schlessinger’s essay on Henry Wallace in 2000 could have been written about Barack Obama. He called him “a Perplexing and Indomitably Naive Public Servant.”

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Posted in History, politics | 3 Comments »

You will see a lot of this next fall

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

Here is one of the You Tube programs that we will see a lot of come the fall campaign. Jeff Jacoby  has some thoughts about it.

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Obama voters

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

UPDATE: Here is an Obama supporter, and presumably voter. She must be highly educated and she wants to nationalize the US oil industry. What a brilliant idea ! She must be very, very highly educated. It takes years of Marxist economics to arrive at those brilliant insights !

A few people have noticed something when Obama voters are described. They are all “highly educated”. What does that mean ?

Here is one characteristic:

I stole a friend’s idea and devised “The World War II Test.” I invited the applicants for interviews. These PMI wannabes came off as slick and somewhat rude. I noted something among my subjects, a sense of entitlement, they all, to varying degrees, emitted a message along the lines of “Why are you bothering me with this silly interview? I am obviously brilliant. I have a degree from Columbia. I am not going to spend my whole life as you have in this stupid bureaucracy. I just need this to add to my resume. I am in a hurry.” I hit them with the test, which consisted of about dozen questions about WWII and its aftermath. I recall a few.

He asked them a few questions like “Who were our allies in World War II?” One applicant said “Why are you asking about World War II when the job is about NATO ?

Hmmm…

Now, here is someone   who is not “highly educated” and is probably not an Obama voter.

We do know that there are Obama voters out there from stories like these.

No doubt those people are “highly educated.”

If you wonder who Marcus Luttrell is, this is his story.

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Posted in education, military, politics | 6 Comments »

Obama and You-Tube

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

Obama is the young guy in the campaign for the presidency this year. McCain is supposed to be the old man. If that is true, and a lot of it is true, why doesn’t Obama understand the significance of You-Tube ? This will be the first presidential campaign since You-Tube became the universal presence that it is. In the old days of 2004, opposition research was directed at finding out things the other candidate had written and said that could be used against him. Now, the video of such incidents will be far more powerful. Obama has been saying that it is unfair for John McCain to attack him on foreign policy. This, of course, is said minutes after Obama accuses McCain of conducting “The Bush foreign policy” for another four years.

I have news for Obama. McCain won’t have to say much. You-Tube will take care of that. His people are already backing away and trying to spin this. I don’t think it will work. You Tube is too easy to use to refute his denials.

Expect to see a lot of that video this fall. The Swiftboat veterans were a minor annoyance to Kerry compared to what this will do.

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Posted in politics, terrorism | 7 Comments »

Obama has some interesting delegates

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

Former Muslim Army chaplain Yee, who was discharged from the military for suspected espionage at Guantanamo, is an Obama delegate to the Democrat convention. Birds of a feather ?

By the way, he was not exonerated.

He did however, appear on Syrian TV and lie about his country

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Posted in military, politics, terrorism | 6 Comments »

Obama’s Values

Monday, May 12th, 2008

There has been considerable discussion of Obama’s values as an index of his electability as president. He is not a Muslim and he now says he rejects the values of his pastor, Reverend Wright.

Here is one indication of where those values might be found. They seem to parallel the values of the philanthropic left today, and that includes most philanthropic foundations. Long ago, these foundations were funded with the estates of great capitalists. It is not unusual for the descendants of these people to lose the connection between capitalism and their own comfortable lives. For example, Ned Lamont, the far-left candidate who opposed Senator Lieberman in the Democratic primary in Connecticut in 2006 and won, forcing Lieberman to run (and win) as an independent, is the grandson of Thomas W Lamont, partner of J.P. Morgan, the greatest financier of the “Gilded Age.” Ned Lamont, of course, has an inherited fortune of “between 90 and 300 million” dollars.

Maybe the trouble is with Obama’s staff. Everything else is.

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Posted in general, politics | 1 Comment »

Post American world II

Monday, May 5th, 2008

Last week, I posted a link to a Fareed Zakaria essay, an excerpt from his new book, that looks at the future of America with both hope and some reservations. Today, he has another piece in Newsweek that is based on the other essay with some additions. He has one big problem, however. Zakaria is a supporter of the Democratic Party.

How does he reconcile this:
The global economy has more than doubled in size over the last 15 years and is now approaching $54 trillion! Global trade has grown by 133 percent in the same period. The expansion of the global economic pie has been so large, with so many countries participating, that it has become the dominating force of the current era. Wars, terrorism, and civil strife cause disruptions temporarily but eventually they are overwhelmed by the waves of globalization. These circumstances may not last, but it is worth understanding what the world has looked like for the past few decades.

with this:

Much of the criticism was initiated by Clinton. But it assumed a life of its own as Obama struggled to explain why a Canadian government memo quoted one of his aides as saying Obama’s opposition to NAFTA was for political show.

and this:

PITTSBURGH – Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton told manufacturers and union workers on Monday that her husband made mistakes related to the North American Free Trade Agreement that she plans to fix. Her comment came in response to a question by a union worker at a summit sponsored by the Alliance for American Manufacturing. The worker said President Clinton had tricked them when he championed NAFTA during his presidency.

Zakari has to deal with the paradox that the party he supports is isolationist and irresponsible on issues like  regulation and taxes. He comments in the article that London is now the world financial capital because of litigation and new laws like Sarbanes-Oxley that drive financial business away from our country. He comments that we have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, ignoring the fact that his favorite candidate for president has just said he would raise the capital gains and corporate tax rates even if they lost money for the government.

Zakaria has a valuable new book but he must reconcile his preferred party’s policies with the world that he sees. It will be a problem.

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Posted in general, History, politics | Comments Closed

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