As many pundits have pointed out, Barack Obama surely must be too arrogant to be president.
It is easy to see this in action: one only has to visit the Obama campaign website to see bumper stickers for sale with his name on them, transcripts of Obama speeches, fawning photos of the senator with his family, and other shocking behaviors.
He speaks to large crowds, instead of carefully selecting supporters for a "town hall" style discussion.
It even appears that he may be running for president because he is cocky enough to believe that he would make a good one. Or even that America's days of greatness may not be all in the past.
As a public service, I have attempted to lay out the areas in which this unbridled arrogance and self-confidence can be dangerous for the country:
Planned Parenthood said the ad is being aimed at women voters, and will be broadcast during the season premiere of "Project Runway," on Bravo, Lifetime’s "Army Wives," and "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in some markets. It will air in battleground states, including Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, and Wisconsin, as well as in the Washington, D.C. area.
The emphasis is mine. Plus, despite the questionable post-waterboarding Maliki retraction released by ...wait till you hear this... CENTCOM, SPIEGEL stands by its reporting of the story, which it adds, has been published by several Iraqi news orgs and has not been contested even in the "government-affiliated" Iraqi press. Der SPIEGEL bleibt jedoch bei seiner Darstellung.
There has been some buzz about the possibility of Senator Obama keeping Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense should he become the 44th President of these United States. The buzz was natural as a result of the huge contrasts between former Secretary Rumsfeld's tenure and that of Secretary Gates. It also helps that Secretary Gates actually shares a lot of the same world-views as Senator Obama. I'm in agreement with former Secretary of the Navy, Richard Danzig;
"My personal position is Gates is a very good secretary of defence and would be an even better one in an Obama administration."
The 2008 Democratic Presidential ticket, burnished with a former U.S. Naval Admiral -- Admiral Fallon is more conciliating than I would like him to be, but...
"There is a fierce behind-the-scenes battle for influence over presumptive Democratic candidate Barack Obama's Hispanic and Latin American agenda,"
and some Democratic strategists say that its outcome could determine the result of the November elections.
Some Obama backers in South Florida, in particular, are especially miffed at what they see as excessive power by labor-union-tied, left-leaning Mexican-American leaders at Obama's Chicago headquarters over the campaign's nationwide Hispanic and Latin American policy strategies.
In a confidential July 4 memo sent to 25 prominent South Florida Hispanics, former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre -- well respected in nationwide Democratic circles [sic] -- called for creation of a ''South Florida Hispanic policy advisory group'' to counterbalance what he perceives as excessive micro-management of state campaigns by Obama's Chicago headquarters.
The good news is the consensus is McCain will choose Mitt Romney for his running mate. Good because contrary to some conventional wisdom ( which is no wisdom at all ) Romney is not going to change the dynamics of the campaign. If he was going to he would have done fsr better than he did in the Primaries. On paper Romney should have blown McCain away. Instead Republicans yawned.
The new newspaper trend -- even extending to boring old AP -- of encouraging reporters to not merely report but opine in their "news" pieces reared its ugly head again this morning by way of a front page story in the Austin American-Statesman on Saturday's Netroots Nation events.
Patrick Beach, a feature writer at the paper who once described himself as a "raging moderate," repeatedly described the gathering in stereotypes that better fit the aging Old Left of years ago than the much younger Netroots of today. I mean, how many of you have ever read much of Chomsky or even know who Nanci Griffith is?
When Beach, at the start refers to the crowd as "marauding liberals" I know it's not to be taken literally. But then we get this:
A thread making it way through the news cycle lately has been the lack of meaningful comedy about Barack Obama on the late night comedy shows and other comedy venues in our usual laugh a minute culture. It seems comedians, at least those that are considered main stream media, are having trepidations about navigating potential Obama comedy through the mine fields of racism and political correctness. I think this gives John McCain an unfair advantage over Obama as he gets the most name exposure in these all important comedian monologues that open these world wide broadly viewed media comedy-talk American television network franchises.
Comedy is a way to acknowledge foibles, potential weaknesses or otherwise perceived human flaws in not just political leaders but also in our own friends, relatives and perhaps most important, ourselves. Comedy gives a release and can bring problems out in the open and can often lead the butt of the joke to a path of self improvement in some area of their life. So what is funny about Barack Obama?
I am looking at the polls showing we are in a horse race. We lead in state polls and are tied in national polls. The 2000 tied election was a fluke which won't occur in another one hundred years.If the electoral college really decided elections in this Republic, the Constitution would have been ammended many moons ago.
If Obama wins the popular vote he is President. If McCain wins the popular vote he is President. Don't waste hours heaping praise on each other about state polls. The only poll that counts is the one that measures the will of the majority of people in this country whether the votes come from Rhode Island or California. Check the history of elections since 1776.
Can 2000 happen again in 2008? Sure, and rabbits can fly,maybe, but don't count on it. The reality is we are tied with McCain and we should be 20 points ahead. Here is why:
Washington, DC: One additional senate staff member is accompanying Sen. Barack Obama on his Middle East trip this week -- Antony Blinken, chief of staff for the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE).
Okay, it's time for the Straight Talk Express to make a stop at Liberal Land, AKA Alan Colmes City. Mr. Colmes, sir, it is your duty to seek an extreme makeover (pundit edition, airing on Lifetime this fall), and I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to call on NetRoots Nation to make a donation to your image -- all in the service of ensuring that the left is perceived as strong and resolute.
Now, don't get me wrong, we're all happy as hell that you gave up stand-up comedy and became a talking head. But the danger of playing second fiddle to Sean Hannity is that you wind up as a kind of political straight man, serving up liberal tidbits that Hannity terminators his way past -- with the help of the producer controlling the cameras.
Boy was I Surprised to find my re-posted, slightly updated, diary, from yesterday, on the rescue list, I'll get to that in a minute.
There is reportedly some 43 million voters who are Veterans of our Military, active duty Members of our Military, as well as direct Family Members of both of those groups. Anyone who wants to keep cruntching numbers could keep a fairly close number of all three groups, births, deaths, enlistments etc., a huge task but a rough estimate could be had. The PLUS comes from the fact of not only the Extended Families of but also includes the Friends, Neighbors, Communities and how much they take into consideration Military Service especially when in occupation of two countries, or any dedicated service, to Country. The figures for that can't be put into a raw number, a close figure, or a percentage, they are Unknown.
With pundits calling Maliki's endorsement of Obama's plan a "major development" in the campaign, the White House, in coordination with McBush, was in a total damage control. A few hours later, some murky sources in Maliki's office began apparently walking backwards on reported qoutes from his interview in Spiegel. "Lost in translation defense" was apparently channeled via CentCom.
My son is a huge fan of Hillary Clinton and took it pretty hard when she lost to Barack Obama. He's even threatened to vote for John McCain. Well, Saturday the DNC and Howard Dean brought their cross-country "Register for Change" bus tour to Baton Rouge. So we attended.
Barack Obama advocates engaging the Iranians diplomatically as a more useful strategy than saber-rattling and refusing to talk to them. Obama is called an appeaser and (much) worse with great disdain by both the administration and the McCain camp for daring to even suggest it. This week, the US sent a diplomatic envoy to the Iran-Europe talks as "an observer" for the very first time. Hmmm. You say coincidence?
