Merry X-Mas

Allow me to be the first quasi-conservative blogger to wish Barack Obama a Merry Christmas.

Good tithings will be needed whenever it is finally revealed that Mr. Obama cannot be all things to all constituencies forever.

Same has come to Washington

Obama's position on the Iraq war has migrated all the way from immediate withdrawal, to arbitrary timetable, to essentially adopting the current Bush Policy of listening to the commanders on the ground.

Even if the flop is to the correct position on an issue, it's still a flip-flop.

Too Big To Fail

Last night the federal government quietly bailed out mega bank, Citi-Group.

Wasn't Citi-Group just involved in a legal battle with Wells Fargo over the right to acquire Wachovia?

Citi-Group, too big and too stupid to fail.

Schism

There seems to be now a rift developing in the Republican ranks between the moderate and conservative wings of the party.

The following is comment I found on a friend's blog post concerning the future of the Republican party:

Hey what about Charlie Crist. He would get my vote. Long live the moderates!!
BTW. I firmly believe that if McCain had chosen Joe Lieberman rather then Palin he wins. Palin was clearly the choice of the RNC rather then McCain in my opinion. He lost because he chose to cave into the party and go right rather then stay center. I can name several Big Liberal who would have voted for a McCain Lieberman ticket rather then Obama.

While I respect this opinion because Republicans do need moderates in their ranks, I generally disagree with the conclusion that the party needs to essentially move to the left in order to be successful. The other school of thought, reflected by the above cartoon, is the camp that I find myself in moving forward.

The solution to this rift will be the ability of the party to rally behind a compelling leader who appeals to both moderates and conservatives. Someone competent who is yes, a conservative, but is not seen as someone who is necessarily on the far right.

I think we can all agree that a Democrat-light like John McCain, was clearly not the answer. After all, if you run a Democrat against a Democrat, the Democrat wins every time.

Real Leadership

We haven't heard word one about what to do with the American Auto industry from "the one" but there are those who know what to do with the big three.

Rubbing raw the wounds

Just when I start to think that Mike Huckabee might be worthwhile, he begins to unravel and undermine any notion that he has something positive to contribute to the conservative movement.

The Huckster is on a book tour now bashing Mitt Romney again. And in a way Huckabee is the perfect foil for Romney. For all Romney's class and dignity, Huckabee is petty and classless. For all of Romney's patient logic, Huckabee is highly emotional and illogical. Who knows, if not for the collusion of McCain and Huckabee conspiring to destroy Romney in the Republican Primary, we may now have a president who actually knows something about the economy heading into this recession. Would have, could have, should have.

There is no point in rehashing the Republican Primary now. I've attacked Huckabee many times on this blog but even I tire of thrashing anyone who still wants to regard themselves as conservative. So I won't say any more about Huckabee other than to point out why his attacks against Romney are so laughable, namely this: All of Romney's criticisms of Huckabee, which occurred early on in the primaries and went away as soon as Huckabee became irrelevant, are provably true (that he raised taxes as Governor, for example). The converse also applies: All of Huckabee's attacks against Romney are provably false (that Romney is responsible for gay marriage in Massachusetts).

Mike Huckabee does himself a disservice by continuing to attack Romney simply because he's still smarting from Romney's legitimate and substantive attacks that were made nearly a year ago now. Think about this, would Huckabee be reacting this way still if Romney's attacks were baseless? People don't respond this vigorously to ridiculous and blatantly false accusations. It's precisely because Romney's critisms of Huckabee hit home so effectivley that the Huckster can't let this go.

Notice how Romney ignores Huckabee? That's the appropriate response to attacks that are not worth the time of day.

a brave new world

Tonight America elected a platitude.

The mantras "Hope & Change", and "Yes we can" are neither policies nor principles.

What concrete set of principles does Obama stand for?

Obama stands for himself and his cult of personality.

He's the one he's been waiting for.

5 Reasons

Five reasons to vote against Obama?

Only five?

I could give you 50, no problem.

1. He wants to tax working Americans back to the Stone Age. He lies when he says he will cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans. You know its nonsense because they can’t keep their numbers straight from hour to hour. Obama claims everyone making under $250,000 is safe, or is it $200,000 (the infomercial) or $150,000 (Joe Biden)? On Friday, Gov. Bill Richardson cut it to $120,000.

Oh what a tangled web we weave. The fact is, the wealth-spreaders have vowed to do away with the Bush tax cuts. So everybody who pays any income taxes is going to take a hit. Plus, the friends of ACORN also plan to get rid of the cap on Social Security withholding taxes. That means everyone who makes over $102,700 will be slaughtered. I don’t have room to talk about capital gains.

2. The federal courts. In that famous 2001 Chicago radio interview, Obama wistfully talked about the need for the Supreme Court to break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution. You know, those pesky constraints that make us a nation of laws, not governed by the whims of the Friends of Obama, or Jeremiah Wright. You think Breyer and Ginsburg are beyond the pale? Obama’s crowd thinks they’re too conservative.

3. Teach the Obama-worshipping bumkisser media a lesson. Have they ever been more in the tank for anyone? They’re all worried about the Patriot Act and terrorists’ rights at Gitmo, but they had no problems printing flat-out lies about Sarah Palin. More recently, they took handouts from Obama thugs in Ohio on Joe the Plumber’s tax liens, divorce problems, child-support payments etc. - worse violations of privacy rights than anything that’s happened under the Patriot Act. But who cares - Joe the Plumber is just a typical white person.

3. The character of Barack Obama. You can always tell a Harvard man, but you can’t tell him much. He lectures you that your kids will have to learn Spanish - your kids, not his. He’s always railing about economic justice, but his illegal-alien aunt lives in poverty in Southie. Hey Barack, I thought charity began at home. Like John Kerry and Joe Biden, he doesn’t believe in donating to charity. Obama is a classic liberal hypocrite: He’ll give anybody the shirt off your back, not his.

4. Michelle Obama. Another pampered semi-literate Ivy Leaguer who still considers herself a victim, even with her $360,000-a-year job as diversity coordinator at a Chicago hospital. Can you stand four years of this harridan lecturing you on your greed?

5. All the other stuff I don’t have much room for. Where the heck was Barack Obama really born? Dont forget his pal Bill Ayers dedication of his 1974 book “Prairie Fire” to, among others, Sirhan Sirhan. (Are you listening, Teddy and Caroline?) If Obama loses, Gwen Ifill’s book tanks. The return of the Fairness Doctrine to censor free speech. Joe Biden, a heartbeat away. And the No. 1 reason of all to vote against Barack Obama: If he loses it will drive the moonbats absolutely bonkers.

-Howie Carr

jumping the gun?

Incongruity

The liberal mind is an interesting thing to study. It defies logic on such a regular basis that it belies classification. It is slave to neither logic or emotion exclusivley. Rather, it toggles between the two at will, depending on the demands of the particular argument at hand. Truly a unique and mind-bending specimen, the Liberal mind.

Apparently there is a video tape that depicts Barack Obama in attendance at a 2003 send off banquet honoring Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian scholar and activist. This video tape was given to the LA Times who have suddenly decided not to release the tape to the general public claiming that they are under an obligation not to air the tape.

The McCain campaign is demanding that the Obama supporting LA Times release the video tape.

My question is: Who gives a video tape to a major media outlet, and then demand that they not release it?

The LA Times excuse for not releasing the tape is very implausible, and stinks to high heaven of media bias.

In the tank for Obama anyone?

If that blatant example of media bias weren't enough, Obama supporting liberals are now simultaneously arguing that Obama's relationship to Khalidi is no big deal and then in the next breath, argue that the tape should not be released.

Well which is it? Is Obama's relationship with Khalidi no big deal?

Then what, one wonders, is the harm in releasing the tape?

At some point here, the last thread of logic is lost.

Just release the tape, LA Times, and this thing goes away.

So long as there's a tape that exists still unreleased, there will always be this additional unresolved partial-revelation about a man who, as we learn more, has a veritable tapestry of shady and/or questionable associations that all share more or less the same sort of anti-American and/or anti-Zionist bent.

But in the new Stalinst 'Obamerica', we're not allowed to ask such questions or have such concerns, I guess.

No doubt the comrades in the MSM will succeed in suppressing any further evidence, including this video tape, that may depict Obama in even the slightest of unfavorable lights.

Here's to hoping that there's something left of America in 2012.

Moonbat, Massachusetts

Greetings from Moonbat country.

not a single school of thought

John Fund, of opinionjournal.com, asserts that there's not a single school of economic thought that says that you raise taxes in a recession.

Yet that's precisely what Barack Obama and this Democratically controlled Congress propose to do, he goes on to point out.

This critique makes so much sense, it must make a liberal's head spin like a top.

You wanna make a recession a depression: Vote Obama.

Hack

It's clear to me now that Joe Biden is a hack.

I'll confess that I didn't know all that much about Biden before he was selected as Obama's running mate. Secretly I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. All I hear from the mainstream media is what a genius he is, so I couldn't just conclude the opposite until presented with sufficient evidence one way or the other.

The new wave of various Biden gaffes have been catalogued for weeks now and yesterday reached a crescendo with the outrageously candid confession that Obama would face an international incident within 6 months of being elected and react slowly. See my previous post.

But for me there is a rhetorical moment where someone reveals themselves to be an intellectual hack. A final "Jump The Shark" moment.

In a campaign rally today Biden discussed the exchange in the recent debate where McCain turned to Obama and said, "I'm not George Bush, if you wanted to run against him you should have run four years ago." An effective line to be sure.

Biden's response to this line today was, "Methinks he doth protest too much." How original... quoting Shakespeare. Only, if you find yourself to be a political junkie like myself, you know that this exact turn of phrase was used just yesterday to describe Biden's own phony outrage that his own patriotism has been questioned one too many times.

The discussion goes like this: Why is it that Democrats are always whining about people questioning their patriotism? Methinks they doth protest too much. That turn of phrase was used in a recent article, I don't remember where at the moment, in reference to Joe Biden's vociferous phony outrage about people questioning the patriotism of Democrats. Awww... people question the patriotism of leftists. Cue the tiny violins.

It appears as though Joe Biden is essentially back to his old plagiarizing ways. This time not whole passages of text at least, but he must have heard the Shakespearean turn of phrase applied to him just yesterday. Surely some aide showed him the article that called to task his phony outrage by effectively invoking Shakespeare.

But because Democrats like Biden are generally rhetorically unoriginal, he must have thought that it was a turn of phrase worth "borrowing" I suppose. But then he massacres the saying by using in an unconvincing fashion. It really is the height of lameness when you rip off the exact turn of phrase that was just used effectively against you, only to have it not make much sense and in turn, not resonate.

Many McCain supporters were wondering when McCain was going to more forcefully attempt to separate himself from President Bush for months now.

The Obama campaign strategy, for its part it seems, was written when Bush won the last election four years ago: Vote Obama because (insert the Republican candidate's name here) is another four years of Bush.

And the Democrats, with their getaway driver the mainstream media, have been routing for things to go badly in America for as long as I can remember at this point in order to drum into the heads of Americans this as their 2008 winning campaign theme.

Things go badly in the war: good for Democrats. Things go badly in the economy: good for Democrats.

So now that McCain has for the first time pointed out that he is not Bush, after months of letting the charge go unchallenged, he's protesting too much?

What???

If you're going to purloin rhetoric, you should at least employ it in an effective manner. To not do so is a blatant example of intellectual hackery. Many have followed Biden for years and have drawn their own conclusions. It now seems that it was largely a function of time, but I now join the chorus that declares Joe Biden to be a hack.

Together with the voluminous body of work of his constant gaffes, his previous history of plagiarism, his propensity to play fast and loose with the facts, and his ongoing rhetorical unoriginality the truth is clear now.

This guy is a joke, a hack, a charlatan.

a gaffe a minute

It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking.... Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy....

I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate… And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you - not financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.

-Joe Biden

Say it ain't so Joe. But thanks for the candor.

dissembling acrobatics

Greg Sargent, a prominent Obama supporting blogger, wrote the following in response to McCain's correct assertion during the debate that Obama voted against a bill that would have explicitly required a doctor to do whatever he/she could in order to attempt to save a baby's life after surviving a botched abortion attempt:

Desperation: McCain Claims That Obama Voted To Let Babies Die

Sheer desperation: John McCain hits Barack Obama for allegedly voting to let babies die.

The reference, of course, is to Obama's opposition to a measure in Illinois that would purportedly have provided care for babies born amid abortions -- something that was already legally required, anyway. The bill was widely viewed by critics as a sneak attack on Roe v. Wade.

To our ears, this is a more despicable smear than just about anything we've seen, worse than Ayers or anything else. It wreaks so overwhelmingly of desperation and dishonesty that it's incredible that McCain actually agreed to it when Steve Schmidt or whoever told him it would work and he really, really would score big points if he lobbed this attack tonight.

Obama himself attempted to perform the same sort of dissembling rhetorical acrobatics during the debate on this issue but the fact remains that the statement that Obama voted against this particular piece of legislation is a correct statement. Mr. Sargent here states that, "The bill was widely viewed by critics as a sneak attack on Roe v. Wade.". So Critics saw it as an attack on Roe v. Wade?

Conclusion: Due to political pressure from the far left pro-abortion lobby, Obama voted against a bill which would have spelled out what was required when a baby was somehow born alive during a botched abortion attempt. This does seem to be an extremely pro-abortion stance and, as McCain stated, out of the mainstream.

There is at least one documented case that I am aware of where a down syndrome baby was left to die in a laundry closet.

Legislation was brought about to prevent further incidences of this sort of thing.

Barrack Obama voted against this legislation.

To point this out is not some scurrilous charge that is outrageously beyond the pale.

It's very simple, either Obama did or did not vote against this piece of legislation.

There, all dissembling has been reassembled.

the politics of grievance and resentment

In words, Obama is a uniter instead of a divider. In deeds, he has spent years promoting polarization. That is what a "community organizer" does, creating a sense of grievance, envy and resentment, in order to mobilize political action to get more of the taxpayers' money or to force banks to lend to people they don't consider good risks, as the community organizing group ACORN did.


After Barack Obama moved beyond the role of a community organizer, he promoted the same polarization in his other roles.

That is what he did when he spent the money of the Woods Fund bankrolling programs to spread the politics of grievance and resentment into the schools. That is what he did when he spent the taxpayers' money bankrolling the grievance and resentment ideology of Michael Pfleger.

When Barack Obama donated $20,000 to Jeremiah Wright, does anyone imagine that he was unaware that Wright was the epitome of grievance, envy and resentment hype? Or were Wright's sermons too subtle for Obama to pick up that message?

How subtle is "Goddamn America!"?

Barack Obama has carried election-year makeovers to a new high, presenting himself a uniter of people, someone reaching across the partisan divide and the racial divide-- after decades of promoting polarization in each of his successive roles and each of his choices of political allies.

Yet the media treat exposing a fraudulent election-year image as far worse than letting someone acquire the powers of the highest office in the land through sheer deception.

-Thomas Sowell

the roaches nest behind the curtain

Read this.

root cause

Say it ain't so Joe

Keith Olbermann Brown

I believe that Keith Olbermann has been reincarnated.

As Campbell Brown.

The tip off isn't necessarily the ridiculously obvious pro-Obama bent as much as it is the sanctimonious delivery and snide yet sing- song tone of voice as she recites what some lefty wrote on the tele-prompter.

Who does Ms. Brown think she's fooling, I wonder, when everybody knows that she's so in the tank for Obama, she's soaking wet.

I love the fact that Sarah Palin is pissing off the MSM.

If Campbell Olbermann Brown is angry, then the McCain campaign is doing something good.

Doctrinal confusion

"Charlie Gibson's gaffe..." Damn right.

unreal

In an effort to influence the election by influencing voters, ABC News apparently edited out whole chunks of the Sarah Palin Charlie Gibson interview.

Here we go again with blatant left leaning media bias. I'm sure ABC News would argue that they edited for time constraints or some other lame argument, but the effect of editing out certain key passages of what Palin was saying had the obviously intended effect of making her appear less coherent on matters of foreign policy.

Why do liberals have to constantly cheat in a pathetic attempt to win the argument?

Here's some advice to ABC News: If you don't want to be accused of cheating and being guilty of left leaning media bias, just run the interview of a Republican candidate in it's entirety. Don't edit out whole passages of the strongest arguments of the candidate! Because we're gonna find out what you did, you stupid bastards.

Would it even be possible to have someone at ABC News editing the interview who isn't in the tank for Obama?

If Charlie Gibson had any knowledge of this insipid editing then he's no better than Dan Rather (who I'm sure most lefties privately regard as a hero for fraudulently trying to take down President Bush on the eve of the 2004 election).

Here's the full context of the foreign policy discussion with the bold and underlined sections being those that were conveniently left out in order to shape people's impression of Sarah Palin's grasp of the issues being discussed.

A lesson in objectivity from Mike Gravel

Listen to this clip of a liberal radio show where the leftist presidential candidate Mike Gravel attempts to set the two partisan hosts straight on "trooper-gate" and a variety of other misguided arguments that are commonly parroted by every liberal media outfit under the sun in an effort to attack and impugn Sarah Palin's character rather than attack her policies.

For those who would seek to try to discredit Palin rather than debate the substance of the issues at hand, listen carefully to Mike Gravel, he's a lefty with some common sense.

7 years

Rescue workers remove a Father Judge, a parish priest from one of New York's fire halls. Father Judge was administering last rites to a firefighter who was killed by one of the many bodies that fell to the ground after people leapt from the tower to their deaths, when he too was struck by a body and killed.

It seems to me that if President Bush is solely responsible for the sub prime mortgage crisis and for high gas prices, as some would have us believe, then he is also solely responsible for keeping America safe from terrorism for 7 years.

I for one have never bought into the narrative, that has been peddled for years now, that George W Bush is worthless. He has done more to confront the threat of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism than any other world leader in history. To me that is far from worthless, it's priceless.

The fine art of moral equivalency

"If you were watching Sean Hannity consistently..."

Huh? Is that Obama telling us that he watches Sean Hannity more than Bill O'Reilly does? I don't doubt it.

At least Obama tried to explain (away) his associations with Reverend Wright et al.

He was unconvincing, yet refreshingly candid.

Liberals and the media

Sometimes I wonder if liberals even understand what it is that every one else objects to about the biased and slanted general news coverage provided by the predominantly left leaning mainstream media.

Keith Olbermann and Chris Mathews were today relieved of their duties as MSNBC news general election anchors.

It seems that the more the left leaning media digs it heels in, the more ground it loses. Yet amazingly, declining readership of liberal publications and bottom of the barrel ratings for liberal television and radio enterprises have served only to somehow embolden far left influenced media rather than discourage it.

When your enemy is in the process of destroying itself it is unwise to point it out, but in this case I can't resist.

How it is that these supposedly intelligent lefty media types could have such a tin ear when it comes to what is expected of them in the realm of journalism? It must have to do with their own high opinion of themselves that causes them to fail to realize that their own audiences, those that cling to guns and religion, are not as stupid as they think. This is what Sarah Palin means when she speaks of the 'elite media', who in her case, have taken media bias to new levels of tawdriness and hypocrisy.

I mean, does the left at least grasp what people objected to when Dan Rather capsized his own career in a blatant effort to influence a political campaign by promoting a fraudulent Bush National Guard story on the eve of the 2004 presidential election?

That fact that many of those on the left are inclined to defend Dan Rather in "Rathergate" essentially dictates that they are doomed to repeat similar, if not the same, mistakes. Because this narrative of left leaning media bias has been around for so long at this point, it has fully taken hold in the public consciousness at large as a normal feature of the political landscape.

So when people see Keith Olbermann berating 9-11 victims or Chris Mathews "getting a thrill up his leg" for Obama they have clear confirmation of the insidious permeation and general brazenness of left leaning political bias bleeding into what is presented supposedly as hard news.

They never learn, so they're gone. Do Olbermann and Mathews even understand why they were taken off their assignment of delivering general coverage during the rest of the campaign? They seem so stubborn and one-sided that I'm sure that they have some sort of rationale that blames Haliburton or George Bush rather than the real culprit: their own failure to comprehend the difference between commentary and general news coverage.

grand slam & smack down

In case you missed Sarah Palin's killer speech last night, like Barack did, here it is in it's entirety. It's gonna be pretty tough for McCain to top this speech, but clearly, picking Sarah as the VP nominee was a stroke of genius.

Fred Thompson, thy hitter of home-runs

Many of the pundits were raving about Joe Lieberman's speech last night but I was partial to Fred Thompson's, I thought his speech was excellent.

He delivered a masterful blend of story telling and red meat dispensing. Fred Thompson knows how to get my conservative leaning juices flowing. He used his acting skills to regale the hall with perhaps the most interesting and compelling account of John McCain's POW experience and then he delved into some of the reasons as to why Obama is decidedly unprepared and unqualified to be president. Here are some of the best lines of the night delivered by Fred Thompson.

On McCain's Hanoi Hilton experience:

We hear a lot of talk about hope.

John McCain knows about hope. That's all he had to survive on. For propaganda purposes, his captors offered to let him go home.

John McCain refused.

He refused to leave ahead of men who'd been there longer.

He refused to abandon his conscience and his honor, even for his freedom.

He refused, even though his captors warned him, "It will be very bad for you."

They were right.

It was.

On tele-prompters:

Because John McCain stood up our country is better off.

The respect he is given around the world is not because of a teleprompter speech designed to appeal to American critics abroad, but because of decades of clearly demonstrated character and statesmanship.

On Democrats:

To deal with these challenges the Democrats present a history making nominee for president.

History making in that he is the most liberal, most inexperienced nominee to ever run for President. Apparently they believe that he would match up well with the history making, Democrat controlled Congress. History making because it's the least accomplished and most unpopular Congress in our nation's history.

Together, they would take on these urgent challenges with protectionism, higher taxes and an even bigger bureaucracy.

And a Supreme Court that could be lost to liberalism for a generation.

This is not reform.

And it's certainly not change.

On taxes:

A President who feels no need to apologize for the United States of America.

We need a President who understands that you don't make citizens prosperous by making Washington richer, and you don't lift an economic downturn by imposing one of the largest tax increases in American history.

Now our opponents tell you not to worry about their tax increases.

They tell you they are not going to tax your family.

No, they're just going to tax "businesses"! So unless you buy something from a "business", like groceries or clothes or gasoline ... or unless you get a paycheck from a big or a small "business", don't worry ... it's not going to affect you.

They say they are not going to take any water out of your side of the bucket, just the "other" side of the bucket! That's their idea of tax reform.

In conclusion, a salute to McCain:

Tonight we are being called upon to stand up for a strong military ... a mature foreign policy ... a free and growing economy and for the values that bind us together and keep our nation free.

Tonight, we are being called upon to step up and stand up with John just as he has stood up for our country.

Our country is calling.

John McCain cannot raise his arms above his shoulders.

He cannot salute the flag of the country for which he sacrificed so much. Tonight, as we begin this convention week, yes, we stand with him.

And we salute him.

We salute his character and his courage.

His spirit of independence, and his drive for reform.

His vision to bring security and peace in our time, and continued prosperity for America and all her citizens.

For our own good and our children's, let us celebrate that vision, that belief, that faith so we can keep America the greatest country the world has ever seen.

Fred Thompson, thy hitter of home-runs.

Sarah Palin

It appears as though McCain will pick Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska, as his Vice presidential running mate.

Putting aside the transparent identity politics play of this decision for the moment, I give McCain credit for picking someone with at least some executive experience.

If Sarah Palin is the Vice Presidential nominee, at least one of the four politicians on the two major party tickets will at least have had some experience running something. The other three: Obama, Biden, and McCain have never run so much as a corner store let alone something like the US Government, the largest enterprise in the world.

But then again I could just be being petty by imagining that the CEO of the free world essentially, should have at least some experience running something other than a self-serving political campaign.

Enter Sarah Palin, a fresh face with executive experience who represents an obvious attempt by the McCain campaign to win over disaffected Hillary voters. I wish her and McCain luck in their quest to defeat the Obama juggernaut and his getaway driver, the mainstream media.

McCain/Palin '08.

UPDATE: As of 10:40 a.m. eastern it has been confirmed that Sarah Palin is indeed McCain's VP pick.

Algebra with Bill

I wonder who he could be talking about.

Tom Ridge

After watching Tom Ridge on Fox News Sunday today it occurs to me that I could probably live with Ridge as McCain's VP choice. Ridge seems ready to "echo" the President as he put it today as the primary responsibility of a Vice President. If that is the primary criterion for Vice Presidential consideration then Ridge is your man. Not a pushover, but not pushy.

The fact that Ridge is pro-choice only lends centrist credibility to the ticket. And it does not harm McCain's pro-life stance because Ridge seems to understand that he is expected to subjugate his own views on abortion were he to be selected.

Of course if McCain wants to run along side an exiting and dynamic Vice Presidential candidate who is already pro-life and who would immeasurably help him win the argument, there's always Mitt Romney.

Obama flops on drilling

Obama today changed his position on off-shore drilling.

Maybe he is led by the facts after all.

If so, we can expect more flip-flops about Iraq in the offing.

change we can believe in

What will be left of your paycheck after taxes under an Obama Administration.

Couric vs. Obama

Katie Couric actually committed journalism the other day when she asked Obama some pointed questions about the war in Iraq and the war on terror. More significantly, she followed up doggedly when Obama did his usual equivocation and obfuscation. In the following excerpt, Obama becomes noticeably peeved when it becomes apparent that Couric was not going to be conducting the standard MSM softball interview that Obama has grown accustomed to at this point. In fact Obama routinely avoids situations where he might be pinned down to decide on an actual stance on an issue or answer even mildly difficult questions about his 'evolving' policy positions.

Couric: But talking microcosmically, did the surge, the addition of 30,000 additional troops ... help the situation in Iraq?

Obama: Katie, as ... you've asked me three different times, and I have said repeatedly that there is no doubt that our troops helped to reduce violence. There's no doubt.

Couric: But yet you're saying ... given what you know now, you still wouldn't support it ... so I'm just trying to understand this.

Obama: Because ... it's pretty straightforward. By us putting $10 billion to $12 billion a month, $200 billion, that's money that could have gone into Afghanistan. Those additional troops could have gone into Afghanistan. That money also could have been used to shore up a declining economic situation in the United States. That money could have been applied to having a serious energy security plan so that we were reducing our demand on oil, which is helping to fund the insurgents in many countries. So those are all factors that would be taken into consideration in my decision-- to deal with a specific tactic or strategy inside of Iraq.

Couric: And I really don't mean to belabor this, Senator, because I'm really, I'm trying ... to figure out your position. Do you think the level of security in Iraq ...

Obama: Yes.

Couric ... would exist today without the surge?

Obama: Katie, I have no idea what would have happened had we applied my approach, which was to put more pressure on the Iraqis to arrive at a political reconciliation. So this is all hypotheticals. What I can say is that there's no doubt that our U.S. troops have contributed to a reduction of violence in Iraq. I said that, not just today, not just yesterday, but I've said that previously. What that doesn't change is that we've got to have a different strategic approach if we're going to make America as safe as possible.

Couric: If you believe, Senator, Afghanistan is, in fact, the central front in the war on terror, why was this your first trip there? And why didn't you hold a single hearing as chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the fighting force there?

Obama: Well, the, actually, the subcommittee that I chair is the European subcommittee. And any issues related to Afghanistan were always dealt with in the full committee, precisely because it's so important. That's not a matter that you would deal with in a subcommittee setting. And the fact that I didn't visit Afghanistan doesn't detract from my accurate assessment that this has been the central front on terror.

Clearly Obama has difficulty figuring out what his own stance is on Iraq, yet he ceaselessly insists that he has always been consistent on every related topic. You name the topic, Obama has always held the same position all along. It's just us not listening closely enough, you see. What's more disturbing than Obama changing his mind on Iraq (and a host of other issues) is that he now apparently imagines himself to be infallible.

the amateur's guide to flip-flopping

John Kerry lost the last presidential election, in many people's estimation, because of his being tagged as a "flip-flopper".

John Kerry was a punter compared to the leftist demi-god messiah, Barack Obama.

In the last few weeks Obama has flipped and flopped around, with such astonishing speed, on matters of such importance like the war in Iraq, that it's actually difficult keep up with his ever changing positions and positioning.

He has twisted himself into knots at this point, as a master political contortionist.

After saying whatever he needed to in order to lock up the far left base of the Democratic party by running to the left of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, Obama shrewdly and cynically deduced that he had to move to the political center in order to begin the process of appealing to the non-far left leaning contingent of voters he would be required to successfully romance in order to win a general election. He would at least need to soften some of what many people correctly imagined as some of his more far left positions into more palatable forms for the mass consumption of the general electorate. His campaign I'm sure would argue that this all is merely a matter of emphasis. You see, by emphasizing the more conservative elements of his existing platform he could soften his hard left edge without actually changing his fundamental positions. This explanation is of course hogwash. Obama has in recent weeks, changed wholesale positions on major issues. On issues about which none are simply so nuanced as to have such conveniently ambiguous parameters that there is no real way of knowing what is triangulation and what is the simple adopting of the direct opposing position. Let's rundown Barack Obama and his 'flip flopper's guide to the galaxy'.

• (Iraq) In the case of the war in Iraq, Obama has changed from one position to another and then back to the original position in the span of 48 hours. He based his entire primary campaign against Hillary as the true anti-war candidate, but in the last few weeks has now said that he would be making "refinements" in his Iraq policy. Refinements that include listening to the commanders fighting the war rather than imposing the arbitrary timetable for withdrawal that was trumpeted as his position in the primary campaign. But now he has flipped back to the original position because of the outcry coming from his far left anti-war base who have no time for the argument that our course of action in Iraq should not be dictated by leftist politicians making academic pronouncements and judgments about a tactical and strategic military situation. This is an example of what I call the compound flip flop, where's there's a flop, then a flip and then another flop back to the original position.

•(FISA) Many of Obama's most ardent supporters have found their candidate's blatant flip-flop on the issue of FISA wiretaps and telecom immunity difficult to stomach. In the primary, Obama promised to filibuster a bill to protect telephone companies from liability for their cooperation with national security wiretaps, then he flipped and voted for the exact legislation he promised to rebuke. The diametric flip flop.

• (Gun Control/2nd amendment) After a recent supreme court decision lifting a ban on handguns in Washington DC, Obama was seen pronouncing that he "has been a consistent supporter of the second amendment." (By the way, whenever you hear someone say that, "they have always been consistent" or John Kerry's favorite "let me be clear", you have a clear indication that the person making those remarks is in fact in the process of flip flopping.) Shortly after declaring support for the second amendment out of nowhere Obama then essentially recanted by attempting to straddle the issue by saying that he was also in fact for the regulation of hand guns by the federal government. The 2nd amendment is unambiguous. It states that The government "shall not infringe" on a citizens right to keep and bear arms. Either you support the 2nd amendment or you do not. But Obama on this is clumsily trying to triangulate by appealing to both polar opposite positions. Instead of triangulation though all he really is doing is flipping and flopping back and forth so fast that it becomes so difficult to track that people lose interest in actually figuring out where he stands on the issue. The high speed flip flop.

• (Public campaign funding) One of Obama's signature positions, as the self declared standard bearer of the "new politics", was his promise not to take private money for his campaign. That was before he saw just how much money he could raise privately. He now has completely flipped on the issue by spurning the public finance system he previously promoted. The signature issue flip-flop.

• (an undivided Jerusalem) When speaking to the Israeli lobby in a speech a few weeks ago Obama declared that he was fully supportive of an undivided Jerusalem. Then the Palestinians reacted badly and Obama flipped over to the mindset that Jerusalem should be shared by both Jews and Palestinians. The foreign policy gaffe flip-flop.

• (direct talks with Ahmadinejad, Chavez) At the You Tube debate last year, Obama famously declared that unlike the Bush administration he was in favor of direct talks with all of the leaders of various rogue nations. Obama indicated that he would be for talks with Ahmadinejad, Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez ,and Kim Jung Il with "no preconditions". These days he has heavily backpedaled into a back flip on the issue. He has done a back pedal flip flop on this issue whereas he now would want some form of "pre-conditions" before meeting with the various rogue nation heads of state mentioned in the original YouTube question.

• (town hall meetings) McCain challenged Obama to a series of town hall meetings style debates where both candidates would be subject to direct questions from the general public. Obama, not wanting to look like he was backing out of a confrontation with the lowly John McCain, initially entertained the idea to only later and quietly deny the request. Apparently Obama isn't as much of a fan of town hall meetings as his book "The Audacity of Hope" would have us believe. There's a passage in the book explaining how and why he loves town hall meetings so much. That was before he might be subjected to difficult questions I suppose. The hypocritical duality flip flop.

• (Partial birth abortions) Obama was once the champion of abortion in all of its grisly forms. Now he seems to be having doubts about the practice of partial birth abortion. Again, either you support partial birth abortion or you don't. The abortion related flip-flop.

And unlike McCain changing on domestic drilling, for example, who may do so because of drastic changes in the facts on the ground, Obama has been wildly flip-flopping for no other reason than political expediency. In other words, Obama needs to be able to adopt whatever stance at whatever time for whatever political reason on whatever issue.

This is flip flopping redefined. 'Change (of position) you can believe in' indeed.

Vive la flip-flop!

Happy 4th!

Happy Independence Day from Boston, home of America's team The New England Patriots, the World Champion Boston Red Sox and Boston Celtics, and the beginning of the American war for Independence.

Trial Balloon

This is one of those campaign flaps that seems too silly to comment upon yet too memorable to ignore.

In this clip, the former presidential candidate and current Obama surrogate demeans and generally assails John McCain's military service.

This is a very odd road that the Obama has now chosen to go down. Attacking McCain's military credentials was never anything that any of the Republican contenders would have ever dreamed of doing in the primary a few months back.

But like any well executed special op, the commander has to have 'plausible deniability'. So in the case of Wesley Clark's obtuse comments, I'm sure that Obama "had no idea" what arguments Clark would be making. Just like he had no idea about Reverend Wright, or Reverend Phleger, or William Ayers, or Tony Rezko I'm sure.

As we've seen in the Democratic primary many times by now, a surrogate of a candidate will go out and make an argument or comment that was then later revealed to be unauthorized only after the negative repercussions started to roll into the campaign headquarters, of course.

Obama has now indirectly denounced the comments of Wesley Clark accordingly.

Nobama

Some of the most passionate supporters of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary have banded together in an effort to see to it that Barack Obama does not get elected president. Perusing the website, it's interesting to see that some of the most virulent forces of anti-Obama are actually Democratic voters who feel that their candidate was snubbed in the worst possible way. At present, I'm inclined to agree with their conclusion, Nobama in '08.

Au contraire

The short version of the Democratic Party primary campaign is that the media fell in love with Barack Obama but the Democratic electorate declined to.

"I felt this thrill going up my leg," said MSNBC's Chris Matthews after one of the senator's speeches. "I mean, I don't have that too often." Au contraire, Chris and the rest of the gang seem to be getting the old tingle up the thigh hairs on a nightly basis. If Obama is political Viagra, the media are at that stage in the ad where the announcer warns that, if leg tingles persist for more than six months, see your doctor.

Out there in the voting booths, however, Democrat legs stayed admirably unthrilled. The more the media told Hillary she was toast, and she should get the hell out of it and let Obama romp to victory, the more Democrats insisted on voting for her. The more the media insisted Barack was inevitable, the less inclined the voters were to get with the program. On the strength of Chris Matthews' vibrating calves, Sen. Obama raised a ton of money – over $300 million – and massively outspent Sen. Clinton, but he didn't really get any bang for his buck. In the end, he crawled over the finish line. The Obama Express came a-hurtlin' down the track at 2 miles an hour.

But what does he care? Sen. Obama has learned an old trick of Bill Clinton's: If you behave like a star, you'll get treated as one. So, even as his numbers weakened, his rhetoric soared. By the time he wrapped up his "victory" speech last week, the great gaseous uplift had his final paragraphs floating in delirious hallucination along the Milky Way:

"I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people … . I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal … . This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation."

It's a good thing he's facing it with "profound humility," isn't it? Because otherwise who knows what he'd be saying. But mark it in your calendars: June 3, 2008 – the long-awaited day, after 232 years, that America began to provide care for the sick. Just a small test program: 47 attendees of the Obama speech were taken to hospital and treated for nausea. Everyone else came away thrilled that the Obamessiah was going to heal the planet and reverse the rise of the oceans: When Barack wants to walk on the water, he doesn't want to have to use a stepladder to get up on it.

There are generally two reactions to this kind of policy proposal. The first was exemplified by the Atlantic Monthly's Marc Ambinder:

"What a different emotional register from John McCain's; Obama seems on the verge of tears; the enormous crowd in the Xcel Center seems ready to lift Obama on its shoulders; the much smaller audience for McCain's speech interrupted his remarks with stilted cheers."

The second reaction boils down to: "'Heal the planet'? Is this guy nuts?" To be honest I prefer a republic whose citizenry can muster no greater enthusiasm for their candidate than "stilted cheers" to one in which the crowd wants to hoist the nominee onto their shoulders for promising to lower ocean levels within his first term. As for coming together "to remake this great nation," if it's so great, why do we have to remake it? A few months back, just after the New Hampshire primary, a Canadian reader of mine – John Gross of Quebec – sent me an all-purpose stump speech for the 2008 campaign:

"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it."

I thought this was so cute, I posted it on the Web at National Review. Whereupon one of those Internetty-type things happened, and three links and a Google search later the line was being attributed not to my correspondent but to Sen. Obama, and a few weeks after that I started getting e-mails from reporters from Florida to Oregon, asking if I could recall at which campaign stop the senator, in fact, uttered these words. And I'd patiently write back and explain that they're John Gross' words, and that not even Barack would be dumb enough to say such a thing in public. Yet last week his demand in his victory speech that we "come together to remake this great nation" came awful close.

Speaking personally, I don't want to remake America. I'm an immigrant, and one reason I came here is because most of the rest of the Western world remade itself along the lines Sen. Obama has in mind. This is pretty much the end of the line for me. If he remakes America, there's nowhere for me to go – although presumably once he's lowered sea levels around the planet there should be a few new atolls popping up here and there.

Marc Ambinder is right. Obama's rhetoric is in a different "emotional register" from John McCain's. It's in a different "emotional register" from every U.S. president – not just the Coolidges but the Kennedys, too. Nothing in Obama's resume suggests he's the man to remake America and heal the planet. Only last week, another of his pals bit the dust, convicted by a Chicago jury of 16 counts of this and that. "This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew," said the senator, in what's becoming a standard formulation. Likewise, this wasn't the Jeremiah Wright he knew. And these are guys he's known for 20 years.

Yet at the same time as he's being stunned by the corruption and anti-Americanism of those closest to him, Obama's convinced that just by jetting into Tehran and Pyongyang he can get to know America's enemies and persuade them to hew to the straight and narrow. No doubt if it all goes belly-up, and Iran winds up nuking Tel Aviv, President Obama will put on his more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger face and announce solemnly that "this isn't the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad I knew."

Every time I hear an Obama speech, I start to giggle. But millions of voters don't. And, if Chris Matthews and the tingly-legged media get their way and drag Obama across the finish line this November, the laugh will be on those of us who think that serious times demand grown-up rhetoric.

-Mark Steyn

Going Green

credit: Boston Herald

Obama as Cosby with a socialist twist

On Father's day yesterday Barack Obama delivered a speech which essentially ripped off the message of Bill Cosby vis a vis the black community. Except that rather than draw scorn from the liberal media and masses as Cosby did, Obama has been lavished with yet more "messianic figure" praise.

Obama not only shamelessly co-opted the message of Cosby, he then proceeded to add his own socialistic touch to Cosby's thesis by concluding that with the benefit of yet more social programs black fathers will be better able to hang around and raise their offspring like a responsible adult. In other words, if the government hands money to black fathers then they will do what they are already "supposed to do" as Chris Rock would say.

Obama's socialist conclusion misses the point of Cosby's thesis, which has much more to do with personal responsibility than it does with the government handouts Obama favors.

But Obama's rationale on this matter is not at all surprising given the fact that to Obama, the answer to all of societies ills are found in the boilerplate principles of socialism.

As Europe, China, and Russia move away from socialism by embracing more and more aspects of capitalism, Barack Obama proposes to rush us towards socialism, the very form of government being abandoned by even the most stubborn and ardent historical proponents of it.

If you strongly feel that taxes are far too low, then by all means vote Barack Obama.

Obama with no tele-promter

liberal drivel pap

“John McCain is not ever going to be an operatic orator but he is not the Chinese dinner that Barack Obama is. You never know what he said an hour later. Just like you never know what you ate when you have a Chinese dinner. What did he say? He gave some liberal drivel pap, the likes of which we’ve heard before and it hasn’t worked, it’s not gonna work and it’s why he’s really an ideal candidate to contrast with the kind of conservatism we need to discuss.”

-Mary Matalin

Rich White People redux

The above footage is of Catholic minister Michael Pfleger giving the sermon at Obama's church the other day. The highlight comes about halfway through this clip, where he lampoons Hillary Clinton for being rich and white.

It appears as though racism and the promotion of racial division are alive and well at the church Obama has attended for the last 2 decades. But Obama was never present during any of the most controversial comments. Yeah... right.

in memoriam

gaffe as policy

'Before the Democratic debate of July 23, Barack Obama had never expounded upon the wisdom of meeting, without precondition, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Hugo Chávez, Kim Jong Il or the Castro brothers. But in that debate, he was asked about doing exactly that. Unprepared, he said sure -- then got fancy, declaring the Bush administration's refusal to do so not just "ridiculous" but "a disgrace."

After that, there was no going back. So he doubled down. What started as a gaffe became policy. By now, it has become doctrine. Yet it remains today what it was on the day he blurted it out: an absurdity. '

-Charles Krauthammer

lingering questions

Many of the same Obama supporters who make the argument that somehow Obama was not aware of the full teachings of Reverend Wright until recently also make the argument that Reverend Wright's world view is largely correct.

I would ask Obama's supporters to settle on either one or the other mutually exclusive argument. To make both concurrently weakens both.

the Huckster: part deux

As a Romney supporter, there's one thing I can always safely rely on John McCain for. That is, doing whatever it is that hurts Mitt Romney and those that support him the most.

So to find out that McCain is about to pick the amiable Southern Baptist pastor Mike Huckabee as his vice presidential running mate is clearly more disappointing than it is surprising. Come to think of it, it makes perfect sense for the pseudo-Republican "Maverick", John McCain, to have Mike Huckabee, the populist preacher/charlatan, as his right hand man. And then there's all the electoral benefits of the political betrothal of Juan Pablo McCain and Mike "Chuckabee" Huckabee detailed here.

...and the world didn't end

Hillary Clinton was on the O'Reilly Factor and the world didn't stop rotating on its axis. Barack Obama and Howard Dean have appeared this week on the Fox News Channel and yet there was no disturbance in the the space time continuum.

All this despite the urgings of the far left. The far lefties at The Daily Kos and Moveon.org have been demanding that all prominent Democrats and Democratic candidates boycott FNC, the most watched cable news network. The far left brain trust behind the Fox News boycott have been ignored by any Democrat that matters at this point.

The far left inner circle would have us believe that somehow left leaning individuals receive unfavorable and/or blatantly unfair treatment on Fox. This interpretation of FNC is pure fiction. There just isn’t a moment someone can point to where a left leaning individual is somehow not allowed to make their point. Fox continues to do well in any kind of objective study of their general coverage.

Any pundit with an argument worth making has full access to be heard on Fox News, period. The “Fox News is an evil and unfair right wing hate machine” narrative is so lame at this point, it's laughable. It's merely a smokescreen used to obfuscate the real reason as to why the far left despise and are afraid of Fox News.

The truth is that the far left is terrified that their candidates or their ideas cannot stand on the merits without the safety net of the liberal MSM and/or the lefty blogosphere constantly propping them up.

This speaks to the intellectual cowardice that runs deep in the far left echo-chambers of Moveon.org, The Daily Kos, and Media Matters.

As was the case with the censorship of Stalinist Russia or even modern day Red China, it's funny how it is always the forces of the political left that are afraid of information and the free exchange of ideas.

This inability or disinclination to engage in honest debate, manifested in one way by an irrational conception of Fox News, is fundamentally why I can never be one of them.

Jeremiah Wright: greatest hits

180

"I can no more disown him than I can my own white grandmother."

-Barack Obama two weeks ago

Grandma better watch out.

Rehabilitation

cursed?

reprint

from some months ago...

Rick Santorum and Laura Ingraham both came out tonight in support of Romney. I’m not sure what they have been waiting for however, because it may be too late. I pray that is not the case. It’s not enough to simply be anti-McCain, we have to rally behind Mitt immediately.

The misgivings some conservatives have about Romney are so minor, in the grand scheme of things. Such as, he was effectively pro-choice 8 years ago. Well the man is telling you now that he is pro-life, why won’t pro lifers take yes for an answer? Is he somehow lying? What evidence is there that Romney is not an honorable man?

It just frustrates me that it took this long for many of us to come around on Romney. The McCain bandwagon train has left the station at this point. And with scant few days until super Tuesday, only now are conservatives beginning to coalesce behind Romney.
The man can’t do everything himself, he needs our vocal support! Conservatives have let him twist in the wind for far too long while they idly shopped around for a candidate. Well the store is closing now, please bring your final selections to the check out lane. There are only 3 days left to save the conservative movement.
_________________

My conception of Mike Huckabee has progressed to the point where I would now be willing to suggest that the Romney campaign may want to at least consider co-opting the Huckabee campaign and base of support by offering him the VP slot.

This would obviously be a purely tactical maneuver designed to consolidate the social conservative vote rather than divide it.

The main problem is that Huckabee seems to be a big fan of McCain and hates Romney. But cannot an appeal be made to Huckabee’s better nature? The man is not a complete moron after all. Can’t it be explained to him that, in terms of ideology, he has more in common with Romney? What sort of supreme court justices would he want appointed for example? Wouldn’t he favor a strict constructionist pro-life judge like Romney would? In the unlikely event that McCain becomes president, who knows what sort of appointees we could see.

Given McCain’s proclivity to stick his finger in the eye of conservatives, we’d be more likely to get a Ruth Bader Ginsburg than a John Roberts.

This plan also assumes that the Romney people would be able to swallow some pride and do what is tactically the strongest play in the interest ultimately winning the nomination. And Huckabee’s irrational dislike of Romney seems to supercede his supposedly conservative principles.

Like Huckabee’s fair tax, this idea might be too radical in the end to be workable, but if it could be pulled off I would feel a lot better about Romney’s chances and the likelihood of conservatism not coming to a screeching halt in the form of a McCain nomination.
_________________

If Republicans are collectively too foolish to figure out what is going on and they continue to vote for Huckabee in droves, for example, then they don’t even deserve to win the presidency anyway. Dark days will be descending on Republicans and conservatives if we continue down the dreary path that is a John McCain nomination.

Reverence

They heard a great speech — and what was the problem with Rev. Wright’s sermons, anyway?

By Byron York

Philadelphia — The small auditorium here at the National Constitution Center, where Barack Obama delivered what his aides called a “major address on race, politics, and unifying our country,” was filled mostly with guests invited by the Obama campaign. So it was not surprising that after the speech, Obama’s guests, streaming out of the room into the cavernous atrium of the Center, thought he delivered a great speech. What might be surprising, though, is that a number of them saw nothing particularly wrong with the “controversial” remarks by Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that set this whole process in motion.

“It was amazing,” Gregory Davis, a financial adviser and Obama supporter from Philadelphia, told me. “I think he addressed the issue, and if that does not address the issue, I don’t know what else can be said about it. That was just awesome oratory.”

I asked Davis what his personal reaction was when he saw video clips of sermons in which Rev. Wright said, “God damn America,” called the United States the “U.S. of KKK A,” and said that 9/11 was “America’s chickens… coming home to roost.” “As a member of a traditional Baptist, black church, I wasn’t surprised,” Davis told me. “I wasn’t offended by anything the pastor said. A lot of things he said were absolutely correct…. The way he said it may not have been the most appropriate way to say it, but as far as a typical black inner-city church, that’s how it’s said.”

Vernon Price, a ward leader in Philadelphia’s 22nd Precinct, told me Obama’s speech was “very courageous.” When I asked his reaction to Rev. Wright, Price said, “A lot of things that he said were true, whether people want to accept it, or believe it, or not. People believe in their hearts that a lot of what he said was true.”

Rev. Alyn Waller, of the Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church in Philadelphia, was effusive about Obama’s performance. “I thought it was masterful,” he told me. Waller explained that he knows Rev. Wright and the preaching tradition from which he comes. “I think much of what he had to say was on point in terms of America needs to challenge her foreign policy,” Waller told me. “While it may be divisive to talk about 9/11 as chickens coming home to roost, what was really being said there is that America cannot believe that our hands are totally innocent in worldwide violence. So at the core of his arguments, I think there is a truth.”

Shortly after “controversial” portions of Wright’s sermons were played on television last week, Obama issued a carefully worded response, saying, “The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation.” In Philadelphia today, Obama conceded that his earlier statement did not answer all the questions about the issue, and he said he had indeed heard Wright make what are often referred to as “fiery” statements. “Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church?” Obama said. “Yes.”

But Obama equated Wright’s “God damn America” comment with the sort of speaking that goes on in churches and synagogues every day. “Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views?” Obama asked. “Absolutely — just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.”

Obama took care not to distance himself any further from his long-time pastor, stressing that Wright had “strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.” If anything, Obama drew Wright closer than he had in the hours after the “God damn America” story broke. “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” Obama told the audience. “I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are part of me.”

In the end, Obama delivered a well-crafted speech. Has he ever made a truly bad one? But his address at the National Constitution Center did not put to rest the concerns of those Americans who wonder just what he thought as he sat in Wright’s church listening to the pastor’s “controversial” statements; after all, Obama knew of Wright’s positions and had planned, until a very cold day and fear of controversy forced a change, to have Wright deliver the invocation at his presidential announcement last year. Beyond that, the reactions of some Obama partisans in the audience here in Philadelphia today did not put to rest concerns that Rev. Wright’s comments are not the subject of universal disapproval but are in fact positions with which many of Obama’s supporters agree.