Redstate

Posted at 10:55am on May 6, 2008 Another Day, another Obama lie. This time about the Teamsters.

This man will say and do anything to get elected.

By Erick

Barack Obama is an addict. We need to just admit it. Actually, he needs to admit it -- that's the first step to recovery.

Obama is addicted to lying. He just can't help himself. Another day, another lie. Today, it's on the teamsters.

The Wall Street Journal reports Obama wants to scrap federal government oversight of the Teamsters.

Read on . . .

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them | Obamafiles | Teamsters — Comments (14)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:59am on May 5, 2008 News From The Redneck Riviera: Obama Is NO Tiger Woods

By haystack

In this "poke fun at the South because it's fun" piece, compliments of the always-neutral International Herald Tribune, we come across a real beauty:

"Tiger Woods is a genius. He is revered. He is above race. But we've learned Obama is not Tiger Woods. If you paid attention to what Reverend Wright said about Obama, then you heard him described as a lightweight, a guy Wright believed had the reflexes of a pol."That famous speech in Philadelphia about race? Wiped out now. What Obama can't deliver ever again, apart from talks and promises, is the certainty he's his own man."

Boy howdy...

Mind you, author John Vinocur doesn't appear to have much respect for southerners, but the wisdom of gun-totin' God-fearin' white and middle-aged "old colonels, the Christian right, and convinced conservatives" can't be ignored:

For the Red Neck Riviera of Florida's Panhandle (or the Emerald Coast in the more genteel vocabulary of the tourist brochures) Obama has become so totally exposed - as a leftist, an elitist out of touch with vast segments of the white majority, a dubious healer saddled with disreputable friendships and unknown debts and obligations - that the colonel could say "McCain is seven strokes ahead on the back nine," and the presidency is in Republican reach.

You know, the more I hear Obama say this race isn't about race and the more I hear his Dem opponent rooting for Obama injuries exactly BECAUSE of race, the more I long for another bag of popcorn and a six-pack of good old-fashioned "angry white guy" (or gal) cheap beer...

Funny how race keeps coming up when Hillary is just ahead or just behind in some bonny new meaningless poll.

As Moe would say:

Best.Democratic.Primary.Ever.

Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles | Rooting For Injuries | The Best Democratic Primary EVER — Comments (6)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 9:35am on May 5, 2008 Michelle Obama says Barack is angry, frustrated.

*Really.* Do tell.

By Moe Lane

And so we greet a lovely Monday morning in the Spring of Pain.

Michelle Obama: Barack has hit boiling point

Michelle Obama lifted the lid on the irritation felt by the leading Democrat candidate for the White House at the way anti-American outbursts by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, have dogged his campaign.

He is said to be itching to turn all his fire on John McCain, the Republican candidate, who is benefiting most from Mr Obama's protracted tussle with Hillary Clinton.

Mrs Obama told a rally in Durham, North Carolina, on Friday that only her husband's desire to change US politics had helped him to control his feelings: "Barack is always thinking three steps ahead – what do we need to do to make change."

Her husband was thinking "I can't let my ego, my anger, my frustration get in the way of the ultimate goal," she said.

Permit me to quote from Bob Heinlein's - a writer who I am morally certain that Michelle Obama would never read voluntarily - quite good and habitually misunderstood Starship Troopers:

I may have given the impression that boot camp was made harder than necessary. This is incorrect.

It was made as hard as possible and on purpose.

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles | Spring of Pain | The Best Democratic Primary EVER — Comments (25)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:21am on May 2, 2008 Lag time on the Wright Meltdown.

Heck of a thing when you have to hope that your staff's just incompetent.

By Moe Lane

You have to wonder whether these are rhetorical questions coming from Daniel Henninger:

This week we learned the limit of a dream in American politics. At Barack Obama's darkest hour, not one prominent ally came forward to support him. Everyone abandoned Everyman.

No prominent black clergyman came forth to make even the simple point that Jeremiah Wright's notion of the "black church" is but one point on a spectrum of faith. Rev. Wright, now written off as a virtual nut case, got more support from black clergymen than did Obama.

Barack Obama was bleeding by Monday and needed cover. Where, when he could have used them, were Obama's oh-so-famous endorsers: Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Oprah, John Kerry, Chris Dodd, Patrick Leahy, Tom Daschle, Amy Klobuchar, Claire McCaskill, Jay Rockefeller, John Lewis, Toni Morrison, Roger Wilkins, Eric Holder, Robert Reich, Ted Sorenson, Alice Walker, David Wilhelm, Cornel West, Clifford Alexander, Donald McHenry, Patricia Wald, Newton Minow?

Where were all the big-city mayors who went over to the Obama camp: Chicago's Richard Daley, Cleveland's Frank Jackson, Atlanta's Shirley Franklin, Washington's Adrian Fenty, Newark's Cory Booker, Baltimore's Sheila Dixon?

[H/T: The Campaign Spot]

...or, at least, questions that can be answered by perusing the data found here. But then again, possibly not.

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | Kneel Before Zod | Obamafiles | The Best Democratic Primary EVER — Comments (11)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:59am on May 1, 2008 The Theology of Barack Obama

By Ben Domenech

RS's own Dan Spencer (California Yankee), who now blogs over at the Examiner, was kind enough to host a piece I wrote on what the Rev. Wright debacle tells us about the theology of Barack Obama. An excerpt:

Barack Obama is the evangelist of the betterment of man. His religion is one of an almost overriding humanism, to the exclusion of the divine: hope is his signet, change his golden cross. He brings salvation to the masses via the empowerment of government, government under his leadership. His followers are not the Southern pro-American Carter voters, and they may carry iPhones instead of the hoes of the agrarian south, but the message is striking for its similarities. Where Carter constantly used Protestant religious terminology to describe the healing that needed to take place in the wake of Watergate, Obama's solution for the Iraq war and the other sins (as he sees them) of the George W. Bush administration is to say: trust in me – untested, inexperienced, poll-driven me – as you trust in yourself.

Yet there are small differences as well, and those are key to understanding the Senator. The language Obama uses may still be that of prayer, but it is prayer not directed toward a creator, but to his audience itself. Faith turns inward, and becomes an infinite loop. So Carter's "We can neither answer all questions nor solve all problems" becomes "Yes we can." And so the old sung tones of "Wait upon the Lord" morphs into "We are the ones we've been waiting for." From Obama's perspective, as opposed to Carter's, it is only the bitter, the nervous, the threatened, or the uneducated who cling to religion.

We know how this ended the first time: the infamous malaise speech of 1979. As the eloquent Steve Hayward put it in his biography of President Carter, the man ran for office promising "a government as good as the people" ultimately ended his term in office by saying that the people were no good. If they took such bets in Vegas, one could get a fine margin on picking the month of his term where President Obama would announce the same realization.

Read it all over at Right Side Politics.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Obamafiles | religion | Rev. Jeremiah Wright — Comments (0)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 7:17pm on Apr. 30, 2008 Travis Childers denies the Obama a second time.

Somebody go get a rooster.

By Moe Lane

Never even met the man, in fact.

He is, of course, running against Greg Davis in MS-01. Childers also needs money for the runoff (and the general): so, for all you progressive lurkers out there, be sure to send him some more.

Just... he'd like you to send it in a plain brown wrapper, OK? You have to understand: it's nothing personal, but he just can't afford to be seen with your sort.

Moe Lane

PS: Also check out this Weekly Standard piece. My, but isn't this fun...

Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles | Rooting For Injuries | The Best Democratic Primary EVER — Comments (5)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:07am on Apr. 30, 2008 John M Murtagh: Hi, I'm one of the people that the Weather Underground tried to kill.

How dare one of the animate backdrops to Bill Ayers' fantasy narrative speak.

By Moe Lane

Perhaps if you had done more, William Ayers, you might have kept this person from writing this. Do you regret that?

During the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, moderator George Stephanopoulos brought up “a gentleman named William Ayers,” who “was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that.” Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to explain his relationship with Ayers. Obama’s answer: “The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.” Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder me.

(Via Hot Air)

Nine years old at the time, Bill. But hey, you guys really showed that military-industrial complex what was what, right? Not to mention all those South Vietnamese that unfortunately had to be sacrificed so that you and your comrades could feel good about yourselves.

Read on.

Posted in Bill Ayers | Liberals | Obamafiles | Weather Underground — Comments (19)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 4:06pm on Apr. 28, 2008 The second time, as farce.

Not that the first time was, strictly speaking, a *tragedy*.

By Moe Lane

They say two wrongs don't make it right /
But it damn sure makes it even.

- Rap artist Sister Souljah, whose famous line "If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?" that had been made about the same time prompted the following response from Bill Clinton: "If you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black’ and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech."

Jesus said, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles.

- Reverend Jeremiah Wright, on being asked if he wanted to, say, walk back a bit on his commentary of 9/11 and roosting chickens.

Two points to this: first, I am now officially unimpressed with Rev. Wright's grasp of the message found in the New Testament. Given that I'm not trained in such things and he reportedly is, that in itself is an noteworthy feat. Second, the Obama campaign has just been given a potential free Get Out Of Trouble card.

Will they take it? And if they do, will it actually work? There is a certain flavor of "set-up for a sound bite by rank amateurs" to all of this, but that may just be poor, old paranoid me.

Moe Lane

Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles | Rev. Jeremiah Wright | The Best Democratic Primary EVER — Comments (12)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:58pm on Apr. 28, 2008 Hard to Starboard! Steer a course for the shoals!

The Obama campaign attempts to avert looming disaster by charting a course from rough waters to perilous shoals

By Jeff Emanuel

Six months from the general election, BarackObama finally appears to be feeling the strain of the Presidential race. He has finally become the target of questions from some in the omnipotent American media, rather than simply of adulation. The Rezko and Ayers connections, the mentor-mentee relationship with the deeply racist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his losing primaries in seven of the nine most populous states in the Union , the self-manufactured controversy over the flag pin, and the increasingly evident contradictions within his campaign -- such as the fact that Obama's Hope-Change-Unite rhetoric is firmly at odds with his highly partisan views, attitudes, and background -- have all contributed to his stress levels, and to his criticism-worthy performances, the combination of which has now snowballed into a problem which he sees as requiring macro changes within his campaign, rather than the smaller, less cumbersome minor-course-corrections he was able to implement throughout the past several months of the race.

Obama's Macro adjustments include several things, some of which were more predictable than others. Not content to merely back out of a pre-scheduled North Carolina debate, he is now refusing to square off with Hillary! at any venue or in any way, Saturday rejecting out-of-hand her offer of a moderator-free Lincoln-Douglass style debate (an offer that was renewed today, with Mrs. Clinton offering to meet Obama "on the back of a flatbed truck" -- a challenge from which he will shrink as certainly as he refused the weekend offer of a moderator-less engagement).

This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as Mr. Obama's campaign changes go, though. Read on.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | I will not debate you in a boat I will not debate you with a goat | Obamafiles — Comments (14)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:53pm on Apr. 27, 2008 Obama Got $8,000 Per Month in Return for Political Favors

By patriotroom

Promoted from the diaries by Neil. So it turns out he's wussy and corrupted enough to be taking payoffs directly and via his wife.

Here is today's daily teeth-gnashing article for the Democrats. Looks like Obama had a buddy who paid him really well when he needed it back in 2001. State Senator Obama made sure his buddy got paid back, and then some, with taxpayer money. From the L.A. Times.

Read on...

Posted in Culture of Corruption | Liberals | Obamafiles — Comments (14) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:57pm on Apr. 26, 2008 I second Jim Geraghty on the Obama Ineligibility Rule

By Erick

And move to call for the previous question.

Permit me to propose a new rule: If your mentor of 20 years has ever declared the United States to be ‘the same as al-Qaeda, under a different color flag, calling on the name a different God to sanction and approve our murder and our mayhem!’ you are ineligible for the Presidency.

All those in favor, signify by saying "Aye".

The motion is agreed to and this is an open thread for your discussion of the same or other matters.

Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles — Comments (31)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:35pm on Apr. 25, 2008 Rev. Wright: Barack "does what politicians do"

By Jeff Emanuel

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Sen. BarackObama's spiritual mentor and pastor for over twenty years, source of the "HopeChangeHopeChange" mantra that has become the messianic core of his empty campaign, and giver of the Obama couple's nuptial vows, recently gave an interview to Bill Moyers about the recent dustup caused by the revelation to the general public that Wright has frequently used his pulpit to preach a racist, hateful, and intolerant brand of so-called "Christianity" to the members of his megachurch, including the surprisingly-not-so-post-racial Obama clan.

In the sit-down, one of the less-coherent segments of which was treated by RedState's absentee earlier today, the Reverend Wright made a very interesting comment about his former flock-member's Philadelphia speech on race and religion, made in the head of the Wright-gate media frenzy.

More below the fold, including video, and an accurate analysis from a most surprising source.

Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles | Politics as usual | Rev. Jeremiah Wright — Comments (9) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:29pm on Apr. 24, 2008 Obama Channels John Kerry: I voted FOR The Tax Holiday Before I Voted AGAINST It

By haystack

Mr. "I'm in touch with the American People" Obama brings us his very OWN flip flop via the Wall Street Journal. Seems 'ol Barry likes temporary tax breaks when he's a State Senator (something about placards honoring him for saving folks a couple hundred bucks), but has decided as a Junior US Senator running for President that he doesn't:

"I've said I think John McCain's proposal for a three-month tax holiday is a bad idea. We're talking about 5 percent of your total cost of gas that you suspend for three months, which might save you a few hundred bucks that then will spike right up," Obama said. "Now keep in mind that it will save you that if Exxon Mobil doesn't decide, 'we'll just tack on another 5 percent on the current cost.'"

Funny. Obama supported a gas tax holiday due to a "huge hike in prices" when gas was running at $1.52 a gallon. Now it's at like $3.50 or $4.00 a gallon, and he won't support something similar? That's a pretty big and hard-to-justify flip-flop, if you ask me.

Barack Obama seems to think a couple hundred bucks is no big deal to the American consumer...not surprising really, given he has millions to play with. Consider that he couldn't even show his sorry butt up long enough to vote for the stimulus package that gives another couple hundred bucks to the consumer via tax rebates...guess we know where we stand with 'ol Barry come judgement day as he fights for a POTUS budget. Flip flopping and mucking things up even worse for us is becoming standard fare with these Democrats...notice the Honorable Junior Senator from New York (who just happens to ALSO be running for President) couldn't be bothered to show up and vote to give us back a couple hundred bucks of our own money either...

What was that remark about elitists again? Sheesh...

Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles | tax relief — Comments (23)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 7:19pm on Apr. 23, 2008 Obama Strategist: The Forgotten Man Is A Republican Now, Anyway

FDR Would Be So Proud

By Dan McLaughlin

So, Barack Obama has this little problem: he can't seem to win working-class white voters. With rare exception (Iowa, Missouri), he basically only wins states - and in particular only wins primaries - where all the working-class white voters are already Republicans, leaving the Democrats a stripped-down shell of African-Americans and college towns. Obama's biggest victory in the past two months was in Mississippi. But if Obama wants to win a national election, he's going to have to win the states where the Democrats are in better shape than they are in Mississippi.

Time was, working-class whites were the backbone, the very reason for the existence of the Democratic Party, FDR's "forgotten man." What Obama is running on instead is, essentially, the McGovern coalition. But even in its headiest days, most of the old McGovernites realized that it wasn't such a great idea to just kick FDR's old stalwarts to the curb.

The smart play for Obama at this point is to run out the clock, squeeze out the delegate margin he needs, say nothing bad about these folks for supporting Hillary, and try like heck to win them back in November. As we saw with the now-infamous San Francisco fundraiser, Obama forgot that lesson when he thought nobody was listening, and Pennsylvania voters were understandably, er, bitter about that. But this is a new one even for the Obama campaign: his chief strategist now says that Obama doesn't need those people because, nationally, FDR's old Forgotten Man is a Republican anyway:

"The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years. This is not new that Democratic candidates don't rely solely on those votes"

(Audio here). As the Politico's Ben Smith notes, this ignores the fact that "[t]he whites getting surveyed in exit polls are people who voted in a Democratic Primary." In any event, it's nice for white working class voters to know where they stand with Obama's campaign. Not to worry, though: the GOP is happy to have your votes. And we're perfectly happy to see the national Democratic Party achieve the success it has had in, say, Utah or Wyoming or Mississippi.

Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles | Rube-gate — Comments (18)/ Email this page » / Read More »