Redstate

Posted at 3:30pm on Jul. 1, 2008 A New Kind of Sleaze

Clark was Put up to it

By Mark I

The Obama campaign officially says that Gen. Wesley Clark was not officially speaking for Obama when on CBS's Face the Nation this past Sunday, he denigrated Sen. John McCain's military experience. "I don't think that riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president, " Clark sniffed. Besides hinting that McCain was a substandard pilot-good ones do not get shot down-that remark necessarily discounts everything that came afterwards, McCain's five and a half years of voluntary confinement. Voluntary because the North Vietnamese, after learning that McCain was the son of a top U.S. Admiral, offered him early release, ahead of others who had been captured before McCain. McCain refused, not wanting to hand his captors a propaganda victory and undermine the morale of his co-prisoners. McCain never had to endure the debilitating torture, the beatings, the psychological torment, and the spirit-breaking confinement. He did it out of love of country and dedication to duty.

This is not to try and make McCain into a Christ-like figure, willingly suffering for the nation's sins. But it does illuminate just how egregious and despicable Clark's comments were. To boil McCain's entire military record down to the singular event of the loss of his plane while flying bombing missions over Hanoi, the most dangerous duty for an aviator in the Vietnam War, is so callous and dismissive that it had to have been intentional.

Read on...

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | John McCain | Liberals | military service | Obamafiles | Same as the Old Politics — Comments (32)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:42pm on Jun. 25, 2008 And Now a Random Thought Concerning Justice Anthony Kennedy

By Leon H Wolf

Gerald Ford once said that he was prepared to have his entire Presidency judged by the nomination of Justice Stevens to the Supreme Court.

George W. Bush ran on a promise to elect judges "in the mold of Scalia and Thomas."

John McCain is currently running on a promise to appoint judges like Alito and Roberts.

Barack Obama Souter, Breyer and Ginsburg as his model Supreme Court Justices.

Posted in Law | Liberals — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 7:00pm on Jun. 22, 2008 Obama Might Just Blow It

This is Not the Moderate You are Looking For

By Mark I

The biggest danger to Sen. Barack Obama's campaign comes not from his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, nor from his former rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, but from Barack Obama himself. Obama has sold himself as a new kind of politician, even an anti-politician, a practitioner of a new kind of politics. The Achilles heel of this strategy is that Obama is not really that different from other politicians; and if he can be shown to be just like every other candidate, save for his eloquence, voters who invested in him on a personal level may begin to feel like they have been had.

The past week provided Obama with a few opportunities to show that he really is a different kind of candidate, indeed a different kind of Democrat, than the standard variety. But in each instance, he espoused the typical liberal position.

Read on...

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Liberals | Obamafiles | Same as the Old Politics — Comments (119)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:13am on Jun. 14, 2008 Betraying Free Speech.

By Paul J Cella

Canada persecutes Mark Steyn for writing that Islam is a threat to the West. The New York Times, having ignored that drama for months, takes the opportunity to dilate tendentiously on the uniqueness of American tolerance for Free Speech, implicitly comparing Steyn to Nazis, and naturally burying his response in the last two paragraphs of a long article. The few European politicians and thinkers with the guts to stand up to creeping Islamization, find themselves betrayed and denounced in America, and likewise compared to Nazis and fascists, by prominent bloggers. Readers will recall the pitifully tepid response from the West to the beleaguered Danes during the Cartoon Jihad.

And now we have this, as reported by Josh Trevino: In Kuala Lumpar, at the Third International Conference on the Muslim World, three prominent Muslim leaders called on the West to renounce Free Speech in order to accommodate Islamic sensibilities; and the three Westerns who spoke uttered not a word of protest.

Read on.

Posted in Anti-Free Speech Liberals | Archived | free speech | Islam | Liberals | Mark Steyn | the Jihad — Comments (12)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:22am on Jun. 12, 2008 Dear President Bush: Defy this Opinion

By Leon H Wolf

According to the United States Constitution, Article III section 2:

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

On two separate occasions now, the United States Congress has duly enacted painstakingly specific laws to lawfully and Constitutionally strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction to hear cases involving non-citizens currently detained outside of sovereign territory held by the United States. As Dan McLaughlin has noted, today the Supreme Court purports to ignore this clear limitation on its own authority to even hear the case before it (which by law has been confined to the CADC) and issue an opinion declaring the act which removed their jurisdiction unconstitutional. Savor the irony for a moment, if you will.

More below...

Posted in Judicial Overreaching | Law | Liberals | Separation of Powers — Comments (63)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 3:49pm on Jun. 5, 2008 What lovely supporters you have, Senator Obama.

You must be proud.

By Moe Lane

Here's one of your most influential bloggers (you can find the link via Hot Air):

It's pretty bad when your hair is whiter than your teeth.

And here's why your opponent has discolored teeth:

"In 1968 he was offered early release, and when he refused, because others had been there longer, his captors went at him again; he suffered cracked ribs, teeth broken off at the gum line, and torture with ropes that lashed his arms behind his back and that were progressively tightened all through the night." Source Vanity Fair, February 2007

...

"He spent two years in solitary confinement, suffered from dysentery and even tried to commit suicide by hanging himself with his own shirt.

In 1968, the Vietnamese broke off many of his teeth at the gum and tortured him for hours on end. They offered him early release, knowing his value as an admirals son, but he refused, saying others had been held captive longer." Source Daily Mail, February 1, 2008

Two things, Senator Obama:

1). How much money did you troll from dKos, again?

2). If you liked this tactic - and until you say otherwise, I'm going to assume that you do - have you considered going after Senator McCain's inability to move his arms properly? After all, the North Vietnamese were kind enough to systematically torture those, too.

UPDATE (Dan McLaughlin): Oh, and a third question: have you considered that maybe there are reasons why your faction of the party lives in constant fear of having its patriotism questioned?

Posted in 2008 | Antiwar Movement | Barack Obama | Democrats | Liberals — Comments (33)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:00pm on May 27, 2008 Obama Takes All Sides on Chavez

Inexperienced and Naïve on Foreign Policy, Good at Campaigning

By Mark I

Another day, another position on Hugo Chavez from Sen. Barack Obama. Last week, he told the Orlando Sentinel that he favored meeting with the Venezuelan Marxist dictator He even went so far as to say that Chavez could set the agenda. But the very next day, he told a Miami audience that Chavez’s support for the FARC narco-terrorist rebel group in Colombia disqualified Venezuela from such a meeting. Speaking to the Cuban American National Foundation, Obama said the following.

"We will shine a light on any support for the FARC that comes from neighboring governments. This behavior must be exposed to international condemnation, regional isolation, and -- if need be -- strong sanctions. It must not stand."

Thank God for the qualifier. Strong sanctions? Whoa! hold on there big guy. You’re inexperienced in foreign affairs and all, but you just can’t go around threatening sanctions, especially strong ones, without months and years of delays, negotiations, aggressive diplomacy, and Security Council debates. You don’t want to blow all your options in one fell swoop.

Mocking aside, there are a couple of bigger points to make from this.

Read on...

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | foreign policy | Hugo Chavez | Liberals | Obamafiles — Comments (7)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:00am on May 23, 2008 Obama Would Dance to Chavez’s Tune

“Hi, President Chavez. What Can I Do For You?”

By Mark I

After weeks of backtracking on his pledge to meet unconditionally with the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba, Sen. Barack Obama has doubled down on his dangerous foreign policy naiveté, telling the Orlando Sentinel yesterday that not only would he have no pre-conditions for the meetings, he wouldn’t even have an agenda. Speaking of a future meeting with Venezuelan dictator, and soon to be internationally recognized terrorist supporter, Hugo Chavez, Obama said that whatever Hugo would want to talk about would be just fine with him.

I would be willing to initiate such talks with leaders of countries adversarial to the United States. There would be a lot of preparation. The first steps would not be to pre-judge all the items on the list. […]

One of the obvious high priorities in my talks with President Hugo Chavez would be the fermentation of anti-American sentiment in Latin America, his support of FARC in Colombia and other issues he would want to talk about. It is important to understand that ignoring these countries has not led to improved behavior on their part and it has not served our national security interests.

There needs to be a shift in foreign politics and return to traditional foreign politics that were supported by both Republicans and Democrats in the past.

First of all, it’s difficult to determine from his words whether Sen. Obama believes that the, "fermentation of anti-American sentiment," and Chavez’s, "support of FARC in Colombia," are necessarily bad things. Obama could have said, "the disturbing fermentation of anti-American sentiment," or, "his unacceptable support of the terrorist group FARC in Colombia." But he didn’t. Chavez certainly does not think that his behavior needs to improve. For all we know, Obama doesn’t either. He won’t pre-judge it. Rather he would reward Chavez by granting him the honor of a meeting of equals, complete with unspecified agenda items that would take Chavez’s phony complaints about U.S. imperialism at face value.

Second, if Obama holds so low an opinion of the Office of the Presidency that he would use the office to bend and scrape at the feet of thugs like Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-Il, one wonders why he is running for it.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | foreign policy | Hugo Chavez | Liberals | Obamafiles — Comments (15)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 7:35am on May 15, 2008 They're Not Going to Miss It

By haystack

There's been a great deal of talk about the state of Conservatism in America these days and what (if anything) that may have to DO with the state of the GOP. For the sake of argument let's pretend ideological "purity" is irrelevant for the moment, and focus on the matter at hand; winning elections is all that matters in 2008...and let's all just get over it.

Like it or not OUR Political heroes are only focused on winning, and if you get after them about what they stand for you'll be ignored; "elect me no matter what I say because my opponent is worse than I am." Such is the state of politics now, and when you consider the most recent Gallup Poll that tags Congressional approval at 18%, they are ALL right - they ALL suck and we face the choices of "suck or suck less."

In a Karl Rove op-ed over at the WSJ, pay close attention to this quote:

No Congress has fallen as far and as fast as the Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid-led House and Senate. Unlike President Bush, congressional Democrats will be on the ballot this fall, and can do little to improve their lackluster record before then.

The thing to remember here, folks, is that none of the candidates running for President have been around to actually vote on very much of the trash that's come from the Halls of Nancy and Harry™. The election in November may be "about" electing a President, but what will matter in our daily lives is who we put in Congress, and those decisions are not very hard to make. One need only consider Blue Dog leader Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark. and his thoughts on the effects of raising taxes on millionaires to pay for new Veteran benefits (not asked for by the President in this particular bill) via the Iraq Supplemental bait and switch trash headed for a veto:

"What we're talking about is a one-half percent income tax surcharge on incomes above $1 million," said Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., a leader of the Blue Dog group. "So someone who earns $2 million a year would pay $5,000. ... They're not going to miss it."

More below the "it's not really hard to vote Republican" fold..

Posted in 2008 | GOP Freefall | Iraq Funding | Liberals | Tax and Spend — Comments (12)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:19pm on May 12, 2008 Open Season on Obama Advisers

Watch Your Own Backs, You’ve Got no Support from the Top

By Mark I

Moe Lane points to a Jake Tapper Piece detailing the numerous times Sen. Barack Obama has placed blame on his advisers for his radical policy positions. Less noticed is the growing tendency for Obama to drop those advisers like hot rocks the minute that their comments explaining Obama’s positions become known.

It all started with the case of Austan Goolsbee, the University of Chicago professor and Obama economics adviser who was caught telling Canadian officials, no doubt in English and French, that Sen. Obama didn’t really think that NAFTA needed to be renegotiated. It was all just campaign rhetoric, Goolsbee helpfully explained. The following week, Samantha Power, Harvard professor (Obama apparently collects university professors) and Obama campaign foreign policy adviser told the BBC that Obama had no intention of following the plan he had campaigned on for close to a year for getting U.S. troops out of Iraq. “He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator,” she said. But of course; and pardon me, but would you have any Grey Poupon?

Power resigned from the campaign, allegedly because in the same interview she referred to Sen. Hillary!™ Clinton as a “monster.” But Clinton’s negatives are so high that it would have been hard for most of America to find fault with that statement. No, the more damaging comments, and the ones she was kicked to the curb over, were the ones that exposed Obama’s real position on Iraq, and exposed him as a typical politician saying one thing to get elected while planning to do something else entirely.

Last week, another Obama adviser was unceremoniously dismissed for doing his job. Only this time, Sen. John McCain’s campaign deserves credit for forcing Obama to reduce his adviser corps by one. McCain pushed back hard on the question of Obama’s relationship with the Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, and forced Obama’s hand. The incident further revealed the thin-skinned nature of the Obama campaign, and provided a model that McCain should follow for the remainder of the election.

Read on…

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hamas | John McCain | Liberals | Obama campaign | Obamafiles — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 9:39am on May 7, 2008 If you MUST run with scissors pointed up...

By RightMichigan.com

Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.

(The relevance of this particular graphic is coming... promise...)

Most days you don't have to look far in Michigan news to find a ridiculous headline or a story about behavior that defies logic and common sense.  And that's not a dig on the mainstream media.  Sure, they're responsible for a laughable or frustrating choice of words from time to time but you work with what you're given, you know?  They can only report on what's happening out there (in theory) and it's usually our fair State and the good folks running it who create the ridiculous situations they cover.  

Posted in Barack Obama | Big Government | Breaking News | Liberals | Michigan | UAW | www.RightMichigan.com — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:36am on Apr. 14, 2008 Pennsylvaniastan: Why You're One 'You're Fired' From Blowing Up Walmart

If you can read this blog, you're surprising the heck out of Barack

By absentee

Senator Obama this week at a fundraiser answered the question "What's the Matter with Pennsylvania."

After listing how President Clinton and then President Bush and "each successive administration," whoever that is, failed to provide jobs and money, Senator Obama outlined what he obviously feels are the bitter and ugly consequences. "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Senator Obama is deeply mired in leftist philosophies: moral relativism, multi-culturalism, open borders, and on and on. One of the most sacred of cows on that side of the fence is the basic philosophical understanding of the unwashed masses as being essentially incorrectable evolutionary throwbacks, cavemen ... barbarians.

Keep reading . . .

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Liberals — Comments (30)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:00pm on Apr. 4, 2008 When Ten Years is not a Trend

Nevermind That Data Behind the Curtain. Look at These Dire Predictions

By Mark I

The proponents of man-made Global Warming have been dealt another serious blow. The United Nations World Meteorological Organisation’s official forecast predicts that global temperatures will be cooler in 2008, again. If it is correct, this will be the tenth consecutive year that global temperatures have not increased. Temperatures stopped increasing in 1998, according to the allegedly impartial world body.

But the Secretary General of the organization, Michel Jarraud, says that the cooling does not constitute a challenge to Global Warming theory. Amazingly, he says that one must not take the evidence of ten straight years of decreasing temperatures as indicative of anything when it comes to the consensus view that Global Warming is real. Rather, he says, one must “look at trends over a pretty long period and the trend of temperature globally is still very much indicative of warming."

In other words, even when it’s cooling, it’s warming.

Read on…

Posted in Environment | Global Warming | Liberals | Miscellanea | radical environmentalists — Comments (65)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:17pm on Mar. 31, 2008 Barack Obama: Liar

Just because he amended the answers with his own handwriting, doesn't mean he read the questionnaire.

By Leon H Wolf

I have said since the beginning of this campaign that Barack Obama is not a moderate, even though he does play one on television. Now, via Captain Ed comes this story from the Politico that reveals that Barack Obama may have been... less than forthcoming about his personal role in reviewing the answers to a campaign questionnaire from 1996. By way of refresher, Obama indicated on this questionnaire in 1996 that he favored bans on the manufacture and sale of guns, opposed parental notification for abortions if the child was older than "12 or 13," and categorically opposed the death penalty. Even the least savvy of political viewers will immediately recognize these positions as the positions of a stark raving liberal - which is of course what Barack Obama is at heart. However, this is contrary to the television image that Obama's staff wants to portray, so once this questionnaire surfaced (via, as the Politico so quaintly puts it, "assistance from political sources opposed to Obama’s presidential campaign"), Obama had a couple of choices on how to respond.

First, Obama *could* have simply responded that yes, he did hold those positions when he was a young and naive politician, but he has learned through experience and through conversations with the American people that these positions are divisive, etc. etc. As skilled as Obama is at slinging BS, I'm sure his people could have come up with a way to say it that wouldn't have made it sound like he was trying to throw the Kos wing of the Democratic party (a group that really believes all this stuff very fervently) overboard in the process. Instead, Obama made a very rookie mistake: he figured it would be easier to lie. Easier to lie than to have to try to nuance this issue, especially since he apparently feels that he doesn't really need the Kossacks anymore. Unfortunately, Obama seems to have forgotten that you should never assume that all the copies of your incriminating documents are destroyed, and that you must always leave yourself wiggle room when you're going to deny something that you know some document somewhere can falsify. The words "I can't recall having ever..." is a nice, handy qualifier, and it's even plausible when you're talking about something that occurred 12 years ago.

But that's not what Obama did. Instead, he issued a blanket denial that he ever said or believed any of those things. So that when the document surfaced from the mysterious unnamed political rival of Obama's that showed that he apparently reviewed the answers closely enough to revise some of the answers in his own handwriting, Obama suddenly found himself in an awkward position. You see, everyone who is remotely paying attention to politics knows by now that Obama really is a flaming liberal. However, Obama's general election strategy isn't really geared toward people who remotely pay attention to politics - it is geared toward people who want a President who makes them feel all warm and fuzzy when they talk. And that sort of person isn't going to care so much about a candidate's position about the issues; however, they just might care that the candidate's first instinct when presented with a difficult situation is to try to lie their way out of the predicament.

You see, part of appealing to people who vote based on who looks purty and sounds flowery on TV is appealing to their ridiculously naive willingness to believe that you, and you alone, have managed to get yourself one step away from the Presidency without being a typical politician. And unfortunately for Obama, lying your way out of inconvenient past positions is very "typical politician."

This kind of story is probably not going to affect those who are already convinced that Barack is really the Obamassiah. But while the people who decided Presidential elections may not pay very close attention to the campaign compared to those of use who obsess about these things - that doesn't mean they don't pay attention at all. And this kind of mistake on Obama's part will help dispel the notion that Obama is anything other than what he is: an eminently ordinary, liberal lying politician.

Posted in 2008 | Liberals | lying | Obamafiles — Comments (34)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:30pm on Mar. 31, 2008 Turning Out the Lights on Freedom

The End Result of Earth Hour Thinking is Visible from Space

By Mark I

Did you turn out your lights on Saturday night between 8 and 9 PM to observe Earth Hour? If you didn’t, or if you were like me and turned extra lights on just to Fight the Power!, you exercised that most precious of rights and the one ingredient most essential to maintaining a free society: personal choice. But the peddlers of Earth Hour nonsense don’t want you to have that right. Not, at least, when it comes to lifestyle decisions that may impact on Global Warming.

Note that I use the original term, Global Warming, not the newly preferred moniker "climate change." Climate change only came about when it became clear that Global Warming wasn’t selling so well. I, for one, will not let the alarmists get away with moving the thermometers by changing the terms. But I digress.

If the environmental movement has its way, your betters in the Sierra Club, and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on [Global Warming] will dictate to you when you must turn off lights, what kind car or unreasonable facsimile of one you can drive, where you can live, what kind of job you can take, even how many children you can have. Does all that sound familiar? It does to me. In fact, there is one place I can think of where there is near 100% compliance with Earth Hour every night and where all of the above is already true.

Read on…

Posted in Earth Hour | Energy | Environment | Global Warming | Liberals | Miscellanea | radical environmentalists — Comments (15)/ Email this page » / Read More »