Truth Factory

Perfection Wasted

2010-10-12T01:10:00.000-07:00

"And another regrettable thing about death is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, which took a whole life to develop and market--the quips, the witticisms, the slant adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears, their tears confused with their diamond earrings, their warm breath pooled in and out with your heartbeat, their response and your performance twinned. The jokes over the phone. The memories packed in the rapid-access file. The whole act. Who will do it again? That's it: no one; imitators and descendants aren't the same."

- John Updike

Thomas Dunn, The Olde Truth Teller, my father and friend, passed away on August 24th, 2010. He was fun and funny, stubborn, loyal, engaged and informed, smart, generous, wonderful. There aren't words to describe the man who always knew what to say. Thank you all for reading. And thank you Poppy, for everything.

Gillian Dunn

Obama Potential Cuts Both Ways

2009-10-12T07:35:00.001-07:00

“Potential just means you ain't done it yet.” Darrell Royal, College Football Hall of Fame coach.

A week or so after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama awoke to find that the awards hadn’t stopped flowing. As he scanned his copy of USA Today while waiting for breakfast to arrive, he noticed an article below the fold that really caught his attention, so much so that he picked up the phone and ordered up an immediate meeting with his chief political advisor David Tierod and his Chief of Staff Rahm Ezekiel.

Five minutes later, the three men sat in the Oval Office and looked at each other with a mixture of bemusement and angst. The newspaper article reported a new award for Obama that none of them either anticipated or welcomed.

“Obama wins Wildoo Award,” Barack read aloud, “for most potential harm to world peace.”

“What is that?” Tierod asked.

“I’ve never heard of it before,” replied Ezekiel, “but it doesn’t sound like a good thing.”

“According to this story,” Barack told them, “this award is given once every decade to whomever has the most inherent capability to damage world peace. Apparently they believe that’s me.”

“Who gives out the award?” Tierod asked.

Barack read for a bit longer, and then answered the question. “The Principality of Potenzia. It’s some little chunk of real estate stuck in Europe between Moldavia and Transylvania.”

“What a joke,” laughed Ezekiel.

Tierod shook his head. “Don’t be too quick to blow this story off, Zeke. Anything negative that gets the attention of the media has the potential to become a political problem.”

“Oh, give me a break, David, there’s no ‘there’ there.”

Later in the morning, Robert Gibbs stopped into the Oval Office to ask the President how he should handle the Wildoo Award questions he expected at today’s press conference.

“The Washington press folks have already called about this. They want to know what bad stuff the award committee knows about you that might lead them to give you this award.”

“Nothing, man. You can’t give someone an award for being a threat to world peace before they’ve done anything to warrant it.”

“I called the U.N. rep for Potenzia, and they say it isn’t necessary to actually do anything bad, only to have the power to do it. The guy told me they started working on this award back in 2002 when Bush invaded Iraq, but it took them this long to decide on the rules. Then they got into an argument between themselves about whether they should give a prize for possible bad deeds. Some of the committee members thought it was a stretch.”

“So why did they end up deciding to do it?”

“The Nobel Prize you just got tipped the balance in the committee.”

“That’s crazy. It’s more plausible to think that I’ll do good deeds rather than evil stuff.”

“Maybe to you, but potential is potential. One more thing the U.N. guy told me. There’s a prize that goes with the award.”

Oh, really?” Obama perked up. “How much do I give away to charity this time?”

“Actually, it’s a negative award.”

“Huh!”

“It’s the same size as the Peace Prize, except that you pay them.”

“Do I get the money back if I don’t harm world peace?”

“Only if you have to give the money back to the Nobel committee if you don’t benefit world peace.”

“The whole thing is crazy!” snapped Obama.

“That’s what I told the press folks, boss. The whole thing is crazy.”

Barry D. Prez Peddles The Baucomobile

2009-09-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." ... George W. Bush

A continuation of the struggle by Barry D. Prez to sell Mr. John Q. Public a serviceable new car when none is available.

A month or so after checking in at Executive Auto Sales for any information about the new car line supposedly being developed by the manufacturer’s design team, and being disappointed by the ridiculous prototype on display, John Q. Public received a phone call from Sales Manager of the Year Barry D. Prez letting him know that things were beginning to look up.

“Mr. Public,” Barry said excitedly, “have I got a deal for you!”

John Q. had learned from previous experiences at Executive Sales to be very suspicious about any good news, but his old car was really starting to frighten him now because it had developed a tendency to shake while he was driving to work and no mechanic he consulted could seem to fix it even though they kept charging him more and more money just to take a look. John Q. really needed that car because he was getting too old to walk to his job every day, and a total breakdown would be disastrous to his finances. So he agreed to head over to Executive Sales one more time even though he didn’t count on much having changed. But when he arrived and walked through the big transparent front doors for the third time, Barry D. Prez grabbed him by the arm and guided him toward one side of the showroom where a shiny new car sat waiting to be inspected.

“I’ve been working with the manufacturer,” Barry told him. “I even went out to their plant and spoke directly with the company President and Chief Designer Mack Bauco. He gave me a tour of their facility, and I had a chance to talk directly with the entire design team. Nice bunch of guys, mostly.”

“What did they have to say?”

“They’re close, John Q., very close. I was able to wrangle a prototype car for shipment back home, and here it is. I think it’s pretty nice looking, especially considering that part of their factory crew is on strike,”

“You mean that the reason you haven’t been able to sell me a new car is that the factory is in some kind of turmoil?”

“Unfortunately true, but the ones who aren’t walking around the plant holding signs and shouting insults are hard at work trying to do whatever they can to get into production. It doesn’t help that a few of them sympathize with the guys outside, but they claim that one way or another they will have new cars to ship by next month. Of course, the ideal design may have to be compromised a little because Mr. Bauco wants to avoid antagonizing the strikers by including anything in the design that they would refuse to assemble once the strike is over. But whatever gets left out at the beginning can be added later once the situation calms down and sales start to rise.”

“What about the car?” John Q. said. “Is it any good?”

“Absolutely. Take a look for yourself.”

John Q. inspected the vehicle and found that all the wacky features he had seen a month ago on the earlier display model seemed to have been cleaned up. The wheels were normal, the paint job seemed okay, and it had useable windows even though they were the old crank style. Looking closer, he found that there were no fancy gadgets that he might have expected in a new car – no air conditioning, CD player, power seats, or anything else – and the transmission was a standard shift. But at least it looked drivable.

“What do they call this model?” he asked.

“It’s a Baucomobile,” Barry said happily. “It’s like the old Model T. No fancy options, just a plain car that runs okay.”

“What about other models,” John Q. asked.

“There aren’t any. This is it.”

John Q. was not thrilled about buying a drab looking new car with no options, but he was willing to consider it because of the sorry state of his old vehicle, so he said, “Let’s look under the hood.” Barry winced a little but complied by raising the hood to show off the engine compartment. Mounted inside was a two-cylinder Briggs and Stratton lawnmower engine.

“Damn All Mighty!” John Q. shouted, and walked straight out into the parking lot, with Barry D. Prez trailing behind. As John Q. headed in the direction of home, Barry called out for him to stop, but John Q. just waived his arm and kept walking.

“Come back John Q.,” Barry yelled. “It’s not perfect, but – hey! - anything is better than nothing.”

Barry D. Prez, Part Two

2009-08-18T15:03:00.000-07:00

"They say I need to be seasoned; they say I need to be stewed. They say, 'We need to boil all the hope out of him -- like us -- and then he'll be ready.'"

Barack Obama Criticizing Hillary Clinton’s Experience Claims at a Campaign Rally 1/19/2008

Further Exploits of Salesman of the Year Barry D. Prez

One sunny morning in August, a flashy brochure was mailed to the middle-class home of Mr. John Q. Public that contained good news from Executive Sales, the only local auto dealer in town. John Q. was surprised to see that buying himself a new car might be possible after all, so he hotfooted it down to the fancy new dealership and peeked though the large transparent glass doors for a glimpse of Sales Manager Barry D. Prez. Nobody seemed to be inside the showroom and – as before, during his earlier visit – there were no autos on display. Taped on the front door was a sign with a large arrow pointing off to the right. As he stood and stared, crowd noise attracted his attention. Just down the block, John Q. spotted another auto dealer that he had never before noticed. Since Barry didn’t seem to be available, he strolled over to take a look at the competition.

What he found was a used car dealer named Barry & Gopper’s Tried and True Autos. Scattered around in a front parking lot full of used cars were several agitated people waving signs and shouting things like “Sellout” and “Weasel.” Like the other dealership, there seemed to be no salesman in the small office building at the back of the lot.

“What’s going on?” John Q. asked the nearest protestor.

“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” he snapped back. “I’m trying to find the guy who runs this place. He’s the same guy who ran the vacant dealership up the street. I came down here to buy a new car, and all I see here are a bunch of old clunkers. I made a down payment for a new car last November, and this is what he has for sale. My old car is nickel-and-diming me to death, and I expected something more for my money.”

John Q. was disappointed and relieved at the same time. On the one hand, he began to think that he had wasted his time coming down here again, but he was also happy that at least he hadn’t given Barry D. Prez any down payment money. Still, what difference did it make if he was going to be stuck with his own clunker that he could barely afford to keep on the road. Nothing he saw in the lot looked any better than the car he already owned, so he walked back to Executive Sales where his car was parked. As he approached the building, Barry D. peeked around the far corner and waved him over.

“Are they still mad?” he asked.

“They don’t seem very happy,” John Q. warned him. “ Why don’t you just call them over and sell them a new car, like your brochure says?”

“I’d like to, John Q., but there’s a small problem.” He led John Q. through a side door into the showroom. Hidden behind two office dividers sat a new car with the hood up. John Q. inspected the car, and burst out laughing.

“Barry, what is this contraption?” The car looked like it had at least five different paint jobs covering different body parts, it had no windows, and it was supported on bicycle wheels. Worst of all, there was no engine.

“I asked the manufacturer to send me a prototype last week, and this is what came on the trailer,” Barry complained. “When the first few prospective buyers came in to take a look, I couldn’t very well show them what I had. So naturally I said I didn’t have anything yet and blamed it on the manufacturer. Then they got mad and started throwing eggs at my front door. So I rented a vacant lot, bought some old cars at an auction, and set up my used car dealership down the street. Now everyone is still mad because the cars are clunkers, but it’s the most I can do right now.”

“Why don’t you complain to the manufacturer? Better yet, tell them what you want and make them build it?”

“If I did that, then the manufacturer will be mad at me. I didn’t get into this business to take grief from everyone. I’m doing the best I can. I just hope I can stay in business a few more years.”

When John Q. arrived back home, he sat down at his kitchen table and re-read the fancy sales brochure, then shook his head. “I guess I’d better get myself some good hiking shoes,” he mumbled.

Barack Obama - Behind The 'Birther' Controversy

2009-07-28T13:24:00.000-07:00

“It is completely unimportant. That is why it is so interesting!”
Agatha Christie (1890 – 1976), English Mystery Writer

Questions of eligibility to hold the office of President of the United States have been raised several times over the history of the republic starting with Chester A. Arthur and continuing through Barry Goldwater, George Romney, and John McCain, but most recently centering on accusations that Barack Obama is either not a “natural born citizen” as required originally by Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution, or is not a citizen of the United States at all. Arguments for this break into two categories:

1. Barack Obama is not a “natural born citizen” as defined in Article 2, Clause 5 Qualifications for Office of the US Constitution.

2. Barack Obama is not an actual “citizen by birth” as defined by the Immigration and Nationalization Act of 1952.

The first argument rests on the direct language of Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 which states:

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

The term “natural born citizen” is not defined, therefore descends from English Common Law that assigns citizenship by place of birth within the jurisdiction of a nation. The purpose of this term was to restrict foreign born persons from becoming commander-in-chief of an American army on American soil. Because it is vague, subsequent law has attempted to better define it. The United States Naturalization Law of 1790 expanded “natural born citizen” to include persons born outside US jurisdiction to two U.S. citizen parents by stating that "children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens".

However, the United States Naturalization Act of 1798 , which replaced the earlier version, removed the term “natural born citizen” by stating only that such persons “shall be considered as citizens of the United States.”

Subsequent revisions of the Naturalization Act have not used the term “natural born citizen” so the strict application of Article 2, Clause 5 remains undefined. It could mean that a person must be born literally on U.S. soil, or it could be considered as equivalent to the term “citizen at birth” used in subsequent versions of the Immigration and Nationality Act now included in the United States Code. If the latter interpretation is accepted, the argument that Barack Obama is not a “natural born citizen” merges with the second argument that he is not a “citizen at birth.” However, if the English common law approach is taken, “natural born citizen” would be restricted to persons themselves born withing the U.S. or in territories under its jurisdiction, based on the 14th Amendment which states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the State wherein they reside.”

The current U.S. State Department Foreign Affairs Manual includes this language: "the fact that someone is a natural born citizen pursuant to a statute does not necessarily imply that he or she is such a citizen for Constitutional purposes." In other words, a person may acquire statutory citizenship at birth due to the doctrine of jus soli, referring to place of birth within U.S. states or eligible territories, or from jus sanguinis, referring to citizenship status of parents, but statutory citizenship is not necessary the same as the Constitutional definition of “natural born citizen.” Therefore, the meaning of this term will ultimately have to be decided either by the Supreme Court or by constitutional amendment to clarify requirements to hold the office of President (and Vice President, according to the 12th Amendment that makes them the same).

The second argument holds that Barack Obama is not a citizen at birth because he was not born in the state of Hawaii as claimed, but was actually born in Mombassa, Kenya on August 4, 1961. Some sources make reference to an affidavit taken by a Kenyan ordained minister and translator purporting to be the eyewitness testimony of Obama’s paternal grandfather’s second wife Sarah Obama, stating that Barack was born in Mombassa, and that it is common knowledge in the area that this is true. The supposed affidavit was filed by Reverend Kweli Shuhubia in the US District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania just prior to the November 2008 election. The affidavit – if true – would be convincing in confirming the Kenyan birth argument.

If Obama were shown to be born outside the jurisdiction of the United States as affirmed, his citizenship at birth would not be governed by the latest version of the Immigration and Nationalization Act included in the U.S. Code Title 8, Chapter 12, Subchapter III, Part 1, Section 1401, made law on January 8, 2008. At the time of his birth on August 4, 1961, the applicable language of The Immigration and Nationality Act of June 27, 1952, 66 Stat. 163, 235, 8 U.S. Code Section 1401 (b). (Section 301 of the Act) required:

(7) A person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States, who prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than ten years, at least five of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years.

However, the 1986 revision of the INA modified the requirement for paragraph (7) renamed (g) as follows:

(g) A person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than five years, at least two of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years: Provided, That any periods of honorable service in the Armed Forces of the United States, or periods of employment with the United States Government or with an international organization as that term is defined in section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (59 Stat. 669; 22 U.S.C. 288) by such citizen parent, or any periods during which such citizen parent is physically present abroad as the dependent unmarried son or daughter and a member of the household of a person (A) honorably serving with the Armed Forces of the United States, or (B) employed by the United States Government or an international organization as defined in section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act, may be included in order to satisfy the physical-presence requirement of this paragraph. This provision shall be applicable to persons born on or after December 24, 1952, to the same extent as if it had become effective in its present form on that date.

This language change modified the number of years required of the citizen parent to have resided within the United States from 5 years to 2 years after attaining the age of 14. Furthermore it made the change cited after the word “Provided” retroactive as though the revised version were in place in 1952, but this language covered only the provision for qualifying time to meet the separate 5 year and 2 year requirements, not the requirement itself. Therefore the modification of 10 years overall and 5 years after age 14 were not made retroactive, leaving the 1952 version to govern the interval from 1952 to 1986.

The most current revision of the INA passed in January 2008 does not modify the language of paragraph (g).

This interpretation is confirmed by review of the current IRA regulation found at the U.S. State Department website:

Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent in Wedlock: A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) INA provided the citizen parent was physically present in the U.S. for the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child's birth. (For birth on or after November 14, 1986, a period of five years physical presence, two after the age of fourteen is required. For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen are required for physical presence in the U.S. to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child.

Birth Abroad Out-of-Wedlock to a U.S. Citizen Mother: A child born abroad out-of-wedlock to a U.S. citizen mother may acquire U.S. citizenship under Section 301(g) INA, as made applicable by Section 309(c) INA if the mother was a U.S. citizen at the time of the child's birth, and if the mother had previously been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year.

Section 309(c) of the Act cited above states that:

[A] person born, after December 23, 1952, outside the United States and out of wedlock shall be held to have acquired at birth the nationality status of his mother, if the mother had the nationality of the United States at the time of such person's birth, and if the mother had previously been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year.

There is no claim made that Barack Obama’s parents were unmarried. such that he was born out of wedlock. All claims are that his parents were married.

Barack Obama’s mother was Ann Dunham (November 29, 1942 – November 7, 1995), born in Wichita, Kansas, and his father was Barack Obama, Sr., a Luou from Kenya. They were married on February 2, 1961, and Barack was born on August 4, 1961 according to his own account. Therefore, Ann Dunham was 18 years and 8 months old at the time of Barack’s birth, and did not meet the statutory requirement for having lived 10 total years in the U.S. of which 5 years followed attainment of age 14 years, the requirement that was in effect in 1961. No subsequent revision to the INA has removed this requirement by making a retroactive change to the age requirement of 301(g) even though changes to the provision concerning qualified accumulation of years in the U.S. was made retroactive.

Therefore, if Barack Obama were born not in Hawaii but in a foreign country as alleged, he would not have acquired “citizen at birth” status and would have needed to be naturalized to become a citizen. There are no claims made that this ever occurred, hence he would currently not even be a U.S. citizen [Except: see link to Michelle Obama remarks in 2008].

Consequently, the entire controversy turns on the location of Barack Obama’s birthplace. If he were born in Hawaii – as commonly believed – he would have acquired automatic citizenship based on the 14th Amendment. If not, he would not even be a U.S. citizen. This would be an amazing finding. However, Chester A. Arthur, 21st President of the United States, was quite possibly born in Lower Canada (now Quebec) with British citizenship before his family moved across the border to north Vermont, and his presidency turned out very successfully. So the real question is: does it matter?

Following are some interesting links to information sources used in this article.

US Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5: Qualifications For Office http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_States_Constitution

Hawaii Health Dept.: http://hawaii.gov/health/vital-records/vital-records/latereg.html

Remarks of Michelle Obama in 2008 about Ann Dunham's marital status:
http://www.theobamafile.com/_exhibits/VeryYoungAndVerySingle.mht

Version of Sarah Obama’s statements from a Palin supporter website: http://boycottoprahsponsors.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/obamas-grandmother-insists-obama-born-in-kenya-affidavit-of-rev-kweli-shuhubia/

INA 1986 Version: http://www.theodora.com/ina_96_title_3.html

History of Revisions in Immigration Law, Includes INA 1952 312 (7)
http://www.aca.ch/hisuscit.htm

Current Link From The US State Department Website: http://travel.state.gov/law/info/info_609.html researched July 28, 2009

Obama Rushes To Judgment Without All The Facts

2009-07-27T13:14:00.000-07:00

“One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty councils. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.”

Woodrow T. Wilson. 28th President

This is the sad story of Rocky the foxhound, who came to an untimely end one weekend when animal control officer Harry Alabama decided to put a bullet in Rocky’s brain for attacking a neighbor’s prize rooster right in the henhouse. The victimized rooster was shown Rocky’s lifeless body, which caused him to finally calm down and return to his normal functioning with a minimum of residual clucking. The neighbor’s only comment was, “One less damn dog to worry about.”

This is how it happened. Rocky was a pretty capable foxhound that had protected many farmers in his neighborhood from having their chicken houses raided by red fox predators. Most people were pretty happy that he lived nearby, but a few were nervous about any dog prowling around anywhere near their chicken flocks. Some complained that – in the past – dogs like Rocky had chased their fowls for sport until they were too exhausted to lay any eggs. Dog lovers dismissed these allegations because they weren’t much concerned about the welfare of a bunch of birds compared with man’s best friend. People in the middle were okay with letting Rocky roam loose as long as he confined himself to running off foxes, and were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

One night, a passer-by spotted what looked like a big red fox scratching at the entryway of a henhouse belonging to her next-door neighbor, old Doc Gates. As she watched, the door opened and the intruder moved inside. Not sure of what she had witnessed, she called Rocky’s owner, Cam Bridge, on her cell phone to report it.

“Cam,” she said, “You better let Rocky out quick. I think we’ve got a fox getting after Doc’s chickens.”

“I’ll get the back door open right away,” Cam assured her. “Don’t worry, Rock’s on the job.”

Off went Rocky looking for what he thought might be yet another fox, and pretty quickly he located the source of the disturbance. Looking into the dark henhouse, he spotted a large shape walking around near the sleeping hens and barked once. The startled Rhode Island Red rooster – for that’s what the supposed red fox was – immediately began to squawk and crow, and kept it up until he woke up everyone in the neighborhood. Rocky didn’t know for sure if the rooster was supposed to be there, but unfortunately he kept looking around for a fox. Meanwhile the rooster continued making a huge commotion until feathers were flying everywhere. Since there seemed to be no fox to be found, Rocky tried to back out but the rooster just kept up with his crowing until a crown had gathered. Then someone called Animal Control.

When Harry Alabama arrived, he appraised the situation thusly. When he was younger, a beagle had bitten his cousin. Plus his Aunt Mary had once caught fleas from her ratty little Pekinese. He knew of a few others who had misadventures with stray dogs. So naturally he assumed the worst.

“What do you think?” the neighbors asked him.

“Clear cut case of canine misbehavior,” Harry announced. Taking out his pistol, he solved the problem by putting down the unfortunate Rocky right on the spot.

“Pretty stupid thing for that dog to do,” he opined. “Poor rooster, he must have been really scared. I hope he doesn’t get laryngitis from all that crowing.”

Barry D. Prez Has A Deal For You

2009-07-22T19:52:00.000-07:00

"When ye proffer the pigge open the poke."

Fraser's Magazine (1858) reprinted from Richard Hill's (or Hilles') Common-place Book, 1530, which gave this advice to market traders

John Q. Public had a problem. The automobile he has been depending on for years showed signs of breaking down and he needed to look into replacing it with something dependable but affordable on his modest budget. So he decided to stop in at his local auto dealer for a look-see and some pricing information..

The giant neon sign looming over the all-glass double doors read: “Executive Auto Sales” and an outdoor speaker blared “Think we can’t sell you a new car? Yes we can.” As John Q. walked inside, he was immediately greeted by a tall skinny salesman with large ears and a toothy smile.

“Come in and have a seat, Mister … What’s your name?”

“John.”

“John what?”

“John Q. Public. And your name is …?”

“Barry D. Prez, Sales Manager of the Year. I take it you are looking for a new set of wheels. Well, John, you have come to the right place. In fact, the only place in town. Take a seat over there, John. If you need to take notes, raise your hand and I’ll try to talk slower, but you have to supply your own paper and pencil.” Barry pointed to a small student desk near one wall, and John Q. stared at it for a moment and then asked a question.

“Mr. Prez, I need to look into buying a new car and I’d like to check out a few of your models. What can you show me?”

“We don’t have any models on display right now.”

John was surprised and disappointed to hear this, but he decided to press on rather than waste his visit, so he made another request.

“If you don’t have a model on the floor, maybe you could show me some brochures with pictures so I can see what interests me.”

“Sorry,” Barry said, “we don’t have any pictures yet. The actual body styling is still under development back in Detroit. But I can tell you that it’s going to be spectacular.”

“Whenever they get done designing it?”

“Not “it” John, “them. Lots and lots of them.”

John Q. was puzzled. “How can there be lots of models if they haven’t been designed yet?”

“But they will, John Q. Trust me on that.”

“Well, what about some spec sheets showing what’s going to be in them. You know, like engine size, transmission choices, wheelbase, those things.”

“That’s what’s holding things up, John Q., the ‘goodies’ are still being selected. Once they agree on those, getting a model put together will be a snap.”

“What do you mean by ‘model’? I thought there would be lots of models to choose from?”

“You know that motto ‘e Pluribus Unum’?. Once they build out a lot of models, they can pick the best one and ship it right here for you.”

Now John Q. was completely disgusted. “How can I buy a car that hasn’t even been designed yet much less built. You can’t show me a picture of it, and you can’t tell me what’s going to be in it. How in the hell can I buy a new care sight unseen?”

“John, John, “ Barry scolded him, “let me remind you that your car is falling apart. I bet it won’t last another year. You need a new car, and I’m the only dealer in town.”

“But …”

“No ‘buts’, John Q. Besides, you don’t think I’d sell you a bad car, now do you?”

John Q. agreed to think about it and went home. A few weeks later, he stopped back with a down payment check, but the dealership light was turned off. On the door hung a note that dashed his hopes.

It read: “Closed until next year. Keep the faith.”

Obama Offers Us Beldar's Predicament

2008-11-03T12:44:00.000-08:00

Tommorow is what used to be called election day before absentee voting turned into widespread early voting and made nonsense of classic First Tuesday in November mania. Now that one quarter of the country has already voted – meaning that Barack Obama already has nearly one-half of his votes already in the bank – this would be a good time to examine the definitions of certain logical conundrums which might be offered as an illustration of what’s left for traditional voters:

Hobson’s Choice – defined as a choice between selecting something or not selecting it. This represents the person who dislikes Obama but cannot vote for McCain’s policies.

False Dilemma - defined as a requirement to choose between either of two candidates when in fact there are additional candidates who may not be apparent. This is the situation for supporters of splinter candidates like Ron Paul and Ralph Nader.

Catch-22 – a type of false dilemma where a desirable result depends on the confluence of events which are mutually exclusive, for example a candidate with McCain’s experience and public dedication combined with Obama’s money, charisma, and ability to shoot hoops.

Morton’s Fork – being forced to choose between two undesirable outcomes, as for example Obama as President or Sarah Palin as VP.

Extortion – being forced to do something unpleasant or face the consequences, like rewarding Obama for painting Bill and Hillary Clinton as racists in order to have any chance at achieving national health.

Feigned Agreement - defined as making a painful alliance with Obama’s fanatical army out of expediency. This could also be described as cheering for the lynch mob to avoid being murdered yourself.

Beldar’s Predicament – best exemplified by Beldar Conehead’s helpless response to Ronnie in the auto repair shop after being told that his car would be ready whenever it was ready: “I will comply. What choice do I have? It is as if you have grabbed me by the base of my snarglies! “

In view of the above illustrations of the current situation, what choice do any of us have? I exclude of course the followers of Obama, who are about to enter the Seventh Heaven on Tuesday night. Obama has indeed grabbed us all by the snarglies, and we must comply. The only pleasure left is to watch the look on the collective faces of his true believers as Barack ditches whatever they imagined was his policy platform in favor of anything that works best for avoiding responsibility and continuing on the path of self-promotion. They say that eventually all good things will end. I predict a sudden onset of mass chagrin sometime around Barack’s first state of the union speech plus 6 months. Of course, I could be wrong – it could happen sooner.

A Lesson For Obama - What Goes Around Comes Around

2008-09-10T19:44:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama used a successful strategy during the Democratic primaries of silently standing by as his supporters in the Congress, media, and blogosphere twisted and mischaracterized statements by both Hillary and Bill Clinton as examples of racism. The attacks began in New Hampshire when an exhausted Hillary showed a little emotion responding to a simple question in a small town hall meeting, and Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D,IL) immediately accused her of shedding crocodile tears to sway voters that she had not shown for Katrina victims. Later during the Philadelphia debate, after Barack compared the power of his words to years of sacrifice by Martin Luther King, Jr. in mobilizing America for change, Hillary commented that it took the political skills of President Johnson to make King’s efforts into the reality of law. For this she was castigated by Obama supporters such as Rep. James Clyborne (D,GA) as a racist who dishonored King by awarding all credit for the civil rights movement to a white southerner. Meanwhile Bill Clinton observed that the notion that Obama had consistently opposed prosecution of the Iraqi War was – as he put it – a “fairy tale” was twisted into a characterization that Obama’s entire hope of winning the presidency was a fairy tale based on his race.

While his enthusiastic surrogates were busy parsing every statement of either Clinton to locate the inherent racism being expressed, Barack profited by remaining silent or making the mildest possible denial on behalf of his battered opponent. By the end of the primary season, the Clintons had been effectively smeared as racial bigots.

Earlier, Hillary described a visit to Tuzla Air Base in Bosnia where – according to her twelve-year-old memory – she had arrived under sniper fire. In fact, there had only been a threat of sniper fire, and she had accurately described the true circumstances in her book Living History written eight years earlier. She had nothing to gain from misstating the facts, but was immediately and endlessly labeled as a chronic liar by Obama netroot supporters for her misstatement. By the time she suspended her campaign in June 2008, “liar” had eclipsed “racist” as the insult of choice.

Now that Obama is forced to campaign out from under the sheltering cloak of restraint self-imposed by opponents who were also Democrats, the same type of word games are being played by Republicans on his every statement. The latest example is the now-infamous “lipstick on a pig” comment Obama made recently in describing what he called the futility of McCain’s attempt to distance himself from the policy disasters of George W. Bush. Instantly, Republicans led by McCain’s campaign related his use of the phrase to Sarah Palin’s GOP Convention joke describing herself as a hockey mom, whom she characterized as resembling a pit bull except for the lipstick. The phrase “putting lipstick on a pig” - meaning to make a purely cosmetic improvement which doesn’t alter the underlying problem – is as old as the hills, and has been used frequently by politicians on both sides. Despite the obvious, Republicans are happily smearing Obama by claiming that he was literally calling Gov. Palin a pig, which is absurd. Obama is now officially a sexist.

How does it feel, Barack? Get used to it - both Clintons did, thanks to you!

Palin Brings Out The Vicious Side of Obama Supporters

2008-09-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

Today’s headline on the Huffington Post:

Report: McCain Camp Stalling Palin Investigation... 'Fringe' Alaskan Secessionist Party: Palin Was A Member... Almost Recalled As Mayor... Directed Fundraising For Indicted Senator's 527... Troopergate Scandal... Calls Iraq A War For Oil... Admits She Hasn't 'Really Focused On Iraq'... Alaska National Guard General: Palin Plays No Role In National Defense... 17 Year-Old Daughter Pregnant... Husband's DUI...
READ MORE AT HUFFPOST'S SARAH PALIN BIG NEWS PAGE

Directly below the headline is story numero uno: photo identification and full name of Sara Palin’s soon-to-be seventeen year old son-in-law, complete with excerpts from his Facebook ramblings. Forget about the old rule barring attacks on children of candidates. For HuffPost devotees and other super-energized supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the election campaign is total war and civilian casualties are not only acceptable but desirable. Sarah Palin has been on the national scene for less than five days, and netroot liberals have discovered so much of importance, to date:

Sarah Palin is uneducated, having attained a mere BS in communications & journalism from the University of Idaho. This is a VERY IMPORTANT finding because netrooters are of an age where college degrees are vital to self-worth. Obama’s time at Columbia and Harvard are frequently cited as at least equal to any other candidate’s elective or life experiences. I sometimes get the impression from blog comments that there should be no general elections, and that the U.S. presidency should simply rotate between presidents of Harvard, Stanford, and MIT, or assigned as the result of a national IQ test.

Sarah is totally corrupt as the result of Alaska’s troopergate scandal.

Sarah has no concept of foreign affairs, and has likely never ventured outside her small-town roots.

Sarah also has no idea what the U.S. vice president actually does.

Sarah’s husband is either 1) a hated oil company stooge, or 2) a blue-collar slug.

Sarah has spent the majority of her life slaying and grinding up moose.

Sarah’s home state of Alaska is so population-lite that governing it for a mere two years constitutes less experience than Obama’s time spent as a Chicago community organizer. After all, Alaska has less people than _______________ (fill in the city).

Alaska itself is filled with banjo playing rednecks.

Sarah’s children have been neglected by her participation in politics, the result of which is evident in her teenage daughter’s unplanned and unwed pregnancy. Should she be elected VP, she will abandon parental responsibilities toward her new Down’s syndrome child.

Sarah is a typical Republican base evangelical, moralistic, pro-life anti-feminist.

Sara’s selection is a direct insult to Hillary Clinton supporters. This, however, was not true of Joe Biden’s selection. The disingenuity of this attack is stunning considering the pure venom heaped by the same netrooters on Senator Clinton during her own campaign.

In summary, Sarah Palin is a fanatical, undereducated, inexperienced, corrupt, and worthless unfit parent from a redneck state with zero population, who is married to an oil company shyster with immoral children for whom she prepares moose meat whenever she has time which is hardly ever.

This is after five days on the job. What vituperation will the next three months bring? Liberals used to be called “socialist” or “irresponsible” or “elite eggheads” by conservatives, but they were never called vicious. At least Karl Rove exhibits some cleverness in his craft. Netroot liberals will never be accused of using Machiavellian tactics, which would bestow far too much credit. When Obama devotees stoop to outing a teenage boy as the accidental father of a political rival’s unwed pregnant teenage daughter, there really is only one way to describe them: jackals. Anyone who followed the Clinton campaign already knew this, but, unbelievably, it has gotten worse.

As a lifelong liberal Democrat, I am stunned and disappointed. Who are these netroot jackals, and why do they dare call themselves “progressive liberals”? They really need to disassociate from ordinary Democrats and form their own party. Obama has already won the nomination and doesn’t need them anymore. Should he lose, they will be without an anchor and therefore will be totally unrestrained in attacking whomever they decide to target. The only fortunate aspect of this is that they operate anonymously in a virtual online world of their own creation, much like other hate groups. With no actual weapons other than typo-filled blog rants, maybe they’ll just stay there in an avoidable jackal matrix.

Palin May Benefit McCain's Ticket

2008-08-29T11:27:00.001-07:00

On the heels of Barack Obama’s extravaganza acceptance speech in Denver, John McCain has picked Sarah Palin – Republican governor of Alaska – as his running mate. Who is Sarah Palin, and what does she bring to the GOP ticket? Two months of campaigning will provide many answers, but at first glance some benefits seem to stand out.

Sarah Palin is a tough tomboy from a state most people think of as the last frontier. Her life story fits well with classic Republican values, and will appeal to many blue-collar Democrats who have already shown a willingness to support a tough woman candidate in the Democratic primaries. In a large sense, Hillary has paved the way for Palin and made her viable in a way Gerry Ferraro was not.

Disaffected Clinton supporters who are threatening to stay away from the polls – or even vote for McCain – in November now have a real incentive to follow through as punishment for what they deeply feel was disrespect for Clinton by establishment Dems, who not only lost to a lesser qualified candidate but is already being held responsible for any Obama loss.

Attack lines against Palin will cite her relative inexperience in foreign policy, but McCain heads the GOP ticket with plenty of experience and Palin is a serving governor. By comparison, the Democratic ticket features the same imbalance in foreign policy experience between candidates, but in reverse. Arguing that Palin is a heartbeat away without adequate experience invites the reaction that inexperienced Obama is himself that heartbeat. Palin’s overall experience is probably equal to Obama’s experience: mayor, state commissioner on ethics reform, and 2-year governor vs. Obama’s resume of community organizer, state senator, and first-term US Senator. How do Democrats jump on Palin as inexperienced at the bottom of the GOP ticket without making McCain’s argument about inexperience at the top of the Democratic ticket?

Voters usually don’t base their decision on the VP candidate, and any who might buy a Dem argument that McCain is too old to serve without danger of dying in office likely would not vote for McCain anyway on that basis alone, so Palin’s lesser experience will probably not impact support for McCain one way or the other.

The biggest attack line against McCain has been to accuse him of being a reformed GOP maverick now joined at the hip to George Bush and the Washington establishment. Selection by Obama of Joe Biden – himself a quintessential Washington insider – has already weakened Obama’s argument by dignifying the kind of experience that Biden – and McCain – both bring to their respective tickets. By selecting Sarah Palin, who is not only a Washington outsider but also the daughter and governor of a state outside the lower-48, McCain has broken down the Bush-McCain storyline and re-established himself as a party maverick who rejects classic wisdom to go as far outside the box for his running mate as anyone might have imagined.

Whatever the wisdom of McCain’s selection, the next two months will feature two strong women on the campaign trail potentially competing in many of the same states for independent and blue-collar voters on behalf of ticket leaders. Everywhere Clinton goes, she softens up resistance to Palin as a female VP, and the harder Clinton campaigns the more potential she has to stir up lingering resentment among women voters who are still smarting over her defeat by Obama, and who now have another woman candidate to support.

The Ascension Obama-Style

2008-08-28T13:24:00.000-07:00

Backstage at the Greco-Roman temple formerly known as Invesco Field:

“Ronnie, get out on the lift so we can check the acoustics again with the big speakers.”

Ronnie the Barack stand-in walked out to the end of the runway and stood behind the decorated podium with the invisible teleprompter, took a deep breath, and spoke in his most majestic voice: “Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth …”

“Okay, now try it with the lift.”

As the podium rose, Ronnie tried again. “As for me, give me liberty or give me death.” A loud squeal practically shattered his eardrums, and he bent over and covered his ears.

“Sorry,” said the soundman, “my bad.”

“Hey man,” Ronnie shouted, “how many times have I got to do this? Why can’t the man just do his damn speech from the main stage like other folks?”

“Because he isn’t like the other speakers. His speech will make history, it’ll be taught word for word to school children, people all over the world will hear it, and there’s even a plan to record it on DVD disk and land it on Mars. We have to make the sound system perfect. Besides, you’re getting paid to do this.”

“My hearing is worth more than fifty buck!”

“One more time Ronnie, we have to try out the 10,000 watt speakers. Hang on.”

Shortly afterward, a cattle rancher near Boulder looked up and asked his hired hand, “Did you hear that? It sounded like somebody talking.” They both stared skyward.

Meanwhile, a group of politicians gathered together backstage, where they were each handed a musical score for the Greek chorus part of the ceremony.

“Do we all stand together,” Chris said, “or half on one side and half on the other?”

“I think on one side,” Dennis answered, “like in a choir.”

“I don’t like not having Hillary or John here,” Mike grumbled. “There aren’t enough of us.”

“She can’t sing anyway,” the stage manager remarked. “Plus, they don’t make toga pantsuits, and she wouldn’t look that good in a toga anyway.”

“Like we do,” Joe whined. “I don’t know what I’m doing here anyway. I should be out in front somewhere, not stuck with the losers.”

“Only one superstar, Joe.”

Back at the lifting podium, EMTs had just finished removing Ronnie’s lifeless body. “Run the lift up,” Axelrod yelled. The podium elevated to a height of 20 feet or so. “More,” he yelled. The lift went up another 10 feet. “More,” he pointed. The lift elevated to at least 50 feet above the stadium floor. “More,” he shouted.

“It won’t go up any more,” the stagehand said.

“Are you kidding?” Axelrod said angrily. “I want it up near the ceiling, or where the ceiling would be if this place had one.”

“I thought this would be high enough for his speech.”

“For the speech, yes, but what about his ascension after the speech?”

“What ascension?”

“To the sky, son, to the sky!” Axelrod pulled out his cell phone and made a quick call, then turned back to the stagehand and asked, “Can you rig him with a harness? One of those things like the Coast Guard uses?”

“Why would he need that?”

“For the helicopter. We can kill the lights for a few seconds while we hook him up, and then take him straight up and out of the stadium. Then we’ll have the fireworks, just after the orchestra plays Fanfare For The Common Man.”

Obama Exposes Yet Another Racist Opponent

2008-07-31T22:01:00.000-07:00

"Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me," Obama said. "You know, he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name, you know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

Barack Obama has a habit of sliding into his “victim of racism” suit during campaign rallies without even thinking about it. The above remark made in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, seems to imply that John McCain and his supporters are actively promoting Obama’s race as a negative, although Obama immediately denied it. On other occasions, Barack has made the same type of accusation against “they” citing non-existent charges that “they” claim he looks funny ( i.e. African-American). To put a finer point on it, McCain and his supporters must be racists since Obama is black and they criticize him. Roll over Hillary and Bill, it’s time for another racist opponent to be exposed.

As the Scarecrow said, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. When Barack Obama announced his candidacy in 2007, millions of inwardly guilt-ridden liberals - impelled by the vision of a color-blind electoral process - saw light at the end of their tunnel and fell into lockstep behind the first viable black politician who had a real shot at the presidency. Throughout the Fall of 2007 this perfect vision persisted. Then came New Hampshire, when Obama’s loss to Clinton was quickly explained by WaPost’s Eugene Robinson as the Bradley Effect, whereby white voters who poll for a black candidate turn into election booth racists. Following New Hampshire, both Bill and Hillary were revealed to be racists by their vicious and dismissive claims that Barack’s inexperience was not a blessing. Pennsylvania and Ohio voters who rejected Barack did so – it seems – due to blatant racism. Now McCain joins this unholy group.

The rule of thumb is: If you say anything critical about Barack Obama you are a racist. It must be so, since no such criticism could possibly be valid. How far we all have fallen since the color-blind days of December 07 in Iowa.

Al Jolson used to tell his audience “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Imagine a President Obama, immune from media scrutiny even as he endeavors to learn the political ropes of governance. Political cartoonists are in special jeopardy, since any caricature of Barack carries a risk of newspaper boycott by fervent Obamites. Ignorant detractors used to talk about the danger of an Obama cult of personality, but adding in automatic charges of racism is a new and even more powerful suit of armor. Peron and Mussolini should have been so lucky.

Here’s an illustration of where this leads. Tonight on CNN during a panel discussion of Obama’s remarks, Donna Brazile came forward with her inevitable defense by attacking John McCain’s recent campaign ad which used images of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears juxtaposed with Barack to illustrate the claim that Obama is more sizzle than substance. According to Donna, Barack should not have been paired with two white blondes but with a black male such as Denzel Washington, which would have obviated the message of the ad but avoided racist implications.

It’s now time for the Obama camp to issue new rules of engagement detailing how political opponents must act and speak to avoid making a racial faux pas from now until the end of Barack’s second term. Criticisms might be couched as follows:

It is suggested (but not asserted) that Presumptive/Acting/Elected (circle one) President Obama conceivably erred in a recent statement or action, to whit _____________________, and may wish to improve his position by _____________________. I hereby certify that no racial connotation is inferred or implied, and beg forgiveness if any hint of same is detected by anybody anywhere.

In addition, a commission should be established to act as a supreme censor of McCain’s campaign, saving him the embarrassment of committing any racist gaffs during his wasted effort to be elected. By this means, we can get back to the garden of December 07 and survive as the ultimate example of a politically correct society. Meanwhile, we all can survive the interval by keeping two precepts in mind:

If McCain or his supporters say it, it’s racist;
If Obama says it, it’s insightful and reassuring.

It may not be possible to have a valid election campaign under these restrictions, but just think about how much better we will all feel when it’s over. Too bad that Hillary couldn’t work this angle with the media during her campaign, but misogyny will have to be the final frontier.

Obama Takes Charge Of Everything

2008-07-22T08:03:00.000-07:00

“There are people who are so presumptuous that they know no other way to praise a greatness that they publicly admire than by representing it as a preliminary stage and bridge leading to themselves.”

- Friedrich Neitzche
_____________________________________________________________________

“Zio Samuel.”

The old man in the striped suit and top hat quit staring down at his cluttered desktop and looked up into the anxious faces of his subordinates. After a few moments he spoke slowly and with obvious weariness: “I’m happy that you honor me with your presence, my old friends, for I have something important to tell you. But first, let me activate this new-fangled telecommunication screen.” He fumbled with a remote control and finally succeeded in lighting up a large flat screen monitor mounted on the wall behind him. Slowly a giant grinning likeness of Barack Obama appeared.

“Buon giorno i miei amici,” he said. “Or as they say back home, what’s the haps in the hood?”

“Hey Barry,” said one of the group, “where are you?”

“All over the place,” the giant head laughed. “ Like that song by – who was it, Willie Nelson? – I’ve been everywhere, man. I’ve been in Baghdad, Anwar, Palestine, Jerusalem, London, Kandahar, Berlin, Uzbekistan ...”

“Johnny Cash.”

“Whatever. If it’s on the surface of the earth, I’ve shot hoops there.”

“My old friends, I have something to tell you,” said Zio Samuel. “From now on, Barack is in charge of the family. He will make all our decisions from now on.”

“But Zio Sam,” they cried out in unison, “ Barry’s so young and inexperienced. The other families will walk all over us. Even now our money gets no respect, we have to get all our oil from the Saudi Gang, and if we don’t start making stuff again there won’t be nothing left at home to defend.”

“Listen to me,” Zio said slowly and deliberately. “Don’t call him Barry any more. From now on he’s Don Candidati Barack Obama. If you trust me, accept this change and serve him faithfully.”

“Yes, Zio Sam,” they all said with heads bowed.

The giant head spoke to the assembled group: “From now on, we stop all fighting among ourselves and do whatever I say. If any of you have any suggestions or ideas, keep them to yourselves. Do as I tell you and our family will regain its standing, and all your problems will be solved. First and most important of all, forget anything I ever told you before this change. Like Groucho said, ‘ I have my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others.’ One more thing – Senatore Clinton, you’re out as Concejal Experimentado.”

“But why?” the only woman in the group gasped. “I’ve been in the family longer than you, I made my bones in the White House when you were barely out of law school, big shots in all the other families know me well, and I’m capo regime to 18 million soldiers. I can help you Barry – er – Don Candidati to bring new recruits into il nostro partito. Why won’t you let me ..”

“You’re out, Hillary. I don’t need your help. Today I will address over a million adoring Italians in Vatican Square. Yesterday it was the same at the Rudolph Wilde Plaza speech in Berlin. All those Germans were chanting ‘J-F-Ba-Ma.’ Even the French spoke English to me. The Dalai Lama came up to me in the Orly Airport men’s room and asked me to be his friend. Everyone adores me wherever I go. I can handle it all by myself, thank you - no help needed. Besides, who could ever be a better concejal experimentado than my man Axelrod? You’ll have to wet your beak somewhere else.”

Zio Samuel nodded, and was about to shut the monitor off when he noticed that Don Candidati Obama’s giant head had been partially eclipsed by a giant hand bearing a large expensive-looking ring. All but Senatore Clinton – who had left the room - crowded around the screen and pressed their lips to the image of his ring. After a while, the giant head reappeared and asked: “Have you all paid your respects?”

“Yes Don Candidati Obama,” the group responded.

“How about you Zio Samuel. Have you kissed my ring yet?”

Abruptly the monitor went blank, as the old man dropped the remote on the floor, rolled his eyes, and sunk back into his chair.

Barack Straight-Arms His Earlier Supporters

2008-07-10T12:32:00.000-07:00

Now that Barack Obama has seemingly clinched the Democratic nomination, his rush to the center has developed so much steam that he has expanded his circle of betrayal to include not only starry-eyed liberal primary voters but African-American loyalty voters as well. Following up on his approval of SCOTUS for issuing the first clarification of Second Amendment rights that eliminates the “well-regulated militia” stricture to universal gun ownership, Obama moved quickly to cement his new appeal to conservatives by reversing a pledge made earlier and voting in support of the new FISA law which grants amnesty to telecommunication giants who aided the government in arguably illegal wiretapping over the full time of GWB’s administration. This latest poke in the eye to his overly devoted netroot base has stirred up a painful mix of outrage and desperate rationalization by people whose emotional investment in Barack the Idea is starting to turn sour.

Despite progressive reaction, Obama appears confident that he can take their votes entirely for granted based on the presumption that he represents their only choice. The same goes for women voters who continue to smart over Hillary Clinton’s defeat. Clinton has promised to campaign for these voters, as well as blue-collar male voters, with an implicit quid pro quo that Obama would reach out to his army of donors to help Clinton retire that portion of her campaign debt owed to individuals and businesses. So far, Hillary has made one eloquent speech for Barack and has committed to more campaign rallies on his behalf. For his part, Barack’s donors have responded with more jeers and insults, and have ponied up a grand total of $100,000 against a debt of $12 million. At a Women For Obama rally with Hillary Clinton today, Obama “forgot” to include a fundraising appeal for Hillary after his speech and had to be prompted to make one after he had already left the stage to work the crowd. In short, helping Hillary – his end of the Faustian bargain – is not much of a priority either for Obama personally or for his fundraisers large or small. The theory again seems to be that Clinton has no choice but to support him, so why concede anything?

However, Barack has saved the best for last by publicly chastising black audiences for failing to act responsibly in matters relating to family and childcare. This is Bill Cosby’s theme, which – as practiced by Barack – seems calculated to appeal directly to white voters. In other words, when Barry Obama needed a racial identity to succeed in Illinois politics, he became black by Africanizing his name, marrying an activist black woman, and joining a black liberation church. During the primary campaign, he improved his African-American bona fides by recruiting Oprah Winfrey to campaign with him in South Carolina, and by permitting his surrogates to tar both Clintons as racists. When Hillary remarked in the New Hampshire debate that it took the efforts of LBJ to make Dr. King’s dream and sacrifice into law, Obama’s troops in the media labeled her a racist. But when Obama’s national co-chairman Jesse Jackson Jr. suggested that Hillary’s so-called tears in New Hampshire were only a campaign stunt, and questioned whether she ever shed similar tears for the (black) victims of Katrina, Obama let his remarks stand.

But now that he has the nomination and needs to attract widespread support, Barack is turning back into Barry before everyone’s eyes. Like a Barbie Doll, Barack can put on a new ideology for every occasion. You want black? – I’ll give you Jeremiah Wright! You want white? – I’ll promise not to reign in Bush’s Faith Based Initiative but to expand it! Plus, I’ll throw in a repeal of every gun control law in the country! Again, Barack operates under the principal that African-American voters simply cannot turn away from the first serious black Presidential candidate and will just have to suck it up. Even Jesse Jackson had to retract and apologize for his live-mike remarks blasting Barack for “talking down to my people.”

There is an enormous aura of entitlement coming from the Obama camp right now. Barack has already announced that he will accept the Democratic nomination not in the 21,000-seat Denver convention center but in the Denver Bronco’s football stadium, which will seat 76,000 cheering admirers. I have a vision of Barack entering like a pro wrestler, dressed in royal robes and wearing a crown, and waving to an army of devotees. The spectacle of an inexperienced, shape-shifting neophyte stiffing his most loyal early supporters to snap up helpless GE voters whose only other option is 71 year old John McCain is enough to make any rational person wish for a parliamentary system, which at least produces leaders who have paid their dues.

Saint Barack Turns Back Into Barry The Politician

2008-06-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

“I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde.”

- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson

A strange tale of metamorphosis has unfolded during the last year that has now become apparent even to those who have made it their business to deny it, or even to fuel it by sheer power of their longing for a new world devoid of every element of politics which offends their notion of purity in an imperfect world. What began in the winter of Barack Obama’s New Hampshire discontent made glorious by the voters of South Carolina has now come full circle in the afterglow of Hillary’s demise and Obama’s reversion into the land of realpolitik. In a nutshell, Barack has started to transition from his media-created golden child persona back into the humdrum Chicago politician formerly known as Barry, and the media elixir that transformed him from overly ambitious neophyte to anointed front runner is beginning to lose its magical effect. Like Henry Jekyll, Barack’s ignoble twin is slowly winning the inner contest and will no longer be denied his rightful pre-eminence. The better angel of Barry’s nature was short-lived and already has one foot out the back door. Now is the time for Democratic primary dreams to give way to the reality of a general election, and Barry is certainly up to the change.

Unlike Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous story, the strange tale of Obama runs in reverse. In the beginning, Barry the ambitious political wannabe emerged from Harvard Law School with an inner mission of greatness but a track record of academia unsuited for conquering the high peak of Chicago electability. For one thing, Barry lacked any cultural identity translating into kinship with the predominant voting base of his adopted region. As a mixed race person raised offshore – first in Indonesia, then in Hawaii – he was ill equipped to appeal directly to the hopes, fears, and aspirations of Chicago’s large African-American population, but also had no meaningful connection to the Daley political machine. Enter Tony Rezko the political influence peddler, who sought out and annexed the fledgling lawyer in whom he saw the potential to bridge the white-black chasm. Needing a stronger tie to the black community, Barry became Barack and married into the family by joining forces with an activist wife and mega church. To maintain ties with the white intellectual community, Barry turned to William Ayers and the professorial life as a university lecturer. When the opportunity presented itself to snag an elected office in the Illinois legislature, Barry challenged primary petitions galore and drove his opponents out of the race. Serving as a State senator, Barry ducked controversial votes to keep his options open. When the U.S. Senate beckoned, Barry’s GOP opponent found himself knocked out on the eve of the election by a backdoor release of personal information to the media.

In the mix of events came Barry’s pivotal speech at the Kerry convention, which elevated his national recognition and brought in Democratic PAC money for his 2004 Senate run. The media prepared their elixir, Barry drank deeply, and the full transition from Barry to Barack occurred overnight. The ambitious politician turned into the new American savior treading a rose covered path to greatness. Through the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire to the peanut covered plains of Georgia, waves of liberal Democrats and fawning media pundits celebrated his glory. Whenever the old Barry popped up, his army of worshippers quickly leaped to his defense. Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko, and the bitter gun owners of Pennsylvania all found room under the bus. Granny fortunately was spared. Michelle has been muzzled, Hillary is conquered, and all roads seemed to be rising.

Then came public financing – rather, lack of it – and the enthusiasts at Daily Koss began to grumble ever so slightly. The elixir was starting to wear off, and the return of Barry Hyde crept closer. More elixir should have been in the works, but Tom Brokaw’s complaints about media favoritism weakened the formula. In a desperate attempt to fortify it, Barack annointed himself with a noble symbol which instantly turned him into the Possum King. Now the vote for renewal of FISA has intruded, complete with telecom immunity, and Barack is starting to transition back into Barry the Chicago Politico. Even HuffPost, the bastion of all things Obama, has begun to sour ever so slightly on their golden child. Meanwhile, the electoral landscape has shifted from adoring primary liberals to centrist GE voters who don’t live and die based on Obama’s signature issue of early Iraq war criticism. These motley lowlifes seem more concerned with bread-and-butter issues which demand solutions more detailed then “change” or “hope” or “yes we can” chanting, so these platitudes will also have to be jettisoned in favor of Clinton-like advocacy for plain-old politics as usual.

The literary Edward Hyde died by his own hand, but the voters may spare Barry that task. Jekyll found out that the good vs. bad duality of his personality was not equally divided between the two, and that the underserved bad self had more growth potential. With Barry it is the opposite: his conniving political side cannot be long repressed by the drug of progressive adoration once inconvenient truth emerges. Get ready Dem liberals, the bus approaches rapidly and no time remains to get off your knees.

E Pluribus Obama

2008-06-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

I’m still shaking my head at the forced capitulation of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary race, so it comes as no shock to me that Senator Barack Obama has now unveiled his new campaign logo that can only be described as arrogant in the extreme. Hard on the heels of his reversal on accepting public financing for the general election, which everyone not already body-snatched into Obama Land knew was coming, Barack has leaped several months into his presumed future by speaking to a gathering of governors while standing behind what appears to be a rip-off of the Presidential Seal made Obamish by substituting “Vero Possumus” for E Pluribus Unum” and his website address for “Seal of the President of the United States.” So now instead of the inspiring national motto “Out of Many, One” we have “Yes We Can.” The coloration is faded blue, which is hardly heroic. The eagle is still there, waiting for the inevitable moment when the newly inaugurated Obama replaces it with his smiling face and two hands holding – respectively – a wad of campaign cash and the head of his latest opponent.

What do dedicated Obamites make of all this. Guess?

Talk continues among Clinton supporters about the prospect of Hillary joining Barack on the Democratic ticket as a way of healing deep division within the party. Whenever this possibility comes up, Obamites react with fear and trembling. They would much prefer continuing their game of tossing out one juvenile speculation after another, most involving politicians who would contribute nothing to a successful general election campaign but would make Barack’s army of neophytic devotees revel in the glory of all-new politics featuring all-new faces. For them, Obama’s primary victory is evidence that America is about to enter an era of left-wing dominance which they actually believe will sweep away all of the daunting problems facing us by the simple force of wishful thinking. Even diehard McGovern voters – I was one – never lost sight of reality like this crowd has, and I almost feel sorry for the pain they will have to endure if either Obama or McCain is elected. Reality is what it is, and even Obama is beginning to sense that fact. Last week, Barack convened a new set of foreign policy advisors which included among others former Clinton insiders like Madeleine Albright, William Perry, and Warren Christopher. Shocking news indeed for the all-things-new crowd, assuming that the younger ones even know who these folks are.

How many ways are they to say this: Obama is a plain vanilla Chicago politician with a built-in sense of entitlement, cultivated by years of being fawned at as a not-quite-white wonder child, who speaks without a Jesse Jackson accent in an emotionless professorial lecturing style about the overriding need for change in a year when the sitting President demands something wildly different. Huge amounts of money drove out his competition, and more money will put him in a position to win the prize he seeks. After that, we’ll all see what change means and how it can be achieved by an inexperienced ex-State Senator whose constituency only knows what they don’t want but has no clue what they will be getting.

One last thought: when Barack Obama reneges on his ironclad promise to support election reform by limiting himself to public campaign financing, and instead opts to crank up his huge internet money machine to bury McCain, where is Tim Russert when we need him?

Time For Barack To Rein In His Jackal Army

2008-06-04T12:05:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day after Hillary Clinton won her last primary in South Dakota by 12% over the presumptive nominee Barack Obama, and his jackal army of wild-eyed supporters are in full throat demanding that Senator Clinton roll over and disappear from the election campaign with as much humiliation and discomfort as possible. Hillary declined to concede the nomination during her South Dakota victory speech as a courtesy to voters, since polls had not yet closed in either Montana or South Dakota. Obama himself is gracious and cautious toward Clinton, seeming to understand better than most of his followers that hard-fought campaigns lasting many months cannot halt on a dime. Calls for Clinton to endorse Obama have assumed a frantic quality in the media and among many politicians who are anxious to get on the Barack bandwagon, although less than 24 hours have elapsed since Obama reached the magic number of total delegates needed to win the nomination. Some of this clamor centers around media speculation of the general variety “what does Hillary want?” and the rest is just nervousness by uncommitted superdelegates who need cover. The same cannot be said of Obama’s mob of unruly Internet supporters who now taste blood in the water.

Take a glance at sites such as the Huffington Post for a solid impression of the vitriol still heaped on Hillary Clinton even in the afterglow of Obama’s primary campaign victory. Just as Clinton’s campaign still has residual momentum which makes it especially painful to bring to an abrupt halt, so too is the wave of hatred for both Clintons fueled by Obamites almost impossible to stop. On her site, liberal radio talk show host and blogger Taylor Marsh is reporting volumes of email insults and personal threats from Obama jackals as a reprisal for her criticism of Obama and support for Clinton during the campaign. Clinton supporters, who have been flinching for months under this umbrella of hatred erected by Obamites, are driven to reject Obama even more, and are vowing to withhold support during the general election or even to vote for McCain against their own deep-seated interests. Crowds of people who protested at the recent DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee meeting, which drove the last dagger into the heart of the Clinton campaign, are a testament to the reactive anger of Clinton’s huge voter base against what they view as unfair treatment by the media and – especially – by the hostility of Obama’s rabid army of supporters.

Barack Obama is neither evil nor incompetent, and would make a good president if elected, but his potential November victory over John McCain and the GOP is by no means certain. The majority of his support is based on overwhelming emotional attachment to the idea of total change in American politics symbolized by election of a non-white President, but this is an ideal which finds more resonance among his liberal Democratic base than may be true among voters in general. Obamites have convinced themselves that any opposition to Obama is based on racism, ignoring the possibility that many voters simply are not convinced that a two-year Senator with little accomplishment on the national stage represents a better choice than either Clinton or McCain. By taking this attitude, Obamites have alienated huge chunks of the electorate. Most voters who are not declared Obama supporters do not view him as some sort of divine intervention in the affairs of America but as an ordinary politician who fights to win and bases his campaign on his own interest. These people do not appreciate being insulted by Obamites.

So what does Hillary want? I suggest three possibilities:

First, Obama’s promise of an amnesty toward declared Clinton supporters who are elected members of Congress. The Obama campaign has not been shy about arm-twisting superdelegates by threatening to finance opponents in upcoming elections, and she will want this tactic to stop.

Second, keeping faith with millions of women for whom her campaign has meant at least as much as Obama’s campaign has meant to African-Americans. For her legion of women supporters, Clinton needs to exit this campaign with proper respect for what she tried so hard to achieve to break down the gender barrier, which would smooth the path for a future woman candidate. This may involve being offered the Vice-Presidential nomination, even if she declines it by pre-arrangement.

Third, being given proper influence on the Democratic platform especially with regard to universal health care. This is the cause of her life, and if she truly believes that Obama does not share her commitment she will want to continue to fight for this by leveraging her nearly eighteen million highly-polarized primary voters to modify Barack’s non-mandatory plan which many health care experts do not believe is workable in practice.

Hillary deserves all of these and more for her courageous campaign, and should be given a little space and time to consider her options. But this has already run afoul of her media critics and fearful uncommitted delegates, and meanwhile the jackal army of Obamites continues to snarl and snap at her precisely because they are what they are – jackals.

New RBC Rule - Uncommitted Is Just Another Name For Obama

2008-06-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

In this primary election cycle there have been many demographic groups who self-identify with one or another candidate, such as Iraq Veterans for Clinton or College Students for Obama. Now add another for the Senator from Illinois. Michigan Primary Uncommitted Delegates For Obama is a newly created pool of Obama voters manufactured by Obama supporters on the DNC’s Rules & Bylaws Committee, using what used to be called Michigan Primary Uncommitted Delegates as raw material. To achieve this, committee members first conceded that 128 Michigan delegates could not simply be divided equally between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, since that would have struck almost everyone as completely arbitrary, and would have been a total rejection not only of the vote that actually occurred in January but of the whole concept of voting itself.

The committee certainly didn’t want to make electing of pledged delegates into a complete joke because that could remind people about some of Barack’s big caucus wins giving him the delegate edge but which were themselves jokes, like Alaska’s 8868 total vote caucus giving Obama’s 10 to 3 delegate advantage over Clinton, thereby canceling out Clinton’s 74 to 67 delegate advantage in the Ohio primary where 2,315,389 people voted. Or Obama’s mighty triumphs in the Virgin Islands and in the District of Columbia, whose combined delegate counts for Barack cancelled out Clinton’s 10 % win in Pennsylvania. So the even split delegate division proposed by Obama’s campaign was properly treated as an opening offer to create the illusion of a later concession when the real compromise was adopted.

Michigan held a primary on January 15 that violated the DNC schedule, but which created 128 pledged delegates allocated between Clinton, Dodd, Kucinich, and Uncommitted. Obama, Richardson, Edwards, and Biden voluntarily took their names off the ballot, which was not required by any DNC rule but was a deliberate strategy to pander to Iowa voters. Clinton won the popular vote 55/40% over Uncommitted, which gave her a 73/55 delegate advantage. The Michigan Democratic party devised an Obama-friendly formula for reallocating delegates as follows:

Given, splitting delegates 64/64 arbitrarily between Clinton and Obama has zero legitimacy because it totally ignores the fact that any election took place:

And, following the actual voter preference would give Clinton a 73/0 advantage over Obama in pledged delegates won, which is unacceptable to Obama’s campaign;

And – most importantly – following the actual voter preference would award Clinton 55.2 % of the total votes cast, equal to 328,309 votes, which would ensure her lead in the popular vote total for all primaries and caucuses over the presumptive nominee Obama;

And, assuming that all Uncommitted votes were really cast for Obama and none were cast for Richardson, Edwards, or Biden, or Uncommitted (a legitimate category), Obama was entitled to all 55 Uncommitted delegates even though his name wasn’t on the ballot.

Then, the best compromise would be to split the difference between awarding delegates 64/64 (ignore the actual vote) and 73/55 (Uncommitted = Obama). The result is 69/59 Clinton, which reduces Clinton’s actual popular vote advantage from 328,309/ zero to 320,614/ 274,148 (46,466) and literally takes away 4 elected delegates from Clinton and simply gives them to Obama.

Finally, assign each delegate a half-vote at the convention, which reduces Clinton’s election-based delegate advantage from 73/ zero (73 delegates) down to 34.5/ 29.5 (5 delegates).

This compromise had the effect of preventing Clinton from claiming the popular vote lead unless the Puerto Rico primary turned out a huge amount of voters, which did not happen. To facilitate this outcome, Obama made no campaign effort in PR, a choice that made the contest far less interesting to voters.

So now the primaries are essentially over, Obama is the near-certain winner, and the Democratic Party is about to nominate a candidate who has lost virtually every big swing state, and who limps into the general election with a losing record against Clinton ever since his decisive string of eleven victories during one two-week stretch following Super Tuesday which is responsible for virtually all of his delegate lead. The Dem primary process now bids to become a historic clinic for political scientists and other pundits on how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Let the contest with McCain begin.

Obama's Likely Win Gives New Hope To GOP Strategists

2008-05-26T19:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10585.html

The above links to a story in Politico that discusses whether or not John McCain will “blow out” Barack Obama in the Fall 08 general election. Republican strategists are coming around to this view while at the same time conceding down-ticket defeats that should increase the Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. The prospect of Obama – who peddles the message that he will reach across divides to somehow heal the ugly divisiveness which so dismays his idealistic followers – instead magnifying the current governmental stalemate by inspiring massive ticket splitting that is pro-Democrats in general but anti-Obama in particular is perfect irony. Ever since Obama’s ascendance in the polls to the position of front-runner, Hillary Clinton has been reduced to selling her greater electability to super-delegates, and her argument is beginning to gain plausibility as the primaries draw to a close. Since the two week interval following Super Tuesday (February 9 to 19), when Obama ran the table with eleven essentially uncontested wins in state primaries and caucuses, Clinton has rebounded by beating Obama 446 to 430 in pledged delegates and would be leading Obama in total popular vote by 51,000 if all votes – Florida, Michigan, and vote estimates for every Obama caucus victory which produced no official vote count – were included in the current totals. Remaining primaries in Montana (16 delegates), South Dakota (15 delegates), and Puerto Rico (55 delegates) should maintain or even widen Clinton’s advantage since March 4.

Obama’s weakness among rural voters, women, and Reagan Democrats has become painfully obvious, leaving him with an electoral map much weaker than both Clinton and McCain, yet he has secured the most pledged and automatic delegates and has a virtual lock on the Democratic nomination. If Hillary is correct, the party is headed over a cliff in an election cycle that should have been handed to them on a silver platter.

Instead of focusing right now on finding ways to address all the concerns of these voters, Obama’s campaign seems willing to write them off as a lost cause and place its dependence on youthful new voters, upscale yuppies, and loyal African Americans to hand him the victory This strategy assumes that Obama will win many states which are historically Republican strongholds, allowing him to lose in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. The probability of this scenario is what seems to be simultaneously energizing both GOP strategists and his fervent supporters, one of whom will be proved wrong in November.

Meanwhile, the Obama camp continues to insinuate that Clinton’s recent comment about other nomination processes that have extended into June, which included an inadvertent reference to Robert Kennedy’s June 1968 assassination as a time marker, was a veiled reference to a possible attempt on Obama’s life for which she needs to apologize to him so he can properly forgive her for misspeaking out of campaign exhaustion. Her remark had absolutely nothing to do with Obama, and her subsequent apology was directed toward the Kennedy family in light of Senator Kennedy’s recently announced illness. Robert Kennedy Jr. quickly defended her remarks as not requiring an apology, but the Obama campaign and its followers continue to push this “story” in the willing media while Obama himself graciously accepts her explanation. This is classic Obama : attacks aimed at Clinton by his surrogates, followed by divorcing the candidate himself from the vicious rhetoric being used against her. How this approach will bring millions of angry Clinton supporters back into the fold is unclear, but it’s easy to predict that it won’t help. An image of the presumptive victor dancing on the grave of his vanquished competitor is in sharp contrast to Obama’s vacuous claims of hope, change, and unification. Why it does not occur to Obama to play a more gracious victor by reining in his campaign to start the hoped-for healing process is a measure both of Obama’s political inexperience and his growing sense of entitlement. If he expects to prove the GOP strategists wrong, now is the time for Barack Obama to start doing the things he should be doing to win, else it will be McCain in November and Obama as the latest democratic loser riding his magic carpet back to Chicago

Obama To Big Oil - Take Our Money, Please!

2008-05-13T06:53:00.000-07:00

Today a gallon of gasoline has reached a new all-time high in America, consumers are screaming for relief, all predictions are pointed straight up, and both the media punditocracy and the leading Democratic presidential candidate have dug in their heels against any notion of a federal or New York State “tax holiday” to give ordinary people any sort of summer break. The reason given is that short term tax breaks cost too much for government to absorb, and any price reduction will simply be captured back by Big Oil with their next round of synchronized price increases. After John McCain first proposed an unfunded federal tax holiday, and Hillary Clinton followed with a more elaborate proposal to fund it with a temporary excess profits tax on the oil industry, Barack Obama issued an intellectual finding that both versions were merely political pandering to the mass of under-educated voters who cannot grasp the intricacies of petro-economics sufficiently to reject the idea of a quick fix. Immediately all experts nodded their sage heads in complete accord. McCain’s proposal has been mostly ignored in the media pushback because Barack’s interests are better served by attacking Clinton as an economic train wreck and a populist phony. The very idea of doing something – anything – to attempt to protect consumers from predatory oil companies is now politically incorrect because it is based on the false hope that Americans either can or should attempt to regulate critical economic factors that presumably are beyond their control. In other words, oil pricing is what it is and we simply have to accept it. Only long-term strategies for energy independence can succeed, and these need to be crafted thoughtfully in concert with all interests to eventually break our dependence on oil. This is the responsible position, which requires responsible politicians to achieve, not pandering populists who only seek cheap votes to advance their own crass causes. Obama has spoken: end of story.

So now the leading Democratic candidate has officially thrown in the towel by ruling out of bounds any rough-and-tumble with Big Oil in favor of crafting future strategies that will be painless and non-confrontational, but will nevertheless work out perfectly because he recognizes the realities of petro-politics in a way that ordinary Clintonesque politicians cannot. His vision allows him to see beyond meaningless posturing to the looming era of idealized solutions. This is the change that Americans supposedly crave, an end to conflict and the beginning of accord. This certainly would be a good place to start, because conflict with the oil companies aimed at saving the consumer from a gas price disaster seems to be something that people would appreciate from their erstwhile leaders. Rejection of the same old intuitive Washington politics logically requires people to sacrifice just a little in the near-term until everyone gets used to the new politics of kumbaya. Obama realizes that there are those folks who may cling to the obsolete notion of fighting back against economic subjugation, but when the season of love begins in January 2008 even they will come to understand the wisdom of this new age philosophy. There will be a solution to the gasoline crisis, but it will unfold eventually. Meanwhile, people will hope for change.

In the business world of manufacturing, sometimes small suppliers are squeezed into financial ruin by accounting rules enforced by major customers with plenty of cash flow who nevertheless set up payments on a long-term schedule designed to maximize their own financials while ignoring the plight of small creditors. The view from the top is often unsympathetic to such minor concerns. But every so often, a small supplier who gets stiffed repeatedly by bean counters will just decide to walk away from future contracts, and only then does it become apparent to stakeholders in the large company that the product or service they no longer receive is in fact critical and irreplaceable. The accountant class defends their failure to work with small suppliers by citing the complex and divine rules for minimizing cost which govern their isolated world. The result is that the accountants are correct in their interpretation of the rules for money management, but the enterprise is harmed as a direct result. The moral of this story is that occasionally it is necessary to think outside the box.

How does a new President Obama effect fundamental change in the price of gasoline if he is unwilling even to challenge the oil companies when their actions are destroying our economy by obvious market manipulation, as recent Congressional testimony admitted? If the argument against a tax holiday is that the oil companies will simply raise their prices again and again to render any tax reduction meaningless, what prevents them from doing that with or without a tax holiday? More importantly, what signal does it send that the new leader acknowledges that is futile to take them on? Obama’s strategy seems to be that America must suffer until new technologies are developed to reduce our dependence – whenever that may be – but why should the oil companies just sit around and accept that if they are unregulated and cannot be checked even when they are obviously rigging the game today. Neville Chamberlain went down the same road with Adolph Hitler, and it didn’t work. If Obama thinks that he can take on Big Oil without being the slightest bit combative, he is a fool leading the blind.

The whole philosophy that is Obama’s message is faulty if it cannot even recognize that sometimes it is better to fight now and hope later. Americans will not appreciate a passive President who has taken a pledge never to put the gloves on and fight for ordinary people. There is a time for lofty rhetorical theories and a time for combat, and now is that time. Democrats who follow the pundits and the Obama idealists in denouncing any attempt to fight back against horrific gasoline prices simply as a means of attacking Clinton are betraying their own constituency who expect and deserve better.

Obama's Monster Is Not Hillary But Jeremiah Wright

2008-04-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

When the now-infamous videos of Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaching such homilies as “God bless America? No, no, no! Goddamn America!” first saw the light of day on Youtube, I predicted rightly that his relationship with Barack Obama would put to rest the hard-sold media notion that Barack has somehow transcended race, forcing Obama to campaign openly as a black man beholden to both his white mainstream and African-American constituencies. What I failed to predict is that Obama’s dainty disengagement from Wright, characterized by gentle rejection of a few of Wright’s more inflammatory statements while continuing to embrace the pastor himself, would so enrage Wright that he would set out on a speaking tour with the dual purpose of promoting and defending himself and getting back at his wayward Trinity United protégé. Apparently Rev. Wright has a different perspective on Barack Obama which doesn’t jive with the image held by the Senator’s legion of fans: namely, that Barack is a disloyal recipient of Wright’s prior efforts to connect him with the Chicago black community to promote his political career. America knew little of Wright, but insiders seem to share his view that he is a principal player in the same league as Minister Louis Farrakhan and cannot be isolated and repudiated by newbies like Obama. Wright’s current speaking tour is as much a reverse repudiation of Barack as it is a defensive move for Wright.

Now that Obama has trashed Wright, the obvious corollary is that Wright will continue to trash Obama as long as his notoriety holds up, which could be long enough to stretch well into the general election. So my new prediction is that the Obama-Wright split is permanent and will directly affect Obama’s electability in two ways: with white voters, and with black voters.

White voters who are undecided about Obama for reasons racial or otherwise will be unable to look at Obama without seeing Wright standing next to him for twenty long years, and will consider Obama’s delay in handling his Wright problem as disingenuous and weak on leadership. They will question Obama’s truthfulness about never being aware of Wright’s opinions, and re-examine Obama’s motives for joining Wright’s congregation to begin with. And they will be right to do so, because Rev. Wright has given them plenty of reasons to question both the depth of Obama’s connection to the church per se and his propensity to “speak as a politician” when he tried to shed Wright in his Philadelphia speech on race. After all, white voters will ask, who knows better what motivates Obama than his pastor of twenty years, his acknowledged spiritual mentor, his religious campaign advisor, the man who married him and baptized his children, the man he said he could no sooner disown that the black community itself? Why should white voters not believe Wright?

On the other hand, by disowning Wright and everything he stands for, Obama may alienate many black voters who comprise that black community for which Wright remains a significant voice. Barack tried, in his denunciation, to base his anger at Wright on what he said were Wright’s personal attacks rather than his stated opinions standing alone. What Obama said previously about white voters not understanding the black church he now tries to morph into personal animosity based on Wright’s disrespecting comments aimed at him. Many black voters, however, who may share much of Wright’s world view, could logically conclude that Obama has simply sold out to white middle class voters by throwing his pastor under the proverbial bus. This could create a small black backlash against Obama that could reduce his black voter turnout in remaining primaries, allowing Clinton to further erode his popular vote lead and reinforce her argument to super-delegates that Obama will not win swing states where black votes are crucial to victory.

Obama’s problem with Jeremiah Wright was not invented by Hillary Clinton or by the media, but is inherent in the nature of Obama’s rise to political prominence in Illinois. He can’t make it go away by giving more speeches on race relations, or need for change, or anything else. If Wright wants to keep punishing Obama for disloyalty, he will do just that. It turns out that – contrary to Samantha Power’s opinion – it’s not Hillary who is the monster.

Why Does Jeremiah Wright Matter, Or Does He?

2008-04-28T11:57:00.000-07:00

Jeremiah Wright is a pastor who says what he has to say, but Barack Obama is a politician who says what a politician has to say. So says the Reverend Wright in his recent NPR interview with Bill Moyers, and no one should have any reason to doubt it except for the hoards of Obama supporters who truly believe deep within their very essence that Obama is not a politician but a transformational person of near-religious significance. For these devotees, Wright may be (present or past tense) Obama’s pastor, but Obama himself is the pastor of his own huge flock who recruited millions of them by saying what a secular pastor has to say. Wright’s idea of ‘saying what a pastor has to say’ may not square with millions of churchgoers who neither hear nor expect the same kind of firebrand rhetoric from their own preachers, but he is entitled to his own views - as are his parishioners – and may defend them as he chooses. So what?

My argument with Obama’s choice of pastor has nothing to do with his views, or whether Obama listened to them for twenty years without objection, or whether he supported Wright’s ministry with cash contributions, or even that he appointed him to his campaign’s religious advisory panel. I don’t even care that he refers to Wright as his spiritual mentor, the man who brought him to Christianity. The reason I don’t care about these deliberate actions is that I don’t think that Barack Obama cares either. Call me cynical, but I don’t think that Barack is religious at all. My evidence is in three parts:

First, most people are religious – if they are - in the same way as their parents, i.e., they absorb a particular set of religious views as a matter of culture, not intellect. Obama’s mother was an atheist, and his early years offered him no clear cultural bias toward either Christianity or Islam. He was not a member of any church during his years growing up, and showed no interest in joining one until he left Harvard and moved to Chicago.

Second, when he did decide to join the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, he said that he did it based on two rationales: he needed to connect with the black Christian community as part of his march toward claiming a racial identity; and, his choice of church was dictated not by Wright’s ‘bringing him to God’ but by an appreciation of Trinity United’s heavy involvement in community work. As he himself stated in the Messiah College sponsored Compassion Forum, he went looking for a church to join, and he settled on Wright’s church as the most activist.

Third, Barack Obama is a Columbia and Harvard educated self-identified intellectual whose principal occupation prior to winning a Senate seat was serving as a constitutional law lecturer at the University of Chicago, where he hobnobbed with other intellectuals like William Ayers. Self-styled intellectual professor types tend to be non-religious. Obama famously referred to this class divide when he commented to San Francisco upscale donors that middle class Pennsylvanians “cling to” religion in times of economic stress. Clinging is an emotional crutch unworthy of any intellectual worth his salt.

On the campaign trail, when pressed to discuss his ‘faith’, Barack always speaks entirely from the abstract by citing examples of being supported by his ‘faith’ or trying to do ‘His’ bidding. These are religious weasel words used by philosophical deists rather than practicing theists. For him, God is a vague concept of an ultimate universal power, not a specific deity like Christ or Buddha.

Actually, Barack’s wife Michelle – whose upbringing was much more in the mainstream of black Chicago culture – may be the principal reason why he attended Trinity United for all those years, was married by Wright, and had his children baptized by Wright. Anyone who has heard Michelle speak at rallies can sense a level of black anger which parallels the tone of Wright’s sermons much more than any statements ever made by Barack himself. I don’t think any of Wright’s controversial statements reflect anything about Barack’s own thinking, which again raises the issue of his church membership. I believe Barack joined Trinity United Church of Christ purely as a matter of convenience to help establish his racial identity to black voters in Chicago, has no actual religious beliefs himself, and demonstrates the shallowness of conviction he brings to his political life in general by his association with Wright and his mega-church in particular.

That’s why I don’t have any problem with Jeremiah Wright. My problem is with Barack Obama. I don’t care what his religious beliefs are or are not, but every time Wright talks about his relation with Obama it reminds me again of how Barack went out of his way to align himself with Wright’s mega-church when he very likely had no religious motive for doing it. As Wright might say, Obama did what a politician had to do by worshipping where a black Chicago politician had to worship.

Michael Moore Endorses Obama The Movement Not The Candidate

2008-04-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

Michael Moore just endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, which is a mixed blessing for Barack in his potential general election campaign. In a letter posted on his own website, Moore took some whacks at Clinton for her 'attacks' on Obama which he took from watching the Philadelphia debate last week. Earlier, Moore had chastised Clinton for what he characterized as her sellout on universal health care, since her plan is not single-payer government run and fails to follow the European model to which Moore is devoted. This is an old disagreement with Clinton, which Moore has lately backed up with allegations that Clinton has sold out to healthcare special interests as exemplified by her fundraising success with PHARMA. John Edwards used the same theme to attack Clinton during his debate participation in the campaign. Guilt by implication rather than evidence is a staple of politicians in general and extreme liberals in particular, and seems more based in disappointment than facts. Even as he disowned Clinton to support Obama, Moore praised her career fighting for rights of families, women, children, and underserved Americans during her lengthy time in public service. But for Michael Moore, Clinton's record just wasn’t good enough. His notion that the Philadelphia debate constituted some kind of tipping point seems contrived, especially since Clinton was widely given the edge and even many supporters universally panned Obama’s performance. So why did Moore decide to publicly endorse Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton with such flourish? His letter explains all.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=225

Over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name "Farrakhan" out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the "F" word to scare white people, pure and simple.

Yes, Senator Clinton, that's how you sounded. Like you were nuts. Like you were a bigot stoking the fires of stupidity. How sad that I would ever have to write those words about you. You have devoted your life to good causes and good deeds. And now to throw it all away for an office you can't win unless you smear the black man so much that the superdelegates cry "Uncle (Tom)" and give it all to you.

But that can't happen. You cast your die when you voted to start this bloody war. When you did that you were like Moses who lost it for a moment and, because of that, was prohibited from entering the Promised Land.

He followed with his reasoning for endorsing Barack Obama:

There are those who say Obama isn't ready, or he's voted wrong on this or that. But that's looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but also a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.

That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man. But what's going on is bigger than him at this point, and that's a good thing for the country. Because, when he wins in November, that Obama Movement is going to have to stay alert and active. Corporate America is not going to give up their hold on our government just because we say so. President Obama is going to need a nation of millions to stand behind him.

Michael Moore encapsulates why so many people have decided to reject Hillary Clinton’s years of public service and obvious advantage in governmental skills and experience in favor of a two year Senator running on an amorphous message of change and hope; a candidate who possesses less meaningful governmental or military experience than any other major party nominee since Alton Brooks Parker ran as a unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate against incumbent President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 based only on serving several years as chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals. Parker, however, did not generate any Parker The Movement phenomenon.

Therefore the choice this year is not between individual candidates – who have to be compared and judged based on actual strengths and weaknesses, but between a merely mortal U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton vs. Obama The Movement. How can a Movement govern? The answer seems to be that The Movement must continue on through any mere election and engulf all human elements of the entire apparatus of the U.S. government, so that people and their petty predispositions toward one or another national imperative simply become irrelevant. The Movement must translate into a wave of compliance with the wishes of the Movement makers, causing all opposition to melt away. Obama-ism must follow the model of Marxism or Capitalism or other “-isms” to displace what movement followers like to describe as the Old Washington Ways that ‘just won’t do’ anymore. What an exiting time to be alive! Michael Moore has his finger on the pulse of the nation. Let Obama The Movement begin!

The Window Opens On Barack Obama

2008-04-14T11:15:00.000-07:00

Recent statements by the junior Senator from Illinois:

On the subject of Pennsylvania voters living anywhere between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh:

“It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Obama said.

On the subject of not needing a VP choice with significant foreign policy experience:

“Foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain,” Obama said.

Senator Barack Obama is slowly opening the window to his real beliefs and personality, which is what people have been talking about when they claim he hasn’t been properly vetted. The view inside differs significantly from how he presents himself to raving masses of devotees and to the worshipful media. Obama is a thinly experienced university lecturer posing as an experienced and competent legislator who incidentally happens to be one of the great visionaries of the century. His political acumen derives from his lessons learned in Illinois from Tony Rezko and friends, sharpened considerably by his campaign manager David Axelrod. His prior achievements may be few, but he has the gift of over-reaching ambition that inspired him to attempt a great leap from neophyte U.S. Senator directly into the White House. He is a smarter and cleverer version of George Bush without the cowboy boots.

When Barack Obama says that he needs no support on foreign policy, he apparently bases his claim on two things: he spend a few years as a child in Indonesia and several more growing up in Hawaii – kind of foreign – and he graduated from Columbia University where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations. Who needs years of experience when you have all that to fall back on?

Speaking to an elite group of San Francisco fundraisers last week, Barack explained his difficulty connecting with Pennsylvania rubes by explaining how economic bitterness has driven them to cling to guns, religion, racism, xenophobia toward immigrants, and opposition to foreign trade as psychological crutches. A few weeks earlier, Obama explained the bitterness felt by his pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright and many African Americans in different terms; in that scenario, he attributed their bitterness not to psychological damage but to years of oppression by white Americans. Attempting to wriggle out of criticism for his comments about Pennsylvanians, Barack focused on the phrase “clinging to religion” which he admonished us is the purpose of religion, i.e., to “cling to” in times of stress. This is a clever dodge that leaves out the other topics contained in his statement. Do Pennsylvanians also rightfully cling to their gun ownership and hunting habits as a way to alleviate economic bitterness? How about the benefits gained by clinging to “antipathy to people who aren’t like them” or “anti-immigrant sentiment” or even “anti-trade sentiment”? Do these helpful attributes all flow from bitterness over economic stress, and will they all - including clinging to religion - disappear under the glow of an Obama presidency? Or are they personal defects condescendingly assigned to the unsophisticated rubes of Pennsylvania by an intellectual elitist who has absolutely nothing in common with ordinary middle class Americans. Obama may not feel their pain, but he understands the reasons for their cultural defectiveness and plans to heal them as an act of charity.

Yesterday, Messiah College in Grantham PA held a forum on compassion that delved deeply into religious views of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Clinton was forthright in expressing her personal religious convictions and connecting them to good works, as her Methodist upbringing requires. Some of the questions were theological, some related to world problems and potential solutions, and she answered them all fully and candidly.

Obama was quite vague in his responses. One telling moment came when he was asked to explain a comment made in Audacity of Hope that Rev. Jeremiah Wright “brought him to God.” Specifically, he was asked to describe how that occurred. Obama responded by saying that he was advised during his community organizer days that – if he planned to bring Christian church organizations into community social efforts – he should become a Christian himself. He then shopped for a church and settled on Trinity United Church of Christ because he was impressed by its agenda of community relief programs. When he returned from Harvard Law School, he joined the congregation.

What I take from this are several things: first, Obama was not a practicing Christian until he returned to Chicago after law school; second, his selection of Trinity United was based not on religion but on its social programs; third, Rev. Wright did not influence him in any religious way. From this I deduce that Obama – whose mother was an atheist – is himself not particularly religious today. I don’t fault him for this, but in what way did Rev. Wright “bring him to God” as he alleges in his book? Many statements made in his two books are proving to be the result of artistic license, and this may be one of them.

Obama is what he is, and a lot of people are fine with that. He just isn’t what he says he is. The word for that is phony.