Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

"MOTHER OF ALL CULTURAL BATTLES" IF OBAMA IS THE NOMINEE

Stanley Kurtz explains why:

Thanks to the verbal stylings of Hugh Hewitt, Mark Steyn, and Barack Obama, I got to bed way too late last night. Here’s what I was listening to, and here’s the transcript. (Focus on the first third.) After listening to these autobiographical excerpts from Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, read out loud by Obama himself, I’m left with the conviction that, in the 2008 election we are facing the mother of all cultural battles. E.J. Dionne thinks the political culture wars are over. Well, I’ve been rebutting "end of the culture wars" declarations for eight years. They always prove out wrong.

[Continue with 2nd page]

ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY TO HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH REV. WRIGHT

Stanley Kurtz breaks new ground with his stunning analysis of what we now know about Obama's mind in reference to his pastor, to the way it would work in relation to America's enemies.    Read the following:

The answer to the persisting question, "Who is Barack Obama?" grows increasingly clear. Barack Obama is the appealing and only slightly more moderate face of American left-radicalism. Edward McClelland’s article, "The crazy uncles in Obama’s attic" is only the latest to confirm the pattern. More dots, more connections...

Obama’s relationship to Wright is paradigmatic. Obama’s own views are not precisely Wright’s, but Obama understands and is attracted to Wright’s radicalism and wants to win at least a gruff sort of understanding and even acceptance of it from Americans at large. What’s scary is that this is all-too-similar to the way Obama thinks about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar Asad. Obama may not agree with them either, but he feels as though he understands their grievances well enough to bridge the gap between these leaders and the American people. That is why Obama is willing to speak to Ahmadinejad and Asad without preconditions.

Can we fairly make analogies between internal American splits and differences between nations? No we cannot. But that is precisely Obama’s error–and it is

REACTIONS TO OBAMA'S SPEECH

Michele Malkin has lots to say and she, in turn, considers Allahpundit's "the best takedown of Obamamessiah of the day."  John Derbyshire is developing a growing dislike for Obama. "The speech is slippery, evasive, dishonest, and sometimes insulting."  I always find Stanley Kurtz uncommonly thoughtful and his published reactions today continue that tradition.  Charles Murray is dazzled by the speech's brilliance.  (Update: he expands here.) Victor Davis Hanson calls it "an elegant farce."  Rush Limbaugh offered his analysis here

Thomas Sowell wrote before Obama's speech,

The fact that Obama talks differently than Jeremiah Wright does not mean that his track record is different. Barack Obama’s voting record in the Senate is perfectly consistent with the far-left ideology and the grievance culture, just as his wife’s statement that she was never proud of her country before is consistent with that ideology.. .   

Shelby Steele published his perspective before the speech.

Update 3/19/08 - Thomas Sowell gives his opinion after hearing the speech.  The National Review Editors opine here.  (Well worth reading).  Michael Gerson calls it "A Speech That Fell Short" (a very probing, insighful review).  Michael Graham opines in the Boston Herald.  See VDH on next page.  Important.

MORE ON OBAMA'S PASTOR, REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT

Update 3/17/08 - Spengler on Rev. Wright and black liberation theology.  His  article appears in the Asian Times Online.  (HT: The Corner)

Update 3/16/08 - VDH analyzes the Obama/Democratic spin.

Update 3/15/08: Last night Barack Obama appeared on television to respond to his crisis, and crisis it is.  Michelle Malkin comments   and links to  other evaluations.

**
Victor Davis Hanson explains the utter seriousness of Obama's close association with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.  (Note my previous posts on Rev. Jeremiah Wright here and here.)

Betrayed?

The problems with Rev. Wright and Sen. Obama are fivefold. They won’t go away, but they will raise dilemmas for him that have no analogy, no parallel with other religious leaders of dubious past declamations who have supported the other candidates:

1) The Obamas were not merely endorsed by, or attended the church of, Rev. Wright, but subsidized his hatred with generous donations [in 2006 Obama gave $22,500 to the church], were married by him, and had their children baptized by this venomous preacher; there is nothing quite comparable in the case of Sens. Clinton and McCain.

2) Rev. Wright’s invective is not insensitive or hyperbolic alone, but in the end disgusting. And when listened to rather than read, the level of emotion and fury only compound the racism and hatred, whether in its attack on the Clintons, or profanity-laced slander of the United States and its history, or in gratuitous references to other races. Its reactionary Afrocentrism, conspiracy-theory, and illiberal racial separatism take us back to the 1970s, and compare with the worst of the fossilized Farrakhan—and have no remote parallel in the present campaign.

"GOD DAMN AMERICA" SAYS OBAMA'S PASTOR, THE REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT

Note updates at the end of the post

**

From ABC News.com via Kathryn Lopez:

Sen. Barack Obama's pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America."

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's south side, has a long history of what even Obama's campaign aides concede is "inflammatory rhetoric," including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism."

In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial." He said Rev. Wright "is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family.

Rev. Wright married Obama and his wife Michelle, baptized their two daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, "The Audacity of Hope."

An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright's sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda's attacks because of its own terrorism.

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he told his congregation.
Sen. Obama told the New York Times he was not at the church on the day of Rev. Wright's 9/11 sermon. "The violence of 9/11 was inexcusable and without justification," Obama said in a recent interview. "It sounds like he was trying to be provocative," Obama told the paper.

Rev. Wright, who announced his retirement last month, has built a large and loyal following at his church with his mesmerizing sermons, mixing traditional spiritual content and his views on contemporary issues.

"I wouldn't call it radical. I call it being black in America," said one congregation member outside the church last Sunday.

Me: What does it say about a person (Obama) who has willingly sat under a man preaching such views for such a long time?  And who has furthermore called him a friend and mentor and guide?  To me it says a lot.  Spooky.  Note: I previously blogged about Obama's pastor here.  - For Victor Davis Hanson's comments, keep reading.
 

OBAMA SERMONIZES ON THE "SERMON ON THE MOUNT"

Michelle Malkin offers a post with many useful links.  Obama's views on abortion and
homosexuality conform to his consistent ultra-liberal perspective.  The Bible suffers from his exegesis and his statements regarding his church seem extraordinarily disingenuous to me. For my previous posts on Obama, click here.

Update 3/4/08 - The Baptist Press offers useful commentary.  (HT: Hugh Hewitt)

Update 3/5/08 - Mollie Ziegler over at "GetReligion" (a blog written by journalists that analyzes press coverage of religion), asks why the press didn't  follow-up with logical questions to Obama such as "which specific portion of the Sermon on the Mount are you referencing?"  Reporters were left to speculate (lamely!)  Her article is appropriately titled, "Blessed are the question askers."

FOR INSIGHT INTO OBAMA, LOOK CLOSELY AT THE WOMEN IN HIS LIFE

The Asian Times columnist, Spengler [a pseudonym], contends that  looking closely at Obama's women (his mother and his wife), will tell you a lot about him: namely, a hatred for America.  Spengler offers an approach and information you won't find elsewhere.  Also, note this:

Listening to Obama speak, Sinclair Lewis' cynical tent-revivalist Elmer Gantry comes to mind, or, even better, Tyrone Power's portrayal of a carnival mentalist in the 1947 film noire "Nightmare Alley. " The latter is available for instant viewing at Netflix, and highly recommended as an antidote to having felt uplifted by an Obama speech.

. . . In times of stress they [Americans] have a baleful susceptibility to hucksters and conmen. Be afraid - be very afraid. America is at a low point in its fortunes, and feeling sorry for itself.  . .

HT: Lisa Schiffren over at the Corner

(Note: This post has been added to my earlier post, The Messianic Fervor Surrounding Barack Obama.)

THE MESSIANIC FERVOR SURROUNDING BARACK OBAMA

- Update 2/26/08 - The Asian Times columnist, Spengler [a pseudonym], contends that  looking closely at Obama's women (his mother and his wife), will tell you a lot about him:  namely, a hatred for America. Spengler offers an approach and information you won't find elsewhere.  Also, note this:

Listening to Obama speak, Sinclair Lewis' cynical tent-revivalist Elmer Gantry comes to mind, or, even better, Tyrone Power's portrayal of a carnival mentalist in the 1947 film noire "Nightmare Alley. " The latter is available for instant viewing at Netflix, and highly recommended as an antidote to having felt uplifted by an Obama speech.

. . . In times of stress they(Americans) have a baleful susceptibility to hucksters and conmen. Be afraid - be very afraid. America is at a low point in its fortunes, and feeling sorry for itself. When Barack utters the word "hope", they instead hear, "handout". A cynic might translate the national motto, E pluribus unum, as "something for nothing". Now that the stock market and the housing market have failed to give Americans something for nothing, they want something for nothing from the government. The trouble is that he who gets something for nothing will earn every penny of it, twice over.

(HT: Lisa Schiffren over at the Corner)

- Update 2/20/08 -  Robert J. Samuelson, writes (in the Washington Post), about "The Obama Delusion."   

Repudiating racism is not a magic cure-all for the nation's ills. The task requires independent ideas, and Obama has few. If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems. . . .   He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't. (more) 

- Update 2/19/08 - David Brooks takes a look at the fervor and asks a lot of questions including the following:

Obama says he is practicing a new kind of politics, but why has his PAC sloshed $698,000 to the campaigns of the superdelegates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics? Is giving Robert Byrd’s campaign $10,000 the kind of change we can believe in?

If he values independent thinking, why is his the most predictable liberal vote in the Senate? A People for the American Way computer program would cast the same votes for cheaper.  (more)

- Yes, his speeches can be oratorical works of art, and even mesmerizing, but might they also be a tad unrealistic?  Big time.  Even scary?  I think so.  Charles Krauthammer notes the fervor and tries to bring a little reality to bear.  See also my previous post on Michelle Obama who can be scary also.

MICHELLE OBAMA - AN INTERESTING PERSON!

Click here for a major New York Times article.  (HT: Drudge)

** Update 2/16/08 - Hugh Hewitt plays snippets  from a talk Michelle Obama gave at UCLA two weeks ago.  He finds her views extravagant and even scary.  Click here for my other posts on Obama.

** Update 2/19/08 - Michelle Malkin says: Here’s the video via Hot Air of The Soul-Fixer’s wife admitting that she hasn’t had a real moment of pride in her country for the duration of her adult life

** Update 2/20/08 - Michelle Malkin's column contrasts her own American experience as a woman of color with Michelle Obama's self-absorption.

** Update 2/23/08 - Michelle Obama's senior year thesis at Princeton was on racial divide.

** Update 3/10/08 Don Surber via Mark Steyn:

In 2005, Mrs. O’s salary was $316,962 at the University of Chicago Hospital. She’s a lawyer, not a doctor.

Hubby’s pay as a U.S. senator topped $160 K that year.

If you are struggling to make ends meet on a half-million a year — a 1040 that puts you in the top 2% of Americans — then the problem is you, not the country.

Still this woman, who was never proud of America when her husband was elected to the state legislature or even the United States Senate, whines and whines and whines.

America is, she said, “just downright mean.”

Liberal Obama is the Most Pro-Abortion Candidate Ever

Terence  Jeffrey writes:

He is so pro-abortion he refused as an Illinois state senator to support legislation to protect babies who survived late-term abortions because he did not want to concede -- as he explained in a cold-blooded speech on the Illinois Senate floor -- that these babies, fully outside their mothers' wombs, with their hearts beating and lungs heaving, were in fact "persons."   (more)

I quoted Larry Kudlow on Obama's liberal voting record over a year ago.

** Update: 4/28/08 - Nat Hentoff, after initially supporting Obama, now registers dissent after learning of Obama's extremist views on abortion.

But on abortion, Mr. Obama is an extremist. He has opposed the Supreme Court decision that finally upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act against that form of infanticide. Most startlingly, for a professed humanist, Mr. Obama in the Illinois Senate also voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. I have reported on several of those cases, when, before the abortion was completed, an alive infant was suddenly in the room. It was disposed of as a horrified nurse who was not necessarily pro-life followed the doctors' orders to put the baby in a pail or otherwise get rid of the child.

As a longtime columnist, John Leo, has written of this form of fatal discrimination, these "mistakes" during an abortion, once born, cannot be "killed or allowed to die simply because they are unwanted." Furthermore, as National Right to Life News" in its April issue included in its account of Mr. Obama's actual votes on abortion, he "voted to kill a bill that would have required an abortionist to notify at least one parent before performing an abortion on a minor girl from another state." These are conspiracies (and that's the word) by pro-abortion extremists to transport a minor girl across state lines from where she lives, unbeknownst to her parents. This assumes that a minor fully understands the consequences of that irredeemable act.

As I was researching this presidential candidate's views on the unilateral "choice" that takes another's life, I heard on the radio what Mr. Obama said during a Johnstown, Pa., town-hall meeting on March 29 as he was discussing the continuing dangers of exposure to HIV/AIDS infections: "When it comes specifically to HIV/AIDS, the most important prevention is education, which should include abstinence education and teaching children, you know, that sex is not something casual. But it should also include other, you know, information about contraception because, look, I've got two daughters, 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals.

"But if they make a mistake," Mr. Obama continued, "I don't want them punished with a baby." Among my children and grandchildren are two daughters and three granddaughters; and when I hear anyone, including a presidential candidate, equate having a baby as punishment, I realize with particular force the impact that the millions of legal abortions in this country have had on respect for human life.

On Feb. 27, testifying before the Wisconsin Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, were a number of young witnesses from a pro-life organization, among them 15-year-old Mariah Smet: "Whenever we talk about abortion, suddenly it's not an unborn child anymore. Instead, people use words like 'fetus' or 'embryo' or 'blob of tissue.'... After an abortion, there is nothing except death... 22 percent of all pregnancies end in abortion, and 47 percent of women having abortions have had more than one."

Mrs. Clinton's Interviews Display a Shocking Ignorance Re: Pakistan

Update 2/2/08 - Joe Biden picks up on Clinton's gaffe.

**
Wow.  I had no idea Mrs. Clinton had so little knowledge of Pakistan.  Recent interviews, however, indicate that fact conclusively.  I find it amazing and truly stupefying.  And she presents herself as experienced?  As someone who knows something about foreign policy?  Check out this post from Thomas Houlahan in Middle East Times from which I excerpt the following:

Sen. Clinton really didn't know that the upcoming elections were for individual seats in Pakistan's parliament. She actually believed that Bhutto, Nawaz and Musharraf would be facing off as individual candidates for leadership of the country in the upcoming elections.

Sen. Clinton didn't know that Nawaz Sharif isn't allowed to run for office in Pakistan because of a felony conviction. She didn't know that President Musharraf won't be on the ballot because he's already been elected.

Sen. Clinton, a candidate for the leadership of the free world, apparently doesn't know the first thing about the country referred to by some as "the most dangerous place on earth." 

Powerline adds:

A transcript of Senator Clinton's interview with Blitzer is posted here; a video of Senator Clinton's interview with Stephanopoulos interview is posted here. If any of the major Republican presidential candidates had spoken in this manner about the scheduled elections in Pakistan, surely an issue would be made of it.

HT: Michael Rubin at The Corner.

Barack Obama and Islam

Update 1/7/08 - Daniel Pipes updates his article, demonstrating it's accuracy against Media Matters for America objections.

- Daniel Pipes makes interesting and well-informed observations.

If I were a Muslim I would let you know,” Barack Obama has said, and I believe him. In fact, he is a practicing Christian, a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ. He is not now a Muslim.

But was he ever a Muslim or seen by others as a Muslim? More precisely, might Muslims consider him a murtadd (apostate), that is, a Muslim who converted to another religion and, therefore, someone whose blood may be shed?  . . .

“I’ve always been a Christian,” said Obama, focusing on his own personal lack of practice of Islam as a child to deny any connection to Islam. But Muslims do not see practice as key. For them, that he was born to a line of Muslim males makes him born a Muslim. Further, all children born with an Arabic name based on the H-S-N trilateral root (Hussein, Hassan, and others) can be assumed to be Muslim, so they will understand Obama’s full name, Barack Hussein Obama, to proclaim him a born Muslim.

David Brooks Has Positive Things to Say About Barack Obama's "Inner Self"

Click here.

9 Democrats Vote "No" on House Resolution Marking Christmas

Unbelievable!  And especially since there were no "No" votes marking Muslim and Hindu holidays.  Michelle Malkin reports (my emphases):

Congressman Steve King reacted this morning to the nine “NO” votes on his resolution to honor Christmas and the Christian faith. The vote shocked Capitol Hill observers because votes on similar resolutions honoring the holidays of Islam and Hinduism passed without any NO votes.

Appearing this morning on the Fox News Channel’s Fox and Friends, King said, “The [nine] naysayers didn’t make it to the floor to debate. I would like to know how they could vote Yes on Islam, Yes on the Indian Religions and No on Christianity when the foundation of this nation and our American culture is Christianity…I think there’s an assault on Christianity in America.”

YouTube video here.

Good News in Iraq Creates Problems for Democrats

Victor Davis Hanson recapitulates the Democrats' poll-watching frenzy and analyzes where it leaves them now.

Ralph Peters - We're Winning Baghdad

The Incompetent, Shameful, Utter Failures of the Democratically Controlled Congress

Karl Rove itemizes the ineptness, the stupidities, and the  maleficent short-sightedness of Pelosi and Reid and company.  I urge you to read this article.

When you take a look at the list of the Democratic Congress' utter failures, it is quite breathtaking -- and without excuse.  Truth be told, the current crop of Democrats do not know how to govern.  They act like immature children quite unable to handle the responsibilities handed them.  Folly indeed, it would be, to allow this circus to destroy the country's future.   

One should read, as well, Senator Joe Lieberman’s critique  of the Democratic party’s national-security stance.  A speech, by the way, that the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today failed to cover. I wonder why.

Peggy Noonan Offers a Fascinating, If Somewhat Damning, Contrast Between Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton

Noonan's article is well worth reading.

. . . Margaret Thatcher would no more have identified herself as a woman, or claimed special pleading that she was a mere frail girl, or asked you to sympathize with her because of her sex, than she would have called up the Kremlin and asked how quickly she could surrender.

She represented a movement. She was its head. She was great figure, a person in history, and she was a woman. She was in it for serious reasons, not to

Dems Waffle/Refuse to Fund the Iraq War: I'm Getting Disgusted

Click here for the latest summary of Democratic Congressional budgetary malfeasance.  I think it is time to crank up demonstrations against the Democratic Party's negligence to support our troops.

Sen.MitchMcConnell( R-Ky):

"While our troops are quelling violence and defeating terrorists in Baghdad and throughout Iraq, Democrats in Washington are trying to choke off funds for our troops in the field," he said.

New Book by Paul Kengor: "God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life"

Jamie Glazov published today a fascinating interview with Paul Kengor, author of the first spiritual biography of the former first lady, God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life. Kengor says,

She is a classic, textbook-case of a Religious Left politician. Through this book, I was eager to remind a theologically ignorant media and secular nation that not everyone who is a religious believer is a “fundamentalist.”  . . . Hillary’s denomination—the United Methodist Church—has moved so far to the left that

The Daily Telegaph Lists the Top 100 Conservatives & Liberals in the U.S.

Click here.

Jimmy Carter's Disastrous Presidency

Investor's Business Daily presents a 10-part series: "Profile in Incompetence"

The Crush Rush Limbaugh Democratic Agenda

Michelle Malkin is posting frequent updates on the sleazy, lie-filled attack on Rush Limbaugh.  The left-wing attacks on Rush add commentary to my previous post which asked, "Does the Left Value Truth?"  The answer then and now:  a resounding "NO!" 

Update: Hugh Hewitt spells out the significance of the Dems attack:

Byron York has a complete recap of the phoney "phoney soldiers" controversy. Senate Democrats are clearly clueless about how this appears to the national audience, so we can only hope they continue to push it as a scandal.

I gave a talk last night on the presidential race to an audience of approximately 100 very successful business people and their spouses, and in the Q&A that followed, a soft spoken woman asked a question in very soft and almost grieved tones:  What has happened

Evangelicals,the Environment, and the Democratic Strategy to Garner Votes

Jay Richards notes that the major media now pays plenty of attention to evangelical views on the environment, especially since  86 evangelical leaders signed the "Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI), although many others refused to sign it. There are powerful political reasons for this new attention to evangelical environmental views and I urge readers of this blog to click through to Richards' article and read it in its entirely.  Some notes follow (underlinings are my own).

Richards distinguishes between "theological principles" and "prudential judgments", saying that on theological principles, evangelicals are in agreement:

Human beings, as image bearers of God, are placed as stewards over the created order. We bear a responsibility for how we treat and use it. We are part of the creation, as well as its crowning achievement. God intends for us to use and transform the natural world around us for good purposes. Proper use is not misuse. But as fallen creatures, we can mess things up. No serious Evangelical thinker questions these basic principles.

Well and good.  But prudential judgments are something quite different.  Richards says we need to recognize at least four separate questions with regard to global warming.

(1) Is the planet warming?

(2) If the planet is warming, is human activity (like CO2 emissions) causing it?

(3) If the planet is warming, is it bad overall?

(4) If the planet is warming, we’re causing it, and it’s bad, would the policies commonly advocated (e.g., the Kyoto Protocol, legislative restrictions on CO2 emissions) make any difference and, if so, would their cost exceed their benefit?

He goes on to say:

Tough questions all, and theology doesn’t provide much help in answering them. To answer (1) and (2), one must consider a wide range of scientific evidence, theorizing, and speculation, drawing on disciplines as diverse as meteorology, astrophysics, geology, and probability theory. And the very nature of the questions and the evidence means answers will always be tentative and uncertain.

To answer (3) and (4), one must do careful economic reasoning. As a result, Evangelicals who agree disagree on how to answer these questions (the application).

The problem with the chief defenders of the Evangelical Climate Initiative is that they haven’t thought through these four questions, at least not publicly. What they have done is label

George Soros: The Chief Financial Backer of MoveOn.Org

Today Investor's Business Daily posted a major, lengthy editorial profile.  See also the profile produced by Discover the Networks.

** Update 7/26/07 - It turns out that Soros's "Open Society Institute" funded "media stories" that we, the naive public, thought were spontaneous and free from manipulation.  Matt Drudge headlined:

"NASA scientist who accused Bush Administration of censorship received $720,000 from George Soros...

Drudge linked his headline to the Investor's Business Daily report:

It's all part of the $74 million OSI spent on "U.S. Programs" in 2006 to "shape policy." Who knows what revelations 2007's report will bring around events now in the news?

It also turns out that Soros partners with the Tides Foundation and the "Democracy Alliance" to manipulate stories and events.  Read the article for details.

President Bush Compares Deserting Iraq to Abandoning Vietnam: Anti-War Leftists Howl

I hope I shall not be violating blogger ethics by reposting so much material from two bloggers below, but links have been provided, and I invite readers to view the posts in their original setting as well as here.  I wish to have the material consolidated here so one can understand as clearly as possible what is at stake should we abandon Iraq prematurely. 

From Peter Wehner:

No More Vietnams (or Cambodias)

Peter Wehner - 8.23.2007 - 10:23AM

In his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars yesterday, President Bush reminded us of the agony and genocide that followed the American retreat in Vietnam:

In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution. In Vietnam, former allies of the United States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. Hundreds of thousands more

"Netroots" Defined and Explained

Click here.

Editor of South Carolina's Largest Paper Declares John Edwards "A Big Phony"

Click here   (HT: Drudge)   I came to that conclusion a long time ago.  But still think it significant that a man so used to political types would go public with his conclusion.

Where the Democratic Party Stands

Bill Bennett  on the current shape of the  Democratic Party:

The Democrats, given the public mood, should have been favored to win this election, but they are going so far left I'm not sure they will.The Democrats are now a censorship (think Fairness Doctrine); Censure (think Russ Feingold); Surrender (think Iraq legislation); Lawsuit crazy (think opposition to the flying imams legislation); Impeachment (think John Conyers); Amnesty party.  In that mix, you also get higher taxes as well. [my emphases]

Mind Boggling: All Democratic Presidential Candidates Support Partial-Birth Abortion

Kirsten Powers a Democratic writer, helpfully spells out how sadly wrong the Democratic Party and its presidential contenders are with regard to partial-birth abortion.  (By way of Michelle Malkin).  Powers writes (my emphases):

It's tragic that abortion rights have become synonymous with modern day feminism. But it's mind-boggling that late-term abortions now enjoy the imprimatur of every one of the presidential candidates of one of the two main political parties. Many early feminists -- the Suffragettes -- opposed abortion. They viewed it as an affront to human rights. There is little doubt that they would have recognized elective, late-term abortion for what it is, a gruesome, uncivilized and inhuman procedure.

Feminism was meant to establish women as having equal legal rights to men. Yet, in today's twisted debate, women are not mere equals. Instead, they have been elevated to a special status where they have the "right" to determine whether a five-month or older "live fetus," as the court called it, should be partially delivered outside of their body and killed in the most gruesome manner imaginable, even if carrying that fetus poses no threat to their life.

Some elected Democrats ignored this faux-feminist canard, and supported the ban, including Rep. James P. Moran, of Virginia, who said, "It's not about a woman's right to choose. It's about a baby's right to life." The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a pro-choice Democrat, called the practice "infanticide."

It needs to be said that there is no constitutional right to crush a living human's skull and suction out its brains, no matter where that life may reside -- inside the womb, or partially outside the womb, as is done in the so-called partial birth abortion. It's immoral and contrary to the values of the Democratic Party, which prides itself on standing up for the weak and voiceless.

The New York Times on Barack Obama and His Religious Faith

Click here.

Do Legislators Understand The Bills They Propose?

That's a good questions, isn't it?  Do they even have the integrity to find out?  Example: Dean Barrett refers to a TV interview Tucker Carlson conducted with Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy who doesn't understand her own gun-control legislation.   Barrett writes:

McCarthy proposed a piece of gun-control legislation that would ban barrel shrouds. Tucker asked her three times why she was so worried about barrel shrouds. She dodged the question, obviously not knowing the difference between a barrel shroud and a howitzer. (Neither do I, but in my defense I’m not proposing a bill eliminating barrel shrouds, and generally speaking Jews don’t know from guns.) Tucker eventually asked her point blank if she knew what these barrel shrouds are that she so desperately wants to make illegal (for the children!), and she had to confess that she didn’t.

A couple of takeaway points here: Such is the intellectual incuriosity of many Congress-critters, Tucker had 100% confidence that McCarthy wouldn’t understand her own piece of legislation before she went on the air. He was probably licking his chops looking forward to ambushing McCarthy all afternoon. The other thing is that McCarthy is all too typical. Many of our leaders imperiously hold forth on subjects on which they are essentially clueless. Worse still, they also draft laws and craft policy on subjects on which they are essentially clueless.

Just How Horrible Will Nancy Pelosi's Visit to the Middle East Turn Out To Be? Potentially Catastrophic

Amir Tahiri's informed analysis will leave you feeling ill.  At least it did me.  I now see Pelosi's visit as not only dumb and stupid and egocentric, but as potentially catastrophic.   This is a MUST READ article.   (Tahiri is an Iranian-born journalist based in Europe.)

Democratic Party Arguments On Iraq Don't Hold Up

William Kristol and Frederick W. Kagin explain why.   

Wanna Know the Pork in the Democratic House Bill Passed Today to End the War?

Update 3/25/07: Investors Business Daily editorializes: 

In passing a bill that will force a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq, Democrats have again shown why they can't be trusted with our nation's security — or with spending money responsibly.

How sad that Congress' new majority didn't have the guts to take a straight-up vote on withdrawing troops without linking it to all sorts of pork-barrel spending.

This shows Democrats don't have the courage of their convictions — unless bribed.

Click here.   

$500 million for emergency wildfires suppression; the Forest Service currently has $831 million for this purpose;

$400 million for rural schools;

$283 million for the Milk Income Loss Contract program;

$120 million to compensate for the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the shrimp and menhaden fishing industries;

$100 million for citrus assistance;

$74 million for peanut storage costs;

$60.4 million for salmon fisheries in the Klamath River region in California and Oregon;

$50 million for asbestos mitigation at the U.S. Capitol Plant;

$48 million in salaries and expenses for the Farm Service Agency;

$35 million for NASA risk mitigation projects in Gulf Coast;

$25 million for spinach growers;

$25 million for livestock;

$20 million for Emergency Conservation Program for farmland damaged by freezing temperatures;

$16 million for security upgrades to House of Representatives office buildings;

$10 million for the International Boundary and Water Commission for the Rio Grande Flood Control System Rehabilitation project;

$6.4 million for House of Representative’s Salaries and Expenses Account for business continuity and disaster recovery expenses;

$5 million for losses suffered by aquaculture businesses including breeding, rearing, or transporting live fish as a result of viral hemorrhagic septicemia;

$4 million for the Office of Women’s Health at the Food and Drug Administration; and
A minimum wage increase, which is the subject of separate legislation.  (more)   

Rep. Mike Pence quips:

"Here are some examples of what the Democrats consider 'urgent' needs that require  'prompt action: '

--         $25 million for payments to spinach producers
--         $120 million to the shrimp industry
--         $74 million for peanut storage
--         $5 million for shellfish, oyster and clam producers

"Spinach, shrimp, peanuts and shellfish?   That's not a war funding bill, that's the salad bar at Denny's."

Barack Obama as Seen by a Fellow Harvard Student

Update below on questions concerning Obama's investment portfolio

***
I blogged before about Barack Obama's liberal voting record.  Carol Platt Liebau (a conservative who blogs here) knew Obama at Harvard Law School and succeeded him as editor of the Harvard Law Review.  Yesterday she wrote an interesting article,"The Barack I Knew," that is both respectful and insightful.   (HT: Hugh Hewitt)

** Update 3/7/07 - Michelle Malkin reports the following:

The New York Times investigates Obama's financial dealings with two speculative companies whose major investors included some of his biggest political donors.

If the story sounds familiar, you read it first on TheStreet.com in a report by Nat Worden...two days ago. (Hat tip - reader Mike)

Gore and Edwards: How Does One Explain Their Hypocrisy?

Victor Davis Hanson probes the hypocrisy of Al Gore and John Edwards:

We need an Orwell to offer some psychological explanation for why an Al Gore, who gobbles up carbon-based power in his mansion and private jet, continues to harangue the less well off about their energy profligacy and threats to the planet, or why a John Edwards, who just finished a towered 28,000 sq. foot palace, claims Jesus would find us unforgiving to the poor, and serially speaks in terms of two nations, rich and poor.

Is this disconnect explained by an easy means of alleviating guilt over their own largess through cosmic preaching about the inequality and selfishness of others?

. . . Or are they in denial, and feel their own respective modes of living and travel are not that much different from others-the enemy being instead wasteful and "selfish" billionaires, not sober multi-millionaires like themselves?

Still, at the very least when Edwards says the following:  "I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs. "I think he would be appalled, actually," he could at least offer the homeless shelter for a few cold nights in his sports and entertainment annex or a cot in something in the palatial residence apparently called "John's Lounge."

Brit Hume Doesn't Think Much of Rep. John Murtha

Note: See Update at the end

Brit Hume of Fox News had some strong things to say Sunday about  anti-war Democratic Representative John Murtha. 

Look, this man has tremendous cachet among House Democrats, but he is not — this guy is long past the day when he had anything but the foggiest awareness of what the heck is going on in the world.

Click  here for short video and transcript.  

Investor's Business Daily in a hard-hitting editorial elaborates on Murtha's plans as chairman of the House panel that overseas military spending. 

Democratic talk of "redeployment" has encouraged terrorist groups around the world.

Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, said before the 2006 vote:

John Kerry: An Embarrassment to America

John Kerry in Davos, Switzerland, refers to the United States as an "international pariah."  Video here.   A blogger posts more of Kerry's comments here.  While Kerry speaks, Mohammad Khatami, the former President of the Iranian terror state, sits just a few feet away.   What's with Democrats like Kerry and Carter who, when outside the country, badmouth the U.S.?   Is anyone else embarrassed that we have leaders like this?  Shame.   (HT: Drudge Report)

Michelle Malkin has more.  Read her post for extensive links especially this video which is more complete and extensive than the one I posted above. 

OBAMA'S LIBERAL VOTING RECORD

Update 4/8/09 -  I have later extensive posts on Obama filed under the following categories: "Obama,"   "Obama as Messiah,"  "Obama's Foreign Relations," and Obama Reign.

Update 10/28/08 -  I have a lot of material on Obama and his positions here.  My posts on "Obama as Messiah" are here.  My material on McCain's "negatives" - including comments by those who originally opposed McCain, but who now support him because they understand the dangers of an Obama presidency -- can be found here.

Update 8/3/08 - What Barack Obama's "Lost Years" as a State Senator Tell us About His Ideological Core

Update 4/15/08 - Obama's Activist Homosexual Agenda

Update 2/14/08 - Larry Kudlow: Obama's Big Government Vision

Update 1/9/08 - Liberal Obama is the Most Pro-Abortion Candidate Ever.  Click here

Update: 7/19/07  - Obama favors sex education for kindergarteners!  Click here.

**

Larry Kudlow says, "Behind the Obama story is a very liberal left voting record."  Kudlow lays it out:

· Voted against extending the Bush tax cuts on capital gains and dividends.

· Voted against permanently repealing the Death Tax. (Called the cuts a "Paris Hilton" tax break for "billionaire heirs and heiresses") · Voted against CAFTA.

· Opposed any bans on partial birth abortions.

THE HORRIBLE CONSEQUENCES OF A DEMOCRATIC CONTROLLED CONGRESS

Thomas Sowell spells it out by asking a series of questions:

. . . Do we really want Congressman Alcee L. Hastings, who was impeached as a federal judge and removed from the bench due to charges of accepting bribes, put in charge of a committee handling top-secret national intelligence?

Do we really want far-left Congressman Dennis Kucinich to be chairman of the subcommittee on national security?

This is the same Dennis Kucinich who once introduced a bill “to abolish all nuclear weapons,” who has refused to condemn Hezbollah terrorists,

Victor Davis Hanson on "Kerryism"

VDH offers astute comments on what he calls "Kerryism."   The whole piece is well worth reading.  Below are a few snippets.

On our educated soldiers:

Some of the brightest and most educated Americans are not only in the military, but veterans of Iraq. Two of the best educated minds I have met-Col. Bill Hix and Lt. Col. Chris Gibson, both Hoover Security Fellows-were both Iraqi veterans. What is striking about visiting Iraq is the wealth of talent there, from privates to generals. Without being gratuitously cruel, the problem of mediocrity is not

AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL ELITES -- TOTALLY OUT OF TOUCH

Here are perceptive words from Michael Ledeen on the alienation of the nation's elite from the thinking and values of ordinary Americans:

It [Sen. John Kerry's remarks belittling U.S. troops] underlines the near-total alienation of the American intellectual elite. I dare say that the leading news and editorial rooms, like the offices of the major universities, are full of people who quite agree with the notion that our troops are stupid and underprivileged. Each time one of our children ships out to the Middle East, we get condolence calls from friends and relatives. They simply cannot fathom it, it is so totally removed from their own experience and from their own narcissistic lives. They do not know uniformed people, they have only a totally misleading stereotype.

WOULD DEMOCRATS BRING FRESH FACES TO WASHINGTON?

Tim Graham talks about a potential Democratic victory in the House:

Has anyone considered how the Democrats can present themselves as a vote for "change" when you consider the term-unlimited people that will chair the committees, as AP reviews it? John Dingell: first elected December of 1955.  That's almost pre-rock-and-roll.  John Conyers: first elected 1964.  Charles Rangel? 1970. Henry Waxman? 1974.  George Miller? 1974.  Fresh faces, anyone?

Michael Novak Coins the Word "Hypocrats"

Michael Novak itemizes the ways in which Democrats behave like Hypocrats.  A few excerpts:

Being a Hypocrat means never having to recognize a moral fault — in oneself. . .

Most religious people, at least those who are serious about churchgoing, and who reflect on what their beliefs actually mean, try hard to cut individuals a lot of slack in mercy and forgiveness.  Yet the slack they cut is for individuals, not for principles. Conservative religious people tend to be faithful to principle, but nonjudgmental about individuals: “Forgive the sinner...etc.” They are not willing to cut slack about what is right and wrong.
 
Hypocrats do pretty much the reverse.  They are wholly flexible on principle, and merciless to individuals who get in their way — from gay men like Congressmen Foley (whom they would have treated differently, were he a Democrat) to a Hall-of-Fame wrestling coach from Illinois . . .

Sexual Views Divide American Politics

Rich Lowry over at National Review Online is a man pardonably skeptical over the Left's newfound concern for matters sexual.  He points out that

The great divide in our cultural politics continues to be sex. The cultural left considers sex all-important and not important at all. All-important because it is a crucial means of self-expression; not important because the when, where and how don’t matter so much (sex is sex so long as it’s consensual). The cultural right considers sex wonderful and dangerous. Wonderful because it is the ultimate consummation of love; dangerous because if it is not carefully circumscribed, it destroys individuals and cultures.   .   .   .

It would be a welcome development indeed if the Foley flap prompted a bipartisan turn toward the values of sexual probity.  It is sexual irresponsibility, in the form of out-of-wedlock childbearing, that is at the root of many of the country’s social ills.   But it’s not to be.   Foley will be wrung for partisan advantage and then forgotten, as the culture war rages on.

Jonah Goldberg offers some historical context to further underscore the political division in America over offensive sexual behavior. 

GEORGE SOROS AND THE "SHADOW PARTY"

David Horowitz does yeoman work in tracing the capture of the Democratic party by billionaire George Soros.  This article offers a brief synopsis of some of what is going on which is explained more throughly in Horowitz's book The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party.  In addition to the article and book just mentioned, Jamie Glazovhas has posted an interview with Richard Poe, Horowitz's co-author.  Poe explains:

The Shadow Party is the real power driving the Democrat machine.  It is a network of radicals dedicated to transforming our constitutional republic into a socialist hive.

 
The leader of these radicals is multibillionaire George Soros.  He has essentially privatized the Democratic Party, bringing it under his personal control.  The Shadow Party is the instrument through which he exerts that control. . . .

In 2003, Soros set up a network of privately-owned groups which acts as a shadow or mirror image of the Party. It performs all the functions we would normally expect the real Democratic Party to perform, such as shaping the Party platform, fielding candidates, running campaigns, and so forth.  However, it performs these functions under the private supervision of Mr. Soros and his associates.

The Shadow Party derives its power from its ability to raise huge sums of money.  By controlling the Democrat pursestrings, the Shadow Party can make or break any Democrat candidate by deciding whether or not to fund him.   

During the 2004 election cycle, the Shadow Party raised more than $300 million for Democrat candidates, prompting one of its operatives, MoveOn PAC director Eli Pariser, to declare, “Now it’s our party. We bought it, we own it…”

.  .  .  He [George Soros] uses it to push the Party leftward.  He is systematically purging the Party of moderates and packing it with radicals. For instance, the Shadow Party ousted Senator Joseph Lieberman in favor of Ned Lamont, because Lieberman refused to support a “cut-and-run” policy in Iraq.

. . . In his new book "The Age of Fallibility," Soros writes, “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States."   He announced in 2003 that it is necessary to "puncture the bubble of American supremacy."  Soros is working systematically to achieve that goal.

Read  more here on George Soros and the Shadow Party.  Scary stuff.   The interview contains so much more than what I've reproduced above.  For still more information, see here and here.