Entries Tagged 'obama' ↓

(via Marc Ambinder) His name is Barack Obama, and I endorse his message [e.a.]:

Jake Tapper: Governor Palin and her husband issued a statement today saying that their 17 year old daughter Bristol who is unmarried is 5 months pregnant. Do you have a comment?

BO: I have heard some of the news on this and so let me be as clear as possible. I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics, it has no relevance to governor Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18. And how family deals with issues and teenage children that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that is off limits.

A lot of Obama’s supporters do not understand that, but I forgive them [even when they make fools of themselves after being reminded of the fundamentals of biology, and still want a doctors letter? Yes, even then. And I'm not even a Christian! ---ed.] They’re passionate about their candidate, and they’re human.

On one level, it’s good that they care enough to get engaged in the messy process that is our democracy—a process that, alas, also gives rights to those caught up in a mob mentality.

The proper remedy to their antics is to outsmart them, and to accomplish your goals: the success of your cause is always the best revenge.

[update: oops! too much time away from the keyboard! links now added]

After Barack Obama’s latest about-face on a position—this time it’s abortion—Ann Althouse asks the pertinent question [emphasis in original]:

So as long as a woman can get her “blues” classified by a medical health professional as “depression,” she has a right to a late term abortion no matter how strongly the majority of citizens feel about the immorality of destroying a fully viable human entity? And that’s rigorous?

Incredible. That would be incredible even without the prior inconsistent statement.

Really. Does he think we are idiots?

And one of her commenters has an interesting reply, which I’ll break down into two parts:

He doesn’t think we are idiots. He thinks that most people will not find out all of the details, through a combination of their own apathy and favorable, for him, press coverage.

Check. Only anti- or un-social people who prefer the companionship of the blogosphere to overheated Fourth of July family picnics are assiduously gathering the evidence of Obama’s betrayal of his base or (or are, conversely, gallantly coming to the aid of their hero by constantly reversing their own political positions—yet again—to keep up with the reversals of the Obama Messiah).

The commenter continues:

And he also thinks that, of those who will find out about all of the instances like this, that those on the left won’t care and will vote for him anyway, and those on the right wouldn’t vote for him anyway, and the ones in the middle will likely not decide based on things like this.

He’s probably right.

Hmm. I was with the commenter all the way till that last nod toward Obama’s assessment of the situation. I think Obama is right in assessing the populace’s general lack of interest in politics (except in party affiliation, which does appeal to a lot of people, just as rooting for a certain team over another team appeals to others).

But no one knows how people are influenced to vote. Obama, his esoteric cultural tastes notwithstanding, has shown himself to be less than original, and way less than scintillating, in his “thinking” about demographics and social groups.

Whatever. I am so over this campaign.

Idiotically and through a lens of partisanship, Jonah Goldberg tries to make this a patriotism problem for Barack Obama—it’s not only a low blow, but it detracts from his argument. Nevertheless, Goldberg hits on something that makes certain people allergic to Obama—his air of melancholy [e.a.]:

After 9/11, he wore it. During the debates over the Iraq war, he stopped because he saw the flag as a sign of support for President Bush. (He started wearing it again in May.) “I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest,” he added in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Instead, I’m going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great and, hopefully, that will be a testimony to my patriotism.”

Read that line again: “What I believe will make this country great.”

Not to sound too much like a Jewish mother, but some might respond, “What? It’s not great now?”

This sense that America is in need of fixing in order to be a great country points to Obama’s real patriotism problem. And it’s not Obama’s alone.

I noted Obama’s melancholy in April 2007, called him “Dr. Blue,” and said he is a downer!

It’s a problem, all right. It’s just not a patriotism problem.

Calling it a patriotism problem is partisan hackery (which is to be expected by someone who wrote a book titled Liberal Fascism, which I won’t link to. Feh).

[reposted, with a new title, cause WordPress is acting up]

Obama rebukes Wesley Clark for saying that McCain’s service to his country was no biggie when it comes to deciding who should run the country.

Josh Marshall thinks it’s a cop-out and that Democrats shouldn’t be afraid to take on McCain’s war record.

John Aravosis wants to know: “Honestly, besides being tortured, what did McCain do to excel in the military?”

For his part, Barack Obama is now not only the proud bearer of a flag pin on his lapel but also a true-blue American patriot, who is offended by MoveOn.org’s accusing General David Petraeus of betrayal.

Now, that is a pivot. And Obama is very smart to execute it, and to run like hell away from attacks on John McCain’s record and character.

p.s. For the record, here’s something John McCain wrote in his 1974 thesis. I’d lay odds that Obama has read it, and everything else McCain has written, and knows a lot better than to attack McCain on his strengths [e.a.]:

[McCain's] fellow prisoners say his [forced] capitulation only redoubled his determination to provoke his captors. “Acts of defiance felt so good that I felt they more than compensated for their repercussions,” he wrote, “and they helped me keep at bay the unsettled feelings of guilt and self doubt my [false] confession had aroused.”

Obama isn’t yet out of the gate and already he has pissed off the Palestinians. Ever the quick study, he immediately corrected course–taking back what he said to AIPAC yesterday.

Facing criticism from Palestinians, Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged today that the status of Jerusalem will need to be negotiated in future peace talks, amending a statement earlier in the week that Jerusalem “must remain undivided.”

Not to worry, though—it’s not a flip-flip; it’s not caving in to pressure from the Palestinians; it’s a “clarification.”

Welcome to ObamaWorld.