What Is This World Coming To?

Barack Obama’s top political adviser said today Obama “didn’t know the history” of unrepentant bomber William Ayers’ activities in the violent Weather Underground movement when the candidate attended a political event at Ayers’ home in 1995.

“When he went he certainly didn’t know the history,” chief Obama strategist David Axelrod told  arguing for the first time since the story surfaced early this year that Obama was unaware of Ayers’ past.

“There’s no evidence that they’re close,” Axelrod added.

Actually, there’s plenty of evidence that suggests they are ‘close’ — unless we’re going to quibble over the definition of ‘close’.   And any argument that Obama didn’t know who Bill Ayers was is preposterous.

“There’s no evidence that Obama in any way subscribed to any of Ayers’ views. And Obama’s been very clear about condemning the despicable acts that Bill Ayers committed 40 years ago when Obama was 8 years old.”

Whether or not Obama was eight years old when Ayers committed his acts of terror are irrelevant.  Obama was forty years old on September 11, 2001 when Bill Ayers bragged to the New York Times that “he didn’t do enough.”

Stanley Kurtz outlined Obama’s connections to ACORN and ACORN’s connection to the mortgage crisis in today’s National Review Online.  It makes for fascinating reading.

According to a report in WorldnetDaily, author Jerome Corsi, author of the unflattering “Obama Nation” was in Kenya doing background research on Obama’s ties to the Kenyan government.   WND reported:

Corsi had promised a news conference today that would “expose details of deep secret ties between U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and a section of Kenya government leaders, their connection to certain sectoral groups in Kenya and subsequent plot to be executed in Kenya should Senator Obama win the American presidency.”

Instead, Corsi was picked up by Kenyan authorities and has been detained. Corsi told WND he has been assured he will be released soon.

Corsi was to report Odinga’s 2007 presidential campaign strategy called for exploiting anti-Kikuyu tribal sentiments, claiming victory and charging voter fraud even if the campaign knew the election had been legitimately lost. Odinga, Corsi said, also was willing to fan the flames of ethnic tribal tensions and use violence as a last resort by calling for mass action that led to the destruction of properties, injuries, loss of life and the displacement of over 500,000 Kenyans. The purpose was to compel the Electoral Commission of Kenya to declare him the winner or enable him to declare himself the winner by force.

A new article in Newsweek discusses the possibility of Senator Obama losing his Presidential bid and touches on the effect it will have on racial tensions in the United States.

In the African-American community, the thinking on Obama’s candidacy has gone something like this: In the beginning, there was disbelief that a black man could become president. Then, when Obama became the Democratic nominee and soared in the polls, listeners were concerned for his safety. Now that the race with John McCain is as tight as Sarah Palin’s smile, (the black community) has started to worry about Election Day itself. There is still a fair amount of optimism in the black community, but it’s being tempered by two words: what if. What if Obama loses? How should people respond? What should they feel?

The article also suggests that an Obama loss would automatically incite anger, but quickly drops the issue:

There’s not a lot of anger—yet—but you can start to sense the potential for it. “I’m going to be mad, real mad, if he doesn’t win,” says Daetwon Fisher, 21, a construction worker from Long Beach, Calif. “Because for him to come this far and lose will be just shady and a slap in black people’s faces. I know there is already talk about protests and stuff if he loses, and I’m down for that.”

This brings up the ever increasing certainty of racial relations AFTER the election… they won’t be good. In fact, they promise to be worse.  That is what Bob Parks of “Black and Right” fears:

Hmmm… a little article from January worth reading. It explains in very simple terms how this “recession” might not even be real.

Is America headed inevitably toward recession? Maybe; probably; who knows? If anyone could accurately predict the economy, they’d be billionaires in no time.

One thing is certain, though: Simply hearing about the possibility of a recession can bring it about. This is due to a combination of two distinctly non-economic factors: psychology and the news media. This is nothing new; sometimes in the process of reporting about a problem, the media actually makes that problem worse.

It is impossible to imagine that the liberal network news could be more clumsy in its efforts to manipulate the results of the general election than it has been in its efforts to paint Sarah Palin as some kind of moose-hunting rube.

Indeed, in ABC’s own coverage of the interview, they continued the assault:

“Palin has no previous foreign policy experience and her comments hewed closely to the McCain camp’s established foreign policy positions on former Soviet nations joining NATO, and the threats posed from Islamic terrorists and a nuclear Iran.

When asked if Georgia joined NATO, whether the United States should go to war if the country was again invaded by Russia, Palin responded: “Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help.”

Palin — whose military experience is limited to her gubernatorial role as commander-in-chief of the Alaska National Guard, an organization with fewer members than there are citizens in the town of which she was mayor — tried to tout her energy expertise in lieu of her lack of national security policy. . . .”

Palin may not have the experience in national security policy of an ABC news reporter, but she was right when she says that NATO treaty obligations include treating an attack on one member nation as an attack on them all.

In fairness, since ABC didn’t, I should point out that Barack Obama’s foreign policy experience (and he is the top of the ticket) is limited to the 173 days he’s served in the Senate, almost all of which were as a presidential candidate.

Palin, 44, whose political career began with the PTA and a city-council seat in Wasilla and who obtained her first passport last year, told Gibson that she was up to the challenge of being Sen. John McCain’s vice president.

I’m waiting to read an ABC account that includes, “Obama, 46, whose political career began as a community organizer who has never even visted Russia or Canada, the two countries that border Alaska, feels his months in the US Senate qualify him to be the most powerful man in the world. . . . “  but I won’t hold my breath.

But I hear a lot fewer people are getting their news from ABC News than from any other source. . . .

I got this video link from my son-in-law in Oklahoma, with a note saying it was produced as an individual campaign commercial effort. You gotta love Youtube. Where else could a hero like this reach out to remind us directly of what sacrifice really is? One thing comes across loud and clear: “It was not a mistake.”

Oooops. That pretty much covers it. I thought it rather thoughtful of Stephanopolis to remind Obama that he was a Christian.

According to Israeli intelligence,  Hezbollah has added the advanced shoulder-fired SA-18 missile to its arsenal of anti-aircraft weapons.

The Lebanese daily Al Akhbar said Hezbollah intends to take measures to stop Israeli overflights. On July 31, the pro-Hezbollah newspaper quoted a militia source as saying that Hezbollah was “close to adopting practical measures that will force Israel to cease the overflights.”

The SA-18s, with a range of 5.2 kilometers, were provided to Hezbollah by Iran and Syria, officials said. They said Iran also plans to equip Hezbollah with longer-range air defense systems designed in China and Russia.

“There is a reinforcement on the other side, and it’s not by chance that we are training intensively on the Golan Heights and on a major scale,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said. “There has been a very significant reinforcement of Hezbollah in recent years, and we are examining the possibility that the balance of power has shifted with the introduction of sophisticated weapons from Syria.”

On Aug. 12, Israel’s military, in a move closely monitored by neighboring Syria, held a major exercise on the Golan Heights. Officials said the exercise envisioned a Hezbollah and Syria attack on northern Israel.

One option for Hezbollah was to procure mobile SAM systems, such as the Pantsyr-S1E from Russia. Officials said Hezbollah could deploy the Pantsyr from Iranian or Syrian stocks in Shi’ite areas of Beirut and the Bekaa Valley, where the militia was believed to keep heavy weapons and long-range rockets.

In an interview on the “O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News,  Barack Obama admitted, for the first time, that the troop surge strategy was successful “beyond our wildest dreams’.  That’s a fairly strong description for a policy that, until now, Obama denied was either successful or relevant.

“I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated — by the way, including President Bush and the other supporters. It has gone very well,” Obama conceded. But, he added, it still hasn’t been a total success.

“We have reduced the violence, but the Iraqis still haven’t taken responsibility, and we still don’t have the kind of political reconciliation — we are still spending $10-$12 billion dollars a month,” Obama said.

In his interview with “The O’Reilly Factor,” Obama listed America’s enemies in the war on terror as Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and a “whole host of networks that are bent on attacking America who have a distorted ideology, who have perverted the faith of Islam — and so we have to go after them,” he said.

One thing you can always say about the Democrats as a national party. When they don’t get it, they don’t get it in spectacular fashion.

After their defeat 2004, the Democrats stopped referring to Red State America as Jesus Land embarked on a new strategy structured on the correct assumption that “God is not a Republican”

The flaw lies in assuming that therefore follows He must be a Democrat. So they’ve invited Him, (or Her, or Whomever) to be part of the DNC’s “Big Tent” — even throwing Him a big welcome in Denver.

Denver: AP At the first official event Sunday of the Democratic National Convention, a choir belted out a gospel song and was followed by a rabbi reciting a Torah reading about forgiveness and the future.

Helen Prejean, the Catholic nun who wrote “Dead Man Walking,” assailed the death penalty and the use of torture.

Young Muslim women in headscarves sat near older African-American women in their finest Sunday hats.

The Democrats got it right when they observed that God is not a Republican, but they got it right by accident, not by conviction. The proof is in the pudding. Is God a Catholic? Then He can’t be a Muslim, so what are they doing there? If He is a Muslim, then what are the Jews doing there?

The result was on display at Sunday’s interfaith service, staged in a theater inside the Colorado Convention Center, and will be evident throughout the convention agenda and on the sidelines.

There will be four “faith caucus” meetings, blessings to open and close each night, and panels and parties run by Democratic-leaning religious advocacy groups that didn’t even exist in 2004 — not to mention protests from religious groups and leaders opposed to the Democratic platform.

One hallmark of Democratic faith efforts at the convention is diversity, which might soften objections from party activists wary of the Christian right or any mixing of religion and politics. Behind the scenes, efforts to attract the religious vote will concentrate largely on Christian “values voters.”

“If we create or become a mirror image of the religious right, we have failed,” said Burns Strider, who ran religious outreach for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and now does faith-based political consulting. “But if we have increased the number of chairs around the table, … then we’ve succeeded.”

But, noted the AP religion writer, somewhat quizzically;

Despite all the effort, there is little evidence religious votes are shifting. A Pew poll released last week showed the political preferences of religious voters, including highly sought Catholics and white evangelicals, have scarcely budged since 2004.

“What? How can that be? We got rabbis. We got ministers. We got imams. We got evangelicals and nuns and Gospel singers . . . ”

Boy, when they don’t get it, they really, really don’t get it. Do they?

Barack Obama has named his vice-presidential running mate and I, for one, could not be happier with the Obama-Biden ticket. Senator Joe Biden’s contribution to the Candidate of Change’s campaign will be significant. Like Obama, Biden worked for only a short time in the private sector before entering public ’service’. Biden, 65, won his Senate seat at age 29 and he’s been there ever since.

During the 2006 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the Post’s Dana Milbank wrote this of Biden’s performance:

“Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., in his first 12 minutes of questioning the nominee, managed to get off only one question. Instead, during his 30-minute round of questioning, Biden spoke about his own Irish American roots, his “Grandfather Finnegan,” his son’s application to Princeton (he attended the University of Pennsylvania instead, Biden said), a speech the senator gave on the Princeton campus, the fact that Biden is “not a Princeton fan,” and his views on the eyeglasses of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).”

Joe Biden is a gift from heaven for the likes of Rush Limbaugh, for whom Joe Biden will provide countless quotable quotes. There’s probably not a politician in Washington more enamored of the sound of his own voice than Joe Biden, who once also admitted, “I exaggerate when I’m angry.”

Evidently, the McCain camp was ready for an Obama-Biden ticket and a campaign commercial already in the can for just such an emergency.

It’s not that Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. is a lightweight — far from it. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden is intimately familiar with the international scene.

But that is the only thing Biden really brings to the table — foreign policy experience — and even then, only after a fashion. As a Senator, Biden knows about foreign policy; he’s never set foreign policy, nor has he had to take responsibility should it fail.

When you are only one out of 100 Senators, there is always somebody else to point fingers at.

Obama’s choice of Joe Biden is yet another example of just how desperate Obama is becoming. Biden brings experience to the ticket, but in the process, demolishes the whole “change” message that gave Obama the edge — Biden’s been in the Senate since Obama was an Indonesian schoolboy.

And Biden brings as much baggage as he does experience — Biden’s previous presidential bids exploded spectacularly — especially his 1988 campaign in which he was caught plagiarizing speeches from British politician Neal Kinnock.

It was Joe Biden who made headlines and ruffled the feathers of folks like Reverend Jeremiah Wright by praising Obama to the New York Observer as “articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy“.

My favorite Biden quote was this one, as Biden was kicking off his latest run at the White House:

“In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”

Obama-Biden — the GOP Dream Ticket.