This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • McCain hits Obama with Chavez

    Hugo Chavez makes the big time in American politics as a star in the latest John McCain ad with Chavez’ rant just last week about “shit Americans”;

    [youtube AHQwsxHiaY0 nolink]

    The Washington Times says the ad is aimed at Hispanic Americans;

    In the ad – replete with bleeps to cover up Mr. Chavez’s repeated expletives in condemning Americans – the McCain campaign charges that Mr. Obama would meet unconditionally with Mr. Chavez and other anti-American foreign leaders. “Do you believe we should talk with Chavez?” the announcer asks.

    The McCain campaign said Hispanic voters are particularly open to the message because many of them are immigrants who came to the U.S. seeking to escape the sort of political tactics Mr. Chavez employs.

    “They come to American for freedom, and yet Senator Obama seems overly willing to deal with a tin-pot dictator,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said.

    Typically, the Obama campaign’s response has little to do with reality;

    Federico de Jesus, an Obama campaign spokesman, called the new Chavez ad the “latest distortion” from Mr. McCain, and said it’s actually President Bush’s policy that has boosted the Venezuelan leader.

    “We cannot afford more of the same economic policies that have driven us into a ditch, and we cannot afford more of the same foreign policy that has strengthened Chavez and set back U.S. leadership in Latin America while doing nothing to break our dependence on foreign oil,” he said.

    Chavez was anti-US before the Bush Administration came into existence. Chavez merely took advantage of the US Left’s disdain and uses Bush as a boogeyman to whip up the crowds of supporters in his own country (like he was doing last week in the video). The reason we haven’t broken our dependence on foreign oil is because we aren’t allowed by our own legislatures to access our own sources, it has nothing to do with George Bush or Hugo Chavez. It’s the Democrats.

    The only part of the ad I disagree with is the phrase “Do you believe we should talk with Chavez?” It ought to be “Do you believe we could talk with Chavez?”The only way Chavez will accept any audience with a US leader is if the president (who ever it is) comes crawling across the floor of the Miraflores Palace. And right now, Obama is probably just the guy to that.

    UPDATED: Chavez responds as quoted by ElUniversal;

    “I will not reply to any candidate (Obama or McCain). We will try to understand each other, as presidents, with whomever who turns out to take office. Now, they are electioneering, seeking votes, and attacking Chávez there will probably give them votes in some sectors.”

  • That 3% get vocal

    In Coral Gables, FL, a group calling themselves “Blacks Against Obama” interrupted his usual yammering blather. Funny, but there’s nothing in the media about it;

    [youtube idEs94sX0DE nolink]

    UPDATED: S. Weasel, one of my favorite bloggers, dropped by and dropped this link to his his take on the speech Obama was giving when he was interrupted.

  • Obama Camp

    Yesterday Gateway Pundit wrote that Obama was telling a crowd of supporters in Elko, Nevada to “get in their face” referring to Obama opponents and voters who haven’t fallen for the empty rhetoric. Well, today I got an email from my new BFF, Sheila O’Connell, the Maryland State Director of the Obama campaign inviting me to go to “Obama Camp”;

    By participating in Camp Obama, you’ll get the kind of experience that Barack got as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he learned that real change happens from the bottom up.

    That experience transformed Barack’s life and made him who he is today.

    What’s that tingling in my leg? Here’s a screen capture of the email;

    Yeah, I know it’s Camp Obama, but Obama Camp sounds more descriptive. Here’s your chance to experience a bit of Obama’s life for yourself…and be brainwashed. It seems to me to be a bit too cultish…and a little bit like Kramers’ Real Jay Peterman Fantasy Tour. If they start passing out blue jogging suits, clompy Nike sneakers and Baby Three Musketeer bars, I’d be out of there.

  • Obama’s Maryland insurgents

    Another wonderful email from the Obama campaign has me wondering what Obama knows that we don’t. It’s from the director of the campaign in Maryland;

    Apparently they figure Maryland is a lock in November, but they’re a little iffy on Virginia. And since all of you dumbass rubes in Virginia can’t figure the election out for yourselves, it’s going to take us smart Marylanders (pronounced Merliners) to set you straight.

    UPDATED: Stop the ACLU says it’s dead even in Virginia, but it also a dead heat in Pennsylvania. Are we going to send Marylanders into bitter-ass PA, too?

  • More window dressing

    Remember back in April when Obama campaign workers ordered “More white people, I need more white people” as backdrop for Michelle Obama’s speech? At the time, Ben Smith at Politico recounted;

    The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.”

    Well, the same principle is being applied at the Obama campaign in countering John McCain’s Vice presidential choice Sarah Palin, according to the Washington Post;

    The Obama campaign is seeking to address a range of festering problems, including the candidate’s persistent underperformance among female voters, especially the older ones. It rolled out a women’s outreach effort Monday, led by scores of prominent female entrepreneurs, athletes and politicians, including former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright, cosmetics entrepreneur Bobbi Brown and Yahoo! Inc. President Sue Decker.

    The women will act as surrogates for Obama, advocating his support for issues such as equal pay, expansion of family leave and reduction of health care costs. Prominent women also are flooding the airwaves on Obama’s behalf, including Sen. Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Govs. Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), a former Hillary Rodham Clinton backer.

    Holy mackeral! It’ll take all of those women, all of that horsepower, “acting as surrogates” to negate the effect of one little working Mom, who, according to Democrats, is from one backwater state and had no foreign policy credientials, no experience? I guess that highlights the danger of playing identity politics, doesn’t it?

    You’d think Obama would try to address the problem that he’s bleeding female voters by changing his policies (didn’t women put President Bush in office twice?) instead of trying to manipulate the electorate with window dressing. If he’s losing women, it’s because they don’t trust him….so why does he think he can cover up his shortcomings with “surrogates”? How gullible does he think women are?

  • Who’s attacking whom, here?

    The day after his campaign ran an ad mocking John McCain’s war injuries, just a few days after he referred to Sarah Palin as a lipsticked pig, Barack Obama warned supporters to look out for sleazy ads and unwarrated attacks on him, according to the Washington Times;

    Sen. Barack Obama told voters not to fall for Republican attempts to “distort my record,” keeping up his attacks on Sen. John McCain, whose campaign criticized the Democrat for talking politics during a hurricane.

    During a rally that was scaled back as Hurricane Ike swamped Texas, the Democratic presidential nominee said Republicans “will try to undermine your trust in what the Democrats are trying to do,” but warned voters in the blue-leaning swing state that “the times are too serious for those strategies to work.”

    “If we don’t [start] the changes that we need starting right now, then our children may not have the same kind of America that we want them to have,” Mr. Obama said.

    I think it’ll be pretty hard for the McCain campaign to distort Obama’s record since he doesn’t have one. Regardless, here’s a quick perusal of headlines in today’s news. From the International Herald Tribune;

    From AFP;

    From The Age;

    From SeaCoast Online;

    In fact, if you do a Yahoo search in the news on “Obama+attack” you get 11,000 results that begin like this;

    Now a search of “McCain+attack” results in 11,000 hits, too (the first three articles were the same, so I cut one out)

    So who is attacking whom here? I remember John McCain extending his hand on the night of Obama’s nomination in an ad that was gentlemanly. He didn’t even bother to campaign that night so Obama could have his night to himself. Obama repaid that gesture by conducting an interview while John McCain accepted his party’s nomination.

    The only thing that has changed about the way Obama is conducting this campaign from Democrat campaigns in the past is the face. Oh, and did I mention he has a funny name?

  • We know what they think of veterans now

    Well, if we didn’t know before, we know now what the Democrats think of veterans. From Cuffy Meigs we see how Obama is willing to make fun of John McCain because of the injuries he suffered after ejecting from his aircraft after being shot down (hint: think about that for a second. You’re cruising along a the speed of sound and suddenly stop and fall a few thousand feet…it’s not the cakewalk it looks like on TV) and beaten by his captors and refused medical attention for a couple of years. Now he can’t manipulate his fingers to type…har-di-har-har.

    Wesley Clark said back in June that McCain‘s time as a prisoner doesn’t give any special insight to being president. Maybe John McCain’s time as a prisoner didn’t make him presidential material, but the training he got at Annapolis and the years after his capture as a military officer give him a leg up on a “community organizer” as far as leadership and decision-making…well, to every one except a community organizer.

    And did I mention that Track Palin was arrested in a vandalism ring a few years ago and part of his plea deal was to go in the Alaska National Guard? Evidence? We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence. Everyone knows that the military is just jam-packed with criminals.

    And idiots. John Kerry said so

    I remember when Bill Clinton was trying to balance the budget, one of the first things he did was start a program for veterans to pay for their health care (called TriCare) – this was after the Democrat Congress doubled the copay for everyone (including recruiters and ROTC instructors who were stationed away from military healthcare facilities). Then Bill Clinton kicked veterans 65 and over off of TriCare and put them on Medicare to save more money (George Bush gave it back, by the way).

    But, hey, the Democrats accepted a letter from the IVAW, so I guess we can trust them to take care of vets now, right?

    UPDATED: Parody video from Scrappleface (h/t Bloodthirsty Liberal‘s Aunt Agatha)

    [youtube DR0k_-IFqJk nolink]

  • More change you can forget about

    Up until recently, Obama’s “new politics” included campaigning in all 50 states rather than in a handfull of states where he could influence electoral votes rather than popular support. Well, that’s gone under the proverbial bus according to the Washington Times;

    Despite the talk about a changing electoral map and new strategies, Barack Obama is pulling back from his 50-state plan as John McCain has solidified Republican support, turning November’s presidential election into a contest for the same handful of states that have swung the last two contests.

    The first round of post-convention polling shows Mr. McCain, in picking Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, has enthused Republicans. Meanwhile Mr. Obama, the Democrats’ nominee, is pulling back resources from Georgia, a state he once boasted he would flip Democratic; is stepping up efforts to hold Democrats in Pennsylvania and Michigan; and is showering attention on Ohio, the lynchpin in Republicans’ 2004 victory.

    But, don’t worry, just because he changes his mind on electioneering, that doesn’t mean he”ll change his mind on middleclass tax cuts or national healthcare or the war in Iraq or his pledge to make the US the world’s BFF or any of those myriad other promises about creating jobs and punishing corporations.

    it seems the only thing that’s changing is the perception of change.