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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Obama leaves the folks what brung him

    Now that the primary is over for Barack Obama, now that he squeezed past Hillary Clinton using her voting record on the war in Iraq, Democrats get the feeling that Obama is leaving them behind on their top issue – the war in Iraq (Washington Times link);

    “If a perception takes hold that a candidate is flip-flopping on core convictions, that will hurt,” pollster Scott Rasmussen said, noting that nearly a third of voters are “up for grabs” this fall.

    A Fox 5/The Washington Times/Rasmussen Reports poll shows 19 percent of voters classified as “other” – neither Republican nor Democrat – think that on the Iraq war, Mr. Obama is “abandoning voters that got him nominated.” (Eleven percent of Democrats agree.) About 20 percent of independents think Mr. Obama is “not really going to change his opinion” on a U.S. withdrawal within 16 months of taking office, a pledge he has made repeatedly.

    A Newsweek poll found similar dissatisfaction among voters over Mr. Obama’s shifts in policy positions. In the survey, 53 percent of voters said he recalibrated his stances on key issues such as the war and President Bush’s new electronic surveillance law in order to gain political advantage.

    But Democrats should be accustomed to their candidates leaving them in the dust. John Kerry did it, the Democrats did it after the 2006 mid terms. Bill Clinton did it in 1993 and after the 1996 election. In 1993 he promised a middle class tax cut, instead we got the biggest tax hike in our history, Before the 1996 election he promised Democrats he’d restructure the welfare reform bill he signed that year, and then he ignored them for four years and changed nothing.

    That can be credited to two things – the Democrat platform and the Far Left voters are detached from realityand the candidates know the Far Left’s agenda will destroy the nation and Democrats candidates will say anything to win no matter how looney it makes them sound. Also, the Far Left is a gullible bunch who wouldn’t accept reality if it was handed to them on a platter soaked in gravy.

  • EO oil ban lifted

    The President lifted the off-shore oil drilling his father put in place in 1990 according to Reuters;

    President George W. Bush on Monday lifted a White House ban on offshore drilling to try to drive down soaring energy prices, a largely symbolic bid unlikely to have any short-term impact on high gasoline costs.

    Yeah, largely symbolic…because the Democrats wouldn’t throw the American people any real relief from the high cost of gasoline if their lives depended on it.

    High gasoline prices and soaring food prices have irked American consumers in a presidential election year, when Bush’s Republicans are trying to keep the White House and wrest control of Congress back from Democrats.

    “Today, I’ve taken every step within my power to allow offshore exploration,” Bush told reporters. “This means the only thing standing between the American people and these vast oil resources is action from the U.S. Congress.”

    The President tried to act seven years ago, but between the quaking RINOs and the Democrats, Congress couldn’t find the guts to make a decision besides throw money at that still undiscovered magic alternate energy source that doesn’t send enviro-whackos into hyperspace. Three years ago, the President also allowed oil development companies to do some exploration in ANWR. He’s done all he can do. It’s up to those weak-kneed politicians in Congress.

    House Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Bush’s plan a “hoax,” joining a chorus of condemnations from environmental groups. The business-friendly U.S. Chamber of Commerce hailed the move as a step toward alleviating high gasoline prices.

    A “hoax” is what the Democrats have foisted on the American public for the last thirty years calling for an energy policy and doing nothing.

    Democratic White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign also criticized Bush’s move. “It would merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for 30 years,” spokesman Bill Burton said.

    The failed energy policies of the last thirty years – ya mean that we haven’t developed any new sources or built any refineries for thirty years? Is that the failed policy you’re talking about, doofus?

    Yeah, ya’all go ahead and sit out the next election, or vote for someone who’ll never get near the White House to make your stupid point and we’ll get more ignorant crap like this inflicted on us. I’ve lived in third world countries before…it’s not much fun, trust me.

    More and better commentary from Baldilocks.

  • It’s Sept. 10th, 2001 again

    We all remember where we were on September 11th, 2001, we remember seeing the towers collapse. Some of us forget that the world and history didn’t begin on that day and at that moment. But here to remind us is the Washington Post which has decided to regale us with the Chandra Levy murder story.

    If you shake those pre-9/11 cobwebs from your head, you might remember that the news channels were saturated with the latest photos of then-Congressman Gary Condit or various members of his family and their doings on any given day.  In fact I remember my second or third thought  after seeing the cloud of smoke roiling from the Pentagon while I stood in our conference room window facing west was of how thankful Condit would be that the media would forget about his affair and the speculation of his involvement in Levy’s disappearance.

    So the Washington Post has decided that the war against terror is over and they want to change the subject and distract their audience from real campaign issues by turning the clock back to the day before Mohammed Atta and his posse struck us. After all, if we keep thinking about the war against terror, we might find weaknesses in the Post’s chosen candidate.

  • It’s getting crowded under that bus

    Barak Obama threw one of the Kings of Comedy under the bus Friday night according to the United Press International. Bernie Mac made some off-color jokes during an Obama fund raiser (that’s kind of what Bernie Mac does for a living, isn’t it?) and the crowd booed and heckled him a bit. Then Obama chastized him;

    “Senator Obama told Bernie Mac that he doesn’t condone these statements and believes what was said was inappropriate,” the campaign team said.

    Obama thanked the comedian for the introduction, but later offered a mixed response to the questionable material.

    “That means, by the way, Bernie, you got to clean up your act,” Obama said after calling for increased equality. “This is a family affair. … I’m just messing with you, man.”

    Jeez, Obama picked Bernie Mac to perform, and that’s the kind of material Bernie uses in his act. If there’s any act that needs cleaning up, it’s Barack for his poor judgment. And then he tries having it both ways with his “I’m just messing with you, man” schtick.

    I’d be real reticent about accepting a job in the Obama Administration – he’s going to leave a lot of corpses behind him if his campaign is any indication of how he’ll treat his cabinet.

  • From My Inbox

    I guess everyone is getting the sense I’ve run out of stuff to write today, so thankfully, they’ve been emailing me stuff and I’ll share some of it with you here.

    DPUD sent me a link to The Drawn Cutlass who wrote about a Native American sniper in the US Army who just finished a stint in the Canadian Army and decided to switch sides (I kid). It’s a fairly fascinating story, but each of those guys who stand in the breech are fascinating in their own ways.

    My buddy D. wrote “Four Months For Victory” at The Dillard Doctrine.

    WHO/WHAT: On July 9, Vets for Freedom will hold a press conference—featuring over a dozen Iraq war veterans—to launch a national “Four Months, For Victory” media and grassroots campaign. The effort will culminate on Veterans Day (November 11) and is intended to inform the American public and key lawmakers about the phenomenal success that our troops have achieved as a result of the surge and the importance of ensuring victory in Iraq, Afghanistan and the overall Global war on Terrorism.

    The launch includes a multi-million dollar television-advertising buy in target markets and on national cable that will air next week and run throughout July and August. The first television ad will be released at the press conference featuring the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans appearing in the ad. These pointed ads are aimed at informing the American people about the truth regarding progress in Iraq and Afghanistan .

    Here’s the VFF ad I’ve had in my YouTube account waiting for someone more qualified than myself to write about the VFF;

    [youtube 4p1aKqz0_IM nolink]

    Go read the rest at D.’s house.

    Bruce Kessler at The Democracy Project sent me this link to his review of the upcoming “Generation Kill” HBO project about the a Marine unit during the initial invasion of Hussein’s Iraq. He put a lot of work into the research, and even though he hasn’t seen the movie or read the book, he’s assembled a lot of background on it.

    Jacob wants you to read about the DNC hiding the homeless people in Denver during their convention at this American Pundit link.

    In order to keep homeless residents out of sight during the Democratic National Convention, the city of Denver is giving away passes to local activities and televisions have been donated to homeless shelters.

    A plan has been developed to provide interested homeless people with free access to cultural activities. They include the Denver Zoo and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and they won’t have to worry about paying for transportation.

    “We’ll have bus tokens if they need them,” Parvensky said.

    Isn’t that nice? For one whole week, the homeless don’t have to worry about what they’ll do with their free time. But then, that’s the Democrats for you – just so long as they do something for the homeless in Denver while the Democrats have to see them, then the Democrats feel good about themselves. Maybe they could give them jobs at the Convention instead…a little life experience. Or buy them new styrofoam cups.

    Speaking of begging…This Ain’t Hell just got it’s first donation from one of your fellow readers. I won’t embarrass him or her but I am grateful. Thanks loads. Now what’s wrong with the rest of you?

    If you won’t send me money, at least send me tips and I’ll add them here.

  • Phil Gramm’s whiner remarks explained

    In Wednesday’s Washington Times, former Senator and McCain adviser Phil Gramm was quoted as saying;

    “You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”

    “We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

    “We’ve never been more dominant; we’ve never had more natural advantages than we have today,” he said. “We have benefited greatly” from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years.

    Mr. Gramm said the constant drubbing of the media on the economy’s problems is one reason people have lost confidence.

    That’s the same thing I’ve been saying here – CNBC was advising people to “invest” in their homes, and then they act shocked when people start losing their homes after they sink their savings into home improvement. When the stock market jumped 35% in 2003, where were cheerleaders from the 90s?

    Regardless, the intellectually vacant Obama writers decided to create a comedy sketch  out of Gramm’s remarks for the intellectually vacant Obama to perform in Virginia last night;

      “Today one of his top economic advisers … said that we’re merely in a mental recession; that’s what he said,” Mr. Obama said, chuckling. “He didn’t say this, but I guess what he meant was it’s a figment of your imagination, these high gas prices.”

    He paused for comic effect while the voters digested the Texas Republican’s remarks, which Mr. McCain denounced when reporters asked about the story.

    “Then he deemed the United States, and I quote, ‘A nation of whiners.’ Whoa,” Mr. Obama said. “A nation of whiners?”

    “I believe that the person here in Michigan that just lost his job isn’t suffering from a mental recession. I believe the mother here in Michigan and around America that is trying to get enough money to educate their children isn’t whining,” Mr. McCain said while campaigning in Belleville, Mich.

    “America’s in great difficulty and we are experiencing enormous economic challenges as well as others,” Mr. McCain added.

    Um, ah, Mr. Obama, you called us whiners. You said we cling to our guns and our faith out of ignorance and helplessness. Remember that? And Phil Gramm wasn’t talking about us, he was talking about you.

    Mr. Gramm expanded on his point in a telephone call to The Times on Thursday.

    “When I spoke of whiners at my breakfast with The Washington Times on Wednesday, I was talking about American leaders who whine instead of lead,” Mr. Gramm said in the phone call.

    He said he was talking about American “leaders who blame speculators and oil companies for high oil prices and yet have no proposal to produce more energy here at home.”

    The former senator also said he was referring to “leaders who think we can’t compete with even Mexico and believe that we should build a wall around America and go hide under a rock somewhere.”

    “Certain too many members of Congress and the Barack Obama campaign fall into the category of whiners,” he said. “We don’t need whining. We need leadership.”

    You can throw in that group of people who think that Obama, or any politician can rescue us from our own excesses and vices. Those fainting Marys and cheering imbeciles that think Obama’s crafted and refined rhetoric will translate into better lives for us all. Those vacant stares and gap-toothed grinning mugs that hang on every sculpted phrase and justify the venom and hatred that lies under the campaign’s exalted, beatified grandiloquence.

  • Obama the Rock Star again

    Cousin Scott alerts me that he saw Obama on the cover of the Rolling Stone (apologies to Doctor Hook) this month so I went and found the cover;

    rolling-stone-2.bmp

    Not surprisingly, I discover that he’s been on the cover of the Rolling Stone (apologies to Doctor Hook) back in March, too. The covers for this year;

    rolling-stone-1.bmp

    I wonder who the editors of The Rolling Stone will be voting for in November.

  • The new “malaise” speech

    In 1977, Jimmy Carter told us to get out of our energy problems, we needed to put on a cardigan and turn our heat in our houses down to 68 degrees. When that didn’t solve our problems, I remember he gave a speech in July 1979 (later to be dubbed the “Malaise Speech” by the media) when he blamed Americans for our slowed economy and our weak perception overseas.

    Carter rolled out the new Energy Department which was supposed to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, but Carter told us we needed to get off our asses, paste smiles on our faces and pull the country out the doldrums. The following year, America answered him at the polls and kicked him to the curb. Then with reduced taxes and a strong military, we pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps and launched the country into the 21st Century.

    Now, we’ve got the new Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, telling us essentially the same thing – we’re a bunch of losers and he’s ashamed of us. Remember when he called us “bitter”?

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

    Even in his apology he called us stupid;

    There has been a small “political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois, who are bitter,” Obama said Saturday morning at a town hall-style meeting at the university. “They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they’re going through.”

    “So I said, well you know, when you’re bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country.”

    Take the statement he made a few months ago;

    We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.

    Yeah, ya buncha lazy slobs. Who do you think you are to want a little comfort in your life and benefit from what our antecedents worked for and left us?

    Yesterday he was ashamed of us, too, because we aren’t multi-lingual;

    “Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English, because they will learn English, you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish,” he said. “We should have every child speaking more than one language.”

    For comic effect, he added, “It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is ‘Merci beaucoup.’”

    What are we doing expecting people to learn our language when they live in our country? We can’t even speak the language of countries we may never visit. Who do we think we are? He’s embarrassed. Baldilocks wonders how many languages The Messiah speaks. I learned Spanish (to meet chicas) and German (to order beer and chow and to find the nearest toilet) so what’s wrong with the rest of you?

    When Obama spoke to the League of United Latin American Citizens, he didn’t mention the immigrants who can’t speak English like he did to the Americans previously. He told them that’s he’s going to protect them from the evil white folks;

    He won cheers for promising it would be a priority his first year in office and saying “it is time” to “finally bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows.”

    I hope he can teach us all Spanish by then, since he’s not all that concerned about those shadow-dwelling illegals learning English.

    But I see a pattern developing, the same pattern of the Carter years. We all need to start living up to the Democrats’ expectations of us. We need to set aside all of our earned comforts and start working to make the Democrats proud of us…or at least not be embarrassed by our rube, uncultured behavior. Now, that’s change we can believe in.

    ADDED: For those of you who are keeping track (Allen Wood), I wrote this before Rush began his program with the same format.