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

Category: John McCain/Sarah Palin

  • Our political salvation

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    Washington Post’s “On Faith” discussion drifted off into the spiritual realm of politics today asking if either Obama or McCain were really “The One” we’re looking for. David Waters says this election is about finding our messiah;

    In this presidential election, as in every presidential election, we’re all looking for The One who can lead us to the promised land, The One who can heal the economy, deliver us from demonic forces of evil, save us from the dreadful mistakes of The Previous One.

    I thought it was pretty juvenile to think that any politician could lead us into the Promised Land. As you read through the piece, Waters admits it, too. But looking at the moon-eyed Obama supporters, a rational person would ask “what’s wrong with these people? ” The Ron Paul crowd is no different – they think their prophet isn’t really a crooked self-serving politician, even though all of the rest are crooked and self-serving.

    Then I ran across this article on Breitbart and it all came home for me

    Police said the 42-year-old man dialed 911 twice last week so he could have his sub [sandwich] made correctly. The second call was to complain that officers weren’t arriving fast enough.

    Subway workers told police Peterson became belligerent and yelled when they were fixing his order. They locked him out of the store after he left to call police.

    When officers arrived, they tried to calm Peterson and explain the proper use of 911. Those efforts failed, and he was arrested on a charge of making false 911 calls.

    That’s an Obama supporter; government has all of the solutions to every petty problem that pops up in our lives. Can’t pay your mortgage because you don’t understand variable rate mortgages? Vote for someone who promises to bail you out. Can’t find a broker who gives you good investment advice? Vote for someone who wants to regulate the industry.  Remember in the 1992 election some pinhead in Virginia asked Bill Clinton to be our national father?

    We don’t need father-figures, we need someone who does what the Constitution says he should do; defend the Constitution from our enemies and preserve our rights. I already have a savior and I know how to fix my own sandwiches.

  • The One

    I guess John McCain’s campaign figures that their Brittney Spear/Paris Hilton ad polled well the other day because they released an “internet only” ad entitled “The One”;

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    It pokes holes in the inflated ego of The Barack. From Ben Smith;

    The ad quotes Obama in both serious riffs telling a crowd “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for”; and in a sarcastic one, joking to an audience, “You will experience an epiphany and you will say to yourself, ‘I have to vote for Barack.’”

    The ad then shows Obama expressing his hope that America will look back at the 2008 election as the beginning of the end of global warming. The ad then cuts to an image a Charlton Heston, as Moses, parting the Red Sea, before concluding:

    “Barack Obama may be The One, but is he ready to lead?”

    Of course, the New York Times and the Obama campaign didn’t see anything funny about it;

     Hari Sevugan, one of its spokesmen: “It’s downright sad that on a day when we learned that 51,000 Americans lost their jobs, a candidate for the presidency is spending all of his time and the powerful platform he has on these sorts of juvenile antics. Senator McCain can keep telling everyone how ‘proud’ he is of these political stunts which even his Republican friends and advisors have called ‘childish’, but Barack Obama will continue talking about his plan to jumpstart our economy by giving working families $1,000 of immediate relief.”

    Whew, when the Obama campaign starts talking about rebates, who know someone hit a nerve. The LA Times has the McCain response;

    On the campaign plane, McCain spokeswoman Nicolle Wallace defended the clip as just another harmless quip. “There is an important role for humor in political campaigns,” she told reporters. “I think all of us would slit our wrists if there wasn’t.”

    She also said the spot had a serious purpose: To buck up any McCain backers who may have been dispirited watching Obama dominate the news with his overseas trip and rally. The hope is to “make sure they understand that Barack Obama, who stands in front of tens of thousands, is not anything to be intimidated by,” she said. “We’re proud we’re showcasing our candidate surrounded by workers.”

    Aside from the Moses clip, the rest is in Barack’s own words, so where’s the smear? Where’s the attack? What’s to be upset about? It’s his ideas and his perception of himself that scares people away…not that superficial crap he complains about. The hit dog yelps.

  • So, get out of the kitchen

    As the Obama campaign realizes that his multi-million-dollar foray into foreign policy isn’t giving Obama the return at the polls they had expected, they’ve decided to take the “low road”. (Washington Times link)

    Sen. John McCain accused presidential opponent Sen. Barack Obama on Thursday of playing the race card.

    Mr. Obama ridiculed Mr. McCain for depicting him as a lightweight celebrity.

    A day after the release of a McCain ad comparing Mr. Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, both campaigns veered away from the issues and into a squabble over who said what, who intended what and who insinuated the rest.

    “Folks ought to just buckle up their seat belts,” said Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, telling reporters on a conference call that they can expect more.

    So the campaign decided to update their “Fight the Smears” page of the campaign’s website.

    Lie:
    John McCain, his spokesmen, and his TV ads have all been politicizing our wounded heroes by making the false claim that Barack Obama snubbed wounded troops by not visiting them on his trip overseas because TV cameras would not be allowed to cover the visit.

    Truth:
    The Obama campaign originally planned a private trip (no media) to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany to visit wounded troops, but canceled it to prevent the perception of politicizing our troops.

    Senator Obama was honored to meet with our men and women in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan during his foreign trip and has visited a combat support hospital in Baghdad as well as wounded soldiers at Walter Reed without fanfare. Barack Obama also called wounded troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center while overseas.

    Yeah, Obama is always ready and willing to sacrifice a photo opportunity for someone else’s dignity, blah, blah blah. He’d hold up a terrorist’s severed head for the cameras if he thought it’d get a vote or two. As evidence, the Obama campaign offers this video of an Andrea Mitchell interview.

    [youtube LifsuCdTnXo nolink]

    The video doesn’t prove anything except that Andrea Mitchell doesn’t like the McCain ad. Obama also puts up completely useless wire diagram (it looks like IVAW’s Montalvan did it) that describes Who’s Behind the Smears. Somehow Willie Horton’s name cames up. DIdn’t Al Gore start the Willie Horton stuff? Why isn’t his name up there?

    So to counter the ad, Messiah tells voters something that IS absolutely untrue;

     Hours earlier, the McCain campaign said Mr. Obama crossed the line of racial politics. Mr. Obama said Wednesday that President Bush and Mr. McCain attacked him as unworthy of the presidency because, as the Democrat put it, he doesn’t “look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills.”

    I’d like Obama to prove that one. And I’d like an apology from the Obama campaign for thinking I’m so damn stupid I’d believe that.

  • Ad Wars

    I just got an email from the Obama campaign warning me about John McCain taking “the low road” of politics;

    Friend —

    As we face the fundraising deadline at midnight tonight, I want you to know what we are up against.

    Less than 24 hours ago, the McCain campaign launched the latest and lowest in a series of misleading attack ads.

    This Karl Rove-style ploy misleads people about Barack’s energy plan and even mocks his ability to inspire voters and bring Americans back into the political process.

    Watchdogs in the media are calling McCain’s accusations “bogus,” “desperate,” “wrong,” “misleading,” “ugly,” “offensive,” “reckless,” and “a nasty turn into the gutter.”

    Some of McCain’s own supporters agree. One senior Republican strategist quoted by the Washington Post called the latest ad a “wild swing at Obama” that reflects his campaign’s “increasing bitterness” and the lack of “any coherent strategy to elect McCain.”

    Even John Weaver, a strategist who worked for McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000 and on his current campaign last year, called the ad “childish,” adding that this negative strategy “diminishes John McCain” and “needs to stop.”

    The ad? This one;

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    I thought it was pretty tame, considering what McCain could have said about the Fluff Master. But Obama thinks I should send him some money so he can run this ad;

    [youtube zPPLSHKH0h4 nolink]

     With the election less than 100 days away, media pundits and Washington insiders will be watching our fundraising numbers more closely than ever.

    In the face of these new attacks, you can help demonstrate that a movement funded by grassroots supporters giving only what they can afford is ready to take on the Republican fundraising machine and its onslaught of negativity.

    Your support will also give this campaign a crucial boost in momentum as we build our organization to compete in all 50 states.

    There are only hours left to make an impact in July.

    Yeah, what McCain ran was an attack ad. Which part is untrue? Well, none of it, actually. A statement of facts is not an attack. Obama’s ad is an attack ad, though. It attacks common sense by talking about “same old politics” and then lays out Obama’s agenda that’s the same old Democrat rhetoric without real solutions. Same old politics indeed.

  • So who’s making this campaign dirty?

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    Not to be outdone by the New Yorker, Vanity Fair decided they’d take a jab at Cindy and John McCain with their cover. It seems to me that all of the “dirty politics” being played this year is by the media and not politicians. I guess this race isn’t exciting enough for them, they have to poke the bear.

  • NY Times red pencils McCain’s opinion

    I read it first at Little Green Footballs and then clicked over to Drudge to read the whole thing, and it’s pretty startling. It seems that the New York Times is now rejecting people’s opinions based on style issues. Obama’s opinion piece a few weeks ago in the Times is apparently the style guide.

    ‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece,’ NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain’s staff. ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.’

    Let me ask this question of the NYT’s editors…how do you think you can get away with presenting one politician’s opinion and then dictating to another what his rebuttal will be?

    NYT’s Shipley advised McCain to try again: ‘I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft.’

    I’d be damned if I ever gave the New York Times anything that’d be beneficial to their traffic or their circulation, if I were John McCain – but he probably will.

    The Times says they want “new information” to publish. Well, how about this line from McCain’s piece;

    Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

    Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

    It must all be new information because Obama doesn’t know it – or the American public doesn’t know it and Obama is lying to them.

    Of course the Times doesn’t want to have to publish this, it makes them look bad…but not as bad as they look because of this rejection notice. I guess they figured that McCain wouldn’t tell the rest of the planet about the New York Times trying to deceive the American public.

  • The soft bigotry of low expectations

    While Jesse Jackson tosses around the forbidden word and threatens Obama’s gentalia, there many more important leaders in the Black community who are saying much more important things – things like educating Black youths. At the NAACP convention yesterday, John McCain chose to speak to the membership about just that (Washington Times editorial);

    Sen. John McCain, who spoke Wednesday, chose a mostly educational theme. This was an issue at the time of the civil-rights movement that demanded educational opportunity and access for all. Today, students have achieved equal access to be replaced with an inexcusable achievement gap afflicting mostly poor black children. As Mr. McCain pointed out: “What is the value of access to a failing school?”

    Many conservatives, from President Bush to Condoleezza Rice, Rod Paige and Colin Powell, have argued that the glaring disparity in black and white educational achievement is this nation’s present-day “civil rights” issue and that our challenge is to overcome “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

    But the NAACP and Barack Obama have a vested interest in keeping Black children uneducated. As long as the children remain low performers, Obama and the NAACP can point to bigotry, they can blame there’s not enough money being spent by the government on Black children. The last time I checked, the District of Columbia spent $12,000/year educating a child and they’re churning out illiterate kids – so money really can’t be the problem.

    Both the NAACP and Barack Obama oppose vouchers, but according to the Washington Times 7,000 families in the District of Columbia have applied for DC Opportunity Scholarships (the equivalent of vouchers) this year.

    Because Obama and the NAACP have bound themselves up with the teachers’ unions, they refuse to see what DC parents see – the politics of education are destroying the future of our children. The disparity in education leads to an economic disparity, but Obama and the others on the Left are perfectly comfortable allowing that disparity to deepen for short term political gain.

    As always, the answer from the Left will be to throw more money at the problem. That’s not the new politics we hear about from Barack Obama. That’s not hope, it’s not change…it’s the failed politics of the past.

  • Obama threatens Pakistan…again

    Suddenly finding his cowboy side, Obama has decided that Pakistan is a bigger threat than Iran. TimesOnline reports that he has once again threatened to invade Pakistan;

    “We cannot tolerate a terrorist sanctuary, and as president, I won’t,” Mr Obama said. “We must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights.”

    He’s so tough with our allies, isn’t he? Yet he trembles at thought of Ahmadinejad or talking tough to the Islamic Republic – the real source of the threat to this nation.

    Disregarding the fact that thousands of al Qaeda operatives have given up the ghost in Iraq, Obama continued to deride the operation in Iraq;

    Insisting that Iraq is not now and never was the “central front in the war on terror”, the White House hopeful dismissed John McCain’s contention that his withdrawal plan amounted to surrender. His Republican rival had focused exclusively on a country which had no involvement in the September 11 attacks at the expense of wider strategic aims crucial to America’s security, he said.

    McCain’s campaign was quick to counter Obama’s tough talk;

    “Senator Obama is departing soon on a trip abroad that will include a fact-finding mission to Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said in remarks released by his campaign.

    “I note that he is speaking today about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan before he has even left, before he has talked to General Petraeus, before he has seen the progress in Iraq, and before he has set foot in Afghanistan for the first time.

    “In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around: first you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy.”

    Since when has Obama presented a coherent policy on anything. That evil McCain campaign expects him to start now?

    Added: In related news, someone (forgive for not remembering who) emailed me this morning about Obama scrubbing his website of his policy statements against the surge. This writer asked me if I could chase down cached copies like I did on Kokesh last month. Before I could get my hands free today, Gateway Pundit and Wizbang beat me to it.

    Meanwhile, The Jawa Report writes that Michael Yon has declared the war in Iraq won. So Obama missed cleaning up the record of his policy by a coupla days. The thing is, when you’re President, you don’t get any Mulligans when it comes to policy. Ask Jimmy Carter. Bush and McCain have been right all along – cleaning up the whiney BS from your website and acting like a cowboy after the tough part doesn’t count.