Redstate

Posted at 7:10pm on Jul. 8, 2008 Now the fun starts.

Game on.

By Moe Lane

Expect the Democrats to howl about this one:

(H/T: Hot Air)

...and expect the Republicans to smile nastily and murmur "100 years, boychiks. 100 years." Not that the situation's the same, of course. The Democrats twisted McCain's position into a pretzel, but we can't do that to the Iraq position of the junior Senator from Illinois.

Obama himself beat us to it.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Obamafiles | RNC — Comments (18)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 4:24pm on Jul. 8, 2008 Record Complicates Obama's "Shift" To Center

By California Yankee

After running a primary campaign from the far left, Obama is now trying to shift right toward the center.

Obama is impeded in this shift by his extreme left wing positions and the voting record that earned him the tittle of the most liberal senator in 2007.

According to Bloomberg:

In recent weeks, Obama said he supports gun-ownership rights, backs legislation giving immunity to telephone companies that participated in an anti-terrorism surveillance program and would consider cutting corporate taxes. On July 3, he said he would ``continue to refine my policies'' on the Iraq War.

Obama built his candidacy on the support of his party's liberal base, which favors restrictions on guns and wiretapping, raising taxes for companies, and pulling U.S. forces from Iraq. As an Illinois state legislator, he voted against a law carving out self-defense exceptions to local handgun bans; as a U.S. senator, he opposed business tax cuts and extending warrantless eavesdropping, and backed tougher gun laws. On Iraq, he has long focused on ending the war and withdrawing troops.

Obama denies that he trying to shift his extreme left wing positions toward the center:

"I get tagged as being on the left and when I simply describe what have been my positions consistently, then suddenly people act surprised," Obama told reporters in Ohio on July 1. There haven't "been substantial shifts," he said.

Read on, there is more.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Budget | Center | Shift | taxes — Comments (9)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:58pm on Jul. 8, 2008 Thank You for Supporting Our Troops

By Congressman Mike Conaway

Thank you so much to the more than 4,800 of you who responded to the petition drive I started in support of General Petraeus and our troops' effort in Iraq. With your help, we were able to present this American hero with solid, heartfelt evidence of support for him, his troops, and their mission.

General Petraeus genuinely appreciated the gesture, and wrote the following letter of thanks for your heartfelt support:

Read on...

Posted in Congress | General Petraeus | Iraq | Petition | Victory — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:39pm on Jul. 8, 2008 Part of the Problem

Obama Campaign Ad

By absentee

We've got to run a different kind of campaign. So we're not going to go around doing negative ads. We're going to keep it positive. We're going to talk about the issues." - Sen. Barack Obama

You know an attack ad when you see it. They have lots of red text and "ominous" stills. They have that voice. You've seen them. The DNC has been running them for months now against John McCain.

Senator Obama, though, is bringing a new kind of politics. Right?

If the New York Times knows it's a negative ad, then it's a negative ad. Negative, as in not "positive." As the McCain campaign said today, "Barack Obama's commitment to a new type of politics is officially over."

Read On ...

Posted in 2008 | campaign ads | Obamafiles — Comments (23)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:33pm on Jul. 8, 2008 "Help Senator Barack Obama win and help Senator Barack Obama develop good space policy."

"Yes we can -- even in space"

By Jeff Emanuel

Yep, it's for real. A Barack Obama supporter who started the "Space Policy Advisory Group" on the suitably-titled "MyBO" social networking portion of Obama's Web site is asking for YOUR money, to -- in his words -- "Help Senator Barack Obama win and help Senator Barack Obama develop good space policy." (Click image at right to see a screencap)

That's profound stuff there. What exactly constitutes a "good space policy," and how will your donation "help Senator Barack Obama develop" that "good space policy"? That, my friends, is left to the imagination, because the title and subtitle of this post is the entirety of the text on that page. Just give them your money, don't ask, and trust that Obama's Space Policy, like everything else he promises, will be "good."

Heck, for an extra $25, he may throw in some Hope and Change, too. And a raffle ticket to the Denver worship service acceptance rally. And a front-row seat to an intelligence briefing. And....

Anyway, I digress. Just give him your money, and trust.

Brilliant. Let's make this an open thread.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | the Potemkin candidate — Comments (40)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:03pm on Jul. 8, 2008 Obama seeks to speak at the Brandenburg Gate

Move over, Reagan. Barry's here!

By Mark Kilmer

Barry's going to run around Europe and the Middle East later this year, and Germany's Spiegel Online offers this crass bit:

No location [for the Obama speech in Germany] has been announced, but the Berlin state government has reportedly been asked whether Obama can speak in front of the Brandenburg Gate, where former US President Ronald Reagan gave a famous speech in 1987. Reagan made a show of asking then-Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down" the Berlin Wall.

Yeah, we can hear it without his mouth having to move:

[more or what escapes from Barry's pie hole beneath the fold]

Posted in 2008 | Berlin | Brandenburg Gate | Gorbachev | Reagan — Comments (40)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:35pm on Jul. 8, 2008 McCain on Obama on Iraq: "I hope that he will reach a position."

Close Combat

By Dan McLaughlin

John McCain on Obama's recent wobbling on Iraq and Obama's concession that he would go to Iraq after McCain called him out on not visiting or meeting with our commander there:

Well, I think you know that I opposed the failed strategy of the Bush administration. I argued for the strategy that is succeeding. I have been to Iraq 8 times. I know the situation on the ground. I predicted we would succeed and we are succeeding. And, we are winning. That victory is fragile, it can be reversed. Sen. Obama opposed the surge. He said it would fail. He still is saying that it would fail. Now, last Thursday or Friday, it seemed for a while there he was agreeing with the surge, then maybe he's not. So, I'm glad he's going to Iraq for the second time. He hasn’t been there in 900 days. I'm glad, for the first time, he’s going to sit down with General Petraeus -- for the first time, a sit-down briefing, if you can believe that. And, I hope that he will reach a position. I don't know what position, because he's been all over the map, calling for immediate withdrawals, back in the primaries to now saying you know -- so it's hard to know. I hope that he'll go over there and get the kind of information he needs that he hasn't requested in the past...But, have no doubt what my position was when I called for additional troops, it was a very unpopular thing to do and many people said my campaign was dead and I said I'd rather lose a campaign then lose a war. He said it would fail, it has succeeded. [The] American people should take notice of that. So, I'll see what he has to say when he gets back from his visit to Iraq. And, I'm sure he'll be impressed with a sit down with one of the greatest generals that America has ever produced, General David Petraeus.

Of course, Obama has now apparently decided that the perception that he's a flip-flopper with no principles is an even more devastating demonstration of weakness than the perception that he would sell out our allies and abandon the mission in Iraq to pander to the anti-war left - really, it's just a choice of who he surrenders to first - so his surrogates are now claiming that it's a lie that Obama ever wavered in his commitment to abandon Iraq. Oceania was never, we repeat never, at war in Iraq! But in political campaigns, as in war, the enemy gets a say in your game plan, and McCain is unlikely to let Obama simultaneously escape responsibility for being wrong about the surge and for belatedly trying to escape the consequences of being wrong.

Read On...

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | John McCain — Comments (9)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:23am on Jul. 8, 2008 Bob Herbert freeloads his disillusionment.

Silly op-ed writer!

By Moe Lane

Bob Herbert is subbing for David Brooks today in the NYT Op-Ed, and his plaintive lament for the way that Senator Barack Obama's running away from his base is well worth the perusal (H/T: Hot Air). It's also meaningless, for the simple reason that the only way that Obama's going to even remotely care about Blue-on-Blue criticism is if it's accompanied with a torn-up check; and as near as I can tell, Bob Herbert's never given any money to Barack Obama at all.

Of course, people who have already given the maximum to the junior Senator from Illinois are (oddly enough) pretty much in the same boat as Mr. Herbert. Ah, the perils of premature infatuation...

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Obamafiles | The Audacity Of Hype — Comments (18)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:44am on Jul. 8, 2008 Question and answer time: the Senate FISA vote.

I spied something convex?

By Moe Lane

Q. OK, what's going on?
A. Assuming that Jesse Helms' funeral doesn't interfere, FISA passes the Senate today with telecom immunity intact. [UPDATE: The final votes will take place tomorrow, in order to allow Senators to attend Helms' funeral.]

Q. Just like that?
A. Just like that.

Q. Aren't there people in the Senate trying to stop it?
A. Not really, no. There are people in the Senate trying their best to look like they're stopping it, but this was all hashed out last week. What happens tomorrow will be about as spontaneous as Kabuki theater. Or any kind of traditional theater, really.

Read on.

Posted in Barack Obama | Congress | FISA | Obamafiles — Comments (21)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:12am on Jul. 8, 2008 So Tell Me, Mr. Immelt, Why Are You Killing American Servicemen?

Bill O’Reilly doesn’t let facts get in the way of a good story line

By blackhedd

Years ago, a large young man from Flint, Michigan with nothing better to do started stalking Roger Smith, who was then the CEO of General Motors Corporation. The young man, with a small film crew in tow, would stick a microphone under Smith’s nose and ask him all kinds of strange questions. Later, he assembled the pieces into what looked like a documentary but in fact was tendentious propaganda.

General Motors learned then that truth is no barrier to being smeared effectively. And young Michael Moore learned that craftily-packaged lies can change the world.

I was reminded of that when I heard that Bill O’Reilly, of Fox News, showed up last week at the National Governor’s Association meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And he appears to have gotten in front of attendee Jeffrey Immelt, who is the CEO of the General Electric Company of Fairfield, Connecticut.

What O’Reilly wanted to know from Immelt more or less boiled down to: Why are you still killing Americans in Iraq?

It turns out that this has been a hobbyhorse for O’Reilly for quite some time now. He’s generated several flaps about General Electric this year.

So this is my way of trying to cut off another one.

Keep reading…

Posted in Bill O'Reilly | Foreign Affairs | General Electric | Iran | nuclear weapons — Comments (30)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:43am on Jul. 8, 2008 Scratch Webb from the VP list.

Pity. I was pretty sure that we could have gotten him to flip out without too much trouble.

By Moe Lane

No, I'm not going to tell you my plan, because it's a), kind of lame; and b), if it actually would work, well, the man presumably will be running for re-election in four years. Anyway, via Hot Air I see that Webb has preemptively removed his name from consideration:

In a press release issued Monday, Webb said that he expressed to Senator Obama and Obama's presidential campaign his intent to stay in the U.S. Senate.

Webb has represented Virginia in the U.S. Senate as a Democrat for one-and-a-half years.

Webb said, "Last week I communicated to Senator Obama and his presidential campaign my firm intention to remain in the United States Senate, where I believe I am best equipped to serve the people of Virginia and this country. Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for Vice President."

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | James Webb | Veepstakes — Comments (15)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:04pm on Jul. 7, 2008 The Answer: Because they know it's *not real*

By Jeff Emanuel

The Question:

Why is it that the anti-theist Left wing goes nuts shrieking "Church and State" and spouting accusations of "[breaking] with longstanding precedent" by "unveil[ing] a presidential campaign ad infused with deeply religious tones" when they look hard enough, with enough prejudice, at the image below to find a phantom religious symbol in it...

...yet there's nary a peep from those same anti-religion Lefties when Barack Obama does this:

Evangelical Christians, and other religious individuals who occasionally feel drawn in by Barack Obama's rapidly-changing message, should keep that question, and the answer, in mind when considering who they want to support -- and why -- this election season.

The anti-religious Left allows Obama and other Democrats to use the imagery and the language of the Church, to attend and be active in churches for two decades-plus, and to speak to people of faith in what they assume is "their" language without argument or protestation (when a fraction of that level of "religious" activity would earn a Republican the title of "theocrat") because the Left knows Obama, et al are simply doing those things out of a need to appeal to the bitter religion-clingers, not because they actually believe or mean them in any way.

Christians should simply look at the Left's reaction to Barack Obama or any other Democrat politician's religious statements and claims of faith to gauge just how real those claims are. Just refer to the above exhibit for evidence of how serious, and how authentic, Barack Obama's are.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Church and State | Mike Huckabee | Obamafiles — Comments (43)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 4:05pm on Jul. 7, 2008 Attempts to defend Obama's shift on Iraq lack logic, seriousness, chronology

By Jeff Emanuel

Attempts to come to terms with, and to defend, Barack Obama's sudden attempt to walk back the centerpiece of his presidential campaign -- unwavering opposition to the effort in Iraq, regardless of facts on the ground or of new information -- have abounded over the last few days, with each falling well short of anything even remotely resembling intellectual honesty or seriousness.

A couple of the latest have come from the New Yorker's George Packer, and from our old friend Andrew Sullivan -- someone whose writing contains intellectual honesty only rarely, and intellectual seriousness never.

Sullivan has this to say about Obama's sudden lurch to the right on Iraq:

"Any potential president who is uninterested in the facts on the ground in calibrating his Iraq policy would be another George W Bush."

All I have to say is, whoever usurped Bush's presidential duties from December 2006 onward, and is therefore actually responsible for effecting a wholesale change in the entire strategy of operations in Iraq as a result of the deteriorating situation on the ground there, while Sully's ideological allies on the left side of the legislative aisle were fighting tooth and nail to prevent any changes from being made, did one heckuva job.

There's no doubt the situation in Iraq progressively worsened over a long enough period of time that the administration has little or no excuse for not recognizing and responding to it with a series of adjustments in how the postwar was being waged. However, for Sully to make that claim after 2006 is simply ridiculous. Fortunately, none of us are surprised to see such ridiculousness emanating from that dank, musty corner of the blogosphere.

The New Yorker's George Packer took a slightly different tack, deciding that acknowledging progress in Iraq as a result of President Bush's willingess to change strategy was an Okay thing to do -- but, in the process of twisting things around as much as possible to defend Obama, he screwed up his timeline royally (while also doing wonderful imitation of Sullivan in terms of abandoning intellectual seriousness). According to the UK First Post:

Read on...

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | New Yorker | Obamafiles — Comments (28) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 3:30pm on Jul. 7, 2008 Obama Will Sell Anything

"I Sell the Things You Need To Be. I'm the Smiling Face on Your TV"

By Mark I

The Obama campaign officially announced today that Sen. Obama will accept the Democratic presidential nomination in an open air event expected to draw 75,000 people. The campaign takes pains to point out that free tickets will be available for the torchlight rally acceptance speech, but...

If you make a donation of $5 or more between now and midnight on July 31st, you could be one of 10 supporters chosen to fly to Denver and spend two days and nights at the convention, meet Barack backstage, and watch his acceptance speech in person. Each of the ten supporters who are selected will be able to bring one guest to join them.

This guy will sell anything. So much for the new politics. Obama's campaign is more motivated by money and fundraising than any campaign in recent memory. One wonders if this will continue into an Obama presidency.

"For a donation of $25 dollars or more, you could be one of 10 lucky people to be flown to Washington D.C. to sit in on an exciting intelligence briefing in the White House Situation Room. Afterwards, you'll be given an exclusive tour of the Oval Office and get to listen in on a secure phone call between President Obama and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Your whirlwind day will conclude with a special de-briefing by the president and the opportunity to personally sign one letter of President Obama's signature to the official roll back of the Bush Tax Cuts."

I guess "fixing a broken public finance system" means "sell anything that isn't nailed down including my dignity and the dignity of the office in order to out raise my opponents" in Obamian.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Democratic Convention | fundraising | Liberals | Obamafiles | Same as the Old Politics — Comments (22)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:28pm on Jul. 7, 2008 "Because this is your convention, not mine, I'm holding an event that is even more about ME than anything else we've done yet"

You can come, maybe, if you keep giving me money and promise to cheer loud enough, or faint.

By Jeff Emanuel

Well, it's official: Barack Obama will be accepting the Democratic nomination for President at Invesco Field at Mile High, the 75,000-seat open-air home of the Denver Broncos, rather than at the convention hall as originally planned.

Campaign manager David Plouffe said the following in an email:

At the Democratic National Convention next month, we're going to kick off the general election with an event that opens up the political process the same way we've opened it up throughout this campaign.

Barack has made it clear that this is your convention, not his.

On Thursday, August 28th, he's scheduled to formally accept the Democratic nomination in a speech at the convention hall in front of the assembled delegates.

Instead, Barack will leave the convention hall and join more than 75,000 people for a huge, free, open-air event where he will deliver his acceptance speech to the American people.

It's going to be an amazing event, and Barack would like you to join him. Free tickets will become available as the date approaches, but we've reserved a special place for a few of the people who brought us this far and who continue to drive this campaign.

If you make a donation of $5 or more between now and midnight on July 31st, you could be one of 10 supporters chosen to fly to Denver and spend two days and nights at the convention, meet Barack backstage, and watch his acceptance speech in person. Each of the ten supporters who are selected will be able to bring one guest to join them.

This is simply the next logical step in a campaign that has been all about one man and his quest for adulation and power.

Opening up the political process? Only by pun are they doing that; the rest is simply another manufactured event for a manufactured candidate. The way they're "opening up the process" here is as they've done it to this point -- by bringing more people in to sit and listen to Obama talk (and have the opportunity to faint, I suppose).

"This is your convention, not his"? Only if you're a willing member of the Obama cult of personality. If you're not -- say, for example, you're a Clinton delegate, as almost half the assigned delegates are -- then an event like this has to feel like an attempt to drown you out, if not to exclude you altogether.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Democratic Convention | Denver | Obamafiles — Comments (78)/ Email this page » / Read More »