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Word is out that Barack Obama and his campaign's brain trust are thinking of staging the most audacious photo op in American political history. But this one will take place on German, not American, soil: Democratic US presidential candidate Barack Obama has requested permission to give an address at the Brandenburg Gate when he visits Berlin later this month, according to German media reports. If permission is granted, the address would be loaded with historical significance. The Brandenburg Gate is where former US President Ronald Regan gave a famous speech in 1987, during which he asked then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...

I also realize that the greatest advances in the human condition came about when the energy contained in fossil fuels, especially petroleum, was harnessed. Until then the vast majority of human beings lived short lives of drudgery, poverty and despair – in contrast to the very few members of royalty or the society of the very rich. Perhaps younger generations who were born to 75 year old lifetimes and great abundance cannot fathom what life could have been like for most of the billions of people who were born and lived prior to the 20th century.

In a report on Monday’s "The Situation Room" purporting to clarify how Barack Obama "really voted on abortion" (as the graphic on-screen at right stated), CNN correspondent Carol Costello misconstrued the Democrat’s stance on legislation during his time in the Illinois state senate that would have protected infants that survived abortions.Besides the two votes specifically mentioned by Costello in the report, Obama also voted against it at the committee level, and when he was committee chair, denied a simple up or down vote on the legislation. The CNN correspondent also misrepresented the apparent pro-life stance of pro-abortion senators like...

In an Apr. 10 interview with The Advocate magazine, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said "homophobic" messages are coming from the pulpits of black churches because "most African-American churches are still fairly traditional in their interpretations of Scripture." In the same interview, Obama praised the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor and long-time spiritual adviser, for being on the right side of the homosexual debate. ... Obama volunteered that his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was "very good on gay and lesbian issues." ... Black leaders and clregy reacted to Obama's remarks to The Advocate, saying they contradict the...

More ties to the radical left have surfaced in Barack Obama's past. The latest stem from his involvement with the activist group, ACORN... ACORN...is the nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities. Obama was a member of ACORN and taught leadership conferences for the group while working for Miner, Barnhill & Galland... Obama actively sought and received the endorsement by ACORN for his local campaigns. He has now done the same in his bid for the USA presidency... So what is ACORN all about? In a Spring 2003 article for...

The shop might run out of stock at this rate.

Several reporters from The New York Times board the Q train at DeKalb Avenue during the morning rush and marvel at the diversity of the 128 passengers in a single subway car and see “all the homelands, all the ages, all the professions” that comprise “New York City in the summer of 2008.”The Stiletto offers her own tribute to our nation’s diversity on this, the 232nd anniversary of our Declaration of Independence from monarchal tyranny – especially the diverse ways in which we choose to pursue happiness (or not) - with this collection of articles: † Couch Potatoes (and those...

Is his campaign dishonest or disorganized? Obama's flip-flopping June There's nothing wrong with a politician changing his mind. They all do it, and constancy in the face of error can be as harmful as flip-flopping. Yet the month of June saw Barack Obama abandoning positions at a clip so brisk it should give even his most stalwart supporters pause. In the wake of last week's Supreme Court ruling overturning Washington's handgun ban, for instance, the Obama campaign disavowed a 2007 statement it had made about the constitutionality of gun laws as "inartful." After claiming in May that he would debate...

Sen. Barack Obama spoke on the subject of patriotism this past week in an effort to undo some of the damage he has already inflicted on his own image -- through his associations, his statements and policy positions -- and to obscure his liberalism. Liberals rightly feel defensive about their patriotism because they always seem to find themselves blaming the United States for this or that, exhorting us to be more like the "enlightened" nations of Europe or forever shouting that we are a "laughing stock" in the eyes of other nations. It was not a conservative who wrote in...

Change, it turns out, wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Having campaigned for the past year as the agent of transformation, the man who would lead an historic shift in America's political direction, Barack Obama is discovering that there is quite a lot he likes about the way things are. Since securing the Democratic nomination a few weeks ago, the only change coming from the Illinois senator has been in what he seems to stand for. Last month he dropped his opposition to a Bill before Congress that would give telecoms companies immunity from prosecution for carrying...

One week after Hillary Clinton made a public show of unity with Barack Obama, a new survey suggests supporters of the New York senator are increasingly less likely to follow her lead. A growing number of Clinton supporters say they may stay home in November instead of casting their ballot for Obama, a clear sign the party has yet to coalesce around the Illinois senator four weeks after the most prolonged and at times divisive primary race in modern American history came to a close. According to a new survey from CNN and the Opinion Research Corporation, the number of...

NOTE: This was originally posted on my blog at The 7-10, but I thought the readers here at The Free Republic might be interested in this post as well. This post is part of an ongoing series assessing various names being floated around for vice presidential picks. In this particular post, I reexamined Mitt Romney. ----- The former Massachusetts governor seems to be the most logical and most beneficial pick for John McCain. I was originally skeptical about his political future, but have since become more bullish about his chances. Romney will not help deliver Massachusetts, but it could make...

July 4, 2008San Francisco, California Wow, even days later, I am still so giddy I can hardly type!Have you ever taken a bong hit that melts away the worries of this world in a euphoric wave of Zen-like contentment? How about the intense pleasure of listening to your favorite Grateful Dead song while enjoying the aforementioned bodacious botanicals, followed by the exquisite pleasure of biting into a chewy, warm brownie right from the oven? While most enlightened liberals would consider these things life's ultimate pleasures, they pale in comparison to sitting at the feet of The Master and drinking in the sweet nectar of hope!Senator Barack Obama's San Francisco campaign stop...

You'll notice Barack Obama is now wearing a flag pin. Again. During the primary campaign, he refused to, explaining that he'd worn one after Sept. 11 but then stopped because it "became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism." So why is he back to sporting pseudo-patriotism on his chest? Need you ask? The primaries are over. While seducing the hard-core MoveOn Democrats that delivered him the caucuses -- hence, the Democratic nomination -- Obama not only disdained the pin. He disparaged it. Now that he's running in a general election against John McCain, and in dire need of the...

New chapter in the lack-of-love fest between Joe Scarborough and Rachel Maddow. As noted here and here, the pair have clashed in the past. The GOP-congressman-turned-MSNBC-host and the Air America personality got into it again on last evening's Race for the White House, with Joe [guest-hosting for David Gregory] eventually accusing Rachel of perfectly capturing the Clinton cackle. View video here. The point of departure was Maddow's insistence against all evidence that Obama hasn't softened his out-of-Iraq-in-16-months position.

You can almost hear the violins playing while reading U.K. Guardian writer Zachary Roth  bemoan the "swiftboat" labeling of Barack Obama by those wascally Republicans: Over the last few months, Barack Obama has been variously labelled an "elitist", a naïve softie and simply "out of the mainstream" in his lifestyle and associates. And lately, in what appears to be the centrepiece of the GOP's attacks, Republicans have focused on portraying Obama as arrogant and self-interested....The "arrogant" label could well damage Obama. That's partly because, as with Kerry's rep for flip-flopping, it might contain a kernel of truth. At the very least,...

We can talk until we are blue in the face about how Obama really has terrorists as friends, but when you see the video, then you will believe.

Many Muslim voters love Barack Obama. They love him even if he doesn't seem to love them back. One young professional I know credited Muslims' enthusiasm for Sen. Obama to a perceived promise of a "brand new, informed international perspective." Other Muslims are moved by a broad and empowering message of hope and change in a tumultuous time of trouble and strife. And many see a reflection of themselves in Mr. Obama – a person who looks different, has a funny name, a sense of the world beyond our borders, and at the same time is very patriotic. That is...

FARGO, N.D. – Senator Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot sustain a long-term military presence in Iraq, but added that he would be open to “refine my policies” about a timeline for withdrawing troops after meeting with American military commanders during a trip to Iraq later this month. Mr. Obama, whose popularity in the Democratic primary was built upon a sharp opposition to the war and an often-touted 16-month gradual timetable for removing combat troops, dismissed suggestions that he was changing positions in the wake of reductions in violence in Iraq and a general election fight with Senator...

Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is expected to become the Democrat candidate for President of the United States. After an unbroken string of wins in primary battle against Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Obama appears to be unbeatable among Democrats.

From the black conservatives who brought you radio ads two years ago claiming that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican come the new summer blockbusters: ads calling Sen. Barack Obama a racist and an elitist. King, of course, was an independent, not a Republican -- but that didn't stop the National Black Republican Association (NBRA) from airing their claim on urban radio. Now spots entitled "Arrogant Obama" and "Bitter Obama" are coming to radio stations serving black America, where more than 90 percent of voters supported Obama in Democratic primaries. The NBRA ads will begin airing July...

Last fall, Barack Obama explained why he hadn't been wearing an American flag pin on his lapel. "I won't wear that pin on my chest," the presumptive Democratic nominee said. "Instead, I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism." What a difference a presidential campaign makes. Obama, who suggested back then that the flag pin "became a substitute for I think true patriotism" after the Sept. 11 attacks, now regularly sports the patriotic symbol at campaign events. He even briefly employed...

Now that Sen. Barack Obama has become the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president, the media and punditocracy has focused their attention on the veepstakes. Speculation about Obama’s running mate reveals an enormous deficiency in the Democrats' standard bearer. Most suggest that Obama needs someone with a military background, such as retired General Wesley Clark or Sen. James Webb to “balance the ticket.” However, it would take military men like George S. Patton or Douglas MacArthur to make up for Obama’s shortcomings on national security. I find it amusing that Democrats find no hypocrisy in essentially turning over the responsibility...

"I have said consistently that I believe the Second Amendment is an individual right." -- Barack Obama, June 26, 2008 "In some ways, the Supreme Court term that just ended seems muddled: disturbing, highly conservative rulings on subjects like voting rights and gun control . . . In another sharp break with its traditions, the court struck down parts of the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. After seven decades of holding that the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms is tied to raising a militia, the court reversed itself and ruled that it confers on individuals the right to keep...

Barack Obama aligned himself with welfare reform on Monday, launching a television ad which touts the way the overhaul "slashed the rolls by 80 percent." Obama leaves out, however, that he was against the 1996 federal legislation which precipitated the caseload reduction. "I am not a defender of the status quo with respect to welfare," Obama said on the floor of the Illinois state Senate on May 31, 1997. "Having said that, I probably would not have supported the federal legislation, because I think it had some problems." Obama's transformation from critic to champion of welfare reform is the latest...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Senator Barack Obama is issuing a call here today for more Americans to become involved in public service, imploring citizens of all ages to rally to the nation’s need at home and abroad. “I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am president of the United States,” Mr. Obama will say in an address here on a college campus. “This will not be a call issued in one speech or one program – this will be a central cause of my presidency.”

On June 25, CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked conservative commentator Bill Bennett what question he would ask Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama if he could.Bennett said he would ask Obama:Why are you to the left of NARAL, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein when it comes to abortion? Are you really there? ... I got to question the guy's moral judgment who doesn't see a problem with killing a baby after it's been born. … What is the answer to that question? Bennett was speaking about Obama's opposition to Illinois' Born Alive Infants Protection Act as state senator. This legislation declared...

This is the first in a long line of blogs that will show that Barack Obama knew that Rev. Wright was a racist, long before the You Tube video clips of Rev. Jeremiah Wright saying "white America, U.S. of KKKA" (among other things) surfaced. Barack Obama, according to his book, "Dreams From My Father," said that at the very first service he attended at Trinity United Church of Christ, and the very first time he heard Rev. Jeremiah Wright preach from the pulpit, he heard the following words spoken by Rev. Jeremiah Wright: Dreams From My Father, Page 293 '"......

Presidential nominee Barack Obama joins the list of several other high-profile Democratic Party members who received highly favorable home loans. Obama, D-Ill., reportedly purchased a $1.65 million mansion in Chicago through a “super, super jumbo” loan he received from Northern Trust Bank in Illinois, the Washington Post reports. The portion of the money financed through the lender ($1.32 million) was offered to the Obamas at an unusually low discount interest rate locked in at 5.625 percent over the life of the 30-year fixed-rate loan, which was below the average of what a typical Chicagoan pursuing a similar low loan rate...

Obama received $71,000 in campaign cash in 2004 from a lender in Illinois, who then in February 2005 gave him a below-market mortgage rate personally saving him nearly $4,000.00 per year. Perhaps just a whiff of corruption from the Chicago Kid?

He ain't triangulating, he's my post-partisan. That's Eugene Robinson innovative new MSM means of covering for Barack Obama. As Obama sprints toward the center and away from many of the positions that won him the nomination from the liberal Dem base, WaPo columnist Robinson has suggested that the nominee isn't engaging in the kind of cynical "triangulating" that made Bill Clinton famous. No, Obama's just being the real post-partisan he really was all along. EUGENE ROBINSON: "My headline tonight is a question: is it post-partisanship, or plain old triangulation? I think everyone's instinct, when we heard Barack Obama talk about...

Barack Obama has an Iraq problem and New Yorker writer, George Packer is worried. The problem is that the surge has been a great success: In February, 2007, when Barack Obama declared that he was running for President, violence in Iraq had reached apocalyptic levels, and he based his candidacy, in part, on a bold promise to begin a rapid withdrawal of American forces upon taking office. At the time, this pledge represented conventional thinking among Democrats and was guaranteed to play well with primary voters. But in the year and a half since then two improbable, though not unforeseeable,...

With Sen. Barack Obama securing the Democratic presidential nomination next comes the veepstakes. Here are some of the top contenders for the second banana slot on the Obama ticket.

John Kerry fought a war, and I respect him for that. And he came home to fight a peace. And I respect him for that, too. (APPLAUSE) John Kerry’s combination of physical courage and moral values is my definition of what we need as Americans in our commander in chief. And John Edwards with his leadership and extraordinary intelligence, he’s going to be a great member of that command team.

From Former foes Clinton, Obama present picture of unity (6/28/08): Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton embraced, praised each other and locked hands in unity Friday, hoping to persuade legions of still-skeptical Clinton backers to rally around her one-time rival. "She rocks. That's the point I'm trying to make," a grinning Obama told the throng of 4,000 squeezed into a soccer field in the small western New Hampshire town of Unity... Both candidates said their six-month rivalry, which ended early this month when the Illinois senator clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, was history. "We may have started on separate paths,...

FALSE beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found. Thus it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories — and mislead us along the way. The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer’s hard drive does. Facts...

With Sen. Barack Obama securing the Democratic presidential nomination next comes the veepstakes. Here are some of the top contenders for the second banana slot on the Obama ticket.

Late last night I had a vision. No, it wasn't a vision like in one of franksolich's bizarre DREAMS. What happened is that I woke up with a start and a sudden realization that Wesley Clark is entirely a creature of the Clintons. In fact, the ONLY reason why he ran for presidential nomination in 2004 is that the Clintons wanted someone to take Howard Dean out. Clark flopped but Dean eventually took himself out with a lot of help from a White House letter released by the Clintons that showed Dean to be a complete hypocrite in opposing...

Politics: Barack Obama revives the politics of personal destruction by sending out surrogates to attack John McCain the war hero and John McCain the man. Politics as usual, Senator?Obama talks about change and hope and masquerades as the anti-politician. But as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright noted after Obama disowned his pastor of two decades, Obama will do and say the things a politician has to do and say to win. Judging from the Sunday performance of Gen. Wesley Clark, an Obama adviser and possible VP pick, the more things change, the more they stay the same. In an interview with...

“Obama’s alleged support of the Second Amendment is utterly cynical and false.”April 13th, 2008 by Bruno Behrend So says the NRA, and they are 100% correct. The above headline is from one of their recent blast e-mails, and I must say that I endorse their view in this situation. _____ To understand Barack Obama on the Second Amendment, you have to know about the clash of character between the then-Chicago state senator and an ordinary citizen who exercised his right to armed self-defense in violation of a local gun ban. That citizen was a 52-year-old resident of Wilmette, Illinois, who,...

"I want you to think about this," Barack Obama said in Las Vegas last week. "The oil companies have already been given 68 million acres of federal land, both onshore and offshore, to drill. They're allowed to drill it, and yet they haven't touched it – 68 million acres that have the potential to nearly double America's total oil production." Wow, how come the oil companies didn't think of that? Perhaps because the notion is obviously false – at least to anyone who knows how oil and gas exploration actually works. Predictably, however, Mr. Obama's claim is also the mantra...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, one of the things that -- we talk about the Drive-By Media here quite a bit, and we analyze them a lot, and there have been periods of time in this program I've frankly gotten tired of it because everybody knows that they have a bias and everybody knows that they have an agenda, and what's news about it? I try to ignore 'em, and just can't. They are such a destructive force. They are so heavily aligned with the Democrats. But perhaps the thing of which they are the most responsible and guilty is a...

Andrea Mitchell claims Wesley Clark's cracks about John McCain's heroism were a gaffe. Bloopers that will cost him any chance of being picked for the Obama veep slot. But surely the seasoned MSM hand knows better to imagine that Clark was freelancing. His were anything but impromptu remarks, made, say, late at night to a foreign reporter in a hotel cocktail lounge in some far-flung land. To the contrary, Clark took his shots in the brightest of limelights—those of a Sunday morning talk show—speaking with the venerable Bob Schieffer. Clark was explicity there as an Obama campaign surrogate. Moreover, Clark...

There was an episode of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm - one of the better shows on television - where Larry David begrudgingly brings his wife to the beach. "I don't get it, I don't understand people's fascination with the beach," David wryly says. "Don't you feel calmer being here, by the ocean?" his wife innocently asks. "I feel aggravated that I don't know what other people are getting," David replies in classic Seinfeldian form. This is analogous to my own feelings about Sen. Obama. A buddy of mine, who supports Obama, recently wanted to know why this was the case....

It looks like Google has officially joined the Barack Obama campaign and decided that its contribution would be to shut down any blog on the Google owned Blogspot.com blogging system that has an anti-Obama message. Yes, it sure seems that Google has begun to go through its many thousands of blogs to lock out the owners of anti-Obama blogs so that the noObama message is effectively squelched. Thus far, Google has terminated the access by blog owners to 7 such sites and the list may be growing. Boy, it must be nice for Barack Obama to have an ally powerful...

Friday, June 27, 2008 By now we all know where presidential nominee Barack Obama stands on the Second Amendment. During the primaries, Obama tried to hide behind vague statements of support for “sportsmen” or unfounded claims of general support for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. But don’t listen to his campaign rhetoric! His real record, based on votes taken, political associations, long-standing positions, and his own words, shows that Barack Obama is a very serious threat to our Second Amendment liberties. A June 26 National Review Online story describes Barack Obama’s latest attempt to deceive the American people...

By all accounts, Barack Obama should win this election. He and his brand control the image, the message and, to a large extent, the media of this election cycle. Yes, the media. He has enough money to buy ads every day from now to election day, glossy magazines cannot wait to put his image on their covers, Hollywood types are so smitten that they wear his image on their clothing and YouTube is bursting at the seams with homages to him. It is definitely his to win -- or to lose. It all hinges on two things: likability and character.

With President Obama in office, the days of governments extracting a top marginal rate of 60% will return. Could bell bottoms be far behind? Remember how the press made George Bush’s tax rate cuts look so “huge” in 2001 and 2003? A March 10, 2001, New York Times article by reporters Frank Bruni and Richard W. Stevenson typified the approach. The trick was to talk about the (scary) $1.6 trillion impact of the “cuts” while minimizing attention to their time frame. At the linked article, the reporters waited until the ninth paragraph to tell us that it was a “$1.6...

Although it was 80 years ago that the man dubbed "The Apostle of Common Sense" made his fateful comments about the then current election in America, they undoubtedly ring true today. Of course, you would substitute the words "Gay Marriage" and "Abortion" for "Drink" and "Prohibition," but the principle (and prejudice) remains the same. In those days, Chesterton argued, Governor Smith lost not so much because he was for social drinking and against Prohibition (a subject which, by the way, history proved him right about) but because he was Catholic—and the Republicans convinced enough ignorant WASP Americans that not only...

Michael Smerconish is thinking of voting for Obama. The Philly talk show host made the admission in the course of subbing for Dan Abrams on tonight's "Verdict" on MSNBC. He actually did so, chatting with Ron Reagan, while criticizing Obama's flip-flops. But the bottom line is the bottom line. SMERCONISH: I want to think big picture, and I want to do so by showing you a piece of that which was published in today's Washington Post by Charles Krauthammer, if we can put that up on the screen: The truth about Obama is uncomplicated. He is just a politician ....