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Anyone who wants to understand Barack Obama would do well to stay away from the radio and the TV. Obama is a theatrical presence. That's what it means to be "charismatic": To an unnerving degree his appeal relies on sight and sound rather than sense. Better, in my opinion, to stick to the printed word. On paper (or the computer screen) his words can be thought about and chewed over. You can understand him at your own pace, undistracted by that rich baritone, the regal bearing, the excellent drape of his Burberry suits.

My account was trashed on USA Today, I suspect by a lib protesting my right to speak freely and basically for publishing a few little dittys about BRO-sama: I.E.: There once was a Dem named Bar-ack With fans who loved to attack All those who disagree, and don’t go yippee, When Barry declared he was crack free! Abroad, he would stutter and stammer, Like a springboard being hit with a hammer Not Muslim denied he, yet we found it to be That Obama was more like Osama! AND.. There is a dem named Hussein, Who’s running quite a campaign, He’s...

Rasmussen reports that McCain is pulling even with Obama, apparently Obama's excellent adventure in Europe didn't have much effect on American voters: The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows the race for the White House is tied with Barack Obama and John McCain each attracting 44% of the vote. However, when "leaners" are included, it’s McCain 47% and Obama 46%. This is the first time McCain has enjoyed even a statistically insignificant advantage of any sort since Obama clinched the Democratic nomination on June 3. That's good news for McCain, but this election is not really about...

When I heard Barack Obama had planned a trip to visit Landstuhl Military Hospital in Germany, I knew from personal experience how much of a lift it would have given the hundreds of soldiers recovering from war wounds there. As fate would have it, I was sent to Landstuhl two years ago, after my lower legs were shattered by shrapnel from a mortar round in Iraq. After undergoing surgery, I spent nearly a month as a bedridden patient in the recovery care unit, uncertain whether or not I would ever walk again. It was around July 4th and I was...

Barack Obama just had the worst week since his beloved pastor, Jeremiah Wright, decided to expatiate on black liberation theology at the National Press Club. Coming off his royal progress through the Near and Middle East, Berlin, Paris and London, Barack had surged to a nine-point lead in the Gallup tracking poll. By Friday, he was back to a dead heat with a 72-year-old opponent with none of his natural skills, in a year when grocers are pulling Republican brands off the shelves. For all its gracelessness, the McCain campaign, given openings by Barack, stepped in and put Muhammad Ali...

Sen. Barack Obama's recent speech in Berlin may have been a hit with American journalists. That, however, is due to most journalists' politics, not to the profundity of Obama's remarks. They were neither profound nor stirring. Indeed, a careful study of the speech should lead an impartial observer to be concerned about Obama's grasp of the world. I started my analysis last week; I conclude this week. Let me begin with that which was praiseworthy. Obama: "This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and...

Up until now, I have been urging caution in (over)interpreting the results of the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls, which had shown the presidential race tightening to a near-tie in recent days. Although the tracking numbers are important sources of information, this trend had not really been reflected in much of the state polling, nor in other, one-off national polls. Today, however, we have a set of state polling out that does indicate some tightening in the race: (Table at link) The most interesting results are in Florida and Massachusetts. In Florida, SurveyUSA shows John McCain ahead by 6 points....

AS the presidential candidates enter the three-month sprint to November, Barack Obama must be wondering: If that didn't do it, what will? "That" is his Berlin speech. "It" is assuage anxieties about his understanding of the need to supplement diplomacy with military force. Obama exhorted Germans to be more willing to wage war, in Afghanistan. He was right to do so. But polls taken since his trip abroad don't indicate that Obama succeeded in altering the oddest aspect of this campaign: Measured against his party's surging strength, he's dramatically underperforming. Surely this is related to anxieties about his thin resume...

"I've been hustled," said Obama, after a Euro tabloid fell down and worshipped his big muscles at the gym during the Ego Trip to Germany.  Well, yes. The Euromedia instantly recognized a slick hustler from America, and they celebrated his Ego Trip with giant headlines for Marxoman. But the real victims in Obama's Audacity Hustle are millions of gawking, slack-jawed, suckered, mind-numbed voters in America. Because Europe and Obama share the same overriding goal, which is to hitch America to the wagon of worldwide socialist elites. Marxists really love America, you see -- but only if America bows to the Party...

Democrats remain flummoxed and liberal pundits fret: what’s the matter with Barack Obama? He is supposed to be winning. By a lot. Well, a Democrat is supposed to be winning, but this particular one is having his share of problems. Charles Krauthammer on Friday explained: I think the sheen from earlier this year, where he was seen as a streaking meteor and he was the candidate of hope–I think it was Brit Hume who said he started the year by selling hope, but now he’s selling audacity. And I think there’s a sourness setting in. And you see it even...

After his visit to Iraq, Democrat Party presidential candidate Barack Obama all but admitted the success of what's come to be called "the surge." Obama claims he met with military leaders in Iraq and spoke with rank and file soldiers who've been fighting the Iraqi insurgents and members of Al-Qaeda who refuse to acknowledge defeat. However, military leaders are not refuting the fact that the additional troops coupled with a more aggressive war plan has resulted in continuing success. Yet, the American left -- Obama included -- refuse to give credit where credit is due. And he's being assisted by...

No kidding. The Spalding group is giving away One Million “NoBama” Bumper stickers. All you have to do is send a self addressed stamped envelope for the sticker. Details on the free offer:

"J'aime l'Europe." "Ich liebe Europa." Whether you say it in French or German, many on the American left harbor a not-so-secret sentiment: "I love Europe." Maybe their trans-Atlantic love affair stems from affection for the Enlightenment, an affinity for secularism or a secret hope for socialism. Regardless, liberals have longed to clone the Old Country. Or at least make America a little more like France. During presidential candidate Barack Obama's supposedly senatorial visit to Europe, the crowd of 200,000 in Berlin made it clear: "Deutschland liebt Barack" and "Barack loves Germany." Interestingly, though, in his meetings with heads of state,...

A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday showed that energy and the gasoline crisis have "emerged as the dominant economic issue," said Clay Richards, assistant director of Quinnipiac's Polling Institute. Mr. Richards spoke at a Monitor-sponsored breakfast for reporters on Thursday morning. Voters say they are more concerned about energy than the war in Iraq, according to Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll, who also spoke at the Monitor breakfast. The new poll found that while Senator Obama leads Senator McCain in all three states, Obama's lead has narrowed in the past month. Florida and Ohio are now too...

August 02, 2008, 0:00 a.m. Was Obama’s Bounce a Bubble?Polls continue to show an unstable presidential campaign. By Michael Barone Just when you think you’ve got the presidential race figured out, something comes along to upend your carefully wrought conclusions. Mainstream media provided lavish coverage of Barack Obama’s trip abroad the week of July 21–25 and predicted he would get a bounce in the polls. Some of his supporters believe he has put the election away. Other observers employ the hackneyed and meaningless phrase, “It’s his to lose.� The poll numbers tell a different and more nuanced story. The...

Cannot post due to copyright issues: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obama-can-he-prove-hes-a-regular-guy-883265.html

WASHINGTON -- As the presidential candidates enter the three-month sprint to November, Barack Obama must be wondering: If that did not do it, what will? The antecedent of the pronoun "that" is his Berlin speech. The antecedent of the pronoun "it" is assuage anxieties about his understanding of the need to supplement soft power (diplomacy) with hard power (military force). He spoke in Berlin at the bullet-scarred base -- it was in the crossfire 63 years ago as Russian troops neared Hitler's bunker about a mile away -- of an 1873 monument to German militarism. To be precise, the monument...

Here is a new McCain web ad entitled, "The World According to Obama." I'm not the brightest bulb in the house, and my Spanish is not good, but it would seem The Messiah forgot to mention any Latin American, South American, or Spanish-speaking countries in his masterpiece Berlin speech. Apparently, in Obama's world, Latinos aren't too uppermost in his thoughts. . . (see video)

The McCain campaign just blasted out the following email: All: Sen. McCain today said that the Obama campaign retracted Sen. Obama's comments in Missouri. They clearly walked away from his statements and we are moving on. As the Politico reported yesterday: Obama's campaign quickly put out a statement Thursday retracting the candidate's suggestion that McCain had improperly used race, and, while on a conference call with reporters, campaign manager David Plouffe declined repeatedly to revisit any aspect of the question of race. http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=7B3AECC9-3048-5C12-00BA1E7BD09BDBA5 Will this be the end of it? We'll see.

It’s hard to imagine a more warped and callous statement about the Iraq War than this one made by Senator Charles Schumer, when asked whether he would support a troop surge in Afghanistan: Yes. The bottom line is I think Obama’s trip was brilliant. Not in the short term, but in the long term, because it’s changed the whole debate. And the whole debate now is focused on Afghanistan more than on Iraq. So: It’s not the U.S. troops who gave everything so that Iraq has a chance at a stable, viable future.

LAST weekend, Barack Obama dazzled crowds in Europe. Discussing international security, he spoke eloquently about needing an American-European partnership to defeat terrorism. In Paris, he said that “terrorism cannot be solved by any one country alone,” and that we should establish partnerships. In Berlin, he expressed hope that Europeans and Americans “can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks” of terrorists worldwide. But there’s one problem. We already have a counterterrorism partnership with the European Union. And it works. Indeed, despite news media caricatures of aggressive Americans feuding with pacifist Europeans, both groups are quite serious...

If Barack Obama sought to win the votes of Germans, he need seek no more. Of course, his new image was all the rage in the Old World long before he gave his July 24 speech in Berlin. Senator Sweetness and Light is the man the Europeans want as our leader. Although Obama certainly has a stateside cult following as well, one reason Americans' enthusiasm pales in comparison may be that we - at least some of us, anyway - can decipher his words better than foreign-language speakers. As to this, there is a certain segment of the Berlin speech...

Last week I was on the road during Obama’s Berlin Speech. Naturally, the only program I was able to listen to the speech on was Rush Limbaugh, who conveniently gave his commentary while the speech was occurring. To this date, Limbaugh is the only media personality I know of to point out that Obama set the stage to inject race into this election during his speech. At the beginning of the speech, Obama stated,...

Obama's trip ... tripping or tripe?  By Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's Senior Political Analyst    Part four of Al Jazeera Senior Political Analyst Marwan Bishara's analysis of Barack Obama's Middle East and Europe tour and what it means for his presidential campaign.Wow!Wow! Wow what? Like so many I was wowed. What a rock star! Did you see how Obama drew a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin, how people were clamouring to take his picture and autograph?What are you, a teenager?Come on! Barack looked truly presidential during his Middle East and Europe trip - like really cool.Yeah and he has Denzel Washington's teeth...

His endorsement of the Democratic candidate, against John McCain, his Republican rival, would usually be considered unusual for a Conservative. But during his recent European tour, Mr Obama proved successful at winning over politicians of all persuasions, charming David Cameron, the Conservative leader, who he met for talks in his House of Commons office. A survey carried out last month found that a third of Tory MPs want the Democrat to emerge triumphant. But the Mayor of London is the most high profile Conservative publicly to throw his weight behind Mr Obama. He told this month's Square Mile magazine: "I...

The McCain campaign issued the following statement today: Today, Dr. Danny Jazarevic, who served as the Chief of Trauma, Critical Care and Vascular Surgery at Landstuhl, issued the following statement on Barack Obama's canceled visit to Ramstein and Landstuhl: "Last week, Senator Obama skipped a visit with wounded U.S. troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany because the Pentagon would not allow campaign staff or media to accompany him into the hospital. I served as director of trauma surgery at that hospital for nearly four years and saw the effect that a visit from a celebrity like Senator Obama...

Barack Obama's claims that he was not going to use a planned visit to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center as a photo-op were blown out of the water tonight by a spokesman for Landstuhl who told Stars and Stripes that plans had been made for Obama's campaign press contingent to film the candidate as he entered and left the hospital.U.S. European Command spokesman Lt. Col. John Dorrian said that local and traveling press would have been brought to the entrance of Landstuhl to film Obama entering and leaving the hospital.The article also noted that it would have been permissible for Obama...

A Washington Post story on Barack Obama’s visit to Iraq caught my eye last week. “In essence, Obama has declared the war in Iraq all but over,” the story said, noting the Democratic presidential candidate’s vow to shift troops away from Iraq to the worsening conflict in Afghanistan. At a time when U.S. military statistics show less violence in Iraq than at any time since early 2004, it’s worth asking the question — is the war over? It is not over for Iraqis in some northern provinces, where al Qaeda militants remain active. And there may be more days like...

Well, one thing's for sure. If you embark upon a world tour, and you decide to make a campaign speech in a foreign country in front of 200,000 Germans, and you act like you're already president, people may notice. And that's what this is about: that he chose to go to Germany and do something I've never known a candidate to do before. You know, he orchestrated the press conference with the French president. He said something, yesterday, basically, that he embodies everything good about America. Well, you know, it's good to have self-confidence. But you can, maybe, go too...

TALLINN, Estonia – When I arrived in Estonia last week – a former Soviet republic that lies just south of Finland – everyone had an opinion on Barack Obama's speech in Berlin. The headline of the British Daily Telegraph we picked up in Finland blared "New walls must not divide us," with half-page photos of the American presidential candidate silhouetted against a sea of 200,000 people. One of the first people I met in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, was Abdul Turay, the editor in chief of The Baltic Times, an English-language weekly that covers Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the...

Ross Douthat at the Atlantic.com notes that the Obama camp is accusing the McCain campaign of making Obama's rally in Berlin look like the sort of thing that Der Fuhrer might have staged. It's remarkable what those fiendish GOP operatives can squeeze into thirty seconds: Not only does McCain's "celeb" ad have "Barack Obama will rape yo daughters overtones," says Rick Perlstein (who's apparently under the impression that most Americans think of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as stand-ins for their daughters), but it was edited to blatantly evoke Triumph of the Will as well - the better to freak...

LANDSTUHL, Germany – Although news outlets have reported charges that Sen. Barack Obama canceled his trip to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany because the media weren’t allowed to cover the event, U.S. European Command officials say plans were in place to allow limited press coverage. All media, including local press and the more than 40 journalists accompanying the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee on his eight-day international trip last week, would have been able to photograph the Illinois senator entering and leaving the hospital, said Air Force Lt. Col. John Dorrian, a U.S. European Command spokesman. Defense Department public affairs...

Today, Dr. Danny Jazarevic, who served as the Chief of Trauma, Critical Care and Vascular Surgery at Landstuhl, issued the following statement on Barack Obama's canceled visit to Ramstein and Landstuhl: "Last week, Senator Obama skipped a visit with wounded U.S. troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany because the Pentagon would not allow campaign staff or media to accompany him into the hospital. I served as director of trauma surgery at that hospital for nearly four years and saw the effect that a visit from a celebrity like Senator Obama could have on morale. During that time, I...

LEAVE BARACK OBAMA ALONE WITH MICHELLE COMMENTS LEAVE BARACK ALONE LEAVE BARACK ALONE VIDEO AGAIN!!!

Vote Both the passionate group devoted to nudging Barack Obama to pick one-time fierce rival Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential running mate is over. Organizers Adam Parkhomenko and Sam Arora said they were ending their effort since all indications are Hillary would not be Obama’s number two. "Because it seems that Senator Obama has made his decision to offer the slot on the ticket to another candidate, we believe that continuing to ask him to pick Hillary is no longer helpful to our party's chances of winning in November," they posted on their website. The writing on the wall...

An American woman fighting to get back four daughters living in the West Bank with their Palestinian father has gotten unusually high-powered help - from Barack Obama. The U.S. presidential hopeful raised the case of the Chicago-area woman in his meeting with Palestinian leaders last week, and won a promise from Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to look into the matter. And that's how the private battle between Yasser and Colleen Barghouti, which spans continents and cultures, took a public turn. In separate interviews, the two offered conflicting explanations of what brought the family to Barghouti's home village of Kobar in...

In case you One of these things is not like the otherdidn't know this, the presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama, is black. Which makes him just like the old Sesame Street comparison ditty, "one of these things is not like the other." He is unlike any other presumptive nominee that we have ever had in American history. If you are not convinced, just line him up next to every presumptive nominee for any major party in American electoral elections, he is still black and they are all still white.

Newsday's John Riley, after watching John McCain's latest ad montage linking Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, is perplexed by his choice of celebrities: Anyone with even a vague sense of pop culture knows that Britney and Paris are yesterday's news. Here's a link to Forbes' Celebrity 100. Paris and Britney don't even make the list any more. Instead, the top 10, in order: Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, Angelina Jolie, Beyonce Knowles, David Beckham, Johnny Depp, Jay-Z, The Police, JK Rowling, Brad Pitt. So, they didn't pick other big celebrities, who were either men, or black, or married....

Graham on the Commercial [Kathryn Jean Lopez]Reporter: I'd like to ask you one more question, and I'll (inaudible) if there are no other ones. There's been some criticism, primarily from Democratic quarters, talking about Senator McCain and his presidential run, regarding some of his ads lately, saying that they were (inaudible). Most recently, the one that they point to is one that included Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. John McCain said from the beginning of the campaign that he was going to lead a respectable campaign. I'm not saying he's not. but some people are saying that this goes against...

Let him run for president of Germany. I mean, he's a citizen of the world, after all. If he wants to play act at being president, and he needs some country to lord it over, let him try Germany. Because we sure don't want him here. We don't want a man whose limited experience should give him humility, but whose ego demands supremacy. We don't want a man who thinks that because he has the audacity to speak at the Brandenburg Gate that he should have the authority to do so. In this cult of personality which has developed around...

There is nothing that better reflects the cowardly, obsequious performance “I tell you only what you want to hear” Barack Obama gave during his European tour last week than the fact that right smack in the middle of the continent, he never mentioned the real lessons of Bosnia. Of course, that omission didn’t surprise those of us who understand that the “agent of change” who never misses an opportunity to vacuously boast “this is our moment, this is our time” is nothing more than a made in Chicago retread liberal. No, unlike Belfast’s Telegraph, we weren’t foolish enough to believe...

It wasn’t until the last week, however, that the narrative of Obama as a president-in-waiting — and perhaps getting impatient in that waiting — began reverberating beyond the inboxes of Washington operatives and journalists. Perhaps one of the clearest indications emerged Tuesday from the world of late-night comedy, when David Letterman offered his “Top Ten Signs Barack Obama is Overconfident.” The examples included Obama proposing to change the name of Oklahoma to “Oklobama” and measuring his head for Mount Rushmore. “When Letterman is doing ‘Top Ten’ lists about something, it has officially entered the public consciousness,” said Dan Schnur, a...

The cardinal rule of presidential speechmaking is knowing the audiences you’re talking to – all of them. Sen. Obama failed the test in Berlin. As a former speechwriter for several presidents, cabinet officers and members of Congress, I can attest to the great care given to crafting speeches dealing with national security issues, lest they be misinterpreted by any of the several audiences listening.

IF elected, Barack Obama might make history in more ways than one. He'll be the country's first black president, but also - perhaps as consequentially - could be its first transnational president. Obama's personal history defies categorization, which makes it so alluring. Born in Hawaii to a black Kenyan father and white Kansan mother and raised for a time in Indonesia, Obama embodies the crosscurrents of globalization and the remarkable dynamism of an American society open to people of talent from any background. Obama tells his story to emphasize its quintessential American-ness, a tale of how an outsider - like...

U.S. News & World Report Despite media raves about Barack Obama's weeklong trip to the Mideast and Europe, Republican strategists say his nation-hopping exposed major vulnerabilities that they hope to exploit in the fall. GOP strategists, including advisers to Republican presidential candidate John McCain, concede that Obama demonstrated an ability to seize the moment and make the most of his opportunities. He lived up to expectations that he would perform well; he dealt smoothly with pressure; and he didn't make any big gaffes. He drew huge, receptive crowds in Berlin. But McCain advisers see a weakness in that Obama emphasized...

MAC ATTACK AD PAINTS OBAMA WITH BLOND BRUSH John McCain launched a cheeky attack ad yesterday, mocking Barack Obama as the world's "biggest celebrity" who is as qualified to be president as blond bimbos Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. The 30-second "Celeb" spot - appearing on cable networks in battleground states - shows Obama waving to hundreds of thousands of adoring fans in Germany during a speech last week. Then images of Spears and Hilton appear in the frame. "He's the biggest celebrity in the world. But, is he ready to lead?" the narrator asks of Obama.

The Washington Post published a smart, thorough takedown Wednesday of the baseless charge that Barack Obama spurned a visit with wounded troops because he couldn't turn the trip into a public relations coup. SNIP After reading the Post story online, I ventured to the adjoining public comment board to see how the public was receiving news about the bogus McCain attack. I shouldn't have bothered. By mid-afternoon Wednesday, the washingtonpost.com forum had been flooded with nearly 1,400 messages. A few ventured toward rational discussion of Obama and his overseas travels, but the forum also overflowed with ignorance, profanity, impertinence and...

This last week conservatives spent a lot of time in the vomitorium.  Everything that Candidate Barack Obama has done has seemed like a n an invitation to upchuck. We are talking about the kumbaya speech at the Siegessäule in Berlin, the culmination of Barack's Excellent Adventure, where we learned that Germany and the United States came together in partnership to solve the problem of the Soviet isolation of Berlin 50 years ago. Don't worry, writes David Brooks, "Obama doesn't really think this way." When he gets down to specific cases, he can be hard-headed.  Last year, he spoke about his...

"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them."-- Matthew 7: 15, 16 (NIV) Barack Obama bellowed before a crowd in Germany, "The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christians and Muslims and Jews, cannot stand." Obama's words do not speak of freedom. A coming together under one banner, the banner of "working together," indicates Mr. Obama believes that the world has a responsibility to unite. Newsflash,...

Israel may have given a warm reception to Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, but if Andra Goldman’s reaction is any indication, his July 22-23 visit to Israel was a mixed success at best. “Just because you take a trip to Israel doesn’t mean anything. Anybody can make a trip,” said Goldman, sitting outside Gimme Jimmy’s Cookie Bar in Livingston with her brother and two sons. A registered Democrat and West Orange resident, Goldman remains undecided about whom she will vote for in December. She’s a two-issue voter this election: Israel and the economy. With regard to Israel, she...