Posted on 01/21/2007 6:03:58 AM PST by Laverne
Did you see that poll about Iraq suggesting that . . . What's that? Barack Obama? Oh, sorry. According to the new rules from the American Media Practitioners Association, we're obliged to make at least one flattering reference to Barack Obama per column, preferably accompanied by that picture USA Today used with his head framed by a kind of luminous halo thing. So OK, all together now:
Barack Obama!
What a wonderful phrase!
Barack Obama!
Ain't no passin' craze!
It means no worries
For the rest of your days!
Barack Obama announced last week that he was forming an exploratory committee to explore whether he can really be as fabulous as the media say he is. And happily the answer is: Yes! He's young, gifted and black, and white, and Hawaiian, and Kansan, and charismatic, and Congregationalist, and Muslim. He rejects the way "politics has become so bitter and partisan,'' he represents "a different kind of politics." He smokes, which is different. He was raised in an Indonesian madrassah by radical imams, which is more than John Edwards can say. And he looks totally cool when he smokes! I haven't smoked since I was 14 but I'm thinking of taking it up again just because the sophisticated refreshing nicotine taste helps take the partisan bitterness out of the atmosphere. Barack Obama is Lauren Bacall to America's Humphrey Bogart. Lauren Barack coolly blows smoke, leans against the wall and purrs:
"You don't have to say anything and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."
Some commentators say he's a blank slate. And how long is it since we've seen one of those? They used to have 'em in the schoolhouses back when the kids still learnt stuff instead of just discussing their sexuality with the guidance counselor all week long. I'll bet in those radical madrassahs they're still using blank slates.
The madrassah stuff was supposedly leaked to Insight Magazine by some oppo-research heavies on Hillary Rodham Clinton's team. Which if true suggests that Hillary's losing her touch. It's certainly the case that a foreign education doesn't always assist in electoral politics: John Kerry didn't play up the Swiss finishing school angle. But look at it from a Democratic primary voter's point of view, the kind who drives around with those ''CO-EXIST'' bumper stickers made up of the cross and the Star of David and the Islamic crescent and the peace sign. Your whole world view is based on the belief that deep down we'd all rub along just fine and this neocon fever about Islam is just a lot of banana oil to keep the American people in a state of fear and paranoia. What would more resoundingly confirm that view than if the nicest, most non-bitter, nonpartisan guy in politics turns out to have graduated from the Sword of the Infidel Slayer grade school in Jakarta?
To be sure, the imams always knew young Barack was not your typical novitiate. No doubt when he was late for Friday prayers they stood around singing "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Obama?" How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? Who knows? But if your entire campaign is based on the fact that your slender resume represents national reconciliation, why be so modest? Why not upgrade it to represent full-blown global reconciliation?
That poll about Iraq I mentioned right at the beginning was very interesting. It came out last week and it posed various questions about whether folks thought the "surge" was a good idea or not. Including the following:
"Do you personally want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week to succeed?"
And here's how the American people answered: 63 percent said yes, 22 percent said no, 15 percent said they didn't know.
Let me see if I understand that. For four years, regardless of this or that position on the merits of the war, almost everybody has claimed to "support our troops.'' Some of us have always thought that ''supporting the troops'' while not supporting them in their mission is not entirely credible. But here we have 37 percent of the American people actually urging defeat on them. They ''support our troops'' by wanting them to lose. This isn't a question about whether you think the plan will work, but whether you want it to work. And nearly 40 percent of respondents either don't know or are actively rooting for failure. Which is to say: more dead American troops and more dead Iraqi civilians. Asked whether they want the surge to succeed, 34 percent of Democrats answered ''No,'' and so did 19 percent of independents and 11 percent of Republicans. What were the numbers like for D-Day?
The problem isn't that our politics is ''bitter'' and ''partisan,'' so much as that it's post-modern. In Congress, Democrats have decided to chip away at the war with various symbolic postures but not to oppose it outright: That way, if things go well, they can muscle in on the credit, but if things go badly, they'll be able to say they told you so without getting stuck with the blame. Over on the other side, the usual Republican squishes (Olympia Snowe et al.) have decided that ''the facts on the ground'' have mysteriously changed and their position on the war is now ''evolving.'' By ''the facts on the ground,'' they mean the ground around the polling booths back home rather than any ground in Baghdad or the Sunni Triangle. Somewhere far away there is a real country called Iraq where real people live and die. But Iraq in domestic terms is now mostly a political calculation and, when it comes to calibrating the precise degree of Defeat Lite that works best for one, most Democrats and more and more Republicans are pushing the rest of the planet to the farthest fringes of the map.
Whether the rest of the planet will be content with a non-speaking part remains to be seen. But increasing numbers of the American people reject the post-9/11 paradigm, and there will be a lot of votes for the quiet-life option in 2008. A doctrinaire liberal disciplined enough to pass himself off as a blank slate with sappy soft-focus multiculti bona fides would seem to offer the most symbolically appealing repudiation of the war years. And all we have to do is whistle: We don't have to say anything and we don't have to do anything, which suits us just fine.
And if Hillary thinks everyone's going to pursue stories about some long-ago madrassah, she has a sweetly touching faith in the American media.
Why not? Let the MSM be the one's to suck the oxygen out of Mrs. Clinton's campaign!
Recent photo of Barack Obama aka Mr Empty Suit:
http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/509135/2/istockphoto_509135_empty_suit.jpg
Barak Obama is going to get support from Moveon.org and the nutroots, as well as the NAACP and the Hispanic equivelent. Also, unions are lining up behind Obama, and the media love him more than Hitlary.
They should--he's their candidate in the race. They understand that they can spoof an election, so why not run their own candidate? And what better candidate to represent the media than someone's that all style and no substance?
its a dream come true, with the Repubs in disarray, only the Dems could pull their ass from the fire, its beyond Rove, it's gotta be THEBIGGUY himself, Barak Hussein Osama, schooled in a Madrass, white mother, absentee black muslim father for president.....the polls will put him 20 points ahead...and those 20 percent will say, "oh yes, Obama". Until they get alone in the booth and it hits them, "WTF am I doing", and the undecides, will never vote for this "guy"...we win in aught8.
Evangelicals Warned to Beware of Obama
WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 /Christian Newswire/ -- Rev. Rob Schenck, President of the National Clergy Council and head of its affiliate, Faith and Action, a Washington, DC-based Christian outreach to policy-makers on Capitol Hill has updated and re-released an in-depth examination of the religious beliefs of Sen. Barack Obama titled, "Barack Obama: Sheep or Goat?" Sources close to the Illinois Democrat announced that he will be filing the necessary paperwork today with the Federal Election Commission in Washington, D.C. to begin a presidential campaign.
Obama has been widely touted as able to win the support of values voters. He has openly discussed his faith in his writings and media appearances, suggesting that it will guide him in policy decisions.
Schenck, who is a board member of the Evangelical Church Alliance, America's oldest association of Evangelical clergy and chair of its committee on church and society, traces the development of Sen. Obama’s religious views from being the son of a nominally Muslim father and a secular humanist mother to his current association with a liberal church denomination. Through the Senator’s written and spoken words, Schenck discovers that Obama is anything but an Evangelical Christian. Schenck points to Obama’s positions on key issues that are at variance with Evangelical beliefs, in particular:
- Rejection of the plenary authority and centrality of the Bible
- Failure to evidence a personal surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ
- Support for abortion in all its forms including partial birth abortion
- Support for same-sex unions
In November 2006, Rev. Schenck publicly criticized mega-church Pastor Rick Warren’s invitation to Sen. Obama to speak at his church. Schenck warned that Obama’s appearance in an Evangelical pulpit would be seen as an endorsement of the politician’s “liberal religiosity” as well as his ambitions for higher office.
Rev. Schenck discusses how quickly “Obama-mania” has penetrated the Evangelical community. His article is designed to help Evangelicals and other traditional Christians to determine Obama's true religious identity.
http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/330251938.html
Steyn Ping!
Just as an aside a good comment on American public education.....
But increasing numbers of the American people reject the post-9/11 paradigm, and there will be a lot of votes for the quiet-life option in 2008. A doctrinaire liberal disciplined enough to pass himself off as a blank slate with sappy soft-focus multiculti bona fides would seem to offer the most symbolically appealing repudiation of the war years.
To date I have thought Barry Hussein Obama has about a snowball's chance in hell of getting elected. Now I'm not so sure......
Barack Hussein Obama will not get my vote.
Obama will never get elected. The voters are too easily confused with the name. In my church this morning, one elderly woman came up to me and told me about that "man that wants to swear in on the Koran, Barak Obama". She told me that he is running for president as a Muslim. I feel that there are too many confused people who think the same way. BTW, I didn't bother to correct her, why, when she is already voting against Obama?
Senate Resolution Opposes Iraq Troop Surge
A “sense of the Senate” resolution opposing President Bush’s new Iraq strategy was introduced by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich), and possible 2008 presidential candidates Sens. Joseph Biden (D-Del) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb). The non-binding resolution states that “escalating the United States military force presence in Iraq is not in the national interest.” Bush has proposed adding 21,500 U.S. troops to the 132,000 already in the country.
“It’s a ‘guilt-free’ way of expressing our opposition to the President’s plan,” Levin said. “If it goes badly, we can say ‘we told you so.’ If, by some chance, the plan works—well, we didn’t cut off funding or do anything to stop it. So, we’ll be winners too.”
Biden agreed. “It’s a perfect ‘straddle’ for someone running for president,” Biden said. “Polls show the majority of Americans are now opposed to the war. This resolution says we’re with the American people. If the polls shift we will remind voters that we supported funding for the war.”
Hagel sees things a little differently. “Look, I’m a long-shot for the Republican nomination,” Hagel admitted. “McCain, Guiliani, and Romney are all lining up as ‘hawks.’ My only chance is if the whole war is a disaster. This resolution is a risk-free way for me to help bring that about. Without a united country behind him, Bush can’t win this. At the same time, I’m on the right side of the polls. I could be seen both as a visionary and a man of the people. It’s my best option if I’m ever going to be president.”
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) denounced the resolution, calling it a “cowardly retreat from responsibility.” “My esteemed colleagues are proposing that we run away and leave our troops to drown in the Iraqi quagmire, while they concoct a clever scheme to deny responsibility,” Kennedy complained. “We need to have the courage to wade in and pull them out before it’s too late.”
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex) confessed he had mixed feelings on the proposed resolution. “At first, I was for sending more troops,” Reyes said. “You know, to crack down on those militia guys. But then when I heard Bush say he was for sending more troops I turned against the idea. Some are saying this is just ‘knee-jerk’ opposition to the President. But when you know as little as I do about this whole jihad thing using your head is not an option.”
Polls show that two-thirds of voters want the Democrats to negotiate a “do over” in the war on terror. The so-called “do over” is a gimmick used by children playing unsupervised games. To avoid endless arguing over whether a runner was out or safe, a ball in or out, the game goes back to where it was before the play initiated. “A ‘do over’ makes a lot of sense,” said poll respondent Bob Addlepate. “We should just go back to before 9-11 and forget about everything that happened rather than try to figure out how to make it right. It’s too hard.”
read more...
http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens1.htm
Thanks for posting the pic. I don't know why, but I can't ever copy and paste pics, it never works for me.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
"And Obama - the Seinfeld candidate of the post-modern political age will be very appealing. "
Seinfeld was a show about nothing. Barak Obama a politician about nothing. Apt.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
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