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For those of you who remember the Carter Administration, you remember how horrible it was. Democrats and Republicans agree that it may have been the worst presidency in memory. So why would we want to re-elect Carter? That’s what an Obama presidency would be. Check it out: Carter instituted “windfall profit taxes” on oil companies and prices went up (if you understand basic economics, you know why). Obama wants to create new “windfall profit taxes” on oil companies. Carter opposed nuclear and oil independence...prices went up...and Obama is also opposed to nuclear and oil independence. When people complained about oil...

Last week raised important questions about whether Barack Obama is strong enough to be president. On the domestic political front, he showed incredible weakness in dealing with the Clintons, while on foreign and defense questions, he betrayed a lack of strength and resolve in standing up to Russia’s invasion of Georgia. This two-dimensional portrait of weakness underscores fears that Obama might, indeed, be a latter-day Jimmy Carter. Consider first the domestic and political. Bill and Hillary Clinton have no leverage over Obama. Hillary can’t win the nomination. She doesn’t control any committees. If she or her supporters tried to disrupt...

Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama have much more in common than their woeful understanding of the Islamist threat. As is by now apparent, Barack Obama and his crack team of foreign policy experts have proven themselves totally tone-deaf when it comes to understanding the American people and their views toward the rest of the world. His campaign’s strategy to convince voters that the way to win their hearts is to cozy up to those who hold them in disdain has resulted in a dip in his poll numbers. So, having failed to impress any of those who have not already...

Barack Obama doesn't just talk about conservation, he practices it. In his thinking and proposals on energy, the Illinois senator has expertly recycled Jimmy Carter. Though there may be a difference here or there, the Obama policies are essentially Carter's. You have doubts? Read through Carter's energy speech from April 1977. In a nationally televised addressed, Carter struck themes that are echoed by Obama today. - Whereas Jimmy Carter accused the United States of being "the most wasteful nation on earth," Obama is fond of saying that Americans are energy hogs, consuming a quarter of the world's energy while being...

There aren’t many who long for a return to the 1970s. Those of us old enough to recall that decade tend to think of gas lines, a hostage crisis and Watergate. President Carter never used the word “malaise,” but he acted as if America was doomed to decline, and it was his job to make sure it went smoothly. There’s some malaise around today, too. High gasoline prices are back. Petroleum-producing nations (such as Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia) again hold us hostage -- this time for petro-dollars, even as the value of our currency slides. And polls show both...

Has Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine's chances of landing the coveted spot as Obama's Veep risen? According to stories at both The Politico and the Washington Post Kaine has risen to the level of serious contender, along with Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh and Delaware Sen. Joe Biden. The WaPo story has close Kaine associates acknowledging that Kaine has told them that he has had "very serious" conversations with Obama about joining the ticket.

The Sen. Barack Obama campaign held a conference call this morning on one of the key battleground states in this race: Pennsylvania. Team O, led by Gov. Ed Rendell, stressed the importance of registering and winning over the one-million-plus, un-registered voters spread out over the Keystone State.

It's complicated. Pennsylvania is a "purple" state that must go Democrat blue instead of Republican red for Barack Obama to win the November election. John McCain does not need Pennsylvania to win the White House, but Obama sure does.

So now that you know that the rest of the world loves Obama, how about you? I raised that question last Thursday night on my radio talk show at Washington, DC’s 630 WMAL, albeit rather facetiously. Despite what the forces at CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Rueters, The New York Times, and “CNN International” may want me to believe, I don’t assume that “the world loves Obama,” anymore than I assume that “the world hates Bush.” But now that the week of cathartic revelry is behind us and the excitement has subsided a little bit, it’s time for some reflection....

Former White House national security adviser says if John McCain becomes the next US president the world will move toward World War IV. Former US President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski criticized US officials in Senator McCain's camp for pushing the presumptive Republican nominee toward a radical foreign policy on issues such as Iran. Brzezinski described McCain's presidency as an 'appalling concept' as it would lead to the World War IV, arguing that from the viewpoint of figures surrounding the Arizona senator the Cold War counted as World War III. "Well, if McCain is president and if his...

The Obama campaign website makes no mention of missile defense. Indeed, there is no national security issue area as there is on the McCain site. Discussion of defense topics is subordinated under the heading of foreign policy. This reflects Obama’s focus on diplomacy over military options. For example, consider the following statement, “Iran has sought nuclear weapons, supports militias inside Iraq and terror across the region, and its leaders threaten Israel and deny the Holocaust. But Obama believes that we have not exhausted our non-military options in confronting this threat; in many ways, we have yet to try them. That’s...

Barack Obama, the US presidential candidate, has called the situation in Afghanistan "precarious and urgent". Obama, who visited US troops in Afghanistan and met Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, said on Sunday the US should start planning immediately for a shift of soldiers from Iraq to Afghanistan. "I think the situation is getting urgent enough that we have to start doing something now," he told the US TV network CBS. Television pictures showed a relaxed Obama at the heavily guarded presidential palace in Kabul, talking to Karzai and flanked by Afghan ministers and fellow senators Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed....

Even here in his home state of Georgia, Jimmy Carter does not receive universal acclaim. He is regarded by many as a weak-kneed appeaser or a naive do-gooder with a puritanical bent. Much of that reputation can be traced back to his widely noted July 1979 speech on the nation's "crisis of confidence," remembered as the "malaise" speech, though he didn't use that word. The response to that televised talk taught politicians one thing: Never ask Americans to make sacrifices. After all, it is now accepted wisdom that the speech — combined with hyperinflation, hostages and an oil spike —...

YES, folks, it's déjà vu all over again. That charismatic American politician Jimmy Carter II, aka Barack Obama, is carrying all before him – at least in Europe – riding a tsunami of media-driven hysteria. When you are possessed of unlimited reserves of rhetoric, boundless ambition, an increasingly undisciplined ego and – er – not a lot else, the soap-box becomes addictive.

...The Ford ad team told them more — how he had grown up in Middle America, played football for the University of Michigan (the name of the team was omitted in ads aired in Ohio) and served in the military in World War II. There's an assumption this year that voters know John McCain pretty well. But my sense is that there is still a lot of filling in the blanks that the McCain campaign can do. Second, they filled in the blanks on Jimmy Carter. Most voters wanted to support a Democrat, and one who had smoothed over the...

Many of Barack Obama’s national security policies are sideways, backward-looking and re-treaded from the Carter Administration. As examples, Obama supports direct negotiations with the Iranian theocracy, opposes support for pro-Democracy Iranian groups, and advocates open lines of relations with the most corrupt members of this despicable regime. All of this works only to legitimize the dictatorship, both in the eyes of the beleaguered Iranian people and in the eyes of the world, friends and foes alike. if enacted, this would be another very dangerous and short-sighted strategic blunder, and one from which we may never recover.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki says his government is hoping that a President Obama will reestablish a U.S. diplomatic presence in his country. “The absence of a U.S. Embassy reduces the ability of our government to effectively communicate with the U.S. government,” Mottaki asserted. “The present arrangement is no substitute for the face-to-face interaction we enjoyed when Jimmy Carter was the U.S. president.” The United States has not had a formal diplomatic presence in Iran since the embassy was overrun by Iranian “students” and the staff taken hostage in 1979. Since that time, the Swiss Embassy has represented U.S. interests...

Perusing the Sunday newspapers with plagiaristic intent, I come across an article about who's responsible for the current energy debacle. Politicians are mentioned along with the amazingly shortsighted auto executives and the oil industry itself. Names — lots of names — are dropped, everyone from the current Bush to the previous Bush to Clinton. But not a mention of the culprit-in-chief, Ronald Wilson Reagan — still, after all these years, the Teflon president.

Barack Obama gave another eloquent, thoughtful, thought-provoking speech this week, this time about patriotism in Independence, Missouri. Obama knew that the July 4th holiday gave him an opportunity to undo some of the damage that Hillary Clinton's primary campaign had done to him. But rather than being defensive, trying to prove his loyalty to America or refuting the claim that he was not-unpatriotic, Obama did what he did best. He spoke powerfully about patriotism - love of country - in a broad expansive way. He insisted that "no party or political philosophy has a monopoly on patriotism" - a sharp...