Free Republic

<p>That's from John McCain's statement on Georgia yesterday, and in those few words is contained a large argument why voters should elect the Arizona senator and not Barack Obama.</p> <p>The world in which we live cannot be captained by a rookie without any meaningful executive experience, an enormous ambition, a radical agenda, and a long record of hard-left freinds and mentors that we have to expect would dominate his administration from day one. The irsk Obama represents is huge.</p>

When Barack Obama was young and poor but lucky, he received a scholarship to Honolulu's prestigious Punahou School, an elite private K-12 school where tuition now tops $16,000 a year. Today, Sen. Obama sends his two daughters to a private school in Chicago that costs $15,528 a year - for kindergarten. And yet our presumptive president disses school choice because, while "it might benefit some kids at the top," it "leaves a lot of kids at the bottom." We know that's how "progressives" garner ringing endorsements from the National Education Association, the teachers union whose core mission is protecting public...

Election '08: Russia's brutal invasion of Georgia caught America off guard. But it did give voters an idea of what to expect from a President McCain or a President Obama, and right now the differences are stark.John McCain understood just what was happening and called it right on the first shot. "Russian military forces crossed an internationally recognized border into the sovereign territory of Georgia," he said as the news broke. "The very existence of independent Georgia — and the survival of democratically elected government — are at stake." He was blasted by pundits as being too extreme, but events...

CNSNews.com Dems' New National Platform Opposes Defense of Marriage Act Tuesday, August 12, 2008 By Josiah Ryan, Staff Writer (CNSNews.com) – The 2008 Democratic Party platform draft, which will be submitted to delegates at the Democratic National Convention for approval later this month, expresses opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law that presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says he wants to repeal. “We will enact a comprehensive bipartisan employment non-discrimination act,” says the platform draft. “We oppose the Defense of Marriage Act and all attempts to use this issue to divide us.”

McCain said the Georgia conflict shows the need for a president with strong foreign policy skills, while likely Democratic opponent U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has little such experience. Supporters of likely Republican U.S. presidential nominee John McCain say the conflict between Russia and Georgia is making him look better to voters. Backers of the senator from Arizona say his stand for a tougher stance against Russia, such as his call for the country to be excluded from the Group of Eight industrialized nations, is resonating in the wake of its military campaign against Georgia, The Hill reported Monday. McCain's...

John McCain's campaign will release a new web ad today that continues to portray Barack Obama as a bigger-than-the-Beatles celebrity but that also directly raises the matter of his sex appeal for the first time. "Fan Club" is designed as a parody of an 80s-era album compilation ad, with testimonials from starry-eyed supporters and some conventional jabs at Obama. At the end of the ad, though, there is a pivot to paint Obama as not just a celebrity, but a boy band heart-throb who makes the girls go weak in the knees. Calling Obama "dreamy," the spot features a woman...

There’s a newly uncovered paper trail demonstrating Barack Obama’s abortion militancy you can believe in (hat tip - Jill Stanek): Newly obtained documents prove that in 2003, Barack Obama, as chairman of an IL state Senate committee, voted down a bill to protect live-born survivors of abortion - even after the panel had amended the bill to contain verbatim language, copied from a federal bill passed by Congress without objection in 2002, explicitly foreclosing any impact on abortion. Obama’s legislative actions in 2003 - denying effective protection even to babies born alive during abortions - were contrary to the position...

Last week Doug Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee drew my attention to a previously unnoticed January 2008 article by Terence Jeffrey stating Barack Obama actually did vote against a version of the IL Born Alive Infants Protection Act that was identical to the federal version, contrary to multiple public statements Obama or his surrogates have made to rationalize his opposition to the IL bill for the past 4 years. Since then we have found 2 separate documents proving Barack Obama has been misrepresenting facts. In fact, Barack Obama is more liberal than any U.S. senator, voting against...

Since the story broke late Saturday that Barack Obama’s real Birth Certificate, now in Republican hands, has the name Barry Soetoro and not Barack Obama, as we predicted a couple of weeks ago, I notice that many people are still confused about the implications of dual citizenship for Obama. The matter is somewhat complex, so I’ve decided to try to provide a summary, with the help of resident expert ”Judah Benjamin.” Indonesian Connection Soetoro is the name on Obama’s Birth Certificate (BC) because a new BC was issued when he was adopted by Lolo Soetoro, his step-father. His original BC,...

On the campaign trail, Sen. Barack Obama bashes President Bush for "reckless" economic policies that are "mortgaging our children's future on a mountain of debt." But the Democratic presidential candidate has adopted a key component of Bush's fiscal policy: A novel bookkeeping method that guarantees that the $9.5 trillion national debt will get much bigger. When Obama promises to cut taxes for the middle class without increasing the deficit, he is measuring his proposals against the large deficits that would result from Bush's plan to extend his signature tax cuts beyond their 2010 expiration date. Because Obama wants to eliminate...

Bobby Jindal hits back at whining from the Barack Obama campaign over his response to Obama’s attack on Randy Scheuneman. On ABC’s This Week, Jindal was asked about a sharp retort from John McCain after Obama said that McCain was unduly influenced towards our ally because of Scheuneman’s prior work for the Republic of Georgia. Instead of taking that bait, Jindal pressed the experience advantage McCain has over Obama and why it mattered in this crisis: ABC’s Jake Tapper: “When you heard me mention to Governor Richardson the Obama campaign attack against Senator McCain when it comes to the Russia/Georgia...

As gas prices soared past the four-dollar-a-gallon mark, the energy issue became one of the key driving issues of Election 2008 and America’s voters perceive a stark difference between Barack Obama and John McCain on the subject. By substantial margins, voters believe that McCain’s top priority is finding new sources of energy while Obama is more focused on reducing the amount of energy we consume. Data released yesterday shows that voters overwhelmingly believe it is more important to find new sources of energy. Sixty-seven percent (67%) believe McCain shares this priority while just 29% believe Obama holds that same view....

Why is it so close? That’s been the chatter after these past two weeks in the three-month run of the Obama-McCain smackdown. The Obamaphiles are nervous that their man has stalled in the polls after what, objectively, was a successful trip overseas. The McCainites, terrified of a Democratic wave, are taking solace in the failure of Barack Obama to break away. The straggling Clintonites are busy preparing their told-you-sos. There are any number of theories offered for the tightness. One is that Obama is too temperamentally aloof for most Americans. According to the columnist Maureen Dowd, he is the Mr...

For the last several weeks, the focus of political debate has been on the energy issue. As I've written, $4-a-gallon gasoline has changed public opinion, which now favors oil drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have been struggling, successfully so far, to prevent votes on such drilling, but that's unpopular with the public. House Republicans this past week have been taking to the House floor—which is open to the public during business hours during the congressional recess—and demanding a vote on drilling now. I think it's...

When the North Caucasus slid into war Thursday night, it presented Senators John McCain and Barack Obama with a true '3 a.m. moment,' and their responses to the crisis suggested dramatic differences in how each candidate, as president, would lead America in moments of international crisis. While Obama offered a response largely in line with statements issued by democratically elected world leaders, including President Bush, first calling on both sides to negotiate, John McCain took a remarkably-and uniquely-more aggressive stance, siding clearly with Georgia's pro-Western leaders and placing the blame for the conflict entirely on Russia. The abrupt crisis in...

A president stays in office four or eight years, but his appointments to the Supreme Court can extend his impact for decades. It's likely that Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama will be able to appoint one - and possibly three - justices to the court during his time in the White House. The ideological makeup of the court today is split very narrowly. Even one appointment could dramatically affect its direction. And it's not just the Supreme Court. The next president will exert his influence through the nomination of hundreds of judges to lower federal courts. Observers of...

Today's News & Views August 8, 2008   Few Americans Know Barack Obama's Real Position on Abortion Part One of Two Editor's note. Please read Part Two for more about an exciting new web site.First, a quick thanks to all of you who have read this week's series on pro-abortion Sen. Barack Obama and pro-life Sen. John McCain and took the time to respond at daveandrusko@hotmail.com. Since there are more components to this discussion than even I thought, this dialogue will extend into next week. Let me complete this week with a critical clarification.As I've explained many times in this...

"The first thing I would do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act!" - Sen. Barack Obama states to a group of Planned Parenthood supportersAmazingly, the American public does not know Senator Barack Obama's extreme position on abortion. Obama is a radical abortion-on-demand guy and his voting record is simply brutal. Barack Obama had the chance to support legislation to ensure that babies who survive abortion are afforded the same legal protections as those who are spontaneously born prematurely. In fact, he had three chances, but he refused to vote in favor of protecting these vulnerable lives...

Let's see: housing meltdown, credit crunch, oil shock not seen since the 1970s. The economy is slowing, unemployment growing and inflation increasing. It's the sixth year of a highly unpopular war and the president's approval rating is at 30%. The Italian Communist Party could win this election. The American Democratic Party is trying its best to lose it. Democrats have the advantage on just about every domestic issue from health care to education. However, Americans' greatest concern is the economy, and their greatest economic concern is energy (by a significant margin: 37% to 21% for inflation). Yet Democrats have gratuitously...

I am thinking that it's pretty much simply a matter of time before some lamewad reporter from the NYSlimes or the LASlimes with too much time on his hands asks John McCain his opinion regarding Edwards straying feet.