Free Republic

What does the recent brouhaha about race in the presidential election tell us about Barack Obama? On the one hand, the scuffle has revealed him as more ruthless and cynical than he might like to appear to his young, idealistic supporters, which may not be a bad thing. That he is not as nice as he looks is good news if he is to counter the world’s tyrants. But his campaign has also revealed a less flattering side: a willingness to silence political opponents by airing imaginary grievances. Obama apparently considers false indignation a legitimate weapon in his political arsenal....

Americans are much smarter than our media or political leadership give us credit for Well, it’s unanimous. For the first time since this endless election cycle started, it appears that people are finally getting sick and tired of hearing about Barack Obama. Recent news reports show that large percentages of Americans believe Obama is completely over-exposed and given far too much praise and positive publicity. It would be nice if the nation could focus on a different subject, perhaps one that actually has some substance, but the mainstream media simply won’t allow that to happen. Instead of providing coverage of...

Two percent. That's the percent of voters outside the "Motor City" that have a favorable impression of embattled Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. You don't have to be a pollster to understand how strongly disliked Kilpatrick is throughout Michigan. Sit in any restaurant or bar, and all you hear is people talking about Kilpatrick's troubles. Indicted in March on eight felony counts for committing perjury during a whistleblower trial that eventually cost the city about $9 million, the Mayor spent one night in jail on August 7th for violating his bond and then was arraigned the next day for a new...

There is palpable anxiety, even despair, among many Republicans and conservatives over the possibility that Barack Obama will be elected president this November.  This anxiety is being fueled by the mainstream media's fawning coverage of Obama's every word, while shamelessly downplaying John McCain's campaign; by public opinion polls that purport to show Obama "leading" the race over McCain; and by political commentators, on both sides of the aisle, who believe this is the Democrats' "election to lose," based on historical cycles, an uneven economy, high gas prices, continuing opposition to the Iraq War, and President Bush's dismal approval ratings. I...

Growing doubts weaken Obama, polls show White, independent voters hedge S.A. Miller and Stephen Dinan Wednesday, August 6, 2008 Growing doubts among white working-class and independent voters blunted the momentum of Sen. Barack Obama's presidential run in recent days, leaving him in a tight contest with Republican candidate Sen. John McCain, pollsters say. "His bubble hasn't burst, but it's leaking a little bit," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "It is not massive. It is incremental, but we've seen it across the board in all of these states, that [Mr. McCain] is doing better among...

Senator Obama refuses to be boxed in between what he considers two “false choices”, either:1) …On such and such date, come Hell or high water we’ve gotten our troops out, and be blind to anything that happens in intermediate months2) …completely defer to whatever the commanders on the ground say (because his military and strategic knowledge is better than theirs)LINKBy dismissing out of hand the absoluteness of a calender date by which all Americans will be out of Iraq, Senator Obama has just capitulated the political left’s dogma for the past six years (a debate that started in 2002 before...

There is some irony in the fact that Democrats, after years of deriding Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as a hopeless bungler and conniving Shiite sectarian, are now treating as sacrosanct his suggestion that Iraq will be ready to assume responsibility for its own security by 2010. Naturally this is because his position seems to support that of Barack Obama. A little skepticism is in order here. The prime minister has political motives for what he's saying -- whatever that is. An anonymous Iraqi official told the state-owned Al-Sabah newspaper, "Maliki thinks that Obama is most likely to win in...

Michelle Obama was both personal and policy-driven while speaking to a crowd of about 150 who paid from $1,000 to $10,000 to sip wine, eat dinner standing up and hear her talk. She got the laughs - telling a story about how Barack Obama had asked her out - but she also got solemn silence when she painted contrasts between her husband and his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain. "We have one candidate who essentially is telling us every day that the world as it is is just fine, that what we've been doing for the last eight years is...

A political messiah, who — unlike Reagan and Kennedy — needn't bother to do anything. Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast — a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins — would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign-policy credentials. --snip--After all, in the words of his own slogan, “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” which, translating the royal “we,” means: “I am the one we’ve been waiting for.” Amazingly, he had a quasi-presidential seal with its own Latin inscription affixed to his...

Americans are sharply divided by race heading into the first election in which an African-American will be a major-party presidential nominee, with blacks and whites holding vastly different views of Senator Barack Obama, the state of race relations and how black Americans are treated by society, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. The results of the poll, conducted against the backdrop of a campaign in which race has been a constant if not always overt issue, suggested that Mr. Obama’s candidacy, while generating high levels of enthusiasm among black voters, is not seen by them as evidence...

Barack Obama isn’t just conducting a political campaign; he’s launching his very own religious cult. Under the headline “Obama Supporters Take His Name as Their Own,” the New York Times reported on a bizarre fad among the candidate’s enraptured acolytes: across the country, they’ve begun adopting his middle name, Hussein. “The result is a group of unlikely sounding Husseins,” writes reporter Jodi Kantor, “from Jaime Hussein Alvarez of Washington, D.C., to Kelly Hussein Crowley of Norman, Oklahoma, to Sarah Beth Hussein Frumkin of Chicago.” One of the key elements in many religious cults involves a name change – like transitioning...

Rally Memo From: Leni Riefenstahl To: Barack Hussein (dare I say it?) Obama Subject: Ideas for the rally Dear Mr. Obama: I've been reading of your plans for the Invesco Field mass rally in Denver. I've had some experience documenting such things and am delighted to offer my suggestions. You are the one I've been waiting for.

This fall, watch for David Axelrod, Obama's campaign manager, to choreograph at least two post-convention mass events at least slightly reminiscent of the stagecraft of Leni Riefenstahl in 1934 Germany. Ms. Riefenstahl first heard her idol at a 1932 rally. She was enthralled by his public speaking ability and became a devotee, dedicating her genius to making films that deified The Leader. Her 1934 work entitled "Triumph of the Will," documenting a mass rally in Nuremberg, remains a movie classic with its pioneering dramatic camera work and superbly suggestive imagery. Riefenstahl, a former dancer, put a camera on a semi-circular...

More than halfway through one of the grimmest elections in the history of the US presidency, we gratefully snatch at any source of innocent merriment we can find. Fortunately, there is something intrinsically ridiculous about Obama's retinue of starstruck devotees. Even "Saturday Night Live", hardly a bastion of conservatism, has snickered at the slavish pandering of the media. And the hyperbolic praise of his devoted adherents verges on, or even wallows in, silliness. Younger critics may liken Obama and his followers to a rock star surrounded by groupies. But I'm inclined to hark back to Victorian models of esthetic gurus, such...

Gun Control: Barack Obama says he won't take folks' guns away as long as they're hunters. But when the hunted are his constituents, well, that's different: He opposes concealed carry and the right to self-defense.There's something about an election that brings out the sportsman in a Democratic presidential candidate. Recall John Kerry's sudden fondness for hunting four years ago. And speaking in Idaho earlier this year, Barack Obama told the crowd, "We got a lot of hunters in the state of Illinois, and I have no intention of taking away folks' guns." Except he does. In a 1996 questionnaire, Obama...

Return to the Article June 30, 2008Obama's Callous IndifferenceBy Peter Kirsanow Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen declares that Barack Obama is " 'likable enough' -- in fact, so much so that he is the most charismatic presidential candidate I have seen since Robert F.Kennedy." Well, even though I've  never spoken with Obama, I don't like him very much  (I did testify with him [and a few others] once about a bill he'd sponsored on voter intimidation, but at the time he didn't impress me as unlikable, just a little intellectually lazy) . This hasn't always been the case.  Until...

A Who’s Who of 1968 radicals supports the candidate. Backing a major-party candidate for president would have been anathema to Michael Klonsky 40 summers ago, when the organization he led, Students for a Democratic Society, urged young people to spurn elections. “By ’68, our line was ‘Vote in the Streets,’” Klonsky told me last spring. “We thought we had to fight with Eugene McCarthy and those people.” In August 1968, protesters clashed with police outside the Democratic Party’s national convention in Chicago—but far from being political innocents who took to the streets to protest Vietnam War hawks’ capture of the...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   On the Second Amendment, Don’t Believe Obama!   Friday, June 06, 2008   On the Second Amendment,Don’t Believe Obama! The presidential primary season is finally over, and it is now time for gun owners to take a careful look at just where apparent nominee Barack Obama stands on issues related to 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. Print PDF version But his real record, based on...

June 11, 2008, 6:00 a.m. Obama’s Unofficial Slogan: ‘No, You’re Wrong.’Whatever happened to his ‘pang of shame’? By Jim Geraghty As Barack Obama’s campaign becomes defined by a series of embarrassments — his assessment of what small-town residents cling to, a mentor who believes the government created HIV, a friend of 20 years who takes to the pulpit and demands whites give up 401(k) accounts to atone for their ancestor’s racist sins, a wife who pledges to take away some people’s pie and give it to others, an associate who expresses no regret over planting a bomb in a...

WASHINGTON - An emboldened Barack Obama browbeat Sen. Joe Lieberman on the Senate floor after the self-proclaimed "Independent Democrat" slammed the candidate on behalf of Republican John McCain. Flexing his new power as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Obama greeted Lieberman, a prominent McCain backer, on the Senate floor Wednesday - then promptly led him by the hand to a back corner to give him a talking-to. "He had him pinned against the wall," said one Senate aide who saw the tete-a-tete...