Obama and Reagan

During the election, some suggested that Barack Obama had similarities to Ronald Reagan, insofar as both men came to national attention in a time when the country was primed and ready for a cultural shift.

After seeing the president-elect's ability to interact with shady figures -- be it Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright or Rod Blagojevich -- yet claim ignorance of their character and come out unscathed, I'm starting to see at least one comparison.

Barack Obama is either incredibly lucky that no one is willing or able to spill the beans on him; incredibly capable of ignoring the character of others in order to accomplish his goals; or incredibly ignorant of the people with whom he associates.

Red Herring of the Day

From an AP article about how gun sales have skyrocketed since the election of Barack Obama (emphasis mine):

Faster than a speeding bullet, rifles and handguns have been flying off the shelves here and across the country since Barack Obama won the presidential election.

"Gun sales doubled Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday last week, and we've sold out of a lot of the guns we normally have in stock," said Jim King, sporting goods manager at Thatcher's Ace Hardware in Baker City, which still retains a tinge of its Wild West boomtown origins.

People are afraid of losing their Second Amendment gun rights, King said, although that would involve a lengthy and improbable attempt to amend the U.S. Constitution.

The issue for Second Amendment supporters is not that they think the amendment will be amended or repealed. But there are plenty of limits that can be placed on gun ownership short of erasing the Second Amendment. Obama tacitly admitted in September that his willingness to change gun laws was limited only by sufficient Congressional support; now that he has it, gun owners worry that he will use his Congressional majorities to impose much more stringent limits on them.

Local blogger's questions on Obama

I was perusing my Site Meter this morning and came across a new blog: Man of Depravity. It's a mix of politics and faith, which always attracts my attention.

But what really got my attention was today's post talking about negative campaigning, and asking specifically about Barack Obama's association with Bill Ayers. Tyler wrote:

Here are a couple of my questions on this story:

• Why did McCain wait this long to push this story? Why didn’t Clinton push it?
• If Ayers is truly a threat and makes Obama a dangerous candidate, how is he still a US citizen not in jail and also working as a professor at a state college?

(These questions aren’t to minimize the importance of the story. They aren’t even to say that I’m not troubled by any connection Obama might have with this man. I know my questions make me sound liberal…I’m just trying to read between the lines of why this is or isn’t a big deal. They are questions not statements.)

It was a good reminder to me that there are plenty of people out there who don't follow politics like I do, and they can be reached with the truth. I hope I was truthful (though I acknowledge relying on others to report truthfully) when I answered with the following:

Why did McCain wait? A great question. I don't fully understand that either, but I think part of it is the press corps' reluctance to dig into the story, so the facts are still coming out.

Why is Ayers not in jail? Because the federal investigation was botched and the case thrown out. In response, what did Ayers say about himself? "Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country."

Why is he a professor at a state college? Have you been on the campus of a state college anytime in the last 30 years?

The red flag in this case is that this is one of several Obama associations that are questionable.

Yes, Obama was 8 years old when Ayers bombed the Capitol and planned (but failed) to detonate a nail-filled bomb at an Army base social.

But Obama was 34 years old when Obama launched his political career in a social gathering in Ayers' home. And he was 37 years old when Ayers and his wife said they didn't do enough bombing. And Obama's story keeps changing. I met him in his living room (would you host a political event in your living room with someone you didn't know?). I met him at a lunch meeting about school reform. He was just a guy who lived in my neighborhood.

Obama was 42 years old when Tony Rezko (who was on Obama's campaign finance committee and under federal investigation at the time) held a lavish fund raiser at the Rezko mansion for Obama. That was followed a year later by an agreement between Rezko's wife and the Obamas to purchase their current house at $1.65 million, which was $300,000 below market value. (Rezko has been convicted of extortion, bribery, money laundering and mail fraud; his sentencing has been postponed until -- surprise -- after the election.)

Obama was about 36 years old when he used his position on a charitable foundation to steer money to the Arab American Action Network, a group that holds the establishment of Israel as an illegitimate catastrophe and whose leader supports Palestinian terror attacks on Israeli military targets.

Obama was about 27 years old when (as he acknowledges in his book, Dreams From My Father) he heard controversial statements from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in Wright's pulpit. He was 43 when he said he went to Wright's church "every Sunday." Twenty years later, he claims not to have heard such statements from Wright until they were brought to his attention by the press. And only then did he distance himself from Wright's church.

How do these associations reflect on Obama as president? There's no way to know that. But it's fair, I think, to ask whether Obama's choice of associates is a hint of the types of people and perspectives that will find their way into a presidential inner circle.

The debate over today's presidential debate

comes down to talk vs. actions.

Barack Obama's strength is his words, and he believes the American people desire to hear the words of their presidential contenders. He intends to proceed with the debate, regardless of progress on the current crisis, in order to demonstrate that he can discuss our country's issues intelligently and masterfully.

John McCain's strength is his actions, and he believes the American people desire to see what their presidential contenders would actually do in crisis. He believes talk is cheap if it's not backed up by actions. And he intends to proceed with the debate only after dealing with this crisis, because his priority is actions before words.

Which would you rather have in the White House? A man who tells you what he believes, or a man who shows you?

Questions for Obama

From George Will in the May 5, 2008 issue of Newsweek:

• Senator, concerning the criteria by which you will nominate judges, you said: "We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old." Such sensitivities might serve an admirable legislator, but what have they to do with judging? Should a judge side with whichever party in a controversy stirs his or her empathy? Is such personalization of the judicial function inimical to the rule of law?

• Voting against the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts, you said: Deciding "truly difficult cases" should involve "one's deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy." Is that not essentially how Chief Justice Roger Taney decided the Dred Scott case? Should other factors—say, the language of the constitutional or statutory provision at issue—matter?

• You say, "The insurance companies, the drug companies, they're not going to give up their profits easily when it comes to health care." Why should they? Who will profit from making those industries unprofitable? When pharmaceutical companies have given up their profits, who will fund pharmaceutical innovations, without which there will be much preventable suffering and death? What other industries should "give up their profits"?

• ExxonMobil's 2007 profit of $40.6 billion annoys you. Do you know that its profit, relative to its revenue, was smaller than Microsoft's and many other corporations'? And that reducing ExxonMobil's profits will injure people who participate in mu-tual funds, index funds and pension funds that own 52 percent of the company?

• You say John McCain is content to "watch [Americans'] home prices decline." So, government should prop up housing prices generally? How? Why? Were prices ideal before the bubble popped? How does a senator know ideal prices? Have you explained to young couples straining to buy their first house that declining prices are a misfortune?

• Telling young people "don't go into corporate America," your wife, Michelle, urged them to become social workers or others in "the helping industry," not "the moneymaking industry." Given that the moneymakers pay for 100 percent of American jobs, in both public and private sectors, is it not helpful?

• Michelle, who was born in 1964, says that most Americans' lives have "gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl." Since 1960, real per capita income has increased 143 percent, life expectancy has increased by seven years, infant mortality has declined 74 percent, deaths from heart disease have been halved, childhood leukemia has stopped being a death sentence, depression has become a treatable disease, air and water pollution have been drastically reduced, the number of women earning a bachelor's degree has more than doubled, the rate of homeownership has increased 10.2 percent, the size of the average American home has doubled, the percentage of homes with air conditioning has risen from 12 to 77, the portion of Americans who own shares of stock has quintupled … Has your wife perhaps missed some pertinent developments in this country that she calls "just downright mean"?

• You favor raising the capital gains tax rate to "20 percent or 25 percent." You say this will not "distort" economic decision making. Your tax returns on your 2007 income of $4.2 million show that you and Michelle own few stocks. Are you sure you understand how investors make decisions?

• During the ABC debate, you acknowledged that when the capital gains rate was dropped first to 20 percent, then to 15 percent, government revenues from the tax increased and they declined in the 1980s when it was increased to 28 percent. Nevertheless, you said you would consider raising the rate "for purposes of fairness." How does decreasing the government's financial resources and punishing investors promote fairness? Are you aware that 20 percent of taxpayers reporting capital gains in 2006 had incomes of less than $50,000?

• This November, electorates in four states will vote on essentially this language: "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting." Three states—California, Washington and Michigan—have enacted such language. You made a radio ad opposing the Michigan initiative. Why? Are those states' voters racists?

• You denounce President Bush for arrogance toward other nations. Yet you vow to use a metaphorical "hammer" to force revisions of trade agreements unless certain weaker nations adjust their labor, environmental and other domestic policies to suit you. Can you define cognitive dissonance?

• You want "to reduce money in politics." In February and March you raised $95 million. See prior question.

A funny definition of neighborliness

When I hear the word "neighborliness," I think of neighbors coming together in a spirit of community and love to voluntarily help those who need it.

Barack Obama has a different definition. On Bill O'Reilly's show Monday night, Obama made it clear that his definition of neighborliness is the forced transfer of money from those who have been successful in America (and who, by the way, employ a huge number of people through their successful businesses) in order to give it to those who have less:

If I am sitting pretty and you’ve got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips and I can afford it and she can’t, what’s the big deal for me to say I’m gonna pay a little bit more? That is neighborliness.

Under that definition, if I get held up in an alley and the thief takes my wallet, but I make enough money to absorb the loss of whatever cash is in the wallet, I'm just being neighborly.

O'Reilly consistently hammered Obama on his plan to raise taxes on the wealthy in order to fund tax cuts elsewhere. Obama refused to take O'Reilly's bait when the latter called it "class warfare" and "income redistribution," even though that's exactly what it is -- taking money away from one class of people to give to another class.

Obama even laid out the terms of how the class warfare will work, telling O'Reilly "you can afford that." In other words, anyone who dislikes such a financial redistribution deserves to be demonized because in the eyes of the left, they should be able to afford whatever the government takes from them -- even though a return to the Clinton tax structure would require those folks to write another five-figure check to the IRS.

Obama tried to come across as an everyday man, saying "I don't like paying taxes. You think I like writing a check?" But his definition of neighborliness is anything but typical. It is, as O'Reilly correctly noted, a "socialist tenet."

By the way, the funniest line in that interview came from O'Reilly, when he said, "It's not all about me, believe me."

Which, of course, is as far from the truth as it could be.

If Obama ever gets the votes, he'll take away your guns

That's the tacit admission that Barack Obama made today during an appearance in Pennsylvania before a "hand-picked crowd," as reported by the Wall Street Journal:

A woman in the crowd told Obama she had “heard a rumor” that he might be planning some sort of gun ban upon being elected president. Obama trotted out his standard policy stance, that he had a deep respect for the “traditions of gun ownership” but favored measures in big cities to keep guns out of the hands of “gang bangers and drug dealers’’ in big cities “who already have them and are shooting people.”

“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it,’’ Obama said. But the Illinois senator could still see skeptics in the crowd, particularly on the faces of several men at the back of the room.

So he tried again. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’ he said. “This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’

Remember, one of the Democrats' goals this election season (along with Obama in the White House) is a filibuster-proof majority in the Congress. Obama seems to be saying that if he gets elected along with such a majority, he won't hesitate to support Orwellian gun-control legislation.

McCain's understanding of the world

John McCain is no Barack Obama. He's not photogenic. He's not a spectacular speaker. His war injuries make him look robotic at times.

And from a purely superficial standpoint, I worry a little bit that too many Americans might make their decisions about the presidency as if it's a beauty contest, instead of looking at the lives and listening to the hearts of the men who want to be the 44th president of the United States.

But I hope there was at least one undecided voter out there tonight who heard John McCain's heart. I hope they heard loud and clear that John McCain has a clear understanding of the world, an understanding garnered by years in the military, years in the government and -- most importantly -- years of watching what war can do to a family, a community and a country:

We face many dangerous threats in this dangerous world, but I'm not afraid of them. I'm prepared for them. I know how the military works, what it can do, what it can do better, and what it shouldn't do. I know how the world works. I know the good and the evil in it. I know how to work with leaders who share our dreams of a freer, safer and more prosperous world, and how to stand up to those who don't. I know how to secure the peace.

My friends, when I was 5 years old, a car pulled up in front of our house. A Navy officer rolled down the window and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I rarely saw my father again for four years. My grandfather came home from that same war exhausted from the burdens he had borne and died the next day. In Vietnam, where I formed the closest friendships of my life, some of those friends never came home with me.

I hate war. It's terrible beyond imagination.

I'm running for president to keep the country I love safe and prevent other families from risking their loved ones in war as my family has. I will draw on all my experience with the world and its leaders, and all the tools at our disposal -- diplomatic, economic, military, and the power of our ideals -- to build the foundations for a stable and enduring peace.

Do you get it? John McCain would keep us out of war if it was at all possible, because he understands the costs of war, but he also understands that war is sometimes necessary to sustain the freedoms that most of us take for granted.

Barack Obama would keep us out of war regardless of the situation, because he doesn't understand the impacts of restraining us from a war we must fight. He believes all war is bad, but has no basis for judging the competing costs of aggression or pacifism.

Heh. Just Heh.

Barack Obama, after winning election to the US Senate in November 2004:

I am a believer in knowing what you’re doing when you apply for a job, and I think that if I were to seriously consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, before having served a day in the senate. Now, there’s some people who might be comfortable doing that, but I’m not one of those people.

Quote of the Day 2

From Jonah Goldberg on Barack Obama, noting that the Democrat should be way ahead of John McCain -- but isn't:

Ask the typical Obama supporter why this should be so and you’ll get a range of answers. Some just stare at the poll numbers the way my late basset hound would look at me when I tried to feed him a grape: with pure unblinking incomprehension. Others act like the guy who sits alone with his shopping bags at the public library, muttering about Fox News conspiracies and how Karl Rove-like aliens are doing terrible things with probes of proctological exactitude. Still others just shake their heads at the racism of anyone who could possibly have a problem with a very left-wing politician with almost no experience, who often sounds like his campaign slogan is: “People of Earth! Stop Your Bickering. I Am From Harvard, And I’m Here To Help.”

I especially liked Goldberg's observation -- via Michael Barone -- that "with the exception of the black vote, Obama’s support within the Democratic party is comprised almost entirely of cultural liberals. [Barone] dubbed this intra-Democratic split a divide between 'academics and Jacksonians.' The Jacksonians are working-class, culturally conservative whites. The academics are the same people who formed the base for Howard Dean, Bill Bradley, Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart, George McGovern, and other successful presidents in the anti-matter universe where Spock has a goatee."

What does birth control do? Park your car?

Today's quote of the day comes from the unexcelled Peggy Noonan, talking about how the country is starting to pay attention to the presidential race, and specifically about Barack Obama's abortion answer at Rick Warren's church last weekend:

As to the question when human life begins, the answer to which is above Mr. Obama's pay grade, oh, let's go on a little tear. You know why they call it birth control? Because it's meant to stop a birth from happening nine months later. We know when life begins. Everyone who ever bought a pack of condoms knows when life begins.

To put it another way, with conception something begins. What do you think it is? A car? A 1948 Buick?

Or as I said in the comments of a post a few years ago:

You think it will develop into a porcupine? A tadpole, maybe? A grapefruit? If it has the physical attributes of a baby, but it's not human, what in the world is it? And how did it get inside that woman? Quick, someone alert the authorities!

Just don't alert Barack Obama. It's above his pay grade.

Quote of the Day: Obama's certainty on abortion

From Rich Lowry:

At Saddleback, Obama said determining when a baby gets rights is “above his pay grade.” Leave aside that presidents usually have an opinion about who deserves legal rights. If Obama is willing to permit any abortions in any circumstances, he’d better possess an absolute certainty about the absolute moral nullity of the fetus.

Or as the folks at Stand to Reason like to say: If the unborn is not a human person, no justification for abortion is necessary. However, if the unborn is a human person, no justification for abortion is adequate.

Obama's been throwing people under the bus for years

In 2000, when Barack Obama was an Illinois State Senator, he ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He lost -- no he was crushed -- by a 2-to-1 margin.

The lesson he apparently learned from that loss was that he should be willing to throw anyone under the bus who stood in the way of his political ambitions. There were no principles or allies, only people to use and positions to take that would get him to the next level.

The evidence of this comes from a news story that appeared on London's Channel 4 news, in which reporter Sarah Smith explains how Obama cleared out his opposition to create a deceptive narrative about transcending race. The portion below starts at the 6:19 mark of the video, and goes for almost a minute:

Rev. Wright, now disowned, was essential to Obama’s early career. Obama needed Wright because the first time he ran for nationwide office, he quickly discovered his unique background that made him so irresistible to white liberals caused distrust in the black community. He was shocked by the hostility from African-American voters when he badly lost a congressional primary eight years ago.

As Obama navigated his way through the power structures in the state senate, he managed to take advantage of boundary changes, and remapped Chicago to suit himself. Obama completely redrew the boundaries of his own state senate seat, and he included in it lots of whiter, wealthier city center areas. Out were the poorer black neighborhoods that he had represented, and into his district came many of the city’s richest and most influential political donors — the very people Obama knew he would need when he ran for the US Senate.

So Barack Obama worked the black community to seem like one of them, only to throw the black community under the bus to gain the favor of rich white folks. Then he threw Rev. Wright under the bus to gain the favor of moderates throughout the country who couldn't stomach the idea that a president would take counsel from a man who called for blacks to sing "God Damn America."

And that's not even counting Obama's entire church, his grandmother, or his positions on gun control or town-hall debates or the Iraq surge or public financing or his nifty presidential seal or state's rights regarding same-sex marriage or...

How is Obama any more qualified than Thomas?

Saturday on the stage of Saddleback Community Church, Barack Obama was asked which Supreme Court justice he would not have nominated if he were president. His answer was Clarence Thomas, about whom he said:

...I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation.

This either questions Thomas' intelligence or his background (or both), so I decided to take a look at the history of Clarence Thomas. And while I was at it, I looked at the history of Barack Obama.

Clarence Thomas was born on June 23, 1948 in a tiny Georgia town. Born into poverty -- his family lived in a one-room shack with dirt floors and without plumbing -- his father left when Clarence was 2. At age 7, Clarence and his brother went to live with their grandfather, who owned a fuel oil business. They made deliveries with their grandfather, learning his ethic of hard work and self-reliance. Clarence's grandfather sent him to Catholic schools, including an all-white boarding school in nearby Savannah, where he overcame racism to play on the football team and achieve excellent grades. He was the only African-American graduate from St. John Vianny Minor Seminary in 1967.

Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His parents split when Barack was 2, and he only saw his father one additional time before he died in 1982. In 1967, his mother remarried and the family moved to his stepfather's native Indonesia. Barack returned to Hawaii in 1971 and lived with his grandparents, attending Punahou Academy as one of three African-American 1979 graduates.

After high school, Clarence Thomas initially attended a Catholic seminary in Missouri, but decided against the priesthood after hearing a classmate's racist comment about Martin Luther King Jr.'s death. He moved to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., graduating cum laude in 1971 with an English degree. While at Holy Cross, he helped found the Black Student Union. After Holy Cross, he moved to New Haven, Conn., where he graduated from the Yale University Law School in 1974.

Barack Obama moved to Los Angeles after high school, attending Occidental College for two years before moving to New York. Transferring to Columbia University, he earned a degree in political science, specializing in international relations.

After Columbia, he worked for a year at the Business International Corp. and for a year at the New York Public Interest Research Group. During that time, he was also involved with two faith-based community organizations, the Developing Communities Project and the Gamaliel Foundation.

In 1988, he entered the Harvard Law School, where he was named the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated magna cum laude in 1991.

So thus far, we have two African-American men whose fathers bailed when the kids were young, who were raised by their mothers and grandparents, who received the opportunity to attend very good high schools, and who earned degrees from very good colleges. Not much difference.

But here's where it gets a little bit more difficult to compare and contrast, because while Clarence Thomas pursued barely a half-dozen opportunities leading up to his Supreme Court appointment, Barack Obama (as we saw prior to his time at Harvard) was much more diversified in his pursuits.

And it's also the point where you see two African-American men go in different directions as it relates to their attitudes toward race. One man disavowed racial preferences, even though he benefited from them in a variety of ways; the other man served in positions (both paid and unpaid) in which his race was a key motivating factor.

After earning his law degree, Clarence Thomas interviewed with various law firms, but as in college, he felt he was treated differently because of his race. (One biography called it "resentment toward the tokenism of affirmative action, [which] combined with his grandfather's lessons on self-sufficiency and independence, had moved Thomas into a circle of African American conservatives who rejected the dependency fostered among blacks by the welfare state.") He instead moved to Missouri to work as an assistant attorney general under John Danforth.

When Danforth was elected to the United States Senate in 1977, Thomas moved to St. Louis to work as a corporate attorney at the Monsanto Corp. Two years later, he moved to Washington to work as a legislative assistant to Danforth -- but only on the condition that he not work on civil rights issues.

And yet, his lack of desire for facing racial issues still led him to positions that dealt directly and specifically with those issues. In 1981, the Reagan Administration tapped Thomas as the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education, a post he held until he was promoted in 1982 to the chairmanship of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In those positions, he insisted that minorities should succeed on their merits, not on the backs of programs like affirmative action.

He worked at the EEOC until 1990, when President George H.W. Bush nominated Thomas to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Less than 16 months later, Bush nominated him to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by retiring African-American justice Thurgood Marshall. The irony could not have been lost on Thomas that his nomination was based, at least in part, on his race. As another biography said, "Although President George Bush stated that he chose Thomas for his legal qualifications, it would take conscious effort to ignore the political pressures on Bush to name a black candidate after the retirement of Thurgood Marshall, the Court's first and only black justice."

When Thomas was sworn in to his seat on the Supreme Court, he was 43 years and four month old.

After Harvard, Barack Obama went in a multitude of directions. He was the director of Illinois Project Vote, which registered African-American voters for the 1992 election. He also began a four-year stint as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School (followed by an eight-year stint as a senior lecturer). In 1993, he accepted an Associate position with Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development. He served Of Counsel at the firm from 1996 to 2004, although his law license went inactive in 2002.

Between 1992 and 2002, he was also on the boards of directors for several groups that focused on civil rights, minority empowerment and economic justice: Public Allies, the Woods Fund of Chicago, the Joyce Foundation, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and the Lugenia Burns Hope Center.

Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996, gaining reelection in both 1998 and 2002. In 2004, he was elected to the United States Senate. Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States a little more than two years later.

If he is elected president, his age on election day will be 47 years, three months.

So with Clarence Thomas, you have a man who earned degrees from two of the nation's finest universities, Holy Cross and Yale. (Say what you want about how he got in, but affirmative action doesn't earn you the grades you need to qualify, nor does it earn you the grades you need to receive the diploma.) He then worked for two years in state government, two years in the private sector, two years in the U.S. Capitol, 10 years dealing with civil and employment rights from a government perspective, and almost two years in the federal judiciary.

That set of experiences is what he brought to the Supreme Court.

With Barack Obama, you have a man who earned degrees from two of the nation's finest universities, Columbia and Harvard. Then in overlapping fashion, he worked for 11 years in the private sector, 12 years in academia, and 10 years with various community organizations, along with eight years in state government and three in the federal government.

Those are the experiences he brings with him in his quest for the presidency.

So here's my question: According to Obama, Clarence Thomas' education and (almost) two decades of experience -- including a variety of government roles and personal challenges -- failed to make him a "strong enough jurist or legal thinker" to qualify as one of nine Supreme Court justices. So why is Barack Obama -- with the same education and (almost) two decades of experience in various government roles and personal challenges -- a strong enough leader to become the one-and-only president of the greatest nation on the planet?

Never mind the mainstream, he's on the extreme fringe

Who said this?

When a child is born, they deserve every protection that the country can provide them.

I'll give you a hint: the speaker is talking about abortion.

Here, I'll give you multiple choice. Was it:

a) Barack Obama
b) John McCain
c) Kate Michelman
d) James Dobson
e) None of the above

Give up? The answer is (e). The speaker was actually an executive for NARAL Pro-Choice America, stating that her organization did not oppose keeping a baby alive once it's born, regardless of how or when that birth occurs. (Nice of them, isn't it?)

What she was talking about was the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA), which passed in 2002 and says that a child who is born "at any stage of development" and who is still living after that birth (no matter if the birth occurred from labor or induced abortion), has all the rights afforded to any other person. It also made a point to say these rights did not apply to a child prior to his or her birth, lest the pro-abortion folks have a meltdown.

And because it stipulated that those rights did not apply prior to birth, NARAL did not oppose the bill.

But Barack Obama did. Mr. Obama holds the opinion that if a mom wants to abort her child and the child somehow survives the abortion attempt, that child has no right to medical care to keep it alive.

Oh, Mr. Obama will tell you otherwise -- that the Illinois version of the BAIPA he opposed was different than the federal law because it would have outlawed all abortions -- but he's, um, mis-remembering. Mr. Obama was chairman of the Health & Human Services Committee when he voted against an amendment that contained language identical to the federal bill passed a year earlier. So because NARAL Pro-Choice America didn't oppose the bill when Mr. Obama did, that places Mr. Obama on the extreme political fringe -- never mind outside the mainstream -- compared to NARAL, one of the most stringent pro-abortion organizations in the country.

In fact, it seems Barack Obama is in favor of allowing a doctor to pull a living baby out until just the head is outside its mother, stab it in the back of the head with a sharp object and create a hole large enough to suck the brains out. After all, Mr. Obama has promised that one of his top priorities as president would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would erase every federal and state restriction on abortion. That means re-legalizing partial birth abortion, which I described above; making sure your 13-year-old daughter could abort her baby without having to tell you a thing; and ensuring that no community could say their tax dollars shouldn't pay for it.

Change we can believe in? That apparently doesn't apply if you're a fetus.

This is the one we have waited for...

I was listening to a Chris Tomlin song yesterday called "This is our God." The chorus goes like this:

This is the one we have waited for
This is the one we have waited for
This is the one we have waited for
Jesus, Lord and Savior
This is our God

For a moment, I forgot who I was listening to and thought it was a song about Barack Obama.

That the surge worked is irrelevant

So the Oregonian editorial page would have us believe. Even though it might be true, they say, that John McCain was right about the surge and Barack Obama was wrong:

...it is also beside the point. The adoption last year of Gen. Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy, as well as the infusion of additional U.S. troops, seems to have improved conditions in Iraq enormously. [Seems to have? Why the qualification?] But now the extra troops have gone home, Iraqi security forces have taken the lead in operations that have made neighborhoods and cities safer, and the national government is more or less functional, despite numerous daunting challenges. And barring a dramatic setback, that's the situation that the next American president will face when he takes office in January.

What matters isn't whether John McCain was right last year when he supported the Petraeus approach. What matters now is whether he or Barack Obama will do the best thing for the overextended military and for the country of Iraq. Further, there's a linkage between the United States' approach to Iraq and its approach to Afghanistan, where more troops are urgently needed to keep the country from slipping back into chaos or extremism.

There's just one problem with this selective approach: If Barack Obama had his way, the surge never would have taken place. More of our troops would be dead. Many more Iraqis would be dead. The Iraqi government and security forces would not have made the strides they have made. And al-Qaeda in Iraq would be in a much greater position of power.

So no, it is not "beside the point." It is entirely the point. It shows that John McCain's instincts about the military -- shaped by decades in the military and dealing with defense issues in government -- are correct. It shows that Barack Obama's instincts -- shaped by three years in the Senate and his time as a Chicago "community organizer" -- will lead to disaster.

And if you don't believe me, check out today's Washington Post editorial about the Iraqi prime minister's supposed support for Obama's troop withdrawal timeline:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has a history of tailoring his public statements for political purposes, made headlines by saying he would support a withdrawal of American forces by 2010. But an Iraqi government statement made clear that Mr. Maliki's timetable would extend at least seven months beyond Mr. Obama's. More significant, it would be "a timetable which Iraqis set" -- not the Washington-imposed schedule that Mr. Obama has in mind. It would also be conditioned on the readiness of Iraqi forces, the same linkage that Gen. Petraeus seeks. As Mr. Obama put it, Mr. Maliki "wants some flexibility in terms of how that's carried out."

Other Iraqi leaders were more directly critical. As Mr. Obama acknowledged, Sunni leaders in Anbar province told him that American troops are essential to maintaining the peace among Iraq's rival sects and said they were worried about a rapid drawdown.

And how does Obama respond to this concern about a rapid troop drawdown negatively impacting peace in the region? He implies that he couldn't care less:

Mr. Obama's response is that, as president, he would have to weigh Iraq's needs against those of Afghanistan and the U.S. economy. He says that because Iraq is "a distraction" from more important problems, U.S. resources devoted to it must be curtailed. Yet he also says his aim is to "succeed in leaving Iraq to a sovereign government that can take responsibility for its own future." What if Gen. Petraeus and Iraqi leaders are right that this goal is not consistent with a 16-month timetable? Will Iraq be written off because Mr. Obama does not consider it important enough -- or will the strategy be altered?

The editorial continues with the answer to that last question, which also answers the Oregonian's editorial -- Obama has shown no proclivity to alter his strategy, but rather is hell-bent on troop withdrawal regardless of what actually happens on the ground:

Yesterday he denied being "so rigid and stubborn that I ignore anything that happens during the course of the 16 months," though this would be more reassuring if Mr. Obama were not rigidly and stubbornly maintaining his opposition to the successful "surge" of the past 16 months.

Oh, and as a final point about Afghanistan, the Post notes:

...there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama's antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

So Barack Obama is a presidential candidate who refuses to acknowledge he was wrong about the surge (other than wiping his previous statements of opposition from the campaign website); who talks repeatedly about a U.S. timeline rather than one dictated by Iraqis; who speaks of Iraq as an irritant that can be swatted aside; and who has shown a rather George Bush-like interest in maintaining his position regardless of the facts on the ground.

Gee, I feel so hopeful.

Quote of the Day: Obama vs. the New Yorker

Today's quote comes from Tony Woodlief, who writes a tongue-in-cheek summation of today's news:

Barack Obama...is furious that the uber-conservative New Yorker magazine's latest cover depicts him as a radical Muslim. Through a spokesman he denounced the image and issued a fatwa against the New Yorker's publisher and cartoonist.