Dick Morris on Hillary Clinton...

Obama's Speech.... a brilliantly conceived failure?

Excerpt from FOX News Special Report w/ Brit Hume

KRAUTHAMMER: His [Obama] speech was nothing more than less than apologia, an explaining away of Jeremiah Wright's rants done with elegance, nuance, and complexity.

Essentially, it said that--if you look at his remarks, this is what Obama was saying--he explained it away in two ways--moral equivalence, and white racism.

The moral equivalence is on the one hand you have Jeremiah Wright, and on the other hand you have Geraldine Ferraro. . . and grandma, who occasionally would utter a private, racist epithet, as if she had shouted these in a crowded church or a crowded theater as a way to arouse and envenom the audience as Wright did.

Obama is a guy who glories in his capacity for intellectual distinctions. There is a huge distinction between a woman of the generation of a Truman, who also uttered epithets about Jews and blacks in private, and the propagation of race hatred in a congregation on behalf of a pastor.

And the second element of that speech was extenuating, and explaining in a way as a reaction to white racism. He says, look, you have to put Wright in context, context is history, and the history he gave is a history of racism starting with slavery and ending at Jeremiah Wright and his anger and frustration.

This kind of extenuation is what you used to hear from Jesse Jackson, except in Obama's case, dressed up in Ivy League language and Harvard Law School nuance. And that's why the commentary that we saw on this was so rhapsodic. It touched two erogenous zones--white guilt and intellectual flattery. And that's all it was. I think it was a brilliantly conceived failure. [From RealClearPolitics.com]

March 21, 2008

from The Speech: A Brilliant Fraud

by Charles Krauthammer
"His [Obama] defense rests on two central propositions: (a) moral equivalence, and (b) white guilt."

So Inconvenient...

Thursday, March 20, 2008

By Brit Hume

Aquatic Androids

Scientists say that 3,000 robots that are collecting global warming data from the earth's oceans have sent a puzzling message. Readings from these instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past five years. But scientists say the bewildering part is that the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record.

One scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says that 80 to 90-percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. So why are the oceans still relatively cool and — in some cases — even cooler than before?

It seems the scientists are not sure. Some say global warming may have taken a breather. Others suggest they don't understand what the robots are telling them. Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says, "I suspect that we'll be able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis. But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board." (from The Grapevine)

Excerpts from Thomas Sowell

Obama's Speech

"Senator Obama has been at his best as an icon, able with his command of words to meet other people's psychic needs, including a need to dispel white guilt by supporting his candidacy.

But President of the United States, in a time of national danger, under a looming threat of nuclear terrorism? No." (Get the full article and comments here.)

Race and Politics

"Senator Barack Obama's political success thus far has been a blow for equality. But equality has its down side.

Equality means that a black demagogue who has been exposed as a phony deserves exactly the same treatment as a white demagogue who has been exposed as a phony.

We don't need a President of the United States who got to the White House by talking one way, voting a very different way in the Senate, and who for 20 years followed a man whose words and deeds contradict Obama's carefully crafted election year image." (Get the full article and comments here.)

Who is the actual inspiration here?

Yes, great speech by Obama. Wonderful platitudes. I am curious though if the entire political ideology of the speech is lost? This speech confirmed for me that Obama is just two standard deviations away from his mentor's far leftist anti-America rhetoric on the political spectrum.

Obama is proving to be quite the politician and it would be wonderful to have a black guy win the Presidency, because it would go a long way to heal some deep wounds in America, but at what cost? Should we not deconstruct his political message and try to figure out how he is going to pay for solving every problem in the US with Federal tax money? Should we not be concerned that he wants to install a health care system that is an admitted failure in other parts of the world? Should we not be concerned that he pulls his political ideology from Marxist thought? Should we not care that if elected, he would immediately withdraw troops from a war that we seem to be winning and worsen the situation by our absence (according to every Middle East leader - except Iran)? Should we not care that his judgment seems to be so impaired that he cannot even lead his own church to correct an ideology that by his own words "expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."

Maybe I'll just vote for him because some parts of that speech made me tingle rather than vote for a true American hero like John McCain. He's not as pretty and damn-it he's white, but it seems McCain's story and ideology is also pretty inspiring.

Visit: JohnMcCaindotcom

Because I was asked...

I think the associations between McCain meeting with Jerry Falwell and Obama’s membership of Wright’s church are completely bogus. I mean, to say that McCain’s one time meeting (and not without issue) with a far right Christian leader is anything similar to Obama’s 20 years under the influence, leadership, and mentorship of a man that says, “God Damn America,” “America got what it deserved (on 9-11),” “that AIDS was created by white men to kill black men,” etc…… is somehow comparable is beyond my logic.

However, I think it is totally above board that the Obama / Wright association should be an issue worth at least discussing at length in the public arena (especially in this day and age) if the man is to be President. If Trent Lott, can be forced to resign his Senate seat after saying that he respected an honored member of the Democratic Party who was once a member of the KKK, then this despicable mess should at least be permissible to question – otherwise we are holding people of different races and different Parties to different standards – and that is problematic!

Additionally, if Obama really thinks that the American people are stupid enough to believe his “non-culpability” response to this matter is plausible even though he was a member of this church for 20 years, was married by this pastor, had his kids baptized by this pastor and titled his book after one of this pastor’s sermons, but “never knew of these outlandish beliefs” or never knew that his church honored Louis Farrakhan or that the pastor traveled with LF to Libya, then he thinks we are truly gullible. My point: should the American people let someone (because of cult of personality) side step harsh criticisms like these and slide into office without a true vetting process?

I don’t necessarily think Obama has to believe all of the stuff his pastor has spouted verbatim, but I think when it comes to the Presidency of the United States… these long-time associations might actually matter – I mean we are not talking about a loose “friendship” here. He (as an adult) decided to submit himself to this man’s authority and made him his religious teacher and authority figure, which makes me question his decision making process and makes me second guess the process by which he might choose his Cabinet and possible Supreme Court justice appointees. I think that is all too fair to question and I would expect the same for any Conservative.

As for the question: is it right for news reporters to use Obama’s middle name?
Come on: it is his given and legal name. It’s not like anyone is making stuff up, adding to the story, or twisting something into a falsehood. It just happens to be his name. The very fact that the name “Hussein” plays into some peoples’ fears and bigotry because of recent historical evens is NOT the fault of the pundit.