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Friday, June 6, 2008
Obama’s flimsy resume gives nation liberal cause for alarm
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Oh goodness, what have we done?
Democrats desperate to regain the White House, and thus eliminate any obstacle to precipitous flight from the reality that there are, indeed, evil people who wish and will try to kill us, and from the reality that free and functioning markets, and not bureaucrats, distribute wealth, now find themselves with a standard-bearer. My goodness, what have we done?
He’s a charming fellow, no doubt. Charming and most liberal — the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, according to the National Journal. He has come this far, defeating the political machine once thought invincible, the second phase of the Clinton Dynasty, on the promise of change and the vague suggestion that he alone is the messiah who can move America beyond partisanship. On those promises, the young flock to him, enraptured by the rhetoric and his relative youth.
The reality is, of course, that not a one of his admirers can point to a single thing in Barack Obama’s past, and especially in his brief two years in the U.S. Senate, that supports the supposition that he’s anything other than the kind of politician the nation has repeatedly rejected when offered up by national Democrats — George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry, Al Gore.
He’s a doctrinaire liberal who, like that wing of the Democratic Party, voted to deny both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito a place on the U.S. Supreme Court despite their exceptional, undisputed qualifications. He’s a doctrinaire liberal who would lead his party in quick retreat from Iraq and who would offer the nation a round of tax increases that would either destroy the incentive to work or create a new industry in tax avoidance.
Say what you will about Hillary Clinton — the nation is ready to move beyond the Bill and Hill saga — she is a politician whose stature grew through the primaries and who came to make a convincing case that she could be a rational and competent president, if, God forbid, that was America’s choice in November. Like Bill, she is enough of a creature of the polls that she’d never go too far afield of public opinion.
Obama frightens. He appears to believe that the reason terrorists and despots want to kill us is because they don’t really understand us. That’s a common misconception on the left. The proper approach, as he sees it, is to talk, to anybody, without preconditions. Phrase the explanation of our virtues just right and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will have his “aha” moment, where he renounces his desires to push Israel into the sea and sees America’s intentions in Iraq and Afghanistan as honorable. And then Ahmadinejad will do what Nancy Pelosi already thinks he does, and that is help tamp down the violence against our warriors in Iraq.
Undoubtedly, Obama will surround himself with wiser heads, seasoned experts like former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia. But it’s his judgment, combined with a hefty dose of arrogance, that prompts concern. As others have noted, he makes a gaffe in a foreign policy pronouncement — meeting bad guys without preconditions, for example — and then sticks to it. He’d rather embrace a wrongheaded policy than admit that he might have been wrong.
He did the same thing in his slow-fuse response to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s anti-Americanism. The reality is that as a community organizer and as a state senator and U.S. Senator, he’s never had to make executive decisions. His instincts are most likely those of facilitator rather than decision-maker, which is why he’s comfortable thinking of himself as one who brings people together, even when his actual votes and behavior in the U.S. Senate indicates no such thing.
Democrats caught up in the “first black” narrative have made their decision. They have one who knows what he would do on Iraq, though he’s not been there in more than two years. They have one who can wax eloquent on public service, as he did in speaking to graduates of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., on the day before Memorial Day. But not once in the entire commencement speech, which included a laundry list of public service options, did he cite military service as an option. This is the guy who would be commander in chief, who would make decisions that could sacrifice life, and it doesn’t occur to him to mention them in a commencement speech on public service.
My goodness, what have we done?
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Fake doc, Ed McMahon, a pickup
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
News flash! Jimmy Carter’s right. Put Hillary on the ticket and his negatives and her negatives will make John McCain a rock star. “His” in this instance is Bill and/or Barack.
Memo to lawyers handling death penalty cases: Don’t die first —- or the murderer’s appeal will be that you were racist, incompetent or whatever other vilification is deemed useful to spare the condemned. That’s the case with Curtis Osborne’s attorney Johnny Mostiler, who died of a massive heart attack eight years ago. Osborne was executed Wednesday night for murdering two people in 1991. Lawyers should also be prepared to admit for the appeal that you waged an incompetent defense.
After discovering that the domestic abuse hotline call was a hoax, Texas authorities had no basis for taking children from their families at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Texas. Justice is ultimately done, though. The courts ordered more than 400 children returned. Taking children from parents should be a last resort and all immediate efforts should be to reunite the family. Texas should set up a trust fund for future counseling for the seized children.
A responsible California Supreme Court would delay its decision on same-sex unions until after Nov. 4, when California voters have the opportunity to do as those in 26 other states have done in defining marriage as between one man and one woman. This one is not, and of course it didn’t wait. Licenses can be issued in about 10 days.
Attendees at Bishop T.D. Jakes’ MegaFest preaching, teaching and entertaining event in Atlanta found travel and lodging costs burdensome. So he’s moving it this year to South Africa. Go figure. Trips can be arranged for about $5,000 to $6,000 per person. It’s a real blow to Atlanta. Church people in their Sunday best brought a welcome freshness to downtown Atlanta.
What a stunning transformation of the American auto industry: 35 Big Three auto plants have closed since 2005, along with 35 of Ford and GM’s major suppliers. It’s an amazingly resilient economy that can withstand that kind of shock.
Downtown Atlanta street vendors —- and fake doctor Eric Perteet —- have one thing in common: They expend enormous amounts of energy in an effort to avoid a real job. Hanging out in a hospital all day attempting to look busy so the new bride doesn’t discover he’s not a real doctor has to be hard work.
Former Johnny Carson sidekick Ed McMahon is $644,000 behind in payments on the $4.8 million mortgage he got in 2005 and facing foreclosure. The question here is why an 85-year-old man still has a mortgage. Especially one who got a $7.2 million insurance settlement in the past six years.
Law enforcement officials who organize the so-called “rolling roadblocks” have too much time and staff and too little crime. We don’t pay taxes to get harassed and toyed with by elected officials. Legislators should curtail the practice, just as they did the possible abuse of red-light cameras at intersections.
The terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told a military judge at Gitmo who warned him that he faces execution if convicted of masterminding 9/11 that “yes, this is what I wish, to be martyr for a long time. I will, God willing, have this, by you.” God willing he will get his wish.
I was about to poke fun at Rex Millsaps, the mayor of Lawrenceville, who won $250,000 gambling on the Georgia Lottery, but then discovered that he’ll use part of the money to get his pickup truck detailed. One pickup owner cannot speak ill of, or poke fun at, another. Owner’s contract, Page 23.
Congress once again passes the buck —- and a $3.1 trillion pile-of-junk budget that contains questionable revenue projections plus an assumption that Congress will raise taxes and the next president will deal with entitlements. The Nancy Pelosi- Harry Reid Congress has become a joke.
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