Personally, I think maybe Obama was talking about Condi becoming Secretary of State, but in an effort to be bipartisan....
Shoot. Me. Now.
Joe The Plumber
John McCain: Focusing on the issues and people that matter.
Also on YouTube.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Colin Powell To Endorse
It seems that Colin Powell is ready to endorse...Barack Obama.
Read the rest here.
Crazy Lady Speaks Out
Gayle Quinnell, the woman who called Obama an "Arab" at a recent rally, speaks out.
It's tough to hear everything she says, so if you want to read the transcript, click here, courtesy of the HuffPo.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The Real Pro-Life Vote
Pro-Choice Catholics for Obama
From Newsweek:
The most visible of the pro-Obama Catholic pro-lifers has been Pepperdine University law professor Douglas Kmiec, formerly dean of the law school at the Catholic University of America and a minor official in the Justice Departments of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Kmiec began the 2008 cycle as co-chairman of Mitt Romney's campaign, but recently told the Chicago Tribune that, as the campaign unfolded, "I kept discovering that Obama was sounding more Catholic than most Catholics I know" on issues like the family wages, health-care costs and the war in Iraq. With Romney out of the race, Kmiec announced his support for Obama on Easter Sunday, arguing that "Senator Obama comes reasonably close" to embodying "an alternative way to be pro-life." Kmiec develops that arresting claim in a new book, "Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Questions About Barack Obama," published in mid-September.
Other pro-Obama Catholic intellectuals include Notre Dame professor M. Cathleen Kaveny, whose Obamapologetics are frequently found on the Commonweal blog, and Duquesne University law professor Nicholas Cafardi, one of the original members of the U.S. bishops' National Review Board to study problems of clerical sexual abuse. In a recent statement, "Senator Obama: A Moral Choice for Catholics," Cafardi summarized the three most frequently deployed arguments of self-declared pro-life Catholics who support Barack Obama for president.
First, according to Cafardi, Catholics have, as a matter of law, "lost the abortion battle ... and I believe that we have lost it permanently." Second, abortion is not the only "intrinsic evil" of the day; the Bush administration has been guilty of committing acts that are "intrinsically evil" in its policies on interrogation of terrorist suspects, in its failures after Hurricane Katrina and in its detention of terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay. Third, Senator Obama "supports government action that would reduce the number of abortions," including an "adequate social safety net for poor women who might otherwise have abortions."
Her argument, in sum: the constitutional and legal arguments that have raged since Roe vs. Wade are over, and Catholics have lost; there are many other "intrinsic evils" that Catholics are morally bound to oppose, and Republicans tend to ignore those evils; liberalized social-welfare policies will drive down the absolute numbers of abortions and Senator Obama is an unabashed liberal on these matters. Therefore, a vote for Obama is the "real" pro-life vote.
Bill Ayers: Obama Ghostwriter
This little piece from RedState.org made me laugh out loud:
Jack Cashill is an Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and novelist who has written for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine and The Weekly Standard. He is a regular contributor to WorldNet Daily.
Cashill has done an exhaustive comparison of Dreams From My Father, the literary coming-out party of Barack Obama, and Fugitive Days, the terrorist memoir of Weatherman founder - turned Academician William Ayers. The two memoirs bear such striking similarities that they appear to have been written by the same person.
Since it is highly unlikely that Sen Barack Obama wrote both, the obvious conclusion would be that Ayers worked closely with Obama in ghostwriting the latter's book. This would seem to put a lie to the fact that Sen Obama hardly knew Ayers, but would suggest, along with the other mounting evidence that the two had a long-standing and obviously close relationship.
The following is a brief excerpt from Fugitive Days by William Ayers.
“I picture the street coming alive, awakening from the fury of winter, stirred from the chilly spring night by cold glimmers of sunlight angling through the city.”
The following is a similar poetic excerpt from Dreams From My Father by Sen Barack Obama.
“Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city lights reflected against the clouds.”
The connection is so OBVIOUS.
Arab and Muslim: Dirty Words?
In February, I spent a day calling undecided Wisconsin voters, urging them to vote, making sure they were registered, helping them find their polling precincts, etc.
Before I went down to Obama headquarters, Tegan and I had a long conversation about the types of rebuttals I may run into from wary voters. The one that made me the most nervous? "I can't vote for Obama because he's a Muslim."
My gut reaction was, "No, no, he's not." I mean, how hard can it be just to tell people he's Christian?
Then I realized that simply saying "no" seems to condone that being Muslim or Arab is wrong. And it shouldn't matter one way or the other. But crafting and navigating a sensitive response was a difficult task—one that I obsessed over all the way to Michigan Avenue. (Luckily, every single person I called planned to vote for Obama and no one mentioned race or religion at all.)
In this clip, Campbell Brown articulately and wonderfully reminds us that when people accuse Obama of being Muslim or Arab, not only are they dead wrong, they're disrespecting the 5-7 million Muslim-Americans living in our country.
Day Late, 101 Million Short
The Obama campaign has released a statement in response to McCain's new economic proposal, which he'll be unveiling this afternoon on Pennsylvania:
John McCain’s latest gambit is a day late and 101 million middle-class families short. McCain’s plan would spend $300 billion to bailout the same irresponsible Wall Street banks that got us into this mess without doing anything to help jumpstart job growth for America’s middle class. His plan continues to provide no tax relief at all to 101 million hardworking families, including 97 percent of senior citizens, and it does nothing to cut taxes for small businesses or give them access to credit. Senator McCain also shows how little he understands the economy by offering lower capital gains rates in a year in which people don’t have an awful lot of capital gains. His trickle-down, ideological recipes won’t strengthen our economy and grow our middle-class, but Barack Obama’s pro-jobs, pro-family economic policies will.
On Calling Obama A Socialist
From The American Prospect:
Right-wing attempts to paint Barack Obama as a socialist aren't just disingenuous. They're rooted in a history of conservative smears against black leaders.Read on...
Ohio Newspaper Endorsement Watch
The Canton Repository: ObamaThe United States is moving in the wrong direction. That is what the polls say. What do you think? We think that the United States is moving in many wrong directions.
The Springfield News-Sun: Obama
On Main Street, families are watching their homes and retirement savings lose value while the cost of their most basic needs goes up and up. On Wall Street, a hands-off approach to oversight of financial institutions has led to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Halfway around the world, the United States remains mired in a country it should never have invaded.
Stark Countians rightly want change in Washington. The Repository editorial board believes that the presidential candidate who can deliver on this demand is Democrat Barack Obama.
It's time for a change and that change cannot be delivered by the Republican candidate who has voiced no real split with the policies of the Bush years.The News-Sun Editorial Board is endorsing Sen. Barack Obama as the best hope for the nation to return to prosperity and to regain its standing in the world.
Obama is clearly a smart, caring, committed candidate for the job of president.
His detractors call him an elitist. A good education, a tendency to analyze problems and the ability to speak in complete sentences are hardly bad qualities to have in a president. Bringing peace to the Middle East or fixing a national economy are complicated tasks.
The Findlay Courier: McCain
From the beginning, McCain seemed to comprehend far better than the Bush administration that Iraq was a huge project. He knew more troops were needed, and called for such long before the "surge" was implemented. McCain's military background is perhaps the greatest asset he brings to the presidency. He understands the principles on which this nation was founded and he's utterly committed to America. He has a realistic view of nations like Russia and Iran, but also would use caution before pushing us into another war; he knows first-hand what wars do to our military. He has shown courage and fortitude, and would continue to do so as president. It's worth pointing out that McCain lacks the negative baggage his opponent carries: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, ACORN, etc. In addition, without a Republican in the White House, there will be virtually no check on the Democratic Congress led by Sen. Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Nothing would stop them from enacting an extremely liberal social agenda as well as further socializing the nation. If we want the economy to be free to grow again; if we want even a chance of returning this nation to its founding values; if we want America to be strong again and respected if not loved by other countries, we will elect John McCain as the 44th president of the United States.