Obama dodged a question?  Say it isn't so!  Decisions to triple the capital gains tax during an economic downturn and to invade Pakistan to get bin Laden demonstrate that economic and foreign policy issues are above your pay grade too, Senator.  But that isn't stopping you from saying it.

This is a vital question to the abortion debate and one that helped push me more into a pro-life position.  What did it for me is that everyone (except Obama) has a view on when abortions should and shouldn't be permitted and they all vary.  Typically, the positions seem to depend on what stage of fetus the target is.  But there is no substantive measurement to this.  It's quite arbitrary and I've had scores of discussions with people where I've tried to get them to clarify why it's okay at 'x' weeks but not okay at 'y' weeks.  In the end, the result is the same so does it really matter if it's nine days or nine months?

The next president will be appointing anywhere from two to four Supreme Court Justices.  In that context, he will be setting up policy and interpretations directly impacting Americans for at least the next few generations.  He had damn well better show that he has some insight on this issue.

John McCain didn't have a problem answering the question.  That's what happens when one has beliefs, even if expressing those beliefs risks alienating potential voters.  McCain could answer the question because his was one of only two answers that make sense:  Rights for babies either begin when the baby exits the birth canal or - as McCain believes - at conception.

McCain solidified his pro-life background.

Obama might have tried defining some magic time for when a fetus is considered worthy for protection.  And that would have been a lie.  In fact, his actual response was a lie.  He didn't answer the question because his answer is on the other side of the spectrum from McCains.  Obama doesn't believe he is "above the pay grade" to profess a belief; Obama believes that Rights kick in when the cord is cut though he professed to support restrictions on late-term abortions.  However…

Obama opposed the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Carhart that upheld partial-birth abortion bans, a brutal, unnecessary act that happens to fall under the umbrella of late-term abortions.  He opposed it on the grounds that it threatened the entire institution of abortion and Roe v. Wade.   He believes that there are no Rights until that baby is born.  He simply doesn't have the political courage to state it.  He can't even weasel-word it to make it sound more appealing than it is.

Obama co-sponsered the FOCA bill which would virtually strip away all restrictions on abortion.  He opposes parental notification laws; he supports taxpayer funded abortions; he opposes waiting periods; he opposes protections for babies born from failed abortion attempts; while he supports government funded health care he opposes government funded health care for unborn children. 

That, according to Hillary Clinton, is when he had the courage to take positions.  Early on in the primary battle, the Clinton campaign accused Obama of voting "present" on seven different pieces of anti-choice legislation during his time in the Illinois State Senate.  That basically says, yeah - I'm here.  I'm just not going to go on record on this one.

It should be no shocker that Obama has a 100% rating from NARAL and a 0% rating from NRL.  So why the artful dodge?  What's to hide?  Doesn't it suggest that even he is aware of how troubling his own record and position on abortion is?

Way to stand up for women's rights!  The movement deserves more of these kinds of acts of raw courage. l 

So does it or does it not matter what is happening in the theater?  Obama says that He will listen to and assess the input from ground force commanders and military brass in regards to when it is and isn't safe to make drastic changes in the Iraq situation.  He also says that as the CIC, He will set a new mission for the generals to achieve, namely getting the troops out.  So what if they oppose that?  Then what?  If He listens to generals who are troubled by His mission, does He consider abandoning His mission?  Or does He act in accordance with one of his previous positions which was to more or less blow off the recommendations of the people managing the conflict?  If a turn for the worse or a turn for the better…does either really matter? 

That approach ignores five years of living history on which demonstrates that it is vital that a president be flexible enough and observant enough to know that saying that 'we should have never ousted Saddam Hussein from power (because with Saddam in power, all of our problems would be gone)' is not a strategy.

How are we to trust a commander-in-chief who ignores all data from an ongoing war and all input from it's commanders to make his decisions based on the post-toddler position of 'we shouldn't have gone there in the first place'?  I still don't get Obama's view that losing in Iraq will help us win in Afghanistan, which, even if it's true - and it's not - it's like saying if I sell my Mercedes that will help me buy a Ford Taurus and then I can attract an entire new class of women.   It's sophomoric.  And it's based on a lie.

I stated some time ago that if we were to abandon Iraq when Harry Reid and Barack Obama wanted to do so a year-and-a-half ago, there would be no point or hope of continuing the fight in Afghanistan or elsewhere (though the fighting would continue).  Handing the enemy the method on how to defeat the US military - or more accurately, defeat the US Congress - would ensure that it is repeated, with more determination and confidence than previously displayed.

The whole take-from-Iraq-and-give-to-Afghanistan plan is based on a lie.  A big lie.  From the ground up.

We'll get to the lie.  First, the motivation behind this Obama position.  It about represents the safest position that Obama could take on the war.  He can end the war in Iraq "without preconditions" and appease his anti-war handlers.  He can also put at ease some of the hawks and moderates who believe that Al Qaeda must be defeated <em>somewhere</em>.  It may become more difficult, as November approaches, to convince people that abandoning Iraq on a phony pretext is the way to go since Rasmussen is reporting that for the first time since 2004, a majority of Americans believe we are winning the war.  Regardless, Obama maintains the perception of sanity by not pulling out of both Iraq <em>and</em> Afghanistan - which fits in perfectly with the big lie and clumsily reaches out to supporters of the war without compromising the base and propping up the lie:  the lie that the Left has always supported the mission in Afghanistan.

One of my more satisfying moments as a blogger was a few years ago when an outspoken nemesis claimed that his opposition to the Iraq War was rationalized by the fact that he supported the Afghanistan invasion.   I confronted him on it, he stuck to his story and I was fortunately able to produce exchanges I had with him in early 2002 where he clearly and passionately opposed invading Afghanistan.  Is there a conservative who was blogging during the months after 9/11 who didn't debate people opposed to invading Afghanistan?  Those people gave many of the same arguments against Afghanistan as they would against Iraq a little over a year later.  But during the buildup to Iraq, suddenly you had to search for a leftist who opposed Afghanistan.

Why is that?  Especially considering that just during the first days of the Afghanistan war the anti-war left was already smearing the invasion with much of the same language and claims that they later used for Iraq.  On October 31, 2001, just three weeks into the war the NY Times asked, "Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam?".  MediaMonitorNetworks reported on November 21, 2001 (a week after Kabul fell to the Americans and a week before Mullah 'Cyclops' Omar fled Kandahar) with another question, "Is Afghanistan slipping into a quagmire?" 

Time Magazine reported on October 31, 2001 , that because the "war in Afghanistan drags on without any bankable signs of progress" [in it's third week of American's running roughshod over the Taliban!] they declared the "Halloween Word for the Pundits" was "Quagmire".  In a country where the Soviets struggled for ten years, American boots had barely hit the sand before opponents were calling it not only a quagmire, but lost.  Anti-war comments were peppered with mockery of the mission after our failure to capture bin Laden in the initial run.  The obligatory invocation of Vietnam emerged.

The Left didn't want to go in and they didn't see or necessarily care for a victory there - after all, only 88% of Americans supported that war; someone was against it!  So why the change of heart and where precisely did it emerge?

The Left now will claim (in alliance with Obama) that being in Iraq is distracting us from the goal of capturing and destroying the organizations that perpetrated the September 11 attacks.  That concerns them now when all conventional wisdom says that AQ leadership is hiding in Pakistan.  In 2001, it didn't seem to matter that the leaders behind the attack were actually in Afghanistan daring us to invade.  People who opposed the Afghanistan invasion for the usual laundry list of reasons are now eager to get back to the fight there, even tap dancing around the possibility that a confrontation with a nuclear armed nation of 168 million Muslims might be considered in the efforts to capture a handful of men.

Democrats become incessant about wars with setbacks but are quick to get America involved in some of the bloodiest confrontations in our history.  Afghanistan was a sure-loser; Iraq was a sure-loser.  Now that Iraq is begin to become shielded against the ritualistic claims of Leftist prophets, their answer is to move troops back into the other sure-loser.  Since it's not enough of a sure-loser, let's throw Pakistan into the mix - it's better to have a hostile nuclear threat than an unstable and flawed ally.

But that is now; this was then.  Since seizing Afghanistan from the Taliban was such a quick and resounding success and more questions could be fueled about the necessity or legitimacy of invading Iraq, the Left managed to move stealth-like from opposing the first war to opposing the second.  After establishing an echo-chamber for attempting to stop the Iraq invasion, suddenly the Afghanistan war that they opposed became their own political tool.  An Iraq invasion would never be as popular as the Afghanistan invasion and they capitalized on that by doing what they do best:  rewriting history.  By hitching on to the Afghanistan cart they could use that to legitimize their contempt for ousting Saddam Hussein.  After all, Leftist-prophets could paint their pictures of doom and gloom with reason and rationale because…they backed the previous invasion.  They weren't just anti-war mouthpieces - they were selectively opposing an Iraq invasion based on substance rather than fanatically opposing it based on political ideals.

In the years since the Iraq invasion, Afghanistan suddenly turned into the war that Leftists wanted to win, or at least fight.  Some of the most consistent complaints during Iraq's post-invasion era was that we were distracted from fighting in Afghanistan, that it was now, years later, imperative to go back and get the perpetrators of 9/11, the very perps they opposed getting in 2001 and the only way to do that would be to lose in Iraq.

The Obama is simply carrying that torch.  Back to my automobile analogy:  

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously said, "Afghanistan is running out of targets."  Or infamously said if you buy into the way his words were spun by the Left.

The point is that the war on terror has been about getting Osama bin Laden.  But of course in a world that doesn't fold up neatly like the pages of The Nation publication the war has been about so much more and Iraq was intricate to much of it.  Osama may not have been in Iraq but Saddam Hussein was.  Hussein was the most open and hostile state supporter of international terrorism in the world, in conflict with the Bush Doctrine of 2001.  Iraq is positioned in the heart of the middle east;  Afghanistan is not.  Iraq has infrastructure; Afghanistan does not.  Iraq has oil; Afghanistan has a pipe.

For good measure, add Saddam's history of invasions, use of wmds against civilian populations, his threats against the US, his financial support for Palestinian suicide bombers, his multiple violations of ceasefire resolutions, including his consistent attacks against no-fly-zone enforcements…the question almost becomes, 'In what world wouldn't we move from Afghanistan to Iraq?'  

War with Saddam Hussein was surely inevitable.  I have no doubt in my mind that even had we not invaded in March of 2003, we would still be in Iraq today, only with a more complex geopolitical layout and more questions than answers on Iraq's WMD capabilities.

Win in Iraq, President Obama - and win decisively.  Then maybe you won't have to start all over from the ground up in Afghanistan, which is no more appealing today than it was seven years ago, despite the political advantages of pretending it is so. 

I will do what it is that keeps me young: I will explore the stories within the stories, the psychology behind political ideals and define what the candidates and politicians are really saying. I will present the convention and the election through the eyes of rational smaller-government conservatism and from the perspective of a devoted John McCain supporter.

If I had my choice I would prefer to attend the Democrats convention in Denver because I find Democrats to be the more interesting specimen of politician and much of leftist politics to be fascinating in a ‘you mean to tell me John Edwards isn’t faithful to his wife?!’ kind of way. Seriously, anyone think that since the ticking-time-bomb-Edwards started making the MSM’s list as a top consideration for Obama’s VP that the Obama campaign itself fueled the Enquirer’s interest in Edwards extramarital…sorry, sorry.

Back to me. I want to thank Calvin Tang, the Chief Operating Officer of Newsvine for offering me this chance and for Newsvine and MSNBC for making it happen. To a political junkie, this is the equivalent of having ESPN send a football addict to blog from the Super Bowl or E! Entertainment sending a movie buff to blog from the Oscars. I recall watching the 2004 conventions from my living room, amazed that I could literally feel the energy from the TV. I remember during various speeches, particularly the barnstormer by Democrat Zell Miller at the RNC, wishing I was there.

Four years later and I am in! Bloggers are no longer relegated to reacting to stories but are increasingly being given the opportunity to make the stories themselves. Thanks to the blog, the average citizen now has the potential to affect the dialog in this country in ways that was just a short time ago limited to the mainstream media and talk radio.

I look forward to meeting fellow Viners Rob Ballew, Adam Hobson and Stacy Malboun, the latter two who will also be attending Ron Paul’s counter rally in Minneapolis. Stacy, suffering from some affliction I’m sure (I kid!), will be covering the anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-capitalist, anti-Republican protests happening all over Saint Paul that week. Perhaps she’ll ask a question for me to the anti-Iraq war protesters: what exactly are you protesting now? Victory?

Please check here in the coming weeks for convention insight. Check the side bars to the right for links to Newsvine’s convention coverage and my contributions, as well as feeds to the McCain and Obama campaign websites and general election and convention coverage.

With this political season continuing to be one of the most exciting races for the White House in history, we are thrilled to provide access to our Newsviners to provide us citizen coverage alongside the that of the MSM.

So, without further ado, here are the teams and the events they’ll cover:
Democratic National Convention

* Chris “Killfile” Thomas
* Viki “Babbles” Gonia
* Miss Dev

Republican National Convention

* Rob Ballew
* Adam Hobson
* The OttO Show

Ron Paul - Rally for the Republic

* Adam Hobson
* Stacy Malbon
* Ben Josephs

RNC Protests - (independent effort)

* Stacy Malbon
* Ben Josephs
* azsky13

- Calvin Tang, Newsvine 08/05/2008

This is to be the first in what I feel is going to be an extensive series in the next 13 weeks.  From his claims regarding his history with the United Trinity Church (what did he know about Jeremiah Wright and when did he know it?) to his claims to have 20 years of public service; from stating that all Americans should learn Spanish and French as second languages (he speaks neither) to his strategy of losing in Iraq in order to win in Afghanistan (almost entirely based on lies); from his stance that he's willing to debate John McCain (after refusing every attempt by McCain to do so) to the motivation of his Kenyan father in emigrating to America - candidate Obama is very much like candidate Bill Clinton without the political background.  Anyone recall the repeated staged drama of women fainting at Obama rally-after-rally earlier this year?

My views of Obama over the months have progressed from curiosity and admiration to disbelief and contempt.  I already knew that politically I would be opposed to Obama but there are Democrats who I disagree with and respect.  Barack Obama is not one of them.

The first lie to cover appropriately is the most recent:  Obama's response to his opponent, Senator John McCain.  McCain has been going after Obama for his lack of experience and his poor judgment.  A recent campaign ad refers to Obama, the celebrity cult-of-personality while depicting images of tabloid superstars like Paris Hilton.  The ad then goes on to address differences between the candidates on nuclear energy and oil drilling.  

Obama's response, made at a campaign stop in Missouri - and repeated in other speeches - has made waves in media because he has done what many of us viewed as inevitable:  he injected racial victimization.

The first question is:  who are "they"?  Bush has said little about Obama.  McCain has said nothing about Obama's name, race or ethnicity.  Not in the aforementioned ad; not ever.  McCain has responded swiftly to people supposedly representing his campaign who have tried to bring Obama's name and race into play.  As I've said in the past, there is plenty to run against Obama on - these trivial and divisive messages are unnecessary.  McCain out does Obama in virtually every measurable trait that we use to determine a president's qualifications.  Even if McCain could get traction from sinking to these levels, he doesn't need it to demonstrate that he would be a better president.

Obama makes the dollar bill statement in a way that suggests that McCain or his campaign have ever compared Barack Obama physically to George Washington or Abraham Lincoln (Obama did insert the five dollar bill in once performance).  It's simply not true and not only is the sentiment a lie, but as the counterattack this was staged as, it's downright false.  It implies something that has never been suggested by the McCain campaign.

Of course when a politician or a candidate lies, it is often followed up with more lies through efforts of damage control.  The McCain campaign responded by saying that Obama "played the race card - from the bottom of the deck."

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs denied it:

This appears to be the standard from Democrats defending Obama or attacking McCain:  take a statement and make up whatever you want in describing it.  They did it to McCain in regards with the '100 years of war in Iraq' lie.  They did it repeatedly throughout the Jeremiah Wright scandal.  They do it now by redirecting Obama's words to mean something that they didn't even come close to saying.

After a couple of days of Obama defenders trying to explain, as Gibbs did, that it wasn't about race,  another key member of Obama's campaign, David Axelrod, admitted that Obama was drawing a distinction between himself and past presidents, summing it up with, "Yes, he's African-American."

I'm just waiting for Barack Obama to announce at some point that he is in fact not black, that it's all just a smear designed by the McCain camp to hurt his chances in the general election.

Paris Hilton doesn't exactly look like George Washington either.  Maybe if she runs for local office now, she can be the Democratic front runner in 2012.  She just might be more trustworthy than Obama.

"Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." - The Manchurian Candidate (line repeated by Shaw's brainwashed colleagues)

"George W was destined from birth to lead us into the valley of the shadow of death. I believe that Obama was destined from birth to lead us out. For us, there is a gift in entering and in leaving to the soul." - Denise Gibel Molini  08/01/2008

Come again?

Generally, we worship a president after he's proven himself to be a great president.  This is like naming Lincoln's birthday a federal holiday before his election in 1860.  Ronald Reagan wasn't truly revered until after he left office - while serving, he was still just a flawed politician.

I don't know Denise very well (I believe she's new to the Vine) and I'm sure she's a wonderful person but I'm curious to know if she - and others - really believe this kind of stuff.  Whether it stems from hatred of George W. Bush or fawning admiration for Barack Obama, it begs to be asked:  are we really going to apply religious overtones to our feelings about fellow men?

Is Obama the Manchurian Candidate minus the international conspiracy, supported by zombies and tall-tale-tellers and people so desperate for meaning in their own lives that they are willing to turn a mere (and unaccomplished) politician into a superman?

These guys are, after all, just politicians - yes, even The Obama.  They are flesh and blood just like you and me.  Yes, they are typically privileged and molded for office, they tend to be ambitious and smart and fortunate and they manage to convince a majority or plurality of voters to support them.  Bush is not going bring about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Obama is not going to part the Red Sea.  When Bush leaves office in less than six months, he will have left some things better and some things worse.  When President Obama or McCain leave office in four or eight years, they will have left behind some things for the better, some for the worse.

The country is bigger than one man and history is bigger than most men.  There are 535 members of Congress who collectively have more influence than the president.  There is a judicial system that, while imperfect, can do things the president can not do.  The presidency is bigger than any other individual perhaps, but not any other body of government in our system.

One of my most consistently applicable and repeated critiques of the Left in the past year has been the line, "To the Left, it's not about the 'what' - it's about the 'who'." 

Barack Obama is the culmination of that trait.

I was in the kitchen of a woman recently who I didn't know well but knew was a committed Democrat.  She asked me if I thought McCain had a chance and I said, "Sure, I think McCain has a great chance."  She sighed and then commented on how depressed she would be if Obama didn't win.

I didn't respond but I was flabbergasted.  Here was a successful, older-than-middle-aged, cultured woman who was going to base her personal happiness on the turnout of an election.  

I want McCain to win.  If he loses, I will be disappointed and concerned - but no one should view the success or failure of a candidate as the be-all, end-all to their own lives.  I will not be depressed if McCain loses.  I will roll up my sleeves and keep doing what I do and fight the fight again in four years.

People need to face up to the very real possibility that Barack Obama is going to lose this election.  It's Obama's lack of a qualifying background that makes the whole worship thing so hard to understand.

So my questions amount to this:  what is Obama's single biggest strength?  What makes people believe that he is the answer to their problems, that he will save the world?  What has he accomplished that would make people believe that he'll accomplish great things (or anything for that matter) in the White House?  Why has the man-child been able to come almost from out of nowhere and capture the minds and hearts and even spiritualness of so many people?

My personal opinion is that it's a sickness - that there is truth to the claim that the Left treats politics like religion with scriptures and temples and prophets and messianic figures and judgment days.  Some of the worst leaders in history have risen to power on these kinds of waves.

My advice for these supporters is to vote, campaign, run for office, stay politically aware, write, organize, contact lawmakers and fight for what you believe in.  But the notion that Obama is going to lead us out of the valley of death makes me wonder:  where exactly is he going to lead us to?

The McCain campaign has also effectively mocked the empty slogan of "hope" associated with The Obama with a line in a new ad:  "Don't hope for a better life. Vote for one."

The real abomination of this election season lies in the surrogate PR wing of Barack The Obama's campaign:  the mainstream media.  Yes, despite the occasional op-ed that shows up critical of The Obama on some level,  hard news reporting virtually ignores The Obama's mistatements, flip-flops and downright embarrassments.  

The NY Times featured an article this week that could have been written by the DNC themselves.  It was describing John McCain's economic stance as confused and self-contradictory.  Why?  Because the author clearly rejects the idea that tax cuts benefit the economy, injecting the opinion that there is something inherently wrong with McCain's desire to see tax cuts as well as spending cuts.  The author went so far as to subtly label tax cuts as "costly", even though tax cuts have been shown time and time again to actually increase tax revenues and it's unbounded spending that is in fact costly.

Regardless of what you or I may think about tax cuts, it's these kinds of articles that feed the idea that the mainstream press is in the bag for Democrats.  The author slyly set up a norm that happened to present the leftist view toward taxes.   When the NY Times endorsed McCain last winter, I seemed to be one of the lone dissenters against the notion that this meant that McCain had favor with the Times.  I argued at the time that once the general election got under way, the NY Times would have little to print that would suggest that McCain was ever their candidate of choice, that he would be thrown under the NY Times delivery truck as soon as the Democrats anointed their nominee.  

Both The Obama and McCain made appearances on The View.  I doubt most people noticed, but The Obama (who appeared first) was treated more like a Hollywood celebrity than a potential president.  Not only was he not challenged on his positions, one of the gals decided it was more informative to tell The Obama how sexy she thought he was.  Compare that to one week later when McCain entered the den.  Suddenly the girls of The View had to get to the bottom of the issues and treated him like Darth Vader rather than the Elvis treatment applied to The Obama.

Of course, this can be easily explained.  While there is actual substance to candidate McCain, The Obama is a juggling act, trying to minimize his inexperience while emphasizing meaningless rhetoric of "change" and "hope"; trying to balance leftist romanticism with mainstream pragmatism.  With The Obama's obfuscating on his Iraq policy (perhaps mirroring Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign rhetoric on Vietnam), one thing is becoming more and more "clear" - and it will be interesting to see how his passionate anti-war base receives this:  President The Obama is not going to end the war in Iraq in the manner that he once campaigned on.  His campaign is already indicating that there will remain at least 80,000 American troops in Iraq for at least the first part of his term - and perhaps indefinitely.  

Which leads to another abomination in this campaign:  the deliberate distortion of otherwise trivial things attributed to John McCain.  I'm sure The Obama's suggestion that tens of thousands of soldiers will remain in Iraq will not get the same treatment as McCain's realistic prediction that we will have a presence in Iraq for years to come, shamelessly translated by the weakest-minded of his opposition into meaning that he intends to have a hundred years of war in Iraq.  

It doesn't stop there.  The efforts to portray McCain as some vicious, crotchety old man have been in high gear.  We could start with the rumors (denied by both Mr. and Mrs. McCain) that he lashed out at Cindy McCain and publicly called her a "c–t".  Some fifteen years ago.

Another example, unsourced, was provided by a fellow writer, stating, "John McCain has a history of being inappropriate with reporters, aside from last week's "Kerry Question" incident. When a New Hampshire high-school student asked McCain if he thought he was too old to run for president, Mac fired back "Thanks for the question, you little jerk.""

What is quoted above hardly represents what really happened, as demonstrated by the video clip.  Here we see McCain having fun with the question, drawing laughs at his own expense, establishing that his age is not a hinder to his ability to preside and then jokingly thanking the "little jerk" for his question, drawing more laughs and laughing himself.  Though we can't see it, it seems safe to say that the "little jerk" was in on the laughs as well.

It says volumes about the case against McCain when these kinds of things are not only seized upon, but fabricated and distorted as well.  If we want to talk about inappropriateness, we could revisit the little covered line by The Obama, when his response (at a get-out-the-vote breakfast) to a reporter's very important question about a member of his own party designing his own foreign policy (by meeting with a terrorist organization) was summed up by the immortal words, "Can I just have my waffles?"

McCain may have an uphill battle, but the summit is approaching.  While The Obama is waffling on the McCain challenge of having ten town-hall style debates, ultimately the two candidates will have their positions go toe-to-toe.  As we are beginning to see, the more The Obama is forced to move away from slogans and bumper stickers and pressured to actually declare his positions, the more trouble it causes for him.  This is the result of having convictions dripping in pretty rhetoric and little else.  

Just as with the Bush/Kerry confrontation of 2004, we are facing a Republican candidate with principles and convictions vs. a Democratic candidate moving all over the place in order to please as many people as possible.  It's the difference between having a campaign that tries to win over voters vs. a campaign that wants to be won over by voters.  A candidate either sells ideas to convince voters or buys votes by pandering to them.

Which better describes The Obama? 

Who is this clown (Obama to be specific) and where did he come from? For years we’ve had to endure the Left seizing on every misstatement made by President Bush as evidence of how stupid he is. At this rate, Obama should pass him up before the 2009 Inauguration.

One would think that after eight horrific years of dealing with a dumb, chimp-ish looking President who struggles to make sense, Hillary Clinton would be riding into the nomination. Let’s face it: the more Obama talks, the more puzzling he becomes.

The above quote is for real. It was Obama’s response to a reporter at a campaign event, a get-out-and-mingle-with-the-voters breakfast. The reporter asked Obama for his thoughts on Carter’s (latest) embarrassing display of auto-fellatio. It’s easy to understand why Obama didn’t want to touch the question but it’s rather amazing that even the Obama-fawning media passed up an opportunity to make this pathetic response a media sensation.

This breakfast was a stop on Obama’s whirlwind “57 state” campaign tour, a campaign that also exposed his belief in a statute of limitations on condemning an unrepentant terrorist from “40 years ago”, unimportant because Obama was only “eight” when William Ayers set off bombs in Washington DC. Put aside that Obama was 40 years old when Ayers said that the Weather Underground didn’t terrorize enough back when Obama was eight. Since Obama was only 33 when the Murrah building was bombed, perhaps that would qualify Terry Nichols as a campaign asset. Or perhaps it’s just failed terrorists who he is attracted to.

Jeremiah Wright set Obama on a roller-coaster of stupidity. In a matter of about six weeks, Obama went from denying that Wright’s statements were necessarily controversial, to denying that he actually heard Wright express these views, to stating that he didn’t agree with them, to denouncing the statements but unable to turn his back on Wright to…turning his back on Wright, based on the conclusion, not that Wright hurt America or race relations or black Americans, but rather based on Wright hurting the Obama campaign.

Obama couldn’t reconcile his desire to double the capital gains tax with the practically admitted reality of what it will do to investment and revenues nor has he reconciled his agenda of leaving Iraq while considering an invasion of Pakistan in efforts to get Osama bin Laden.

Couple all of this with the incessant whining by Obama every time he is in a situation that he can’t slick his way out of, the old ‘why is everybody always picking on me?’ response. Just what we want in a president, especially a commander-in-chief at a time of war. Sorry Barry, condemning and denouncing William Ayers should amount to the easiest thing a presidential candidate might have to do. If we can’t even expect that out of him, what could we possibly expect from him when he is president?

This is supposed to be a new breed of politician? Maybe when we knew little about him. Looking at his judgment on these supposedly little things makes me wonder how his judgment will be better on the big things, when he has the power of the office to back him up. We had better hope when that troubling call comes in at 3:00 in the morning, President Obama hasn’t just been served up with a fresh plate of waffles.

What I think is the most interesting question at this point (and one that I wish were being asked more) is for Barack Obama supporters who were practically goaded by Obama into defending Jeremiah Wright for the past six weeks: who are you philosophically aligned with? Jeremiah Wright or Barack Obama?

Someone tapped Obama on the shoulder recently and pointed out that Wright was sinking his campaign. And Obama has taken a step toward turning his back on his white grandma and the black community. In other words, he is turning his back on his mentor.

This is where Barack Obama should fire the entire hierarchy of his campaign staff who apparently couldn’t/didn’t inform him some time ago that Reverend Wright was going to be a problem and who couldn’t/didn’t convince him since that he had to make a swift and decisive break. Obama has evolved from not knowing about Wright’s crazy side to not agreeing with it to finally, flat out refuting and rejecting it.

I’ve read and had numerous exchanges with Obama supporters in recent weeks over this ‘pastor disaster’. There were basically two camps: those who didn’t care for Wright’s rhetoric but felt that Obama wouldn’t or shouldn’t be hurt by it or react strongly to it and those who agreed with or defended Wright’s tirades. I’m particularly interested in the second group: now that Obama has (a little late) specifically and clearly clobbered some of Wright’s expressed points of view, who are you going to stand with?

One of the more lame defenses of Wright were the arguments that “snippets” were being taken out of context. Unfortunately, the more these “snippets” expanded, the more clear the context was becoming.

Following that argument was the position that the media focused on a couple of sermons and ignored the bulk of Jeremiah Wright’s body of work. Conservative talk-show host Michael Medved claims to have spent hours pouring over the sermons of Wright including transcripts and the available DVD’s of Wright’s sermons sold by the UTCC. Medved acknowledged that Wright’s “Audacity of Hope” speech was beautiful but revealed that virtually every other sermon he could access featured extreme and radical passages. So according to people who have no knowledge of Wright’s deliveries, the media-relied sermons are contrary to what most of Wright’s sermons are. To a person who’s actually researched it, those sermons didn’t stray far from the norm.

So is Wright really right? Which would make Obama…wrong? Where do you stand? Is it principle over person? If Wright is rallying for the oppressed and the victimized, if he is exposing or challenging an evil and corrupt government and Obama has come out as a contrarian to Wright’s radical statements - doesn’t that make Obama part of the problem, as Wright and his defenders define it?

Obama’s campaign has been the ‘race-card campaign’. Obama has been struggling to maintain credibility among white voters since this controversy emerged. Now he stands to lose credibility among black voters, the “community” who he said he could never turn his back on in the same manner that he could never turn his back on Jeremiah Wright. Let’s be honest here: this week’s change of heart for Obama (in which he essentially told Wright, ‘don’t call me; I’ll call you’) was an attempt to salvage his white support.

In a way, this is a calling for the “black community”. Wright supporters have made it clear that he is speaking the truth, that he is reflecting what blacks think and that this is the status quo of the black church. Will we than see a significant drop in black support for Obama? Or will they shrug off his denunciation of Wright and continue to rally behind Obama? In other words, how many black voters has Obama offended this week?

Reverend Wright could have laid low. He could have toned it down until November. He could have turned his notoriety into a campaign tool. He instead chose to reopen the flood gates. With his remarks about Obama’s relunctant original denunciation of his past comments being nothing more than something he had to say as a politician, he forced Obama to publicly divorce him and his insane claims and ideas.

The final position on behalf of Obama and Wright that I think is important to reflect on is the notion that we shouldn’t even be wasting our time talking about this. Unfortunately for those people, this is a very real and important political scandal. It goes to the heart of what every presidential campaign is about: judging the candidate. This is about character and judgment. Obama has failed those tests. He didn’t denounce Wright at some point over the years when Wright was trashing his country and inciting racial division. He didn’t even denounce Wright when the story hit nationwide. He has only come around to denouncing Wright once the good pastor became a clear threat to his campaign.

Hurting the country is okay. Hurting Obama is not.

And hurt Barack HUSSEIN Obama (Wright’s emphasis, not mine) is what Wright has done and will continue to do, peddling his book to the masses. Wright can’t lose. He will become one of the most famous people in the country and will make gobs of money off of this. And all he has to do is periodically provide a photo make or claim to conversations with or statements by Obama that will keep his own pre-book buzz in the air while flexing power over one of the most important people in the country.

The Obama candidacy, through every fault of his own, has become a slave to Jeremiah Wright. Wright and only Wright can decide to rally people for or against Obama. Only Wright can decide to retire quietly to his new 1.6 million dollar home. Only Wright can decide to continue embarrassing and harming Obama’s campaign. Whether Obama wins or loses the nomination, rest assure that Wright will have something to do with it.

Poor Obama. Can’t he just eat his waffle?

1. $720 billion (2005):  Total estimated annual cost of US public schools
2. $249 billion:  Total cost of US public schools in 1990
3. 190%:  Increase in cost of US public schools in 15 years
   
4. $9295 (2005) pdf:  Average cost per pupil per school year
   
5. $15,155 (2005) pdf page 43:  Annual cost per pupil of New Jersey public schools (national high)
   
6. 31 pdf page 43:  National mathematics ranking for New Jersey
   
7. 29 pdf page 43:  National reading ranking for New Jersey
   
8. 69% (2007) :  Students nationwide performing below proficiency in math
   
9. 71% (2007) :  Students nationwide performing below proficiency in reading
10.  -1% (2007) pdf page 97:  Nationwide improvement in reading proficiency since 1996
11.  9%:  Federal government's financial contribution to public education (37% increase since 1990)

My concept on federal spending is pretty easy to comprehend.  As a citizen of Minnesota, I think it is a reasonable position to expect that my tax dollars going to Louisiana or South Carolina or Colorado should benefit me somehow.  Interstate commerce is something that benefits me.  Federal interest in a nationwide recognition in driver's licenses and marriage is of benefit to me.  Educating children in another state is not something that will benefit me.

I'm not a zero-tolerance kind of person when it comes to public schools.  Many states are bound to their own Constitutions to provide accessible education for their populace.  It is of the interest of a state or locale to have a system for providing education to it's children for the sake of it's economy, crime levels and next-generation stability.

But there are three big problems with public education.

The first, as I led in with, is federal involvement.  It's simply not necessary.   I discovered something that surprised me while looking up these numbers.  As you can see in statistic #1, we spend an impressive amount of money on education.  What surprised me is how little we actually spend on the federal level.  Of the total of public ed spending across the board, federal taxes pay for about 9% of it.  9% of a lot is still a nice sum of money but you might say, "OttO - 9%?  What's the big deal?"

The big deal is that it means it's one of several pointless federal spending programs that increases the size and scope and bureaucracy of the federal government.  It's senseless to send my tax dollars to Washington so they can be disseminated back to schools across the country when that money could go directly to schools in my community.  Keep in mind that the feds aren't just assisting with a transaction:  they are using this money to buy power in your community.  That money has big strings attached to it.  It is given out with conditions.  Those conditions are subject to change at the will of the feds which then means that a state must choose between accepting those conditions or removing established funding from a supposedly desperately cash-strapped institution.  Is there any reason why the states can't determine their own standards?

Which of course leads directly into the boondoggle that is No Child Left Behind.  We can argue about which aspects of it work and which don't work but do we really need the federal government charging us more and more so bureaucrats in Washington can tell us how our schools are going to operate?  In many ways, each state should have it's own NCLB.  But not at the federal level.

The second problem with education is of course the cost.   The thing to keep in mind when looking at statistic #4 is that most of this $9300 per pupil is going to shared expenses.  It doesn't cost $9300 for a kid to have a desk, a locker and a textbook.  A classroom of 20 students has an average cost of $186,000 per year.  Take out the average teacher's salary of $48,000 and that leaves $139,000 leftover to fund that classroom.  Most of that money never touches the classroom and a majority isn't even for the school itself; take out the school level administrative costs, utilities, building and maintenance costs, libraries and computers and the rest goes to the school district to pay for what is most often bloated and poorly managed bureaucracies.  

Every year the schools cry for more money.  One would think that a single year could go by without some sort of financial crisis in public schools.  Even though the least amount of tax dollars actually goes to the classroom, the first thing the powers-that-be threaten to do in a budget crunch is promise to make the children suffer.  No school district ever sets up a referendum to increase funds with the concern that if this request isn't fulfilled, some administrative department is going to have to suffer or some district employee is going to face a salary-cut.  Instead, the threat is to lay-off teachers, increase class sizes, stop providing necessary classroom materials etc.  In other words, threaten to harm their very purpose first because that is what will get the tax payer's attention.  This is the epitome of governing through fear and the consensus is that more money does not mean more education:

"…the United States is a world leader in education investment. However, nations that spend far less achieve higher levels of student performance." (U.S. Department of Education)

And we can further see from statistic #5, #6 and #7 that money does not mean results.  New Jersey, having the most expensive public education in the country, should be at or near the top in performance as well.  But in reading and math, they are average at best (and average in this regards is not something to be proud of - statistic #8 and #9). District of Columbia boasts the third highest cost-per-pupil in the country and ranks in last place in reading and math.  In the context of ever-increasing spending, statistic #10 speaks for itself.

The third big problem, which goes hand-in-hand with the cost problem, is your friendly, neighborhood teachers union.  The mafia has nothing on these unions in regards to power, influence and extortion.  Unions have destroyed the public education system.  One of the most prevailing offenses is the unwaivering job security that unions provide teachers.  Two schools of thought here:  (1) teachers are public servants dispatched to educate and mold our children and should be held to the highest standards; and (2) failure to achieve this task should be dealt with harshly and swiftly.  

Any demand for more tax dollars under threat of harming the classroom/students should include a public display of past performance.  When we approved the 10% increase last year, what did we get out of it?  Higher graduation rates?  More students proficient in math and reading?  Students who understand how their government works and have a general grasp of American history?  Then where did that 10% increase go?  Why should we give you more?  Oh right, because if we don't then our kids are going to pay.  Which is interesting - less than half of public school employees are actually teachers; for every teacher employed in a typical school district, there is at least one non-teacher employed.  Unions willfully protect their bureaucracy at all costs.

Here's an idea to address the demand for more money where performance is static if not recessive:  here's the money - now replace the worst 20% of teachers whose income we are paying.  But teacher's unions would never allow this.  It only makes sense that in the business of educating kids, those who fail to do so should not be allowed to continue failing.  Unions are in essence anti-performance.  In fact, it seems counter-productive for a union to want to see a school district succeed.  It's easier to get more money when things are dire.  Since unions work feverishly to eliminate or minimize school competition in all of it's forms, it's easier to not have to perform.

*** 

If there is one government program that we should expect to work and work within reasonable means, it's the public education system.  It's time to stop rewarding failure and for people to recognize that the very system we are expected to rely on for one of the most important societal contributions is in it's current form, an enemy to the kind of common sense and decency we as parents and tax payers should expect.