Sorry, Hussein, what was that about the Soviet Union? How do you plan to stop them?

Update: HotAir has the new McCain ad on this same Obama gaffe:

Off-shore drilling? A campaign ploy that won’t reduce gas prices, but if Bush wants to repeal the off-shore drilling ban he can do it. Bush did and Pelosi, Reid and the Democrats continue to fight the will of the American people. So now that oil prices have retreated since Bush’s announcement, Obama is ready to flip flop compromise on that issue.

The Bush stimulus plan won’t help. Obama opposed it. But in the heat of the presidential election he’s now proposing an additional stimulus plan – that he can’t pay for.

Obama should ask his wife why a stimulus package is even needed. I mean really, “You’re getting $600 – what can you do with that?”

Michelle Obama: Americans Spending $600 Stimulus Checks on Earrings – link

Amanda Carpenter notes:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, complained the government’s $600 economic stimulus check was only enough to buy “a pair of earrings” while stumping for her husband.

“You’re getting $600 – what can you do with that?” Mrs. Obama said in Pontiac, Michigan last week. “Not to be ungrateful or anything, but maybe it pays down a bill, but it doesn’t pay down every bill every month. The short-term quick fix kinda stuff sounds good, and it may even feel good that first month when you get that check, and then you go out and you buy a pair of earrings.”

She made these remarks at a “working women’s roundtable discussion.”

Well, it’s not like Michelle Obama makes comments like this all the time.

not everyone can afford to keep it all together, especially here in Muskingum County, where, according to the census, the median household income in 2004 was $37,192, below both the Ohio and national average. Out of that, there’s the mortgage. And child care. Health care. Education. Lessons. “I know we’re spending — I added it up for the first time — we spend between the two kids, on extracurriculars outside the classroom, we’re spending about $10,000 a year on piano and dance and sports supplements and so on and so forth,” Mrs. Obama tells the women. “And summer programs. That’s the other huge cost. Barack is saying, ‘Whyyyyyy are we spending that?’ And I’m saying, ‘Do you know what summer camp costs?’”

One wonders whether that $600 budgeted for earrings could be spent on, say, fruit:

“Now we’re keeping, like, a bowl of fresh fruit in the house. But you have to go to the fruit stand a couple of times a week to keep that fruit fresh enough that a six-year-old—she’s not gonna eat the pruney grape, you know. At that point it’s, like, ‘Eww!’ She’s not gonna eat the brown banana or the shrivelledy-up things. It’s got to be fresh for them to want it. Who’s got time to go to the fruit stand? Who can afford it, first of all?”

Eh, nevermind the fruit. It’s probably not worth it, what with all the nefarious labeling of products:

“And the notion of trying to think about a lunch every day! . . . So you grab the Lunchables, right? And the fruit-juice-box thing, and we think—we think—that’s juice. And you start reading the labels and you realize there’s high-fructose corn syrup in everything we’re eating. Every jelly, every juice. Everything that’s in a bottle or a package is like poison in a way that most people don’t even know. . “

What with the $600 earrings, the $10,000 summer camps, unaffordable fruit and hidden poisons on the store shelves, daily life in America seems particularly tough on women:

“I wake up every morning wondering how on earth I am going to pull off that next minor miracle to get through the day. I know that everybody in this room is going through this. That is the dilemma women face today. Every woman that I know, regardless of race, education, income, background, political affiliation, is struggling to keep her head above water.” (This presumably includes her friend Oprah.)

(COUGHoprahCOUGH) So who’s to blame?

“What I notice about men, all men, is that their order is me, my family, God is in there somewhere, but me is first.”

Dear Obama campaign, please make sure this is the theme of her prime-time address at the convention.

07/15 04:35 PM

Well it’s gotten so bad in Obama’s Chicago, that the Democratic governor of Illinois has stated that crime is “out of control.” So out of control that the governor is devising a plan to call in the National Guard to protect citizens of the city. This is Obama’s hometown.

Imagine what will happen to America and how bad crime and housing will deteriorate should he be president? He clearly has done nothing for his own constituents yet he wants to give billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to foreigners while his own city crumbles. While he’s out talking to terrorists and giving them money for God knows what – more American cities will follow Chicago’s tragic path.

Obama has no leadership skills, no management skills, no police or military training. He has no financial acumen except how to buy a home for himself from a convicted criminal well below market value. The only thing Barack Obama knows is how to lie for votes. He has mastered that skill.

Lie, get vote, reverse position. That is the Obama mantra. But back to the downfall of his own Chicago under his watchful eye.

CHICAGO — As Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Wednesday signed a new law that will put in place tougher penalties for selling guns to minors, he also announced he’s got a new idea to help combat the violence that Chicago is experiencing: he’s talking to the Illinois State Police and the National Guard to see if they could help.

The Chicago Sun-Times depicted Blagojevich as the “new sheriff in town” Thursday morning in its coverage of the governor’s plan to form an “elite tactical team” to help the city fight crime.

“Violent crime in the city of Chicago is out of control,” Blagojevich said at the bill signing ceremony. “I’m offering resources of the state to the city to work in a constructive way with Mayor Daley to do everything we can possibly do to help stop this violence,” said the governor.The summer of 2008 will be remembered as especially violent. Blagojevich said there’s been a child shot nearly every day since June 26, with 29 Chicago Public School students shot since last fall.

The summer of 2008 will be remembered as especially violent. Blagojevich said there’s been a child shot nearly every day since June 26, with 29 Chicago Public School students shot since last fall.

“Twenty-eight of those kids are African-American and Latino. Hard to imagine that that would be acceptable if that were, in fact, the case inother parts of the city or in a middle-class suburb somewhere,” he said. “Something is wrong, and this violence has to stop.”

Full story and video here.

Another example of Obama’s judgment or lack thereof. Mac’s book I Ain’t Scared of You: Bernie Mac on How Life Is, gives an inside glimpse of Bernie’s views on race and it’s not the kind of stuff a presidential candidate who is claiming to be the hope and change in politics would endorse.

“We can’t afford to be divided by race. We can’t afford to be divided by region or by class and we can’t afford to be divided by gender, which by the way, that means, Bernie, you’ve got to clean up your act next time,” Obama said. “This is a family affair. By the way, I’m just messing with you, man.”

Clearly Obama didn’t have a problem with Mac’s opening jokes, or the views in his book, or else he wouldn’t have invited him or allowed him to perform. So, did Bernie Mac bring the nigga out in Obama?

Bernie Mac makes off-color joke at Obama event

Jul 12, 8:00 AM (ET) – By ASHLEY M. HEHER

(AP) In this June 7, 2007 file photo, comedian Bernie Mac talks with reporters on the red carpet at a… Full Image

CHICAGO (AP) – Comedian Bernie Mac endured some heckling and a campaign rebuke during a surprise appearance Friday night at a fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Toward the end of a 10-minute standup routine at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Chicago, the 50-year-old star of “The Bernie Mac Show” joked about menopause, sexual infidelity and promiscuity, and used occasional crude language.

“My little nephew came to me and he said, ‘Uncle, what’s the difference between a hypothetical question and a realistic question?’” Mac said. “I said, I don’t know, but I said, ‘Go upstairs and ask your mother if she’d make love to the mailman for $50,000.’”

As the joke continued, the punchline evoked an angry response from at least one person in the audience, who said it was offensive to women.

“It’s not funny. Let’s get Barack on,” a man shouted from the crowd, which paid $2,300 each to support the Illinois senator.

About 15 minutes later, Obama tried to smooth things over with a joke of his own.

“We can’t afford to be divided by race. We can’t afford to be divided by region or by class and we can’t afford to be divided by gender, which by the way, that means, Bernie, you’ve got to clean up your act next time,” Obama said. “This is a family affair. By the way, I’m just messing with you, man.”

The incident drew response from Obama’s campaign, which criticized Mac for his choice of material.

“Sen. Obama told Bernie Mac that he doesn’t condone these statements and believes what was said was inappropriate,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement after the event.

Mac, a Chicago native, said he’s a longtime Obama supporter and called the presumptive Democratic nominee a “man’s man” while offering him advice for the duration of the campaign trail.

“People like rumors. They’re going to say things like you was at the club with Lil’ Kim, and you and Kanye West got into a fist fight,” he said. “You can’t get upset. You’ve got to keep hope alive.”

Mac’s appearance was Obama’s first celebrity event of the evening. Later at a Lincoln Park nightclub, Obama spoke to a raucous crowd of music fans, who paid up to $500 per person to see a performance by Wilco lead singer Jeff Tweedy, and two other band members.

“Before these guys go, I want them to know that I had heard a rumor that they had suggested that I had nothing by them on my iPod,” Obama said. “That is not true. I love Wilco.”

From a recent interview:

Q: What qualifies you to be commander in chief?
A: Well, I think that the most important quality that a commander in chief needs at this juncture in history in particular is judgment…

From another recent interview on putting his kids on tv:

On Wednesday, Obama said he had second thoughts after seeing how much attention the interview had received.

Asked if he regretted the interview, Obama said: “A little bit of pause, Michelle and I, particularly given the way it sort of went around the cable stations. I don’t think it’s healthy and it’s something that we’ll be avoiding in the future.”

If he can’t make sound judgments regarding his children, why would we trust him on national security, the military, the economy, or any other issue?

Asked what makes their parents angry, Sasha said whining and Malia cited arguing with each other.

“We are not a news organization,” said Rodgers, speaking at the opening session of the semi-annual Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills. “We are a television network designed to celebrate African American achievement. If Hillary was the nominee, we would not be covering this year’s Democratic Convention.”

“My audience is 93% black,” Rodgers added. “I serve my audience.”

Here’s some news – Obama is 50% white.

State is asked to clarify Web solicitation
By RANDY FURST, Star Tribune

July 9, 2008

The head of the Minnesota Gambling Control Board said that a solicitation for funds on the national website of the Barack Obama presidential campaign may constitute a raffle, which is a violation of Minnesota gambling laws.

Tom Barrett, executive director of the board, said he will ask the state Department of Public Safety to look into the matter.

The Obama campaign said Monday night that the solicitation does not constitute a raffle. “We are not conducting a raffle of any kind,” said Nick Kimball, a spokesman for the Obama campaign in Minnesota.

The Obama website, which is soliciting funds of up to $2,300, says anyone who makes a contribution to the Obama campaign of $5 or more between now and July 31 “could be one of 10 supporters chosen to meet Barack backstage” in Denver.

It further says that the 10 selected supporters can bring a guest and will be flown to Denver to spend two days at the Democratic Party national convention, including hearing Obama’s speech on Aug. 28.

Barrett said he received a phone call from someone who had seen the website, and after reviewing it, decided to contact the Department of Public Safety.

Barrett said his office regulates only charitable gambling. The state Gambling Board website specifically states that one cannot conduct a raffle as a fundraiser for a political campaign. Only nonprofit charities may conduct raffles.

He said three elements make a drawing a form of gambling under state law: if it costs money to participate, if it involves “the luck of the draw” in which no skill is involved and if one wins something of value.

Barrett said that if one could participate in the drawing to become one of the 10 special guests without making a contribution, then it would not be gambling. But he could find no mention of that possibility on the Obama website.

He also said that if the website stated that the offer was void in Minnesota, it would also be legal.

© 2008 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

Several months ago author Christopher Hitchens, on the heels of his magnum opus God is Not Great, wrote an opinion piece suggesting it was not out of line to question former presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith. Besides some of the more peculiar aspects of the Mormon doctrine –– that whole business about Garden of Eden being in Missouri –– there were more pressing matters, Hitchens felt, which required an explanation on behalf of Governor Romney. The primary concern went as follows:

It is not just legitimate that he be asked about the beliefs that he has not just held, but has caused to be spread and caused to be inculcated into children. It is essential. Here is the most salient reason: Until 1978, the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an officially racist organization. Mitt Romney was an adult in 1978. We need to know how he justified this to himself, and we need to hear his self-criticism, if he should chance to have one.

If one reads the Book of Mormon, or examines the religious interpretations of some LDS theologians, these inquires into what Romney does and does not believe, I feel, were not without legitimacy. Does Gov. Romney, for instance, truly believe Joseph Smith’s account of the battle of Cumorah, whereby the fair-skinned and “handsome” Nephites clashed with the recluse Lamanites, whose chastisement from the heavens for shunning God’s will was to be fraught with dark skin? Or that a third faction, who mistakenly remained neutral between God and Satan, was to be punished by God for their impartiality –– “and hence the Negro or African race,” as the dogma goes? What did Gov. Romney think about his church’s policy, until ’78, of disallowing black membership into even the lowliest positions of clergy? No further elaboration is needed.

Hitchens was making a modest and fair appeal to Romney, a soft ball for any politician to hit out of the park. The obvious and most rational response would have been to reassure Americans that he was not a dogmatist, did not take everything about the texts of his faith literally, disagreed with racist scripture vehemently, and is glad that his church moved beyond periods of divisiveness and division. And to Romney’s credit, I felt he tried to handle this issue as best he could (even if, undoubtedly, the likes of Hitchens still considered his answers insufficient).

The same, sadly, cannot be said about Senator Obama. If it was appropriate to question Gov. Romney’s beliefs regarding his church and its view of race –– and it was –– then it is certainly appropriate to continue questioning Sen. Obama’s beliefs, at the least, and aspects of his character, at the most, until the presumptive Democratic nominee can adequately explain his relationship with hate-monger and “black liberation” theologian Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Those who have been following this story are now well aware of Rev. Wright’s ridiculous and racist statements, his charade of a race-baiting career, his relationship with Col. Qaddafi in Libya, his honoring the likes of Louis Farrakhan, and, coincidentally, his close personal friendship with Sen. Obama. The pastor married Obama to his wife Michelle, baptized Obama’s two daughters, inspired the title of Obama’s book, was part of Obama’s “African American Religious Leadership Committee” (whatever that means), and, until this controversy, donned the candidate’s website as a testament to the senator’s history of working with the “grass roots” of urban Chicago.

For some two decades, Obama sat in the pews of Chicago’s Trinity United Church as the recently retired Wright preached a radically sectarian “Afro-centric” doctrine of black separatism. In the interim, Rev. Wright screeched, just days after the crater in lower Manhattan, that the burned ash and crushed bodies under the rubble of the World Trade Center was a case of “America’s chickens… coming home to roost.” He would go on to assert that “white America,” or the “U.S. of KKK A,” infected “people of color” with syphilis and the HIV virus “as a means of genocide,” and would periodically wail “God damn America” amongst other ludicrous banalities and anti-white epithets.

You have to credit Sen. Obama for having the gumption, the nerve, to stake the rest of his candidacy on salvaging his credibility by first promising us, the electorate, that he “did not attend,” over the course of twenty years, any of these hateful sermons, thus not partaking in the mindless rah-rahing and bawling of Wright’s enthralled parishioners –– fiery and angry congregations more apt for a bullhorn mob rally in Gaza City. (I’m sure his campaign would be open to the idea of providing at least some proof of Obama’s whereabouts during these successive Sundays for twenty years.)

I wonder what Harry Truman –– “the buck stops here” –– would have thought about Sen. Obama’s much publicized speech on race. Most people who took the time to watch Obama explaining Rev. Wright’s antics did not see the historical, timeless, and beautifully transcendent speech hailed by the press. They saw, and heard, a complete and unequivocal copout. What they heard was trivial minutia (and of course continued clichés) from a young, overachieving, upstart politician attempting to rescue his career by insisting not only does the buck not stop with him, but he was not really anyway near the buck during any of Wright’s odious invectives –– he swears! (During the past few weeks, Obama seemed to go back on this specific claim, but has yet to be called out on it in a public forum.)

Sen. Obama equated Rev. Wright’s envenom, propagation of hate, and decades of inflammatory tirades to 10,000 parishioners to the occasional bigoted sneer by his white grandmother –– whom he later called “a typical white person.” His grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, will now no longer be remembered for once saving the Obama household, but rather in the manner her ambitious “post-racial” grandson opportunistically threw her under the bus.

By imploring the public to put Wright’s hatred in a historical framework; by suggesting that in growing up during a different time Wright’s rhetoric is more explicable; by declaring “I can no more disown (Wright) than I can disown the black community” or his grandmother; by flowering us with inane moral equivalences (Wright’s televised hate-fests with a private remark by grandma or a wisecrack by Geraldine Ferraro); by applying a double standard in castigating the vulgarities of a Don Imus who Obama felt should be fired and the “biblical scholar” Wright who he feels ought to be understood; by blaming an up-until-now starry-eyed media for taking Wright’s comments out of perspective; by all this and more, Sen. Obama is promoting and utilizing an ethic of contextualization, trying to outweigh bad with conjured up “good” (Wright’s social work, etc.), and is therefore setting an atrocious precedent, whereby concrete wrong can never be ostracized and disavowed in an unapologetic and absolute spirit.

The next time someone somewhere says something hateful, racist, and inflammatory, one wonders if the Obama model of rationalization will be employed.

Nobody expects Sen. Obama to end his personal friendship with Rev. Wright. All we ask is to be spoken to like adults and to be told the truth (some straight talk, if you will). If it is true that Sen. Obama never attended any of these hate speeches, we would like to know if the senator was or was not aware of Wright’s tendencies and idiosyncrasies? If not, why not? Is that the kind of aloofness Americans deserve in our chief executive?

And if it happens to be the case that Obama did attend one of these particular sermons, or many of them, as he later seemed to admit, then why did the senator first tell us otherwise? Did the senator feel ill at ease sitting there listening to such filth, and if so, how come he did not politely excuse himself from the pew and leave? Or was he jumping around, laughing, and lap-slapping, as well, like the rest of the parishioners?

We would be curious as to know why Obama let his daughters, who were baptized by Wright, frequent a house of black liberation theology, having vile nonsense “inculcated” into their ears.

Obama asserted he disagrees with “some” of Wright’s highlighted comments. Which ones are these, and which are the comments in question he does not disagree with?

There is a tragic irony to this whole episode. The irony is this: Obama has made it such that he is no longer being criticized for what he obviously could be criticized for –– that is, being a novice social-worker-turned-legislator with a paper-thin record and absolutely no executive experience or qualifications –– but rather, dejectedly for his supporters, he is being criticized because the very heart of his message is now seen to be in want.

A few weeks ago, Clinton supporters and moderate Democrats were wondering why this rookie thought he deserved the enormous power and capacity of the world’s strongest country to be turned over to him, but still nonetheless considered the senator a bipartisan fresh face and, as it were, a candidate of coalescence. Today, many are instead mocking the notion that this post-racial candidate –– who talked about not talking about race nonstop even before this Wright controversy –– is the unifying figure he claims to be.

There is a disconnect there. The allusions of racial transcendence fall on deaf ears when Michelle Obama insists that soon “black America will wake up and get it,” help elect her husband, so she can feel proud of her country “for the first time in her adult life.” Somewhere along the way, for these two Ivy Leaguers, to be American meant to “feel justified in your own ignorance… that’s America.” Somewhere between growing up middle class, going to Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton, being the benefactors of sweetheart housing deals, grants, and loans, and filing over $1 million in tax returns, the United States became “downright mean.”

Somewhere between campaigning for votes across the likes of rural Scranton and speaking privately to wealthy-yuppie elitist donors in San Francisco mansions, middle-class Pennsylvanians became “bitter,” whereby blue collar Midwest voters “cling” to their guns and religion. (Sen. Obama did not know he was being recorded.)

The indignation of this candidate, this couple, and this campaign is apparent to anyone who isn’t aroused by Obama’s supposed trace-like eloquence. Aside from the vague calls of “change” and “hope,” some still see the man as just a man; a talented and well-intentioned, but calculating and flawed man.

Some still see little biracial “Barry,” raised by his white mother, growing up abroad outside the African-American experience, who later, as an upcoming Chicago politician, transformed into “Barack” –– now “black enough,” earning his fides at Wright’s Trinity United –– while wetting the appetites of his diverse urban constituents, as well as those of academic intellectuals and suburban guilty white upper-class liberals who all equally salivated at the opportunity to support a candidate who would underscore their own egalitarianism while alleviating them of whatever past ancestral sins they still felt responsible for.

Whereas the Hussein middle name used to be “exotic” and championed as evidence of Obama’s multicultural credentials, today the mere mention of it has his campaign crying smear. The cold, calculating switch is unpardonable, and is only now being recognized for what it is.

I suspect that the Obama-as-iconoclast perception, as the symbolic figurehead to end “old politics” and polarization as we know it, will fade into the woodwork as time progresses. As Hitchens himself noted, Obama’s crowds and their monotonous “Yes we can” mantra is the “sort of thing parents might chant encouragingly to a child slow on the potty-training uptake.” It’s getting old, and, at least according to most Democrats I speak to, it’s getting old really fast.

People are starting to see the campaign’s attitude of entitlement seep through. To counter this, the senator, in conceding “Washington experience” to his rivals, has placed a premium on the idea of trusting his judgment. I am glad to take him up on that proposal, and so should the electorate.

Not only is much still to be explained regarding Rev. Wright, but as the general election approaches, a good number of people are going to want to know more about Sen. Obama’s contributions from, and business ties with, the wealthy and corrupt Illinois slumlord Tony Rezko.

A good number of people are going to want to know more about Sen. Obama’s open friendship with former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, who bombed military bases, the Pentagon, and the U.S. Capitol (amongst other targets). At last account, Ayers was unrepentant, insisting “I don’t regret setting the bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough.”

A good number of people are going to want to know more about Sen. Obama’s relationship with Rashid Khalidi, his relationship with Iraqi-born billionaire Nadhmi Auchi (who, according to any prominent member of the Iraqi community, was a front man for Saddam for years), and the extent of his personal relationship with his childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a known communist who belonged to a proxy party to the Soviet Union. Judging on his judgment, it is.

Aside from some Chicago soup kitchen altruism, nobody, including Obama’s fervent supporters, quite knows anything the senator has done. Why should we therefore believe an incurious electorate would be aware, at present, of Mr. Obama’s connections with shady individuals which spawned his political career, and the extent of their influence in his life and in his rise in politics? There is a crisis of information in this country, but as Democrats start to fret with buyer’s remorse, I suspect not for long.

Nicholas M. Guariglia writes on the issues of national defense and counterterrorism, specifically regarding Middle East geopolitics. He is a graduate of the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, where he is studied U.S. foreign policy. Mr. Guariglia also contributes to WorldThreats.com and FamilySecurityMatters.org. He can be contacted at nickguar@gmail.com