From Savage Politics: CNN is Guilty of Censorship!

Yesterday was an interesting day in the history of this BlogZine. CNN, who has been notorious for their biased and Liberal reporting when dealing with Barack Hussein Obama, decided to inform the McCain Campaign that their automated Google ads were running on our site and that they should be quickly removed. CNN somehow must presume that we depend on advertising money to sustain this site, and thus took it upon themselves to specifically make sure that SavagePolitics.com was ostracized and rebuked by the candidate that many of our readers have come to support and that our site’s pockets were robbed of much needed revenue. Let’s first look at how CNN described this site, and in what context, and then we can further discuss what it all means. Here is an excerpt that specifically pertains to our site: More...

SavagePolitics.com, another anti-Obama site that has run McCain ads, has called Obama a “bold faced liar, a thief, a sexist and a racist.”

The McCain campaign pulled the ads after being notified by CNN.

Rogers said the campaign often has no control over where their ads show up on the Web. That’s because the campaign uses a third-party vendor — in this case, Google — to distribute their banner ads across a broad array of political Web sites by searching for certain key words.

When the campaign is made aware of ads appearing on offensive or irrelevant Web sites, Rogers said, they notify the ad distributor and have the sites added to a list of blocked URLs. He noted the McCain campaign has already blocked “tens of thousands” of such sites. (CLICK HERE TO READ)

In other words, per the second line in the excerpt above, CNN NOTIFIED the McCain campaign that SavagePolitics.com was running their ads. Of course, they conveniently obviated the McCain link on our right column and the fact that there is a fundraising tool underneath it that even directs donors to the John McCain campaign. The reason for ignoring these details is quite simple; the links that they are complaining about appear to make a ‘profit’ for our site, while the second category doesn’t (it actually deviates funds away from it!). This, of course, proves that CNN’s sole intention in their ‘reporting’ is to directly stifle the alternative voice that this BlogZine represents and thus limit the American populace to their brand of “unfiltered” information.

But, for the sake of personal entertainment, I will first tackle some of their charges against our site and then discuss the importance of boycotting this “news” agency.

CNN claims that SavagePolitics.com is “negative” because we have called Mr. Obama a “bold faced liar, a thief, a sexist and a racist.” The question that any reasonable and intelligent person should ask themselves is: Are any of these claims untrue? If the Mainstream Media spent more time doing their job and less time looking for ways to attack ‘irrelevant and offensive’ BlogZines like ours, they would have figured out a long time ago that our claims are not only ENTIRELY TRUE but even mildly stated.

What makes Obama a BOLD FACED LIAR? His already well established record of outright reversals, misdirections, dishonesty and LIES. These words are not “negative” or “smears” but simple allocations of appropriate descriptive labels to a person that CNN and their corrupt lackeys have been all too willing to give a ‘pass’ from their critical scopes. If you wish to feel nauseated by the impressive amount of proven lies that this Illinois Senator has passed underneath your noses, please study our classic read “The Truth vs. Barack Obama“, but let me point out a few of the most recent ones below:

1. Barack Obama stated, not only verbally (through his debates with Senator Clinton and via diverse interviews) but in written form, that he would take PUBLIC FINANCING for his general election campaign. As we all know, he plainly LIED to the American people about this commitment and decided to continue his accumulation of special interest money, not from recognized Federal PACs, but directly from the corrupt CEO’s and their personal corporate slaves. If this ‘flip flopping’ is not BOLD FACED LYING, I don’t know what is.

2. Barack Obama stated, not only through countless campaign surrogates but by his own words in many interviews, that he thought that the D.C. Gun Ban was CONSTITUTIONAL. But, after the Supreme Court decided that it wasn’t and Obama was confronted with the reality of looking foolishly ignorant on legal matters, he told a reporter that he “never said that” and that he always knew that it was not going to pass the Supreme Court’s scrutiny. (WATCH EVIDENCE HERE) If this is not BOLD FACED LYING, I don’t know what is.

3. Barack Obama’s FIRST GENERAL ELECTION Advertisement actually claims that he “extended health care for wounded troops” and cites Public Law 110-181 as the evidence of said action. The problem is, Obama NEVER VOTED for said bill and was not even near Washington DC at the time. When asked about this lie, Obama defended himself by claiming that McCain was also missing for said vote and should then not criticize him for being absent. The difference is that McCain never claimed that he voted for this bill, Obama did. If this is not BOLD FACED LYING, I don’t know what is.

The sad reality of this election is that I could literally continue this list to infinity, and this would only encompass this month’s news. Is it not shameful that our American political system has reached this low level? Is there then any question that our affirmative labeling of Mr. Obama as a LIAR is not only accurate but painfully constrained? Most people would agree that a person who lies with such impunity, sloppiness and frequency should be called much harsher names than “bold faced liar”.

The other ‘less dramatic’ descriptors that CNN chastises our site for are also quite easy to understand.

We openly call Obama a racist, not only because of his association with Rev. Wright and the Liberation Theology cesspool that is his Trinity United Church, but because Barack’s own books are infested with hundreds of racialist affirmations and sentiments. Among them is the now infamous “white folks greed runs a world in need” line that when put into context is even more damaging that what the single line implies. Many of these “wonderfully” racially charged comments can be easily found in his ‘Dreams from My Father’ book. In this same ethnocentric spirit, there is also that now infamous radio interview where he described his own grandmother as a “typical white person” who feels threatened by black men when they walk down the street (CLICK HERE TO HEAR OBAMA). If these circumstances do not categorize you in the realm of “racist” (or “racially insensitive”) then we should have sent that memo to David Duke, since we have socially ostracized him for many years for saying milder things than this (and for actually being honest about it!). Can you even imagine John McCain utilizing the term “typical black person” without getting viciously attacked for being a ‘racist’?

But the ‘big picture’ aspect of CNN’s action has nothing to do with Obama nor his well recorded dishonesty and unpreparedness to become President of the United States. This entire controversy is about our freedom of speech and the ability of every citizen to dictate his own conscience. CNN is upset at the idea of having to compete with independent blogs that DO NOT depend on advertisement, nor on corporate interests, but merely on the support of each individual reader. Of course, the mere fact that SavagePolitics.com was even mentioned as a ‘problem’ for the Obama campaign is quite flattering, and it obviously means that we are doing our job, but it also signals a new step in their assault on our freedom and independent thought. Since when did the Press and their surrogates began to dedicate their valuable time to destroy the earning potential of other sources of information and speech? Since when is it their job to inform on others, as if we were living inside the Soviet Union, and they were part of the ‘thought police’? What is next, snitch on your own parents for not ‘following the party line’?

In this regard, the McCain campaign should also receive some of the blame for this disrespectful and overt action against the right of ALL citizens to express their views and read whatever they feel is relevant, irregardless of how unpopular or inconvenient it may appear to some. We have never seen CNN calling the advertisers of any anti-McCain blogs for their “offensive” nature, even though many of them even claim that McCain lied about being injured in Vietnam (among countless silly allegations)! Why would the McCain campaign stoop so low as to allow the Liberal press to dictate their path to victory? The answer lies in FEAR. Many inside McCain’s campaign (and for this I am willing to give a temporary pass to J. McCain himself) fear to be branded as “mean”, “negative”, “racists”, etc. by an overtly socialist, corrupt albeit powerful news agency like CNN. To take control of this situation, and appear ‘above the fray’, they will thus continuously pontificate about “positive campaigning”, “not questioning the patriotism of others”, fighting the “smears”, and other euphemism that hide the truth behind their assertion.

If they honestly feel that this is a coherent strategy to beat Obama, and that it will somehow ‘out change’ the Change candidate, then we all hope that they are right in this approach and we would then be all too willing to comply. But, just like I warned the Hillary Clinton campaign during many occasions I will now directly warn the McCain camp. You may be preaching to the wrong choir! Many of these imbeciles who love “change” and “hope” are either Liberal fanatics, foolish youngsters, or racist African Americans. These individuals could care less if McCain attacks Obama or he does not, they will not vote for his candidacy anyway, irrespective of the “good nature”, “logic”, “reasonableness”, and/or “fairness” that he may represent.

Because of this, and more often than not, a campaign has to OPENLY engage in ruthless tactics if they wish to achieve victory, and in this election, not doing so from an EARLY stage is what directly destroyed Hillary Clinton’s chances of becoming the first female President in our history. We must then all presume that the McCain campaign does not wish to fall into this same ditch and that they are right now tightly strapping their thinking caps as they face the Obama machine, if not, they must quickly realize that they are in trouble. Most of us ‘political savages’ understand that common Americans do not understand subtleties and that going along with CNN’s Liberal “love fest” ploy, with the aim of somehow ‘take them from the inside’ may backfire. For the sake of our entire Nation, we hope that John McCain’s campaign quickly learns these realities or we will be facing the disturbing possibility of an Obama administration (as unlikely as it is at this point).

At the end of the day, SavagePolitics.com has proven to be morally stronger than any Mainstream Media source. This is so because we DO NOT depend on any corporate money to survive and instead depend on the support of our loyal readers. Those who subscribe and continuously donate to this site have always been the ones in charge, and thus the newly christened Communist News Network (a fitting name when you consider their ‘informant’ and liberal tendencies) is utterly powerless to influence or stop this site from doing its job in the SAVAGE advocacy of freedom, justice and truth.

To our readers, please know that if the THOUSANDS of you who already visit this site want to effect REAL CHANGE in the way American politics functions in our Country, you should personally make it a point to boycott many of these corporate (and corrupt) news networks. This can only be done by donating, and/or subscribing to alternative sources of information like this site. This is truly the only way to actually influence our public discourse and force our press to once and for all break their bondage from corporate and special interests. Spending small amounts of cash on alternative thoughts is as crucial as investing in ‘alternative fuels’, or even giving your cash away to Hollywood films and their other mindless agendas.

UNDERSTAND that the day that our News Media starts ’snitching’ on it’s own citizens, is the day that our freedom will begin its slippery slope towards its collapse. Nonetheless, I want you to know that I am NOT afraid of the Corporate Media and their nefarious intentions. If they want war, then war it is. Our aim has never been to only stop political corruption and speak truth to power, it has also been to utterly destroy the American Mainstream Media and permanently eradicate their influence from the political discussion. It therefore high time for an old fashioned political mutiny, and the conditions are ripe for their taking.

This 4th of July will henceforth also represent OUR independence from corporate manipulation and their dictatorial tactics. We will nevermore be led astray by their lies and hidden agendas and we will take back what can never be stolen from us; our FREEDOM.

©2008 J. Cifre, J.D., of SAVAGEPOLITICS.com. All Rights Reserved.

How’d This Happen?

Jennifer Rubin - 08.06.2008 - 12:08 PM

The debate over energy is going full tilt. Somehow Barack Obama is now reduced to arguing that tire inflation is a substitute for domestic energy development. I am not sure how calling your opponent “ignorant” qualifies as “the high road,” but I do agree with this take from the Left that “Obama will lose this exchange and wind up sounding like a Dukakisian know-it-all.” More...

Obama does have a few problems on the subject of energy: he is flip-flopping (or maybe not) on drilling and on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), he is saddled with his recalcitrant Democratic Congressional colleagues who fled rather than vote on drilling, public opinion is overwhelmingly against him, and he has his facts wrong (at least on oil savings from inflated tires). Mainstream media outlets frown at his windfall profits tax and SPR flip-flop which are seen as ham-handed, very old school gimmicks.

This episode is classic Obama: he was slow to recognize he had a problem, he looks alternately recalcitrant and then irresolute (as with the surge) as be bobs and weaves between his base and political reality, and he condescends to voters. And then he doesn’t have a good answer for his own voting record. But it is really a failure of common sense: why not include domestic drilling as a significant part of our energy approach? (After several weeks someone seems to have explained this to The One.)

The haphazard and delinquent effort to catch up to McCain’s energy policy blitz (which has been going on for weeks now) also tells us something else: Obama thinks he can ignore whatever McCain is doing. It is not surprising for the candidate who considers himself already President to disregard what his opponent is up to. The temptation is great to try to run out the clock and get by on pablum and pretty pictures.

But Obama does it at his peril . He is now struggling to find a way to counteract the McCain energy offensive. You have the feeling that each day will bring a new challenge/gambit from the McCain camp (What’s next? Jiffy Lube tune-ups for the entire press corps?) and the rest of the day will be spent watching Obama and his media allies trying to swat away the incoming fire. It is what happens when you take a victory lap months before the first votes are cast.

Obama's Muslim-Outreach Adviser Resigns

By GLENN R. SIMPSON and AMY CHOZICK
August 6, 2008

The Muslim-outreach coordinator to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama has resigned amid questions about his involvement in an Islamic investment fund and various Islamic groups.

Chicago lawyer Mazen Asbahi, who was appointed volunteer national coordinator for Muslim American affairs by the Obama campaign on July 26, stepped down Monday after an Internet newsletter wrote about his brief stint on the fund's board, which also included a fundamentalist imam.
More...

"Mr. Asbahi has informed the campaign that he no longer wishes to serve in his volunteer position, and we are in the process of searching for a new national Arab American and Muslim American outreach coordinator," spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement.

A corporate lawyer at the firm of Schiff Hardin LLP, Mr. Asbahi tendered his resignation after he and the Obama campaign received emailed inquiries about his background from The Wall Street Journal. He did not respond to the email or a message left at his law office; the campaign released a letter in which Mr. Asbahi said he did not want to be a distraction.

The Obama campaign is trying to strike a balance between courting Muslim American voters and dispelling rumors intended by some to link the candidate to radical Islam. Sen. Obama is a Christian.

Until Mr. Asbahi joined the campaign, Sen. Obama did not have a Muslim-outreach coordinator and had relied on the Democratic National Committee's efforts. The campaign has long had its own outreach efforts to Catholic, evangelical Christian and Jewish voters. Some Muslim voters have complained about the disparity. An Obama aide says Mr. Asbahi was brought on in part to bridge that perceived gap and to reach out to Muslim communities in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, states seen as among the most competitive this fall.

"We need Muslim Americans to get excited about the Campaign, and there's a lot to get excited about!" Mr. Asbahi wrote in a statement posted on a blog when he was appointed. "Sure, there have been mis-steps," he added.

In 2000, Mr. Asbahi briefly served on the board of Allied Assets Advisors Fund, a Delaware-registered trust. Its other board members at the time included Jamal Said, the imam at a fundamentalist-controlled mosque in Illinois.
[faith and obama]

"I served on that board for only a few weeks before resigning as soon as I became aware of public allegations against another member of the board," Mr. Asbahi said in his resignation letter. "Since concerns have been raised about that brief time, I am stepping down...to avoid distracting from Barack Obama's message of change."

The eight-year-old connection between Mr. Asbahi and Mr. Said was raised last week by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, which is published by a Washington think tank and chronicles the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, a world-wide fundamentalist group based in Egypt. Other Web sites, some pro-Republican and others critical of fundamentalist Islam, also have reported on the background of Mr. Asbahi. He is a frequent speaker before several groups in the U.S. that scholars have associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Justice Department named Mr. Said an unindicted co-conspirator in the racketeering trial last year of several alleged Hamas fund-raisers, which ended in a mistrial. He has also been identified as a leading member of the group in news reports going back to 1993.

Mr. Said is the imam at the Bridgeview Mosque in Bridge-view, Ill., outside Chicago. He left the board of the Islamic fund in 2005, Securities and Exchange Commission filings state. A message left for Mr. Said at the mosque was not returned.

Allied Asset Advisors is a subsidiary of the North American Islamic Trust. The trust, which is supported financially by the government of Saudi Arabia, holds title to many mosques in the U.S. and promotes a conservative brand of Islam compatible with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and also akin to the fundamentalist style predominant in Saudi Arabia. Allied executives did not respond to inquiries.

Write to Glenn R. Simpson at glenn.simpson@wsj.com1 and Amy Chozick at amy.chozick@wsj.com2
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121797906741214995.html

Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) mailto:glenn.simpson@wsj.com
(2) mailto:amy.chozick@wsj.com

A list of the Top Obama Fund-Raisers

More...

join Hillary on Thursday, August 7, at 12:00 PM EDT for an online web chat

Hillary will be hosting a web chat tomorrow at 12pm EDT on BlogHillary.

She will be answering questions from the people most important to her - you.

Please watch her short message and join us tomorrow at http://blog.hillaryclinton.com.

Click Here to watch her message.

Obama Accuses Reporter of Serving as McCain's 'Proxy'

By Noel Sheppard
August 6, 2008 - 10:54 ET

Aside from being tagged a racist, it now appears that any press member who dares ask presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama a tough question will be accused of acting as a proxy for John McCain.

Such was the case Tuesday when the junior senator from Illinois was being interviewed on Las Vegas's CBS affiliate. To read the full article, click here.

Jon Voight Blasts Obama

Jon Voight Blasts Obama, Says He’d Usher In Socialism And Is Weak On Terror. Some of the same story in this article.

Hillary Clinton: No Crisis Is Immune From Exploitation Under Bush

By HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
August 6, 2008; Page A15

Tucked away on the Cayman Islands sits Ugland House, an unassuming, nondescript building of modest scale and size. However, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), this five-story office building is home to more than 18,000 corporate entities, nearly half of which have U.S. ties.

In the past few years, the number of corporations flocking to places like the Cayman Islands to evade U.S. taxes has exploded. One of these companies, former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, has used offshore tax havens to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal taxes. To no one's surprise, instead of cracking down on KBR, the Bush administration has rewarded the company in April of this year with a 10-year, $150 billion contract in Iraq. More...

There appears to be no crisis, tragedy or disaster immune from exploitation under the Bush administration. The examples of the waste, fraud and abuse are legion -- from KBR performing shoddy electrical work in Iraq that has resulted in the electrocution of our military personnel according to Pentagon and Congressional investigators, to the firing of an Army official who dared to refuse a $1 billion payout for questionable charges to the same company. In another scam, the Pentagon awarded a $300 million contract to AEY, Inc., a company run by a 22-year-old who fulfilled an ammunition deal in Afghanistan by supplying rotting Chinese-made munitions to our allies.

But the fraud and waste are not limited to the war. In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, for example, FEMA awarded a contract worth more than $500 million for trailers to serve as temporary housing. The contractor, Gulf Stream, collected all of its money even though they knew at the time that its trailers were contaminated with formaldehyde.

While touting fiscal responsibility, President Bush and his administration have lined the pockets of political cronies like Halliburton and Blackwater. While calling for earmark reform, the president has allowed no-bid and questionable contracting throughout the federal government to dwarf earmark spending by a 10-to-1 ratio.

If we're going to get serious about putting our nation's fiscal house in order, let's talk about putting an end to billions in no-bid contract awards to unaccountable contractors. Let's talk about the number of lucrative contracts and bonuses being paid for duties never performed, promises never fulfilled, and contracts falsely described as complete. And let's talk about reforming the federal contracting system so that we can take on the real waste, fraud and abuse in our federal government.

I've proposed a comprehensive overhaul to root out corruption in no-bid contracts and other shady deals. Reforms must include the following:

- Instead of rewarding companies that exploit tax shelters and incorporate in tax havens, let's ban the federal government from contracting with companies that hide profits offshore.

- We should put in place safeguards so that contracts are awarded to responsible companies that abide by the law and complete the work they're hired to do.

- Let's put a stop to the disgraceful practice of giving bonuses to contractors for work never performed, which has been allowed to happen in Iraq and throughout the federal government according to the GAO and inspectors general.

- We need to increase transparency and competition in the contracting system, and to stop the ideological privatization of critical governmental functions.

In 1941, as the U.S. mobilized and entered World War II, then Sen. Harry Truman proposed and chaired the Senate Special Committee to investigate the National Defense Program. Over the course of three years, Truman set about investigating a president of his own party in order to discover and eliminate wasteful and fraudulent spending. By some estimates, the "Truman Committee" saved the American people some $15 billion -- more than $165 billion in today's dollars.

Truman took on the war profiteers because he understood that when the lives of Americans hang in the balance, we cannot afford to misuse even a single dollar. In the Democratic Congress, we've proposed a new Truman Committee to address the waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan that has already taken place, a proposal stymied by the president and his allies. And my proposal would prevent waste, fraud and abuse in future contracting.

Of course, we need far more than a Truman Committee. We need the Truman spirit in the White House, where the buck finally stops.

SOURCE: online.wsj.com/article/SB121798030763715107.html

CLINTON DEMS.COM ACTION ALERT!

Dear Clinton Dem,

As you may be aware, John McCain has slipped ahead of Barack Obama in a few key polls. It is very unusual for this to be the case at this stage of a presidential campaign, and much more unusual in a year when it appeared all factors played into the hands of Democrats. A "generic" Democrat performs much better against McCain than Obama himself does.

Since we would like very much for the delegates to get a chance to see what a nomination for Hillary Clinton could bring to the party, we ask that you contact each of the polling organizations below and ask them to include Hillary Clinton's name in their polling data. More...

Dear Pollster X,

In light of Barack Obama's lagging performance in the polls against John McCain, and the fact that nearly 60% of Americans want a Democrat for president, I ask you to please place Hillary Clinton's name in your presidential polls from now until at least the convention.

There is currently no certified nominee. It is not too late for the party to re-evaluate (or validate) their choice with a viable comparision. Maybe it is time for the pulse of the American people to be taken again?

Hillary was ahead when the last polls like this were done soon after she suspended her campaign.

Thank you for your consideration in this matter.

Your Name
Pollsters

Rasmussen Reports, LLC
Phone: 732-776-9777
Email: info@rasmussenreports.com

Quinnipiac University
CONTACT THE POLLING INSTITUTE
275 Mount Carmel Ave.
Hamden, CT 06518-1908
203-582-5201
pollinginstitute@quinnipiac.edu

Gallup
Sarah Van Allen
Phone: 877-242-5587
Alt: 202-715-3030
Fax: 202-715-3045
901 F Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20004
email: sarah_van_allen@gallup.com

QUICK LINKS:

Contact Delegates

Contact Howard Dean

Keep Fighting!

"Of course, we need far more than a Truman Committee. We need the Truman spirit in the White House, where the buck finally stops.''

~ Hillary Clinton

Obama Needs to Make Nice on All Sides

Great Article by Susan Estrich on how you don’t win by denouncing people on your own side (or even the other side), by questioning their motives, impugning their integrity, and making clear that there is no room for anyone who views this as a political contest rather than a test of faithMore...


Wednesday, July 30, 2008

By Susan Estrich

Spare me the true believers.

I don’t mean the people who support Barack Obama for president. I support Barack Obama for president. I mean the people who worship him to the point that anyone who says anything raising questions about the inevitability of his rise to sainthood, much less the perfection of him and his wife and his campaign, is deserving of damnation.

I wrote a column last week about how the Obama campaign needed to guard against the arrogance that many people tell me they have detected in dealing with them. I didn’t condemn the candidate. I didn’t say he doesn’t deserve to be president. I just made the point, which seems almost obvious to me, that he isn’t president yet, that even with the great speeches and adoring crowds he found abroad, the race remains very close, at least; that there is resistance in many quarters to his candidacy and while some of it may be race-based, some of it reflects legitimate questions about experience, and policy; and that whatever its basis, in the end it doesn’t matter if more people vote for McCain than for him.

“Heinous,” one woman wrote to me, in describing my thoughts, and me. Heinous? Oh, of course, and racist and stupid. Thanks. Such comments came not from conservatives who oppose Barack Obama but from true-believers who are ready to condemn anyone who has not joined the revival.

Hold on a minute.

I’ve been out there fighting to elect Democrats for the better part of three decades. I know what it’s like to win, and I know what it’s like to lose, and winning is definitely better. And believe me, you don’t win by denouncing people on your own side (or even the other side), by questioning their motives, impugning their integrity, and making clear that there is no room for anyone who views this as a political contest rather than a test of faith.

I agree with Michael Kinsley, who wrote a very smart column in Time Magazine two weeks ago saying that Hillary supporters and die-hard liberals need to stop criticizing Obama for moving to the middle, stop focusing on how Hillary was treated, or mistreated, in the primaries and caucuses, stop licking their wounds and get with the program. He’s right. But love is a two-way street. It’s also time to extend the welcome mat.

There are stories kicking around about how African-Americans in at least two states (South Carolina and New York itself) who supported Hillary Clinton ended up with primary opponents in their own races for re-election to punish them for being pro-Clinton. This is not the way to win. There are stories kicking around that the reason (or one of them) that the highly effective Hillraisers are not raising the kind of money for Obama that they raised for Clinton is because they have been told that no matter what they do, they will never be the “equal” of the Obama fundraisers.

Come again?

These are not people looking for government jobs. All they want is invitations to events and the trinkets and titles that prove they are part of the team, the sort of things that are easy to give and ridiculous to withhold. There are places for seniority systems, but campaigns aren’t among them.

I am happy to believe that Barack Obama himself has nothing to do with recruiting candidates to oppose former Hillary supporters or creating barriers to their full participation. I am happy to believe that he would be appalled if he read some of the e-mails I get when I write columns cautioning the campaing to avoid arrogance, taking on the attitude (that I am certainly not alone in perceiving) that Obama can’t lose and that anyone who so much as suggests that he might is a heretic deserving of condemnation. I am happy to believe that he does not share in the nastiness and invective that is still being heaped on Hillary and Bill Clinton by some who hold themselves out as members of Obama’s inner circle.

But it needs to stop, and he needs to make sure that it does.

Because of the way delegate selection works on the Democratic side, a process with which we all became intimately familiar during the long primary season, very close to half the delegates at the Demcoratic Convention will be there because they supported Hillary Clinton for president, not Barack Obama. From the media perspective, there is nothing better than a convention fight, than disgruntled delegates ready to go on the record, than delegates acting up and acting out at the expense of the nominee. From the candidate’s perspective, there is nothing worse.


As anyone who has ever polled the question of conventions will tell you, there is a widespread view among voters (as opposed to television producers) that discord is a sign of weakness; that if you can’t run (control) your convention, how can you run the country? Jimmy Carter almost certainly paid for the discord at the 1980 Convention, in which angry Kennedy supporters (I was just a kid at the time, what can I say?) took out their frustration at the campaign that had not only defeated us, but chose to “stomp on the grave,” as we call it in politics, in the months leading up to the convention.

We pressied for votes on dozens of minority reports and even interrupted their speakers with chants of “no, no, no.” Poor Andy Young. He had actually cleared his speech with Senator Kennedy himself. But my friend (and now federal judge) Rick Stearns and I didn’t know that when the grownups left us in charge of the boiler room; we decided that it would be an excellent opportunity to test out our communcations system, by asking all our delegates to stand up and chant, fists in the air. We timed how many seconds it took between our giving the order and the networks interrupting the speech to ask what was going on. Ninety second, the first time. "Will there be a walkout?," Walter Cronkhite asked. We told our delegates to sit down. Then we did it again. Cut 10 seconds off the time.

There was a reason, four years later, that Mondale went the extra mile to compromise with Jesse Jackson. He didn’t want a convention crack-up. Ditto for Dukakis, in 1988. Bill Clinton could never have done his Sister Souljah speech on the eve of the 1992 Convention had Jesse run that year. But he hadn’t, and the convention belonged to Clinton . George Bush paid dearly for the anger that was on display at the 1992 convention from the likes of his primary opponent, Pat Buchanan.

No candidate — in my memory, anyway — has gone into a convention with as many delegates pledged to his one-time opponent as Barack Obama will face in Denver in August. They may not be able to wrest the nomination away from him (I have no reason to believe they would even try), but if they don’t feel included, their exclusion could cost him dearly. It’s time to make nice, on all sides. Otherwise, John McCain will be the victor. And spare me the “heinous” e-mails for saying that. The truth may hurt, but believe me, losing hurts a whole lot more.

Susan Estrich is the Robert Kingsley Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Southern California. She was Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the first female president of the Harvard Law Review. She is a columnist for Creators Syndicate and has written for USA Today and the Los Angeles Times.

Estrich's books include the just published "Soulless," "The Case for Hillary Clinton," "How to Get Into Law School," "Sex & Power," "Real Rape," "Getting Away with Murder: How Politics Is Destroying the Criminal Justice System" and "Making the Case for Yourself: A Diet Book for Smart Women."

She served as campaign manager for Michael Dukakis' presidential bid, becoming the first woman to head a U.S. presidential campaign. Estrich appears regularly on the FOX News Channel, in addition to writing the "Blue Streak" column for FOXNews.com.

Bad Economy May Hurt Obama

By Dick Morris

The conventional wisdom has it down pat: A bad economy works against the candidate from the party in power as voters take out their rage and fear on the president’s party and back the challenger, just like they did in 1992. But this is not a normal economic slowdown (or recession) and Obama is not a normal challenger. I think the conventional wisdom may be dead wrong.More...

It is not so much that unemployment is so high (5.7 percent) or that the economy is in the tank (1 percent growth this quarter) as it is that everything seems to be falling apart. Banks are under assault; mortgages are in default; quasi-government agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac need bailouts; financial institutions go hat in hand to foreign sovereign wealth funds peddling shares of their equity in return for desperately needed cash; the cost of filling a gas tank has tripled. It is not the present circumstances that have voters freaked, it is the threats that seem to loom on the horizon.

And Obama is no ordinary challenger. Not like Bill Clinton, for example. In 1992, from the moment the campaign started, Clinton billed himself as the expert who could solve the economy’s problems. His promise to “focus like a laser beam” on the recession won him big points throughout the campaign. His 10-year record as a governor and his chairmanship of the National Governors Association bolstered his credentials. But we first met Barack Obama as an advocate of racial and partisan healing and then as an opponent of the war in Iraq. When he tried to morph into an economic expert in time for the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries, voters didn’t buy it and voted for Hillary.

So the question that hangs over the election is: Are we prepared to trust a new candidate with almost no experience and no claim to economic expertise in the middle of one of the most threatening economic situations we have ever faced?

Add to this backdrop Obama’s pledge to raise taxes and you have a combustible situation that could frighten American voters en masse. When, amid relative prosperity, Obama said he would restore fairness by raising taxes on the rich, it was well-received, particularly in the Democratic primary.

Raising the top bracket to 40 percent seemed a no-brainer. Applying the Social Security tax to more earned income, not just to the first $100,000, seemed like elemental fairness and a good way to save the pension system. Restoring the capital gains tax to 28 percent appeared to comport with the notion that those whose income derives from investment should pay a tax closer to that paid on earned income (despite the argument that it is after-tax money that they invested in the first place).

But now, with massive capital outflows crippling the public and private sectors, doubling the tax on capital seems like a very, very bad idea. And a sharp increase in taxes on the entrepreneurial class seems like a risky proposition.

And, besides, when a candidate starts raising taxes, who knows where he will stop once he is in office?

McCain can put economist after economist on the air to prophesy depression if Obama’s plan for taxes is enacted. And the public will not be reassured by the Democrat’s claims that his tax hikes are only on the rich.

It almost doesn’t matter that McCain is not an economist and avows ignorance of what Thomas Carlyle called the “dismal science.” We know McCain. We know he will surround himself with some pretty capable people. And, above all, we know that he won’t raise taxes.

Were these calmer times, with less of a threat from abroad and less economic danger, we might indulge our penchant for change and elect a neophyte in the hope that he will offer something different. We might be more easily captivated by his charisma. But, in these times, we may want to stay with the safer candidate.

Allyson Schwartz (D-PA) on Obama’s Vote for the Bush-Cheney Energy Policy — Let’s Play Dodgeball

August 5th, 2008 4:32 pm

Poor, poor Allyson Schwartz, a Democratic Congresswoman from Pennsylvania, who today was embarrassed on national television by MSNBC’s David Schuster who asked in the wake of Obama’s attacks on the Bush-Cheney Energy Policy:

Didn’t Barack Obama vote for the 2005 Bush-Cheney energy bill?More...

At first she dodged the question and tried the valiant, let’s not talk about that, let’s talk about this tactic. Schuster would have none of it and persisted. To which, the idiotic Congresswoman from Pennsylvania could only say that David Schuster would have to ask the Obama campaign. Really? So either she didn’t know or she was too embarrassed to admit the awful truth and hypocrisy of Obama’s energy attacks.

Allow me then, Congresswoman, to inform you that Senator Obama voted for the 2005 Energy Bill, written in secret by Vice President Cheney and the energy lobby. Thomas Friedman referred to the bill as “the sum of all lobbies.” U.S. PIRG noted that the bill’s “heavy tilt toward big oil companies reflects the influence of Exxon Mobil and other oil companies on policy-makers in Washington, DC.”

The Washington Post editorialized that the bill was a “piñata of perks for energy industries.” Indeed, the bill contained $6 billion in subsidies to the oil and gas industry and $12 billion to the nuclear power industry.

Although Sen. Obama voted for the legislation, he has spoken as if he opposed it on the campaign trail, criticizing it repeatedly. At a presidential debate he said “You can look at how Dick Cheney did his energy policy . . . he met with oil and gas companies forty times, and that’s how they put together our energy policy.” He attributes the failure of our current energy policy to Congress’s “failure to stand up to the lobbyists.” Actually Barack, I attribute the failure of current energy policy to shameless politicians like you and Dick Durbin who crossed the aisle to vote the most egregious give-away since the 1872 Mining Law.

Here’s the transcript of Schuster’s grilling of Allyson Schwartz:

DAVID SHUSTER: Congresswoman, during the event in Ohio today, Barack Obama attacked the Bush-Cheney energy policy. But didn’t Barack Obama vote for the 2005 Bush-Cheney energy bill?

ALLYSON SCHWARTZ: Well let’s talk about what John McCain’s been saying, and John McCain was in Pennsylvania just yesterday and really had very little to say about doing anything differently than the Bush administration’s been doing for years.

SHUSTER: Congresswoman, I’m happy to talk about that, but just a yes or no question: didn’t Barack Obama vote for the 2005 Bush-Cheney energy bill?

SCHWARTZ: Well, I think, you know, we have to go back and, and check on that. I’m sure the campaign can give you the specifics on, uh, exactly what, uh, was done.

Allyson Schwartz, I think your television career, hapless as it was, as a surrogate is over.

You can view the exchange in all its fluttering glory on here. It’s must see television as they say. You can actually see her panic when her attempt to play dodgeball failed. She looks up to the side and you can see her wonder “what do I say next?” In this case, shamelessly Allyson Schwartz chose to dodge again and pass the buck. She chose to omit the truth. Obama voted for the Bush-Cheney Energy Policy. John McCain did not. And it matters, neither did Hillary Clinton.

John McCain is now trusted more than Barack Obama on nine out of 14 electoral issues

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

The latest national telephone surveys find that McCain has the biggest advantage on the war in Iraq, by a 51% to 39% margin.

Perhaps the most interesting finding of these polls is that McCain has expanded his leads on nearly every issue he had previously had the advantage on, while Obama’s leads have diminished over the past two weeks.More...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows the race for the White House is very close. The results are consistent with results from the past couple of weeks showing a race that is essentially even as the convention season approaches (see recent daily results).

In the new survey, McCain has tripled his lead on the topic of immigration. He now has a 45% to 36% advantage over his Democratic opponent, up from a three-point lead two weeks ago.

The Republican also has pulled ahead on the issue of balancing the federal budget. Two weeks ago, the candidates were tied on this issue at 40%. McCain now has a 43% to 40% lead on the issue among voters.

McCain used to be behind on the issue of Social Security but has pulled ahead of Obama for a 44% to 38% lead.

On issues that Obama has previously enjoyed huge advantages, such as health care and education, his leads have decreased. On health care, Obama leads 46% to 41%, down from a 12 percentage-point lead just two weeks ago. On education, Obama leads 43% to 39%, down from a 10-point lead two weeks ago. On environmental issues, Obama’s advantage over McCain has gone from 14 percentage points down to eight this week.

The economy is the top issue for the majority of voters this election season. Voters have consistently trusted the Democratic Party more on this issue, but the two presidential candidates are tied at 45% as to who voters trust more. A week prior, Obama had a statistically insignificant one percentage point lead on the issue.

On national security, an issue that McCain consistently performs well on, the Republican leads 52% to 40%. His lead represents an improvement from the eight-point lead he held the week before.

A poll released this week finds that over half of voters support Obama’s proposal to provide working families with energy credits but aren’t sure about his idea of taxing big oil companies. When asked who voters trust more when it comes to energy issues, voters choose McCain by a 46% to 42% margin.

When it comes to government ethics and corruption, Obama has a 46% to 44% advantage. A separate survey finds that the Democratic Party is trusted more on this issue by a 40% to 29% margin.

See survey questions and toplines. Crosstabs for Obama/McCain Trust on Issues I and Issues II available for Premium Members only.

Stanford Law Professor: Counter Terrorism Czar Claims Plans exist for an i-9/11 And An i-Patriot Act

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Amazing revelations have emerged concerning already existing government plans to overhaul the way the internet functions in order to apply much greater restrictions and control over the web.

Lawrence Lessig, a respected Law Professor from Stanford University told an audience at this years Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, California, that “There’s going to be an i-9/11 event” which will act as a catalyst for a radical reworking of the law pertaining to the internet.

Lessig also revealed that he had learned, during a dinner with former government Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke, that there is already in existence a cyber equivalent of the Patriot Act, an “i-Patriot Act” if you will, and that the Justice Department is waiting for a cyber terrorism event in order to implement its provisions. To watch the video and read more, click here.

Report Reveals Obama Birth Certificate is a digitally modified Forgery

UPDATE: According to Puma Radio, there is an individual attempting to place an injunction against Obama's candidacy until an authenticated Certificate of Birth is provided.

By TechdudecloseAuthor: Techdude

Foreword by TexasDarlin: Techdude’s latest report, written exclusively for the TD and No Quarter blogs, is mind-blowing. This report solves the “security border” mystery AND exposes THE SMOKING GUN that will be conclusive in proving that the Certificate of Live Birth (COLB) proffered by Barack Obama on his official campaign website IS FAKE.

The author’s previous report and professional credentials are at the end. He is the REAL DEAL.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This follow up report, although it is more of an addendum, is about to reveal enough proof, beyond any doubt, that the KOS COLB is a digitally modified forgery and was based on another individual’s post-2006 COLB.
To read more click here

Big-Dollar Donors Are Major Force in Obama Campaign

New York Times

Big-Dollar Donors Are Major Force in Obama Campaign
By MICHAEL LUO and CHRISTOPHER DREW
Published: August 5, 2008

In an effort to cast himself as independent of the influence of money on politics, Senator Barack Obama often highlights the campaign contributions of $200 or less that have amounted to fully half of the $340 million he has collected so far.

But records show that one-third of his record-breaking haul has come from donations of $1,000 or more: a total of $112 million, more than Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his opponent in the Democratic primaries, raised in contributions of that size.

Behind those larger donations is a phalanx of more than 500 Obama “bundlers,” fund-raisers who have each collected contributions totaling $50,000 or more. Many of the bundlers come from industries with critical interests in Washington. Nearly three dozen of the bundlers have raised more than $500,000 each, including more than a half-dozen who have passed the $1 million mark and one or two who have exceeded $2 million, according to interviews with fund-raisers.More...

While his campaign has cited its volume of small donations as a rationale for his decision to opt out of public financing for the general election, Mr. Obama has worked to build a network of big-dollar supporters from the time he began contemplating a run for the United States Senate. He tapped into well-connected people in Chicago prior to the 2004 Senate race, and once elected, set out across the country starting to cultivate some of his party’s most influential money collectors.

He courted them with the savvy of a veteran politician, through phone calls, meals and one-on-one meetings; he wrote thank-you cards and remembered birthdays; he sent them autographed copies of his book and doted on their children.

The fruits of his efforts have put Mr. Obama’s major donors on a pace that almost rivals the $147 million raised by President Bush’s network of Pioneers and Rangers in contributions of $1,000 or larger during the 2004 primary season.

Given his decision not to accept public financing, Mr. Obama is counting on his bundlers to help him raise $300 million for his general-election campaign and another $180 million for the Democratic National Committee.

An analysis of campaign finance records shows that about two-thirds of his bundlers are concentrated in four major industries: law, securities and investments, real estate and entertainment. Lawyers make up the largest group, numbering roughly 130, with many of them working for firms that also have lobbying arms. At least 100 Obama bundlers are top executives or brokers from investment businesses: nearly two dozen work for financial titans like Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs or Citigroup. About 40 others come from the real estate industry.

The biggest fund-raisers include people like Julius Genachowski, a former senior official at the Federal Communications Commission and a technology executive who is new to political fund-raising; Robert Wolf, president and chief operating officer of UBS Investment Bank; James A. Torrey, a New York hedge-fund investor; and Charles H. Rivkin, chief executive of an animation studio in Los Angeles.

“It’s fairly clear that this is being packaged as an extraordinary new kind of fund-raising, and the Internet is a new and powerful part of it,” said Michael J. Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute. “But it’s also clear that many of the old donors are still there and important.”

The care and feeding that top Obama fund-raisers have received underscores their significance to his campaign. Members of his National Finance Committee who fulfill their commitment to raise at least $250,000 are being rewarded with trips to the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Finance committee members participate in conference calls with top campaign officials every other week. The fund-raisers meet quarterly, often with Mr. Obama dropping in. He lingered after the most recent meeting in June in Chicago, telling his staff he wanted to thank every person in the room. Some fund-raisers who knocked on doors for Mr. Obama in places like Indiana, Iowa and Pennsylvania got to spend time with Mr. Obama backstage before and after speeches on primary nights.

His fund-raisers invariably say their support for him is not rooted in any kind of promise of access, but rather their belief in him.

“This is about Barack Obama and changing the direction of our country,” said Jonathan B. Perdue, a business consultant in Mill Valley, Calif., who has raised more than $250,000 for Mr. Obama’s campaign.

Mr. Obama has pledged not to accept donations from lobbyists or political action committees registered with the federal government. But some top donors clearly have policy and political agendas. Hedge-fund executives, for example, have bundled large sums for Mr. Obama at a time when their industry has been looking to increase its clout in Washington.

Kenneth C. Griffin, chief executive officer of Citadel Investment Group in Chicago, has collected more than $50,000 for Mr. Obama. But Mr. Griffin, whose $1.5 billion in income in 2007 made him one of the country’s highest-paid hedge-fund executives, has given generously over the years to Republicans as well, and he recently helped to hold a fund-raiser for Mr. McCain. Citadel has spent more than $1.1 million, dating back to 2007, in lobbying against higher tax rates for hedge-fund gains. (Mr. Obama has supported the higher tax rates.)

Similarly, Paul Tudor Jones, a billionaire hedge-fund manager from Connecticut, has raised more than $100,000 for Mr. Obama. But he also gave to Mr. McCain, to Rudolph W. Giuliani and to Mitt Romney. Mr. Jones, who has given more than $900,000 over the last decade to federal candidates and political organizations, helped form a trade association that has fought hedge-fund regulation.

Many fund-raisers sit on the campaign’s array of policy working groups, getting a chance to weigh in on policy positions and speeches. Mr. Genachowski, a Harvard Law School classmate of Mr. Obama, leads the technology working group. Fund-raisers from private equity and hedge funds sit on Mr. Obama’s economic policy group.

Despite Mr. Obama’s image as a newcomer, many of his bundlers are Democratic Party stalwarts, including people who were some of the top fund-raisers for Senator John Kerry in 2004. At least 58 of them appear to have personally made more than $100,000 in contributions to federal candidates and committees over the last decade. Updated bundler lists released recently by the McCain and Obama campaigns show that they have similar numbers of high-dollar fund-raisers.

The Obama fund-raising operation is meticulously organized. Bundlers are assigned tracking numbers, and the finance staff sends them quarterly reminders of how they are doing in meeting their goals.

“There’s no price for admission,” said Alan D. Solomont, a top Democratic fund-raiser in Boston who made his fortune in the nursing home industry and has given more than $1.5 million to Democratic candidates and causes. “We value every donation and every donor equally. But we are a performance-based organization. We want everybody to feel like they’re included, but at the same time we’re not here to have tea together.”

Mr. Obama began courting many of his fund-raisers soon after he burst upon the national scene with his rousing speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

Mr. Solomont, a major fund-raiser both for Mr. Kerry and for Bill Clinton during their presidential runs, received a call on his cellphone in February 2005, a year after Mr. Obama’s election to the Senate, from a member of his staff who asked if he would like to get together with Mr. Obama.

They met for Chinese food in Washington the following week, and Mr. Obama scored points with Mr. Solomont when he pointed out that they had both been community organizers earlier in their careers.

“I’ve been involved in politics a long time,” Mr. Solomont said. “Nobody’s bothered to know that about me.”

Early that same year, Mr. Obama attended a dinner in the Bay Area for about 20 major Kerry supporters. The dinner was organized by Mark Gorenberg, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who was Mr. Kerry’s single biggest fund-raiser, after Mr. Obama’s staff members contacted him. Several of those on hand, including Mr. Gorenberg and John Roos, head of a Silicon Valley law firm, became among the earliest and biggest check collectors for Mr. Obama’s presidential bid.

In 2006, Mr. Obama became a vice chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, giving him the opportunity to campaign across the country and to cultivate other potential benefactors.

When his book “The Audacity of Hope” came out later that year, his staff members organized book parties at the homes of major Democratic donors.

In December, Mr. Obama visited the New York office of the billionaire investor George Soros to court a roomful of high-powered Democratic fund-raisers, hoping to lure some of them away from Mrs. Clinton. Not everyone was swayed, but Mr. Obama won over Orin Kramer, a hedge-fund executive from New Jersey, and Mr. Wolf, the UBS executive, both of whom are now among Mr. Obama’s biggest fund-raisers.

Mr. Obama signed on as his finance director Julianna Smoot, who had led fund-raising for Senate Democrats and, before that, for Senator Tom Daschle when he was majority leader.

With guidance from Ms. Smoot, a key part of the campaign’s fast start was its success in scooping up top former Kerry fund-raisers, including Lou Susman, a Chicago investment banker who was Mr. Kerry’s national finance chairman, and Kirk Wagar, a lawyer in Miami who became Mr. Obama’s finance chairman in Florida.

Even so, the initial meeting of Mr. Obama’s national finance committee, held in Chicago the day after he officially announced his candidacy, was a relatively small affair, numbering about 75 people.

Penny Pritzker, the billionaire heiress to the Hyatt hotel fortune whom Mr. Obama asked to become his finance chairwoman, challenged the group to double in size.

The number of bundlers ballooned quickly. The Obama campaign made important inroads among affluent people under age 45, including Silicon Valley engineers and hedge-fund analysts, many of whom had not been on the political radar screen.

Donations in June, the latest month for which Mr. Obama has disclosed his donors to the Federal Election Commission, illustrate the double-barreled nature of the campaign’s fund-raising. Mr. Obama brought in nearly $31 million in contributions of less than $200, his best month for small donations. But he also collected more than $12 million in contributions of $1,000 or more, the most since the first half of 2007.

The share from large contributions appears poised to increase, as Mr. Obama has stepped up his fund-raising schedule.

“In 2007, the campaign relied on the tried and true methods like fund-raisers, for both large- and small-dollar donors, with the candidate or his surrogates, and the Internet largely financed it in 2008,” said Kirk Dornbush, the president of a biotech firm and a top fund-raiser in Atlanta. “When you combine the traditional fund-raising methods with the continued online contributions, you have a very, very powerful fund-raising engine.”

Denver Police Brace for Convention

Security was heavy for the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004, including state troopers in riot gear the day before it opened. This year’s convention is in Denver on Aug. 25-28.

By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: August 5, 2008

WASHINGTON — Federal and local authorities are girding for huge protests, mammoth traffic tie-ups and civil disturbances at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this month, fearing that the convention will become a magnet for militant protest groups. More...

Officials say that what makes Denver different than past conventions is the historic nature of Senator Barack Obama’s nomination, a megawattage event whose global spotlight could draw tens of thousands of demonstrators, including self-described anarchists who the police fear will infiltrate peaceful protest groups to disrupt the weeklong event.

The Secret Service is wary of discussing threats against the people they protect, but with Mr. Obama poised to become the first black presidential nominee, there are special worries. While law enforcement officials say there are no specific, credible threats against Mr. Obama, they expressed concern about low-level chatter on Web sites frequented by white separatists who spew hate about Mr. Obama’s race and what they perceive as his liberal agenda.

One recent scheduling change caused a major shift in security plans. When Mr. Obama announced last month that he would accept his party’s nomination not at the Pepsi Center in downtown Denver, where the convention is being held, but at Invesco Field, home of the Denver Broncos, the Secret Service scrambled to work out plans with local authorities to secure the open-air stadium, which seats more than 75,000 people. Invesco is also adjacent to Interstate 25, a major corridor through the Northern Rockies that will most likely be closed for at least part of Mr. Obama’s acceptance speech.

“The magnitude of the event has expanded,” said John W. Hickenlooper, the mayor of Denver and a Democrat. “It’s bigger and more profound than we expected.”

Officials acknowledge that their projections for the number of protesters are based more on a worst-case chain of events than specific information about who will show up, but they say they cannot take any chances.

As a result, the Secret Service, the Pentagon, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and scores of police departments are moving thousands of agents, analysts, officers and employees to Denver for the Aug. 25-28 convention. They will operate through a complex hierarchy of command centers, steering committees and protocols to respond to disruptions.

National political conventions are a chance for federal agencies to test their latest and most sophisticated technology, and this year is no different. There was a brief flare-up recently between the F.B.I. and the Secret Service, when each wanted to patrol the skies over the convention with their surveillance aircraft, packed with infrared cameras and other electronics. The issue was resolved in favor of the Secret Service, according to people briefed on the matter.

Both Denver and St. Paul, where the Republican National Convention will be held Sept. 1-4, are enlisting thousands of additional officers to help with security. Even so, their numbers will be only about a third of the 10,000 police officers that New York City fielded for the 2004 Republican convention, just three years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Denver Police Department will nearly double in size, according to federal officials involved in the planning. The city is bringing in nearly 1,500 police officers from communities throughout Colorado and beyond, even inviting an eight-person mounted unit from Cheyenne, Wyo. State lawmakers changed Colorado law to allow the out-of-state police officers to serve as peace officers in Denver.

The expressions of concern about security at the convention could have more immediate political and legal implications, too. A federal judge, Marcia S. Krieger of United States District Court in Denver, is expected to issue a decision this week in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking to ease security provisions at the convention. The A.C.L.U. has suggested that the Secret Service and the Denver police have exaggerated risks as part of a crackdown on dissent.

The case centers on whether the security zone around the Pepsi Center is so large, and the designated parade route through the city for marches and rallies so far away, as to unnecessarily stifle free speech. New worries about protests and anarchy could bolster the government’s case that the plans are justified.

Last month, under pressure from the A.C.L.U. lawsuit, the city released a list of expenses related to the convention showing that the police were preparing for large demonstrations and mass arrests and that the department had spent $2.1 million on protection equipment for its officers, $1.4 million for barricades and $850,000 for supplies related to the arrest and processing of suspects.

In disclosing the cost breakdown, city officials denied rumors that had circulated for weeks that they had contemplated buying exotic nonlethal weapons that fired an immobilizing goo, or that used radiation or sonic waves to incapacitate people or vehicles.

Similar preparations are under way for the Republican convention in Minnesota, but without the harsh glare that, at the moment, seems to be focused on Denver. St. Paul’s 600-member police force will grow nearly sixfold with about 3,000 additional officers arriving from around Minnesota, as well as from Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and the Dakotas, said Tom Walsh, a spokesman for the St. Paul Police Department.

“St. Paul isn’t New York,” he said. “We just don’t have the staffing.”

Kenneth L. Wainstein, the White House adviser on homeland security and counterterrorism, recently visited Denver and St. Paul, a trip that reflected the administration’s interest in the conventions. “In the post-9/11 world, you have to prepare and plan for all contingencies,” Mr. Wainstein said. “That means preparing for everything from a minor disruption and an unruly individual to a broader terrorist event. We need to plan for everything no matter what the threat level is on any particular day.”

Intelligence analysts, however, have not reported a heightened threat from Islamic extremists or domestic threats from antigovernment groups or environmental militants like the kind that operate in many Western states, according to federal officials. “We just aren’t seeing a credible threat,” said James H. Davis, the F.B.I. agent in charge of the Denver office.

Each convention has been designated a National Special Security Event, which makes the Secret Service the lead federal agency responsible for protecting dignitaries and providing overall security. Other agencies will be on standby.

The National Guard in Minnesota and Colorado will each have hundreds of troops on call to their governors to help civilian medical personnel or bomb squads, for instance, if needed. National Guard specialists trained to deal with biological, chemical, nuclear and radiological weapons will also be available.

“There won’t be a visible military presence,” said Maj. Gen. Guy C. Swan III, director of operations for the military’s Northern Command, which is in charge of the military’s response to threats on American soil.

Each city has been awarded $50 million in federal funds for convention costs, a substantial part of which is being spent on security-related equipment and training. And each city has been enlisting the help of neighboring communities to provide more officers to help police the conventions.

The security and safety of convention delegates and visitors has become an increasingly significant issue in Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul, where local officials were hoping to avoid complaints, heard in 2004 after the Democratic convention in Boston and the Republican convention in New York, that restrictive security arrangements had nearly locked down the convention sites.

From the start, the Democrats’ decision to hold their convention in Denver and the Republicans’ choice of St. Paul stirred concerns about whether local police in each city had enough officers to deal with a wide range of threats, including terrorist attacks or a lone gunman.

The most pressing fears, particularly in Denver, are that as many as 30,000 demonstrators may sweep into the city to disrupt the convention. Much of the city’s planning, in conjunction with federal authorities, has been based on the possibility of such protests, according to federal officials.

Still, these officials acknowledge that they have little concrete intelligence indicating that such large or unruly demonstrations are being planned. But, officials said they had based their assessments on groups like Recreate 68, Tent State and other activist coalitions. Organizers insist the groups are nonviolent, but to the authorities their names alone raise the specter of violent confrontations like those at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.

In Denver, federal officials have expressed concern that demonstrators could try to shut down regular business at several major offices, including the Federal Reserve Bank, the United States Mint, and the federal courthouse.

“Because of the Internet, the ability of protesters to mobilize and share information has metastasized,” said Troy A. Eid, the United States attorney for Colorado. “That would be fine if it were peaceful, as we expect. But we have to plan accordingly.”

In recent days, domestic security officials issued a heightened awareness bulletin urging greater attention because of a number of factors, including the election and the conventions. But law enforcement authorities say they are trying to strike a balance between planning for every conceivable threat, including terrorist attacks and large public demonstrations, and not strangling a city’s commercial life in the process.

“We’re not looking to shut down an entire city,” said Malcolm Wiley, a Secret Service agent involved in security planning for the convention in Denver.

Kirk Johnson contributed reporting from Denver.

The Molten Core of Barack: Why Obama Can't Win

SUMMARY: John McCain is a complete and well-formed man. Barack Obama is completing himself. As he moves to fit what he perceives to be a right-of-center country, he distances himself from the simple and authentic passion of a young candidate who once pledged "Change We Can Believe In."

This is the trap Barack Obama has made for himself, the one he cannot escape, the one Hillary Clinton foresaw, the one that may doom him. The Obama campaign knows it too. In fear the dream is being lost drop-by-drop, they are going negative on John McCain. Maybe the aliens should ask to meet McCain, as well. (Click on the header to read the full article)

Critical of McCain, Obama Quiet on Own Energy Vote

Not only is Obama running a negative campaign, he's flip flopping himself in an apparent display of hypocrisy...More...

Tom Raum

Democratic candidate Barack Obama criticized Republican John McCain on Tuesday for taking a page out of "the Cheney playbook" on energy, overlooking his own support of oil-friendly policies that the unpopular vice president helped to craft.

Vice President Dick Cheney, a former oilman, early in the Bush administration helped draft an energy policy that Obama asserted is biased in favor of tax breaks and favorable treatment for big oil. Obama's remarks were an attempt to capitalize on Cheney's unpopularity.

"President Bush, he had an energy policy. He turned to Dick Cheney and he said, 'Cheney, go take care of this,'" Obama said. "Cheney met with renewable-energy folks once and oil and gas (executives) 40 times. McCain has taken a page out of the Cheney playbook."

In stumping Tuesday in this key battleground state, Obama sought to link the troubled economy with Republican policies and offer his own energy plan in contrast. He has tried to cast McCain as more concerned about oil company profits and drilling than an overall energy strategy.

However, Obama himself voted for a 2005 energy bill backed by Bush that included billions in subsidies for oil and natural gas production, a measure Cheney played a major role in developing. McCain opposed the bill on grounds it included billions in unnecessary tax breaks for the oil industry.

The Obama campaign has said the Illinois senator supported the legislation because it included huge investments in renewable energy.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, said, "Barack Obama is opposed to offshore drilling and is also opposed to admitting that he voted for the same corporate giveaways for Big Oil that he's campaigning against today."

With polls showing concern over gas prices a prime concern of Americans, Obama has been depicting energy as the nation's most pressing national security and economic issue.

Obama has proposed a $1,000-per family energy rebate to be paid for by a tax on excessive energy-company profits. He called for ending U.S. reliance on oil from the Middle East and Venezuela over the next 10 years, a project he said would cost the U.S. $150 billion.

Obama has also proposed borrowing oil from the strategic petroleum reserve as a short-term measure to reduce gasoline prices, a conditional and limited resumption of offshore drilling, and a new emphasis on alternative energy sources and hybrid vehicles.

"Our economy is in turmoil, I don't have to tell the people of Youngstown," Obama told a high-school gymnasium audience in this rust-belt city. "People here have known some hard knocks and hard times."

Ohio is a bellwether state, having voted for the winning candidate in all 11 presidential elections since 1964, including handing Bush a close re-election victory in 2004.

Increasingly, with his appearances this week and with a new ad, Obama has been seeking to tie McCain to the oil and gas industry, although McCain, unlike Bush and Cheney, did not previously work in the industry.

A new Obama ad says Big Oil filled McCain's campaign with $2 million in contributions and that he "wants to give them another $4 billion in tax breaks."

That $4 billion consists mainly of potential revenue from a McCain proposal to lower corporate taxes on all American businesses.

The McCain campaign pointed out that the ad doesn't mention Obama has taken some $400,000 from oil company executives.

"We have to end the age of oil. "Obama said. "If we fail to act, there are severe indications for national security, our economy and our environment."

Obama has had trouble connecting with white working-class voters, who are a major factor in Ohio. Clinton won the state in its Democratic primary earlier this year. Gov. Ted Strickland, who had been a Clinton supporter, gave a rousing endorsement of Obama, calling him "bright, young, energized and compassionate."

Obama's focused on economic issues. He said that oil giant Exxon-Mobil "makes in 30 seconds what the typical Ohio worker makes in a year."

"We need more jobs and economic development. Why don't we focus on clean energy and reopening factories and putting people back to work? Nobody is benefiting from jobs that are leaving the community," he said.

Obama has proposed a $15-billion-a-year program to help promote clean-energy jobs.

In a question-and-answer session, Obama was asked if he would support term limits for members of Congress by a questioner who noted that many senators were elderly.

"I've got colleagues in the Senate who are doing absolutely outstanding work, and they're well into their 70s," Obama said. He praised ailing Sen. Edward M. Kennedy as one.

"I'm generally not in favor of term limits," he said. "Nobody is term-limiting the lobbyists or the slick operators walking around the halls of Congress. I believe in one form of term limits. They're called elections."

Obama had a 6 percentage point lead over McCain in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. He leads McCain among women by 13 points, among young voters 33 and younger by 30 points, and by 55 points among minorities, according to the poll. McCain leads among whites by 10 points.

A poll released Monday by The Washington Post showed Obama with a 2-to-1 edge with low-income voters.
The Associated Press
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/ap/politics/2008/Aug/05/critical_of_mccain__obama_quiet_on_own_energy_vote.html at August 05, 2008 - 03:11:00 PM PDT

The Oborg continues its collapse.

In the past few days, a raft of new polls have documented the depth and severity of voters' reactions to Obama as they get to know the so-called "presumptive nominee" better.

For the second day running, Rasmussen shows McCain leading by 47-46%.

Zogby shows McCain ahead by 42-41%, a stunning reversal of a Zogby poll earlier in the month that had Obama ahead by 46-36%. Zogby noted that Obama's collapse was swiftest and sharpest amongst voters he has always taken for granted, and especially voters aged 18-29 and women.More...

-Among voters aged 18-29, Obama lost 16 percent and McCain gained 20. Obama still leads, 49-38;

-Among women, McCain gained 10 percentage points. Obama now leads 43-38;

-Among independents, Obama lost an 11 point lead. They're now tied;

-Among Democrats, Obama's support dropped from 83 percent to 74 percent;

-Among Catholics, Obama lost the 11 point lead he had in July and now trails McCain by 15.

The Rasmussen and Zogby polls come hot on the heels of the Gallup tracking poll that showed Obama's support evaporating over the course of of last week, and the Gallup/USA Today poll last Monday that showed McCain ahead 46-43%. We are no longer talking about outliers: this is a sharp trend that coincided with Obama's most recent policy reversals, his make-believe "presidency in waiting," and McCain's most recent ads inviting viewers to laugh at Obama's pretensions. He has gone from Messiah to national joke in almost no time flat.

Pundits seem taken aback at how quickly the Chosen One is cratering. They shouldn't be. From the beginning, PUMAs have warned that Obama's lack of principle, his complete inexperience, the cultishness of his campaign and his overbearing arrogance would turn off voters in the general election. Since he was crowned by the media (and without even waiting for the Democratic Party to formally nominate him) Obama has gone out of his way to alienate his base of inexperienced young voters, upper-mid-income "progressives" and blacks at virtually every opportunity.

Obama's has betrayed his constituents on almost every single signature issue of his: campaign finance reform, FISA, NAFTA, Iraq and now offshore-drilling. No wonder his support is going through the floor. It's hard to draw much of a meaningful distinction between him and George Bush or John McCain on policy, except that McCain seems to have more conviction. Obama gives the impression of being "willing to do anything to win," something that progressives used say about Hillary back when Obama was against NAFTA, for public campaign funding, against FISA, against staying in Iraq and against offshore-drilling.

Remember those days?

Of course, some things haven't changed since then. And they may also have something to do with the Dear Leader's plunging poll numbers. Just as he did in the Winter and Spring against Hillary, Obama spent last week trying to tar the McCain campaign as "racist" for having the temerity to campaign for president at the same as him. Not surprisingly, the Clintons didn't jump to Obama's defense. Clinton campaign communications director, Howard Wolfson, had this to say on Fox News about the McCain campaign's slapping Obama down after the Precious One accused John McCain of running a "racist" campaign against him:

I think the McCain camp watched our primary on the Democratic side very carefully, and they know that any accusation of racial divisiveness can be very, very harmful for a candidate's prospects.

The Obama campaign's bullying tactics worked in a Democratic Primary season when many of the Democratic electorate were pining for an excuse to vote for a black man no matter how unqualified he was and when young male Democrats were given license to exercise their sexist impulses, as long as it was in the service of the Oborg.

But now we're in a general election, and the general electorate is less in thrall to the idea of "making history" by electing Obama as President. They want to know what the next President will do about Iraq, about jobs, about energy, about national security.

Obama has no answer for them: he has no experience, he has no record. All he can do is talk about his wonderful self. He blew any credibility he could have as a principled politician with his constant policy flip-flops and his arrogant preening as "president in waiting."

Voters have seen the man for what he is, and they don't like him. Unlike in the Democratic primaries, general election voters can't be guilt-tripped into voting for Obama.

As they head into the nominating convention in Denver, superdelegates need to take their responsibility to the Democratic Party and to the country seriously. They need to ask if the Democratic Party can afford to nominate yet another loser in a year that by all rights a Democrat should win -- but that this Democrat cannot.

OP Ed with a little Humor: The Obama derangement syndrome.

Obama causes derangement. I am convinced of it. Much has been said about the "Clinton Derangement Syndrome" - that is the media and individuals having irrational hatred for the Clintons based in ...well...nothing...it is just mindless hatred.More...

There is an "Obama Derangement Syndrome" as well. ODS is a malady that causes people to shove their rational abilities aside and fall into an adoring trance for BHO. I came across another advanced case of ODS today.

DISCLAIMER: Not everyone who intends to vote for Obama (should he become the nominee) has ODS. Those who do not have ODS usually fall into the "I can't vote for the Republican and don't care to think about it much" camp. I really can't take issue with those voters. They don't vote GOP - ever. I respect party loyalty - to a degree. I have often been in this camp. I have never voted for a Republican in a presidential race. In presidential races I have voted FOR the Democrat 3 times - 92, 96, and 2000. Though I was queasy about Clinton for a long time in 1992. In 84, 88, and 04 - my "Democratic" votes were out of resignation. Mondale, Dukakis, and Kerry were sad excuses for nominees. But they were qualified for the job. (Dukakis would have been a disaster - but he had executive experience. Besides he had no chance of winning so I felt safe in sticking to my - former - party.) The presumptive Democratic nominee this time is not even qualified to be a Senator much less a President. Still I understand sane voters resigning themselves to Obama and hoping it turns out alright.

It's the delusional BHO people that alarm me. Even the most committed Kerry or Dukakis people never gave up their common sense. Even the fiercest labor unionists for Mondale did not delude themselves about who Walter Mondale actually was. This is not the case with the hard core Obamites. They believe in someone who simply isn't there. Like Santa Clause.

Today I had a brief conversation with a young guy who had come to my building to check on some landscaping. Without getting to detailed, in short order "news" came up. The conversation went something like this:

ME: I restrict my news intake at this point.
POD: I know. It's so depressing. McCain is ahead in the polls.
ME: Actually it's a tie now. I don't find that depressing, though.
POD: Well, I just can't understand how people would want McCain. He's awful.
ME: I'm not crazy about McCain but better him than the other guy.
POD: WHAT?
ME: Obama is a joker. I don't trust him at all.
(his eyes glazed as he probably decided I must be a bigot)
POD: But you're not going to vote for McCain.
ME: I might.
POD: Why?
ME: At least McCain has experience. I don't trust Obama has far as I can spit. Why are you for him?
POD: He's great. I just love him.
ME: Why?
POD: Because McCain wants war forever. I used to like Hillary until she started eating her own.
ME: Clinton ran a much cleaner campaign that Obama. Do you know who Tony Rezko is?
POD: Who?
ME: Rezko.
POD: No
ME : You should.
POD: Come on. Obama is great. He'll be good for the country.
ME: How?
POD: We just can't afford McCain
ME: Don't his flip flops bother you?
POD: What flip flops?

We went on like this for a while and nothing got out of hand. But you'll notice that he could not defend Obama in a meaningful way.He followed a set pattern for Obama fanatics:

Rule one: Obama is a great man. Period. No back up needed. (or available)
Rule two: Insult Clinton or Clintons
Rule three: Attempt - however lamely - to imply McCain is bad, evil - whatever.

I wish I could report that this conversation I had today was unique. It is not. I have never seen anything like this year. When I volunteered for McGovern in 1984 and Clinton in 1992 I could give you solid reasons, based in fact, as to why they would make good Presidents. I knew about McGovern's WW2 record and had a basic knowledge of his work in the Senate. By August of 1992 I could report - albeit weakly - on some of Clinton's accomplishments as a governor. I knew about Hillary's work with Marian Wright Eldeman and the Children's Defense Fund. I did not know a lot but I knew something. I have yet to find a strong Obama supporter on the street who can quantify Obama's qualifications beyond a speech here and a speech there. However, and most disturbingly, their adoration for the man is in direct inverted proportion to their knowledge of him.

Facts don't matter.

How appalling is this year? Cynical as I have become I am still shocked by the gleeful emptiness embedded in Obama fanatics. Contempt for experience is a badge of honor.

We've seen this campaign already. 2000. I knew no - zero - zip - Bush voters in 2000. But my father who resides in Texas knew plenty. In many conversations he reported the same thing about Bush voters that I now see in Obama voters. The gulf between the actual man and the man presented by handlers and the press was enormous. The difference is that W came from a long line of politicians. There were experienced adults in his entourage. I did not agree with them - but they had experience. Bush was a buffoon to be sure. Be he had back up.

Later in the day I was at a social gathering. An older Edwards supporter told me that she felt she had no choice but to vote for McCain. Obama was simply unacceptable. I told her I knew exactly how she felt.

Does BHO have the potential to be a good or great President. Sure, I guess. Any number of people do. If BHO wins and becomes a good or great President will I admit I was wrong?

You bet.

Hold me to it.

If after a few years of President Obama things have changed for the better I will eat my words and I will get on board for Obama 2012. My anger at Obama is much less personal than it sometimes seems around here. I'd like to be wrong about Obama - and Peak Oil - and hope I and many others are.

What I won't do now is vote on a hope and a prayer. This is not American Idol. This is our country and our lives.

Finally, I do not understand why the DNC is forcing this man on us. Clinton's claim on the nomination is as strong or stronger than Obama's. Neither has enough delegates. The super delegates can make a sound and sane choice in Denver. A race between Clinton and McCain for the White House is a contest of titans. A contest between Clinton and McCain can be run on ideas and issues. McCain versus Obama is not a choice a concerned citizen in an established democracy should be forced to make. The man with experience who I don't agree with much or the mystery behind door number three...

The DNC should be ashamed.

If you are maxed out but still want to help support Hillary Clinton, Here Are Some Options

1. Starting a Matching Fund Drive where you will agree to match a contribution to Hillary Clinton with a contribution to a candidate who has been loyal to Hillary (Sheila Jackson Lee and Stephanie Tubbs Jones come quickly to mind, but there are countless others). If you don't have a blog or website and want to conduct the Matching Fund Drive on any one of PUMA's blog sites.
2. Donating to Heidi Li's Denver Group.The group's goals are: An open convention; Senator Clinton's name on the ballot; Speeches allowed by supporters of Senator Clinton on behalf of her candidacy; A roll call vote; and No coronation.

In White House Race, Strong is Often Wrong

The image of Michael Dukakis in a tank haunts the Democratic Party

Photo: AP

By: Mark J. Penn
August 5, 2008 07:50 AM EST

In many recent presidential elections, Americans have had a choice: pick the candidate they think is a stronger leader or pick the candidate they believe is right on the issues. Almost always, they have chosen the stronger leader — even though they have often come to regret that decision.More...

Strong and wrong or weak and right — that is the choice that Republicans have tried to present to the voters. They will try it again this year; as conditions in the economy worsen and with two wars in the background, Americans are again looking for a tough leader for tough times.

We hear less and less about who the voters would rather have a beer with or ask to baby-sit for their kids — the voters have had it with those kinds of choices.

So take key issues such as the economy, health care and Iraq. Once again, the Democrats lead on those issues by large margins. Americans don’t want their troops in Iraq for a hundred years or even for two years — they want to see the war end and the money spent on military action in Iraq going instead to help relieve our country’s problems at home. They favor alternative energy over drilling and nuclear energy, and they see the health care system falling into increasing disrepair.

So if they overwhelmingly favor the policies of the Democrats, why is the presidential horse race not reflecting a 10- or 15-percentage-point edge for Barack Obama? Because of the same concerns that the public had about past Democratic presidential nominees Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John F. Kerry. The image of Dukakis in a tank still haunts the Democratic Party.
See also

* Pelosi: At-risk Dems back drilling
* Book says White House ordered forgery
* Hell freezes, coalition melts

In response, Democratic candidates have tried to show that they, in fact, are strong leaders, too — that is why Dukakis got in a tank in 1988 in the first place. And that is why Kerry held a convention in 2004 that was about his war record instead of his war policies. Dwight D. Eisenhower easily defeated the stirring rhetoric of Adlai Stevenson, and President Jimmy Carter’s inability to deal with the Iranian hostage crisis cost him the presidency in 1980.

I sometimes joke that for presidents and large figures, “being human is overrated.” And by that I mean that Americans really look for a superhuman leader as their president — someone who can do what can’t be done: fight terrorists and solve the problems of the Middle East at the same time; lower energy prices and stimulate alternative energy; cut taxes and balance the budget. The great presidents have been those who had incredible resolve in the face of danger at home and abroad, people such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who took strong stands even when those stands sent us to war. The public is always looking for the next larger-than-life person who can do the big things that the job often demands. That is at the core of many voters’ attraction to Obama, who promises change and draws audiences of hundreds of thousands of people, even in Germany.

So when John McCain mocks Obama’s drawing power as mere celebrity, it is a significant volley in the battle over who can be the right leader for these difficult times. Obama is running as the candidate of leadership for our new times, and so his convention will be judged by how effectively his leadership offers Americans solutions to the tough problems facing the country.



In this election, it is McCain who will be playing the war hero card to project an image of having the strength necessary to protect America from danger. But evidenced by the losses of Kerry and Bob Dole, both decorated war heroes, that’s no longer the only yardstick for measuring leadership.

In polls, the public consistently chooses two qualities as most important for the next president: honesty and strength. The media tend to conflate the public’s desire for someone who is genuine with the idea that the public wants someone warm and fuzzy. The public has made clear over and over again that it does not judge presidents by their personal lives; rather, the public cares deeply about promise-keeping. When a candidate vows to cut taxes or end the war, voters want that person to cut taxes or end the war. “Read my lips” had better mean “read my lips,” or voters can turn on a president very quickly. And remember that when President Bill Clinton beat back the Republicans’ efforts to impeach him, he had kept his promises to revive the economy and balance the budget.

The past few elections have been dominated by images of Democrats mountain climbing, duck hunting and motorcycle riding. Obama’s attempt at bowling was in this tradition. Once again, Democrats will face a choice: do the equivalent of putting their candidate in a tank or do something completely different. And if the Democrats go in this direction again, they will face a torrent of ads ridiculing them. Republicans have proved adept at convincing voters that there is too much risk in electing a Democrat, and that is where they are likely to focus their energies again.

So here is a radical suggestion: Rather than sparring on the Republican playing field to determine the rougher and tougher leader, Democrats should introduce more clearly substantive differences. How about this for a message — ending the war in Iraq now, making an Apollo-like investment in alternative energy and starting a revolution in health care to cover every American. I suggest making clear that this election is not about who is strong or weak, but about who is right or wrong. Maybe the key will be to emphasize that there will be real policy differences between a Democrat and a Republican in the White House next year and that those differences will — as they did in the past eight years — make all of the difference in the world to the country and the lives of its people.

Mark J. Penn served as chief adviser to President Bill Clinton in the 1996 presidential election and to Hillary Rodham Clinton through her Senate and presidential races. He is author of the best-selling book “Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes” (Twelve, 2007).

Two Articles on Obama's Reversal on Energy Positions

The New York Times Article "Critical of McCain, Obama quiet on own energy vote" describes how Obama has been seeking to tie McCain to the oil and gas industry, even though McCain has no direct ties to the industry, unlike Bush and Cheney, who both worked in the industry before their election. In fact Obama voted for a 2005 energy bill backed by President Bush that included billions in subsidies for oil and natural gas production, a measure for which Vice President Dick Cheney played a major role. McCain opposed the bill, saying at the time that it included billions in unnecessary tax breaks for the oil industry.

The second article titled "Obama Reverses Two Positions in New Energy Plan" describes Obama's reversals on tapping the oil reserves and opening up off-shore drilling.

To use Obama's own words "The same old Washington politics won’t fix our problems. We need honest answers — and a president we can trust." (ref: http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/5/5/16528/47565). Those are Obama's words in an advertisement responding to the McCain/Hillary Gas Tax holiday proposal as a potential way to give citizens short term relief on the rising gas prices.

The hypocrisy is simply amazing...

Anti-Obama Bloggers Say They Were Silenced

UPDATED: AUG 5, 2008 12PM PST Obama Campaign Accused of Criminally Suppressing Free Speech(Additional info added below)

Election 2008

By ANNA PHILLIPS, Special to the Sun | August 5, 2008

Web loggers who are campaigning against Senator Obama's presidential run are accusing Google and Obama supporters of silencing them after their Web logs were marked as spam and their accounts temporarily frozen.More...

On Thursday, hours after publishing a post about an online petition demanding that Mr. Obama publicly produce his birth certificate, an associate professor of business administration at Brooklyn College, Mitchell Langbert, found that he could no longer access his Web log.

Google's Blogger hosting service had suspended "Mitchell Langbert's Blog," which Mr. Langbert describes as "two-thirds academic stuff I'm working on and one-third politics," until it could verify the Web log was not a "spam blog," or a site designed solely to increase the page views of associated Web sites.

A day later Google lifted the block on the account, but the incident and earlier Web log freezes in late June have led Mr. Langbert and other anti-Obama bloggers to accuse the Illinois senator's supporters of intentionally identifying their blog addresses to Google as spam blogs. They also say the company has reflexively suspended the sites.

"These tech-savvy smart alecks have figured out that if you report a blog you don't like, you can do some damage to a person," Mr. Langbert said.

A spokesman for Google, Adam Kovacevich, said in a statement that an overzealous antispam filter was responsible for the blocks.

"We believe this was caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the 'Just Say No Deal' network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam," he said. "We have restored posting rights to the affected blogs, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression."

Several of the blogs that were blocked, including hillaryorbust.com and comealongway.blogspot.com, are part of the "Just Say No Deal" network of anti-Obama blogs. But Mr. Langbert's blog is not, leading him to conclude that Obama supporters had targeted him.

On her right-leaning blog "Atlas Shrugs," Pamela Geller keeps a list of blogs that Google has temporarily blocked. "The blockings do come in waves," she said. "The last wave was this past week, and now it got very quiet."

Some writers have had their blogs unblocked, while others have moved them to WordPress, a rival blog host.

"I don't think" Google has "malicious intentions at all, it's just that spammers can literally overrun a service if you're not careful, so their defenses have become overzealous," a spokesman for WordPress, Matthew Mullenweg, said in an e-mail.

"We always have human review before turning off an active blog," he said. "People invest so much time into their blogs, to treat it with anything less than the utmost respect is criminal."

But wait, there's more:

http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2008/08/blog-shutdowns-attack-from-ips-assigned-to-barackobamacom/

"We have reported twice in the last two weeks about the attacks on anti-Obama websites. ["Google, Blogger, Obama: Obamanation Shut Down My Blog!"]] & [BabbaZee's "Anti-Obama Blogs Shut Down by Google, Obamabots"]

Speculation on who was behind the attacks has ranged from “Obama supporters” to “it’s no one, just a glitch” “to “it’s a browser problem”. [Site Meter causing Internet Explorer failure ]. This latter is a completely different issue from the blogs that got shut down by Google/Blogger.

A few liberal blogs and Instapundit have said there is no connection between this latest wave of blog shutdowns and the Obama camp.

Speculation can now be set aside–at least, in one instance.

We came across this post by MacRanger at MacsMind [Macsmind Hacking UPDATE] yesterday, where Mac presents “one fact that can’t be explained away”.

On July 22-25 Macsmind was DOS’d (Denial of Service) that originated from three IP addresses that are assigned to Barack Obama’s website. This isn’t a theory but was confirmed via law enforcement through an inspection of the site logs from those dates. The IP address in question; 66.39.4.254 66.39.143.229 216.146.206.181, are all registered via “Go Daddy” under the name barackobama.com.

On those dates, beginning at At 5:48PM Central on the 22nd, the hosted server that contained our site was hit by a 1.6 gigabyte flood of illegitimate traffic. The attacks never abated and only stopped when our host provider took us off line.

Spam traffic originating from three IPs assigned to the barackobama.com would seem to be compelling evidence to the disinterested reader. We haven’t been able to reach MacRanger yet, but the real question isn’t “Is the Obama camp involved in this?”

It’s “Will this story be publicized?”

MacsMind finishes with

Speculation is one thing, but facts are another. This time however we’ve taken protective measures to prevent this from happening again. Additionally the investigation will continue and appropriate interstate authorities have been notified.

Texas Hill Country [] makes the comment, “Translation: People using computers at the Barack Obama Campaign are using them to systematically hack, attack and shut down websites that don’t agree with him. This is so messed up. It’s some Orewellian type business and it’s stuff like this that makes Obama scary as hell…”"