Obama '08?

More evidence that conservatives aren't funny.

More debates, please
By Mona Charen
April 23, 2008

Other than zinging Mrs. Clinton by pointing out that Bill Clinton had pardoned two members of the Weather Underground (there's that taint again), Mr. Obama's response was lame and deceptive. "The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense, George." Doesn't it? Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers served together on the eight-person board of directors of the Wood Fund.



An early organizing meeting about Mr. Obama's political career was held in Mr. Ayers' living room. This isn't just "somebody he knows." Some of us wouldn't even shake hands with Mr. Ayers, far less accept a $200 donation and his hospitality. Suppose Sen. John McCain had a similar relationship with abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph?

You jaded citizens may be bored silly by these seemingly endless candidate debates. But the last encounter between the two Democrats was an entertainment milestone. I say give me more!



Who has ever seen a politician admit to lying before? Asked yet again about the corkscrew landing, Sen. Hillary Clinton introduced her mea culpa with this odd formulation: "I can tell you that I may be a lot of things, but I'm not dumb." She then proceeded to admit she said things that "weren't in keeping with what I knew to be the case and what I had written about in my book."



So by stressing she isn't dumb, she was suggesting what? That she flat-out lied with no excuse? Perhaps what she meant to say was "I'm not dumb, but I really did a brainless thing this time. Heck, I even wrote the truth in the book. Don't know what I was thinking."



For someone else, that tack might have been acceptable. But this is the woman who told us she converted a $1,000 stock investment into a $100,000 windfall by "reading the Wall Street Journal" and who miraculously "found" the missing Rose Law Firm billing records on an East Wing credenza after being unable to locate them for two years.



From one point of view, it's a shame she is so tainted, because she delivered some body blows to His Serene Highness. She reminded viewers that Sen. Barack Obama's church had offered its bulletin as a forum for a message from Hamas, and cheerfully piled on when George Stephanopoulos raised the troublesome matter of Mr. Obama's connection to William Ayers.



Bill Ayers is no run-of-the-mill lefty. Along with his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, he was a founding member of the Weather Underground, a radical spin-off of the SDS that "declared war" on "Amerikkka" in 1970 and planned a terrorist attack on Fort Dix, N.J., that the group anticipated would be "the most horrific hit the United States government has ever suffered on its soil." Alas for them, three of the Weathermen were blown up in a Greenwich Village apartment while mixing the ingredients for the bomb.



The Weathermen had more success on other outings, planting bombs in a New York City police precinct house, the U.S. Capitol building, and, this was a nice touch, on Ho Chi Minh's birthday in a women's bathroom at the Pentagon. The group claimed credit for a total of 25 bombings and assorted other acts of incitement and mayhem.



Reflecting on his life as a revolutionary, Mr. Ayers told the New York Times that he didn't regret setting bombs. In fact, he found "a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance." The New York Times profile was published on Sept. 11, 2001.



You jaded citizens may be bored silly by these seemingly endless candidate debates. But the last encounter between the two Democrats was an entertainment milestone. I say give me more!



Who has ever seen a politician admit to lying before? Asked yet again about the corkscrew landing, Sen. Hillary Clinton introduced her mea culpa with this odd formulation: "I can tell you that I may be a lot of things, but I'm not dumb." She then proceeded to admit she said things that "weren't in keeping with what I knew to be the case and what I had written about in my book."



So by stressing she isn't dumb, she was suggesting what? That she flat-out lied with no excuse? Perhaps what she meant to say was "I'm not dumb, but I really did a brainless thing this time. Heck, I even wrote the truth in the book. Don't know what I was thinking."



For someone else, that tack might have been acceptable. But this is the woman who told us she converted a $1,000 stock investment into a $100,000 windfall by "reading the Wall Street Journal" and who miraculously "found" the missing Rose Law Firm billing records on an East Wing credenza after being unable to locate them for two years.



From one point of view, it's a shame she is so tainted, because she delivered some body blows to His Serene Highness. She reminded viewers that Sen. Barack Obama's church had offered its bulletin as a forum for a message from Hamas, and cheerfully piled on when George Stephanopoulos raised the troublesome matter of Mr. Obama's connection to William Ayers.



Bill Ayers is no run-of-the-mill lefty. Along with his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, he was a founding member of the Weather Underground, a radical spin-off of the SDS that "declared war" on "Amerikkka" in 1970 and planned a terrorist attack on Fort Dix, N.J., that the group anticipated would be "the most horrific hit the United States government has ever suffered on its soil." Alas for them, three of the Weathermen were blown up in a Greenwich Village apartment while mixing the ingredients for the bomb.



The Weathermen had more success on other outings, planting bombs in a New York City police precinct house, the U.S. Capitol building, and, this was a nice touch, on Ho Chi Minh's birthday in a women's bathroom at the Pentagon. The group claimed credit for a total of 25 bombings and assorted other acts of incitement and mayhem.



Reflecting on his life as a revolutionary, Mr. Ayers told the New York Times that he didn't regret setting bombs. In fact, he found "a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance." The New York Times profile was published on Sept. 11, 2001.




With every peel of the onion, Barack Obama is revealed to have hard-left friends and allies. The list of questionable friends extends not just to Mr. Ayers, Tony Rezko and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but also to Rashid Khalidi, professor at Columbia and another fund-raising host for Mr. Obama. Khalidi, whose heroes include the late Edward Said and Noam Chomsky, is a cheerleader for the Palestine Liberation Organization who spits contempt for Israel.



In his memoir, Mr. Obama recalls that in his college days, he sat up late with friends discussing "neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy." To "avoid being mistaken for a sellout," he selected his friends carefully. "The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance artists."



On first reading, I thought he had achieved ironic distance from this jejune leftism. But maybe not. And now, to paraphrase his pastor and mentor, the chickens are coming home to roost.

LOL Mona Charen. "Questionable friends" Mind-numbing


dailykos.com

Obama's across-the-board gains
by kos
Wed Apr 23, 2008 at 07:21:02 AM PDT

One of the arguments the Clinton campaign is making to the supers, hoping they'll overturn the will of the voters, is that Obama can't win certain demographics. Yet looking at the exit poll numbers, it's clear that Obama has actually been making serious gains the past six weeks.

Obama's percent of the vote:
OH PA

60 and older 28 38
White 34 38
White men 39 44
White women 31 34
Less than $50K 42 46
No college 40 38
College 51 49
Catholic 36 31
Protestant 36 53

What was a 10.5% win in demographically friendly Ohio has become an 8.6% 9.4% win in similar Pennsylvania, except the state was even less black and with a much smaller youth voter population (Pennsylvania's seniors accounted for 32 percent of the electorate, compared to 23 percent in Ohio).

And, those gains were made despite the Wright controversy as well as manufactured bullshit about "bitter" and flag pins and whatnot.

On top of that, Obama has had to run against Hillary Clinton, against former President of the United States Bill Clinton, and against John McCain and the entire GOP apparatus, which has trained its guns on Obama hoping to give Clinton a boost.

Yet he continues to gain among most of Clinton's best demographics, is still raising more money, leads comfortably in delegates, leads comfortably in the popular vote, leads in states won, leads in the national polls, and does better in the head-to-head matchups against McCain.

So why should the supers spark an intra-party civil war by overturning the will of the electorate again?

LETS REVIEW A FEW THINGS 1.A SPOOKALA 2.A COMMUNIST 3.A MUSLIM 4.ARE WE KIDDING NO WAY WILL ASAMA BE PRESIDENT

Another fruitcake heard from.

Go away.

What an idiotic observation. There is absolutely no sense that Obama has Kansas ties. He won Kansas because the people of that State have the good sense to not want the Hildabeast elected.

And what a bunch of caterwauling about his not winning, the rest of the article is. If there's anything leftists are extremely good at, it's coming up with a list of excuses for losing an election.

I was half expecting a reference to Diebold or "hanging chads."

There is a delicious irony in ticomama calling something markos expounds "idiotic."

I'm so sick of Hillary, I could puke!

One very slight warning:

The exit poll numbers he uses here (and I can't find any that have been further adjusted either) add up to a total score of 53% for Clinton and 47% for Obama.

That's a 6-point lead rather than the 9-point lead that Hillary actually got.

How come? Thats easy enough: exit polls are initially based only on interviews at polling stations, the result of which of course do not necessarily match the actual election results. So as the night passes and more and more actual results come in, the exit poll data is weighed to correspond to the real election results. In the end, the exit poll data is made to conform exactly with the real results.

Problem is, apparently the exit poll data online now (at MSNBC, CNN etc) have not had this final adjustment yet. So they still reflect a race where Hillary won by just 6 rather than by 9.

Doesnt make the data less interesting - but does mean that you have to keep in mind that Obama's numbers are flattered somewhat. In reality you'd have to shave a little off Obama's numbers for each subgroup and add a little to Hillary's. Not much, obviously - just - wait lemme calculate...

...

... multiply Hillary's numbers by 1.025, and Obama's by 0.97.

<looks up>

OK, well that doesnt make any friggin difference then, does it. Nebbermind.

(I'm gonna post this anyway as proof that the difference isnt, actually, relevant ... I mean hey, proving your thesis wrong can be just as useful as proving it right )

It seems with Hillary's win in PA, she won a mere 15 more delegates than Obama; she's finished, but she'll make it sound like that was a HUGE win.

Another personal opinion about Hillary; she's going to reveal to us how she will react when desperate as president; not always the best decision for democrats or Americans as a whole. I call it myopia of self-interest.

Thanks guys.

Tico,

Obama won 74% of the vote in Kansas.

Now compare the neighbouring states:

31% in Oklahoma
49% in Missouri
68% in Nebraska
67% in Colorado

Why do you think Obama did better in Kansas than in any nearby state?

After reports of the raucous welcome Obama got when he visited Kansas and talked about his family background there, I'd assumed there was some kind of related effect that explained how well he did...

That and the fact that he actually showed up. Didn't he also get the nod of the governor there? Or maybe I'm thinking of somewhere else.

Good point, but according to the NYT's rather wonderful interactive map of campaign appearances, he also showed up in Missouri (Kansas City), Nebraska (Omaha) and Colorado (Denver).


He did, indeed - Gov. Sebelius. But according to this list at DemConWatch he also got the nod from Gov. Henry in Oklahoma, and in Missouri from Sen. McCaskill, and in Nebraska from Sen. Nelson. So that's not something particular to Kansas either..

I mean, I dunno. Maybe Sebelius has far more sway than McCaskill or Henry? Or maybe the rally was received much better? But wouldnt that in turn be partly because of the suggestion of family heritage?

Very cool find. I actually meant that he bothered to show up while his opponent did not. But yeah, he probably showed up because he knew he was favored. I'm not disputing the family connection -- I'm agreeing with you on that. If Hillary's grandparents get her a connection to PA then Obama's certainly get him one in KS. It's the native son/daughter phenomenon.

Oklahoma's governor just endorsed Obama today btw (i.e. he hadn't endorsed him or campaigned for him at the time of the OK primary).

Gee soz- that's amazing. Did he actually do that. I'm astounded.