Free Republic

So the skinny kid with the funny name has taken the first step toward trying to become president of the United States. Sen. Barack Obama has already demonstrated he's loaded with traits that make him a formidable challenger for the Democratic nomination: incredible charisma, plenty of smarts, excellent rhetorical skills. Just as importantly, there's little doubt Obama has the ability to raise the insane gobs of money over the next 12 months -- $100 million or more -- that it will take to make him competitive. What Obama doesn't have right now, however, and what he must find quickly, is...

Mayor Daley is not reserving a seat on the Barack Obama bandwagon alongside television talk show diva Oprah Winfrey and actress Halle Berry. But if the freshman senator with the rock star appeal wants to run for president in 2008, Chicago's most powerful Democrat sees no problem with it. "Everybody wants him. If he wants to run, he should run. I mean, why not?" Daley said Wednesday. Pressed on whether Obama was seasoned enough to make the race, the mayor said, "Well, you know, if people want to run, they're going to run. I mean, you're not going to stop...

Oprah Winfrey says she is not urging Barack Obama to run for president, but wishes he would and pledged to "do everything in my power to campaign for him" if he did. "I'm reading his book right now called The Audacity of Hope, and I think his sense of hope and optimism for this country and what is possible for the United States is the kind of thing that I would like to get behind," Winfrey said. "It's the kind of the thing that if I were ever gonna run myself, he says all the things that I would want...

Who is President George W. Bush? That's an important question, said Bob Woodward, an assistant managing editor for The Washington Post who has been analyzing Bush since he was elected president in 2000. As Bush prepares for his second term, Woodward said it's important for people to understand what motivates their president. Woodward, perhaps best known for his reporting on the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974, shed some light on the Bush presidency Wednesday while speaking to 500 members of the Washtenaw Economic Club at the Ypsilanti Marriott at Eagle Crest. Bush has been...

Pollster John Zogby surprised the political world back in April with a long-range prediction that John Kerry would defeat George W. Bush for president. On Monday this week, Zogby told me, he changed his mind. He now thinks the president is more likely to be re-elected because he has reinforced support from his base, including married white women. That conclusion would be a surprise for frantically nervous Republicans and cautiously upbeat Democrats entering the campaign's final days. In fact, nobody, including Zogby and all the other polltakers, can be sure who will win this election. Yet, it is clear that...

As the director of polling for The Washington Post, I join my fellow pollsters in the hospitality rooms at professional meetings to drink cheap wine and listen as they talk nervously about the present and agonize about the future: Two consecutive Election Day debacles have shaken public confidence in exit polls, once viewed as the crown jewel of political surveys. Cell phones, Caller ID and increasingly elaborate call screening technologies make it harder than ever to reach a random sample of Americans. Prompted by the popularity of do-not-call lists, a few state legislatures are considering laws that would lump pollsters...

Television Commercial Highlights Kerry’s Conflict with Ronald Reagan Washington, Oct 21 - "In The Face Of Evil: Reagan's War in Word and Deed,” a new film, that focuses on Ronald Reagan’s war against Soviet Communism, has inspired a television commercial produced by Americans for Peace Through Strength, a 527 political organization, designed to show how John Kerry opposed many, if not all of Reagan’s defense initiatives during his administration. Phil Anderson, the Executive Director, of Americans for Peace Through Strength, said “We are running an ad campaign that spotlights the stark differences between the leadership President Reagan provided to win the...

Al Gore went completely nuts tonight, demonstrating that he is in step with the modern Democratic Party. Reuters reports on his speech at Georgetown University: I'm convinced that most of the president's frequent departures from fact-based analysis have much more to do with right-wing political and economic ideology than with the Bible. It is love of power for its own sake that is the original sin of this presidency. The essential cruelty of Bush's game is that he takes an astonishingly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals and then cloaks them with a phony moral authority, thus...

Maine advertisers pull ad over station’s airing of Kerry film PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Several businesses have pulled advertising from WGME-TV in response to the station’s plan to televise a critical documentary about John Kerry’s anti-Vietnam War activities. The Lee Auto Malls, and the law offices of Joe Bornstein withdrew their advertising indefinitely, according to the Portland Press Herald. Hannaford supermarkets also decided to withdraw advertising, but it reversed its position on Friday. "We recognize that WGME has been placed in an untenable position," spokeswoman Caren Epstein said in a statement. "It was never our intention to politicize this issue...

In the pre-dawn darkness, Dr. Sofia Shakir, chief resident at Cook County's John Stroger Hospital, will rise to say her morning prayers and eat a small meal before heading to the hospital by 7 a.m. to begin a long day of rounds, lectures and paperwork. Once the sun rises, Shakir, a Muslim, will take no food, no water, and -- perhaps most importantly for a young doctor working an average of 80 hours a week -- no coffee until the sun sets, because it is Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. For young Muslim physicians such as Shakir, 32, the requirements...

This, without question, is the best anti-Kerry ad that I have seen. I miss Ronald Reagan.

Terry McAuliffe and the DNC just asked us to write to all the columnists in the papers and tell them that Kerry won the debate tonight. Let's all do it now! I just wrote to all the columnists at the Sun Times. Have fun with this. Don't forget to write to Greta now

Last night, before the V-P debate, I was privileged to go to a book signing and speech by John O'Neill and Buzz Patterson. If you could all see John O'Neill in person, there would be no doubt in your minds that he is the most honest man around. He and Buzz Patterson said they were surprised that the Bush campaign wanted nothing to do with them. John O'Neill donated his kidney to his wife in January. He was contacted by Admiral Hoffman about doing something about John Kerry. O'Neill said that everyone in the unit would all drink out of...

Last Thursday's presidential debate was still in progress when the e-mails started trickling in from citizens around the country. At 8:28 p.m. CST, Catie Tierney of Douglas, Ga., wrote: "John Kerry did an AMAZING job tonight. His arguments were valid and very well-said. I sincerely hope he wins the election this fall. He will make a far better president than Bush." Harvey Jones chimed in: "Have you noticed Bush's body language? He seems to be blinking an awful lot. I hear this is one of the usual signs of lying." Next up, Anne Horton Wood of Knoxville, Tenn.: "John Kerry...

Liberal Media Cognitive Dissonance: The NewsWeak "Poll" On September 11th (good time for a political poll, huh?), NewsWeak belched out a set of data that was based on the following partisan breakdown: R = 39 percent D = 30 percent I = 27 percent Not stated = 4 percent Earlier today, however, NewsWeak predictably began the last-ditch media push to try and take down President Bush and to replace him with John Kerry. Part of that process, of course, is and will be a psy-ops campaign to encourage liberal college students actually to vote and to suppress turnout amongst nervous,...

Well, I guess this is where I find out the way my readers think, because I figure I'm going to set off a few people with today's comments. Earlier this week, I predicted that because of the agreed preconditions, Kerry had already lost the first Debate. I was right. Before I continue, I want to explain how the situation was set up. This was NOT a debate in school, or under some arcane set of rules. This was a Political debate, where Bush and Kerry were pursuing specific goals, and they were not always the same goal. President Bush wanted...

Hubbard Woods School officials last week withdrew an invitation to first lady Laura Bush to spend 30 minutes reading to school children after meeting resistance from local Democrats and gun-control advocates. Invoking memories of a shooting rampage at the school 16 years ago, members of two gun-control lobby groups told the school's principal, Maureen Cheever, there was no place in the "sacred" halls of Hubbard Woods School for a representative of the Bush administration, which they argued has a lax stance on gun control. Bush, who had not formally accepted the invitation, was in Winnetka Friday afternoon for a fund-raiser...

Katherine Mangu-Ward has strong piece in the Weekly Standard (with a great title which I have stolen) about John Kerry's sister in Australia. As Mangu-Ward notes, "As the head of Americans Overseas for Kerry, Diana Kerry is a campaign official. And she was speaking in that capacity when, in reference to the invasion of Iraq, she said, 'Australia has kept faith with the U.S., and we are endangering the Australians now by this wanton disregard for international law and multilateral channels.'" Apart from the fact that Ms. Kerry is attempting to undermine our coalition in Iraq, Mangu-Ward points out that...

We have noted before that the Associated Press has become a part of the John Kerry campaign. This morning, many readers have directed our attention to this astonishing AP story titled "Bush Twists Kerry's Words on Iraq". Yes, you read that right. This is not a Kerry campaign press release; it is an Associated Press story that will be reprinted in hundreds, maybe thousands, of American newspapers. Well. Let's see how President Bush has "twisted Kerry's words." Here is the first example cited by AP reporter Jennifer Loven: President Bush opened several new scathing lines of attack against Democrat John...

Kerry looks, er, very small today. I mean, was this statement for real? In its discombobulation, utter lack of grace (all but calling Allawi a liar--a man almost axed to death by Saddam's henchmen in the U.K. and under constant threat of assassination today), near absurdities ("Let me tell you, if the 4th Infantry Division and the diplomacy had been done (ed. note: whatever "done" means) with Turkey, you wouldn't have had a Fallujah"), pleading tone ("And ask the military leaders. Go ask the military leaders")--it reads more like a bona fide Deanian (or Goreian?) meltdown than a serious policy...