Free Republic

Barack Obama is a "decidedly liberal" senator "who was finding his feet, and then got diverted by his presidential ambitions", according to a frank verdict delivered to Gordon Brown by the British ambassador to the United States. Sir Nigel Sheinwald, ambassador in Washington since last year, delivered his unvarnished assessment of the White House front runner in a seven-page letter to the Prime Minister, obtained by The Daily Telegraph, just before the Democratic nominee's visit to Downing Street just over two months ago. The candid letter, marked as containing "sensitive judgements" and requesting officials to "protect the contents carefully" gives...

If Barack Obama loses the presidential election, it may well be the result of a public perception that he is detached and elitist -- a politician whose expressions of empathy for hard-working Americans stem more from abstract solidarity than a real connection to the lives of millions of citizens. Suggestions that Sen. Obama has failed to relate to working- and middle-class voters in swing states have dogged his campaign for months. His choice of Sen. Joseph Biden as his running mate only marginally corrects the problem. While Obama supporters attempt to dismiss the charges about their candidate's perceived hauteur, they...

The nation's financials may be in a spiral, but cash is flowing into the Obama campaign faster than Marvin Hamlisch can play "Niagara"! Yesterday, Obama declared how we are in "the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression." Today he will host a dinner in Beverly Hills --- costing attendees $28,500 dollars each! Hundreds of high rollers, including some of the biggest executives in film, television and music, will munch gourmet chow and hang out with the candidate. Streisand will then sing at the five-star Beverly Wilshire, no doubt reviving the Depression-era standard "Happy Days Are Here Again" with...

'Meet the Press' transcript for August 31, 2008 **SNIP** MS. ANDREA MITCHELL: Well, they, they think now that they have a story. They have a story of a working mom, she is a colorful character, an Annie Oakley, you know, Annie get your gun. They love her story. But when she tried to talk about Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, in western Pennsylvania yesterday at a rally with conservative Republican voters, Hillary Clinton was booed. So she can use the Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro analogy if she wants to in interviews. She cannot use that at Republican rallies. She is...

Senator Barak Obama Has a Right Head Tilt Watching the Saddleback Church Forum with Pastor Rick Warren interviewing Senator Barak Obama on Saturday August 16, I was struck by the marked and obvious tilting of the Senator’s head Forum. The tilt is to the right side. This phenomenon has not been widely written about from a medical perspective. A head tilt can be a sign that a patient has double vision also known as diplopia. Diplopia can be benign if it is caused by a congenital (from birth) eye muscle weakness or it can be associated with autoimmune medical disorders...

WASHINGTON - One of the first images prime-time viewers will see of the Democratic National Convention next week is that of Michelle Obama, who will begin the four-day introduction of her husband, and her family, on her terms. Like everything else at the orchestrated gala, that is by design. Democrats face a number of imperatives at their convention, none trickier than making more voters comfortable with the prospect of putting a candidate with a most unusual background — the son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia — and his...

The sea of shining, hope-filled faces that routinely flood Barack Obama's rallies would be an alien environment for the grizzled features and tobacco-stained temperament of Dave “Mudcat” Saunders. His preferred habitat is up a tree gunning down deer or on the mud flats — which lent him their name — catching catfish, part of an endless struggle with Appalachian wildlife. Along with his Confederate flag bedspread, the stag heads on his walls, his preference for profanity over punctuation, he would horrify what he calls the “northeastern elitist, Metropolitan Opera wing of the Democrats”. But, as one of the party's few...

There was a spring in Barack Obama's step and a sense of heady excitement in the air as he took to the stage beside Berlin's Victory column for his latest Big Speech. Members of his expansive entourage could have been forgiven for dreaming about the West Wing offices they will occupy in January. By any yardstick, the first half of the Illinois senator's foreign tour was everything his campaign staff had wished for and a little bit more. Wherever he went, world leaders wanted to bask in his reflected glory as the presumed next president. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of...

SPIEGEL: It is unusual for a US presidential candidate to travel to Europe in the middle of the campaign. Why is Barack Obama coming? Susan Rice: Senator Obama believes it is critically important for the United States and Europe to cooperate far more effectively than we have in recent years. None of us can tackle the critical global challenges we face in isolation -- be it terrorism, proliferation, climate change, disease, poverty or energy security. Obama will want to discuss in Europe and Germany how we each view these challenges and how we can best address them together. SPIEGEL: Critics...

In his pre-campaign book, "The Audacity of Hope," Barack Obama proclaims, "I find comfort in the fact that the longer I'm in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that a striving for rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience." Some might think this odd testimony from a young and inexperienced freshman senator on the cusp of seeking the highest rank, and the most famous position, in the world. It's a bit like a parish priest saying he's happy with his modest lot in...

You can almost hear the violins playing while reading U.K. Guardian writer Zachary Roth  bemoan the "swiftboat" labeling of Barack Obama by those wascally Republicans: Over the last few months, Barack Obama has been variously labelled an "elitist", a naïve softie and simply "out of the mainstream" in his lifestyle and associates. And lately, in what appears to be the centrepiece of the GOP's attacks, Republicans have focused on portraying Obama as arrogant and self-interested....The "arrogant" label could well damage Obama. That's partly because, as with Kerry's rep for flip-flopping, it might contain a kernel of truth. At the very least,...

Tonight on CNN's Election Center, Joe Klein spewed the following while engaged in a group discussion about a comment made by Karl Rove.......BLITZER: Let's turn to another hot topic right now from the campaign trail today, Karl Rove seriously blasting Barack Obama. We have got some of the smartest people here to talk about that, Joe Klein, Leslie Sanchez, Candy Crowley. Candy, here's the quote from Karl Rove at a breakfast, a Republican breakfast today -- quote -- "Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date holding...

ABC News' Christianne Klein reports that at a breakfast with Republican insiders at the Capitol Hill Club this morning, former White House senior aide Karl Rove referred to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, as "coolly arrogant." "Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove said, per Christianne Klein. "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

Vero Possumus, latin for yes we can (or at least an approxmimation of it). While I think that every failed campaign has a "jump the shark" moment. I'm thinking Michael Dukakis in the tank and John Kerry in the bunny suit. Therefore I'm thinking that Obama's campaign has just jumped the possom. What I was hoping is that all you Freepers out there with a command of Latin could have some fun with this and give us alternatives for his use on his new presidential seal. Of course faux Latin would also be much fun

Polls show Clinton holding a stubborn lead over Obama and, if she wins, she will have staved off political death one more time. Yet if Clinton wins by a narrow margin - even after an unusually bad stretch for Obama, including his foolish observation about 'bitter' small-town voters and a horrendous debate on Wednesday - her victory will be underwhelming. In the next two primaries, on 6 May, she trails badly in one (North Carolina) and has surrendered a one-time lead in another (Indiana). Even some Clintonites say they will pressure her to drop out should she lose both those...

I really don’t know where a person would find Barak Obama’s “Small Town America”. I know that I have not viewed that kind of world from my own vantage point...and I have lived in this so-called “Small Town America” for the past 35 years. In political remarks that are burning up the Internet, leading the dialog of talk shows and firing up political pundits everywhere, the topic is Obama, speaking in San Francisco. He said, “You go to some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone...

The odor of elitism is like onion breath: It’s quick to acquire, hard to mask. Try as he might, Barack Obama cannot camouflage the political stink he exhaled when he dissed small-town Americans as “bitter” Neanderthals “clinging” to their guns, faith, and belief in strict immigration enforcement. It wasn’t the first time the effete Snob-ama revealed himself. In Philadelphia, he passed up the hometown cheesesteak — gloppy, artery-clogging, and blue-collar (yum!) — for a nibble of Spanish-imported, $100/pound ham. In Iowa, he moaned to voters about the price of arugula at Whole Foods. (Fun fact: There aren’t any Whole Foods...

... Because the manipulable masses are easily given a "false consciousness" (another category, like religion as the "opiate" of the suffering masses, that liberalism appropriated from Marxism), four things follow: First, the consent of the governed, when their behavior is governed by their false consciousnesses, is unimportant. Second, the public requires the supervision of a progressive elite which, somehow emancipated from false consciousness, can engineer true consciousness. Third, because consciousness is a reflection of social conditions, true consciousness is engineered by progressive social reforms. Fourth, because people in the grip of false consciousness cannot be expected to demand or even...

Having grown up in one of those small Pennsylvania towns Sen. Barack Obama sneers at, I know what really makes people there "bitter." It's slick-talking politicians who look down on their beliefs and values. Small-town people get doubly "bitter" when those pols have the gall to ask for their votes while demeaning their lives. See, even hicks don't like being played for suckers. When they accused Obama of being out of touch for saying small-towners "cling to guns or religion" out of frustration, Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain were too kind. Snob-ama is not just out of touch. He's from...

Obama, speaking to a group of supporters in San Francisco, CA. , recently said: "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment...

  April 13, 2008   This cartoon/graphic is free for noncommercial use in emails, blogs, and forums.  iowapresidentialwatch.com

<p>You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.</p>

Actual op-ed column, or parody of Upper West Side liberal mockery of Middle America? You be the judge of this p.p.v. opus today by Gail Collins, New York Times columnist turned Editorial Page Editor now returned to her column-writing roots. We'll begin with the title, Republicans in the Straw, and proceed to these excerpts: Today 40,000 Republicans are expected to make a pilgrimage to a large tent in Ames, Iowa, where they will eat an enormous amount of free food and vote for a presidential candidate. Mitt Romney is going to serve barbecue, and one of his sons has just...

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards acknowledged Thursday that amid his criticism of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a volunteer member of his staff asked the world's largest retailer for help obtaining a hot new Sony Playstation 3 for Edwards' family. Edwards, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, told The Associated Press that the volunteer "feels terrible" about seeking the game unit at Wal-Mart while his boss claims the retailer doesn't treat its employees fairly. "My wife, Elizabeth, wanted to get a Playstation3 for my young children. She mentioned it in front of one of my staff people. That staff person mentioned it...

Twin towers no loss to architecture, says critic Richard Brooks, Arts Editor ------------------------------------------- THE World Trade Center was an “ugly box” whose loss did no architectural damage to New York, one of the world’s most outspoken art critics has said. “It was a large, scaleless lump, which completely dominated that end of Manhattan,” said Robert Hughes, best known in Britain for The Shock of the New, his 1980s BBC television series and book. “It only became iconic when it was knocked over by a bunch of Arabs.” Hughes, an Australian who has lived in New York for many years, was...

Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com) - U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts on Tuesday told an audience at the liberal Take Back America conference that he was sorry for voting to authorize the war in Iraq, calling the entire mission "a mistake." "We were misled, we were given evidence that was not true," Kerry said. "It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote [for it]." Kerry, who led an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2004, said it was necessary to admit mistakes because "you cannot change the future if you''re not honest about the past." He criticized supporters of the...

Cynics are right: Hercules' old-fashioned new neighborhoods are downright unreal. The houses are too pristine, the landscaping too prim. They're modeled along the lines of a bungalow-filled village of yore, yet the result looks like a pastel launching pad for commuters. No matter. I'll root for a David clad in Ralph Lauren over a bottom-line Wal-Mart Goliath any day.

WASHINGTON -- Rich, oceanfront residents of Cape Cod do not want their view of Nantucket Sound faintly obstructed by offshore protrusions of a proposed wind farm. So, they have hired high-priced lobbyists to kill Cape Wind, a project providing an environmentally sound source of energy. Their most important ally in this venture is a fellow wealthy Cape Cod landowner, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Opposition to America's first offshore wind farm seems a peculiar posture for the liberal lion of the Senate. The self-indulgent squires of Cape Cod likewise seem a strange set of friends for Teddy Kennedy. He is also...

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Leading the world's wealthiest and probably most famous university sounds like the plummiest job in academe -- with a staff, a house, and a half-million dollar salary among the many perks. But running Harvard isn't easy. Neil Rudenstine, school president from 1991 to 2001, was forced to take leave of absence for exhaustion in 1994. His successor, Lawrence Summers, announced Tuesday he would resign June 30 after a tumultuous five years, his ambitious agenda to get Harvard's territorial undergraduate and professional schools on same page done in by faculty revolts and brusque management style. Harvard-watchers inside...

There's no helping you. This site is now just a diversion -- like a train wreck. This site is inherently for and about raving egomaniacs, and Jim's site policies -- which amount to excluding reality and actual dialogue in favor of political/militaristic pornography -- is conducive to cognitive dissonance, which at the times your worldview is threatened leads you into psychotic breaks (on the political cognitive plane, that is, and just maybe in other realms too). Not to mention that your baseline politics is based in mythology about American demographics, science, economics, ethics etc. You spoonfeed each other in the...

Of all the words written about Harriet Miers, none are more disturbing than the ones she wrote herself. In the early '90s, while she was president of the Texas bar association, Miers wrote a column called "President's Opinion" for The Texas Bar Journal. It is the largest body of public writing we have from her, and sad to say, the quality of thought and writing doesn't even rise to the level of pedestrian. Of course, we have to make allowances for the fact that the first job of any association president is to not offend her members. Still, nothing excuses...

The lovably irascible Beldar, the Texas trial lawyer who is one of the two people on earth hotly defending the Miers nomination (the other being our buddy Hugh Hewitt), has posted a convenient link to articles written by Harriet Miers during one of her stints as a bar association honcho. He did this in part to address a charge I made on Hugh's show that Miers shouldn't be taken seriously because over the past 30 years of hot dispute on matters of constitutional law she hadn't published so much as an op-ed on a single topic of moment. Thank you,...

Don't you remember the utter let-down when elder Bush broke the fundamental promise he made, "No new taxes"? The promise was not merely a bow to the Laffer curve, it was an emotional and pyschological statement to the many people in this country who still believe in constitutional goverment, and who knew that taxation was the means to undermine constitutional government, liberty and freedom, to put it another way. The younger Bush promised a Thomas or Scalia for the same reasons: to tell the believers in constitutional government that supporting him would mean a definitive change in the jurisprudence of...

Canadian singer Celine Dion has launched a scathing attack on President Bush's Iraq policy, while criticizing the government's slow response to the southern states devastated by Hurricane Katrina, reports IMDB.com.Dion, who has donated $1 million to victims of the storm, grew visibly emotional as she told of her frustration watching tens of thousands of survivors wait days for aid Saturday on CNN's Larry King Live show.''I open [sic] the television, there's people still there, waiting to be rescued, and for me it's not acceptable,'' she said. ``I know there's reasons for it, I'm sorry to say, I'm being rude, but...

Maureen Dowd's latest article is typical Times. Had to see the reaction here. My email response to her is also posted below.

Kerry: "...And looking around here, at this group here, I suspect there are only three people here who are going to be affected: the president, me, and, Charlie, I'm sorry, you too." Kerry speaking in last evening's debate about his plan to raise taxes on people making 200k+ annually. So now John Kerry is prejudging people by just looking at them to determine their income?!? He decided that the only people in the room that qualified as his new tax-hike victims were himself, Bush and Charlie Gibson! Wow, a big criticism many liberals have of Bush is his supposed "arrogance",...

Best and Worst of the Debate Best Kerry Line of the Debate: "From the looks of the people in this audience, the only ones in this room who will be affected by the president's tax cut for the rich will be myself, the president, and Charles Gibson." Kerry's inner snob made an appearance last night at the debate. How could he tell the annual income of the audience? I guess no one was wearing Prada. One must have a trained eye for spotting designer clothes. Maybe there were no five hundred dollar haircuts like the one Kerry sports. There might...

John Kerry may be sinking in the polls, but even if he goes down with the ship Nov. 2, he'll still have his own little flotilla to return to back here in Massachusetts. According to a check of state and U.S. Coast Guard records, he and his ``family'' own almost as many high-end boats as they do mansions and SUVs. Since Liveshot married the Widow Heinz, he's been on a nautical buying spree. Excuse me, let me clarify that last statement: His elderly second wife's first husband's grandfather's trust fund has been on a nautical buying spree on behalf of...

Sorry for the vanity but I have to ask...has ANY Democratic candidate running this year asked Kerry to appear with him or her! If not, that fact alone is VERY telling...

You're John Kerry [related, bio], and the only liberal puke who's had a worse August than you is William Kennedy Smith. They said it was your election to lose, and you're losing it. You told 'em you were no Dukakis and you're not. As the Bush campaign pulverized him in August 1988, the Duke ran away to Tanglewood. Sixteen years later, you haven't fled to Tanglewood, you've lammed out for Nantucket. And now you're holed up in the $9 million mansion on Hulbert Avenue that your second wife's first husband's trust fund bought. You're John Kerry, and you can't help...

I wrote a brief amazon.com review of Garrison Keillor's "Homegrown Democrat," one of the most vile, bigoted tracts published by a major publisher this year. Apparently the lefties have been voting against my review in droves! Please stop by and vote for it. Muchos Gracias!

The reign of terror is nearly over. Bill Moyers is leaving the Public Broadcasting System. Admittedly, Moyers is no Robespierre. Just an insufferable elitist, an inveterate busybody, a mocker of Christians and a belligerent defender of the paternalistic state. There is a temptation to follow such purple prose by cracking "and those are his good qualities," because Moyers, who was largely a sycophant to President Johnson when he worked on his staff, is most certainly a hypocrite, as well. But let's not kick a man while he's down, or in this case on his way out - no matter how...

Workers in the Shadows By DAVID BROOKS Imagine a person 10 times as determined as you are. Picture a guy who will wade across rivers, brave 120-degree boxcars and face vicious smugglers and murderous vigilantes — all to get a job picking fruit for 10 hours a day. That person is the illegal immigrant. Let's call him Sam. This whole immigration debate is about him, the choices he faces and the way he responds. One thing we know about Sam: he will get here. Between 1986 and 1998, Congress increased the Border Patrol's budget sixfold. Over that time the...

Going Native for 2004 By DAVID BROOKS To: Tom DeLay From: A Concerned Conservative Dear Tom, This week I read that you have abandoned plans to house Republicans safely on a cruise ship off the island of Manhattan during the G.O.P. convention in New York this summer. Have you paused to consider what this will mean? It will mean that instead of spending time in a secure environment offshore, kind, decent Republicans will be wandering innocently among packs of inflamed New York liberals. They'll be subjected to long harangues that rely heavily on the words "multilateral," "Kyoto" and "John...

Hummers to Harleys By DAVID BROOKS f I had any brains I'd make a big investment in Mack Trucks, because Mack now has an opportunity to extend its brand into all sorts of hugely profitable product lines. I foresee a chain of Mack Trucks tapas restaurants, Mack Trucks brand tub tea and Mack Trucks exfoliating sponges for men. There may even be growth possibilities for the trucks themselves, for what else are people going to buy when they start feeling cramped in their Hummers? I had this insight when I realized that we now have this huge population of...

Peter Jennings takes up U.S. citizenship After pondering the idea seriously for a decade -- and weathering a recent controversy in which his Canadian roots were an issue -- ABC News anchor Peter Jennings has become an American citizen. The Toronto-born journalist, who was raised in Ottawa and still retreats from fame every summer to a farm in the nearby Gatineau Hills, said yesterday the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. and his recent travels throughout the country have made him feel "much more connected to the Founding Fathers' dreams and ideas for the future." Mr. Jennings, who...

America's most famous Canadian, Peter Jennings has announced that he will be seeking American citizenship.