Free Republic

In Norway they may think that President Barack Obama has a great knack for peace, but around here his forte seems to be stirring up strife. New Orleans is mad because Obama's visit tomorrow will be little more than a whistlestop. The Mississippi Gulf Coast is mad because New Orleans gets all the attention, such as it is, while the lingering effects of Katrina over there are ignored. And from southwest Louisiana comes the cry, "What about Rita, Gustav and Ike? The president really needs to take a look at Cameron Parish." Obama is also being denounced for an apparent...

Gordon Brown has made an overtly religious call for a new world order based on the 'deep moral sense' shared by all faiths. Making the first speech by a serving Prime Minister at St Paul's Cathedral in London, he quoted scripture as he urged people to unite to forge a new 'global society'. The Prime Minister argued that through all faiths, traditions and heritages runs a 'single powerful modern sense demanding responsibility from all and fairness to all'. He quoted the Christian doctrine of 'do to others what you would have them do unto you' and highlighted similar principles in...

Will ending the culture wars be as difficult as repairing a broken economy? If President Obama's primary task is to restore economic growth, he has also been waging a quiet, long-term campaign to ease the nation's divisions around religious and moral questions. That venture, which has its roots in a 2006 speech that paid tribute to the political role of religious Americans, bore fruit in last year's election. Obama increased the Democratic share of the vote among Roman Catholics and younger evangelical Christians. Since assuming the presidency, he has pressed this effort through persistent calls to personal and family responsibility,...

Unprecedented press coverage of the Inauguration means an audience which could top the Super Bowl as the whole world makes an American moment into a global one.

If Europe wants to phone America on the Gaza crisis, who does it call? Not George Bush, who has two weeks left in the White House. And not Barack Obama, who has been mute on Israel’s military action, although the world looked to him immediately the conflict filled the screens. “Nobody at home in Washington”, ran one US headline on the turmoil. “President-elect Obama is closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza, but there is one president at a time,” said Brooke Anderson, his chief national security spokeswoman. This is disingenuous. Even if silence is meant only as...

Canadians have made some mighty distinctive music, and CBC wants Barack Obama to know it. Starting next week, Canadians will collect some choice homegrown songs for the new president to groove to as he takes office Jan. 20. CBC Radio 2 is calling on the public to take care of business, tune-wise - to help select 49 songs from north of the 49th parallel that best represent the northern nation. "We believe that a country is defined by its artistic expression. If you wanted to know about Canada you just close your eyes and listen to our songs," said Denise...

Villagers hold posters of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama in the village of Cavustepe in the province of Van, eastern Turkey. ANKARA, Turkey — Residents of a mainly Kurdish village in southeastern Turkey have sacrificed 44 sheep to celebrate the election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. Dogan news agency video Friday shows villagers in Cavustepe village, in the province of Van, bordering Iran, holding Obama posters smeared with blood. In overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey, the practice is believed to protect people or property from bad luck. The posters read "you are one of us" and...

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn): "Barack Obama was a community organizer like Jesus, who our minister prayed about. Pontius Pilate was a governor."

For reasons only "progressive" minds can fathom, several bloggers on the left think—or more likely, are perhaps wishing—that Sarah Palin, John McCain's newly-announced choice for Vice President, will drop out of the Presidential race. Jeralyn Merritt, probably once the most consistently rational member of the leftist blogosphere, is actively promoting a drop-out pool. Merritt claims that McCain must force Palin out because she wasn't adequately vetted, and then quite seriously suggests that Obama was: Obama presented himself for 17 months to the American people, they heard him debate more than a dozen times, they made their own decision that he...

A photo essay of Barak-O-polis at the link.

These hagiographic pictures are displayed in Denver during the DNC featuring the One.

"Well, how could they be jamming us if they don't know...if we're coming?" - Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) If you watch TV or go to the movies, you're already pretty familiar with the black sidekick. From Rochester to Robin Quivers, there is frequently at least one African American in the crew to provide a little flavor and a little, um, color. Spenser: For Hire had Hawk, Bruce Springsteen had Clarence Clemons, and Han Solo had Lando Calrissian, but now the country might have a black guy sitting in the big chair and his lieutenant, his road dog, his ace...

Hillary Clinton would have won this election. Joe Biden would have won this election. Bill Richardson would have won this election. Barack Obama just might lose this election. Has anybody noticed that, in this Year of the Democrat, Barack Obama is starting to choke? In a year when voters seem fed up with all things Republican, and poll after poll pitting a hypothetical Democrat against a hypothetical Republican shows the GOP candidate getting slaughtered, Barack Obama is in a dead heat with the oldest and least-inspiring man ever to run for the presidency. Is it time to start recognizing that...

Obama, his campaign trying to transcend it -- but can't I can't be the only person who sees the snake in the room. The one that slithers away whenever the political pundits start explaining what the latest presidential poll means. From the moment Barack Obama went from a wannabe presidential contender to a front-runner, the race factor curled up and waited to strike anyone who got too close. Former President Bill Clinton got bit. So did the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Still, whenever commentators talk about the close contest between Obama and John McCain, they ignore the snake. Yet anyone who...

When it comes to the end times, there isn't much that I agree with Hal Lindsey about. Hal Lindsey, author of the huge (and phenomenally misguided) "Late Great Planet Earth" and rapture promoter wrote a column last week comparing the reception received by Barack Obama on his world tour to the reception that the Antichrist will one day receive. After describing some of the detail of Obama's trip, Lindsey says this: And the Bible says that such a leader will soon make his appearance on the scene. It won't be Barack Obama, but Obama's world tour provided a foretaste of...

"WASHINGTON: A day after Senator Barack Obama said he could support broad energy legislation even though it would permit offshore oil drilling, which he has opposed, an aide to Senator John McCain said Sunday that he too might support such a package."

Something's going on. Or some things. A new CNN/Opinion Research poll out Wednesday shows that despite nine solid days of blanket media coverage from overseas with Barack Obama cheered by adoring throngs of Germans and parlez-vousing with the French, making a three-point shot in the Middle East and standing outside No. 10 Downing Street, the freshman Illinois Democratic presidential nominee to be Senator Barack Obama of Illinois stayed static in the polls despite his well-covered long foreign tripsenator is stuck right where he was in the polls before he left.

WASHINGTON – The Republican National Committee (RNC) today launched a new Web Site, titled “Obama Audacity Watch.” From Obama’s fond memories of “when I was a United States Senator” to his short-lived “presidential” seal, the Web site tracks his audacious comments. The Web site features news and video clips, and will be continually updated through Election Day. To view the RNC’s new Web site “Obama Audacity Watch,” click here. To learn more about Barack Obama, visit: www.MeetBarackObama.com.

Oh, for the love of crumbcake, this is getting so creepy.I have been saying for weeks that Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism has really helped my understanding of Barack Obama. I have pointed it out in three other posts:Barack Obama is a 1920s-style fascist Early 20th century "progressivism" has returned... Barack Obama: I AM America Every time I do, I think to myself, oh dear, this is going to sound overwrought. I do it anyways, because truth is truth, and the truth is that Barack Obama talks about himself and his plans in the same transcendent, populist, cult-of-personality terms as...

The Obama Madness Is Over By Rev. Lainie Dowell Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is not going to be the President of the United States. He is never going to be qualified. He has not only said in his own mind that he will be the President but much worse. He believes that he is already the President. However, many citizens of the United States recognize him for the destroyer he really is. Instead of being a healer, he brings with him all the hurt, pain, and harm not only for Americans but for the world. Americans are crying out to...

BERLIN (AFP) - Barack Obama Thursday told a staggering crowd of 200,000 people in Berlin that Americans and Europeans must tear down walls between estranged allies, races and faiths, in a soaring challenge to a new political generation. ... humanity must build "a world that stands as one," before the biggest crowd of his campaign. "The greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another," said Obama, who has scorched through US politics at lightning speed to challenge Republican John McCain for the White House in November's election. --snip-- The crowd was put at...

It made no sense when Barack Obama left the country on his nine-day overseas tour for some of my fellow columnists to describe it as a high-risk venture. Foreign leaders, who can read the polls as well as anyone, would go out of their way not to embarrass a man who may, six months from now, be president of the United States. Obama prepares thoroughly for the big occasions. He is almost always well-briefed, and he was traveling in sharp company — with Sens. Jack Reed and Chuck Hagel — so you knew he would be thoroughly ready for these...

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - A Republican state senator from South Carolina is being criticized for a post on his blog that shows photos of Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden wearing similar clothing, along with a line that states the difference between the two is "a little B.S." The image was posted on Sen. Kevin Bryant's blog on Friday without an explanation from the politician. It appears to be a photo of a T-shirt, with images of bin Laden and Obama wearing turbans and the words "OBAMA" AND "OSAMA," with the "B" and "S" each highlighted in red. The American-Arab...

The New York Times' refusal to publish John McCain's rebuttal to Barack Obama's Iraq op-ed may be the most glaring example of liberal media bias this journalist has ever seen. But true proof of widespread media bias requires one to follow an old journalism maxim: Follow the money. Even the Associated Press — no bastion of conservatism — has considered, at least superficially, the media's favoritism for Barack Obama. It's time to revisit media bias. True to form, journalists are defending their bias by saying that one candidate, Obama, is more newsworthy than the other. In other words, there is...

"...This is pretty extraordinary. A candidate for the American Presidency is using flyers printed in German to turn people out for his campaign rally in Berlin on Thursday. This flyer can be found on a bilingual page on BarackObama.com advertising the event: The German flyers bear Obama’s campaign logo and say “Paid for by Obama for America"..."

RUSH: Grab audio sound bite number 26 first, Mike. I didn't know we'd get to this this early. I asked Cookie to put together a little montage here of all the stuttering around that Obama did in his press conference today and I want you to hear this because -- and we didn't repeat anything here. It goes 46 seconds, and we're doing this because we hear constantly, "What a great orator and a great communicator! Ohhhh, this man is smooth!" Just listen. This is a great illustration here of what happened when you take the teleprompter and your prepared...

<p>In a little intramural joshing in the magazine world, Vanity Fair today posted a send-up of the by-now infamous New Yorker cover meant to be a satire of attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism.</p> <p>The New Yorker's version showed Democrat Obama in Muslim garb fist-bumping his wife Michelle while the American flag burned in the fireplace under a portrait of Osama bin Laden.</p>

US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is saluted as he steps off an osprey upon arriving at Marka Airport in Amman, Jordan, July 22, 2008.

It's bad enough that Barack Obama's trip to the Middle East is getting an insane amount of MSM coverage (the three big network news anchors? Whoa!); now, NBC News believes it apt to compare Obama's sojourn to ... an actual military tour of duty.

NYT REJECTS MCCAIN'S EDITORIAL; SHOULD 'MIRROR' OBAMA Mon Jul 21 2008 12:00:25 ET An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES -- less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. The paper's decision to refuse McCain's direct rebuttal to Obama's 'My Plan for Iraq' has ignited explosive charges of media bias in top Republican circles. 'It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama's piece,' NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday...

The Obama campaign announced Monday that he will leave the hall of the Democratic National Convention in Denver and deliver a rock-star-style acceptance speech at Invesco Field at Mile High, quadrupling his live audience. The speech will be on the fourth and final day of the convention, Aug. 28. Adding to the historic resonance of the first African-American to be nominated for president, that’s also the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech.” The move means additional expense for the television networks, where executives are having a conference call Monday to discuss the expense and...

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama is the first nonwhite candidate in U.S. history to win a major-party presidential nomination. That fact alone makes him a tradition-breaking, political pioneer. Much less discussed is that Mr. Obama is an atypical, nontraditional African-American politician, too. I'm not talking about Mr. Obama's rhetorical abilities or personal charisma, which set him apart from the vast majority of American politicians of all races. I refer instead to five aspects of Mr. Obama's biography that make him unique even among America's black political class.