What Is This World Coming To?

Investors Business Daily
It was only in May that Sen. Barack Obama cockily proclaimed he would debate Sen. John McCain “anywhere, anytime.” But in June, Obama said no to McCain’s challenge to have 10 one-on-one town hall meetings.

After what happened at Lake Forest, Calif.’s evangelical Saddleback megachurch Saturday evening, we may have found that debating is Obama’s Achilles’ heel. Whether or not you like the idea of such events being held in religious venues, the plain-and-simple method of questioning used by Saddleback pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren revealed fundamental differences between these two men.

“It’s one of those situations where the devil is in the details,” Obama said at one point. He could have been referring to his own oratorical shortcomings when a teleprompter is unavailable. We learned a lot more about the real Obama at Saddleback than we will next week as he delivers his acceptance speech in Denver before a massive stadium crowd.

The stark differences between the two came through the most on the question of whether there is evil in the world. Obama spoke of evil within America, “in parents who have viciously abused their children.” According to the Democrat, we can’t really erase evil in the world because “that is God’s task.” And we have to “have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil.”

For McCain, with a global war on terror raging, there was no equivocating: We must “defeat” evil. If al-Qaida’s placing of suicide vests on mentally-disabled women and then blowing them up by remote control in a Baghdad market isn’t evil, he asked: “You have to tell me what is.”

Asked to name figures he would rely on for advice, Obama gave the stock answer of family members. McCain pointed to Gen. David Petraeus, Iraq’s scourge of the surge; Democratic Rep. John Lewis, who “had his skull fractured” by white racists while protesting for civil rights in the 60s; plus Internet entrepreneur Meg Whitman, the innovative former CEO of eBay.

When Warren inquired into changes of mind on big issues, Obama fretted about welfare reform; McCain unashamedly said “drilling” — for reasons of national security and economic need.

On taxes, Obama waxed political: “What I’m trying to do is create a sense of balance and fairness in our tax code.” McCain showed an understanding of what drives a free economy: “I don’t want to take any money from the rich. I want everybody to get rich. I don’t believe in class warfare or redistribution of the wealth.”

To any honest observer, the differences between John McCain and Barack Obama have been evident all along. What we saw last weekend was Obama’s shallowness juxtaposed with McCain’s depth, the product of his extraordinary life experience.

It may not have been a debate, but it was one of the most lopsided political contests in memory. No wonder Obama wants to keep debate formats boring and predictable.

We were only a scream away from the possibility that Howard Dean could conceivably be President of the United States today, but that is the genius of the nomination process. It separates the liars from the lunatics, and in Dean’s case, exposes those who are both.

Dean made headlines by calling the Republican Party the “white” party:

“If you look at folks of color, even women, they’re more successful in the Democratic Party than they are in the white, uh, excuse me, in the Republican Party because we just give more opportunity to folks who are hardworking people who are immigrants and come from members of minority groups,” Dean said at one point.

It appears that the Democrats have finally found their campaign issue. It’s Republican racism. Obama has adopted a practice at every campaign stop of mentioning that the Republicans will use the fact Obama is black against him. It must be working — so far no Republican has dared to bring it up. Just the Democrats. Over and over.

In most elections, the Left prefers to divide according to class, rich vs. poor, bourgeoisie vs. proletariat; black vs white is something the Democrats have avoided since the 1950s, (when the Democrats were the party of Jim Crow and the Republicans the party of Lincoln). This new effort, running a black candidate and claiming to be the ‘party of color’ is still wobbly. So far, the only racist comments of any kind have emanated from within the ranks of the Democrats.

Before being elected head of the Democratic National Committee, Dean was governor of Vermont, a state that is 0.7% black. Who better to criticize the pot than the kettle? The DNC later issued a statement to the effect that Dean ‘misspoke’ after his comment drew the inevitable comparisons to the Dean scream the sunk his 2004 run for the White House.

As previously noted, Dean is both a lunatic and a liar. In 2005 he told a gathering of the San Francisco Democratic elite: “They all behave the same. They all look the same. It’s pretty much a white Christian party.”

Really.  Colin Powell was the first black secretary of state in history. Condi Rice the second black and first woman. The Department of Commerce is headed by Carlos Guitierrez. The Department of Labor by Elaine Chao.

There is former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former Labor Secretary Linda Chavez, Spencer Abraham, Mel Martinez, Alphonso Jackson . . . let’s not forget that Clarence Thomas was appointed to the Supreme Court by former President Bush.

If one browses the Democrat Party’s official website, one comes upon a page entitled, “Democratic Leaders.” They all look alike.

But race is this year’s campaign issue, so get used to it. The Democrats already used bringing down oil prices and improving the economy to get elected in 2006 — they’d rather we didn’t dwell on the outcome. If Hillary had gotten the nomination, it would have been women vs. men — that’s entertaining, but ultimately kind of messy. But race-baiting only works if somebody takes the bait.

Senator Barack Obama proclaimed last week that properly inflated tires and well-maintained engines “will produce all the savings we’ll need” - presumably as much as all the oil we could hope to obtain by all the drilling offshore, onshore, ANWR, and from shale.

“There are things that you can do individually though to save energy; making sure your tires are properly inflated, simple thing, but we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups,’ Obama said. “You could actually save just as much.”

The media, so mesmerized by Obama-speak that they didn’t notice how stupid that was until after they arrived home, and free from his charismatic spell, read what they had written in their notes. That’s right.

Could Obama’s national energy strategy really be mandatory tuneups and new tire gauges for all? Unsure if they had transcribed what they had heard, they put a lid on it and hoped Their Guy would come up with something a bit more, er, meaningful if they gave him time. Read the rest of this entry »

by Jerome Corsi - WND

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America is dead, says Robert A. Pastor, the American University professor who for more than a decade has been a major proponent of building a North American Community.

“The new president will probably discard the SPP,” Pastor wrote in an article titled “The Future of North America,” published in the current July/August issue of the Council on Foreign Relations magazine Foreign Affairs.

The SPP, which critics contend is a step toward a North American Union, is an agreement to increase cooperation on security and economic issues signed by the leaders of the U.S., Mexico and Canada in 2005. Despite having no authorization from Congress, the Bush administration launched extensive working-group activity to implement the agreement. The working groups – ranging from e-commerce, to aviation policy, to borders and immigration – have counterparts in Mexico and Canada.

Full Report

No, the media isn’t in the tank for Obama. That’s a myth made up by the vast, right-wing conspiracy now that they don’t have Hillary to kick around anymore. . . . This just in from the respected German news magazine, Bild

I Worked Out With Obama!” As thousands waited at the Sieges Saule monument in Berlin to hear Obama’s sensational speech, a BILD reporter met Barack all alone – in the gym! Here’s the incredible account of Judith Bonesky’s meeting…

Obama (with toned arms and a strong back) puts on his headphones for his iPod to listen to pop music. He hums quietly. Then he jumps on a fitness bike. He pushes three times on the pedals – but then can’t be bothered with it.

He goes and picks up a pair of 16 kilo weights and starts curling them with his left and right arms, 30 repetitions on each side. Then, amazingly, he picks up the 32 kilo weights! Very slowly he lifts them, first 10 curls with his right, then 10 with his left. He breathes deeply in and out and takes a sip of water from his 0,5 litre Evian bottle.

What an incredible account! OMG, OMG, OMG! What a man! Or is he just a man? Maybe he’s more than just a man. . . . From the London Times Online:

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organization with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.”

Noted this Associated Press dispatch about Obama’s Triumph of the Will in Berlin:

“In this city where John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton all made famous speeches, Obama will find himself stepping into perhaps another iconic moment Thursday as his superstar charisma meets German adoration live in shadows of the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate. He then travels to Paris and London where he can expect to be greeted with similar adulation.

“It’s not only Obama’s youth, eloquence and energy that have stolen hearts across the Atlantic. . . . Obama has raised expectations of a chance for the nation to redeem itself.”

Seig Heil! “A slam-dunk success,” in the words of Time’s Joe Klein; “a real grand slam,” as Salon Editor Joan Walsh put it on “Hardball.”

Obama “confidently walked onto a stage at the foot of Berlin’s Victory Column to intermittent chants of ‘Obama, Obama, Obama!’ Some in the crowd compared the address to the rock concerts and sports events that sometimes draw hundreds of thousands of people to the Tiergarten.”

The Chicago Tribune says the setting “evoked historic addresses by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan,” and “offered an opportunity” for Obama “to demonstrate his capacity to represent American ideals to the international public,” and USA Today says Obama “is betting he can win votes at home by proving he can win hearts abroad.”

All three networks led with the story last night. NBC Nightly News reported, “As one local journalist here put it, if the election were held today, Barack Obama could sail to victory by a margin of seventy percent or more as president of Germany, perhaps even all of Europe.”

The CBS Evening News reported, “They’ve been calling this the ‘Obama Show’ in Berlin. His appeal here, part exotic politician, part rock star. And a rock festival-sized crowd of more than 200,000 gathered to see him.” Obama “told them a lot of what they wanted to hear, that Europe and the US had drifted apart and that he would pull them back together.”

“The Obama phenomenon is so much the better story — an obscure African American senator from Illinois, little known to most Americans two years ago, emerges as very probably the next president,” says Terence Smith, a former correspondent for CBS and PBS.

“That is a fantastic story. Of course it’s going to get two or three times the space and attention and airtime of John McCain, who, while he may be a very appealing semi-maverick on his bus, is a much more conventional candidate.”

Last week, Obama penned an op-ed piece for the New York Times that outlined ‘his vision’ for America. It was free campaign advertising thinly disguised as ‘opinion’. Later that same week, John McCain penned a rebuttal to Obama’s piece and submitted it to the New York Times. The Times rejected it.

“We don’t use the Op-Ed page for people to respond directly to articles in the paper or other Op-Eds. That’s what letters to the editor are for,” said NYTimes editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal.

So write a letter to the editor, John! Who do you think you are? Barack Obama?

I got an email attached to an Omega Letter Daily Intelligence Digest regarding the growing mystery about Barack Obama’s birth certificate. The email highlighted the following quote from Politifact proclaiming, “Obama’s Birth Certificate: The Final Chapter.”

The Hawaii Department of Health receives about a dozen e-mail inquiries a day about Obama’s birth certificate, spokesman Okubo said.

“I guess the big issue that’s being raised is the lack of an embossed seal and a signature,” Okubo said, pointing out that in Hawaii, both those things are on the back of the document. “Because they scanned the front … you wouldn’t see those things.”

Okubo says she got a copy of her own birth certificate last year and it is identical to the Obama one we received.”

What was not included in the quote was this line:

“Unlike the other documents, Hawaii birth certificates aren’t public record. Only family members can request copies, so when the campaign declined to give us one, we were stalled.” Read the rest of this entry »

by Marie Jon’

While some might be undecided on who to vote for this coming Election Day, for others it’s a no-brainer. Although the news media would like us to believe otherwise, there is still an enormous political gap between the Left and the Right.

“Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins” — William Pitt

The American people must wake up to the the facts. The Democratic Party has moved well to the left of liberalism, and Barack Obama is — by his record — as far left as one can get in the party.

Sorry America, but we can’t afford an Obama presidency. It would be political and social mayhem having a Democrat House, Senate, Supreme Court and Executive branch. For many decades the United States would be held under the sway of a very unjust, destructive force. Our citizenry would have to deal with the extreme rulings of a Supreme Court gone wild. There would be no more checks and balances.

Liberal judges would change our country’s disposition. Even if Americans were roused from their lethargy and subsequently voted in a Republican president and Congress, it would be too late. They would not be able to neutralize the highest court of the land.

Once a liberal Supreme Court is installed, all traditional values will be null and void. Everything will change to satisfy the progressives’ mind-set. Nothing would be sacrosanct, from the war against terror to the right to bear arms, late-term abortion and the varied definitions of marriage.

America needs a Republican president who will appoint judges to the Supreme Court without a litmus test. Only then can liberalism’s hold of our federal benches be defeated. Our country might then be spared from the dictates of a black-robed oligarchy.

Senator John McCain is not trying to run as a Ronald Reagan conservative. He is a maverick. Yet, even his worst critics understand that our nation would be much better off in the hands of President John McCain than President Barack Obama. Read the rest of this entry »

Worldnetdaily’s David Kupelian published a column in which he outlined the three best reasons to elect John McCain over Barack Obama. Considering that his boss, Joseph Farah, has gone on record saying he intends to cast a protest vote for a third party candidate, Kupelian’s arguments put him on the opposite side.

Reason One: End the tyranny of the Supreme Court

Reason Two: Win the war against radical Islam

Reason Three: A president needs a strong character

A protest vote for a third candidate is therefore a partisan decision in which what is best for the country is secondary to what is best for the party. Do you want someone in the White House who opposes abortion, or someone who favors it? Voting for someone who has no chance of winning accomplishes zero for the country — even if it makes you feel good.

It provides yet another definition of 21st century patriotism: “The country may collapse, but I feel good about it. Serves them right for not agreeing with me.” I like the old definition better: “My country, right or wrong.”

Call me a blind loyalist, if you like. I no longer know what ‘patriot’ means, anyway.

According to Barack Obama’s “Fight the Smears” website, the rumors that suggest he isn’t a natural born citizen are an easily provable lie. According to his website,

Truth:

Senator Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, after it became a state on August 21st, 1959. Obama became a citizen at birth under the first section of the 14th Amendment

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Although it ought to be an easily provable lie, it doesn’t seem to be that easy for Obama. On his website, he posts what is purported to be a copy of his official State of Hawaii birth certificate, which copy, as we’ve noted elsewhere, it is clearly faked.

There’s no embossed state seal. And most interesting of all, there are no fold marks. The State of Hawaii sends official copies folded to fit in a standard business envelope. Once a document has been folded, any scanned image will show those folds.

The only way to get rid of them is to Photoshop them out — and the certificate clearly says in block letters at the bottom: “ANY ALTERATIONS INVALIDATE THIS CERTIFICATE.”

Ditto for the embossed state seal. Embossing imprints on both sides of the document. The scanner would pick up embossing with even more resolution than a person can with the naked eye. But Obama’s certificate as posted on his website, has none of these identifying characteristics.

But, for the third time, it is an easily provable lie. Obama’s campaign need do nothing more than authorize the State of Hawaii to release an official, certified copy to the media for examination. Instead, his campaign published what appears to be a laughably obvious forgery. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it is completely on the level and I’m out of my head.

It wouldn’t be hard to make me look foolish. All Obama has to do is authorize the release of a fresh, certified copy of his birth certificate directly to the media.

When I applied for my passport, I was required to produce my birth certificate. I also had to produce one to get my driver’s license.

No doubt Barack Obama has a driver’s license. And since he is planning to visit the Middle East something this summer, no doubt he also has a passport. So, presumably, he had to produce a birth certificate when he applied for his.

So, I don’t really believe that Obama is not a natural-born citizen. I believe he was born in Hawaii in 1961, just as the alleged “birth certificate” claims he was. But that doesn’t mean that his actual birth certificate says what the web copy says.

If, for example, the original lists his father’s race as “Arab” instead of “African” then, although that fact , by itself, is largely irrelevant, it still means the certificate posted on his website is a forgery. A forgery the candidate would have to know was forged. After all, he has presumably seen the original.

This is too strange by half.  If Obama has nothing to hide, then why create the appearance that he does?  And if he does have something to hide, surely he doesn’t believe he can keep it a secret until November?

Calling it a ‘right-wing smear’ doesn’t cut it.  It’s only a ’smear’ if it’s not true.

By Isi Leibler

Sen. Barack Obama is possibly the most charismatic US presidential candidate since John Kennedy. He is young, charming, passionate and extremely bright. He has overcome the barrier of racial bias and defeated a powerful adversary considered unbeatable. He is adored by many idealistic young people, who see in him a hope for a brighter future. Read the rest of this entry »