The Middle is Always Evil

Unfortunately, it was just an accident.

In a series of hang-up and follow-up calls that appears to have taken up much of the afternoon, Ros-Lehtinen first received a call on her cell phone, from a Chicago phone number, and was informed by the caller that Obama wished to speak with her. When a man sounding like Obama got on the line, Ros-Lehtinen cut him off, saying, “I’m sorry, but I think this is a joke from one of the South Florida radio stations known for these pranks.” She then hung up, according to a statement issued by her office.

A little while later, Chief of Staff-designate Rahm Emanuel called the congresswoman back.

“Ileana, I cannot believe that you hung up on the president-elect,” Emanuel said, according to the congresswoman’s office.

Her response?

“Ros-Lehtinen told Rahm that she didn’t believe the call was legitimate and hung up on Emanuel,” her statement said.

The quote to keep from this definitely comes from Rahm:

“I cannot believe that you hung up on the president-elect.”

What is the deal with these people? Seems that whenever I read something from the Obama trasition team, the words “president-elect” fly out of their mouths at least two or three times every minute. I want to grab these people by the shoulders and shake them. “President-elect” is not even an official title, its just something the media made up; its nowhere in the constitution. There is no such thing as an “Office of the President-Elect.” Be patient, you’ll get there soon enough.

…Anyway, just wait until Keith Olbermann gets his grubby little fingers on this story. I can hear it now: “This idiot Republican didn’t even know Obama won the election!”

All in all, Ros-Lehtinen shouldn’t feel too bad; if it had been me, I would’ve hung up on them intentionally.

Last night, Sarah Palin gave what was by all accounts an excellent speech.

This is a woman who, in the last week, has been the target of multiple, scurrilous attacks. The left wing press has made her into a pariah, a target upon which it can unload all of its hatred for conservatism. Much has been said, and it has been roundly speculated that McCain’s vetting process was anything but thorough. But between Palin and Barack Obama, can there be any question as to whose record has been more carefully examined by the media– by the American public?

Briefly consider the following facts, and ask yourself how many times you’ve heard about them in the mainstream press:

Obama, a black man, is a former member of a church that endorses Black Liberation Theology, a faith that believes that Christianity teaches us to free the “oppressed” through redistributing the wealth– the oppressed, in this case, being everyone who is black; this is a church that he attended for twenty years.

While visiting his father’s homeland, Kenya, in 2004, Obama met with and campaigned on behalf of fellow Lou tribesman and openly socialist Ralia Odinga, who is now the Prime Minister of Kenya.

Obama is a known associate of William Ayers, unrepentant domestic terrorist directly responsible for bombings on both the Capitol Building and the Pentagon; it is in that man’s home where Obama held his political coming-out party in 1995, when he first announced his candidacy for State Senator of Illinois.

Many are familiar with Barack Obama as a “community organizer,” but few seem to know what work he did specifically; Obama worked for the Developing Communities Project of the Calumet Community Religious Conference in Chicago, organizations based around the principles of the Communist writer, Saul Alinsky. Alinsky wrote a book called Rules for Radicals, which Obama says he read in college in his autobiography, The Audacity of Hope. Considered by many to be the Bible of bloodless socialist revolution, Rules for Radicals surely had an effect on the just-out-of-college Obama, considering that he went to work for organizations dedicated to the principles that were laid out in it. Alinsky’s son, L. David Alinsky, recently said to the Boston Globe:

“Barack Obama’s training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

“I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.”

According to Alinsky, Obama has learned his lesson well. What lesson, and from whom? The answer: how to affect “Change” as taught by an avowed Communist. This is how Obama earned his stripes– organizing.

When Barack Obama, the man who may quite possibly be the next Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America, is free from the intense scrutiny that has been given to Sarah Palin’s seventeen year-old daughter’s romantic life, something is not right.

This post is best begun with a YouTube clip (be patient its a bit slow to load). Watch:

I have to point out the stark difference between Barack Obama’s bumbling, backtracking and general verbosity and John McCain’s conciseness of response– this difference is due in large part to the fact that while John McCain has principles (even though I disagree with many of them), Barack Obama has none– at least no consistent ones. But this is to be expected. John McCain has led a life of public service, and Obama hasn’t even finished his first term in the Senate.

If you watched the clip, you’d know that the Junior Senator said that answering the question of when a baby gets human rights is “above his pay grade.” In other words, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know? A one-year old is a baby– does he have human rights? Of all the things that he could’ve said, this was the dumbest.

Strange words coming from the most liberal, pro-human rights candidate in history. Do you think the folks who presented him with the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award feel a bit… awkward?

But Obama has had plenty to say on the issue of Human Rights; here are some highlights.

At the Council on Foreign Relations in 2004:

In every region of the globe, our foreign policy should promote traditional American ideals: democracy and human rights

Yes, but how, under your leadership, can the US promote Human Rights when you don’t even know at what point people get them? Lets move on. At the ‘Citizen of the World’ speech in Berlin:

Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe?

I don’t know Barry, how can we, under your leadership, if the question of whether they deserve them at all is ‘above your pay grade’?

But Obama did not think that it was above his pay grade in 2001 as a state senator, when he voted against the infanticidal Born Alive Infants Bill, which would require that a child that has been born and has survived an abortion to receive the same care as a child that was born prematurely; Obama would rather the baby be left to die. Ironically, Obama made substantially less money then than he does now: maybe his standards went up?

Perhaps Senator Obama does not realize that as president of the United States, he’ll be making decisions that effect the lives of millions of people, including the unborn. If that question is above his pay grade, then –in all seriousness– maybe he should apply for another job. If I had been Rick Warren, I would have stopped him before he continued into his bloated elaboration, and I would have asked him, “Senator, if its above your pay grade to answer that question, do you believe your daughters have human rights?”

Last night, the two remaining contenders for the presidency took the stage together for the first time in the election cycle. The event, as you probably know, was held at Saddleback Chruch in Lake Forest, California. All in all, this event showed us two things:

• Any casual observer learned (and probably already knows) that Barack Obama cannot preform well off-the-cuff, and that John McCain can; this means the debates between these two are going to be interesting, and that this election may be a lot closer than many of us previously thought.
• We also learned that both candidates despise their own happiness– or at least consider it something to feel guilty for, to try to hide from the public.

Case in point: when asked what his greatest moral failure was, Senator Obama mumbled something about drug use, but then went on to say that it was a “fundamental selfishness”

I am proud to say that what Barack Obama lists as his greatest moral failure is the thing that I would consider to be the greatest moral achievement a person could aspire to: selfishness.

When Pastor Rick Warren asked McCain why he wanted to be president, he said that he wanted to,

“inspire a generation of Americans to serve a cause greater than their self interest.”

For all their disagreements (and agreements) on foreign and domestic policy, these two candidates sure do come down together on the issue of whether or not Americans have the right to live for their own sake: the answer, firmly, emphatically, is: no.

John McCain is not the first politician that has called for a generation to bow to a cause greater than themselves; watch the clip. Barack Obama is not the first politician to call for a country that– like in the clip above– “knows no class distinction;” This is not a Change I can believe in– in fact, its not a change at all. Its been done before.

You see, ladies and gentlemen, the actors change, but the course of history stays the same.

John McCain wants you to serve your country; Barack Obama wants you to serve, not just your country, but an amorphous “others.” But what these men forget– or rather, what they do not forget– but instead, what you forget is that where there is a servant, there is a master, ladies and gentlemen.

And don’t comment saying that its inappropriate for me to compare modern day political figures to Adolf Hitler, because it isn’t; watch the video.

Besides, that’s just what I do: I compare people to Hitler.

I was doing a bit of intellectual slumming earlier tonight, watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann; Rachel Maddow was guest hosting. Initially, I was just going to shut the garbage off, but she previewed a segment on Jerome Corsi’s new book The Obama Nation that would appear later in the program, and since I am currently reading it, I decided to stick around for a bit.

I should have left the room.

I sat uncomfortably through the bizarre first half of the program, which, amid numerous calls for a united Democratic Party, mostly consisted of impugning John McCain for his wealth—very strange.

Finally, the segment I had been waiting for started, featuring Eric Burns, who was presented as a non-partisan “media critic.” I was skeptical. The segment started with Maddow saying flatly the book is full of lies that have all been debunked. “OK,” I said to myself, “if that’s true, Burns should have some solid information for me, and I can throw my copy in the trash.”

What did Burns actually have to say to discredit the book? Here he is:

“Let me… You didn’t ask me this, but I just have to mention this to you… You know, one of the other things that gives a book cachè—a non fiction book—is foot notes; you look at the back of the book and you see all these footnotes, dozens of pages of them, and you say, ‘this guy did a lot of research.’ Well, before the show tonight, and I didn’t have time to do more… but, of the first eleven footnotes in the book, nine of them, in nine of them, Corsi quotes Corsi—in other words, he quotes previous writings of his own. It’s a dubious practice to say the least.”

Wow, I thought. If that’s true, Corsi really must be a truly dishonest journalist. I happened to have the book right beside me at the moment, so I checked out what Burns had said. It was true! Of the first eleven footnotes, nine of them are of Corsi’s own writings. Shocked, I checked the actual text to see what they referred to.

Lo and behold, the citations referred to the preface of the book, which is entitled Who I Am and Why I Wrote This Book. The very first clause of the preface is footnoted, and it is one of the footnotes in question. It reads as follows:

“In 2004, I coauthored Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry.”

The corresponding footnote reads:

John E. O’Neill and Jerome r. Corsi, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2004).

A dubious practice indeed. Burns made it seem as though Corsi was being dishonest in citing himself, when he clearly was just being thorough.

Eric Burns is a renowned “media critic” with considerable experience. If Corsi’s book is so full of lies, why does a professional such as he have to distort the facts about the book itself in order to prove his case?

During his world tour this week, Senator Barack Obama has been up to all sorts of trouble. Before heading to Germany to deliver a speech at Victory Square, he stopped at the Wailing Wall, where he took the opportunity to turn the holiest site in Jerusalem into a crass campaign stop, where he paused to look contemplative and to meet with rabbis– in front of a horde of media hounds which he brought along with him for the “event.” God was not amused.

Apparently, some of the local yokels in Jerusalem weren’t too happy either; one man shouted, “Obama, Jerusalem is not for sale!” as he passed by the myriad of campaign posters and literature that had been set up around the sacred West Wall prior to the Obamessiah’s momentous visit (source). It isn’t hard for me to believe that Obama would pull something like this– after all, in his eyes, God answers to him.

Later on, in Berlin, Senator Obama forgot (once again) that he isn’t JFK, as he delivered a speech in which he spoke of nothing but vague bromides and empty platitudes, to 200,000 screaming fans who have no idea who he is or what he stands for. Throughout the speech, Obama made veiled references to “tearing down walls,” invoking the memory of president Reagan’s memorable “tear down this wall” speech. If you’d like to hear the real thing, follow this link; if you’ve never heard it, its definitely worth a listen. You’ll get a chance to hear a real American president speak in Berlin.

When I was watching the video of Obama’s speech, I couldn’t help notice that throughout the oration, the junior Senator would occasionally pause and giggle a little. I can’t say I know what he was thinking in those moments, but I definitely have a guess: he was probably thinking how hilarious it was that he could get away with so much presumptuousness, having so little experience, and only his charm to back him up.

Barack Obama supporters are starting to creep me out in a serious way. You know the ones; chanting his name, crying during his speeches, fainting during his speeches, screaming “I love you!” as he passes.

Jesse Jackson, Jr. had this to say about Obama’s Nomination clinch:

“I cried all night. I’m going to be crying for the next four years,” he said. “What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation’s political history. … The event itself is so extraordinary that another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance.” (italics mine)

Michael Morse, a teen columnist for TeenLink, a newspaper aimed at young people in South Florida, went to an Obama rally and shared his experience:

The crowd immediately ceased the roar when Obama approached the mic, eager to hear whatever the man has to say… I can’t believe the man whose speeches I watch on YouTube everyday is so close to me. His speeches give an aura of immortality that belies the fact that he’s a living breathing human.

Its very upsetting to hear this kind of thing from someone my age; it bears a frightening similarity to Hitler’s level of popularity in Nazi Germany, where he was elevated to a sort of demi-god status. This is especially concerning, considering Obama’s support for compulsory national service for American high-school, middle-school and college-age students, which is (if you accept my earlier analogy) more than a little similar the imfamous Hitler Youth, Hitler’s version of compulsory national service.

Obama’s supporters seem to have forgotten that Barack Obama is just a man– and less than a man, hes just a politician. Worse still, he isn’t even a good politician. Its been said over and over again, but Obama is all fluff and no substance. One struggles to find anything material on his webpage, aside from one, large PDF ominously titled, “THE BLUEPRINT FOR CHANGE” (caps his, not mine).

Time columnist Joe Klein knows what I’m talking about:

Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.

Have you seen Obama’s website? Its creepy! On the main part of the site there’s a Kids for Obama page, where kids are given 10 ways in which they can get involved, encouraging children to host Obama-themed sleepovers and parties, to get a pen pal to talk to about Obama, among other things. If you sign up, you can set up your own little facebook right there on his homepage, give all your information, and join other Obamunists to celebrate his birthday, hold Obama-themed spa parties, book clubs, and any other kind of get-together you could think of– all in Obama’s holy name.

Worst of all, though, is Camp Obama, a four day training camp paid for by the Obama campaign, which teaches Obama supporters to learn more about how Barack Obama is a great and wise leader.

Hitler and Barack Obama have too much in common for me to not feel uneasy going into election season. Gun control, socialized healthcare, compulsory national service, an anti-market economic position, all on top of a creepy, cult-like leader worship by supporters. Thats five too many similarities.

This weekend, I picked up a copy of the most recent issue of Time magazine, expecting to learn what the real meaning of patriotism is. Inside, I found two, short essays; one by Barack Obama, one by John McCain, about what patriotism means to them. I was disappointed.

McCain’s essay was so abominable, I can’t even comment on it. Obama’s, on the other hand, was less despicable, but only because it (predictably) had less substance. I would like to take just a moment to talk about what it did have to say.

Obama focuses his essay around the Declaration of Independence, the greatest of our founding documents. He writes:

“We are a nation of strong and varied convictions and beliefs. We argue and debate our differences vigorously and often. But when all is said and done, we still come together as one people and pledge our allegiance not just to a place on a map or a certain leader but to the words my mother read to me years ago: ‘that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’”

This is all fine and good, and I cannot disagree with what is written there. But listen to Mr. Obama’s interpretation of those words:

For me, it is the love and defense of [the ideals put forth in the Declaration of Independence] that constitutes the true meaning of patriotism. They are ideals that do not belong to any particular party or group of people but call each of us to service and sacrifice for the sake of our common good.

He professes to love and defend each man’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and follows this up by saying that these ideals call us to sacrifice and serve the common good. Its almost as though he were reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand when he wrote this, and decided to contradict her (and himself). Rand wrote:

Observe the results of a society built on the principle of individualism. This, our country. The noblest country in the history of men. The country of greatest achievement, greatest prosperity, greatest freedom. This country was not based on selfless service, sacrifice, renunciation or any precept of altruism. It was based on a man’s right to the pursuit of happiness. His own happiness. Not anyone else’s. A private, personal, selfish motive. Look at the results.

How, Mr. Obama, can one pursue one’s own happiness sacrificially for the sake of others? Don’t these ideals directly contradict? Yes, yes they do.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness means that man has the right to live in a society that is free from force and coercion, that he may work in whatever pursuit he chooses, that he is entitled to the products of his work, and that he may use those products in whatever way his conscience may dictate, so long as he does not initiate the use of force against another. With an increase in taxes of $800 billion dollars, more regulations of business, a mandated “living wage,” and mandated healthcare benefits for employees, this is exactly the society that Barack Obama is working against, rather than ideals that he loves and defends.

Barack Obama has demonstrated that he has no understanding at all of our nation’s founding document, and he wants to be the president.