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Posted at 10:09pm on May 11, 2008 Getting just a little testy about West Virginia and Kentucky, are we?

Dueling. Banjos. Ye gods, and little fishes.

By Moe Lane

Those two particular states? Just not down with the narrative. You know, I'm reminded of a poem... one which it would seem that the progressive movement has finally decided to take to heart:

The Solution

After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

- Bertolt Brecht

Ironic, really: Appalachia has always been where the hard work's been. Coal, iron, steel... you can talk about the railroads, you can talk about the truckers and stevedores, you can talk about the textile mill workers and the garment makers; but this is where the labor movement - the real one, the true one, the one that existed before the 1960s mucked it up like everything else - built its spine. And if there really are two Americas, Appalachia's in the one that the progressives so often insist that they're worried about.

But I guess that we know how seriously to treat that pious assertion of theirs now, huh?

Moe Lane

Posted in 2008 | Appalachia | Kentucky | Obamafiles | West Virginia — Comments (4)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:50pm on May 11, 2008 It's On

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Morgan Tsvangirai will contest the runoff in Zimbabwe:

Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe's opposition leader, on Saturday sought to reclaim the initiative in his country's political crisis, saying he would return to his homeland in the next two days to contest a run-off election against President Robert Mugabe.

His pledge ended several weeks of public equivocation within the opposition Movement for Democratic Change over whether to take part in a second round in the face of a campaign of violent intimidation of MDC activists by Mr Mugabe's supporters.

Addressing a press conference in Pretoria, the capital of neighbouring South Africa, Mr Tsvangirai sounded a defiant note.

"I am ready, the people are ready," he said. "I intend to return as shortly as possible and intend to begin a victory tour."

Read on . . .

Posted in Begone I Say And Let Us Have Done With You | Foreign Affairs | Robert Mugabe | Zimbabwe — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:45pm on May 11, 2008 The Audacity Of Naïveté

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

I am sure that if someone has the temerity to point this out, then he/she will be accused of conducting a savage and vicious and horrible and not-very-nice-at-all "onslaught" on the likely Democratic nominee for President. And yet, I can't help but wonder why it is that more people aren't pointing out that Barack Obama's knowledge of the situation in Lebanon is--how to phrase this?--deficient.

Posted in Barack Obama | Don't Know Much About The Middle East | Foreign Affairs | Lebanon — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:42pm on May 11, 2008 It's Not Too Soon To Start Thinking Of 2012

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Via Patterico's Pontifications, we have this:

As Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., avoids any real campaigning in West Virginia, the former president of the United States is out there ginning up resentments.

Bill Clinton has the right to say whatever he wants, of course. But he's a smart man. Brilliant, even.

He can do the math. He must know that it's quite improbable that his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., will be the Democratic presidential nominee.

So what purpose does it serve for him to barnstorm a state like West Virginia and tell rural voters that Obama and his elitist political/media cabal allies are mocking Appalachia?

He's using the kind of language Democrats typically use against Republicans -- as in, stuff you say when you don't want voters to vote for the other guy under any circumstance.

This is tough stuff to walk back from.

As if the Clintons want to walk back from it. Now that they realize the nomination is likely not theirs, they will do whatever is necessary to ensure that Barack Obama will not win in the fall. Then Hillary Clinton will run again in 2012, gambling that by that time, the Democrats will have become so hungry for a Presidential win that they will forgive her and her husband for the efforts they are currently undertaking to destroy the Democratic Party.

And don't think that a few of the Clintons' supporters won't take what they are doing to heart and heed the implicit message not to vote for Barack Obama under any circumstances this fall.

Once again, the Clintons have ensured their place in history as the Patron Saints of Popcorn. The entertainment they provide political observers is nothing short of amazing.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | Kneel Before Zod | Let's You And Him Fight | Rooting For Injuries — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:39pm on May 11, 2008 How Cute

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

While the slightest Republican critique of a Democrat is decried as the greatest threat to democracy since I-don't-know-what, stuff like the following just gets laughed off:

Speaking before Clinton, Gov. Steve Beshear had some fighting words of his own. He tied the plight of the national Democrats to local ones, having reclaimed the office from a Republican incumbent last year. He said Democrats were "problem solvers."

"I can think of only one Republican that could be a problem solver," he added. "And that is Vice President Cheney, if he would just take George on a hunting trip."

I won't hold my breath waiting for denunciations of so despicable a comment. But of course, if a Republican said something like this about a pair of Democrats, you could just imagine the outrage and fury.

Posted in 2008 | It's Not Negative Campaigning When A Democrat Does It — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:35pm on May 11, 2008 The Same Old Song And Dance

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

By now, we should be used to stories like this one, in which mainstream media journalists warn us with ever so much tut-tutting that Republicans win Presidential elections by planning "onslaughts" against Democrats and "scaring" voters--thus fostering and furthering a narrative that states that Democratic victories are triumphs of Light and Truth while Republican victories are illegitimate and only come about because the sheeple are too terrified to vote the other way. Added to this narrative is an epic poem to the wonderfulness of Senator Obama. I am sure that Senator Obama is a very nice and charming guy, but good grief, no one is perfect and there are plenty of things that could be pointed about about Senator Obama's personality and character that would conflict with the hagiography that has been drawn up concerning him.

All of this is fatuous nonsense and I would call it various other things as well if this was not a family blog. Don't tell me that Democrats don't run fear campaigns; on a regular basis, the desperate need to reform entitlements like Social Security and Medicare is sidetracked because of Democratic fear-mongering that Republicans are out to take away the pensions of seniors or the health care of old people. Free trade in general and pacts like NAFTA in particular have been dazzlingly successful in bringing about greater prosperity, but you wouldn't know if from listening to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and others in the Democratic Party link the implementation of free trade policies to widespread job losses and economic downturns (with no evidence or substantiation whatsoever, mind you). The economy has thus far avoided contracting, unemployment is at a very low 5% with the employment picture actually picking up and 95% of homeowners are still able to pay their mortgages, but the facts are ignored you would think that we are in the throes of yet another Great Depression. The surge and the implementation of the counterinsurgency strategy have stabilized the situation in Iraq but we are regularly told that we are "losing" or have "lost" there. And on and on and on.

So you can understand the frustration of people like me who watch demagoguery get raised to an art form on the other side of the partisan divide while at the same time, the mainstream media piously tries to convince us that Democrats are fighting by Marquis of Queensbury rules while Republicans are punching below the belt. The facts don't support this at all and while I have come to recognize that this lack of evidence is never an obstacle for the "reality-based community" and its natural allies in the mainstream media, I nevertheless don't have to like being lied to. And neither do the rest of you.

Posted in 2008 | In The Tank for Barack Obama — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:25pm on May 11, 2008 The Government That Fails Them

By haystack

The problem with our Government is not Democrats or Republicans, per se, but with the collective need to do whatever it takes to get and keep power. This never-ending opportunistic positioning on issues, with little regard for any who might suffer from the effects, fails all of "we the People" and the Government should be ashamed of itself...though we have a better chance of finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow than ever seeing sincere humility and embarrassment come from any of our Political Heroes in Washington.

The political football that is Iraq is being as poorly handled as any issue in my memory, and our Warfighters and Veterans (those we should most concern ourselves with) are being failed on almost every level. I blame the President. I blame the Department of Defense. I blame Veterans Affairs. Most of all, I blame Congress. While most of these issues with Soldiers and Veterans lie squarely in the lap of the DoD and the VA, Congress owns the lion's share of blame for not fixing this mess because they hold the checkbook and they aren't doing what needs doing: writing the damn checks.

Let's start with the New York Times piece, The Suffering of Soldiers:

Several years into a pair of wars, the Department of Veterans Affairs is struggling to cope with a task for which it was tragically unready: the care of soldiers who left Afghanistan and Iraq with an extra burden of brain injury and psychic anguish. The last thing they need is the toxic blend of secrecy, arrogance and heedlessness that helped to send many of them into harm’s way.

Quick cheap shot at the President aside, the NYT's Editorial board is on to something. But, before we look at the rest of this "opinion" piece, let's pile on a few more things for emphasis.

More below the fold...

Posted in Congress | Iraq Funding | veterans — Comments (29) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:48pm on May 11, 2008 The Sunday Morning Talk Shows: The Review

To quote the late Rep. Bono (R-California): "And the beat goes on..."

By Mark Kilmer

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Preface:

On FNS, Obama campaign boss David Axelrod told host Chris Wallace that he was "encouraged" by the McCain campaign's proposal to hold joint town hall meetings this summer. Next up, Clinton mouthpiece Howard Wolfson argued that the race for the Dem nomination would not be over until someone garnered the support of 2209 delegates, the number required to nominate if both the Florida and the Michigan delegations are counted.

On TW, Harry Reid told host George Stephanopoulos that Americans have outgrown the 2nd Amendment as an issue in Presidential campaigns and that John McCain was a "flawed" candidate because of his temper. Asked for evidence of this temper, Reid said that "everybody knows" about it. Carly Fiorina, McCain advisor, was up next, and she made a point about "incentivizing" private companies to develop green technologies to combat the global warming threat. (She didn't use the term "global warming threat"; rather, I get a kick out of it.)

On MTP, Obama supporter Chris Dodd said that he was not upset that Hillary was still in the race; rather, he didn't want her trashing Barry. Hillary's campaign manager, Terence McAuliffe, threatened that if the Democrats nominate Obama, they'll lose both the Presidential election and the House of Representatives.

On FTN, host Bob Schieffer talked to John Edwards who said that he might eventually endorse. He added with a twinkle in his eye that John McCain seemed to be open about his proposal to create a cabinet-level Poverty Czar. (I hope not.) Next up, Terence McAuliffe answered questions about Hillary being the candidate of white people.

On LE, host Wolf Blitzer first talked to Obama, who opined that the American people want change and that he wanted to appoint Supreme Court justices who saw the court as a "refuge for justice." With two shrubberies so you get the two-level effect with a little path running down the middle. He next spoke to Roy Blunt and Chris Van Hollen, with Van Hollen spouting memorized notes he clearly did not understand.

The complete, show-by-show review is beneath the fold. …

Posted in Face the Nation | FOX News Sunday | Late Edition | Meet the Press | Special Features | This Week — Comments (24)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:25pm on May 11, 2008 More Lies And Distortion From The Obama Campaign

Chapter 4

By California Yankee

In yet another New York Times advocacy "article" for Obama, this one trying to explain away the fact that the terrorist group Hamas prefers Obama for president, Susan E. Rice, an Obama foreign policy adviser tells a whopper.

Incredibly, Rice had the audacity to claim that Obama isn't "willing to meet “unconditionally” with Mr. Ahmadinejad:

Mr. McCain and his surrogates have repeatedly stated that Mr. Obama would be willing to meet “unconditionally” with Mr. Ahmadinejad. But Dr. Rice said that this was not the case for Iran or any other so-called “rogue” state.

This is simply a bald face lie.

At the CNN/YouTube Democrat debate last July, Obama was asked if he would be willing to meet, without precondition, during the first year of his administration with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. Obama's answer was simple and direct, "I would." That's much different from the fabrication put forth by Rice.

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | McCain | Obama — Comments (7)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:08am on May 11, 2008 The Chicago Way

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

I love and adore my home city, but let us face it: Clean politics has never quite been a Chicago forte. That's why it is valuable to have John Kass ask how precisely it came to be that Barack Obama was seen as a cleaner, fresher product of Chicago politics when, in fact, he has done nothing to challenge the traditional nature of politics in my beloved hometown. The following passage is a key one:

As a candidate, Obama will do what he has to do to win. My argument is not with him--but with the national political media pack that refuses to look closely at what Chicago is. They're fixated on what it was, and they think it's clean now.

And they've spent years crafting, then cleaving to their eager and trembling Obama narrative, a tale of great yearning, almost mythic and ardently adolescent, a tale in which Obama is portrayed as a reformer, a dynamic change agent about to do away with the old thuggish politics.

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Chicago Politics — Comments (20)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:01am on May 11, 2008 "Nothing's Over Until We Decide It Is!"

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Refusing to go gently into that good night, Clinton supporter Jerome Armstrong stubbornly sticks to the message that Hillary Clinton can win the Democratic Presidential nomination. He points to West Virginia as a state that serves as a good indicator of what Armstrong believes to be Barack Obama's general election problems. Sensitive to charges that fretting about Obama's general election appeal in West Virginia could be tantamount to giving credence to the views of racists, Armstrong spends a goodly amount of time denouncing anyone who would dismiss as racists anti-Obama voters in West Virginia.

This isn't particularly interesting save for two observations:

1. The Clinton folks actually believe that their candidate might yet pull off some sort of miracle and capture the nomination.
   
2. Despite all of the talk that Obama's nomination is now inevitable and that with said inevitability will come newfound party unity, seething anger and resentment continues to define the mood of Clinton supporters. This is, perhaps, somewhat understandable; at the beginning of the nomination contest, I don't imagine that people like Armstrong really ever thought that Obama would be able to wrest the nomination away from Clinton when they consulted the stars. Nevertheless, one would have thought that the various pro-Clinton factions in the netroots would have begun to reconcile themselves to an Obama nomination and then line up to support him against John McCain and the Republicans.

Well, perhaps eventually, they will. But for now, there remains seething anger and resentment and since it is almost the middle of May already, one could easily see the resentment continuing through the summer--especially if Hillary Clinton decides to push through the rest of the primary schedule and goes to the Democratic National Convention without having fallen on her sword. Ted Kennedy kept on fighting up to and during the convention in New York in 1980 even though he had significantly less support then than Clinton does and will have during this electoral contest. I am sure that this information will not be lost on the Clintons, I would not be surprised if they continued to play every trick in the book--and some that may not be in the book--to try to win the nomination at the last moment during a knife fight in Denver and while I have not recently checked the stock prices for popcorn companies, I don't imagine that they have gone down all that much.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | Kneel Before Zod | Let's You And Him Fight | Rooting For Injuries — Comments (27)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 7:49pm on May 10, 2008 Not a racist? Prof. Alan Abramowitz thinks that makes you even more of one.

By Jeff Emanuel

Headshot of Prof. Alan Abramowitz, the most assuredly not racist professor of PoliSci at Emory University. Click the image above to send Prof. Abramowitz an email about his column in which he called "working class whites" who don't admit that blacks' problems are due solely to racism, racists.

Tomorrow's Washington Post (h/t Adam C) will feature an op-ed by Emory University PoliSci professor Alan Abramowitz ("In These Primary Numbers, Warnings for the Fall") that seeks to turn logic and rationality on its head for the purposes of calling White America racist.

"Voting patterns in Indiana and North Carolina show that resistance to a black candidate among some white Democrats remains a serious threat to his chances in November," Abramowitz writes. "Obama continues to have particular difficulty with one segment of the Democratic electorate: white working-class voters."

His explanation of this is long on unsubstantiated, not-rationally-supportable conjecture, and his conclusions lack anything remotely resembling evidence or facts. I suppose that's the price one pays for (or the benefit of) being a political "scientist": rather than having an academic specialty that prepares one to conduct research (and draw conclusions from that research) and analysis, all a political "scientist" like Abramowitz seems to feel the need to do is obtain numbers. His analysis and conclusions drawn from those numbers are all assumption, with no explanation added as to how those conclusions were reached, or why they should be accepted as correct.

The backdoor assault on working-class whites begins with Abramowitz's declaration that, despite a dearth of "overtly racist beliefs" (which he concedes "are much less prevalent among white Americans of all classes today"), "a more subtle form of prejudice, which social scientists sometimes call symbolic racism, is still out there -- especially among working-class whites."

"Symbolic racism," he explains, "means believing that African American poverty and other problems are largely the result of lack of ambition and effort, rather than white racism and discrimination."

Read on.

Posted in Academia | Barack Obama | Liberals | liberals in the mist | Racism — Comments (73) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 5:46pm on May 10, 2008 Hamas Hearts Obama

By Erick

First Hamas praised Barack Obama. Then Barack Obama's campaign said how flattered it was. Then Obama had to toss an advisor once it became public that the guy was working with Hamas.

In light of all the undesirables Obama is associated with and the undesirables who support Obama, I've added this one to the RedState Store.

Hey, it's truth in advertising. Deal with it.

[UPDATE:] By popular demand, you can get this one now too.

Posted in 2008 — Comments (5)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 3:35pm on May 10, 2008 A Proven, Conservative, Republican for Congress

By Hal Valeche for Congress

While RedState has endorsed Tom Rooney in FL-16, we do recognize there are other good candidates there. One of them is Hal Valeche, who asked if we'd allow him to put up a note from him. We're happy to do so. -- Erick

Dear Red State,

I am running for Congress in Florida's 16th District, and I would like to take this effort to tell you why I feel I am the best candidate to defeat liberal Tim Mahoney.

Upon graduation from Yale in 1969, despite a knee injury that kept me out of the draft, I volunteered for the military and was accepted into the Navy Flight training program where I finished first in my class. I flew 85 combat missions over North Vietnam in the early 1970's, and was awarded 6 air medals for my service.

After my military career, I went to the Wharton School where I received an MBA in finance, and then worked as a successful investment banker in New York City. I met my wife Stephanie in New York, and we have been happily married for 18 years and have been blessed with one daughter, Claire, who is 9. Stephanie and I moved to south Florida in the early 1990's, where I continued my business career as a merger specialist for a public company, and then as an entrepreneur.

Read on . . .

Posted in Archived — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:10pm on May 10, 2008 [Insert tired Godfather reference here.] [Video fixed.]

[Insert yet another one here.]

By Moe Lane

While in the process of reading this National Interest attempt to link American foreign policy positions to The Godfather (and this rather well done beatdown of said attempt, via Ace), I was reminded of the clip below (via Hot Air), which I should have mentioned at the time:

[Or, try this YouTube, which actually works.]

Do you know why we don't trust the Democrats on foreign policy? It's because too many of them applaud when national security ignoramuses make ignorant statements like that. Or, as see-dubya put it, very succinctly:

Yeah, Truman negotiated with his enemies; his emissaries were Fat Man and Little Boy.

Please, Democrats, nominate this man: I'm learning to enjoy watching people stop by three times a week to earnestly, and somewhat desperately, explain the latest damfool thing that came out of his mouth.

Posted in Barack Obama | GWOT | The Godfather | War — Comments (13)/ Email this page » / Read More »