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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (25550)	2/13/2007 6:18:07 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 35834

Obama's "Restructuring" By Michael Goldfarb WorldwideStandard.com Barack Obama has already stepped back from remarks he made the other day claiming that we "have seen over three thousand lives of the bravest young Americans wasted." Here's the video clip, which was widely circulated by conservative blogs yesterday. weeklystandard.com The New York Times reports that Obama has "restructure[d]" his remarks--he only meant "that their service hasn’t been honored because our civilian strategy has not honored their courage and bravery, and we have put them in a situation in which it is hard for them to succeed.” Hard to take that seriously when none of the Democratic candidates has proposed any type of strategy that would give the troops a better chance at success. Allahpundit does an excellent job of explaining the conundrum facing the Democrats: Of course he thinks their lives were wasted. Everyone on the anti-war side does; that’s one of the reasons they want to end the war. But they can’t say that because it dishonors the dead so they’re forced into rhetorical pretzels like the one Pelosi tied herself into a few weeks ago with Diane Sawyer. Army Lawyer summed up her position at the time thusly: “They didn’t die for nothing, they died for something stupid.” http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/02/obamas_restructuring.asp nytimes.com hotair.com

To: Sully- who wrote (25550)	2/15/2007 12:32:13 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Obama: Wasting His Own Breath By Michelle Malkin Townhall.com Columnist Wednesday, February 14, 2007 I have good news for everyone offended by the description of Sen. Barack Obama as "articulate." He has quickly shed any claim to that label. Indeed, Obama's remarks this week about American troops killed in Iraq were a bumbling, incoherent mess. You may now refer to him officially as the Inarticulate Barack Obama. (As for judging his current level of cleanliness and brightness, you know that's Joe Biden's milieu.) At one of his opening presidential campaign events on the Iowa State University campus this weekend, Obama pandered energetically to the anti-war crowd. With his smooth voice rising and thousands of fans goading him on, he proclaimed: "We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and to which we have now spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted." Yes, "wasted." Squandered. Pointless. Down the drain. Meaningless. Video footage of the speech shows Sen. Obama delivering his scripted words carefully and confidently. No umms or ahhs or pauses as he argued that each and every member of the military who volunteered to serve and died in Iraq "wasted" his/her life. This revealing slip of Obama's tongue and mind -- or "Obamanation," as conservative blogger Scott Johnson at Power Line (powerlineblog.com) calls it -- did not play well among countless service members and their families who actually support their mission and sacrifice. Who repeatedly volunteer to go back even after the war has taken a turn for the worse. Who believe their work enhances their children's and our children's safety. Who risk their lives purposefully and of their own free will. Despite every best effort of the Democrats, media and anti-war movement to infantilize or demonize them, their voices are heard. Listen to the father of Marine Sgt. Joshua J. Frazier, who was killed by a sniper in Iraq last week on his third tour of duty: "He believed in the United States and believed what he was doing was right. He gave his life for what he thought was the right thing to do," Rick Frazier said. Remember the words of Marine Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr, who died in a 2005 firefight in Ramadi: "Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq . . . I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark." Several days after taking flak for his disparaging comments dishonoring such heroism, Obama blubbered about what he really meant. ''I was actually upset with myself when I said that, because I never use that term,'' he told the Des Moines Register. Well, then what dastardly saboteur slipped it into his well-rehearsed stump speech? What supernatural force produced the guttural noise that glided effortlessly from his voicebox through his lips and pronounced the term "wasted"? "What I would say -- and meant to say -- is that their service hasn't been honored," Obama told The New York Times and other reporters in Nashua, N.H., "because our civilian strategy has not honored their courage and bravery, and we have put them in a situation in which it is hard for them to succeed." As opposed to pulling out precipitously? Obama offered the standard "sorry-if-I-offended-anyone" disclaimer: " . . . I would absolutely apologize if any of them felt that in some ways it had diminished the enormous courage and sacrifice that they'd shown. You know, and if you look at all the other speeches that I've made, that is always the starting point in my view of this war.'' Except on the first day of the biggest campaign of his life, that wasn't the starting point. The starting point of his discussion on the troops in Iraq began with the letter "w" and ended with "-asted." "Even as I said it," Obama claims, "I realized I had misspoken." So what, one wonders, prevented him from immediately correcting himself there on stage, as thousands cheered the term he now says he immediately regretted? Words fail. Michelle Malkin makes news and waves with a unique combination of investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild . townhall.com

To: Sully- who wrote (25550)	2/15/2007 12:53:17 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 35834

Jonathan Livingston Obama By Ann Coulter Townhall.com Columnist Wednesday, February 14, 2007 I've caught Obama fever! Obamamania, Obamarama, Obama, Obama, Obama. (I just pray to God this is clean, renewable electricity I'm feeling.) Only white guilt could explain the insanely hyperbolic descriptions of Obama's "eloquence." His speeches are a run-on string of embarrassing, sophomoric Hallmark bromides. In announcing his candidacy last week, Obama confirmed that he believes in "the basic decency of the American people." And let the chips fall where they may! Obama forthrightly decried "a smallness of our politics" -- deftly slipping a sword into the sides of the smallness-in-politics advocates. (To his credit, he somehow avoided saying, "My fellow Americans, size does matter.") He took a strong stand against the anti-hope crowd, saying: "There are those who don't believe in talking about hope." Take that, Hillary! Most weirdly, he said: "I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness in this -- a certain audacity -- to this announcement." What is so audacious about announcing that you're running for president? Any idiot can run for president. Dennis Kucinich is running for president. Until he was imprisoned, Lyndon LaRouche used to run for president constantly. John Kerry ran for president. Today, all you have to do is suggest a date by which U.S. forces in Iraq should surrender, and you're officially a Democratic candidate for president. Obama made his announcement surrounded by hundreds of adoring Democratic voters. And those were just the reporters. There were about 400 more reporters at Obama's announcement than Mitt Romney's, who, by the way, is more likely to be sworn in as our next president than B. Hussein Obama. Obama has locked up the Hollywood money. Even Miss America has endorsed Obama. (John "Two Americas" Edwards is still hoping for the other Miss America to endorse him.) But Obama tells us he's brave for announcing that he's running for president. And if life gives you lemons, make lemonade! I don't want to say that Obama didn't say anything in his announcement, but afterward, even Jesse Jackson was asking, "What did he say?" There was one refreshing aspect to Obama's announcement: It was nice to see a man call a press conference this week to announce something other than he was the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby. B. Hussein Obama's announcement also included this gem: "I know that I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change." As long as Obama insists on using Hallmark card greetings in his speeches, he could at least get Jesse Jackson to help him with the rhyming. If Obama's biggest asset is his inexperience, then if by the slightest chance he were elected and were to run for a second term, he will have to claim he didn't learn anything the first four years. There was also this inspirational nugget: "Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what's needed to be done. Today we are called once more, and it is time for our generation to answer that call." Is this guy running for president or trying to get people to switch to a new long-distance provider? He said that "we learned to disagree without being disagreeable." (There goes Howard Dean's endorsement.) This was an improvement on the first draft, which read, "It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice." This guy's like the ANWR of trite political aphorisms. There's no telling exactly how many he's sitting on, but it could be in the billions. Obama's famed eloquence reminds me of a book of platitudes I read about once called "Life Lessons." The book contained such inspiring thoughts as: "When was the last time you really looked at the sea? Or smelled the morning? Touched a baby's hair? Really tasted and enjoyed food? Walked barefoot in the grass? Looked in the blue sky?" (When was the last time you fantasized about dismembering the authors of a book of platitudes?) I can't wait for Obama's inaugural address when he reveals that he loves long walks in the rain, sunsets, and fresh-baked cookies shaped like puppies. The guy I feel sorry for is Harold Ford. The former representative from Tennessee is also black, a Democrat, about the same age as Obama, and is every bit as attractive. The difference is, when he talks, you don't fantasize about plunging knitting needles into your ears to stop the gusher of meaningless platitudes. Ford ran as a Democrat in Republican Tennessee and almost won -- and the press didn't knock out his opponent for him by unsealing sealed divorce records, as it did for B. Hussein Obama. Yet no one ever talks about Ford as the second coming of Cary Grant and Albert Einstein. Maybe liberals aren't secret racists expunging vast stores of white guilt by hyperventilating over B. Hussein Obama. Maybe they're just running out of greeting card inscriptions. Ann Coulter is the legal correspondent for Human Events and author of Godless: The Church of Liberalism . townhall.com