Obama Speech - Teleprompter Goes Out
youtube.com
How many? youtube.com
Is he serious?
youtube.com
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Liberal Outrage: A Pro-McCain March In Manhattan
youtube.com
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Missouri Prosecutors, Sheriffs 'Target Anyone Who Lies' About Barack Obama
National Review ^ | 9/26/2008 | Jim Geraghy campaignspot.nationalreview.com
St. Louis television station reports — their words — "The Barack Obama campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading TV ad during the presidential campaign."Prosecutors and sheriffs from across Missouri are joining "The Barack Obama Truth Squad."They mention Jennifer Joyce, St. Louis Circuit Attorney and Bob McCullough, prosecutor for St. Louis County in Missouri.The reporter says, "They will be reminding voters that Barack Obama is a Christian who wants to cut taxes for anyone making less than $250,000 a year."
While the report never quite comes out and says that anyone running an ad saying those things would be subject to prosecution, that certainly is the message implied. Not all things that are wrong are illegal. Saying that Barack Obama is a Muslim is wrong, but it does not warrant prosecution by the state.I would cite Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, but an angry mob just took my copy to their book-burning....
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Gov. Blunt Statement on Obama Campaign’s Abusive Use of Missouri Law Enforcement
JEFFERSON CITY - Gov. Matt Blunt today issued the following statement on news reports that have exposed plans by U.S. Senator Barack Obama to use Missouri law enforcement to threaten and intimidate his critics.
“St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.
“What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.
“This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson’s thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights. The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by this anti-civil rights, to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism on television, radio, the Internet, blogs, e-mail and daily conversation about the election.
“Barack Obama needs to grow up. Leftist blogs and others in the press constantly say false things about me and my family. Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them. Enlisting Missouri law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent of the Sedition Acts - not a free society.”
governor.mo.gov.
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Obama state senate grant probed
By Chris Fusco and Dave McKinney
Chicago Sun-Times reporters A $100,000 state grant for a botanic garden in Englewood that then-state Sen. Barack Obama awarded in 2001 to a group headed by a onetime campaign volunteer is now under investigation by the Illinois attorney general amid new questions, prompted by Chicago Sun-Times reports, about whether the money might have been misspent.The garden was never built. And now state records obtained by the Sun-Times show $65,000 of the grant money went to the wife of Kenny B. Smith, the Obama 2000 congressional campaign volunteer who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association, which was in charge of the project for the blighted South Side neighborhood. Smith wrote another $20,000 in grant-related checks to K.D. Contractors, a construction company that his wife, Karen D. Smith, created five months after work on the garden was supposed to have begun, records show. K.D. is no longer in business. Attorney General Lisa Madigan -- a Democrat who is supporting Obama's presidential bid -- is investigating "whether this charitable organization properly used its charitable assets, including the state funds it received," Cara Smith, Madigan's deputy chief of staff, said Wednesday. In addition to the 2001 grant that Obama directed to the housing association as a "member initiative," the not-for-profit group got a separate $20,000 state grant in 2006. Madigan's office has notified Obama's presidential campaign of the probe, which was launched this week. But Obama's actions in awarding the money are not a focus of the investigation, Smith said. Questions about the grant, though, come as spending on local pet projects has become an issue in Obama's campaign against John McCain. Obama and Kenny Smith announced the "Englewood Botanic Garden Project" at a January 2000 news conference at Englewood High School. Obama was in the midst of a failed bid to oust South Side Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush for a seat in Congress. The garden -- planned near and under L tracks between 59th Place and 62nd Place -- fell outside of Obama's Illinois Senate district but within the congressional district's borders. Obama vowed to "work tirelessly" to raise $1.1 million to help Smith's organization turn the City of Chicago-owned lot into an oasis of trees and paths. But Obama lost the congressional race, no more money was raised, and today the garden site is a mess of weeds, chunks of concrete and garbage. The only noticeable improvement is a gazebo. In a previous interview, Smith said the state grant money was legitimately spent, mostly on underground site preparation. But no one ever took out construction permits required for such work, city records show. And a contractor who Smith said did most of the work told a reporter all he did was cut down trees and grade the site with a Bobcat. Citing the garden's failure to take root, NeighborSpace -- an umbrella group for dozens of community gardens citywide -- moved Sept. 9 to return the site to the city. Its action followed a July 11 Sun-Times report on the grant. Obama spokesman Michael Ortiz said Wednesday the senator's staff in Washington will monitor the Madigan probe and an additional review under way by Gov. Blagojevich's administration to make sure "the taxpayer funds allocated for the construction of the garden are recuperated from CBHA if the agencies determine that the funds were not properly spent." Obama's goal is to ensure the site "be used in a way that benefits the community and that any taxpayer dollars allocated are spent wisely," Ortiz said. The relationship between Smith and Obama dates to at least 1997, when Obama wrote a letter that Smith used to help the housing association win city funding for an affordable-housing development near the garden site. Plans called for more than 50 homes; a dozen ultimately were built.
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Obama’s lawyer threatens TV stations that run NRA ad
hotair.com ^ | 25 September, 2008 hotair.com
I’m surprised. Usually in cases like this, Obama has his cult followers inundate the offending station with irate, semi-coherent phone calls, like they did recently to try to knock hatemongering smear merchant David Freddoso off the air for the crime of committing journalism critical of The One. For whatever reason they’ve decided that won’t work here, so they’re opting for Plan B. Straight out of the Democratic handbook Harry Reid used to threaten ABC’s broadcast license for showing the “Path to 9/11,” here’s Obama lawyer Robert Bauer warning station managers not to air the NRA’s new anti-Obama “Hunter” ad if they want to stay in the FCC’s good graces. Follow the link and read his letter and the NRA’s rebuttal for point/counterpoint. Is the NRA attributing gun policy positions to Obama which he no longer holds? Hard to say. Is there such a thing as a consistent Obama gun position? He flip-flopped opportunistically on the D.C. gun ban and was caught lying a few months ago about whether he’d ever seen that 1996 questionnaire in which his campaign claimed he supported a total ban on guns. Read Dave Kopel’s painstaking response to FactCheck’s piece on the NRA ads for more cases of obfuscation, noting particularly Obama’s habit of speaking of gun regulations not in terms of what he does or doesn’t support but what is and isn’t “politically practicable” at a given moment. No wonder Guy Benson’s worried about him bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. What happens when a deep blue Congress make that “politically practicable” too?
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Biden, Obama helped keep 'Bridge to Nowhere' alive
Both voted for final transportation bill that included the $223 million bridge earmark By Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston
CNN Special Investigations Unit
DEWEY BEACH, Delaware (CNN) -- Although Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden routinely mocks his Republican counterpart, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, for her onetime support of the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," Biden and his running mate voted to keep the project alive twice. Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden campaigns in Washington on Tuesday. Both Biden and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama voted to kill a Senate amendment that would have diverted federal funding for the bridge to repair a Louisiana span badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina, Senate records show. And both voted for the final transportation bill that included the $223 million earmark for the Alaska project.An amendment offered by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, would have stripped the money appropriated to connect the Alaskan coastal city of Ketchikan to its airport on sparsely populated Gravina Island and diverted the money to Louisiana. But Biden andObama and 80 of their colleagues rejected the measure, an amendment to a massive 2005 transportation bill that funded thousands of projects across the country. Watch how Biden has blasted Palin »"That is probably the most disturbing element of this and the campaigning on the Bridge to Nowhere," said Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation, a taxpayer watchdog group. "Because, yes, they had a chance to vote specifically against the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska to redirect the money to people, to bridges and infrastructure damaged by Hurricane Katrina going in to New Orleans, and they chose not to."Don't MissThe final version passed the Senate 93-1. Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who has made his opposition to congressional "pork-barrel" spending a cornerstone of his campaign, did not vote on either the Coburn amendment or the final bill. Palin, whom McCain chose as his running mate in August, has regaled crowds at the Republican convention and on the campaign trail with her declaration of "Thanks, but no thanks" for the bridge. But her conversion came after she became Alaska's governor in 2006 and after the bridge became a national symbol of congressional waste. The record shows that she supported the bridge as a gubernatorial candidate, and Democrats have seized on the flip-flop, perhaps no one with as much relish as Biden. "I got also a bridge I got to sell you here, and guess what, it's in Alaska, and it goes nowhere," Biden mocked Palin on the campaign trail last week in Maumee, Ohio. And in Canton, Ohio, he tied it to McCain. "If you look at it John McCain's answers for the economy, and we're in such desperate shape, is the ultimate bridge to nowhere. It's nowhere," Biden said. "It takes you nowhere." But while the applause line appealed to the Democratic faithful, it could come back to bite the Delaware senator. This year, Delaware has requested 116 congressional earmarks through Biden, its longtime senator, at a cost to taxpayers of $342 million. In an appearance on CNN's "American Morning" with anchor John Roberts, Biden said that he had been open about those requests and that they all can be justified. "Everyone has seen them, and we have no Lawrence Welk Museums and have no bridges to nowhere in Delaware. It's all straight up," Biden said. Among his requests: $1 million for renovation of an opera house in Wilmington, another million for the construction of a children's museum and thousands of dollars for a water park renovation in Lewes. "I think opera patrons generally can afford to -- you can raise money for an opera house; you can refurbish things a lot of different ways," Allison said. "To have federal taxpaying dollars -- which is coming from people all over the country; low-income, middle-income people, as well as the wealthy -- to go to pay for the renovation of something that is really a luxury for Wilmington ... There are far more vital projects that anyone could think of that needs money. You got health care. You got education. You got all other types of things. Instead, we are redirecting money to refurbish an opera house in Wilmington or to build a children's museum." And Biden's request includes a bridge that even the head of the Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce says is not crucial at this juncture. The Indian River Inlet Bridge is a vital link between two popular beachfront towns: Dewey and Bethany. Without it, the estimated 30,000 summer visitors would have to travel an additional 35 minutes to get to the towns. "We need a new bridge, and we are fortunate to be at a place where it is finally going to happen," said Carol Everhart, the chief of the Chamber of Commerce. The existing bridge has some erosion problems, and if it ever collapsed, Everhart said, it would cause an economic disaster in the community. But it's safe for now. "The bridge, as it is, is perfectly safe," she said. Still, Biden asked for $13 million to help shore up the existing bridge and begin construction of a new one. And that's what troubles the Sunlight Foundation's Allison. "This bridge is not in any danger of collapse, and essentially what Sen. Biden is doing is saying, 'My state bridge gets the priority dollar even though it is not a priority project,' " Allison said. He said the Department of Transportation, rather than U.S. senators, should be deciding which bridges get priority funding in the country. That way, the bridges in the U.S. that need immediate repair would be first in line for the dollars needed to do the work. As he embarked on his presidential bid in 2007, Obama said he would no longer ask for earmark projects. McCain, who has been a longtime critic of the process, does not seek any for his home state of Arizona. CNN asked Biden's campaign whether it could ask the senator about his earmark requests and his votes on the Bridge to Nowhere.
In response, a staffer e-mailed, "You've interviewed Gov. Palin re: her completely made up position on the Bridge to Nowhere right?"
cnn.com
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Obama: "I want you to argue with them and get in their face"
humanevents.com
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Compare questions asked to Obama to those asked of PalinThese are my favorite questions to Obama, from his friend Charlie:
GIBSON: Senator, I’m curious about your feelings last night. It was an historic moment. Has it sunk in yet?
GIBSON: Public moments are not your own. There’s a million people pulling you in a million different directions, but when everybody clears out, the staff is gone, you’re in your hotel room at night and you’re alone — do you say to yourself: “Son of a gun, I’ve done this?”
GIBSON: (inaudible) when you announced, did you truly, in your gut, think that a black man could win the nomination of a major party to be president of the United States?
GIBSON: You don’t get much time to enjoy this before people immediately start talking about the vice presidency. On what criteria and what timetable will you choose a vice president?Full transcript of Gibson softball questions to Obama here —> abcnews.go.com
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AP poll: Obama losing on experience to....Sarah Palin
hotair ^ | 9/12/2008 | hotair hotair.com 47 percent say Obama lacks the proper experience — an even worse reading than the 36 percent who had the same criticism about McCain running mate Sarah Palin, serving her second year as Alaska governor after being a small-town mayor.
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Obama States He "would not be comfortable" Running for National Office in 2008 (not experienced enough)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BnLozS-TnM&feature=related |
