QC Examiner

I’m a big fan of Scott Reeder. He has done a lot of good work for SNG and when he does, I always shout loud hosannahs.

Unfortunately, like so many journalists, Reeder has fallen into the Obama Vortex.

Today, Reeder has a column in the Dispatch attempting to exonerate Obama for his 20 year connection with Rev. Wright.

It doesn’t help that Reeder choses to compare (favorably) Obama to Jimmy Carter, but Reeder’s logic fails with his final quote: “It says much about both men (Carter and Obama)—choosing to live in an environment where intolerance is tolerated by also choosing to rise above it.

But Obama did not “rise above” the intolerance and hate that Rev. Wright preached, he was part of it for 20 years, and more than likely used it to his political advantage.

If Obama was truly to “rise above” Wright’s intolerance, he would have worked to become a race ”healer” within his own church.  How can we believe that Obama will bring us together, bridge racial divides, etc. when he can’t or won’t even confront his own church for their racism?

It seems the Democrat race for POTUS is turning into a liars contest.

After Hillary was busted on her Excellent Tuzla Adventure, she fired back with this little gem listing Obama’s Top Ten “Exaggerations & Misstatements”.

You can go to the link to see these “exaggerations” for yourself, but here’s the Cliff Notes version:

1. Obama claims he was a law “professor” at the University of Chicago, but the truth is that he was only a “lecturer”.

2. Obama claimed credit for nuclear leak legislation that never passed. Well, no politician has ever puffed his record like THIS before! *snork*

3. Obama said he was conceived because of Selma, when in fact he was born four years BEFORE the civil rights confrontation at Selma.

4. Obama took too much credit for his community organization efforts. See #2 above.

5. Obama’s claim that nobody had indications Rezko was engaging in wrongdoing “strains credulity”. I might agree with this one. If Obama is this clueless about Chicago politics, I doubt he will be able to deal with all the bad actors on the international stage. On the other hand, he did get that sweet deal from Rezko on land adjacent to his ritzy new house, so what would any good Illinois politician say about his benefactor—-it’s the Chicago Way!

6. Obama was forced to revise his claim that lobbyists “won’t work in my White House.” I’ve had something on the back burner for sometime about how Obama has parsed his statements about lobbyists, but gee Hillary is a fine one to be criticizing others about the meaning of “is”.

7. “Selective, embellished and out-of-context quotes from newspapers pump up Obama’s health plan.” Yeah, that never happens, but what I find amazing is considering how in the tank the establishment press is for Obama, he had to embellish at all—most MSM reports on him read like press releases.

8. Obama claims he “passed a law that put Illinois on a path to universal health coverage” but all he did was set up a task force—-and we’re still fighting about how to finance this program.

9. Obama exaggerated the legislative progress he made on ethics reform. More ZZzzzzz.

10. Obama drastically overstated Kansas tornado deaths during campaign appearance. Gee, none of us have ever quoted the wrong number on anything, ever.

All this is really small potatoes and doesn’t make Hillary look good—in fact it makes her look desperate.

On the other hand, Obama has just backpedalled about the Kennedy financed airlift of Africans that his father was on. Zzzzzzz.

With so little difference in policy, we are constantly bombarded with this sort of trivia—–Democrats, spare us, PLEASE!

Joe Lieberman speaks for me:

Well, I say that the Democratic Party changed. The Democratic Party today was not the party it was in 2000. It’s not the Bill Clinton-Al Gore party, which was strong internationalists, strong on defense, pro-trade, pro-reform in our domestic government. It’s been effectively taken over by a small group on the left of the party that is protectionist, isolationist and basically will—and very, very hyperpartisan. So it pains me. I’m a Democrat who came to the party in the era of President John F. Kennedy. It’s a strange turn of the road when I find among the candidates running this year that the one, in my opinion, closest to the Kennedy legacy, the John F. Kennedy legacy, is John S. McCain.

On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, Dick Cheney gave an interview to ABC’s Martha Raddatz about the state of the situation in Iraq after five years.

Cheney gave a fairly positive assessment of progress in Iraq and the surge, but then Raddatz, channeling inquiring minds, asked him how he squared his positive assessment with the “fact” that around 2/3 of Americans thought “the fight in Iraq is not worth it”.

In classic Cheney style, his answer to this important question was “So?”.

Of course the moonbat left went bonkers—but when do they not?  My thinking at the time was that while Cheney could have been more diplomatic in his answer, his answer was 100% correct.

I had this on the back burner since the 19th, intending to eventually blog about it, when today I saw this Nick Kristof column that made my point about Cheney’s “So?” comment.

According to Kristof:

1. 30% of African-Americans believe it is possible the government engineered AIDS to kill them;

2. 36% of Americans believe the federal government assisted in the 9/11 attacks;

3. More Americans believe in flying saucers than evolution;

4. Only 1 in 10 Americans understand radiation;

5. Only 1 in 3 Americans understand DNA;

6. 1 in 5 believe the Sun orbits the Earth.

Yet the moonbat left believes these people should control policy.

Sheesh!

There is a reason we have elections and elect officials as our proxies—otherwise we could just disband the government and run the country by polls, thereby giving the 1 in 5 who believe the Sun orbits the Earth a chance to run the country.

On the other hand, maybe it wouldn’t be any worse than it has been for the last 232 years!

I don’t usually watch “The View” on ABC, but when I heard that Obama was going to be on Friday’s show, I tuned in.

What an embarrassment.  I realize that none of the members of The View are journalists, except maybe Barbara Walters, (but then she slobbered all over Fidel Castro, so what credibility does she have?), but I have never seen such groupie-like behavior— ever.

For those who care (not me) Obama again attempted to distance himself from the inflammatory Rev. Wright, and IMO way too much time was taken up with this issue.  By now, everyone either believes Wright is a flaming racist and Obama is tainted by his 20 year association with him, or you think it’s no big deal.

The questions the ladies of “The View” asked were trite and boring; what would Obama do in the first 100 days of his presidency—healthcare for EVERYONE!, troups out of Iraq NOW! Zzzzzzz.  How would Obama fight the “Republican Attack Machine”?  To his credit, Obama answered obliquely that Hillary was doing some fair attacking herself.

But this post isn’t about Obama’s policy and talking points—-we have been bombarded with them for over a year.  What I want to address is the behavior of “the ladies/groupies” of The View.

Right off the bat, Barbara Walters  told Obama he was “sexy-looking”.  Another “View” girl said that she previously backed Hillary but would now work for Obama.  Walters and Joy Behar set next to Obama and they were constantly stroking and touching him.  Obama was whispering in Walter’s ear so obviously, I was reminded of that old Rowan and Martin chestnut—-blow in my ear and I’ll follow you anywhere.

All in all an embarrassing performance by the “ladies”.  Frankly, if one of the ladies had jumped on Obama and attempted a lap dance, I wouldn’t have been surprised—-it was that over the top.

I used to be an Obama Girl myself, and I fully admitted my attraction to him was not intellectual, but I can’t imagine myself fawning over ANY politician the way The View ladies did with Obama.

Obama on The View: Eeewwwwww!

From Gail Collins in the New York Times concerning the Democrat nominating process where “two candidates can run for five months in all 50 states and neither one can possibly win enough delegates to clinch the nomination”:

“We should have known this was coming when people started talking about how exciting the Clinton-Obama race is. We live, after all, in a country where the Christmas shopping season begins in October. We have a sports calendar in which basketball leaches into baseball, which leaches into football. Too much of a good thing is our middle name. Now, the Democratic primary has become the McMansion of politics.”

From Condoleezza Rice:

“What I would like understood as a black American is that black Americans loved and had faith in this country even when this country didn’t love and have faith in them—and that’s our legacy.”

Barack Obama:

“The truth is that my foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush’s father, of John F. Kennedy, of, in some ways, Ronald Reagan, and it is George Bush that’s been naive and it’s people like John McCain and, unfortunately, some Democrats that have facilitated him acting in these naive ways that have caused us so much damage in our reputation around the world…”

Well, maybe, but I doubt Obama actually believes this:

“We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

If I thought Obama actually believed this Kennedy quote, I might be more inclined for vote for him in the general—-but then, even if he did believe it, the anti-war Democrat Party would not allow him to implement it as policy.

Just more pretty words.

…how Iowa QC bloggers are more concerned with local and civic matters and Illinois QC bloggers are more interested in national politics?

Showing civic concern in Iowa are these bloggers, here, here, and here.

For contrast, check out these Illinois QC blogs, here, here, and here.

The lone Illinois exception, maybe here.

My personal opinion about this is that those who live in the ILQCs realize the futility of fighting the Democrat Machine, but the Iowegians at least know they have a fighting chance against their government.

This is by far the silliest thing written so far in the Never Ending Silly Season

It should be noted that the Minnesota Monitor isn’t a real news source in the traditional sense; it is completely funded by liberal fat-cat moneybags George Soros in order to get the “progressive” message out.

Some “progress”. Out of all the things McCain can be legitimately criticized for, this twit at the Monitor chose to mock John McCain’s—–TEETH!

Good lord, it don’t get no dummer than that. Immediately, thinking, rational, informed people flooded the comments section denouncing the twit for her ignorance. You see, McCain lost his teeth during his stay at a North Vietnamese prison camp—-they were knocked out at the root. This would seem to be the least of what he endured as a POW, but those deep-thinking “progressives” know in politics, it’s LOOKS that count.

Eventually, Monitor “management” stepped in and apologized for this Twit-O-Rama, but the damage has been done—-the internet is forever, even if teeth aren’t.

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But this is just part of something larger. Whenever I see some leftwinger denigrating McCain by saying something like “how brave can he be—-he got shot down”, I cringe.

I have a lot of objections to some of McCain’s policy positions, but the sort of casual dismissal of his war time history by the left leads me to believe something else is going on here.

Here is what is discomforting about McCain: We know how McCain reacted when tortured but we don’t know what we would do in similar circumstances.

It’s not something that is at the front of everyone’s mind, but it goes to the heart of who and what we are. Would we immediately cave and give our torturers everything they wanted? We we bargain and collaborate with them? Would we hang tough and not give in? Would we be willing to die in service to our country? 

Is surviving a POW camp a qualification for POTUS? Probably not any more than being the wife of a former POTUS or being a Half-Kenyan/Half-Kansan from Hawaii, but McCain brings a whole different level of experience to the table.