Video of Obama's Pastor Gone Wild: "God Damn America"

It is clear Senator Obama has an association problem with his controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright. But, not enough has been made of this relationship or of Dr. Wright's views. ABC News clearly documented some of the controversial statements made by Obama's pastor over the years and provides a video clip.

Some might say, this is "irrelevant." Obama isn't saying this, Jeremiah Wright is. What is relevant though is the people a President surrounds himself by. What is relevant is that this is the very church where Obama "got Christianity." What is relevant is this is a pastor that has been so influential on Senator Obama that Obama himself claims that the title of his book, The Audacity of Hope, was taken from a sermon delivered by Jeremiah Wright. What is relevant is this is the pastor who married Obama and his wife and baptized his children. And what is relevant is that despite the exposure of Jeremiah Wright and his controversial sermons and statements, Obama has refused to denounce, but only to say that Wright is like an old uncle who you sometimes disagree with.

Obama needs to diassociate himself from this radical pastor - or decline his bid for the Presidency of these United States. We cannot have a President who is so strongly influenced by a man who says that blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but should proclaim "God damn America."

Democrats Can't Even Get Voting Right

So, the Democrats screwed up again. Six or nine months ago, we all thought the Democrat primary would be decided by early February. Hillary Clinton would be the presumptive nominee and it would be the Republicans battling it out. But, that didn't happen. And it's all the Democrats fault, and not only because they have a contested battle, but because of how their ideology affected how they organize their voting.

The Democrats set up their primary voting structure based on their "egalitarian" ideology. Their ideology doesn't believe in this representative Republic, but rather in dismantling this Republic and taking us closer to a Direct Democracy, which our nation's founders detested. Our founders learned from the Greeks that direct democracy doesn't work. But, in the Democrat primary, the "party of the people" relies on direct democracy - most of the delegates in each state are apportioned according to the popular vote in that state.

The Republican Party, however, allows each state to either be a "winner take all" delegates or to do as the Democrats do, and apportion delegates according to how many popular votes were won by each candidate. Because so many of the major states, like California and Florida, have a "winner take all" approach, a consensus winner is more likely to be decided earlier. With a wide field of candidates, John McCain racked up more delegates because he won the popular votes of each state and was able to "win" all the delegates. The GOP race is over and McCain moves on with more momentum.

The Democrats also have another problem - unique to 2008. The DNC didn't want Florida and Michigan voting ahead of the February 5 primary. In Florida, where I live, the Florida Democrats didn't have a choice. The Florida legislature is dominated by Republicans and it was the Florida legislature that moved up our state's primary. So, what is a Florida Democrat to do, but go out and vote (in record numbers by the way) on January 29.

Now, being a fan of tradition, I wasn't a fan of moving up our primary earlier, but it is what it is. The national GOP penalized Florida as well - but didn't silence our votes, but rather just discounted some of our delegates. The DNC on the other hand, "silenced" the Florida voters. And, they also silenced the Michigan voters.

Now, this election has gotten close - all because of an incoherent "egalitarian" ideology that goes against our Constitutional form of government, and because some idiotic party officials that run Howard Dean's DNC didn't want to "cave in" to what the Michigan and Florida legislators did when they moved up their primary. Now, they have chaos. And chaos is exactly what you get when you have direct democracy.

Democrats can't even get voting right - why should we trust them to run our government?

Bull fighting's resurgence in Spain

The glory days of bullfighting are back. This article in Men's Vogue talks about bull fighting's resurgence and about Cayetano Rivera Ordóñez, Spain's best new matador, who has "a nasty habit of getting gored."

If you've never seen a bullfight before, I urge you to get to Spain or the Latin American country of your choice and see one. Man versus beast. It just reminds me of Gladiator or something. And when you're at a bullfight, you feel like you've been removed from modern times. It's great.

Senior Obama foreign policy advisor: Barack and Hillary "both not ready to have that 3am phone call."

Barack Obama's senior foreign policy advisor, Susan Rice, says that both Hillary and her candidate, Barack Obama, are "both not ready to have that 3am phone call." She said this on Tucker Carlson's MSNBC show.

Watch the clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TumIz2bajus&feature=related

Wow. Well, finally a Democrat honest enough to say that they aren't ready to protect America's national security.... or she just realizes McCain is better.

Obama Lied about meeting with Canadian officials

In debates in Ohio about the future of NAFTA, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama positioned themselves to say that they believed NAFTA (created under Bill Clinton's presidency) had taken away important industrial jobs in places like Ohio. They both further positioned themselves to say, as President, they would "renegotiate" NAFTA. (First of all, that could be an economic disaster, not just for us, but the world, but that's beside the point). World leaders from many other nations took notice and were alarmed by these reports, particularly those in Canada.

In the days following these very public debates, Barack Obama's senior economic advisor met with officials at the Canadian consulate in Chicago to assure them that Obama's comments were just part of the political posturing he needed to do to secure the nomination - a nomination he thought he would have wrapped up by Tuesday night.

Word leaked to the media that Obama's advisor had indeed met with Canadian officials. When that story first leaked, Obama denied it.

But then, the Associated Press obtained a memo from Canadian officials, which confirmed their meeting with Obama's senior economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee.

Obama has portrayed himself as not the "usual" Washington politician. But in fact, he is. He flat out lied to Americans about his campaign's backdoor meetings with foreign officials about a major trade agreement. What else is Obama lying to us about that we haven't yet found out about? Perhaps this news story, which broke heavily in Ohio and Texas earlier this week (yet was largely ignored by the national media) is why those voters decided not to go with Obama.

He isn't the golden boy he has portrayed himself to be. Rather, he is a typical product of the corrupt Chicago political machine - something even Washington (and America) do not need.

Obama can't handle tough questions

The Washington Post reported this morning about a press conference yesterday in San Antonio, where Obama was hammered with tough questions, that he simply tried to dodge. According to the Post, once those attempts to dodge questions failed, Obama tried another approach: "We're running late," the candidate said, and then he disappeared behind a curtain.

Obama is running away from the truth. It will eventually catch up to him.

The New York Daily News also reported about an Angry Barack bombarded by media. The tougher questions Hillary and other critics of Obama have been asking still have not been answered. We need to keep asking the questions. The truth will come and he will be exposed.

Obama's Terrorist Friends

Last week, The Politico reported reported about who Obama reached out to for support when he began his state senate campaign in Illinois in 1995: American terrorists of the infamous group, the Weather Underground.

Bernandine Dohn and William Ayers are just a few of the most influential liberals in Obama's Illinois district. They are notorious and unrepentant about their role in more than 25 bombings that were a "protest" to the Vietnam War. (some "peace" activists)

The question is, who will Obama have in his inner circles, as President of the United States of America? Who will he continue to court for support? Why are these domestic terrorists able to roam freely? And why are they still of influence in the liberal intellectual circles of Chicago?

Movement Conservatives are "two degrees from Francisco"

On March 13th of this year, Nathanael Blake wrote in his Human Events blog that he proposes "a new parlor game for conservatives: two degrees from Francisco "Cisco" Gonzales, a great fellow who every movement conservative seems to know (and if they don’t, it’s a cert they know someone who does)."

Nathanael mentioned me because of Elizabeth Kantor's citation of me in her "Conservative Book Notes" blog, when she cited a quote of T.S. Eliot that she first heard from me.

I thank Nathanael for his compliments and perhaps keen observation - an observance that even I am starting to take notice of every time I venture into D.C. or attend a conservative conference... Although I am going to start betting that many conservatives could claim the same of our mutual friend, Brendan Steinhauser, of FreedomWorks. Let the vast-right wing conspiracy continue... (vast?)

ABC News: Brownback Quietly Courting Conservatives

This recent article by ABC News details how the Kansas Senator, Sam Brownback, is sticking to "a well-honed strategy, waging a classic grass-roots campaign away from the glare of the media spotlight by mingling with activists in living rooms, parks and churches. He's made repeated trips from his neighboring state to campaign in Iowa, where he underscores his cultural ties."

Read more about how Brownback may surprise everyone, including the media, in Iowa: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/WireStory?id=3373429&page=1

Also, check out this YouTube video where "Brownback rides in on a tractor" to an Iowa event held in a barn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-13UheKpAA

This conservative is loudly supporting Brownback.

Owen Harries: The Perils of Hegemony

This blog is in a series of posts from my readings of THE RIGHT WAR? THE CONSERVATIVE DEBATE ON IRAQ. Please contribute your comments. The following is a discussion of Chapter 10, a republished article by Owen Harries, June 21, 2004, The American Conservative.




When the Cold War ended, the United States found itself as a global hegemon, writes Owen Harries. Throughout history, there have been plenty of regional hegemonies, but "there has never before been one that dominated the whole system."

According to Harries, when hegemons form, normally other "strong states" have typically joined with one another against the prospective hegemon. So his comments beg the question, should the United States be wary of other such powers today joining forces to oppose us as the only global hegemon? History tells us that we should. To strengthen his argument, Harries goes back to Thucydides' discussion of the causes of war between Athens and Sparta. "What made war inevitable," said Thucydides, "was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in the Spartans."

Why the fear? Because unchecked power creates its own motives and sets its own agenda. So, it seems that Harries is saying - through Thucydides - that whether we like it or not, our own power needs to be checked, or others will ally themselves against us through fear and check it in perhaps a more dangerous way.

"America's emergence as a hegemonic power came not by deliberate effort, but inadvertently, by the default of the Soviet Union," Harries reminds us. The U.S. dominates the world economically and militarily, but mostly with "soft power" as a cultural hegemon.

Harries takes a swipe at Charles Krauthammer's suggestion that between the end of the Cold War (roughly 1990) and September 11, 2001, the United States took a ten-year "holiday from history." But Harries reminds us that during the 1990s, U.S. military forces were more active than during any other time since Vietnam - in the Gulf and in Iraq, in Somalia, in Haiti, in Bosnia, in Afghanistan, in Sudan, in Colombia, and in Kosovo. "Far from thinking the United States was on vacation during these years, other countries were increasingly aware of its dominant presence."

Harries then suggests that what he thinks Krauthammer really meant by his notion that the U.S. took a "holiday from history" during these years, was that the U.S., having become the sole remaining superpower, had failed to develop a grand strategy. Most countries might not feel the need for such a thing, but Americans do. We have had the Monroe Doctrine, the Truman Doctrine, and the Reagan Doctrine. While our forces were deployed many times for various operations under George H.W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton, neither administration had outlined any kind of post-Cold War grand strategy doctrine. And, George W. Bush had campaigned against the idea of nation-building. But then 9/11 happened. "How the Bush administration's foreign policy would have developed in the absence of the Sept. 11 attack, we shall never know," writes Harries. "But in an instant the terrorists gave the country the clear purpose it had previously lacked."

The effort that has been pursued since 9/11 has become too ideological for Harries. A global grand strategy to combat the enemy on various battlefields may have been appropriate, but the heavy emphasis on the ideology of spreading democracy has perhaps led us with too high ambitions and goals that are not realistic. The post-9/11, 31-page National Security Strategy of the United States of America was a document that was supposed to outline a "strategy," but as Harries points out, "for a document concerned with strategy, it puts an extremely heavy emphasis on ideology in defining America's purpose."

Harries points out some keys to this new doctrine: (1) it invites a "double standard" mentality, where the U.S. enforces arms control on other nations, but strengthens its own; (2) it abandons the policy of deterrence, which Harries suggests was vital to dealing with the Soviets; (3) it is unilateral in its insistence that "we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary."

Given the whole history of international politics, Harries points out how foolish it is to think that other nations will be willing to accept the double standard that the U.S. says it must live by. Will other states make the U.S. the exception in all of history simply because we claim to be a "benign hegemon?" Highly doubtful.

So, back to Iraq. Harries does not think our high goals for Iraq will be successful. If it is, the current struggles will be seen as a learning experience and a "breaking-in period" for a revolutionary new doctine. But if this project is not successful, if the U.S. finds that bringing about a decent political order is beyond its capacity - then the limits of U.S. power will be made evident, and the inclination for other powers to resist the U.S. will be greatly strengthened.

In some further arguments about the idea of exporting democracy and nation-building, Harries echoes the conservative comments made by James Kurth. He then points to building economic institutions as a better solution to helping a democracy grow. Military implementation will not be the answer for "democracy cannot be exported ... to be viable, political institutions and political cultures require a long, organic, indigenous growth ..."