Around the Web

“The Barack Obama I knew,” according to, er, a Palestinian anti-Zionist activist. Wonderful company this guy keeps….

Political personalities, coming to a Nintendo Wii near you.

Nobody should take pleasure in Ted Kennedy’s recent medical woes, and most conservatives have offered him and his family their condolences and prayers, as well they should. But for John McCain
to go so far beyond that as to say it’s “a great privilege to call” this guilty-of-manslaughter demagogue “my friend” is pathetic.

In the wake of California’s latest same-sex marriage decision, Dennis Prager has some
must-listen segments on the matter.

Pot, meet kettle.

The Obama Future: Haven’t We Been Here Before?

No matter how you try to parse it, there’s no way to make Barack Obama’s history with Reverend Jeremiah Wright look good. On March 14, Obama told Fox News’ Major Garrett, “none of these statements were ones that I had heard myself personally in the pews” (which becomes “I knew about one or two statements” later in the interview). To buy Wright Spin 1.0, you’d have to believe that the sound bites we’ve heard were all isolated incidents outside of which Wright’s message was totally different, and that Obama never caught wind of any of it, either in person or from fellow congregants, even though this was the kind of thing the church made available on video, and his wife sure as heck was paying attention. So the best case scenario is that Obama is Jacques Clouseau. Now there’s presidential material!

As unflattering as “inattentive buffoon” is, Obama could have settled for it. But no, in his
“A More Perfect Union” speech, he said “Did I ever know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.” Make no mistake: this is an admission that Barack Obama, the new-style politician of hope who is going to restore our ability to believe in the process, lied to the American people just days earlier.

But that’s not all Messiah has to offer. He continues to maintain that, deep down, Reverend Jeremiah—who’s like an uncle to him—isn’t so terrible: even though he made “mistakes” (you mean the CIA didn’t invent AIDS? Whoops, my bad), there was enough talk of love and Christ and helping the poor amongst the lies, demagoguery and insanity to justify regularly exposing his kids to this man and his message. I don’t buy it—especially not after Wright’s
flattering appearance on Hannity & Colmes last year. (By the way, this would happen to be the same Barack Obama who called for Don Imus to be fired and for Trent Lott to resign, each for considerably less. What a fraud.)

Then there are the cheap shots towards Geraldine Ferraro, who “some have dismissed…as harboring some deep-seated racial bias” (not Barack, of course; he just, y’know, thought you might be curious about what people are saying), “politicians [who] routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends,” and “talk show hosts and conservative commentators [who] built entire careers unmasking bogus cases of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality.” Nice. And let’s not forget Obama’s charming reminiscence about Grandma. As Ann Coulter
writes this week:

Discrimination has become so openly accepted that—in a speech meant to tamp down his association with a black racist—Obama felt perfectly comfortable throwing his white grandmother under the bus. He used her as the white racist counterpart to his black racist “old uncle,” Rev. Wright.

First of all, Wright is not Obama’s uncle. The only reason we indulge crazy uncles is that everyone understands that people don’t choose their relatives the way they choose, for example, their pastors and mentors. No one quarrels with the idea that you can’t be expected to publicly denounce your blood relatives. But Wright is not a relative of Obama’s at all. Yet Obama cravenly compared Wright’s racist invective to his actual grandmother, who “once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

Rev. Wright accuses white people of inventing AIDS to kill black men, but Obama’s grandmother—who raised him, cooked his food, tucked him in at night, and paid for his clothes and books and private school—has expressed the same feelings about passing black men on the street
that Jesse Jackson has. Unlike his “old uncle”—who is not his uncle—Obama had no excuses for his grandmother. Obama’s grandmother never felt the lash of discrimination! Crazy grandma doesn’t get the same pass as the crazy uncle; she’s white. Denounce the racist!

And finally, the heart of his message is fundamentally contradictory. Sure, he throws in the obligatory scolding of Wright’s “profoundly distorted view of this country,” and admits that “all too often [anger] distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change.” But in the same breath, Obama perpetuates the distraction by saying he could no more sever ties with Wright than with the black community, thereby identifying the two as one and the same. Give to bigotry no sanction…unless the bigot in question talks about nice stuff, too. I don’t think so, Barack.

Who Will Brownback Endorse?

Failed presidential hopeful and supposed socon standard bearer Sam Brownback is considering endorsing one of the remaining GOP candidates. Is it Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson, whose conservative credentials have come under fire yet aggressively claim the mantle of life? John McCain? Mike Huckabee?

Nope. Try Rudy Giuliani.

That’s right—during the primary Brownback may throw his support behind the
single greatest foe of his supposedly defining cause. Why?

“I’m going to meet with him and I’m going to talk to him and hear what he is specifically saying now because he’s changed on a number of the abortion issues,” Brownback said in an interview. “He’s changed on partial-birth [abortion] and he … has said he would appoint strict constructionists.”…When asked about Giuliani’s position on allowing women the right to late-term abortions, also known as partial-birth abortions, Brownback said: “He is opposed to it. That’s what I’ve been told indirectly. I want to hear it from him.”

Bulls***. Giuliani’s abortion position is no secret.
It’s all come out during this campaign, and there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Brownback doesn’t know exactly where Giuliani stands. Are you telling me Mr. Pro-Life never campaigned on the GOP frontrunner’s publicized deficiencies on abortion? No way. My guess is that ol’ Sam is gonna ask Rudy, “If I endorse you, maybe giving your campaign some nice social-conservative window dressing, what’s in it for me?”

Jim Geraghty
guesses Brownback is just being polite, but I’m not convinced:

“While he didn’t endorse the ex-mayor, he praised him as an “excellent leader” and said he was “much more comfortable” with Giuliani’s views on abortion and gay rights issues after the meeting,” according to the Washington Post. Asked by reporters in a brief press conference after the meeting with Giuliani if he could support a “pro-choice” nominee, Brownback said “I don’t know that he described himself…as a pro-choice candidate” and then said he wanted to let Giuliani explains his own view.

Spoken like a true pro-lifer…not. If Scam Brownback ends up endorsing Giuliani in the primary, it means he didn’t really mean it when he talked up the life plank’s centrality is to the Republican platform. He just figured the unborn were a good gimmick.

Another possibility: the Hill quotes a Brownback source as saying “We’ve done some internal polling to see where [Brownback supporters] are going to make sure they’re not flocking to someone we’re not going to endorse.” So you mean to tell me Brownback is going to end up telling his fans who to choose as America’s leader not based on his convictions or his honest assessment, but based on a poll?! If this quote is accurate, then it’s obvious Brownback is a phony.

Pro-lifers should have known this man (who, let’s face it, was never going to be president anyway) was a fraud the minute he changed his vote on the amnesty bill within the space of eleven minutes after sticking his finger in the political wind. Fortunately, now that he’s out of the picture, the social-conservative choice for the presidency is becoming
increasingly clear, and hopefully will become more so the more people learn about Thompson and Huckabee. It’s time to follow the lead of National Right to Life Committee co-founder Dr. John Willke and unite behind Mitt Romney.

Target: Ann Coulter

Another day, another liberal lie about Ann Coulter:

Elizabeth Edwards pleaded Tuesday with Ann Coulter to “stop the personal attacks,” a day after the conservative commentator said she wished Edwards’ husband, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, had been killed by terrorists.

This is an utter mischaracterization of what Ann actually said (video at the sidebar
here). In no way did she express a desire to see John Edwards murdered. No honest observer could even think she even found the prospect of Edward’s death amusing. Her actual point was that, since around the same time of Ann’s CPAC snafu Bill Maher got away with seriously expressing a desire to see Dick Cheney dead, the apparent lesson was: death threats against politicians fine, crude words against politicians intolerable.

Be sure to check out the video of
Elizabeth Edwards’ ambush on “Hardball. Methinks Mrs. Ambulance-Chaser’s plan backfired?

Then came the
obligatory anti-Coulter whining from Sean Hackbarth (it’s a shame when conservatives act like liberals, isn’t it?).

A note to the hacks on both sides: get over it. Ann doesn’t have a single word she should retract or be embarrassed about.

(Oh, and Ann’s full ABC interview—not the dishonest video snippet Hackbarth got from a
left-wing blog—is actually quite good.)
UPDATE: Thanks to Mark Levin’s good memory for exposing Elizabeth Edwards’ phoniness and hypocrisy:

Elizabeth Edwards is blasting second lady Lynne Cheney for objecting to John Kerry calling her daughter “a lesbian” during Wednesday night’s presidential debate.

In the ugliest outburst yet in the Kerry-lesbian contretemps, the woman who wants to replace Mrs. Cheney told ABC Radio network news Thursday morning, “I think that [Mrs. Cheney’s complaint] indicates a certain degree of shame with respect to her daughter’s sexual preferences.”

These people are despicable.
UPDATE 2: By the way, here’s the column Mrs. Ambulance-Chaser was referring to.

Rational Discourse, Liberal Style

That same arbiter of civility who stood up to mean ol’ me on YouStinkLeft has a new post about a classy, productive [read: whiny indulgence] website called sorryaboutourpresident.com. Not surprisingly, it’s another opportunity to show the Left’s upside-down sensibilities.

Remember, the Left
does not approve of mean-spiritedness. No sir! ‘Course, that apparently doesn’t apply to the following:

Calling half the American voting populace “halfwits.”

Saying “their bad choice has made me hate the country I was born in, the country whose anthem could bring tears to my eyes. I hear it now and feel a little nauseated.”

Moreover, this reaction to a comparatively-mild counter-post puts this whole thing in perspective quite nicely:

The post: “We are fighting a war to win, hopefully, so my great-grandchildren DON’T have to fight to live in a peaceful world. The great-grandchildren of the fanatics we now find ourselves engaged with, although unborn, will be just as dedicated to our demise as their predecessors. If you don’t have the courage for this battle, fine. Step out of the way. Your lack of courage embarrasses me. It should embarrass you, too.”

The reaction: “Excuse me for this comment, but who the hell is this person to tell me what I should be embarrassed of? What gives them the jurisdiction to tell me that ‘Dubya’ is doing a good job and that I should stop complaining? Oh, and we lack courage. Yeah, that’d be why we’ve been working to impeach Bush. This person’s great-grandchildren are probably going to have to fight in a war (if we make it though this one). Do they think that after this war that there will be world peace? Well, in that case, this person is not only not worth the glance, but also ignorant.”

I love it: these people can take the most heinous, lazily-ignorant, hypocritical, and reckless positions imaginable, but unless we treat them with kid gloves, we’re the bad guys. ‘Of course, daring not to pull the lever for their guy is enough to make somebody a “halfwit” and justifies hating their country & being sickened by the National Anthem (straight from the horse’s mouth, folks!), so currying favor with them is really a tremendous waste of time.

ONE Rotten Recruiter

Upon seeing the resume of Corey Andrew on CareerBuilder.com, an Army recruiter named Marcia Ramode chose to pick a fight with him via email in which she made pathetic racial & homophobic slurs against him.

There’s no question that Ramode needs to be fired. But can we please forego the liberal opportunism that followed it, like Andrew Sullivan’s
comment that “It seems as if some in the military have taken Peter Pace’s recent remarks on homosexuality and run with them”? This was one nut, and if she got the homophobia from General Pace, where’d the racism come from?

But remember: there’s NO LINK WHATSOEVER between the Democrat Party and liberal punks who
slash the tires of Republican vans. Bad apples only reflect poorly upon the whole on the Right.