Degree of Madness

Put that fork down!

Barack Obama wants to "lead by example".  Which means we've got to make a few changes:

Pitching his message to Oregon's environmentally-conscious voters, Obama called on the United States to "lead by example" on global warming, and develop new technologies at home which could be exported to developing countries.

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said.

Yuval Levin:

There's a winning message

I'll say.

***Update 8:38 PM CT***

IBD, Obama's Bad Example:

...Obama has even bigger ideas, such as repealing the Industrial Revolution

I think we need to brush up on the 19th century.  If Obama is elected President, that's where we're headed.  Unless we get lucky.  Then we'll wind up in 1910:

What Obama wants to do is reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. That assumes that such emission cuts are even necessary considering that the Earth has not warmed since 1998 and is likely to stay that way at least for another decade as the solar cycle wanes.

Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute has actually sat down and crunched the numbers and found that Obama's 80% reduction from 1990 levels means that in 2050 we cannot emit more than one billion tons of CO2. The last time U.S. emissions were that low, Hayward estimates from historical energy data, was in 1910.

1910 might not be so bad.  On March 19, 1910:

In the USA, Republicans reduce the powers of the Speaker of the House of Representatives to influence Committee membership.

Barack Obama: Republicans had better "be careful"

Oh Dear Lord.  Those rascally Republicans have gone and upset Barack Obama again.  The Tennessee GOP had the NERVE to run an ad he finds unacceptable.  Obama let the Republicans have it in an interview today on Good Morning America.  Via Gateway Pundit who supplied the emphasis:

Barack whined on Good Morning America that the GOP was distorting his wife's gloomy message.

[...]

ABC News reported on Barack getting tough with the enemy GOP:

The Republicans seem to have come to the same conclusion and a GOP Internet campaign in Tennessee has an ad featuring Michelle Obama's comments during the long Democratic campaign that "for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country."

Michelle Obama was asked about the ad on "GMA," but her husband said, "Let me just interject on this."

"The GOP, should I be the nominee, I think can say whatever they want to say about me, my track record," Obama said. "I've been in public life for 20 years. I expect them to pore through everything that I've said, every utterance, every statement. And to paint it in the most undesirable light possible. That's what they do."

"But I do want to say this to the GOP. If they think that they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful. Because that I find unacceptable," he said.

Obama praised his wife's patriotism and said that for Republicans "to try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her I think is just low class ... and especially for people who purport to be promoters of family values, who claim that they are protectors of the values and ideals and the decency of the American people to start attacking my wife in a political campaign I think is detestable."

If Obama wants Republicans to shut up, he needs to tell his wife to shut up too.  If she is going to campaign for him, her words are fair game, as they should be.  I don't see the Obama campaign "laying off" Bill Clinton.  Here's a deal, courtesy of baldilocks:

Pundits, professional and otherwise, will lay off of Michelle Obama.   In her turn, Mrs. Obama will, for the most part, heed the advice which NBA star LeBron James offered to his mother when she inserted herself into one of his professional campaigns.

Deal?

Obama could have a hidden motive in lashing out at Republicans right now.  I hate to admit it, but this was my first thought also:

But the real reason for Obama’s extraordinary freakout is that he fears the release of the videotape, reported here, of Michelle Obama in the pulpit of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church railing against “whitey.” And we don’t mean Whitey Ford. Four Republican sources have told me that the tape exists. I’ve also been informed that Karl Rove and his allies have a copy of it and are using it to raise funds for independent expenditure groups. The tape, I’m told, will be disclosed as the GOP October Surprise. It’s a ticking time bomb.

Whether the tape exists or not, there is a ticking time bomb out there and his name's Barack Obama.  One more word from Republicans and his head might explode.

Ed Morrissey:

Toughen up, buttercup, and stop whining about criticism of speeches at political events. If you can’t handle that much, you have no business running for re-election to your current job, let alone for the presidency.

John McCain on SNL

Pretty funny stuff:

via: LGF

Will Obama claim victory Tuesday night in Iowa?

That is the suggestion in the headline of Larry Rohter's New York Times column today, Obama to Return to Iowa, Possibly to Claim Victory:

Senator Barack Obama has chosen to spend Tuesday night not in Kentucky or Oregon, the two states that will be holding their primaries that day, or even at his home in Chicago. Instead, Mr. Obama’s staff announced on Saturday, he will be returning to Iowa, where he won the Democratic caucuses way back in January...

Much more than nostalgia seems to have motivated that decision. If things continue to go as well for Mr. Obama this week as they have so far this month, with a romp in North Carolina, a strong showing in Indiana and daily growth in his support among party superdelegates, he could actually end up with enough pledged delegates to proclaim, without fear of contradiction, that he is now the Democratic nominee for president.

Why else would Obama spend Tuesday night in Iowa when two other states, one of which he will most likely win, are holding their primaries that day?  Who knows, but unless his goal is to alienate as many Hillary voters as possible, it seems like a stupid move to go there and claim victory.  Unless of course he does end up with the magic number of delegates needed to win.  Problem is, what's the magic number?  According to the DNC it's 2025.  That number does not include Florida or Michigan.  As it stands now, Obama has 1897 total delegates and Hillary has 1717.  Obama could certainly get to the 2025 number by Tuesday, if he picks up some (enough) more Super delegates.  Maybe he knows something we don't know.  Maybe enough Super delegates are ready to end this thing.  But what about Florida and Michigan?  The DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee is going to meet on May 31 to make a decision about their delegates.  Declaring victory before then would not endear Obama to the voters in those two states.

I can't see where Obama has anything to gain by forcing the issue.  He does, however, have much to lose.  Hillary's voters will not be pleased and he will need them in November.  So I guess from where I'm sitting, I say go ahead Obama.  Declare victory.  And to Hillary's voters, come on over to the dark side.  McCain 2008.

***Update 7:57 PM CT***

CNN has Obama's delegate count at 1904:

According to CNN's latest count, Obama leads Clinton in total delegates 1,904 to 1,717.

Sen. Tom Harkin: McCain "trapped" in worldview shaped by the military

Democratic Senator Tom Harkin:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain's family background as the son and grandson of admirals has given him a worldview shaped by the military, "and he has a hard time thinking beyond that," Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., said Friday.

"I think he's trapped in that," Harkin said in a conference call with Iowa reporters. "Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous."

Harkin said that "it's one thing to have been drafted and served, but another thing when you come from generations of military people and that's just how you're steeped, how you've learned, how you've grown up."

So a family tradition of serving one's country is a bad thing? 

He said that "I just want to be very clear there's nothing wrong with a career in the military" and that he has friends who are generals and admirals who have served the country well.

I'm glad he cleared that up, sort of:

"But now McCain is running for a higher office. He's running for commander in chief, and our Constitution says that should be a civilian," Harkin said. "And in some ways, I think it would be nice if that commander in chief had some military background, but I don't know if they need a whole lot."

Mark Steyn:

Oh, okay. So it's great if you were in combat for a couple of months like Senator Kerry but if you make a whole big career deal of this military thing, that's just way over the top

John at Power Line:

For what it's worth, it's hardly correct to say that McCain has "always...been in the military;" he retired from the Navy 27 years ago.

For what it's worth, I think Harkin is the one who's trapped.  In a worldview of incoherence.

Barack Obama, whining for votes

Why, do you suppose, Barack Obama is so far behind Hillary Clinton in Kentucky?  Could it have anything to do with this?  Or this?  Is he too liberal?  Maybe it has something to do with this.  If not, this could be the answer.  Or maybe it's Fox News:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, facing a likely defeat in next Tuesday's primary election, won't travel to Kentucky before the voting, but said he hopes to have much more time to win over Kentucky voters before the November general election.             

He also blamed Fox News for disseminating "rumors" about him and said that that and e-mails filled with misinformation that have been "systematically" dispersed have hurt him in Kentucky.

I guess it hasn't occurred to Obama that he is running for President and should expect that not everyone is going to vote for him.  Not everyone is going to agree with him.  Blaming e-mails and Fox News is one more example of Obama's increasingly irritating habit of whining in public.  It's not a very attractive trait. 

Obama also believes one of the problems is that folks in Kentucky just don't know him:

Obama conceded that he has a steep challenge to get his message and background to voters in states such as Kentucky — where he trails Sen. Hillary Clinton by 27 points, according to a poll published earlier this week — and West Virginia, where voters chose Clinton over Obama by 40 points on Tuesday.

"What it says is that I'm not very well known in that part of the country," Obama said. "Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it's not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle."

Wrong again.  This has been a very long campaign for the Democratic nomination.  The longer it goes on the more we learn about the Senator and his background.  A background he really doesn't want to talk about.  Obama has declared that questions about his background are "distractions".  The only thing we need to know about him is that he's all for hope and change.  Unfortunately for Obama, not everyone is hopeless.  And all change means is "something different", not necessarily something better.

Obama's claims against Fox noticeably lack any specific examples:

“And there are a lot of voters who get their news from Fox News. Fox has been pumping up rumors about my religious beliefs or my patriotism or what have you since the beginning of the campaign.”

Obama sounds petty and spiteful.  And not at all Presidential.

Jill Simpson goes to Washington

John H. Hinderaker continues to do the heavy lifting on the Jill Simpson story.  From his Weekly Standard column:

Jill Simpson is an unusual woman. A lawyer, she has scratched out an uncertain living in DeKalb County, Alabama. Fellow DeKalb County lawyers describe her as "a very strange person" who "lives in her own world." The daughter of rabid Democrats, she has rarely if ever been known to participate in politics as even a low-level volunteer. Yet today, she is a minor celebrity who is unvaryingly described in the press as a "Republican operative." Those who know her in DeKalb County scoff at the idea that she is a Republican at all.

...Jill Simpson, who barely got by in Alabama, is now toasted by the national Democratic party and featured on network and cable news. All this because she has testified--without a shred of supporting evidence--to a conspiracy so vast as to be not just implausible, but ridiculous.

Simpson claims to have participated in a phone conversation with several Alabama Republicans in which she was made privy to a plot involving the Republican governor of Alabama, Bob Riley, a former justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, a federal judge, two United States attorneys, several assistant United States attorneys, the Air Force, and, apparently 12 jurors, to "railroad" former governor Don Siegelman into his 2006 conviction for bribery and mail fraud...

And a final conspirator: Karl Rove, who, according to Simpson, orchestrated the plot against Siegelman.

This woman's story is so full of holes you could drive an eighteen wheeler through it.  So what?  Who needs facts when you can nail Karl Rove.  House Democrats, 60 Minutes and MSNBC's Don Abrams (who seems to have gone completely off the deep end on this story) are determined to give her the credibility she's never had in Alabama.  How's this for objective journalistic principles...from Abrams' webpage at MSNBC where he links to the stories he's done on the Simpson/Siegelman story:

Bush League Justice
A look at how the Bush Administration has politicized the Justice Department.

No forgone conclusions there. 

As Hinderaker points out, Simpson has offered no evidence whatsoever for her claims, the most outlandish being she was hired by Karl Rove to spy on Siegelman, to try and photograph him "in a compromising sexual position" with one of his aides.  This whole elaborate conspiracy concocted by Simpson is bordering on the insane.  In the extremely unlikely event any of it turns out to be true, truth would indeed be stranger than fiction.

From John Hinderaker's March 1, 2008, post at Power Line: 

Actually, every single person whose name Simpson invokes as she spins her stories says that she is either lying or deluded. Even Don Siegelman. Simpson says that she signed her affidavit after repeated urging by Siegelman, whom she spoke with several times on the telephone. Untrue, says Siegelman. As the Justice Department wrote in a letter to John Conyers' Judiciary Committee:

The alleged conversation described by Ms. Simpson has been denied by all of the alleged participants except Ms. Simpson. Indeed, even Mr. Siegelman states that Ms. Simpson's affidavit is false as it relates to him. Moreover, according to Ms. Simpson, she met with Mr. Siegelman and his co-defendant Richard Scrushy for several months before signing the statement at their urging. She also claims to have provided legal advice to them. She contends she drafted but did not sign a motion filed by Mr. Scrushy seeking to have the federal judge removed from the case.

Sometimes denial is just a river in Egypt.

There is a bit of good news, according to Hinderaker's column Jill Simpson is leaving Alabama, heading for the suburbs of Washington, D.C.  Good move on her part, plenty of targets there for her "lunatic" conspiracies, all in one place.

Scott Johnson writes about the conspiracy in today's Power Line here.

Dogpile salutes our troops

Screenshot from today's Dogpile Homepage.  "All the best search engines piled into one"

via Instapundit

Huckabee for VP? Maybe not...

Just a few days ago it was reported that Mike Huckabee was on John McCain's short list for a running mate.  Maybe he was, but after today, maybe not anymore.  Speaking before the National Rifle Association convention, reacting to a noise offstage, Huckabee's well deserved reputation for humor failed him.  Big time:

During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

The "audience laughter" came before the gun remark.  Allahpundit has the video:

It comes at around the halfway point.  The silence is excruciating.

And the silence from the McCain campaign might be just as excruciating for Huckabee.  I think the short list just got shorter.

*** Update 9:55 PM CT***

Mike Huckabee apologizes:

During my speech at the NRA a loud noise backstage, that sounded like a chair falling, distracted the crowd and interrupted my speech. I made an off hand remark that was in no way intended to offend or disparage Sen. Obama.I apologize that my comments were offensive, that was never my intention.

Would someone please kiss Barack's boo boo?

The whining is getting on my nerves. 

For the record.  Here's what the President said:

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is –- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Barack Obama, obviously assuming that everything spoken must be about him:

"After almost eight years, I did not think I could be surprised by almost anything George Bush says," Obama told a crowd at a campaign event in Watertown, South Dakota, Friday, "He accused me and other Democrats of wanting to negotiate with terrorists and said we were appeasers no different than people who appeased the Nazis before World War II."

Did the President say that?  No.  But Obama, obviously recognizing himself in the statement, threw a hissy fit (along with various other Democrats).  Apparently Obama is trying to distance himself from...himself:

Obama said President Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for.  So do you, Senator.  Unfortunately anytime someone asks you a question you don't like you grab your blankee and cry NO FAIR. 

Obama has thrown down the gauntlet:

In a press conference following his town hall meeting in South Dakota, Obama continued on the offensive, insisting there is "no separation" between Bush and McCain and repeating the challenge that he would meet McCain "anywhere, anytime" for a debate on foreign policy.

How about meeting at the flagpole after school?  I'm sure McCain is shaking in his boots.

Speaking of John McCain:

“It was remarkable to see Barack Obama’s hysterical diatribe in response to a speech in which his name wasn’t even mentioned,” said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds...

Hope, change, and hysteria we can believe in.