The Smell Of Fear

The Captain is funny with this link to Barack whining about how he has a funny name and mean Republicans are going to attack him.

Now, the Captain describes this as playing the race card.  My thought - if a Republican says anything at all, such as "Obama was a community organizer" or "the sky is blue", that is a coded racial attack.  But unless Obama does his most earnest Richard Pryor impression and starts yelling "It's because I'm black", it is not code when he talks about his pedigree or his funny name.

Just trying to think like a lefty here.  Sorry, typical MSM reporter.  Pardon my redundancy.

On a related topic my free advice to Team Obama is inspired by this from Drudge:

Obama At Bon Jovi Event: 'We Won't Be Bullied'

Whether Obama is revealing personal weakness or simply highlighting the historic weakness of his party, this is not talk that projects strength, especially in the current context - what is Obama saying, he won't be bullied by a 44 year old hockey mom?  Stand Tall, Barack - you won't be bullied by Sarah Palin!  OMG, is this a secret plan to assassinate Putin by making him laugh so hard he gets an aneurysm?  Or is this Laugh Attack launched at the Right Blogosphere (It's working!  I can barely type through the tears). 

Man up, Barry - even though she was a state champ, you are probably a better baller, too, what with being 6' 2" and a guy to boot.  'Course there is that cigarette smoking that may have cut your wind...

Our next President - ready to take on hockey moms, PTA heads and small town mayors.  Even former ones.

COURAGE!  Get me Bert Lahr!  Or Dan Rather.

UNRELENTING:  A certain type of lib likes to pretend that Obama showed courage by opposing the war in Iraq back in 2002, thereby risking the scorn of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Dick Cheney.  In fact, Obama recently claimed that speech as an example of a "tough decision" when chatting with Rick Warren.  Last March he offered the speech as an example of courage and judgment.

Here is a debunking from someone else if you are tired of mine.  The gist:

I checked the congressional records and confirmed that eight of the 10 Illinois Dems in the U.S. House voted No on the resolution. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois also opposed the resolution authorizing the use of force.

All eight Illinois Republican congressmen plus GOP Sen. Peter Fitzgerald all voted Aye. The Chicago newspapers were editorializing in favor of the resolution, and polls showed that a majority of Americans and the majority of Illinoisans favored the use of U.S. military force to remove Saddam Hussein.

...If the climate in Illinois was such that most Democratic elected officials opposed the war, it hardly seems that the decision of a state senator who was contemplating a run for Fitzgerald's U.S. Senate seat should qualify for a Profile in Courage award for taking the same position.

To which I would add that 90% of the Congressional Black Caucus opposed the resolution as did Carol Mosely Braun, who was still in play as a Senate candidate in Oct 2002.

By way of contrast, Sarah Palin took on her own state party chairman and the Republican governor en route to the governorship.  Hmm, maybe Obama ought to pick on someone his own size.

Comments

[Cecil Turner]

No, and nothing that I've written contains any such suggestion.

Didn't claim you did. The point is that someone's good (or poor) opinion of someone else is as close to a meaningless datapoint as one can get. Extrapolating from that is a waste of time, not a telling metric of merit. Cheers.

[Jane]

.. and Palineo-cons, too.

I'm one of those!

[Sue]

Shoot. I missed Foo Bar's list of Obama accomplishments. Did he provide it and I missed it?

[Jim]

Hooray for Foo Bar! Argues with conservatives without flying off the handle. Is not a sophist. Pretty cool.

[Barney Frank]

Argues with conservatives without flying off the handle. Is not a sophist. Pretty cool.

That generally indicates an incipient 'road to Damascus' moment.

[Foo Bar]

Did he provide it and I missed it?

I don't have time to compile a laundry list from scratch all on my own, but you could start by looking here and here.

[Sue]

Thanks Foo Bar. Now I'll have to go explore exactly what his role was.

[DebinNC]

CBS on BO's Obama's IL state senate record:

If true, have did I miss this?...

"Obama regularly supported gun-control measures, including a ban on semiautomatic "assault weapons" and a limit on handgun purchases to one a month.

He also opposed letting people use a self-defense argument if charged with violating local handgun bans by using weapons in their homes. The bill was a reaction to a Chicago-area man who, after shooting an intruder, was charged with a handgun violation." Whoa!

[JM Hanes]

FooBar:

"False. Read my "defied" link again::

Yes, I did miss the mention of Obama. Maybe that's because your citation doesn't even begin to approach a basis for laying claim to ethics reform in the Senate. I crossed the aisle to vote on a Republican amendment to someone else's ethics bill! It doesn't really even sound all that good as the example Obama uses of doing heroic battle with his own party. His tacit admission that the Democrats were alligned against ethics reform is just a freebie. That probably pisses Reid off more than the actual vote did.

I don't blame you for bugging out when you have so little to work with here. Which is the whole point, of course.

[JM Hanes]

FooBar:

Can't believe I forgot to add that:

"My mistakes were was not material..."

...unless we count providing you with a convenient excuse for avoiding further discussion of the actual question at issue. But never mind. You clearly don't need my help to believe what you want to believe.

[kim]

I want to thank you Foo Bar for leading me to a useful and instructive insight into the meaning of an honors degree from Harvard Law School, and in particular the suspiciousness of Obama's designation. What would induce Harvard to so cheapen their degrees, adverse to self-interest?
==================================

[Foo Bar]

unless we count providing you with a convenient excuse for avoiding further discussion of the actual question at issue

???

My "my mistakes were not material" comment was left at 12:40 last night and was in reference to the exchange Clarice and I had about how much evidence the HLS review presidency was of Obama's merit (specifically, our discussion of the contemporaneous 1990 NYT article). Since then, I've left 9 or 10 additional comments, with numerous links to evidence from conservative sources of Obama's ability. How does that amount to "avoiding the actual issue"? I'm sorry. I can't live my whole life on JOM (as much as I'm sure you all wish I would ;) ).

[JM Hanes]

Just in case FooBar lurks, here's something to toss into the Harvard pot. Discouraged by how hard it was to effect changes as a community organizer (which appears to require controlling the people you organize), co-worker, Mike Kruglik, reports:

“He said, ‘I need to go there [Harvard Law School] to find out more about power. How do powerful people think? What kind of networks do they have? How do they connect to each other?’”

Apparently, he found out -- although he credits Michelle with the best advice, doesn't he?

[clarice]

FooBar, You clai you didn't notice the Hotel California clause at thetop of JOM? Heh..Ignorance of the clause is no excuse.

[JM Hanes]

FooBar:

Didn't realize you were still here. I thought the comment which offends you was a perfectly obvious addendum to my post, immediately above it, which referried to my mistake. The quasi-quote was just an aide-memoire as to the apparent standard, set by you, for discourse here. Unless I'm mistaken, the issue we were discussing was Obama's claimed accomplishments, not his claimed potential.

[bad]

FooBar

Have you an idea why Obama left The Chicago Annenberg Challenge board position off of his resume given that his resume is a tad thin?

And do you have an explanation for the coordinated attacks on WGN radio and Dr. Stanley Kurtz at the behest of the Obama Campaign?

What is Obama trying to hide?

[JM Hanes]

I maybe went a little heavy on the italics there. :-)

[Pagar]

"what is Obama trying to hide?"

Judging by the info Foo Bar Left in his 3:33 PM links, Obama is supposedly known for his work on openness in govt. Here is a man who is running for President of the US, but we can't find out what his birth cert says, what his name is, what he did at the colleges he attended, who he performed legal work for, what his medical records say, what he did in the Illinois Legis, etc, etc.
We are supposed to be dumb enough to believe that he represents some kind of committment to openness in govt? You've got to be kidding.
" passing a bill that created a searchable database of recipients of federal contracts and grant" Yet we can't find out which hospital he was born in.

Was supposed to have done something on lobbyists according to the link: "the strongest ethics legislation to emerge from Congress yet"
Here's some lobbyist who works for Obama:

"# Only one of 35 bundlers to raise over $500,000 for Obama, on par with Hollywood moguls Daivd Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg
# Not only a registered lobbyist, but Lobbyist of the Year (2006)
# Not only Lobbyist of the Year, but he played a lobbyist (himself) on HBO's K Street
# Did I mention he likes to lobby?
# And that Obama does not?

*

“I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists — and won. They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president.”

— Barack Obama, Speech in Des Moines, IA, November 10, 2007"

LUN

From foo bar's link again: "and introducing legislation to criminalize deceptive political tactics and voter intimidation."

For studies of the 2008 caucuses won by Obama and the thug tactics used see the www.Lynettelong.com Under caucus fraud.

But the real intimidation apparently was in the effort to insure that a proper rollcall vote was not taken at the convention.

"WHAT ROLL CALL VOTE?" some of the most chilling voter intimidation stories ever told.

"KENTUCKY: Moretta Bosley: "I was overwhelmed by e-mails in support of Hillary. I want you to know that kept my word and voted for Hillary despite strong pressure to do otherwise."

A delegate: "Our Hillary delegation was shouted at, told that they would be perceived as racists, told that their careers would be over if they voted for Hillary. Perhaps because of this, Hillary had a private meeting to thank our delegates. Clinton won the state by nearly 40 points. Nonetheless, the roll call was annnounced as Obama 36, Hillary 24.""

Article

[Jim Baxter]

Note: Obama displays a dialectic 'flop' on almost every issue. His
less recognized or publicized pose is a maintained position on
opposing principles.

Case in point: His support of humanistic collectivism & Marxist
Liberation 'Theology' at the same time he claims spiritual Christian
Individual Value.

He has earned the title; "Mr. Oxymoron."

[sophy]

I do not know how to use the flyff gold ; my friend tells me how to use.