Monthly Archives: April 2008

Panic on 15th Street

Fresh off his willfully ignorant hit piece on John McCain’s position on taxes, the Washington Post’s Jonathan Weisman (this time joined by Matthew Mosk) turns his attention to the other obstacle to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton. The thesis of their piece is that Hillary Clinton’s candidacy may well produce “a racial divide” that “could do lasting harm” to the Democratic party. Weisman and Mosk, in essence, turn their front-page story »

Obama: The Candidate of Hamas, But Not Rev. Wright

I missed yesterday’s blogger call with John McCain, but it contained a remarkable exchange with Jennifer Rubin in which McCain, noting the fact that Hamas has endorsed Obama for President, said: All I can tell you Jennifer is that I think it’s very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States. So apparently has Danny Ortega and several others. I think that people should understand »

Obama knows the words, but can he learn the music?

I’ve suggested before that the real “Clinton” is this campaign is not Hillary, but Obama. Both came from fairly humble origins and from the intellectual and social periphery. Both had major father figure issues. Both, by virtue of their great intelligence, were admitted into America’s elite educational institutions. There, both were exposed to, and profoundly influenced by, strong strains of radicalism. Both, in seeking the nation’s highest office, understood the »

Good News From Iraq

Earlier today, the highest-ranking Sunni in Maliki’s Iraqi government called on his fellow Sunnis to rejoin the government so they can help to “save Iraq:” The Sunni leader has been one of al-Maliki’s most bitter critics, accusing him of sectarian favoritism, while the prime minister has complained that the vice president is blocking key legislation. But al-Hashemi and other Sunni leaders apparently have been swayed by al-Maliki’s crackdown against Shiite »

Season of the witch

In November 2001 Peggy Noonan was scheduled to appear as the featured speaker at the Center of the American Experiment’s “fall briefing” event in Minneapolis. A few days before the event, as I recall (I’m a member of CAE’s board and I am writing from memory), she informed CAE that she wouldn’t be appearing because of her fear of flying in the aftermath of 9/11. It wasn’t much of an »

McCain Triangulates

John McCain is in the midst of a “Time for Action Tour,” which could perhaps better be named his “Bash Bush and the Republicans Tour.” First came his demand that the North Carolina Republican Party withdraw its ad criticizing Barack Obama’s choice of Jeremiah Wright as a spiritual mentor. On NBC this morning, this is how McCain answered questions about the ad: VIERA: The ad says Obama’s, quote, “just too »

Change you’re not supposed to notice

Hatem El-Hady is the former chairman of the Toledo-based Islamic charity Kindhearts that was shuttered by government in 2006 for Hamas-friendly fundraising. El-Hady now devotes himself to raising money for the Obama campaign. He even has a web page at the official Obama campaign site. Make that had a web page. On Wednesday Charles Johnson wrote about El-Hady and noted three “friends” listed on his page. One of them was »

An apologist for Syria denies he’s Obama’s adviser

Yesterday Paul Mirengoff wrote here about Obama nuclear policy advisor Joseph Cirincione. Paul’s post was based on Gabriel Schoenfeld’s discussion of “Obama’s radioactive potato.” Cirincione has now responded to Schoenfeld: “I am not a top advisor to Senator Obama. I have never met the Senator. I have written occasional memos to his campaign and publicly endorsed his candidacy, but I am afraid there is no way I could be considered »

An apologist for Syria shifts his ground

Yesterday, I noted that Joseph Cirincione, Barack Obama’s go-to guy on nuclear issues, insisted in September 2007 that reports of North Korean involvement in developing a Syrian nuclear facility were “nonsense” cooked up by the Bush administration and Israel for their own purposes. One might think that being this wrongheaded — lashing out against a valid report due to dislike of its sources and implications — would disqualify Cirincione not »

Why not him?

Minnesota Democratic senatorial candidate Al Franken titled his mock memoir of a presidential campaign Why Not Me?. Over the past few weeks, with his failure to pay workers’ compensation insurance in New York and his failure to pay corporate tax returns in California, he has begun to answer the question he asked in the title of that book. Today’s Star Tribune reports that a new round of financial questions dogs »

“McCain offers tax policies he once opposed”

That’s a headline on the front page of today’s Washington Post. The story, which was written by Jonathan Weisman but could just as easily have been penned by the DNC, begins this way: On May 26, 2001, after then-Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.) cast his vote against President Bush’s $1.35 trillion tax cut, he trudged back to his office, convinced, he recalled, that he had been the lone Republican to »

Those darned Iranians

The Wall Street Journal reports that Iranian weapons unaccountably just keep turning up in Iraq: The U.S. military says it has found caches of newly made Iranian weapons in Iraq, leading senior officials to conclude Tehran is continuing to funnel armaments into Iraq despite its pledges to the contrary. Officials in Washington and Baghdad said the purported Iranian mortars, rockets and explosives had date stamps indicating they were manufactured in »

How high the moon?

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Ella Fitzgerald. She was a remarkable artist. Each period of her long career is rewarding, though she deepened her art as she got older. She excelled in a wide variety of material and in every muscial setting. There is an emotional reserve or detachment in her singing, but there is also joy and an irrespressible sense of fun in her approach. The »

Obama’s bad luck with advisers continues

Gabriel Schoenfeld reports on the latest Obama foreign policy adviser who turns out not to like Israel very much. Add Joseph Cirincione to the list that includes Samantha Power, Robert Malley, Merrill McPeak, Zbigniew Brzezinski , and his spiritual adviser Jeremiah Wright. (Obama, of course, loves Israel; he’s just unlucky with his advisers). Last September, in response to reports that the site in Syria that Israel bombed was a potential »

The Wright interviewer

Rev. Jeremiah Wright did an interview with Bill Moyers. That’s a good match; it’s difficult to say which one holds America in lower regard. During the interview, Wright tries to have it both ways — he stands by his statements, but he’s being unjustly portrayed through the airing of them. No wonder Obama admires Wright. JOHN adds: Here is part of the Moyers interview. You’ll notice that, notwithstanding Moyers’s sympathetic »

Change you can forget about — a word from Bill Otis

My friend Bill Otis writes: One way of testing whether Obama is the candidate of “bringing us together” and “getting past partisan divisions” is to ask him to specify one — just one — significant issue on which he would be willing to break ranks with his party and join with the other party. We know McCain has done this all the time, on immigration, campaign finance, tax cuts, “torture” »

A fair and balanced take on Bill Ayers

We understand that Bill O’Reilly will be reporting on and playing highlights of the audio clips of Barack Obama’s mainstream Chicago friend Bill Ayers on his O’Reilly Factor impact segment at ten after the top of the hour tonight. We posted the audio clips here (part 1) and here (part 2). It should be worth watching as this story breaks out of its cocoon following last week’s debate. Thanks to »