Brutally Honest

Wesley Clark's a buffoon

Here's why:

The latest dustup began on CBS's "Face the Nation." Clark, the former supreme commander of NATO under Bill Clinton, said McCain's military service was not the same as executive experience.

"In the matters of national security policy making, it's a matter of understanding risk," Clark said "It's a matter of gauging your opponents, and it's a matter of being held accountable. John McCain's never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war.

"He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee and he has traveled all over the world, but he hasn't held executive responsibility," Clark said. "That large squadron in the Navy that he
commanded - that wasn't a wartime squadron."

Clark has said as much before, but drew little notice. CBS moderator Bob Schieffer cited Clark's earlier remarks and noted that Obama hadn't had those experiences either nor had he ridden in a fighter plane and been shot down. "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," Clark replied.

At least five Republican senators and retired military officers - four on a conference call arranged by the McCain campaign - cried foul Monday, particularly over Clark's last line.

"I was utterly shocked," Sen. John Warner, R-Va., told the conference call, " ... that he would in such a disrespectful way attack one of his fellow career military officers."

"Beyond comprehension ... further erosion of our nation's political discourse," said former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., in a written statement.

"Complete silliness," retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Carl Smith said on the call.

Retired Marine Lt. Col. Orson Swindle said Clark was "denigrating the character and the experience and the integrity and the performance" of McCain.

"A very indecent thing," said retired Air Force Col. Bud Day.

Obama has yet to come out and state that this is not the Wesley Clark he's known for years but hang tight, given history, it ought to be coming any minute now.

Local Harley dealer comes through

Not just any local dealer but my own:

As they walked down the fairway, they didn't see a darn thing near the hole, so 45-year-old [Allen] Underwood began to get excited. He called back to the official monitor on site to tell him there's something he might want to check out.

"Sure enough," Underwood says, "we went up there and it was in the hole and everybody went nuts for about 10 minutes."

Tourney organizers announced his coup, and Underwood spent the rest of the afternoon buying drinks, shaking hands and calling his family. Friends took pictures of him and the bike, and the Harley rep who had just arrived to drive the bike back to the dealership congratulated him, too.

He was told to come by Hampton Roads Harley-Davidson off Route 17 in Grafton on Monday to fill out paperwork and collect his prize.

Then came the hitch.

At the dealership, Underwood noticed that the affidavit for the insurance company covering the prize awards indicated that the Harley was offered for acing hole 17, not 14. An employee assured him it wasn't a problem.

But it was.

By Wednesday, a Harley representative phoned Underwood to say its insurance company wouldn't cover a hole-in-one for the 14th hole.

Sorry, and take it up with the tourney sponsor, the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, or AFCEA, a global, nonprofit membership association that raises funds for charity and education.

How did the holes get switched?

"It was all my fault," tournament organizer Bob Ingram said Friday. "My deja vu was a mess."

It was all a matter of logistics: Ingram said he wanted to keep the Mercedes and the Harley on nearby holes to make it easier on the two hole monitors. That meant moving the Harley to the 14th.

AFCEA doesn't have the funds to simply buy the bike for Underwood — tourney pledges amounted to $7,500, or less than the value of the bike. And besides, those pledges are intended for college scholarships to local ROTC students.

 

For a while, it looked like Underwood was out of luck.

Then on Thursday, he learned that the issue was suddenly resolved.

Basically, he says, the dealership decided, "Let's just give him the bike."

That same day, they did.

"They just treated me like a king when I went to pick it up," Underwood said Friday. "They were totally gracious and happy with me."

They even picked up the cost of tax, title and registration and threw in a free annual membership to their Harley Owners Group.

"We have to thank Harley for that," says Ingram. "They really came through in our hour of need. My hat's off to them."

He says he's even thinking of buying a bike, himself, now.

The dealership owner didn't return phone calls Friday for comment.

And she likely won't. 

I've had my Road King now for 4 years and Mrs. BH has bought two bikes from this dealer, her first a Sportster 883 and and last year in May she traded that in for her Fat Boy.  For each purchase, this dealer went out of their way to make us comfortable, to work with us on accessories, and each time we go back for one thing or another, we literally are treated like family.  So when this story came across the wires, we weren't surprised. 

Hampton Roads Harley Davidson is a special place run by special people.  Time and again they shatter the stereotypical mythology that paints the biker as something most of them are not.  Hats off to 'em. 

And to Mr. Underwood...  welcome to the club sir and remember... only bikers know why dogs like to stick their heads out windows.

Hope and change

Obama's glass ceiling:

While Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has vowed to make pay equity for women a top priority if elected president, an analysis of his Senate staff shows that women are outnumbered and out-paid by men.

That is in contrast to Republican presidential candidate John McCain's Senate office, where women, for the most part, out-rank and are paid more than men.

Obama spoke in Albuquerque, N.M. last week about his commitment to the issue and his support of a Senate bill to make it easier to sue an employer for pay discrimination.

"Mr. McCain is an honorable man, we respect his service. But when you look at our records and our plans on issues that matter to working women, the choice could not be clearer," Obama told the audience in New Mexico, a voter-swing state. "It starts with equal pay. Sixty-two percent of working women in America earn half or more than of their family's income. But women still earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2008. You'd think that Washington would be united it its determination to fight for equal pay."

...

On average, women working in Obama's Senate office were paid at least $6,000 below the average man working for the Illinois senator. That's according to data calculated from the Report of the Secretary of the Senate, which covered the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007. Of the five people in Obama's Senate office who were paid $100,000 or more on an annual basis, only one -- Obama's administrative manager -- was a woman.

The average pay for the 33 men on Obama's staff (who earned more than $23,000, the lowest annual salary paid for non-intern employees) was $59,207. The average pay for the 31 women on Obama's staff who earned more than $23,000 per year was $48,729.91. (The average pay for all 36 male employees on Obama's staff was $55,962; and the average pay for all 31 female employees was $48,729. The report indicated that Obama had only one paid intern during the period, who was a male.)

McCain, an Arizona senator, employed a total of 69 people during the reporting period ending in the fall of 2007, but 23 of them were interns. Of his non-intern employees, 30 were women and 16 were men. After excluding interns, the average pay for the 30 women on McCain's staff was $59,104.51. The 16 non-intern males in McCain's office, by comparison, were paid an average of $56,628.83.

The new kind of politician smells a lot like the old kind of hypocrite.

Putrid.

But hey, he's all about hope and change.

"And please, please try to wake the hell up."

Via Insty comes Arthur Silber's hard look at the "woozily sentimental, intellectually reprehensible remarks" of your average Obama supporter:

I have several complicated essays in the works concerning the nature of the attraction that Barack Obama holds for many of his supporters. Once I complete some other articles, I will turn my full attention to them.

I want to mention the following, only because I am still so gobsmacked by it. A little while ago, in a fleeting moment of distraction, I turned my radio to the Stephanie Miller show. No more links for her; I gave her a link some months ago in connection with her grotesquely awful comments about the tasering of Andrew Meyer (she was Commentary Four). Miller is on vacation this week, so a couple of guest hosts are filling in.

The subject was Obama, and the comments in general were fairly horrifying, but in the way that has been typical for several months now. "Oh, his message is so wonderful!" What's that message? "Hope! Change!" And what's the nature of that hope and change?

So much for specifics.

Then another caller came on the line.  She began by announcing that, of course, in general she doesn't believe any of that nonsense about God controlling our national destiny, and she certainly doesn't believe that God chose that awful George Bush to be our president.

BUT, she burbled on, she absolutely believes that Barack Obama has been ordained by God to lead the United States of America.  AND, she  further oozed, look at the physical effect he has on people!  This, she portentously announced, IS.  NOT.  A.  COINCIDENCE.

THIS.  IS.  SIGNIFICANT.

Reactions of this kind to Obama are fairly common. No, they are not this extreme much of the time, but such statements are far from unusual. And many of Obama's less obviously deluded supporters fall along the same continuum.

Take a look at the woozily sentimental, intellectually reprehensible remarks collected at the beginning of "Obama's Whitewash," the third excerpt here, and the comments here. Moreover, this kind of reaction -- an emotion-driven response utterly devoid of coherent ideational content, a response that leads far too many people to be enthusiastically willing to believe virtually anything that Obama might proclaim and to follow him anywhere -- is one that Obama and his campaign explicitly seek to elicit.

People had better wake the hell up, and they had better study some history very damned fast. I have sometimes remarked, and I repeat the warning here, that the twentieth century was a nonstop train of horrors -- yet in one sense, the most terrible and horrifying aspect of the twentieth century is that we learned absolutely nothing from it.

There's more, all of it noteworthy and repeatable and in fact worthy of passing on to an Obama supporter near you who's elevator still goes to the top.  I say still because frankly, there's no hope (or change) to be found for the true Obamaniac.

If only the Republicans would walk this talk...

... especially John McCain:

Nicely done Fred... now use your influence to hold the NRSC and NRCC and John McCain to these words.

Please...

H/T to St. Blogustine.

Unity

Larwyn points us to Gateway Pundit and the latest episode of As the Democrat Party Turns:

Bill Clinton says Barack Obama must 'kiss my a**' for his support

The Telegraph reported:

Bill Clinton is so bitter about Barack Obama's victory over his wife Hillary that he has told friends the Democratic nominee will have to beg for his wholehearted support...

The Telegraph has learned that the former president's rage is still so great that even loyal allies are shocked by his patronising attitude to Mr Obama, and believe that he risks damaging his own reputation by his intransigence.

A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could "kiss my a**" in return for his support.

Of course, this will all hinge on what the definition of "a**" is. 

 

"We are all Hussein"

Emily Nordling has never met a Muslim, at least not to her knowledge. But this spring, Ms. Nordling, a 19-year-old student from Fort Thomas, Ky., gave herself a new middle name on Facebook.com, mimicking her boyfriend and shocking her father.

“Emily Hussein Nordling,” her entry now reads.

With her decision, she joined a growing band of supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who are expressing solidarity with him by informally adopting his middle name.

The result is a group of unlikely-sounding Husseins: Jewish and Catholic, Hispanic and Asian and Italian-American, from Jaime Hussein Alvarez of Washington, D.C., to Kelly Hussein Crowley of Norman, Okla., to Sarah Beth Hussein Frumkin of Chicago.

Jeff Strabone of Brooklyn now signs credit card receipts with his newly assumed middle name, while Dan O’Maley of Washington, D.C., jiggered his e-mail account so his name would appear as “D. Hussein O’Maley.” Alex Enderle made the switch online along with several other Obama volunteers from Columbus, Ohio, and now friends greet him that way in person, too.

Mr. Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim. Hussein is a family name inherited from a Kenyan father he barely knew, who was born a Muslim and died an atheist. But the name has become a political liability. Some critics on cable television talk shows dwell on it, while others, on blogs or in e-mail messages, use it to falsely assert that Mr. Obama is a Muslim or, more fantastically, a terrorist.

“I am sick of Republicans pronouncing Barack Obama’s name like it was some sort of cuss word,” Mr. Strabone wrote in a manifesto titled “We Are All Hussein” that he posted on his own blog and on dailykos.com.

So like the residents of Billings, Mont., who reacted to a series of anti-Semitic incidents in 1993 with a townwide display of menorahs in their front windows, these supporters are brandishing the name themselves.

“My name is such a vanilla, white-girl American name,” said Ashley Holmes of Indianapolis, who changed her name online “to show how little meaning ‘Hussein’ really has.”

-NYTimes.

In that spirit, and in response to ReliaPundit's question here, I've modified my Presidential campaign accordingly:

All nuance, all the time

Glenn Greenwald highlights Keith Olbermann's flip flopping on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) now that Obama has come out in support of it:

On January 31 of this year, Keith Olbermann donned his most serious face and most indignant voice tone to rail against George Bush for supporting telecom immunity and revisions to FISA. In a 10-minute "Special Comment," the MSNBC star condemned Bush for wanting to "retroactively immunize corporate criminals," and said that telecom immnity is "an ex post facto law, which would clear the phone giants from responsibility for their systematic, aggressive and blatant collaboration with [Bush's] illegal and unjustified spying on Americans under this flimsy guise of looking for any terrorists who are stupid enough to make a collect call or send a mass email."

Olbermann added that telecom amnesty was a "shameless, breathless, literally textbook example of Fascism -- the merged efforts of government and corporations that answer to no government." Noting the numerous telecom lobbyists connected to the Bush administration, Olbermann said:

This is no longer just a farce in which protecting telecoms is dressed up as protecting us from terrorists conference cells. Now it begins to look like the bureaucrats of the Third Reich, trying to protect the Krupp family, the industrial giants, re-writing the laws of Germany for their benefit.

Olbermann closed by scoffing at the idea that telecom amnesty or revisions to FISA were necessary to help National Security:

There is not a choice of protecting the telecoms from prosecution or protecting the people from terrorism, Sir. This is a choice of protecting the telecoms from prosecution or pretending to protect the people from terrorists. Sorry, Mr. Bush, the eavesdropping provisions of FISA have obviously had no impact on counter-terrorism, and there is no current or perceived terrorist threat the thwarting of which could hinge on an email or phone call that is going through Room 641 of AT&T in San Francisco.

Strong and righteous words indeed. But that was five whole months ago, when George Bush was urging enactment of a law with retroactive immunity and a lessening of FISA protections. Now that Barack Obama supports a law that does the same thing -- and now that Obama justifies that support by claiming that this bill is necessary to keep us Safe from the Terrorists -- everything has changed.

Greenwald, no fan of FISA, goes on to chronicle Olberman's reversal including a a tell-tale interview with Newsweek's Jonathan Alter.

In summary, from the perspective of Keith Olbermann, who speaks for many a moonbat across this great land, Bush=Nazi when it comes to his support of FISA but Obama=Strength when he supports the exact same legislation.

Nuance.  It's a beautiful thing.

Kate gets the H/T.

I've got your hope and change right here (UPDATED)

With props and thanks to Pastor Chuckels.

UPDATE: I've already decided to make changes in the campaign, they are detailed here.

Nuanced anti-semitism

I'm sure the Presbyterians mean well:

An unusually broad array of American Jewish groups is sounding an alarm about proposals the Presbyterian Church is set take up here tomorrow addressing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

At least 19 Jewish organizations, ranging from Americans for Peace Now to the Zionist Organization of America, have spoken out against some of the so-called overtures to be debated at the weeklong biennial meeting of Presbyterians in America.

Jewish leaders contend that some of the resolutions and a new church statement on anti-Semitism threaten to reopen the wounds caused in 2004 when the Presbyterian general assembly approved a measure threatening divestment in companies that do business with the Israeli government.

In a blunt letter this month, leaders of three Jewish denominations said they felt betrayed by Presbyterian Church officials who reached out after the 2004 imbroglio. "Friends, or even dialogue partners, do not engage in actions that can so easily and plausibly be seen as bait-and-switch tactics," Rabbi Jerome Epstein of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Dr. Carl Sheingold of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, and Rabbi Eric Yoffie of the Union for Reform Judaism wrote to the Reverend Clifton Kirkpatrick, who is stepping down this week after 12 years as the head of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

The church's statement on anti-Semitism "marks a new low-point in Presbyterian-Jewish relations," the Jewish leaders said. "Indeed, this document reads as a blueprint for how to engage in anti-Israel activity without being accused of anti-Semitism."

It's all about the nuance. 

My new favorite word.