Blogs For Victory

Not that British politics means all too much for the United States, but here’s an example of how even the slickest leftism backed by the entire popular culture and its MSM can still be beaten by conservatism:

Conservative leader David Cameron hailed his party’s victory in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election as marking the “end of New Labour”.

But while describing Edward Timpson’s triumph – on an emphatic swing of 17.6 per cent – as “remarkable”, Mr Cameron added: “I know we still have a long way to go.”

Mr Timpson wiped out the 7,000 majority achieved by the late Gwyneth Dunwoody in the 2005 general election, to win by a margin of almost 8,000 votes over the former MP’s daughter Tamsin.

Labour’s Deputy Leader Harriet Harman conceded that voters were demanding action on the faltering economy and angry about soaring oil and food prices and the Government’s handling of the abolition of the 10p tax rate.

Maggie Thatcher’s campaign slogan from 1979 was “Labour Isn’t Working” – a double hit on rising British unemployment and the fact that the Labour party really had no clue on what to do about it. Naturally, a leftwing party never, ever has a clue on what to do about things because leftist thought is wrong from the start, and thus can’t get it right. “New Labour” coasted to victory on the back of a stunning rise in world prosperity starting in the 90’s (mostly, of course, the result of Thatcherism in the UK and Reaganism in the USA) which cloaked its manifest failure to get anything right. Blair proved a brilliant politician and showed he had rare courage in backing the liberation of Iraq, but in fiscal and social policy, he was a mess…and his successor is just more so, without the charm of Blair. Now that more stringent times are on offer, Labour is failing to figure out what needs to be done, just as the American left hasn’t a clue (though this is masked by the fact that they are the “out” party, and may get rewarded simply for being such in November…but if the left does win, it’ll all come crashing down as people get a good look at leftwing incompetance).

Keep this in mind, fellow conservatives – if we do enter the political wildnerness in November, it will have an end…we’d prefer to spare our nation a dose of leftism, but we’ll also stand prepared to endure, knowing that the left will mess it up, and the people will turn back to us, just as they are in the UK.

The AP has a story out that basically portrays oil execs as cowering under the thundering bloviations coming from the Senate yesterday:

“Where is the corporate conscience?” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., asked the top executives of the five largest U.S. oil companies.

It’s all about economics, came the reply. Supply and demand. The company leaders tried to shift attention from motorists’ anger over $4-a-gallon gasoline to a debate over new areas for drilling.

But senators at the Judiciary Committee hearing weren’t having any of that. They wanted to press the executives about public anguish over paying $60 or more to fill up a car’s gas tank.

“People we represent are hurting, the companies you represent are profiting,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told the executives. He said there’s a “disconnect” between legitimate supply issues and the oil and gasoline prices motorists are seeing.

The executives, sitting shoulder to shoulder in the hearing room, said they understood people were hurting, but they tried to blunt the emotion with economic analysis.

Profits have been huge “in absolute terms,” conceded J. Stephen Simon, executive vice president of Exxon Mobil Corp., but they “must be viewed in the context of the massive scale of our industry.” And high earnings “in the current up cycle” are needed for investments in the long term, including when profits will be down.

“‘Current up cycle,’ that’s a nice term when people can’t afford to go to work” because gasoline is costing so much, replied Leahy with sarcasm.

“The fundamental laws of supply and demand are at work,” said John Hofmeister, chairman of Shell Oil Co., acknowledging it is something the oil industry has been saying for some time and that the explanation may sound “repetitive and uninteresting.”

Hofmeister was joined by executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., BP America Inc. and ConocoPhilips Co. Together the five companies earned $36 billion during the first three months of this year.

As the executives sought to explain their profits and why prices are so high, the global oil markets were moving into new, uncharted highs, touching $133 a barrel for the first time. The national average price of a gallon of gasoline hit $3.80, with $4 showing up in more places. Crude prices increased even more in late electronic trading Wednesday hitting $134 for the first time.

What writer Josef Hebert conveniently failed to add to the reporting was this reply by John Hofmeister, CEO of Shell Oil:

HOFMEISTER: In the United States, access to our own oil and gas resources has been limited for the last 30 years, prohibiting companies such as Shell from exploring and developing resources for the benefit of the American people. It is not a free market. According to the Department of the Interior, 62% of all on-shore federal lands are off limits to oil and gas developments, with restrictions applying to 92% of all federal lands. The Argonne National Laboratory did a report in 2004 that identified 40 specific federal policy areas that halt, limit, delay, or restrict natural gas projects. The problem of access can be solved in this country by the same government that has prohibited it. Congress could have chose to lift some or all of the current restrictions on exploration and production of oil and gas. Congress could provide national policy to reverse the persistent decline of domestically secure natural resource development.

That, my dear readers, is the problem in a nutshell. Big Government is in the midst of bloviating, beating their chests and pointing their bony fingers of indignation at “Big Oil,” when all the while the cause of and answer to the problem is waiting to be answered the next time they look in the mirror. And “Big Media” who is in cahoots with “Big Government” lacks the cajones to report that fact.

Surprise? I think not.

Hillary scores big victory Kentucky while Obama has won a majority of pledged delegates.

Clinton won Kentucky by more than 30 points, but Obama’s share of the state’s 51 delegates was enough put him over the threshold, according to CNN estimates.

Obama’s top strategist, David Axelrod, said this was an “important milestone,” but not the end of the trail.

A candidate needs 2,026 delegates to win the Democratic nomination. Obama has 1,932 total delegates, while Clinton has 1,753.

After Kentucky’s results came in, Clinton thanked her supporters for handing her a victory “even in the face of some pretty tough odds.”

“Tonight we have achieved an important victory,” Clinton said in Louisville.

“It’s not just Kentucky bluegrass that’s music to my ears. It’s the sound of your overwhelming vote of confidence even in the face of some pretty tough odds.”

Clinton beat Obama across all age groups, income groups and education levels in Kentucky.

Eighty-nine percent of Tuesday’s voters in Kentucky were white, according to the exit polls. Among them, Clinton won 72-22 percent. Nine percent of the voters were African-American and they overwhelmingly broke for Obama, 87-7 percent.

While Camp Obama may be patting themselves on the back for hitting their milestone, there’s some bleak news that may or may not influence superdelegates:

The exit polls from Kentucky also suggest a deep division among Democrats. Video Watch how Clinton’s win could affect the race »

Two-thirds of Clinton’s supporters there said they would vote Republican or not vote at all rather than for Obama, according to the polls.

Forty-one percent of Clinton supporters said they’d cast their vote for John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, and 23 percent said they would not vote at all.

I’m looking forward to November.

We’re now learning that Ted Kennedy’s seizures from the other day were caused by a malignant brain tumor, and the outlook for the senior senator from Massachusetts isn’t very good.

Read this story on Obama’s tendencies to blame the help for all his woes. Here’s but a snippet:

In a March 2008 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times to answer questions about Tony Rezko, Obama was asked about the fact that Obama had told the newspaper in November 2006 that he had never been asked to do anything to advance Rezko’s business interests. But the Sun-Times had subsequently learned about a October 28, 1998 letter Obama wrote to city and state housing officials on behalf of a housing project for seniors that Rezko was working on.

The letter, Obama said, “was essentially a form letter of the sort that I did all time. And that I wasn’t, by the way, aware of.”

A reporter asked: You weren’t aware that he was associated with the project?

Responded Obama: “I wasn’t even aware that we wrote the letter. The answer that I gave at the time was accurate as far as I knew…This was one of many form letters, or letters of recommendation we would send out constantly for all sorts of projects. And my understanding is that our letter was just one of many. And I wasn’t a decision maker in any of this process.”

The Sun-Times also pointed out that in November 2006 Obama estimated that Rezko had raised somewhere between $50,000 and $60,000 for him during his political career.

But since that answer, Obama has given back almost $160,000 in Rezko-related contributions.

“The original estimate was based on, I asked my staff to find what monies they attributed to Rezko, and this was the figure given to me,” Obama said.

Blaming others for your own misfortunes, gaffes and mis-steps will only get you so far. For the better part of a year, Barack Obama was held above criticism by the larger media, and was thought to be the democratic “pure as the wind-driven snow” golden child. But the more the truth about the “real Obama” comes out, the more the electorate will realize that the “golden child” they thought they were getting was in reality nothing but costume jewelry.

The list of what we can no longer criticize about Barack Hussein– (oops) — Obama continues. Even if it’s the truth. Now it just so happens that whatever his wife says is beyond reproach:

Earlier, Obama told critics in an interview aired on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to “lay off my wife.”

The Illinois senator was responding to an online ad run by the Tennessee GOP that, during a four-minute video, replays six times Michelle Obama’s comment that “for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.” Michelle Obama has clarified her remark, saying she meant she is proud of the public’s engagement in this year’s political process. Obama called the ad “just low class.”

Obama said that if he wins the nomination, Republicans “can say whatever they want to say about me, my track record. But, he added, “if they think that they’re going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful, because I find unacceptable the notion that you start attacking my wife or my family.”

This would be fair enough if Michelle Obama didn’t insert herself and her words as part and parcel of her husband’s campaign. But in that very same interview, Michele Obama did just that:

In the joint interview, Michelle Obama said, “We’re trusting that the American voters are ready to talk about the issues.” She also denied speculation that she has ruled out a place by Clinton on her husband’s ticket.

“There’s no way that I would say ‘absolutely not’ to one of the most successful and powerful and groundbreaking women on this planet,” Michelle Obama said. Empathizing with her as someone who raised “a phenomenal daughter” while in politics, she said, “I think the world of Hillary Clinton,” and added, “I know how hard, just in the little bit of exposure I’ve had to this, what she’s had to deal with and what she’s accomplished.”

Word to Michelle Obama: If you can’t take the political heat, then get the hell in the kitchen and bake some cookies.

Despite Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s well known rampant corruption, he was easily reelected back in 2006. But it looks like Illinois voters are finally realizing that it’s time to stop letting party loyalty make them turn a blind eye. A new poll shows that nearly 2/3 of Illinois registered voters want the Democrat governor to be impeached.

A new statewide poll has found that 59 percent of Illinois registered voters want the Illinois Legislature to begin impeachment hearings against Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

The survey of 600 registered voters was conducted May 7 to 10 and has a margin of error of plus/minus 4 percent.

Conducted by the Glengariff Group, the poll found Blagojevich’s disapproval rating was a whopping 65 percent, while just 26 percent approve. An Ipsos poll conducted in late March found 54 percent disapproved of Blagojevich’s performance, but Ipsos also asked whether respondents had “mixed feelings,” whereas Glengariff just asked straight up whether they approved or disapproved.

The governor’s job approval ratings, the coverage of the Tony Rezko trial, the frustrated attempt to put recall on the ballot, the disastrous debate over yet another pay raise for legislators and the governor, and the horrendous right-track/wrong-track numbers (14 percent said the state was on the right track, while 71 percent said it was on the wrong track) all likely contributed to the impeachment hearings result.

Just 29.6 percent of registered voters opposed holding impeachment hearings, while 38 percent strongly supported holding hearings and 20.5 percent “somewhat supported” the idea.

Even a plurality of Democrats supports holding impeachment hearings. Democratic voters said they supported the idea by a margin of 49.4 percent to 41.5 percent. Independents overwhelmingly like the proposal, backing it 63 to 24. And it’s probably no surprise that Republicans love it. A whopping 73.5 percent of GOP voters said it was a good idea, compared to just 16 percent who said it wasn’t.

Blagojevich’s troubles go way back, and Mark and I even went into some detail about the dark ethical cloud hanging over him in our book, Caucus of Corruption. I’m glad the people of Illinois have finally begun opening their eyes.

Oh, I almost fell off my chair laughing when I read this quote from Barack Obama.

“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.”

Sounds exactly like what Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have done with John McCain… of course, they’ve gone further, deliberately twisting McCain’s words, evening splicing sentences together to alter the meaning.

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.”

I guess Obama finds himself and his own party detestable.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Advice to Mrs. Obama – if you don’t want to catch any political flack, then don’t make any political statements outside of generalised support for your husband. You want to be in the political kitchen? Then get used to the heat…

Egomaniac Barack Obama appears even more desperate today as he continues whine like a 5 year old child about Bush’s speech to the Knesset, which Obama thinks was an attack directly on him.

Barack Obama has called President Bush’s comments on appeasement “exactly the kind of appalling attack that’s divided our country and alienates us from the rest of the world.”
Obama criticized Republican rival John McCain and President Bush for “dishonest and divisive” attacks in hinting that the Democratic presidential candidate would appease terrorists.

Obama strongly responded Friday to the comments Bush made in Israel on Thursday and McCain’s subsequent words. Obama told a town hall meeting, “That’s the kind of hypocrisy that we’ve been seeing in our foreign policy, the kind of fear-peddling, fear mongering that has prevented us from actually making us safer.”

Of course, the fact that Obama, by every indication we’ve received on the campaign, would be a terrorist appeaser, but let’s face it, he’s trying to make an issue out of something that really wasn’t about him specifically. No one can deny that Obama is part of a larger group of individuals who seem to believe that we can sit down for tea and biscuits with terrorists and the world will be A-OK after that. But, Obama may just not have enough experience to have a realistic understanding of the world and our enemies.

Meanwhile, in Columbus, Ohio, McCain said he took the White House at its word, but then he weighed into the spat himself, saying: “This does bring up an issue that we will be discussing with the American people, and that is, why does Barack Obama, Senator Obama, want to sit down with a state sponsor of terrorism?”

Asked if Obama was an appeaser, McCain said Obama must explain why he wants to talk with leaders like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and added that Obama’s position was a serious error. “It shows naivete and inexperience and lack of judgment to say that he wants to sit down across the table from an individual who leads a country that says Israel is a stinking corpse, that is dedicated to the extinction of the state of Israel. My question is, what does he want to talk about?”

The answer is, Obama doesn’t want to talk about anything that may hurt his candidacy. He feels he is exempt from explaining himself or his positions when such positions could hurt his candidacy.

Keep crying Barack. Waaaa… Waaaa.

The Washington Times has an interesting article about John McCain’s blog reachout efforts, which have recently include left-leaning and apolitical bloggers.

Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign is trying to tap a new audience of potential voters by taking his campaign message straight to liberal and nonpolitical issues-based blogs, which reach millions of readers but don’t often delve into conservative politics.

The strategy was in full swing yesterday when Mr. McCain invited non-conservative bloggers to join his regular blogger conference call, just hours after he delivered a major speech previewing his war strategy and other priorities for a first presidential term.

It already has started a war among liberal bloggers over how to react to Mr. McCain’s overture.

In answering the first question on the call, Mr. McCain said his likely Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, lacks the judgment to be commander in chief, which set him up for a bruising from the readers at TalkingPointsMemo.com, a liberal-leaning site that joined in the call.

Blogger Greg Sargent said it amounted to “what may be [Mr. McCain’s] most direct attack yet on Barack Obama’s national security credentials.” But commenters were split: Some took aim at Mr. McCain, some said they were thankful for the intelligence on “what the enemy is planning,” and others lashed out at Mr. Sargent, saying he should have been harsher in evaluating Mr. McCain’s attack.

“This IS a Democratic blog, and as such, it would seem to me that there SHOULD be SOME bias with regards to how YOU report of McCain’s craziness, as opposed to treating his ranting and attacks with a sort of dignity they and he DO NOT deserve,” wrote one emphasis-abundant reader.

Ahh, there’s some of that liberal “tolerance” on display. While in many ways this broader blog reachout strategy is good, there are clearly many bloggers on the left who have no interest in actual dialogue. They don’t want to debate issues, they want to be agreed with.

The question I have is, would Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton ever attempt to reachout to conservative bloggers? While both claim they can unite the country and both parties, their campaign rhetoric and actions have proven the opposite. I don’t see either of them attempting to deliver their message to conservative bloggers and field questions. They were too afraid to debate on a Fox News debate, so I’m sure they are equally, if not more afraid of conservative bloggers who will actually challenge them on issues and ask hard questions.