Blogs For Victory

Bill Bradley over at Pajamas Media has the whole story of how Obama’s comments managed to make it on to Huffington Post, and then out to the rest of the world. It is a fascinating story of how the New Media works, and how the unwary can be tripped up by it, some times quite unintentionally. As it turns out, the story was brought up by an ardent Obama supporter whom, I’ll bet, didn’t find anything particularly wrong with what Obama said, but who did have some doubts about publishing it. At any rate, what comes through quite clearly is that Obama is mostly mad that it got out – and it seems that it got out mostly because Obama’s fellow elitists didn’t even realise what a boneheaded statement Obama had made.

The lesson here is in the absolute necessity of being honest at all times – had Obama not been trying to hide his contempt for the unwashed masses, then this story would have had far less impact. Of course, if Obama had been forthright about his genuine views on America and Americans, he wouldn’t have survived the Iowa caucuses. Honesty is the best policy – unless you’re a liberal, ’cause a liberal – as a liberal – can’t win a national election.

Not at all surprising:

As Chinese authorities have clamped down on unrest in Tibet and jailed dissidents in advance of the 2008 Olympics, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken a strong public stance, calling for restraint in Tibet and urging President Bush to boycott the Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing.

But her recent stern comments on China’s internal crackdown collide with former President Bill Clinton’s fundraising relationship with a Chinese Internet company accused of collaborating with the mainland government’s censorship of the Web. Last month, the firm, Alibaba Inc., carried a government-issued “most wanted” posting on its Yahoo China homepage, urging viewers to provide information on Tibetan activists suspected of stirring recent riots.

Alibaba, which took over Yahoo’s China operation in 2005 as part of a billion-dollar deal with the U.S.-based search engine, arranged for the former president to speak to a conference of Internet executives in Hangzhou in September 2005. Instead of taking his standard speaking fees, which have ranged from $100,000 to $400,000, Clinton accepted an unspecified private donation from Alibaba to his international charity, the William J. Clinton Foundation.

The former president’s charity has raised more than $500 million over the last decade and has been lauded for its roles in disaster response, AIDS prevention and Third World medical and poverty relief. But his reliance on influential foreign donors and his foundation’s refusal to release its list of donors have led to repeated questions about the sources and transparency of his fundraising…

Sorry, but there’s only one thing to say about this – the shady donations are merely a calculation by foreign interests that they may be buying influence in a future Clinton Administration. This is just the corrupt nature of the Clinton, Inc. beast – or do you think this is all new stuff? Questionable fundraising and Clinton go together like Mafia and Don. While Democrats spend their time wondering if Cheney – who has divested himself entirely from Halliburton – is working for Halliburton’s benefit, no Democrat seems to want to know if various Chinese and other foreign elements own the Clintons body and soul.

This nauseating greed for money and power on display in the actions of the Clintons, coupled with the way Democrats refuse to condemn it, illustrates the depths to which the Democratic party has fallen. As my Dad points out, the corrupt city bosses of Democratic history at least did some things for their cities – and most of them died broke; these days, senior Democrats are determined to live very well, indeed, and don’t question to closely about who is writing the checks, or what they might demand later on.

Damage control:

Barack Obama said Saturday that if he has offended people with comments he made almost a week ago where he labeled small town Pennsylvanians “bitter” and that they “cling to guns and religion” then he regrets it.

“Obviously, if I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that,” Obama said in an interview with the Winston-Salem Journal, according to a transcript provided by his campaign.

Hey, Senator – if you’re sorry you said it, then apologise for saying it. Saying your sorry if someone was offended is a cowardly dodge – makes it seem like you’re saying, “shoot, I wish those bitter, gun-toting, small town Christian racists would lighten up a bit”.

The really useful thing about this incident is how neatly it sums up the way liberal Democrats really view most of America…New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco – wonderful places to be full of the right sorts of people. Rest of America? A bunch of people who are a varied combination of dumb and wicked.

Over the past month or so I’ve had plenty of people send me commentary on Obama Sr’s communism and the clear indications that Obama Jr is also at least somewhat communist in viewpoint – but, of course, the communist viewpoint long ago absorbed the liberal viewpoint, and Obama isn’t the only senior Democrat with communist connections (Hillary has hers, too). These days, in a lot of ways, there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Lenin and any so-called liberal Democrat – of course, the liberal Democrats will vehemently deny this, but that is more a function of their ignorance of just what Lenin was advocating pre-Revolution. And there lies the real problem – Obama isn’t a communist and, in fact, is likely so ignorant of history that he’s unaware that what he considers his liberalism is actually just a species of junior-league Leninism.

One of the hallmarks of Lenin and his ideology was his monunmental contempt for everyone other than himself and his prized henchmen (and even there contempt sometimes oozed out). Lenin was convinced of his superiority and absolutely convinced that he know what was best, and was also bound and determined that no pettifogging concerns for liberty and the sanctity of life would stand in the way of his program. This Leninst contempt is very well mirrored in the contempt modern American liberals hold for the vast majority of the United States – including those poorer Americans they claim to speak for. Obama, self-styled liberal and unwitting intelletual descendent of Lenin, also has this contempt for those he proposes to lead to a better life. Its natural, its easy – and all that happened here is that it came out in unmistakable terms.

And herein is also the fundamental battle of our times – between those who propose to save humanity from itself, and those who value individual humans as they are. Liberals love humanity, but have nothing good to say about the particular, individual humans, especially when those humans perversely prefer to be governed by people other than liberals. Conservatives, on the other hand, humbly admit to not knowing everything and are thus wary of any utopian programs for reform preferring, instead, to just fix what is immediately broken and allow the larger issues to work themelves over time.

For the immediate future, this gaffe will probably work to Hillary’s advantage – lot of small town people in Pennsylvania, ya know? Longer term, this gaffe could absolutely kill Obama’s chances, should he end up gaining the nomination (which, in my view, he’s still the inside favorite to do) – put out in ads and flyers around the nation, it could provide just that erg of support the GOP would need to capture such States as Pennsylvania and Michigan in the fall, thus killing any chance for a Democratic win. Only time will tell on all this, of course, but Obama’s statement here is akin to Kerry’s “global test” in 2004 as far as its potential to utterly destroy the candidate.

Last week, Retired Spook informed the Blogs For Victory community that Michael Turner, (aka Scaramonga) passed away last week, the morning of Monday, March 31. Michael blogged regularly at his own blog, and also was a regular in the comment threads here at Blogs For Victory. He posted his last comment here the night before he passed away.

Michael had actually been a part of our community since the early days of Blogs For Bush. Michael volunteered his time and energy to be our moderator. His help contributed to Blogs For Bush becoming one of the most successful blogs during the 2004 campaign.

I would like to offer my condolences to Michael’s entire family. I spoke with his wife earlier this week, and she remember how Michael helped with Blogs For Bush, spending night and day on it. He remained a die-hard Republican until he passed away.

In order to honor Michael, his life, and his contributions to B4B and Blogs For Victory, I ask our readers here to consider contributing to The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, which supports the families of fallen and injured men and women of the Armed Forces.

Please click here to donate to The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, via their website.

You are also welcome to leave your thoughts here.

Details over at our McCain blog…

UPDATE: Obama stands by his insulting comments.

That’s the message given to parents by California lawmakers, who are pushing a bill to outlaw spanking in California:

“AB 2943 would label good, loving parents — who occasionally use a little paddle, a ruler, a little stick, or a brush to correct their youngster’s misbehavior — as official “child abusers” in the eyes of the law,” said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families.

The bill is a repeat of legislation introduced last year by Democratic Assemblywoman Sally Lieber. “The vast majority of child abuse victims and fatalities are young children,” Lieber said when she first introduced her Child Abuse And Infant/Toddler Protection Bill. “Too often the abuse begins as some form of ‘discipline.’ Existing law is clearly not doing enough to protect the youngest, smallest, most vulnerable members of our society.”

In that, Ms. Lieber may actually have a point.

One of the most liberal RINOs out there is getting a taste of his own medicine:

Silver Introduces “Courtesy” Pricing Bill, Wants a Millionaire Tax

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver introduced a congestion pricing bill yesterday, but was quoted as saying “we have a long way to go” before it clears his chamber.

The Times reports that Silver, introducing the plan “as a courtesy to the new governor,” agreed not to “block” it “in exchange for some version of the new tax on anyone making more than $1 million.” But some Republican lawmakers who might otherwise support congestion pricing are opposed to the “millionaire tax” (as is Mayor Bloomberg).

Heh. Live by liberalism, die by liberalism, I say.

What would you call Obama’s broken pledge that if his general election opponent accepted public financing for his campaign that he would as well.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: A nightmare for Democrats, according to Marist – McCain leads Obama and only barely trails Hillary in New York. Polls, as I endlessly point out, are weak reeds, especially this far out from the actual voting…but such polls (and there are a lot of them these days showing this sort of thing) have to have hearts trembling with fear over at the DNC, and explain why Dean wants this whole thing wrapped up by June 1st.

UPDATE, by Matt Margolis: I think it is quite clear from the attacks by the DNC against McCain that the Democrats are afraid of him. Now Dean is claiming people are concerned about McCain’s age.

Howard Dean can’t seem to open his mouth without saying something nonsensical… Earlier this week he said that John McCain isn’t a strong candidate … yet both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are “extraordinary.”

Howard Dean is as partisan as they come, but for him to make both those claims is just plain stupidity. John McCain has more experience than Hillary and Obama combined. Four years ago, Democrats claimed that John Kerry’s four months in Vietnam made him more qualified to be commander-in-chief, but today they say that John McCain, who served far longer and endured far more than John Kerry did, is a weaker candidate than both Hillary and Obama, neither of whom served in the military. Hillary and Obama support disastrous policies…. They both want to cut and run from Iraq. They both want to raise taxes. They both want socialized health care. Yet, Howard Dean calls them extraordinary…

“Like most Americans, I’m eager to hear what General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have to say about military and political progress in Iraq. These men have spent decades mastering their respective professional fields. They deserve our respect.” -Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell

Mark and I are both at work… So feel free to talk about the hearings… give us the details of the Democrats’ defeatist grandstanding… Let’s have it.

UPDATE: Snippets of Patreus’s remarks:

Since September, levels of violence and civilian deaths have been reduced substantially, Al Qaeda-Iraq and a number of other extremist elements have been dealt serious blows, the capabilities of Iraqi Security Force elements have grown, and there has been noteworthy involvement of local Iraqis in local security. Nonetheless, the situation in certain areas is still unsatisfactory and innumerable challenges remain. Moreover, as events in the past two weeks have reminded us and as I have repeatedly cautioned, the progress made since last spring is fragile and reversible.

And yet, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want to retreat.

A number of factors have contributed to the progress that has been made. First, of course, has been the impact of increased numbers of Coalition and Iraqi Forces. You are well aware of the U.S. surge. Less recognized is that Iraq has also conducted a surge, adding well over 100,000 additional soldiers and police to the ranks of its security forces in 2007 and slowly increasing its capability to deploy and employ these forces.

So, the surge is working and Iraqis are standing up and doing their part.