"I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions," he said.
Socialism, abortion on demand without question or twinge of conscience, dismantling the traditional family and social structure - yup, all of the best traditions of America!
This about sums it up:Slublog, over at Ace's place
Yea, we have long waited for an inexperienced legislator with no significant accomplishments and former community organizer to lead us out of the wilderness.
VERO POSSUMUS!
Simple assignment for the press corps: ask the senator to name three specific traditions to which America will return upon his election and why his election will prompt their return. No teleprompters allowed.
Obama constantly touts his judgement as one of the prime qualities that he would bring to the office of President. But on the most important issue of the time, at the time that it was most important to make a good judgement, he made a terribly, terribly bad judgement:
“To reach such a solution, we must communicate clearly and effectively to the factions in Iraq that the days of asking, urging, and waiting for them to take control of their own country are coming to an end.” This is the most absurd point of all. The Iraqis didn’t have enough trained and seasoned security forces to bring stability. Retreat would not have forced them to work together — it would have forced the factions to arm themselves and go to war to protect themselves. The central government needed more time to develop the means to “take control of their own country”, and in 2008 we have seen the results.
McCain and Bush made the right call in supporting the Surge. The irony of the situation now is that the gains that we have made through the Surge have made Obama's withdrawal plans feasible, instead of crazy - as they were when he started advocating them - in other words, the rightness of McCain and Bush ultimately allow Obama to seem more reasonable, and thus, electable. That's a shame.
"Irrational" is how 36th District Court Judge Ronald Giles described Kilpatrick's assault on a deputy who was trying Thursday afternoon to serve court papers on a friend of the mayor. Good for Giles to finally take real charge of the mayor's criminal case Friday, after weeks of swaying in the hot air from Kilpatrick's defense team. The judge set a thug-like cash bond for the mayor, subjected him to random drug tests, and generally dressed Kilpatrick down for incredibly bad behavior. In short, he treated the mayor like the criminal defendant he is. About time.
Maybe now Kilpatrick's $700-an-hour lawyers will get serious with Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy about some kind of plea to end this nightmare, which has yet to reach even the preliminary hearing stage. Trial? Likely into next year. Cost? Millions of Wayne County tax dollars that could be put to so much better use.
With a cloud hanging over the City Council because of its own scandal on a sludge contract, there's a big ball sitting in Gov. Jennifer Granholm's court, too. The council asked her to use her constitutional power to boot the mayor; Granholm, ever judicious, has set up a legal procedure for decision-making. It is at least on a faster pace than the mayor's criminal case, but nothing official can really begin to happen until after Labor Day, and this, again, is going to take time and money from a state that has so many other major needs for its resources.
Even as Granholm's quasi-judicial cogs are turning, she ought to be privately leaning on the mayor to do everybody, including himself, a favor and quit. Whatever she may think of the legal grounds for removing him, Granholm can't be happy about the mayor's public conduct, the paralysis he has inflicted on Detroit and the damage he is doing to Michigan's image. Next time he calls to ask for a meeting on Cobo Hall, she just has to say: "Mr. Mayor, what's the point? I've been asked to sit in judgment of you. We have nothing else to discuss unless it's how you can spare us both a lot of grief."
And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.
He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the
Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.
And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.
From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.
And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child's very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.
And the Persians, who saw all this and were greatly fearful, longed to speak with the Child and saw that the Child was the bringer of peace. At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.
Ace sums up Obama's comments on the surge pretty well:
Obama: Surge Was a "Bad Strategy," I Have No Idea What Would Have Happened if We'd Followed My Strategy (and I Don't Really Care to Think About It), and Oh, By the Way, It Was Really My Call for Political Reconciliation That Reduced Violence
...Or - if you're having trouble winning, change the rules!
An interesting story indeed, chronicled here and here...
More:Thoughts from the young man who discovered this document:
We’re all for ”right-sizing” and reforming state government, but the blatantly partisan nature of what this measure does to make that happen in disturbing. The redistricting provision, for example: A truly fair way would be to have a Senate with a representative from every county, and a House that is districted based on population, not along partisan lines as proposed by RMGN. Yes this would create a larger Senate, but at least it would be fair and reasonable.
The proposed Executive Branch cuts appear to be a response to the absence of a strong candidate to succeed Gov. Granholm. The cuts in the Judiciary are a blatant response to the strict constructionist court Michigan currently enjoys. The only “non-GOP” Justice position proposed for removal is a new appointee of the Bush Administration who is moving to the federal bench anyway.
And more: Some more technical analysis of the document at the Mackinac Center...
Oh, it's all true, but it'll never get through to those who've bought what Obama is selling:
Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?
Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.
It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history -- "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" -- when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow." As Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone.
The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt renders a valuable service by wading through last week’s Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report which ostensibly flogs the “Bush Lied” theme, but in fact reports that Pres. Bush’s statements on Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, chemical weapons, biological weapons, production capability and mobile laboratories, weapons of mass destruction overall, ballistic missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda were all substantiated by the available intelligence...
My colleagues on The Times’s editorial page called the [farm] bill “disgraceful.” My former colleagues at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page ripped it as a “scam.” Yet such is the logic of collective action; the bill is certain to become law. It passed with 81 votes in the Senate and 318 in the House — enough to override President Bush’s coming veto. Nearly everyone in Congress got something.
The question amid this supposed change election is: Who is going to end this sort of thing?
Barack Obama talks about taking on the special interests. This farm bill would have been a perfect opportunity to do so. But Obama supported the bill, just as he supported the 2005 energy bill that was a Christmas tree for the oil and gas industries.
Obama’s vote may help him win Iowa, but it will lead to higher global food prices and more hunger in Africa. Moreover, it raises questions about how exactly he expects to bring about the change that he promises.
If elected, Obama’s main opposition will not come from Republicans. It will come from Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill. Already, the Democratic machine is reborn. Lobbyists are now giving 60 percent of their dollars to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The pharmaceutical industry, the defense industry and the financial sector all give more money to Democrats than Republicans. If Obama is actually going to bring about change, he’s going to have to ruffle these sorts of alliances. If he can’t do it in an easy case like the farm bill, will he ever?
Even though the entire media has been falling over themselves to tell us how inspiring and eloquent and downright wonderful Obama is, it's possible that some of us may not have gotten that message. So now Barack is talking about it too:
"And let me make one last point about the comparison to McGovern and Dukakis, both excellent men, but I'm a pretty darn good politician," he said. "I can give a pretty good speech, and I can connect and inspire the American people in ways that have become apparent. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't pretty good at mixing it up, and so much of the attack machine that's been built up is part of the old politics."
Goodness. Get over yourself, man. It's just unseemly for any politician to give themselves complements like that.
Obama doesn't understand a great deal of America. He has no experience with it other than as a politician looking for votes, and even that experience outside of Chicago has been accumulated only since he began his run for the U.S. Senate in 2003. His life has made him keenly aware of urban dysfunction and of African-American issues even as it has exposed him to the Third World in a way that very few American officials have been.
But he is blind to what makes most American communities work. His family experiences and his work experiences have never immersed him in the majority of America that not only functions but indeed thrives. His projection on to that America of his own beliefs -- that odd mix of the beliefs assembled during his very unusual childhood, in Hawaii's most privileged school, on Chicago's south side, and at Columbia and Harvard Law School and Trinity's congregation-- has opened a lot of eyes to just how different Obama's vision of America is.
The more I hear Obama talk, the more I believe that he sees the state as the true provider of spiritual fulfillment for individuals. After all, if people weren't embittered by failures of government, they wouldn't have to turn to guns or God or anything else to fill that spiritual void. It's a pretty sad vision in the end, and one I hope enough of America isn't dumb enough to buy into.
His remarks were indefensible and unspinnable, which is why the media is in such a rush to 1) claim that the only dispute is over "bitter" and 2) end discussion on the flare-up entirely.
Even his liberal defenders cannot agree on an actual defense -- they alternate (sometimes in the same sentence) between claiming that of course Obama could not have intended to say such an offensive and condescending thing, and also that he was 100% right to say such an offensive and condescending thing -- hey, it's just a fact that hicks vote on guns, God, and racism because they don't have enough money to rise above their petty resentments and childish faiths!
Detroit City Council members reacted with indignation and a flurry of disbelieving questioning Tuesday after one of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's attorneys insisted that the mayor's text messages didn't trigger the settlement of a police whistle-blower lawsuit.
Wilson Copeland II, testifying on the first of three days of hearings the council is conducting, said the abrupt settlement of the lawsuit from two former cops was done to quickly wrap up a similar suit against the city from a third officer. He said it was not out of fear of the text messages, which showed Kilpatrick and former chief of staff Christine Beatty lied under oath at the whistle-blower trial.
After 20 years Obama was just about to get up and walk out of the door in protest of Wright’s demagoguery but don’t you know it, the old man goes and retires.
OK, so Kwame's problems aren't just about his affair and perjury; it turns out that there's also possible favors for friends in city contracting, the infamous Manoogian Mansion stripper party is back, and by gum if this doesn't also have a whiff of murder about it:
A retired Detroit Police Department clerk came forward Monday to say she saw a police report in 2002 in which stripper Tamara Greene described being attacked by Carlita Kilpatrick, wife of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, during a party at the Manoogian Mansion.
The court affidavit by former clerk Joyce Carolyn Rogers of Troy marks the first time a Detroit police employee has stated that a report on the long-rumored party and assault exists.
Rogers told the Free Press she came forward on the advice of her psychiatrist.
"According to the report, the mayor's wife walked into a room and witnessed Ms. Greene touching Mayor Kilpatrick in a manner that upset the mayor's wife," Rogers, 65, said in the affidavit. "The report further states that the mayor's wife witnessed this, left the room and returned with a wooden object in her hand and began assaulting Ms. Greene."
The report indicated Greene was taken to a hospital because she was injured, Rogers said. "It was clear to me as a clerk working in records that Ms. Greene wanted to press charges against Carlita Kilpatrick," Rogers said in the affidavit.
It's a mystery that never had a definitive answer, the story of a Detroit stripper known as Strawberry who was killed in a hail of gunfire while sitting in a car with her boyfriend in the predawn darkness of April 30, 2003.
Since then, Detroit police and Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick have combated persistent rumors and lawsuit allegations that Tamara Greene was killed because she danced at a wild party at the Manoogian Mansion.
Despite repeated denials by the mayor and a state investigation that dismissed the claims as urban legend, the story has persisted and is being fueled by fresh allegations raised by a former homicide detective as part of a lawsuit filed on behalf of Greene's 14-year-old son.
In a 10-page affidavit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, former Lt. Alvin Bowman says he believes Greene, 27, was killed by a Detroit cop and that police officials derailed his homicide investigation.
"I suspected that the shooter was a law enforcement officer, and more specifically, a Detroit Police Department officer," Bowman said in the document.
Spend a few moments scrolling through the Detroit Free Press archive of Kilpatrick scandal-related coverage and your jaw will drop. Considering that Kwame is just the latest in a long line of lousy officials in Detroit, it's really no surprise that a once-great city has been reduced to a hellhole. This is the sort of thing that happens when the politics of a city become entirely dominated by race, bad economics, and corruption.
Michigan Central Station, Abandoned - Corktown, Detroit
Unfortunately, he doesn't appear to have a brain. Last night, he gave his annual State of the City address and had this to say about the sex and perjury scandal that he has, through his own actions, mired himself in:
And finally tonight, and this may be the most talked-about part of this speech after laying out all of that, but I feel that I cannot leave this auditorium with my wife and my sons sitting there without addressing this issue. In the past 30 days, I've been called a n------, a n----- more than any time in my entire life. In the past three days, I've received more death threats than I have in my entire administration. I've heard these words before, but I've never heard people say them about my wife and children. I have to say this because it's very personal to me. I don't believe that a Nielsen rating is worth the life of my children or your children. This unethical, illegal, lynch mob mentality has to stop. And it's seriously time, we've never been here before and I don't care if they cut the TV off, we've never been in a situation like this before. Where you can say anything, do anything, have no facts, no research, no nothing and you can launch a hate-driven, bigoted assault on a family.
I humbly ask members of council, I humbly ask the business community, I humbly ask the religious community, I humbly ask the brothers and sisters of the city of Detroit, I humbly ask we say 'No more' together. I humbly ask that we say "No more' together.
Give the man credit for that greatest of modern Democrat virtues, audacity, but no more credit than that. I find it somewhat hard to believe that Kilpatrick is being flooded with racist hate mail threatening him and his family, but then again, who knows. Perhaps there is a significant cadre of racist morons out there who simply can't figure out that this case is about race about as much as Bill Clinton's impeachment was about sex - specifically, not at all. It's about perjury, lawbreaking, character, and the fitness of an executive to lead a city or the country. For Kilpatrick to play the race card in order to weasel out of the consequences of his actions is laughable and pathetic. "Unethical, illegal, lynch mob mentality"? What, for reporting what you clearly did and demanding that you be held accountable for the $8.4 million you cost to an already financially devastated city? Where's the regret for your clearly unethical and illegal activities that got you and your city into this mess in the first place?
I believe the Detroit media has responded to Kilpatrick's tantrum. The Detroit News editorializes:
...for the longest time, it seemed as if he were going to stare past that elephant in the room and focus determinedly on the progress of his administration and the hopes for the future. It was a rousing speech, filled with new initiatives aimed at easing his citizens' concerns about public safety, education and neighborhood services. Not a word about his personal travails, until the end.
And then Kilpatrick blew it. He angrily and audaciously defined the scandal as a bigoted attack, claiming he's been called the n-word; that he and his family have been threatened; and that opponents with an "unethical, illegal lynch mob mentality" are trying to tear him down.
He blamed everyone but the real villain -- himself.
It's not the first time Kilpatrick has selfishly played the race card to escape a jam. But it may be the most cynical, coming at a time when his personal conduct and poor choices have stalled progress in Detroit and slammed a hammer into the fledgling and fragile attempts to get beyond differences and establish regional unity in Metro Detroit.
The Free Press has two editorials on the matter. From the first:
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick gets at best an "incomplete" for Tuesday night's State of the City address. At worst, an "incredible" for what he didn't address and a closing rhetorical flourish in which Kilpatrick declared himself and his family to be victims of his self-created problems.
Ending a fairly lackluster speech, the mayor said he has faced unprecedented death threats, racial slurs and "a hate-driven, bigoted assault on our family" since the so-called text-message scandal erupted. He called for unity and said he "will continue to focus on building the next Detroit," without acknowledging that he's the one pulling focus from the myriad tasks at hand, and diverting money the city could use to get some of the work done.
In his State of the City speech a year ago, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick issued a challenge.
It moved me then. It saddens me now.
"Men of Detroit," the mayor implored, "I am talking to you not just as mayor, but as a father, a husband and a fellow Detroiter. As men of Detroit, we must step up together and take a leadership role in saving our city. ... Men of Detroit, the time is now for us to take the openhearted and courageous way."
Wonderful words to inspire Detroiters to "man up" against violence, crime and joblessness in the city. In a broad sense, to take responsibility for themselves, their own actions, and how they relate to the city's future.
But they were words that could have been directed at the mayor himself Tuesday, as he gave his 2008 address under the cloud of his inartful dodging of responsibility for the text message scandal.
Was Kilpatrick's tirade at the end of his speech, in which he claimed the media and nearly everyone else are to blame for the brutal effects of this scandal on his family, his idea of taking responsibility? The shameful, divisive words he used to draw false lines between those who want him to own up and those he expects to give him a pass will serve only to prolong the agony in this community.
This whole episode was sad to begin with, but Kilpatrick just made it pathetic. Predictable, considering that this is Detroit after all, but pathetic.
