Video: Matthews wants us to “think like our kids for once” and consider race … without really considering it?

Let’s deconstruct this. First, Matthews pretty clearly implies that anyone who doesn’t vote for Obama is doing so on the basis of race. However, the biggest reason Matthews can offer for an Obama vote is to open up our hearts to “something different”.  In other words, the most pressing reason Matthews supports Obama is not for his policies or his experience, but because he’s “different”.

At best, that’s an extremely shallow reason, and at worst, well …

But there’s another level of stupidity here.  “Think like your kids for once.  Think the way they think.”  So we should all think like eight-year-olds when we choose our leaders?  That certainly explains Matthews’ shallowness.  I’d prefer that people think like adults and inform themselves on the choices.  That would be the responsible path to voting, which is to say mature, which avoids such notions as picking (or opposing) candidates for their ethnicity or gender, or favoring Matthews’ favorite leg-thrill because it would be neato and super-cool to have Obama in the White House.

DNC convention committee gets its own gas-tax holiday

Obama called McCain’s gas-tax holiday proposal “a gimmick” back in April.  How would he describe the convention planners’ use of tax-free gasoline while the rest of the country pays its fair share of taxes on fuel?  Maybe Obama would like to explain that while he’s talking about hiking fuel taxes to pay for investments in alternative energy sources.  Will Democrats be exempt from that tax?

Mayor Hickenlooper tried to play the everyone-does-it card, telling Faatz that the RNC gets the same deal in St Paul.  Well, no they don’t:

Teresa McFarland, a spokeswoman for the Minneapolis-St. Paul host committee, said they’re getting their gas at the pump.

“We’re not getting a tax break on fuel,” she said. “That’s not the set-up at this end.”

Democrats — making sure only the peasants pay the taxes they impose.

Gas Tax Holiday For Me, Not For Thee.

A gas tax holiday is a "gimmick", Obama assures us. Nonetheless, the DNC bigwigs won't be paying it while attending the convention this year.

National Barack Channel's Shuster: "Americans Don't Care" If Surge Worked

New York Daily News: NBC (National Barack Channel) Defends Obama Coverage

Mistakes pile up on the Messiah Tour: Andrea Mitchell on Obama's staged interviews

Obama is a con artist. He is conning everybody, and he's getting away with it because so many people want to be conned.

"We're succeeding in Iraq because of tribesmen standing down and the awakening, not the US military, not our strategy, not our execution of the battle plan? Right, Obama. And the Soviet collapsing had nothing to do with America or Reagan."

Wind isn’t a standalone power source. It needs a Plan B for when the wind "just don’t blow."

This contrasts with coal- or gas-fired electrical power, which can be produced on demand and as needed. A great benefit of modern technology is that it liberates us from Mother Nature’s harsh whims. Pickens wants to re-enslave us with 12th century technology.

What about Pickens’ plan to shift us into natural gas vehicles? Well, they cost a lot more: an extra $3,000 to $6,000 for cars and $30,000 to $40,000 for buses and trucks. There are only about 1,300 natural gas refueling stations in the U.S., as compared with about 180,000 conventional gas stations — that’s a lot of infrastructure to build and finance. Will Pickens’ plan reduce our dependence on foreign oil? Doubtful.

Not only does Pickens’ firm, BP capital, have significant investments in natural gas, but last June he announced plans to build the world’s largest wind farm in west Texas, capable of producing 4,000 megawatts of electricity.

Michelle Obama’s pledge: Barack will save all the children

Charles Krauthammer wrote last week about the enormous arrogance of Barack Obama, but even Krauthammer couldn’t imagine that the Obamas would claim to rescue all of the world’s children through their election.  Michelle Obama appeared in Colorado last week, the same time as Krauthammer wrote his column, and told the audience that she didn’t have time to get angry — but she wishes she did.  Why?  Well, let her tell you:

“We have one candidate who essentially is telling us every day that the world as it is just fine. That what we’ve been doing for the last eight years is fine,” Obama said. “Stay the course. Don’t make too many changes.

“And then we have this other candidate — Barack Obama — who is saying every day that the world as it is not right. It’s not good enough,” she said. …

“I wish we had time to be divided. I wish we had time to be upset. To be angry. To be disappointed. I wish we did,” Obama said. “Because if we had time for that, then things wouldn’t be so bad right now. Instead, we’re in a place where another four or eight years of the world as it is will devastate the life of some child.”

Which child is that?  And only one child? This is the kind of rhetoric that the Left loves to use, claiming that if just one person in the world is unhappy, then everything we do is wrong and entire systems have to be recreated to address it.  It’s Utopianism, an impulse that has led to the devastation of millions of lives, not just one.  The message intends to show the Obamas as more caring than John McCain, vapid enough without the silliness of arguing that McCain doesn’t want to change anything at all.

Debate over McCain op-ed continues as NY Post publishes it

However, if they offer the lame excuses Shipley does in this case for not publishing McCain’s piece, then their readers can reasonably conclude that they have no objectivity in this election and have decided to become a campaign mouthpiece for Barack Obama. Pointing out the biased treatment given on this point does not constitute “whining”, as Richardson puts it, but a fair criticism of the Times’ editorial decision.

Video: Giuliani on Obama and the surge

Of course, this makes sense only if a candidate has wedded himself so closely to a position that he cannot admit he got it wrong — and that describes perfectly the conundrum in which Obama finds himself on Iraq. Despite the significant improvements in Iraq, despite the stability and political reconciliation that has taken place and is still in motion, Obama cannot admit that he got this call wrong. To do so would be to admit that had Obama been in charge of the effort in 2007, America would have lost the war unnecessarily and given a gift win to terrorists and militias throughout Iraq — as well as the nation’s oil resources.

Obama’s trip to Iraq put him in this vise. Politically, he cannot move away from the anti-war Left that refuses to see any progress in Iraq, especially after betraying them on FISA reform. That explains Bill Richardson’s assertion that the trip isn’t about fact-finding — because acknowledging the facts on the ground would force him into a change. Today, they’re calling the Obama foreign tour a “listening” event, but Obama isn’t listening to commanders on the ground in Iraq. He simply can’t afford to do so.

Well, not yet …

Unfortunately for Obama, the adviser had it right. When the President travels abroad and gives a speech, it is not a domestic, electoral political speech, but that’s because the President actually has the office already.  Barack Obama hasn’t yet even officially won his party’s nomination, let alone be elected as our head of state.  The adviser explained rather neatly why holding big rallies in Berlin is inappropriate for a candidate running for the US presidency.  It’s obviously a political rally, made so by the fact that Obama is running for the White House.

They want to have this both ways.  As Brown reports, the Obama campaign has framed this trip as a means for Obama to get to know the people with whom he’ll deal if he wins the election.  That’s political in and of itself, and that doesn’t account for the massive rally at the Siegessäule monument.  If all Obama wanted was a listening tour, he would have confined himself to diplomatic meetings and fact-finding events.  Instead, he wants to have a massive rally, which is on its face a political event and a political speech, unless Obama does nothing but talk about the World Cup.

Gergen: We only have one president at a time

In one of those front-page editorials disguised as "news" stories, the New York Times blames "the lucrative lending practices"...

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Blaming the lenders is the party line of congressional Democrats as well. What we need is more government regulation of lenders, they say, to protect the innocent borrowers from "predatory" lending practices.

Before going further down that road, it may be useful to look back at what got us into this mess in the first place.

It was not that many years ago when there was moral outrage ringing throughout the media because lenders were reluctant to lend in certain neighborhoods and because banks did not approve mortgage loan applications from blacks as often as they approved mortgage loan applications from whites.

All this was an opening salvo in a campaign to get Congress to pass laws forcing lenders to lend to people they would not otherwise lend to and in places where they would not otherwise put their money.

Shocking as it may be to some, lenders are in the business of making money, and they don't much care whose money it is, so long as they get paid. Politicians, on the other hand, are in the business of getting votes, and they don't much care whose votes it is — or what they have to say or do in order to get those votes.

It was government intervention in the financial markets, which is now supposed to save the situation, that created the problem in the first place.

Laws and regulations pressured lending institutions to lend to people that they were not lending to, given the economic realities.

The Community Reinvestment Act forced them to lend in places where they didn't want to send money, and where neither they nor politicians wanted to walk.

Now that this whole situation has blown up in everybody's face, the government intervention that brought on this disaster in is supposed to save the day.

Politics is largely the process of taking credit and putting the blame on others — regardless of what the facts may be. Politicians get away with this to the extent that we gullibly accept their words and look to them as political messiahs.