On The Run

Liberals are on the run. They feel Obama has thrown them under the bus much in the same way he did to his grandmother and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Liberals should now and forever be distrustful of Obama. He’s proven himself to be the typical politician who says conflicting things with feigned conviction to whatever audience he happens to be addressing at the time. Think First District Congressman Tim Walz and State Representative Andy Welti.

Just last week, Obama was saying that the public option was, well ... optional. The next day, Kathleen Sebelius, his Health and Human Services Secretary, tells the Sunday shows that the public option is not an essential element of Obamacare. They even floated the idea of so-called health care co-ops, remember?

None of this was lost on rank-and-file liberals. They had been taking it on the chin for weeks from Sarah Palin on Facebook to grandma and grandpa at town hall meetings across the country. Now, the One on Whom They Had Placed Their Hope and Change seemed to be equivocating on the key element of the socialization of health care in America. Such egregious betrayal so soon after Obama’s Immaculation!

Maybe Obama is the one at whom they are really incensed, not Independents, Republicans and principled Democrats who oppose socialized health care, its death panels and public options. Their rage, however misplaced is palpable, particularly among the President’s Astroturf agents

Where in the World is Tim Walz Hiding? His Constitutents Have A Few Questions About Health Care Reform

Health Debate Turns Hostile at Town Hall Meetings

By IAN URBINA

The bitter divisions over an overhaul of the health care system have exploded at town-hall-style meetings over the last few days as members of Congress have been shouted down, hanged in effigy and taunted by crowds. In several cities, noisy demonstrations have led to fistfights, arrests and hospitalizations.

Democrats have said the protesters are being organized by conser

vative lobbying groups like FreedomWorks. Republicans respond that the protests are an organic response to the Obama administration’s health care restructuring proposals.

There is no dispute, however, that most of the shouting and mocking is from opponents of those plans. Many of those opponents have been encouraged to attend by conservative commentators and Web sites. [More]

Why is it that liberal Democrat groups such as ACORN can "organize" (rabble rouse, really) while conservatives, independents, the elderly, the disabled and, yes, even a few principled Democrats who oppose Obama's socialist, autocratic and intolerant measures are labeled "Nazis," "brown shirts" and worse.

Liberal Democrat legislators should be thankful they do not live in the pre-Revolutionary War days when the populace used to beat, tar, feather and kick agents of the British Crown out of town.

By the way, where is First Distric CongressmanTim Walz? He is apparently not holding any town hall meetings during the August recess, ostensibly for fear that his constituents will ask him a few pointed and hard-hitting questions regarding Barack Obama's health care reform legislation, which the Congressman favors enthusiastically. It would seem that Walz doesn't have any Hy-Vee appearances scheduled this month either. Hmmmm ...

If Mr. Walz is not going to meet with his constituents and give an account of his activities, positions and voting record up to this point of the current congressional session, how will he spend the August recess? Fundraising in the Twin Cities and California, perhaps?

So, where in the world is Tim hiding? Has anyone in Mankato seen him these days? Maybe his pet blogger and faithful flunky, Sally Joe "Ollie Ox" Sorenson of "Bluestem Prairie" infamy, knows where Walz is. But wait, she lives in Hutchinson. That's not in the First District, by the way.

Life Imitates Art: Congressman Tim Walz's Flunky Sally Jo Sorenson - For more of the funniest videos, click here

Obama to Dissenters: "Shut Up and Get Out of My Way!"

How very American. This is one of those occasions when, as President, Barack Obama should draw more from his experiences as a constitutional law professor than as a community organizer. He is behaving like the rabble-rouser-in-chief, not the commander-in-chief here.

Paglia on Obama-Ayers, Sarah Palin and Liberal Democrats' "Grotesque Lock-step Parade of Bourgeois Provincialism"

Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.

How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the State University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don't know their asses from their elbows.

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology -- contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.

As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee -- what navel-gazing hypocrisy! What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry's nod for veep four years ago? And Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, for whom I lobbied to be Obama's pick and who was on everyone's short list for months, has a record indistinguishable from Palin's. Whatever knowledge deficit Palin has about the federal bureaucracy or international affairs (outside the normal purview of governors) will hopefully be remedied during the next eight years of the Obama presidencies.

The U.S. Senate as a career option? What a claustrophobic, nitpicking comedown for an energetic Alaskan -- nothing but droning committees and incestuous back-scratching. No, Sarah Palin should stick to her governorship and just hit the rubber-chicken circuit, as Richard Nixon did in his long haul back from political limbo following his California gubernatorial defeat in 1962. Step by step, the mainstream media will come around, wipe its own mud out of its eyes, and see Palin for the populist phenomenon that she is.

-- The Indefatigable Camille Paglia

Schumer: Free, Dissenting Speech = Pornography

Here they come. If news organizations, talk radio and other news and opinion outlets (blogs?) don't conform to the liberal concept of "fairness" and "balance," meaning no criticism allowed, they will be treated the same way as pornography. This is probably going to be the first mission of Barack Obama's "Civilian National Security Force."

Barack the Tolerant: Endorse Me Or Else

"I hope the candidate that promises to unite America isn't using a litmus test to determine who gets to cover his campaign."

-- Washington Times Executive Editor John Solomon, reacting to the news that his newspaper had been kicked off Barack Obama's plane after it ran an editorial endorsing Senator John McCain's presidential bid.


Washington Times Kicked Off Obama's Plane
by Tom Ramstack
Friday, October 31, 2008

The Washington Times, N.Y. Post and Dallas Morning News -- three newspapers that recently endorsed John McCain -- have been kicked off Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's plane in the final days of his campaign.

The Obama campaign informed The Washington Times Thursday evening of its decision, which came two days after The Times editorial page endorsed Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama. The Times editorial page runs independently of the news department.

"This feels like the journalistic equivalent of redistributing the wealth. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars covering Senator Obama's campaign, traveling on his plane, and taking our turn in the reporters' pool, only to have our seat given away to someone else in the last days of the campaign," said Washington Times Executive Editor John Solomon.

News organizations pay campaigns for the cost of traveling on the candidate's planes.

Read The Washington Times' editorial on the endorsement of Republican presidential hopeful John McCain.

Obama spokeswoman Linda Douglass said the changes on the plane had "absolutely nothing" to do with the organizations' coverage, an explanation echoed by Obama advisor and communications chief Anita Dunn.

"Demand for seats on the plane during this final weekend has far exceeded supply, and because of logistical issues we made the decision not to add a second plane. This means we've had to make hard and unpleasant for all concerned decisions about limiting some news organizations and in some cases not being in a position to offer space to news organizations altogether," Ms. Dunn wrote in an e-mail to The Times Thursday night.

However, the Politico reported Friday that political considerations also were part of the decision. Bill Burton, another Obama spokesman, said the seat shuffles were an effort by the campaign to "reach as many swing voters as we can."

Swing voters aren't likely to change results among The Dallas Morning News' Texas readership or the New York Post's audience, but The Washington Times is widely read in Virginia, a battleground state where the race could still break either way.

Liberals often vilify me when I point out Obama and his campaign's Nazi-like approach to those they perceive, rightly or wrongly, as their political opponents. Obama is a thin-skinned politician. He cannot handle criticism or opposition without retaliation.

Should Obama be elected, God forbid, what damage will he cause to the First Amendment when he abuses presidential power to silence dissenting voices?