Barack Obama on Running for President

August 31, 2008 · Filed Under Ethics ·  

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“You know, I am a believer in… in knowing what you’re doing when you apply for a job. Uh, and I think that… if I were seriously to consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, before having served a day in the Senate.

Now there may be some people who are comfortable doing that, but I am not one of those people.”

— Barack Obama, 2004

I guess he is one of those people. And, of course, you can believe all the promises he’s making now.

Red Hat Blue Hat Podcast 12: Democratic National Convention Analysis

August 31, 2008 · Filed Under News, Podcasts ·  

The twelfth installment of Red Hat Blue Hat featured Mike Allen, Shawn Collins, Todd Crawford, Sam Harrelson, and Tim Jones.

This installment focused on the Democratic National Convention with a discussion on Hillary Clinton’s speech, Joe Biden at VP candidate, the skill of Bill Clinton’s oratory, and lack thereof from Nancy “Can We Drill Your Brain?” Pelosi.

Also, there was talk of the likely VP pick for John McCain… Hutchison, Lieberman, Pawlenty, Romney, somebody else?

Then, we moved on to some geek talk and the uses of Twitter, indenti.ca and other tools that can be harnessed by political campaigns.

We wound up on the uses of social media by each campaign, as well as which is less in touch, and whether any President is actually in touch.

Episode 12 runs 68 minutes, but we have no plans to recreate ‘68.

Subscribe to the RedHatBlueHat RSS feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/redhatbluehat.

Another Democrat Giddy About Hurricane Gustav

August 30, 2008 · Filed Under Democratic National Convention, News ·  

God is on the side of the Democrats, or at least former National Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Don Fowler, based on a video clip posted at redstate.com.

Fowler laughs as he comments to Congressman John Spratt (D-SC):

“The hurricane is going to hit New Orleans about the time it’s (Republican Convention) starting.”

Fowler continues… “The times, at least as it appears now, is that it will be there on Monday. That just demonstrates that God’s on our side.”

Wow. That is profoundly disturbing that Don Fowler is excited about a hurricane hitting our country as the Republicans meet.

Twisted. Disturbing. Sad.

Todd Palin and Big Oil

August 30, 2008 · Filed Under News, Sarah Palin ·  

Mainstream media outlets and liberal bloggers are excitedly reporting that Todd Palin, husband of Republican Vice-President candidate Sarah Palin, is an employee of BP, part of the evil big oil empire.

But they fail to mention a key fact, as according to the Associated Press, Todd Palin isn’t in the board room lording over oil prices.

Her husband, Todd Palin, is part Yup’ik Eskimo, and is a blue-collar North Slope oil worker…

But then again, that reality doesn’t fit quite as nicely in the effort to demonize Sarah Palin.

Michael Moore Cheers on Hurricane Gustav

August 30, 2008 · Filed Under News ·  

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore is known for nasty, fact-challenged attacks, but I thought he had a shred of decency in him.

Guess not, based on comments he made on MSNBC’s August 29 “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” show, where he commented about prospect of Hurricane Gustav making landfall at the beginning of the Republican National Convention next week, according to the Business & Media Institute.

“I was just thinking, this Gustav is proof that there is a God in heaven,” Moore said, laughing. “To have it planned at the same time – that it would actually be on its way to New Orleans for day one of the Republican Convention, up in the Twin Cities – at the top of the Mississippi River.”

And in case you were wondering, Keith Olbermann didn’t chastise Moore for the comments.

Obama Camp Demeans Accomplishments of Sarah Palin

August 29, 2008 · Filed Under Sarah Palin ·  

The Barack Obama campaign didn’t waste time in making a petty attack on Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton referred to Governor Palin as “the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency,” according to Politico.com.

It’s sad that Team Obama belittles both small America and the fact that Sarah Palin is the Alaskan Governor.

By virtue of that office, Palin has more executive experience than Barack Obama.

Sarah Palin Breaks the Political Glass Ceiling

August 29, 2008 · Filed Under Sarah Palin ·  

Sarah Palin has been announced as first female running mate on a Republican ticket. The historic selection is a huge surprise, as many expected Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty as the pick.

Sarah Palin is the first female governor of Alaska, the mother of five, and at 44 is the youngest chief executive in the history of Alaska.

Born in Idaho, Palin moved to Alaska with her parents, to Charles and Sally Heath, when she was 3 months old.

She grew up in Wasilla, just outside of Anchorage, and played on the Wasilla state championship girls’ basketball team. She was crowned Miss Wasilla in 1984 and was a runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant.

Palin studied journalism and political science at the University of Idaho and graduated in 1987. She eloped with her high school boyfriend, Todd Palin, in 1988 to save money on an expensive wedding. She helped out in her husband’s family commercial fishing business and appeared occasionally as a television sportscaster.

Sarah PalinPalin won a seat on the Wasilla City Council in 1992 as a new face and a new voice, and by opposing tax increases. Four years later she was elected mayor at 32 by knocking off a three-term incumbent. At the end of her second term, party leaders encouraged her to enter the 2002 race for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. Against veteran legislators with far more experience, Palin finished second by fewer than 2,000 votes, making a name for herself in statewide politics. She was elected Alaska’s youngest and first woman governor in 2006.

Sarah and Todd Palin have five children: boys Track, 19, and Trig, 4 months, and daughters Bristol, 17, Willow, 13, and Piper, 7. Track Palin joined the Army last September and will deploy to Iraq on Sept. 11. Palin gave birth to Trig, who has Down syndrome, in April and returned to work three days later.

Read more about Sarah Palin.

Michelle Obama to Poor, Black People: Be Sick Somewhere Else

August 29, 2008 · Filed Under Healthcare, Michelle Obama, Tony Rezko ·  

Michelle Obama and three close advisers to Barack Obama have been involved with a program at the University of Chicago Medical Center that turns away patients who don’t have private insurance, who are typically poor, black people, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Michelle Obama helped create the program while serving as the vice president of the University of Chicago Medical Center. She is currently on unpaid leave from the $317,000-a-year job.

The top Obama political strategist, David Axelrod, co-owns the firm, ASK Public Strategies, that was hired by the hospital last year to sell the program.

Additionally, Obama adviser and close friend, Dr. Eric Whitaker, took over the program in October 2007. Dr. Whitaker had previously been the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health.

He was recommended for the state job by Obama, who gave his name to Tony Rezko. Rezko helped Governor Blagojevich assemble his Cabinet.

Tony Rezko has been a fund-raiser for Obama and Blagojevich, but you might know him better as the Obama friend who was recently found guilty on 16 of 24 charges of fraud and money laundering.

What a tangled web of rejecting the poor people who need health care and good, old fashioned cronyism.

We’re Still Not in a Recession

August 28, 2008 · Filed Under Democratic National Convention, Economy ·  

The Barack Obama campaign has been beating the drum about the sour state of the U.S. economy, and the mainstream media keeps pushing the “r” word: recession.

But guess what… the reality is quite different than the jaundiced view coming out of Denver.

The economy performed better than expected in Q2 of 2008, according to the Associated Press.

The economy shifted to a higher gear in the spring, growing at its fastest pace in nearly a year as foreign buyers snapped up U.S. exports and tax rebates spurred shoppers at home.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that gross domestic product, or GDP, increased at a 3.3 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter. The revised reading was much better than the government’s initial estimate of a 1.9 percent pace and exceeded economists’ expectations for a 2.7 percent growth rate.

I’m so sure we’ll hear about this in Obama’s speech tonight.

Bill Clinton Lies in Support of Barack Obama

August 28, 2008 · Filed Under Democratic National Convention ·  

I was watching Bill Clinton address the faithful in Denver last night, and a couple thing stuck out as being particularly truth challenged.

At one point, Clinton mentioned in his remarks that we need to focus more on fighting diseases like AIDS overseas.

Say what you might about President Bush, but he has done more than any other President to fight AIDS in Africa.

A recent opinion piece at philly.com details the contrasts between Bush and Clinton when it came to fighting AIDS.

Little things like Bush spending more than three times annually than Clinton ever did.

Bill Clinton also touched on how “they took us from record surpluses to an exploding national debt.”

This mythology is continually reiterated by Democrats, but it simply has no basis, unless you don’t count the end of Clinton’s second term, and the Clinton Recession, which began in March 2000, as documented by Wikipedia.

Using the stock market as an unofficial benchmark, a recession would have begun in March 2000 when the NASDAQ crashed following the collapse of the Dot-com bubble. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was relatively unscathed by the NASDAQ’s crash until the September 11, 2001 attacks, after which the DJIA suffered its worst one-day point loss and biggest one-week losses in history.

If only the Dot-com bubble, which was the basis for the economic growth in the 1990s, had not burst under Clinton, and he had addressed Al-Qaeda during all of the smaller terror attacks in the 1990s, he would have a point.

But the inconvenient truth is that his claims and damning statements were full of holes.

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