The Wizard of OOZE/ a four year doozy of a hangover.

The more Sen. Obama provides us insight the more he appears out of touch and/or a racist himself. I suspect the twenty years he and Michelle spent being tutored by Rev. Wright proved some of it rubbed off and Obama's inner thoughts keep spilling out when he lets his guard down and becomes himself. When he becomes himself , as I always suspected and frequently have said, he is not only less likeable but also is both unlikeable and untrustworthy.

The Messiah, to me, is just another grasping politicians who fortunately is running against a woman with high negatives and who the double affliction of running a poor campaign. Obama has also been boosted by an adoring press, guilt laden voters and a kettle of youthful prospective voters whose brains have yet to be tested by the reality of the real world. Add to that volatile mixture, an undercurrent of discontent impacted by a severe economic downturn and you have Obama the wizard of OOZE.

Even the bitter comments of his radical wife, Michelle, and those of his over the board Reverend have been feathers the Senator has easily blown away during the nomination process. However, these feathers should come back to haunt him and might readily be his undoing in the general campaign as they turn into bricks.

I continue to believe, if Sen. Obama is elected, we will wake up the next morning with a four year hangover that will prove to be a doozy!

Syria continues to deploy. (See 1 below.)

Democrats are looking for love in all the right places and James Lewis thinks they have found it in Obama the "chic of Arabique." (See 2 below.)

More regarding Obama the Harvard educated elitist who disdains those who worship God and guns. However, he may have shot himself in the foot. (See 3 below.)

The more I think about Bret Stephens comments last night about the transition from radical Muslims making victims of others to making victims of other Muslims the more I believe he is prescient. I have always maintained humans eventually tire of being killed and most particularly by their own who promise and fail to deliver.

The question Stephens poses is what are we going to do about it? So far, as he explained in his address last night, we are failing to seize the moment.

What Stephens proposes is we must have enough confidence in our own liberty to sell it convincingly and be willing to criticize our allies for their own misdeeds. Furthermore, Stephens correctly points out, we must not fall into the self-made trap of preaching one thing and doing another. Muslims and Arabs are very attuned to double standards. They see it within their own society and will not buy the same brand simply because it is made in America.

Dick



1) Another Syrian armored division masses on Israeli-Lebanese borders



Military sources report Damascus has deployed the 10th armored corps at the Massaneh crossing of Mount Hermon. It links up with the northwestern positions the 14th division took up last month on the Syrian-Israeli border which cuts through the Hermon range.

Syrian troops are now strung along a continuous crescent-shaped line from the central Lebanese mountains through Mt Dov on the western slopes of Mt. Hermon and up to southeastern Lebanon. This deployment, commanding Syria’s Israeli and Lebanese borders, is under the command of the president’s brother, Maher Assad.

The 10th armored corps was moved forward straight after Syria’s snap civil defense exercise which crashed after three hours last Thursday, April 10. The exercise was ordered without notice by president Bashar Assad on the last day of Israel’s five-day homeland defense drill.

Military sources are criticizing Israel officials for attributing Syria’s latest military movements to domestic troubles inside the Syrian leadership. They say this is throwing sand in the public’s eyes and at one with the government’s practice of playing down all the heightened military threats to Israel – whether from Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah or the Palestinian Hamas in Gaza.

The IDF’s Northern Command officers report Syrian army’s buildup opposite Israel has accelerated in April and warn that its units are arrayed for a quick transition to attack mode.

The link-up between Syria’s 10th and 14th divisions on the border running through Mt Hermon should have been a wake-up call for the government in Jerusalem, they say, and elicited counter-moves to show Damascus that Israel is ready to meet every contingency.

Sunday, April 13, prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas met briefly to rough out the position Abbas will put before President George W. Bush whom he meets at the White House in ten days. Olmert made the gesture of licensing the entry to Israel of 5,000 Palestinian construction workers. This gesture was challenged by security services as a carrying the risk of terrorist infiltration and by economic leaders who say the Palestinians will take Israeli jobs.

Foreign minister Tzipi Livni is in Qatar, where she is to address the 8th annual Doha Forum on Democracy, Development and Free Trade. Qatari rulers plan to persuade her that Israel should back their initiatives to patch up quarrels in the Arab world between Egypt and Syria and the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas. Neither is in Israel’s interest, because conciliation would confer legitimacy on Arab and Islamist radicalism and spur its expansion.

Livni, who knew she would come under pressure during her Doha visit, insisted on going through with it and treating it as a breakthrough in Israeli relations with the Gulf emirates.

2) Obama Chic
By James Lewis

Geraldine Ferraro wasn't quite right: It's not just Obama's race that has made him the frontrunner on the Left. It's his chic-ness.

It helps that Senator Obama is "international" and half black, but don't ignore his youth, his sonorous voice and skinniness: He's the fashion icon of the age. Shortly after Obama announced, he captured the gay vote with one photo op in a bathing suit.

If Senator Obama looked and talked like Charlie Rangel he would not be adored by millions of lovelorn liberals.

Have our greatest presidents have been chic just like Obama? There is George Washington with his wooden teeth, Abe Lincoln with his ole' prairie lawyer drawl, and Ronald Reagan with this 1950s haircut.

Still, there is something about Obama that casts a magic spell over those of a certain mindset. At Salon magazine, Walter Shapiro gushed,

"Unlike most presidential Dems in recent memory, the Illinois senator is at ease with himself -- even while bowling gutter balls in Pennsylvania."


Even flubbing a couple of bowling ball tries reflects on the man's cool. This man can do no wrong.

I have a friend who ran into Bill Clinton in the 90s one day, shook hands with the great man for a few seconds, and came away transformed. I asked him what came over him. "You don't understand!" he said. "He loved me!" So my friend voted for the Slick One, and wouldn't listen to a critical word in spite of all the scandals. True story. That's what a celebrity handshake and five seconds of sincere vibes can do to certain folks when dealing with a charismatic pol.

I thought it was degrading to be so easily suckered by an flaming con artist. But maybe that's the secret of the Democrats: they know their followers are looking for love. Like any good sales outfit they play to whatever their customers dream about: I care for you, yes you, personally, it's love, baby, sitting in front of your TV with 200 million other viewers. It's like the old radio preacher asking all the listeners to place both hands on their RCA Victor, bow their heads, and pray with him in person, one to one. Bill Clinton made "I care for you" work at the polls. Obama is doing it right in front of our eyes. Hillary doesn't have the mojo, no matter how hard she tries.

You have to admit that black Democrats have a point. If you are looking for a crowd charmer to mesmerize millions of gullible folks, why not choose a black guy? After all, could Obama be worse than Bill?

With the New Media finding out more about the real Obama, we are learning a lot that doesn't quite fit the manufactured image. Such as Senator Obama's notion of compassion toward white small-town Pennsylvanians and their well-known racial rage and hatred.

"... So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations..." (italics added)


Oops.

When Hillary and McCain promptly jumped on that remark as showing contempt for and ignorance about the voters, Obama dug himself a deeper hole:

"No, I'm in touch. I know exactly what's going on. I know what's going on in Pennsylvania, I know what's going on in Indiana, I know what's going on in Illinois," Mr. Obama said, his voice rising. "People are fed up, they're angry, they're frustrated, they're bitter and they want to see a change in Washington. That's why I'm running for president of the United States of America."


It's funny, those are feelings a lot of average Americans may have never noticed themselves --- it's unconscious racism, you you --- but the libs are sure that everybody is a racist out there. It's a miracle how Obama can read all those typical white minds with absolute, metaphysical certainty.

"I know exactly what's going on. I know what's going on in Pennsylvania, I know what's going on in Indiana, I know what's going on in Illinois."


Call it omniscient mind-reading. It's a liberal faith that surpasseth human understanding. They and only they can see right through false consciousness of the masses.

If the media have their way, Obama chic will put all those oddities to rest. The elites yearn for an avatar of human perfection, and Hillary is just so Nineties, and simply not slender. Recognizing a great opportunity, they have switched from Slick Willie to Slick Barry, and are hammering poor Mrs. Clinton for just a few of the old lies -- while letting Obama get away with a bumper harvest of whoppers. Senator Clinton is correct. It's not fair!

Given that the Dems are now wedded to Obama, the new line is that "experience" doesn't matter to for a president. With Obama's brilliance, three years in the Senate is plenty of time to learn how to govern America in a time of war and economic fever. If you were hiring a Starbucks manager you'd look for experience. But President of the United States? Commander in Chief? Captain of the Ship of State? Leader of the Free World? Who cares about experience?

(Am I the only one who thinks that's certifiably insane?)

Even Camille Paglia has fallen for Obama chic. Normally one of the most level-headed people on the Left, she now thinks Obama's magic outweighs any doubts about his substance, character, or racially charged Leftism. Paglia is making the case for Obama's purity of heart is what really matters.

"... I plan to vote for Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary because he is a rational, centered personality who speaks the language of idealism and national unity. Obama has served longer as an elected official than Hillary. He has had experience as a grass-roots activist, and he is also a highly educated lawyer who will be a quick learner in office. His international parentage and childhood, as well as his knowledge of both Christianity and Islam, would make him the right leader at the right time. And his wife Michelle is a powerhouse.

"The Obamas represent the future, not the past."


Senator Obama is very slick indeed, a Bill Clinton for the 21st Century. Like Bill, he is good at prettifying his dubious personal associations, politicians and influence peddlers who helped him get where he is today. He is also dexterous in skating through tricky questions.

But Obama has stumbled repeatedly on basic foreign policy knowledge, where he is absolutely Carteresque. Not exactly a man for the times, as Carter's most famous foreign affairs blunder, letting Ayatollah Khomeini overthrow the Shah of Iran in 1979, is now leading to nuclear panic all over the Middle East. Carter himself is adding a new catastrophe to all the old ones by promising to shake hands with Hamas. Is this a foretaste of Barack Obama's compassionate foreign policy? He has certainly not criticized Jimmy Carter's newest desperate grab for the spotlight.

Still, we're not supposed to be looking for flaws. Let's all pretend we didn't hear Senator Obama's off-the-cuff idea of invading nuclear Pakistan, or his notion of trying to charm A'jad out of his race for nukes by being really, really nice to him. We know how susceptible the Mullahs are to sweet reason. Carter showed us how that works in 1979.

Freud said that love is a kind of madness -- you're totally convinced that your adored one makes the world go 'round. Well, liberals have done it again. They fell in love with Adlai Stevenson; they tumbled head over heels for JFK, and then Bill Clinton. Now it's Obama's turn. The only question is, how many voters will surrender to the celebrity parade? That may decide the presidential election.

It all goes to show that Finley Peter Dunne's Mister Dooley had it right: God protects orphans, drunkards, and the United States.

At least, we better hope so.

3) The Matter With What? The politics of condescension.
by Noemie Emery

ON THE AFTERNOON OF May 25, 1984, the rising It Candidate of the current electoral season committed an unwitting faux pas at a fund raising event for le tout California that set his high-flying campaign on its heels. As recounted by Jack Germond and Jules Witcover in the book they wrote, Gary Hart and wife Lee converged on a "sumptuous home" in Los Angeles, where, on the patio that overlooked most of the city, Hart tried his hand at some fun.

"The deal is we campaign separately," Hart said. "That's the bad news. The good news for her is she campaigns in California and I campaign in New Jersey." Amid the laughter, Lee broke in to say that while campaigning in California, she got to hold a koala bear. To which her husband observed, "I won't tell you what I got to hold--samples from a toxic dump." At first, Hart denied that he had a problem. "He kind of gave me a look," one of his managers related, "like, 'Come on, Billy, we have bigger things to worry about than that."'

In fact, he didn't. "The joke had a devastating effect in New Jersey," the reporters recounted. "The 'Jersey joke' became the lead story two days running . . . and the press in general leaped on Hart's clumsy explanation that all he was trying to say was that he wished he could spend more time with his wife."

This wasn't the sole reason that Hart lost New Jersey--and the nomination that followed--but his golden boy aura never recovered, given his rapid ascent, his relative novelty, and some discordant notes in his past. "Whenever you could raise questions about Hart's integrity, his levelheadedness, all of that, you had him," the pair quote Bob Beckel, then the main strategist for Hart's rival, Fritz Mondale. "There was a built-in question about . . . his name and his age and all that stuff . . . Then he comes off the wall with a crack like that. Part of it was New Jersey pride, but the other was, 'Why does the guy do it? It doesn't make sense. He wants to be President of the United States."'

With this theme of looking down on the wretched they manfully try to enlighten more or less ingrained in the genes of the party, it was déjà vu all over again when the It Candidate of the current primary season chose yet another Golden State soiree to dump on the residents of a less gilded venue for the pleasure of those in the audience, explaining that 'bitterness' over their squalid condition led them to embrace not toxic wastes in this instance but the false consolations of guns and religion. For some reason, the bitterness that led the members of his own congregation to embrace a man who railed against Jews and Italians and urged the congregation to sing "God Damn America" had gone unexplained at this time.

Whether this will do for Barack Obama in Pennsylvania and in Indiana what Hart's remarks did for him in New Jersey remains unknown, but condescension towards the people by the party that loves them has a lineage that goes well beyond Hart.

In Our Country, Michael Barone traces this strain back to 1956 and the second campaign of Adlai E. Stevenson, who, when told "thinking people" were for him, said, "Yes, but I need to win a majority," and when praised for having educated the voters, said that too many had not passed the course. "Stevenson," Barone says, "was the first leading Democratic politician to become a critic rather than a celebrator of middle-class American culture--the prototype of the liberal Democrat who would judge ordinary Americans by an abstract standard and find them wanting," and since Stevenson, there have been many such. Hart and Michael Dukakis were brought down by this failing, as was John Kerry, whose 2006 swipe at George W. Bush and those forced into the armed forces brought this response from some servicemen: "Halp us, Jon Carry--We R Stuck HEAR N Irak."

After their unexpected loss in 2004, Democrats were much too impressed by Thomas Frank's treatise What's the Matter With Kansas? which complained that they lost because middle-class voters were too stupid to vote their 'real' interests (which were presumably served by the Democrats), because conservatives wickedly played on their fears. ('Fear' is the Democrats' answer for every vote they don't get.) Whether middle-class interests are better served by liberalism is an open question--they did so much better, after all, under Carter than Reagan, and the Clintons did so much to help them get health care--but condescension remains an unpromising strategy. There is, it appears, not much the matter with Kansas. Obama's mother, he says, did come from Kansas. But the matter with Democrats, and with Obama, seems to be Thomas Frank.