Arriving in October

Larry Johnson describes the alleged tape which, if it really exists, will, sooner or later, put paid to the Obama candidacy by revealing unpalatable truths about Barack Obama’s real opinions and ties.

I learned over the weekend why the Republicans who have seen the tape of Michelle Obama ranting about “whitey” describe it as “STUNNING.” I have not seen it but I have heard from five separate sources who have spoken directly with people who have seen the tape. It features Michelle Obama and Louis Farrakhan. They are sitting on a panel at Jeremiah Wright’s Church when Michelle makes her intemperate remarks. Whoops!! When that image comes out it will enter the political ads hall of fame. It will be right up there with the little girl plucking daisy petals in the famous 1964 ad LBJ used against Barry Goldwater.

Barack may have quit his church but his religious problems are not over. Barack Obama has a Nation of Islam problem that will receive more attention in the coming days. Before Barack came on the scene, THE MAN in his political district was Louis Farrakhan. No one could take Alice Palmer’s seat without Farrakhan’s blessing. No one. I do not fault Barack Obama for seeking out the blessing of Farrakhan, but the story of what was done behind the scenes to get rid of Barack’s predecessor—Alice Palmer—has not been told. A knowledgeable source tells me that Tony Rezko played a direct role in this feat. And Rezko has been tight with Farrakhan.

It also should come as no surprise that Barack hired two members of the Nation of Islam to work on his staff. ..

In probing those matters we begin to understand that the Nation of Islam has been a critical component of Barack Obama’s base of support. And, I am told, Louis Farrakhan has been careful to use Tony Rezko as the intermediary in his relationship with Barack. This is not guilt by association, this is guilt because of actual relationship. Farrakhan, Wright, and Pfleger are each on tape in various settings spewing the most vile racists garbage in the guise of preaching. Barack Obama, up to this point, has tried to pretend he had no idea that these men had these thoughts or said these things.

NONSENSE!! He knew and he knows. And the gig will be up when the Michelle tape hits the airwaves. One source described how this tape was acquired. Let’s just say that one of the republican candidates who is no longer in the race, but had a dandy oppo research capability, uncovered this gem. If Republican poohbahs have their way the tape will remain on ice until October. But when it comes out, Barack will be permanently branded with the Nation of Islam. That’s not a winning platform in November.

Larry Johnson is a friend of Valerie Plame’s and an active participant in the Pouting Spooks’ anti-Bush Administration fun and games. In other words, Larry is not above prevarication and dirty tricks.

But, he’s certainly sticking his neck out very far, and putting whatever credibility he’s got on the line, on this one. If he’s telling the truth, and it sounds like he is, that’s the old ball game for Obama. Those democrat superdelegates had better run, not walk, over to kiss Hillary’s ring.

——————————————–

All postings on this story.

Peter J. Wirs points out that the DNC Rules Committee’s artificial assignment of Michigan delegate votes to Barack Obama (who did not even run in that state’s primary) may not be as easy to pull off as the power brokers in that party’s back room supposed.

The democrat bosses forgot that federal election law exists. Hillary’s side has recourse, and it looks like Arlen Specter may be preparing to give her a hand.

This past Saturday, the Democratic National Committee Rules Committee voted, as many anticipated, on seating the Florida and Michigan Democratic delegates with only half of vote. Moreover, 59 Michigan delegates were awarded to Barak Obama, notwithstanding he was not on the January 15 Michigan primary ballot. As Clinton adviser and Rules committee member Harold Ickes asserted, the outcome for Michigan was a hijacking of voters’ intent because it assigned delegates to Mr. Obama even though he did not win them.

As we reported last week, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), the former chairman and now ranking minority member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is seriously evaluating whether he should call for Congressional hearings. …

Specter, probably one of the most legally astute of GOP Senators, contends the DNC is violating one of the most fundamental of all constitutional rules, that once a vote is cast it must be counted. This constitutional principle, pronounced by the United States Supreme Court since Ex parte Yarborough (1884) and reiterated as recently as Gray v. Sanders (1963), is simply beyond reproach. This rock-bottom constitutional demand applies to primaries as well as general elections. …

No one is disputing the Democrats have every right to set what its rules are and how its delegates are to be selected.

But once the Democrats evoke the state’s machinery in order to hold a public primary, a bright line is crossed. As the Supreme Court in Gray v. Saunders observed state regulated party primaries “show that the State . . . collaborates in the conduct of the primary, and puts its power behind the rules of the party. It adopts the primary as a part of the public election machinery. The exclusions of voters made by the party by the primary rules become exclusions enforced by the State.” Grey v. Saunders went on to assert that “state regulation of this preliminary phase of the election process makes it state action.”

The issue isn’t that the DNC is asserting some “for members only” admission to a clubhouse. The issue is that the Great States of Florida and Michigan held primaries, which although concerning one or another of our two major political parties, is part of the electoral process. These primaries weren’t private affairs. They weren’t even party affairs. They were official state actions. The DNC was acting by virtue of the power delegated to it by the legislatures of both Florida and Michigan. The taxpayers of both Florida and Michigan, not the DNC, paid for the primaries. If the DNC wants to exclude voters, or count only half of the votes cast, or award Obama delegates he did not win, then they should hold private affairs (like that San Francisco cocktail reception where Obama asserts most of us are bitter by virtue of believing in God). Let them sell tickets and pay for the events themselves. …

when I go to the polls to vote, I don’t want someone to cancel or dilute my vote. I expect my vote to be count as one vote, nothing more, nothing less.

Jeff Lukens argues that it was.

They say if it bleeds, it leads on the nightly news. The recent silence from the mainstream news media on Iraq, however, is speaking volumes. While the war remains unpopular, our success there has been unmistakable. The Iraqi people, with the help of the U.S. led coalition, have succeeded in establishing the world’s first Arab democracy. Their achievement is a milestone in the war on terror and for the cause of liberty. …

No one likes to go to war, but even an elective war is sometimes necessary. With all the consternation these past years, President Bush may finally be able to say “Mission Accomplished” to what he originally set out to do.

This we know, Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction. He even gassed his own Kurd and Shiite populations in the 1980s. What happened to those chemical weapons? Who knows? Whether they buried them in the ground somewhere or trucked off to Syria, we had every reason to believe he had them.

In the early years of the Civil War, Lincoln lost battle after battle with a revolving door of generals who could not or would not fight Robert E. Lee. Lincoln finally found his general with Ulysses S. Grant who took after Lee’s army and ground it down.

Bush had a similar problem with Donald Rumsfeld and generals who would not adapt to insurgents who did not wear uniforms and hid among the people. Bush finally replaced Rumsfeld and found his Generals in David Petraeus and Ray Odierno. The counterinsurgency strategy they employed made quick work of our enemies in Iraq.

Back in the U.S., however, liberal opposition to the war has at times reached hysterical levels and threatened to unravel all that we sought to achieve. Some things do not change. They have been acting this way since our days in Vietnam. And like our experience there, instead of finding ways to win they sought the worst possible outcome by unilateral surrender.

Liberals have never considered Bush a legitimate president. They have never gotten over the myth that the 2000 election was stolen. For them, Bush’s decision to enter into an elective war that took longer than expected was just too much. His presidency is too emotional a subject for them, and reasoning with them about any aspect of it has become nearly impossible. But for anyone who still cares and is willing to listen, what we are seeing in Iraq today is exactly what we set out to accomplish from the beginning — establish a beachhead for democracy in the Middle East.

Before the war, state sponsors of terrorism in the Middle East were Iran, Syria, Libya and Iraq. Today, only Iran and Syria remain — with a democratic Iraq located between them.

New Republic’s Dana Goldstein describes the war between Clinton and Obama supporters in the blogosphere.

These people are not pretty when they’re angry.

As anybody with high-speed Internet knows, MyDD and Daily Kos sit at the top of the liberal Netroots movement, which over the last five years has made astonishing strides in its campaign to transform the Democratic Party into a hard-fighting, proudly liberal, and, most importantly, victorious entity. Though their websites offer distinct communities and commentaries, and though they have very different personalities, MyDD founder Jerome Armstrong (a former astrologer) and Kos’s Markos Moulitsas (a former Army man) have always gotten along–the two co-authored a 2006 book, Crashing the Gate, about the rise of their movement. Their bond has been rooted mostly in common foes: Republicans, namby-pamby Democrats, the Iraq War, divisive “identity politics,” and the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. But the harmony that existed between MyDD and Kos since the birth of the Netroots no longer exists today, and a bitter internecine struggle within the progressive blogosphere is to blame. Just as bilious in tone as previous fights with Republicans or Joe Lieberman, it has revealed fault lines in the movement that will be tough to cover back up. There have been charges of misogyny and of bullying, and some longtime members have walked away from their cause altogether. And what’s at the heart of it all is that most loaded of questions: Barack or Hillary?

The Netroots have been arguing about the 2008 campaign since the day after John Kerry lost, but the debate turned ugly when Armstrong revealed his vote in the February 12 Virginia primary. “In the end, what compelled me to vote for Clinton was looking at someone that seemed practical about the battle we have on our hands and looking ready to engage in the fight,” Armstrong blogged that day. “I’d rather be part of the fight than be told to stay on the sidelines because I’m too partisan.”

Armstrong had long voiced concerns that Obama’s campaign was too personality-driven and too reliant on the votes of Independents and Republicans. But his official endorsement made readers go ballistic. “Voting for the DLC candidate makes you part of the fight? Come on,” wrote one commenter. Another suggested, “If you aren’t a part of her campaign, you really oughta try to sign up and get some of those $$$ while you can”–a dig at Armstrong’s past campaign work for politicians like Howard Dean, Jon Corzine, and Mark Warner. A group of far nastier comments were deleted.

At Daily Kos, commenters were ripping Armstrong to shreds. One user wrote, “MyDD isn’t even a pro-Clinton site these days. It’s just a toxic waste dump dedicated to throwing slime at Obama and hoping it sticks. … I know that Kos and Jerome are friends and partners, but it’s perhaps time for Kos to reconsider linking to MyDD from the DK blogroll.”

Clintonites and Obamabots were ferrying between the two sites, “recommending” posts sympathetic to their favored candidate (thus ensuring more prominent placement on the page), and brutally attacking one another in the comment sections. In late March, Armstrong, upset by name-calling between Clinton and Obama supporters on MyDD, barred new user accounts on the site for a week. The sense of betrayal among fellow Netrooters after his Clinton endorsement was palpable. Armstrong was backing a candidate who, as Chris Bowers, another leading lefty blogger, wrote on Open Left, hadn’t fully rejected the DLC, hadn’t opposed the Iraq war from the start, hadn’t offered overwhelming support for Net Neutrality, and hadn’t campaigned in small caucus states.

Jeffrey Lord comments on Obama’s resignation under fire from his long-term spiritual home, Chicago’s and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Church.

He ran.

After twenty years of sitting with apparent acquiescence in the pews of Trinity United Church of Christ, after doing a slow-motion backslide from the Reverend Jeremiah Wright when the campaign spotlight flickered on, a backslide that eventually ended in an open break, Senator Barack Obama has now officially cut his ties with Trinity UCC altogether. Faced with a choice between bringing change to his own congregation, or simply turning his back, Obama chose the latter.

As he would do in Iraq, so he has now done with Trinity. …

As both the Reverend Thomas and Senator Obama are all too well aware, even if the media is not, the very heart of UCC doctrine is that the members run the church. At any time in the last twenty years Barack Obama had the complete authority to say to Reverend Wright and his fellow parishioners at Trinity: “I don’t think this is a good idea. I think we have to stop wallowing in black victimology. The things I am hearing from our pulpit sound racist, divisive, hateful.” And then he could have begun an effort to remove Wright from the pulpit, something every UCC member has the ability to do.

He did not do it.

Obama froze. Or he chose — to do nothing. To give Wright his “old uncle” a pass. Was it because he was afraid to damage his political base? Was it because he was afraid he would anger Wright? Or most interestingly of all — was it because he actually agreed with what Wright was preaching? For that matter, since we now know Obama was such a great friend to not only Wright but Father Pfleger as well, is there any record of Obama objecting to Pfleger’s activities in Chicago? Whatever the reason, the harsh and very plain fact is that when it came to having the courage to bring change to Trinity, to exercise good judgment, Barack Obama displayed, as Theodore Roosevelt once said of William McKinley, “the backbone of a chocolate eclair.”

Senator Obama has decided that the White House in Washington, D.C. is worth a small sacrifice.

Senator Barack Obama has resigned his membership in Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, which he attended for nearly two decades, following months of controversy about pastors and their political views.

Mr. Obama said he and his wife, Michelle, wrote a letter on Friday to the church’s pastor, the Rev. Otis Moss, explaining that their estrangement from Trinity took root in controversial remarks by the church’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who once was Mr. Obama’s spiritual guide.

“Our relations with Trinity have been strained by the divisive statements of Reverend Wright, which sharply conflict with our own views,” they wrote. “These controversies have served as an unfortunate distraction for other Trinity members who seek to worship in peace, and have placed you in an untenable position.”

But at a news conference after a town-hall-style meeting here on Saturday, Mr. Obama sounded pained as he confirmed his decision to leave the place he had considered his spiritual home. A sermon by Mr. Wright, a longtime pastor at the church, even provided the phrase — “the audacity of hope” — that became Mr. Obama’s campaign theme and the title of his latest book.

“I make this decision with sadness,” said Mr. Obama, speaking in subdued tones as he stood before a bland background. “This is where I found Jesus Christ, where we were married, where our children were baptized. We are proud of the extraordinary works of that church.”

Good thinking! B. Hussein. Now nobody can possibly criticize you on the basis of the ethnic chauvinism and racial hatred routinely preached there in the course of your twenty year membership.

A copy was forwarded to the Politico.

There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues,” Dole wrote in a message sent yesterday morning. “No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits and, spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique.”

Michael Marshall, Dole’s spokesman and colleague at the Alston Bird law firm, confirms the message came from the former senator and presidential candidate. “Yes, it is authentic,” Marshall wrote in an e-mail.

“In my nearly 36 years of public service I’ve known of a few like you,” Dole writes, recounting his years representing Kansas in the House and Senate. “No doubt you will ‘clean up’ as the liberal anti-Bush press will promote your belated concerns with wild enthusiasm. When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, ‘Biting The Hand That Fed Me.’ Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years”

Dole assures McClellan that he won’t read the book — “because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high-profile job.”

“That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively,” Dole concludes. “You’re a hot ticket now, but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?”

He signs the email simply: “BOB DOLE”

Hat tip to the News Junkie.

An Obama-packed rules committee, operating behind closed doors, first ejected a number of unhappy pro-Clinton demonstrators (see videos below), then cut the votes of the Florida and Michigan delegations in half. They then proceeded to divide Michigan’s votes (where Obama did not appear on the ballot) between Hillary and Obama > 69 (halved to 34.5 votes) – 59 (halved to 29.5 votes), conceding Hillary a slightly larger number. The slight concession secured Obama’s team a whopping 19-8 Rules Committee majority.

Dana Milbank describes how it all went.

Clinton campaign advisor Harold Ickes expressed indignation.

I rise in opposition, but I’ll sit. … We find it inexplicable that this body that is supposedly devoted to rules is going to fly in the face of, other than our affirmative action rules, the single most fundamental rule in the delegate selection process, that is fair reflection. …

I am stunned that we have the gall and the chutzpah to substitute our judgment for 600,000 voters. …

Hijacking four delegates is not a good way to start down the path of party unity.

Ickes argued that the principle of “fair reflection” should guarantee that delegate allocation reflect the actual vote tally.

Under the Rules Committee’s “compromise,” the state shifts four delegates to Barack Obama without justification, Ickes said.

Hell, why not take 10 of them, take 20 of them,” Ickes said. “Just keep on going.

Ickes threatened to take the fight to the August Convention.

———————————–

Deborah Foster was roughed up & ejected: 1:33 video

Harriet Christian of Manhattan is very angry, and promises McCain will be the next president of the United State 1:44 video

Hat tips (video 1 and video 2) to Jane Hamsher.