Bad Weld

Do you sometimes get the feeling that they're all liars and it's all a hustle? Or do you always feel that way. Last year, former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, a moderate Republican, endorsed Mitt Romney for President.

"He's a true-blue fiscal conservative and he's spelled out exactly how he's going to hold down spending in Washington," Weld said as he accompanied Romney on the first of his four public stops, a visit to the Windham Junction country store.

Two years ago, Weld, who has moved out of Massachusetts, accepted the Libertarian nomination for Governor of New York.

Weld pledged to remain on the Libertarian Line and run in November even if he doesn’t get the GOP line, for which he’s fighting former Assembly Minority Leader John Faso.

He had no hesitation sounding like a Republican on either occasion.

Weld singled out Romney's pledge to veto any federal spending more than inflation, minus 1 percent. Weld also expressed affinity for New Hampshire's tax-wary residents, noting he spent childhood summers in the state and celebrated the state's motto by proclaiming, "I'm one of these people who's heart lifts when he sees a 'Live Free or Die' sign."

Today, he added his name to the list of supporters of Barack Obama!

"Senator Obama is a once-in-a-lifetime candidate who will transform our politics and restore America's standing in the world," Weld said in a statement released Friday.

How does a Republican repeat these Obama campaign talking points without the guarantee of a payoff? Barack has never transformed anything in his life!

"We need a president who will lead based on our common values and Senator Obama demonstrates an ability to unite and inspire.

Common values? Are those the values of Acorn, Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, Tony Rezko, or perhaps Reverend Pfleger? Being a politician seems no different today than being a Hollywood actor. Read whatever is on the page, and deliver it with style.

Unqualified White Liberals

Rush nails it - again. If Powell is not being influenced by race, then where are all the unqualified, inexperienced white liberals he's been moved to support?

Rush Limbaugh said Colin Powell's decision to get behind Barack Obama appeared to be very much tied to Obama's status as the first African-American with a chance to become president.

"Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race," Limbaugh wrote in an e-mail. "OK, fine. I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed. I'll let you know what I come up with."

It is odd that Powell was so influenced by 7 weeks of watching Barack.

As for Powell's statement of concern this morning about the sort of Supreme Court justices a President McCain might appoint, Limbaugh wrote: "I was also unaware of his dislike for John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia. I guess he also regrets Reagan and Bush making him a four-star [general] and secretary of state and appointing his son to head the FCC. Yes, let's hear it for transformational figures."

LA Times

So the LA Times endorses Barack Obama.

It is inherent in the American character to aspire to greatness, so it can be disorienting when the nation stumbles or loses confidence in bedrock principles or institutions. That's where the United States is as it prepares to select a new president: We have seen the government take a stake in venerable private financial houses; we have witnessed eight years of executive branch power grabs and erosion of civil liberties; we are still recovering from a murderous attack by terrorists on our own soil and still struggling with how best to prevent a recurrence.

The guy whose career was created by the racist preacher Jeremiah Wright, the Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers, and the convicted briber Tony Rezko. The Times is, unavoidably, impressed.

The Times without hesitation endorses Barack Obama for president.

Our nation has never before had a candidate like Obama, a man born in the 1960s, of black African and white heritage, raised and educated abroad as well as in the United States, and bringing with him a personal narrative that encompasses much of the American story but that, until now, has been reflected in little of its elected leadership. The excitement of Obama's early campaign was amplified by that newness. But as the presidential race draws to its conclusion, it is Obama's character and temperament that come to the fore. It is his steadiness. His maturity.

It's creepy how they ignore reality.

Who's Radical?

Is Barack Obama a radical? All we can say for certain is that 1) he partnered with a slew of them to get himself into positions of power in Chicago and, 2) he gave them tons of money when he had the chance. It's possible that this doesn't reflect his heart, but rather, a cool calculation about how to crack the corrupt Chicago power structure - but, in the end, the difference may be academic. Stanley Kurtz writes in National Review -

However he may seek to deny it, all evidence points to the fact that, from his position as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama knowingly and persistently funded an educational project that shared the extremist and anti-American philosophy of Jeremiah Wright. The Wright affair was no fluke.

Look at the linkage that exists in that one paragraph. Barack gets to be head of Bill Ayers' Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and is given the power to distribute as much as $150 million to improve education, when he just is a couple of years out of law school and has no background in education. Some of the money goes to Reverend Wright. Some of it goes to people who make Wright appear mainstream and mild.

It looks like Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did Barack Obama savor Wright’s sermons, Obama gave legitimacy — and a whole lot of money — to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And guess what? Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting a decade ago.

That's the reality. Liberals are scambling to hide that reality behind - what else - accusations of racism. In today's Boston Globe, Derrick Jackson pretends that the reaction of a couple of angry McCain supporters makes McCain the equivalent of George Wallace because Wallace had angry crowds, an assertion that was widely shouted down when made a few days ago by civil rights Congressman John Lewis. Jackson is too smart not to be conscious of the perfidy he's engaged in.

HAVING FAILED to convince voters that they represent a break from the tragic Bush presidency, Republican presidential candidate John McCain and vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin are careening into George Wallace territory to destroy the nation's first African-American nominee, Democrat Barack Obama.

Frank Rich says in the New York Times:

By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.

While Rich takes the predictable liberal stance that saying Barack's middle name is a racist attempt to make him the "other," in its endorsement of Obama today the Boston Globe, owned by Rich's bosses at the New York Times, celebrates Barack's otherness, calling him by his full name.

Voters can make no more powerful statement about America's commitment to inclusion and opportunity than to put forward this man - Barack Hussein Obama, son of a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas - as the nation's representative to the world.

So if otherness is good, Hussein is good, but if otherness concerns you, Hussein is evil. Not content to simply endorse for President the man who is so uniquely unqualified for the position whose political partners have been hateful, violent and racist, the Globe, in a separate disendorsement, calls McCain unfit!

Campaigns are crucibles, and this one has revealed McCain to be erratic, out of touch with ordinary Americans, and, with Palin as his shotgun messenger, too quick with the sneer, smear, and division. He has been a profound disappointment, and he is unfit to lead the nation into its perilous future.

While it seems pretty clear that Barack is a radical, we have no way of knowing if he'll have any allegiance to the philosophy of those who got him to where he is. One thing Barack has been consistent about is that Barack comes first, ideals second.

Rollin' with Colin

Will Colin Powell endorse Barack? Speak, perhaps, at the convention? Fox News commentator Bill Kristol says that's what he hears from inside the Obama campaign.

“He may well give a speech at the Democratic convention explaining his
endorsement of Obama,” Kristol, a FOX News contributor, said, citing inside
sources.

Powell says it's not true.

“I do not have time to waste on Bill Kristol’s musings,” Powell told ABC News.
“I am not going to the convention. I have made this clear.”

Clear to whom?

Kristol said sources told him Powell will “quite possibly” speak at the
Democratic convention on the same night as Obama’s vice-presidential selection
and former President Bill Clinton. “The Obama people are quietly trying to
line up a pretty strong convention,” Kristol said. “I think the Obama campaign
shouldn’t be underestimated. Obviously anyone would like to have Powell’s
endorsement.”