In a side by side comparison, Palin would be more qualified to be president than Obama.

This amusing but factual comparison in Redstate sets it out clearly:  Palin on the left (for once), Obama on the right. Read the whole thing at www.redstate.com posted on 30 August 2008 by Jeff Emanuel.

 … and a worthless speech.

Not worth deep analysis, but Power Line dusts it off effectively:

Fireworks! The perfect end to an evening of BS slinging of historic proportions. Barack Obama is a demagogue who will stoop to any lie or distortion; the question is how many people he can fool. On that, the jury is out. The answer will emerge between now and November.

It will take some time to dissect all of the foolishness we heard tonight, but here are a few observations:

Obama outlined, in the vaguest terms possible, countless billions or trillions of new federal spending. How would he pay for it? By "closing corporate loopholes"–like what? The idea that Obama’s orgy of spending can be funded by "closing corporate loopholes" is frankly childish. By increasing taxes on the top 5% of taxpayers, i.e., precisely those who are grossly over-taxed already. The top 5% already pay 60% of all federal income taxes. And by "eliminating programs that no longer work." Really? Which ones? No one seriously imagines that Obama–let alone the Democratic Congress!–has any intention of eliminating any significant government programs.

Obama says he wants to become independent of foreign oil in ten years. How? By tapping natural gas reserves. I wonder whether Obama, unlike Nancy Pelosi, understands that natural gas is a fossil fuel for which we must drill offshore, in ANWR, etc. There was perhaps some news here: Obama also came out for developing nuclear energy, yet another flip-flop. But does anyone imagine that nuclear energy development would go forward in a Democratic Congress and White House? In one of his many cheap shots, Obama said that we import three times as much foreign oil as when John McCain went to Washington. That’s no doubt true, because the Democratic Party has enacted legislation that makes it illegal to develop our domestic resources.

Obama said he is happy to debate John McCain about who has the judgment and temperament to guide foreign policy. Of course, he has had many opportunities to do so, and has ducked them. Does this mean that Obama will now accept McCain’s challenge to a series of town hall appearances? But what about Obama’s foreign policy judgment? He barely mentioned Iraq–once, in the distant past, his signature issue–but never referred at all to the surge. Obama was dead wrong on the most important foreign policy issue that has arisen during his time in the Senate, and he failed even to mention it, let alone try to justify his error.

Rather weirdly, Obama attacked McCain for alleged unwillingness to "follow Osama bin Laden to the cave where he lives." If this means anything, it means that Obama is still in favor of invading Pakistan. Again, no one really believes Obama will do this; it’s just another example of how he doesn’t feel any obligation to conform his words to reality.

He says we "don’t deter Iran by talking tough," so how, then, do we deter Iran? Obama offers no clue. Likewise with Georgia; "talking tough" won’t stop the Russians. True enough; deterring the Russians requires military capability. Yet Obama has pledged to reduce our military capability. So how, exactly, are the Russians to be stopped?

Obama is utterly unreliable every time he recites a statistic. Examples could be multiplied endlessly; to take just one, he said tonight that "the average American family saw its income go down $2,000 under George Bush." That is untrue. Here are the real median household income figures from the Census Bureau; click to enlarge:

Inflation-adjusted median income during the Bush administration is up, not "down $2,000" since 2001, and it increased again last year.

Of course, Obama has no intention of appealing to the well-informed. Like other Democrats, he feeds on ignorance. Whether a majority of voters are ignorant enough to swallow Obama’s whoppers is, as yet, unknown.

             One last thought: was there a single sentence in Obama’s speech that could not have come from Jimmy Carter?

 Peter Wehner writes on Commentary’s Contentions website:

It is striking that when speaking about Barack Obama’s years in Chicago, Democrats invoke like an incantation his work as a community organizer–which I gather is not all that impressive–rather than his record as a state legislator. You would never know that Obama does in fact have a legislative record; it’s simply one Democrats cannot highlight without doing enormous damage to Obama.

I have written pieces that document Obama’s overall legislative record and his fluctuating and misguided positions on Iraq. And today the Washington Times does us the service ofexamining, with some care, Obama’s record as an Illinois state senator. According to theTimes,

Sen. Barack Obama will portray himself Thursday night as an agent of change for mainstream America, but his eight-year voting record in the Illinois Senate shows the Democrat was on occasion an agent of isolation who took stands – particularly on anti-crime legislation – that put him to the left of his own party.

Mr. Obama was the only member of the state Senate to vote against a bill to prohibit the early release of convicted criminal sexual abusers; was among only four who voted against bills to toughen criminal sentences and to increase penalties for “gangbangers” and dealers of Ecstasy; and voted “present” on a bill making it harder for abusive parents to regain custody of their children, a Washington Timesreview of Illinois legislative records shows.

You might think that Obama’s voting record in Illinois would be of intense interest to the media, given how few achievements Obama has and how little is known about him. But you would be wrong. There has been far more attention on his biography than on his stands on the issue or his underlying political philosophy. For example, Obama is able to take the most radical stand on abortion imaginable, and yet there is far more coverage given to the number of houses owned by Cindy McCain.

Barack Obama, based on his voting record, has established himself as the most liberal nominee since George McGovern. On issue after issue, Obama has positioned himself outside–and in some instances far outside–the American political mainstream. We can only hope that during the next 68 days there will be far more attention devoted to the substance of Obama’s record rather than his rhetoric and the mood he evokes.

Senator Obama, building on his post-primary victory, will try mightily to pretend that his political views are significantly different than his political record. His campaign depends on obscuring the reality of that record. Any person whose campaign is predicated on creating such large distortions and deceptions ought not to be elected President.

 Obama and Biden both want closer US ties to Iran. 

       ‘Sen. Barack Obama and his newly-picked running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, may have sparred during the primaries. But on one issue they are firmly united: the need to forge closer ties to the government of Iran.

        Kaveh Mohseni, a spokesman for the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran, calls Biden “a great friend of the mullahs.”

           He notes that Biden’s election campaigns “have been financed by Islamic charities of the Iranian regime based in California and by the Silicon Iran network,” a loosely-knit group of wealthy Iranian-American businessmen and women seeking to end the U.S. trade  embargo on Iran.

           "In exchange, the senator does his best to aid the mullahs,” Mohseni argues.

        Biden’s ties to pro-Tehran lobbying groups are no secret. But so far, the elite media has avoided even mentioning the subject.

         Just recently, Biden was one of 16 U.S. senators who voted against a bill that would add Iran’s Revolutionary Guards corps to the State Department’s list of international terrorist organizations, because of its involvement in murdering U.S. troops in Iraq.’

Read the whole Newsmax article here.  

 George Will asks:  

There never is a shortage of nonsensical political rhetoric, but really: Has there ever been solemn silliness comparable to today’s politicians tarting up their agendas as things designed for, and necessary to, "saving the planet," and promising edicts to "require" entire industries to reorder themselves?

In 1996, Bob Dole, citing the Clinton campaign’s scabrous fundraising, exclaimed: "Where’s the outrage?" This year’s campaign, soggy with environmental messianism, deranged self-importance and delusional economics, the question is: Where is the derisive laughter?

Read his whole article on Obama’s airy-fairy, rather puerile promises and what they’d cost the tax-payer here.  

 … and they’re trying to cover it up.

The four plus years (1995-1999) Barack Obama spent as founding chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) represent his track record as reformer, as someone who reached out in a public-private collaboration and had the audacity to believe his effort would make things better. At the time he became leader of this ambitious project to remake the public schools of Chicago, he was 33 years old and a third year associate at a small Chicago law firm, Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland.

This was a big test for him, his chance to cut his teeth on bringing hope and change to the mostly minority inner city school children trapped in Chicago schools. And he flopped big time, squandering lots of money and the time of many public employees in the process.

 Investor’s Business daily carries an editorial today about the radical Communist  ideologist who taught Obama all he knows.

Barack Obama’s "Change We Can Believe In" is simply socialism — imposed by stratagem because Americans have never believed in Marxist economics. Saul Alinsky understood this, and his ghost is alive and well — and threatening to haunt the White House. 

Read it all here.

 Power Line pertinently questions Barack Obama’s defense ‘credo’:

With events in Georgia over the past week, it is time to revisit Barack Obama’s stated views on America’s defense needs … 

I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems…

 …I will not weaponize space…

…I will slow development of future combat systems…

…and I will institute a "Defense Priorities Board" to ensure the quadrennial defense review is not used to justify unnecessary spending…

…I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons…

…and to seek that goal, I will not develop nuclear weapons…

…I will seek a global ban on the development of fissile material…

…and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert…

…and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals…

Isn’t it time for someone who covers politics for a living to ask Obama about this credo?

 

 Fred Thompson has an interesting article in Townhall today, the main point of which is that McCain has the necessary experience, understanding and strength of will to be the leader of the Free World over the next few dangerous years, and Obama has not.  MacCain’s first-hand knowledge of Georgia and quick grasp of what Russia intends by invading the small Western-allied democracy is a vivid illustration of his contention.  The whole thing is worth reading. But one part of the information it contains strikes us as puzzling and shocking.  He says:

Former Soviet provinces have faced all forms of intimidation, from thuggish trade shakedowns to cyber attacks that shut down communications with the outside world. And whether a former satellite like Poland or a longtime western ally like Germany, Russia has made overt threats over plans to bring eastern European countries into NATO or to deploy a U.S.-provided missile defense system.

Russia is not above using anything at its disposal to make its point. It is a wealthy nation, built on a petro-economy that provides oil and gas to dependent European nations, which are petrified of having their energy supplies disrupted and are now in their own economic doldrums.

Given all this, Russia’s incursion into Georgia is a logical extension of Putin’s autocratic words and deeds and Russia’s regional ambitions, which must be leaving those nations closest to Russia’s borders – the Baltic states and Ukraine – nervous about a bitter and uneasy winter.

All the while, in Eastern Europe some of America’s staunchest friends are watching to see what the reaction of the U.S. and the west will be to Russia’s latest gambit. The U.S. and others use the word “unacceptable,” undoubtedly with the same effect that we get when we use it with the Iranians. So do we threaten Russia with denial of the membership in the World Trade Organization that it so covets? Do we expedite Georgia and the Ukraine’s entry into NATO? Do we cut off the tens of millions that we send into Russia to – hopefully – provide for security of nuclear materials? Everything should be on the table.

‘Russia is a wealthy nation’ – okay. Then why is the US sending ‘tens of millions’  to Russia? How does this ‘provide  for security of nuclear materials’?  Is this a form of extortion? Who in the US was responsible for the descision to do this? When? Answers are urgently required. 

 While he has his own children educated in private schools, Obama wants all other children to have collectivist education. Especially in the joys of collectivism as propounded by his terrorist associate, William Ayres?

This from the Investor’s Business Daily:

 

When Barack Obama collected the endorsement of the American Federation of Teachers, he told the teachers that support for alternatives to the education monopoly amounted to "tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice."

He recently told an interviewer that he opposes school choice because "although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you’re going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom."

Not being left behind are Obama’s daughters, who attend the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. There, tuition ranges from $15,528 for kindergarten to $20,445 for high school. When asked about it during last year’s YouTube debate, Sen. Obama responded that it was "the best option" for his children. They had a choice Obama would deny others.

Obama has been completely silent about the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.

The D.C. School Choice Act of 2003 established the federally funded voucher program that provides vouchers of up to $7,500 for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. It lets students attend one of 60 participating nonpublic schools.

But it was funded only through the 2008-09 school year. Democrats such as D.C.’s delegate to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton, want to kill the successful program, which shows that money is not the root of a good education.

Norton and Obama seem oblivious to the fact that District school spending is at $13,400 per student — third-highest in the nation. Yet in 2007, D.C. public schools ranked last in math scores and second-to-last in reading scores for all urban public school systems in the U.S., according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Norton is leading the charge to block a mere $18 million in funding for the 2009-10 school year. This demonstration program serves some 1,900 students. A recent Education Department report found that nearly 90% of Opportunity scholarship students had higher reading scores than peers who didn’t receive a scholarship.

Not surprisingly, there are five applicants for every opening.

April Cole-Walton’s daughter attends St. Peter’s Interparish School thanks to an Opportunity Scholarship. "If I could talk to Sen. Obama," she says, "I would say, ‘Give me a choice and give my daughter a chance.’ "

Fat chance. Obama instead offers support for things like universal preschool, based on the idea that the earlier the government gets its hands on our children, the better off they will be. The nanny state will spend more money and pay for more teachers.

Obama also wants to create something called the American Opportunity Tax Credit to provide a "free" college education by ensuring that the first $4,000 of college tuition is covered for students from lower-income families. Each student will be required to put in 100 hours of "voluntary" national service a year to get the money.

Obama’s buddy, former Weatherman terrorist William Ayers, has plans for the same captive student audiences Obama wants to keep captive. Now a tenured Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, Ayers works to educate teachers in socialist revolutionary ideology, urging that it be passed on to impressionable students.

One of Ayers’ descriptions for a course called "Improving Learning Environments" says a prospective K-12 teacher needs to "be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and … be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, teaching for social justice and liberation."

For his course "Urban Education," Ayers writes: "In a truly just society, there would be a greater sharing of the burden, a fairer distribution of material and human resources."

All of this sounds like Obama’s plans for "economic justice" and redistribution of the nation’s wealth.

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley has employed Ayers as a teacher trainer for the city’s public schools. On his Web site, Obama describes Ayers as a "tenured professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a ‘respected advisor to Mayor Daley on school reform.’ "

And a future secretary of education, perhaps?