Little Green Footballs reports:

For the Pritzker family of Chicago, the 2001 collapse of subprime-mortgage lender Superior Bank was an embarrassing failure in a corner of their giant business empire.

Billionaire Penny Pritzker helped run Hinsdale, Ill.-based Superior, overseeing her family’s 50% ownership stake. She now serves as Barack Obama’s national campaign-finance chairwoman, which means her banking past could prove to be an embarrassment to her — and perhaps to the campaign.

Superior was seized in 2001 and later closed by federal regulators. Government investigators and consumer advocates have contended that Superior engaged in unsound financial activities and predatory lending practices. Ms. Pritzker, a longtime friend and supporter of Sen. Obama, served for a time as Superior’s chairman, and later sat on the board of its holding company.

Sen. Obama has long criticized predatory subprime mortgage lenders and urged strong actions against them.

 Charles Krauthammer, always worth reading and hearing, writes brilliantly on Obama’s narcissism:

Americans are beginning to notice Obama’s elevated opinion of himself. There’s nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history – "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" – when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow." As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone.

Read the whole column here.

 Power Line correctly argues:

OBAMA ON JERUSALEM – DISHONEST, IGNORANT, OR BOTH

 

As with virtually every other issue of consequence, Barack Obama has failed to take a consistent, coherent position with respect to his goal for the city of Jerusalem. A few months ago, when he was pandering to the pro-Israel audience at AIPAC, Obama said that Jerusalem should remain “undivided.” For those with a basic understanding of the discourse on this issue, the meaning of his statement was clear – Jerusalem will remain the Jewish people’s historical capital city and will remain exclusively part of the Jewish state under any future agreement with the Palestinians.

Obama, moreover, had plenty of incentive to convey this position to the AIPAC convention. Indeed, any other descripton of the future of Jerusalem would have played poorly with an audience Obama very much wanted to impress.

However, Obama’s handlers were uncomfortable with Obama’s statement because the call for an undivided city might “prejudice” the “final status” of Jerusalem. The party line among mainstream advocates of the "peace process" is to call on Israel and the Palestinians negotiate without such preconditions, with the "final status" of Jerusalem to be resolved at the end of the process.

With the AIPAC convention behind him, Obama has fallen back to the party line. Attempting to "clarify" his "poorly phrased" remarks to the pro-Israel crowd, Obama now says:

The point we were simply making was that we don’t want barbed wire running through Jerusalem, similar to the way it was prior to the ‘67 war, that it is possible for us to create a Jerusalem that is cohesive and coherent. I was not trying to predetermine what are essentially final-status issues.

But that is an easy point to make. If this is what Obama wanted to convey to AIPAC, it’s difficult to believe he would have used the loaded term "undivided."

But what of Obama’s current vision under which Mr. Yes-We-Can resolves to "create a Jerusalem that is cohesive and coherent" that it is not exclusively part of a Jewish state but requires no barriers? The question answers itself. Here’s how David Hazony, a resident of Jerusalem, puts it:

What could it possibly mean to want a “coherent” city that is the capital of two different countries, one of which has been teaching its entire population to hate the other and commit suicide bombings in its restaurants for 15 years now — and all this without a proper border? I live in Jerusalem. The border between Israel and the Palestinians, wherever it may run, and no matter how long peace reigns, will never be like that between Massachusetts and Connecticut. It is unlikely ever even to be like the one between Arizona and Mexico. If there is ever a division of Jerusalem, there will be more than just barbed wire separating the two halves of the city. We are talking about different worlds entirely, and security arrangements will reflect this.

As Hazony concludes, Obama either understands this or he doesn’t. If he does, he is being dishonest when he claim the city can be undivided in other than the sense in which his AIPAC remarks were construed. If he doesn’t, his ignorance is staggering.

 

 Would Obama bring change to the corruption which remains an integral part of the political culture of Chicago and Illinois?

‘His chief advisor, David Axelrod, is working with the Alliance to Protect the Illinois Constitution, a big labor/big business coalition, to defeat this opportunity for change. Barack’s main man is helping the most powerful special interests of his state’s dysfunctional status quo in a multi-million dollar campaign to prevent the chance for change on this November’s statewide ballot.’

Read more about it here.  

 Hugh Hewitt writes that the economic mess the country confronts  can be laid at the door of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

He asserts:

A vote for any Democrat is a vote for shortages, rising gas prices, rising unemployment, and falling production. A vote for any democrat is a vote for failing airlines and collapsing financial institutions and for the shuttering of car plants and large manufacturing.

A growing, vibrant economy needs energy. The Democrats are anti-energy.

Read the whole article here.

 … so Power Line asks, what do they really want? 

We’re all enjoying, for now, the anguish experienced by many on the left over Barack Obama’s entirely predictable lunge towards the center, now that he has clinched the Democratic nomination. But few seem to be enjoying it more than our friend Tiger Hawk. He writes:

In this morning’s lead editorial ("New and Not Improved"), [the editors of the New York Times] detail and denounce many of Obama’s post-Hillary pivots to the center. As their irritation builds, I’m thinking that there are only three positions that could explain this editorial. First, that the editors genuinely believe that Obama could win the general election with his primary season policy ideas. It is believable that they think this because they live inside a Manhattan cocoon, but silly. Second, that the editors would rather that Obama lose than compromise his principles. This seems unlikely in the cold light of a November morning, however satisfying it might feel to spew such romantic drivel on the Fourth of July. Or, third, the editors know that Obama’s pivots will be much more believable to the swing voters if the Times denounces them. This theory holds that the editors are pretending to be outraged so as to further deceive the rubes who prefer the Flop to the Flip.

It is so hard to know which explanation to believe.

 

The first explanation seems like the most plausible of the three, but let’s consider two more. Fourth, the New York Times is just posturing. It wants Obama to win at all costs and recognizes that (though he might well win running from the left), his chances are better if he moderates. However, the editors want to preserve their purity and can do so at no cost by expressing disappointment with Obama. Fifth, the Times is thinking ahead. It understands that Obama maximizes his chances of winning by tacking towards the center and isn’t that bothered that he’s doing so. But it has its eyes on the Obama presidency and wants to make it plain to the candidate that, as president, he’ll need to return to his lefitst principles if he wants to stay on the Times’ good side. 

 Obama and Clinton – lest we forget, read a reminder here. 

 … while enriching his developer friends at public expense. That is his record of accomplishment.

See the distressing PICTURES here.

 Jennifer Rubin writes on the Contentions website of Commentary Magazine:

The Wesley Clark mess is not going away – in large part because Barack Obama seems compelled to double down, or at the very least ignore the warning flares being sent up my the amazed mainstream media. Now the MSM is in full feeding frenzy because, for unknown reasons, Obama may be listening to the loony Left which is encouraging him to resist apologizing for Clark’s mega-gaffe. As Rick Klein details, whatever opportunity Obama might have used to allow his patriotism speech to be construed as an apology and whatever chances he had to expunge Clark’s insults have now been tossed away. And McCain now is daring himto cut Clark “loose” — an unlikely occurrence given that Obama has thrown his lot in with the far Left on this one. (Besides, Clark hasn’t gone to the National Press Club to denounce Obama as just another phony politician.) Indeed his spokesman doesn’t even know how to cut Clark loose, she says. (Hint: “I want no part of Clark representing me; he’s an embarassment.”)

So we have Obama’s entirely self-created blunder where even the MSM is virtually slack-jawed at the sight of the Obama campaign’s determination to inflict more and more damage upon itself. His atrocious judgment in perpetuating a horrible storyline for himself defies the pre-existing media narrative — that Obama is smart, savvy, world-wise, and adept. Not the Obama we have seen lately: he is either paralyzed by indecision or in such a cocoon of liberal elitism that he sees nothing wrong with attacking a war hero’s military service.

The McCain camp is going to town because its opponent has simply reinforced the McCain storyline that Obama — the man with no national record and scant national service of his own — is arrogant and ill equipped to navigate through mildly rocky political waters. One can hardly fault the mainstream media for its surprise. Obama’s behavior is remarkable to those whodoubted Obama’s credentials; it must be shocking to those who thought he was the brightest new political light in a generation. Not since Howard Dean’s wail have we seen such an act of self-destruction.

 

 Showing indecisiveness and no strength of character, he veers to the wind.

Read the always-interesting Charles Krauthammer on Obama’s flip-flops here,