Duty Calls

"We will always be prepared, so we may always be free."

-- Ronald Reagan

The Conservative Manifesto will return Monday.

Obama's Banking Committee?

It's beyond apparent that when Barack Obama finds himself separated from the teleprompter, he finds himself in an awkward environment. Since securing the nomination -- wait, he hasn't even done that yet -- Obama has and continues to build an impressive resume of gaffes. One also notices how often Obama resorts to using metaphors when answering questions and explaining himself -- a practice often used when the orator doesn't know what he's talking about.

But when does a gaffe become a lie?



Problem is, Obama is not a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

Is this just another tick mark in a growing list of gaffes; or Barack Obama attempting to beef up his "accomplishments" resume with the untrue?

You be the judge.

Obama to Partake in the Embarrassing

Am I the only one giggling at the irony in the fact that today, Barack Obama will give a speech to thousands upon thousands of Germans... in English?

Presidential candidate Barack Obama travels to Berlin on Thursday to give the only public speech of a week-long foreign tour, an outdoor address on transatlantic ties that is likely to draw tens of thousands.

Highly popular in Germany, where he is often likened to former President John F. Kennedy, the Democratic senator will also meet for the first time Chancellor Angela Merkel, who opposed his initial plan to speak at the Brandenburg Gate.

Isn't this exactly the sort of stuff of which Obama is embarrassed?

"It's embarrassing... it's embarrassing... when, when, uhh, Eu... when Europeans come over here -- they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe... and, and, uh, all we's can say is 'merci beaucoup'."

But I suppose Mr. Obama is excused. After all, he only went to Columbia, Harvard Law, and has never held a full-time job. Must have been too busy to take it upon himself to learn another language.

How embarrassing.

Completely off topic...

Blame the animal lover in me, but I could not resist posting the following video after reading this story.



Perhaps it was the immediate transformation of a wildly powerful and deadly creature into a playful kitten that so gripped me. I was almost moved to tears and I don't know why.

Utterly amazing, God's creatures are.

The decades-old footage of a full-grown lion joyously embracing two young men like an affectionate house cat has made myriad eyes misty since it recently landed on YouTube. What is it about the old, grainy images of Christian the lion that has attracted some 3 million hits and counting?

Is it simply that a lion remembered the two men who raised it and then released it into the wild? Is it nostalgia for a simpler time 39 years ago, when you could walk into Harrods department store in London, stroll through the “exotic animals” section, and buy a live lion cub? Is it a longing for the swinging Austin Powers-era London of 1969, when you could take the animal home to a basement flat, play with it in a nearby churchyard, and even take it to dinner in swanky restaurants?

The answer may be all of the above. After all, people love animals, and there are few things as enthralling as a lion that could kill a person with one swipe of its paw acting like a pussycat with people who obviously love it. Top it off with Whitney Houston’s sentimental love song "I Will Always Love You" as background music, and you have keyboards shorting out all over America from the tears dripping on them.

McCain to Choose VP this Week?

Robert Novak seems to think McCain will choose a running mate this week.

Sources close to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign are suggesting he will reveal the name of his vice presidential selection this week while Sen. Barack Obama is getting the headlines on his foreign trip. The name of McCain's running mate has not been disclosed...

Predictions? Recommendations?

Movie Review: The Dark Knight

Some of my more dedicated readers may have noticed that I haven't posted a movie review for some time now. To be honest, I found that the thought of writing a review changed my movie-going experience for the worse. Rather than sitting back and immersing myself in a film, I found myself distracted by swirling mental notes.

That said, I was fortunate enough this weekend to experience the latest in the Batman saga, The Dark Knight, and wanted to whip up a quick review.

One word: brilliant.

See it for Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker alone.

Four stars (out of five) for The Dark Knight.

Obama Changes Location of Berlin Speech

Barack Obama's international tour -- obviously an attempt to burnish his foreign policy credentials (or lack thereof) -- has created a predictable tsunami of buzz.

One aspect of Obama's tour that I have been tracking is his desire to speak at the historic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany.

I had a lot to say regarding this flagrantly arrogant gimmick, but I couldn't word a better response than Charles Krauthammer did in his latest article: Who Does He Think He Is?

What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final "tear down this wall" liquidation. When President Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.

Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush 41 -- who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap -- called "a Europe whole and free"?

Does Obama not see the incongruity? It's as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.)

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.

HOWEVER, pressure from the German people has forced Barack Obama's handlers to change the location of his speech. Obama will instead be speaking at Berlin's Victory Column.

Barack Obama's team has confirmed the presumptive US Democratic presidential candidate, hugely popular in Germany, will give a speech at Berlin's Victory Column next week focusing on strengthening transatlantic ties.

Good to hear.

The Obama Iraq Documentary

There is no better method by which to shed light on Barack Obama's disgusting shift in positions on Iraq than to simply quote him.


Bravo!

A massive, well-deserved hat tip goes out to Lucaso on this one.

Article of the Week: Could 2008 Be a McCain Landslide?

This week's article of the week is a terrific piece by Kyle-Anne Shiver over at American Thinker, entitled Could 2008 be a McCain Landslide?

Ah yes, dear readers, this title has nailed me. I'm an unconventional thinker, a woman who is wont to go madly against the grain, in nearly all matters. I'm usually in the unpopular camp, the one who disdains conventional wisdom and consensus science. I'm just too darned independent-minded for my own good sometimes.

And 2008 is one of those times.

...

The 2008 Presidential election could be a landslide victory for John McCain.

I'm basing my assessment here on 3 factors: Time, the Anti-Obama vote and Obama's own arrogance.

Field trip: Check out Kyle-Anne's blog at www.kyleanneshiver.com

Obama and His "Civilian National Security Force"

On my drive home from work this evening, I was listening to the third hour of the Hugh Hewitt Show as I always do. Hugh is on vacation, and guest host Carol Liebau was speaking about an issue I have been meaning to blog about for over a week now.

On the 2nd of this month, Barack Obama gave a speech to supporters in Colorado Springs about national service, foreign policy, and national security, and in that vein stated the following:

We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

See and hear it for yourself; the quote begins at 16:45.



I'll give you a few seconds to compose yourself.

...

In true Obama fashion, Barack is talking a lot but saying very little. As Ms. Liebau was begging of Hewitt's audience the question: "What exactly would this civilian national security force look like?", I decided to join the discussion from my Bluetooth enabled cell phone (thanks California legislature!) while cruising the Pacific Coast Highway.

What I find equally as disturbing to what this sort of civilian national security force would look like, is the fact that Barack Obama thinks it should be just as well-funded as the US Military, I told Ms. Liebau. Currently, military spending is roughly $500-600 billion, and I'd like to know from where Barack Obama is going to pull that sort of cash.

Carol was quick to quip: from you and me, and the oil companies!

Ed Morrissey was on before I had a chance to call in, but he laid out a terrific post on the matter earlier today.

Obama needs to clarify what he means by "civilian national security force", and how it would be funded. After all, we have a panoply of federal security agencies already: FBI, BATF, DEA, and more, plus the National Guard on the state level. Where would Obama get the money to fund it at the same level as the Pentagon? What would its mission be, and where would it get its authority? What would be the lines of jurisdiction?

All of these questions need to be answered — but first the media has to find its objectivity and start asking about the speech and report it correctly. Obviously the Obama campaign provided them with an advance copy for the event, and just as obviously Obama deviated from it. Aren’t any journalists curious as to why?

I also much appreciate Ed pointing out Obama's conflicting messages.

Update: Doesn’t this statement conflicted with Obama’s statement about ICE?

When communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel, when all that is happening, the system just isn’t working, and we need to change it.

Wouldn’t ICE be part of a civilian national security force? Obama sounds more and more confused by the day.

Indeed he does.

Obama Promises to Rid the World of Nukes

The man's plans grow more dangerous with each passing day.

Two goals of his administration would be to secure all loose nuclear material during his first term and to rid the world of nuclear weapons, Obama told an audience before a roundtable discussion at Purdue University.

Obama said adhering to nonproliferation treaties would put pressure on nations such as North Korea and Iran. North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon and Iran has an energy program the Bush administration warns could be a precursor to nuclear weapon development.

"As long as nuclear weapons exist, we'll retain a strong deterrent. But we will make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy," Obama said.

As LGF put it:

Because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-Il will look at the US adhering to those treaties, and be embarrassed into getting rid of their weapons programs.

Or something like that.

The Free Market at Work: Bush Says Drill, Oil Drops $9

From Kudlow's Money Politics:

In a dramatic move yesterday President Bush removed the executive-branch moratorium on offshore drilling. Today, at a news conference, Bush repeated his new position, and slammed the Democratic Congress for not removing the congressional moratorium on the Outer Continental Shelf and elsewhere. Crude-oil futures for August delivery plunged $9.26, or 6.3 percent, almost immediately as Bush was speaking, bringing the barrel price down to $136.

Now isn’t this interesting?

Democrats keep saying that it will take 10 years or longer to produce oil from the offshore areas. And they say that oil prices won’t decline for at least that long. And they, along with Obama and McCain, bash so-called oil speculators. And today we had a real-world example as to why they are wrong. All of them. Reid, Pelosi, Obama, McCain — all of them.

Traders took a look at a feisty and aggressive George Bush and started selling the market well before a single new drop of oil has been lifted. What does this tell us? Well, if Congress moves to seal the deal, oil prices will probably keep on falling. That’s the way traders work. They discount the future. Psychology and expectations can turn on a dime.

The congressional ban on offshore drilling expires September 30, so that becomes a key date. A new report from Wall Street research house Sanford C. Bernstein says that California actually could start producing new oil within one year if the moratorium were lifted. The California oil is under shallow water and already has been explored. Drilling platforms have been in place since before the moratorium. They’re talking about 10 billion barrels worth off the coast of California.

There’s also a “gang of 10” in the Senate, five Republicans and five Democrats, that is trying to work a compromise deal on lifting the moratorium. So it’s possible a lot of action on this front could occur much sooner than people seem to think.

So I repeat: Drill, drill, drill. Deregulate, decontrol, and unleash the American energy industry. Those hated traders will then keep selling oil as the laws of supply and demand and free markets keep working.

Bravo for Bush. Bravo for the traders.