Right Wing Nut House

There are hundreds of black preachers across America who, to one degree or another, sound off like Reverend Jeremiah Wright and rail against white America for oppressing Blacks. I have no doubt that, at times, the rhetoric takes on an American hating tinge given the history of African Americans in this country over the last 400 years.

The question isn’t whether Wright is in or out of the mainstream of black preachers but rather what exactly candidate Obama believes? John McCain, after all, is extremely friendly with Pastor John Hagee, a controversial preacher whose anti-homosexual statements and what some consider anti-Catholic rants have landed him in hot water more than once.

I can see some conservatives heads exploding - “There is no equivalence between Hagee and Wright!” This is true - except in the narrow sense that both Pastors are used by political opponents to make it appear that the other candidate shares their preacher’s hateful views. McCain and Obama have disavowed the hate speech coming from their pastors so we can safely assume that they, in fact, do not agree with the more problematic positions taken by their preacher friends.

And I think we can give Obama the benefit of the doubt and say with some certainty that he does not agree with his spiritual advisor’s view of white America nor does Obama’s view of America match that of Wright. Just looking at his political career could tell you this. Obama has never played “the angry black radical” in his decade in politics. He has never given any hint that he supports the idea that the government created the AIDS virus to kill black people or any of the other loony conspiracy theories spouted by Wright.

Therefore, what’s the big deal about Reverend Wright? Why should it matter what he believes? Isn’t it more important to find out what the candidate believes?

As for Wright, the founder of so-called Black Liberation Theology” says we white people just don’t get it.

From Newsmax:

Apologists for Wright have said that what he says is normal in black churches, and many blacks claim such preaching cannot be understood by whites.

“If you’re black, it’s hard to say what you truly think and not upset white people,” the New York Times quoted James Cone as saying. Cone is a professor at Union Theological Seminary and the father of what is known as black liberation theology.

(Note: I will not link the Newsmax story until independent verification of its thesis is forthcoming.)

I suppose for some African Americans, the above might be true. But is anyone seriously suggesting that Obama subscribes to those views?

I don’t see how. There is simply no evidence that Obama is a race mongering radical. So it is not what Wright believes that has Obama in trouble today. It is what the candidate himself has said by way of explanation that could be his downfall.

Obama has pleaded innocent. He says he was never in the church when Wright was making those horrible statements. He says he was unaware his pastor of 20 years even held those views:

The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.

This is a lie. And as we have seen with the Rezko caper, Obama is very good at it.

In fact, Obama knew full well what flights of rhetorical fancy Wright was capable. He canceled Wright’s scheduled invocation at his presidential announcement speech, explaining to his friend:

According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.”

The idea that Obama didn’t know that Wright was a hate mongering, anti-American race baiting radical is absurd. And as more of Wright’s past utterings come to light and the probability that either through Wright’s writings or preaching Obama knew full well what kind of preacher he was grows, the candidate will find himself trying to parse his own statement of defense into smaller and smaller bits until he looks and sounds like Bill Clinton (”It all depends on what the meaning of “is” is.”)

Just 48 hours ago, I thought the Obama-Wright story had a good chance of blowing over. But Obama is going to find out, like all politicians before him, it’s not so much the transgression that gets you but lying about it will bring you down everytime.

The “strike” at Daily Kos of pro-Hillary bloggers upset that Obama commenters are being meanies has brought out the rabbits feet and lucky coins of many conservatives as they are frantically rubbing those talismans while chanting “The Democrats are imploding. The Democrats are imploding.”

Would that it were so. Rather than the stresses of the campaign “tearing apart the Democratic Party,” I think what we’re really seeing is a reordering of the liberal blogosphere - an extremely small fringe of the Democratic party whose influence is growing but not decisive in any way. This reordering is being mirrored in the conservative blogosphere and constitutes a battle between realists and idealists.

Hillary Clinton and John McCain are an anathema to the idealists because of their perceived impurity on some cherished issues. They are suspected of being closet conservative/liberals because of their willingness to work with the other party on some issues or, in Hillary’s case, the major beef seems to be that she just isn’t quite liberal enough and takes positions on some issues apparently because she wants to (gasp!) get elected.

This would be an impossibility if she swallowed the progressive agenda whole - something that is lost on the netroots who believe that voters who disagree with them are either evil Republican Rovebots or stupid, ignorant, inbred, goober chewing, bible thumping, gun toting, yip-yips who are too dense to know what is good for them.

McCain is suspect because of his willingness to skewer Republicans and conservatives at the drop of a hat and a perceived coziness with the press. And yet many conservatives such as myself, plan on pulling the lever for the Senator from Arizona despite the fact that like Hillary, McCain does not hew to the idealist’s line 100% of the time.

The Kos “revolt” (I hardly call a couple of dozen writers leaving a website that gets 800,000 hits a day a “revolt”) is not indicative of any large scale civil war in the Democratic party. But it does reveal an interesting scramble among the netroots. My feeling is that there are a lot more realists in the conservative blogosphere than there are on the left. I don’t know whether that is a function of the polarization that Hillary Clinton seems to engender but it certainly shows that the relatively few supporters Hillary has on the lefty blogs are being more and more isolated as the race goes on.

Come November, I expect the Hillary supporters to be voting Democrat even if Obama is on the ticket - something that despite his recent troubles is looking pretty certain at this point. Clinton will not overtake Obama in the pledged count and Obama supporters are the ones more likely to stay at home if their candidate is not on the ballot. Ergo, talk of a Democratic party schism is just that - interesting fodder for the blogs but not very likely by the time November rolls around.

Realism will trump ideology almost every time in both parties.

UPDATE

The New York Times did extensive interviews with the Super Delegates and confirm that unless the Wright/Rezko scandals start to really hurt Obama, he will almost certainly be the nominee. The vast majority of them have rejected Hillary’s “electability” argument and are leaning strongly toward Obama’s “will of the people” meme.

Hillary supporters, being realists for the most part, will eventually - reluctantly - accept this bitter pill and will almost certainly pull together with the Obama camp to help the party win in November.

Does all this make an Obama-Clinton ticket more likely? A week ago I would have said “no chance.” But stranger things have happened when a party is as divided as the Democrats. It may come down to a situation where both sides would refuse the marriage but be forced into a partnership. This would only happen, I believe, if the delegate controversy goes all the way to the floor of the convention. At that point, the only solution that would satisfy would be the forced fusion of both camps.

How many lies must Obama tell before he falls off his perch as an “Agent of Change” and comes back down to earth and is recognized as a gifted but flawed politician, no better and no worse than McCain or Hillary Clinton for that matter?

Lying about one’s personal affairs in order to avoid taking a political hit is an art form that most politicians must eventually master if they are to survive. All of us have some kind of skeleton in the closet whether it’s our own or someone close to us. Beyond that, innocent situations can be twisted by opponents and unfriendly media into the appearance of wrongdoing. Eventually, just about everyone will come face to face with a situation where a choice will present itself; tell the truth and risk the wrath of the voters or lie and hope no one catches you.

In Obama’s case, he has lied about the extent of his relationship with Tony Rezko from the beginning. And yesterday, the chickens came home to roost.

Prior to yesterday, Obama described his relationship with Rezko in casual terms:

Mr. Obama says he never did any favors for Mr. Rezko, who raised about $150,000 for his campaigns over the years and was once one of the most powerful men in Illinois. There is no sign that Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, did anything improper.

Mr. Obama has portrayed Mr. Rezko as a one-time fund-raiser whom he had occasionally seen socially. But interviews with more than a dozen political and business associates suggest that the two men were closer than the senator has indicated.

[snip]

When Mr. Obama first fielded questions about Mr. Rezko last fall, he said they had had lunch once or twice a year and had socialized with their wives “two to four times.”

(6/14/07)

A “one time fundraiser?” Occasional socializing?

That was then. This is now:

Trying to put his past with Antoin “Tony” Rezko behind him, presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday said he never thought the nowindicted Chicago businessman would try to take advantage of him because his old friend had never asked for a political favor.

But in a 90-minute interview with Tribune reporters and editors, Obama disclosed that Rezko had raised more for Obama’s earlier political campaigns than previously known, gathering as much as $250,000 for the first three offices he sought.

[snip]

Rezko helped bankroll all of Obama’s subsequent campaigns except his presidential bid. Rezko was on Obama’s campaign committee in his failed run against U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush and gathered between $50,000 and $75,000 of the estimated $600,000 raised in that race, Obama said.

Rezko also was on the finance committee for Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate run. “My best assessment is that he raised $160,000 during my U.S. Senate primary,” he said, adding that those funds had been given to charity.

At first, Obama claimed that Rezko raised no more than $50,000 for his campaigns - which was a lie. Any politician who doesn’t have a good idea how much an important fundraiser like Rezko raises for him wouldn’t be winning many elections. The figure rose to $150,000 and now stands at $250,000.

Any bets on how high that number will eventually go?

Beyond that is the extent of his friendship with Rezko - something both Obama and the campaign have sought to minimize since day one by simply telling outright lies about how well the two men knew each other.

Even Obama’s statements about the purchase of his house were full of falsehoods as far as the reason Rezko went in on the deal.

At first, Obama downplayed the entire matter:

“I don’t recall exactly what our conversations were or where I first learned, and I am not clear what the circumstnces were where he made a decision that he was interested in the property,” Obama reportedly said.

“I may have mentioned to him the name of [a developer and] he may at that point have contacted that person. I’m not clear about that,” he said.

(11/2/2006)

That was then. This is now:

But they talked about the upcoming sales. “He said, ‘I might be interested,’ ” Obama recalled. “My response was, ‘Well, that would be fine.’”

Obama added: “This is an area where I can see a lapse in judgment.” He said his motivation was “if this lot is going to be developed, here’s somebody I knew. So I didn?t object.”

[snip]

In his first accounts of the purchase, Obama did not divulge that tour. He said Friday that he simply didn’t feel the information was salient and insisted the tour didn’t mean he and Rezko coordinated their purchases.

Is this plausible? Your friend of 20 years is buying the lot next to your dream home (although the sellers insist they gave no “discount” to Obama they also said that they wished to sell both the lot and house at the same time which Obama confirms in the Trib interview) and you don’t “coordinate” the sale in any way? This after touring the property with your friend and discussing possible development of the lot next door?

Obama is asking us to take an awful lot on faith - faith in his truthfulness.

Finally, in the matter of Reverend Wright, we are asked to believe that in a 20 year relationship with the pastor, he never once uttered the kind of vicious racial and anti-American statements that were revealed yesterday:

The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.

Is that true? Rich Lowry did a little digging:

Before he ever thought he would have to deploy Clintonesque spin to try to get himself out of a campaign controversy, Barack Obama wrote (an achingly good) memoir. In the book, Obama makes it clear that Wright when he first got to know him was pretty much the same Wright we’re getting to know now (the one that Obama is at pains to say is on the verge of retirement). Wright was striking some of the same notes, saying racially venomous things and attacking the bombing of Hiroshima. Note this passage about the first sermon Obama heard from Wright, the source ultimately of the title of Obama’s second book and one of the central themes of his presidential campaign:

“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere…That’s the world! On which hope sits!”

And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic, the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountaintop, worrying about paying the light bill…

Is it possible Barack Obama forgot the things that Reverend Wright preached? Or, more frighteningly, is it possible that Obama can’t recognize hate speech and anti-American rants when he hears them?

And then there’s this curious comment from his Wright “Mea Culpa” quoted above:

When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments.

“At the time?” People are still digging but no one seems to be able to come up with any comments “condemning” anything Wright has ever said that occurred anywhere near the beginning of his campaign for president. He condemned s Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic statements (not the man) when it became known that Wright’s Church bestowed the “Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Lifetime Achievement Trumpeteer” named after Wright’s church’s magazine that featured the racist demagogue on the cover:

“I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan,” Obama said in the statement. “I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.”

(1/15/08)

This is certainly a long time after “the beginning” of his presidential run - almost a year.

And what do we make of this excerpt from his book Dreams of my Father where he specifically mentions Wright’s “radical” reputation:

In his 1993 memoir “Dreams from My Father,” Obama recounts in vivid detail his first meeting with Wright in 1985. The pastor warned the community activist that getting involved with Trinity might turn off other black clergy because of the church’s radical reputation.

What exactly did Obama think Wright’s “radical reputation” was all about?

Obama’s statement published at Huffingtonpost is at best a careful dissembling of the truth and at worst a tissue of lies as this piece at American Thinker makes clear:

We noticed on the videotaped sermons that when Rev. Wright fires up the crowd, they jump to their feet. A Harvard-trained lawyer like Obama inserting the phrase “sat in the pews” knows exactly what he is doing. If he was on his feet applauding and shouting approval like so many other Trinity congregants, then this statement becomes true, if utterly misleading.

It is time for the Obamamaniacs to wake up and come down from the mountaintop. Support him for president if you must but base it on his positions on the issues and his abilities not on his perceived messianic visions of a new kind of politics - “post racial” or “post partisan” or any other unique attribute that his leadership supposedly will bring out.

Barack Obama is just another politician - devious when he has to be, vague when it suits him, and a liar when necessity calls. May this incident involving Reverend Wright open the eyes of most of those who have lost themselves in Obama’s rhetorical fog so that they can see who and what they are supporting for President of the United States.

Every once and a while (usually on a Friday so fewer people will read it), I write a post that is so politically incorrect, so outrageously provocative that I cringe when re-reading it at a later date. Not because it’s badly written (an impossibility on this site my long time readers will attest) or because the arguments are poorly made. Rather, I blanch at the audacity with which I plunged willy nilly into an issue that had liberals rending their garments and wailing in anguish that anyone would be so presumptuous as to challenge some cherished orthodoxy.

I actually hate controversy, preferring vanilla to rocky road as a rule. But questioning orthodoxy will always get you in trouble - a consequence of offending people’s sense of the way the world is or should be.

Sometimes, I’m wrong to do so if only because there are some 800 LB gorillas in the room you just don’t poke with a stick. Other times, my heart is in the right place but I end up being completely (or deliberately) misunderstood.

No matter. The question that I would like to examine in a serious manner is whether we can really believe that the probable Democratic candidate for President of the United States loves the country of his birth.

Having tossed that bomb allow me to fling another; does it really matter one way or another?

The legitimate questions that can be raised about Obama’s true feelings regarding the United States are due entirely to statements made by those that the candidate himself has informed us have had the most impact on his life; his wife, his pastor, and his mother. Couple that with what appears to me to be a dalliance with radical politics in his youth where Obama stoked the anger and rage in the ghettos of Chicago by painting a picture of America as oppressor when he was a community organizer, and the picture that emerges is of a man with decidedly mixed feelings about this country.

Who can blame him? I think if I grew up a black man in this country - even in the same economic circumstances - I might very well have a conflicted view of America. Some of my conservative friends would disagree but there has been real, honest to God oppression visited upon African Americans - I mean third world, tinpot dictator, intolerable, cruel, manifestly evil oppression. I remember when I was a liberal back in the 1970’s thinking that if I were a black man, I’d probably be a commie.

You cannot read a social history of the United States and come away with any other notion except it is a remarkable testament to the power of ideas and the fact of American exceptionalism that African Americans have fought and died in our wars, built our infrastructure, contributed to the scientific and technical achievements that have made us the envy of the world, and vastly enriched the culture - all the while being denied the simplest, most common rights and privileges enjoyed by the majority white population.

This is the world into which Barack Obama was born, raised, matriculated, and set out to make a life for himself. Even while some things were changing as far as those rights were concerned, no government could peer into men’s hearts and change the insidious evil of racial hatred. The government can mitigate the effects of racism. But it cannot cure the illness itself.

I digress because it is so easy to forget, especially when looking at Obama, that every black American carries the burden of the past with them no matter what heights they achieve in life. And with that burden is the knowledge that America’s schizophrenia regarding race - a country boasting of its freedom and liberty while failing to grant equal rights to some - weighs most heavily on those who have yet to climb the ladder of success.

But Barack Obama the candidate has given no sign that he is conflicted or or that his love of America is any less passionate than you or I. In fact, I would say that Obama is the first liberal since Hubert Humphrey who can give a 5 Star, 4th of July, patriotic stemwinder of a speech and make you believe it. But that speaks more to Obama’s oratorical gifts. What can we deduce about what he truly thinks of America from those who have had the largest impact on his life - people he himself has said that he admires and trusts.

First, his mother. I don’t care what her politics were. I am more concerned with what she thought of America. This moving article in today’s New York Times profiling Obama’s mother reveals a woman that could easily be defined as an internationalist in the strictest definition of that term:

“She was a very, very big thinker,” said Nancy Barry, a former president of Women’s World Banking, an international network of microfinance providers, where Ms. Soetoro worked in New York City in the early 1990s. “I think she was not at all personally ambitious, I think she cared about the core issues, and I think she was not afraid to speak truth to power.”

[snip]

Those choices were not entirely surprising, said several high school friends of Ms. Soetoro, whom they remembered as unusually intelligent, curious and open. She never dated “the crew-cut white boys,” said one friend, Susan Blake: “She had a world view, even as a young girl. It was embracing the different, rather than that ethnocentric thing of shunning the different. That was where her mind took her.”

There is much more in the article that points to a strong willed woman who loved her son and wanted the best for him. But running through the narrative is this sense that she was a woman whose heart was far away from the United States - that she saved her love not for nations but for the ethereal notion of the brotherhood of man.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this, of course. But it raises questions about Obama’s own feelings about the United States. How were they developed? Did his stint at the exclusive prep school in Hawaii inculcate a sense of his “Americanism?” Evidently not:

“I doubted what Indonesia now had to offer and wearied of being new all over again,” he wrote in his memoir. “More than that, I’d arrived at an unspoken pact with my grandparents: I could live with them and they’d leave me alone so long as I kept my trouble out of sight.” During those years, he was “engaged in a fitful interior struggle. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America.”

I can’t shake the notion that this statement about raising himself to be “a black man in America” is revealing of Obama’s conflicted feelings about the country. Having spent so much time out of the country, shouldn’t he have been concerned about “raising himself” to be an American rather than a black American? It may be a small point but I believe it is revealing nonetheless.

Obama’s struggles with his black identity will lead to his embrace of a pastor who can, at best, be called “conflicted” about America and a wife whose own feelings about America can be called into question.

And let me tell you something — for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment.

These words are not shocking coming from a black woman given history and circumstance. But they are troubling coming from the wife of a candidate for Presdent of the United States. What influence has she had on her husband’s thinking? Has she clarified or even reinforced his doubts about America or has he simply dismissed her misgivings?

Right about now those of my friends on the left whose heads have not exploded are probably doing a little seething. But I would say to those liberals who have come this far with me that these are perfectly legitimate questions to ask and seek answers. Obama has made it clear that his wife has helped him in his quest for a black identity. She has been the bridge to Obama’s self-acceptance into the African American community. Someone who has given Obama so much must have some influence on him.

Speculation? Or logical deduction? I suppose that depends on how open your mind might be.

One doesn’t need an open mind to glean what is in the heart of Obama’s long time preacher, friend, and confidante Jeremiah Wright:

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes three-strike laws and wants them to sing God Bless America.

“No! No No!

“God damn America … for killing innocent people.

“God damn America for threatening citizens as less than humans.

“God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and supreme.”

Obama’s statement on these and other incendiary remarks is frankly unbelievable:

“Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy,” he said in the statement. “I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.”

Obama said he never personally heard Wright preach the statements at the center of the controversy, but that he first learned of them when he launched his presidential campaign.

Are we supposed to accept his statement that Obama was unaware of the Reverend’s beliefs until last year despite the fact he has known him as a friend and accepted him as a spiritual advisor for nearly two decades? Or are we to believe that Reverend Wright hid these views from his congregation since Obama attended services at the church on a regular basis?

Get beyond the repudiation of the words and sentiments of Wright and what is Obama saying? For more than a year, he has has been attending the church of a minister that he knew spouted outrageous anti-American sermons.

These are the things that make us question Obama’s true feelings about the United States. I am sure that he does not share the views of Wright nor perhaps of his wife either. But deep down, where only the candidate really knows and could tell us, what does he really feel about this country? Those who had the most impact on his life have made plain their conflicted feelings about America. Does Obama share this?

And ultimately, does it really matter?

I think that depends on the individual voter, doesn’t it? After all, I’m sure many of Obama’s African American supporters do not put as much stock in Obama’s relative depth of feeling about America than many others would. And spending 10 minutes perusing some liberal websites would be equally revealing with regard to the conflicted feelings about the United States felt by some on the left.

If Obama were, in fact, conflicted about America would that interfere with his ability to do the job of president? I don’t see how. It doesn’t make him any less loyal or patriotic - at least in the sense that he wouldn’t commit treason or sell out the country to foreigners. It certainly wouldn’t interfere with his ability to be a good executive.

So in the end, it really doesn’t matter to a lot of people what Obama really thinks about America. To some, like Mona Charen, it is nevertheless troubling:

Obama’s book is strewn with hints of his far left sympathies, as when he tells an African cousin who complains about the hardships of life in Kenya that things are no better in America. Or when he suggests that the lives of poor black young men in the inner city are blighted by white racism. He never says it explicitly, but it’s there.

He has been very friendly with Rashid Khaladi, the fierce anti-Israel professor who took Edward Said’s post at Columbia.

My own theory, FWIW, is that Obama acquired his far left views at least in part to make himself as authentically black as he could to compensate for having a white mother. His mother, of course, was very left herself. But looking the way he does, and having been raised among only white people (mother and maternal grandparents) he felt the need to better identify with his black heritage. That struggle is what the book is all about.

One can have sympathy for his psychological predicament . But that sympathy certainly does not extend to electing him president of a country that I sincerely believe he does not love.

Charen is unable to prove that Obama can’t do the job based solely on whether or not he loves America. I’d never vote for the guy in a million years. But whether he truly loves America as deeply as I do is far down the list of reasons why.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is starting to remind me of the orders General Grant gave to General Sheridan for the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign.

Angry that a confederate army led by Jubal Early had been able to use the Valley both as a granary for the southern armies and a sheltered invasion route of the north, Grant created the 40,000 man Army of the Shenandoah and put the bulldog Sheridan in command with two specific orders; kill Early’s army and “consume and destroy all forage and subsistence, burn all barns and mills and drive off all stock in the region.” Valley residents who complained about the wholesale destruction were told, per Sheridan’s instructions, “that they have furnished too many meals to guerrillas to expect much sympathy.”

Grant explained in a letter to Army Commander in Chief Henry Halleck that he wanted Sheridan to “eat out Virginia clear and clean as far as they go, so that crows flying over it for the balance of the season will have to carry their provender with them.” Grant got down to more specific details in his further instructions to Sheridan, saying that he “should make all the Valley south of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad a desert as high up as possible. I do not mean that houses should be burned, but all provisions and stock should be removed, and the people notified to get out.”

The Clinton campaign has declared total war - on Obama, on the party, on the media, on basically anyone who is in their way. It is a campaign quite unlike any the Democrats have seen since perhaps 1860 when Stephen Douglas refused to step aside for the good of the party and ended up driving the Dixiecrats out of the convention to put up their own candidate thus assuring the election of a Republican.

No one will walk out of this year’s Democratic convention (we think). But Hillary Clinton’s tactics from here on out are apparently designed to cleave the Democratic party in two and bulldoze her way to the nomination by any means necessary.

And just in case she falls short, she is going to damage Obama to the point that he will be “unelectable” in November.

Jonathon Chait:

As I said, Obama was running well ahead of Clinton in head-to-head matchups a few weeks ago, and now they’re tied. After several more weeks of Clinton reinforcing McCain’s message against Obama, Clinton will probably be performing better than Obama against McCain. This is the point I made in my TRB column. She needs to convince the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to split for her by about a 2-to-1 margin. The only way she can get a split like that is if she can persuasively argue that Obama is unelectable. And the only way she can do that is to make him unelectable. Some people have treated this as an unfortunate byproduct of Clinton’s decision to continue her campaign. It’s actually a central element of the strategy. Penn is already saying he’s unelectable. It’s not true, but by the time the convention rolls around, it may well be.

MyDD on Obama’s unelectability:

With this in mind, the most sensible conclusion I seem to be able to infer from Penn’s statements are that after the Clinton campaign gets done with Obama he won’t be able to win a national election — in other words a promise from the Clinton campaign to make Obama unelectable.

Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely room for the two campaigns to hit one another on legitimate bones of contention or to make the case that their candidate is relatively stronger. And both candidates should be and need to be scrutinized so that the Democrats can put their best foot forward in November. But when a campaign begins lashing out senselessly, as appears to be the case in this instance, it simply must be put to a stop — for the good of the party and for the good of the nation, which cannot afford to go through the third Bush term with a McCain presidency.

Would it be too much to read into this theme the unspoken reason for Obama’s unelectability? Is the Clinton campaign playing their final and most devastating race card by strongly hinting that America simply will not elect a black man president?

I don’t think it can be anything else. It goes hand in hand with the rest of the campaign’s tearing down of Obama, marginalizing him as being too inexperienced and not tough enough while Hillary’s surrogates do the dirty work. Was Geraldine Ferraro’s statement about Obama basically being an “affirmative action” presidential candidate so off the cuff or was it a deliberate, planned ploy using a liberal icon like Ferraro to raise perhaps the most devastating questions about Obama’s abilities? Can even the Clintons be that devious?

Logic would say no but the idea shouldn’t be dismissed entirely. Desperate people do desperate things and in order to stave off elimination, the Clintons are proving themselves as proficient as the Huns in laying waste to the political landscape.

Is this damaging what Andrew Sullivan calls Obama’s “post racial” appeal? In Mississippi, Obama received 90% of the black vote while Clinton got 75% of the white vote. That’s the white Democratic vote (with about 12% GOP crossovers). It remains to be seen what will happen in Pennsylvania on April 22 but with Governor “A black man can’t win in Pennsylvania” Rendel, you can bet that the Clinton campaign will bend every effort to portray Obama as a one trick pony - a candidate unable to win the white working class vote while gaining 90% majorities from a racial group the Democrats have in the bag already.

Obama’s dilemma is if he plays Hillary’s game by even acknowledging the charges of unelectability, he falls into the trap of joining the debate. For Obama, there can be no discussion of the matter. It is a ridiculous charge on its face and so far, his campaign is treating it as such.

But what happens if in the next three states - Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Indiana - Obama fails to win a majority of white votes? In Virginia, Obama won 52% of the white vote. But in the southeastern part of the state in counties bordering North Carolina, Hillary Clinton rolled up huge majorities. And Indiana could also prove difficult for Obama given the economic downturn in that state which lately seems to have favored Clinton.

By exacerbating the racial divide in the Democratic party, Hillary Clinton may indeed make Obama unelectable. And there’s no guarantee that the strategy will sway the Super Delegates and make her the nominee especially since she will probably be trailing in the delegate count and popular vote. But none of this seems to matter. As far as the Clinton campaign can see, this is their only avenue to the White House and by hook or by crook, whether they bring the Democratic party down or not, they’re going to take it.

If you’re a Democrat, you should be absolutely outraged, incensed, and weeping with frustration at the prospect of tens of thousands of Republican voters entering your primaries in order to support the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.

These GOP pranksters are not voting for Clinton because someone put something in the water thus turning them from being rabid dog Clinton haters into slavish Hillary bots. Rather they are trying to keep Barack Obama from winning the nomination believing that Hillary will be easier to beat than the charismatic Obama.

For myself, I’m not so sure. My own guess is that Obama is going to be damaged goods by the middle of summer thanks to his relationships with Tony Rezko and his crooked cronies. He would be a much easier general election target for McCain who will be seen as a paragon of virtue next to Obama.

Regardless, Rush Limbaugh has been pushing this campaign for Republicans to game the system and vote for Hillary in Democratic primaries. What’s even worse for Democrats is that it seems to be working:

I have to say, I’m mystified by the large number of Republicans turning up in the Mississippi Democratic primary to vote for Hillary. They more than doubled their share of the 2004 Democratic primary, up to 13%. They were among Clinton’s best demographics groups — she won 75% of Republicans — and made up a significant portion of her overall support.

Typically, it’s been the reverse: Republicans in the North turned out for Obama. And it’s certainly contrary to conventional wisdom that Southern Republicans bear special fondness for Hillary.

I’ll be interested in what the local press has to say about this. I don’t have a clear grasp of Mississippi’s traditions in crossing party lines, and there was no real GOP contest here, which may have increased the numbers.

There are smart people who think this is strategic voting, aimed at producing the weaker candidate — something Rush Limbaugh, in particular, has gleefully espoused.

This is a fun theory, but before it takes root, a couple of notes of skepticism. First, this is all based on quite small samples in exit polls.

Second, Rush wasn’t campaigning for Hillary in Mississippi.

Are you trying to tell me that 13% of Republicans in the state of Mississippi worship and adore Hillary Clinton? Are you nuts?

The Jed Report has an interesting breakdown showing the impact of GOP voters on Texas

As the number of Republicans in the primary has increased, Hillary Clinton’s share of the Republican vote has skyrocketed, going from a 69-31 deficit in January and February to a whopping 75-25 lead in Mississippi. Although Barack Obama’s share of the Republican vote declined, his absolute percentage did not change much, hovering around 3-4%. In other words, he was simply winning a smaller percentage of a larger pie.

In the abstract, there’s nothing wrong with receiving votes from Republicans in the Democratic primary — as long as those votes come from Republicans who are truly committed to a Democratic candidate. That appears to be the case with Barack Obama, who consistently does well among Republicans and independents in public opinion surveys.

Hillary Clinton’s support from Republicans, on the other hand, is coming from Republicans who will not support her in the general election. They are simply wreaking havoc in the Democratic primary, hoping to further divide an already divided party, and perhaps even help Hillary Clinton win the nomination.

How likely is it that these voters are Republican mischief makers and not true blue Hillaryites? Check the sun this evening. If it sets in the west, there’s a pretty good chance that there are tens of thousands of Republicans who are getting a huge kick out of throwing a monkey wrench into the Democratic primary process.

Dirty play? What, in this campaign? You’re kidding right? I give you Kos himself on the eve of the Michigan Republican primary:

Next Tuesday, January 15th, Michigan will hold its primary. Michigan Democrats should vote for Mitt Romney, because if Mitt wins, Democrats win. How so?

For Michigan Democrats, the Democratic primary is meaningless since the DNC stripped the state of all its delegates (at least temporarily) for violating party rules. Hillary Clinton is alone on the ballot.

But on the GOP side, this primary will be fiercely contested. John McCain is currently enjoying the afterglow of media love since his New Hamsphire victory, while Iowa winner Mike Huckabee is poised to do well in South Carolina.

Meanwhile, poor Mitt Romney, who’s suffered back-to-back losses in the last week, desperately needs to win Michigan in order to keep his campaign afloat. Bottom line, if Romney loses Michigan, he’s out. If he wins, he stays in.

And we want Romney in, because the more Republican candidates we have fighting it out, trashing each other with negative ads and spending tons of money, the better it is for us. We want Mitt to stay in the race, and to do that, we need him to win in Michigan.

That hasn’t stopped some whiners on the left from complaining about GOP dirty tricks:

It’s only going to get worse — Republicans will change parties when there is closed primaries and in open primaries, they will cross-over and vote for Hillary Clinton in increasing numbers.

Effectively, this emerging pattern calls into question the validity of any voting from here on out, even in closed primaries. There’s just so much lead time before the next contests that Republicans have plenty of time to register as Democrats and monkey with our primary.

Imagine just how effin’ hard it will be to make sure revotes in Florida and Michigan don’t end becoming a huge clusterf**k…

The problem is that Republicans whose only goal is sabotage our nomination process are going to make this seem closer than it really is. And that’s going to embolden Hillary Clinton to continue to make more attacks on our eventual nominee. And it’s going to further divide the party. And maybe even cost us the election.

The Kos gambit proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that if the shoe were on the other foot, the netroots would be having a gay old time organizing and getting their minions to the polls to vote for one Republican or another. I hardly think the crocodile tears being shed here should make any Republican feel sorry for the Democrats and the pickle they are in - trouble entirely of their own making.

From their cockamamie caucuses to the perfidious proportional representation plans to the very idea of so many Super Delegates having the nomination in their hands not to mention the Michigan and Florida fiascos all point to a party besotted with political correctness, sacrificing winning on the altar of “fairness” and “diversity.” How “fair” is the caucus system really? And “diversity” is just another way to pander - again, at the expense of what elections are all about; winning.

We ain’t playing “Go Fish” here, folks. This race is for keeps. If the Democrats ever start acting like that is the case, Republicans will stay away and Democrats will come up with a viable nominee.

Otherwise, Democrats will continue to be toyed with while the GOP chortles with glee over what magic they have wrought.

This is another in a series of stories that received some play in Chicago at the time it occurred but never made it past the state line for some reason.

It is especially curious that this story never took off nationally because far more than most people realize, Mayor Richard M. Daley is a player in national Democratic politics - perhaps not as powerful as his father but almost certainly the current Mayor Daley has more clout than any other big city Democratic mayor in the country.

The current mayor has fewer congressmen that he can whip into line for the party thanks to Chicago’s shrinking population and a welcome sense of independence among some minority legislators. But the Machine built by the Democratic party prior World War II can still flex its muscles when called upon. It may not be as monolithic as it once was. But thanks to people like the Mayor’s brother Bill Daley - who served as Secretary of Commerce for Clinton and ran Al Gore’s 2000 campaign - as well as some important money men in the party, the Machine’s reach is indeed considerable.

But what led Mayor Daley, normally reluctant to endorse a presidential candidate in the primaries, to give the nod to Obama?

Apparently, the Mayor was looking at his own electoral problems in 2007 with what was promising to be a very tough re-election campaign. Until early November, 2006, Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr - son of the Democratic party activist and former presidential candidate - was planning his own run for Mayor as was powerful Hispanic Congressman Luis Gutierrez. Fortune favored Daley in this case when Democrats swept the mid terms and brought both Congressmen the opportunity to chair powerful subcommittees. Suddenly, Mayor of Chicago didn’t look quite as attractive. Both men dropped out of the Mayor’s race later that month.

The prospect of running against a three term incumbent probably played an equally large role in dissuading both men from running as well.

The problem for the Mayor’s opponents was finding a candidate who could unite the fractious west and south side African Americans while pulling in a substantial number of Hispanic voters along with white, reform minded liberals along the lakefront. Such a coalition would have a chance against the Mayor’s powerbase on the southwest side where he routinely racked up 90% majorities in some wards.

With Jackson and Gutierrez out of the picture, the Mayor’s main challenger was Dorothy Brown, Clerk of the Cook County Circuit Court. Brown was an attractive candidate out of the reform mold, beloved of white liberals and just the sort of citywide office holder that might be able to bridge the gap between the south and west side black communities.

To be sure, Brown had an uphill battle against Daley’s huge advantage in infrastructure and fund raising. What she really needed to give her campaign a rocket powered boost was an endorsement from a major black politician being mentioned as a possible presidential candidate.

Taking no chances, Daley called Obama in for a series of meetings that lasted two months. Obama’s major problem with Daley was that he was a corrupt sonnovabith, having just seen 4 of his top aides convicted in the city’s largest patronage scandal. It seemed a given that the squeaky clean Obama would endorse the candidate promising to clean up city hall.

Then, in late December of 2007, the tumblers all clicked into place and Daley made his nearly unprecedented endorsement of Obama for president. About the same time, it was announced that his brother Bill would be going to work for the Obama campaign.

As Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed reported this week, Bill Daley has signed on as a senior adviser to Obama, who is expected to formally enter the presidential race next month.

Sources said the mayor’s decision to embrace Obama was made before his brother reserved a seat on the senator’s bandwagon. The mayor and Obama have been meeting about the subject for months, huddling for 2½ hours at City Hall as recently as last week.

It is hard to overstate the coup Obama pulled off by getting both Daleys on his side. Bill Daley has a rolodex of Democratic contributors that could rival Hillary and Bill’s. It would be an interesting counterfactual to imagine the Obama campaign’s finances without the younger Daley.

So what did Obama promise in return?

In effect, Obama surrendered to the Machine by promising to endorse its corrupt mayor rather than his reform minded challenger (commentary in parenthesis):

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama today endorsed Mayor Daley’s re-election bid, asserting that City Hall corruption is being cleaned up and that Chicago has “blossomed” under the mayor’s “innovative” and decisive leadership.

Obama said he decided to support Daley and the mayor’s revamped “rainbow ticket” long before deciding to enter the presidential sweepstakes. (Pure BS)

Daley plans to abandon his longstanding tradition of remaining neutral in Democratic primaries to endorse Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential race. But Obama said his endorsement of Daley was earned and not part of any quid pro quo. (Liar)

“Even his detractors acknowledge that the city has been well-managed and has performed in all respects in ways that are the envy of a lot of other cities across the country,” (and the envy of corrupt politicians as well) Obama said at a news conference at the mayor’s Loop campaign headquarters.

“I don’t think there’s a city in America that has blossomed as much over the last couple of decades than Chicago — and a lot of that has to do with our mayor. He has a national reputation that’s well-deserved . . . as somebody’s who’s innovative, as somebody who’s tough, as somebody who’s willing to make the hard the decisions, as somebody who is constantly thinking about how to make the city better.” (and someone who can help get me elected president despite him being a crook.)

That’s not all. A couple of months later, Obama endorsed another crook from the Machine:

Though it didn’t make national news, Obama inflamed many residents in his old state Senate district last March when he endorsed controversial Chicago alderman Dorothy Tillman in a runoff election.

Flamboyant and unpredictable, Tillman is perhaps best known for once pulling a pistol from her purse and brandishing it around at a city council meeting. The ward she represented for 22 years, which included historic Bronzeville, comprised the city’s largest concentration of vacant lots.

Just three months before Obama made his endorsement, the Lakefront Outlook community newspaper ran a three-part investigative series exposing flagrant cronyism and possible tax-law violations that centered on Tillman and her biggest pet project, a taxpayer-funded cultural center built across the street from her ward office that had been hemorrhaging money since its inception.

In the end, Tillman lost the election despite Obama’s endorsement, which critics said countered his calls for clean government. Obama told the Chicago Tribune that he had backed Tillman because she was an early supporter of his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign.

Many speculate Obama only bothered to weigh in on a paltry city council election during his presidential campaign as a gesture to Chicago’s powerful Mayor Richard M. Daley, a Tillman supporter.

This behavior is not unusual for Obama if you examine the record. To wit:

1. His very first race for state senate, he used the time honored Machine tactic of challenging the nominating petitions of every other candidate, getting all 4 of them removed from the ballot.

2. He cultivated a relationship with the ancient President of the Illinois State Senate Emil Jones who told a colleague in 2002 after the Democrats swept into office “I’m gonna make me a senator.” Jones then proceeded to give Obama credit on the passage of 26 key legislative measures - almost all of which had been pushed by other state senators for years - thus giving Obama a record of sorts to go with all that charisma. Obama calls Jones his “political godfather.”

3. While in the Senate, Obama has had numerous opportunities to live up to his promised “post partisan” reforms and has never - repeat never - participated in any bi-partisan agreement reached by Democrats and Republicans on any issue. He has gone so far as to reject the outcomes of those compromises on immigration reform and an agreement on confirming federal judges.

4. When faced with a choice between supporting a mayoral candidate who stood for clean government and the corruption of the Chicago Machine, Obama chose old fashioned power politics.

Obama’s political career is replete with examples of opportunism, cynical deal making, hack politics, and business as usual relationships with crooks and scam artists like Tony Rezko. His entire presidential campaign is built on a lie; that he is a different kind of politician and will be able to change the way business is done in Washington.

When given the opportunity in the past, Obama has usually chosen doing things the old fashioned way. Why in God’s name should we believe him now? Did he try and “reform” Chicago politics? Did he try and “reform” the Senate while his colleagues worked on bi-partisan agreements on vital issues?

You can support the man’s policies without holding him up (and throwing in our faces) the idea he is some kind of “new” politician who will change everyone’s lives. And if he keeps pushing that meme, he will look like the emperor with no clothes as facts about his relationships with various shady Chicago characters come to light, giving the lie to his grandiose claims like “We are the change that we are seeking.”

There is an argument to be made for America’s never-ending presidential campaign in that it tests a candidate in a variety of different ways. It examines a potential president’s physical stamina, ability to organize and prioritize, strategic thinking, tactical ability, and gifts of persuasion.

Eventually, it will also test a candidate’s ability to handle adversity. Judging by what has transpired this week for Barack Obama and his suddenly faltering campaign, one would think the candidate would have had a bellyfull of untoward occurrences, staff gaffes, bad luck, and perhaps a touch of incompetence on the part of the candidate himself.

It began Monday with Obama’s worst performance before the national media to date. The candidate has been chided in the past for his lack of press availability so perhaps the media was a little on edge as Obama, smiling, stepped up to the podium.

He wasn’t smiling when he stepped down 15 minutes later. After a staffer called out “Last question,” Obama didn’t even wait for the query but instead, stomped away while the press roared out a cacophony of questions about Tony Rezko and the NAFTA flap at the retreating candidate. Opening himself up to derision, the candidate turned back briefly and with a forced smile on his face, pleading with the press, “C’mon guys. I answered like 8 questions.”

The Chicago Sun Times, whose reporters were a big part of making the presser an uncomfortable experience for the candidate, taunted Obama; first, with a piece that featured the phone number of the newspaper in the headline asking the candidate to call in and answer questions about his relationship with Tony Rezko - this after Obama said that he had been unable to sit down with reporters about the matter. Then today, the Sun Times takes Obama to task for only answering 8 questions:

Try to imagine President Bush, fleeing questions coming at him fast and furious over a controversy, closing a news conference by saying, “Come on, I just answered like eight questions.” Democrats in Congress and liberal interest groups would be shouting coverup. The editorial pages of the national newspapers would be thundering outrage. The late night comedians and left-wing blogs would be heaping ridicule on him.

Or contrast Obama’s avoidance strategy to John McCain’s response to what was universally considered a shoddy New York Times story. It alleged two disillusioned McCain aides eight years ago thought he might have had a romantic relationship with a lobbyist. McCain met with reporters and took every question they had about the article.

Obama is lucky the Rezko affair is a Chicago issue with which national reporters are unfamiliar. And, given what’s known today, it’s hard to see how the Rezko case could wound Obama’s political ambitions. But for that reason, it’s hard to understand his reluctance to answer questions from the Chicago investigative reporters who know the Rezko issues best.

Tuesday only got worse. Still reeling from fallout from the NAFTA kerfluffle and lost in the excitement of the primaries was something Obama said that John McCain and the Republicans have carefully filed away, sure to bring up at some point in the general election campaign if Obama were to win the nomination: That the Sermon on the Mount justifies same sex unions and abortion:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told a crowd at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio, Sunday that he believes the Sermon on the Mount justifies his support for legal recognition of same-sex unions. He also told the crowd that his position in favor of legalized abortion does not make him “less Christian.”

“I don’t think it [a same-sex union] should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state,” said Obama. “If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans.” ((Hear audio from WTAP-TV)) St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans condemns homosexual acts as unnatural and sinful.

Then there was the results from the primaries themselves. Obama was swamped in Ohio and ambushed in Texas - perhaps by Republican crossover votes for Hillary. His momentum destroyed, the candidate gave a perfunctory speech that lacked passion and fire following his defeats.

Wednesday dawned to a whole new campaign. A Gallup poll showed Obama trailing Clinton for the first time in weeks. The campaign then got down to business firing an awkward salvo at Hillary Clinton, taking her to task for not releasing her tax returns. This was somewhat overshadowed by news that Obama’s name figured prominently on a Columbian terrorist group’s computer. Clinton meanwhile, undercut Obama’s campaign by suggesting she would take him as a running mate. This had the effect of freezing Super Delegates who may have been willing to bolt for Obama between now and the Pennsylvania primary 7 long weeks away.

By Thursday, it appeared the Obama campaign was in disarray. Unpaid advisor Samantha Powers - Obama’s most visible foreign policy spokesperson - began a series of incomprehensible verbal faux pas that shook the organization to its roots. First, she referred to Hillary Clinton as a “monster.” Naively trying to take back the comment, by late afternoon it was plastered all over the internet.

But Powers was far from finished. In another interview, she insulted British PM Gordon Brown by averring “I am confused by what’s happened to Gordon Brown. I thought he was impressive.” And for the pièce de résistance , Powers cut the legs out from underneath Obama’s anti-war position by claiming that the candidate’s plan to withdraw troops from Iraq was a “best case scenario:”

“He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator,” she said at one point in the interview.

Power downplayed Obama’s commitment to quick withdrawal from Iraq on Hard Talk, a program that often exceeds any of the U.S. talk shows in the rigor of its grillings. She was challenged on Obama’s Iraq plan, as it appears on his website, which says that Obama “will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.”

“What he’s actually said, after meting with the generals and meeting with intelligence professionals, is that you – at best case scenario – will be able to withdraw one to two combat brigades each month. That’s what they’re telling him. He will revisit it when he becomes president,” Power says.

Hillary pounced:

“While Senator Obama campaigns on his plan to end the war, his top advisors tell people abroad that he will not rely on his own plan should he become president. This is the latest example of promising the American people one thing on the campaign trail and telling people in other countries another. We saw this with NAFTA as well,” Clinton said.

“He has attacked me continuously for having no hard exit date and now we learn that he doesn’t have one -– in fact he doesn’t have a plan at all according to his top foreign policy adviser,” she said. “He keeps telling people one thing while his campaign tells people abroad something else I’m not sure what the American people should believe but I would refer you to the BBC interview in which the top foreign policy adviser is speaking about senator Obama and Iraq,” Clinton said.

The day was not done.

Another staffer, Susan Rice, provided a kick in the teeth when she blurted out on national television that neither Obama or Hillary were ready to take that 3:00 AM phone call featured in the most effective campaign ad to date:

“Clinton hasn’t had to answer the phone at three o’clock in the morning and yet she attacked Barack Obama for not being ready,” Ms. Rice said. “They’re both not ready to have that 3 a.m. phone call.”

The sun came up on Friday and the Samantha Powers issue had reached critical mass forcing her resignation. One prominent aide, Zbigniew Brzezinski , publicly disagreed with the decision to throw Powers under the bus while other Democrats piled on the Obama campaign. It was “amatuer hour,” according to some. The entire day was spent in damage control on Powers and the rest with the candidate himself feeling for a means to attack Clinton without coming off too negatively.

To top off the dreary day, it didn’t take long for the Chicago trial of Obama’s long time friend and patron Tony Rezko to do damage; Obama’s name was brought up by Rezko’s defense attorney in his opening arguments to the jury.

But beyond the questions about Powers and Rice, there was a feeling that things were getting out of control. The staff was going off on their own and projecting their own opinions rather than sticking to the campaign script. This came into sharper focus today as Obama’s chief intelligence advisor came out in favor of immunity for telecoms - in direct contravention of the candidate’s position and a statement that has gotten the left roots in an uproar:

In a new interview with National Journal magazine, an intelligence adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign broke with his candidate’s position opposing retroactive legal protection for telecommunications companies being sued for cooperating with a dubious U.S. government domestic surveillance program.

“I do believe strongly that [telecoms] should be granted that immunity,” former CIA official John Brennan told National Journal reporter Shane Harris in the interview. “They were told to [cooperate] by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context.”

“I know people are concerned about that, but I do believe that’s the right thing to do,” added Brennan, who is an intelligence and foreign policy adviser to Obama.

That wasn’t just a personal opinion, Brennan made clear to Harris. “My advice, to whoever is coming in [to the White House], is they need to spend some time learning, understanding what’s out there, identifying those key issues,” including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, he said — the law at the heart of the immunity debate.

Question for the Obama camp: Is anybody in charge these days?

Obama is now being questioned about everything from campaign strategy to his judgment on choosing aides. And the fact that some of those aides have gone off the reservation on vitally important issues would seem to indicate a lackadaisical approach to controlling the message of the campaign.

Contrast the Obama’s campaign scattershot message lately with that of the Clinton camp werre everyone from the candidate on down to surrogates knows what the talking points are for the day and delivers a consistently clear message. It is that kind of discipline that appears to be lacking from the Obama camp and will only raise more questions about the inexperienced Obama’s fitness for the highest office in the land.

Whenever I’m stuck and can’t figure out why I believe what I actually believe as a conservative, there’s only one thing I can do.

No, don’t be silly. I don’t sit down, carefully and systematically analyzing the underlying assumptions that make up my beliefs, testing them against the available facts, buttressing or weakening my arguments as the case may be and arrive at an intelligent, intellectually coherent position.

Instead, I ask Lambchop.

Conservatives love to claim that Obama supporters have excess reverence for their candidate and see him as some sort of transcendent messiah figure. There is a small minority of Obama supporters — as is true for most candidates and political movements — who probably expect more from Obama than it is healthy to expect from political leaders generally.

But listening to this objection from the right-wing movement is the ultimate irony. There has not been a political figure in a long, long time who was revered, worshiped and transformed into a grotesque Icon of Transcendent Greatness the way the Commander-in-Chief, George W. Bush, has been. For years and years, the Right sustained itself as little more than a glorified Cult of Personality around the Great, Conquering War Hero.

Mr. Ellison’s post is entitled “Why do conservatives really find the Obama campaign scary?” Unfortunately, the World Famous Sock Puppet never quite gets around to answering that question. This proved a huge disappointment to me as I am always interested in bettering myself by having my fears allayed by someone whose stock in trade is portraying conservatives in the scariest, the lowest, the most hyperbolically evil manner possible.

No matter. Instead of telling me why I’m scared of Obama, Lambchop gravely informs me that I harbor the same messianic delusions about George Bush as millions of Democrats and liberals believe of Barack Obama.

This is very comforting - if it were true. The fact is, although George Bush is a handsome fellow (in a “Bushy” sort of way) he could be said to have the charisma of a goat and the rhetorical gifts of a Macaw. He does not engender the same fawning, fainting, chest heaving, breathless, hyper-sexual responses to his presence as Barack Obama.

But does that singular fact stop our favorite sock puppet from reaching for the stars in trying to compare the reaction of supporters to the two men?

Don’t bet on it:

When introducing the Commander-in-Chief at the 2004 GOP Convention — that Orwellian orgy of unprecedentedly creepy, relentless hero worship — Gov. George Pataki said: “He is one of those men God and fate somehow led to the fore in times of challenge.” The righteous Gen. Boykin said: “The majority of Americans did not vote for him. He’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.” Rudy Giuliani added: “I say it — I say it again tonight — I say it again tonight: Thank God that George Bush is our President.”

Politicians are funny, aren’t they? They can dress a pig up in a prom dress and swear on a stack of bibles that Porky is the belle of the ball. Lambchop’s problem in evaluating the relative enthusiasm and love directed at Obama and Bush appears to be one of (big surprise) proportion. For one so hysterically inclined to exaggerate, to denigrate, to posit the most outrageously ignorant motivations for conservative actions, our man Mr. Ellison simply lacks the ability to evaluate anything in an adult manner. Instead, he reminds me of a teenage girl in the way he dramatizes the most insignificant events and statements from conservatives as sinister and evil. A true drama queen of the left, he is incapable of the kind of balanced, nuanced judgement ascribed to most grown ups who write about politics and politicians.

Lambchop cannot tell the difference between political hyperbole as given by politicians above and the raw, emotional, slavish, worshipful, and fervent idolatry that millions of Obama supporters demonstrate on a regular basis. They can’t tell you why they are for him. They can’t tell you why they faint and weep in his presence. They can’t tell you why they believe he can “change the world” when he can’t even change the politics of Chicago.

All they can tell you is that they love him and will follow his “movement.” Does this sound like something George Bush supporters would be saying?

Describing various encounters with Obama supporters, she writes, “Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used here is the language of evangelical Christianity – the Obama volunteers speak of ‘coming to Obama’ in the same way born-again Christians talk about ‘coming to Jesus.’…

Even someone as juvenile as Lambchop - James Wolcott - can tell the difference between party loyalists and those who genuflect at the altar of Obama:

The always interesting James Wolcott writes that “(p)erhaps it’s my atheism at work but I found myself increasingly wary of and resistant to the salvational fervor of the Obama campaign, the idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria. I can picture President Hillary in the White House dealing with a recalcitrant Republican faction; I can’t picture President Obama in the same role because his summons to history and call to hope seems to transcend legislative maneuvers and horse-trading; his charisma is on a more ethereal plane, and I don’t look to politics for transcendence and self-certification.”

No one has ever accused George Bush of being a rock star. No one has ever said that Bush causes the hearts of women to palpitate uncontrollably thus causing them to pass out.

And yet Lambchop, in what can only be described as one of his more desperate leaps of illogic, tries to assign equal value to the Obama phenomena and the small number of Bush-bots who I’ll bet never thought any impure thoughts about George.

It’s silly, of course. It proves that Lambchop is a very silly man with the singular inability to be rational in discourse and temperate in his analysis.

Why this continues to qualify Mr. Ellison as a lion of the left escapes me.

Malone: You said you wanted to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? You see what I’m saying is, what are you prepared to do?
Ness: Anything and everything in my power.
Malone: And *then* what are you prepared to do? If you open the can on these worms you must be prepared to go all the way because they’re not gonna give up the fight until one of you is dead.
Ness: How do you do it then?
Malone: You wanna know how you do it? Here’s how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way…
(From “The Untouchables”)

Many of us familiar with Chicago politics have been wondering for months at the apparent disconnect of the media regarding Obama’s relationship to the Chicago political machine. Where did they think this guy came from?

The lack of curiosity by the press about Obama’s connections to one of the most corrupt city governments in the United States should be one of the big media stories of this campaign. While it is true that Obama’s connections to the Machine are not as extensive as many other politicians, I’ve got news for you Obama apologists; try running for any office in Chicago - local, state, or federal - and see how far you get without support from the regular Democrats.

Besides, examining Obama’s first state senate race should have been a tip off to the national press that this fellow can play the game of politics “The Chicago Way” as well as any corrupt Daleycrat:

The day after New Year’s 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.

There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city’s South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama’s four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.

Fresh from his work as a civil rights lawyer and head of a voter registration project that expanded access to the ballot box, Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate saying he wanted to empower disenfranchised citizens.

But in that initial bid for political office, Obama quickly mastered the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics. His overwhelming legal onslaught signaled his impatience to gain office, even if that meant elbowing aside an elder stateswoman like Palmer.

A close examination of Obama’s first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career: The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.

Don’t you think that information like this might be included in any standard media bio of the candidate, MSNBC? Or have you guys at Fox never heard of the internet and Google?

This is politics “The Chicago Way” as John Kass points out in this ground breaking column today:

The Chicago Way.

What is it? Is it easily abused? Is it dangerous in the wrong hands?

This is critical, as the nation’s eyes turn toward Chicago’s federal building, where Barack Obama’s personal real estate fairy, Tony Rezko, stands trial on federal corruption charges.

The phrase must be put in context, something the national media fails to do when they portray Obama as the boy king drawing the sword from the stone, ready to change America’s politics of influence and lobbyists, ignoring the fact that Chicago ain’t Camelot.

With opening statements expected Thursday, the court will be packed with journalists foreign to our idiom. In the past, a few reporters have applied “The Chicago Way” to our pizza, theater and opera, thereby embarrassing themselves beyond redemption.

“Chicago ain’t Camelot” may be the understatement of this political year. Chicago is…well, Chicago. For instance:

Chicago’s mob — we call it the Outfit — was slapped last summer by federal prosecutors in the Operation Family Secrets trial that convicted Outfit bosses, and cops and put political figures in with them. We’ve had our chief of detectives sent to prison for running the Outfit’s jewelry-heist ring. And we’ve had white guys with Outfit connections get $100 million in affirmative action contracts from their drinking buddy, Mayor Richard Daley, who must have seen them pink and white and male at some point.

That’s the Chicago Way.

Are you getting the picture New York Times? Do I have to spell it out for you Washington Post? Wake up and smell the coffee, CNN!

“This country was built on taxes,” said a Democratic machine hack, Cook County Commissioner Deborah Sims, as she and other Democrats prepared to slap Chicago with the highest sales tax of any major city in the country….

“There’s not that many political hacks in Cook County,” Sims insisted after the tax hike.

Not that many hacks? The only one reporters need to bother about is also involved at the same federal building: the mayor’s own Duke of Patronage, Robert Sorich.

Sorich has been found guilty by a jury, but the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals above the Rezko courtroom is still deciding whether to redeem the jury or redeem the mayor, who’d much rather have Sorich happy than Obama in the White House.

Sorich was convicted two years ago of running the mayor’s massive and illegal patronage operation, and he’s still not in prison. Thugs, morons, idiots, and convicts were put on the city payroll to work the precincts so that Daley could keep getting elected. Obama’s spokesman, David Axelrod, defended Daley patronage in a Tribune op-ed piece.

As an aside, for a while there it looked like Fitzy might be targeting hizzoner himself, measuring him for prison coveralls. But the Daleys have always been too smart to get caught doing anything really illegal and the Mayor’s luck held.

But seriously LA Times, this is the political culture Barack Obama matured in. Would it do any harm to perhaps, you know, pretend that you’re doing your job and send a reporter down here to look into a few things.

Maybe you folks at ABC News could start by looking into those letters Obama wrote to city and state officials on behalf of his now indicted patron, friend, and fund raiser Tony Rezko to get a $14 million contract to build senior housing - a development located outside of his senate district:

The deal included $855,000 in development fees for Rezko and his partner, Allison S. Davis, Obama’s former boss, according to records from the project, which was four blocks outside Obama’s state Senate district.

Obama’s letters, written nearly nine years ago, for the first time show the Democratic presidential hopeful did a political favor for Rezko — a longtime friend, campaign fund-raiser and client of the law firm where Obama worked — who was indicted last fall on federal charges that accuse him of demanding kickbacks from companies seeking state business under Gov. Blagojevich.

The letters appear to contradict a statement last December from Obama, who told the Chicago Tribune that, in all the years he’s known Rezko, “I’ve never done any favors for him.”

And lest there be any doubt CBS News, here’s Obama’s “Chicago Way” response:

On Tuesday, Bill Burton, press secretary for Obama’s presidential campaign, said the letters Obama wrote in support of the development weren’t intended as a favor to Rezko or Davis.

“This wasn’t done as a favor for anyone,” Burton said in a written statement. “It was done in the interests of the people in the community who have benefited from the project.
“I don’t know that anyone specifically asked him to write this letter nine years ago,” the statement said. “There was a consensus in the community about the positive impact the project would make and Obama supported it because it was going to help people in his district. . . .

Um, no Boston Herald, the project was not benefiting people in Obama’s district. It was benefiting his buddy Rezko to the tune of $855,000. But hey! It sure sounds good when you can say that you don’t know “that anyone specifically asked” Obama to write the letters. That’s the key to any “Chicago Way” denial; be as vague as possible so just in case evidence surfaces later that you’re lying through your teeth, you have an out.

The same goes for the shady deal on the house, Philadelphia Inquirer:

Naturally, there are some squares who don’t think taxpayers should pave the Chicago Way to make it easy for Rezko to help purchase the senator’s dream house in a kinky deal exposed by the Tribune and still not fully explained.

“It’s really the Old Chicago Way,” said Jay Stewart, executive director of the Better Government Association. “In the old days they would pretty much admit it up front, and now they deny it. It’s essentially about power, access to government jobs, government contracts and taking care of your own.”

“Taking care of your own” was something Obama was very good at. How good we probably won’t know for a while. That’s because it’s not only what Obama did for Rezko and vice versa that should be occupying the press as they write about the potential next President of the United States. It’s what he did for Rezko’s cronies and other contributors that should also be examined. And the candidate himself isn’t volunteering any information. That, too is “The Chicago Way.” Be smart and keep your mouth shut.

Perhaps the Rezko trial, now underway at the Federal building downtown, will change this dynamic. But I guess I shouldn’t be too optimistic. Kass explains:

One secret DaVinci Code-type sign for the Chicago Way is in the back room of the Chicago City Council chambers at City Hall, where a portrait of George Washington looks down at the crookedness below, and extends his own hand, palm up, itchy, needing that special grease.

When even sainted George Washington is on the take, you know that something is really rotten in this town.

DRIP…DRIP…DRIP…

From today’s Sun Times: “Did Rezko find jobs for Obama staffers?”

Among those on the list were two people who appear to have Obama links and a third who’s now an Obama presidential campaign staffer.

“We do not know how decisions were made to fill specific state positions, and we have no records of any individual recommendations we were asked to make or made,” says Obama spokesman Bill Burton “But we do know that Tony Rezko, among others, was helping to gather names for the positions coming open with a new administration, and, if it is established any names came through our office, we would have no reason to doubt it.”

UPDATE II: COMMENT MODERATION OFF

With so many links on this piece - especially Insty and Hot Air - I am removing comment moderation because I am too lazy and besides I don’t want to read what you have to say anyway.

Uh - just kiddin’ about that last one, people. Let’s just say I don’t want to have to be interrpupted every few minutes and batch the comments. This is a serious site here and we do serious work.

Now excuse me while I get back to HotMovies…

UPDATE III

Reliapundit, who has been on the Rezko-Obama story for about 2 years longer than I have, has a long, detailed post on Obama’s rise in Chicago and his connections to the machine.