Want to piss off the left? Everybody watch every single episode of the new ABC mini-series “V.” Drive the ratings through the roof. Make the show the hottest cultural happening since Seinfeld. Copy the hairstyles. Ape the fashion. Start bidding up the action dolls on Ebay.

And most especially, actually tell people you believe that this is a show about Obama and the left. It isn’t, but if you want the liberals to poop in their pants, say you think it is.

I find it not a little ironic that Jonathan Chait would see a “Tea Party Worldview” in a show that is such a hammer over the head metaphor for fascism. That’s because in the universe created for “V,” the birthers are right, the paranoid loons who believe Obama is a Muslim terrorist have a point, and there really are Haliburton built concentration camps in Utah.

Except the plot line follows fairly closely the original “V” which aired before many tea partyers were even born. This makes any overt connection to Obama problematic, although the writers manage to stick it to the president on at least one occasion when “national health care” is mentioned to describe the Visitors plans to help humanity.

Chait:

The political drama of the original was replaced by a ham-handed metaphor for President Obama. The visitors are young, charismatic, futuristic, and have a one-worldish vision of peace. They target the young by enticing them to join an idealistic (but, in reality, sinister) youth group. A few perceptive humans warn of the dangers of hopping on the bandwagon before we know what the bandwagon is really about. The alien leader, Ana, promises to use futuristic technology to heal humans. “You mean universal health care!” gapes a reporter, who, naturally, has been co-opted by the aliens. Anna soothes skeptics by declaring that accepting change can be difficult. A small band of human resistors forms. The lead character is skeptical–what proof do you have she asks, besides some scary thing “you read on the internet.” But the seemingly hysterical message from the internet is true! The charismatic new leader is masking her true identity! The death panels are real! Etc., etc.

The real irony passes so far over Chait’s head it doesn’t even muss his hair. The fact is, the “resistors” are paranoid. That’s because at first, there is no proof that the aliens are anything other than benevolent souls who only want to help. It is not until the true reptilian nature of the Visitors is revealed to one of the main characters, FBI Agent Erica Evans (played by the ravishing MILF Elizabeth Mitchell) that the “paranoid” conspiracy nuts are proved correct.

Now this might be considered something of a birther fantasy come true - except the show has been in the works since 2007, according to executive producer Scott Peters:

Others on both sides of the political spectrum may point to the visitors’ explicit promises of hope, change and universal health care as a pointed reference to pledges of the Obama administration. But [Executive Producer Scott] Peters says the show has been in the works since 2007. Reality was “never really a factor,” he says. “There’s no political message being shoved down anyone’s throat.”

Could it be that the outward, and unintentional parallels with Obamamania is discomfiting some on the left because the parallels to Hitler’s Germany - so obvious, so easily seen - hold implications for the ease with which many of them succumbed to the siren song being sung by the president? Not that Obama is a fascist in any way, but is Chait really upset because he and his fellow leftists might, under other circumstances and with another candidate less dedicated to constitutional order, have fallen into supporting a real fascist?

It would upset me if I suddenly realized my susceptibility to abandoning critical thinking and embracing an undemocratic leader. All that is missing from Obamamania for it to have become an American nightmare was a candidate willing to take the cult of personality he created and turn it into something that perverts democracy. The same can be said for some other political leaders in America (one - Huey Long - may have actually harbored such un-American notions).

But in Obama’s case, the ability to manipulate the media (not to mention the open cheerleading for the candidate during the race), more money than God, and the extra added bonus of being able to stifle criticism by playing the race card at the drop of a hat all combined to create an extraordinarily incendiary mixture that a man with more authoritarian appetites than our president might have been tempted to use to the detriment of democracy.

Thankfully, Barack Obama is not such a man. Sure, he tries to stifle dissent. What modern president hasn’t? Clinton blaming conservative talk radio for the Oklahoma City bombing and Karl Rove calling war protestors “unpatriotic” are just two examples of how the presidency has evolved to control the opposition by marginalizing resisters. It didn’t work any better than Obama’s efforts to shush Fox News so perhaps we can be grateful that even with their enormous power, presidents have to put up with criticism despite their best efforts to silence it.

In the case of “V,” one wonders if the unintentional parallels to Obamania will actually force script changes down the road. That’s because ABC has decided to air only 4 episodes this month, and then send the series off to hiatus until the spring. Already, there are signs that someone is not happy with the finished product.

Naturally, when a show debuts to huge ratings and mostly great reviews, the producer’s career is golden. Not this time. Apparently the network who gave Obama an infomercial and refuses to release the “Path to 9/11? DVD decided to replace the show runner Scott Peters before the pilot even aired. In fact, ABC hosted a big visit by press people last Monday, but Peters was notably absent. Exec producer Steve Pearlman spoke with the reporters.

Peters has been demoted to exec producer, a largely honorary title and has been replaced by former “The Shield” and “Chuck” alum Scott Rosenbaum.

Was this a case of ABC purging a political dissident from the show to make it more politically subservient? ABC has been very pro-Obama. And while the president’s name is never mentioned once in the show, there’s little doubt what they’re getting at. Critics of the “V” aliens are shown to be viewed as wackos and fringe people, the same way the MSM likes to portray ordinary Americans who don’t drink the kOOl-aid. Journalists who question the motives of the V are treated like they’re “not real news”. Wink!

My understanding is that such a change is not uncommon in the industry once a series goes on the air. Still, one wonders if the writing will take a different turn for future episodes given the jawboning on the left about parallels to Obamanania.

Yes, there are superficial similarities with Obama, but perhaps because I loved the original mini-series so much (both parts), I was more focused on how closely this incarnation of the story reflected back to the 1983 version. From what I’ve seen so far, the biggest change is the strong female characters compared to the original. Elizabeth Mitchell plays one tough cookie. She is also a single mom raising a problem teenager. The alien leader, Anna, is cool, gorgeous, scary smart, and so self possessed that any male I know would fight for the chance to ask her out for coffee.

There’s also an interesting religious angle with a Catholic priest questioning his faith with the arrival of beings from another world who never heard of Jesus, and who appear to be the real “saviors” of man. I hope they develop this a little more because it certainly would be one of the major implications for humankind if it was ever discovered that an alien civilization existed.

The special effects are a lot less cheesy, the revelation that the “Visitors” who look gorgeous in their human costumes are actually dragons isn’t handled half as well, and there is less big hair and more pixie styles among the women. (Being a big hair lover, I found this disappointing). The way we discovered the Visitors were aliens in the original was when the female co-leader Diana was seen by newsman Marc Sanger who had snuck aboard the Mothership, devouring a hamster whole. Now that was great television.

The 1983 series had “scientists” who were the persecuted minority - stand ins for the Jews. Given references to the internet already, might bloggers be targets in the remake? I’m with Chait who doubts whether scientists will be the imagined “enemies” of the Visitors. I also doubt that the fifth columnists will all be filthy rich, having been promised fabulous wealth by the Visitors if they cooperate. The great columnist Dorothy Thompson once wrote a piece on “Who would go Nazi?” if fascism ever came to America. Most of her choices were Republicans. I wonder if the new series will try and advance that same meme?

Overall, I’d give the production a B+ for it’s faithfulness to the original (so far) and a B- for political content. The have yet to really get into the fascist parallels that made the original so compelling. That grade may change as the story is fleshed out more in the coming weeks.

But if you want to enjoy the show, I suggest not trying to see Obama criticism or tea party worldview validation in every scene. It’s not there, and it will take away from immersing yourself in what promises to be a good story with lots of action.

One after another, Obamagaffes just keep coming. Two, sometimes three times a day, we are witness to the fruits of electing someone president who quite simply, had no business running for the office in the first place.

I’m tired of writing about it except that it sets up my prescient and trenchant analysis directed at our good friends on the left:

I told ya so.

I hate to say it but we have got to find a way to right the ship at the White House. History has reached out and tapped this novice on the shoulder at a time when there is real danger his bungling will result in a catastrophic economic collapse as bad as the worst in our history.

Many historians believe that the Panic of 1837 (a speculative boom to bust combined with an inflationary crisis) was even worse than the Depresssion in the 1930’s. One third of all banks in the US failed. For different reasons, we are looking at a similar crisis today in the financial markets. It is not likely that we will see 1/3 of all banks in the country go under. But unless our unsteady and clueless Treasury Secretary can get his act together - and quickly - the dominoes will begin to topple, starting with giants like Citibank, working its way down to powerful regional banks like Fifth Third.

The idea of building up anticipation for the announcement of a plan to deal with this crisis as the White House did all last weekend and then first, delaying the announcment a day and then sending out Geithner with not much of a plan at all is shocking. Didn’t the bozos at the White House have any clue that the markets were on tenterhooks waiting for this plan? When nothing much materialized, many concluded that the White House and their financial wunderkind Geithner were stymied. They didn’t know how to solve the crisis and were fumbling around in the dark, trying to figure out what to do. The markets reacted accordingly and here we are, three days out from Geithner’s “deer in headlights” appearance before Congress where he was actually laughed at by members and Congressional staffs, and we still haven’t fleshed out many details of how this “plan” is going to work , how much it will cost the taxpayer, which banks will get more cash, which will be lucky enough to have toxic assets removed from their balance sheets, and on and on into the darkness.

We know that bank executives will have their salaries set by the Treasury Department, though so that’s something. Congratulations to Geithner and his boss for concentrating on the real important stuff like playing the class warfare game by sticking it to the rich bankers.

They’ve screwed up monumentally on the big stuff like the “Financial Stability Act” that no one knows how it will work as well as the stimulus bill that even if you believe we need to spend every dime of it, one must be concerned that this 1500 page monster of a bill will never be read in its entirety because the Democrats and the White House refuse to publish it and there isn’t enough time to read it and study it anyway.

The frightening fact that this reveals is that these guys aren’t really that smart after all. For all the talk of a “team of rivals” and the brilliance of our president and his people, the truth is a lot more prosaic; they have proven themselves to be as incompetent and thick headed as Bush ever was. Personnel problems the likes we have never seen with Judd Gregg the latest colossal blunder. Obama’s promise that if the stim bill passes, the head of Caterpillar will rehire some people has been revealed to be a lie or wishful thinking on the part of the president when the CEO - a supporter of the president - contradicted his optimistic rhetoric.

Then there’s the aggrandizing of power within the White House, marginalizing the Secretary of State and the bureaucracy. The last president that tried this? Nixon. And he was roundly criticized when it turned out the State Department never knew what the White House was doing behind its back. This led to some comical foreign policy blunders including the temporary derailment of our rapproachment with China. One could add the politicizing of the census, a tiff with the military over Iraq that had the president retreating from his campaign rhetoric about withdrawal, a rambling, disjointed press conference that resembled a question and answer session between 3rd graders and their teacher, and the general feeling emenating from the administration that no one is in charge.

All of this would be enough Obamagaffes for one term and yet we are barely 3 weeks into his presidency.

It’s time to call in some wiser heads. Obama would hate it but utilizing Bill Clinton’s knowledge and experience would probably help a great deal. Clinton, was if nothing else, a competent manager of the executive branch. One of the problems right now is that the Obama people still think they’re in Chicago. They were absolutely tone deaf to the tax problems of Geithner and Daschle as well as being blissfully ignorant of the impact that Bill Richardson’s real troubles with the law might have. Clinton might be of great help in fixing their broken personnel operation; no more lobbyists and find honest people who know what they’re doing.

Obama has done well in calling in some of the other Democratic graybeards like George Mitchell and Ambassador Holbrooke. Perhaps he can expand that list to include some other old Clinton hands. Not permanent hires but people he can call on to guide him through the maze that is Washington. God knows, we need this White House to get its act together and fast. Otherwise, Obama is going to have the shortest honeymoon in history. And there are so many challenges ahead that getting things right now is vital to his - and our - future success.

Right now, his party is still united behind him and the American people seem willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But continuing to stumble and stagger around will cause people to lose confidence in him in a hurry. Democrats, a notoriously fractious and disunited bunch ordinarily, might return to their old ways if Obama proves not up to the job.

And if, despite all his rhetoric about his stimulus bill saving the day, the economy really begins to tank, the American people will desert him faster than you can say “Hope and Change.”

The game of softball has two incarnations. Most of the country plays the 12″ variety that features a fairly hard ball that the player needs a leather glove in order to catch it.

But around these parts, when one says “Let’s play softball,” we are talking about a great big 16″ “mushball” that you don’t need a mitt to catch it and is easy to hit. Much more conducive to playing spinoff games like “Beer Ball” and other variations, the game is marked by the painlessness involved in catching the ball due to its lumpen shape and forgiving texture.

Hence, the term “softball question” which apparently has its origins in questions asked certain Machine politicians in Chicago in the 1970’s. The exact date and origin of the term are unknown but anecdotally, I recall the great Chicago columnist Mike Royko using the term to describe the witlessness of Chicago beat reporters at City Hall who were a most incurious lot when it came to Machine corruption. This may have been unfair of Royko due to Mayor Richard J. Daley’s notorious hatred of reporters and the vengeance he would take against any who crossed him.

But the reference is to the 16″ variety which, unlike the more popular 12″ game is played with a true “soft ball” and is seen mostly in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs and ex-urbs.

No doubt Barack Obama is very familiar with the 16″ variety of the game. And after last night, he is now intimately familiar with the term “softball question:”

Question: Thank you, Mr. President. Earlier today in Indiana, you said something striking. You said that this nation could end up in a crisis without action that we would be unable to reverse.

Can you talk about what you know or what you’re hearing that would lead you to say that our recession might be permanent when others in our history have not? And do you think that you risk losing some credibility or even talking down the economy by using dire language like that?

Batter up! Play ball!

Announcer: Here’s Obama at the plate. So far the president is 0 for 3 with two strikeouts and a weak pop-up to the second baseman. He’s also been credited with a sacrifice when he lifted a medium deep fly ball to left field that advanced catcher Hillary Clinton to third.

Here’s the first pitch … it’s an underhand delivery from Jen Loven of the Associated Press who couldn’t decide whether to rush to the plate and kiss the batter or simply grovel at his feet. Obama takes a mighty swing…and misses!

Obama: That’s why the figure that we initially came up with of approximately $800 billion was put forward. That wasn’t just some random number that I plucked out of — out of a hat. That was Republican and Democratic, conservative and liberal economists that I spoke to who indicated that, given the magnitude of the crisis and the fact that it’s happening worldwide, it’s important for us to have a bill of sufficient size and scope that we can save or create 4 million jobs.

I doubt too many conservative economists recommended a bill that contained such a lopsided ratio of spending to tax cuts. He is either being disingenuous or lying. I have seen plenty of conservative economists say we need a stimulus bill but of “sufficient size and scope?” That’s one on me and it would be helpful if the President could give us the names of those economists. Not just to check his story but also to scream at any fools who would have recommended such idiocy.

But back to the game…

Announcer: Obama steps out of the box for a moment. He adjusts his immaculate uniform - evidently his cup is slightly out of place. He daintily spits into his government-funded, Taiwanese built spitoon that he insists on bringing with him to the plate (life must be hell for Barak ever since his wife forced him to quit smoking and switch to chewing tobacco). Time is called as Obama insists that the spitoon be emptied and out comes a stimulus funded worker, the Designated Spit Chucker, to take care of the problem.

Obama steps back in. The rookie looks nervous as his spikes paw at the dirt. He squeezes the bat and awaits the pitch from Karen Boeing of Reuters. Here it comes …oooooh a brushback pitch that narrowly misses Obama’s enormous ear:

Question: Thank you, Mr. President. I’d like to shift gears to foreign policy. What is your strategy for engaging Iran? And when will you start to implement it? Will your timetable be affected at all by the Iranian elections? And are you getting any indications that Iran is interested in a dialogue with the United States?

Obama gives us all a lesson in how to say absolutely nothing in 1000 words or less.

And my expectation is, in the coming months, we will be looking for openings that can be created where we can start sitting across the table, face-to-face diplomatic overtures, that will allow us to move our policy in a new direction.

There’s been a lot of mistrust built up over the years, so it’s not going to happen overnight. And it’s important that, even as we engage in this direct diplomacy, we are very clear about certain deep concerns that we have as a country, that Iran understands that we find the funding of terrorist organizations unacceptable, that we’re clear about the fact that a nuclear Iran could set off a nuclear arms race in the region that would be profoundly destabilizing.

So there are going to be a set of objectives that we have in these conversations, but I think that there’s the possibility at least of a relationship of mutual respect and progress.

As long as Obama is willing to grovel at the feet of the Iranian government by “apologizing” for all the naughty things we’ve done in Iran without them having to apologize for their support of Hezbullah and Hamas, then I have no doubt that a relationship of respect and “progress” (whatever that means) can be achieved.

Just tell our diplomats to be careful what they say. Iran has already committed one act of war in taking and holding our personnel as hostages. No doubt they would probably find it efficacious to have a repeat performance.

Let’s pick up the game where we left off…

Announcer: Obama is getting up slowly and dusting himself off after the high heat put him on his ear. He glares at the pitcher but restrains his inclination to go after her with a bat. Obama appears to be disgusted that his uniform is dirty and may call for his valet to brush him off. I believe - yes - he is asking the ump for permission but Nester is having none of it. He points to the box and orders Obama to resume.

Obama looks determined now. His steely gaze is concentrated on Chip Reid of NBC as he goes into his windup. Here’s the pitch…it’s an eephus pitch that Obama slams deep to left. Back she goes…back…back…IT’S OUTA HERE!

Thank you, Mr. President. You have often said that bipartisanship is extraordinarily important, overall and in this stimulus package, but now, when we ask your advisers about the lack of bipartisanship so far — zero votes in the House, three in the Senate — they say, “Well, it’s not the number of votes that matters; it’s the number of jobs that will be created.”

Is that a sign that you are moving away — your White House is moving away from this emphasis on bipartisanship?

And what went wrong? Did you underestimate how hard it would be to change the way Washington works?

Not only does Reid set the ball on a tee for the president, he actually gets him started toward trashing his opposition while being able to appear “bi-partisan:”

As I said, the one concern I’ve got on the stimulus package, in terms of the debate and listening to some of what’s been said in Congress, is that there seems to be a set of folks who — I don’t doubt their sincerity — who just believe that we should do nothing.

Now, if that’s their opening position or their closing position in negotiations, then we’re probably not going to make much progress, because I don’t think that’s economically sound and I don’t think what — that’s what the American people expect, is for us to stand by and do nothing.

There are others who recognize that we’ve got to do a significant recovery package, but they’re concerned about the mix of what’s in there. And if they’re sincere about it, then I’m happy to have conversations about this tax cut versus that — that tax cut or this infrastructure project versus that infrastructure project.

But what I’ve — what I’ve been concerned about is some of the language that’s been used suggesting that this is full of pork and this is wasteful government spending, so on and so forth.

First of all, when I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, then, you know, I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history. I inherited the deficit that we have right now and the economic crisis that we have right now.

There may be some lonely back bencher (Ron Paul) who may want to “sit back and do nothing” about the economic crisis but to try and say that this opinion is even a minority opinion in the GOP is a lie and he knows it. And this is even worse:

Number two is that, although there are some programs in there that I think are good policy, some of them aren’t job-creators. I think it’s perfectly legitimate to say that those programs should be out of this particular recovery package and we can deal with them later.

But when they start characterizing this as pork, without acknowledging that there are no earmarks in this package — something, again, that was pretty rare over the last eight years — then you get a feeling that maybe we’re playing politics instead of actually trying to solve problems for the American people.

I’m sorry but $4.2 billion for “neighborhood stabilization activities” - much if which would go to ACORN and other partisan Democratic organizations smacks of a Hugo Chavez type of political program where organizing people at the neighborhood level, getting them dependent on those government programs earmarked for the purpose, and then when election day rolls around, actually paying ACORN and their sister organizations to get the grateful citizens to the polls would cement the Democratic majority in many states where big cities make up a sizable segment of the vote.

Here are 49 other “destimulating facts” about the bill (many of which I agree with Obama should be included but many others we can clearly do without).

It’s not that we expected the press to challenge Obama and ask him tough questions. There’s no opportunity for follow-up and the president calls on the reporters like a teacher calling on students in class. The modern presidential press conference has become a drama starring the President of the United States and featuring recognizable talking heads from the various networks, bit players from the dead tree media, and a cast of hundreds of extras. It is a political speech disguised as a press conference and the transparent willingness of the press to play their designated roll was nauseating.

No questions about Gitmo? What about Obama’s keeping some Bush era policies on rendition and the Terrorist Surveillance Program? Poor Glenn Greenwald has his panties in a twist because Obama won’t let the terrorists free in downtown Washington with an apology for inconveniencing their jihad by incarcerating them for a few years.

The fact is, there was not one question that discomfited him, not one challenge to a decision he has made. No questions about his cabinet picks who have backed out or his breaking his pledge not to put lobbyists in positions where they would have jurisdiction over the areas where they lobbied, or any questions on breaking his promise to wait 5 days before signing a bill into law in order to get feedback from his adoring public.

Announcer: Obama is circling the bases in triumph, women are swooning in the stands, men are weeping, and reporters are running next to him trying to get his autograph. Our hero-savior-president has triumphed and his enemies have been temporarily silenced.

Ain’t softball a grand game?

President Obama had a very difficult task yesterday. It wasn’t just the stratospheric expectations for his inaugural address engendered not only by his previous performances but also because of the frenzy whipped up by his sycophants in the press. I doubt whether even something along the lines of the Sermon on the Mount would have been good enough to live up to the build up given him by his cultists in the media.

Obama’s primary task to my mind - what I wanted to hear from him - was a commitment to bring the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a successful conclusion while maintaining the pressure on al-Qaeda around the world.

The sticking point, as always, is to define “success” in Iraq and Afghanistan. I must confess to cringing whenever I hear one of my fellow conservatives praise George Bush for bringing “democracy” to Iraq and how our efforts have created a “strong ally” in the war on terror.

Iraq may be a democracy some day. But it is far from being a free country today and even our own ambassador thinks things are still balanced on a knife’s edge. The situation is much better than it was two years ago but, all things being relative, Iraq is still a violent place that needs American assistance to keep from flying apart at the seams. Also, the latest Freedom House ranking for Iraq, based on very specific criteria is “not free.” Granted it is difficult to create a functioning democracy following so many decades of brutal dictatorship and there is no doubt that there have been some improvements even in the face of violence by terrorists who wish to destabilize the country. But for anyone to claim that Iraq is “free” or even close to being free is being disingenuous or ignorant. Holding elections does not make a nation free or democratic by itself. One glance at Gaza proves that.

We have yet to even see the beginning of the end game in domestic Iraqi politics that will play out among the various factions of Shias as they vie for power. Some of those factions are loyal to Iran or at least look to Iran for protection and leadership. The idea that Iraq will be an ally in the war on terror is still up in the air and it may yet devolve into a religious dictatorship like the one next door. The chances of that happening are ebbing but who can tell?

In short, Iraq is still messy - about what you’d expect from a nation that has gone through what the Iraqis have had to endure these last 6 years. Therefore, a definition of “success” in Iraq at a bare minimum would have to include a functioning Iraqi government capable of handling its own security. The longer we stay on in numbers capable of assisting the Iraqi government in achieving this goal, the better the chance for success. Right now, a clock is ticking on our presence in those kind of numbers with the alarm set to go off by the end of 2011. And it appears Obama wishes to speed things along. Do not be surprised if, after meeting with his military chiefs, the new president sets his own timetable for withdrawal.

In his speech yesterday, Obama said nothing about “success” regarding Iraq or Afghanistan:

We are the keepers of this legacy, guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We’ll begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard- earned peace in Afghanistan.

Indeed, it is difficult to succeed if one does not wish to. This is especially true in Afghanistan where it is becoming increasingly clear that no positive outcome will be possible there as long as al-Qaeda and the Taliban are using Pakistani territory with impunity to attack NATO troops and train suicide bombers to wreak havoc in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. I will watch with great interest as Obama deals with Pakistan. I predict he will have even less success than President Bush in getting the Pakistanis to reassert sovereignty over their own territory and kick the terrorists out. The post-Musharraf government is disinclined to make the all out effort required to defeat their enemies which means they will be at constant risk of being overthrown themselves either by the military or, less likely, a combination of forces sympathetic to the extremists.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan bleeds. And given the great reluctance most other NATO countries have shown to carry their weight in this war and commit their troops to combat, the burden of “forging a hard earned peace” will fall squarely on the shoulders of the US and the few nations who are already fighting. Will this mean that President Karzai will be forced to treat with the Taliban? He may have little choice if President Obama decides that the war is unwinnable and starts withdrawing US forces.

The key to Obama’s foreign policy can be found in this passage from his speech:

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

Welcome words for the rest of the world - including our enemies. He is right when he states that our military power alone cannot protect us. But it goes a damn sight farther in doing so than “humility and restraint.” In fact, it appears to me that Obama is saying that “doing as we please” - protecting our own interests first which may not fit his definition of “justness” - is a mistake and that we should be “humble” and practice self-abnegation in abjuring what is in our best interests to show the world we will allow our nose to be blown off to spite our face.

An exaggeration but apropos of what Obama and the New Left have been spouting for years. If there is the stink of self-interest involved in a military action (or any other application of hard power), it is likely to be opposed. Darfur or the Congo is where we should be sending troops thus showing our selflessness to the world. Anyplace where war fighting advances or protects American interests is evil.

Just how “humility and restraint” will do anything besides make liberals feel good that the rest of the world doesn’t despise us anymore because we have subsumed our own interests to some other “higher” interest, including humanitarian goals or perhaps the will of the United Nations escapes me.

And then, there’s the idea that fanatics and thugs were just itching for George Bush to leave office so they could turn over a new leaf in our relations with them:

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

On my radio show last night, Rich Baehr of the American Thinker pointed out that in the last decade we have freed Muslims from persecution and tyranny in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Praytell why is it the United States who should be coming hat in hand to the Muslim world? What more could we possibly do to prove our “respect?” Time for the moderate Muslims to stand up and start reciprocating. That is the true way forward with US-Muslim relations.

And who but a liberal could actually believe that the thugs and fanatics care one whit about “the people” in their countries and what they think? All they care about is if someone looks sideways at the regime, they are lined up against a wall and shot. Being “on the wrong side of history” is an occupational hazard for the Assads, the Castros, the Chavez’s, and the fanatical mullahs of the world. They seem to be surviving just fine, thank you.

And why should any of those peace loving gentlemen “unclench their fist” when they can achieve so much more dealing with a president who wishes to approach them with “humility and restraint?” Most of the animosity directed against America by the brutes of the world is, as Obama points out, manufactured internally in order to justify oppression. Only Iran has broadened their anti-Americanism to include proxies like Hezbullah and, potentially, Hamas. The question remains why should our enemies extend a hand in friendship or even civility? As we have already seen, the inauguration of Obama has changed nothing, altered no positions, softened any hearts.

I will not refer to Obama as naive in deference to my friend and frequent commenter Michael Reynolds who has almost convinced me that the new president has a realistic take on our enemies. But will approaching Iran with “humility and restraint” actually do anything except risk the overture being thrown back in your face with the typical derisiveness demonstrated by the Iranian leadership?

I have a feeling we will find out over the coming months.

The irony in the left’s total absolution granted the Obama transition team regarding any unethical contacts with Governor Rod Blagojevich or his staff actually makes for some pretty good comedy.

This is the crew that swallowed al-Qaeda propaganda whole with regards to every war “atrocity” ever reported instead of giving their own military or government the benefit of the doubt - including the “Haditha Massacre” where many liberals tried to outdo one another in heaping calumny on innocent soldiers. And now a single report, issued by a politician who presents no other evidence that could clarify or contradict its conclusions, is being trumpeted to the skies as “proof” that no one in the Obama camp did anything wrong.

In short, the left is apt to unquestioningly take what al-Qaeda and Obama say at face value while dismissing the reports of their own government.

Now I will be the first to point out that there were many reports from our military regarding readiness of the Iraqi Army and other political benchmarks set by Congress that were less than honest. And there have been other instances where our government lied outright about the war, specifically in their overly optimistic assessments about progress in bringing peace and security to the provinces.

I am not saying that we should automatically believe everything the government says and not believe al-Qaeda propagandists. I am saying that the left is being hypocritical by not showing the same skepticism they direct towards the Bush Administration on anything and everything they come out with compared to their superficial, eager embrace of the one sided, sole source Obama report on staff contacts with Blago.

It is a selective form of information processing that proves two things; most on the left are partisan hacks and that we are in for at least four years of insufferable hypocrisy from people who are so clueless that they fail to recognize it.

Apparently, we are to suspend disbelief for the duration of Obama’s presidency. No matter that not one single taped conversation with the principles has been released to either confirm the information in the report or make Obama out a liar. Reports in the press on what Fitzy actually has as far as taped conversations between Blagojevich and the Obama team have been wildly overstated (at least according to the report). And yet, when the press assures us that because of the findings in the president-elect’s own manufactured report we can now put this controversy to rest.

In a front page diary at Kos from JedL, we get this bit of certainty about our new president:

Let me emphasize this point: the reason why the release of the Obama report was delayed was to allow Fitzgerald to complete his interviews with the transition team. In other words, everything that Obama’s team has said has been true.

Such unquestioning devotion based on nothing more than a politician’s word - an oxymoron to be sure - would be laughable if this same attitude wasn’t so prevelant on the left.

Steve Bennen:

And as expected, there was nothing to hide. The entire Craig memo is online (.pdf), and after reading it, everything we’d heard from Obama and his team was completely true. Obama never spoke to Blagojevich or his office about the Senate vacancy; no one on Obama’s staff ever had any inappropriate discussions with the governor or his office; and no one Obama’s staff ever had any indication that Blagojevich was engaged in alleged corruption.

The report is quite thorough - in a self serving kind of way. But what in God’s name does anyone expect? If anyone actually thought Obama would put one iota of information in that report that would have contradicted anything he or his aides have said on the matter they belong in an insane asylum.

So what’s the rush, guys? The exoneration of Obama and his team as a result of findings released in their own report after conducting their own investigation would make most people with a molecule of curiosity say “OK, fine. I’m glad they say they’re innocent of any ethical breach or lawbreaking as a newborn babe. Perhaps we might wait upon Fitzgerald for a release of, like, you know, some actual evidence that what they say is true rather than swallowing their report whole like a good little Obamabot?”

But why let a little reality slip into the “Reality Based Community” when anti-intellectualism is so much easier to embrace?

UPDATE

I note that Steven Benen makes the arguement that because Fitzy has the tapes, this means that the Obama camp was “forced” to tell the truth lest any information that came out a a later date would contradict what’s in the report.

One imagines that Obama detractors might not believe these conclusions — “the transition team can’t clear itself of wrongdoing!” — but the review was done with the knowledge that Blagojevich and his office was the subject of FBI wiretaps. The transition team, in other words, knew in advance that any false claims would be easily exposed, so they had a very strong incentive to be completely honest.

First, there is no certainty that the tapes in question will ever see the light of day and the Obama camp could certainly have been told this. No doubt Fitzy would play some of the tapes at any trial of Blagojevich and Harris but since there almost certainly was nothing illegal offered by Blago to the Obama camp, the chances of any Blago-Emanuel converstations aired at trial would be slim. What kind of horse trading that might have gone on would be irrelevant in a criminal trial but might be damaging politically.

Secondly, as we saw with Bill Clinton, parsing words is an art form and statements made in the report could very well contradict what the actual conversations might say because a good lawyer can twist words and facts until they reveal exactly what he wishes them to reveal. The report could have said the sun rises in the west and Obama could come out with a statement that if you are standing upsidedown and facing sideways, of course the sun rises in the west, dummy.

No doubt Bennen et al would swallow that one without any skepticism too.

This will be the 12th presidential election that I have followed closely in my lifetime. As a 10 year old growing up in suburban Chicago, I got hooked on politics watching the conventions that summer - two of the most dramatic party conclaves of the 20th century. For Republicans, there was the utter bewilderment and anger as the establishment couldn’t understand what was happening when Barry Goldwater’s insurgency overwhelmed the Rockefeller wing of the party and began the long slide of GOP liberals and moderates into oblivion.

For you younger folk, yes indeed there was such an animal as a “liberal” Republican. And to their eternal credit, they sided with LBJ and the Democrats in passing the two most important pieces of legislation of the era - the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. They also were solid internationalists, beating back the challenge of the remnants of the isolationist Taft faction who would have turned the United States inward at a time of maximum risk to what freedom existed around the world at the time.

Goldwater was right otherwise, of course. The GOP liberals sided with Johnson in his overreach in creating a welfare state that has now handed their ancestors tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities coming due in a few decades. The cry today of “We didn’t know” echoes hollowly. Of course we “knew.” Goldwater told us. Even liberal lion Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that the way the welfare state was set up, it would create a dependency among African Americans and destroy the black family.

As clearly as many conservatives saw the way that the welfare state was designed would lead to eventual catastrophe, I will base the following on my life experience and more than 40 years observation of politics and government; a Barack Obama presidency will result in a radical diminution of American wealth, American power and prestige, and inevitably, a loss of liberty.

Barack Obama is not qualified to be president of the United States. He has little interest in the nuts and bolts of how government works (yes, one can say the same of George Bush and look at us now). Unlike a Clinton or Bush #41 who enjoyed fiddling with the levers of government, enjoining the bureaucracy and Congress to bend to their wills, Obama literally doesn’t have a clue. He will be eaten alive by the striped pants set in the State Department. He will be gobbled up whole by the poverty lobby. And since he has little or no ideology or principles, he will sway with the political winds tacking hard left and then hard right until he angers everybody.

Oh, he will have a “plan” when he comes into office. The first 100 days will be a liberal paradise thanks to an increased and more leftist Democratic majority in the Congress. We will bail out homeowners, his buddies in the unions, finish the job of nationalizing most of our financial industry if not in name then certainly in the practice of it. He will set ambitious targets for carbon reduction. He will nationalize the health insurance industry. He will begin to raise taxes on the rich (a process that any first year government student could inform him will result in eventual tax hikes for all). He will begin to “re-regulate” - a process that will take many years but will eventually lead to where we were at the end of the 1970’s; strangulation and reduced competition in industries affected.

These are all things he has promised to do - and they will get done. But then what? After absorbing the idiotic, slavish, and nauseating comparisons to the greatest presidents in history, just what will this neophyte do?

Well, maybe he’ll start consolidating his power by moving to cut off opposition to what he plans to do:

he Obama campaign has decided to heave out three newspapers from its plane for the final days of its blitz across battleground states — and all three endorsed Sen. John McCain for president!

The NY POST, WASHINGTON TIMES and DALLAS MORNING NEWS have all been told to move out by Sunday to make room for network bigwigs — and possibly for the inclusion of reporters from two black magazines, ESSENCE and JET, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Despite pleas from top editors of the three newspapers that have covered the campaign for months at extraordinary cost, the Obama campaign says their reporters — and possibly others — will have to vacate their coveted seats so more power players can document the final days of Sen. Barack Obama’s historic campaign to become the first black American president.

MORE

Some told the DRUDGE REPORT that the reporters are being ousted to bring on documentary film-makers to record the final days; others expect to see on board more sympathetic members of the media, including the NY TIMES’ Maureen Dowd, who once complained that she was barred from McCain’s Straight Talk Express airplane.

After a week of quiet but desperate behind-the-scenes negotiations, the reporters of the three papers heard last night that they were definitely off for the final swing. They are already planning how to cover the final days by flying commercial or driving from event to event.

Do you also feel the hairs on the back of your head pricking up in reaction to this move? A portend of what’s to come in Obama’s America?

Of course, we’re being silly our liberal betters tell us. No doubt the New York Times and Washington Post will have examples in their columns tomorrow of previous candidates who booted newspapers off their plane. It will be sold as just something that everyone does and there’s nothing to get alarmed about America. Just go back to sleep and don’t forget to wake up long enough to go to the polls on Tuesday and elect our Messiah.

Except this isn’t the Podunk Tribune we’re talking about here. These are three respected newspapers who happen to have critical coverage of a candidate who now deems it necessary to toss them off his campaign plane. No connection?

A sizable number of residents in Virginia buy and subscribe to the Washington Times. Obama is limiting a point of view that residents in perhaps the most vital swing state in America will be getting. Are we to believe that this is an accident? Are we to seriously consider that Obama isn’t trying to affect how reporters cover his campaign?

I would say to the Washington Post and New York Times there will come a day when you too will feel this rope around your neck and your freedom is affected because you are not behind The One 100%. Your cries of “We didn’t know” at that point will be ignored by a public who will wonder where were you when it started?

There’s always energy policy. As long as our economy is sluggish (thus dragging down the economies of most of the planet), oil prices could remain fairly steady, at or near where they are now.

Except they won’t. The Israel-Iran showdown is coming - probably sooner than anyone realizes. Simply put, the Israelis cannot afford to take Iran’s word - or the word of the IAEA - that Iran is not in the process of building a bomb. With their survival at stake, Israel will act pre-emptively and seek to take out or slow down the Iranian program. The resulting spike in oil prices will be a catalyst for Obama to push through a massive energy bill, the end result being anyone’s guess.

The foreign policy ramifications could be Obama’s first real “test” - Biden’s nightmare. Will Obama lead the charge in the UN to censure Israel? Would he cut off military aid? Don’t put it past him. Given his advisors and their views on our relationship with the Jewish state, anything is possible.

“We didn’t know” that he would sacrifice the safety and security of an ally will be the cry.

Meanwhile, less energy means less economic growth - or worse. Obama’s energy schemes alone could hamper the American economy for a generation.

“How could we have guessed?” will be the refrain.

Education reform will no doubt occupy an Obama Administration’s time. What kind of mischief could it cause if this beginner gave the education bureaucrats (no doubt staffed with Ayers-trained acolytes) their heads?

I am not necessarily worried about Obama’s cabinet appointments. It is the 3,000 or so other presidential appointments within his power that scares the beejeebes out of me. Coming as they will from academia and liberal think tanks, here is where the real radicalism of an Obama Administration would manifest itself. The cabinet secretaries are figureheads, chosen as much for how they come off on the Sunday news programs as how knowledgeable and competent they are.

The real power in these departments devolve to the under secretaries and assistant secretaries who are charged with implementing any decisions made by the president. “The devil is in the details” is a literalness I care not to discover when it comes to “school reform” or Obama’s health insurance plan. Unless someone is watching these underlings, the chances are good that they will interpret their mandate to act through their own ideological prism rather than any good intentions of Obama or their cabinet secretary bosses.

“Nobody told us” will be the excuse.

We saw some of this in the Bush Administration with science policy and other areas where lobbyists who had worked for one industry were then named to oversee that same industry in a federal department. This may be good for business but it is bad government. And Obama will probably not want to go to war with a lot of these folks since they will have been put in those positions by his far left base.

Finally, what will the world say when we sell out Lebanon in order to get Syria to play ball with the Israelis on a peace deal? There is only one thing we have that Syria wants - and wants more than anything; our continuing support for a free and independent Lebanon. They don’t want our money or our “good will.” They don’t want any trade agreements or trade goods. They want us to adopt a “hands off” policy on Lebanon so that when Syria moves back in (or their terrorist proxies in Hezballah engineer a takeover of some kind), we do nothing.

Obama wants to talk with Assad. Fine. His no preconditions pledge will come back to bite him in the ass - and not only in Syria. What possible advantage is there to the United States to have the American president meet President Ahmadinejad? “Good will?” Or the world will fall in love with us again?

Whatever small step made in service to internationalism a presidential meet with the Iranians would bring would be dwarfed by the mammoth propaganda coup that would accrue to the Iranians, granting them a legitimacy and stature far beyond anything they have had previously. A similar situation would present itself in Venezuela with a grip and grin with Chavez.

“Well whaddya know, who would have thunk it?” the voters will say.

But we know all this. The world knows it too which is why France’s President Sarkozy is so peeved at Obama. It isn’t meeting with an enemy that is at issue. It is the simple formulation that presupposes a huge advantage being given an enemy for absolutely nothing in return.

But at least we’ll all feel good about ourselves for being so “civilized.”

Obama will not sell us out to the UN. But I have little doubt that we will subsume our national interests in order to curry favor with the lickspittles there. This will result in an erosion of our position in the world and a loss of prestige - and worse. Nation’s that fear us now will not fear us under Obama. They won’t like us any more. They won’t be any more cooperative in keeping the peace. The difference will be that they will be able to cause trouble wherever they wish with no worries that the US would try and stop them - except at the UN. And we know how effective the UN is at dealing with the thugs, the miscreants, and the lunatics of the world.

So sometime in the near future - perhaps within a couple of years or more likely before Obama leaves office - people will wake up one morning and say to themselves, “How did this happen? How could we have known?”

It won’t be an acceptable question to ask then because everything that happens in the next few years will have been predicted by someone based on all the crap that the press either refused to cover or glossed over, denigrated, or called a “distraction” today.

A few days ago, I wrote a much maligned post entitled “If Elected, Obama will be My President.” You would have thought I killed Santa Claus judging by the reaction to that piece. People misunderstood my granting legitimacy to whoever the next president is as a blanket endorsement of his policies. I wrote no such thing, of course. People read into the piece whatever they wanted to and reacted accordingly. Even my pledge to back Obama’s play in a foreign crisis - something all patriots should do when the safety of the country is at stake - was seen as a betrayal.

The point is very simple - too simple for some who seek to complicate matters by ascribing the absolute worst possible motives to Obama and fear his coming administration as medieval peasants feared the appearance of a comet. Ignorance of history and a lack of common sense has caused many on the right to go stark raving, around the bend, screw loose, bat out of hell nutzo.

Obama will not turn America into a Marxist state. There will be no gulags or prison camps where conservatives and Obama regime opponents will be rounded up and sent for re-education (even though there is a sizable subset of Obama supporters who would no doubt crave such treatment of righties).

Obama will not cancel future elections, initiate Soviet style restrictions on free speech (more on the Fairness Doctrine later which, btw, is hardly “a Soviet style restriction”), make us stand in line for toilet paper, or place his smiling visage on 10 story high office buildings in order to perpetrate a cult of personality (I think).

Obama will not “take away” your guns, close churches, shutter conservative newspapers, shut down Fox News, darken conservative blogs, or take any other actions that would smack of dictatorship or authoritarianism.

Holy Christ! We just went through 8 fricking years of listening to the left babble on about all of this crap and now we have to read this kind of garbage from conservatives? Will you listen to yourselves? We have stood shoulder to shoulder these past 8 years laughing at, belittling, screaming about, and pointing a finger of shame at the left for saying many of the exact same things about Bush that you are already saying about Obama.

The exact. Same. Things.

Right down to and including the growing meme - fed and given life, to his eternal shame, by John McCain - that the coming election is about to be “stolen.”

Yes, there are enormous problems with bogus voter registrations in several states. But the kind of conspiracy to turn those bogus registrations into fraudulent votes on a nationwide basis being touted by my conservative friends is just not logical or even feasible. A reasonable person can question whether ACORN and the Obama campaign are in cahoots to steal Ohio. That I will grant because the bulk of the problems seem to be concentrated in the Buckeye state. But an entire election? That would take a conspiracy of gigantic proportions involving dozens of people, perhaps hundreds. History shows that even conspiracies involving a handful of people are rarely successful. And the more people involved, the harder to maintain security.

Vigilance yes, Investigate the fraud, certainly. But let’s not go off half cocked and blame the coming landslide on Democrats cheating. I know how you can turn thousands of fake registrations into fraudulent votes. But you can’t do it by signing up “Mickey Mouse” or “Dick Tracy” to vote. The Democrats already have tried and true methods of cheating and they hardly need ACORN to show them the ropes. And to accomplish something like this on a nationwide scale would require an enormous effort. Hard to see how you could keep an effort of that magnitude from the the watchful eyes of Republicans much less the authorities.

But an Obama-ACORN effort to game the system in Ohio (with help from the usual suspects in unions) should be stopped. There the possibility of vote stealing and ballot box stuffing is real. Much can be accomplished when you have a rabidly partisan Secretary of State as Ohio does in Jennifer Brunner. But in order to steal a national vote, you would need a dozen or more Brunners - some of them Republicans - working for Obama. It just isn’t logical or reasonable.

Obama is a far left liberal, that’s for sure. His policies would aggrandize government at the expense of the individual. His foreign policy will weaken us and, I believe, place us in greater danger as well as making the world much more dangerous place.

There will be a supreme effort to nationalize the health insurance industry (not the health care industry - not yet anyway). And I’ve got news for my conservative friends - John McCain would be forced to do pretty much the same thing. The Democratic Congress is going to make Obama’s health insurance ideas into law. Or, in the unlikely event McCain is elected, they will pass something almost equally abhorrent and send it to him, daring him to veto something that 70% of the country wants.

All of this about Obama is true. But Obama’s agenda is liberal boilerplate - the same crap they’ve been advocating for 30 years. It isn’t communism. It isn’t socialism (Obama is not going to guillotine the rich and throw their money to the peasants in order to “spread the wealth.”). In fact, Obama’s and the Democrats’ ideas are egalitarian in nature. They can be traced to the Utopian movements of the 19th century and early progressives of the 20th century who saw government as something that could be “perfected” scientifically.

We conservatives know the folly of believing in such nonsense. We also know what this “tinkering” means; threats to private property rights, threats to individual liberty, threats to the free market, threats to the civic values that we believe are essential in order to ensure a just and moral society.

We will fight these threats with every ounce of our strength and through whatever means we have at our disposal. But we will do it free from the fear that Obama and the Democrats want to turn the US into a Soviet style state or destroy the Bill of Rights.

Bringing back some form of the Fairness Doctrine (it won’t be called the “Fairness Doctrine” I assure you - probably something innocuous like “Broadcasting Bill of Rights” or some other Orwellian formulation) will be fought tooth and nail - and not just by bloggers. You are talking about gigantic corporations who would be adversely affected. They are not just going to take the reimposition of a Fairness Doctrine lying down. We will have powerful allies in this fight that we all know is coming. There will probably be some Democrats of good conscience who join us as well.

But is the Fairness Doctrine a communist plot? Is it socialism run rampant? We existed as a nation for nearly 40 years with its draconian restrictions and I didn’t hear too many conservatives claiming we were living in a totalitarian state because of it. Besides, unless the government wants to hire a million monitors for the internet, it is extremely unlikely that any such restrictions would ever trickle down to blogs and other news websites. The lefties would be up in arms if they were forced to give any bandwidth to conservatives so one would think the internet will remain free of any such nonsense as long as both sides would be affected.

An Obama presidency means there will be changes, not revolution. Liberal pablum is not the same as Marxist dialectic. Equating liberalism with Marxism ignores the history of liberalism in America and its sometimes salutary effect on society. Yes, it has been wrongheaded, stubborn in its refusal to deal with reality, class conscious, weak in the face of tyrants, and too eager to turn to the national government to solve local problems. It has also been almost sublime in its effect on some of our most intractable problems having to do with race, sex, and the social structure of America - problems, I might add, that we conservatives have either ignored or accepted as “the way things are.”

Liberalism is the yin to conservatism’s yang. We need each other and can’t make America a better place without the constant tug and pull of conflict between the two ideologies. What in many countries is a source of revolution, our war of ideas with liberalism and theirs with conservatism makes us both better. It forces us to come up with new approaches to solving problems in order to compete in the marketplace of ideas. This is a free market that Obama, no matter what his proclivities, cannot shut down.

No doubt we will be angry at many of the changes attempted by Obama. But change is what all elections are about. America stands still for no one, no ideology, no group of people. We always have one foot in the future. And if the American people choose this lurch to the left, it will be up to us to come up with the ideas and the principals to show them a better way.

After all, 2012 is just 4 short years away. And that’s the great thing about politics in America: There’s always another election.

I received close to a dozen emails this morning linking to this article that breathlessly breaks the news that Obama was a member of “The New Party” - a “fusion” party made up of hard line Maoists, Communists, American socialists, and far left liberal Democrats in Chicago.

Readers of this site may recall that I wrote about this connection back in late May. The blogsite Yid With a Lid did all the legwork as far as I can determine. Eric Ericson and Warner Todd Houston  then fleshed out the connection at RedState and added some great analysis.

I have written frequently about Obama’s connection with the New Party including  here and here as well as several posts at The American Thinker. (See also Tom Lifson’s excellent post today.) The point being, there is absolutely nothing new here - even the archived links to The New Party website have been floating around the web for 6 months.  David Freddoso included information in his book The Case Against Barack Obama and Stanley Kurtz at NRO has mentioned the fact that ACORN members staffed Obama’s campaign in his first run for state senate. ACORN was a prominent member of The New Party coalition.

Does this make Obama a Marxist? A socialist?

I may be going over old ground here for daily readers but this is such an important aspect of Obama’s political personae that it bears repeating. Barack Obama’s political beliefs are secondary to his using anyone and everyone - from corrupt Machine politicians to wild eyed radical Maoists - to further his political career. All of the radical associations in his past (and present) represent nothing more than stepping stones to aid him in his political advancement. As early as 1987 he told Jeremiah Wright that he had his eye on the Governor’s mansion in Illinois (no doubt his sights were set higher). The arc of his career has always been headed toward high political office. Of this, there is no doubt.

Besides using these radicals to get ahead and making common cause with groups like ACORN and The New Party, it is a legitimate question to ask if Obama shared their ideology. The answer is almost certainly no. I believe that there is something about these radicals that attracted Obama. Perhaps it was their utter certainty and belief that they are in the moral right. Or maybe it was that their personalities are so driven and single minded. Given Obama’s own doubts about his place in the world as a young man as well as his apparent aimlessness early on, it stands to reason that people who believed so strongly in something and seemed to know where they were going in life would be able to interest the young, ambitious politician.

Calling Obama a “socialist” simply isn’t logical. He doesn’t share the belief that industries should be nationalized by the government or even taken over by the workers as many American Marxists espouse. He may not be as wedded to the free market as a conservative but he doesn’t want to get rid of it. He wants to regulate it. He wants “capitalism with a human face.” He wants to mitigate some of the effects of the market when people lose. This is boilerplate Democratic party liberalism not radical socialism.

I detest conservatives throwing around the words “socialism” and “Marxism” when it comes to Obama as much as I get angry when idiot liberals toss around the word “fascist” when describing conservatives. I’m sorry but this is ignorant. It bespeaks a lack of knowledge of what socialism and communism represent as well as an ignorance of simple definitions. Obama will not set up a government agency to plan the economy. He will not as president, require businesses to meet targets for production. He will not outlaw profit. He will not put workers in charge of companies (unless it is negotiated between unions and management. It is not unheard of in this country and the practice may become more common in these perilous economic times.).

An Obama presidency will have more regulation, more “oversight,” more interference from government agencies, more paperwork for business, less business creation, fewer jobs, fewer opportunities. It will be friendlier to unions, more protectionist, and will require higher taxes from corporations (who then will simply pass the tax bill on to us, their customers). But government won’t run the economy. And calling Obama a “socialist” simply ignores all of the above and substitutes irrationalism (or ignorance) for the reality of what an Obama presidency actually represents; a lurch to the left that will be detrimental to the economy, bad for business, but basically allow market forces to continue to dominate our economy.

Obama’s friendship with Ayers, Rezko, Wright, Pfleger, Meeks, Khalidi, as well as his working with Richard Daley’s Chicago Machine was the result of his overweening ambition and not due to any ideological affinity or strain of corruption in his makeup. He may have taken a scholarly interest in some of the ideas put forth by Ayers and he might have seen working to approve some of Ayers’ radical ideas as good politics (Ayers was an ally of Daley in the School wars of the 1990’s).

But frankly, Obama is someone who impresses me as having no real ideology save that which can get him elected. His campaign has shown him to pander to whatever audience he is addressing at the moment. His contradictory positions on issues is simply dismissed as his words “being taken out of context” or the candidate himself “misstated” his position. The press gives him a pass and its off to the next audience where he tells them exactly what they want to hear.

This is not a man with a radical ideology. It is a man with no ideology at all, no set beliefs in anything save his own supreme abilities. It is this more than anything else that will cause him to fail if he is elected president. When the political winds are blowing the strongest, he will have no set of beliefs he can cling to in order to ride out the storm. His efforts to “reform” Washington will come a cropper because of this and in the end, his empty rhetoric will be all that is remembered of him.

It had to happen sooner or later. Once the emptiness of Obama’s “Hope and Change” campaign was realized by the voters, the Democratic candidate for president had precious little substance to fall back on.

Political attacks only resonate if the voter perceives a kernel of truth in them. And the way John McCain has been pounding away at Obama’s non-existent plans for what exactly he would like to accomplish as president, it was bound to have an effect on the polls.

It has.

Abandoning all pretense of being a candidate who can unite the country by reaching across the aisle to Republicans and reforming Washington, Obama has dramatically shifted his campaign rhetoric to the Bill Clinton strategy of telling voters “I feel your pain:”

Barack Obama sounds more like a man trying to shake a rain cloud these days, dispensing a teeth-clenching, I-get-your-pain stump speech in town after town that offers only snippets of the unbridled optimism that long permeated his campaign pitch.

Beginning in the days before his party’s convention, the inspirational has given way to the traditional: attacks on John McCain, a register of policy prescriptions and partisan language with the sting of a needle.

Over the summer, Obama would often simply say that he and McCain “fundamentally disagree” on key issues. In New Hampshire on Saturday, Obama said the Arizona senator “doesn’t get it. He doesn’t know what is going on your lives. He is out of touch with the American people.”

The poetic defenses of hope, the playful jokes about being a distant relative of Vice President Cheney and the glancing attention to policy have been replaced by an emphasis on economic fears - an issue-by-issue argument of why the American dream is slipping away and the Republican ticket has no plan to rescue it. He furrows his brow, wags his finger and broadcasts exasperation at the idea that a 26-year veteran of Washington is co-opting his mantra of change.

The Obama campaign has even replaced the wistful slogan, “Change We Can Believe In,” with the more imperative “Change We Need.”

This is the sign of a desperate candidate who doesn’t have a clue how to go about regaining the momentum he enjoyed in the early summer. Gone is the messiah who will go to Washington and save us from partisanship and race hatred. Gone is The One who’s campaign once promised to transcend politics and enter the realm of a crusade.

Now the brawling, Chicago trained street fighter is emerging - and it isn’t pretty. One wonders how his younger, more naive fans are taking this switch. I would have to say that based on history, many of them will become disillusioned and could stay at home on election day - as their older brothers and sisters and even their parents did when they were young and impressionable and had their eyes opened about politics and politicians.

One group this change won’t affect is Obama’s African American base who would probably vote for him if he was found to be the devil himself.  This part of the equation could still make the difference in some blue state races in Michigan and Pennsylvania (among other states) where large African American populations in Detroit and Philadelphia respectively could supply Obama with the margin of victory in very tight races.

But the millions of new voters who answered Obama’s call and saw him as a different kind of politician will, unless they are completely unaware of what is going on in the campaign, have second thoughts about this new version of Obama. This is the Machine pol who kicked his challengers off the ballot in his first state senate race by challenging their signature petitions. This is the “reformer” who walked into Illinois senate leader Emil Jones’ office and made a deal with the devil in order to have some kind of legislative record to run on for his US senate bid. And this is the Obama who threw the Chicago reformers under the bus by endorsing some of the worst Machine candidates at the expense of those running on a “hope and change” platform. All of these critiques will now resonate with voters.

That’s why Obama’s new strategy is so risky. Cynically, he is banking on the economy getting so bad that the voter will respond to his Clintonesque class warfare claims which will allow him to barely squeak out a win in November. He apparently feels that’s all he’s got left.

One thing is certain, however; Obama has totally abandoned all that made him different and exciting to so many voters and now appears to be just another Democratic politician.

This blog post originally appears in The American Thinker

UPDATE

As usual, Ed Morrissey and I are on the same page this morning:

Obama has had to turn back towards his base rather than make a play for independents and centrists. The base has begun to get dispirited, if not outright mutinous, and Obama needs an enthusiastic effort to win battleground states. Instead, he’s begun to fade in formerly safe states like Minnesota and New York, and Pennsylvania and Michigan may have already slipped through his fingers.

Make no mistake about it. Obama may claim this as going on the offensive, but this is a purely defensive move that ignores his one major theme: being different enough to transcend partisanship. John McCain has pushed him out of his comfort zone and forced him to play this election by McCain’s rules, and apparently he isn’t adept enough to figure that out for himself.

If you are totally in the tank for Obama, no doubt you loved the speech and thought it was one of the greatest in history. That’s fine. I’m glad you’re proud of your candidate and believe he did a great job.

But you will forgive me if my own, somewhat more honest and analytical take on what Obama said doesn’t quite match your gushing, effusive, unrealistic assessment.

It was a very good political speech and unmatched political theater. As I pointed out in my post on the Top 10 American Speeches of all Time, there are three elements that make a great speech. The first is the moment in time when the speech is delivered. The second is the venue where it is delivered. And finally, the words themselves must be as powerful when read as they are when spoken.

Obama did very well with all three, although the last element dragged down the overall ranking a bit. Without a doubt, the moment in history was there - first black man to accept the nomination of a major party is a huge historical deal and is one of those identifying moments in history; a “hinge” of history, if you will.

The venue was good but more because it was the Democratic convention and because of the number of people watching it rather than the speech having a grand backdrop like an inaugural address or King at the Lincoln Memorial. (As a convention speech having a lasting impact, it fell far short of Kennedy’s 1980 speech or - love it or not - Pat Buchanan’s 1992 barn burner, not to mention Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” stemwinder in 1896.)

Where the speech failed the test of historically “great” were the words themselves. In places, it soared. In others, it was just liberal boilerplate. Rereading it this morning, I was struck by how ordinary it truly was. There was hardly a policy proposal we haven’t heard from Democrats over the past 2 decades. To say that this represents “change” is arguable.

So not one of the great speeches of all time but a very good address that accomplished some of the things Obama set out to do. Obama. Obama got “specific” in the sense that he attached some concrete proposals to the idea of “change.” But he was no more forthcoming in how he was going to achieve this “change” as he has been in the past.

Case in point:

That’s the promise we need to keep. That’s the change we need right now.

So — so let me — let me spell out exactly what that change would mean if I am president.

Change means a tax code that doesn’t reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it.

You know, unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.

I’ll eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

I will — listen now — I will cut taxes — cut taxes — for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.

1. What does it mean when he says he will give tax breaks to companies that create “good jobs right here in America?” Eliminating capital gains for small business that create high tech jobs sounds fine but we are talking about jobs in the thousands not millions. And is that part of his plan to give tax breaks to companies that “create good jobs right here in America.” What’s a “good” job? What kind of tax break? Who gets it?

And doesn’t Obama realize that 45 million Americans already pay absolutely no federal income tax? Hard to cut someone’s taxes when they’re not paying any. There are another 18 million taxpayers who pay less than $500 in federal taxes. The point being, somebody has to pay for what you are proposing in the rest of your speech. And after you’re through upping the tax burden on the richest two percent (who already pay 88% of all the taxes from individuals in America) and carry through with your Carteresque idea to reduce domestic oil production by taxing “windfall” profits from oil companies, the well goes pretty dry.

Then there are these “specifics” on energy policy:

And in that time, he has said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil than we had on the day that Senator McCain took office.

Now is the time to end this addiction and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution, not even close.

As president, as president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I’ll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America.

I’ll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars.

There are a couple of jaw droppers in there. First, if this is his energy “plan” I would start laying in a generous supply of firewood and go out and buy a good bicycle. The government doesn’t “invest” in clean coal technology. It can incentivize the changeover or mandate it by simply changing the clean air standards for coal fired power plants. And if Obama thinks his own party - his own liberal base - is going to allow him to start building nuclear power plants, he doesn’t read blogs very much nor does he listen to his own members of Congress.

But “helping our auto companies retool?” Is he planning on making the government a partner with Ford, GM, and the rest? Auto companies don’t need to retool, they need better leadership. Relying on profits from gas guzzling SUV’s and trucks is why automakers are in such dire straits today - despite signs all over the place that the price of gas was going to go up because of tight supplies. Executives at the auto companies took the easy road of short term profit and sacrificed the long term viability of their companies.

And Obama wants to reward this bad behavior by helping them “retool?” It would be nice if the designers actually had cars for which the retooling would be necessary. Maybe we should solve that little problem first and then think of big giveways to giant corporations and big labor.

And then there was Obama’s “chicken in every pot” line, promising to ” make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars.” Can he get any less specific than that? I leave it to your imagination for how this particular giveaway might work.

Finally, there was this:

And I’ll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy — wind power, and solar power, and the next generation of biofuels — an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced.

It might seem like a lot of money - $150 over the next decade - but it is less than a drop in the bucket compared to what we spend every year on energy. And Obama wants to spread that paltry sum out over 10 years.

No we will not drill our way out of this crisis. But wind and solar power are not the answer to our long term energy needs either. Those technologies too, will be stop gap measures and never supply more than a couple of percent of our energy needs. The answer is the most abundant element in the universe - hydrogen. And Obama never mentioned it in his speech.

So Obama’s specificity on how he will bring about “change” was slightly better than in the past but not much. Education, health care, paid sick leave, and the rest of liberal policy proposals all sounded wonderful. But as far as how he was specifically going to implement them or even what some of them meant, we are still in the dark.

He even borrowed from Republicans:

Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I’ve laid out how I’ll pay for every dime: by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don’t help America grow.

But I will also go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less, because we cannot meet 21st-century challenges with a 20th-century bureaucracy.

I believe Gerald Ford was the first candidate to make this promise at a convention. The Democrats had Bill Clinton and Al Gore making similar promises. It is a ridiculous political premise that the president (actually whoever he chooses to head up OMB) will go through the budget “line by line” and find savings. The old Grace Commission did something similar and had less than 10% of their recommendations passed by Congress.

The fact is, many of those “obsolete” programs benefit someone somewhere. Trying to cut programs much less eliminate them causes such screams of anguish that no president has come close to realizing significant savings in the federal budget. With only around 15% of the budget “discretionary” spending with the rest tied up in defense and entitlements, there is only one place Obama can go to pay for his “change;” the Department of Defense.

He has already said he will cut tens of billions by slowing down programs and eliminating others including missile defense. This doesn’t “save” much at all because what you do by cutting a defense contract in the “out” years is simply extend the contract while the contractor keeps adding “cost +” accounting.

But Obama didn’t say he was going to cut the military budget in Denver:

I will end this war in Iraq responsibly and finish the fight against Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts, but I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression.

I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation, poverty and genocide, climate change and disease.

First, the next person that tells me Obama was being “specific” last night is going to make me scream. This is about as non-specific as you can get and still be on the stage. Just how does he create a world without nuclear weapons? It is nothing more than liberal pablum and for people like Andy Sullivan to gush about Obama “specifics” last night is simply ignoring reality.

But Obama’s talk of “rebuilding our military” flies in the face of what he said last year:

Second, I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems…and I will institute an independent Defense Priorities Board to ensure that the Quadrennial Defense Review is not used to justify unnecessary spending.

Third, I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal I will not develop new nuclear weapons…I will seek a global ban on the development of fissile material…and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off of hair-trigger alert…and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals.”

Which is it, Barack? “Rebuild” the military or tear it down?

Obama’s speech last night still fell way short of specifics - despite what shamelessly gushing reporters had to say. I nearly had a stroke when Carl Bernstein, appearing on CNN as an “analyst” said that this was “the greatest convention in modern times” - as if the first two nights weren’t incredible yawners not to mention near disasters for Obama. And apparently, the press showed their true colors during the speech:

Several members of the media were seen cheering and clapping for Barack Obama as the Illinois senator accepted the Democratic nomination Thursday.

Standing on the periphery of the football field serving as the Democratic convention floor, dozens of men and women wearing green media floor passes chanted along with the crowd.

Two members of the foreign press exchanged opportunities to take each other’s picture while wearing an Obama hat and waving a flag.

Several others nearby screamed “woo” during some of Obama’s biggest applause lines.

No doubt they just couldn’t help themselves.

Overall, not bad at all for Obama. Lacking many specifics (although more specific than he has been in the past) with his usual excellent delivery made the night a triumph for him.

I would grade him out at a B minus. It should give him a bounce in the polls even when McCain names his choice of running mate. The question will be, how long that bounce will last and what will things look like after the dust settles from the Republican convention which, as we speak, may be postponed due to Tropical Storm Gustav.

My guess is that by mid September, we will be back to the 4-6 point Obama lead from July. And the number of days that McCain will be able to carve into that lead will start to dwindle.