Obama Is A Phony

Obama's denunciation of Rev. Wright is not convincing. Obama does not explain the contradiction between his present displeasure with the Rev. and the Obama family long-term participation in the Rev.'s church and attendance at his rabidly racist sermons.

The net is this: Obama has been exposed as a phony and there is no way he wriggle out of his predicament.

What Will Ballmer Do?

An article in today's NYTimes speculates about Ballmer's actions regarding the potential Yahoo acquisition.



What is extraordinary about this speculative article is that the interests of the Microsoft stockholders are not even mentioned.

Legally, Microsoft is not Ballmer's toy. He is supposed to maximize stockholder value, not aggrandize his aging and shrinking ego.

It is abundantly evident that Microsoft has very little talent for acquisitions and diversifications.

Let them manage a declining business and pay out the profits in the form of dividends and permit their stockholders to make their own diversification decisions. They are likely to do better than Ballmer.

Why Is Rev. Wright Wrecking Obama's Campaign?

The opening sentence of Bob Herbert's column :

"The Rev. Jeremiah Wright went to Washington on Monday not to praise Barack Obama, but to bury him."

Later:

"The question that cries out for an answer from Mr. Wright is why — if he is so passionately committed to liberating and empowering blacks — does he seem so insistent on wrecking the campaign of the only African-American ever to have had a legitimate shot at the presidency."

My proposed answer to the question:

Rev. Wright's claim to legitimacy rests on the mistreatment of blacks by whites. But if a black becomes President of the of the U.S., that would be evidence that blacks are not so badly mistreated by whites and Rev. Wright appears to have lost his legitimacy.

Rev. Wright is enjoying enormously the attention he is getting which would not happen except for the youtube snippets and Obama's candidacy.

What Wright needs is for the dispute to continue and ultimately for Obama to lose. Wright is doing his utmost to achieve both of these objectives.

The Obama fad has peaked.

It is now in its declining phase.

Some of Obama's strongest supporters, the African-American op-ed columnists on the NYTimes and WaPost are warning Obama to show that he can fight as aggressively as Hillary or lose the election even if gets the nomination.

You know how Obama replied? He explained that he is not a fighter.

Where will that get him?

Obama Is Losing a Strong Supporter

"Barack Obama is winning, so why does it look like Hillary Clinton is having all the fun?"

That is the first sentence of Bob Herbert's column.

The last sentence is:

"There is nothing more fiercely urgent for him (Obama) right now than to reassure voters and superdelegates that an Obama candidacy will not lead to a Democratic debacle in November."

Bob Herbert used to be strongly committed to Obama. Now, he sees him as a loser. Some change, and very sudden, too.

Self-Inflicted Confusion

Maybe Barack Obama’s transformational campaign isn’t winning over working-class voters because transformation isn’t what they’re looking for.

See Krugman's column .

The Turning Point

Evidence of a turning point:

1. Hillary raised $10,000,000 in 24 hours.

2. Cartoonist Pat Oliphant (who has been burning Hillary mercilessly) admits the possibility of the Clintons going back to the White House.

3. Cartoonist Jeff Danziger takes a "bitter" swipe at Obama - something he had never done before.

See cartoons at: http://laughlines.blogs.nytimes.com/

“Why can’t he close the deal?”

That's the question that Hillary asked after she won Pennsylvania.

Why can't Obama close the deal? He outspent Hillary 2 to 1 in campaign advertising. He has all the bloggers and much of the media giving him a free ride and most of all he claims that he has unique skills that enable him to convert opponents to supporters.

He even pigs out on hi-carb foods to prove that he is one of the boys.



Why can’t he close the deal? What's the answer?

Why Does This Man Look So Sick?

What Did Carter Accomplish?

Absolutely nothing.

Why?

Because he went to Hamas on the assumption that Carter's superior talking skills would lead to peace between Israel and Hamas.

Carter is senile if he thinks that talking is the key.

The key is for both sides to want peace more than war.

When Carter brokered peace between Egypt and Israel, success came not from Carter's talking skills but from Egypt's strong need for peace.

Hamas does not want or need peace. They need war. War is what keeps them in power. Hamas has no skills for managing a peaceful Palestine. They can only arm young men, put black ski-masks on their faces and march them off to suicide. They will settle for nothing less than the utter destruction of Israel. Israel can not negotiate while its own destruction is goal of the other side.

Case closed.

Carter is a senile fool.

Senility Personified

New Pictures on Flicker

For a larger version of this photo and some other new pictures, go to:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51072101@N00/?saved=1

What If . . .?

What if McCain chooses Lieberman as his Vice Presidential candidate?

Assuming that Obama is the Democratic candidate, the Republicans could win Connecticut in the general election and possibly New York and maybe even New Jersey and even California.

And the Democrats would lose another Presidential election that at one time looked like a sure win.

What Happened to Obama's Unique Appeal?

Obama used to claim that he would (single-handedly) improve the practice of politics. He would somehow get all politicians to unite in support of the changes that the American people can believe in.

What happened?

In the real world, Hillary, whose proposed policies are not greatly different from his own, does not cooperate with Obama at all. She ridicules him. She criticizes him. She weakens his position in the general election by providing the Republicans with verbal ammunition to use against Obama.

What happened to Obama's claimed ability to unite all in support of change we can believe in?

Poor Obama. His main claim is revealed to be a big lie. He does not have the ability to convert opponents to supporters, after all. He is just another politician.

Obama Is No Social Scientist

Obama jumped to an unwarranted conclusion and he and his followers treat his boneheaded remark as an awkward truth.

Obama may well have observed that small-town Americans are religious, prize their guns and are suspicious of people who are not like them but where is the evidence that these traits are caused by loss of jobs?

In fact, small-town Americans were religious, prized their guns and were suspicious of people who are not like them even when they had the good jobs.

Obama is no social scientist. He is just a tin-horn politician. The only reason that he is leading the Democratic primary contest is that Hillary has grossly mismanaged her campaign.

Run-away High Food Prices

Krugman has a good column outlining most of the causes of rising food prices.

He left out the most troublesome reason - run-away population growth, especially in Africa and other Moslem areas, Egypt and Palestine, for example. Families with eight children are not uncommon, also in Latin America.