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Obama Is Not America’s Hope

March 4, 2009 by

-By Frederick Meekins

During a recent trip to a local Wal-Mart, I saw something quite disturbing as I stood in the checkout line. In the magazine wrack was a commemorative edition of some publication with a portrait of Barack Obama on the cover.

That was not the disturbing part even to someone that did not vote for him. Behind him on the cover was a glow making him look angelic or even messianic in appearance. Above the image, the words read “Barack Obama: The Hope Of America”.
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Obama Is Not America’s Hope”

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Why I Quit The Reporter

February 2, 2009 by 2 Comments

-By Michael M. Bates

The Reporter, a suburban Chicago newspaper, included on its commentary page last week this editorial announcement:

“The Reporter newspaper regrets to inform our loyal readers that columnist Michael Bates has chosen to discontinue his services after nearly 20 years writing for our commentary page.

“Mr. Bates is a polarizing commentator beloved by some readers and detested by others. . . We know some readers won’t be upset by his departure, but we also understand those members of the unofficial Michael Bates fan club will be extremely disappointed. One or two readers have actually told us over the years that Mr. Bates’ column is the reason they read The Reporter.” The notice went on to say something complimentary about my writing and to wish my family and me well.

The statement was wrong about how long I’ve taken up space in The Reporter. It’s been well over 20 years. Then again, since the editor was in elementary school when I began cranking – the emphasis here is on crank – out a weekly column, his error is understandable.
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Include Me Out

January 25, 2009 by 1 Comment

-By Michael M. Bates

It’s numbing. The adulation, the elation, the mirth, the idolatry, the reveling in every possible facet of Obamaness. And that’s just the response of the mainstream media.

There was too much riveting coverage to fully absorb. You were no doubt stunned to learn, about every three minutes, that this year’s inauguration was historic. Stop the presses.

Unhappily, some stories didn’t receive as much attention as that revelation. One was Jill Biden confiding to Oprah Winfrey’s national audience that “Joe had the choice to be secretary of state or vice president.” Plugs quickly hollered “Shhh!” to his charming missus, but obviously she has as much trouble keeping her mouth shut as her husband. “OK,” she continued, “he did.”
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President Kennedy and the Mob

January 17, 2009 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Plans are moving forward to complete the Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement. Known also as the Mob Museum, it will be an interactive attraction “dedicated to the history of organized crime and law enforcement.” One of the displays, in the organized crime section of the museum rather than the law enforcement area, should feature President John F. Kennedy.

That’s because the Outfit helped put him in the White House. Academics still captivated with the myth of Camelot may not buy that contention, but the evidence is pretty persuasive.

Tina Sinatra authored “My Father’s Daughter,” a book about her father Frank, in 2000. In it, she details how Frank served as an intermediary between Chicago crime chief Sam “Momo” Giancana and JFK’s father, Joseph Kennedy, in 1960.
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Roland will fit right in

January 10, 2009 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Senate majority leader Harry Reid can be such a tease. On Sunday, the Nevada Democrat suggested that Illinois Gov. Blagojevich’s appointment of Roland Burris to replace The One in what is facetiously called the world’s greatest deliberative body might not be welcomed with open arms.

In his trademark high-pitched voice that thrills Canine-Americans everywhere, Reid said of Burris’s becoming a senator: “It’s going to be very difficult for that to occur.” Then, realizing that his statement could possibly offend felons or other core Democratic constituencies, he backed off slightly with “I’ve learned, being a senator for the time I have, that anything can happen.”

That someone like Reid is the Senate majority leader is corroboration of how right he is.
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Requiescat in pace, Uncle Sam

January 4, 2009 by

-By Michael M. Bates

2008 will be known as the year the United States set aside any pretense of free enterprise. A nation that had flourished with the concept of limited government economic intervention turned to the seductive allure of massive federal intrusion. Washington will now more than ever redistribute wealth in the name of compassion, pick winners and losers, and decide how the fruits of your labor will be spent.

Admittedly, we’ve been heading in that direction, sometimes gradually but inexorably, for decades. James Madison, often identified as the father of the Constitution, would have been astonished by the shift. He’d written: “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. . . ”

When the ostensible crisis hit last fall, everyone from President Bush to Barack Obama insisted that Congress needed to take immediate action to bail out the financial industry. Sounding like used car salesmen, they argued it couldn’t wait for a month or even for a week; a $700 billion deal had to be cut now. The details could all be sorted out later.
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Roddy, We Hardly Knew Ye

December 20, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Our president-elect said in 2002: “. . . right now, my main focus is to make sure that we elect Rod Blagojevich as governor. . .” Obama’s White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has bragged that he, Obama, and two another party loyalists “were the top strategists of Blagojevich’s victory.” Like other major Democratic politicians, Obama had absolutely no doubts about the character of the man they made governor. That’s their story and they’re sticking with it.

What they had to have known back then was that their candidate, who ironically campaigned against Republican dishonesty, was himself a product of the Chicago Machine, hardly a prototype for good government. Roddy didn’t wed just any foul-mouthed gal; tactically, he aimed for the stars. His wife is the daughter of a powerful alderman.

In endorsing Rod’s opponent in 2002, the Chicago Tribune reported everything voters needed to know:
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Bring back test patterns

December 14, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

The head of NBC told an investor conference Monday that his network may have to cut back on its programming. “Can we continue to program 22 hours of prime-time? Three of our competitors don’t. Can we afford to program seven nights a week? One of our competitors doesn’t,” he said.

His candid admission put me to dreaming of an appetizing if improbable prospect: That some television stations might actually go off the air, at least for the night.

Many baby boomers grew up before network and cable stations operated 24 hours a day. Not only that; most of us actually survived.

Much of today’s late night/early morning programming may be slightly less than scintillating (ever catch Bobby Vinton peddling the “Lifetime of Romance” oldies collection?), but most TV outlets refuse to go off the air, even for a few hours.
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Fun and Game Boys at Guantanamo

December 7, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Raul Castro is, at 77, Fidel’s kid brother. When Fidel’s health forced him to take a break from full-time dictator duties, he installed baby brother as president.

Raul swiftly demonstrated his leadership skills by consulting with some of the wisest people available. You know, deep thinkers like Hollywood millionaires. Recently he met with actor and activist Sean Penn.

The performer wrote in The Nation magazine of his meetings with Raul. According to Penn, Castro the younger is open to getting together with Obama. The Cuban said the setting would have to be a neutral one, perhaps Guantanamo Bay.
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Slummin’ with Barry

November 23, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Mrs. Clinton assumed full taunting mode in a January Democratic presidential candidate debate. She aggressively battled “bad” Republican ideas, she told Obama, “when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Rezko, in his slumlord business in inner-city Chicago.”

Obama feebly replied he was merely an associate at a law firm that represented a church group working with “this individual” and had done a few hours legal work. Hillary could have attacked Obama for accepting political contributions from Tony Rezko at the same time the real estate wheeler-dealer victimized African-Americans struggling for survival in his properties’ squalid living conditions.

It’s a persistent situation. Barry’s a millionaire, yet seems unable or unwilling to shake his connection with slums.
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A nation of Peter Pans

November 15, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Author J. M. Barrie gave literature Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up. Government, by encouraging people to not assume the responsibilities of adulthood, is fashioning a nation of Peter Pans.

Many health insurance policies allow parents to carry their children as covered dependents until they turn 19 or, if a full-time student, around 23. That’s changing. Two years ago, New Jersey required health insurance companies to extend coverage to qualifying children up to age 30.

Tony Rezko’s favorite Democratic governor, Illinois’ Milorad Blagojevich, used his amendatory veto authority this year to do the same. The covered “children” need not be students nor even live with their parents.
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Why the race was lost

November 7, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Castro this week described Obama as “more intelligent, cultured and levelheaded than his Republican adversary.” The American people agreed. So let the finger pointing commence. In no special order of consequence, here are a few probable reasons for the GOP loss:

  • The candidate. John McCain wasn’t conservatives’ first, or even fourth, choice for nominee. Infinitely preferable to Obama, he nonetheless carried too much baggage for many in the party’s base. Legislative liaisons with Teddy Kennedy and Russ Feingold on matters like immigration and campaign finance didn’t inspire confidence. Neither did McCain’s late conversion to tax cuts. Not discussing the Jeremiah Wright connection, a sensible basis to question his opponent’s judgment, was unwise. Bringing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the ticket did help a lot. People who dislike her would never have voted for the GOP anyway and she was a huge asset to the campaign. McCain’s estrangement with the rank and file never fully healed. When the Republican Party stops serving as a vehicle for conservatism, it falters.

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The young will pay for a President Obama

November 1, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

It’s lamentable that Obama and Biden only tell the truth when people give them money. It was at a San Francisco fundraiser that Obama voiced his belief that residents of small towns in Pennsylvania and elsewhere “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

More recently Biden told contributors at a Seattle fundraiser:

“Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”
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Birds of a feather Barack together

October 26, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

An ABC News/Washington Post poll shows more than half the respondents don’t think Barack Obama’s association with unrepentant 60s terrorist William Ayers is a legitimate issue. It’s old news. Such reasoning suggests that in about 30 years Obama can serve on boards with bin Laden, visit Osama’s home and take political contributions from him, just as he’s done with Ayers. After all, that 9/11 stuff will be old news by then.

Offering no basis for his assumption, Obama says he “assumed that (Ayers) had been rehabilitated.” Yet in Ayers’s 2001 book he wrote that he can’t quite imagine bombing a building today, “but I can’t imagine entirely dismissing the possibility either.”

Then there’s the lovely Mrs. Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn. It was, let it not be overlooked, also in her living room that candidate Obama had his political coming out in 1995. Dohrn saluted Charles Manson after a 1969 killing spree in which pregnant actress Sharon Tate was stabbed with a fork:
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Another Great Depression?

October 18, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

It looks as though John McCain is respectfully campaigning himself into the footnotes of history. Polls with Barack Obama winning by double digits are an indicator. So are predictions of a Democratic landslide by longtime GOP operatives such as Ed Rollins. McCain backers stand up at rallies to voice their exasperation that he’s not doing enough to win. Obama presents a clear, though hackneyed, message; McCain appears tentative and inconsistent.

Thus far, McCain fears that highlighting Obama’s relationships with ACORN and Jeremiah Wright – matters that directly reflect on Obama’s judgment – will lead to additional scathing attacks like the one from a black congressman comparing McCain to the segregationist Democrat George Wallace. So the Republican nominee, after reaching across the aisle to bail out Wall Street and people who made bad decisions, emphasizes how adroitly he reaches across the aisle. That’s a real crowd pleaser among Republicans cautioning that Obama, Pelosi and the other hooligans are bent on imposing socialism. The candidate is starting to make the listless Bob Dole look driven.
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Cubs carry a devilish burden

October 12, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

This begins with an apology. Last June a column from your humble servant focused on Barack Obama’s refusal, after initially approving the idea, to hold frequent town hall meetings with John McCain. I wrote: “When it comes to confronting McCain, however, Barack folds like the Cubs in September.”

I was wrong. Not about the pusillanimous Obama, but about the Cubs folding in September. They made it all the way to October this year before folding like a cheap and, as in Barry’s case, empty suit.

In spring training, pitcher Ryan Dempster predicted the Cubs would win the World Series this year. That sounded familiar. A year earlier, pitcher Carlos Zambrano ventured the same prophecy. That was about the time manager Lou Piniella spoke of instilling a “Cubbie swagger” in the team. Bet he’d love to have that line back.
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The politics of the bailout

October 5, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

So how did they come up with that $700 billion bailout figure? A Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com last week: “It’s not based on any particular data point. We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

That they did and, in so doing, scared a many Americans. Watching cable news after the House sensibly defeated the bill ratcheted up anxiety. When the markets closed with a record drop in the Dow Jones, the media mavens were shooting for their own personal best in high dudgeon.

How dare House Republicans fail to approve the bailout, particularly after Speaker Nancy Pelosi persuaded Democrats to – as one CNN anchor asserted – overwhelmingly back it? An undoubtedly innocent lapse kept him from reporting that almost a hundred Democrats voted against the measure.
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Patriotism, Taxes and Charity

September 29, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden was interviewed on ABC’s Good Morning America last week. With hair plugs set perfectly and dental caps gleaming – or was it the other way around? – Joe was asked by Kate Snow if those odious folks known as the rich should pay more in taxes. His reply:

“You got it. It’s time to be patriotic, Kate. Time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help America out of the rut, and the way to do that is they’re still gonna pay less taxes than they did under Reagan.”

Oh, so now the argument is sending more bucks to Washington is a form of patriotism. Readers familiar with Biden’s well-established record of “borrowing” that goes back at least to his law school days won’t be traumatized to learn it’s not an original notion.
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The truth is not dishonorable

September 22, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

John McCain ran an ad criticizing Barack Obama for supporting sex education for kindergartners. The reaction of Obama and his media sycophants was so vociferous that you might have thought abortion had been curtailed. The ad was described as a total fabrication, swill, truly vile, and one of the sleaziest spots in history.

McCain lied. McCain is dishonorable. McCain is running a squalid campaign of bald-faced smears. That’s what we read in the newspapers, saw on TV, and heard on the radio.

The truth is McCain’s ad is accurate. Ah, say the Obamatons, it’s false because Obama didn’t sponsor the Illinois Senate bill in question. McCain’s ad didn’t assert he did.
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Obama’s politics of new ideas

September 12, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Barack Obama maintains he’s the candidate of new ideas. When clinching his party’s nomination, he boasted that it’s “our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face.” The senator’s acceptance speech at the convention noted, “Change happens because the American people demand it – because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.”

A good place to find some of these new ideas is the Democratic platform, which documents the party’s official position on issues.
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Obama condemns (wink, wink) sleazy politics

September 7, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

For readers who might not yet have memorized last week’s column, it consisted of observations from the Democratic Convention’s first day. My intent was to provide something similar this week, but those darn GOPers refused to cooperate and held an abbreviated session Monday. I’m awaiting press reports that Hurricane Gustav was George Bush’s fault.

Still, there was considerable political activity. Most of it centered on John McCain’s choice of running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. I joined other conservatives in supporting Sarah’s selection.

The delight intensified by seeing how out of favor Gov. Palin is with the mainstream media. The New York Times’s Maureen Dowd criticized her because, among other transgressions, Sarah “has never even been on ‘Meet the Press.’” On ABC’s Good Morning America, the co-anchor posed this to a McCain staffer: “She has an, she has an infant with special needs. Will that affect her campaigning?” Newsweek’s Howard Fineman opined that “Sarah Palin makes Barack Obama look like John Adams.” Yes, I can certainly see how being a $10,000 a year community organizer offers so much more substantive governing experience than running a state.
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Dictatorship we can believe in

August 24, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Barack Obama wants to be president. Given his authoritarian tendencies, will that be enough for him?

My suspicions were roused last winter when his wife spoke and announced:

“Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

Require? Demand? Never allow? Such actions generally aren’t accomplished solely by a president. They almost always necessitate legislative sanction.
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The power of one

August 11, 2008 by 1 Comment

-By Michael M. Bates

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who passed away this week, meticulously documented Communist oppression in his books. The subject was one with which he was all too familiar.

In the final days of World War II, he wrote critically of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in a letter to a friend. Describing the mass murderer as “the man with the mustache,” he received an eight-year prison sentence for the impertinence.

Such was life in the Soviet Union. Secret police, neighborhood spies, knocks on the door in the middle of the night, false charges, clandestine tribunals, show trials, and long-term incarceration in an extensive prison and work camp structure named by Solzhenitsyn the Gulag Archipelago were all too real. The author estimated that 60 million people were swallowed up in the system.

In achingly specific detail, he chronicled it all. One incident included in the first book of his exhaustive Gulag Archipelago trilogy still remains with me more than three decades after reading it.
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Is Obama an alien abductee?

August 3, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

When Obamatons aren’t renting their shirts or tearing out their hair in sheer ecstasy over his total wonderfulness, they must occasionally speculate about what made their hero the hero he is. I mean, other than the “pot (that) had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow (cocaine) when you could afford it” that he admitted to in his book.

I believe I’ve uncovered the answer. Obamatons won’t like it. Nevertheless, the data are persuasive.

Barack Obama’s existence has been largely shaped by his experience as an alien abductee.

SciFi.com’s Ufology Resource Center includes a very helpful “58 Signs of Alien Abduction,” compiled by Melinda Leslie, a self-described abductee. In question format, several of these signs indisputably apply to Obama.
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