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Have we gone insane?

July 27, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Last week’s poll sponsored by Time magazine and the Rockefeller Foundation found 85 percent of the respondents believe the country is on the wrong track. Time’s Web site carried a story on the study that noted:

“Most intriguing, a majority of those surveyed believe in the power of Big Government to solve the biggest problems of our time. They support major government investments that create jobs – 82% favor public works projects – and they remain sympathetic to the economy’s victims: 70% say more government programs should help those now struggling.”

All of which leads to this obvious question: Where in the world have these people been all their lives?
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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - News - President - Society/Culture

Smart Hillary bides her time

July 21, 2008 by 1 Comment

-By Michael M. Bates

Hillary Clinton can be accused of many things. Stupidity isn’t one of them. Waiting in the wings, she’s ready to rescue her party if Mr. Wonderful continues to self-destruct.

Mrs. Clinton didn’t formally terminate her candidacy for the Democratic nomination; she suspended it. She didn’t officially release the delegates pledged to her; she merely asked them to support Barack Obama.

Clinton loyalists now demand her name be placed in nomination at next month’s convention. They point out that the Illinois senator wins only if he secures the support of numerous super delegates. Those superior beings can change their votes at any time, including the day of the balloting.
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Obama’s Supreme puzzlement

July 15, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Tracking Barack Obama’s position on many issues is akin to watching the weather. Stick around a little while and it’ll change. He can make a U-turn faster than a speeding fist bump.

The senator claims he’s still actively working on refining his views, a rather peculiar exercise for a man whose supposedly rock-solid convictions propelled him to success. I mean, he’s still going to get the U.S. out of Iraq immediately, right?

Holding a second press conference to explain what you said at the first press conference because “Apparently I was not clear enough this morning,” isn’t inspiring. Maybe next time Democrats will select a candidate with stronger credentials than merely having once been a community organizer, whatever the heck that is.

This guy is starting to make Monsieur Kerry, who voted for the $87 billion before he voted against it, look downright decisive. Democrats should have anticipated Barry’s backtracking.
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The Unsinkable Father Pfleger

July 3, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Chicago’s Father Michael Pfleger made a triumphant appearance Sunday at St. Sabina’s Catholic Church. Returning from a two-week suspension, the priest delivered his “Ain’t nothing like a comeback” sermon to an adoring congregation.

He could as aptly have used “I will survive” as his theme. Like him or love him, Father Pfleger is the definitive survivor. Cardinals come and cardinals go, but the activist pastor does as he pleases and prevails.

It’s always been that way. Declining enrollments forced some Chicago Catholic schools to close in the 1970s. Pfleger, still a seminarian at the time, picketed then-Cardinal John Cody’s home in protest.
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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Media Bias - News - Society/Culture

Big bad Barack flinches

June 25, 2008 by 1 Comment

-By Michael M. Bates

Democrat Senator Joe Biden described Barack Obama last year: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Biden received justifiable grief for his artless observation.

Nevertheless, the view that Obama is a smart, eloquent communicator enjoys widespread currency.

There’s no denying the man gives good teleprompter. If you turn down the volume on the TV it looks like he’s watching a tennis match, but with the sound up he does a yeoman’s job of reciting what’s been written for him.

The unscripted moments are problematic. Like in the debate when he condescendingly conceded, “You’re likeable enough, Hillary,” in a way that made him appear haughty. Or when he asserted last month that 10,000 people had died in Kansas tornadoes. The actual number was 12.
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Hooray for gas pains

June 16, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Paying more at the pump has its benefits. For the first time in a long time, Americans are beginning to pay attention. And, by Jove, I think we’ve got it! Or at least some of us do.

We’re realizing that leaving most of our energy needs in the hands of those who wish us ill isn’t prudent. Last month’s Gallup poll found that by a healthy 57 to 41 percent margin, Americans favor drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas that are currently off limits.

That’s a noteworthy turnaround from the results of a CBS News/New York Times poll conducted only last year. It asked if participants approved of drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Then, 57 percent of respondents disapproved while 39 percent supported the idea.

Forking over more than $4.00 a gallon for gas has evidently been educational.

It was in 1995 that President Clinton vetoed ANWR development as part of a budget bill. Out of 19 million acres, only about 2,000 would have been used for drilling facilities. As a former Alaska governor noted, ANWR is “a barren, marshy wilderness . . . infested with uncountable mosquitoes and locked in temperatures of 60 and 70 degrees below zero for up to nine months of the year.”

Still, it was all just too much for the tree-hugging set. “We must protect the Earth that God gave us,” Hillary’s husband dramatically declared in his veto message. That Bill, always doing God’s work, isn’t he?
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Echoes of 1968

June 1, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

It’s been 40 years since his passing, but Robert Kennedy is again in the news. One reason is Hillary Clinton’s imprudent mention of his assassination. Barack Obama and media accomplices managed to turn that molehill into a mountain in near-record time.

Another reason is that Obama has invoked Bobby’s memory throughout his campaign. People who weren’t around 40 years ago have been instilled with the fable of Kennedy’s pristine greatness and Barack hopes to benefit by the association.

I wonder how many of Obama’s young, college-educated liberals know much about the real Bobby Kennedy. Would their admiration be diluted if they knew of a 1956 conversation he had with an assistant attorney general in the Eisenhower administration?

“The trouble with you Republicans is that you have done away with the very best man your party has,” Bobby told the appointee. When asked who that was, his reply was Joe McCarthy. Yes, that Joe McCarthy. The official asked if Kennedy were joking. The response: “I am not kidding. I think so well of the man I made him a godfather of one of my children.”

Which is true. Joe McCarthy was the godfather of Kennedy’s oldest child. And when the infamous Red hunter from Wisconsin was buried in 1957, Bobby Kennedy flew to Appleton for the services.
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Where Obama should start

May 19, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Barack Obama presents himself as the voice of hope and change. A transformational figure, he’ll set aside the old politics and run a dignified, elevated campaign, one eschewing gratuitous smears. If Obama is sincere, he should begin by cleaning up his party’s official Web presence.

A quick tour of the Democratic Party site (www.democrats.org) should persuade him. The blog there is rife with smears, insults and obscenities. Perhaps the party loyalists posting there have lost their bearings.

Here are a few examples of what’s been posted in just the past few days. Expletives have been removed for obvious reasons. Grammar and misspellings haven’t been corrected.

  • “Senile McLame, can’t remember stuff now, what would he be like in 4 years if elected? End up like a senile Reagun, with corrupt cronies and crooks set free in the white house to pillage and hide the crimes?”
  • “Morning Bill, I don’t understand why McNuts what to a series of town hall debates with Obama.”
  • “McCain appears to be mentally impaired. McCain needs to get a brain scan and retire for treatment.”
  • “We could have told Gorbachev that bush is an expletive and he truly is a fascist pig who is trying to dominate the world. mclame will be worse. Why do we allow these retards to run our government. They should be in prison in the Hague. bush is going to the Middle East next week goosestepping the whole way and accusing more nations of being terrorist. We are the expletive terrorists.”
  • “McCain has not yet had to debate Obama on the same platform, That will be like a giant taking on an unarmed, mentally defective pygmy!”
  • “Are you talking about chimpenfuhrer’s dimwitted dipstick daughters by any chance. I wonder how much this faux wedding is costing the American working man?”
  • “Republicans HAVE MOthers? I thought they were spawned underneath very wet rocks !”
  • “And as far as your mentally defective nominee, Senator McNuts, Obama is going to wipe the deck with him. It doesn’t matter how much you try to swift boat him.”
  • “We should bury bush and cheney in pig expletive at their local landfill. That includes all members of their families.”
  • “Has she (Cindy McCain) been involved in some way in a lot of blind trusts/partnerships set up by her father that could land her in political if not legal hot water if they ever see the light of day? As long as she paid her taxes (unlike Capone), the IRS has left her alone? Let’s face it, McCain may very well be married to the mob.”
  • “I am continually amazed at the size of the expletive on expletive like this, to continually insinuate that THEY and expletive like them are this country. If we say Bush is an idiot, then we are insulting America….what major expletive expletive that takes. (Btw, Bush is NOT an idiot, he’s a piece of expletive evil expletive conservative whose expletive success at enacting conservative policies has just about destroyed this country.”

Some of the Democratic blog contributors are less than thrilled with Mrs. Clinton these days. Here’s an interesting theory one of them propounds:
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I just love Fox News

May 11, 2008 by 1 Comment

-By Michael M. Bates

In fact, I don’t really love Fox News. I do, however, love saying that I just love Fox News. Simply expressing that view is enough to drive many liberals to rabid, foaming at the mouth frenzy. I mean, even more than their typical rabid, foaming at the mouth frenzy, which is not inconsiderable.

That’s because Fox News has a reputation, primarily among people who’ve dwelled too long on college campuses, for being dreadfully, unashamedly, intolerably conservative. Or, as they are wont to label anything deviating one iota from the prescribed liberal line, fascist.

Which is mildly amusing as a Fox News mainstay, Bill O’Reilly, is deemed by at least a few conservatives as not very conservative. In her book Slander, Ann Coulter – she of the long blond hair and short skirts – takes O’Reilly to task for his opposition to the death penalty and support for gun control. Add to that his all too eager acceptance of the global warming hysteria and his belief that poor little Elian Gonzalez deserved dispatch to the Castro Brothers’ prison known as Cuba, and you’ve got a guy Jeremiah Wright might find adequate.
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00Publius Contributor - Constitution - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - GOP - News - President - Society/Culture

The Supremes uphold election integrity

May 4, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Heaven knows Jimmy Carter is wrong much of the time. Yet even the former president has his better days. One of them occurred during his service as co-chair of the 2005 Commission on Federal Election Reform. Carter joined in the commission’s recommendation for a voter photo identification requirement.

On Monday, the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s law mandating voters to produce a photo ID. Reaction to this commonsensical ruling was predictable.

Barack Obama called the decision wrong and charged it would hurt minorities, the elderly, the poor, and blustering retired ministers moving into multimillion-dollar mansions in Tinley Park gated communities. OK, so I made that last part up.
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Another liberal profile in pettiness

April 27, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

California Senator Barbara Boxer is your standard-issue shrill, humorless, doctrinaire liberal who knows what’s best for everyone else and will force it on them whether they want it or not. Naturally, this makes her a leading light among her Democratic colleagues.

Ms. Boxer exhibits a keen insight that is the envy of other solons. Speaking of earthquake victims, she shrewdly observed: “Those who survived said, ‘Thank God I’m still alive,’ but of course those who died, well, their lives will never be the same.”

Ever vigilant, Ms. Boxer recently picked up on a rumor that Pope Benedict XVI would visit the United States this month. Then she learned that other senators planned to introduce a resolution welcoming His Holiness to the land of the free and the home of the brave.
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St. Francis should have tried bribes

April 20, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

St. Francis Hospital serves a number of low-income people in suburban Chicago. Losing millions of dollars by caring for uninsured patients, four years ago St. Francis sought approval to build an additional hospital in a more prosperous suburb, Orland Park. The idea was to generate income that would help the original facility survive.

Readers may wonder why, in this land so blessed by the fruits of free enterprise, a hospital would have to get state permission to serve a new community. There is no good reason.

Nevertheless, the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board must endorse all such undertakings. Its members, appointed by the governor and ratified by the Illinois Senate, wield heavy clout in a state where clout is king. And when the governor is Milorad Blagojevich, also known as “Public Official A” in Federal indictments, the possibilities are endless.
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My, Obama, what big ear(marks) you have

April 14, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Senator Barack Obama will reform government. If you don’t believe it, just ask him.

Demonstrating his devotion to transparency in government, he recently endorsed a one-year ban on earmarks, those devilish special provisions that let lawmakers funnel money to pet projects without going through the normal review process. Earmarks permit legislators to sneak in spending that’s often tacked onto unrelated bills at the last minute.

Obama’s commitment to ending earmarks would be more convincing if he hadn’t resorted to them so much since going to Washington. The nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense calculates that Obama secured almost $100 million in pork for Illinois this fiscal year.
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No uniform answer for the Democrats

April 8, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Unless you’re more fortunate than I, you remember erstwhile Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Monsieur Kerry was famous for bringing up he’d been in the military. Indeed, his service became a constant refrain of the campaign.

Beginning his acceptance speech at the 2004 convention with a salute, he announced “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty.” A few weeks later, he snapped that if George Bush “wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: Bring it on.” Obviously, the fact George Bush never questioned Kerry’s service couldn’t get in the way of a good applause line.

The Democrat’s surrogates and supporters quickly got with the program. With Kerry at his side at an August Tacoma gathering, retired Army General Wesley Clark bellowed, “Where was George Bush when young men from Arkansas and Texas and Massachusetts were called to serve their country and went to Vietnam?”

The following month in Nevada a couple of retired generals lent their support to Kerry. One spoke of how members of the Bush administration were AWOL during Vietnam: “They all ducked the opportunity to participate.”
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Green collar jobs to the rescue?

March 31, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

It’s the latest. It’s the greatest. Green collar jobs are going to help turn around the economy if Democrats have their way.

Senator Barack Obama last month promised the government would spend $150 billion to create 5 million such jobs. At $30,000 a pop, that’s placing a great deal of faith in federal job training.

Even your typical white person has hopped on the green bandwagon. Also last month, Senator Hillary Clinton argued in a debate: “We can create at least five million new jobs. . . I helped to pass legislation to begin a training program for green collar jobs. I want to see people. . . trained to do the work that will put solar panels on roofs, install wind turbines, do geothermal, take advantage of biofuels.”

In all the excitement and all the campaign promises, it’s painless for them to overlook, if they ever knew, that federal job training programs have been less than a rousing triumph for many years.

Franklin Roosevelt initiated the Work Progress Administration to ease the mass unemployment of the Great Depression. My Mom lived through that era and said that WPA ended up standing for We Piddle Along to some Americans.

Another observer noted that the WPA gave a bad name to leaning on a shovel.
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A Hussein by any other name

March 9, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Michelle Obama describes the use of her husband’s middle name, Hussein, as “the fear bomb.” Political adversaries tossed this device in his 2004 Senate race. “They threw in the obvious, ultimate fear bomb. . . When all else fails, be afraid of his name, and what that could stand for, because it’s different.” Now “they’re” doing it again. An intriguing storyline, but is it supported by the facts?

A NewsBank check for 2004 shows no stories in either the Chicago Tribune or the Chicago Sun-Times reporting this particular fear bomb being dropped by his feisty opponent, Alan Keyes, or any of his supporters.

A December, 2006 commentary in the New York Times noted “there hadn’t been much focus on the unfortunate coincidence” of Obama sharing a name with the Butcher of Baghdad until that week.

Perhaps Mrs. Obama is confused. That’s understandable, with all that was going on in her life at the time. Within weeks after her husband’s arrival in the Senate, the University of Chicago Medical Center more than doubled her salary. And then there was an appointment to the board of TreeHouse Foods that brought in another $100,000 or so to the Obama household.
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Not a dime’s worth of difference

March 3, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Forty years ago, third-party presidential candidate George Wallace cackled that there wasn’t “a dime’s worth of difference” between Republican Richard Nixon and Democrat Hubert Humphrey. Gov. Wallace, who was a stanch Democrat most of his life, could have been describing the distinctions between his party’s presidential candidates in 2008.

Democrats may protest, but the reality is they have a choice of candidate, not of platform. Evidence of the similarities between Senators Clinton and Obama abound in the ratings awarded by assorted interest groups. Project Vote Smart (www.votesmart.org) compiles many of these evaluations.

Mrs. Clinton was given a 100 percent rating by both NARAL Pro-Choice America (previously conducting its nefarious business under the more straightforward name of the National Abortion Rights Action League) and Planned Parenthood for her 2006 votes. By golly, so was Mr. Obama.

For 2005-2006, the National Right to Life Committee awarded Mr. Obama a zero. Shockingly, that’s what Mrs. Clinton was also given.
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Behind every great man

February 25, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Former first lady Nancy Reagan took a fall last weekend. She reportedly is doing well and I hope her recovery is swift and complete.

Nancy Reagan’s central role in the history of this country can’t be discounted. It’s possible, perhaps likely, that Ronald Reagan would never have been president were it not for his wife.

Their son Ron believes that’s the case: “I don’t think he would’ve gotten to where he got to (without her). Because I think she has more ambition than he does. I think if left to his own devices, he might’ve ended up hosting ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ on TV or something … I think that she saw in him the stuff that could be president, and she kept pushing.”

She kept pushing. And staring. Listening again and again to her husband’s speeches, when he was a private citizen, then as California governor, then as activist, then as president, she stared in rapt attention, as though never hearing the words before.

It became known as “the gaze.” At least one very close friend claimed that it was never phony; Mrs. Reagan truly was fascinated by what Mr. Reagan had to say, no matter how many times he said it.
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McCain’s looking better already

February 18, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Ann Coulter says conservatives should vote for Hillary Clinton if John McCain is the GOP’s nominee. Ann Coulter is wrong.

For one thing, right now it looks as though Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate, if his swooning supporters don’t manage to get him declared a saint before then. His lack of substance has transformed him into today’s John F. Kennedy, another empty suit who realized you don’t have to fool all the people all the time, just half of the voters plus one.

For another thing, for all of John McCain’s deficiencies in satisfying conservatives, he’d make a far better president than either the empty suit or the pantsuit.

Maybe it was Sister Annie’s temporary insanity that emboldened Ms. Chelsea Clinton, taking a day off from her $100,000 plus gig at a hedge fund operation, to make a startling claim. She alleges that Mumsie is the “most fiscally conservative candidate running.”
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Trusting in government

February 10, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Call me a nervous Nellie – if anyone still uses that expression – but I find middle-of-the-night phone calls disquieting. So when my telephone rang at 4:19 early Sunday, an assortment of scenarios, none of them good, ran through my mind in the few seconds it took to answer.

It was a reverse 911 call from the village of Tinley Park. The message began by telling me not to hang up before the entire recording played. If I did, I’d be called back until I listened to the whole thing.

The message concerned Saturday’s tragedy at a retail store in which five women were killed. I learned an intense investigation is underway, It was believed the person or persons responsible had fled the scene. If residents observed any suspicious persons or activity, they should contact the police. They should dial 911 if urgent assistance is required.

Additional police officers will be on patrol in the village. The town’s thoughts and prayers are with the victims.
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Happenings Ten Years Time Ago

January 26, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

The president of the United States clenched his jaw, narrowed his eyes and wagged his finger. Glaring at the cameras, Bill Clinton ordered: “I want you to listen to me. I’m going to say this again, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time – never. These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people.”

It’s been ten years ago this week that Clinton made his forceful denial. A few days earlier, he’d insisted to a National Public Radio interviewer that there was absolutely no basis to allegations that either he or a minion had encouraged a witness in the Paula Jones sex harassment lawsuit to lie. “I don’t know any more about it than I’ve told you,” he said, “and any more about it really than you do, but I will cooperate.”

He was still cooperating the next day when he told reporters that the American people had a right to know what was going on. “I’d like for you to have more (information) rather than less, sooner rather than later. So we’ll work through it as quickly as we can and get all those questions out there to you.” Right.

Mrs. Clinton hastily came to her husband’s defense on national television: “The great story here for anybody willing to find it, write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”
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As nasty as an afternoon tea party

January 20, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

The Democrats are really going after one another now. It’s bare knuckles, brass knuckles, brawling, malicious, vicious, brutal, vitriolic. The contest may even border on – dare I say it? – mean spirited.

At least that’s the storyline dished out by the mainstream media. Democratic presidential candidates Clinton and Obama have reached new levels of enmity in their attacks.

That’s laughable. For one thing, the Clintons and their surrogates specialize in speaking vaguely, leaving room for plausible denial. They’ll say something like we know what Obama was doing in the hood back in the day. When someone asks, why are you bringing up his drug use? the answer is no, that’s not what we were talking about. You misinterpreted what was said.

Barack Obama dwells on fuzzy, feel good promises of hope and change. After his Iowa victory, he told supporters that hope insists “that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.” But what precisely is that something better? And is that something better something that all of us will consider something better?
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Democrats for dead babies

January 12, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Look at our presidential candidates, brag Democrats. Such diversity, such pluralism, such variety. We have a woman, a black, and a Hispanic running. Heck, there’s even a white male tossed in the mix just for fun. Indeed, Democrats perceive a veritable embarrassment of riches.

What they don’t have is a contender who’s even moderately pro-life. Every one of them ardently supports abortion rights.

Hillary Clinton has pledged her resolve to “keeping abortion safe, legal and rare,” a popular Democratic mantra that begs the question of, if there’s nothing wrong with abortion, why do they want it to be rare? Barack Obama has avowed: “I have consistently advocated for reproductive choice and will make preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority as President.”

John Edwards boasts of his 100 percent voting record with the National Abortion Rights Action League and has a past NARAL president advising his campaign. Bill Richardson pledges that “when I’m president” he’ll fight for a woman’s right to choose (death).

Given all this diversity, it was unforeseen, at least to me, that Mrs. Clinton would put down her Kleenex long enough to assail Mr. Obama for being insufficiently pro-abortion. A mailing to New Hampshire Democrats warns them that as a state senator Obama voted an ambiguous “present” on a number of abortion bills.

Seven times, the flyer noted, Obama had a chance to “stand up against Republican anti-choice legislation.” Each time, he weaseled out according to Hillary.

The Illinois senator responded with a statement of support from the Chicago chapter of the National Organization for Women assuring abortion enthusiasts of Barry’s support.
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An Endorsement That Might Matter

January 5, 2008 by

-By Michael M. Bates

Do celebrity endorsements make much of a difference in elections? Barack Obama’s assistance from the unelected queen of the world, Oprah Winfrey, suggests maybe not, at least not in the way you’d expect.

A poll found that one in three young New Hampshire women were less likely to vote for the clean, smart and articulate Obama because of the Oprah endorsement. One –sixth of women over age 65 said their opinion of the senator diminished as a result of Ms. Winfrey’s support.

Perhaps there’s hope for the Republic after all. Not that politicians are likely to discourage endorsements from some of the only folks with egos as colossal as their own.

At times we can tell a lot about a candidate by the celebrities backing him or her. Barbra Streisand endorsed Hillary Clinton, saying “Madame President of the United States . . . it’s an extraordinary thought.” No, Babs, what’s truly extraordinary is that you even imagine having what passes as a thought. This is the woman who’s claimed her absolute biggest nightmare is getting sick, getting taken to a hospital, and dying while hospital staff conjectures if their patient is indeed the Barbra Streisand.

Others supporting Mrs. Clinton include director Robb Reiner, who isn’t called Meathead for nothing, former NBA star Magic Johnson, and TV handyman Bob Vila.
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