Of course, if Obama were to accuse McCain of picking his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition, everyone would laugh, because it obviously is not true. By contrast, there is quite a bit of evidence that Obama has placed political expediency above national security (for an excellent example, see our item yesterday on his shifting explanations for his original opposition to the liberation of Iraq).
In politics one often hears the charge of hypocrisy: My opponent criticizes me for X, but he has done Y, which is just as bad or worse. Obama’s argument here, though, is roughly opposite in form. He concedes that McCain is above reproach on this particular subject and therefore demands that McCain treat him as if he were beyond reproach. Obama’s acknowledgment of a McCain virtue is well and good, but it does not mitigate or excuse his own shortcoming.
Not only will bloggers have Internet access, workspaces and couches for napping
Napping!
in the “Big Tent” headquarters, they will be provided food and beverages,
Food, and beverages!
Google-sponsored massages,
Back rubs!
smoothies and a candy buffet.
Unfortunately not for me. I’m sugar-free. Will have to ask about unsweetened smoothies, though.
On the final night of the convention, Google is co-sponsoring a bash with Vanity Fair magazine for convention-goers and journalists that has become one of the hottest party invites.
That’s probably for the Dem convention only, I expect. If Google sponsors a party for Republicans it’ll probably more in the likes of Real Simple rather than Vanity Fair.
But I’ll bring my red shoes just in case.
At the RNC,
Google will offer similar amenities for bloggers and new-media reporters who attend the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., company officials say. It will demo a variety of new political tools next week, including a search function on YouTube that will offer almost real-time keyword searches of convention speech videos.
Heck, if they have that, I might even take time from my napping, snacking, drinking and partying to actually blog.
Now excuse me while I go pack my little black dress…
I read blogs for nearly two years before I started blogging in 2004, and Andrew Sullivan used to be one of my daily reads.
Unfortunately, Andrew’s gone off the deep end and I stopped reading his blog - except rarely - once he started railing against “Christianism”. I find the term “Christianism” repugnant, and its connotations of moral equivalence with Islamists.
That said, Andrew has recently been obsessing about McCain’s cross in the dirt, claiming that McCain plagiarized the story from Solzhenitsyn. Obviously, Andrew can not imagine that two people can share a silent moment of faith, something that occurs daily in people’s lives, whether they are in extremely horrible circumstances in concentration camps, or simply living their ordinary lives in the suburbs. If Andrew had watched the 1951 movie Quo Vadis or any of the Roman sagas of that time he’d be saying that Solzhenitsyn imitated Hollywood.
the McCain people must be ecstatic to have any more focus on his painful POW experiences.
What makes Andrew’s obsession with McCain’s story downright odd is that the McCain campaign’s Christmas ad mentioned it months ago. It’s nothing new. Here’s the video:
I’m not sure why Andrew’s obsessed with this particular item. It speaks a lot more about him and his own doubts than what it says about McCain.
What is quite well known beyond ANY shadow of a doubt is that Senator John McCain spent five years in captivity for serving his country during which time he was brutalized to such a severe extent that he still carries the scars and handicap from that captivity.
And all Andrew Sullivan and a significant number of new media members on the Left care about is whether or not a North Vietnamese prison guard drew a cross in the sand with a stick some 40 years ago?
A long-time friend of this blog emailed asking how come I hadn’t posted much on France for the past couple of months.
The main reason is that I’ve been out of town, first in Florida and then in California, and have been catching up with a couple of other projects.
But another reason is that most of my commentary was centered around how French government-owned channel France2 sees American news, and France2 now doesn’t allow Americans to watch their TV broadcasts at their website. If you go to 20 Heures/Le Journal (the evening news), you get a message that reads,
YOU CAN NOT SEE THIS BROADCAST
Because it is only accessible to the countries that are active members of the EBU.
WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING
I suppose us non-members are expected to watch the filtered-for-foreign-consumption version at France 24. Bear in mind that France24, Chirac’s brainchild, was set up to present “a positive image of France” to the world.
After moving my blog from Blogger to Wordpress, I’ve been very pleased with the results, particularly when it comes to pingbacks and trackbacks.
There’s only a couple of minor things left to work out:
1. I tried using Day by Day’s mouseover code but it caused the blog to vanish temporarily. Here’s a second try, with code that Chris Muir himself sent:
I’m thrilled to have heard from Chris himself. He’s one of the great gods of the blogosphere!
(I’m still having a little trouble with the mouseover code, so for now at least, I’ll use the horizontal box.)
2. After the move, Memeorandum can’t seem to be able to find my posts. Whether it’s because my traffic count dropped to zero (really!) because there were several days the blog was down, and then I had the sitemeters turned off for the move and Memeorandum goes by weeks-old stats, or whether they’re looking at the old feed (http://faustasblog.com/atom.xml) instead of the new, correct feed, which is http://faustasblog.com/?feed=rss2 (please subscribe if you haven’t already), or for any other reason, I have no way of knowing.
The Memeorandum spiders work in mysterious ways.
Give a blogger a hand, and link to my posts!
3. Trolls seem to have disappeared, so I’m not having to request commenters to register. However, there’s an inordinate amount of spam comments, from Viagra to “adult” websites. The spammers are talented in following posts threads. For instance, this post attracted chain saw sellers, and this one Indian casinos links.
Unrelated to the Wordpress move, but related to its timing, I am going as a credentialed blogger to the Republican National Convention. If you would like to help me cover my expenses, I’ll be most grateful if you contribute through the PayPal “Donate” button.
And, last but not least, a big hug of thanks to all of you who support my daily podcasts. I am very grateful for all your kind comments and hope you will continue to listen daily. Please invite your friends to listen. As I say in the podcasts, Latin America doesn’t exist in a vaccum, and what happens in our hemisphere is at least as important as news from more far-away places.
This was not your usual political TV show. Warren — Pastor Rick, around here — asked big questions, about big subjects; he wasn’t concerned about what appeared on the front page of that morning’s Washington Post. And his simple, direct, big questions brought out something we don’t usually see in a presidential face-off; in this forum, as opposed to a read-the-prompter speech, or even a debate focused on the issues of the moment, the candidates were forced to call on everything they had — the things they have done and learned throughout their lives. And the fact is, John McCain has lived a much bigger life than Barack Obama. That’s not a slam at Obama; McCain has lived a much bigger life than most people. But it still made Obama look small in comparison. McCain was the clear winner of the night.
Finally, there was the question of abortion. In the days leading up to the forum, pro-lifers had been worried that Warren was not going to include a question on the issue, focusing instead on things like poverty, AIDS, and the “new” evangelical agenda. But Warren brought it up, simple and straight. “At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?” he asked Obama.
“Well, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade,” Obama answered. “But let me just speak more generally about the issue of abortion because this is something obviously the country wrestles with. One thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is there is a moral and ethical content to this issue. So I think that anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue, I think, is not paying attention. So that would be point number one.” Obama went on to say that he is pro-choice. Even for people who agreed with him, it wasn’t a terribly impressive answer.
An hour later, when Warren asked McCain the same thing, he got this: “At the moment of conception. I have a 25-year pro-life record in the Congress, in the Senate, and as president of the United States, I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro-life policies.”
“Okay — we don’t have to go longer on that one,” Warren said, quickly moving on.
Obama had nothing to win on the question; if anything, he seemed wary of saying something that might anger his pro-choice base. But McCain had a lot at stake with this group, and his answer seemed to settle the concerns of social conservatives who have been rattled by reports that he might be considering a pro-choice running mate. While many evangelicals have softened on the issue of gay marriage, they wanted to hear a solid, clear statement from McCain on abortion. “Abortion and marriage are still pivotal issues…but I think that abortion is probably more pivotal than marriage,” Marlys Popma, the Iowa social conservative who is now McCain’s national coordinator for evangelical issues, told me after the forum. “Abortion is still very, very solid with this group, even the younger ones [who are more liberal on marriage]. Life is a real delineating factor.”
Nice Deb shreds to ribbons Obama’s statements. Make sure to read her post.
Obama’s immoral objection to the legislation protecting infants who survive abortion is particularly troublesome. And this campaign realizes it. Obama has lied about his opposing the bill, even when the law clearly stated that it only applied to infants born alive:
Obama himself lied about the bill he torpedoed in 2003 that would have required medical providers to give normal medical attention to infants born alive during an abortion.
With a straight face, Obama chastised others for not abiding by the precepts of Matthew 25, when he had a chance to do the same and failed. For example, instead of choosing to protect and care for the least of his brothers, the unborn, by supporting a bill that would protect those born alive after failed abortion attempts, he voted against the bill. (Obama can’t keep straight his reasons for voting against the bill. Also see Life Lies.)
Who among us is more vulnerable and needy than an infant, unborn or otherwise? Obama the “Christian” said he would not yield when it comes to a woman’s right to have her baby slaughtered.
To Obama, America’s “greatest moral failure” isn’t that babies are murdered; it’s that our “wealthy and powerful” country isn’t giving more money to the poor. (See Carol Platt Liebau’s comment on that.) Never mind that Americans give billions of dollars in charity each year, uncoerced by the government.
Since McCain clearly came out ahead on that debate, now Andrea Mitchell and the NYT claim that it was because McCain cheated, i.e., Mitchell and the NYT are repeating the Obama campaign’s spin. Betsy nails it:
Mitchell also seems to be missing how illuminating that whispered accusation is. They’re at the same time revealing how badly they think their guy did; how impossible it seems to them that their guy could do worse than the old guy; and how little they think of Rick Warren and the Saddleback Church.
Welcome to the Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean. If you would like your posts included in the carnival, please email me: faustaw2 “at” gmail “dot” com.
In attendance Saturday were the presidents of Chile, Colombia, Equatorial Guinea and Haiti, which shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.
Taiwan’s new president, Ma Ying-jeou, came to meet with Fernandez and strengthen relations with a shrinking list of 23 countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan instead of rival China.
Leftist presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Evo Morales of Bolivia, who have increased state control of the economy in their countries, saluted Lugo as a revolutionary brother when they arrived on Thursday.
…
CONSERVATIVES STAY AWAY
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Argentine President Cristina Fernandez came to Asuncion for the swearing in and were met by a front-page editorial in ABC Color newspaper, calling on them to pay higher prices for electricity produced in Paraguay from dams their countries financed.
…
The region’s more conservative and pro-Washington leaders, from Colombia, Mexico and Peru, sent emissaries to the inauguration.
the facts of the case could not be denied, a suitcase full of US$ 800,000 in cash, caught in a country friendly to Chavez, arriving in an airplane chartered by PDVSA and filled with PDVSA employees and Argentinean Government officials.
PARAGUAY
