Those who have seen him in action have probably noticed something weird about America’s favorite Democratic presidential candidate with a decent jump shot. Obama’s always so … hopeful. Is it all the coke and the weed? Or is he consuming more prescription meds than Cindy McCain on a six-day bender at the Naval infirmary?READ THE REST

The NAFTA - Obama story gets more interesting.I called CTV to verify the story, especially given the Obama campaign’s cries that it’s “inaccurate.” After asking Greg McIsaac of CTV if they were sticking by their story, he quickly called me back with verification. The facts of our story are accurate.

Then why are the traditional media and Obama blogs pushing Obama’s side of the story that the CTV story is “innacurate?” That an embassy spokesperson alone proves the reporting is wrong? Back channels exist, which means skepticism should apply, especially with CTV standing by the facts of their story:

Within the last month, a top staff member for Obama’s campaign telephoned Michael Wilson, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, and warned him that Obama would speak out against NAFTA, according to Canadian sources.

The staff member reassured Wilson that the criticisms would only be campaign rhetoric, and should not be taken at face value. … ..

Obama staffer gave warning of NAFTA rhetoric

Will the journalistic stenography on behalf of Mr. Obama ever end?

Other talk:

Just when you think identity politics can’t parody itself any better (or worse), along comes a new set of race-mongers with an even more absurd set of grievances.A story in today’s Washington Post reads like a lead story in The Onion (via HA Headlines):

When Barack Obama announced his candidacy for president last year, some observers questioned whether the senator from Illinois was “black enough” to embody the hopes and aspirations of African Americans.Now a variation on that theme has emerged: Is Fred Armisen, who is not African American, “black enough” to embody Obama on “Saturday Night Live”?

READ FULL POST HERE

“It’s a constant sense of guilt,” Obama, dressed simply in a blue sweater with a triple strand of pearls, tells the women of her own dilemma as a working mother. “It’s guilt, feeling guilty all the time.”

“Obama does it again. In what seems to be a continuing pattern, Senator Barack Obama threw African-Americans under the bus once again. During [Tuesday] night’s MSNBC debate with Senator Hillary Clinton, when tackling moderator Tim Russert’s question about nutso Louis Farrakhan’s semi-endorsement of him and Farrakhan’s past statement that Judaism is a ‘gutter religion’, Sen. Obama pompously noted that he went to Dr. King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church during recent King Day observances and gave a speech in which he denounced anti-Semitism within the African-American community.While trying to demonstrate his record against anti-Semitic rhetoric, Obama asserted the audience at Ebenezer was largely African-American. Then I damn near fell out of my seat when Obama stated in the course of the debate that he plans to be the conduit to rebuild the ‘historic relationship’ between African-Americans and Jews.

 Obama reflected that he would not be a candidate for president of the United States if it were not for ‘a whole host of Jewish-Americans that supported the civil rights movement.’ With this level of pandering, I am beginning to wonder if Senator Barack Obama has some kind of personality flaw. While I have absolutely nothing against Jewish people, why does Obama feel he needs to be the conduit healer of black-Jewish relations? Is it because they are largely bankrolling his campaign? And why has Sen. Obama only taken aim [at] African-Americans with regards to the so-called ‘frayed’ Black-Jewish relations? Has Obama gone to Jewish synagogues to admonish Jews, many who are anti-black and racist, to confront them about their anti-black rhetoric?

 Although I agree with his repudiation of Farrakhan’s past statements, has Senator Obama ‘repudiated’ racist Jews like David Horowitz? If so, I want to know when it occurred. Furthermore, I don’t know one African-American conversing loquaciously about ‘frayed’ Black-Jewish relations. While strengthening relations between all Americans wouldn’t be a bad thing, is improving Black-Jewish relations a priority issue for Black Americans?

Perhaps Obama should have attended the State of The Black Union forum afterall [sic]. Senator Obama seems to have a personal agenda for Black America that Black America doesn’t seem to know. On the contrary, Tavis Smiley was attacked for expressing concerns about Senator Obama and others who chose not to attend the State of The Black Union forum held recently. For crying out loud, Obama has garnered 80-95% of the black vote in states that have held primaries and caucuses thus far. But then again, why should he have attended the State of The Black Union considering the large percentage of African-American votes he’s getting in each state.

 For me, Obama’s persistent ambiguity and pandering with regards to racial issues especially at the expense of African-Americans is very disturbing, and it further disturbs me that the Black community has not made Senator Barack Obama accountable.”

— Terrence Says, a Texas-based black moderate blog that supports Sen. Hillary Clinton for president

Trevor Phillips, chairman of the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, is likely to stir up a hornet’s nest after claiming that Barack Obama might prolong racial divisions in the US, rather than heal them, if he becomes President.In an article entitled ‘Healing postponed’, which appears in the new issue of the UK current affairs magazine Prospect, Phillips - who is black - suggests more forcefully than many US commentators have that Obama’s success is in large part due to white guilt (they’ll vote for him ’so long as they don’t have to live next door to him’), and goes so far as to suggest that he’s taking advantage of racial divisions.

Phillips, whose observations on the failure of multiculturalism in Britain have drawn criticism from white ‘progressives’ such as odious London mayor Ken Livingstone, draws on many of the arguments put forward by Shelby Steele in his book on Obama, A Bound Man, in which he divides America’s black leaders into ‘challengers’ (Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson) whose power derives from real or imagined black victimhood, and bargainers (Cosby, Oprah).

Phillips, like Steel, portrays Obama as the quintessential bargainer, and claims that Obama is more Bill Clinton that JFK…

READ THE REST HERE 

The YouTube link to the video does not identify the source.

Compact fluorescent lamps - those spiral, energy-efficient bulbs popular as a device to combat global warming - can pose a small risk of mercury poisoning to infants, young children, and pregnant women if they break, two reports concluded yesterday.But the reports, issued by the state of Maine and the Vermont-based Mercury Policy Project, urged homeowners to keep using compact fluorescents because their energy-saving benefits far outweigh the risk posed by mercury released from a broken lamp.

They said most danger could be avoided if people exercised common-sense caution, such as not using compact fluorescents in table lamps that could be knocked over by children or pets and properly cleaning up broken bulbs.

READ THE REST

What to do when compact fluorescents crack
• Keep people and pets away. Open windows, and leave the area for 15 minutes before beginning the cleanup.
• Do not use a vacuum cleaner, even on a carpet. This will spread the mercury vapor and dust and potentially contaminate the vacuum.
• Wear rubber gloves.
• Carefully remove the larger pieces and place them in a secure closed container, preferably a glass jar with a metal screw top lid and seal like a canning jar.
• Next, scoop up the smaller pieces and dust using two stiff pieces of paper such as index cards or playing cards.
• Pick up fine particles with duct tape, packing tape, or masking tape, and then use a wet wipe or damp paper towel.
• Put all waste into the glass container, including all material used in the cleanup. Remove the container from your home and call your local solid waste district or municipality for disposal instructions.
• Continue ventilating the room for several hours.
• Wash your hands and face.

As a precaution, consider discarding throw rugs or the area of carpet where the breakage occurred, particularly if the rug is in an area frequented by infants, small children or pregnant women. Otherwise, open windows during the next several times you vacuum the carpet to provide good ventilation.

SOURCES: Maine Bureau of Remediation and Waste Management; Mercury Policy Project

ROBERTS: The only group she still really has is white women, and I do think that there’s some possibility that you will see a sort of reaction among white women. I had the opportunity –STEPHY: Like New Hampshire.

ROBERTS: — to interview Billie Jean King this week. And she said, “You know, I feel like everything I’ve worked for all my life is going out the window,” and there is that sense. I mean, here is this woman who worked hard. She’s done it all the way you’re supposed to do it, and then this cute young man comes in and says a bunch of sweet, you know, nothings, and — and pushes you out of the way. And a lot of women are looking at that and saying, “There goes my life.”

ROBERTS: The truth is, is that for a Republican running against him he can put him, you know, just squarely on the left of the Democratic Party. You know, he’s got a very — very much, you know, ADA, Americans for Democratic Action-approved voting record. He, unlike Hillary Clinton, oddly enough, given the rhetoric, has not reached across the aisle and worked with people in the other party to get things done, which she has done.

***********

MYERS: Hillary Clinton’s options are limited in many ways because she’s a woman. It’s difficult for her to get angry; it’s difficult for her to be sarcastic; when she gets tough, she sounds like a scold; and I think we have a different standard for how women, umm, can approach going negative, getting tough, and making their point than we do for men.

MYERS: The public has different expectations for women, and I think the press has covered her different as a woman. I think one of the things we’ve learned in this campaign is that the playing field still isn’t level. I don’t think you can separate the fact that she’s a woman. I think it’s still easier to be critical of a woman. I think you can say almost anything about a woman, even if it’s based in gender stereotypes without much penalty, and I think we’ve seen that throughout this race.

Oh Boo fucken hoo!

AUSTIN, Texas - In his radio and TV ads that are blanketing Texas, Barack Obama claims a chief executive can make more money “in 10 minutes” than an ordinary worker makes in a year. Obama wants to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, enact a national health plan, offer a $4,000-a-year tuition reimbursement in exchange for national service, and have the government intervene to prevent home foreclosures.

But he doesn’t want anyone

to call him a liberal.

For despite Obama’s vow to build a working majority for change - to win a clear mandate for his progressive agenda, rather than engage in Clinton-like “triangulation” - he’s not yet willing to own the l-word.

Obama seems to have calculated that such labels can be distracting - that some voters have negative associations with the term liberal that obscures their support for such Democratic priorities as affordable healthcare and higher education for all.

He may be right. But his reluctance to own the term in a forthright way is somewhat surprising because Obama has said he wants to be a transformative figure like Ronald Reagan, whose crusade against liberals and big government has dominated American political discourse for almost 30 years.

Read the rest here

My two cents, Hey Hussein! Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal , Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal and another thing Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal and finally, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal!

Tipster JP passes along audio from a Black History Town Hall meeting last night held by Congressional Black Caucus leaders at Howard University in Washington, D.C.California Democrat Rep. Diane Watson, in discussing D.C. representation, channeled New Orleans Mayor Ray “Chocolate City” Nagin. Partial transcript:

Did you know your representatives can not vote? They can only vote in the committee as a whole. So what you’re going to have to do is declare the District [of Columbia] something like a state so they can have a proportional representation who vote. But that would give this district two senators and there are a lot of people on that floor who don’t want to see that occur because if there’s a chocolate city, this is it.

More at Michelle Malkin

The future looks bright for the Earth – but not in the way we’d hoped. The slim chance our planet will survive when the Sun begins its death throes has been ruled out.In a few billion years, the Sun will fuse the last of its hydrogen into helium, turn into a red giant and expand to 250 times its current size. At first, the Sun’s loss of mass will loosen its gravitational pull on Earth, which will allow the planet to migrate to a wider orbit about 7.6 billion years from now.

This process has led some to speculate that the Earth might escape destruction – but survival now seems impossible, says Peter Schröder of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico and Robert Smith of the University of Sussex in the UK.

They created the most detailed model to date of the Sun’s transition to a red giant, based on observations of six nearby red giant stars. Sure enough, they found that Earth’s orbit will widen at first. But Earth will also induce a “tidal bulge” on the Sun’s surface, with its own gravitational pull. The bulge will lag just behind the Earth in its orbit, slowing it down enough to drag it to a fiery demise.

There is one last hope for anybody still living on Earth, the researchers say. In the past, some have suggested that Earth’s orbit could be tweaked by arranging the fly-by of a nearby asteroid to tug at it. This method could potentially maintain Earth’s speed enough to keep it in a widening orbit, they say.

Also check out: The last place on earth to survive when the sun explodes

(CNSNews.com) - A page for Muslim supporters of Sen. Barack Obama — hosted on Obama’s presidential campaign Web site — promotes events sponsored by controversial Islamic groups.Muslim Americans for Obama ‘08, found on Obama’s main campaign site, allows users to create their own page through a “My Obama” option. The Muslim Americans for Obama page also links to a Web site that features lectures by people who have expressed radical Islamic views in the past.

A portion of the “Muslim Americans for Obama” page lists proposals to establish a Muslim American advisory group on U.S. foreign policy; provide prayer areas in public places such as malls, airports, universities and government buildings; institute a law to allow Muslim employees to take time from their work day for prayer; and institute a law against harassment of Muslim women in public areas.

The Obama campaign’s press office did not respond to numerous phone calls and e-mail messages from Cybercast News Service on this matter.

Throughout the campaign, Obama has professed his Christian faith, although his father is a Muslim.

READ THE REST HERE