Blog Roll on The O’s Speech
By NancyA on August 30, 2008 at 8:07 AM in Andrew Sullivan, Barack Obama, Obama, Women
Hot Air seemed to be an appropriate blog to start with considering the location of the O’s speech and its “grandeur”, a bit over the top. Certainly didn’t make this Kansas Tornado find him any less elitist. And it absolutely made me feel my blue collar roots grow deeper and more entrenched. Obama you missed in this working house!
Ed Morrisey at Hot Air had this to say about the Obama speech. He said it was “more of the same, only less”. Ed’s appraisal of the speech was great, he highlighted the lack of specifics.
Instead, Obama essentially mailed in his usual stump speech. While people waited to hear specifics, Obama only offered slogans. Meanwhile, he threw in the same attacks that his campaign has made for the last four weeks against John McCain and offered more bluster about having a debate on foreign policy, national security, and patriotism without agreeing to actually meet McCain to do it.
Andrew Sullivan from The Daily Dish had this to say:
It was a deeply substantive speech, full of policy detail, full of people other than the candidate, centered overwhelmingly on domestic economic anxiety. It was a liberal speech, more unabashedly, unashamedly liberal than any Democratic acceptance speech since the great era of American liberalism. But it made the case for that liberalism – in the context of the decline of the American dream, and the rise of cynicism and the collapse of cultural unity. His ability to portray that liberalism as a patriotic, unifying, ennobling tradition makes him the most lethal and remarkable Democratic figure since John F Kennedy.
Personally I heard some of Hillary’s stump speech intermingled in the O’s speech. Just didn’t cut the deal when he had to borrow once again from Hillary! It may have sounded “patriotic” to Sullivan, he may have worn a “flag” pin, all I heard and saw was dead veterans in the crowd…I know I borrowed that from Obama!
And the fireworks, this isn’t the 4th of July, you know!…more on the Obamessiah from Powerline.
Fireworks! The perfect end to an evening of BS slinging of historic proportions. Barack Obama is a demagogue who will stoop to any lie or distortion; the question is how many people he can fool. On that, the jury is out. The answer will emerge between now and November.
As I was listening to the speech I was tearing the speech apart, pointing out to my daughter all the lies his speech pointed out. We chatted up the flip flops…as I was wagging my red, white and blue decorated flip flop at the TV….it had the whole list of the O’s flips.
More from Powerline:
Obama outlined, in the vaguest terms possible, countless billions or trillions of new federal spending. How would he pay for it? By “closing corporate loopholes”–like what? The idea that Obama’s orgy of spending can be funded by “closing corporate loopholes” is frankly childish. By increasing taxes on the top 5% of taxpayers, i.e., precisely those who are grossly over-taxed already. The top 5% already pay 60% of all federal income taxes. And by “eliminating programs that no longer work.” Really? Which ones? No one seriously imagines that Obama–let alone the Democratic Congress!–has any intention of eliminating any significant government programs.
Obama says he wants to become independent of foreign oil in ten years. How? By tapping natural gas reserves. I wonder whether Obama, unlike Nancy Pelosi, understands that natural gas is a fossil fuel for which we must drill offshore, in ANWR, etc. There was perhaps some news here: Obama also came out for developing nuclear energy, yet another flip-flop. But does anyone imagine that nuclear energy development would go forward in a Democratic Congress and White House? In one of his many cheap shots, Obama said that we import three times as much foreign oil as when John McCain went to Washington. That’s no doubt true, because the Democratic Party has enacted legislation that makes it illegal to develop our domestic resources.
Obama said he is happy to debate John McCain about who has the judgment and temperament to guide foreign policy. Of course, he has had many opportunities to do so, and has ducked them. Does this mean that Obama will now accept McCain’s challenge to a series of town hall appearances? But what about Obama’s foreign policy judgment? He barely mentioned Iraq–once, in the distant past, his signature issue–but never referred at all to the surge. Obama was dead wrong on the most important foreign policy issue that has arisen during his time in the Senate, and he failed even to mention it, let alone try to justify his error.
Rather weirdly, Obama attacked McCain for alleged unwillingness to “follow Osama bin Laden to the cave where he lives.” If this means anything, it means that Obama is still in favor of invading Pakistan. Again, no one really believes Obama will do this; it’s just another example of how he doesn’t feel any obligation to conform his words to reality.
He says we “don’t deter Iran by talking tough,” so how, then, do we deter Iran? Obama offers no clue. Likewise with Georgia; “talking tough” won’t stop the Russians. True enough; deterring the Russians requires military capability. Yet Obama has pledged to reduce our military capability. So how, exactly, are the Russians to be stopped?
And I thought it would be great to hear from an Ol’ Broad. She is a very staunch right winger. What can I say?
Obama draws parallels to Martin Luther King Jr.
Embarking on the final leg of his historic presidential run, Barack Obama on Thursday invoked the promise of Martin Luther King in a pledge to end “the broken politics in Washington and the failed presidency of George W. Bush.”
Before nearly 90,000 flag-waving supporters in an open-air NFL stadium, Obama accepted his party’s nomination in a quest to become the nation’s first African-American president — 45 years to the day after King delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
I can hear Dr. King crying from Heaven at the thought that his dream has been pre-empted and turned into something it was never meant to be.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
And more from the Ol’ Broad. Her comments here highlight the problem Obama still has with National Security.
“If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander in chief, that’s a debate I’m willing to have,” Mr. Obama said last night, accepting the Democratic presidential nomination before a crowd of 75,000 in the highly unusual venue of an outdoor football stadium.
Mr. Obama invoked one of the hallmarks of his campaign, his opposition to the war in Iraq, as he painted Mr. McCain as a key supporter of the strategy that put America’s military focus on Baghdad while Al Qaeda regrouped in Afghanistan.
Obama regurgitated his 2002 anti-war speech meme, the one from 2002 that was reproduced with canned applause, the same one ignored by the media in 2002. Yeah! That memorable one!
The American Prospect…..Obama, the American Prospect, the prospect of that when considered in the face of some tough National Security issues and Russia, The Bear, and its tough action…..scary. Here is what Ezra Klein had to say on the O’s speech.
This has been the most aggressive speech of the week. And the most substantive I’ve seen Obama give. It’s not a thematic address: It’s not about hope or values or the universality of the American experience of the illusory obstacles that divide us. It’s concrete. It’s about the failure of the Republican Party, and the promises of the Democratic Party. Internet is spotty and the speech is ongoing, so for now, this is an open thread on his speech.
I am rather opinionated about Obama. I dissected his speech as he was speaking and remembered all his flips and lies! I was less kind than Ezra was.
Here are some words from the comments at Ezra’s place:
I was really hoping that he’d do something for party unity and say something to the many women who are hurting from sexism in the primaries… at least acknowledge it, perhaps even promise to increase representation of women in government.
I expected that the O wouldn’t really address the sexism. He seems to have a blind spot. Obama said “the women have to get over it, I have a campaign to run against McCain”. I have paraphrased here of course.
Yuval Levin at The Corner said this about the O’s speech.
I thought Obama’s speech was better than Biden’s though not as good as either of the Clintons’ speeches. It was a decent text, and a reasonably good performance, though Obama has done a whole lot better on both fronts in the past. Given his considerable talent, he could have done much better. But it wasn’t bad. It was a more traditional liberal Democratic speech than he normally gives, and that certainly must have turned off Republicans (it turned off this one, let me tell you) and might have left some independents cold, but being perceived as a generic Democrat is not such a bad thing in this particular election year, alas. What it didn’t do, though, was answer the basic question the McCain campaign has worked to plant in voters’ minds: what makes this guy think he’s qualified and ready to be president?
What makes anyone think this guy can be president. His resume? No. His time in the Illinois Senate? No. His time in the US Senate? No.
I am reminded of a burger commercial! I can’t remember whose commercial it was but it had a line about, where’s the beef! Well when I look at his speech and consider his lack of experience, I feel like I am looking at an empty bun, asking where’s the beef?
by Ronald Scott
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