But now we are finding out that this threat may have been overstated, though I seriously doubt it is as a result of Obama’s claims. Actually, it is worse than that. As it turns out, Climate Scientists Withdraw Journal Claims of Rising Sea Levels.

Say what?

Again, I believe in being a good steward of this planet on which we make our home regardless of how much the claims of global warming may, or may not, be exaggerated. I have long been an environmentalist, and do not feel compelled to change that underlying belief because a bunch of scientists may, or may not, have fudged the data.

But here’s the thing. This is my front yard:

So, not only does this matter to me in a big picture way, it matters to me in a very personal, direct way. As it is, insurance companies like State Farm have stopped insuring people who live on the coast in these here parts like I do (our insurance is with Lloyds of London – I kid you not).

And we get articles like this in our daily newspaper, “Coalition Hoping For Sea Change As Ocean Levels Rise,” that contain information in them that scares the absolute bejesus out of Lowcountry residents, like me:

An international group of climate scientists predicted last fall that sea levels will rise by 23 inches this century as the oceans warm, which would be roughly double the rise documented during the last century.

That prediction from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change did not account for the record-setting pace of melting polar ice, however.

“The potential is so astounding, if it continues,” Duke University Professor Orrin Pilkey said at a panel discussion in Charleston addressing the issue. “I think that 3 to 5 feet is a conservative estimate for coastal management here.”

Holy crappydoo – that would make a HUGE change in terms of where I live right now, especially when we are already getting high tides that leave the water lapping the bottom of our docks. But add to that the fact that this is Hurricane Alley. If waters are truly rising, the impact of a hurricane hitting at the “right” time will surely increase the levels of devastation, will they not?

Well, yes, if THIS article is to be believed, “Study: Warming To Bring Stronger Hurricanes“:

Knutson said the new study, which looks at worldwide projections, doesn’t make clear whether global warming will lead to more or less hurricane damage on balance. But he pointed to a study he co-authored last month that looked at just the Atlantic hurricane basin and predicted that global warming would trigger a 28 percent increase in damage near the U.S. despite fewer storms.

That study suggests category 4 and 5 Atlantic hurricanes — those with winds more than 130 mph — would nearly double by the end of the century. On average, a category 4 or stronger hurricane hits the United States about once every seven years, mostly in Florida or Texas. Recent category 4 or 5 storms include 2004′s Charley and 1992′s Andrew, but not Katrina which made landfall as a strong category 3.

Outside experts praised the work.

The study does a good job of summarizing the current understanding of storms and warming, said Chunzai Wang, a researcher with NOAA who had no role in the study.

I am more confused than ever. These are not abstract issues to me. They are very, very real, impacting people I know, cities I love, and my very home. So, do we believe this research, or do we not?

Which raises the bigger question: When did “Scientific Method” become so incredibly subjective? Who, or what, is gaining from these questionable studies? If there truly is global warming, which I have long believed to be true because I trusted that these scientists were doing their work based not on politics, but DATA, and that is not being called into question, what are we to believe?

Again – these are not abstract questions to me, or to the community in which I live. We have to plan for these kinds of changes, if they are indeed true. We have to plan what to do in the event of such catastrophic changes, for our homes, and even our docks, not to mention our investments. Are they scaring the crap out of us because they know for a fact this is happening, or because there is some other incentive for doing so? The recent article claiming there has been no “global warming” in 15 years seems to contradict the NEW study claiming hurricanes are getting worse BECAUSE of global warming.

Good grief – can someone help me out here?

But what is not being focused on in this book, at least so far, is how clearly it asserts the fix was in AGAINST Hillary Clinton. In each piece thus far, there has been something about the DNC not wanting Hillary Clinton to be the nominee, or the senators with clout secretly backing Obama. In the NY Magazine article, “Saint Elizabeth and the Ego Monster,” there are passages like this:

Edwards never expected to be the third wheel in 2008. The race was going to be Hillary versus him. That was how he saw it from the start. She would be the front-runner, of course. But as sure as night follows day, there would be an alternative, an anti-Hillary, and he would be it.

The Democratic Establishment agreed that there would be—and certainly should be—a viable challenger to Clinton. The party’s pooh-bahs on Capitol Hill were privately terrified about the prospect of Hillary rolling to the nomination. They feared that she was too polarizing to win, that she would drag down House and Senate candidates in red and purple states; and they worried, too, about Bill’s putative affairs (emphasis mine). But while the Clintons themselves regarded Edwards as Hillary’s most formidable rival, there existed a deep wariness about the North Carolinian among his fellow Democrats. In the Senate, in particular, Edwards was regarded almost universally by his former colleagues as a callow, shallow phony. Quietly, the Establishment began a quest to find a different alternative, eventually settling on the unlikely horse that was Obama—with Harry Reid personally, and secretly, urging the Illinois senator to run against Clinton.

So much for the people choosing our nominee, right? I just love that the “pooh-bahs” decided that Hilary was too polarizing. THEY created this hype, along with the Republicans during Bill’s tenure, and with the MSM. But the people who listened to her, who read her policies, who saw how she worked, knew she was exactly who we wanted to run for president

This isn’t the only example out of this book. There is also the claim by the book’s authors that Chuck Schumer secretly supported Obama, though he publicly claimed to support Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, Schumer’s people claim this isn’t true, but again, even taking what the authors wrote with a grain of sand, this doesn’t sound good. The book goes on to claim Schumer encouraged a “get tough” policy against Clinton, and enlisted another senator to support Obama, presumably in his stead:

The book reports that in the summer of 2007, Schumer and others wanted Team Obama to get tougher on Clinton.

At one point, the authors contend, Schumer felt “Obama needed to take a two-by-four to Hillary,” the book says.

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill was tapped as the messenger from the worried senators to the Obama campaign.

She denies feeling any such pressure.

“It wasn’t like he [Schumer] came to me and said, ‘Be for Barack Obama – I gotta be for Hillary,’” McCaskill told the Daily News Saturday. “He never, ever said a word to me that would give the kind of impression [this book seems] to be giving. He was never giving advice to the campaign on how to undermine her.”

What a bunch of back-stabbing conniving Brutus’ these senators are. And the DNC, too, if you ask me.

The glaring fallacy with the logic of the DNC and its minions are the number are Republicans who crossed over for Hillary Clinton. Former dyed-in-the-wool Republicans becoming caucus captains for Hillary in Texas, for example (an example relayed to me by the person who crossed over). All of the post voting showed Hillary Clinton got the majority of Democratic votes AND a large number of Republican votes. Yet the DNC in its infinite “wisdom” decided Hillary Clinton could NOT be the nominee, and worked their asses off to break every rule necessary to make that so.

No doubt, there will be more to this book after it is released this week, but there are some glaring omissions mentioned thus far. Ben Smith noted that Obama was pretty much the same throughout the campaign, thus most of these revelations are about the Clintons, the Edwards, et al. But as one commenter noted:

Where are the stories of how the campaign handled Jerimah (sic) Wright?

Where are the stories about how they had to put a muzzle on Michelle Obama?

Where are the stories about ‘sweetie’ and calling his grandmother a ‘typical white person’?

And who did Obama think he picked when he picked Joe Biden? He must be stupid if he is surprised by how he has acted!

The secret to Obama winning was the media and frankly Mark Halprin doesn’t want to blow that gig.

No kidding. Don’t forget the “Obama and Biden Can’t Stand Each Other” part of this book referenced above, which is sure not getting much play by the MSM:

The relationship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden grew so strained during the 2008 campaign, according to a new book, that the two rarely spoke and aides not only kept Biden off internal conference calls but refused to even tell him they existed.

Instead, a separate campaign call was regularly scheduled between the then-Delaware senator and two of Obama’s top campaign aides – “so that they could keep a tight rein on him,” write journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann in “Game Change,” a long-awaited account of the 2008 campaign.

Uh, yeah. So, the bottom line as far as I can tell from this book so far is this: the Democratic Party committed massive fraud in 2008, costing voters millions of dollars in campaign donations to candidates they had already determined were not going to get the nomination. That is fraud, pure and simple. Not only did I give donations (in the beginning to John Edwards), but I gave a LOT to Hillary Clinton.

If the DNC knew they were never going to let her get the nomination no matter how she performed, no matter how many people voted for her, no matter WHAT, that, to me, is fraud. And they damn well better be held accountable for that, don’t you think?

Your opinions are sought in two polls below, and there are TWO UPDATES:
Which colleges did this yokel go to? Anybody? You are so correct! What percentage of body mass does “white guilt” occupy in this guy, do you think? REALLY? That much? Of course, CNN chose his IReport for publication! It’s so touching, and, um, uh, forward-looking.

Rep. Paul Ryan, get goin’, guy. You’re real presidential timber with the brains and the actual experience!

After all, the American people always choose a person of substance over a symbol. Right?

There are hundreds of resources on the Internet, and countless books and seminar tapes, that advise that one — during a job interview or in any formal setting outside one’s own home — never cross one’s legs. The feet are to be flat on the floor with the legs comfortable resting together.

See the person on the right for how to do it. Do not follow the example of the person to your left:

Photo: Daily Mail

This photograph was sent by a fellow NoQuarter writer who asked, “Does she have to show so much of her thigh?”

The rise of the skirt and the surely unintended display of the thighs is one of the reasons why all experts advise that one does not cross one’s legs in any public setting outside the home.

By the way, don’t you think that the dress worn by the person to your left looks quite suitable for an early evening cocktail party? And don’t you find that the Dior ensemble worn by the person to your right is “quiet” — i.e., it does not call attention to itself? And should not all clothing worn in both formal and professional settings be “quiet,” and not intended to cause the eye to rivet to the clothing but instead to the person?

Here are but a very few of the experts on how to sit properly. They were randomly chosen. You can find hundreds more via Google’s search engine.

“BODY TALK,” by Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D, NonVerbalAdvantage.com:

Don’t Cross Legs:

While some people may think that crossing legs shows that you are comfortable and relaxed, this is not the time or place for crossing legs. Crossing legs is seen as especially inappropriate for women as well. Keep both feet on the floor and refrain from shifting leg positions. You will have plenty of time to stretch and cross your legs when the interview is over and you’re behind your own desk.

“Interview Body Language That Sends the Right Message“:

Be aware of the interview body language message your legs are giving. A lot of leg movement is both distracting and indicates nervousness. Resting one leg or ankle on top of your other knee makes you look too casual and comes across as arrogant. Crossing your legs high up conveys a defensive attitude in the one-on-one context of a job interview. Crossing them at the ankles or placing both feet flat on the floor conveys a confident and professional look during the job interview.

“How One Should Sit During The Job Interview?“:

• Crossing your legs at the thighs: Too familiar, especially at the beginning of an interview.
• Leaning forward too much: May make some interviewers feel uncomfortable, especially if you’re physically big and talk loudly.
Tips on good sitting practice include:
• Straight and upright body: This is a neutral sitting position that interviewers expect to see.

“Proper attire and etiquette for men and women“:

Wear a Suit – Although women have come a long way in the world of work, skirt suits are still preferred. There is an old saying “Dress the position you want, not the one you have.” Many corporate offices follow the professional look their customers are accustomed to working with and placing confidence in. Longstanding colors such as Blue, Black, Gray, or Brown are the color choice of many executive champions.

The trick is to look conservative and professional. Wear an appropriate length skirt, avoid tight skirts and mini-skirts. Let quality of your suit, followed by the strength of your words to impress your potential employer.

Blouses – A cotton or silk blouse in a neutral color with a simple collar is fine. Do not wear a sleeve-less blouse, just in case you have to take off your jacket. Most conservative offices do not allow sleeveless blouses as proper dress attire. Be sure, to ask about the corporate culture of an office prior rushing out to the interview. With the rise and fall of dot.com companies, much has changed. Make sure your power blouse should fit comfortably, and not appear to be tight, wrinkled or distracting due to loud colors.

In this photo, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton provides a perfect example of both attire and the positioning of one’s feet and legs:

As for the United States of America’s president? Well, perhaps he can sit like that at Camp David while he watches his beloved sports games. But at a formal tea service? Oh my.

See also, this book’s section: Global business etiquette By Jeanette S. Martin, Lillian H. Chaney

Special thanks to G. and P. for the photographs. And thanks to G. for the video update below.

UPDATE: Here’s the title of the EUX.TV video: “Is Michelle Obama pregnant?” My goodness.

And that bow! Isn’t that something?!

This video, which I do not believe we saw on American TV, comes from EUX.TV, which is “an independent webtv channel that reports on European affairs and EU politics.”

EUX.TV is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.

Here is the accompanying text:

After the G20 in London, the NATO meeting on the French-German border, the Obama’s travelled to the Czech Republic for an official EU-US summit.

Obama and his wife Michelle listen to a Czech band at the presidential palace in the Czech capital Prague. Obama is in Prague for a summit with the European Union later on Sunday. The Czech republic currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

YES! The EUX.TV page is titled, “Is Michelle Obama pregnant?”

Update #2: Just in case EUX.TV stops by, we want them to know that Michelle’s stomach looked the same on January 20, 2009:

With every step forward that women in Afghanistan take, violent incidents highlight the fact many still struggle for basic human rights eight years after the ouster of the conservative Taliban regime.

In a speech commemorating International Women’s Day on Sunday, President Hamid Karzai challenged Afghan religious leaders to denounce violence against women and reject traditional practices that treat women as property.

“The forced marriages, the selling of women — these are against Islam,” Karzai told some 600 women gathered in a high school auditorium in the capital, Kabul.

The Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 forced women to stay at home and banned them from appearing in public without a body-covering burqa.

There have surely been improvements, as the article details (it’s an AP article, and they are very picky about having those reprinted). Thank heavens for that.

But that is not the end of the story. The same day President Karzai was speaking to this group of women, a woman, a widow, set herself on fire to escape the poverty in which she lived, and from which she saw no escape:

The incident occurred in an area where scores of women have killed themselves by self-immolation to escape abuse, forced marriages or other oppressive customs. As a widow, Bibi would have been on the bottom rung of traditional Afghan society — undesirable for marriage and unemployable because of her gender.

Even in the cities, where women have made great strides in employment and recognition, there are signs of backsliding in recent years. Karzai noted in his speech that the number of women working in government ministries has actually dropped to 21 percent from an earlier figure of 32 percent.

A U.N. report this week on human rights in Afghanistan said that “threats and intimidation against women in public life or who work outside the home have seen a dramatic increase.”

Things are getting better in some ways for women, but too much is still the same, or getting worse.

And not just in Afghanistan, unfortunately, but in Iraq in which mothers are selling their daughters into prostitution (H/T to Cheneywatch.com). This TIME article describes the far-reaching extent of this practice, with many of the daughters not yet teenagers, some going to our close friends in the Middle East. For the sake of space, I am not reprinting the whole article here, but I urge you to read it all:

…That underworld is a place where nefarious female pimps hold sway, where impoverished mothers sell their teenage daughters into a sex market that believes females who reach the age of 20 are too old to fetch a good price. The youngest victims, some just 11 and 12, are sold for as much as $30,000, others for as little as $2,000. “The buying and selling of girls in Iraq, it’s like the trade in cattle,” Hinda (an undercover human rights worker) says. “I’ve seen mothers haggle with agents over the price of their daughters.”

The trafficking routes are both local and international, most often to Syria, Jordan and the Gulf (primarily the United Arab Emirates). The victims are trafficked illegally on forged passports, or “legally” through forced marriages. A married female, even one as young as 14, raises few suspicions if she’s travelling with her “husband.” The girls are then divorced upon arrival and put to work. (See Iraq’s return to “normalcy”.)

Nobody knows exactly how many Iraqi women and children have been sold into sexual slavery since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, and there are no official numbers because of the shadowy nature of the business. Baghdad-based activists like Hinda and others put the number in the tens of thousands. Still, it remains a hidden crime; one that the 2008 US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report says the Iraqi government is not combating. Baghdad, the report says, “offers no protection services to victims of trafficking, reported no efforts to prevent trafficking in persons and does not acknowledge trafficking to be a problem in the country.”

Mere children are being sold into sexual slavery in Iraq, and it has gotten WORSE under our watch. Sadly there is more, horrifying information in this article, but Hinda’s experience is pertinent:

Hinda the activist-investigator also knows what’s its like to be betrayed by family and considered human merchandise. Raped at 16, she was disowned by her family and left homeless. In many parts of the Arab world, the stigma of compromised chastity, even if it was stolen, is such that victims are at best outcasts and at worst killed for “dishonoring” their family or community. Desperate and destitute, Hinda turned to prostitution.

Now 33, she is using her knowledge of the industry to infiltrate trafficking rings across the country. She gathers information about the victims, where they are from, how much they’re sold for and who is buying them. Most often she poses as a buyer for overseas clients, a cover that enables her to snap pictures of victims and claim that they are for her potential customers. She drags out the negotiations for several days, knowing that the victims are usually sold during that period. Playing a disappointed pimp helps keep her cover intact, she says. She can’t rescue the girls, but the hope is that when the government decides to take trafficking seriously, her work and that of others will eventually help prosecute offenders and identify victims. She moves away from each trafficking ring as quickly as she can. To linger would be to invite suspicion.

But these days, she says suspicion is getting harder to avoid. She has been beaten before, by the security guards of pimps who suspect her of encouraging young victims to escape or offering them help. But in the past week she has received several death threats, some so frightening and persistent that she penned a farewell letter to her mother. “I’m scared. I’m scared that I’ll be killed,” she says, wiping away her tears. “But I will not surrender to that fear. If I do it means I’ve given up and I won’t do that. I have to work to stop this.”

So do we. But not just in Iraq, or Afghanistan. We, too, have a government that needs to work to stop this abuse of women. I have written before about domestic violence, and rape, but in more general terms. Today, though, it will be more specific. Today, I speak out for our women in the military. Yes, I said the women in our military. More than 1 in 4 women, officers and enlisted, are either raped or sexually assaulted. More than 25% of our women in uniform are sexually assaulted. And they are assaulted by fellow military personnel (96%). These women are putting their lives on the line for US, and while in the service of our country, over 25% are assaulted in the most horrendous way possible for a woman (at least in my opinion).

The statistics above came from a House panel on Friday, March 7, 2009. Again, thanks to Cheneywatch.com for bringing these to my attention. If you do not have time to watch all 4 of them, please watch the first one:

I am sickened by this, absolutely sickened. But it is cultural, unfortunately, here in the States. Valuing men above women, using women as a means to an end, using women as objects, treating them with callous disregard and with violence.

In our military, where women go to serve their nation, too, too many are being subjected to the most despicable form of violence, taking something by force that can never be returned, and from which most never fully recover. By their contemporaries. With whom they are forced to remain in contact. Can you even begin to imagine the psychological effects this has on them?

We saw the most qualified person, a woman, with the majority of support by members of her party, forced to concede her victory to a lesser qualified, far more inexperienced man. This was able to happen because of the tacit acceptance of rampant sexism and outright misogyny (as a reminder – misogyny means HATRED of women), perpetrated by men in that party and in the media, as well as from the women who wanted, no, craved, men’s approval. It is a matter of degrees, and in this country, we have made it quite clear – even the very best, most qualified women are not as good, not as WORTHY, as the worst of con men with little to offer.

And this has effects on all of us. The lessons it teaches us, our daughters, our nieces, our grandchildren, is that they are less than, they are tools to be used, they are objects. Like Afghanistan and Iraq, while some strides may be made, there is always a price to be paid, and too many women in our country, in our military, are paying that price. That is simply unacceptable, and it must stop. Now.

Back in the 1920s Dr. Hermann Rorschach tossed some ink on a piece of paper, quickly folded it in half, and opened it up to find a mirror-image splatter. He tried his “accidental inkblots” on some of his psychoanalysis patients, asking them “What do you see?”

So was born the famous Rorschach Inkblot Test, presenting people with an ambiguous stimulus that requires them to project their own strong feelings, values, wishes, needs, and aspirations, in an attempt to find meaning in something where none actually exists.

Barack Obama is a Human Rorschach Test. People see what they want to see.

He is, pure and simple, an ambiguous stimulus.

Record of baptism – Not released
Embossed, signed paper Certification of Live Birth – Not released
Occidental College records – Not released
Columbia College records – Not released
Columbia Thesis paper – “not available”
Activities as a “community organizer” (main “experience” claim)- Unclear
Harvard College records – Not released
Selective Service Registration – Not released
Medical records – One page
Illinois State Senate records – Not available, maybe lost
Illinois State Senate schedule – Not available
Law practice client list – Not released
Harvard Law Review articles published — None found
University of Chicago scholarly articles – None found
Access to research material on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (Obama/Ayers connection)– Denied

and, last but hardly least:

Minutes of Obama’s Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs since 2007—responsible for all matters within the European continent (except central Asia) relating to: (1) terrorism and non-proliferation; (2) crime and illicit narcotics; (3) U.S. foreign assistance programs; and (4) the promotion of U.S. trade and exports– Not available because the committee has yet to meet! This is leadership???

But Obama himself said it best: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” –The Audacity of Hope

I TOTALLY rest my case.

I see the folly of my ways. It isn’t that it has much to do with me, it is about the depth of my “maternal” instinct. It hurts my “heart” to see Obama, a presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party, so unfeeling, that he cares nothing for the life of a baby!

If my children had come early, barely clinging to life, I would have done everything in my power to save their lives. I was very fortunate not to experience caring for a sick child, but I had many friends who did experience it. My children are my legacy I will leave to this world when I am no longer here, they are special to me as are all babies and children. They are our future and as such we must offer them every chance at life. Even if we are required to enact laws to do it!

The original IL bill.The IL Senate ammendment.And finally the bill passed in the US Senate, passed unanimously by a vote of 98-0.

I am definitely educated now. I have viewed several videos, read a few articles and even the paper from the pro-life people. I can honestly say I am appalled. Obama’s actions are reprehensible!

On Sunday Obama got testy with David Brody on the Brody files. He went so far to accuse “people”, me and you of lying on this subject! We have it wrong! The presumptuous nominee could never be wrong! How arrogant! Listen to his words!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Obama you are digging your hole deeper and deeper. If I knew about this 5 years ago, I would have protested your candidacy as soon as you began to run for the presidency. You would have lost me with your lies and more lies on this subject! The only “gift” I have received from you, the resolve to do everything in my power to see you go down in defeat. You are a callous man with deep flaws especially about the life of a baby!

Okay – what did you see? As promised, Hillary Clinton will be speaking – among 274 other people. Okay – not really that many, but now she is one of TEN – 10 – speakers. Oh, yes – all kinds of people are thrown in there. I guess this way, they can try and (micro)manage her impact on the Convention crowd. But get THIS: SHE is not the Keynote Speaker. Oh, no – that honor goes to FORMER Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Mark Warner. Who, you say?? Yeah. See, I know him because I lived in Virginia when he was governor. But really – seriously – honestly – out of ALL the people Obama could have picked (and HE is the one who sets the schedule), he picked Mark Warner. Yep.

Oh, but wait. It gets even better than this. The candidate Planned Parenthood and NARAL picked, Planned Parenthood for the second time EVER with a presidential candidate, that one? Barack Obama? Guess who he picked to speak that night? Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. No, I am not kidding! He DID! On the anniversary of Women’s Suffrage, not only did he not pick a WOMAN for Keynote Speaker, but he picked an ANTI-CHOICE Senator to speak on the anniversary of Women’s Suffrage!! Can you just IMAGINE – just IMAGINE, the hew and cry if it was ANY OTHER MAJOR GROUP, and someone who was opposed to their ability to CHOOSE their own course in life, was picked to speak?? You know people would be going NUTS. Rightly so. What a slap in the face.

And if this is not enough to get your blood boiling (just consider this a cardiovascular workout, courtesy of Barack Obama – he’s such a giver), there are only FIVE – 5 – speakers on Monday night, August 25th. No, I am not kidding. Senator Clinton gets squeezed like a lemon, but MICHELLE OBAMA will kick everything off, being introduced by her BROTHER. And Obama’s sister, the one who has his same BIRTH CERTIFICATE NAME, Soetoro, will be there, too. So, it’s Family Night at the DNC Convention. Oh, and Claire McCaskill and Nancy Pelosi will round out that evening. I am sure you are ALL dying to see THAT. Hahahahaha!!!! Yeah, me neither.

So, here it is – a BIG F-U to women in general, and Hillary in particular, courtesy of Barack Obama, the Big Uniter. Oh, he’s a uniter alright – uniting us in hatred of him and the DNC. And the DNC bears HUGE responsibility for not just shoring up, but PICKING the most unqualified, inexperienced, arrogant, narcissisitc, sexist candidate I have seen in my entire life. The one who, having mostly his family speak on August 25th, has almost completed the DNC becoming the BOC. Yes, the transformation is almost complete. Thanks, Howard, Nancy, Donna, Ted, John, John, Claire, et. al., for propping up the worst candidate EVER. And for stabbing in the back one of the BEST candidates ever, while also twisting the blade in for all women. That takes some doing, but somehow you managed it. What pieces of work, the whole lot of them…

So, yes – “Babylon” it is.

How would you characterize a man who:

has played the race card to great effect repeatedly and with impunity throughout his campaign, and gotten the mainstream press and the Democratic elite to gamely play along;

has insulted or ignored anyone who didn’t vote for him;

is too politically shortsighted to realize that by nixing a roll call for Hillary and not placing her name in nomination, he is probably costing himself the election, further alienating her voters.

Forgive me, but he doesn’t sound very unifying.

More telling are Senator Obama’s unscripted moments – very Bush-like. I know Senator Obama reads a teleprompter well, and perhaps imitates the cadence of Rev. Martin Luther King. But the message underneath rings hollow.

In moments of crisis, and the leader of the free world will encounter many, there may not be time for 20 scriptwriters to pull him together if he himself cannot exhibit the proper leadership to guide this nation. He will not have a long weekend as he did in creating his “scintillating speech on race” to distract from the debacle that was Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Jonah Goldberg’s op-ed in the LA Times yesterday, Obama Without His Script, was a welcome surprise, considering the source – a newspaper that, with rare exception, has given the newbie Illinois Senator glowing coverage. The subtitle…

Judging by his reaction to the Georgia-Russia crisis, Obama’s make-believe presidency isn’t ready for prime time…

…makes it look as though, at least for this columnist, the bloom is off the rose. Mr. Goldberg’s recent columns hit both Obama and McCain pretty evenly, but for the LA Times even to print this, wow! Senator Obama must have made a boo boo:

The Obama campaign has for months pursued the odd strategy of having the junior senator from Illinois act as if he were already kinda-sorta president of the United States. In June, it tried sticking a quasi-presidential seal on his lectern. Then in July, he conducted what seemed like official state visits with foreign leaders and delivered something like a “prenaugural” address in Berlin, inviting comparisons to JFK and Reagan.
…
If the would-be president can seem plausibly presidential, voting for him might not seem like such a crapshoot. It all makes sense, even if it fosters an air of presumptuousness.
…
The invasion of Georgia elicited a wan written communique instead of the sort of exciting rhetoric we’ve come to expect from his make-believe presidency. But he did make it in front of the cameras the next day for a rally celebrating his vacation in Hawaii. He promised “to go body surfing at some undisclosed location.”

During Obama’s make-believe presidency, we’ve heard about bold action, about the courage to talk to dictators. When faced with a real “3 a.m. moment,” Obama – who boasts about 200 foreign policy advisors, broken into 10 subgroups – proclaims, “I’m going to get some shave ice.”
…
Indeed, President Bush’s jaunt to the Olympics as a “sports fan” should also have been cut short the moment tanks started rolling over a country he’d proclaimed a “beacon of liberty” during his visit there in 2005. By Monday, both Bush and Obama were playing catch-up to Sen. John McCain, who seemed to have grasped the gravity from the get-go…

Putting Bush and Obama in the same sandbox and well behind McCain’s much touted handling of the 3 A.M. moment is not the kind of press Obama wants at this point.

But, for once, in the press, the assessment is honest. This country doesn’t need any more versions of someone caught flatfooted reading “My Pet Goat” instead of standing up and taking appropriate action to get on top of the situation.

Referring to Obama’s statement on the crisis, Steve Huntley, in yesterday’s Chicago Sun Times made the point:

It took first-term Sen. Barack Obama three tries to get it right. Headed for a vacation in Hawaii, the presumed Democratic candidate for commander in chief issued an even-handed statement, urging restraint by both sides. Later Friday, he again called for mutual restraint but blamed Russia for the fighting. The next day his language finally caught up with toughness of McCain’s.

Making matters worse, Obama’s staff focused on a McCain aide who had served as a lobbyist for Georgia, charging it showed McCain was “ensconced in a lobbyist culture.” Obama’s campaign came off as injecting petty partisan politics into an international crisis. This was not a serious response on behalf [of] a man who aspires to be the leader of the Free World. After all, what’s so bad about representing a small former Soviet republic struggling to remake itself as a Western-style democracy?

The comparison between the two candidates served to emphasize the strength McCain’s experience would bring to the White House in a dangerous world.

Obama’s favored approach to international issues, diplomatic talks, failed to stop Russia’s invasion. Vladimir Putin, a KGB bull in the former Soviet Union, wants to restore Russia as the supreme power of Eurasia…

However the world’s newest war ends, America’s leadership must recognize and respond to the underlying dynamic of Russia’s resurgent aggressive instincts — the power bestowed on Moscow by its oil and gas riches.

I am not endorsing Senator McCain. I think by now, everyone knows who my candidate is. Hillary exhibited great foresight about this crisis. But Senator Obama is making newbie mistakes all over the place. These are schoolyard games – harping about lobbyists at a time like this? There are far larger issues at stake here.

Mr. Goldberg of the Times further observes:

[Obama] has been playacting at being presidential in order to convince voters that we live in a “new moment” with “new challenges” – and that he is the president we need for this new era.

This moment calls for more than playacting, yet Obama looks lost without a presidential script. Events in the Caucasus – and, for that matter, in Beijing – suggest that the times aren’t so new after all. Two powerful antidemocratic foes are once again flexing their muscles at a moment when America seems weak and distracted.

That is not a new challenge but a very old one. Perhaps this is not a time for a novice spouting grand rhetoric about a new page in history, but for someone who’s actually read the pages of some old, but still relevant, books. Perhaps this is not the time for playacting.

Perhaps it is not the time for body surfing?

Obama presents grave cause for worry. He may actually be naïve enough to think that he can just “delegate” the yucky stuff and someone else is going to do the actual clean up.

I have witnessed many of his supporters recite a similar mantra – “He’ll surround himself with great people. Congress does everything anyway. He has really good judgment.” This is the President they want? A figurehead to make a “speech” and leave the rest of the work to the grown ups? This Democratic Congress isn’t doing very well – and after the behavior I have witnessed these past seven months, these are not the people I want ‘running the show.’

Aside from choosing David Axelrod (better known as Axel-Rove) as his slash and burn campaign manager, what were his good decisions exactly? I reference here my earlier assessment of why I cannot support him and his prior ‘boneheaded’ actions. This is another way he reminds me of Bush. Every time I think I have looked into the nadir, Obama does something else to earn my mistrust. I have actually started to get numb and lose track.

His shocking reversal on FISA, for example, from a supposedly dearly held belief in the sanctity of the fourth amendment betrays an arrogant “well, too bad, where else are you gonna go” attitude, taking advantage of and even diminishing the value of his most fervent supporters. Tiresome as it may be, I will remind people once again that Senator Clinton voted correctly on FISA. What happened to the filibuster Senator Obama promised us?

No off-shore oil drilling, anyone? Another one of his campaign promises. To quote Senator Obama, “Words, just words.”

But Senator Obama would be gratified to know a number of those original supporters are still making excuses for him. I would imagine it is getting both exhausting and frustrating for them.

Further, his plan to ‘accept’ the nomination at Invesco Field before an audience of 75,000 smacks simultaneously of hubris and bullying – just squash the competition, the detractors, the protesters with a wall of noise and size.

This is reminiscent of George Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” declaration where, to quote General Wes Clark, Bush “pranced around on the deck of that aircraft carrier.”

I was a lifelong Democrat until two months ago. I certainly hoped we’d have a better choice at this point than to be force fed a man so arrogant and inexperienced; someone who is more interested in image management than rolling up his sleeves to do the work required to deal with the world that is – not the world he wishes could be. Perhaps he really believes that he alone can ‘heal our planet.’ Unfortunately, this is grandiose to the point of being delusional.

Leaders in other countries will not be so easily hypnotized just because our American press has been. Putin, for example, may not get a ‘tingle up his leg’ as Chris Matthews has.

Surely it has occurred to the Party elite that if Democrats cannot win the election in this ‘no-lose year,’ with the Republican brand damaged as it is, the Democratic Party will be over. Not that that would be a bad thing in its current state.

More and more, I remember Hillary’s claim to be ‘ready on day one.’ I believe she is. And we’re going to need somebody who is.

Delusions are not required. Solutions are.