This is an odd tale of poor record keeping, tossing away personal items left for soldiers killed, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, whistle-blowing, and the firing of the whistle-blower. It ends with an investigation of the Director of the Cemetery, but I’ll save the results of that for later. I am just shaking my head in disbelief that this is going on at the National Cemetery. It boggles the mind:

An elegant white sign at Arlington National Cemetery informs visitors they are inside “our nation’s most sacred shrine.” Run under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army, Arlington is the final resting place of John and Robert Kennedy, Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Earl Warren, and the nation’s military royalty from the Civil War to the Iraq war. More than 4 million people visit Arlington every year to tour the legendary grave sites, which include those of “Maltese Falcon” author Dashiell Hammett and big-band leader Glenn Miller, and watch a specially trained U.S. infantry soldier march silently in guard of the Tomb of the Unknowns. Arlington shelters the remains of more than 320,000 service members and holds nearly 30 new funerals a day. As visitors head out into the sacred grounds, the cemetery asks, “Please conduct yourselves with dignity and respect at all times.”

Behind the pristine lawns, the dignity of, and respect for, Arlington National Cemetery are tattered. An Army investigation this year found that the de facto boss of the cemetery, Deputy Superintendent Thurman Higginbotham, made false statements to Army investigators as they probed what they later classified as wire fraud at Arlington — a female employee’s computer had been tapped into without authorization, and she had been impersonated online. An internal Army memo and an interview with a former Army employee also suggest that high-level Army officials knew for months about problems at Arlington but failed to act. Three former public affairs officers have recently testified under oath about a hostile work environment at Arlington. One was fired after speaking out. The other two quit in disgust.

Sadly, Arlington’s internal problems have materialized on the grounds themselves. Despite nearly 10 years and countless dollars spent on computerizing its operations, the cemetery still relies mostly on paper burial records that in some cases do not match the headstones. “There are numerous examples of discrepancies that exist between burial maps, the physical location of headstones, and the burial records/grave cards,” the cemetery admitted in a 2008 report to Congress.

And in a relatively remote area of the cemetery, where 600 service members from Iraq and Afghanistan are laid to rest, personal mementos placed on graves are left out to rot in the rain for days, ruined by workers with power washers, or thrown into a trash bin.

Are you as surprised as I am by this level of intrigue at Arlington? Who in the world knew this was going on at the final resting place of presidents, SCOTUS Justices, and thousands of men and women who served their country in uniform? This sounds more like a novel than reality, but as they say, truth is stranger than fiction. And it gets stranger:

“The aesthetics of the cemetery are deceptive,” says Gina Gray, an Army veteran of eight years who served in Iraq and who was the cemetery’s public affairs officer in early 2008, before she was fired over a clash with her boss. “To the naked eye, it is a place of sacred beauty and a tribute to our nation’s heroes,” says Gray, who has been rehired as an Army contractor at Fort Belvoir, in Virginia. “But if you scratch below the surface, you will find that it’s really just window dressing. They’ve put these pretty curtains up to hide the ugliness on the inside.”

At the center of the chaos is Higginbotham, Gray’s former superior and a focus of the Army investigation. While cemetery Superintendent John Metzler is the titular head at Arlington, Higginbotham runs the show, say current and former employees. A tall and imposing man, Higginbotham has worked at the cemetery since 1965. He started as a security guard and worked his way up to deputy supervisor in 1990. In his current position, he has earned a reputation for running the cemetery with an iron fist. (Higginbotham declined to talk to Salon.)

One of Higginbotham’s failures, say employees, has been his inability to rectify disturbing discrepancies between burial records and information on headstones. For years, Arlington has struggled to replace paper-and-pen burial records with a satellite-aided system of tracking grave locations. “My goal is to have all the gravesites available online to the public, so people can look up a grave from home and print out a map that will show exactly where the gravesite is,” Higginbotham told Government Computer News in April 2006. Such systems are standard at other cemeteries, like the Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio, nearly identical to Arlington in age and size. Yet an effort begun in 2000 to set up a similar system at Arlington remains unrealized.

Anyone else getting shades of Burr Oaks Cemetery in Chicago?? Seems like a difference of degrees to me:

In 2004 and 2005, Arlington conducted a pilot project to check burial records against headstone information on 300 graves. “The accuracy of interment records and maps that track reserved, obstructed, and occupied graves were proven to have errors,” the project found, according to Arlington National Cemetery budget documents. “For example, gravesites that were marked as obstructed were actually available and information listed on grave cards and burial records were not consistent with the information on the actual headstone.”

The problems continue today. In 2008, Arlington National Cemetery issued a progress report to Congress on the computerization project. “The current way of doing business is mostly manual, complex, redundant and inefficient,” cemetery officials noted, acknowledging continuing discrepancies among burial maps, headstones and burial records.

Gray says her conversations with groundskeepers suggest the discrepancies and confusion might not stop at the grave’s edge. “They told me they’ve got people buried there that they don’t know who they are, and then they’ve got the wrong headstones over the graves.” She adds: “I told several Army officials — in one instance, a two-star general — but nothing was ever followed up on.” Salon heard the same claims from current and former cemetery employees, who asked to remain anonymous.

Arlington officials insist that there are no cases at Arlington where headstones do not match the remains beneath. “We are not aware of any situation like that,” says cemetery spokeswoman Kaitlin Horst.

Hmmm – who is more believable here, the people who actually TEND the graves, or some bureaucrat? I’m going with the groundskeepers myself, and Ms. Gray:

Gray, who was fired, has a gripe against the cemetery, to be sure. But her complaints against Higginbotham triggered an investigation that exposed criminal acts that question the Army’s oversight of Arlington.

Higginbotham fell under the eye of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command in October 2008, when Gray reported to investigators that somebody had tapped into her e-mail account. But the trouble between Gray and Higginbotham began months earlier, in April 2008, just a few days after Gray landed her job as public affairs officer. During the high-profile funeral of a decorated officer killed in Iraq, the deputy superintendent tried to move the media 100 yards from the funeral, making coverage all but impossible. Gray pushed back, stating that Army regulations did not bar the media from a funeral when families agreed to the coverage.

Gray’s insistence on fair access for the media turned into an embarrassment for the cemetery — and for the Army — when the Washington Post wrote about the tussle. Journalists trying to cover the funeral were “separated from the mourning party by six or seven rows of graves, and staring into the sun and penned in by a yellow rope,” the Post wrote. Gray, the paper added, “pushed vigorously to allow the journalists more access to the service yesterday — but she was apparently shot down by other cemetery officials.”

Gray locked horns with Higginbotham in the following weeks. In June, she pursued an equal employment opportunity complaint against the cemetery. She claimed discrimination based on “race, sex, age and reprisal” (Gray is white and Higginbotham is an African-American) and a hostile work environment. The cemetery fired Gray a few weeks later — a story that again made its way into the Post. “Putting her foot down and getting the boot,” read the headline.

The cemetery blames Gray for poor job performance. Its termination memorandum claims she failed to follow instructions, communicated poorly with superiors, and behaved disrespectfully to those superiors. Cemetery officials cited e-mail traffic prior to Memorial Day in 2008, in which Gray seemed intent on the use of Army public affairs specialists to interact with the media on Memorial Day, rather than the cemetery staff preferred by Gray’s bosses.

In her sworn testimony in the fall, as part of her equal opportunity complaint, which is still pending, Gray stressed “an elitist mentality among cemetery officials.” Kara McCarthy, who held Gray’s job at the cemetery from early 2007 until March 2008, also testified. She said Higginbotham and other top officials at Arlington “could do whatever the hell they wanted, and they did, because they had been getting away with it for years.” McCarthy said she also left the cemetery after a year because of the “hostile work environment.”

Gosh – don’t you just hate it when people mince words? Ahem. Well, it sure sounds like Ms. Gray is not alone in her assessment of Mr. Higginbotham. Let’s see what he has to say for himself:

In his testimony, Higginbotham describes himself as in charge. “The day-to-day operation of Arlington National Cemetery is my responsibility,” he said. He stated he had little interaction with Gray and less to do with her termination. “I had no direct involvement with her on a day-to-day basis,” Higginbotham said under oath. “I was not involved in this.” He added that Gray was “not subjected to a hostile work environment.”

As it turned out, Higginbotham had been worried about Gray, fretting in an e-mail that he could be the victim of a “conspiracy.” He was apparently determined to learn what he could about her.

In October, a friend of Gray’s who had worked at Arlington e-mailed Gray’s Army account to say hello. An hour later, the friend received an e-mail with Gina Gray’s name on it. “I see you’ve moved on,” the e-mail read. “A lot of drama going on at ANC.” The note was signed, “GG.” Yet Gray had been locked out of that e-mail account since the day she was fired in June. She had not sent it.

“I felt sick,” Gray says, when she heard about the e-mail impersonating her. “I felt like somebody had broken into my house and gone through my things.” Gray alerted the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command.

And the plot thickens:

Army agents first questioned Higginbotham on Oct. 16. The Army did authorize a search of Gray’s computer, but before that, Higginbotham said, “no one used her computer until they received authorization.” Higginbotham added that access without permission would have been impossible, as a special card and password were needed to get into Gray’s computer. “No one used her computer until after they received authorization,” he reiterated, according to the Army report.

But the Army soon found reason to doubt that Higginbotham was telling the truth. It discovered an e-mail written to the deputy superintendent dated June 27, 2008 — the day Gray was fired and before the Army authorized access to Gray’s computer. It was from Bobbie Garrett, who worked for a contractor favored by Higginbotham, called Alpha Technology Group. The e-mail sent to Higginbotham, and one of Higginbotham’s subordinates, read: “I was able to access Ms. Gray’s computer. I changed her domain account to be able to log in with the username and password. To login to this PC, use the following: Username: gina.gray. Password: PublicAffairs11**.”

Army agents learned Higginbotham had also ordered Garrett, the contractor, to remove Gray’s hard drive and send it out to a private company to mine for information. But an Army official involved in authorizing access to Gray’s e-mail said he “never authorized anyone at ANC [Arlington National Cemetery] to pull the hard drive from Ms. Gray’s work computer.” When Army investigators attempted to interview Garrett, Alpha Technology Group told them Garrett had resigned, adding, “Mr. Garrett was supposedly in Ohio visiting his sick mother” and was unavailable. Alpha Technology Group did not return Salon’s phone call or e-mail to the company’s director of public relations.

Oopsie daisy, dontcha hate it when your bald-faced lies come back to bite ya? That is to say, “liar, liar, pants on fire”:

Army investigators uncovered further evidence that Gray’s computer had been broken into without authorization. They found an e-mail from Higginbotham discussing Gray with an Army official, in which Higginbotham had attached “the list of persons that she bcc’d.” That list, investigators noted, must have come “from someone logged into Ms. Gray’s email account.”

Lori Calvillo, who also worked as a public affairs officer at Arlington and quit under “hostile” circumstances, testified in Gray’s employment hearing that Arlington officials had also hacked her computer. “They did the exact same thing to me,” she said. (The computer analysis conducted by the Army states that it was “possible Mr. Higginbotham routinely reviews employee’s email when he deems necessary.”)

Oh, yeah – I am SURE that was it – Higginbotham was just “reviewing” employee emails. Uh huh. Or maybe it was something more egregious:

Why didn’t Army officials in Higginbotham’s e-mail chain — including Col. Jerry Blixt, the garrison commander at Fort Belvoir, and William Koon, an attorney at the Military District of Washington, which oversees the cemetery — recognize that Gray’s computer had been breached? In fact, the Army had been aware of complaints about a “pattern of workplace … hostility” at Arlington, as a July 2008 Army memo states, months before it launched its Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) investigation. In June, Gray had met with Maj. Gen. Richard Rowe, then the commanding general of the Military District of Washington, to explain the problems. So why did the Army wait months to investigate? “The Army viewed the allegations associated with the cemetery very seriously, as we do any such allegation,” Gary Tallman, an Army spokesman said. “Allegations of a criminal nature were referred to, and investigated by, CID.”

In the conclusion of their report, Army investigators declared Higginbotham “made false and misleading statements to agents from this office, regarding access to Ms. Gray’s email account and government computer.” The report said agents could not determine precisely who impersonated Gray online but called the act “wire fraud.”

Higginbotham has had a share of personal challenges. He came out of Chapter 13 bankruptcy proceedings in 2002. In the case, a judge did not excuse Higginbotham for a debt associated with “a death or personal injury caused by the debtor’s unlawful operation of a motor vehicle while intoxicated” in 1990. Today he is also the chief financial officer of Roads Inc., an organization of African-American funeral professionals, where he lists himself as “Dr. Thurman Higginbotham,” although he doesn’t hold a university Ph.D. or medical degree.

Currently no legal action against Higginbotham is expected. On April 23, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia declined prosecution based on the Army’s findings. The report adds, however, that “civilian report of disciplinary action is pending.” Superintendent John Metzler would not say whether Higginbotham faced any disciplinary action. “The privacy act prevents me from discussing actions on individual employees here at the cemetery,” Metzler says. Higginbotham declined a request for an interview.

And why the hell is there no legal action facing Mr. Higginbotham? Just wondering. At the very least, I would hope there would be SOME disciplinary action, wouldn’t you? The man is a liar at the very least, and has forced two women out of their positions because of the “hostile work environment” he has crafted. SOMETHING better happen to him, and I don’t mean a promotion, either.

And that is not the end of it. This should affect all of us, because this could happen to anyone of us:

During the Higginbotham investigation, a different kind of crime arose at Arlington. But this one had little to do with the law. In her sworn testimony, Gray criticized the cemetery for disposing of artifacts left in Section 60, where soldiers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried. “They throw away things that are left at the gravesites — cards, letters,” Gray said. “They don’t save anything.”

As we say down South, that ain’t right. In fact, that is SO wrong. I remember asking my partner one time after watching a show in which someone left their medals on the headstone of someone they knew in Arlington National if that really happened, and if no one messed with them. She assured me that was the case (her dad is a retired 3-star). How sad, how upsetting, to find out that may not be the case after all. How downright disrespectful. They should be ashamed of themselves…

This is a first in a series about Arlington National Cemetery, so if you are interested in learning more about how the cemetery maintains the graves, and treats the artifacts left behind as Ms. Gray stated above, please go back to Salon.com tomorrow to read more.

Barack Obama and his supporters have been relentlessly comparing the new president to Franklin Roosevelt. At least one similarity is shockingly accurate: They were both beneficiaries of an obsequious press corps.

In part because the feeling was mutual, the reporters hated FDR’s Republican predecessor, Herbert Hoover. The new Democratic president, however, left White House correspondents “jubilant,” in one historian’s words. Indeed, they were so charmed by his first news conference, reporters literally burst into applause when he was done. One grizzled newspaperman observed that “the press barely restrained its ‘whoopees.’ ”

There’ve been no standing ovations — yet — with Obama, but there’s no denying that many in the news media are clapping on the inside. Obviously, not everyone is swooning, as the news media aren’t a monolith. And, yes, President Obama deserves his honeymoon. But honeymoons suggest a respectful partnership of equals. What we’re seeing here is more like a gaggle of aging love-struck groupies following Jon Bon Jovi around.

That’s quite the image, isn’t it? Accurate, too. Come to think of it, considering Obama listens to misogynistic rappers like JayZ, maybe HE should have been the example Goldberg used. Ahem. He continues:

Though no one’s idea of an objective reporter, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews does express the euphoria nicely. On The Tonight Show, he told Jay Leno that the Obamas “are really cool. They are Jack and Jackie Kennedy when you see them together. They are cool. And they’re great looking, and they’re cool and they’re young, and they’re — everything seems to be great. I know I’m selling them now. I’m not supposed to sell, OK? … But the fact is, I wouldn’t be an honest reporter if I didn’t tell you what the spiritual experience is like of being in a Barack Obama rally.” …

On Inauguration Day, Matthews came a hair’s breadth from shrieking like a teenage girl at the Beatles’ debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. As is often the case with crushes, what Matthews seems to like best about Obama is how he makes Matthews feel about himself — and his network. “This is the network that has opened its heart to change, to change and its possibilities,” Matthews gushed.

I am providing a break here in case you need to run to the bathroom to throw up.

Okay. I’m just shaking my head at what passes for “journalism” these days, but MSNBC/NBC has demonstrated long ago that they are nothing more than a propaganda arm. No surprise. As to the bias, Goldberg writes:

One of the great tests of news media bias is when the storyline has become unfalsifiable. With George W. Bush, no matter what he did, the facts always seemed to prove he was to blame. With Obama, no matter what he does, he’s always the hero. For instance, during a trip to China in 2005, then-President Bush tried to open a locked door while leaving a news conference, and the press tittered at his buffoonery. Yet last week, when President Obama walked into an Oval Office window that he thought was a door, much of the news media looked the other way — perhaps recognizing his genius at spotting where a door should have been.

Bush’s love of exercise was analyzed as a troubling obsession of an out-of-touch president. Obama’s fixation with physical fitness gives numerous reporters hope that he will alleviate America’s obesity epidemic. In a front-page exclusive, The Washington Post revealed that on Obama’s recent vacation, the Hawaiian “sun glinted off (his) chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.”

Remember that? How people made fun of Bush for riding his bike all of the time, and for exchanging his drinking addiction to an addiction for exercise? Everyone made fun of him. Now, of course, it’s cool because Obama is hip, cool, and “chiseled” (cough, choke). But it isn’t only the superficial in which these differences are highlighted:

A more serious example can be found in some of the news coverage of the stimulus bill. Obama made it his top priority to get bipartisan support for his unprecedented spending bill. The president exerted enormous personal effort to sway House Republicans to his cause but failed to win a single GOP vote, and he even lost 11 Democrats. And yet the Post reported in another front-page article that the Democratic House’s passage of the bill — which was always assured — “marked a big victory for his presidency a little more than a week into his term.” Indeed, it’s hard to see how anything short of a crushing defeat would be described as anything other than a “big victory.”

He meant to do that

Oh, yeah, that’s the ticket. It was all part of his master plan!! Just like this:

Then there’s Obama’s inaugural address, which was panned as pedestrian by pretty much everyone who hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid and was received as the greatest oration since Henry V rallied the British at Agincourt by everyone else. Leave it to New York magazine’s political reporter, John Heilemann, to square the circle. He conceded that Obama’s speech failed to deliver the goods, inspirationwise. But, don’t ya see, he meant to do that. In a piece titled, “Obama’s Spare Inaugural Rhetoric Signals Strategic Mastery,” Heilemann explained that the speech was “less than thrilling in itself, perhaps by design.”

Apparently, the press corps has decided that antonyms are the way to go in reporting these days. Well, golly gee, I guess this is their idea of “change.”

Goldberg concludes his article with the daily barrage of what Saint Obama means to do today, or what pithy little detail they can find about his personal regimen, or what he and the family eat for breakfast, which will no doubt bring about World Peace:

Since the inauguration, it seems every day brings another article about “Day 3″ or “Day 7″ or “Day 12.5″ of the Obama presidency. And each one reads like a People magazine blog about American Idol. Everything he does signals hope for peace in the Middle East or race relations or the economy or whatever.

CNN’s John King recently said “nobody disputes” that journalists are too enraptured by Obama’s historic presidency; he seems to think it will wear off when the serious work of the nation kicks in.

History is not so reassuring. “You are still the most interesting person,” newspaper editor William Allen White told FDR at the end of his second term. “For box office attraction you leave Clark Gable gasping for breath.” (Jonah Goldberg, editor at large of National Review Online, is a member of USA TODAY’s board of contributors.)

See, I think it is reassuring, because it demonstrates that the country has survived this kind of sophomoric fawning by the media before. FDR, Bush II, and now Obama. It gives me hope that at SOME point, they will realize what a grave disservice they have done this country by their lack of unbiased coverage. One can on;y hope that John King is right – maybe he’ll be one of the first journalists to get off the bandwagon. One can but hope.

Can you all do something this minute? Can you go to this link, and click on the video, and give it five stars? Appallingly, at the moment, this video has received a three-star rating from Fox News readers and viewers. I do not know who the people are who gave this video such a low rating that it’s cumulatively at three stars. And I pray that I do not know them. – Susan

“This weekend, Geraldo delves deep into the heart of a crisis that has gripped America’s disabled for years …

‘The Waiting List: America’s Healthcare Crisis’ is an extension of a story he broke nearly 37 years ago. Geraldo will bring to light once again the imminent need for action in one of the most important issues our nation faces

Here’s a flashback to the horrific living conditions at Willowbrook State School for the disabled:

Here are three additional videos that Fox News has made available to us:

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And, if you have joined NoQuarter’s readership since October, please listen to Bud White’s remarkable program about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., “Hidden Agenda: Bud White interviews Thurston Clarke.”

As a off-topic additional note: In the Summer of 1968, my mother said to me one day, “Robert Kennedy is going to speak at the University of Washington today. Why don’t you go and hear him?” I thought that was a great idea, even though I then supported Eugene McCarthy for president in the Democratic party primary against a sitting president, Lyndon B. Johnson. Well. I have rarely been so transformed by a single speech. Robert F. Kennedy so moved me, so motivated me, so filled me with the belief that somehow we could get out of the madness of Vietnam and thousands of American soldiers and Vietnamese dying needlessly, that I began to campaign for RFK that day.

Two months later, I was back for the fall term of college.

I heard a scream. So did other women, and we all dashed down the hallway because we feared something had happened to our fellow dormmate.

She was from a very wealthy family. She was one of the very few students who had a television. It was a tiny black-and-white tv.

She had just seen Robert F. Kennedy shot on live television.

it is impossible to know how living through the assassinations of so many great Americans, in such a short period of history, has affected all of our lives.

When I was still growing up in a small town, our superintendent of schools arranged for school buses to take every single student to hear John F. Kennedy speak at the Hanford Nuclear Project near the Tri-Cities area of Washington state.

It was a long, hot, dusty ride on those little two-lane highways that we all had in those days.

But, standing along with 40,000 other people that day in the desert, it was an experience I will never forget. John F. Kennedy was both a gifted speaker and a gifted writer, and he moved us all on that day.

Then, a little more than two months later, our principal came in to our classrooms to tell us that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.

I only share this because — if those two men had lived out their lives and if both of them had been able to serve full terms as president — the care of disabled children in this nation would be far more advanced than it is to this day. As Geraldo will sadly make clear tonight.

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I’m also thinking about the mental cruelty inflicted on me by the “Obamabots,” so much so that I’ve had to go into hiding, pretty much everywhere, including most of the time on this blog.

And I think about their fervent belief in a man who has, at best, 100th of the lifetime of experience that both John and Robert Kennedy had.

Last spring, drawing on an article in the Washington Monthly by an expert on John F. Kennedy, I explored thoroughly how little experience Obama has compared to JFK. I realize that most Obamabots assumeM that JFK was a man of little experience, but they simply are ignorant of history and of the actual biography of JFK. As Bud White could also tell you, since he is a true expert on JFK.

Then there’s RFK, who had DECADES of experience in the White House, as Attorney General, in the Senate, as an aide to senators (some not so great, eh?), and much more.

And he had traveled the world, as had his brother. RFK, in the Arthur Schlesinger biography I’ve read, wrote the most extraordinary diaries as a young man traveling through the Middle East and through Europe.

Please read:

1) “Obama and Kennedy: Gut vs. Experience”

2) “Obama and Kennedy: Gut vs. Experience: Part II”

3) ALL of Bud White’s writings related to both Kennedy brothers

That’s the number of questions Caroline Kennedy has answered in her pursuit to secure Hillary Clinton’s seat, according to THIS article in the NY Times. Want to guess how many interviews she has granted in this pursuit? Zero. How about answers to questions regarding her finances? Zero. Yes, Caroline Kennedy is using the Barack Obama School of campaigning – give up NO information whatsoever. None. According to the article:

If she were applying to be, say, an undersecretary of education in Barack Obama’s new administration, Caroline Kennedy would have to fill out a 63-item confidential questionnaire disclosing potentially embarrassing text messages and diary entries, the immigration status of her household staff, even copies of every résumé she used in the last 10 years.

If she were running for election to the Senate, Ms. Kennedy would have to file a 10-part, publicly available report disclosing her financial assets, credit card debts, mortgages, book deals and the sources of any payments greater than $5,000 in the last three years.

But Ms. Kennedy, who has asked Gov. David A. Paterson to appoint her to succeed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton — and who helped oversee the vetting process for Mr. Obama’s possible running mates — is declining to provide a variety of basic data, including companies she has a stake in and whether she has ever been charged with a crime.

Isn’t that just fitting considering Obama’s own levels of secrecy? Once again, it begs the question WHY she wants to be a politician. It would seem she sees it not as a service to the people of New York, but as an honor OWED her. I’d say she’s a bit unclear on the responsibilities of the job. Never mind that this is an appointed position, and there are actually other people out there interested in the position who are FAR more qualified than she, say Andrew Cuomo, for starters (and I, too, would love to have a woman replace a woman in this seat, but women are not interchageable by gender alone. Experience, qualifications, and commitment to public service count, too.).

Jonah Goldberg had an interesting comparison of Gov. Sarah Palin and Caroline Kennedy in this article: Cinderella vs. the Barracuda
A perfect example of the bowel-stewing self-indulgence of elite liberalism:

For people who think there’s no cultural divide in this country, consider the treatment of two women much in the news in 2008.

The first is Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. A woman from very humble roots and with a very blue-collar life story, she worked with her steelworker and professional-fisherman husband to provide a life for their large family. She got involved in the PTA. She became mayor of her small town, then rose, by dint of her dedication and almost naive fearlessness, to the job of governor. In a mainstream, almost romantic sense, it’s almost like she was designed by God for a Hallmark movie of the week.

But, when John McCain picked her to be his running mate, the full fury of the liberal establishment — and sizable swaths of the conservative establishment, some of whom dubbed her a “cancer” on the GOP — came down on her with a vengeance usually reserved for Klansmen and pedophiles. Don’t get me wrong: There were valid criticisms to make. But that is quite a different thing than saying all of the criticism was valid or that the intensity and volume of the criticism was warranted.

No kidding. Americans used to revel in the “pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps” kind of story. Gov. Palin couldn’t BE a better example of that rise. Well, maybe not quite as good as President Bill Clinton, but still – she clearly has made something of herself through hard work and perseverance. Not that you could tell that by the media’s attacks on her.

And now to potential senator from the Great State of New York:

Then there’s Caroline Bouvier Kennedy, daughter of John F. Kennedy, sister of John Jr., niece of Senators Ted and Robert Kennedy, granddaughter of Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, and the cousin of myriad other Kennedys and Shrivers who’ve burrowed deep into the timber of the house of liberalism. A multimillionaire from birth, Ms. Kennedy has spent most of her life on the charity-benefit and cotillion circuit. A product of the Brearley School in New York and the Concord Academy in Massachusetts before she attended Harvard and Columbia, Kennedy has made the importance of public education her signature cause.

Sweet Caroline (she was the inspiration for the Neil Diamond song) recently made it known that she would like to be appointed to Hillary Clinton’s vacant Senate seat.

One could say without fear of overstating things that the liberal reaction to the inexperienced Caroline has been somewhat more gracious than the reaction to the “inexperienced” Palin. Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post has devoted two columns in as many weeks to this “fairy tale” scenario in which Kennedy, our “tragic national princess,” is finally rewarded — for her years of quiet dignity, selflessly avoiding scandal and the paparazzi — with the Senate seat that once belonged to her uncle Bobby. What’s astounding about the normally sensible Marcus’s case for “the Cinderella Kennedy” (New York magazine’s phrase) is that she doesn’t really make one, at least not on the merits. Marcus doesn’t even bother. It’s all schoolgirl gushing.

Pretty much. While there are very few actual requirements to be Senator, age being one of the few. But, don’t you think that wanting to BE a politician might be helpful?? You know, going among the people, talking to them, shaking their hands, going to meeting after meeting after meeting? Just sayin’. Not that that seems to matter to The NY Times:

The editors of the New York Times, in a more skeptical editorial, summarized her qualifications thusly: “Ms. Kennedy has much going for her. As a public figure, she carries the glamour and poignancy of her family …” The editors then went on to describe what great liberals her dad and uncles were. That’s it.

Wow. Talk about your hard-hitting journalism! Way to GO, NY Times!!! Goldberg continued:

This (is) a perfect example of the bowel-stewing self-indulgence of elite liberalism.

Here’s a news flash: Not everyone truckles with doe-eyed awe at “America’s royal family.” Some of us don’t even like the idea of American royal families. JFK and RFK had their good points, but they don’t deserve the beatification they receive on a daily basis. As a man, Teddy Kennedy is hardly a role model, and as a public servant he’s not much better. I, for one, don’t think denying poor black kids private-school scholarships (aka vouchers) is heroic. Nor do I think his support for alternative energy, except when it might obstruct his Hyannis Port estate’s views with windmills, is admirable.

Simply, the Kennedy clan is no priestly caste, serving as the conscience of the nation, and its progeny do not deserve eternal deference.

You gotta admit – he has a point. Many liberals, myself included, found Ted’s position on windmills to be just a TAD hypocritical, but it is to the more important issue that Mr. Goldberg is addressing: the Kennedys are hardly worthy of beatification with all of the personal, and political, issues in which they have engaged, or been caught, much less be “American royalty.”

Goldberg concludes:

Now, I know the comparison between Palin and Caroline Kennedy is not perfect. Each has strengths where the other has weaknesses, and the jobs of senator and vice president aren’t identical (the former actually has more responsibility, for starters).

But the comparison is nonetheless revealing. Palin’s selection triggered troughs of bile, vomited up from nearly every respectable liberal quarter. A Florida congressman, and Obama surrogate, insinuated that Palin was a “Nazi sympathizer” and anti-Semite (she’s not, but Caroline Kennedy’s grandfather was). Her by-the-bootstraps story was ridiculed by nearly every ex-debutante newsreader and avowed “feminist” in America.

Meanwhile, Caroline, with a resume perfectly suited to being a Kennedy and little else, is a Cinderella who deserves a Senate seat because, well, she just does.

Whatever Palin’s faults, Sarah Barracuda’s America has a lot more going for it than Sweet Caroline’s.

Oh, sure – Caroline Kennedy deserves the seat just because she wants it, at least in HER mind, and the mind of her family. That’s just exactly the kind of people we need in Washington, especially to provide oversight to The One Who Wants To Be King.

On a lighter note, I think Andy Borowitz, the humorist, has the perfect interpretation of Caroline Kennedy wanting something for not much in this piece:

Caroline Kennedy Asks to be Time’s Person of the Year: Places Phone Call to Magazine’s Editor

Caroline Kennedy would like to be considered Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2009 and has let the magazine’s editor know of her interest in the honor, aides to Ms. Kennedy confirmed today.

While some observers considered Ms. Kennedy’s bid to be premature, especially since 2009 has not officially begun, aides to the New York senatorial aspirant said that it reflected her view that 2009 will be a very big year for her.

“I think Caroline’s calling Time magazine and asking to be put on the cover shows just what a tireless worker she is,” said cousin Kerry Kennedy. “When she really wants something, she’s not afraid to roll up her sleeves and make a phone call.”

Her cousin said that having witnessed Caroline’s work ethic, she has no doubt that she is deserving of Time’s highest honor: “I can’t tell you how many times she’s gotten the wrong number, been put on hold, or had calls dropped altogether.”

In addition to the Person of the Year honors, Kerry Kennedy said that Caroline had also expressed an interest in next year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

“That’s a call she hasn’t made yet,” Ms. Kennedy said. “She has to figure out the time difference in Oslo.”

Ahem. Well, she’s just as qualified for THAT as she is the US Senate.

I could be wrong, but isn’t SHE engaging in a “Pay to Play” scheme? Isn’t that what her uncle, Harry Reid, and all the others are doing by trying to force Gov. Paterson to choose her?? It sure seems to be pretty close to what is happening in IL, except from the other side. They are trying to coerce Gov. Paterson to give her this position for what, payback for all of her service during the election? Probably. Hey, I’m just sayin’. But it seems eerily similar to me. What do YOU say?

‘Don’t agonize. Organize.’
- Florynce Kennedy

Right now, many people believe that they will not see a woman elected president of this country in their lifetimes. The estimable Marie Cocco sums the situation up once again. One of my favorite blog writers, Ani, gives us her take.

One can hardly blame people for feeling this way. But, I think it is too early to conclude that we will not see a woman elected president in the next 24 years. So, if you think you have another quarter century in you, not only might you see a woman elected president, you can help make it happen. It won’t happen because it will be easy to accomplish. And it It won’t happen because of hope. It will happen because of hard work in the face of long odds.

It will happen because we challenge ourselves to make it happen’ to make it a national priority. We must recognize that electing a woman to the Presidency of the United States of America is a way of affirming the 51 per cent of the American population consisting of women, a way of affirming that Americans can understand human rights well enough to appreciate that women’s rights are human rights, a way of affirming the great American heritage in promoting the rights of all persons based on ever more inclusive ideas of who counts as a rights-bearing person.

Before you stop reading because you decide this is just going to be a bit of cockeyed optimism or mere exhortation, I will name two concrete ways Americans can challenge themselves to make a woman President within the next 25 years.

I. First, learn about The White House Project. Don’t be put off by the bit on the home page congratulating Obama-Biden. There will be some ideas and aspects of the site you will like more than others, but spend some time at The White House Project, and you will see that this group understands that to put a woman in the White House we, as a nation, are going to have to face down the pervasive misogyny and sexism rampant in the culture and never more in evidence than right now. (In May, Marie Cocco wrote about the phenomenon; now with the talk of Senator Clinton becoming Secretary of State, the public face of misogyny has surged to the forefront again.) Some great pages from the website are here (this page shows that The White House Project understands exactly what we are up against), as does this one. Want to think about leading a political life? Look here. After you investigate, sign up to participate in the group – costs nothing but keeps you involved. Then, use the group’s form to get some friends to sign up.

II. Second, set up your own support/action group, dedicated to challenging yourself and other people to put a woman in the Oval Office by 2034. I think of such a group as a “Send a Woman to the White House” [SWWH] club or partnership. It might start with you and just one other person. But as with exercise, it is easier to stay motivated toward a goal if you do so with some friends and companions. Here are some things SWWH clubs can do:

meet once a week for at least an hour; use the hour to focus on political actions you are taking or want to take; then use the next hour to see how progress is going.

create an investment fund – decide with other members what you can raise per month, and how you can raise it, and pick an organization that is dedicated to women’s rights and particularly their representation as President of the United States of America.

think of fun and social ways to educate yourself (book group on women’s history or building presidential campaigns); walk-a-thons to raise money to donate to women’s rights/interest groups.

let other people know you have set up an SWWH group – and stay in communication with other groups.

take small but direct actions: if you see misogynistic or sexist advertising, boycott the product or service and write the company in question; if your local bookstore or library does not have an extensive collection of nonfiction about women in politics or women’s history, speak to the manager and ask for a better selection; when somebody uses misogynistic or sexist language, tell him or her that you object.

invite a woman you would like to know better or whose work you would to know more about to come meet with your SWWH; she does not have to be famous and the event does not have to be fancy; it can be a coffee for three or an open house for 30.

Yesterday was the anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. This sorry date did not cause me to dwell on the horror and sadness of life cut too short. Instead, it put me in mind of one of the most admirable things President Kennedy did for this country. He challenged Americans to meet a seemingly impossible challenge: they did. In 1961, President Kennedy addressed the United States Congress urging long-term and continuous funding and commitment to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. President Kennedy did not live to see that goal met in 1969, but the goal would not have been met if he had not issued the Congress and, in another famous address well worth reading and hearing, the American people to invest resources and energy in hitting the mark. So we know that we as a country can attain goals that, when first presented, seem outrageously unreachable.

We may not have a President who will challenge us to put a woman in the Oval Office by 2034, but as American citizens we can issue the challenge to ourselves and to one another. If enough of us start now, we Americans can put a woman in the Oval Office by 2034, just as 40 years ago Americans put a man on the moon.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

-John F. Kennedy, Rice University, 1963

My own ambition and commitment: to start an SWWH group and to help anybody else who would like to start one. You can reach me through Heidi Li’s Potpourri for ideas about books to read, groups that might be worth supporting, specific projects you might want to try.

Holy Toledo – is he allowed to SAY something like that?!?! I hope he has someone watching his back. At all times. Oh, but you’re not gonna believe some of the things our “media” have cooked up. Check this out:

Perhaps it was the announcement that NBC News is coming out with a DVD titled “Yes We Can: The Barack Obama Story.” Or that ABC and USA Today are rushing out a book on the election. Or that HBO has snapped up a documentary on Obama’s campaign.

Perhaps it was the Newsweek commemorative issue — “Obama’s American Dream” — filled with so many iconic images and such stirring prose that it could have been campaign literature. Or the Time cover depicting Obama as FDR, complete with jaunty cigarette holder.

Are the media capable of merchandizing the moment, packaging a president-elect for profit? Yes, they are.

Okay. NBC. ABC. Two of the major networks using OUR AIRWAVES have lost all semblance of journalistic integrity.

What the HELL is the matter with these people?!?!? Good grief, how in the world will they ever cover anything remotely challenging for The One??? Oh, right – what they care? They are clearly making a lot out of this:

What’s troubling here goes beyond the clanging of cash registers. Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks off the next big thing. The endless campaign is over, and there’s nothing wrong with the country pulling together, however briefly, behind its new leader. But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking.

“The Obamas’ New Life!” blares People’s cover, with a shot of the family. “New home, new friends, new puppy!” Us Weekly goes with a Barack quote: “I Think I’m a Pretty Cool Dad.” The Chicago Tribune trumpets that Michelle “is poised to be the new Oprah and the next Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis — combined!” for the fashion world.

Whew! Are journalists fostering the notion that Obama is invincible, the leader of what the New York Times dubbed “Generation O”?

I’m sorry – were you saying something? I couldn’t hear you through the grinding of my teeth. When did the MSM and the National Enquirer change places? If you will recall, this year, it was the latter that that actually broke some real news. The MSM? Not so much:

Each writer, each publication, seems to reach for more eye-popping superlatives. “OBAMAISM — It’s a Kind of Religion,” says New York magazine. “Those of us too young to have known JFK’s Camelot are going to have our own giddy Camelot II to enrapture and entertain us,” Kurt Andersen writes. The New York Post has already christened it “BAM-A-LOT.”

“Here we are,” writes Salon’s Rebecca Traister, “oohing and aahing over what they’ll be wearing, and what they’ll be eating, what kind of dog they’ll be getting, what bedrooms they’ll be living in, and what schools they’ll be attending. It feels better than good to sniff and snurfle through the Obamas’ tastes and habits. . . . Who knew we had in us the capacity to fall for this kind of idealized Americana again?”

I am seriously on the verge of being ill here. “It’s a Kind of Religion”??? Worshiping this lying, cheating, bamboozling, hoodwinking, race-baiting sham of a politician who hasn’t had an original idea I can discern, who got everywhere he is by stepping on the throats of others? THIS is a “kind of religion”? Okay, it is clear to me. We have gone to hell in a hand basket.

No doubt, Thomas Jefferson, who knew the importance of the Fourth Estate for maintaining a democracy, would be, check that, probably IS, rolling over in his grave right now. Kurtz asks the right question about this, well, INSANITY:

But aren’t media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?

“Obama is a figure, especially in pop culture, in a way that most new presidents are not,” historian Michael Beschloss says. “Young people who may not be interested in the details of NAFTA or foreign policy just think Obama is cool, and they’re interested in him. Being cool can really help a new president.”

So can a sense of optimism, reflected on USA Today’s front page. “Poll: Hopes soaring for Obama, administration,” the headline said, with 65 percent saying “the USA will be better off 4 years from now.”

Yeah, I saw that headline, too. I wondered who the hell they were talking to first, then realized it was probably an AP article. Sure enough, it was. Like they haven’t been in the tank all year long. Hahahaha.

And why, pray tell, would these young people think Obama is “cool,” yet know NOTHING for which he stands?? I mean, really – on what, exactly, are they making that determination? His listening to Ludacris? The misogyny? Reverend Wright’s racist ravings? What?? What a bunch of ridiculously uninformed children. And THEY are the future? Yikes. Sure will be interesting to see what happend if they ever get more than one brain cell to rub against another. Or as Kurtz puts it:

But what happens when adulation gives way to the messy, incremental process of governing? When Obama has to confront a deep-rooted financial crisis, two wars and a political system whose default setting is gridlock? When he makes decisions that inevitably disappoint some of his boosters?

“We’re celebrating a moment as much as a man, I think,” says Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham, whose new issue, out today, compares Obama to Lincoln. “Given our racial history, an hour or two of commemoration seems appropriate. But there is no doubt that the glow of the moment will fade, and I am sure the coverage will reflect that in due course.”

FDR?? LINCOLN?? Are they INSANE????? LINCOLN??? The ONLY thing Obama has in common with Lincoln is living in IL. FDR? What are you people SMOKING???

And, sure. You just know you can count on the media to reflect reality at SOME point, right? Because they have demonstrated time and again how willing they are to reveal the realities of who Obama really is, and what he has really done. Oh, yeah.

And not for nothing, but I sure as hell don’t remember the media being so glowing and positive about Hillary Clinton, who, since they were clearly unaware of this, was a “historical” figure by being a woman who received more votes than any other Democrat ever, as well as winning a primary, and a lot more than one. But hey, let’s bury THAT “moment” as quickly as possible so no one intrudes on The One’s ascension.

Thankfully (or despairingly), there is an itsy bitsy teensy weensy ray of light:

One of the few magazines to strike a skeptical tone is the London-based Economist, which endorsed Obama. “With such a victory come unreasonably great expectations,” its lead editorial says.

Naturally, it is European based, not US based. Big surprise. One could say that:

Web worship of Obama is nearly limitless. On YouTube alone, the Obama Girl song, “I’ve Got a Crush on Obama,” has been viewed 11.7 million times. Even an unadorned video of the candidate’s election night speech in Chicago has drawn 3.5 million views.

Can someone please tell me how it is that this virtual unknown with the thinnest resume I have ever seen, who couldn’t even get a full time job in any university or business on his lack of documentation, has manipulated the masses so masterfully with “words, just words” and no real deeds of which to speak? I mean, besides the characteristics he has demonstrated thus far besides those listed above?

Yes, this is a change:

I am not trying to diminish the sheer improbability of what this African American politician, a virtual unknown four years ago, has accomplished. Every one of us views his victory through a personal lens. I thought of growing up in a “Leave It to Beaver” era, when there were no blacks in leading television roles until Bill Cosby was tapped as the co-star of “I Spy” in 1965. When the Watts riots broke out that year, the Los Angeles Times sent an advertising salesman to cover it because the paper had no black reporters. The country has traveled light-years since then.

Is it nitpicky to point out that Obama is bi-racial, reared by his white and Indonesian family, not his African one at any time? But hey – why rain on (more of) their delusion? Those pesky facts, why am I bringing THOSE up? This is SPECIAL, you know:

It is hard to find a precedent in American history. Ronald Reagan was a marquee star because of his Hollywood career, but mainly among older voters, since he made his last movie 16 years before winning the White House in 1980. Jack Kennedy was a more formal figure after winning the 1960 election — “trying to look older than he was, because he thought youth was a handicap in running for president,” Beschloss says — but quickly took on larger-than-life dimensions.

“The Kennedy buildup goes on,” James MacGregor Burns wrote in the New Republic in the spring of 1961. “The adjectives tumble over one another. He is not only the handsomest, the best-dressed, the most articulate, and graceful as a gazelle. He is omniscient; he swallows and digests whole books in minutes; he confounds experts with his superior knowledge of their field. He is omnipotent.”

Soon afterward, Kennedy blundered into the Bay of Pigs debacle.

The media would be remiss if they didn’t reflect the sense of unadulterated joy that greeted Obama’s election, both here and around the world, and the pride even among those who opposed him. Newspapers were stunned and delighted at the voracious demand for post-election editions, prompting The Washington Post and other papers to print hundreds of thousands of extra copies and pocket the change. (When else have we felt so loved lately?) Demand for inaugural tickets has been unprecedented. Barack is suddenly a hot baby name. Record companies are releasing hip-hop songs, by the likes of Jay-Z and Will.I.Am, with such titles as “Pop Champagne for Barack.” Consumers, the Los Angeles Times reports, are buying up “Obama-themed T-shirts, buttons, bobblehead dolls, coffee mugs, wine bottles, magnets, greeting cards, neon signs, mobile phones and framed art prints.”

“Unadulterated joy”? That the MEDIA ITSELF created, and for which it fanned the flames?? Yeah, absolutely – don’t start having any kind of ethics now on our behalf! We might all fall over dead from the shock of it. So, please, just spare us and keep us in our little Happy Obama Place. Oh, yuck – making myself sick now…

Oh, and just in time for the holidays:

A barrage of Obama-related books are in the works. Newsweek’s quadrennial election volume is titled “A Long Time Coming: The Historic, Combative, Expensive and Inspiring 2008 Election and the Victory of Barack Obama.” Publishers obviously see a bull market.

Oh, JOY!!!! Another way for Americans to spend all of our hard earned, ever dwindling dollars! Yay!

And speaking of cheers:

MSNBC, which was accused of cheerleading for the Democratic nominee during the campaign, is running promos that say: “Barack Obama, America’s 44th president. Watch as a leader renews America’s promise.” What are viewers to make of that?

There is always a level of excitement when a new president is coming to town — new aides to profile, new policies to dissect, new family members to follow. But can anyone imagine this kind of media frenzy if John McCain had managed to win?

Obama’s days of walking on water won’t last indefinitely. His chroniclers will need a new story line. And sometime after Jan. 20, they will wade back into reality.

Do you PROMISE, Mr. Kurtz? Because I am WAY over all of this Messiah worship we have had to endure, even as the most qualified candidate in decades was kicking his butt in the primaries on a whole helluva lot less money (that untraceable mountain of Obama’s money. See Ani’s post, “Obama’s Questionable Internet Donations Raise Suspicion at WaPo.“). But hey – that never stopped the “media” from promoting their rapturous tale of who Obama was, how he was the One for whom we had been waiting, regardless of what the people said with their votes…I mean, really – how much reporting did they even do on the Michigan fiasco? How many people in this country really knew what happened there? How many people outside the states where there were caucuses actually knew about the vast amount of caucus fraud? Close friends in Baton Rouge had no idea about a lot of this because their state wasn’t contested, so how would THEY know what had really been going on? As one of them said, they sure didn’t see this on ABC News! No, indeed. And that is exactly the problem. So many of the issues that should have been covered about Obama simply were not, or left to the “News Briefs” section. Not so for anything the least bit suspect or negative about any of the other candidates (or if it was one of Obama’s BFFs, like John Edwards. In that case, the MSM buried critical information the voters deserved to know.). And on it goes…

You may have seen this new video already, but personally, I find this to be a glaring indictment of the Fourth Estate,as if the above was not enough (H/T to American Girl in Italy for the heads up on this):

Holy Toledo. Add these results of the Zogby Poll commissioned by John Ziegler of “How Obama Got Elected“, and bear in mind these were MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS:

512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points

97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet…..

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her “house,” even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we “gave” one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

Just to be clear – Palin did not ask for the clothes the MSM made such a brouhaha about, and she did not keep them. They were given to, or will be auctioned off for, charity.

For an added bonus, you can watch this John Stoessel interview of voters:

YIKES. Are people not required to take Civics classes any longer?? Really??

What a sad, sad state of affairs, for our educational system, for the Fourth Estate, for democracy, and for this country. We reap what we sow…

It’s clear to many Democrats that a radical clique has taken control of the Party. Democratic ideals once held to be sacrosanct, including freedom of speech, one person one vote, and an intolerance of sexism have been violently pushed aside for the benefit of Obama. The media drumbeat for Obama is incessant; the media has even stopped pretending to be neutral. We’re seeing the country through Alice’s Looking Glass now and everything is upside-down and backwards. In an effort to save our Party and country, many Democrats are actively working to defeat Obama.

In 1980, the last Japanese soldier of World War Two, Captain Fumio Nakahira, was discovered on Mt. Halcon, Mindoro Island, Philippines. During the previous 35 years, Captain Nakahira had survived alone, serving his Emperor and believing that the War had not yet ended. (This was 15 years after the Gilligan’s Island episode).

Captain Nakahira comes to mind when I think about the thousands of disaffected and disillusioned Democrats across the country who will not be voting for Obama. If Obama is elected despite our efforts to defeat him, it will codify for a generation the Chicago corruption, race-baiting, and misogyny practiced by Obama and his minions; tactics which caused many of to leave the Party. And Obama’s race-baiting, misogynistic thugs will say: Good riddance!

Camping out on our own private Mt. Halcons, many thousands of men and women will remain committed to the causes which brought us to the Democratic Party in the first place. We won’t stop being concerned about sexism, race relations, economic opportunity, and national security.

It’s now dawning on Republicans and independents that a creeping totalitarianism is sweeping the country. Obama’s Truth Squads use the power of the state to stifle free expression, McCain supporters are jeered in public, and Obama’s shock troops — in a form of hate speech so ugly that it can only be described as a pogrom against women — wear clothing which declares that the Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, is a “cunt.” Sexual terrorism is the new form of Left-wing Kristallnacht.

Where did this come from?

The ecstatic mania of Obama’s supporters comes from many places, and I don’t pretend to understand all of the sources. Many who support Obama are low-information liberals, do-good progressives, proud African Americans, and fed-up independents. I can’t blame these groups; the Bush Administration has been a disaster. There is, however, a core group of Obama supporters who believe that the Senator from Illinois will bring revolutionary change. And their desire for the revolution is all-consuming and any tactic is considered fair game: caucus fraud, sexism, race-baiting, voter intimidation, online smear campaigns, sexual terrorism, and voter fraud. Anything to win.

I hold Obama accountable for the tone of this campaign and the actions of his supporters. From “hoodwink and bamboozled” to his “lipstick on a pig,” Obama’s sexist double-speak and race-baiting innuendos have unleashed something very ugly into the ether. Obama has given his supporters the tacit encouragement to cross lines of acceptable discourse in order to destroy his political opponents. In the Obama world, Bill Clinton is a racist, Hillary is a bitch, Sarah Palin is a cunt, and John McCain is erratic and senile. I fully expect that an Obama Administration, like all recent Administrations, will continue in campaign mode and I expect these tactics to continue. This was the reason, to borrow a phrase, that we sought to fumigate our Party.

Like many of you, I won’t have anything to do with Obama or his party. Obama’s tactics go against the reason I was a Democrat and no pleas and no threats will force me to give up my principles. Above my computer I have postcards with the images of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy; my Hillary poster is in the corner and remains unframed.

For all that has been written on Kennedy, he is in many ways a mystery. The first books written after his death, by grieving aides and friends, are often one-dimensional in the way they describe the character of the 35th president.

Although Schlesinger’s A Thousands Days sparkles, the human quality of John F. Kennedy is only hinted at. Ted Sorensen’s Kennedy, published in 1965, was written by a man closer to Kennedy but oddly it was even a more distant portrayal of Kennedy, as if criticism of Kennedy or details of his thinking would undermine the martyred president’s memory.

However worshipful the early biographies were, the attacks on Kennedy are just as one-dimensional. He was a complex man who was intensely private for a public person. He was both flawed and heroic, and a real intellectual who projected a vigorous image in an effort to conceal his poor health. (Audio below the fold)

Kennedy was dedicated to self-improvement. As he makes clear on the audio, his father didn’t think he had the health or personality for politics. Kennedy forced himself to be outgoing.

One of my favorite stories about Kennedy — if I remember correctly — took place shortly after he returned from the war and immediately prior to running for a seat in Congress. He was suffering from malaria, Addison’s disease, and a bad back which had been aggravated when the boat he commanded, PT 109, was split in half by a Japanese destroyer. In order to heal, he went to a clinic in Arizona. While he was there, Kennedy met a prominent labor leader who was also convalescing. In order to be educated on labor issues, Kennedy sent for a box of books on labor issues. This labor leader was shocked to discover that Kennedy would stay up half the night reading so that he could hold an intelligent conversation the following day.

After all the books and rumors, this audio gives the best feeling of his personality I’ve heard or read. He’s intelligent, gracious, and humble. What a concept.

In a recent post on Bobby Kennedy, I asked No Quarter readers about their memories of RFK, and there were some incredibly moving stories. So, with this audio being released, I ask: What are your memories of JFK? Or, if don’t remember him, what do think his memory means to the country?

Please see other No Quarters posts on the 35th president:

Obama and Kennedy: Gut vs. Experience by SusanUnPC

Kennedy Choosing Johnson v Obama Choosing Biden by Bud White

To the Moon by Easton McNeal

JFK, Walter Mitty and Barack Obama by Uppity Woman

Senator, You’re No Jack Kennedy by LisaB

Appeasement at Tehran? by Medusa

Obama’s choice of Joe Biden, I suspect, will go down as one of worst political decisions in recent memory. John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin will be remembered as one of the best.

Biden reinforces Obama’s worst traits: egoism, verbosity, elitism, and D.C.-insider status.

Palin, of course, reminds us of the best of McCain: fresh, unconventional, funny, and willing to battle the D.C. insiders.

Like John F. Kennedy, Obama was suppose to represent a new generation of leadership. But Biden is a dead weight on Obama; he entered the senate before much of Obama’s base was born.

Some argue that Biden, like Lyndon Johnson, brings gravitas to the ticket. Douglas Schoen is of this opinion. He writes:

Witness the single biggest decision that Obama has made thus far: choosing Joe Biden as his running mate. The pick helped squelch concerns about Obama’s perceived lack of experience and foreign policy savvy. More importantly, it signaled to moderates that when it matters, Obama makes sensible, pragmatic choices.

What Schoen fails to note is that this is a change election. Americans aren’t looking for the presidential candidate to supplement his credentials with a Washington insider, they are looking for attainable solutions for our economic woes and a smart exit strategy from Iraq.

Biden only emphasizes Obama’s weakness on foreign affairs, and he fails to bring Obama any electoral votes. Although it’s often stated that the Daley machine won the election for Kennedy in Illinois, it was actually Lyndon Johnson who guaranteed Texas for Kennedy and thus the election. Even if Kennedy lost Illinois, he would still have become president. Biden, unlike Johnson, doesn’t heal the Party’s divisions nor does he bring votes.

John F. Kennedy, in contrast to Obama, was not new to national service. Beginning as a lieutenant in the Navy during World War II and then by election to the Congress and Senate, Kennedy served his country for 17 years prior to running for president. Although Kennedy at 42 was younger than Obama’s 47, he was considered an expert on foreign affairs, authoring a book on pre-War England, traveling widely, and as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Kennedy offered himself as a fully-formed presidential candidate. Kennedy did not require Johnson’s résumé in order to sell himself to the country. Johnson signaled geographical and ideological balance, and a concession that Johnson was a real threat to Kennedy during the real balloting at the convention in Los Angeles. Kennedy finished with 806 delegates to Johnson’s 409, a far bigger spread that the Obama/Clinton contest.

What Johnson did for Kennedy was to unite two factious sides of the Democratic Party, the liberals and the southern Democrats. Obama’s failure to select Hillary as V.P. only increased the division in the Party, and it gave McCain an opening.

This opening has allowed McCain to completely dominate the narrative for nearly two weeks. Not all the conversation is positive, of course, but it doesn’t need to be; Obama’s message is being drowned out.

Although I ignore Dick Morris when he speaks about the Clintons, his Machiavellian view of politics is often worth listening to closely. Here’s Morris on Palin and women:

Anecdotal evidence already suggests that women may have a gut reaction to the establishment’s sexist assault on a woman candidate – and flock to McCain. They’ve seen him stake everything on this one big move of turning toward a woman – in direct contrast to Obama’s deliberate decision not to name a woman.

They’ve seen the media and Democrats gang up on her and do their worst. And they’ve seen Palin stand up and stuff the challenge right back down the establishment’s throat. All this may have created an entirely new dynamic in the race.

Recent polling data is confirming Morris’ prediction:

An ABC News-Washington Post survey showed white women have moved from backing Obama by 8 points to supporting McCain by 12 points, with majorities viewing Palin favorably and saying she boosts their faith in McCain’s decisions.

For many women, I believe, Obama-Biden represents the worst of the boys club and McCain-Palin have become the agents of change. The vicious attacks on Palin only reinforces this narrative. Valentine Bonnaire captures the revulsion many women feel towards the Obama-Biden-DNC sexist club:

We don’t like your ticket, BOYZ. And we’ll unpack why, now. To watch you SQUIRM. Your ticket represents every man who ever groped us, whoever abandoned us, whoever BROKE our fragile FEMALE HEART, whoever BEAT US UP, whoever hurt ONE OF OUR GIRLFRIENDS, OUR BEST FRIENDS — Oh, I could go on

Instead of making a peace offering to women by picking Hillary, Obama is now in the position of attacking another woman candidate. It’s starting to look like a pattern. The headline today from the Associated Press, written by Nedra Pickler, is “Obama puts heat on Palin as she boosts GOP ticket.” She writes:

Obama said last week’s Republican National Convention did a good job of highlighting Palin’s biography — “Mother, governor, moose shooter. That’s cool,” he said. But he said Palin really is just another Republican politician, one who is stretching the truth about her record.

“When John McCain gets up there with Sarah Palin and says, `We’re for change,’ … what are they talking about?” Obama said Monday. (emphasis added)

Obama’s use of the pedestrian “cool” is meant to assure us that he is unfazed by Palin, but his need to sound unconcerned makes the desperation almost palpable. Obama is now running against Palin. He doesn’t have a choice. Obama is hemorrhaging women voters. He must stop the bleeding, but his attacks on her only serve to diminish him. Palin has become Obama’s opponent, and his attacks on her inexperience only remind voters of his own inexperience and, even worse, they remind women of what he and his supporters did to Hillary. The attacks on Palin, a woman friend told me today, are beginning to feel like personal attacks on all women.

Instead of having two political giants like Kennedy and Johnson, we have three candidates for vice president, of which Palin is the best, and McCain is reaping the benefit.

Obama’s willingness to flip-flop has earned him the moniker Backtrack Obama. He betrayed progressives by voting for the FISA legislation; he promised to expand Bush’s faith-based initiatives; he equivocated on choice by saying that “mental distress” should not be a factor in abortion.

Obama’s newest flip flop was not over a matter of public policy important to progressives, but rather the United State’s historic role in confronting evil. During the debate at Saddleback, Rick Warren asked, “Does evil exist and, if it does, do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it, or do we defeat it?”

OBAMA: Evil does exist. I mean, I think we see evil all the time. We see evil in Darfur. We see evil sadly on the streets of our cities. We see evil in parents who viciously abuse their children. And I think it has to be confronted. It has to be confronted squarely. And one of the things that I strongly believe is that, you know, we are not going to, as individuals, be able to erase evil from the world. That is God’s task. But we can be soldiers in that process. And we can confront it when we see it.

Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil. Because, you know, a lot of evil’s been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.

Think about Obama’s words. He’s talking about the United States. Consider the image below. It’s G.I.s examining a train car at Dachau. During the last century, the United States ended the bloody morass of World War I, freed Europe from genocidal Nazism and freed the Pacific Rim from the horrors of Imperial Japan. We held off Soviet expansionism and our policies eventually freed hundreds of millions who lived under the iron fist of communism.

Our country has undoubtedly made grievous errors confronting evil. We’ve entered conflicts, like Vietnam, where we had only a cursory understanding of the nationalistic feelings of the population. But to accuse the United States of being evil when we confronted communist expansionism in Korea or Vietnam or dictators elsewhere, like Iraq — regardless of how unwise the war policies may have been — is an inaccurate and shameful explanation of our history. It is the typical far-left canard which describes bad policies as having evil intentions.

The men responsible for our entry into Vietnam — Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson — were idealists who were responding to the pressures of their era. They collectively made many mistakes, but they were not evil men. Similarly, the men who had to deal with Saddam Hussein — Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II — were all criticized for their actions or inactions but all of them, I believe, wanted to make the best decisions for the security of their country. So while mistakes were made, colossal mistakes, it was not on par with the evil we confronted, as Obama suggests.

When Warren asked the same question of McCain, he responded:

MCCAIN: Defeat it.

(APPLAUSE) A couple points. One, if I’m president of the United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice. I will do that and I know how to do it. I will get that guy. No one, no one should be allowed to take thousands of innocent American lives.

This one question put into stark relief each man’s attitude towards the United States. McCain is a man who personally sacrificed in a war which lasted far too long, but he does not ascribe evil to his own country. He knows evil exists and he is ready to confront it. McCain is an old-fashioned patriot, and Obama believes in the moral relativists values of the extreme left. In Obama’s flip flop, the good guys become the bad guys. No wonder he felt at home at Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Church.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, the US Senate is actually in session!! I bet you didn’t realize that since Obama is on his World Tour! But Obama not being in the Senate does not stop him from claiming credit, falsely, for one of the big committees in the Senate, the Banking Committee. He flat out said – with hand on his chest to make the point – that the Banking Committee is HIS committee! Here’s the kicker – he ISN’T EVEN ON IT!!! Wowie zowie – with all of the lies this man has told about his experience, especially his legislative experience, it is sure a good thing that his supporters have finally woken up and realized what a lying, conniving, scheming, Chicago-style politician he is!!! Oh, wait – that hasn’t happened yet. But we can hope that SOMEDAY they will realize they have been had. Of course, it would help if the media actually did their job to facilitate that awakening. This is me NOT holding my breath.

So, yes, the US Senate is in session, and there is someone who has been knocking herself out for her constituents, and all Americans. Oh, shoot – I have already given a clue by the use of the pronoun. I can assure you, it is not Claire McCaskill, one of Obama’s sycophantic “my children convinced me” supporters. No, of course not – you know who it is. Hillary Clinton.

That’s right, Hillary Clinton is currently fighting in the US Senate to get us relief from these exorbitant gas prices. Oh, and to argue against offshore drilling. What a silly little woman – worrying about the little people! Yet, she spoke about this on the Senate floor:

Senator Clinton urged her colleagues to support The Stop Excessive Energy Speculation Act to provide short term relief to Americans feeling the pain of rising fuel prices and also called for bold new steps to break the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels and achieve long term energy independence based on clean, renewable alternative energy.

Say WHAT? Gee willikers – it seems that all of her talk during her campaigning wasn’t just TALK! She CARES about these issues because she cares about us, energy independence, and the environment. Well, I’ll be darned! She went on to say:

“I believe we can lower gas prices in the very near term by taking smart, practical, sensible steps to address rampant oil speculation,” Senator Clinton said. “And let’s lead our nation to embrace the great next American endeavor, a national effort to change the way we produce and use energy. It’ll serve our economy. It will strengthen our security. It will bring us together as a nation.”

Oh, she just needs to stop – energy independence AND economic recovery? It’s madness, I tell you!!! Maybe that’s what Jim Cramer of CNBC’s “Mad Money” responded EMPHATICALLY when asked by Ellen Degeneres which candidate would be best for the economy: “That’s actually, hands down, Hillary Clinton.” HERE is the link for the interview on YouTube.com. It’s short, but powerful.

But Senator Clinton doesn’t stop there, oh no. She goes on to tackle the issue of offshore drilling:

“Drilling is the wrong answer. It will do nothing right now. It is literally a Shell game, or an Exxon Mobile game. It’s designed to serve the political interests of vulnerable Republicans and the financial interests of profit-rich oil companies. Average Americans will not see a dime,” Senator Clinton said. “The oil companies say, ‘Drill,’ and the President and the Vice President say, ‘How deep?’ I don’t think that’s the smartest, most effective answer.”

Crazy talk, I tell ya! WHAT is she thinking?? Energy independence? Get the economy on track?? NO offshore drilling?!?!? She is out of control!!!

It seems there is some precedent for these wild ideas of hers:

Senator Clinton has previously cosponsored the Petroleum Consumer Price Gouging Protection Act and the Close the Enron Loophole Act, which would protect consumers from unscrupulous energy profiteers and increase transparency in the retail and wholesale markets.

What has gotten INTO this woman?? Concerned about price gouging at the pump? While ExxonMobil continues to rake in record-breaking profits?? What is WRONG with her?! I swannee, as we say down here in the South, she just seems hell-bent on HELPING people! Not in self-promotion! Or being Master of the Universe and pretending to be former American heroes! Good grief.

So, Senator Clinton was on the floor, talking away, pushing this:

Senator Clinton outlined her proposal to create a Strategic Energy Fund to jump start research and investment in clean energy technologies to promote job growth, energy independence and a cleaner environment. She also underscored her support for providing energy relief to low-income families in New York and across the country. Senator Clinton has long been an advocate of fully funding the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

How dare she? She wants a program that will help the people of New York and all Americans? Including low-income people?! She has just gone too far. Apparently, she did not get the memo that her REAL job was to engage in narcissistic, selfish, egotistical, arrogant, CYA actions, not to actually do things that would HELP people, the economy, and the environment! Well, no wonder Kerry, Reid, Dodd, et al, in the Senate didn’t want her!! It has all become clear to me now!

Grrrr. So, to recap: Obama is off on his European vacation on TAXPAYER’S dime, pretending to be JFK but missing the mark by a universe, and Clinton is in the Senate fighting for US.

Once again, Automatic Super Duper Delegates: PICK THE PERSON WHO IS FIGHTING FOR US, who has the intelligence, the passion, the COMMITMENT, to restoring this country to economic health, and to take us to energy independence. HILLARY CLINTON is the only one who will do that. Grow a spine, stop worrying about getting more money for your pet projects, and DO THE RIGHT THING already. Have some integrity. Have some GUTS. Do not foist yet another Pretender on us. Seriously.

For an added bonus, here is the LINK to her speech on YouTube.com. Get a cup of coffee, tea, whatever your beverage of choice is, and watch a REAL leader, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Tonight I have the honor of interviewing Bob Shrum. His book, No Excuses, is just out in paperback and it’s candy for the political junkie. If you love politics, you’ll love this book. I’ll be asking him about his political war stories. I also want to get his thoughts on this recent primary campaign and the concerns expressed by Hillary’s supporters. We’ll take some calls. I hope you’ll tune in to hear this very special guest. The show begins at 9 p.m. EST.

Not unlike a naughty child who just threw a water balloon at teacher and doesn’t want to get caught.

First we have the Obama Presidential Seal – i.e., Obama as Übermentsch. This blue hellaciousness was a grotesque lift of the real Presidential seal even though he is only the presumptuous nominee. Remember, he hasn’t yet ‘arrived’ at the Convention. How arrogant and how sad. To think he needs to stand behind a symbol like this to make himself “look” more presidential. You know, sort of like subliminal advertising in commercials and/or the ‘Vulcan mind-meld.’

Gee, Senator, how about doing your job once in a while? You know, like holding even one subcommittee meeting on Afghanistan these past 18 months, you know, since, umm, you are, like, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on European Affairs. That might be kinda presidential. And our troops and our citizens might really appreciate it.

When his ‘logo’ was met with outrage and ridicule, suddenly it was ‘oh gee, this was only a one time deal, for a special event, we never really intended to use it.’ Right.

Then we have Obama deciding to give another one of his glorious speeches at the Brandenburg Gate in Germany. While I don’t usually find myself in agreement with Charles Krauthammer, his new opinion piece, The Audacity of Vanity, is spot on:

What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Ronald Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final “tear down this wall” liquidation. When President John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.

When Chancellor Merkel kinda sorta told Obama that was not a good idea, the basic response was: ‘No worries, we were never really planning to do it anyway. We’ll just find some other powerful monument to stand in front of for our campaign backdrop.’

Senator Obama’s self-congratulatory European/Iraq tour is merely another marketing ploy designed to make him “look” more presidential – without ever actually having done anything that is Presidential. So just flying around a bunch of foreign countries is supposed to give him foreign policy street cred? Not unlike sitting in Rev. Wright’s church for 20 years was supposed to give him Chicago street cred? Got it.

Instead of doing his American Idol victory lap, dragging the three biggest news anchors in tow to worship at his feet, why doesn’t he consent to do a town hall meeting or two and face Senator McCain? You know – talk to the American people. Umm, yeah, like, the ones who he is supposed to be helping out of the morass we are in as a nation right now.

And now, the pièce de resistance. His treatment of Senator Max Cleland. I would say it is the latest of his blunders, but, sadly, there is a new one every day.

From Politico:

Former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland was an icon of Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 campaign, a badly wounded war hero who lost his seat, Kerry deplored, after a television advertising campaign questioned his commitment to national security.

But to the Obama campaign, Cleland has another qualification: Registered lobbyist.

So Cleland — despite his iconic status — was abruptly disinvited from appearing with Obama in Atlanta July 8, three sources familiar with the incident said.

“This was a hard decision regarding Senator Cleland,” said Obama’s deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, in an email. He cited Obama’s policy of banning lobbyists from participating in fundraising or giving money.

“If we make exceptions, we will open ourselves to criticism,” he said.

Cleland has told associates he was asked to appear at an Obama fundraising event in Atlanta on July 8, only to be told at the last minute that he wouldn’t be welcome.

The policy has been a key symbol of Obama’s outsider status, but many Democrats have also quietly questioned whether it goes too far when prominent party figures like Cleland, who an associate said has never actually lobbied in Washington, are left out in the cold on a technicality.

Cleland is registered to lobby for a company whose products are aimed at helping soldiers recover more quickly from battlefield injuries, Tissue Regeneration Technologies.

So let me get this straight. A man who is in a wheel chair, an icon of the Democratic party, who works to help wounded soldiers’ recovery when he himself lost three limbs in the war is told he is not welcome because – I must repeat this – if the Obama camp makes exceptions they will “open themselves to criticism”?

Hold fast my heart, Obama – you wouldn’t want to be criticized!! Horrors. Better to defecate on a man who almost died for his country, who served honorably in the Senate only to be swift boated in 2002. Now you – the standard bearer of the Democratic Party – tell him to get lost? Nice going, Senator.

Truly, this is among the worst of his idiotic, insensitive and cowardly behaviors. Once again, Senator Obama has proven there is no one person, no policy, no ideal, nor code of conduct he won’t throw under the bus for his own political gain or to cover his own shape-shifting persona.

For someone who is running on his great judgment, he seems to exercise none.

Senator Obama’s endless gaffes and misstatements, his blunders and the well of seemingly never ending arrogance are given grateful audience by his supporters and unfathomable political cover from mainstream news outlets and the Party powerful.

A good friend said to me today, a cruise ship is slow to turn. I’m still waiting for all those aboard this particular Titanic to change course.

“Factually Correct, Not Politically Correct”

“Senator Obama, I knew Jack Kennedy, and you’re no Jack Kennedy”

(NEW YORK) (July 17, 2008) One of the great lines in American political history is Senator Lloyd’s Bentsen’s 1988 retort to Senator Dan Quayle, “Senator, I knew Jack Kennedy, and you’re no Jack Kenney.” Senator Barack Obama daydreams that he’s the “new Kennedy.” In your dreams.

The remnants of the Kennedy dynasty have pronounced Obama “the new Kennedy.” Defunct dynasties are like that. They still want to pretend the dynasty lives. But the entire Kennedy/Obama spectacle is farce and charade. Obama is a great actor and entertainer. Kennedy was neither. On the contrary, Kennedy had great personal charm and incredible grace. Obama is the spitting image of the fictional Sammy Glick, not the legendary John F. Kennedy.

I have learned a few lessons about grace along the way, and I vividly remember one lesson administered by Senator Charles Percy in 1978 on a snowy day at the Palmer House in Chicago. Senator Percy could not have been more gracious and more welcoming, and humorous, in introducing me to his audience.

As a talk radio host in Palm Beach, I often raised controversial topics. But callers always felt I was gracious and fair to even my harshest critics. I never screamed, never hung up the phone, never insulted anyone—all while raising the blood pressure of my audience with hot button topics. As so graciousness and gracefulness come with time and experience.

Let’s start with the obvious: The New Yorker cover was laughable. It was ridiculous. And it was funny. I know the East Side of New York well, and the West Side too; and in those neighborhoods where the New Yorker is targeted people would have laughed and moved on.

Obama made the story by bungling his response to the New Yorker.

I was in New York last Sunday and saw the new New Yorker issue at the newsstand where I buy the Washington Post. The newsstand editions a wrapper that obscured the full cover, so I missed a view of the outrageous NY cartoon.

Obama’s initial response to the cover cartoon was correct. He shrugged his shoulders. That’s what Kennedy would have done, and maybe tossed off a quip. End of story.

Obama’s handlers then issued a denunciation of the New Yorker cover, and the story exploded. Obama made the incident, not the New Yorker. Senator John McCain also chimed in, and he made the ruckus even louder. Good move, John; if that’s what you intended. Obama’s denunciation was all the talking heads on cable TV needed to create the gonsa megillah. As a result, Obama took what should have been a nothingburger and converted the cover cartoon into a media extravaganza.

Outrageous political cartoons have a long history in the United States. Thomas Nast’s cartoon attacks on corrupt New York City leaders a century and a half ago are part of American history. Richard Nixon endured biting attacks. Even President Franklin Roosevelt was targeted by conservative opponents. So the goofy New Yorker cover on Obama was nothing special.

Ironically, by reacting the way he did, Obama made something out of nothing. He showed that he lacked the grace and graciousness to “blow off” the New Yorker with a genuine Kennedyesque quip and maybe a roll of the eyes.

The bottom line: it’s not enough to daydream you are the “new Kennedy.” Dreamin’ ain’t bein’. I won’t take anything away from Barack Obama. He is intelligent, attractive and suave. He knows how to work the rope line. He is going to make mega millions after he leaves the senate.

But I knew Jack Kennedy. And Barry Obama is no Jack Kennedy.

Not now. Not ever. Not inshallah.

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Andy Martin is a legendary Chicago muckraker, author, Internet columnist, radio talk show host, broadcaster and media critic. Andy is the Executive Editor and publisher of Contrarian Commentary. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2008. Martin covers regional, national and world events with over forty years of experience. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois College of Law. His columns are also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com. Andy is the author of Obama: The Man Behind The Mask, published in July 2008, via AndyMart20@aol.com.

Note about NoQuarter Radio’s interview of Andy Martin: An audio archive of the Friday interview of Andy Martin by Larry Johnson, which you can hear live at 11:00 a.m. ET via No Quarter Radio (NQR) will be available at NoQuarterUSA.net and at NQR immediately following the show.