Obama-rama Update:

Here is a video: Watch it.

Continues from here and here and here


The Breath of the Beast provides a very cogent analysis of the case of

Obama's Campaign and The Real Meaning of The Che Guevara Flag

They go on to say that it the flag does not reflect Obama's views and that "Barack Obama has been very clear in putting forward a Cuba policy that is based on one principle: freedom for the Cuban people" It's funny how bland and non-committal that “freedom for the Cuban people” sounds. What does that mean exactly? To me, it has the same ring of ominous irony of, say, calling a repressive Communist totalitarian state “The People’s Republic of Whateverstan”.
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It is unsettling that the Obama campaign, notably through his wife Michelle Obama, is pandering to and encouraging the ecstatic urge for change in a recent speech (HT Sister Toldjah) Mrs. Obama said in a recent speech at UCLA, “Barack is the only man who can “heal” this nation and “fix our souls””

My reading of history tells me that when a government undertakes to “fix” peoples souls, as nice as that sounds, it will ultimately mean that if you don’t care to have your soul fixed in that particular way, they are going to wind up doing something very unpleasant (maybe even fatal)to your property, your freedoms and, your life.

The View from Paris: Le Monde:

Il y a enfin les non-croyants, les athées de la politique. Ceux-là sont troublés par les références aux Ecritures, par le "messianisme de masse", selon l'expression de Joe Klein, de Time Magazine, par le langage de télévangéliste : "Nous sommes ceux que nous avons attendus"... "Notre temps est venu"... Dans les meetings, ils entendent des invitations à croire. "Believe." Les militants, en "born again" de la politique, racontent comment ils sont venus à Obama. "Quand les deux militants ont sonné à ma porte, je me suis demandé s'ils avaient pris de l'ecstasy, plaisantait récemment Joel Stein dans le Los Angeles Times. J'ai eu peur qu'ils m'embrassent."

And finally there are the disbelievers, the political atheists. They are disturbed by Obama’s linguistic references to scriptures, which adorn his speeches. Joe Klein, of Time Magazine, called it the "mass messianism", that typifies the oratorical style of the televangelist: "WE are the CHANGE that we SEEK"... "Our time has come"... In the meetings, the politically "born again" activists await the invitation “to believe”, and they describe how they “came to” Obama. "When two activists rang my doorbell, I wondered whether they had taken “Ecstasy”, recently joked Joel Stein in the Los Angeles Times, “I was afraid that they might hug me."

In Focus: The End of the Obama Honeymoon?

Now that Senator Obama has become a really serious candidate for President, he faces some tough explaining to do. About this, for example:

3. His foreign policy guru travels to Syria to kibitz with murderous fascists.
As reported by Eli Lake in the New York Sun, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor and a consultant to Obama on Iraq, led a RAND Corp. delegation to Syria last week, the purpose of which was to meet with “high-level people in the region.” The Baathist regime in Damascus still dispatches jihadists to Iraq, has likely been responsible for more than half a dozen assassinations of Lebanese politicians in the last three years, and otherwise rules a police state complete with roving death squads. Despite the fact that Obama has pledged, as commander-in-chief, to open discussions with regimes exactly like Syria’s, his camp claimed not to have known about the Brzezinski trip until Lake told them. Yet even if this is true, state-controlled Cham News agency has happily described the meet-and-greet as an “important sign that the end of official dialogue between Washington and Damascus has not prevented dialogue with important American intellectuals and politicians.”

Which begs the question: Whom did they have in mind by “politicians”?

This is funny: Obama hope withdrawal symptoms

The victims of OCS struggle against Obama-myopia, or the inability to see beyond Election Day. But here's the fascinating thing: They still like him. They know that most of his hope mongering is vaporous. They know that he knows it's vaporous.

But the fact that they can share this dream still means something. After the magic fades and reality sets in, they still know something about his soul, and he knows something about theirs. They figure that any new president is going to face gigantic obstacles. At least this candidate seems likely to want to head in the right direction. Obama's hype comes from exaggerating his powers and his virtues, not faking them.

The view from Israel: Ami Isseroff

The best summary of all the uncertainties and questions that ought to bother those who care about Israel's security and possibly continued existence:

Why are certain people so desperate to cover for Barack Obama? Why are they ready to believe anything and everything good about him, however improbable, as well as to exclude any shadow of doubt? Obama has to be a tough and realistic politician, since he has won elections. He must know that the DC insider cliques and the pork barrel manipulators can't be overcome just by having people chant "Yes we can" in different languages. He knows it, and much of his well educated following know it too. Faith alone can't really move mountains, though it helps. People believe what they know is not true for the same reason that terminally ill people believe faith healers: they want to believe. They have to believe.

For Democrats, Barack Obama is a major asset... Among some Jews and Israel watchers, there are also some who are so fed up with the occupation and all that it stands for, that they feel the ends justify the means. They want to end the occupation any way possible, even by using people who want to end Israel. ..

Above all, there are those who want to live the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. in our lifetimes. ...I am among those people. I can feel in my heart much better than I can explain, the need to make Barack Obama president, and the will to believe that this man who talks about change and has captured the imagination of the American people can really make it happen. I also want to believe that Barack Obama is the American leader who will finally have the stature to somehow make peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. That would truly be a wondrous miracle.

However, I am not willing to sacrifice Israel in order to realize the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. Whatever my heart tells me, my head tells me that Wright, Malley and Brzezinsky can't be good for Israel, and if they are Obama's associates, whether day-to-day or only on Sundays, he can't be good for Israel. And my head also tells me that the villains of Washington DC or those in Tehran for that matter, cannot be defeated just by chanting "Yes we can."