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	<title>NO QUARTER &#187; Middle America</title>
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	<pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:30:51 +0000</pubDate>
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		<title>Report: Democrats Need Gains Among All The People They Insulted</title>
		<link>http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/09/25/report-democrats-need-gains-among-all-the-people-they-insulted/</link>
		<comments>http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/09/25/report-democrats-need-gains-among-all-the-people-they-insulted/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:35:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Uppity Woman</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Current Affairs]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Democratic Party]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Disenfranchisement]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Donna Brazile]]></category>

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		<category><![CDATA[Jewish voters]]></category>

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		<category><![CDATA[Misogyny]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[PUMA]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Paul Begala]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Race Card]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Senior Vote]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Sexism]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Small town America]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[White People]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[outrage]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[women]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Bitter Hicks]]></category>

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		<category><![CDATA[Garlic Noses]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Gays and Lesbians]]></category>

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		<category><![CDATA[Latinos]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Native Americans]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[new democratic party]]></category>

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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/09/25/report-democrats-need-gains-among-all-the-people-they-insulted/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I vividly remember when Paul Begala Davis told smug Donna Brazile on CNN: You can&#8217;t win an election with African Americans and Eggheads. She snorted. That was not long after Donna said we could all just &#8220;Stay Home&#8221; because she has a New Party.
Don&#8217;t believe me. Take a look at this sarcastic woman talk about [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I vividly remember when Paul Begala Davis told smug Donna Brazile on CNN: You can&#8217;t win an election with African Americans and Eggheads. She snorted. That was not long after Donna said we could all just &#8220;Stay Home&#8221; because she has a New Party.</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t believe me. Take a look at this sarcastic woman talk about her New Party. And who &#8220;Split us into groups&#8221; again?</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s Donna telling us all about her &#8220;New Party&#8221;. Check out her snide face and hear her snide voice. Good luck with that Donna. Paul Begala also warns arrogant Donna that she is going to need all the people she is insulting to win this election. Nobody can deny it. We were told to go to hell. Well we don&#8217;t plan on doing that, instead we plan to vote.</p>
<p><center><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/l-2ZG60iDRs&#038;color1=0xb1b1b1&#038;color2=0xcfcfcf&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/l-2ZG60iDRs&#038;color1=0xb1b1b1&#038;color2=0xcfcfcf&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></center></p>
<p>So now there&#8217;s a recent study discussing the very warning given to arrogant ass Donna Brazile, the one who was going to&#8221;Change the Demographics of her &#8220;New&#8221; Democratic Party. Now she needs us. <span id="more-5019"></span> We&#8217;ll be back when people like Donna are no longer in charge, for starters. We are going to take back our party. Again. This is not the first time elite socialist fringe snobs tried to hijack our party. It seems the one thing our party learns from history is how to repeat their mistakes over and over and over again.</p>
<p>The majority of this party is not interested in busting their butts at work and then &#8220;sharing&#8221; their gains with people who don&#8217;t. The majority of this party is not interested in sexism and misogyny. The majority of this party does not belong to MoveOn. The majority of this party is not interested in allowing dependent children, off-the-cliff radicals, old hippies stilll on the bong, left over cranks from the failed AmeriKKKan Socialist, Communist, Marxist and Stalinist parties pick presidents.</p>
<p>And the majority of the Democratic Party will NOT be staying home on November 4, Donna. Get that idea out of your head.</p>
<p>A study <span style="text-decoration: line-through">surprise!</span> reveals that Barack Obama needs us now. Of course, the Race Card has to be played with respect to the &#8220;White Vote&#8221;. Once more, my party wants to ignore the impact of PUMA at their own peril. So be it.</p>
<p>But it&#8217;s pretty safe to say that playing the Race Card every five minutes hasn&#8217;t exactly endeared white people to the Obama candidacy. Threatening people and calling them racist has backfired. Refusing to recognize that there are plenty of reasons why people will never vote for Barack Obama that have little to do with his color. Like sexest piggism and socialism, for starters. His rude, threatening and savage followers would be right up there on the list too. People don&#8217;t like to feel threatened. And people don&#8217;t like to have real issues ignored and twisted into a &#8220;Race Card&#8221; discussion. It not only ticks them off, but it&#8217;s been done and overdone so much by Obama and his surrogates, that the effect is now just a lot of Eye Rolling when it&#8217;s heard again. And again. And again.</p>
<p>There are plenty of reasons why many Democrats aren&#8217;t interested in Barack Obama. The report mentions the &#8220;White working class&#8221;. Those are those Bitter Hicks With Guns. Does anybody really expect them to forgive Barack Obama for his tasteless, snobby, downright ignorant remark about them at a fundraiser at Billionaire&#8217;s Row in San Francisco? <em>Really?</em></p>
<p>Does anyone really expect all Hillary Clinton supporters to forgive Barack Obama for his attempt to destroy her and his coordinated attacks on her because she is a woman? Really? <em>Really?</em> How arrogant can you <em>get</em>?</p>
<p>Does anyone really expect all Jews in America to rush to the polls for Obama when every Jidadist in the Middle East has endorsed him? <em>Really?</em></p>
<p>Does anyone really expect all of us well-educated Hillary supporters to forget being constantly referred to as &#8220;Downscale&#8221; and &#8220;Low Information&#8221;? <em>Really?</em></p>
<p>Does anyone really expect women to give him their undying support after his disgusting behaviors toward women in this campaign? Really? <em>Really?</em></p>
<p>Does anyone really expect everyone in America to forget Reverend Wright&#8217;s disgusting remarks? Does anyone really expect every Italian-American to vote for a guy whose 20-year pastor calls them Garlic-Noses? Really? <em>Really?</em></p>
<p>Does anyone <em>really</em> expect that Seniors, who have lived long enough to recognize BS when they see it, are endeared en masse by Barack Obama, whose followers have consistently insulted them as &#8220;old people&#8221;?</p>
<p>Has anyone heard Barack Obama say one helpful thing to Native Americans?</p>
<p>Does anyone really expect all Latinos in Florida to worship a man who wants to talk to Castro with no pre-conditions?<em> Really?</em></p>
<p>Does anyone really expect all gays and lesbians to be in love with Barack Obama when he refused to have his photo taken with the Mayor of San Francisco? <em>Really?</em></p>
<p>If all of these people happen to be white, then the real thing the report reveals is that Barack Obama, his surrogates and his followers have insulted plenty of white people in this election season. In droves. The Democrats might like to continue the &#8220;Race Card&#8221; with their studies, but the truth is, <strong>their loss among Democrats consist of the people they insulted and decided they didn&#8217;t need any longer</strong>. And that&#8217;s not going to go away.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13790.html">Politico&#8217;s</a> take on the report:</p>
<blockquote><p>In an election year where Barack Obama pledged to change the electorate, the centrist Democratic Leadership Council has weighed into the debate with a detailed report arguing it will be difficult for Obama to earn enough African American and youth support to compensate for enduring Democratic failures with white voters.</p>
<p>The report, titled “Who are the swing voters,” finds that the party must make historic inroads with working class whites in order to create a sustainable presidential majority.</p>
<p>It’s hardly news that the Democratic Party has struggled with white voters. Democrats have not won a majority of whites since 1964. Since 1980 though, Democrats have struggled to even remain competitive among whites, particularly men, and that has allowed Republicans to dominate the last quarter century of presidential politics.</p>
<p>The DLC set out in its analysis, an early draft of which was provided to Politico, to investigate the most influential swing blocs for Democrats. It concluded that slight but significant gains with working class whites— who constitute four in ten voters and were defined by the DLC as white high school graduates without a four-year college degree—is the best means to enlarge the Democratic coalition.</p>
<p>“There has been so much emphasis on new entrants in the electorate, and this report is historic and not predictive, but history tells us it would be an unusual circumstance if we witnessed a massive shift in the electorate,” the DLC analysis reads.</p>
<p>The report calculates that a 10 percent increase in black voter turnout amounts to a 1-percentage point uptick in the overall electorate, assuming all other groups remain constant.</p>
<p>That means that if the black voting rate rises from 60 percent to 67.2, the level of whites as measured by the Census Bureau, it amounts to 1.7 million votes— less than George W. Bush’s margin of victory in 2004.</p>
<p>“None of this means that the 2008 election could not be decided because of a radical shift in the electorate—by a dramatically increased turnout among critical constituencies or by a sharp shift in party identification, for example,” the report reads, “But historical voting patterns say that would be an unusual occurrence.”</p>
<p>The DLC study looked at the exit polls of the last five presidential elections as well as the 2006 midterm election.</p>
<p>The report, authored by Al From and Victoria Lynch, described black voters, self-identified liberals, and “strongly pro-choice” voters as the most influential legs of the Democratic coalition.</p>
<p>The DLC calculated that about four in ten voters in presidential elections are part of this Democratic base. John Kerry won 80 percent of these voters, meaning Democrats only amounted to about a third of the electorate. That number will likely be higher in 2008 as Democrats enjoy a newfound party identification advantage, though one that multiple polls show lessened in late summer.</p>
<p>The report strongly suggests, however, that it will be difficult for the Obama campaign to win if he does not improve Democrats’ appeal to the white working class.</p>
<p>The report also paints two blocs of working class whites:</p>
<p>“A typical male voter in that category will likely be between 30 and 59 years old, live in a suburb or small town in the South or Midwest, and be married with no children living at home. He’s likely to be a Republican or independent, moderate or conservative, not a member of a labor union, pro-life, and in favor smaller government. Finally, he’s most likely to be Protestant but not a weekly churchgoer.”</p></blockquote>
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		<title>*Breaking* Wisconsin in Play, McCain Shores Up Base</title>
		<link>http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/09/25/breaking-wisconsin-in-play/</link>
		<comments>http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/09/25/breaking-wisconsin-in-play/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:45:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bud White</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>

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		<category><![CDATA[McCain/Palin 2008]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Michigan]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[According to this report, celebrity candidate Barack Obama had 4,000 fewer people in attendance than McCain-Palin at an event in Wisconsin:
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Hoping to shore up support in his suddenly undependable backyard, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama flew here Monday to talk about how he’d handle economic crises as president.
Recent polls have shown [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>According to this <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1178184,obamarally092208.article">report</a>, celebrity candidate Barack Obama had 4,000 <em>fewer</em> people in attendance than McCain-Palin at an event in Wisconsin:</p>
<blockquote><p>GREEN BAY, Wis. — Hoping to shore up support in his suddenly undependable backyard, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama flew here Monday to talk about how he’d handle economic crises as president.</p>
<p>Recent polls have shown that Wisconsin — once pretty solidly in Obama’s column — is now a statistical dead heat between Obama and Republican John McCain.</p>
<p>“You all know that you hold this election in your hands,” Sen. Russ Feingold, a Democrat who said he worked on ethics legislation with Obama, told a crowd of about 6,000 cheering Obama fans in the arena next to Lambeau Field. “We just barely won this state for Al Gore in 2000 and we just barely won this state for John Kerry in 2004.”</p></blockquote>
<p><span id="more-5026"></span></p>
<p>While it&#8217;s true that Obama has had an uptick in national polls over the last week, he is also on the defensive in more blue states. John McCain is locking down states like Ohio and Florida, and is now expanding the map into Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. Obama, it appears, has a small advantage in New Mexico and Colorado.</p>
<p>National Public Radio <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94973392">reports</a> that the battleground states are becoming fewer:</p>
<blockquote><p>The number of battleground states has shrunk — from 19 to 14 — as Alaska, Georgia, North Dakota and Montana returned to their Republican roots.</p>
<p>In August, Obama led in the 14 states by 3 points. Now McCain leads in those states by 2, and the underlying political landscape has shifted a bit as well.</p></blockquote>
<p>If national polls swing back to McCain, and there&#8217;s no reason to think they won&#8217;t, then we should expect McCain to take a small lead in Minnesota, Wisconsin and, perhaps, Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>Kerry beat Bush in Wisconsin by a razor-thin .38% or 11,384 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Wisconsin,_2004">votes</a> of nearly 3 million cast, while Ralph Nader received just over 16,000 votes. The Nader campaign recently <a href="http://www.votenader.org/media/2008/09/01/WIturnin/" target="_blank">announced</a> that Nader will be on the ballot in Wisconsin this year, having collected 3,500 signatures.</p>
<p>Although not as close as Wisconsin, two other swing states are worth watching. In 2004, Kerry beat Bush by 98,319 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Minnesota,_2004">votes</a> in Minnesota of almost 3 million cast, and in Pennsylvania by 144,248 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Pennsylvania,_2004">votes</a> out of 6 million cast, a 2.5% margin.</p>
<p>What is causing Obama such problems in swing states? <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94973392">NPR</a> says it&#8217;s The Clinton Factor:</p>
<blockquote><p>something else is holding Obama back: He still hasn&#8217;t won over enough of Hillary Clinton&#8217;s voters.</p>
<p>&#8220;One thing that Obama tried to do in his convention was unite the Democratic vote behind him, and it still hasn&#8217;t completely happened,&#8221; Bolger said. &#8220;Our survey found that of the voters who said they voted for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, 20 percent of them are still voting for John McCain.&#8221;</p>
<p>One Clinton voter is Louis Brandenburg, a heavy-equipment operator from Avella, Pa. He said he has made up his mind for November.</p>
<p>&#8220;Yeah, I guess so: Mr. Obama, I guess. I have no choice,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>Even with little enthusiasm, Brandenburg — a Democrat — is sticking with his party. But plenty of his friends in southwestern Pennsylvania are very enthusiastic about Sarah Palin.</p>
<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of them who are going to vote for her and McCain because of the hunting issue,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I can&#8217;t understand what happened to our party; it just seems like the Republican Party is always the ones who back hunters and sportsmen, and all we get from the other one is flack about hunting and guns.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<br />
Photographs of <a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/sitting-room-on.html">empty seats at the Obama rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin</a>:</p>
<p><a href='http://noquarterusa.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/ht_tapper_65_080922_blog_21.jpg' title='ht_tapper_65_080922_blog_21.jpg'><img width=460 src='http://noquarterusa.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/ht_tapper_65_080922_blog_21.jpg' alt='ht_tapper_65_080922_blog_21.jpg' /></a></p>
<p><a href='http://noquarterusa.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/ht_tapper_658_080922_blog_3.jpg' title='ht_tapper_658_080922_blog_3.jpg'><img width=460 src='http://noquarterusa.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/ht_tapper_658_080922_blog_3.jpg' alt='ht_tapper_658_080922_blog_3.jpg' /></a></p>
<p>According to Jake Tapper of ABC News, &#8220;Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin packed the house last week in Green Bay, Wis., at the Resch Center.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>Obama Forgets the Forgotten Middle Class</title>
		<link>http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/08/11/obama-forgets-the-forgotten-middle-class/</link>
		<comments>http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/08/11/obama-forgets-the-forgotten-middle-class/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:00:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bud White</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Advertising]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Appalachia]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[During the opening night of the Olympics, John McCain broadcast the following ad, titled &#8220;Painful&#8221;:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWXqpHEsrxc[/youtube]


I was struck by the high quality of the ad. It tweaks Obama&#8217;s celebrity status, and then unleashes a full-throttle class attack on Obama. &#8220;Life in the spotlight must be grand,&#8221; intones a woman&#8217;s voice, dropping her voice off for emphasis, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>During the opening night of the Olympics, John McCain broadcast the following ad, titled &#8220;Painful&#8221;:</p>
<p>[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWXqpHEsrxc[/youtube]</p>
<ul>
</ul>
<p>I was struck by the high quality of the ad. It tweaks Obama&#8217;s celebrity status, and then unleashes a full-throttle class attack on Obama. &#8220;Life in the spotlight must be grand,&#8221; intones a woman&#8217;s voice, dropping her voice off for emphasis, &#8220;but for the rest of us times are tough. Obama voted to raise taxes on people making just $42,000.&#8221;</p>
<p>Contrast this ad with the lingering image of Obama in Europe, a trip which I think cost him dearly. Obama is trying to stretch his image into that of a statesman; he tried to fill the shoes of real presidents by going on the Euro-Disney tour of historic moments of American presidential history. But these staged events actually make Obama seem smaller, like the scared guy hiding behind a faux presidential seal:</p>
<p><span id="more-4104"></span></p>
<p><center><img src="http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2008/06/24/obamaseal_narrowweb__300x493,0.jpg" alt="seal" /></center></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking about Obama&#8217;s missteps since he &#8220;secured&#8221; the nomination. I think Obama would have been wise to go somewhere he lost big, like West Virginia, leaving behind his entourage and asking working people about their concerns in the streets and cafes of small town America. Instead of puffing himself up to look presidential, Obama should bring himself to the door steps of poor whites in Appalachia, Latinos in Texas, the elderly in Florida. Bill Clinton published a book during the 1992 campaign called &#8220;Putting People First,&#8221; and his economic message struck a chord. Obama has promised Hope, but he has failed to articulate a compelling economic message. But I suspect that he and his advisers are already intoxicated on their perceived greatness. </p>
<p><center><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/419HPCJ05PL._SL500_AA240_.jpg" alt="ppf" /></center></p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s message is a post-modern, self-referential echo of how great Obama is, because Obama brings you hope and that&#8217;s what you&#8217;ve been waiting for, in addition to yourself (who you didn&#8217;t know you were waiting for).  He won&#8217;t let you be complacent and he will remind you that you and he are merging into &#8220;The Ones we&#8217;ve all been waiting for&#8221;. And then a light will shine. Our tires will spontaneously inflate. And the earth will begin to heal. </p>
<p>Putting sarcasm aside, take a look at a Bill Clinton ad from 1992. People often complain that politics is all image and no substance. But here we have a candidate who is nearly all substance. He is <em>working</em> at his desk while the names of economists supporting his economic plan scroll across the screen. Obama fills the screen with himself and his adoring crowds, Bill Clinton (like Hillary Clinton) outlined solutions. Working Americans, I suggest, can see the difference. </p>
<ul>
</ul>
<p>[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gny-7ZBsJ9w[/youtube]</p>
<ul>
</ul>
<p>My neighbor told me today that he&#8217;s voting for McCain. The only other time he&#8217;s voted Republican was for Nixon in 1972, an ominous warning for Democrats. </p>
<p>If Obama is losing Democrats like my neighbor &#8212; white ethnic, life-long Democrat, over 65 years old &#8212; he is in deep trouble. Back in April, <a href="http://anglachelg.blogspot.com/2008/04/blowback-ahead.html#links">Anglachel </a> wrote that Obama&#8217;s inability to speak the language of the working class would cost the Democrats the election:</p>
<blockquote><p>Should Obama be the nominee, he can kiss the general election goodbye &#8230; the Democratic Party leadership itself is going to be paying for its whole-hearted embrace of reductionist class politics. Some voters will defect to the Republicans, though I think that is going to be limited &#8230; I think you see a significant section of the working class simply turn away from participation, depressing turn out and costing the party electoral success. They will stay away until the party offers them candidates who talk to their material interests instead of to the leadership&#8217;s fantasy of being modern day Solons.</p></blockquote>
<p>Obama&#8217;s inability to speak to the &#8220;forgotten middle class,&#8221; as Bill Clinton famously called them, is a primary source of his troubles. His campaign is still running to win the votes of college towns, but now great swaths of working America are starting to pay attention and the candidate speaking to the concerns of the working class, ironically enough, is the Republican nominee. </p>
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		<title>Just Say Anything: Obama&#8217;s talking points</title>
		<link>http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/07/03/just-say-anything-obamas-talking-points/</link>
		<comments>http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/07/03/just-say-anything-obamas-talking-points/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:25:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>medusa</dc:creator>
		
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/07/03/just-say-anything-obamas-talking-points/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One of the lead stories listed on my Google homepage today was about Obama&#8217;s current tour of Middle America, and as the title of the article by Leonard Doyle makes clear, these folks aren&#8217;t sure who Obama is:
Obama courts Middle America in attempt to counter &#8216;antiChrist&#8217; image   
If Obama thinks he has problems [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>One of the lead stories listed on my Google homepage today was about Obama&#8217;s current tour of Middle America, and as the title of the article by <a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/369309_obamacourtsonline03.html">Leonard Doyle </a>makes clear, these folks aren&#8217;t sure who Obama is:<br />
<blockquote>Obama courts Middle America in attempt to counter &#8216;antiChrist&#8217; image   </p></blockquote>
<p>If Obama thinks he has problems with us <a href="http://justsaynodeal.com/">Just Say No Deal Pumas</a>, he&#8217;s got much bigger problems with the very same Americans that he put down during the primaries, you know, those bitter, gun toting, bible clinging folks:<br />
<blockquote>The Obama team&#8217;s strategy of picking up conservative, evangelical Christian voters has run into unexpectedly strong headwinds. This is especially true among the poor, white and working-class voters of Scots-Irish descent who live in the Appalachian mountain region that stretches across parts of seven states.   </p></blockquote>
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<p>Barack Obama may wonder why many people aren&#8217;t falling in line behind him, but the truth is, he faces major public relation problems. Many people just don&#8217;t trust him to tell the truth about himself. Obama remains a mystery to millions of ordinary Americans.  Who is he? What does he believe in? Is he a Christian? And if so, after 20 years in the church run by Jeremiah Wright, what kind of Christian is he? Doyle writes:<br />
<blockquote>Along with Internet claims that he is a Muslim, some evangelical Christians have put it about that Obama may be the Antichrist. Glenda Kinzer, 41, from rural Ohio, believes the end of the world is about to occur. &#8220;A lot of people are talking about how Obama fits the description&#8221; of the Antichrist. &#8220;I always thought he will be from the Middle East.&#8221;   </p></blockquote>
<p>Obama is now advertising his Christianity by pushing Bush&#8217;s faith-based initiatives. Not long ago, liberal Democrats worried about Bush using religion, and now, Obama, the shape-shifter extraordinaire is hawking the same old wares (this is a new kind of politician?). Not only are these programs designed to replace social programs (and social programs have long been the mission of the Democratic party),  even more troubling is that Obama&#8217;s plan &#8220;blurs the nation&#8217;s constitutional separation of church and state&#8221;:<br />
<blockquote>Earlier in the week, he unexpectedly took a page from George W. Bush&#8217;s political playbook by embracing his controversial &#8220;faith-based initiatives.&#8221; He told voters in the evangelical heartland of Ohio that as president he would fund religious groups dealing with America&#8217;s social problems provided they did not discriminate in who they offer help.   </p></blockquote>
<p>He praises Ronald Reagan and copies George Bush. Yet Obama remains an unknown. Many of us will never vote for him because he is inexperienced, unproven and displays poor judgement.  And Obama&#8217;s talking points consist of whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear. What are Obama&#8217;s positions? As they say about the weather, wait five minutes and they&#8217;ll change. Just last week Obama appeared to throw MoveOn under the bus. MoveOn is one of his major contributors, but for the sake of appearances, they went quietly under the bus. Obama&#8217;s<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/26/barackobama.uselections2008"> followers </a>embrace his political position of never allowing values to come in the way of winning:<br />
<blockquote>In the run-up to the July 4th national holiday, Obama has been on a &#8220;values&#8221; tour of middle America as he seeks to counter Republican attempts to label him as too liberal.    </p></blockquote>
<p>That&#8217;s the thing: Obama will say and do anything for the sake of appearances. And the good folks of Middle America are wise to question who he is and to wonder about his motives.</p>
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