I thought you might appreciate this Letter to the Editor of the Richmond (VA) Times Dispatch which was in the 7/7/08 edition. Hopefully it will be read with close attention by those who are so behind the presidential candidate for “Change”. Editor, Richmond Times-Dispatch Each year I get to celebrate Independence Day twice. On June 30, I celebrate my independence day and on July 4, I celebrate America’s. This year is special, because it marks the 40th anniversary of my independence. On June 30, 1968, I escaped Communist Cuba and a few months later I was in the United Sates to stay. That I happened to arrive in Richmond on Thanksgiving Day is just part of the story, but I digress. I’ve thought a lot about the anniversary this year. The election-year rhetoric has made me think a lot about Cuba and what transpired there. In the late 1950s, most Cubans thought Cuba needed a change, and they were right. So when a young leader came along, every Cuban was at least receptive. When the young leader spoke eloquently and passionately and denounced the old system, the press fell in love with him. They never questioned who his friends were or what he really believed in. When he said he would help the farmers and the poor and bring free medical care and education to all, everyone followed. When he said he would bring justice and equality to all, everyone said “Praise the Lord”. And when the young leader said, “I will be for change and I’ll bring you change,” everyone yelled, “Viva Fidel!”. But nobody asked about the change, so by the time the executioner’s guns went silent the people’s guns had been taken away. By the time everyone was equal, they were equally poor, hungry, and oppressed. By the time everyone received their free education it was worth nothing. By the time the press notice, it was too late, because they were now working for him. By the time the change was finally implemented, Cuba had been knocked down a couple of notches to Third-World status. By the time the change was over more than a million people had taken to boats, rafts and inner tubes. You can call those who made it ashore anywhere else in the world the most fortunate Cubans. And now I’m back to the beginning of my story. Luckily, we would never fall in America for a young leader who promised change without asking, what change? How will you carry it out? What will it cost America? Would we? Manuel Alvarez, Jr.
Commom Sense from Newt Gingrich about Energy Crisis
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Beware Charismatic Men Who Preach ‘Change’
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McCain, Not Disarmed
by Robert Novak
When one of the Democratic Party's most astute strategists this week criticized John McCain for attacking Barack Obama's desire to engage
Obama embraced that formula once it became clear that he would best Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. He began pounding McCain for seeking the third term of George W. Bush. At the same time, Obama implores McCain in the interest of "one nation" and "one people" not to attack him. The shorthand, widely repeated by the news media, is that the Republican candidate must not "Swift boat" Obama. That amounts to unilateral political disarmament by McCain.
McCain is not about to disarm. His campaign has no intention of fighting this battle on Democratic turf. During the more than five months ahead, Republicans will explore the mindset of this young man who is a stranger to most Americans. That includes his association with the
Indicating what lies ahead is the McCain campaign's plan to bring in Tim Griffin, a protege of Karl Rove, who is a leading practitioner of opposition research -- digging up derogatory information about opponents. Although final arrangements have not been pinned down,
It is an article of Democratic faith that John Kerry would have been elected president had not Republicans undermined public confidence in his leadership and integrity by assailing his performance as a Swift boat commander in
Simultaneously, with
While on this attack, Obama rails against any responsive fire from McCain. He has lashed out against criticism of his declared willingness to sit down with Ahmadinejad and
In fact, Obama has repeatedly been questioned specifically about Ahmadinejad. At a press conference in
The debate over such "a conversation" was heightened by Bush's speech last week to the Israeli Knesset, suggesting "appeasement" by Obama. The White House has privately informed the McCain campaign it had no intention of leaping into presidential politics, but Obama's defensive response enabled him again to link McCain with Bush. Although the Republican candidate would like the unpopular president to get offstage politically, McCain is not about to run a campaign about health care mandates and home foreclosures.
Mr. Novak is a syndicated columnist and editor of the Evans-Novak Political Report, a political newsletter he founded in 1967 with Rowland Evans.
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Barack Obama: Gaffe Machine
All it takes is one gaffe to taint a Republican for life. The political establishment never let Dan Quayle live down his fateful misspelling of "potatoe." The New York Times distorted and misreported the first President Bush's questions about new scanner technology at a grocers' convention to brand him permanently as out of touch.
But what about Barack Obama? The guy's a perpetual gaffe machine. Let us count the ways, large and small, that his tongue has betrayed him throughout the campaign:
-- Last May, he claimed that tornadoes in
-- Earlier this month in
-- Last week, in front of a roaring
-- Explaining last week why he was trailing Hillary Clinton in
-- Obama has as much trouble with numbers as he has with maps. Last March, on the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in
"There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in
Obama was born in 1961. The
-- Earlier this month in
-- Over the weekend in Oregon, Obama pleaded ignorance of the decades-old, multi-billion-dollar massive Hanford nuclear waste cleanup:
"Here's something that you will rarely hear from a politician, and that is that I'm not familiar with the Hanford, uuuuhh, site, so I don't know exactly what's going on there. (Applause.) Now, having said that, I promise you I'll learn about it by the time I leave here on the ride back to the airport."
I assume on that ride, a staffer reminded him that he's voted on at least one defense authorization bill that addressed the "costs, schedules, and technical issues" dealing with the nation's most contaminated nuclear waste site.
-- Last March, the Chicago Tribune reported this little-noticed nugget about a fake autobiographical detail in Obama's "Dreams from My Father":
"Then, there's the copy of Life magazine that Obama presents as his racial awakening at age 9. In it, he wrote, was an article and two accompanying photographs of an African-American man physically and mentally scarred by his efforts to lighten his skin. In fact, the Life article and the photographs don't exist, say the magazine's own historians."
-- And in perhaps the most seriously troubling set of gaffes of them all, Obama told a Portland crowd over the weekend that Iran doesn't "pose a serious threat to us" -- cluelessly arguing that "tiny countries" with small defense budgets can't do us harm -- and then promptly flip-flopped the next day, claiming, "I've made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave."
Barack Obama -- promoted by the Left and the media as an all-knowing, articulate, transcendent Messiah -- is a walking, talking gaffe machine. How many more passes does he get? How many more can we afford?
Mrs. Malkin is author of Unhinged (Regnery).
