Not Ready.

If Barack Obama is trying to position himself as the candidate of change and of the future, then why does he constantly revert to the past when the issue of Iraq is brought up?

(CNN) -- Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama engaged in a pointed exchange over al Qaeda in Iraq on Wednesday.

Sen. John McCain questioned Sen. Barack Obama's way of handling the war in Iraq.

McCain was in Tyler, Texas, and Obama was in Columbus, Ohio.

"I understand that Sen. Obama said that if al Qaeda established a base in Iraq that he would send troops back in militarily. Al Qaeda already has a base in Iraq. It's called al Qaeda in Iraq," McCain said.

"It's a remarkable statement to say that you would send troops back to a place where al Qaeda has established a base -- where they have already established a base."

McCain's comments come in response to remarks Obama made Tuesday night in a debate with Sen. Hillary Clinton. He was asked if the president would have to right to go back into Iraq in order to suppress an insurrection after downsizing the U.S. troop presence.

"I always reserve the right for the president ... to make sure that we are looking out for American interests," Obama said. "And if al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad."

In a statement sent out by McCain's press office Wednesday said, "Is Sen. Obama unaware that al Qaeda is still present in Iraq, that our forces are successfully fighting them every day, and that his Iraq policy of withdrawal would embolden al Qaeda and weaken our security?"

Obama responded to the latest attacks from McCain, saying his comments were taken out of context.

Obama said the question he was asked during the debate was a "big hypothetical."

"I said, 'Well, I would always reserve the right to go in and strike against al Qaeda if they were in Iraq,' so you know, this is how politics works," Obama said at a rally in Columbus.

"McCain thought that he could make a clever point by saying ,'Well let me give you some news Barack, al Qaeda is in Iraq,' like I wasn't reading the papers, like I didn't know what was going on."

"I said, 'Well first of all, I do know that al Qaeda is in Iraq. That's why I've said we should continue to strike al Qaeda targets. But I have some news for John McCain, and that is that there was no such thing as al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq."

Obama continued to blast Bush and McCain, saying, "John McCain may like to say he wants to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, but so far all he's done is follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq."

McCain in his statement said "the Democratic presidential contenders deny progress and see only gloom and doom. Where is the audacity of hope when it comes to backing the success?

"Big Hypothetical?" Not if you get your way and pull the troops out before the job is done Mr. Obama.

Yes, we know that Obama opposed the war.

We also know that he opposed the surge, and wants to abandon Iraq, throwing troops back in whenever Al Queda pops up in the region. Of course, this is similar to what we were doing pre-surge and it wasn't working.

Here's an interesting question that someone should ask BHO. Is it a good thing that we are in the process of handing Al-Queda a devastating defeat in Iraq?

Yes, we know that they weren't there before, but how is that relevant to the future of the country and to American national security?

This is just one more sign that Mr. Obama is a candidate of rhetoric and not ideas. When questioned about the future, he brings up the past and then goes to the old standby of being taken "out of context" when McCain makes him look naive.

The answer Obama should have given, the right answer, would have been:

"Well Tim [Russert], the U.S military is currently crushing the remaining elements of Al-Queda in Iraq, due to the surge strategy which I opposed and we are going to stay in Iraq until the Iraqi military is capable of quelling any Al-Queda presence in the country on their own so that the next President won't need to send more troops into that nation ever again."

Seriously, Barack, you are not nearly as prepared to play this game as your supporters and many in the media think you are. When the honeymoon is over and people start to see who you really are.....well, we can only hope the American people will have such an awakening before Election Day.

Oh, and by the way, don't you love how Democrats--like Chris Dodd--are so anxious to be seen as being on board the bandwagon with a winning candidate that they wait until the nomination is all but wrapped up to endorse someone? Or they switch from the candidate that they were supporting to the one who is ahead so as to save face, like Rep. John Lewis of Georgia. Whatever happened to loyalty? I'm sure Mrs. Clinton knows all about that, being a life-long Yankees fan. Oh wait.

I'm just wondering when these same Democrats will see the light and jump on the Iraq surge bandwagon.

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Obama Supporter Stumped

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Black, White and Yellow All Over

The first non-candidate causality of Election ’08 is surprising in its timing, but not unexpected.

At some point, the hearsay, innuendo and scandal mongering of the supermarket tabloids crept from the checkout isle and jumped onto Page One of The New York Times.

We have turned a corner however and before the Time’s smear of John McCain even reached newsstands, fair-minded individuals were all over the “paper of record” for their irresponsible journalism aimed at hurting the perspective Republican nominee.

Some will argue that the papers primary endorsement of McCain shows that the paper has no grudge against the perspective nomminee. That they were just reporting the news.

To this I say, go look at the Time's half-hearted, primary endorsement of McCain and then compare it with the glowing, rave which they printed on the same day endorsing Hillary. Who do you think that paper will give their stamp of approval to come election time?

After seven years of revealing clandestine government programs, giving favors to far-left advertisers and monolithic liberalism on their editorial page, a significant portion of the mainstream media finally got the message that any criticism of a Republican found on the pages of the Times is written in sand, not stone.

McCain's reaction made him look presidential, helped unify his base and diminished the Time's credibility for the remainder of this election cycle.

It's a big win for him and a big loss for the Gray Lady. However it is a loss that the paper richly deserves. Bill Keller is the next thing which that paper should lose.

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The Best So Far.....

Found this one elsewhere, but it's still appropriate:


Keep 'em coming people!

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The Falling Panda Motivational Poster Contest

I know that you've seen them all over the internets, but what you may not know is that anyone can make one.

All you do is pick a picture, a bold word and a witty definition for that word.

So for the next few weeks Falling Panda will be holding a contest to see who can come up with the best motivational poster.

You can make your poster here:

motivational poster maker

Then e-mail it to us at:dan@fallingpanda.com

We'll post the best ones on the blog over the next few weeks.

Here are a couple that I made today:

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Obama's Baby Mama

“For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country." - Michelle Obama

I'm not prepared to make any Theresa Heinz Kerry comparisons as of yet, however, all indicators point to the fact that Michelle Obama is not quite ready for prime time.

My first memory of Mrs. Obama is from the night of Nov. 2, 2004. Her husband had just been elected to the U.S. Senate and Michelle Obama introduced her husband for his victory speech, referring to him as her "baby's daddy".

While no one is arguing that it's a positive thing that the father of Michelle Obama's children is in fact married to Michelle Obama, the use of this slang term by a senator-elect's spouse caused everyone in the room that night to look at each other curiously and subsequently explode into laughter. "Did she really just say that?"

So now we find out that Mrs. Obama hasn't really been that big of an America fan for most of her life.

Now, for those of you who are regular readers here, you know that I'm not one of those tin-foil hat individuals who believes that Obama is a Muslim sleeper-cell, hoping to get elected so that he can infiltrate our government from the inside.


However, all of these little things are beginning to add up. His refusal to wear a flag pin, his ho-hum reaction to The National Anthem. While these small instances shouldn't get BHO sent to Gitmo or anything, they are odd behaviors for an individual who wants to be President Of The United States.

His wife's bizarre shame of her own nation is perplexing, especially coming from a woman who has benefited so greatly from being an American. She epitomizes the American dream, going from the south-side of Chicago to the Ivy League and now potentially to The White House.

Is it possible that Obama's entire campaign is aimed at those on the left who really don't like America? Those who believe that our nation is not a force for good in the world?

To disapprove of the actions of an administration or an individual is acceptable, but you really have to be delusional to see America's recent legacy as being devoid of things to be proud of.

And if it's too shameful for Mrs. Obama to be the First Lady of a nation in which she only recently found pride in calling home, I understand that there is a position that recently opened up just south of Florida. Perhaps she and some of her husband's supporters would be happier there.

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Yes We Can.....Plagiarize

Obama/Biden '08

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Happy President's Day

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Obama Worship

Fantastic article by Mark Steyn in today's OC register.

By MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist
Comments 8| Recommend 20

These days, Obama worshippers file two kinds of columns. The first school is well-represented by Ezra Klein, the elderly bobby-soxer of The American Prospect:

"Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair."

Er, OK, if you say so.

It seems to me that Barack Obama is the triumph of flesh, color and despair over word – that's to say, he offers an appealing embodiment of identity politics plus a ludicrously despairing vision of contemporary America (sample: "Trade deals like NAFTA ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart") that triumphs over anything so prosaic as a policy platform.

On the other hand, if you're running for president not as an unexceptional first-term senator with a thin resume but as the new Messiah, the new Kennedy, the new Gandhi, the new Martin Luther King, you can't blame folks for leaping ahead to the next stage in the mythic narrative. Around the world, a second instant subgenre has sprung up in which commentators speculate how long it will be before some deranged Christian-fundamentalist neo-Nazi gun-nut deprives America of its fleeting wisp of glory. Setting a new standard for fevered, slavering Obama assassination porn, Earl MacRae warned Canadians in The Ottawa Sun:

"To be black and catapulting toward the presidency on charm, intellect and popularity is unacceptable to the racist paranoid and scary in America the beautiful. … They do not want to hear that he is a better American than they are, these right-wing extremist fascists in the land of America who no doubt believe it's God's will Barack Obama not get to the White House, no method of deterrence out of bounds, in their zealotry to protect and perpetuate Roy Rogers, John Wayne, Mom's apple pie and the cross of Jesus in every home."

By this point, Mr. MacRae wasn't so much warming to his theme as typing up his first draft for Miramax:

"Barack Obama is waving his arms. The crowd is cheering. … I see Barack Obama, one minute smiling, the people crying his name. I see Barack Obama grab his chest and his eyes widen and his mouth opens, and the crowd screams as Barack Obama, black candidate for the presidency of the United States of America, falls to the ground, dead, an assassin's bullet inside him."

Er, OK.

Right now Obama's more at risk of being taken out by traces of polonium-210 left in his hotel by a Clinton operative than by Roy Rogers saddling up for Jesus. Every president is a target for assassination, though George W. Bush is unique in having been the subject of explicit murder fantasies by so many non-right-wing nonextremist impeccably reasonable artists (the British movie "Death Of A President"; the novella "Checkpoint" by Nicholson Baker) and even the occasional straightforward exhortation: "On Nov. 2, the entire civilized world will be praying, praying Bush loses," wrote Charlie Brooker in London's Guardian in 2004. "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. – where are you now that we need you?"

Well, wherever they are, they're probably saying: "Why bring us into it? When Lee Harvey decided it was time for JFK to get assassinated, he didn't sit around whining, 'John Wilkes Booth, where are you now that I need you?' Get off your butt and do it yourself, you big Euro-ninny." Ah, but for the armchair insurgents of the Western Left, the vicarious frisson is more than delicious enough. Anything else would interfere with dinner plans.

The Bush assassination fantasies are concocted by his political opponents and at least arise from his acts – invading the world; slaughtering 14 million Iraqi civilians; shredding the Constitution. By contrast, the Obama assassination porn is written by his worshippers and testifies to one of the most palpable features of the senator's campaign – its faintly ersatz quality, its determination to appropriate Camelot and every other mythic narrative.

A few days ago, a local news team went to shoot some film at Obama's Houston campaign headquarters. Behind the desks of the perky gals answering the phones were posters of Che Guevara and Cuban flags. Do Obama's volunteers even know who Che is? Apart from being a really cool guy on posters and T-shirts, like James Dean or Bart Simpson. I doubt it. They're pseudo-revolutionaries. Very few people in America want a real revolution: Life is great, this is a terrific country, with unparalleled economic opportunities.

To be sure, it's a tougher break if you have the misfortune to be the victim of one of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs or a decrepit inner-city grade school with a higher per-student budget than the wealthiest parts of Switzerland. But even so, to be born a U.S. citizen is, as Cecil Rhodes once said of England, to win first prize in the lottery of life.

Not even Obama supporters want real revolution: Ask the many peoples around the world for whom revolution means not a lame-o Sixties poster above your desk but the carnage and horror of the day before yesterday.

Poor mean, vengeful Hillary, heading for a one-way ticket on the Oblivion Express, has a point. Barack Obama is an elevator Muzak dinner-theater reduction of all the glibbest hand-me-down myths in liberal iconography – which is probably why he's a shoo-in. The problems facing America – unsustainable entitlements, broken borders, nuclearizing enemies – require tough solutions, not gaseous Sesame Street platitudes. But, unlike the whose-turn-is-it? GOP, Mrs. Clinton's crowd generally picks the new kid on the block: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama. I wonder if Hillary Rodham, Goldwater Girl of 1964, ever wishes she'd stuck with her original party.

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Pelosi Fiddles, Obama Cowers

McCain '08. Exhibit "A"

Thursday, February 14, 2008
As Of Saturday, Even Roger Clemens Is At Risk
Posted by: Duane R. Patterson at 2:34 PM

You've got to love the priorities of the House Democrats. They spend most of the day yesterday going after Roger Clemens and what he did or did not have injected into his glutes eight years ago by a creepy trainer that seems to have a used syringe collection as a hobby.

Nancy Pelosi and Co. had one simple task today - pass the FISA law permanently. FISA is already in effect to make sure the country stays protected. It has led to the breakup of terrorist cells, and it's prevented attacks on American soil. And it expires tomorrow, meaning as of Saturday, our national intelligence agencies legally can't intercept phone calls outside the country between two parties planning attacks here or in the countries of our allies.

The Senate passed a clean version of the FISA bill Tuesday in a bipartisan manner. The President has already said he's willing to sign the Senate version. On a side note, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton failed to vote for the final passage in the Senate yesterday. I guess change and hope have little to do with defending and protecting the country.

Back to the House today, all that had to happen was for Nancy Pelosi to stop playing games with our country's defense and bring up the Senate version for a vote. But game playing seems to be what Pelosi does best. Instead of putting the country ahead of partisan politics, she substituted another 21 day extension of the existing law as a stop-gap. That was rejected immediately by House Republicans, the President, and even the hard left members of the House Democrats, who have their collective heads so far in the sand that they see no foreign threats. They want the bill to go away period.

Moments ago, John Boehner and the House Republicans got so fed up at Pelosi's antics that they walked out in a mass protest.

Ms. Pelosi, the time for games has long gone. If you want to stake the political future of your party on weakening the national defense and hoping we don't get attacked again, that's certainly your right. I hope you can live with the consequences when something bad happens because of your actions today.

Today is another reason why those of you upset with the specter of a John McCain candidacy need to realize why this election in November does matter so much. Obama and Clinton don't view FISA as important enough to even vote on. In fact, Obama was there and voted for amendments to weaken the overall bill that eventually failed. But when the final passage vote came up, Obama walked away and didn't cast a vote. John McCain was there, and McCain voted to pass it.

The Democratic Party, in spite of all the flowering press over the two Democratic candidates, just are not serious about protecting the country. The Republican Party, in spite of all the fissures and fractures on policy issues, still get national defense and security right.

The story that should come out of this, but won't, is how the Democrats were so beholden to the trial lawyers, that they refused to enact the absolutely necessary provision, which gave the telecom companies immunity from lawsuits involving terrorism related, government wiretaps.

Aren't the Democrats always telling us that it's the GOP that works for the special interests and not for the American people?

The Democrats appear to believe that the phone company is more dangerous than Al-Queda. Except for Mr. Obama of course who can't be troubled with trivial matters such as national security and terrorism. After all, including those issues in his speeches would take up valuable time during which he could be repeatedly saying the word "hope".

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Is Obama A Straight-Talker

If I had to trace the implosion of the Clinton campaign to one event, it would be the evasivness which she displayed here:



A couple of weeks later Obama did essentially the same thing:



So where was the media coverage?

I know this happened a long time ago, but shouldn't Obama's poor attempt at avoiding taking a position on the issue, have been called into question by the MSM in the same fashion that Clintons was?

Think about this when you ask yourself whether or not the media is in the tank for one candidate or the other this year.

To be fair, once shamed into it by Blitzer and the rest of the audience, Obama came out in favor of drivers licensees for illegals. Let's hope that John McCain takes more notice of this than did the rest of the mainstream media.

By the way, did Obama ever quit smoking?

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Keep It Red

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Examining Obama's Record Of Accomplishment

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More Defeatism From The Democrats

AP- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said twice Sunday that Iraq “is a failure,” adding that President Bush’s troop surge has “not produced the desired effect.”

“The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “They have not done that.”

"There haven't been gains, Wolf,” the speaker replied. “The gains have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. This is a failure. This is a failure."

Didn't Pelosi learn anything, when her partner in dumb, Harry Reid was pilloried from all sides for proclaiming the war "lost"?

Ten years from now, if Iraq is a stable, peaceful democracy, and history has proven that Bush's actions were not only justified but also beneficial to the reigion and to security here at home, I hope that Americans have the collective memory to remember how Reid and Pelosi attempted to undermine and politicize the war effort at every turn.

Political reconciliation can only come if people are not getting blown up in the streets. Any honest observer- as well as Rep.Murtha - can clearly see that the surge has worked magnificently in quelling violence around the country.

The Democrats new strategy, as witnessed by their collective hissy fit when John McCain implied that the U.S. may need to have a presence in Iraq for 100 years, is to insist that our strategy in Iraq isn't working, simply because we're there.

The Democrats can't stand the thought of U.S. success in Iraq. They know it would set their party back another 25 years on the issue of national security, just as their refusal to take on the Soviet Union and their bungling and subsequent surrender in Southeast Asia, made them the party of defeat throughout the later part of the 20th century.

Between Hillary crying for a third time last night after losing another handful of primaries and Democratic congressional leaders doing everything they can in order to force the U.S. military to run home from Baghdad with their tails between their legs, is it any wonder that the GOP has picked McCain as their standard bearer?

Despite all of his faults, at least McCain can be trusted not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory or to allow the Democrats to send harmful messages to our troops in the field, when the truth is that they are changing the world for the better, by democratizing a region, which so desperately needs it.

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Liberals Are Dumb.....

......but whoever made these videos is brilliant:

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Fear-Mongering Fear

Over the past six years, some on the left have accused the Bush administration of using "fear" or "fear-mongering" in order to gain politically from the threat, or as the left claims, the imagined threat of radical Islamic thought.

Most recently, the Democrats' Rookie of the Year, Barack Obama accused the GOP of this in his Super Tuesday speech, garnering a supportive reaction from his audience of political neophytes and starry-eyed idealists. He said:

"When I’m president, we will put an end to the politics of fear, a politics that uses 9/11 as a way to scare up votes. We’re going to start seeing 9/11 as a challenge that should unite America and the world against the common threats of the 21st century, terrorism and nuclear weapons, climate change and poverty, genocide and disease."(APPLAUSE)

Ironically, using "...9/11 to scare up votes" is exactly what Obama was doing with this statement.

This was the first time during his relatively substance-free campaign that I felt the same anger towards Obama that I have felt towards the other Democrats who have used the same kind of unpatriotic rhetoric over the years.

That's right, I used the word "unpatriotic." I do not use that word lightly.

Despite what those on the left say, neither I nor anyone that I can think of in the administration has ever used that word to describe those who disagree with them on the War On Terror. Here it applies perfectly.

To imply that this administration has used "fear" unnecessarily and for political gain, without any evidence to back up that claim is unpatriotic and a bit nauseating. Mr. Obama should be called out immediately for this statement which has no basis in fact and which reeks of exactly the type of political opportunism and divisiveness, which Obama's supporters claim that they are sick of.

Ron Silver, an actor who broke away from the monolithic liberalism of the acting community after the events of 9/11, has a terrific piece on his blog regarding this issue. The left's recent proclivity to attempt to erode trust in their own government on the most important issue of our time in order to win elections should be rejected by all Americans. Here's that article:
http://pajamasmedia.com/xpress/ronsilver/

Six and a half years ago, we saw the damage brought about by the actions of fewer than 20 Islamic-extremists. There are many more out there who want to attack us again and in a fashion that would dwarf the attacks on the Pentagon and The World Trade Center. If you refuse to take this threat seriously, you're naive. If you're a presidential candidate who refuses to take it seriously, you're clearly not ready to assume the office.

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Ready To Lead On Day Five-Hundred Forty-One

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The Mitt Hits The Fan

"Hey. Where did everybody go?"

It appears that the silver-medal express has reached the end of the line.

For the good of the party it's time for Mitt to bail out and back the inevitable nominee.

If he does, we will rememeber it in 8 years when it's time to pick another standard- bearer.

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Faces Of The Left

This is Robert Anbian. He writes haikus.

Haikus for the White House

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Wanna guess where this guy's from? If you said San Francisco, YOU WIN! I hope that you didn't spend too long figuring that one out.

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Crying Her Way To The White House

Stop crying Hillary. You want to be the leader of the most powerful military on Earth. Your recent tendency to open up the waterworks -whether intentional or not- is not exactly instilling me with much confidence in your abiltiy to take on Muslims who enjoy blowing up buildings. Not that I had much confidence in you to begin with.

So is the face of modern feminism streaked with tears? Probably only if it helps the ladies get what they want.

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