Denver Convention- Who gets the hook?
Somebody needs to get Barack Obama back behind the teleprompter. With it, he is a gifted speaker. Without it, he is bumbling, full of verbal tics and prone to say the wrong thing.
Yesterday, in Indiana, a seven-year-old girl asked him why he wanted to be president. His answer was that he wanted to be president because the country is not the way it could be and once was.
There are two things wrong with that answer. First of all, it's not true. Obama wants to be president because he wants to be president-same as everyone else who wants to be president. It's not "For the Children".
Secondly, he added another brick to the edifice that says Obama is down on his country. Add that to his wife's previous comments, some comments the senator made in Berlin to a German audience, plus something said by some obscure minister in Chicago whose name I can't recall, and overly-suspicious critics like me start to see a trend.
This comment in Indiana comes on the heels of a silly statement he made about solving the energy crisis by us all checking the air in our tires. He even said that checking the tire pressure on our cars would be the equivalent of drilling. Now he comes up with some vague plan to "invest" 150 billion dollars in the next ten years, using the private sector and government to get us off Middle Eastern oil-without drilling for new oil. Of course, there are no specifics, and when you break that dollar figure down to each year that is 15 billion dollars a year. He's going to solve our energy problems on 15 billion a year? And, of course, "invest" means using our money in the form of more taxes. And,as for putting the government and private sector together, what that would mean is the Government would be controlling the private sector- always a bad prescription. I know. I worked for the Government for 25 years.
Then there's Hillary. Remember her? Like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, she is floating rumors that her supporters might put her name in nomination at the Convention for a roll-call vote. There's also talk about a possible Hillary parade in downtown Denver to proclaim that she should be the rightful nominee. How classless would that be? Some are speculating that she is just positioning herself and Bill for prime-time speaking appearances. Sounds innocent enough except that depending how the schedule is arranged, the Clintons together could steal the stage from Obama virtually until his own acceptance speech. Of course, the teleprompter will be there, and Obama will certainly give a classic stemwinder-once the Clintons finally let him get on the stage.
Anyway, there is good news on the horizon for Obama. George Clooney, the Hollywood actor, is planning a $10,000 a plate fund-raiser for Obama-in Geneva, Switzerland!!! Boy, that'll impress the folks in Peoria. Maybe they can fly Teresa Heinz Kerry over to Geneva with Obama, and she can give a speech in 5 languages like she did at the 2004 Convention. How can we vote against Senator Obama when he has the support of all those sophisticated "Beautiful People"?
It's disingenuous to say that he claimed that we could "solve the energy crisis" by checking our tire pressure. He just said that's something that we can all do. (Wow...people should exercise a little personal responsibility rather than waiting for the government to solve all their problems! What a Commie-Pinko thing to say!)
ReplyDeleteI did a little reading on this, and it turns out that the math adds up. Just by doing it, our mileage goes up 3%. It hardly solves the crisis, but it's not insignificant either.
One guy actually did the math (can't vouch for its accuracy, but it's interesting) and according to him, it would take 39 years of drilling to match the gas saved by everybody making sure that their tire pressure is where it should be.
Republicans, conservatives, Obama detractors, whatever need to drop this one, because it's really making them look silly. I actually think that Obama's response was quite appropriate when he said, "It’s like these people take pride in being ignorant."
And realize, the best that I can say for Obama is that I haven't 100% decided that I'm not going to vote for him. (I'm about 80% - but I'm 95% on McCain.) So, please don't try and get me to defend a bunch of other stuff he said or did. I'm just talking about this one thing.
But does Obama have any other ideas beyond air pressure? Like finding our own resources? Like it or not, oil is not going anywhere in the short term. Alternate sources are fine. Inventing cars that run on beer are fine-that would put Bud to good use- but oil is what the world runs on. Depending on Saudi, Venezuela and other Middle East countries for what runs our economy is insane.
ReplyDeleteWe should also remember that American oil technology is the safest in the world notwithstanding accidents that happened 20-30 years ago.
I just think, we need-at least in the short term- to find our own oil. It's a matter of national security. Talking about windmills, solar this and that, and keeping our tires inflated is fine-but it won't solve the problem.
Just a quick search yielded his energy plan.
ReplyDeleteI mean, if you want to critique it based on what it is, then that's something, but to say that the tire pressure thing is all he has is REALLY oversimplifying it.