The New York Times Manner in Describing the Candidates…..Obama in Des Moines had “not the usual presidential reserve when mentioning his opponent”

and, the propagandist, Peter Baker of the New York Tmes, suggests an Obama early leap:

“Obama Takes Early Leap Into Campaign Fray”

By PETER BAKER

DES MOINES — With the general election campaign now under way, one thing has become clear: There will be no Rose Garden strategy for President Obama.

 

President Obama, who was in Des Moines on Thursday, has not had the usual presidential reserve when mentioning his opponent.

 

A one-stop destination for the latest political news — from The Times and other top sources. Plus opinion, polls, campaign data and vide

On Thursday, Mitt Romney took his campaign to Philadelphia.

If past incumbents have been reluctant to directly engage opponents this early in an election year for fear of looking like a candidate rather than a president, Mr. Obama has tossed aside convention. No simply leaving it to the vice president or the campaign staff, no waiting until summer, no dancing around with oblique phrases like “my opponent.”

Instead, with Mitt Romney now the nominal Republican nominee, Mr. Obama has shown a willingness to confront him aggressively by name more than five months before the election. In a succession of speeches on the road over the last two days, the president attacked Mr. Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat whose prescriptions for the economy would reverse the fragile gains of the last couple of years.

“There may be value in that kind of experience, but it’s not in the White House,” Mr. Obama told supporters at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Thursday night. He used the setting to needle Mr. Romney about a controversial comment he made here during the primaries. “The world view that Governor Romney gained” in private finance, he said, “explains why the last time he visited these very same fairgrounds he famously declared that corporations are people.”

Encouraged by the partisan audience, Mr. Obama then mimicked Mr. Romney. “ ‘Human beings, my friend’ — that’s what he called them.”

Then, he called Mr. Romney’s speech here last week warning of a “prairie fire of debt” more like “a cow pie of distortion.” He added, “I don’t know whose record he twisted the most, mine or his.”

Mr. Romney’s camp said the attacks signal desperation. “All he has to offer now are tired political attacks,” said Amanda Henneberg, a spokeswoman. “With no record to run on, no new ideas and flailing attacks like these, it’s no surprise the Obama campaign has had such a tough week.”

The early engagement reflects the acceleration of politics in the age of Twitter, when every attack must be countered in real time. Obama strategists calculate that if previous presidents could afford to be more genteel until later in the year and leave the back-and-forth to surrogates until then, such an approach is no longer realistic. After all, no challenger waits to attack the president by name.

“There’s no point in being coy,” said David Axelrod, the president’s adviser. “Governor Romney is the nominee. He’s been directing his comments to, and about, the president for a year. The debate has been joined.”

But some veterans of past campaigns, particularly Republicans, questioned whether it would take some of the sheen off Mr. Obama’s stature as president. Rather than appearing above the fray, Mr. Obama may look like just another officeseeker.

Sara Fagen, an adviser to President George W. Bush during his 2004 campaign against Senator John Kerry, and later the White House political director, said the campaign was conscious to avoid that. “He almost never mentioned him and certainly not this early,” she said. “President Bush understood it diminished the office by going after his opponent directly.”

That does not mean Mr. Bush’s campaign went soft on Mr. Kerry. But the president largely left it to others to be so direct until summer. Vice President Dick Cheney opened the debate with a sharp speech criticizing Mr. Kerry in March 2004 at the same time the campaign began airing its first negative advertisements. When Mr. Bush criticized Mr. Kerry, he generally used phrases like “my opponent.” Only in July did he start naming him regularly.

That was the case for previous presidents like Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1996. Of course, Mr. Clinton was in far better shape at this point than Mr. Obama is; he led by 15 percentage points in a Gallup survey in May and could afford to dismiss Senator Bob Dole. Mr. Reagan was ahead by just 4 points at this stage. Mr. Obama is essentially tied with Mr. Romney, according to a succession of polls.

Mr. Romney sought on Thursday to change the subject from his time at Bain Capital, traveling to a mostly black elementary school in West Philadelphia to promote his plan for reducing the role of the federal government in education.

“Our failure to provide kids with the skills they need for the jobs of today and tomorrow is a crisis,” Mr. Romney said. “We have an education, an American education crisis, and we keep talking through the same things expecting somehow things to get better. It’s like, you guys we’ve got to try some new things, we’ve got to be bold.”

But during a panel discussion in the school’s library, he faced skepticism from faculty members and local education leaders, who challenged his argument that small class sizes play little role in improving performance. And outside were reminders of Mr. Romney’s time in private equity. Protesters held up signs declaring, “We are the 99 percent.”

Mr. Romney arrived at his campaign headquarters in Boston shortly after lunchtime to meet with advisers.

Before taking a brief reprieve from campaigning over the holiday weekend, he is wrapping up an extensive week of fund-raising at an evening event in Chestnut Hill, Mass., which donors said is expected to raise more than $6 million for his campaign and the Republican National Committee.

Then he and the president will renew a political battle that increasingly sounds more like Labor Day than Memorial Day.

Michael Barbaro contributed reporting from Philadelphia, Ashley Parker from Washington, and Jeff Zeleny from Boston.

Comment:   The petulant Marxist Obama speaks small in a  common manner.    He is remarkably skilled  con-artist.

Paul G. Kengor Thinking about Memorial Day and Greatness

 

The Flags at the Cemetery

Posted By Paul G. Kengor On May 22, 2012 @ 10:19 am In The American Story,The DNA of Greatness,The Global Challenge,The Path to Freedom 

Like many Americans, Memorial Day never ceases to move me. Rivaled only by Christmas and Easter, it’s the most poignant time of the year for me, maybe because, like Christmas and Easter, it’s about life, death, and remembrance.

This Memorial Day, several images stick with me:

Recently, I was sitting at the waiting room at the nearby hospital, alternately reading something and checking email on my BlackBerry, consumed by my own little modern, technological world. Over to my left, I heard an elderly gentleman saying to another elderly gentleman, “Yes, I got there in 1943, ready to deploy to Italy….”

I looked over at the two of them. They were chatting amicably, calmly, quietly, un-ostentatiously. When the one finished a thought about the Italian campaign, the other picked up with his story about boarding a plane for Europe nearly 70 years ago.

The two men sat a few feet apart, two chairs between them. I was struck by how similar they looked. Each was probably late 80s, about 5’9”, 160 pounds, apparent good shape, minds sharp as tacks, wearing trousers on a very hot day, baseball caps, legs crossed, arms bent atop the back of a chair. They looked like farmers, and probably were farmers in their youth before they headed off to World War II. They were mirror images physically, could be mistaken for brothers, but their resemblance was more than that: each possessed a sort of serenity, a peace. You had the sense that if the doctor told them they had just weeks to live, they’d shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, that’s a tough break, Doc. But I can’t complain.”

When the one man was fetched by an attractive young nurse, he got up, smiled, and said to her, “Nice day outside, eh?”

Both had the comportment of the gentleman American farmer, the guys who, when called to duty, did their duty—a long time ago.

Like many of you reading this article, I’ve encountered these men frequently in my life, but increasingly less so. I’m in my mid-40s. I came across them much more often 20 years ago.

I recall another such instance in the early 1990s. I pulled off I-95 in rural Virginia, early in the morning. It was only my fiancé and I—before all the kids we have now. We stopped at a McDonald’s. Sitting there was a group of old men. They were talking about “The Big One,” about “W-W-Two.” One was describing what it was like at the Battle of the Bulge, as the others listened intently.

I wonder about those men at that McDonald’s in Virginia. Are they still alive? Perhaps half of them are, at best.

I’m struggling here to provide a picture of what I regrettably know is a dying breed, a special American that my kids will not encounter in their mid-40s. What a loss that will be. These WWII vets are the essence of Americana. Norman Rockwell would have painted them for the Saturday Evening Post. And they are nearing extinction. Two decades from now, a handful will be left, and they won’t be shooting the breeze in the hospital waiting room or local McDonald’s.

That brings me to another image that sticks with me:

Speaking of Norman Rockwell, I live in a quintessential American small-town: the main street with the flags, trees, barber shops, old movie theatre, churches, and people who know your name. After you cross the railroad tracks to leave town, drive about three miles, you come to a cemetery. Whizzing past that cemetery on Memorial Day literally gives pause. It looks like every second or third tombstone is festooned with a tiny American flag. Could that be possible?

Sure, it could. My town (probably like yours) was founded in the 19^th century. From then on, America’s men went to war. From the Civil War to World War I to World War II to Korea to Vietnam, among other conflicts, each generation served and died. Most died years after getting home and starting families with their sweethearts. The flags at the cemetery bear witness.

Sadly, we’re currently amid a period when we’ll observe a palpable increase in the flags at the cemetery, and a corresponding decrease in the gentlemen talking about the war at the hospital or McDonald’s. It’s a process that’s irreversible. There’s nothing we mere mortals can do about it. It’s in God’s hands.

But there is something you can do. When you see these men, talk to them. Don’t miss a golden, fleeting opportunity that your children and grandchildren will not get. Listen to them, enjoy them, and remember them.

The above commentary was sent by Mark Waldeland.

Obama’s War agaisnt Catholics…..Do His Victims Have a Case in Court?

How Meritorious Are the Catholic Lawsuits?

by John Hinderaker      at   PowerLine:

We have written several posts about the lawsuits by dozens of Catholic institutions against the federal government that seek to invalidate the HHS mandate requiring them to violate their religious precepts by providing employees with contraceptive and certain abortion services. It strikes me as obvious that the HHS mandate violates the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, but this is not an area in which I am an expert. So I did a little research to find out whether the country’s pre-eminent expert on the religion clauses of the First Amendment, Michael McConnell, had written anything on the subject. Michael is a law professor at Stanford and formerly served on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. I can’t find that he has written anything on the mandate that is available on the web, but on March 22, he participated in a panel on “Religious Freedom and Healthcare Reform,” sponsored by the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center. His comments were summarized in some detail here. McConnell argues that the mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as well as the First Amendment:

Michael McConnell, a former federal judge and current law professor at Stanford University Law School, explained that at its core, the debate over the mandate is a question of religious freedom.

“I do not share the Church’s theology with respect to contraception,” said McConnell, who is not Catholic.

Yet he explained that the real issue in this case is not contraception, but the government’s “unprecedented decision” to require American individuals and institutions to act in a way that violates their religious beliefs.

In addition to Constitutional protections under the First Amendment, there is also support for religious freedom in statutory law, McConnell said.

He explained that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 makes it clear that the federal government may not “substantially burden” the exercise of religion unless it is furthering a “compelling government interest” and employing the “least restrictive means” of doing so.

In this case, he said, it is “rather obvious” that the mandate imposes a substantial burden on the free exercise of religion by requiring religious individuals and organizations to participate in something that they consider gravely immoral.

Furthermore, in granting an exemption at all, however narrow, the administration was acknowledging that “this would be a burden” on the free exercise of religious groups that find it objectionable, he said.

He added that the mandate would impose a substantial burden even with the administration’s promised accommodation, which he said is “no difference in substance whatsoever” than the original regulation.

Turning to the standard for a “compelling government interest,” McConnell explained that the federal government issued the mandate because it believes that contraception coverage is important and wants to place the cost of covering it on employers.

This is “not a compelling interest at all,” he said.

He noted that multiple states have contraception mandates in place, but none of them implement them in the same sweeping way with such a narrow exemption as the federal mandate does.

If it were a compelling government interest, the regulations would not have included any exemption at all, he explained.

Finally, McConnell said, the mandate is not the “least restrictive means” of carrying out the government’s goal.

The administration could achieve its objective in another way, such as expanding Title X funding of contraception, without forcing religious employers to violate their consciences, he observed.

Because it fails to meet the standards set out for religious freedom cases, the mandate violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and should not be allowed to stand, he said.

Obama Lie No. 112,482 “I’m Cleaning up after Republican Debts.”

Fellow American, are you that dumb?   that gullible? or that much of a devoted Lefty that you will vote Marxist no mater how egregious the lie?

Has  there ever been a more deceptive president elected to ‘lead’ America?   That Obama  who brags about leading from ‘behind’.

Let’s review this Obamatalk moment on his campaign trail  to con the American uneducated.

The following video is from realclearpolitics videos:

Obama: I’m Cleaning Up After “Wild Debts” Caused By Republicans

“I don’t know how they’ve been bamboozling folks into thinking that they are the responsible, fiscally-disciplined party. They run up these wild debts and then when we take over we have to clean it up,” Obama said. “And then they point and say, ‘Look how irresponsible they are.’ Look at facts, look at the numbers. And now I want to finish the job,” President Obama said at a fundraiser in Denver.

“This election will be closer than last one. People don’t remember last election was close. We’re going to have to contend with even more negative ads, even more cynicism and nastiness and just plain foolishness.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/05/24/obama_im_cleaning_up_after_wild_debts_caused_by_republicans.html

Comment:   The Hitlerian part of Obama knows that the American people will not  ”look at the facts, look at the figures…….in particular his black brotherhood and sisterhood communities.   With the exception of a small but well educated mnortiy, where would they ever look?   Who in the inner city black plantation culture would guide them to the facts, to the numbers, when they are the people who a cooking the books to exclude truth and the rational from America’s black minority?

Maxine Waters?   Al Sharpton?   Jesse Jackson?   the NAACP?    the Congressional black causcus?…….racists who live in racial divides and foster hatred for America?

And, yes, there is no doubt that the people will have to put up with more negative ads, Obama’s ads encouraging racism and class divide.

Do read John Hinderaker’s article at PowerLine on the topic:

Barack Obama, Fiscal Conservative!

It might seem incredible that a president who has signed into law the largest federal spending in history, who has run up $5 trillion in new debt, who has submitted budgets that propose increasing the national debt to $22 trillion–budgets so extreme that not a single member of either the House or the Senate would vote for them, two years running–would somehow try to pass himself off as a fiscal conservative. But in politics, nothing, apparently, is impossible. This is the Obama campaign’s new theme: Obama as the green-eyeshade fiscal conservative.

It started with the ridiculous column by one Rex Nutting that I dismantled last night. Nutting claims that the “Obama spending binge never happened.” He says Obama has presided over the slowest growth in federal spending in modern history. Nutting achieves this counter-intuitive feat by simply omitting the first year of the Obama administration, FY 2009, when federal spending jumped $535 billion, a massive increase that has been sustained and built upon in the succeeding years. Nutting blithely attributes this FY 2009 spending to President Bush, even though 1) Obama was president for more than two-thirds of FY 2009; 2) the Democratic Congress never submitted a budget to President Bush for FY 2009, instead waiting until after Obama was inaugurated; 3) Obama signed the FY 2009 budget in March of that year; 4) Obama and the Democratic Congress spent more than $400 billion more in FY 2009 than Bush had requested in his budget proposal, which was submitted in early 2008; and 5) the stimulus bill, which ballooned FY 2009 spending, was, as we all know, enacted by the Democratic Congress and signed into law by President Obama. So for Nutting to use FY 2010 as the first year of the Obama administration for fiscal purposes was absurd. Moreover, it was largely because of the incredible explosion in federal spending in the first year of the Obama administration that the Tea Party movement sprang up, the GOP swept the 2010 elections, and federal spending has been relatively stable (although not declining, of course) since then.

Nutting’s article was the opening salvo. Next we had Jay Carney telling reporters aboard Air Force One that they shouldn’t fall for “Republican BS,” and suggesting that Obama is joining Jimmy Carter as one of the great fiscal conservatives of modern times: