If Wives Are Off Limits…

Somewhere in the great USA there are smart people who know what is going on and will use this intelligence to vote for a president... BO is a man with little experience...with no experience would you make him CEO just cause he
is a good talker...McCain has a temper
boy don't let him near the red button
on a bad day... and then there is Hillary...if you get there you better do it right...those men are out for blood-- the last thing the men in Congress want is a WOMAN telling them what to do...You know, women like me hope you get the presidency. A woman has been running this country for a
long time...and each year we are getting better at it, the home, the work force, the head of a company, seats in congress, govenors and the last thing left the white house....They
(the men of this world) need to get ready cause it's coming whether it be this year or in the future...She can't do any worse.......

Michelle Obama is definitely NOT off limits, and in fact, she is a key player in the Obama campaign. On a CBS news report, there is video of a sign in one of Obama's offices that reads, "Whatever Michelle says is the Message," or something like that. So, Barry is a total hypocrite when he declares that wifey is off-limits. In fact, she will soon be his undoing.

Randy ole boy, I guess, what planet did you come from? Hussein Obama is the picture of unpatriotic, not to mention antiwhite,antiflag,antianthem. Where have you been besides drinking the liberal koolaid?

Cindy McCain stole drugs from CHARITY to support her habit. I've not seen any Democrat mention this. IF she were being attacked don't you think this would be the first spot they'd pick?

Writing a press release asking for Mrs. McCain's tax returns is a tad bit nicer then producing televison commercials acusing Ms. Obama of being anti-American....don't ya think?

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that last summer, Illinois Senator Barack Obama told officials in the Teamsters union that he favored ending the Independent Review Board (IRB) that was created in 1989 by the federal government to rid the union of organized crime. Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Obama, confirmed the story, saying that the candidate believed that the IRB had "run its course" because "organized crime influence in the union has drastically declined." The Teamsters subsequently endorsed Obama for president, in late February.
Obama and the Teamsters bristled at suggestions that any deal was made. The Obama campaign also circulated a tape of a speech that Senator Hillary Clinton made last March to the Teamsters saying "at some point the past has to be opened," but Clinton's statement, like those made by Senator John Kerry in 2004, stopped well short of committing her to end oversight of the Teamsters. Based on the statements the newspaper quoted, it is fair to assume that The Wall Street Journal got the details right.

There are two reasons to be concerned about Obama's actions here. The first is procedural. Obama's promise to close down the IRB suggests a Bush-like contempt for the customary relationship between government and the judicial process. The president himself can't shut down the IRB. He can only recommend to his attorney general that he recommend to the U.S. Attorney in New York that it be shut down. But in these kind of touchy matters, presidents usually defer to the judgment of their attorney generals. By coming close to promising a shutdown, Obama was putting politics above judicial procedure--which is just the kind of "Washington" behavior that he likes to criticize his opponents for doing.

The second reason for concern is more substantive. Labor leaders have made plausible arguments for shutting down the IRB, but a Chicago politician should be extremely wary of acceding to them. If there is continuing mob influence in the Teamsters, it is probably centered in the Chicago area. And in the last decade, the Teamsters in Chicago have shown little enthusiasm for rooting out corruption in their ranks. As a veteran Chicago politician surrounded by a veteran Chicago campaign staff, Obama had to have known this--and that makes his warm words to the Teamsters all the more disturbing.

A different type of politics, to be sure. Making corrupt deals with mob-connected thugs to win union endorsements.

I guess it's "new" in the sense it's so retro; we haven't seen much of this kind of open, not-even-trying-to-hide-it corruption since the bad old days of, say, the sixties.

"That's enough. That – that's a show of disrespect to me."

That was Barack Obama, a couple of weeks back, explaining why he was casting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into outer darkness. It's one thing to wallow in "adolescent grandiosity" (as Scott Johnson of the Powerline Web site called it) when it's a family dispute between you and your pastor of 20 years. It's quite another to do so when it's the 60th anniversary celebrations of one of America's closest allies.

President Bush was in Israel the other day and gave a speech to the Knesset. Its perspective was summed up by his closing anecdote – a departing British officer in May 1948 handing the iron bar to the Zion Gate to a trembling rabbi and telling him it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to the gates of the Jerusalem was in the hands of a Jew. In other words, it was a big-picture speech, referencing the Holocaust, the pogroms, Masada – and the challenges that lie ahead. Sen. Obama was not mentioned in the text. No Democrat was mentioned, save for President Truman, in the context of his recognition of the new state of Israel when it was a mere 11 minutes old.

Nonetheless, Barack Obama decided that the president's speech was really about him, and he didn't care for it. He didn't put it quite as bluntly as he did with the Rev. Wright, but the message was the same: "That's enough. That's a show of disrespect to me." And, taking their cue from the soon-to-be nominee's weirdly petty narcissism, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Co. piled on to deplore Bush's outrageous, unacceptable, unpresidential, outrageously unacceptable and unacceptably unpresidential behavior.

Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies. Here's what the president said:

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

It says something for Democrat touchiness that the minute a guy makes a generalized observation about folks who appease terrorists and dictators the Dems assume: Hey, they're talking about me. Actually, he wasn't – or, to be more precise, he wasn't talking onlyabout you.

Yes, there are plenty of Democrats who are in favor of negotiating with our enemies, and a few Republicans, too – President Bush's pal James Baker, whose Iraq Study Group was full of proposals to barter with Iran and Syria and everybody else. But that general line is also taken by at least three of Tony Blair's former Cabinet ministers and his senior policy adviser, and by the leader of Canada's New Democratic Party and by a whole bunch of bigshot Europeans. It's not a Democrat election policy, it's an entire worldview. Even Barack Obama can't be so vain as to think his fly-me-to-[insert name of enemy here]concept is an original idea.

Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It's one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks arethe end, talks without end. Because that's what civilized nations like doing – chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and crumpets, talking talking talking. Uncivilized nations like torturing dissidents, killing civilians, bombing villages, doing doing doing. It's easier to get the doers to pass themselves off as talkers then to get the talkers to rouse themselves to do anything.

And, as the Iranians understand, talks provide a splendid cover for getting on with anything you want to do. If, say, you want to get on with your nuclear program relatively undisturbed, the easiest way to do it is to enter years of endless talks with the Europeans over said nuclear program. That's why that Hamas honcho endorsed Obama: They know he's their best shot at getting a European foreign minister installed as president of the United States.

Mo Mowlam was Britain's Northern Ireland secretary and oversaw the process by which the IRA's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness became ministers of a Crown they decline to recognize. By 2004, she was calling for Osama bin Laden to be invited to "the negotiating table," having concluded he was no different from Adams: Stern fellow, lots of blood on his hands, but no sense getting on your high horse about all that; let's find out what he wants and give him part of it.

In his 2002 letter to the United States, bin Laden has a lot of grievances, from America's refusal to implement Sharia law to Jew-controlled usury to the lack of punishment for "President Clinton's immoral acts." Like Barack Obama's pastor, bin Laden shares the view that AIDS is a "Satanic American invention." Obviously, there are items on the agenda that the free world can never concede on – "President Clinton's immoral acts" – but who's to say most of the rest isn't worth chewing over?

This will be the fault line in the post-Bush war debate over the next few years. Are the political ambitions of the broader jihad totalitarian, genocidal, millenarian – in a word, nuts? Or are they negotiable? President Bush knows where he stands. Just before the words that Barack Obama took umbrage at, he said:

"There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously."

Here are some words of Hussein Massawi, the former leader of Hezbollah:

"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."

Are his actions consistent with those words? Amazingly so. So, too, are those of Hezbollah's patrons in Tehran.

President Reagan talked with the Soviets while pushing ahead with the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe. He spoke softly – after getting himself a bigger stick. Sen. Obama is proposing to reward a man who pledges to wipe Israel off the map with a presidential photo-op to which he will bring not even a twig. No wonder he's so twitchy about it.

Then Bill is off limits?

Mrs. Obama is not a plus... The tapes from the Wright service will surface. The swiftboaters will surely make use of them...duh!

Hillary's campaign has been advised of all of this and probably has known it longer than we have. They bump those letters off her site and won't have anything to do with using that kind of material. She should get credit for the restraint and common sense she's used, speaking of grace.

Political wives should always be off limits, unless and until they start making policy speeches, and stepping outside the traditional role of a spouse.

Cindy McCain isn't running around making policy statements for her husband. Digging up dirt, repeating it, on the pretense of "the publics right to know", about her past drug addiction, and widely publicized scrape with he law, is just mean-spirited.

Michelle Obama has made hundreds of policy speeches, far beyond the usual "support my husband, he's a good man" kind of talk candidates wives usually make. Because of her openly admitted policy role, she removes herself from the usual immunity.

I wonder what the explanation will be when the videos of Michelle Obama agreeing with the sermons of Rev. Wright, making anti-U.S. statements and repeating wild leftist conspiracy theories, surface? Will they be addressed directly, or hidden away by the Obama campaign as something made up by the "vast right-wing conspiracy"?

If I am not mistaken, the GOP forced disclosure on Teresa's Heinz taxes -- I am more interested in the Sudanese investments in light of the lobbyists involved in McCains campaign.
Also, how about those houses 8 is it?? Do they live and use all and are they staffed even when they are not there?
I think talking about the houses they use and own is fair -- didn't they do a piece on Kerry and Vinyard, etc.

Actually, I meant to say, people who call others "low-class" are those with no class.

If a candidate's wife holds an odious of the country she's campaigning to be first lady of, then that's fair game. If she's not proud of her country or think it "downright mean," then voters have every right to take that into consideration. If Cindy McCain made a racist comment about Obama, then THAT would be fair game.

Jake,

There has been a double standard about what Obama and his wife could have said about them versus what the Clintons, McCains, and others could have said about them from the beginning. Obama has made the rules, his campaign breaks them, and then he cries foul when he happens back to them. Or didn't you get that Obama memo?

It is a Pandora’s Box. If they start attacking Michelle, it makes Cindy McCain free game. She is open to criticism in many areas, like supporting companies propping up the Sudanese government, not releasing her tax returns, letting her husband use her private jet to exploit a tax loophole, and her past drug addiction (real family values). The Republicans took aim at Obama’s spouse, but they may have bit off more than they can chew.
The Republicans don’t have much when they have to stoop so low as to go after Obama’s wife. For the last 7 1/2 years, I believe most of us would agree with her that we have not been very proud of our country because of the president, who has put us in such a mess internationally and economically.
The Republican machine would try to link Michelle and Barack Obama to unicorns if it would scare the American people and lead them back to the White House. First he’s Muslim, then he goes to a nutty Christian church, although I don’t know how he’s both. And now they are going after his wife. Does Obama have a dog? Better keep it on a short leash. Soon they’ll say the dog barks in Arabic.

I don't recall Obama getting outraged at the criticism of Chelsea Clinton's not taking questions from the press or of the classless questions about the scandal involving her father.

It is quite obvious that BO and the party pundits behind him are using Bush's playbook; smearing, tongue twisting, taking things out of context and using double standards. They are in show biz not in politics. There is no sense of right or wrong and they don't have a conscience.

Hillary or McGain; Nobama

Ever since Rhode Island primary, Obama is on his way down and only recover temporarily in NC with the massive black votes.

The BO and company begins to lose by landslides and pretend that they don't care. This losing streaks carried into the General Election means
big loses.

MSNBC cannot carry him anymore because we all switch to FOX and ABC instead.

Cream the BO fanatics. Humiliate them by votes: they are running downhill. The college kid is going to leave them in November and they are in a big slum.

Attacking Cindy McCain about her drug addiction problems is off-limits.

Attacking Cindy McCain about her tax returns is not.

If you don't understand the difference, ask your mother.

Can Hillary say " Layoff my husband" when he was critized by talking about Jessy Jackson?

Michelle Obama's comments about America being "mean" and not being proud of her country are fair game.

I think she needs to be careful with these kind of negative opinions. i also think that the commercials won't help the GOP...they should be using Obama's "bitter" comments which have been largely edited so they can be defended.

I really don't think Cindy McCain's tax returns are anybody's business, but her own....she has filed seperate throughout her marriage and is independently wealthy,

Obama should not be so resentful that his wife is being scrutinized....his very successful strategy to minimize Bill Clinton and paint the Clinton's as racist is one of the main reasons he's ahead. Apparently spouse's are fair game as long as they aren't Obama's.

Especially when he was running behind HRC, BO made fair game of going after Bill Clinton's record, trying to discredit it in a bid to discredit HRC or to show she had minimal impact on the achievements of that era. He went as far as saying that the two Houses of Congress were lost by the DNC during the Clinton Presidency as evidence that the Clintons could not work across board and were polarizers. It was okay for him to attach both Bill and HRC as a package even though Bill Clinton was the most successful Democrat in the White House in the last 44 years.
I remember also the way the media injected race into the primaries by completely twisting Bill Clinton's response to a reporter's question after the South Carolina primary.
Why does he want a different set of rules now for his wife? Does Michelle Obama not campaign for her husband? Does he listen to her speak when campaigning? Maybe he should. Then he would either pull her off and ask her to just keep quiet, or be ready for Americans to respond to her distasteful speeches in the same way that she rubs them.

Asking for tax returns is not a personal attack. Calling someone unpatriotic is a personal attack and a smear. This is like comparing apples and elephants.

Every day poor Obama get picked on. Sorry but if Michelle is campaigning for her husband and she says something so offensive she is fair game. If she says stupid things like that as first lady it could be a problem. Stop whining and either be proud of your words or apologize.