United Liberty

Senator Obama has made his Christian faith abundantly clear to the American public, but his Muslim background is hard to ignore and has been a source of fodder for blog gossips everywhere.  We’ve all received the emails circulating claiming that the Democratic Presidential nominee is a sleeper Muslim agent waiting to betray us to our Al-Qaeda enemies (puh-leeze!); those I promptly move to my spam file.  So, while I know the rumors aren’t true, it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the humor of this Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd “Wabbit Season” parody.

I expect sharp words and fireworks with Bill O’Reilly and Barack Obama on the same set.  What I don’t expect is to find myself agreeing with Obama over O’Reilly.

Though I consider myself conservative, when it comes to foreign policy, there’s a sharp divide between my beliefs and the current practice of the Republican Party.  I certainly can’t claim to agree with Senator Obama 100%, but I find his rhetoric regarding Iran and Pakistan far less scary than “Bomb, Bomb Iran-McCain”.

Obama’s Cult of Personality stuff is really getting out of hand, as this ABC News story illustrates:

DENVER (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.

The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos’ National Football League team plays.

Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington’s Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party’s nomination for president.

He will stride out to a raised platform to a podium that can be raised from beneath the floor.

For all of you clever enough to make United Liberty your home page, you now know Senator Obama’s pick for VP.

Biden, the “safe liberal” (there’s a contradiction in terms) will do alot for the Obama ticket, but what will he do for individual liberty?

Hopefully - not too much damage.

The AP News is reporting about the security command center in Denver for next week’s Democratic Convention. When I saw the report I could not help but ask the question - Why do you need more security for a political convention than for the transportation of a nuclear weapon? It was only a century ago that a regular citizen could knock on the White House front door and have the President of the United States answer. The necessity and level of security for public officials seems to correlate with very high accuracy to how many of our liberties they restrict through the use of government force.

Revealing his comedic genius, Libertarian Presidential Candidate, Bob Barr, made an appearance in Philadelphia at a comedy show benefiting ill children.  Quite often, Bob has been described in articles as “dry and humorless”, but just a few minutes spent in his presence proves this to be an inaccurate assessment.  Between his dimpled grin and self-depreciating jokes, I believe that “humorless” is an unfair characterization.

Judge for yourself-

Though Dr. Paul has not endorsed a candidate for the November Presidential election, he has made it abundantly clear that he cannot support Senators McCain or Obama.  So what advice does he offer to his supporters?

[Paul] says his supporters “should do whatever they want.” But at a party the night before a recent rally in Washington, he told one Paulite, “The contest is to get as many votes as we can to not support the two major candidates.”

Last night on Hannity asked Newt Gingrich:

“I am hearing some pretty credible rumors from people that know that Senator McCain has really narrowed down his selection process to about two or three people, and one of those people would be Joe Lieberman. Would that be a good choice in your view?”

Newt replied:

“Well, I like Senator Lieberman a great deal, I admire him a lot, he’d be a great Secretary of State, he’d be terrific as an Attorney General, but the idea of him being the Republican Vice President nominee would split the convention, and Bob Barr would get 15% of the vote”

Here is the clip.

Today the Barr Campaign released a video of Bob talking about John McCain’s ‘Maverick’ credentials. I would agree with his assessment: if John McCain is a political maverick, who isn’t? Considering how many establishment candidates have been talking about ‘Changing Washington’ since the primaries, I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised.

For my first post I thought I would talk about the big media dustup right now, which is John Edwards’ admission to an affair with Rielle Hunter. I had heard rumors about this before the story finally blew up. Pajamas Media’s podcast, “PJM Political,” had a segment on July 30 that focussed on the lack of coverage of the affair. Almost two weeks later, the story has broke out and people are getting worried. Christopher Beam at Slate worried outloud that the scandal may have a Mark Foley effect on the election, and went on to point out that John McCain didn’t have a clean marital history.