We don’t generally do a segment like this on our blog, but this quote from Louisiana Democrat State Representative Charmaine L. Marchand struck me as particularly noteworthy. First some context from a NYT article about Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and his new ethics reform package:

The new requirements will force all state legislators, as well as most other elected and appointed officials around the state, to disclose all sources of income, real estate holdings and debts over $10,000. (Judges are exempted.) Lawmakers and executive branch officials will no longer be able to get contracts for state-financed or disaster-related work. Lobbyists will also have to disclose their sources of income and will be limited to spending no more than $50 per elected official, per meal; splitting the tab, say among other lobbyists or legislators, will also be prohibited. (…)

The governor, ignoring cries of pain and going against the unswerving devotion to Louisiana’s food culture, pushed for the $50-a-meal cap, at any restaurant. No more unlimited spending.

In a town where legislators have been known to proclaim paid-for meals a principal draw to public service, this was an especially unpopular move. Last week, State Representative Charmaine L. Marchand of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans said the limit would force her and her colleagues to dine at Taco Bell, and urged that it be pushed to $75 per person, to give them “wiggle room.”

No public groundswell took up her cause, and the $50 limit held.

Poor gal, only $50 per meal.

Here’s a link to to Marchand’s website that talks about her commitment to rebuilding her home district that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. I wonder how many of her constituents could use a little “wiggle room” to make ends meet. This blog and this writer offer no sympathy to this oppressed legislator.

However, I do offer a hearty “atta boy” to Gov. Jindall and the reforms passed in Louisiana.

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/poll_belo_texaswfaa_tracking_s_1.php 

WFAA-TV/Public Strategies

Texas

Clinton 46, Obama 45… McCain 60, Huckabee 27, Paul 6

I don’t really have to say much, because the video from Canadian television says it pretty well, bu the gist of the news segment is that while Barack Obama is saying he will repeal NAFTA as president, his campaign has secret calls into the Canadian Ambassador telling him not to worry:

Take it from the candidate himself

Well, another chapter is being written in the dramatic saga of the Barack Obama President Campaign.

It seems now, that despite the lofty rhetoric telling us otherwise, Barack Obama is just like the rest of them - Chicago politicians that is. We’re familiar with them all now, Mayor Daley being the king of the bunch. But Barack, it seems, is oh-so-ambitious and doesn’t want the Daleys to rule the roost forever.

Because of length, I won’t recount the whole story (which you MUST READ HERE!), but let this short summary suffice:

Barack Obama, champion of “new politics”, hope, integrity, puppies, and sunshine, seems to be in an ethical pickle. You see, he bought a home - a very, very nice home - on the same day, from the say seller, and right next door to one Mrs. Rezko. She happens to be the wife of a man on trial for corruption, Tony Rezko, who happens to be close (it appears too close) business associates with Mr. Nadhmi Auchi.

If you asked me, “Is this the same Nadhmi Auchi who is the 13th richest man in England and is known for his ability to buy British politicians?” I would respond, “Yes, and did you also know that he was charged in the 1950’s with being an accomplice of Saddam Hussein, accused of hiding money for Saddam and Colonel Gadaffi in the 1990’s, and in 2002 was found to be behind the largest swindle of the NHS ever?!”

Not only are the Rezko’s Barack Obama’s neighbor, and apparent business associates of Auchi, but it’s also coming to light that they took a few hundred-thousand dollars from Auchi to buy Barack’s mansion in Chicago.

Oops! The Pure One seems to be engaging in some slight-of-hand with some dirty members of Old Politics!

Please read the whole account HERE! from Redstate.com.

From the USA Today piece

 WASHINGTON — Both Democratic presidential candidates, who promise to curb the influence of corporate lobbyists inWashington, helped enact narrowly tailored tax breaks sought by major campaign contributors.

Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has accepted $54,350 from members of a law firm that in 2006 lobbied him to introduce a tax provision for a Japanese drug company with operations in Illinois, according to public records and interviews. The government estimates the provision, which became law in December 2006, will cost the treasury $800,000.

 As always, democrat’s hypocrisy abounds. 

Obama = 47%

Clinton = 45%

http://www.gallup.com/poll/104530/Gallup-Daily-Tracking-Election-2008.aspx

Rasmussen Reports – Clinton leads in Rhode Island, Texas race neck-and-neck

Rhode Island

Clinton = 53%

Obama = 38%

http://rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/rhode_island/rhode_island_democratic_presidential_primary

Texas

Clinton = 46%

Obama = 45%

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/texas/texas_democratic_presidential_primary

I think this SNL skit sums it up pretty well:

The O’Drama plot finally begins to thicken…

The left and the Democratic Party (but I repeat myself), have had this nasty habit of being very out-of-touch with the American mainstream. President Jimmy Carter won office by faking an average-guy persona, but ended up being a squishy liberal more concerned about international opinion than America’s interests. John Kerry fit the stereotype of Ivy League snob (no offense to our great Ivy League chapters who are full of great Republican who understand how our country works) and could never really connect with Americans working hard for a better life for their families.

Barack Obama, despite his change-oriented rhetoric attempting to convince people otherwise, is just as out of touch with Americans as these prior two leading Democrats - and I think people are starting to take notice.

Peggy Noonan poses some very interesting questions that she believes many voters are starting to or are about to ask:

Are the Obamas, at bottom, snobs? Do they understand America? Are they of it? Did anyone at their Ivy League universities school them in why one should love America? Do they confuse patriotism with nationalism, or nativism? Are they more inspired by abstractions like “international justice” than by old visions of America as the city on a hill, which is how John Winthrop saw it, and Ronald Reagan and JFK spoke of it?

…

Why is all this actually not a distraction but a real issue? Because Americans have common sense and are bottom line. They think like this. If the president and his first lady are not loyal first to America and its interests, who will be? The president of France? But it’s his job to love France, and protect its interests. If America’s leaders don’t love America tenderly, who will?

Pretty valid questions considering where Barack Obama got his political beginnings.

In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they’re better known nationally as two of the most notorious — and unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war movement.

In fact, Ayers and Dohrn are both known quite well for planting bombs in places like the United States Capitol, the Pentagon, and the State Department, and for their leadership in the Weather Underground - one of the most radical domestic terror groups in American history.

The point here is that O’Drama is nothing new, nothing fresh, nothing revolutionary in American politics. While he espouses some vague sort of post-partisan change, he remains of the same far-left, radical political bloodline that has dominated Democratic politics for decades.

Barack Obama is out of touch with America, as America and Barack are about to find out.

From a campiagn press release

 “Meet, talk, and hope may be a sound approach in a state legislature, but it is dangerously naive in international diplomacy where the oppressed look to America for hope and adversaries wish us ill.”