A Rake’s Progress

First things first: I’m glad I am not running for president. You should be glad, too. I have the memory of someone with advanced Alzheimer’s disease. I can barely remember what I had for dinner yesterday, much less my dramatic moments 12 years ago.

The Obama campaign and web sites like Politico are all whirred up that Hillary’s recollection of a trip to Bosnia when she was First Lady was not as Hollywood-inspired and dramatic as it sounded. In fact, when she landed there was sniper fire in the hillside around her. She was not personally in direct physical danger.

That was in 1996. While Hillary was visiting war-torn Bosnia, what earth-shattering events was Barack Obama involved in?

In turns out, as a newly-elected pol in the Illinois state senate, most of Obama’s profiles in courage consisted of pushing the wrong voting button on six major pieces of legislation.

According to the LA Times –

Barack Obama angered fellow Democrats in the Illinois Senate when he voted to strip millions of dollars from a child welfare office on Chicago’s West Side. But Obama had a ready explanation: He goofed.

“I was not aware that I had voted no,” he said that day in June 2002, asking that the record be changed to reflect that he “intended to vote yes.”
 
That was not the only misfire for the former civil rights attorney first elected to the state Senate in 1996. During his eight years in state office, Obama cast more than 4,000 votes. Of those, according to transcripts of the proceedings in Springfield, he hit the wrong button at least six times.

This is the candidate who scoffed at Hillary’s “3:00 am phone” call video? This is the same candidate who now scoffs at the First Lady visiting a war zone, sniper fire in the hills, while he is safe in his posh Chicago digs, voting on the wrong side of major pieces of legislation? He thinks he’s ready to lead America?

He’s the candidate who can’t shoot straight or push straight.

Bill Richardson had the wrong candidate in mind when he spoke of gutter politics. When I look into the gutter I see Obama and His Friends, the Rev. Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and a variety of other anti-American extremists who will say anything, do anything, to win this nomination.

If he does, the real victor will be John McCain.