FYI - make sure to update your bookmarks. Aussie blogger Tim Blair has some new digs: Australia’s Daily Telegraph blog. Instapundit has moved as well, to this web address.

Heheh.

And speaking of lapel pins, Obama was back to wearing one today in veteran-friendly West Virginia:

Wearing a flag lapel pin, Sen. Barack Obama emphasized his patriotism and support for a strong and humane military Monday, while Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton implored West Virginians to sustain her hopes of somehow denying him the Democratic presidential nomination.

Obama expects Clinton to win Tuesday’s primary in West Virginia, which has large numbers of working-class whites — a group that usually backs the former first lady — as well as a strong military tradition. He used his visit to Charleston to combat critics’ claims that he is not particularly patriotic or ready to be commander in chief, in part because he never served in the military, usually does not wear a flag pin, and opposed the Iraq war from the start.

Obama broke from his usual practice by wearing the flag pin and reading his speech instead of talking without notes. He told several thousand people at the Charleston Civic Center that patriotism means more than saluting flags and holding parades. He criticized Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain for opposing a Democratic bill to expand education benefits for veterans.

Whatever.

I really couldn’t care less as to whether or not he wears a flag pin. My issue with his original comments on the issue was that he implied that those who did choose to wear one were “substituting” it for “true patriotism,” which is a baffling statement to make, because by that logic you could just as well say that about anyone who flies the American flag. What Obama didn’t understand then - and still doesn’t today - is that most people who wear flag pins are doing so because they want to openly display symbol of what they feel deep inside for their country: pride, love, honor. They’re also wearing it close to their hearts, another symbolic gesture.

Sadly, for Barry O. and many other Democrats who believe just like him, the only time it makes sense to “support the troops” is when they return home from the battlefield (h/t: Anne Leary at UNCoRRELATED). It apparently never occurs to them that when our troops need most when they’re standing in harms way is our support, rather than telling them that their fellow soldiers died for a lie, promising a premature withdrawal before the mission our military has made so many sacrifices for has been completed, and having to listen while Obama supporters like Senator Ted Kennedy broad brush the entire US military with the accusation that Saddam’s torture chambers have “reopened under new management, US management.”

Supporting the troops when they come home is the easy part. Supporting them while they’re engaged in a war that has become increasingly unpopular with your base - as well as a majority of the American people - takes courage. Yes, it’s nice that Obama continues to support war supps to fund our troops, but support involves a lot more than just sending money. If Obama asked any one of the number of people he has or will come across in West Virginia (or any other state for that matter) who proudly sports a flag lapel pin, I’m sure they’d be glad to explain to him just how it’s done.

Peter Foster at Canada’s National Post blog writes about the latest example of The Goracle proving himself to be the consumate opportunist - by using the Myanmar cyclone tragedy, which to date has left nearly 32,000 dead, another 30,000 missing, and over 2 million other devastated, to promote the paperback version of his alarmist scribblings:

With the potential death toll in Myanmar from Cyclone Nargis rising into the hundreds of thousands, last week’s attempt by Al Gore to use the tragedy to promote his “climate crisis” agenda becomes all the more reprehensible.

Promoting the paperback version of his book, The Assault on Reason, on a U.S. National Public Radio show, Mr. Gore said that “even though any individual storm can’t be linked singularly to global warming… nevertheless… the trend toward stronger more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures in the top couple hundred feet of the ocean, which drives convection energy and moisture into these storms and makes them more powerful.”

Mr. Gore went on to cite the current disaster in Myanmar, last year’s cyclone in Bangladesh, and the previous year’s storms in China, as evidence for his apocalyptic theories. The problem is that science doesn’t support him.

Violent storms have caused more property damage in recent years, but that is – as experts such as Bjorn Lomborg have pointed out — because there is more property to damage. The situation in Myanmar is somewhat different. There, the lower amount of property damage relative to the huge loss of human life is directly linked to the country’s poverty, which in turn is a consequence of the lack of freedoms under the country’s dictatorship.

Myanmar is evidence of how the main protection against extreme weather is wealth. For climate change activists, however, it is economic growth that is the villain rather than the solution.

Mr. Gore’s book, meanwhile, lurches between paranoia and megalomanic fantasies of a world that falls in step behind his vague “Marshall Plan” to save it from a climate catastrophe whose most turbulent storms lie inside Mr. Gore’s head.

The book’s title is appropriate, since it is filled with fallacies and illogicalities. Its central conceit is that the “climate crisis” will somehow make grand central U.N.-style plans – which have always and everywhere failed in the past – suddenly viable.

Robert Tracinski wrote about the book last May:

Early coverage of Al Gore’s new book, The Assault on Reason, has focused on the fact that the book is largely an assault on the Bush administration. But they have glossed over the most significant and alarming theme that Al Gore has taken up: his alleged defense of “reason” includes a justification for government controls over political speech.

Judging from the excerpts of Gore’s book published in TIME, his not-so-subtle theme is that reason is being “assaulted” by a free and unfettered debate in the media–and particularly by the fact that Gore has to contend with opposition from the right-leaning media.

Developing a dangerous theme that the left has been toying with for years, Gore says that reason is being suffocated by “media Machiavellis”–that’s a veiled reference to Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch and Bush political advisor Karl Rove, the twin hobgoblins of the left. According to Gore, these puppet-masters take advantage of “the clever use of electronic mass media” to “manipulate the outcome of elections.”

Now here’s the really ominous part. This “manipulation” is rendering our representative government “illegitimate” because it only has the public’s “consent”–he repeatedly puts “consent” in scare quotes, just to emphasize the point that this consent is not, in Al Gore’s superior judgment, genuine or legitimate. As he puts it, “the ‘consent of the governed’ [has become] a commodity to be purchased by the highest bidder.”

[…]

His new argument doesn’t do anything to reverse that impression. His basic theme seems to be: if the left isn’t winning in the marketplace of ideas, there can’t possibly be anything wrong with their ideas. It must be the marketplace itself that is “broken,” and the left needs to use the power of government to fix it–in both senses of the word “fix.”

This is by no means a new theme on the left; Noam Chomsky has been peddling this stuff for years. We only think that we are free to write and to speak and to make our minds up for ourselves, the left tells us. But behind the scenes we’re being manipulated by the big corporate media, so the votes we cast and the consent we give to those who govern us is artificially “manufactured.” We need to be liberated–by having the left take control of the media and manage it in our best interests.

Yep, that’s pretty evident by the far left’s fondness for the unconstitutional “Fairness Doctrine” as well as Gore’s insistance that 1) global warming skeptics are nothing more than conspiracy theorist/flat earther types and 2) balanced reporting about global warming will have “severe consequences” on the environment.

Wonder how long it will be before he, too, starts calling for “Nuremburg-style” trials for gw skeptics?

If these poll numbers are any indication, it’s all over but the crying for Barry O. as far as the upcoming West Virginia and Kentucky primaries are concerned.

Both states have high populations of working class white Democrats who have not warmed up to Obama. I think Hillary’s sticking around in the Dem nomination race, in part, for reasons like this - to show that states like West Virginia and Kentucky won’t be on the table for Democrats in the fall because a majority of working class white Dems won’t vote for Obama.

The Kentucky poll also suggests that Kentucky may not be much of a battleground state during the general election as McCain currently leads Hillary by 12 and Obama by 25. Kentucky has correctly picked the winner of presidential elections since 1964.

And speaking of McCain, will a Bob Barr Libertarian presidential run hurt his chances of winning in the fall? Alex Knapp at Outside the Beltway says “yes.” Robert Stacy McCain has a link round-up of news stories on Barr’s announcement.

Plus: The Ron Paulnuts aren’t done yet.

Newsweek’s Evan Thomas and Richard Wolffe wrote a piece this past weekend that sounded like something you’d find emphasized in the Obama campaign’s talking points handbook. Essentially, the piece talked about how the Obama camp would be prepared to counter the GOP’s “smear tactics,” implying that using such tactics, including the use of proxies in 527s to defeat opponents, was the only way the GOP knew how to win. The piece also suggests that legitimate issues, like Hamas’ endorsement of Senator Obama, are vicious “smears” against the rookie Senator from Illinois, a sentiment Obama apparently agrees with.

McCain adviser Mark Salter is fighting back against this blatantly one-sided piece, and the response is posted at Newsweek. Here’s a little bit of it:

Suggesting that that we can expect a whispering campaign from the McCain campaign or the Republican Party about Senator Obama’s race and the false charge that he is a Muslim is scurrilous. Has John McCain ever campaigned that way? On the contrary, he has on numerous occasions denounced tactics offensive tactics from campaigns, 527s and others, both Democratic and Republican. By the way, which party had more 527 and other independent expenditure ads made on its behalf in 2004? It wasn’t us.

By accepting the Obama campaign construct as if it were objective, Evan and Richard framed this race exactly as Senator Obama wants it to be framed – every issue that raises doubts about his policy views and judgment is part of a smear campaign intended to distract voters from the real issues at stake in the election, and, thus, illegitimate. And even if Senator McCain might not be inclined to support such advertising, if he can’t stop them from occurring then he will have succumbed to the temptation to put ambition before principle. How this notion could appear credible after MoveOn, the AFL-CIO and the DNC launched negative ad campaigns weeks ago, and after leaks from the Obama campaign that they would soon start running negative ads against McCain, is mystifying. When a conservative talk show host emphasized Senator Obama’s middle name, Senator McCain immediately denounced it himself in the strongest possible terms. When a left wing radio host called Senator McCain a “warmonger;” when Senator Rockefeller disparaged Senator McCain’s war record; and when Howard Dean consistently accused Senator McCain of corruption, dishonesty and various other smears, the response from the Obama campaign has been either silence or a spokesperson releases an anodyne statement saying they don’t agree with the characterization.

To see how completely Evan and Richard have accepted the Obama campaign spin look at the example of an illegitimate smear they cite: Senator McCain raising the Hamas spokesman’s comments welcoming Obama’s election. The Senator has never said that Senator Obama shares Hamas’ goals or values or proposed a relationship with Hamas different than the one he would propose. On the contrary, he publicly acknowledged that he doesn’t believe Senator Obama. He did note that there must be something about Obama’s positions, particularly his repeated insistence that he would meet with the President of Iran (Hamas’s chief state sponsor), that was welcomed by Hamas. Imagine if a right wing death squad spokesman announced that they welcomed McCain’s election. Would Evan or Richard treat that as an illegitimate issue or would they examine which of McCain’s stated positions might have found favor with the terrorists? That seems obvious on its face to me. Rather than argue that his position on Iran is the right one and has no bearing on how Hamas views him, Senator Obama makes a false charge that we accused him of advocating a different relationship with Hamas than Senator McCain’s supports. His false characterization of Senator McCain’s statement was accepted uncritically by Evan and Richard.

Democratic Party allied third parties have announced negative ad campaigns, which distort McCain’s statements and positions, in the hundreds of millions of dollars. They are already running them. Senator Obama himself and Democrats generally have taken out of context and distorted Senator McCain’s statements on a post war military presence in Iraq and his views on the economy. Our townhalls are now routinely salted with Obama supporters who are there to raise embarrassing questions for the Senator (we don’t screen people at our events). An Obama supporter asked him in Iowa if he called his wife a very vulgar name.

Read the rest here.

Happy Mother’s Day to my beautiful, sweet, best-in-the-world mom, and to all the other tireless, fearless mothers around the world.

What Mother’s Day would be complete without flowers and poetry?

Today, by the way, is the 100th anniversary of Mother’s Day. You can read up on the history of mom’s day here.

One of the President’s two twin daughters got married Saturday in a private ceremony at his Crawford, Texas ranch:

CRAWFORD, Texas - Jenna Bush and Henry Hager said “I do” Saturday at President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, in a private ceremony attended by family and close friends.

Jenna, 26, wore an Oscar de la Renta gown — organza, sheer fabric, embroidery with matte beading. Her earrings: 18-carat white gold and platinum, chain-framed minted iced quartz teardrops. The ring: Platinum with a round diamond from the groom’s maternal great grandmother. The diamond is flanked by sapphires.

The president and the bride picked “You Are So Beautiful” for their father-daughter dance, according to band leader Tyrone Smith of Nashville, Tenn. Smith and his 10-piece party band, The Tyrone Smith Revue, was asked to do “Lovin’ in My Baby’s Eyes” by Taj Mahal for the newlyweds’ first dance.

[…]

Jenna’s twin sister, Barbara, was maid of honor and 14 other women were part of the “house party.” Barbara Bush wore wear a long, moonstone blue dress with a low-cut back. The women in the “house party” were in seven different styles of knee-length dresses in seven different colors that match the palate of Texas wildflowers — blues, greens, lavenders and pinky reds.

The best man was the groom’s brother, John “Jack” Hager. Also part of the “house party” were 14 ushers, who walked with the 14 women down the aisle to their seats, but did not participate in the ceremony.

More than 200 family and friends converged here for the nuptials on the 1,600-acre ranch where a tent was erected for the post-ceremony dinner and dancing.

Here’s a photo of the bride and groom:

And a family photo:

Jenna Bush has come a long way from the rebellious college student she in Bush’s first few year’s in office. It has to be tough being the daughter or son of a president, growing up before everyone’s eyes - and especially considering your every move is not only scrutinized by the press, but people who detest your father (William Teach at The Pirate’s Cove has documented some of what the far left have said this weekend in response to Jenna’s nuptials).

The last couple of years we’ve seen her do well for herself and come into her own. I wish both her and her husband well as they begin their life journey together.

Photos courtesy: AP/The White House/Shealah Craighead

The likelihood of Hillary Clinton getting the Democrat nomination for president is becoming more remote by the day. With that in mind, Doug Ross has some pictorial suggestions for what La Hillarina could choose as her next career opportunity - even beyond the US Senate.

I have to say - that first one is probably one her hubby certainly wouldn’t approve of …

Hat tip: Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters

PM Update/Related: Patrick O’Hannigan answers the “character or sexism?” question as it relates to why Hillary Clinton has not rec’d the glowing press coverage that Barry O. has.

First off, I want to wish all the moms out there a very happy Mother’s Day. If you want to keep it happy, I’d advise you not watch the following video clip of females in Obama’s travelling press corps swooning over and oogling a jeans-clad Barack Obama on a plane:

Is it just me or early on in the video did he perform a model-like twirl around one time for no apparent reason?

Look, I’ll be the first one to say that he looks good in jeans. But then again, I’m not a member of the mainstream media, a group of people who are supposed to be reporting on the presidential race objectively. I personally find the whole incident appalling and believe it should be added to the mountains of evidence regarding the MSM’s dereliction of duty (the Chi Tribune’s John Kass writes more about that here) when it comes to fairly covering the candidacy of Barack Obama.

Michelle Malkin says the video made her throw up a little bit in her mouth. It’s come pretty close to making me want to skip out on eating Mother’s Day lunch.

Related: Several bloggers have caught the the Obama campaign and the NYT trying to rewrite history as it relates to his promise last summer that he would be willing to meet unconditionally with some of the world’s most notorious despots, including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Columnist Jacky Kelly ripped Obama over this in a column a few days ago about The Chosen One’s repeating this promise on the campaign trail - most recently at his victory speech in North Carolina:

In defending his stated intent to meet with America’s enemies without preconditions, Sen. Obama said: “I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.”

That he made this statement, and that it passed without comment by the journalists covering his speech indicates either breathtaking ignorance of history on the part of both, or deceit.

I assume the Roosevelt to whom Sen. Obama referred is Franklin D. Roosevelt. Our enemies in World War II were Nazi Germany, headed by Adolf Hitler; fascist Italy, headed by Benito Mussolini, and militarist Japan, headed by Hideki Tojo. FDR talked directly with none of them before the outbreak of hostilities, and his policy once war began was unconditional surrender.

FDR died before victory was achieved, and was succeeded by Harry Truman. Truman did not modify the policy of unconditional surrender. He ended that war not with negotiation, but with the atomic bomb.

Harry Truman also was president when North Korea invaded South Korea in June, 1950. President Truman’s response was not to call up North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung for a chat. It was to send troops.

Perhaps Sen. Obama is thinking of the meeting FDR and Churchill had with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in Tehran in December, 1943, and the meetings Truman and Roosevelt had with Stalin at Yalta and Potsdam in February and July, 1945. But Stalin was then a U.S. ally, though one of whom we should have been more wary than FDR and Truman were. Few historians think the agreements reached at Yalta and Potsdam, which in effect consigned Eastern Europe to slavery, are diplomatic models we ought to follow. Even fewer Eastern Europeans think so.

When Stalin’s designs became unmistakably clear, President Truman’s response wasn’t to seek a summit meeting. He sent military aid to Greece, ordered the Berlin airlift and the Marshall Plan, and sent troops to South Korea.

Sen. Obama is on both sounder and softer ground with regard to John F. Kennedy. The new president held a summit meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev in Vienna in June, 1961.

Elie Abel, who wrote a history of the Cuban missile crisis (The Missiles of October), said the crisis had its genesis in that summit.

“There is reason to believe that Khrushchev took Kennedy’s measure in June 1961 and decided this was a young man who would shrink from hard decisions,” Mr. Abel wrote. “There is no evidence to support the belief that Khrushchev ever questioned America’s power. He questioned only the president’s readiness to use it. As he once told Robert Frost, he came to believe that Americans are ‘too liberal to fight.’”

That view was supported by New York Times columnist James Reston, who traveled to Vienna with President Kennedy: “Khrushchev had studied the events of the Bay of Pigs,” Mr. Reston wrote. “He would have understood if Kennedy had left Castro alone or destroyed him, but when Kennedy was rash enough to strike at Cuba but not bold enough to finish the job, Khrushchev decided he was dealing with an inexperienced young leader who could be intimidated and blackmailed.”

It’s worth noting that Kennedy then was vastly more experienced than Sen. Obama is now. A combat veteran of World War II, Jack Kennedy served 14 years in Congress before becoming president. Sen. Obama has no military and little work experience, and has been in Congress for less than four years.

[…]

History is an elective few liberals choose to take these days, noted a poster on the Web log “Hot Air.” The lack of historical knowledge among journalists is merely appalling. But in a presidential candidate it’s dangerous. As Sir Winston Churchill said:

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

‘Nuff said.

Cross-posted to Right Wing News, where I am helping guestblog for John Hawkins on Sundays.

Amanda Carpenter has the details on the WaPo story, and notes how an Obama surrogate in Oregon is playing “six degrees to the Keating Five” on McCain’s position on deregulation - while standing right next to Barry O:

At a town hall this evening Senator Barack Obama was introduced by one of the superdelegates that endorsed him today in his flood of superdelegate gains. Oregon Congressman Pete DeFazio praised Obama and said that even though “pundits” may think differently Democrats would come together in November. He then quickly went after presumptive Republican nominee John McCain asking voters not to be “tempted” by McCain’s “Straight Talk Express.” He compared McCain to George Bush and Dick Cheney and even mentioned the Keating Five Scandal, “He says we need less regulation. Hello! Wall Street mortgage meltdown, Bear Stearns taxpayer bailout, Enron, but, you know, I guess maybe for a guy who was up to his neck in the Keating Five and savings and loan scandal–less regulation is better.”

Um, but no mention of Obama’s desire for less oversight of the Teamsters, who endorsed BO back in February …