Two Nations [Victor Davis Hanson]
This Democratic propensity to plead poverty and oppression to highlight one's own success -- along with the therapeutic anecdote -- finally becomes numbing. Obama, who gained his education and found opportunity in the awful Reagan and Bush I years, lives in a mansion, has prep school and Ivy League degrees, made several millions of dollars last year, and was the offspring of two PhD candidates -- and is thus a firsthand witness to America's greed and unfairness?
If Obama were to win, no one would infer from the desolation he described in America, that he may well inherit an economy, in a downturn, that just grew at 3.3 in the last quarter, an unemployment rate of 5.7%, and record levels of exportation, one that did not go into recession with $140 a barrel oil, with more students in college than at any time in its history and more than any other nation in the world, with a war in Iraq nearly won, and both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein gone and replaced with constitutional governments -- and Europe, whether in France, Germany, or Italy, with strong pro-American leadership.
No one would infer that after our enemies blew a 16-acre crater in New York and attacked the Pentagon -- and promised lots more to come -- we have not been hit since, but in contrast, al Qaeda's leaders are either in hiding, scattered, imprisoned, or killed, with bin Laden and the tactic of suicide bombing with record low levels of support in the Middle East.
His bottom line: our enemies are winning, AK-47s are ubiquitous in our streets, our economy is in depression, and gay people can't visit their dying partners in our hospitals. In short, "Hope and Change" has became gloom and doom and there is something for everybody from government to save us.
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Surreal Obama [Victor Davis Hanson]
It was quite strange to see his enormous televised image shining through a Greek temple, as if he were Zeus speaking through the naos, giving us divine guidance on everything from turning off the television to ensuring we all go to college to promising an end to global warming and disease -- with fire and lightning from Olympus in the background.
08/28 11:51 PM
Foreign Policy Insanity [Victor Davis Hanson]
Obama will invade Pakistan, as he earlier promised, to get bin Laden? He thinks that his own call for withdrawal on a mandatory timetable that would have abandoned Iraq by March 2008 -- not the Petraeus surge and change in tactics, have led to the chance to reduce the American presence in Iraq? And he wants to debate John McCain on all that? In town meetings?
