Fox News Reports -- Obama Lowers Expectations, "May Be A Drop In Poll Numbers," From Overseas Campaigning

Reported on Fox and Friends today, but not online yet.  And since Redlasso has been shut by the likes of Fox News I can't show you.

Update:  Here you go -- NY Times reporting some of the same sentiments as Fox.

Perhaps he read this Rasmussen poll where 63% of Americans say his trip doesn't make him more fit to be President.  I think that was due to an error in judgment, he just couldn't help doing the German rally instead of just meeting the leaders of the world.  It made it look just like another campaign stop (in a country that can't vote) rather then a fact finding, experience gaining trip.


Power and Control makes this very excellent point:

In any case the differential between American growth rates and European growth rates is going to widen the divide. What can the Europeans do? Become more like Americans. In that sense his speech shows that Obama is going in the wrong direction. Americans do not want to join the European league (the phrase in America is bush league - har). He should at the very least be thinking of dragging Europe our way, rather than making efforts to drag America to theirs. That might have mitigated what will, I predict, be the downfall of the Obama campaign.

DKK

Daily Trek -- July 26, 2008

 Just A Daily Trek and Rainbow Tour update today.

What'd I miss?

Everything you need to know to stay informed each day in 5 minutes or less!  Read your regular news and include this and you will be able to participate in most any current events discussion.
---------------------------
CNN dying to prove there is no enthusiasm for McCain among younger voters interviews a fake College Republican who, predictably isn't and knows of no one who is enthusiastic about McCain.  Hmmm, go figure.

"Congress gives it to you without lubrication," bumper stickers available at Power and Control.  A truer bumper sticker has never been written.

Anchorage Alaska may end up having its coldest summer on record. 

Oh dear, Bin Laden's driver was not read his rights!  Do you know anyone who cares?  By the way, he also head Bin Laden brag about the number of innocent people killed that day.

The Senate Republicans are holding the line on their promise to not allow any legislation to pass until a serious comprehensive energy bill that includes drilling can be voted on -- Harry Reid loses it under the pressure.

Energy is the top issue for voters now -- Republicans are on the right side of this one.  I really can not figure out what is wrong with the Democrats.  They either figure a bad economy helps Obama or they are such captives of Gore's Law that they can't think straight any longer.

"The bill is HR 6615. Its title is 'A bill to provide for the transport of the enemy combatants detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to Washington, D.C., where the United States Supreme Court will be able to more effectively micromanage the detainees by holding them on the Supreme Court grounds, and for other purposes.'"

"...The result threatens to be the first time since at least 1950 that lawmakers will go home for the August recess without either chamber having passed a single appropriations bill.
If drilling opponents really have the better of this argument, why are they so worried about letting it come to a vote?"

Just in case they thought they could get a sweetheart deal from Obama -- I wonder why they would have thought that --  he tells them to act now and not to wait for him.

Iran has a website where they demonstrate their wonderful military technology.  Problem is that, like the time they photoshopped the missile launches, some of the planes are fake.  Worse the photoshops though, these are photos of models -- as in plastic and some glue!

Back before her deadly DDT rant that cost millions of lives from malaria, Rachel Carson had written about global warming.  Only her information showed that the changes were from ocean changes, just like the recent testimony given by NASA.

John Edwards WAS at the hotel meeting his ex staffer.

Ooow, the UN wants to take the lead on counter terrorism.  Problem is they haven't even been able to define the term terrorism.

EXPLAINING the Northern Lights.

Toyota tops manufactures on CAFE numbers.

McDonalds sued for refusing to allow womens Muslim headwear.
--------------------------------------
DKK










 

The Obama Rainbow Tour -- Day 7 -- Paris And London

There you are, I told you so
Makes no difference where she goes
The whole world over just the same
Just listen to them call her name
And who would underestimate the actress now? 
Evita - Rainbow Tour

What's the use in mourning if there is no one there to see you do it (paraphrase Absolutely Fabulous):

Pentagon officials tell NBC

the problem was that Obama’s request to visit Landstuhl included two members of his campaign staff — retired Major General Jonathan S. Gration and Jeff Kiernan. US military officials in Germany informed the campaign the two political operatives would not be permitted on base.
Pentagon officials say Gration was the campaign’s point of contact at Landstuhl in arranging Obama’s visit and “got torqued” when he was told he would not be permitted to join Obama. It was Gration who later suggested to reporters that the Pentagon short-circuited Obama’s visit. 

Jim Geraghty wrote yesterday: “A very interesting email from a source I must protect suggests that Obama’s visit to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center had the green light until a campaign staffer raised a stink about going with Obama.”
And today Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs strongly hinted that Gration’s exclusion was what led to the campaign’s last-minute decision to scrap the visit.
“Based on the information that we received from the Pentagon,” Gibbs said, “anybody on the staff that was related to the campaign including General Gration a two start [sic] general” would not be allowed to go to Landstuhl.

Patterico

Junior Ill. Senator Barack Obama is on his way to France today. By the end of this media junk-it, he will have visited several foreign countries throughout Europe and the Middle East.

I would just like to say ... oh, heck - Barack already said it better than I ever could:

It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they all speak French, they speak German, and then we go over to Europe (laughter) and all we can say is ‘Merci Beaucoup.’ (Laughter ensues) Right?!”

Ironic that about all Obama can muster up is "Merci Beaucoup" while traveling abroad.

BERLIN (AFP) — US presidential hopeful Barack Obama was due in Paris on Friday a day after telling a vast crowd of 200,000 people in Berlin that Americans and Europeans must tear down walls between estranged allies, races and faiths, in a soaring challenge to a new political generation.

Not even a merci beaucoup!
Reihl World View




200,000 . . . or 20,000? Obama's Crowd in Berlin -- looked like more then 20,000 to me, remember there was food and music after his speech!

"During the big anti-Bush demonstration after the fall of Baghdad, there were 250,000 people. And it looked totally different from yesterday. Then, you couldn't move all the way from the Brandenburg Gate to the Technical University [on the western side of Tiergarten park, another kilometer beyond the Siegessäule]."

World Politics Review Blog

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama met with British Prime Gordon Brown in London Saturday on the last leg of his weeklong overseas tour.
Obama waved and smiled at the media outside Brown's residence at 10 Downing Street but made no comments as he walked inside.
Brown decided not to greet the U.S. senator on the doorstep because he did not grant the same honor to Obama's rival, John McCain, when the Republican candidate visited in March.
Obama's visit in London is more low-key than the other stops on his trip. He plans no major news conferences and is expected to make his only remarks to reporters as he departs his meeting with Brown.
Earlier Saturday, Obama met with former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who now serves as the Middle East envoy for the "quartet" of the United States, European Union, Russia, and the United Nations. The two posed for the cameras at Obama's hotel but made no statements.
Obama also plans a meeting with British opposition leader David Cameron, head of the Conservative Party, following the talks with Brown.

CNN

Major Garrett: If Obama spent more time visiting troops, he’d know they don’t only watch Fox News

No one doubts that our partners in the coalitions in both Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered losses on the battlefield, and of course every loss is tragic.  However, Barack Obama tells NBC’s Brian Williams that Americans have ignored the “serious losses” that NATO allies have taken in Afghanistan, scolding us for our lack of appreciation for their effort.  Unfortunately, this dumbs down the definition of serious to such a degree that our losses look positively catastrophic.

Hot Air

In Berlin, Obama was just making up facts! His fiction about Belfast is even worse than his story about Airlift flights turning back.

Obama speech text:

"Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together;"

Quoting from a 5/3/2008 USA Today article:

"Ten years after peace was declared in Northern Ireland, one might have expected that Belfast's barriers would be torn down by now. But reality, as usual, is far messier. Not one has been dismantled. Instead they've grown in both size and number."

American Thinker Blog

Yes, another tedious climate change post.

Among many curious moments in Barack Obama's speech in Berlin on Thursday, this line takes Gorean liberties with the facts:

As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.

"As we speak"? You have to love the royal "we."

In any case, as we write, Barack Obama is just wrong. Sea levels have been declining, not rising, for the last two years.

TigerHawk

“If the real Messiah came back to the Holy Land, the coverage couldn’t be any more thorough, and it probably would be a good deal less adoring.” — Kevin O’Brien, the Plain Dealer. 

Don Surber

Israelis know in their kishkahs that Obama isn't here for Israelis. Obama is here for the American Jewish vote. The rank and file Israeli knows that Obama is an outsider here as well as there. There is no connection. There is only coldness and calculation. The AP picture of Obama with Olmert in the Jerusalem Post was a joke--the Two Yo-Yo's, a good buddy called it. Obama isn't even attempting to look at Olmert.

Gateway Pundit
DKK

Redlasso Tool No Longer Available -- Networks Losers Long Term As They Fail To Adapt To New Media

For those who grew up in the Napster era, the music industry’s emphatic protection of its copyrights in music content is very familiar territory. However, the aggressive shutdown of music download websites has plagued the music industry as a bad public relations move for many years. Despite a shift to legalized digital downloading, the music industry continues to suffer lagging sales.

Today, one must wonder whether other media conglomerates have learned from the mistakes of the music industry—or is history simply poised to repeat itself? On May 19, 2008, NBC, FOX, CBS, and Allbritton Communications served a cease-and-desist letter to the blogger-friendly website, redlasso.com. 

JETLaw blog

Redlasso, the video site that allows bloggers to post clips of television content, has shut down its beta in response to a recently filed lawsuit by Hulu-backers Fox and NBC.
In May, Fox, CBS and NBC issued Cease and Desist notices to Redlasso for copyright violation, which the company largely ignored. In June the company established a “Media Advisory Board” headed by a number of ex-studio execs that they hoped would help smooth things over with the networks.

TechCrunch

So much for that experiment.  I hope they can get a compromised reached soon.  The sad thing is this is the same type of thing the music industry went through.  Instead of working to form a new business model that included supportive use on the net and expanding choices they would rather drive a business plan of limiting what is available in an attempt to force use of their old model.

I don't know of an alternative yet, but I will try to find one that has the flexibility to select specific content.
DKK

Update copied from later post:

You know, the more I have though about the whole Redlasso thing it really makes me wonder the logic.  Imagine I put up a snippet from say, Special Report and say it's a good one.  How many more possible viewers do they get for the two later airings of Special Report that day who go there just to see that snippet in context.  Free advertising driving ratings, now lost because of the inability to adjust to changing technologies.  Oh and the Hulu service supported by NBC and Newscorp is very limited and the videos are not breaking news.
DKK