All Those Other Presidents on the Dollar Bills

Barack Obama ignited another brush fire with the following recent comment:

"What they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name, you know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

The McCain campaign jumped on with a statement from campaign manager Rick Davis:

"Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong."

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton quickly slipped the race card back into the deck, where it can presumably be played again later if needed:

"Barack Obama in no way believes that the McCain campaign is using race as an issue, but he does believe they're using the same old low-road politics to distract voters from the real issues in this campaign, and those are the issues he'll continue to talk about."

We will point out that only one president appears on the U.S. dollar bill, George Washington. So who could Barack have meant by "all those other presidents?"

There are a number of other countries that issue dollars, and Queen Elizabeth appears on many of these, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, and Fiji. But Queen Elizabeth is not a president.

Or perhaps Barack Obama was thinking of other U.S. Presidents on our paper money: Thomas Jefferson ($2), Abraham Lincoln ($5), Andrew Jackson ($20) and Ulysses S. Grant ($50). You can keep your Washingtons ($1) and Lincolns ($5). We prefer Alexander Hamilton ($10) and Benjamin Franklin ($100), who were never president.



It turns out that George Washington and Barack Obama are related. Their common ancestor is Lawrence Washington, an English wool merchant born around 1500. Lawrence is Obama's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather on his mother's side. Lawrence was George Washington's great-great-great-great-great grandfather on his father's side. I can see the resemblance.

Win a Night with Hillary?

I got the following email today from Bill Clinton. He's trying to raffle off Hillary to pay down her campaign debt.

During the campaign, Hillary and I didn't have the chance to eat together much because we were usually on the trail in different states. Now that the campaign's over, I'm glad we can share more meals again.

Of all the people I've had the privilege to break bread with, the person I most enjoy is still Hillary.

Now you have a chance to have dinner with her. And if you contribute today to help Hillary retire that pesky campaign debt, you and a guest might be sitting down to dinner with her soon. I think you should go for it and enter today.

Join Hillary for dinner. Make a contribution today.

Trust me on this one. If you're the lucky winner, it will be a night you'll really enjoy and one to remember.

I'm a little intrigued about the phrasing: "Of all the people I've had the privilege to break bread with, the person I most enjoy is still Hillary." Are we just talking about dinner, or does "break bread" perhaps suggest something more? And let me see, I can bring a guest, so would that be a threesome?

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Obama: Unqualified Puppet of the DNC

Barack Obama is no Britney Spears or Paris Hilton

The latest add from John McCain titled "Celeb" seems to compare Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. But Senator McCain. We know Britney Spears. We know Paris Hilton. Senator Obama is no Britney Spears, no Paris Hilton.

OK, maybe Barack admits that when he was young man he did a little blow when he could afford it. But John, we also know about those drinking binges all your aviator friends used to fly in for that you fessed to.

Will We or Won't We?

Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin on Thursday, July 24, 2008 asked these seven questions:

(1) Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice?

(2) Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?

(3) Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe?

(4) Will we give meaning to the words “never again” in Darfur?

(5) Will we acknowledge that there is no more powerful example than the one each of our nations projects to the world?

(6) Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law?

(7) Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don’t look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?

Boston Not Green Enough for Barack Obama

Speaking on Thursday, July 24,2008 in Berlin, Barack Obama said

"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. This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands."

Obama drew a large crowd of 200,000. That's an impressive number, but some will point out that just a week or so ago the annual Love Parade techno music festival drew a crowd of 1.5 million in the western German city of Dortmund. Obama's largest audience in the United States was a crowd of 75,000 back in May at a rock concert in Portland, Oregon.

But, let's face it, this speech was not exactly "Ich Bin Ein Berliner" or "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."


John F. Kennedy June 1963 speech.



Ronald Reagan June 1987 speech.

Another Mission Accomplished

Oh boy, Barack Obama is in trouble now. While in Baghdad, he got Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to affirm support for the 16-month troop withdrawal timeline that Obama has proposed.

The Bush administration is in a rage as they feel they have been undermined in their ongoing negotiations for an agreement with the Iraqi government about future American military presence and obligations. John McCain keeps reminding anyone who will listen that the only reason Obama can be talking about timetables is because the troop surge McCain advocated is working. And I saw David Gergen on CNN lecturing that Obama has made a serious mistake because we have a tradition in this country that we only have one President at a time. David, please get yourself another banana and go lecture Dick Cheney.

Now we are 18 months into the surge. And it is 6 more months until the new President takes office, which will make it 24 months and counting. And 16 more months to withdrawal will make it 40 months. So all that Obama is saying that we are 60% done. If you add the 46 months of war before that, Obama is saying that we are 81% done. John McCain, on the other hand, says that violence in Iraq is down 80% from 4 years ago and Iraq has now met 15 of 18 benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress, which is 83% done.

Is it wrong to ask the Iraqis to do the last 20% themselves? If you apply the old engineering rule, it takes 20% of the effort to get to 80% done. And 80% of the effort to get the last 20% done. That suggests with 5.5 years behind us, there could be 22 years to go. If you count back to the start of the first Iraq war in 1990, we have 18 years behind us, and 72 years to go. That's starting to get close to the 100 year mark that John McCain mentioned last January would be fine with him.

Of course, I’m remembering that banner that flew above President Bush on the USS Abraham Lincoln back on May 1, 2003. I think we did have the war won then. It’s winning the peace that is so hard.