Peggy Noonan: Obama flapping his wings...

[carpe diem]

Yesterday Rachel Maddow said on AA that there was the beginnings of a Durbin like assault about to start in Barack Obama based on a posting on Drudge re: Obama's comments on Lincoln in an essay he wrote for Time magazine. This morning the Noonan column below was posted. If you read the essay by Obama you can see that, like always, the RW attack machine is misinterpreting deliberately and taking all out of context what Obama wrote...but they are counting on few people actually reading it for themselves and they will likely end up demanding Obama apolgize for something he hasn't actually said/written. And why is Noonan writing about some Obama essay and not drooling over shub's speech like usual?

________________________________________________________________________________________

Conceit of Government
Why are our politicians so full of themselves?

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110006884

This week comes the previously careful Sen. Barack Obama, flapping his wings in Time magazine and explaining that he's a lot like Abraham Lincoln, only sort of better. "In Lincoln's rise from poverty, his ultimate mastery of language and law, his capacity to overcome personal loss and remain determined in the face of repeated defeat--in all this he reminded me not just of my own struggles."

Oh. So that's what Lincoln's for. Actually Lincoln's life is a lot like Mr. Obama's. Lincoln came from a lean-to in the backwoods. His mother died when he was 9. The Lincolns had no money, no standing. Lincoln educated himself, reading law on his own, working as a field hand, a store clerk and a raft hand on the Mississippi. He also split some rails. He entered politics, knew more defeat than victory, and went on to lead the nation through its greatest trauma, the Civil War, and past its greatest sin, slavery.

Barack Obama, the son of two University of Hawaii students, went to Columbia and Harvard Law after attending a private academy that taught the children of the Hawaiian royal family. He made his name in politics as an aggressive Chicago vote hustler in Bill Clinton's first campaign for the presidency.

You see the similarities.

There is nothing wrong with Barack Obama's résumé, but it is a log-cabin-free zone. So far it also is a greatness-free zone. If he keeps talking about himself like this it always will be.
________________________________________________________________________________________

Obama's Essay on Lincoln below:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/28/obama.lincoln.tm/

[wtmusic]

1. I'll side with Peggy

That piece makes me gag. Obama has far to go before he compares himself with Lincoln in any way, shape, or form. :eyes:

[Frances]

2. Give me a break

Anyone who doesn't understand racial bigotry should listen to me tell stories of what I have personally witnessed hour after hour after hour.

Lincoln was poor, but so were many people in his state. Overcoming poverty is difficult. But overcoming racism is also difficult unless you go over to the dark side the way Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice, Clarence Thomas, Steele of Maryland, and many others have done.

And anyone who doesn't understand how hard Lincoln fought to persuade ignorant people that their own rights were imperiled when the rights of any group were ignored should read Lincoln's many speeches ont he Declaration of Independence. He repeated over and over again "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...."

[wallwriter]

3. Maybe Obama could use more restraint, but consider

the following:

1) There is exactly one African American in the United States Senate. It is Obama. You would think that 140 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, we would have made more progress than that, but we have not.

2) As Obama points out, he occupies a Senate seat for which Lincoln ran but to which Lincoln was not elected.

3) The Republican Party, which pays lip service to equal rights, is full of people who worked actively in the last election and others to prevent African Americans from voting. This well documented, including published comments from the leader of the Pennsylvania State House.

4) Peggy Noonan is a world class turd polisher, notorious for burnishing the reputations of a xenophobic, washed up B-movie actor and a proudly anti-intellectual spoiled brat of a failed businessman.

That's just the beginning of the long list of continuing prejudices and astonishing hypocrisies coming from Noonan and this nation as a whole. Obama should pat his won back with a little less zeal, but Noonan should gagged with a moldy sweat sock.

[GoldenOldie]

4. The Peggy Noonan of "Read My Lips," fame????

How so many blowhards can obtain such exalted heights in the US, is beyond belief!

O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Gingrich, DeLay, Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, etc., etc., etc., and the list goes on and on.

How can so many Americans buy into their CONS. They make big bucks off the ignorance of the suckers......

[Igel]

7. I would feel somewhat better about it if

Obama actually *were* "African-American" in the usual sense.

If you're black and your ancestors were here 170 years ago, you have a whole world of problems that the children of people that immigrated from Africa don't have, even if your father did leave your mother. They graduate high school at different rates, tend to attend better colleges, and to graduate at higher rates. They earn more after graduation.

It's not surprising the only "African-American" in the Senate is the son not of an African-American, but an African.

[yellowcanine]

8. I disagree. The piece is a tribute to Lincoln, not Obama. Lincoln is

an inspiration to him. Peggy Noonan, the author of "read my lips" and "Elian was saved by dolphins", is a Republican shill and is not objective enough to pass judgement on anyone.

[colonel odis]

5. obama is a rising star with appeal to a broad range of people. they

want to take him down early, discredit him before too many middle american voters hear his message and become attracted to it.

on the day john edwards announced that he was running for president, the right wing spin machine was in full force, decrying him as an evil trail lawyer evil trial lawyer evil trial lawyer reason malpractice insurance costs so much evil poor, poor doctors.

you can usually tell just how afraid the right is of particular democrats by the timing and intensity of the attacks that are launched. this seems no different.

[Tommymac]

6. Peggy Noonan is snail slime.

I hope they do continue to assualt Obama. It will only backfire...