Alas, hypocrites! Hat tips all around!

Almost everything I am linking to today is thanks to either Larwyn or Maggie’s Farm. Great resources!

The Doc is In links to Donald Sensing who writes excellently about the positive side of hypocrisy:

The true hypocrite wants others to think better of him/her than is actually justified. Absent this deceit, there is no hypocrisy, just error or human frailty. That’s what the hypocrisy-excuse people don’t understand – or pretend not to understand – about church people. What may appear to be church people’s hypocrisy is almost always just simple failure to meet the standards of our faith rather than deceit. Why? Because the standard is so high.

See, it’s the toughest part of any religion – living up to the standards. Even Al Gore is having difficulty living up to his new religion!. Or, you know…he may really be all about deception, after all. Now some members of the American Physical Society are saying “WHOA….Bessie…let’s put some breaks on that there global warming/climate change whiligig!, or words to that affect:

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming “incontrovertible.”
…
Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton’s paper an “expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and “extensive errors”.

Ace is saying this is the year the global warming hoax starts coming apart.

Well, Obama DID say in June that just nominating him would get the oceans to stop their rising, and we’d finally start employing more than the usual 95% of the people, so…there you go.

Nat Hentoff says that in 60 years of covering politics he’s never felt more let down and disappointed in a politician than he is in Barack Obama. I actually concur with much that he writes in the beginning, especially this line:

Obama’s deflation has not been due to ruthless opposition research by John McCain’s team but by the “change” candidate himself. Like millions of Americans, I, for a time, was buoyed by not only the real-time prospect of our first black president but much more by the likelihood that Obama would pierce the dense hypocrisy and insatiable power-grabbing of current American politics.

Yeah, well…so much for that. Obviously I came out of the ether a lot faster than Hentoff, but you’ll want to read his whole piece to the end.

Frankly, while I pooh-poohed those people who two months ago were saying they were “afraid” of Obama, I am starting to get why. This has made me really uncomfortable since I first read it.

We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

And the fact that the speech is difficult to find and has been “disappeared” from Obama’s site (along, it seems, with anything he has said in the past that doesn’t jibe with what he is saying today) actually makes me more uncomfortable than anything else about this guy. Lowly BLOGGERS know that if you post something and then re-think a thing, you write a new piece linking to the old and explaining why your thinking has changed. Why doesn’t this presidential candidate know that? Why doesn’t the press that covers him? Why don’t the search engines that love and do not cache his website know this?

Ed Morrissey hopes the starstruck press will ask Obama about that statement, and about the changing realities of his documentation, but that is not going to happen. Adoration only couples with hard questions when you’re talking to God…not to a demi-god.

How slick is Obama? Jeff Dobbs counts the ways, with links:

Obama apparently published no articles or notes while a member of the Harvard Law Review.
Obama voted “present” nearly 130 times as an Illinois state legislator.
Obama won’t release a number of records, such as state legislative records, his application to the Illinois bar, his complete health records, records of his work at a law firm including which clients he worked with, or his birth certificate.
Obama has chickened out on town hall debates with John McCain.

I don’t know how you get to edit the HLR without writing – that’s actually a pretty impressive thing to pull off. I have no idea why a lawyer would not release his application to the bar, why a man wanting the most powerful office in the world won’t release his medical records (we’d like to know the engine won’t fail, sir). We DO have some experience with lawyers in the WH refusing to show billing records (must we go back there?) But really…why is it so difficult for this fellow to put his birth certificate out there? Seems like a no-brainer, that one. Bush released thousands of TANG papers, which could not have been a cinch to collect. How hard is a birth certificate? If something that easy is hard for Obama, how the hell is he going to deal with real problems?

Why is so much of this man’s day-to-day kept in shadows? It does not make me comfortable. The besotted press does not care, but the American people have a legitimate right to “see” this candidate in the harsh light of reality.

I wrote in 2004 that the press “is blocking my view of John Kerry” and that’s how I’m feeling once again:

John Kerry does not allow, will not allow me to take that close look. And he has the press standing in front of him, making sure I don’t get too near. My difficult or awkward questions are not brought forth and so they cannot be answered. He has refused to allow me to look at the record of his work – his resume – if you will. He has refused to supply me with references from superiors. He has had people from those “other offices” come in to tell me he would be great for the job, but they cannot tell me WHY he would be great for the job, only that he is “not the other guy.”

Wasn’t this election going to be about hope, and change and transparency? I see nothing but same-old-same-old, and I mourn the American press, which has fallen into a prostrate position of ardent surrender and is ready for Obama to walk on their backs – so his feet won’t touch the ground – into the White House.

By the way, in case you missed it – more good news from Iraq, more or less ignored by the press. Shameful.

Finally – John McCain has finally put out a good ad – and all he’s done is used Obama’s own words. It’s quite powerful.

Lorie Byrd also does some damage in noting that Obama blows with the expedient winds.