Senator Joseph Lieberman and White House Communications Director Ed Gillespie were guests yesterday.

Lieberman has an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal, "Democrats and Our Enemies," which begins:

How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

The transcript of our conversation is here.  One exchange:

HH: Do you expect to address the Republican convention, Senator? 

JL: You know, I don’t know. I’ve said that if John McCain asked me to do it, I would do it, because I support his candidacy that strongly, and I think this election year, this presidential election is that important to our future security, obviously to the way our government will run, and the way our economy will be for the next period of our history.  

The transcript of the conversation with Gillespie is here.  Most of our conversation dealt with NBC';s fraudulent editing of a recent interview the network conducted with the president. At the conclusion of our talk, we discussed MSNBC's descent into madness:

HH: Ed Gillespie, I don’t know who drew the short straw in your shop, and this may very well, I hope, earns us another worst person in the world nominee, but someone’s got to watch Keith Olbermann, and someone has to watch Chris Matthews, because you’re the White House, and you’ve got to know what they’re saying, even if it is a marginal network watched by hard left extremists. 

EG: Yeah, it’s somebody below me, Hugh (laughing). 

HH: But I mean, hasn’t the impression spread that this is really about ratings? They don’t believe this stuff. They just do what they have to do to get ratings. And if that means going hard left and perverting the news, they’ll pervert the news. And Olbermann’s a sports guy. He doesn’t understand it anyway. What do you guys do about that? I mean, I wouldn’t even bother sending them e-mails. They’re obviously beyond the pale.  

EG: Well look, we don’t. I mean, Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann, you know, they’re advocates for a worldview that obviously, we don’t agree with here at the White House. And that’s fine. You know, they’re identified as such on MSNBC. What is disconcerting to me, though, is that there are times when they, you know, they pretend to take off their advocate hat, and they become objective newsmen and journalists, and you have Brian Williams and Tim Russert sitting down with them like they’re sitting down with Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews like it’s Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite or something.  

HH: Did you ever read Bizarro Superman comic books when you were young, Ed? 

EG: I did, yeah. 

HH: That’s the Bizarro world of journalism over there. 

EG: Right.  

HH: And everything’s upside down. 

EG: Look, I did raise the question. I said it is, it does concern us here at the White House that, you know, the MSNBC attitude could be seeping into the NBC broadcast network’s coverage. 

HH: Clearly, it is. Ed Gillespie from the White House, thank you.   

$31 million in campaign debt is a lot of speeches for Bill to make.

Michelle Malkin has assembled a fine collection of Obama gaffes.
 
Of course MSM is covering for him, but new media keeps educating the public on the fact that Obama is far out of his depth.  He's a lightweight propped up by friends with cameras and microphones, and keeping the big con going through November will prove difficult.

Turns out that Obama's opening act at the megarally was The Decemberists, a hugely popular indie rock band, which typically opens their concerts with the Soviet National Anthem.

How odd that the MSM didn't tell us that a few of the 75K in attendance may have come for the tunes.  

And did the Obama rally begin with the Soviet National Anthem?  The concert went for 45 minutes and was widely pitched on Facebook etc.  But did the band trim their act to make it Obama-appropriate?

BTW: Here's an except of an interview with the band's guitarist:

 

We’re a city magazine, so we’d like to talk about some of the cities in your life. Think of this as an urban Rorschach test. I’m going to say a city, and you say the first few words that come into your mind.

Okay.

Valparaiso, Indiana [Funk’s hometown].

Popcorn central. It’s where Orville Redenbacher’s from.

Portland, Oregon.

Don’t move here.

Why not?

‘Cause, I like it the way it is.

Okay, Washington, DC.

Harboring war criminals.

Do you mean politicians?

Yeah, I mean the big guy. You know, the guy who ignores the UN, that one. The guy who pretends he’s from Texas, but is really from Connecticut. The guy who can’t dribble a basketball. The guy who farms out our military. Etc....

Here's an Obama e-mail promoting the event:

Barack Obama in Portland, OR Join Barack Obama at a rally in Portland on Sunday, May 18th. Rally with Barack Obama The Bowl Waterfront Park Corner of SW Columbia St. and SW Naito Pkwy. South of the Hawthorne Bridge Sunday, May 18th, 2008 Doors Open: 12:30 p.m. Special Guest Performance by: Colin Meloy, Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee, Nate Query, and John Moen The event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required, but an RSVP is strongly encouraged. Admission is on a first-come, first-served basis. For security reasons, do not bring bags and limit personal items. No signs or banners are permitted.

RSVP: Email: * First Name: * Last Name: * Address: City: State: AA AE AK AL AP AR AS AZ CA CO CT DC DE FL FM GA GU HI IA ID IL IN KS KY LA MA MD ME MH MI MN MO MP MS MT NC ND NE NH NJ NM NV NY OH OK OR PA PR PW RI SC SD TN TX UT VA VI VT WA WI WV WY AB BC MB NB NL NT NS NU ON PE QC SK YT n/a Zip / Postal Code: * Phone: * I will volunteer for Barack in Oregon:      Fri, May 16th   Sat, May 17th      Sun, May 18th   Mon, May 19th      Tue, May 20th

We knew it would continue to rise as rescue workers reached cut-off villages.

Here is a story of volunteers rushing to the region to help.

And here is one of 575 pictures Yahoo has surveying the awful aftermath.

 

 A woman mourns in front of a picture of her daughter and the awards she had won next to the rubble of the destroyed Juyuan Middle School in earthquake-hit Dujiangyan, Sichuan province May 20, 2008.REUTERS/Donald Chan (CHINA)

As noted on the radio show yesterday and throughout last week, Caring for China is a Christian organization that runs orphanages and clinics in the region devastated by the quake.  CFC has established an earthquake relief fund which you can be assured will be managed efficiently and with immediate impact for the relief of the victims. CFC has been in the area for a quarter century, and its leadership and staff is first rate. You can donate online here, or you can send a check to:

Caring for China
3300 S. Fairview
Santa Ana, CA 92704

I have spoken at enough commencements to know that rule one is don't confuse your role as speaker with the celebration of the accomplishments of the graduates.

Don't step on the story, in other words, and don't impose yourself or your political views on the audience.  They are the honorees, and they are a diverse group.

The cost of losing sight of this is fully explained in an e-mail I received last night:

Hi Hugh, I sent this as a letter to the editor for the Honolulu Advertiser hoping to get at least a favorable portion published...

I attended my wife's graduation ceremony this Sunday from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.  As a full-time, active duty officer in the U.S. military, it was a proud moment for her.  I sat next to her Dad, who was glowing with pride at how his little girl had set off on her own from a little farm in Colorado to achieve his equal in the realm of academics: a Master's degree.
Read More...

Susan Salter Reynolds is the accomplished book critic for the Los Angeles Times, and her review of Ann Hood's Comfort: A Journey Through Grief will show you why.



The Amazon.com page for the book is here.

The review and the book that prompted it are certain to tear at your heart, if you have one.  As I noted on my show last week, some very close friends of ours lost their son last week, and perhaps because of the grief surrounding them and their family and friends I found this more poignant than the average reader would, but I don't think so. 

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton was my guest yesterday.  The podcast is here, the transcript is here.  Key excerpts:

HH: Now Mr. Ambassador, one of the things he said that caught my ear on Friday was that when Kennedy met Kruschev, we were on the brink of nuclear war. It’s a minor paraphrase, but he clearly did not have a good grasp on the history of the United States in the 60’s. When Kennedy met Kruschev, it was in June of ’61. The Cuban Missile Crisis came in ’62. What does that tell you about just generally his grip on the necessary fundamentals, the basic chords of how you conduct foreign policy? 

JB: Well you know, the liberals used to ridicule Ronald Reagan for remembering scenes in movies that had never actually occurred in real life, and I think what Senator Obama is remembering is the liberals’ view of the Cold War. That meeting between Kennedy and Kruschev in the early days of the Kennedy administration was a humiliation for the new President Kennedy. Kruschev understood that, and he judged new President Kennedy to be so weak at that point, weak as a person, that many think it was a significant factor in Kruschev and the Soviet Union’s decision to put those missiles in Cuba to begin with, a crisis that did, in fact, bring us to the brink of nuclear war. So this is, the stakes of summit diplomacy are high, and really goes to what I think is just a fundamentally important point about negotiation and diplomacy generally. And that is like all human activity, it has costs and benefits. It has to take place in a specific context, and you have to look at when it benefits the United States, when we should engage in it, what our objectives are. This is all about specifics and context, and that is, I think, one of Senator Obama’s biggest weaknesses. He talks in vague generalities, and so far, look, he’s getting away with it. But that’s not how you conduct foreign policy in the real world. ...

HH: Do you think [Obama] had any kind of a serious vetting yet in terms of the media drilling down on things like…do you think he understands the relationship, say, between Hezbollah and Iran? 

JB: I think the, we haven’t plumbed the depths of that ignorance yet, but I wouldn’t count on the mainstream media to do it during the course of the campaign. Look, he has led a very cosseted, privileged existence in his life, that this is not somebody born in poverty who was risen by his bootstraps. He’s had, basically, a fairly comfortable middle class life. He’s gone to Ivy League universities, he’s lived in a liberal bubble in Chicago. And you know, you don’t have to acquire a lot of knowledge to be acceptable in those circles, and I think what we’re seeing is, as he emerges from that bubble, we’re seeing his view of reality. And I think it’s right there for Senator McCain to go after.  

HH: Now you have spent way too many hours across the table from North Koreans and Iranians. How tough are they? What will they make of Odalai Bama, the kid from Chicago?  

JB: Well, I think they will make hash of him and his advisors, too. Let’s not forget one of his most amazing defenses against being criticized for him saying he would negotiate with the rogue states without preconditions was to say well, I wouldn’t negotiate without preparations, without lower level exchanges, as if somehow we’re confused about what he said. But remember, he also has a team of advisors that I’m sure the rogue states would love to negotiate with, even if it never gets to him. This is a very serious issue of the United States, as to who’s going to represent us in international affairs, whether it would be Obama and his team, or McCain and his team.  

Another significant advance for the Iraqi Security Forces, and for the elected Iraqi government.

The cost in American lives has been very high, but the people of Iraq have freedom and a republic that is methodically eliminating the terrorists within the country even as essential services and security increase daily. Six years ago Saddam threatened his neighbors, shot at American planes, exported terror, and was busy corrupting the world with oil-for-food payoffs.  His mad-as-hatter sons were in line to succeed him in cruelty and ambition. 

Obama wants to abandon the effort even as it crosses into success because retreat works as a political appeal to his base.  His stubborn refusal to acknowledge the transformation in Iraq over the past 18 months underscores why he is not qualified to be Commander-in-Chief.

The Washington Post has an article on the skyrocketing rate of child obesity.

Stanford Medical School has a research effort underway at the Center for Healthy Weight if the issue interests you.

Here is one of their research papers.

I have been a member of the Orange County Children and Families Commission for many years, and the Commission is investing a lot of money in an aquatics center in Santa Ana, California in an effort to introduce a swimming/water polo culture in a community with limited sports facilities and a growing childhood obesity problem.  The facility will also have an obesity prevention clinic in the building.  The theory is pretty simple:  You don't see a lot of overweight kids on swim teams and water polo clubs.  The habits that produce fitness require family support and the opportunity to exercise in a safe environment.  Pools provide the greatest number of kids the greatest opportunity to train and to compete, and few sports are as much fun and as inexpensive to run --after the construction of the facilities-- as water polo.  "Life is a habit," one of my coach friends likes to say.  The answer to childhood obesity is the introduction of habits that produce fitness.

If your business/corporation would like to be involved with this effort, drop me a note at hugh@hughhewitt.com.

158 relief workers have been killed in landslides as they worked to assist survivors of China's earthquake.  The devastation is staggering, and the world barely understands the scale yet.

 

Photo: Andy Wong/Associated Press

 

    Photo: China Photos/Getty Images

As noted on the radio show throughout last week, Caring for China is a Christian organization that runs orphanages and clinics in the region devastated by the quake.  CFC has established an earthquake relief fund which you can be assured will be managed efficiently and with immediate impact for the relief of the victims. CFC has been in the area for a quarter century, and its leadership and staff is first rate. You can donate online here, or you can send a check to:

Caring for China
3300 S. Fairview
Santa Ana, CA 92704

Jennifer Rubin reports on Barack Obama's latest display of foreign policy naivete.  Iran, as well as Venezuela and Cuba, don't pose "serious threat[s]" to the U.S.

Has Obama read even one book on the mullahs and their record of terror and their ambitions for the region and their plans for Israel?

Is he aware that Iran is killing American soldiers and Marines? 

Obama expects people to take his support for Israel's security seriously, and then declares that Iran isn't a serious threat?

This is indeed full-throated appeasement, the refusal to face facts about malign forces in the world and the repeated attempt to negotiate with powers that do not want anything except additional domination and which cannot be satisfied with other than conflict.

I note that Obama's comments came only a day after his private meeting with a senior Shia leader in the U.S., Hassan Qazwini, detailed by Powerline and others.  Qazwini clearly does not believe that Iran is a threat in the region, and his remarks in a joint appearance with Juan Cole give you a sense of the sort of advice he offered Obama in their sit-down.

Clearly Qazwini got his points across with Obama.

Barack Obama attempted to add Michelle Obama to the category of "those who may not be discussed," a room now full with Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and Tony Rezko.  Here's what Obama had to say this morning:

"The GOP, should I be the nominee, I think can say whatever they want to say about me, my track record," Obama said. "I've been in public life for 20 years. I expect them to pore through everything that I've said, every utterance, every statement. And to paint it in the most undesirable light possible. That's what they do." 

"But I do want to say this to the GOP. If they think that they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful. Because that I find unacceptable," he said.

Obama praised his wife's patriotism and said that for Republicans "to try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her I think is just low class ... and especially for people who purport to be promoters of family values, who claim that they are protectors of the values and ideals and the decency of the American people to start attacking my wife in a political campaign I think is detestable."

The level of dishonesty at work here is large.  Michelle Obama has made long speeches full of political content in her appearances at campaign rallies made to encourage people to vote for her husband.  This makes her a central figure in the campaign.

Many of her ideas are radical, like those of her husband.  It is of course wrong to distort or manipulate her remarks, but playing excerpts is not only legitimate but a necessary exercise of the media's job to present the candidate and his closest advisors in full.  What lacks class is the attempt to mold the media into an agent of the campaign by whining about how its coverage of speeches and statements is "detestable."

Michelle Obama's rhetoric has been full of appeals to the victim mentality, stuffed with angry rhetoric about "moving bars" and the climate of fear in the country.

Now her husband is trying to intimidate political coverage, to create a zone in which Michelle Obama and other associates can say or do anything and yet have it defined as irrelevant to his candidacy.  That is a radical demand on the media, and while some in the MSM may agree to it as part of its campaign to get Obama elected, self-respecting professionals won't be intimidated and they won't be issued free passes to Mrs. Obama or any other figure that looms large in Obama's life. 

Social networking guru Jeremiah Owyang makes an appeal for donations to China relief.

As noted on the radio show throughout the week, Caring for China is a Christian organization that runs orphanages and clinics in the region devastated by the quake.  CFC has established an earthquake relief fund which you can be assured will be managed efficiently and with immediate impact for the relief of the victims. CFC has been in the area for a quarter century, and its leadership and staff is first rate. You can donate online here, or you can send a check to:

Caring for China
3300 S. Fairview
Santa Ana, CA 92704.

Photo: Andy Wong/Associated Press

Photo: Guangquan/Reuters

  
An aerial view of the town of Yingxiu, in Wenchuan County, Sichuan.Photo: Chen Kai/Xinhua, via Reuters

That's Barack Obama from today's incredible press conference where the Illinois senator combined petulance and ignorance in an unnerving display of just how unqualified he is to be Commander-in-Chief

For the record, Kennedy and Khrushchev met in Vienna in June of 1961.  We were not on the brink of nuclear war.  The Cuban Missile Crisis was 15 months in the future.