If I lived in Mandeville, Louisiana, I'd be buying my insurance from the no-nonsense State Farm agent Bud Gregg:

I gotta like a guy who risks offending a few folks and maybe losing a customer or two in the interest of conveying a message he really believes in.

The fact that I happen to agree with Mr. Gregg's message might influence my opinion, of course.

Snopes verifies that the signs were real, although Bud has taken them down at the behest of State Farm.

It's doubtful that Obama actually said the quote attributed to him about changing the greatest nation in the world. At least, it's doubtful that he said it in so many words. But it does seem to sum up the tenor of his whole campaign.

Obama's lead in the polls is slipping away and he's panicking about it.

Part of the problem is that he knows he won't win unless he convinces some pro-lifers to vote for him. He's made some efforts in that direction, but he really crapped in his hat when he tried to pass off a soundbyte as a serious answer when Rick Warren asked him about abortion:

Obama ... told Pastor Rick Warren during a nationally televised forum that deciding when the rights of personhood should be extended to the unborn was "above my pay grade." Even Doug Kmiec, a conservative Pepperdine University lawyer who has become one of Mr. Obama's most prominent pro-life backers, was unsettled. He called the candidate's answer "much too glib for something this serious."

Well, that's the thing, though. Abortion is "something this serious" to those of us who see it for what it is. To people like Obama it's just a political token to be played with hopefully the best possible results.

Oh, but it gets deeper:

Mr. Obama compounded his problems after the forum when in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, he accused pro-life groups of "lying" about his record in the Illinois State Senate on legislation that would have protected viable babies born after botched abortions. Mr. Obama acknowledged voting against the bill but said he would have voted "yes" if the bill had contained language similar to a federal bill's language making clear that the intention wasn't to diminish overall abortion rights. But, as recently revealed, the Illinois bill had indeed included such language and Mr. Obama still voted against it...

...Mr. Obama is now in the difficult position of trying to explain why he voted against a bill that the legislative record shows addressed infanticide rather than abortion.

Emphasis above is mine.

Obama voted against the bill, knowing full well that it contained essentially the same wording as the federal bill, because he did not believe that protecting living, born infants is as important as shoring up Roe v. Wade. This is how Obama explained his vote in Illinois at the time:

"Number one, whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a — a child, a nine-month-old — child that was delivered to term. That determination, then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it — it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute."

This is all easy to explain: Barack Obama is lying to try to win votes. He is lying to pro-lifers because he believes that we're stupid people. He knows that the majority of pro-lifers have a mindset steeped in religious tradition, and we all know what he thinks of religious conservatives. He's been clear. He looks down on us as bitter, scared little people who cling to religion and guns. His words, not mine.

He thinks we're small minded, bitter, silly. He thinks we're too dumb to know when we're being lied to and that we can't or won't do the research and find out the truth. The rest of the world seems vulnerable to the slick charm and good looks of "The Chosen One." He thinks that he can get that crucial slice of the pro-life vote by turning on the charm and looking in our eyes and lying to us.

He's wrong about that.

Labels: News, Obama Watch, Politics