In an excellent summary of Obama as insufferably sold on himself, more than most, Krauthammer starts with the hubris manifested in his Germany ploy, asking

what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush 41—who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap—called “a Europe whole and free”?

Does Obama not see the incongruity? It’s as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.)

He further asks:

has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

He continues:

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted “present” nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

And there’s more more more here.

Daily Herald discusses loan-capping from hard-luck-story perspective:

“It’s mainly desperate people and desperate people don’t always do the smart thing,” Alop says. “There are some folks who it works for, but in my experience … 90 percent regret ever doing it.”

How about hard-hitting reportage about the dangers of borrowing over one’s head?  How about asking schools what they do to warn students from their most tender ages?  Or do we say there oughta be a law in true statist knee jerk?

Arlington Heights business owner Bob Griffith [drinker of statist Kool-Aid] balked as soon as he read the letter from a payday loan company demanding that he garnish the wages of one of his employees.

“Is this even legal?” Griffith wondered. “If it is legal, then shame on our legislators.”

is the lede for this story, which quotes a retail lender in its middle:

Sitting in his Cash Now Loans office in a Palatine strip mall, Henry Magiera counters that charge with testimonials from recovering alcoholics, gamblers, cancer patients and others who say they used his service in the last eight years to keep from falling into further financial problems while they got their lives in order.

“My customers are very happy I’m here,” Magiera says. “We’re the last ones on the block who are going to give them money.” [Italics added]

When a bank charges $35 for bouncing a $7 check, “I’m the lesser of two evils,” Magiera says.

As if on a cue, a former customer comes in, thanking him for lending her some cash when she was down.

“This place has always been great to me,” she says.

but devotes the rest of the story to this lending as bad idea, even puffing Dick (Turban) Durbin’s proposed federal legislation “that would cap interest rates nationwide at 36 percent” — as a suggestion by the deputy director of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago.

This after noting the failure of state legislation — “The law only affects loans of 60 days or under, so [lenders] all went to 61-day products,”

Reminds me of anti-gun legislation that fails to eliminate guns in hands of bad guys.  So what?  Let’s have more of it, say libs.

What’s wrong with this statement, besides its content, namely government mixing politics with business?

As a flood of high-cost and reckless lending saturates our nation, Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) took a crucial and targeted step to clean up abusive consumer lending yesterday by introducing a 36 percent cap on annual interest, a move that will save America’s working middle class billions of dollars.

Got it yet?  OK, I’ll tell you: “reckless lending,” with “abusive . . . lending” a close second, should be “reckless borrowing,” with maybe “self-abusive borrowing a throw-in for good measure.

Dick Turban (as Limbaugh refers to him) wouldn’t know about that. 

This is from his PR release, by the way.

=========

From Reader D:

 Sen. Turban:  He’s an enabler if you are irresponsible and would like to be part of the permanent underclass receiving hand-outs.

He’s a harsh judge if you are defenders of liberty and believe in personal responsibility.

 

(His one talent: knowing how to turn a belch into a soundbyte on the 10 o’clock news.)

Dick Durbin’s Republican opponent is “resorting to personal, hateful personal attacks,” a Durbin spokesman told Chi Trib. 

“I don’t think that’s what people are looking for. I think people are looking for constructive discussion on issues and not scorched-earth, old-style politics.”

No they aren’t.  Personal attacks win elections or tip close ones.  Not that Durbin’s in a close one.  He has a life seat in the U.S. Senate.  But his attacks on personal attacks — this time “personal, hateful personal attacks,” for a double, even triple whammy — are common

“The hottest ring in hell is reserved for those in politics who attack their opponents’ families,” he said on Messy NBC, reacting to criticism of Mrs. O. “And if there are some Republican strategists who think that’s the way to win the election, I think they’re wrong.”

He’s wrong and knows it, which is why he came up with this ring-in-hell business.

On the other hand, he was one of 25 senators voting against condemning “personal attacks” on Gen. Petraeus by a MoveOn.Org last September.  Ah, but that was different, was it not?

September is the cruelest month for Durbin, who in that month in 2005 from the Senate floor, during debate on an energy bill, compared Americans running Guatanomo to “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime——Pol Pot or others——that had no concern for human beings.”

For which he at first refused to apologize (said Aljazeera in a link now cached-only) but later did, with tears:

“Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line,” the Illinois Democrat said on Tuesday. “To them I extend my heartfelt apologies.”

To the others a wink.

Dick Morris has quite a good rundown here on “Why the race is tied,” including Obama’s carrying “flip-flopping to new heights”:

In the space of a month and a half, this candidate — who we don’t really yet know very well — reversed or sharply modified his positions on at least eight key issues

which he lists.  He also addresses the politico-moral equivalence argument:

Obama’s breathtaking flips and flops are materially different from McCain’s. While McCain had opposed offshore oil drilling and now supports it, the facts have obviously changed. Obama’s shifts have nothing to do with altered circumstances, just a change in the political calendar.

Somebody has even called O. a

“black Bill Clinton,” a turnaround of the “first black president” moniker that had been pinned on Bill.

The comparison has relevance to another phenomenon, the O. campaign being all for itself, and the devil take other Dem candidates, to judge from this at Politico:

After a brief bout of Obamamania, some Capitol Hill Democrats have begun to complain privately that Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is insular, uncooperative and inattentive to their hopes for a broad Democratic victory in November.

Praise abounds for all-around newsman, commentator, and presidential press secretary Tony Snow — “the best ever, without qualification,” says John Podhoretz. 

He could speak with fluency, honesty, wit, and clarity on every subject under the sun; he remained poised, unruffled, and as sure of himself at the podium in the press room as he was on that boat in the Potomac nearly two decades earlier.

But this from Brendan Miniter tells about him in a way most memorably:

I last saw Tony several years ago as he was heading out the door of a Starbucks in Alexandria, Va., on his way to work. He wasn’t rushing. He had time for a man who was asking for spare change. Tony reached into his pocket, dug out several coins and at least one bill and handed it to the man. I saw Tony step closer to the man and heard him ask how he was. As the door closed, I couldn’t hear what else he said, but as Tony walked away both were smiling.

Confident in his benevolence.

John K, Wilson, author of Barack Obama, This Improbable Quest, takes a shot at rebutting Dennis Byrne, who accused O. of flip-flopping in the matter of campaign financing.  Before, he was for it (taking fed money and calling off fund-raising), later he was against it (broken system, can’t condone it, can’t employ it, like a broken PC: can’t use it, you know, have to get a Mac).

Not so, says Wilson, who blogs at www.obamapolitics.com — “Barack Obama is quickly becoming America’s most popular politician” — and has criticized the U. of Colorado committee that punished prof Ward Churchill as “opening the door to a vast new right-wing witch hunt on college campuses that conservatives could easily exploit across the country.” 

“Obama never made an unconditional promise to take public funding,” says Wilson in a letter to Chi Trib editor that identifies him as author of his book, which he would dearly like us all to know about — I didn’t — which is unusual in letter-writer (“Voice of the People”) identifications.  Wouldn’t we all like our books given such display?  The letters editor would be swamped.

To Wilson: What was the condition O. set?  And what’s this “agreement” vs. “promise”?  Publicly made, of course, to gain advantage in campaign sweepstakes.

“I defy Byrne to offer a single example,” says this doughty campaigner-book author. 

Byrne accuses Obama’s campaign of “shading the truth” because “it implies that all the money comes from small contributions of $5, $10 or $20.”

But this was the entire import of O’s agreement-not-a-promise, was it not?  That he as reformer would take the supposed reformer’s path?  Wilson missed that?

Again the bluster, reminiscent of “I would challenge” to Chicago newsies to “dispute that basic fact” — that he’s not a typical Chicago politician:

Unless Byrne can come up with a single example in which Obama’s campaign claimed that all of its money comes from $20 donations or less, he’s “shading the truth” and owes Obama–and his readers–an apology.

En garde, Byrne!  We bloggers at obamapolitics.com want to joust!  Make our day!

Big O. and the gang should call this guy off, especially in view of its claim that this was “an extremely difficult decision.”

Of course.  Breaking (up) an agreement is always hard to do.