Obama Snubs Kansas City Mayor

Mayor Funkhouser, who has been harshly criticized by liberal groups (because of his defense of embattled Minuteman member, Frances Semler) was not allowed on stage during Obama’s speech Tuesday night at Municipal Auditorium.

Instead he stood in the background.

“I wasn’t invited to be on stage,” said Mayor Funkhouser. “But, why would I care? I’m not remotely interested in being on stage and trying to be in the celebrity part of this thing.”

The mayor doesn’t believe he was snubbed, but Kansas City Star political reporter Dave Helling does.

“I don’t think people at the presidential level are worried about the kryptonite from Mark Funkhouser,” Helling says. “But, in any campaign, you don’t want to have to fight the fights you don’t have to fight.”

Funkhouser is fighting harsh criticism and opponents who are demanding a recall election.

“I don’t see myself as political kryptonite,” said Funkhouser.

The mayor believes he was excluded because his political star just isn’t bright enough yet.

“We’re not in the same class,” said Funkhouser. “They’re 747’s. I’m a piper.”

With all due respect….I think Funkhouser is trying to play this down. When a major candidate for POTUS from your own party visits your town, and you are the Mayor of that town…you should expect to be invited on stage during the big speech.

Funkhouser refuses to endorse Obama or any other candidate. The mayor doesn’t want to make any more political enemies.

I daresay.

Obama Voted Mr. Congeniality And Most Liberal…But Mostly Most Liberal

Apologies to Ace for that.

This is red meat for Republicans if he winds up being the nominee:

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was the most liberal senator in 2007, according to National Journal’s 27th annual vote ratings. The insurgent presidential candidate shifted further to the left last year in the run-up to the primaries, after ranking as the 16th- and 10th-most-liberal during his first two years in the Senate.

Allahpundit surmises that this is why we get ‘10 parts gassy “change” to every one part specific policy proposals’.

That Pain McCain Is Driving Us Insane

And we’re about to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. Not too long ago, Hillary was looking like an inevitable “sure thing”. But the Clintons’ floundering and dirty politics has managed to sully both Democratic candidates, offering the Republicans a gift we seem loath to accept.

No, he not perfect. No, he doesn’t seem terribly conservative. Yet somehow he’s managed to acquire an 82% career ranking by the American Conservative Union.

Victor Davis Hansen offers these words of wisdom:

In reaction to McCain’s own surge and the Republican windfall, the conservative base went ballistic. Soon a Republican civil war broke out over how best to lose the election.

Despite McCain’s 82-percent career ranking by the American Conservative Union, and his support for balanced budgets, an end to pork-barrel spending and earmarks, strong support for the war, and expressed regret over once supporting the Bush illegal immigration reform package, McCain was branded by the conservative media as a sellout and a near liberal. Not to mention that he was supposedly too old and hot-tempered to be the Republican nominee. The more McCain was discovered not to be a perfect conservative, the more he was accused of not even being a good one.

Even stranger, the various Republican candidates began invoking Ronald Reagan’s three-decade-old tenure as the new litmus test of the times — apparently to show how moderates like the wayward McCain fell far short of the Gipper’s true-blue conservatism.

Were conservatives supposed to forget that a maverick Reagan raised some taxes, signed an illegal-alien amnesty bill, expanded government, appointed centrist Supreme Court justices, advocated nuclear disarmament, sold arms to Iran, and pulled out of Lebanon — but to remember only that John McCain was not for the original Bush tax cuts or once supported the administration’s offer of a quasi-amnesty?

I’m all for pointing out the differences in the candidates, and attacking a candidate on the points you strongly disagree with. That’s politics.

But this…”I’m staying home”, or worse, “I’m voting for Obama if he’s the nominee” bullshit has got to stop.

If you think our country can survive the foreign policy decisions of a liberal Democrat Commander In Chief at this critical juncture, then I want to know what you’re smoking.

There is still a war on terror going on. That should be the primary consideration for any serious Republican.

And we all know where McCain stands on the war.

I put my country above my party.

Petre And The Bear

 A seven year old Romanian boy, with the help of his three legged dog, a stick, and -  I’m thinking - one hell of an adrenaline rush,  fought off a 280 pound bear that was attacking his mother:

When the bear appeared, Petre Prundaru ran off and hid behind a tree, but his mother, Anisoara, 40, slipped and fell. When the boy saw the bear grab her by the neck, he picked up a stick and charged it.

His pet dog, Cotonogu, also went for the bear and the animal ran off.

Petre then managed to find a shepherd, who called emergency services. His mother was taken to hospital, where she was treated for cuts.

A hospital spokesman said, most people who get that close to a bear, don’t live to tell the tale.

She (Petre’s mother) said: “We were gathering sticks for firewood when suddenly our little dog, Cotonogu, started to growl, and then out of the bushes came this enormous bear. I stepped backwards and tripped over and shouted at Petre to run.

“Then the bear came and started sniffing me and scratching and biting me. I couldn’t move – I was terrified – and then it opened its mouth and put it round my throat.

“I could feel its breath and its teeth and then I heard Petre and my dog shouting and barking, and the bear was gone. I can’t believe I survived.”

I liked the first comment at the Scotsman’s  website:

 Brave wee laddie and his dog….she is one lucky woman….

Aye.