The Washington Post found the victim that Robert Novak “bumped into” with a .22 cal pistol, no wait that’s Ambinder’s fantasy, I meant his corvette.

“The homeless pedestrian who was struck by a car driven by syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak said in a radio interview yesterday that he is “doing fine,” recovering from a dislocated shoulder, and voiced surprise and amusement that the prominent political pundit was at the wheel of the Chevrolet Corvette that hit him.

“Bob Novak is the one that hit me?” said 86-year-old Don Clifford Liljenquist, sounding astonished when WMAL (630 AM) reporter Troy Russell told him that the driver was Novak. “Well, everybody knows who Bob Novak is! He’s a famous journalist! . . . I was struck by Bob Novak? . . . Well, I think that makes it a great story!”.

Yeah I know, I was smelling “conspiracy” this morning. Tell you what, I’m still smelling it. Can’t help it, former cop. Back to the story.

“Novak, 77, whose column appears in The Washington Post, has said that he did not know he hit Liljenquist until a bicyclist stopped him a short distance from the site of Wednesday morning’s incident, at 18th and K Streets NW. Speaking to the radio station by phone from his room at George Washington University Medical Center, Liljenquist did not dispute Novak’s account.

“Yeah, it’s possible that he didn’t know he hit me,” Liljenquist said. “The vehicle was moving at 10 miles per hour or something like that, and the driver might not have seen me, because I rolled off and fell down to the pavement. So, yeah, it’s possible that he didn’t see me. He wasn’t paying attention to his driving.”

Opps? Ten miles per hour? To hear Mr. Helpful Citizen, David Bono tell it. Novak was ripping through the intersection looking to run over jaywalkers.

Side question, how many bums do you know that aren’t three-sheets to the wind or a few fries short of a Happy Meal? The Washington Post doesn’t answer that question, but hints at it.

“Liljenquist, a resident of a homeless shelter, largely confirmed Bono’s account, though he repeatedly used a garbled word to describe a part of the Corvette.

“I had the right of way,” he said. “But an automobile was approaching on K Street. He just kept going. . . . His bumper run under me. And I did a maneuver. I rolled across his . . .”

He paused, until Russell finally said, “The hood of his car?”

Liljenquist continued, “Across his [unintelligible] and then fell down to the pavement.”

We have a LOT of bums on the streets here in South Florida. They all would say that they have the “right of way” as they cross I-95 into the woods, holding their hand up to tell cars to stop. They normally don’t and - well you know the rest.

Incidentally a few of them know “Judo” but it usually doesn’t help.

It will still be interesting to see whether or not Liljenquist sues, again non-specific:

“He did not answer definitively when asked whether he is contemplating legal action against Novak.

“He’s a very good reporter,” Liljenquist said. “But as a driver, he wasn’t paying attention.”

Neither is the rest of America.

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Like a lot of us I’m going over the transcript from Obama’s speech in Berlin. Towards the end of the transcript we read this.

“I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.”

Really? This might be popular to America hating - and leftist Germans, and their counterparts here. After all if liberals have communicated nothing else over the last 40 years it’s that they believe vehemently that America sucks. So Obama saying it isn’t a surprise.

But while it gets the libs clapping, it’s not going to sell on mainstreet America.

Americans still remember how Germany, France did not stand with us on the War on Terror and many of them still hold it against them. Quite frankly many Americans don’t give a crap what Europe - who would be goose-stepping to Hitler’s grandson had we not bailed their ass out - thinks.

So according to Obama we’re “flawed”, “poor, pitiful, blind and naked”. Ask yourself how that makes you feel. Ask your neighbor. Then ask do you want your president to be talking down the US to the world, or lifting her up as the standard to be lived up to that she is.

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Another american Germans love beside the “Light Being”.

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The Obamanites over at MSNBC write:

“NBC Senior Investigative Producer Jim Popkin looks at “Obama and the case of the missing ‘thesis’” in an item on NBC blog Deep Background.

Conservative provocateurs have been hunting for it. Investigative journalists have been on the prowl, too. Even a former professor has been searching through old boxes for his copy of it. But today Barack Obama made it official: He doesn’t have and can’t release any copies of the thesis-length paper he wrote 25 years ago while a senior at Columbia University.

“We do not have a copy of the course paper you requested and neither does Columbia University,” Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt told NBC News.

The hunt for Obama’s senior “thesis” began with a throwaway line in a newspaper article last October. The New York Times story, on Obama’s early New York years, mentioned in passing that the presidential contender had majored in political science at Columbia and had spent his time “writing his thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament.”

Journalists began hounding Columbia University for copies of the musty document. Conservative bloggers began wondering if the young Obama had written a no-nukes screed that he might come to regret. And David Bossie, the former congressional investigator and “right-wing hit man,” as one newspaper described him, took out classified newspaper ads in Columbia University’s newspaper and the Chicago Tribune in March searching for the term paper.

So what does the missing paper say, and could it be politically damaging to Obama? The Obama campaign won’t offer any guidance since it says it doesn’t have a copy. Spokesman Ben LaBolt wouldn’t even say whether Sen. Obama threw out his copy or lost it.

So we turned for answers to the former professor who graded the now-elusive paper. His former professor, Michael Baron, recalled in an interview with NBC News that Obama easily aced the year-long class. Baron described the paper as a “thesis” or “senior thesis” in several interviews, and said that Obama spent a year working on it. Baron recalls that the topic was nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union.

“My recollection is that the paper was an analysis of the evolution of the arms reduction negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States,” Baron said in an e-mail. “At that time, a hot topic in foreign policy circles was finding a way in which each country could safely reduce the large arsenal of nuclear weapons pointed at the other … For U.S. policy makers in both political parties, the aim was not disarmament, but achieving deep reductions in the Soviet nuclear arsenal and keeping a substantial and permanent American advantage. As I remember it, the paper was about those negotiations, their tactics and chances for success. Barack got an A.”

Well, we don’t need the paper. Once again, here it is.

Then as now he’ll negotiate in weakness after he’s Disarmed America.

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From Byron York the latest example.

“It’s a small passage from Obama’s Berlin speech, but this formulation, common in some circles, grates on some ears, like mine:

The terrorists of September 11th plotted in Hamburg and trained in Kandahar and Karachi before killing thousands from all over the globe on American soil.
Yes, the victims were from all over the globe — places like Brooklyn, and the Bronx, and Manhattan, and Queens, and Staten Island, and New Jersey — all over. And most were Americans, weren’t they? Wasn’t that the point of the attack? This isn’t to diminish the loss of anyone on September 11, but people come from all over the world to be Americans, and the great majority of people who died that day were Americans. Factcheck.org looked into the question a while back:
Specifically in New York, a little under 3,000 people died in the attack on the World Trade Center. A year after the incident, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 2,726 death certificates had been issued and estimated that another 93 deaths had occurred, bringing the total to 2,819 persons.

Of those issued death certificates, 1 percent (27 people) were foreign nationals from eight different countries. Also, about 21 percent (568 people) were born outside of the U.S.”

Kevin Drum takes typical lefty issue with York:

“This is crazy. Obama was in Berlin. He was trying to connect with a European crowd. He was trying to convince those Europeans that the fight against terrorism is their fight too. Isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t that a point that conservatives try to make all the time? What better way to make it?”

So he exaggerates? Isn’t that you and your liberal buds have been getting after GWB about for the invasion of Iraq? The hypocrisy is dripping. Sure we love for the Europeans to get “tough” on terrorism, but we don’t have to lie to them to get it done. As if they were ever going to do it anyway.

We could give Obama a pass, but he’s got a track record on crappy math. Whether it’s about how many states we have, like 57?

By the way he’s up it to 58 states now and he will reign over them as President for 8-10 years!

Or about how many died in a Kansas tornado last year, some crazy number like 10,000.

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Seems it was all about the HYPE because the results were anything but stellar. Cancellations in Paris, low crowd turnout in Berlin - 200,000 compared to the million expected Ed at Hot Air is keeping a running tally of the Obama World Tour gone Bust.

Here’s a bit of his speech in Berlin.

By the way The Political Redeemer stiffed the troops via Spiegel:

“SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that Obama has cancelled a planned short visit to the Rammstein and Landstuhl US military bases in the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The visits were planned for Friday. “Barack Obama will not be coming to us,” a spokesperson for the US military hospital in Landstuhl announced. “I don’t know why.” Shortly before the same spokeswoman had announced a planned visit by Obama.”

Don’t feel bad fellas he stiffed them at Fort Hood too.

UPDATE: h/t to coffee in the comments on the background of Obama not visiting wounded troops:

Jim Geraghty over at NRO’s, The Campaign Spot has this update.

“Who decided that Obama had spent enough time with the troops?

UPDATE: A very interesting email from a source I must protect suggests that Obama’s visit to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center had the green light until a campaign staffer raised a stink about going with Obama. (There are rules meant to ensure candidates do not use soldiers or military bases for campaign purposes, and they state that personal and committee staff may accompany a sitting senator on a visit but campaign staff may not.) I am told that when one of Obama’s campaign staff was told he or she would be denied access, the visit was canceled.

The last-minute cancellation speaks more poorly of this unidentified staffer than of Obama himself. But in the end, shouldn’t Obama have been able to say, “fine, the staffer stays in Berlin (or where-ever) and I’m going to Landstuhl? Can he still say so?”

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According to Rasumussen the poll also found that only 32% believe he will learn anything from his trip to Iraq, while 40% agree Obama already has his mind made up on Iraq.

The poll also shows 74% of Republicans and 60% of democrats agree it is not right for a candidate to make political statements contrary to government policy while in a war zone. Poll numbers have risen from 41% to 45% who now say Obama is too inexperienced to be President.

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My my, we’re getting ahead of ourselves aren’t we Barry? I mean really, alreadypreparing our transition team?

Not so fast Skippy

“Republican John McCain has quickly closed the gap between himself and Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama in several key battleground states even as the Arizona senator struggles to break through the wall-to-wall coverage of Obama’s trip to Europe and the Middle East this week.

McCain and Obama are in a statistical dead heat in Colorado, Michigan and Minnesota while the Illinois senator has a more comfortable double-digit edge in Wisconsin, according to polling conducted by Quinnipiac University for washingtonpost.com and the Wall Street Journal during the past week. Only in Colorado, however, does McCain hold a greater percentage of the vote share than Obama.

The economy is still the dominant concern of voters in each state. Nearly six in ten respondents in Michigan, a state crippled by the dire problems of the auto industry, cited the economy as the single most important issue in their decision this fall. The war in Iraq ranked second in terms of voter priorities but was named by less than one in five respondents in each state. Potential hot button issues such as terrorism and illegal immigration were cited by fewer than 10 percent of voters in ranking their top priorities.

The surveys are part of a four-month long effort to measure voter sentiment in key battleground states that could determine the outcome of the race. The path to the presidency runs through a handful of battleground states, as both Obama and McCain seek the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. Thus, the four states surveyed in this project provide a snapshot of where things stand less than four months before Election Day.

The first in the series of polls, conducted in the four states in mid-June, showed Obama comfortably ahead of McCain in Wisconsin and Minnesota while the races in Michigan and Colorado were closer although Obama still held the lead. The latest polling, showing a much tighter race, was conducted July 14 to 22, during Obama’s high-profile trip to the Middle East.

National polling suggests Obama retains a steady but statistically significant edge. In the most recent Washington Post/ABC News survey, Obama held a 50 percent to 42 margin over McCain; in the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, released last night, Obama leads 47 percent to 41.

While both campaigns are heavily engaged on television in most of these states, it’s not immediately clear from the data what accounted for McCain’s rapid rise — particularly in Minnesota and Colorado.

One possible reason is the campaign’s focus over the last month on the war in Iraq and national security concerns more broadly. McCain’s campaign has hammered home the idea that Obama was mistaken in his opposition to the surge of U.S. troops last year and is wrong now about his proposed 16-month timetable for withdrawing troops.

Voters in all four states seem to agree. Asked whether they would prefer a “fixed date” for withdrawal or to “keep troops in Iraq until the situation is more stable,” majorities in all four states preferred the latter option despite the fact that similar majorities in each state say that America was wrong to go to war in Iraq.

Those results suggest that while Obama’s initial opposition to the war plays well with voters, his plan to remove troops from the country within 16 months of taking office as president is less well received. Obama’s plan did, however, receive a major boost earlier this week when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said his government would like U.S Forces to be out of the country by 2010.”

You know, for all the media love fest with Obama he should be trouncing McCain, but the fact is that he’s not and barely leading in some polls. That’s NOT good for Obama no matter how much spin his legions try to place on it.

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Am I alone in smelling something’s up with the Novak and the Pedestrian story? We all know that Novak is an “agressive driver”, yet I wonder who told the media that.

But first to the good citizen who chased down Novak after the accident, David Bono. First he’s an attorney which makes me giggle knowing that he just “happened” to be there as this 66 year old man was hit.

David Bono is an attorney with Harkins Cunningham LLP, and a heavy contributor to several democrats including - yeah - the messiah.

Now to the update today.

“The pedestrian who was struck by prominent Washington columnist and commentator Robert Novak is in worse shape than first thought, a hospital source tells ABC 7 News.

The victim, a 66-year-old man, appeared somewhat incoherent, said the source who had seen the victim. The man appeared to have casts on his neck and back. The victim was X-rayed and a surgical team plans to evaluate him, the source said.

In an exclusive interview with ABC 7 News, Novak, 77, said felt “terrible” about striking a pedestrian Wednesday morning while on his way to work in downtown D.C.

Metropolitan police cited Novak with failure to yield to a pedestrian about 10:07 a.m. at 18th and K streets NW, Novak confirmed to ABC 7 News.

Novak spoke to ABC 7 News as he emerged from a police car at the scene. Novak said he did not know he had struck anyone. Novak said he didn’t know anything was wrong until a bicyclist rode ahead of him and blocked traffic. The bicyclist, attorney David Bono, informed Novak he had hit a pedestrian.

“I see something of an older gentleman in the crosswalk get hit. The black Corvette convertible take a right turn onto the K Street service road; the pedestrian rolls off to the left and the car speeds away,” he said.

Bono dismissed Novak’s assertion that he never saw the struck pedestrian.

“There was a pedestrian splayed on his windshield — I don’t think there is any way you can miss that,” Bono said.

Bono also said that the pedestrian was in a crosswalk and had the right of way.”

I handled a few accidents such as this during my law enforcement years and I can remember a more “animated” witness. Nevertheless it’s important to understand that Novak’s corvette has no cracks to the windshield nor any physical evidence that the victim was “splayed”. In fact, Bono’s account sounds contrived and sketchy in my professional opinion. Additionally since Novak was cited only for a minor moving violation it outright doubtful Bono’s account happened. If the officer had detected anything more than that he would have arrested him.

Yet as of yesterday the victim appeared to have “minor” injuries and yet today he’s in all but a complete body cast.

But back to Bono. Aside from being a Obama supporter, he may have ties to someone whom Novak had a prior assocation of sorts.

That being Joe and Valerie Wilson, who just coincidently sent Think Progress this note after the accident.

“ThinkProgress received a statement from Amb. Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson on Robert Novak’s collision today, in which he “was cited by police after he hit a pedestrian with his black Corvette in downtown Washington, D.C., Wednesday morning.” From their statement:

“Our sympathies go out to the victim of Novak’s action. Once again Novak has demonstrated his callous disregard for the rights of others, as well as his chronic inability to accept responsibility for his actions.

We have long argued that responsible adults should take Novak’s typewriter away. The time has arrived for them to also take away the keys to his Corvette.”

My, my that was quick now wasn’t it? Call it my “intuition” it would appear that there might be more to the story. We see as the “victim” no doubt goes to sue Novak and more importantly who represents him.

UPDATE: I missed this but it’s highly unusual that the name of the victim hasn’t been released. Normally this has to do with notifying next of kin, but that would have happened by now. Would love to know exactly who he is and of course where he “came from”.

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Can’t resist this. No, I don’t believe Obama’s the “Anti-Christ”, besides even if he is the Devil’s a fool. But the contrasts are striking wouldn’t you say?

“When therefore ye see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let him that readeth understand)” Mat. 24:15

The general understanding is that “the holy place” referred to here is the ancient temple in Jerusalem, of which the western wall is a part.

Via Drudge:

“OBAMA VISITS WESTERN WALL IN OLD CITY JERUSALEM… ARRIVES AT 5:08 AM LOCAL TIME [10:08 PM ET]… SUNRISE… SHOUTING MAN: ‘JERUSALEM IS NOT FOR SALE, OBAMA’… MOB SCENE… CHAOS… BOWING HIS HEAD IN PRAYER… PLACES NOTE IN WALL… POSES FOR PHOTOS… LOTS OF SHOUTING… LEAVES 5:20 AM… DEVELOPING…”

Again, for discussion. It’s late, I just finished The MacRanger Show and it’s time for bed.

By the way Snopes says “no” but their theology is a bit off.

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Phone in 646-652-4913 and the chat room is now OPEN!

See you there!

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Despite all the lefty pouncing on McCain for his “Surge came before Anbar” comment, the fact is that non military types (most lefty bloggers) haven’t a clue what they’re talking about. McCain is right that the ground work for the surge began in Anbar, “Fire for Effect”. McCain as a naval commander knows full well what the term means. Morons like Keith Olbermann and Anderson (Serious) Cooper don’t and wouldn’t if it hit them in the ass.

McCain clarified the comment beautifully and correctly:

“This counter-insurgency was initiated to some degree by Col. McFarland in Anbar province, relatively on his own. And I visited with him in December of 2006. He had already initiated that strategy in Ramadi by going in and clearing and holding in certain places,” McCain said. “Later on, there were additional troops, and General Petraeus said that the surge would not have worked, and the Anbar awakening would not have taken place, successfully, if they hadn’t had an increase in the number of troops.”

What promoted the outrage is that this again nailed Obama in his ignorance of all thing Iraq when he told Katie Couric that the Sunni awakening would have improved security even without the surge.

McCain addressed this clearly that the precursor of the surge was the counter insurgency in Anbar. Something incidentally that wasn’t known until after the surge had begun.

Joe Scarborough today on his morning show nails the naysayers.

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Yet another gaffe (I’ve lost count). This time the Light Being claims to be places in the Senate he has never been! CNN calls it an “incorrect statement”. Come on! If I tell someone I’m George Clooney I’m either a nut or a liar. Take your pick!

“Responding to an Israeli reporter’s question Wednesday on his commitment to protect the Jewish state, Barack Obama pointed to a bill “we passed” in the U.S. Senate Banking Committee that tightens sanctions and authorizes divestment from Iran. “My committee,” he called it.

Except that he isn’t a member of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

“Just this past week, we passed out of the out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee - which is my committee - a bill to call for divestment from Iran as way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon,” Obama said at a press conference in Sderot, Israel.”

UPDATE: Here’s the video:

Now at this point Obama should have just shut his pancake hole, but naw…

“An Obama spokesman tells CNN “it was his bill, not his committee,” referring to the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act that the Illinois senator sponsored and introduced in May 2007. The measure was then referred to the Banking Committee, and passed a vote of 19-2 on July 17.

In a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday, Obama told the former Israeli Prime Minister, “I could fall asleep now standing up,” after Netanyahu asked him how his whirlwind trip to the Middle East and Europe is going.”

Tired? Now where have we heard that before?

Oh yeah.

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You just have to know where to look but he’s kicking them out so fast it’s hard to keep up. Dean Barnett catches this gift:

“What I think can change is the ability of the United States government and a United States president to be actively engaged with the peace process and to be concerned and to recognize the legitimate difficulties that the Palestinian people are experiencing right now and recognize that it is not only in the interest of the Palestinian people that their situation improves - I believe that it is in the interest of the Israeli people…That’s why terrorism is so counterproductive as well as being immoral because it makes I believe the Israelis want to dig in and simply think about their own security regardless of what’s going on beyond their borders.”

I read this to one of my devout Jewish Friends and he spit a pickel clear across the deli. Just for further kicks and giggles I emailed it to a couple of dozen Temples here in the South Florida area. I’m sure they’ll get a kick out of it too.

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Commenting on Robert Novak’s minor run in with a pedestrian, Matthew Yglesias is mad, but I mean really?

“This isn’t the first time Novak’s gotten in trouble with criminal driving. Fortunately, the 66 year-old man Novak hit has only minor injuries, which means Novak will probably only see a minor penalty. And that’s too bad. The penalties for this stuff ought to be much stiffer. Morally speaking, what Novak was doing here is no better than walking down a crowded street with his handgun, firing off .22 rounds at random. “He’s not dead, that’s the main thing,” says Novak but that’s just a coincidence.

I hate, incidentally, that coverage of this is using the euphemism that Novak is known as an “aggressive” driver. He’s a criminal. Cars are large, heavy, fast-moving objects that share space with delicate flesh-and-blood human beings — piloting them in an illegal manner is serious wrongdoing.

Typical liberal “Over-reactiviatas” we call it here. Some an old man hits a person with their car in the cross walk - regardless of the reason - and that equates him with a mass murderer?

I mean its not as if he left a secretary drowning in the river or some crazy thing like that.

Since Yglesias is preparing for his new gig at George Soro’s Center for American Progress, this is all in a days work.

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