The Democrats made history last night. Never before has a major political party nominated someone with fewer qualifications than Barack Obama to be their candidate for President of the United States. The Democratic National Convention has gone on for three days and we have yet to hear about Mr. Obama's accomplishments. No surprise there. He doesn't have any. Neither have we heard about his record as a Chicago politician. No surprise there either. It's too radical for the average American. Instead we hear about hope and change and moving into the future. Race is the prominent issue at the convention. Americans yearn to go beyond race, to a place where a person is truly judged by who he is and not by the color of his skin. Obama understands this aspiration and plays to it skillfully. His message is clear and simple. Vote for him and you will feel good about yourself and your country. But the Presidency of the United States is not a beauty pageant or a homecoming. The decisions made by the person occupying the Oval Office have wide ranging repercussions. Obama's background suggests the decisions he makes will be bad ones. He believes the government should implement policies to redistribute wealth.  He opposed the surge and was willing to accept defeat and humiliation in Iraq. He opposed funding for the troops during wartime. He publicly stated his intention to bomb Pakistan. He minimizes the threat from Iran. He changes his positions on everything from financing political campaigns to the status of Jerusalem, and he has had relationships with truly smarmy characters like William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Tony Rezko. Most Americans believe in the idea of merit and oppose the whole concept of affirmative action. Things are earned, not given. For them, experience and judgment matter more than race. That's bad news for Obama.

The Russians invade a small neighboring country and threaten Poland, a NATO ally, with nuclear weapons. Al-Qaeda sets off bombs in Afghanistan. Energy prices are out of control and the world economy could be sliding into recession. So what is Barack Obama talking about? John McCain's houses. Why not? He can't talk about his accomplishments because he doesn't have any. He can't talk about his record in Chicago because it's too radical, and he can't talk about his plans and policies for America because the constant changes make him look like a flip-flopper. So he talks about John McCain's houses. We know John McCain has the right stuff. He was a Navy fighter pilot. Barack Obama doesn't have the right stuff so he substitutes the right fluff instead.

Add another reason to the list for why Barack Obama should not be President – his constant whining. Who wants to listen to that for four years?  After the Saddleback Forum where he fumbled, mumbled, and stumbled, he started whining about John McCain having the questions beforehand. He had no proof McCain had the questions, but that didn't stop his campaign from whining anyway. Now he's whining about people suggesting he is unpatriotic. After all, he went all the way to Germany to tell a crowd of Germans he loved his country. He even went before an audience of veterans to say the same thing. Just because he hung out with William Ayers, an anti-American radical who wanted to set off bombs at military installations is no reason to suggest he is unpatriotic. Just because he didn't hold his hand over his heart during the national anthem or refused to wear an American flag lapel pin is no reason to suggest he is unpatriotic. Just because he opposed funding for the war in Iraq which would have lead to humiliation and defeat is no reason to suggest he is unpatriotic. Just because the people closest to him, like his wife, had no pride in America until her husband began running for President is no reason to suggest he is unpatriotic. Just because his pastor and mentor of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright called for the country to be damned is no reason to suggest he is unpatriotic. No, of course not. All these things just go to show what a patriot he is. Barack Obama's “I love my country remark” may go down in the annals of American politics alongside Richard Nixon's “I'm not a crook”.

If anyone doubted Obama's plans to redistribute income, they need only look at his latest energy proposal. He promises to give American workers a $1,000 check paid for by taxing oil company profits. Don't expect him to stop at the oil companies. If he thinks drug company profits are too high, he will tax them to provide affordable health care. If banks make too much money, he will tax them to provide affordable housing, and so on. This policy will, of course, lead to failure. After a while there are no more profits and therefore nothing left to give away. Obama doesn't care. In his heart he is a socialist, cut from the same cloth as Saul Alinsky, another Chicago “community organizer”. It was Alinsky who wrote in Rules for Radicals, “There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future.” Sound familiar?

Like most of Obama's proposals, the $1,000 giveaway doesn't add up. About 145 million Americans are currently employed so the cost of Obama's plan will exceed $145 billion.  He will have to take all the profits from all the oil companies and then some. This guy is dangerous, very, very dangerous.

You thought it was an act. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi would advocate loony ideas in order to placate the radical left wing of her party. Surprise! She actually believes all those things she's been saying. Gas prices are at record highs. People are losing their homes and jobs. Iran is developing nuclear weapons and threatens to shut down the Straight of Hormuz, a choke point for 40 percent of the world's oil. America may be sliding into a recession and taking the rest of the world with us. So what is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's top priority? Saving the planet. She refuses to allow oil and gas exploration and development in American waters because she wants to save the planet. She has no problem with Saudi Arabia increasing oil production, or Russia, or China, or any other country other than America. It's only when America increases domestic oil production that the planet becomes threatened. This country was doing pretty well until the Democrats got control of Congress. Then gas prices exploded and the economy started going downhill. Every Democrat running for Congress should be made to defend Pelosi and her ideas.

So Barack Obama gives his Ich bin ein citizen of the world speech in Berlin and the adoring throng goes wild, which is exactly what you would expect from the media people covering the event. They understand their job is to get him elected. Others in the crowd apparently also received the speech well. The purpose of the speech was to burnish Obama's foreign policy credentials. I don't think it succeeded. Rather than showing Obama as a man with a vast and comprehensive understanding of world events, it showed him as a man of unbridled arrogance. Nobody elected him to make foreign policy. Nobody elected him to represent American interests abroad or to apologize for America's actions. Yet there he was, pretending to speak for all of America. The speech may have wowed journalists and a crowd of German Socialists but I suspect it will not go over well with American voters. We don't want a citizen of the world who apologizes for American actions to be our President. We want a citizen of America who is proud of his country to be our President. Obama's big day in Berlin only serves to highlight what many people are beginning to learn about him. He is not a transcendent figure above politics but rather a callow, erratic politician entirely too full of himself.

And you thought high gas prices were caused by an imbalance between supply and demand or rampant speculation. No! According to Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, gas prices are high because oil is being held hostage by the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. “Free our oil from the SPR”, she told Wolf Blitzer Sunday. Come again. Oil is being held captive by the SPR? The SPR was created for dire emergencies, like, for instance, Iran shutting down the Straight of Hormuz, which would cripple the world economy. Pelosi wants to start pumping oil out of the reserve weakening our ability to respond to a geopolitical crisis. At the same time she absolutely refuses to allow the House of Representatives to vote on drilling in American waters where enormous quantities of oil and natural gas are expected to be found. Instead she comes up with an idiotic soundbite, “free our oil from the SPR” as if she were talking about the Chicago Seven. Democrats running for Congress should be made to defend the crazy statements and policies of their leader in the House of Representatives.

Barack Obama said drilling for oil to lower gas prices is a “gimmick”. Yeah, he really said that. He also said the problem with gas prices is not that they are high, but that they went up too fast. He's not opposed to high prices, just the rate of increase. This is classic environmental extremism which seeks to use high prices to limit demand. In Obama's world, conservation is the only solution to our energy problems. Want gas at $6, $7, $8, or more a gallon?  Then vote for Obama.

During one of his debates, Barack Obama said he would debate the Iraq war with John McCain anytime, anywhere. Well, the candidate of change has changed his mind once again. He has declined McCain's invitation to a series of debates on a variety of issues, including Iraq. Obama is subject to gaffes so his refusal to debate is understandable. He's a guy who can read a teleprompter as well as anyone. What he can't do is think on his feet.