The LuLac Edition #469, April 27th, 2008

PHOTO INDEX: THE WORLD AND SENATOR OBAMA.

OBAMA GETS FOXEY

Senator Barack Obama finally appeared on Fox News Sunday today. The network had an Obama meter wondering when the Senator would sit down with host Chris Wallace. Today was the day and it was wortth getting up for and not tuning in to Jill Knopka and April Gonzalez on WBRE TV. Host Chris Wallace, who had started the clock because Obama has steadfastly refused to do his show, asked about Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, as well as his Chicago connection to Weather Underground figure William Ayers. And he sought specific examples of how the Illinois senator has, or will, put into practice the bipartisanship that he preaches. Obama pushed back against “top-down, command-and-control” regulation that was popular with the left in the ‘60s and ‘70s. He credited the GOP with pushing market-oriented solutions and cited his support of a cap-and-trade system for controlling carbon emissions. “I think that the Republican Party and people who thought about the markets came up with the notion that, you know, what if you simply set some guidelines, some rules and incentives for businesses, let them figure out how they're going to, for example, reduce pollution. It's a smarter way of doing it,” he said. On education, Obama said “we should be experimenting with charter schools” and “should be experimenting with different ways of compensating teachers.” Both positions run counter to those strongly backed by teachers unions, a core segment of the Democratic Party base. Obama also cited a vote on tort reform that angered trial lawyers — another key segment of the Democratic base. And while he opposed the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, Obama noted that he took to the popular blog DailyKos in defense of colleagues who supported Roberts for chief justice. “There are a lot of liberal commentators who think I’m too accommodating,” Obama said. Wallace also pressed Obama on comments he made at the last Democratic presidential debate with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton about Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Ayers, the former member of the violent Weather Underground. Obama had said that he should no more be assumed to endorse Coburn’s position that doctors who perform abortions should face the death penalty than he should be assumed to endorse the Weather Underground’s embrace of violence in opposition to the Vietnam War.

STATE OF THE WORLD

Next weekend in Sugar Notch, Pennsylvania. Host: Mario Fiorucci and an array of citizens talking about the state of the world. Begins noon on Sunday May 4th. Speaking will be Joe Pilchesky of Scranton, who won the Free Speech Award
this year and Dr. Mort Malkin, the educational speaker, about health care reform and his new book about creating a 'culture of wellness' for everyone.