VDH On Obama's "Messianic Style"; Power Line On His Gotti Style.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson totes up the increasingly creepy (and worrisome) accretion of convenient occurences that have paved The One's path to power:

Individually, the extra-electoral efforts are irrelevant. But in the aggregate, they start to add up. In 1996 Obama goes to court, challenges the petition signatures of mostly African-American voters, and gets all his rivals eliminated from the ballot and so de facto runs unopposed.

In 2004 sealed divorce records were strangely released destroying the chances of his chief Democratic rival Blair Hull; then in the general, lightning again struck, and Republican front-runner Jack Ryan's sealed divorce records were likewise mysteriously released—and he too crashed, in effect, leaving Obama without a serious primary or general election rival.

In this campaign, Acorn galvanizes to register voters and almost immediately runs into serial charges of voter registration fraud. Now an Obama ad runs asking Americans simply to take the day off to help get out the Obama vote: apparently American businesses, universities, and the government all are supposed to sacrifice hundreds of millions of dollars in lost collective work days to subsidize the Obama campaign in order "to change history"?

When one marries all that with the swarming of radio stations when someone like Stanley Kurtz goes on, the threats to go to court to stop ads, or the blacklisting of TV stations who dared to conduct tough interviews, the same old pattern reappears of by any means necessary. And in turn the explanation for all that?

The messianic style—the cosmic tug to "change history", or stop the seas from rising or the planet from heating, juxtaposed with the creepy faux-Greek columns, Michelle's "deign to enter" politics snippet, the fainting at rallies, the Victory Column mass address, the vero possumus presidential seal, and the 'we are the change we've been waiting for' mantra—reflects the omnipresent narcissism: the exalted ends of electing a prophet always justify the often crude and all too mortal means.

If this is considered 'right', I'd rather be wrong with McCain.

Power Line compares Obama to John Gotti as they update on Obama's Ohio governmental Brownshirts who have attempted to smear and destroy Joe the Plumber for daring to ask a simple question that the Dear Leader botched the answer.

Barack Obama reminds me a bit of John Gotti. Obama is no murderer, of course, but here is the analogy: John Gotti (before his incarceration) was a well-dressed, genial, smooth-talking guy. Not a visible threat in sight. But if you crossed him, his thugs were very quickly at your door.

Likewise with Barack Obama. He is always at pains to seem high-minded, but his tactics are anything but. If you cross him, his goons, too, are sure to retaliate, albeit in less deadly fashion than Gotti's.

The case of Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher is an object lesson in how Obama and his supporters try to destroy anyone who even inadvertently gets in their way. Once Wurzelbacher was thrust into the limelight after Obama approached him in his driveway, Democrats swung into action to try to discredit the plumber by ransacking records on file with the State of Ohio. These efforts--the ones that have come to light so far--are recounted in the Columbus Dispatch:

Authorities in Toledo and Cleveland confirmed today that workers accessed Wurzelbacher's driving record and vehicle information through state computer systems in checks uncovered by The Dispatch. ...

The Toledo Police Department announced that a records clerk improperly pulled Wurzelbacher's information on behalf of a reporter for a Toledo television station the day after the Oct. 15 presidential debate. ...

Altogether, the Dispatch identifies four separate violations of Wurzelbacher's privacy by Democrats in Ohio's state bureaucracy who improperly accessed his records, hoping to find information helpful to the Obama campaign. This is the worst one:

Inspector General Thomas P. Charles also is investigating why the director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services approved a check on Wurzelbacher through the state's child-support computer system.

Director Helen Jones-Kelley said that after a "team meeting," she OK'd the check because the department often runs inquiries to check for unpaid child support on people thrust into "the public spotlight."

Is that disgusting, or what? They actually held a "team meeting" to decide to spy on Wurzelbacher on Obama's behalf. As it happens, Wurzelbacher doesn't pay child support, but they apparently thought there was no harm in checking. The Director of the Department of Job and Family Services denies that she was trying to help Obama:

Jones-Kelley said there were no political motivations behind the check. The Democratic appointee has contributed the maximum $2,300 to the Obama campaign this year, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Democrats often purport to be concerned about privacy rights, but those claims are about as credible as their claim to be tax-cutters.

They also claim to be the party of freedom and it's true; we are all free to worship the Obamessiah.

Or else.