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Sen. Barack Obama better not mess with his running mate Joe Biden's guns...or else. In an out-of-nowhere attempt to re-assure a southwestern Virginia labor crowd about gun owners' rights, Biden -- who regularly scores "F" ratings from the National Rifle Association -- warned Obama that if "he tries to fool with my Beretta, he’s got a problem."

Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware sent a stern message to his boss, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois to keep his hands off Biden's guns.As reported by ABC News and Fox News this afternoon, Biden was trying to reassure rural Virginia voters that they have nothing to fear about losing their Second Amendment rights under an Obama administration.From ABC:"I guarantee you Barack Obama ain't taking my shotguns, so don't buy that malarkey," Biden said Saturday at the United Mine Workers of America's annual fish fry in Castlewood, Virginia. "Don't buy that malarkey. They're going...

I KNOW Sarah Palin, and so does my wife. Neither of us ever actually met the governor of Alaska, but we grew up with her - in the small-town America despised by the leftwing elite. One gal-pal classmate of my wife's has even traveled from New York's Finger Lakes to Alaska to hunt moose with her husband. (Got one, too.) And no, Ms. Streisand, she isn't a redneck missing half her teeth - she's a lawyer. The sneering elites and their mediacrat fellow travelers just don't get it: How on earth could anyone vote for someone who didn't attend an...

On a swing through Pennsylvania last month, John McCain visited a Manheim Central High School football practice — not to ingratiate himself with the players, who weren't even old enough to vote, but to identify himself with the gritty, down-home lunch bucket values of small-town football. "This is a blue-collar town," Manheim's coach said in his introduction of McCain. "We don't have a lot of flashy athletes. We don't come out with a lot of flash." But the coach explained that his team works hard, plays with discipline, and comes through in the end. "A lot like John McCain," he...

Maybe Sarah Palin’s small-town governing experience is more worthwhile than the press wants to admit....

My video tribute to Governor Sarah Palin. Hope you enjoy it!

During this US election cycle we are hearing a lot from the pundits and candidates about "heartland voters," and "white working class voters." What they are talking about are rednecks. But in their political correctness, media types cannot bring themselves to utter the word "redneck." So I'll say it for them: redneck-redneck-redneck-redneck. The fact is that we American rednecks embrace the term in a sort of proud defiance. To us, the term redneck indicates a culture we were born in and enjoy. So I find it very interesting that politically correct people have taken it upon themselves to protect us...

ABC reporter Lisa Fletcher interviewed friends of Sarah Palin for a segment on Monday's "Nightline" and grilled them on whether a "small town mom" will be able to "sit down with Putin and deal with foreign issues?" Fletcher, who herself was a small town reporter before joining ABC in December of 2007, mostly avoided friendly queries and instead grilled the Alaskan friends of the Republican vice presidential candidate. At one point she asked pal Sandy Hoest, "She's spent less than two years as the governor of Alaska. Why should Americans have any confidence whatsoever that this woman can fulfill the...

Sarah Palin is not such a small-town girl after all By James Bennett It is clear that few in America, let alone Britain, have any idea what to make of Sarah Palin. The Republicans' vice-presidential candidate confounds the commentators because they don't understand the forces that shaped her in the remote state of Alaska. John McCain and Sarah Palin Thus, most coverage dwells on exotica - the moose shooting, her Eskimo husband - combined with befuddlement at how a woman can go from being mayor of a town of 9,000, to governor, to prospective VP within the space of a...

I just thought this tune is Sarah to a T.

Sarah Palin is not such a small-town girl after all By James Bennett Last Updated: 12:01am BST 09/09/2008 It is clear that few in America, let alone Britain, have any idea what to make of Sarah Palin. The Republicans' vice-presidential candidate confounds the commentators because they don't understand the forces that shaped her in the remote state of Alaska. Thus, most coverage dwells on exotica - the moose shooting, her Eskimo husband - combined with befuddlement at how a woman can go from being mayor of a town of 9,000, to governor, to prospective VP within the space of a...

Last week's dramatic entry of Sarah Palin on to America's political stage did more than revive a flagging Republican campaign and give heart to John McCain. It provided graphic evidence of the deep cultural divide that shapes the country - and put God, guns and sex right at the centre of the election The small, pretty college town of Northfield, Minnesota, is only an hour's drive south of urban St Paul, site of the Republican National Convention, but it is a world away. A welcoming sign promises 'Cows, colleges and contentment'. Its main street bustles with shoppers and its town...

Map of the US after the 2004 presidential election shows where the winning votes have to come from. Victory comes from counties and small towns. McCain and Palin have to carry them all plus enough from the cities to reach the tipping point. THAT is why Palin's small-town roots are spot-on. Sorry, no USA Today link accepted but maybe below will help. Prepare to see red. http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap.htm

Hundreds of angry people in this small town outside Milwaukee taunted reporters and TV crews traveling with Sen. John McCain on Friday, chanting "Be fair!" and pointing fingers at a pack of journalists as they booed loudly...

Sarah Palin mania transformed John McCain's presidential campaign as the Republican duo made their first appearances after claiming their party's White House nominations. In a sweep through the swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin, Mr McCain was met by the kind of near-hysterical crowds previously seen only at campaign events for his Democratic rival, Barack Obama. More than 6,000 exultant supporters turned out on Friday night in Sterling Heights, a town in Michigan's Macomb County, home of the Reagan-Democrats, the small town blue collar voters who propelled Ronald Reagan to the White House in the 1980s and hold the key...

Honor Your Word, or This Banker May Call Mom By RON LIEBER Just a few years ago, it was easy to write off the local community bank as a relic, a quaint reminder of an age when you actually needed to visit a branch to manage your money. Who needed a local banker when a mortgage broker could easily connect you with financing from some faraway lender? Internet banks offered savings accounts with interest rates far superior to community banks’ pathetic payouts, and brokerage firms created fee-free checking accounts. Like many of you, I suspect, I haven’t set foot in...

(CNSNews.com) - Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that the Second Amendment provides individuals the right to bear arms was a "landmark victory" and that his Democratic rival is on the wrong side of the debate. "Unlike Senator Obama, who refused to join me in signing a bipartisan amicus brief, I was pleased to express my support and call for the ruling issued today," McCain said in a statement issued by his campaign following Thursday's 5-4 ruling. "Today's ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller makes clear that other municipalities like Chicago that have banned handguns...

Go to http://my.barackobama.com/uniteforchange and enter zip code 18702 (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a city of 50,000 or so that is almost entirely blue collar DEMOCRATIC in terms of its politics). The map shows Unite for Change events within 50 miles. Unite for Change events in Wilkes-Barre: ZERO Unite for Change events in Scranton (90,000 people): ONE In other words, the Obama campaign could not find one single person in DEMOCRATIC Wilkes-Barre who would associate his or her name with this phony smile on top of an empty suit. In nearby Scranton, which also is blue collar Democrat, only one person was willing...

"But the pharmacist said not much has changed in the year since the behemoth from Bentonville, Ark., threw open its doors. His loyal clients have not strayed. They like the fact that he delivers for free and remembers most of his customers' names." "...But local proprietors and community leaders say the fears have not panned out."

Barack Obama insisted yesterday that he shared the same values as voters in white, small-town America, as the controversy over his former pastor’s incendiary remarks continued to damage his candidacy. Mr Obama – seeking to put the issue behind him during an hour-long televised interview – spoke as new polls showed Hillary Clinton pulling ahead in Indiana and gaining ground in North Carolina, before their next primary battles tomorrow. The surveys showed Mrs Clinton drawing overwhelming support from white, blue-collar voters and signs of growing alienation to Mr Obama among the group in a Democratic race more polarised along race...

Barack Obama's prospects of sealing the Democratic Party's nomination in Pennsylvania tomorrow have apparently evaporated in the state's ghost towns. In Clairton, a once-thriving community, where The Deer Hunter was filmed in the mid-1970s, the population has shrunk by two thirds in the past 30 years. Jobs at the huge steel mill beside the Monongahela River have steadily disappeared. Mr Obama and rival Senator Hillary Clinton are pursuing blue collar votes in places like Clairton that could decide the primary and the most closely fought nomination battle in living memory. If the young Illinois senator wants to expand his support...

If you happen to be a conservative in a small town, you might be chafing at Senator Barack Obama's recent comments at a fundraiser in San Francisco. Obama described small town blue-collar workers as "bitter", saying that they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." In plain English, Obama was saying that small town folk (among whom he apparently wasn't polling too well) are red-necked, xenophobic, gun-toting, Bible-pounding bigots who don't have a clue about how markets work in the real...

I really don’t know where a person would find Barak Obama’s “Small Town America”. I know that I have not viewed that kind of world from my own vantage point...and I have lived in this so-called “Small Town America” for the past 35 years. In political remarks that are burning up the Internet, leading the dialog of talk shows and firing up political pundits everywhere, the topic is Obama, speaking in San Francisco. He said, “You go to some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone...

Last week in Terre Haute, Ind., Mr. Obama explained that the people he had in mind “don’t vote on economic issues, because they don’t expect anybody’s going to help them.” He added: “So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don’t believe they can count on Washington.” This is a remarkably detailed and vivid account of the political...

The dirty little secret about Barack Obama's indictment of flyover country is that he said what liberals, including Hillary Clinton, believe. Sufficient proof of this can be found in the liberal outrage at Wednesday night's Democratic presidential debate, where Obama was pressed both by the moderators and Clinton to explain Bitter-gate, Wright-gate, Ayers-gate and Flag pin-gate. Consider the uncannily similar reactions of columnists Tom Shales and Stephen Silver. Shales expressed indignation that ABC News moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos would dare ask Obama to justify his insulting remarks about small-town Americans and his relationships with certain anti-American people. Shale's...

Perhaps the greatest lesson to be learned by Democrats from this week’s “bitter” brouhaha is that when you get advice about how to hook rural, white, blue-collar voters from a guy named Mudcat, you’d best listen. Dave “Mudcat” Saunders—Democratic strategist, bluegrass enthusiast, and general pied piper of the “Bubba vote,” as he calls it—had a little-noticed fight with liberal bloggers back in June 2007 that perfectly presaged this week’s controversy. “I have bitched and moaned for years about the lack of tolerance in the elitist wing of the Democratic Party, or what I refer to as the ‘Metropolitan Opera Wing.’...

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, accused of being elitist for remarks he made about small-town American voters, said on Tuesday the slap at his background is amusing and signals a nation in the midst of "political silly season." The Democratic senator, campaigning in Pennsylvania, dismissed the charges of being elitist and out of touch by fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton and by Republican John McCain as unfounded, given his background. "I am amused about this notion of elitist, given that when you're raised by a single mom, when you were on food stamps for a while when you were growing up, you...

People who are proud to point out their certainty about everything generally shouldn’t run for president. Because no one has it all figured out. Perhaps the worst part of this unfortunate situation is political rallies. A bunch of people crowd around a person running for office who explains to them what their emotions really are and why they are experiencing them. And everyone is supposed to leave saying, “Wow. This guy really gets me. It looks like someone’s finally going to add some zeroes to my bank account and heal this pesky rash on my calf.” And that’s what was...

56% Disagree with Obama’s Comments on Small Town America Monday, April 14, 2008 Fifty-six percent (56%) of voters nationwide disagree with Barack Obama’s statement that people in small towns “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 25% agree with the Democratic frontrunner while 19% are not sure. Partisan and ideological differences suggest that the comments are more likely to be a factor in the General Election than in the Primaries. A plurality...

Election 2008: Is Barack Obama's small-town America really a land of bitter gun-toting, Bible-thumping racists? Or are they just God-fearing American patriots? Maybe we should ask his "typical white" grandmother. Many pundits call it a gaffe, but we see Barack Obama's remarks to a bunch of San Francisco Democrats about small town people in Pennsylvania as a revelation. The remarks of our first "post-racial" presidential candidate go a long way towards explaining how he could listen to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright talk about the "United States of White America" for two decades. Meeting privately with a group of donors in...

This has been a long Presidential campaign, but often usefully so. The Democratic Party fight is helping us learn that there's more to Barack Obama than the eloquent, post-partisan, disciplined purveyor of "hope" that he typically projects. There's also the Barack Obama who attended Rev. Jeremiah Wright's ("God d--- America") church for 20 years, the one who emerged from the Chicago Democratic machine with friends like Tony Rezko, the one with the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate, and now we learn the one with a Harvard-eye view of American angst. At an April 6 fund-raiser in San...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Even without me, for four days, Operation Chaos is proceeding beautifully, ladies and gentlemen. A Democrat dream team is now in a total nightmare. It is a total nightmare. As Operation Chaos continues to draw Democrats into bloody bickering throughout the country. ... So, Barack Obama, talking to a bunch of elitist millionaires and billionaires in San Francisco on April 6th, basically reveals what we have all known that all Democrats think of the people who make this country work. They hold average people in contempt! They don't think average people are capable of overcoming the obstacles...

Fifty-six percent (56%) of voters nationwide disagree with Barack Obama’s statement that people in small towns “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 25% agree with the Democratic frontrunner while 19% are not sure. Partisan and ideological differences suggest that the comments are more likely to be a factor in the General Election than in the Primaries.

Obama outburst in Pennsylvania Shame, shame, shame TRIBUNE-REVIEW By Salena Zito ABC News is reporting that Barack Obama launched into a fiery offensive tonight in a speech before the United Steelworkers Union in Steelton, Pa. Obama, in response to Sen. Hillary Clinton criticisms of his 'bitter' remarks, said "Shame on her, shame on her, she knows better."

Faith out front: Democratic candidates try to reach religious voters By Mike Wereschagin TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, April 13, 2008 The God gap is closing. Both Democratic presidential candidates are expected to speak about their faith today at the Compassion Forum, a 90-minute event at Messiah College near Harrisburg that will be broadcast to more than 1,000 congregations next Sunday, two days before the Pennsylvania primary. In a stark break from the last two presidential races, the presumptive Republican nominee does not plan to attend.

The stuff Pennsylvanians are made of TRIBUNE-REVIEW By Salena Zito Obama's statements have also put Pennsylvanians under the microscope of the country. No state's diverse population can be placed into one category, but a good insight as to what is important to most Pennsylvanians was found in our own newspaper today. ...If you want an insight into the stuff Pennsylvanians are made of, read ‘Fishmas Eve.'

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's remarks about "bitter" small-town Pennsylvanians could make it more difficult for vulnerable House Democrats, many of whom remain uncommitted as superdelegates to the Democratic convention, to back Obama's campaign. A good portion of House members who have not declared their support are moderates and conservatives who represent swing districts dominated by small towns. Republicans, in particular, sought to use the remarks to put two politically-vulnerable Democratic House members on the hot seat. The targets of the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee were a pair of freshman Pennsylvania Democrats - Jason Altmire, who represents small towns outside...

Senator Barack Obama fought back Saturday against accusations from his rivals that he had displayed a profound misunderstanding of small-town values, in a flare-up that left him on the defensive before a series of primaries that could test his ability to win over white voters in economically distressed communities. For a second day, Mr. Obama sought to explain his remarks at a recent San Francisco fund-raiser that small-town Pennsylvania voters, bitter over their economic circumstances, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” as a way to explain their frustrations. Acknowledging Saturday that “I didn’t...

Here's a clip taken by somebody at the San Francisco event; it's the passage just before the lines everyone is now focused on, in which he talks about the skepticism he encounters: Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered...

The possibility of a Clinton comeback was looking far-fetched. But operatives in both parties were buzzing about that possibility Saturday following the revelation that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told wealthy San Franciscans that small-town Pennsylvanians and Midwesterners “cling to guns or religion” because they are “bitter” about their economic status. Obama at first dug in on that contention Friday after audio of the private fundraiser was posted by The Huffington Post. Altering course, on Saturday in Muncie, Ind., he conceded that he “didn’t say it as well as I should have.” And he told the Winston-Salem, N.C., Journal that “obviously,...

IMHO the "bitter, guns, god, small town" blow up is fatal for Obama. He can maybe still win the dem primary, but he is DOA in the general election.

<p>You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.</p>

Barack Obama showed his deft political touch today, and demonstrated his keen insight into the lives of the little people in this country, with a speech that is sure to be worth at least thirty points in Pennsylvania in the upcoming primary: You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them... And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Hillary Clinton slammed Barack Obama for comments he made at fundraiser last Sunday where he said middle class Americans are “bitter” about the state of the economy. “I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small town America,” Clinton said. “Senator Obama’s remarks are elitist and out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans, certainly not the Americans I know, not the Americans I grew up with, not the Americans I grew up with in Arkansas or the Americans I represent in New York.” Referring to...

(CHICAGO)(April 12, 2008) Chicago-based Obama expert and Internet columnist Andy Martin will hold a 1:00 P.M. Chicago news conference Saturday, April 12th, to condemn Senator Barack Obama for suggesting that small-town America is “bitter” about America and that Americans “cling” to “guns” and “religion” as an outlet for their bitterness. Martin will also demand that Obama end his “secret” campaign in which the presidential candidate uses meetings that are closed to the media to raise money from wealthy liberals by privately disparaging ordinary Americans. “In listening to Obama depreciate and disparage small town America,” Martin will say, “I am reminded...

While the White House press corps seemed stunned that the Caller-Times broke the story on Dick Cheney's hunting accident, our local readers expected it. And we were glad to meet their expectations. Frankly, the newsroom had some difficulty understanding what all the hubbub was about last week. As national newscasters asked repeatedly why a local newspaper first reported the story instead of the White House press, we kept asking, "Why not?" George Gongora/Caller-Times Reporters and photographers from all over the world converged in city to cover the startling story that began on the Armstrong Ranch. We all heard our...

I Hadn’t Planned to Tell This Story – But : Sometimes you have to speak out and be heard – even when you’re a Certified Old Fogey . Long ago , but not too far away , I lived in a little country town, in upstate New York. Most of the people who lived there were small farmers, tradesmen, mechanics, or factory workers : “blue collar with pretensions” , I guess you’d call us. The town was mostly what my Dad used to call “ Narrowback Protestants “ ( You’d have to show a girl your Sunday School pins before...

BRADFORD, Tenn. - A management squabble over Bradford's small police force has led to the arrest of the mayor and two members of the town council, the sheriff said. Mayor Glynn James and Board of Aldermen members Ray Arnold and Betty Cunningham were arrested Wednesday on complaints filed by a former police officer and the former chief of police, said Gibson County Sheriff Joe Shepard. The complaints allege official misconduct and retaliation. Darrell Taylor, the former chief, remains on the force as the only police officer for the town of about 1,200 residents. Taylor contends he was demoted and former...

A day after county officials announced an August vote on a new, larger jail to solve the overcrowding problem, a 20-year-old Bozeman man sat behind bars for not showing up in court on a dog-at-large ticket. When Dennis Krack Jr. appeared in Gallatin County Justice Court Thursday, handcuffed, via video from jail, his attorney shook his head in disbelief. "In my opinion, this is not the best use of jail space," Deputy Public Defender Eric Brewer said after the hearing. County officials have been grappling with a full jail for years. The current jail was made to hold 40 inmates,...

BLOOMSBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Drive west down this town's Main Street, and the sharp divisions over this year's presidential election quickly become clear. On the left, a chalkboard mounted outside a coffee shop lists the day's special as a showing of "Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election" - a documentary implying that George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, colluded with Florida politicians to disenfranchise black voters and steal the election. On the right, a sign in the window of a motorcycle shop reads: "Kerry Sucks."