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Friday, October 31, 2008

The Los Angeles Times’s Strange Notion of Journalistic Ethics

Great Article by Andrew McCarthy at NRO:

Journalistic ethics?

When it comes to insulting our collective intelligence, the Obamedia soundtrack of the ongoing campaign breaks new ground on a daily, indeed an hourly, basis. Still, the Los Angeles Times takes the cake.

Change you can believe in is a short hop from fairy tales you can be sold. In that spirit, the Times tells us, we’d really, really love to release the videotape we’re holding of that 2003 Khalidi shindig — the one where Barack Obama joined a motley collection of Israel-bashers, including the former terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, to sing the praises of Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for PLO master-terrorist Yasser Arafat. But alas, our hands are tied by journalistic ethics.

Read the rest.

If the Times won't release it, it must be a bombshell.

Rush Limbaugh: The man who's always Right

An interview by a Brit, Nigel Farndale, that is interesting more for what it says about Farndale than it does about Rush. The American people know Rush, but during the interview Farndale and the attitudes that people like him have comes through in vivid colors.

Excerpts:

Although Rush Limbaugh doesn't actually work from a bunker, he does have a bunker mentality. His studio is on the third floor of a (purposefully) anonymous building 100 yards off the white sands of Palm Beach, Florida,
The building is a bunker? Which represents his mind? How do you make a building purposefully anonymous?

He has also had his quota of criticism from the media, or the liberal media, as he tends to call it.
You mean they are not?

There are commercial breaks and phone-ins, but mostly it is him delivering homilies on politics and current affairs, extemporaneously. His fluency is breathtaking.
Homilies?

Some 20 million Americans tune in to hear it on 600 stations across what he calls 'this fruited land'.
Actually Rush uses the term "the fruited plain" which is a phrase from the song "America the Beautiful," but I would not expect a Brit to be aware of a uniquely American song.

Limbaugh said it was only because he was black. Groan. He was being insulting, of course, on many levels, to both men, but at least he was being consistent with the Limbaugh world view, the view of the fabled 'angry white man'.
Thee is something a little sad about the childlike innocence of people like Nigel about American race relations and the monolith that is the black community. But if Rush's comment is an insult, then Thomas Sowell's agreement with Rush is also.

And this fabled "angry white man" is a creation of the pseudo-intellectual white Liberal to make them feel superior to the "lumpen-proletariat" in "flyover country."

But there is one issue about which I think he is dangerously wrong. Global warming. After all, I point out, 98 per cent of the world's leading scientists in this area don't think global warming is a hoax.


I have no idea where the Nigels of this world get this number. It must make them feel good about their faith. But as we enter one of the coldest winters in modern history, where snow if falling in Europe where it has not fallen this much in decades, they are as blind to reality as any jihadist. The denial of reality is literally breathtaking.

Still an interesting read both for what it reveals about Rush Limbaugh and the Nigel Farndales of this world.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Is Ann Althouse a Religious Fanatic?

Ann Althouse claims to be a law professor in Madison, Wisconsin but I'm beginning to doubt it because she is actually QUOTING THE BIBLE in defense of Barack Obama! How weird is that?

Ann is on-board with Obama not helping his impoverished relatives because that would be bad for them. Ann says she's a liberal (law prof, Madison, it's a given) but she actually thinks that she's reinforcing her argument when she says:


Could it be that Obama practices Christian values? Jesus said:

Matthew 6

1 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.


Holy Obama, Batman, she actually goes on to quote all of Matthew 6, verse 1 & 2! What was she drinking? The self proclaimed "moderate middle" has only just buried Jerry Falwell literally and Pat Roberson metaphorically when Althouse turns into a raving Christianist loon! Pretty soon I expect her to begin wearing a sandwich board proclaiming, "Repent, for the end is nigh!"

But not to worry, I support her on her major points and gently admonish her for breaking into a full throated hymn.

Here's my reply on her blog:

Ann Althouse defends Barack Obama for not helping out his impoverished relatives and I have to agree with her. First of all, Barack comes from a very large family in which the men had multiple wives and an even larger number of children, I’m sure it takes a village rather than a mere multi-millionaire who has raised nearly a billion dollars in contributions to help out all the assorted aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, half brothers, half sisters, half aunts and half uncles and other even less related relatives all of whom may be in need either in Boston or Kenya.

Second, as Ann points out, it is not his fault that his relatives are living is squalor. He has not mistreated them, in fact he remarks on some of them in his autobiographies. And mentioning a relative in one’s autobiography does not obligate one to send a buck or two to keep up anyone’s shack in Nairobi or cold water flat in Boston. As Ann points out, handouts can keep these ner-do-wells from finding gainful employment and earning a living for themselves. As Ann has pointed out many times before, welfare of this kind is bad for society, especially if the welfare is administered by relatives. They are apt to keep coming back and making pests of themselves. Once this kind of thing begins, who knows, in the end Barack could end up supporting generations of lazy relatives and then where would he be?

I do have a rather major objection to Ann’s gratuitous reference to religion, specifically Christianity in her remarks. Religion has no place in discussions of public policy or private philanthropy in America. We must observe the injunction that we have separation of church and state and appeals to Christianity are no more than veiled attempts to impose a not-so-veiled attempt to impose a theocracy on America. No sooner has Jerry Farwell died than Ann is invoking the bible as a talking point. I am always surprised by the hidden theocrats that are found on college campuses.

It does little to advance the conversation to refer to Barack’s references to being his brother’s and sister’s keepers. We all know that in that Bible fable he was referring to the story of Cain and Abel. The one in which one brother murdered the other. What Barack meant to say was that he wanted to help his brothers and sisters out, but there was absolutely no reference to half-brothers or half-sisters and certainly no reference to half-aunts living in a slum in Boston.

So Ann, I’m on your side. No matter what anyone says charity is not an individual responsibility. If you can’t get congress to pass a welfare law, the hell with the relatives.




UPDATE: Ann seems to have a little trouble with a joke at her expense. In retribution she is taking to quoting scripture ... a lot. Her regular readers are noticing, and wondering what's going on.
Ann, what is with all the Bible quotes and attempting to prove that Obama is behaving the way a Christian should? It's disturbing.
HEH.

Credit Card Fraud by Obama

Geert Wilders Speech: America as the Last Man Standing

Great read. It may make you uncomfortable, because we are so used to appeasement and the use of soft words designed to hide the truth.

Allow me to give you a brief Islam 101. The first thing you need to know about Islam is the importance of the book of the Quran. The Quran is Allah's personal word, revealed by an angel to Mohammed, the prophet. This is where the trouble starts. Every word in the Quran is Allah's word and therefore not open to discussion or interpretation. It is valid for every Muslim and for all times. Therefore, there is no such a thing as moderate Islam. Sure, there are a lot of moderate Muslims. But a moderate Islam is non-existent.

The Quran calls for hatred, violence, submission, murder, and terrorism. The Quran calls for Muslims to kill non-Muslims, to terrorize non-Muslims and to fulfil their duty to wage war: violent jihad. Jihad is a duty for every Muslim, Islam is to rule the world -- by the sword. The Quran is clearly anti-Semitic, describing Jews as monkeys and pigs.

The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behaviour is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages -- at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. He advised on matters of slavery, but never advised to liberate slaves. Islam has no other morality than the advancement of Islam. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad. There is no gray area or other side.

Quran as Allah's own word and Mohammed as the perfect man are the two most important facets of Islam. Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins. But in its essence Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means 'submission'. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.

Read the whole thing.

“America as the Last Man Standing?”

Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club reminds us of the precarious situation in which the "West" finds itself. The islamization of Europe is proceeding apace. And what is frightening is that just as America is needed as a bulwark of Western civilization, we may find ourselves in the hands of a party that is determined to destroy American influence in the world. A party that is literally ashamed of American and is determined to avoid winning.

Many might have taken prosperity and jobs for granted just two or three months ago. Work was just a daily hassle to some who may count themselves lucky to have it in the near future. In one respect Wilder’s speech is evergreen, speaking as it does to the universal experience of experiencing the loss of things we’ve long taken for granted. The aging understand: the teeth, eyesight and hair. But what of freedom? Wilders writes:

My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe’s children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.

Yet in this I think, Wilders is wrong. Generations can bequeath things to each other. Abstract ideas can be transmitted through print, the visual arts and electronic storage. Even the consequences of freedom are transmittable through our institutions. But freedom itself can never be bequeathed because it always involves an exercise of will by the living man. It cannot be passively consumed. It is new to each of us, though it was there from the foundations of the world. Whether you’re hunched behind the ramp on the first landing craft to hit Omaha Beach; or deciding with your wife to have a child with Down’s Syndrome, or standing with a hood over your head awaiting a beheading deciding whether to passively await your end and eke out a few more seconds of life or snatch the cover off your head to yell “I’ll show you how an Italian dies!”, that moment was made for you and you alone. Europe and America will meet such fates as they choose. However long they’ve lived in liberty; however ancient their constitutional guarantees, they can choose unfreedom in a moment. One day they may decide they have a right to choose dependency; to choose slavery.

Barack Obama’s aunt was found living in a “rundown” Boston home.

Bob Krumm writes about Obama's aunt.


Spread the wealth indeed

Barack Obama’s aunt was found living in a “rundown” Boston home.

While he was a U.S. Senator and his wife was a high paid hospital administrator making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, while he was busy raising more than half-a-billion dollars for his campaign, Barack Obama’s aunt was living in a Boston slum. No this isn’t a long lost half-brother he barely knew living halfway across the globe. This is a woman he spoke glowingly about in one of his books.

The most damning part of the story is this (emphasis added):

Speaking outside her home in Flaherty Way, South Boston, on Tuesday, Ms Onyango, 56, confirmed she was the “Auntie Zeituni” in Mr Obama’s memoir. She declined to answer most other questions about her relationship with the presidential contender until after the November 4 election. “I can’t talk about it, I just pray for him, that’s all,” she said, adding: “After the 4th, I can talk to anyone.”


His campaign obviously found her. It shouldn’t have been hard, in spite of being an apparent illegal immigrant, she and her husband have been cited in several newspapers over the years. But once they found her, rather than help her, the Obama campaign shut her up.

Spread the wealth indeed.

Oh, and since I’ve already mentioned illegal immigration, let’s talk about “Jobs that Americans won’t do”: It took a
London paper to break this story.

Perhaps it's a Kenyan tradition to allow your relatives to wallow in poverty while you get rich.


UPDATE: Tigerhawk
This story is eerily reminiscent of the moment back in December 2007 when Obama seemed to brag that his grandmother lived in a "hut" back in Kenya. The press ate it up, but he dropped that talking point after conservative bloggers wondered why he had not helped the poor woman pay for a better house. Call me a bonehead, but we are beginning to see a pattern here. Indeed, I have finally figured out why somebody who has been as successful as Barack Obama believes that the government must help people who cannot or do not help themselves: He simply does not understand that helping the poor, unlucky, or incompetent is first the responsibility of family.

MORE: In response to various comments that defend Barack Obama on various grounds, I wrote a responsive comment that I liked enough to move into an update:

To those commenters taking the other side:

1. I completely agree that one is not responsible for the financial well-being of every relative.

2. I further agree that if one happens to have a lot of relatives from a poor country, be it Kenya or, for that matter, half of Europe circa 1945, it is unreasonable to demand that one locate them and ensure the well-beinng of all of them.

So I do not condemn Obama for deciding not to help his African relatives in the abstract.

But...

3. He has used these people -- his grandmother, his aunt and uncle, and so forth -- as props in his political narrative. He wants us to measure him in part by his relationship to these Kenyans, but -- and here is the harsh part -- only as that relationship is described by him. What if his characterization of that relationship is misleading? What if it turns out that while he is delighted to cite these people as evidence of his humble beginnings -- that is what I mean by using them as props -- he is not so delighted to consider them as part of his family? Is that not at least a potentially useful insight into the character of this man about whom we know so little?

Obama

The New Marx Brothers

OBAMA's TAX PLAN - Penn & Teller and gang return to comment on Barack Obama's socialist plans to turn the United States into a Marxist wasteland!

Obama's Prime Time Ad

Via Breibart we get this analysis penned by the AP. (Are pigs flying ?)

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was less than upfront in his half-hour commercial Wednesday night about the costs of his programs and the crushing budget pressures he would face in office.
Obama's assertion that "I've offered spending cuts above and beyond" the expense of his promises is accepted only by his partisans. His vow to save money by "eliminating programs that don't work" masks his failure throughout the campaign to specify what those programs are—beyond the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

A sampling of what voters heard in the ad, and what he didn't tell them:

THE SPIN: "That's why my health care plan includes improving information technology, requires coverage for preventive care and pre-existing conditions and lowers health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year."

THE FACTS: His plan does not lower premiums by $2,500, or any set amount. Obama hopes that by spending $50 billion over five years on electronic medical records and by improving access to proven disease management programs, among other steps, consumers will end up saving money. He uses an optimistic analysis to suggest cost reductions in national health care spending could amount to the equivalent of $2,500 for a family of four. Many economists are skeptical those savings can be achieved, but even if they are, it's not a certainty that every dollar would be passed on to consumers in the form of lower premiums.

___

THE SPIN: "I've offered spending cuts above and beyond their cost."

THE FACTS: Independent analysts say both Obama and Republican John McCain would deepen the deficit. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates Obama's policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years—and that analysis accepts the savings he claims from spending cuts. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, whose other findings have been quoted approvingly by the Obama campaign, says: "Both John McCain and Barack Obama have proposed tax plans that would substantially increase the national debt over the next 10 years." The analysis goes on to say: "Neither candidate's plan would significantly increase economic growth unless offset by spending cuts or tax increases that the campaigns have not specified."

___

THE SPIN: "Here's what I'll do. Cut taxes for every working family making less than $200,000 a year. Give businesses a tax credit for every new employee that they hire right here in the U.S. over the next two years and eliminate tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. Help homeowners who are making a good faith effort to pay their mortgages, by freezing foreclosures for 90 days. And just like after 9-11, we'll provide low-cost loans to help small businesses pay their workers and keep their doors open. "

THE FACTS: His proposals—the tax cuts, the low-cost loans, the $15 billion a year he promises for alternative energy, and more—cost money, and the country could be facing a record $1 trillion deficit next year. Indeed, Obama recently acknowledged—although not in his commercial—that: "The next president will have to scale back his agenda and some of his proposals."

___

THE SPIN: "I also believe every American has a right to affordable health care."

THE FACTS: That belief should not be confused with a guarantee of health coverage for all. He makes no such promise. Obama hinted as much in the ad when he said about the problem of the uninsured: "I want to start doing something about it." He would mandate coverage for children but not adults. His program is aimed at making insurance more affordable by offering the choice of government-subsidized coverage similar to that in a plan for federal employees and other steps, including requiring larger employers to share costs of insuring workers.

___

THE SPIN: "We are currently spending $10 billion a month in Iraq, when they have a $79 billion surplus. It seems to me that if we're going to be strong at home as well as strong abroad that we've got to look at bringing that war to a close." These lines in the ad were taken from a debate with McCain.

THE FACTS: Obama was once and very often definitive about getting combat troops out in 16 months (At times during the primaries, he promised to do so within a year). More recently, without backing away explicitly from the 16-month withdrawal pledge, he has talked of the need for flexibility. In the primaries, it would have been a jarring departure for him to have said merely that "we've got to look at" ending the war. As for Iraq's surplus, it's true that Iraq could end up with a surplus that large, but that hasn't happened yet.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Joe the Plumber may sue Ohio officials for breach of privacy in records search

I hope he does.

What conceivable reason could he have for not suing? He’s appropriately “bothered” by the intrusion. His privacy’s already shot to hell so he has nothing to lose from extra media coverage. The legal fees won’t cost a dime: Surely the RNC would pay for a lawyer or 20 to staff the case, which will be worth the expense in PR value even if he doesn’t win. And if he does win, so much the better. Thanks to the press digging up the fact that he doesn’t have a plumber’s license, his career’s in limbo at the moment. Push forward, get a settlement, and enjoy a few years of financial security courtesy of the state of Ohio. What am I missing here?

Notorious Obamedia moments of 2008

Roundup by Michelle Malkin.

Hymn to Hitler (Things my brother sent me)

Lori Kalner is a real person. She lived through the Hitler years and is now an elderly woman. She is a friend of Bodie Thoene, the Christian author. Please read her story. It is so important for the times we are living in.

In Germany, when Hitler came to power, it was a time of terrible financial depression. Money was worth nothing. In Germany people lost homes and jobs, just like in the American Depression in the 1930s, which we have read about in Thoene's Shiloh books. In those days, in my homeland, Adolph Hitler was elected to power by promising 'Change.' He blamed the 'Zionists' around the world for all our problems. He told everyone it was greedy Zionist Bankers who had caused every problem we had. He promised when he was leader, the greedy Zionist bankers would be punished. The Zionists, he promised, would be wiped off the face of the earth. So Hitler was elected to power by only 1/3 the popular vote. A coalition of other political parties in parliament made him supreme leader. Then, when he was leader, he disgraced and expelled everyone in parliament who did not go along with him. Yes. Change came to my homeland as the new leader promised it would.


The teachers in German schools began to teach the children to sing songs in praise of Hitler. This was the beginning of the Hitler Youth movement. It began with praise of the Fuhrer's programs on the lips of innocent children. Hymns in praise of Hitler and his programs were being sung in the schoolrooms and in the play yard. Little girls and boys joined hands and sang these songs as they walked home from school.

My brother came home and told Papa what was happening at school. The political hymns of children proclaimed Change was coming to our homeland and the Fuhrer was a leader we could trust. I will never forget my father's face. Grief and fear. He knew that the best propaganda of the Nazis was song on the lips of little children. That evening before he said grace at the dinner table, he placed his hands upon the heads of my brothers and me and prayed the Living Word upon us from Jeremiah 1:4-5. 'Now the Word of the Lord came to me, saying, 'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to The nations.'


Soon the children's songs praising the Fuhrer were heard everywhere on the streets and over the radio. 'With our Fuhrer to lead us, we can do it! We can change the world!' Soon after that Papa, a pastor, was turned away from visiting elderly parishioners in hospitals. The people he had come to bring comfort of God's Word, were 'no longer there.' Where had they vanished to while under nationalized health care?

It became an open secret. The elderly and sick began to disappear from hospitals feet first as 'mercy killing' became the policy. Children with disabilities and those who had Down syndrome were euthanized. People whispered, 'Maybe it is better for them now. Put them out of misery. They are no longer suffering. And, of course, their death is better for the treasury of our nation. Our taxes no longer must be spent to care for such a burden.' And so murder was called mercy.

The government took over private business. Industry and health care were 'nationalized.' (NA-ZI means National Socialist Party) The businesses of all Jews were seized. (Perhaps you remember our story in Berlin on Krystalnacht in the book Munich Signature)

The world and God's word were turned upside down. Hitler promised the people economic Change?

Not change. It was, rather, Lucifer's very ancient Delusion leading to Destruction. What began with the propaganda of children singing a catchy tune ended in the deaths of millions of children. The reality of what came upon us is so horrible that you in this present generation cannot imagine it. Our suffering is too great to ever tell in a book or show in a black and white newsreel.

When I spoke to Bodie about some of these things, she wept and said she could not bear to write them. Perhaps one day she will, but I asked her, 'who could bear to read our suffering?' Yet with my last breaths I warn every Christian and Jew now in the name of the Lord, unless your course of the church in America is spiritually changed now, returning to the Lord, there are new horrors yet to come.

I trembled last night when I heard the voices of American children raised in song, praising the name of Obama, the charismatic fellow who claims he is the American Messiah. Yet I have heard what this man Obama says about abortion and the 'mercy killing' of tiny babies who are not wanted.

There are so few of us left to warn you. I have heard that there are 69 million Catholics in America and 70 million Evangelical Christians. Where are your voices? Where is your outrage? Where is passion and your vote? Do you vote based on an abortionist's empty promises and economics? Or do you vote according to the Bible? Thus says the Lord about every living child still in the womb.

'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.'

I have experienced the signs of the politics of Death in my youth. I see them again now. Christians! Unless you stand up now, you will lose your freedom of religion. In America priests and preachers have already lost their freedom to speak openly from their pulpits of moral danger in political candidates. They cannot legally instruct you of which candidate holds fast to the precepts of scripture! American law forbids this freedom of speech to conservative pastors or they will lose their 'tax exempt' status. And yet I have heard the words of Obama's pastor Damning America! I have heard the words of Obama damning and mocking all of you in small towns because you 'Cling to your religion.' But I am a woman whose name is unknown. My life is recorded as a work of fiction. I have no fear of reprisal when I speak truth to you from the pages of a book. (Though the Zion Covenant books are mocked and condemned by the Left in America.)

I am an old woman and will soon go to be with my Lord. I have no fear for myself, but for all of you and for your children, I tremble. I tremble at the hymns to a political leaders which your children will sing at school. (Though even now a hymn or a prayer to God and our Lord Jesus is against the law in public school!)

Your vote must put a stop to what will come upon America if Barrack Obama is elected. I pray you will personally heed this warning for the sake of your children and your grandchildren. Do not be deceived. The Lord in Jeremiah 1:7-8 commands every believer to speak up!

'Do not say, 'I am only a youth,' for to all whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them for I am with you, declares the Lord!'

I am in Prayer for you, and for the Church! Spoken to you in the authority of Jesus the Christ, the Name Above All Names.

The Press Defense is BS

Response to the Politico: Why McCain is getting hosed in the press


The press is feeling the hate, and is telling us that it isn’t their fault, it’s those darn Republicans. Having been inundated with e-mails and calls about biased reporting, they tell us that if the country is about to elect a mystery man for President, a man whose past associations were mentioned and then buried, the fault lies with infighting among in the McCain camp.

Charles Krauthammer had a great example of this yesterday when he referred to the issue of Jeremiah Wright. Obama has been a member of this racist, anti-Semitic hatemonger’s church for 20 years, even calling him his spiritual mentor. When Wright’s sermons become public Obama gives a speech in which he says he rejects the message but embraces the messenger, and the press swoons, likening the Philadelphia speech to the Gettysburg address. Chris Matthews have a near-orgasmic experience. A few weeks later, Wright surfaces again in a speech at the National Press Club, calling Obama the dreaded “P” word (politician) and this time Obama disowns him, totally reversing course, and the press swoons again. And Wright disappears from view with never another question raised again on how Obama managed to sit thought 20 years of hate and racism.

The Obama campaign has pounded and pounded the fact that only the “rich” would see tax increases, and 95% of Americans would have their taxes reduced. Given the fact that 30-40% of Americans don’t pay income taxes that assertion is a flat out lie. The press ignores the issue; the only place this gets play is in the internet and on talk radio. In the last few days the definition of the rich who would have their taxes raised has dropped from $250,000 to $200,000 and then – via Biden – to $150,000. And the press averts it eyes, not asking for even a moment if any of this is to be believed.

In short, the press bias problem is not just their role as attack dogs for the Obama campaign; it’s their role as cover up artists for the Obama campaign.

In blaming the Republicans, the press is using the “quick, look over here” defense and by now it’s so tattered and torn I wonder why they use three pages to raise it once again.

This member of the public has a few choice words for this sorry crew: f**k off.

Judge rules Ohio homeless voters may list park benches as addresses

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - A federal judge in Ohio has ruled that counties must allow homeless voters to list park benches and other locations that aren't buildings as their addresses.

U.S. District Judge Edmund Sargus also ruled that provisional ballots can't be invalidated because of poll worker errors.

Monday's ruling resolved the final two pieces of a settlement between the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.
The coalition agreed to drop a constitutional challenge to Ohio's voter identification law until after the Nov. 4 election. In return, Brunner and the coalition agreed on procedures to verify provisional ballots across all Ohio counties.
The coalition was concerned that unequal treatment of provisional ballots would disenfranchise some voters.

Well, if you're going to register the homeless, where else would they be living. Can they show a utility bill tied to the park bench?

"Global Warming"Leaves Northeast Buried

The East Regional News story reports conditions will improve only slightly over the Northeast today following the departure of Tuesday's potent nor'easter. The heavy rain and burying snow will be gone, but blustery winds will continue to howl.

The winds will generally gust between 30 and 40 mph across the Northeast. Stronger gusts will occur this morning.

The combination of the winds and arctic air funneling overhead will result in chilly AccuWeather.com RealFeel® temperatures. The air will feel like temperatures are in the 30s this afternoon in the Interstate 95 corridor.

Heavy snow will overspread western Quebec today as the potent storm races northward. Some snow will still persist over the interior Northeast with moisture wrapping around the storm's backside.

The snow will leave an additional 3 to 6 inches across the northern Adirondacks and Green Mountains through tonight. The combination of the snow's weight and gusty winds could down tree limbs power lines, resulting in power outages.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

McCain camp demands L.A. Times release video

Ben Smith at Politico reports:
John McCain's campaign is demanding that the Los Angeles Times release a video of a party for a prominent Palestinian activist that Barack Obama attended in 2003.

The Times described the going-away party for former University of Chicago professor, and Obama friend, Rashid Khalidi, in a story in April. The story reported that Palestinians thought they might have a friend in Obama because of his friendships in that community, despite the fact that his positions have never been particularly pro-Palestinian.

"A major news organization is intentionally suppressing information that could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi," said McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb, citing Obama's friendship with Khalidi, who is now a professor at Columbia University.

He said the video could, among other things, show how Obama responded to a poem recited at the party accusing Israel of "terrorism" and warning of consequences for U.S. support for Israel, which Goldfarb described as "hate speech."


It's also getting play at Little Green Footballs.
The John McCain campaign is demanding that the Los Angeles Times release the videotape of Barack Obama toasting former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi, at a party attended by radical Palestinian activists and former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

The Los Angeles Times has pulled their editorial heads into their shells, hoping it will all blow over. But the buzz is only spreading further.

Brit Hume opened his Fox News show with this story today, and reported that the Times is now saying “No comment.”

LA Times excuses so far:

* “We did report on it. Why aren’t you happy with that?”

* “There are ethical problems with releasing the tape.”

* “No comment.”

Yahoo News:
But the Times hasn't explained the move, and the McCain campaign is turning up the heat on a story that, whether or not the tape is released, is a reminder that some of Obama's Hyde Park friends stand well to the left of his stated positions.


Sean Hannity.

Life of Rubin:
This is just another example of the type of thing we can expect from a (g-d forbid) Obama Presidency. While so many of my friends on the Left are stuck in la la land, gazing in a haze and the tall man, with a bright smile and warm words, they don’t realize what kind of disaster we are in for, especially in the Israel/Us realm.

This is a man who is even more radically liberal than Jimmy Carter, a man who sympathizes, defends and supports Hamas and Hizballah. This is the type of snobbish anti Israel Politician who doesn’t see “bad guys” or “evil people” just two sides having a disagreement. When a person can’t even see the difference between a terrorist and a soldier we have massive problems.

A President Obama will lean on Israel for more consessions from israel than they have ever been asked for. We will certainly see a divided Jersualem, and much more. He will allow the UN to vote as they will against Israel and in the coming years, all my liberal friends will be shocked that the man they thought was our Messiah is really the harbinger of disaster for Israel and of course America.


From Hillbuzz:
Oh, Lordy, Lordy, this is going to be fun.

We’ve told you before that at Obama fundraisers here in Chicago (which we were invited to by people who knew we’d listen closely and dish everything we heard on HillBuzz…
...
The second punch we were told was coming involves Obama’s presence at a 2003 dinner where Palestinian Rhashid Khalidi was honored, amongst frequent calls for the immediate destruction of the state of Israel. Obama and Michelle attended this hatefest, smiling throughout, with reports of Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayers in attendance (and possibly sharing a table with the Obamas).


Just imagine a photo like this with Obama at the table with better known kooks, terrorists, and radicals (where Michelle exhibits more of her refined table manners). In the LA Times video, there’s a very good chance that Bernadine Dohrn is seated to the left of Michelle and Ayers is seated to the right of Obama, since the two couples would most likely have shared the same table at this event for Khalidi. We believe this is why the LA Times refuses to release the videotape of Obama at this event: it would not only place Obama at a dinner that called for the destruction of Israel, but would call out his lie that Ayers was just some man from the neighborhood: and not someone the Obamas had dinner with, or even let babysit their daughters (as people in Chicago repeatedly admit).

We believe the increased calls for the LA Times to release the Obama-Khalidi video — coming from the McCain camp today — is setting the stage for release of the video either tomorrow or Thursday, in an effort to blunt the impact of whatever Obama says during his Wednesday night informercial.

All eyes are on the LA Times right now — so if the tape sits in GOP hands, it’s far better for the Times to be pressured to release it on its own, and to do so at a time when the narrative shouldn’t be about Obama’s big informercial, but instead about Obama sitting at dinner with terrorists, laughing and having a grand old time while speaker after speaker calls for the destruction of Israel and the death of all Israelis.

Because that’s what we’ve heard went on at this dinner.

Statisticians love balls and urns.

Iowahawk on polls and sampling error:

A typical Stats 101 midterm, for example, usually includes a question along these lines:

"You take a simple random sample of 1000 balls from an urn containing 120,000,000 red and blue balls, and your sample shows 450 red balls and 550 blue balls. Construct a 95% confidence interval for the true proportion of blue balls in the urn."

After choking back a giggle about "blue balls," you whip out your calculator and text your frat brother who has a copy of last semester's midterm. He instantly recognizes the correct formula is
... [see analysis of statistical error calculation]

Works pretty well if you're interested in hypothetical colored balls in hypothetical giant urns, or survival rates of plants in a controlled experiment, or defects in a batch of factory products. It may even work well if you're interested in blind cola taste tests. But what if the thing you are studying doesn't quite fit the balls & urns template?

What if 40% of the balls have personally chosen to live in an urn that you legally can't stick your hand into?
What if 50% of the balls who live in the legal urn explicitly refuse to let you select them?
What if the balls inside the urn are constantly interacting and talking and arguing with each other, and can decide to change their color on a whim?
What if you have to rely on the balls to report their own color, and some unknown number are probably lying to you?
What if you've been hired to count balls by a company who has endorsed blue as their favorite color?
What if you have outsourced the urn-ball counting to part-time temp balls, most of whom happen to be blue?
What if the balls inside the urn are listening to you counting out there, and it affects whether they want to be counted, and/or which color they want to be?
If one or more of the above statements are true, then the formula for margin of error simplifies to

Margin of Error = Who the hell knows?

Because, in this case, so-called scientific "sampling error" is completely meaningless, because it is utterly overwhelmed by unmeasurable non-sampling error. Under these circumstances "margin of error" is a fantasy, a numeric fiction masquerading as a pseudo-scientific fact. If a poll reports it -- even if it's collected "scientifically" -- the pollster is guilty of aggravated bullshit in the first degree.

The moral of this midterm for all would-be pollsters: if you are really interested in how many of us red and blue balls there are in this great big urn, sit back and relax until Tuesday, and let us show our true colors.

Until then, fondle your own balls.

The Return of Jeremiah Wright



From Powerline

Election 2008: Objective journalism the loser

Michael Graham:
Did you see that amazing video obtained by the Los Angeles Times of Sen. Barack Obama toasting a prominent former PLO member at an Arab American Action Network meeting in 2003? The video in which Obama gives Yasser Arafat’s frontman a warm embrace, as Bill Ayers look on?

You haven’t seen it? Me, neither. The Los Angeles Times refuses to release it.

And so an incriminating video of Obama literally “palling around” with PLO supporters becomes one more nail in the coffin of “objective journalism.”


Alas, the obit for objective reporting has been buried - along with the stories about Obama’s 2001 support for court-imposed “redistribution of wealth” and Joe Biden’s latest gaffe.

For the record (that’s J-school talk for “I actually know what I’m talking about for a change”), I am not a journalist. I’m an opinion writer and talk show host. But I admire reporters tremendously. I married one. My oldest son is named for the great H. L. Mencken.

So it is particularly heartbreaking for me to see the death of objective journalism. And believe me - it is stone cold dead. Sacrificed on the altar of service to Barack Obama.


Read the rest.

Obama's Education Groups Funded Controversial Organizations in the '90s, Tax Returns Show

No surprise there.


The Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund of Chicago funded numerous controversial groups while Barack Obama served on their boards between 1995 and 2002, an analysis of their tax returns shows.

In 2001, when Obama was a part-time director of The Woods Fund of Chicago, it gave $75,000 to ACORN, the voter registration group now under investigation for voter fraud in 12 states.

The Woods Fund also gave $6,000 to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, which Obama attended. The reason for the donation to the church is unclear -- it is simply listed as "for special purposes" in the group's IRS tax form.

It gave a further $60,000 to the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University, which was founded and run by Bernardine Dohrn, the wife of domestic terrorist William Ayers and, with her husband, a former member of the 1960s radical group the Weather Underground.

Other controversial donations that year included $50,000 to the Small Schools Network -- which was founded by Ayers and run by Michael Klonsky, a friend of Ayers' and the former chairman of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), an offshoot of the 1960s radical group Students for a Democratic Society -- and $40,000 to the Arab American Action Network, which critics have accused of being anti-Semitic.

The Woods Fund did not respond to questions about the funding.


Here's a picture of the lovely couple who's group, the Weather Underground, planned to liquidate about 25 million people when they came to power.





With all the words thrown about regarding Ayers and the Weather Underground, about bombs at the Pentagon, etc., no one has captured the essential evil of these people until I saw this video. Bill Ayers and his group were planning an American “Killing Fields.” They were dead serious. They have not changed their views. And they have their defenders in the Democrat party, in the media and on college campuses.


UPDATE: Click HERE for the video with Larry Grathwohl on Ayers' plan for American re-education camps and the need to kill millions

Media's Presidential Bias and Decline

Everyone else has linked to Malone's article, I may as well too.

The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game -- with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.

The media have covered this presidential campaign with a bias and that ultimately could lead to its downfall.The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I've found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist.


Read the whole thing.

"Sal In Harlem"

In Harlem Obama supporters claim to support Obama because of his policies. but when McCain's policies are described as Obama policies they agree with them. And they think Obama's pick of Sarah Palin as his VP pick was a good one.

But they are not voting for Obama because he's black, no sir!

Monday, October 27, 2008

Megyn Kelly Fillets Obamahack on "Redistribution of Wealth"



Via Ace of Spades

Another Biden Interview That Went Bad

Obama Rally: "Stone" Sarah Palin

The MSM has recounted McCain rallies in which a person was supposed to have shouted “kill him,” referring to Obama. That was denied by the Secret Service. Nevertheless, it began a theme in the press that McCain/Palin supporters were violent racists.

So now we have a teacher named Helen McCaffrey who writes:
“I was present at an Obama rally at which the mention of Palin's name drew shouts of "stone her."
No one bothers to deny it.

You may want to read the entire column and some of the comments following it. There is and incredible amount of hate and misogyny compressed in a few words.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Campaign Finance Gets New Scrutiny (But Not From the Media)

Matthew Mosk, Washington Post “reporter,” has been given the assignment of putting lipstick on the campaign finance fraud that is being committed by the Obama campaign.

No longer able to spike the news that has the Internet abuzz about fraudulent credit card contributions to the Obama campaign, Mosk writes a story that makes it appear to be a systemic campaign issue rather than an Obama issue.

He does this in various ways. Here is his lede:

Sen. Barack Obama's record-breaking $150 million fundraising performance in September has for the first time prompted questions about whether presidential candidates should be permitted to collect huge sums of money through faceless credit card transactions over the Internet.


No, it hasn’t. The question is about the Obama campaign’s disabling of credit card payment fraud filters that have allowed obviously fake names like Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to make contributions to Obama’s campaign.


Lawyers for both the Republican and Democratic parties have asked the Federal Election Commission to examine the issue, pointing to dozens of examples of what they say are lax screening procedures by the presidential campaigns that permitted donors using false names or stolen credit cards to make contributions.

This is an obvious attempt to provide an equivalence. And it doesn’t wash. First because McCain has chosen to accept Federal funds and is not dependent on fundraising like Obama. And second because attempts to make contributions using fake names and addresses are being screened out by the McCain campaign credit card fraud filters while the Obama campaign has turned those filters off.


While the potentially fraudulent or excessive contributions represent about 1 percent of Obama's staggering haul, the security challenge is one of several major campaign-finance-related questions raised by the Democrat's fundraising juggernaut.



This paragraph begins with a lie. The writer does not know what the “potentially fraudulent or excessive contributions represent.” He takes the Obama campaign at its word when it claims that:


In September, according to the campaign, $1.8 million in online contributions was flagged, and $353,000 was refunded. Of the contributions flagged because a foreign address or bank account was involved, 94.1 percent were found to be proper. One-tenth of one percent were marked for refund, and 5.77 percent are still being vetted.
In paragraph 9 we finally learn of : Donors to the Obama campaign using false names such as Doodad Pro and Good Will gave $17,375 through 1,000 separate donations, with no sign that they immediately tripped alarms at the campaign.


Mosk then turns to the McCain campaign and tries to establish that it’s equally riddled with fraud:

McCain's contributor database shows at least 201 donations from individuals listing themselves as "anonymous" or "anonymous anonymous," according to Obama's campaign. In one particularly embarrassing episode, the McCain campaign mistakenly sent a fundraising solicitation to the Russian ambassador to the United Nations.
I have gone to the McCain contributor website and find nothing about a contributor named "anonymous." I wonder if Mosk checked or simply accepted their word.

It goes unrecorded whether the Russian ambassador contributed to McCain. If he did, I’m sure that would have been noted.

Then, totally dismissing the question of whether there is either minor or massive fraud being perpetrated on the public, Mosk assumes that everything is on the up-and-up and predicts that this will revolutionize campaign finance. Before we go there, a curious reporter may well have wondered how the Obama campaign, having turned off its fraud filters on the credit card contributions, is vetting the contributions.


There are a few facts that strike me as odd about the massive Obama contributions. Obama said he raised $150 million in a single month, September. Let’s do some simple math. According to FEC records, about half of Obama’s contributions come from donors under $200.

Let’s assume that’s also true in September. That leaves us with $75 million. Those contributions can be anywhere from, say, $5 to $200. If we assume the best case that every contributions was for $200, that means that the Obama campaign would have to screen 375,000 contributors in September to insure that none are fraudulent. Since they have turned off the credit card fraud screens, they would have to be done manually. Let’s assume a room full of hyper-efficient fraud screeners working for Obama in 8 hour shifts, taking no breaks, screening 12,500 contributions per day taking just sixty seconds to verify a contributor’s name, address, employers and occupation. That would take 26 screeners working 7 days a week.

If the average donation is less than $200 (and Obama brags about the $5, $10 and $25 dollar contributions) the number of people required to properly vet these contributions becomes enormous. And I don’t believe for a minute that this can be done in a minute per contributor.

So here’s the bottom line. The Obama campaign has made a deliberate decision to rake in as much money as possible and forget about where it comes from. They are not going to get caught by the MSM who are rooting for them. The numbers of contributors fake and real are going to create data overload on any organization like the FEC that tries to do an audit. And after the election, the FEC will be in Obama’s hands.

The danger to Democracy from a media that takes a dive for a candidate is becoming more and more apparent.

MSM In Depression

Welcome Instapundit readers. Try these links HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and come here often.

Via Breibart


NEW YORK (AP) - The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., will reduce its newsroom staff by nearly half through voluntary buyouts as New Jersey's largest newspaper seeks to return to profitability.
Jim Willse, the Star-Ledger's editor, said Friday that the newspaper accepted 151 buyout offers from its news staff, or about 45 percent of its 334 editorial employees. He said 17 buyout applications were rejected.

Some staffers already have left, and others are leaving by year's end, many after the elections.

Faster please.

This followed hard on: NY Times Profits slide, downgraded to junk status

And underscores: Editing Their Way to Oblivion: Journalism Sacrificed For Power and Pensions

Picture yourself in your 50s in a job [editor]where you’ve spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power . . . only to discover that you’re presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn’t have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you’ll lose your job before you cross that finish line, ten years hence, of retirement and a pension.

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway - all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself: an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career. With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived Fairness Doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe, be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

Biden Gets Tough Questions

Joe Biden got some questions from the Right in this interview. He's clearly not expecting them and expresses outrage and incredulity.



From Powerline:
For Joe Biden, that is: being asked tough questions by a news reporter. This interview with a local TV station is fun to watch, because it makes you realize how rare it is for a Democrat to face hostile questions from the press. Really, it's almost unheard of, and you can see Biden's outrage at the idea that a television reporter is willing to challenge Democrat orthodoxy. Biden handles himself fine, in the sense that he delivers his utterly fictitious talking points with aplomb. But his outrage was shared by the Obama campaign, which promptly decreed that this station will get no more interviews. The Republicans should think about doing that with CNN, CBS and NBC.


I agree. For some reason, Republicans treat questions from the MSM in such a way as to give them legitimacy. There are few instances I can think of when a Republican showed contempt for MSM talking points or laughed in the face of a reporter's question.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

David Corn Can’t Understand Why the “Peons” Vote Their Principles.

David Corn of Mother Jones can’t believe that people who are not rich would be opposed to raising taxes of higher income people. He can’t understand why they would not want handouts from the government. He tells a McCain supporter that Obama promises to cut his taxes so why won’t he vote for Obama.

This is an interesting exhibition of intellectual snobbery that is omnipresent on the Left. Ask them if they vote their principles or their wallet and they will tell you how principled they are. The so-called intellectuals have always told us they disdain mere money-grubbing; they live on a higher plane. But “little people” are a lower order; a class that is supposed to respond to economic stimuli alone. They are little better than animals reacting in a Pavlovian way to economic stimuli. The assumption is that principles are for the upper classes, the Literati, the Intellectuals, the David Corns of this world.

It would be an interesting experiment to ask David Corn what he earns and whether he will vote solely on behalf of his pocketbook. He would, I'm sure take it as an insult. But he apparently feels that the "little people" are insult-proof.

Reminds me of the French aristocrats in a “Tale of Two Cities.” That did not end well.

Did You Ever Wonder Where All Those "Small" Contributions To Barack Obama Came From? Apparently You Are Not The Press.

Mark Steyn:

As readers may recall, a couple of days ago it became clear that the Obama website had intentionally disabled all the basic credit-card-processing security checks and thereby enabled multiple contributions from donors with fake names. The excuse offered in the New York Times story was that, ah, yes, the Obama gang may appear to accept contributions from "Mr Fake Donor" of "23 Fraudulent Lane", but all those phony baloney contributions are picked up by their rigorous offline checking procedures. As many Obama supporters wrote to point out, simply because you get a message saying "Thank you for contributing to the Obama landslide, Mr S Hussein of 47 Spider-Hole Gardens (basement flat), Tikrit!" is no reason to believe any real money is actually leaving real accounts.

The gentleman who started the ball rolling made four donations under the names "John Galt", "Saddam Hussein", "Osama bin Laden", and "William Ayers", all using the same credit card number. He wrote this morning to say that all four donations have been charged to his card and the money has now left his account. Again, it's worth pointing out: in order to enable the most basic card fraud of all - multiple names using a single credit card number - the Obama campaign had to manually disable all the default security checks provided by their merchant processor.

The reader adds:

Last night on Sheppard Smith’s 3pm-ET show this issue was brought up briefly and they cited the Obama campaign falsely claiming that this sort of thing happens at the McCain site and that they catch these errors later in the processing. Well, it took three days to process my donations and they all skated through their rigorous screening.


And it doesn't happen at the McCain site. This reader tried donating under "John Galt" and "Saddam Hussein" to the McCain campaign and they rejected it.

This should be Journalism 101. I'm not the guy who made Obama's fundraising a story. The media did that when they ran hundreds of puff pieces marveling at his record-breaking cash haul, and in particular the gazillions of small donors. Isn't the fact that his website has chosen to disable basic fraud protection procedures at the very least a legitimate addendum to those stories?

Oh, sorry, I was waiting for the chirping crickets. But evidently Mr C Cricket is over at Obama Central charging 20 bucks to his MasterChirp.

Racy Content: This? Racist! That? Racist!

Not since the days of Jim Crow have there been so many accusations of racism by the party that says its candidate is all about transcending race. Jonah Goldberg has had enough.

Transcend means “to move beyond, to surpass.” At least that’s what I always thought. But I’m beginning to wonder whether it means instead: “Much, much more of the same, only this time really stupid.”

...

It is, of course, total and complete nonsense. According to L.B.O. (Logic Before Obama), transcending race would involve making race less of an issue. Passengers on Spaceship Obama would see race shrink and then vanish in the rearview mirror.

Instead, Obama has set off a case of full-blown race dementia among precisely the crowd that swears Obama is leading us out of the racial wilderness. Rather than shrink, the tumor of racial paranoia is metastasizing, pressing down on the medulla oblongata or whatever part of the brain that, when poked, causes one to hallucinate, conjure false memories and write astoundingly insipid things. For instance, a writer for Slate sees racism when anyone notes that Barack Obama is — wait for it — skinny. What this portends for Fat Albert is above my pay grade.

We need to rewrite those old Schoolhouse Rock cartoons, because now virtually any adjective, noun, verb, or adverb aimed at Barack Obama that is not obsequiously sycophantic or wantonly worshipful runs the risk of being decried as racist. Community organizer? Racist! Mentioning his middle name? Racist! Arrogant? Racist! Palling around with a (white) terrorist? Racist! Celebrity? Racist! Cosmopolitan? Racist! This? Racist! That? Racist! The other thing? Oh man, that’s really racist.

...

Now, let us actually transcend race for a moment. Apparently for Obama, “transcend” isn’t a racial term so much as a euphemism for declaring victory. He says he wants to “turn the page” on the arguments of the ’80s and ’90s, by which he means conservatives should stop clinging to their guns and antiquated Sky God and join his cause.

He told Planned Parenthood he wants to stop “arguing about the same ole stuff,” by which he means he wants people who disagree with his absolute support for government-funded abortion on demand to shut up already.

He doesn’t want to argue about his pals from the Weather Underground who murdered or celebrated the murder of policemen and other Americans, he just wants everyone to agree no one should care.

In short, Obama and his disciples only demand one kind of transcendence from all Americans. We must, as Obama likes to say, unite as one people, one nation, one American family and transcend all of our misgivings about Barack Obama. Then, and only then, will The One fulfill his wife’s pledge and fix our broken souls.

Only a racist could possibly disagree.

Editing Their Way to Oblivion: Journalism Sacrificed For Power and Pensions

Michael S. Malone thinks he knows why the MSM is committing suicide.

He gives us his background, tells us what is going on and then comes to the bottom line (read the whole thing):

Why? I think I know, because had my life taken a different path, I could have been one: Picture yourself in your 50s in a job [editor]where you’ve spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power . . . only to discover that you’re presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn’t have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you’ll lose your job before you cross that finish line, ten years hence, of retirement and a pension.

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway - all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself: an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career. With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived Fairness Doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe, be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

And besides, you tell yourself, it’s all for the good of the country . . .

The O'Reilly Factor Confronts William Ayers - Video



This is interesting. You would think that a number of print or TV reporters would have given us a picture of William Ayers, but you would be wrong. His address is known.

Ayers also knows what to do when he is surprised by the cameras. He has experience. He doesn't say a word. He doesn't try to explain. He just shuts up and calls the police.

Counting Chickens before they roost

"JohnHuang2" at FreeRepublic:

The media keep insisting that their bogus polls show Obama already won the elections, with the only unfinished bidness being . . . having the elections.

This 'confidence' must be why they're going after a plumber in Ohio, prying the lids off his garbage cans, rummaging inside his plumbing fixtures looking for clogged pipes containing evidence this obvious Neo-Con Fascist/Zionist/Rove-Halliburton AmeriKKKan Mossad plant called "Joe the Plumber" had staged the Gulf of Tonkin incident, brought down WTC Building 7, frolicked in the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza. For evilly framing the Teleprompter Jesus by asking him a question, libbies are going bananas.

Sen. Joe Six-Term accused Joe the Plumber of being a liar, blasting McCain for palling around with "this guy Joe the Plumber . . . I don't have any Joe the Plumbers in my neighborhood that make $250,000 a year." He confirmed this by checking with Katie's restaurant that was closed twenty years ago.

Running his positive campaign as usual, Obama attacked Joe the Plumber as a liar, asking a crowd of lemmings in a mocking tone, "how many plumbers do you know making a quarter of a million dollars a year?" Joe the Plumber didn't say he was making $250K per year. He told Obama he may be "getting ready to buy a company that makes about $250,000, $270,000" a year, but that Senator Government's planned tax hikes to stimulate the economy will keep him from buying the company. Jug ears then gives his Hugo Chavez-esque game away -- all he wants to do is "spread" Joe the Plumber's "wealth around."

Obamatron Michael Brown complained on Fox News that McCain is using Joe the Plumber as a 'distraction'. Obama and Biden can't stop talking about Joe the Plumber, so they must be in on it. Brown said "the McCain campaign now are talking about Joe the Plumber as much as possible, because any time they can get off the issues that matter to the American people, they think that's a winner for them . . . but Barack Obama and Joe Biden are going to focus on things that matter," such as reports that Joe the Plumber is unlicensed!

Among the other signs that Democrats are supremely "confident":

-- In Nevada, hysterical Democrats are wailing about a GOP ad that accuses Obama, a chum of William Ayers, of being . . . a chum of William Ayers. Citing "historians", they complain that pointing out Obama's close ties to a domestic terrorist could "stir dark passions," including "a desire" to inflict violence. Who knows, someone could start bombing the Capitol!

-- Newsbusters.org reports that "Wizbang has obtained a copy of a Facebook e-mail sent by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor" to a 16-year-old friend of John McCain's youngest daughter, Bridgette, "in order to snoop into [her] private life." In her e-mail message, Kantor pretended that she was only seeking advice on how to write a 'profile' story, in the hopes of getting the scoop on Bridgette's links to unrepentant domestic terrorists!

-- Out of devotion for the First Amendment, a Democrat lawyer and Obamatron in Missouri is suing John McCain and Sarah Palin for "inciting violence against" Obama and "promoting hate speech." The lawyer, Mary Kay Green, complains that McCain and Palin "intentionally, recklessly and irresponsibly portray [Obama] as un-American" and "a terrorist by association," such as when McCain accused Obama of being "a decent family man and citizen that I just have disagreements with on fundamental issues . . ." S c a n d a l o u s. In contrast to this barbaric hate speech, Obama rapper Ludacris lovingly sang that "McCain don't belong in any chair unless he's paralyzed."

-- In its commitment to stay focused on the issues, the Washington Post is trying again to rekindle Democrat hopes that McCain has skin cancer. In an article authoritatively sourced to "physicians" who haven't examined McCain, the alleged newspaper notes that efforts to quell 'lingering' "questions about [McCain's] odds of surviving an eight-year tenure in the White House" have failed, especially since the run-down, ailing, feeble, infirm McCain is running against a smoker and former crackhead who gets skinnier and grayer by the hour and whose sidekick is known for having aneurysms. There are also 'lingering' questions about where Obama's medical records are, but, don't worry, they're probably right next to that valid birth certificate that he can't produce either.

-- Since he's supposedly got the election in the bag, Obama's buying major chunks of prime time airtime on the major TV networks, perhaps to counter Osama's habit of waiting until late October to officially endorse the Democrat candidate.

In addition to all of the above, there's ACORN trying to steal an election Obama allegedly already "won", plus his honcho lawyer demanding that DOJ probe GOP voter fraud 'claims' because such 'claims' only serve to "suppress the vote" of poor Mickey Mouse.

Zogby shows the race to be a dead heat -- just two or three points apart. Gallup's 'likely voter' poll shows the race to be a dead heat -- just two points apart. The IBD/Tipp poll shows a similar trend. And the Bradley Effect? You don't need to go back to the '82 California governor's race for evidence that the typical respondent abhors being called 'racist', telling the idiot conducting the poll that they're either on the fence or are voting for the black guy. Just whip out the exit polls during the primaries this year and you'll find the Obama Effect.

To quote a column I wrote a few months ago, "Exit polls had Obama winning Ohio by 2 points, so Hillary won by 10 points. Exit polls had Obama-Hillary 'too close to call' in Pennsylvania, so Hillary won by almost 10 points. Exit polls had the race in California 'too close to call' -- Hillary won by 8 points. Exit polls had Obama winning by 5 points in New Jersey -- Hillary romped to victory by double-digits. Exit polls had Obama defeating Hillary in New Hampshire by 4 points -- she won by 2 points. Obama won New Mexico by 6 points in exit polls but lost by 1 point in the real election. Exit polls had Obama winning Arizona by 6 points -- Hillary won by 8. Obama won Massachusetts by 2 points in exit polls -- but lost by 15 points. Obama won the exit polls in Texas by 2 points and lost to Hillary by 4 points. In Rhode Island, Hillary and Obama were tied in exit polls -- Obama lost by 18 points. The lame-o pollsters use the excuse that these polls were 'unweighted' -- and by 'weighting' they mean 'fixing' them to match actual results."

November 4 should be interesting.

Thirteen campaign workers for Barack Obama yesterday yanked their voter registrations and ballots in Ohio

From the NY Post:

Thirteen campaign workers for Barack Obama yesterday yanked their voter registrations and ballots in Ohio after being warned by a prosecutor that temporary residents can't vote in the battleground state.

A dozen staffers - including Obama Ohio spokeswoman Olivia Alair and James Cadogan, who recently joined Team Obama - signed a form letter asking the Franklin County elections board to pull their names from the rolls.


I'm surprised that fear of prosecution stopped them.

Government computers used to find information on Joe the Plumber

If you are wondering how the Obamamedia managed to get so much information on Joe the Plumber in such a short period of time, wonder no longer. People with access to government data bases accessed Joe’s records.

Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.


It appears that this information was shared with the media because shortly thereafter the MSM was all over Joe like white on rice.

The fact is that much of our lives are an open book to people in government who wish us ill. This kind of invasion of privacy by political enemies is not to be tolerated.

The Obama campaign denied responsibility. I believe them. I also believe that he attracts followers who are able and willing to do in his political opponents and would love to give negative information to the Obama’s Fifth Column in the MSM.

Friday, October 24, 2008

What about people who bomb abortion clinics in America?

When reading on the internet about Islamic terrorism, commenters often mention that there is also terrorism by Christian fundamentalists in America, where there have been bombings of abortion clinics and shootings of abortion providers.

How prevalent is this form of American domestic terrorism? In recent years there have been round about 15,000 - 20,000 murders in total per year in the US. How many of these were of abortion providers?

Guess now. Scribble your answer down.

If you had asked me a few months ago I would have said three or four murders per year.

Considered over the last fifteen years I was overestimating somewhat. According to the best-known pro-abortion organisation in the US, NARAL Pro-Choice America, ...


Read the rest...

Colin Powell: A House Negro No More!

I wish I had said that...


Former Uncle Tom, House Negro, and unrepentant war criminal, Colin Powell, gave his coveted endorsement to Barack Obama last weekend, hailing our future President as a "transformational figure".


Transformational, indeed! Saturday night, Powell was a still just a lapdog of the Bush Junta, a lying liar who lied about WMD's in Iraq, and had blood on his hands for the millions of innocent Iraqis that Bush murdered so he could steal their oil. But on Monday morning, Powell crawled out of his bed a "man of courage", a "true patriot", and a "great American". That's quite a transformation. And all he had to do to cleanse himself of his past sins was declare his unconditional love for Obama.


When it comes right down to it, blind devotion is all Obama really asks of any of us. In return, he annointest us with hope, change, and free health care until our cup runneth over. Even DicKKK Halliburton Cheney, Rummy RumselKKKd, and KKKarl Rove can be absolved of their crimes - and cured of various maladies ranging from male-pattern baldness to racism - if they simply drop to their knees and declare fealty to our future President, Barack Obama. And he will be our president, as long as the superstitious, bible-clinging evangelical nutjobs of the GOP don't get in his way.

Genocide Is The Wet Work of Intellectuals

Richard Fernandez views the world of “intellectuals” and realizes that they are the most dangerous part of humanity. Mere murderers and thugs can kill, at most dozens or hundreds. To create a truly efficient extermination machine required an intellectual.

Undercover agent Larry Grathwohl discusses the Weather Underground’s post-revolution governing plans for the United States on a YouTube video. The video is taken from the 1982 documentary “No Place to Hide”. The Weathermen’s plans included putting parts of United States under the administration of Cuba, North Vietnam, China and Russia and re-educating the uncooperative in camps in located in the Southwest. Since there would be holdouts, plans were made for liquidating the estimated 25 million unreconstructable die-hards.

The most interesting moment of the video comes when Grathwohl asks the viewer to imagine what it’s like to be in a room with 25 people, all of whom have master’s degrees or higher from elite institutions of higher learning like Columbia, listening to them discuss the logistics of killing 25 million Americans.

Actually, it’s easy. What’s hard to imagine is sitting in a room full of plumbers discussing the same thing. The longer I live the less I believe that humanity is able to live without submitting itself to some kind of belief system. Western Civilization decided to liberate itself from a belief in Christ — whose Kingdom was not of this world — and went straight to the altars of Nazism and Communism, whose kingdom was in the camps. People like Ayers aren’t atheists, they’re true believers. GK Chesterton was right when he said that a man who declares he has stopped believing in God often doesn’t mean he believes in nothing. It only means he’s willing to believe in anything.

Jean Paul Sarte believed Che Guevara was “not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age … [the] era’s most perfect man”, which just goes to show you can get a fancy diploma from the École Normale Supérieure and still graduate with not an iota of common sense. Unclogging a drain with a snake is something anyone with a little intelligence and persistence can do. Planning the death of millions of Americans takes an education.




With all the words thrown about regarding Ayers and the Weather Underground, about bombs at the Pentagon, etc., no one has captured the essential evil of these people until I saw this video. Bill Ayers and his group were planning an American “Killing Fields.” They were dead serious. They have not changed their views. And they have their defenders in the Democrat party, in the media and on college campuses.

Poll Results That Mean Exactly the Opposite of What They are Interpreted To Mean

Have you ever had a conversation in which you nodded in agreement with an assertion, but later, when you thought about it you realize that it was totally wrong? Mickey Kaus points out an example:

I never understand poll results like this:

"[L]ess than a third of voters" in three swing states said the Ayers and ACORN issues "would affect their votes."

This is interpreted by TIME, and others, as a sign that McCain's Ayers and ACORN attacks aren't working.

But if the attacks really did move a bit "less than a third"--27% or 30%--of voters into the McCain column, they'd be fantastically effective. ...

Obviously, the attacks haven't done that. Most of the 27%-30% of affected voters were probably McCain voters anyway. But the poll doesn't tell us how many weren't. If even a third of that 27% were undecided voters, that could have a huge impact in a close race.

Nor does the poll tell us how much these voters votes are being affected, or even in which direction the "affect" cuts. (Maybe the attacks produced sympathy for Obama.)

All this is assuming voters are being improbably, brutally self aware and honest about what's affecting them. ....

... They're manufactured news designed to give the impression that lines of attack the MSM doesn't want to work aren't in fact working. ..

More on the Obama Credit Card Fraud

We recently posted on the way Obama is using the Internet to gather donations using credit cards to show how he is using it to garner millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions.

Patrick Ruffini :

I just contributed $5 to Barack Obama.

I didn't want to. Ideally, I could have contributed $0.01 and cost them money. But it was the only way to confirm the root cause of the fraudulent micro-donations to the Obama campaign ("Doodad Pro" for $17,300 and "Good Will" for $11,000).

The Obama campaign has turned its security settings for accepting online contributions down to the bare minimum -- possibly to juice the numbers, and turning a blind eye towards the potential for fraud not just against the FEC, but against unsuspecting victims of credit card fraud.
...
The end result? "Donors" like "Doodad Pro" can submit tons of donations totaling well above the $2,300 limit using different bogus addresses (this does clarify how donations from "Palestine", or PA, got through). And the campaign has no way to reliably de-dupe these donations, besides looking at the last four digits of the credit card number, which with 3.1 million donors is an identifier that could be shared by literally hundreds of donors, and is not as easy to eyeball like a common name or address would be. The ability to contribute with a false address, when the technology to prevent it not only exists but comes standard, is a green light for fraud.

One could understand the oversight if prior to the bogus donor story breaking. But you'd think they would have taken measures to step up their donor security in the aftermath of the revelations. Having AVS turned on would have stopped or significantly deterred the fraudulent donations (or, at a very minimum, made them easily detectable). By turning this basic setting off, the Obama campaign invited this kind of fraud and has taken no steps to correct it.


Obama defenders are throwing up clouds of dust to try to obscure what is going on. But there's the bottom line (thanks to stevieray)


Don't lose focus

The arguments upthread show how easy it is to get sidetracked into minutiae, leaving the average voter with glazed eyes and a belly full of indifference.

Sum it up simply.

Obama's system doesn't care what name is used, only that the credit card number is valid.

Obama's system doesn't care what address is used, only that the credit card number is valid.

Obama's system doesn't care if the security number is valid, it doesn't even ask for it.

Federal law limits the amount anyone can give to the campaign, and requires the campaign to keep track of the donors and report the info to the feds.

Obama cannot report his donors accurately, because he can't prove who gave ANY of the money to his campaign.

Every report he sent to the FEC is a fraud.

He can't prove ANYBODY is below the limit, because he doesn't know. His system made sure of that.

Is Obama Going to Bail Out thew MSM?

We commented yesterday about the continued slide into oblivion of the MSM - including its bellwether the NY Slimes (what Chris Muir calls Obama’s “Pet Media.”)

So can we expect an Obama administration and Democrat congress to enact legislation to find a way of supporting their Pet Media? Mark Steyn thinks so.
Too lib to fail? [Mark Steyn]


In her report on Moody's possible downgrading of The New York Times to junk status, Michelle Malkin concludes with a throwaway line:

Anyone smelling a bailout plea coming on?
I hadn't thought about it like that but now you mention it, it sounds all too plausible.

The reason the press are going to such shameless lengths to drag Obama across the finish line is because he's their last best hope at restoring the old media environment, including a new Unfairness Doctrine for radio, and regulation of the Internet. The Obama's-already-won-give-it-up-you-GOP-losers stories are intended only to demoralize turnout. Bear in mind, that round about 5pm Eastern on Election Day, they'll be doing those stories at industrial strength, in order to clobber any Republican voters still dumb enough to think it's worth making the trip to the polls. A good GOTV operation will not only lead to political victory but assure that the free market gets to pronounce the final judgment on the media conduct of this election.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

IBD/TIPP Tracking Poll: Day Eleven

McCain has cut into Obama's lead for a second day and is now just 1.1 points behind. The spread was 3.7 Wednesday and 6.0 Tuesday. The Republican is making headway with middle- and working- class voters, and has surged 10 points in two days among those earning between $30,000 and $75,000. He has also gone from an 11-point deficit to a 9-point lead among Catholics.

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

Orson Scott Card:

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

Read the rest.