Blagojevich Scandal

Thanks to the Internet, it’s possible to bypass the media spin and go to the actual criminal complaint that was filed for the details on the Blagojevich scandal. After reading all 78 pages there are a number of subjects that are not adequately covered by the stories in the media.

Rod Blagojevich has been under federal investigation since his election in 2002. The complaint focuses on his activities during 2008 because it appears that the feds wanted to prevent Blagojevich from using his power to appoint a Senator to replace Obama based on bribery, or as a way to improve his position should he be indicted.

The whole story has not been told; the criminal complaint is only the iceberg’s tip. The FBI agent filing the complaint:

Because this affidavit is submitted for the limited purpose of securing a criminal complaint and corresponding arrest warrants, I have not included each and every fact known to me concerning this investigation.

In addition to trying to “sell” the Senate seat, Blagojevich is accused of ...

…beginning no later than November 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH and JOHN HARRIS have corruptly solicited and demanded the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members responsible for editorials critical of ROD BLAGOJEVICH, intending to be influenced and rewarded in connection with State of Illinois financial assistance in connection with the sale of Wrigley Field.

Why did the Blagojevich team go into high gear this year?

As detailed below, in early October 2008, the government obtained information that ROD BLAGOJEVICH was accelerating his corrupt fund raising activities to accumulate as much money as possible before the implementation of ethics legislation on January 1, 2009, that would severely curtail ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s ability to raise money from individuals and entities conducting business with the State of Illinois.

The Rezko connection:

In or about 2000 or 2001, at a meeting with Ata, ROD BLAGOJEVICH who at the time was a member of the United States House of Representatives, told Ata that he was contemplating a run for higher office and asked for Ata’s support. Ata agreed to support him. Thereafter, Ata observed that Rezko was close to ROD BLAGOJEVICH and was very involved in fund raising for ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s campaign, including overseeing Ata’s own fund raising efforts on behalf of ROD BLAGOJEVICH.

19. In or about 2002, Ata had several conversations with Rezko regarding the possibility of a high level appointment for Ata in state government should ROD BLAGOJEVICH be elected. At Rezko’s direction, Ata put together a list of three state agencies to which he would be interested in being appointed, including the Capital Development Board.

Rezko was a principal fundraiser for ROD BLAGOJEVICH. 3 His criminal trial focused on allegations that Rezko and Stuart Levine, a member of the board of trustees of the Teachers Retirement System and the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, engaged in a scheme to defraud the State of Illinois of Levine’s honest services by demanding kickbacks, as well as political contributions to the campaign of ROD BLAGOJEVICH, in return for the exercise of Levine’s official influence. Relevant evidence presented at the Rezko trial is summarized below.

This is apparently the Rezko that Obama did not know.

The complaint provides several more instances of the Rezko Blagojevich connection for those who are interested.

There is some eyebrow-raising information about the Illinois State Planning Board which determines if a hospital can be built based on a “Certificate of Need.” We have these in Virginia and it is revealing how these boards can be used for corrupt purposes.

Blagojevich also used his ability to determine who got contracts to run the State’s pension money to enrich himself.

Part of the complaint involves the use of highway construction funds to obtain large campaign contributions:

According to Individual A, after Individual B left the meeting on October 6, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Individual A that he was going to make an upcoming announcement concerning a $1.8 billion project involving the Tollway Authority. ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Individual A that Lobbyist 1 was going to approach Highway Contractor 1 to ask for $500,000 for Friends of Blagojevich. ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Individual A that, “I could have made a larger announcement but wanted to see how they perform by the end of the year. If they don’t perform, fuck ‘em.” According to Individual A, he/she believed that ROD BLAGOJEVICH was telling Individual A that ROD BLAGOJEVICH expected Highway Contractor 1 to raise $500,000 in contributions to Friends of Blagojevich and that ROD BLAGOJEVICH is willing to commit additional state money to the Tollway project but is waiting to see how much money Highway Contractor 1 raises for Friends of Blagojevich.

This raises legitimate questions about the potential for widespread corruption in connection with the hundreds of billions of dollars that Obama plans to spend on infrastructure projects in the coming years.

Most of the discussion regarding the plan to sell the Illinois Senate seat to the highest bidder has focused on the process. What is equally interesting are the many possibilities for getting rich that are open to a well-connected politician – especially one that has the ear of a President.

In the case of Blagojevich these include an interest in getting an appointment to the Red Cross, becoming the head of a private foundation dependent on federal funding. Becoming the leader of a union organization. There was also talk of getting himself or his wife appointed to a number of corporate boards, which usually are well paid for very little work. Also of great interest was setting up a 501 (c) (4) organization with the aid of wealthy supporters of Obama like Warren Buffet as a way of creating a pool of money that Blagojevich would run for his personal benefit while advancing his political aspirations.

What the Blagojevich complaint illustrates graphically is the potential for graft on a widespread scale in government. The scale of that graft expands exponentially as government grows and dispenses hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars. There is a lesson here that should inform the public about the ways that corruption goes hand-in-hand with public pools of money.

Also, note the focus on ways of making money illegally via so-called non-profit organizations. The Blagojevich complaint opened my eyes. And I thought I was fairly sophisticated in such matters.

Thanks to Small Dead Animals for the link

Joe The Plumber Really Is One Of Us...He Didn't Like McCain All That Much Either

ASs Glenn Reynolds would say: HEH.

Red Queen's Race

The Twelve Days of Holiday

Michael Graham comments on Amazon.com's decision (since rescinded) to substitute "Holiday" for Christmas in the phrase "Twelve Days of Christmas."

On The First Day Of Holiday, My True Love Gave To Me...

Now we have some pretty odd traditions here in Boston, I'll admit. Our mayor, for example, holds lightings of the "Holiday" tree, the "Annual" tree and in classic goverment-worker speak, the "Official" tree, while other cities content themselves with Christmas trees.

But the "12 Days of Holiday"--what the heck is that? Does Amazon also sell items to Jewish Americans for their eight nights of "coincidental gift giving" every December? The phrase "12 Days of Holiday" makes no sense. If it's the "12 days of HOLIDAYS," it could describe the actual work attendance of government employees during the Christmas season I suppose.

And from the Corner - Mark Steyn:

Seven customer care representatives a-leaping [Mark Steyn]


Following my post yesterday on Amazon.com's bizarre "Twelve Days Of Holiday" campaign, an unseasonably intemperate reader wrote:

Don't like Amazon? Don't shop at it then, you clot. Nobody really gives a damn if some online retailer is insufficiently Christian for your tastes. Nobody.

Oh, I don't know. The "Twelve Days Of Holiday" promotion has now been amended to "The Twelve Days Of [click here for offensive C-word]". So, if I'm a clot, I'm Rudolph the Red-Nosed Clot in whose wake you run-of-the-sleigh clots follow.

To be honest, I mildly regret this instant corporate capitulation as sometime Cornerite Michael Graham has started up a poll to find out your favorite "Twelve Days Of Holiday" song. As I write, the runaway winner is "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Thursday".

[UPDATE: Things are going from bad to Norse:

Some may find it offensive to officially promote the Norse gods, so I believe it would be best to quit using terminology such as "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday" and "Friday" for our weekdays. Clearly, "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Thursday" is highly offensive to those who do not worship Thor, and thus a more appropriate holiday song should be "It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like The Fifth Day of the Week".

But only if you assume the week begins on Sunday, as so many C-word obsessives do. Another reader writes:

Surely we should avoid offending those who do not worship Thor, god of thunder. So it should be “It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like the 4th day of the week”.

How about "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Lunchtime"?

Military Jet Crashes into House in University City

Three University City residents were killed Monday and another was missing after a disabled fighter jet crashed into their neighborhood and exploded in flames moments after the pilot safely ejected.

The F/A-18D Hornet plunged to the ground near Cather Avenue and Huggins Street, about a mile northwest of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, just before noon, according to San Diego police and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Thomas Sowell: The Meaning of Mumbai

This is a subject that Sowell is passionate about:

A very shrewd observer of the deterioration of Western societies, British writer Theodore Dalrymple, said: "This mental flabbiness is decadence, and at the same time a manifestation of the arrogant assumption that nothing can destroy us."

Read the whole thing.

UNC Bans Christmas Trees At Libraries

Dr. Mike Adams is a gadfly ... on the side of right. In a sea of leftism, he has become what many of us wish we could be: an irritant to the academic establishment.

Unfortunately, the rest of us don't have tenure.

Here he writes about the decision by associate provost of university libraries, Sarah Michalak, to remove Christmas tree from the UNC libraries.

The anti-Christmas lunacy that has been sweeping the nation has made its latest stop in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Wilson and Davis libraries at UNC-Chapel Hill have for years been adorned with Christmas trees. But thanks to the associate provost of university libraries, Sarah Michalak, that tradition is about to be broken – you guessed it, all in the name of tolerance. Who was it that said the provost of university libraries doesn’t do important things!?

Michalak is claiming that her decision is based on several years’ worth of complaints made by people who were offended by the Christmas display. In other words, the Christophobic bigots that have made UNC-CH their home have pestered Michalak into removing the tree. They made life just hard enough for her to capitulate and order the removal of a simple Christmas tree.

There’s only one way to deal with university administrators like Michalak who make decisions based on convenience, not principle. We need to make things very inconvenient for them when they act in unprincipled ways. That’s why I sent Michalak a fax and email this morning saying “Christophobia is a Social Disease.” And I’m asking the hundreds of thousands of people who will read this column today to do the same with the following information:

Fax: 919-843-8936
Email: smichala@email.unc.edu

I decided to do my part and sent her this e-mail:

I read with interest Dr. Mike Adams’ article about your decision to remove Christmas trees from the UNC libraries. I recognize that minders of modern culture are interested in finding new ways to show their “tolerance” and “inclusiveness” by being intolerant of Christian traditions and excluding Christian symbols. Yours is simply another way of slapping Christians in the face, knowing that you will not be slapped back.

But in a way, it may be the proper thing to do. You may not be worthy of keeping Christmas in your institution. In the season when the Christian world celebrates the birth of Christ with displays of all kinds, it may be proper that UNC should be a dark island of nihilism in a sea of faith brightened by the one we call “The Light of the World.”

There is symbolism in a lack of symbols, isn’t there?

Obama's Citizenship

Ace of Spades has, I think, the only good point to be made on this issue: produce the damn thing and get it out of the way.

First of all, my objection here is proceduralist. I do not expect any particular result from a subpoena to produce a birth certificate -- other than to establish he does in fact have a birth certificate and is qualified to become president.

In a way this is like Hillary's Emoluments Clause problems. I want Hillary to be Secretary of the State, if only for the drama/comedy value of it. (And also-- that she'll try to be tougher than Obama.)

Nevertheless, I am very bothered by the fact that the Constitution seems to unambiguously disqualify her, and the Congress is not even attempting a superficial fix of the situation by repealing the pay raise her Congress authorized for the Secretary of State. I don't know if that would wholly solve the problem, but at least it would be gesture in the direction of compliance with the Constitution.

For the same reason I insist upon Obama proving his qualifications for office. I don't expect him to be disqualified. I insist upon it because it's in the Constitution and it's rather bad precedent for presidents to begin deciding which parts of the constitution they'll respect.

Because why? Because it one of the few rules for being president.

For the record, I believe Obama was born in Hawaii. However, it is not his right to refuse the production of documents establishing his eligibility. John McCain produced his documentation, after all. One should not need to sue a candidate to compel evidence of his right to serve. Such documents should be produced immediately upon declaration, or shortly thereafter.

If you want to attend a very exclusive party, you show the invite at the door. Obama has sought admission to the most exclusive party in the world, but won't show his invite.

Obama and the DNC have been fighting these suits for a half a year. Even if they wanted to fight the suits just to establish they would not allow themselves to be compelled by nuisance suits, they could have produced the birth certificate independently. And they should have.

Instead, they continue fighting to not produce the document. And the Supreme Court has officially ruled that apparently no one in America has the right to challenge a candidate's constitution qualifications and compel the production of such documents.

And the Libertarians are doing what they do best:

The wild-eyed liberals pretending to be common-sense "libertarians" at Reason waste no time in labeling conservatives kooky. Which is the whole point of libertarianism, pretty much. Attacking the right relentlessly to ingratiate oneself with the liberal establishment:

How much further will the fight to de-certify Obama go? It won’t stop if the Electoral College votes for Obama, as the skeptics will try to get a congressman or senator to officially challenge the result. Rep. Chris Cannon of Utah was willing to believe that Bill Ayers wrote Dreams From My Father, so the skeptics might have a chance.
And if every vote certification goes off without a hitch and Obama is inaugurated on Jan. 20? Gary Kreep is ready for that.

“When Obama starts signing executive orders and legislation,” Kreep says, “I’ll be filing lawsuits unless and until he proves he’s an American citizen. Some judge, someday, is going to want this proved on the merits. You can run, but you can’t hide.”

The point is that this is a constitutional mandate. Candidates routinely refuse to release medical, military, and school records. Fine. Well, not so fine; they should disclose. But the constitution makes no demands in these areas. There is no legal compunction along these lines, although there are of course political and ethical imperatives here.

But age and citizenship are, in fact, legal requirements to hold the office. While a candidate like Obama has the right to refuse the release of detailed medical records and school transcripts (though he shouldn't exercise that right; he should, of course, release them), he has no right whatsoever to refuse providing proof of his constitutional eligibility for the office he seeks.

What privacy interests does Barack Obama have in suppressing a document establishing his eligibility for an office he voluntarily seeks?

Incidentally, Reason: Obama almost certainly had Dreams From My Father ghostwritten, as most politicians do. The real question is by whom. We know most politician's ghostwriters; why not Obama's?

Reason poses as too smart to be taken in by such malarkey, and yet they're the ones taking the embarrassingly naive position that of course Obama, like no other politician before him, personally wrote his memoirs.

Yeah. Reason's really showing off its skeptical, independent streak with that one.

Tribune Co. files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Nothing about their crappy product

You will find it in the comments on blogs, but the stories in the MSM never get close to the issue of the quality of the product that the MSM is peddling. There are all sots of stories about the product that the car companies are selling, but nothing about the newspapers.

Glenn Reynolds has noticed.

ATTACK AT DAWN - PEARL HARBOR. DECEMBER 7, 1941

Hitler was the perfect boss: Former maid breaks her silence on the 'charming' dictator

I recall a movie, I don’t know the name, in which the character who played the Devil (yes, the real Devil) was a handsome, charming man. It is important for us to keep in mind that people who seek to acquire political power never look like monsters or act like monsters. In most cases, they appear to be the exact opposite: charming, witty, compassionate and above all charismatic. Monsters know how to move crowds. That is why I prefer my politicians “pedestrian.”

Ignoring Godwin’s law, it is instructive to study the rise to power of Hitler from the inside. Not from the people who hated him, but from the people who supported him, from the people who put him in power and believed in him. Only from this perspective can we develop an understanding that will prevent us from making the same mistake the Germans made in the 1930s.

From the Daily Mail:

History has condemned him as the megalomaniac who brought death and misery to millions.

But for one woman, the name Adolf Hitler evokes a smile not a shudder.

She is Rosa Mitterer, who worked as a maid for the Fuhrer at his mountain retreat in Bavaria in the 1930s.

Rosa is 91 and until now has kept a vow of silence about her experiences. She has chosen to break it after realising she is the last survivor of the circle who served the tyrant in the years before he launched the Second World War.

And her verdict on her former master: 'He was a charming man, someone who was only ever nice to me, a great boss to work for. You can say what you like, but he was a good man to us.'
...
Recalling her first direct request from her master, she said she was drying some porcelain cups when he came down the stairs.
'Hello,' he said softly. 'Sorry to trouble you, but could you make me some coffee and bring some gingerbread biscuits to my study?'

Nor do all tyrants live lives of opulent splendor, in fact Hilter's lifestyle was rather Spartan:

'In those days, Hitler slept in his study. In it was an iron bed, one wardrobe, one table, two chairs and a shoebox. It was very modestly furnished. Beside the bed hung a picture of his mother.'

A man who loved his mother.

A generous neighbor:

Part of her duties involved sorting out the fan letters and presents that were delivered in their thousands to the house.

'There were cigars, jars of jam, flowers, pictures,' she recalled. 'We gave most of them away to poorer peasant families nearby on Hitler's orders

So how do we defend against the would-be Hitlers in our midst? Keep a very careful limit to the powers of the governments they head. And try to avoid electing people who appeal to your emotions, your grievances and your fears.

Parallel lives of the Democrats and Republicans

Scott Johnson at Powerline refers to an article by Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson adapts Plutarch to a review of notable stories of the past year in his column on the parallel lives of Democrats and Republicans. After his comparisons of Richard Fuld with Robert Rubin, Ted Stevens with Charles Rangel, Alberto Gonzales with Eric Holder, and Christopher Dodd with Trent Lott, Hanson concludes:

I could go on and on with these Plutarachean examples of Parallel Lives but you get the picture. Here, the contrast is not the respective virtues of Greece and Rome. Nor is there any regret whatsoever that liberals of good faith thankfully scrutinize the bad judgment and even criminal activity of wayward conservatives. The problem instead is why we continuously consider liberal transgressions as misdemeanors and their conservative counterparts as felonies.

I was reminded of this when I contrast the manner in which Sarah Palin was covered versus Joe Biden. Biden is a gaff machine, one who has all the traits of a poser but none of the saving graces. Even his hair is fake.

During the campaign Biden told us that FDR got on TV after the stock market crashed in 1929, apparently not aware that FDR was not president and that TV had not been invented.

He showed his sensitivity to race and ethnicity with: "you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent." Or when he called Obama "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Trent Lott’s career ended over less.

In Ohio Biden said he was against clean coal technology when Obama was busy telling everyone that he was for it.

He gets in the face of a person who questions him at a campaign event to launch into a tirade on how smart he is.

He tells us he spends time in Katie’s restaurant, a place that closed 20 years ago.

These may be chalked up to typical bluster by a bloviating politician, but what other major politician says and does things like this?

There are more substantial issues:

The man who is presumed to be this administration’s foreign policy heavyweight said that the US drove Hezbollah out of Lebanon when that was totally false, and no one cared.

On October 9th I posted a column entitled “Have you noticed that there’s not a lot of fact checking of Biden?”

Christopher Beam at Slate explains the reasons for Biden's Gaffe Immunity The subhead is:

He misspeaks so often, it's hardly news—and hardly damaging.

So if we have a major political figure, one who has just been elected Vice President, who misspeaks so often why is it not damaging? Beam tell us that

Informational gaffes don't hurt Biden because, whatever his imperfections, he's generally seen as worldly and knowledgeable. Message gaffes don't matter because, even if it's a headache for the campaign, they make him sound authentic. (If he thinks the ad is "terrible," that's just his honest opinion!) And political gaffes don't damage Biden because, well, he's so darned congenial.

Tell the part about congeniality to people who have appeared before his committee and the guy who dared to question him.

So that's the MSM's take. the man can be wrong so often and in so many ways BUT "he's generally seen as worldly and knowledgeable." By whom? Ah, that's the clue: by the press. He can claim that the sun rises in the West, but the press, secure in the innate wisdom and charm of Joe Biden, will mention it and pass on and he will still be seen as smart, and well informed. If you are a Democrat, it seems that there is nothing you can say or do to change the template: you are smart, handsome, knowledgeable and your mother dresses you well.

Jonah Goldberg is exactly right when he says Biden’s “gravitas” is derived almost entirely from the fact that he can lie with absolute passion and conviction
Speaking about the VP debate:

What struck me the most about the debate – and it probably helped having quintessential Obamaphiles in the room – was how Biden’s “gravitas” is derived almost entirely from the fact that he can lie with absolute passion and conviction. He just plain made stuff up tonight. I read a long list tonight in my debate with Beinart here at Wash U, we can visit the details tomorrow.

Just a few: Flatly asserting that Obama never said he’d meet with Achmenijad; that absolute nonsense about spending more in a month in Iraq than we’ve spent in Afghanistan (“let me say it again,” he said as if he was hammering home a real fact); the bit about McCain voting with Obama on raising taxes; his vote in favor of the war etc.

From Hanson:

I remember why most Republicans, other than Colin Powell, abandoned the soon-to-be convicted Ted Stevens. And the names of Mark Foley and Larry Craig are now understandably infamous. It is altogether fine and proper that Republicans turned on their own miscreants, who needed to be turned on for their various misdeeds.

But why in the world is Rep. Charles Rangel still the Chairman of the House Ways and Means committee which oversees U.S. tax policy — especially at this critical juncture in our nation’s financial history?

I say “Why?” not out of sarcasm, but out of real bewilderment: Rangel’s record of financial and ethical improprieties is no longer a matter of hypocrisy, but rather one of probable criminality.

Then there is the strange case of Sen. Chris Dodd. Future economic historians may trace the origins of the September financial collapse back to the deregulation of the federally affiliated Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae lending agencies, and the banking industry’s shenanigans in allowing the unqualified to receive improper loans — all under political pressure from Congressional leaders.

Somehow Dodd seems to have had an uncanny ability to have been at Ground Zero of both implosions. Here are the facts: Chris Dodd is currently chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. As such, he refinanced his own mortgage property through (the now bankrupt) Countrywide’s “V.I.P.” program. That is, Dodd was given an unusually favorable loan discount that over the life of his mortgage in theory would have saved him several thousand dollars. Yet Senate rules make it illegal for members to knowingly receive gifts worth $100 or more a year from private businesses like Countrywide that makes use of lobbyists. What’s more, Countrywide had also contributed $21,000 to Dodd’s senate campaigns since 1997. Worse still, Dodd received about $70,000 in campaign gifts from Bank of America — which bought out the bankrupt Countrywide.

Remember, as well, that Sen. Dodd serially asserted that both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were fundamentally strong — even as both were on the verge of bankruptcy. Dodd was strangely confident in the insolvent entities perhaps because he had received more campaign contributions from the two failed agencies than did any other legislator in Congress.

I think all our grandfathers at one time in this country might have thought it morally wrong for a congressional banking overseer to take money from banks — and in particular when they were in the process of being looted and run into the ground. If the Senate Banking Committee Chairman is improperly receiving mortgage preferences and outright cash from banking concerns, then who will police the police?

If Plutarch once believed that action, not intention matters (otherwise, as Aristotle noted, we could all be moral in our sleep), we moderns believe the reverse — that proper thinking can often excuse improper acts.

Why so? Perhaps we suspect that a Rubin or Dodd want to do more good things for the poor than do a Fuld or Lott, and so we should interpret their transgressions as atypical lapses rather than characteristic behavior.

Perhaps we think an Attorney-General designate Holder is properly cognizant of our long liberal efforts to force the system to change and therefore deserves some exemption for ethical blindness on the job. Again in contrast, Attorney-General emeritus Gonzales is unduly cynical in not appreciating that progressive thinking is responsible for his job, and therefore he must be held accountable immediately and for the rest of his professional life for supposed character flaws.

Perhaps we think a life-long crusading African-American like Rangel merely fudges a bit here and there in the twilight of a long exemplary career seeking to ensure racial harmony and parity for his nation, and therefore is absent-minded rather than felonious and hypocritical. Yet the sordid behavior of his white male conservative counterparts provides valuable elucidation about their depravity and bigotry -- and is proper grounds for their eventual departures not merely from posts of influence, but from the Congress altogether.

Perhaps -- as we saw from the asymmetrical media treatment of the two candidates during the recent campaign -- in matters of power and politics today, intention, symbolism, and rhetoric are everything; facts essentially nothing.

Or maybe less cynically -- in the minds of self-appointed liberal moralists concerned about the greater good -- exalted ends at times necessarily entail regrettable means.

UPDATE: Parallel lives of the Democrats and Republicans, part 2

In his weekly Washington Times column, Andrew Breitbart adapts Professor Hanson's Plutarchean method to a similar end. Breitbart considers the photo featuring President-elect Obama's chief speechwriter Jon Favreau and his colleague that turned up in the media and on the Internet last week. The photo depicted Favreau groping the breast of a cardboard cutout of Hillary Clinton while Favreau's unidentified colleague shared his beer with her.

Breitbart observes that "[t]he aggressive iconography of two young drunk men taking advantage of a life-size cutout of a woman - especially a powerful one - would bring an elite college campus to a standstill, force a housecleaning of a Fortune 500 company, ground the Air Force Academy and would, in most cases, ruin the career of a Republican staffer or elected official." He juxtaposes the jocular reaction to Favreau's photograph with that of any comparable Republican....

In the case of Favreau, however, "the Democratic double standard on political correctness kicked in immediately as the feminist establishment, the media and even Mrs. Clinton herself came forth to save the fast-rising Obama wordsmith." Whatever moral one draws from this particular episode, it is a striking illustration of the phenomenon that was the subject of Professor Hanson's column.

The Religion of the Left

Note that God has been removed and only man remains.


Gerard Vander Leun has a beautiful essay for a Sunday Morning:

I've written elsewhere that one of the "things you can't say about the First Terrorist War" is that it is, at bottom, a war of two religions. So it is with the culture wars in America today. It too is, and you are not supposed to say this either, a war of TWO religions.

Then again, that is not quite right. Try it this way.

We are fighting a war of two religions in which only one side is allowed to be designated as a religion -- the Right. "The Right" in these terms is always code for "The Religious Right", which is, in turn, code for "Christianity." This is sometimes, by the legion of scribblers ready to push out the party line at the drop of a hat, modified for form's sake into "Christian Fundamentalism." But realistic observers of this game are not fooled and know it to be the same sort of bearded shorthand by which "Islamic Fundamentalism" is made to stand in for Islam, pure and simple.

In whatever form the attack takes, we have seen -- and will continue to see -- an attack on Religious Americans by another group of Americans that previously identified themselves as "secular," but who lately are trying to wrap themselves in the raiment of religion to a greater or lesser extent. I am expecting a plethora of punditry soon that includes the phrase, "Some of my best friends are Christians, but...." at every opportunity.

But this tactic will, in the end, not suffice. It will fail because those of real faith easily see through those of false faith. And to profess a faith is worse than to remain simply agnostic. Still, it will be tried because bare atheism reveals that the Religion of the Liberal/Left is not a religion of the people, but of those who would be master. In the coming years, the acolytes of this Religion may attempt to don the fleece of the flock, but the Shepherd will always be able to tell between the quick and the dead.

The real disaster for the Liberal/Left in the last 8-years was not that George Bush was religious, but that Bush's religion was not the Liberal/Left's approved religion; the Religion of the Self. They now have their new apotheosis in Obama, a man whose professed faith is plain to see -- through.

The Religion of the Self is the most ancient religion. Indeed, many faiths were created, revealed, and promulgated to contain the Religion of the Self. I say "contain" because real faith is always a struggle to contain the Religion of the Self in the hopes of a more transformative life and a closer approach to God.

In the age of myth, the Religion of the Self first arose in the Garden as a result of a persuasive conversation between Eve, Adam, and a Serpent. As we know, but still have not learned, it did not work out well for Eve or her husband, and humanity has been struggling to get back to the state of the Garden ever since; a state that, without true faith, will forever recede beyond its grasp.


The Religion of the Self does not rest upon selfless service but upon ego, even as the ego calls upon selflessness in others to boost it to power. Today's Religion of the Self spends a good many cycles advocating that others should serve its endless causes; that others should obey its endless requirements; that others should recite only its approved catechism. Above all it demands that others should reach for their wallets to pay for it all.

The Religion of the Self elects candidates to high office that promise equality and deliver obscenity. The Religion of the Self is composed of many millions of believers whose primary aim is their own glory at someone else's expense. It is little wonder that the high priests of the Religion of the Self are today known as "celebrities," and that the highest state sought by members of this religion is to be, themselves, "celebrated."

A poet, who was taken for many decades to be one of their seers, but who has recently revealed he merely used them for his own,deeper purposes, once wrote of them:

"But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody...."

And they agreed as long as it was clear that the somebody they were to serve was always going to be the Self.

The Religion of the Self teaches, as its first and last precept, that there is nothing in this world greater than the self and -- beyond this world, out beyond even the unimaginable edges of the universe -- there is... well... nothing at all;

"purposeless matter hovering in the dark."

Read the whole thing ... and then go to church and pray.

Anti Ballistic Missile System Test Successful

For this exercise, a threat-representative target missile was launched from Kodiak, Alaska at 3:04pm (EST). This long-range ballistic target was tracked by several land- and sea-based radars, which sent targeting information to the interceptor missile. At 3:23pm (EST)the Ground-Based Interceptor was launched from the Ronald W. Reagan Missile Defense Site, located at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The interceptor’s exoatmospheric kill vehicle was carried into the target’s predicted trajectory in space, maneuvered to the target, performed discrimination, and intercepted the threat warhead

Multiple sensors fed the fire control:

The target was successfully tracked by a transportable AN/TPY-2 radar located in Juneau, Alaska, a U.S. Navy Aegis BMD ship with SPY-1 radar, the Upgraded Early Warning Radar at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., and the Sea-Based X-band radar. Each sensor sent information to the fire control system, which integrated the data together to provide the most accurate target trajectory for the interceptor.

Reuters expresses doubts with the headline U.S. says latest missile defense test a success

US Says?

The lead of the story:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military conducted a successful test of its system built to knock out long-range missiles that could be fired by North Korea or Iran, the Pentagon said on Friday.

The target missile for the test over the Pacific was launched from Kodiak, Alaska and an interceptor was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, officials said. The intercept took place at 3:29 p.m. EST .

Boeing Co is prime contractor for the system, called the ground-based midcourse defense.

Mark Steyn: Jews get killed, but Muslims feel vulnerable

Islamofascists target innocents and Jewish innocents in particular but the MSM is unable to tell who is the criminal and who is the victim.

Is it hatred, stupidity, ignorance or cowardice? Whose side are they on? Don't answer that!

Mark Steyn in the Orange County Register:

Shortly after the London Tube bombings in 2005, a reader of Tim Blair, The Sydney Daily Telegraph's columnist wag, sent him a note-perfect parody of a typical newspaper headline:

"British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow's Train Bombing."

Indeed. And so it goes. This time round – Mumbai – it was the Associated Press that filed a story about how Muslims "found themselves on the defensive once again about bloodshed linked to their religion".

Oh, I don't know about that. In fact, you'd be hard pressed from most news reports to figure out the bloodshed was "linked" to any religion, least of all one beginning with "I-" and ending in "-slam." In the three years since those British bombings, the media have more or less entirely abandoned the offending formulations – "Islamic terrorists," "Muslim extremists" – and by the time of the assault on Mumbai found it easier just to call the alleged perpetrators "militants" or "gunmen" or "teenage gunmen," as in the opening line of this report in The Australian: "An Adelaide woman in India for her wedding is lucky to be alive after teenage gunmen ran amok."

Kids today, eh? Always running amok in an aimless fashion.

The veteran British TV anchor Jon Snow, on the other hand, opted for the more cryptic locution "practitioners." "Practitioners" of what, exactly?

Hard to say. And getting harder. For the Wall Street Journal, Tom Gross produced a jaw-dropping round-up of Mumbai media coverage: The discovery that, for the first time in an Indian terrorist atrocity, Jews had been attacked, tortured and killed produced from the New York Times a serene befuddlement: "It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene."

Hmm. Greater Mumbai forms one of the world's five biggest cities. It has a population of nearly 20 million. But only one Jewish center, located in a building that gives no external clue as to the bounty waiting therein. An "accidental hostage scene" that one of the "practitioners" just happened to stumble upon? "I must be the luckiest jihadist in town. What are the odds?"

Meanwhile, the New Age guru Deepak Chopra laid all the blame on American foreign policy for "going after the wrong people" and inflaming moderates, and "that inflammation then gets organized and appears as this disaster" in Mumbai.

Really? The inflammation just "appears"? Like a bad pimple? The "fairer" we get to the, ah, inflamed militant practitioners, the unfairer we get to everyone else. At the Chabad House, the murdered Jews were described in almost all the Western media as "ultra-Orthodox," "ultra-" in this instance being less a term of theological precision than a generalized code for "strange, weird people, nothing against them personally, but they probably shouldn't have been over there in the first place."

Are they stranger or weirder than their killers? Two "inflamed moderates" entered the Chabad House, shouted "Allahu Akbar!," tortured the Jews and murdered them, including the young rabbi's pregnant wife. Their 2-year-old child escaped because of a quick-witted (non-Jewish) nanny who hid in a closet and then, risking being mowed down by machine-gun fire, ran with him to safety.

The Times was being silly in suggesting this was just an "accidental" hostage opportunity – and not just because, when Muslim terrorists capture Jews, it's not a hostage situation, it's a mass murder-in-waiting. The sole surviving "militant" revealed that the Jewish center had been targeted a year in advance. The 28-year-old rabbi was Gavriel Holtzberg. His pregnant wife was Rivka Holtzberg. Their orphaned son is Moshe Holtzberg, and his brave nanny is Sandra Samuels. Remember their names, not because they're any more important than the Indians, Britons and Americans targeted in the attack, but because they are an especially revealing glimpse into the pathologies of the perpetrators.

In a well-planned attack on iconic Mumbai landmarks symbolizing great power and wealth, the "militants" nevertheless found time to divert 20 percent of their manpower to torturing and killing a handful of obscure Jews helping the city's poor in a nondescript building. If they were just "teenage gunmen" or "militants" in the cause of Kashmir, engaged in a more or less conventional territorial dispute with India, why kill the only rabbi in Mumbai? Dennis Prager got to the absurdity of it when he invited his readers to imagine Basque separatists attacking Madrid: "Would the terrorists take time out to murder all those in the Madrid Chabad House? The idea is ludicrous."

And yet we take it for granted that Pakistani "militants" in a long-running border dispute with India would take time out of their hectic schedule to kill Jews. In going to ever more baroque lengths to avoid saying "Islamic" or "Muslim" or "terrorist," we have somehow managed to internalize the pathologies of these men.

We are enjoined to be "understanding," and we're doing our best. A Minnesotan suicide bomber (now there's a phrase) originally from Somalia returned to the old country and blew up himself and 29 other people last October. His family prevailed upon your government to have his parts (or as many of them as could be sifted from the debris) returned to the United States at taxpayer expense and buried in Burnsville Cemetery. Well, hey, in the current climate, what's the big deal about a federal bailout of jihad operational expenses? If that's not "too big to fail," what is?

Last week, a Canadian critic reprimanded me for failing to understand that Muslims feel "vulnerable." Au contraire, they project tremendous cultural confidence, as well they might: They're the world's fastest-growing population. A prominent British Muslim announced the other day that, when the United Kingdom becomes a Muslim state, non-Muslims will be required to wear insignia identifying them as infidels. If he's feeling "vulnerable," he's doing a terrific job of covering it up.

We are told that the "vast majority" of the 1.6 billion to 1.8 billion Muslims (in Deepak Chopra's estimate) are "moderate." Maybe so, but they're also quiet. And, as the AIDS activists used to say, "Silence=Acceptance." It equals acceptance of the things done in the name of their faith. Rabbi Holtzberg was not murdered because of a territorial dispute over Kashmir or because of Bush's foreign policy. He was murdered in the name of Islam – "Allahu Akbar."

I wrote in my book, "America Alone," that "reforming" Islam is something only Muslims can do. But they show very little sign of being interested in doing it, and the rest of us are inclined to accept that. Spread a rumor that a Quran got flushed down the can at Gitmo, and there'll be rioting throughout the Muslim world. Publish some dull cartoons in a minor Danish newspaper, and there'll be protests around the planet. But slaughter the young pregnant wife of a rabbi in Mumbai in the name of Allah, and that's just business as usual. And, if it is somehow "understandable" that for the first time in history it's no longer safe for a Jew to live in India, then we are greasing the skids for a very slippery slope. Muslims, the AP headline informs us, "worry about image." Not enough.

Bill "Cold Cash" Jefferson Ousted

Louisiana voters oust indicted Rep. Jefferson
(H/T Ace of Spades)

NEW ORLEANS – In a year when national Republican fortunes took a turn for the worse, Louisiana delivered the GOP two seats in Congress in elections delayed by Hurricane Gustav.

Indicted Democratic U.S. Rep. William Jefferson was ousted Saturday from his New Orleans area district, while Republicans narrowly held on to the seat vacated by a retiring incumbent.

The wins followed Republicans' reconquest of another House seat earlier this fall that had been lost to Democrats.

In the 2nd Congressional District, which includes most of New Orleans, Republican attorney Anh "Joseph" Cao won 50 percent of the vote to Jefferson's 47 percent and will become the first Vietnamese-American in Congress. His only previous political experience was an unsuccessful 2007 bid for a seat in the state legislature.

This is actually shocking. Up until now, Democrats were totally immune from accusations of corruption, double dealing, lying, graft, sexual improprieties, etc. Only Republicans were punished for these things. But in Louisiana, which vies for the title of corruption HQ with Chicago, apparently the voters are marginally less forgiving of criminal activity.

Just recently this race was covered in Fox News and the default assumption was that Jefferson would be re-elected.

More from the Wall Street Journal:

Republicans made an aggressive push to take the 2nd District seat from the 61-year-old Mr. Jefferson, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of bribery, laundering money and misusing his congressional office.

Unofficial results showed Mr. Cao winning 50% of the vote to Mr. Jefferson's 47%.

"The people of the 2nd District have spoken,'' Mr. Cao, 41, told supporters at a restaurant near the French Quarter. "We want new direction. We want action. We want accountability."

In a speech that was gracious but stopped short of concession, Mr. Jefferson blamed low voter turnout for his showing and said supporters may have thought he was a shoo-in after he won a Nov. 4 primary in the predominantly black and heavily Democratic district.

"I think people just ran out of gas a bit," he said. "People today flat didn't come out in large numbers."

Greg Rigamer, a New Orleans political consultant, said his analysis showed turnout in predominantly white sections of the district was double that in black areas. He said that helped push Mr. Cao to victory over Mr. Jefferson, who became Louisiana's first black congressman since Reconstruction when he took office in 1991. "This is quite a feat," Mr. Rigamer said of Mr. Cao's victory.

New Orleans voters had long been loyal to Mr. Jefferson, re-electing him in 2006 even after news of the bribery scandal broke. Late-night TV comics made him the butt of jokes after federal agents said they found $90,000 in alleged bribe money hidden in his freezer.

From Fox news:

Turnout appeared light in the district, where two-thirds of voters are Democrats and 11 percent are Republicans. More than 60 percent are black.

Though he was the underdog, Cao received endorsements from some Democrat and green-conscious groups as well as the area's Vietnamese-American community. Cao came to the United States as a child after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and went on to earn degrees in philosophy, physics and law.
...
Prosecutors contend Jefferson used his influence as chairman of the congressional Africa Investment and Trade Caucus to broker deals in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and other African nations on behalf of those who bribed him.

The 2007 indictment claims Jefferson received more than $500,000 in bribes and demanded millions more between 2000 and 2005, including the $90,000 found in the freezer of his Washington home.

One interesting flashback: how many remember the Republicans under Denny Hastert being outraged that the FBI raided Jefferson's office? You realize that happened in 2006? How long does it take to get an indictment? What are the odds that the case will be dropped? Has he not "suffered enough?" Don't Democrats have "get out of jail free" cards? Isn't this a case of "the Man" getting all over a brother?

Could Bush Be Hitler?

Frank J. asks the question that's on everyone's lips:

In Bush’s last days, if he suddenly unveils he is really Hitler and unleashes his Hitler plans involving world conquest through UFOs, dinosaurs, and pirates, the liberals are going to be like, “See! He was Hitler! We told you!” And we’re all going to look really stupid if we hadn’t even given that possibility some honest thought.

Read the whole thing.

How Orson Bean found God

Orson Bean is a funny guy. He also wrote "Through the Years With the Blacklist."

Worth reading.

Global Cooling Deniers

From the UK Guardian: 2008 will be coolest year of the decade

The subhead reads:

Global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, but cooler temperature is not evidence that global warming is slowing, say climate scientists

The people whose reputations and financial well-being depend on the myth of global warming are desperately trying to convince you that the fact that this has been the coolest year in a decade does not affect their hypothesis. Their pronouncements are sort of funny, in a pathetic way.

This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07.

The relatively chilly temperatures compared with recent years are not evidence that global warming is slowing however, say climate scientists at the Met Office. "Absolutely not," said Dr Peter Stott, the manager of understanding and attributing climate change at the Met Office's Hadley Centre. "If we are going to understand climate change we need to look at long-term trends."

I purchased a book a few years ago entitled "How to lie with statistics". The graph shown in the article is a perfect example.

Give me the right to choose the beginning and the end point of a statistical series and I can prove anything. I am reminded of the old accountant joke that goes like this:

There once was a business owner who was interviewing people for a division manager position. He decided to select the individual that could answer the question "how much is 2+2?"

The engineer pulled out his slide rule and shuffled it back and forth, and finally announced, "It lies between 3.98 and 4.02".

The mathematician said, "In two hours I can demonstrate it equals 4 with the following short proof."

The physicist declared, "It's in the magnitude of 1x101."

The logician paused for a long while and then said, "This problem is solvable."

The social worker said, "I don't know the answer, but I a glad that we discussed this important question.

The attorney stated, "In the case of Svenson vs. the State, 2+2 was declared to be 4."

The trader asked, "Are you buying or selling?"

The accountant looked at the business owner, then got out of his chair, went to see if anyone was listening at the door and pulled the drapes. Then he returned to the business owner, leaned across the desk and said in a low voice, "What would you like it to be?"

Do you want to see statistics that see the world getting warmer ... or colder? I can show you both with computer generated graphs and charts.

But lately I have been intrigued with the question: what is the “proper” temperature for the earth, and why? For some reason the answer from the global warming hoaxers is a nostalgic yearning for the 1940s or 1960s. Why? Is that when they grew up? Is that where the earth’s temperature should be stabilized for all time? What do we do about other sources of warming or cooling like sunspots or volcanoes? What happens if we reduce carbon dioxide emissions and find that other factors we are unaware of are causing a new ice age which could have been prevented by a man-made increase in greenhouse gasses?

The obsessive focus on man’s impact on climate reminds me of another old joke about the drunk looking for the car keys he dropped. He was looking for them under a street lamp not because he dropped them there, but because it was night and it’s the only place illuminated.

The War, Obama and His Acolytes - A Flip Of Unimaginable Cynicism

David Limbaugh writes: What the Obama Cult Factor Portends

Excerpt:

Given the nation's Bush fatigue -- no matter how unjustified from a broad historical perspective -- and Bush's very low approval ratings, it only made sense for Democratic presidential aspirants to make themselves the anti-Bush.

Because the Iraq war was perceived as Bush's greatest sin and almost all other sins flowed from Iraq or were somehow conflated with it -- Abu Ghraib, rendition, waterboarding, "unilateralism," NSA surveillance, Halliburton, Gitmo, etc. -- Obama was uniquely positioned to be the anti-Bush.
...
Although Obama certainly articulated policies that were contrary to the status quo under President Bush, many of his supporters didn't care or weren't the slightest bit informed about the specifics of his policies. They were just swept up in his personality cult and nebulous promises of hope and change.

So it should be no surprise that Obama's series of head-spinning reversals so far have been met not with outrage from his supporters (fringe leftists excepted), but with glib rationalizations.

His newfound vacillation about Gitmo and NSA surveillance, his flip-flop on withdrawing from Iraq in 16 months, and his announced Cabinet appointments -- particularly Gates and Clinton -- are not being criticized as betrayals, but lauded as evidence that he is open-minded, adaptable, wise and, of course, presidential.

He's facing nary a shred of accountability for his anticipatory breaches of campaign promises. His flock is just happy that he will be implementing these policies -- not President Bush.

All of this says so many things about our electorate and the coming climate for the Obama presidency, but I'll just leave you with two quick ones. First, it shows that most of the hatred for Bush was not based on his policies, but on the eight-year hate-filled propaganda campaign against him.

Read the whole thing.

Limbaugh makes a very important point that should be repeated time and again as we go on: if Obama continues Bush’s policies on Iraq after denouncing them during the campaign, and his supporters do not denounce him for doing so, we have incontrovertible proof that BDS – whipped up by the media and academia – is not just a hypothesis but a fact. It also shows that Obama’s followers are not issue oriented but personality oriented. But we knew that, didn’t we?

UPDATE: 'Muted by Reality' Now that Obama has won, we could be in Iraq for a hundred years.
From Best of the web in the Wall Street Journal we read

Barack Obama was elected president a month ago and does not take office for another 6½ weeks. But his most fervent supporters already have reason to be disappointed in him. Witness the headline of a "news analysis" in today's New York Times: "Campaign Promises on Ending the War in Iraq Now Muted by Reality."

"As he moves closer to the White House," the Times reveals, "President-elect Obama is making clearer than ever that tens of thousands of American troops will be left behind in Iraq, even if he can make good on his campaign promise to pull all combat forces out within 16 months." That itself is a big "if," as the Times acknowledges:

That status-of-forces agreement remains subject to change, by mutual agreement, and Army planners acknowledge privately that they are examining projections that could see the number of Americans hovering between 30,000 and 50,000--and some say as high as 70,000--for a substantial time even beyond 2011.

We may be in Iraq for a hundred years! The Times notes that "there always was a tension, if not a bit of a contradiction, in the two parts of Mr. Obama's campaign platform to 'end the war' by withdrawing all combat troops by May 2010":

To be sure, Mr. Obama was careful to say that the drawdowns he was promising included only combat troops. But supporters who keyed on the language of ending the war might be forgiven if they thought that would mean bringing home all of the troops.

Hmm, here is what the Times editorial page said about the subject when it endorsed Obama back in October:

The unnecessary and staggeringly costly war in Iraq must be ended as quickly and responsibly as possible.
While Iraq's leaders insist on a swift drawdown of American troops and a deadline for the end of the occupation, Mr. McCain is still talking about some ill-defined "victory." As a result, he has offered no real plan for extracting American troops and limiting any further damage to Iraq and its neighbors.
Mr. Obama was an early and thoughtful opponent of the war in Iraq, and he has presented a military and diplomatic plan for withdrawing American forces. Mr. Obama also has correctly warned that until the Pentagon starts pulling troops out of Iraq, there will not be enough troops to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

It is awfully generous of the Times to forgive Obama's supporters for believing what they read in the Times.

It must be said that not everyone is surprised to find Obama's campaign promises "muted by reality." Those of us who were paying attention to reality before Nov. 4 never took Obama's pledge to flee Iraq seriously. Although it is especially repugnant to seek political gain by promising to lose a war, it is also common for presidential candidates to make unrealistic promises, especially on foreign policy, and disregard them once elected. (Remember how George W. Bush was going to stop "nation building" and Bill Clinton was going to get tough on the Red Chinese?)

Obama thus is carrying on a long tradition of making empty and irresponsible promises. While he may deliver victory in Iraq, his war against cynicism has already been lost.

This incredible back-flip by the NY Slimes and the rest of Obama's acolytes is simply staggering. It is evidence that they did not believe their own propaganda at the time they were writing it. and give us not reason to believe a word they say now.

Jonah Goldberg on China and Markets

The Foggy Crystal Ball

For more than a century, countless American intellectuals and business leaders have looked enviously at how foreign countries "planned" and "managed" their economies. Woodrow Wilson and the Progressives drooled over Otto von Bismarck, and today every self-proclaimed "global strategist" gazes at China's managed capitalism like a kid with his nose pressed against a candy-store window.

Of course, China has made enormous progress since it decided that markets are a more desirable means of improving the lot of its citizens than organized mass murder. But China's fans still have an enormous blind spot.

Ask yourself this: Why are we in this financial crisis?

Read the rest...

Did you know that Sarah Palin-haters are still trying to prove she didn't give birth to her youngest son, Trig?

Michelle Malkin: Truthers to the Left of Me, Truthers to the Right

Did you know that Sarah Palin-haters are still trying to prove she didn't give birth to her youngest son, Trig? These tinfoil hat-wearers are as obnoxious and unhinged as the 9/11 Truth cultists who insist that America engineered the jihadi attacks on itself. The presidential campaign may be over, but there's no expiration date on Palin Derangement Syndrome.

Jack Bogdanski, a law professor at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, stirred up Trig Trutherism again this week with a post on his website exposing "Sarah Palin's fake pregnancy belly." Armed with frontal photos of Palin's stomach, Bogdanski declared: "The Mar. 26 photo is the smoking gun. There really is no chance that there's a baby in there who will be born 23 days later at six pounds birth weight. And there really is no chance that the child grew so suddenly over the following two weeks. … Sarah Palin is not the mother."

We're all obstetricians now!

This nonsense began with left-wing Internet rumors that Palin was really Trig's grandmother and that she was covering up for the "real" mother -- her teenage daughter, Bristol. The conspiracy was hyped by The Atlantic's excitable resident womb-chaser Andrew Sullivan and later amplified by "respectable" journalists like CNN/Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz. As the fever swamps roiled, Alaska TV reporter Cherie Shirey stepped forward to squash the paranoia with a statement to the liberal Huffington Post ... (read the rest)

You know that Sarah Palin represents a real threat to the Left BECAUSE she is the subject of such bizarre accusations. This obsession cannot attach itself to small, insignificant people. In a back-handed way it validates Palin's stature are a major force in American politics.

Islam

Chambliss wins in landslide; Sarah Palin widely blamed

"JohnHuang2" at FreeRepublic. Since some corporate blocking programs block FR, I usually copy the full article. This one is no exception.

Chambliss wins in landslide; Sarah Palin widely blamed
Liberals are so afraid of Sarah Palin that they rolled out one of their biggest guns to campaign for Jim Martin in Georgia -- Ludacris! (Their biggest ugly gun -- Rosie O'Donnell -- was too busy boarding up the windows on her new TV gig.)

But still the Obama puppet lost to Saxby Chambliss, 57% to 43%. (Al Franken swiftly issued a statement that he's contesting the Georgia results.)

Now that Bush is on his way out, libbies need someone new to hate. The scared little darlings feel so threatened by Sarah, they're mustering their most sophisticated, analytical arguments against her, such as, "Palin is stoopid!", "Palin is dum!", "Palin is a more on!", "Sara is a stoopid dum more on hik!". For convincing "proof", these brainiacs cite their own silly caricatures of her, as "reported" on the pages of their own New York Times. (In the holiday spirit, maybe Bush will pardon liberals for committing idiocy.)

Democrats keep telling themselves that Sarah's "15 minutes" are up, that her star is fading away, which must be why they can't stop whimpering and whining about her. The "fading star" has faded into getting almost as much coverage as Obama. Campaigning in Georgia, the washed-up has-been Sarah drew huge crowds in Savannah, Augusta, Perry, etc. Six-thousand at the Gwinnett Center in Duluth. The Washington Post reacted with impotent rage, using a porno reference in their headline: Palin does Georgia.

Speaking of purported newspapers, liberals at the Anchorage Daily News even attacked Sarah merely for campaigning for Chambliss because Chambliss six years ago defeated their sainted Max Cleland, who apparently is off-limits to criticism because he blew his own limbs off in an accident in Viet Nam.

In an editorial, Matt Zencey sniffed that Chambliss won the 2002 election by "running one of the most reprehensible campaigns of modern times," which itself is one of the most reprehensible lies of modern times. Naturally, liberals keep repeating it. Chambliss ran an ad criticizing Cleland for insisting on absurd union rules for workers at the Homeland Security Department, especially the useless workers. Liberals were so livid at the ad, they threatened to go to the U.N. to pass a resolution.

The ad had pictures of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, but also the U.S. military. Given liberals' fondness for the ol' Kurds-gassing, mass-graves-filling former Butcher of Baghdad, it's anyone's guess which of the other two pictures libbies were complaining about -- bin Laden's or the U.S. military's?

Obama ran attack ads mocking McCain for his war injuries and libbies were probing the size of Bristol Palin's belly but Chambliss "ran the most reprehensible campaign of modern times" because he criticized Cleland for pimping for union thugs.

In response, buffoon Cleland went Mary Mapes on Bush. After getting his butt handed to him, Cleland spent gobs of time on TV attacking Bush for his National Guard service, apparently auditioning for a job at CBS. Cleland complained hysterically that Bush didn't go to Viet Nam to serve his country, as opposed to Bill Clinton, who fought on the battlefields of Arkansas. Service in Viet Nam consisted of "shooting cattle and dogs for fun," "razing villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan," according to the liberals' other phony war hero, John Kerry.

In an interview on MSNBC at the time, Cleland told both viewers that the lack of pay stubs proved Bush was AWOL during the 12-month period in question, May '72 to May '73. After the White House produced the pay stubs approximately 3 seconds later, Cleland demanded to know why Bush, who got an honorable discharge, left the National Guard early in '73 when the war was practically over.

The losercrats tried the same 'so-and-so is a chicken hawk!' in the Georgia Senate runoff and -- in a total shock -- it flopped again.

But notice something -- I'm not gloating! I've decided to go with a no-gloat approach, and I'm sticking to it. It's awfully tempting to gloat about the fact that polls predicted a very narrow win for Chambliss, who went on to win in a landslide. But am I going to mention how wrong the pundits were? No. That they've got egg on their faces? No. That they look stupid and out of touch? No. Nor am I going to mention how the media were all set to shout from every rooftop that 'Chambliss's narrow win (or hoped-for defeat) is a further repudiation of Bushitler', blah, blah, blah. Not a peep from me either that tonight is a preview of the 2010 midterm elections. Oh, and did you catch the glumness at CNN when the numbers started rolling in? Heh, heh, heh! Whoops, wasn't gloating -- honest!

Totally Awesome Views of the Earth

If you have not viewed the earth from space, these pictures will ethrall you with their beauty and power.

"Community Organizers" Sue Firms for Following Their Advice

From the Best of the Web:

Why'd You Listen to Us?
"An association of community-based organizations has filed a federal civil rights complaint against two of the three largest Wall Street rating firms, charging that their inflated ratings on subprime mortgage bonds disproportionately caused financial harm to African American and Latino home buyers across the country," the Los Angeles Times reports:

The complaint, filed by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, alleges that Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings enriched themselves by assigning high ratings to bonds backed by mortgages "that were designed to fail" because of "unfair payment terms and insufficient borrower income levels."
The firms "knew or should have known" that subprime loans disproportionately were marketed to minority consumers--a process known as "reverse redlining"--and that those borrowers would ultimately default and go into foreclosure at high rates, according to the coalition's complaint.

As Mickey Kaus points out (fourth item), it was groups like the plaintiffs that pressured banks to make imprudent loans to minorities in the first place. It reminds us of that joke about the definition of chutzpah: Guy murders his parents, than pleads with the bank not to foreclose on their house saying he forgot to pay the mortgage because he was so upset over being an orphan.

Whats particularly interesting about this is that it proves what conservatives have been saying about the sub-prime crisis all along: it was the lending practices that resulted from the Community Redevelopment Act and government policies that forced banks to lower lending standards that are at the root of the worldwide financial panic. The Left is admitting it was not "deregulation" but specific government "regulation" that is the cause of the mess we are in.

Who’s afraid of Gianna Jessen? Answer: Barack Obama

Gianna Jessen is the powerfully eloquent survivor of abortion who recently appeared in the ad above challenging Barack Obama’s opposition as state senator to the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act.

The Obama response is a perfect example of telling a brazen lie and getting away with it. To work it requires that the dominant media organs support you. In the case of the American media, Obama was able to get away with lying, and even using the occasion to attack McCain because the dominant media agreed with him on the issue of abortion and infanticide. The MSM support abortion for any and all reasons and simply looks away when the issue of killing infants who were meant to be aborted are born alive.

US newspaper ad sales fall a record $2B in 3Q

U.S. newspaper advertising revenue collapsed by nearly $2 billion, or 18 percent, in the third quarter, according to the Newspaper Association of America, an industry group. Even online ad revenue made a small U-turn for the second quarter in a row.

The year-on-year quarterly percentage decline is the worst since since the NAA has been keeping such records and represents an increasingly rapid deceleration that began in the third quarter of 2006, when total ad spending dropped 1.5 percent.

The figures, updated on the day before the Thanksgiving holiday, show total ad spending at newspapers fell 18.1 percent to $8.94 billion, down from $10.92 billion in the third quarter last year.

This does have me smiling as the stock market ends the worst year since the 1930. The media arm of the Obama administration is dying, but not fast enough.

Faster please.

Reid: We won't smell the tourists anymore

Here's what the top Democrat in the Senate, Harry Reid, thinks of you: you stink!

The Capitol Visitors Center, which opened this morning, may have tripled its original budget and fallen years behind schedule, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid found a silver lining for members of Congress: tourists won't offend them with their B.O. anymore.

"My staff tells me not to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway," said Reid in his remarks. "In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it's true."

But it's no longer going to be true, noted Reid, thanks to the air conditioned, indoor space.

And that's not all. "We have many bathrooms here, as you can see," Reid continued. "Souvenirs are available."

$621 million well spent.

What a lovely guy. Mr. Democrat!

P.S.: You won't find that reported in the Virginian Pilot.

Say No to Newspaper Bailouts

It was supposed to be a joke, but in Connecticut they stopped laughing. Here's a report by Michelle Malkin:

The Republican governor and the Democratic attorney general of Connecticut went on the record last week in support of government intervention for failing local newspapers. God save us from bipartisanship. Their joint statements pushing a salvage program came in response to news that The New Britain Herald, The Bristol Press and 11 weekly papers across the state face closure. About 100 jobs are at stake. This is bad news, no question. But cause for apocalyptic talk and expansive meddling by politicians? Please.

Perhaps sensing a trend? The Virginian Pilot has stopped looking for a buyer. The Pilot "reports" on itself Sale process for The Virginian-Pilot is put on hold and remains totally incurious and is not about to vigorously investigate itself.

Obligatory VA Pilot disclosure:

Pravda was a beacon of journalistic truth and technical prowess compared with the Virginian Pilot

Back to the usual Pilot spin we have Obama victimized by Bush policies at the Pentagon despite his campaign promises to slash military spending according to "reporter" Dale Eisman:

Seven years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq have so taxed American troops and equipment that the new president has little choice but to find the billions of dollars needed to maintain what's left and replace what's been lost, Finel said.

Oh, you mean THAT war?

India Security Faulted as Survivors Tell of Terror

Timeline of the Mumbai massacre

Fox News is O for 5 on getting a single question answered at an Obama press conference:

The First Amendment and freedom of the press: great concepts... so long as they are only used to protect speech progressives happen to agree with.

It's going to be a fun four years, folks. One quasi-conservative news network out of how many? And it's already being blacklisted by the future President of the United States.

Impressive. Really impressive. Thank God we have a Constitutional lawyer in charge. I feel my rights are safer already.

Sanitizing Mumbai?

Mickey Kaus made a point I made a few days ago.

Indian security, including "Ill-paid city police [who] are often armed with little more than batons," and "little information-sharing among law enforcement agencies" and all that inadequate equipment, including "old, bulky bulletproof jackets" and lack of thosehigh-power scopes and "no technology at their disposal to determine where the firepower was coming from ..." [E.A.] It reads like the budget-increase proposal submitted by the Mumbai police bureaucracy--The Indian Omnibus Anti-Terror Funding Act of 2009. Nowhere in the NYT story will you learn what American blog readers learned a day earlier when Instapundit (among others) linked to the Belfast story: Police had lots of guns, and no problem seeing who and where the terrorists were, but they wouldn't shoot at them.

I'm used to a sort of Liebling-like hierarchy of news sources, with twitterers and bloggers being fastest, but maybe less reliable, while the grand institutions of the MSM weigh in later with more comprehensive and accurate accounts. But that's not what is happening with this Mumbai story. The "fast" sources are telling you what happened. The "slow" MSM sources are using their extra time to sanitize what's happened, to build euphemistic assumptions into their very reporting of the events themselves--in this case, it just so happens, liberal assumptions:1) the idea that there is no problem that can't be solved by greater funding for government bureaucracies and more interagency taskforces** 2) the predisposition to think widely-distributed small arms and a willingness to use them can never be a good idea and 3) an antipathy to any suggestion that an aspect of foreign culture is inferior to nasty American culture. (Maybe we Americans are trigger happy. But do we think that a handful of terrorists could have gone on a similar rampage in New York City without quite quickly encountering a fair number of cops who would have shot back--let alone armed civilians who did the same)? ...

Maybe Slate should pay ME the big bucks. Here's what I wrote:
Why the Mumbai Police Did Not Shoot

There are also cultural issues against taking a life in a country where cows are still sacred and pacifism is widely admired and practiced. Hinduism is the predominant religion in India and while it does not specifically reject wars against injustice, it does have a broad streak of fatalism and pacifism.So why did the police in the Mumbai train station not open fire? All three factors were probably at work.

America has the cowboy as its icon – the John Wayne figure – India has Mahatma Gandhi who threw off the British yoke via non-violent resistance. But Gandhi also recommended pacifism in the face of the Hitler’s aggression.

How different then would I expect the response to be if the Islamofacists try a Mumbai in the US? Two of the three factors would apply here, but in somewhat different order.

I would expect terrorists to meet both civilian and police resistance. More Americans are armed than Indians and civilians have been known to defend themselves and their neighbors from armed attacks.

I would expect the police to be cautious about returning fire for fear of legal repercussions of injuring civilians, but our cultural imperatives would result in more “heroic” behavior.

Footage of Captured Mumbai Terrorist

If this Isn't Terrorism, What Is?

Media bias or stupidity? Hard to decide.

Last week in Mumbai we witnessed as clear a case of carefully planned mass terrorism as we are ever likely to see.

The seven-venue atrocity was coordinated in a highly sophisticated way. The terrorists used BlackBerrys to stay in touch with each other during their three-and-half-day rampage, outwitting the authorities by monitoring international reaction to the attacks on British, Urdu and Arabic Web sites. It was a meticulously organized operation aimed exclusively at civilian targets: two hospitals, a train station, two hotels, a leading tourist restaurant and a Jewish center.


There was nothing remotely random about it. This was no hostage standoff. The terrorists didn't want to negotiate. They wanted to murder as many Hindus, Christians, Jews, atheists and other "infidels" as they could, and in as spectacular a manner as possible. In the Jewish center, some of the female victims even appear to have been tortured before being killed.

So why are so many prominent Western media reluctant to call the perpetrators terrorists? Why did Jon Snow, one of Britain's most respected TV journalists, use the word "practitioners" when referring to the Mumbai terrorists? Was he perhaps confusing them with doctors?

Perhaps we can call extermination camps "population control center."

Apologetic Mumbai Killers: "We Didn't Get the Memo About Obama"

Iowahawk explains what went wrong:

Kasab, who is personally suspected of killing over 30 victims at point-blank range in a posh Mumbai hotel, was at a loss to explain how he and other members of the terrorist assault team remained unaware of the historic U.S. election results that many American analysts predicted would lead to an immediate and permanent outbreak of rapturous harmony and transcendent brotherly love throughout the universe.

"Jeez, I'm... I don't know, I just never got any kind of memo," said Kasab. "The ironic thing is that just the other day, when we were ritually shaving our testicles for final martyrdom, a bunch of us were talking about how great and symbolic it would be if the American infidels would only elect an handsome, articulate young African-American infidel. That way we could just lay down the suicide belts and scimitars and suitcase nukes and finally get involved in the positive aspects of community activism, like raising awareness for breast cancer research. Look, I know it's a cliche to point fingers at the IT department, but our email system really sucks. And it's hard to find a decent wi-fi hot spot in Northwest Pakistan."

It's all just a failure to communicate. "My bad."

Susan Rice To The United Nations

Tom Maguire tells us what we may not have known about Susan Rice.

Ms. Rice supported Obama's Jan 2007 plan for a rapid withdrawal from Iraq back when the National Intelligence Estimate was that it would lead to increased violence there. But otherwise, genocide is a bad thing. Puzzling. If removing US troops "ends the war" in Iraq, why not announce that the absence of US troops ended the war in Darfur?

Her motivation is her experience with Rwanda:

During her first run at the State Department, Ms. Rice was a point person in responding to Al Qaeda’s 1998 bombing of United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. But her most searing experience was visiting Rwanda after the 1994 genocide when she was still on the N.S.C. staff.

As she later described the scene, the hundreds, if not thousands, of decomposing, hacked up bodies that she saw haunted her and fueled a desire to never let it happen again.

“I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required,” she told The Atlantic Monthly in 2001. She eventually became a sharp critic of the Bush administration’s handling of the Darfur killings and last year testified before Congress on behalf of an American-led bombing campaign or naval blockade to force a recalcitrant Sudanese government to stop the slaughter.

"Going down in flames" is entirely metaphorical, of course - Ms. Rice won't be carrying a rifle or piloting a chopper, unlike real soldiers who will risk going down in actual flames in order to soothe her troubled conscience.

The heroism of women in Washington is a wonder to behold.

What If Modern Advertisers Created the Stop Sign?

http://view.break.com/542649 - Watch more free videos

Distraught British woman tells how two of her family were executed by terrorists in Mumbai massacre

From the Daily Mail online:

A British woman told today how two of her family were executed by terrorists in Mumbai.
Jaffer and Yasmin Kapasi's relatives were among 130 people to die in attacks across the city.
Mrs Kapasi's mother's cousin, Majabeen Hararwala, and her husband Salim, both in their early 50s, had ventured outside after bullets smashed the windows of their flat.

As they came out on to the street between two hotels targeted by the terrorists, they and their son Abbas, 22, were singled out by the terrorists

They ordered Abbas to stand aside and he was then forced to watch as they opened fire on his parents, killing them both.

The "religion of peace" strikes again.

From Mumbai to Minneapolis, WHY it WILL happen here

Worth a read.

Media: Up Markets Caused By Obama, Down Markets Caused By Bush

Ace of Spades notes that the media is full of ObamaPraise, even unto the stock market's actions. Market up? Obama is the cause. Market down? Bush's fault.

The Lightworker is truly a remarkable fellow. As that second Newsbusters link notes, the markets have experienced the greatest post-election sell-off in history, and a loss in the DOW of 1,100 points since his election.

But he's not responsible for any of that of course -- only the upticks get credited to him. Even when the genera trajectory is down.

Down 450 points? That's the Bush recession. Up 200 points? That's the Obama effect. Down again 600 points? Bush. Up 150? Lightworker.

Of course the main reason the markets perked at all was the Citigroup bailout. The market always goes up on news of a bailout (and then down in the next several days). The effect is not a persistent one. But there is an effect... and as far as I know it's still the Bush Administration making calls on bailouts.

The Dow just dropped another 680 points, the 4th biggest drop on record.

The Dow just dropped another 680 points, the 4th biggest drop on record.

Worst President-Elect EVER!!!

Hmmmm.... Bush recession or Obama Effect? So hard to tell, huh?

In related news, the sun will disappear from the skies tonight, smothering the world with darkness and cold. Bush's fault.

Have no fear, however: At approximately 6:42 ET (check your local weather stations), Obama shall make it rise once more. He says he'll make it rise in the east, as a special bonus to those Northeastern states that voted for him so solidly.

Palinophobic: Liz Smith shows her ignorance.

Don Surber

Liz Smith shows her ignorance.

In her column today, Smith of The New York Post shows her ignorance as well as her envy for the $7 million advance that Republican Gov. Sarah Palin can expect if she writes a book.

Wrote Smith: “What could Sarah Palin, age 44, write of a life still so young? Anything she damn well wants to write. The public, it seems, is just waiting to lap it all up like that finger-lickin’ moose stew.”

Barrack Obama was 34 when he finished, “Dreams from My Father.”

By the way, Palin has been a beauty queen (OK, runner-up), a sportscaster, a business partner with her husband, the mother of 5, a reform mayor, a reform governor and a candidate for the vice presidency.

Ed Driscoll pointed me to Suber:

She's no community organizer though--and let's face it, age 44 is "a life still so young" as Smith writes; it's not until you hit the wizened age of 47 when the Lincoln, FDR, JFK, RFK, RWR comparisons start to flow in.

What's great about the internet is that you can browse the news and views without actually ever having to wade through the crap that appears between the ads in the newspapers.

One wonders, however, who is Liz Smith and why is she paid to write?

Oh, I clicked on the link to her article and read the following:

...good journalists and fair-minded publishers should get in a old jalopy together and go to Washington to press the case that the nation's newspapers and magazines also need a bailout from Congress, specifically because they're so important to the future health and democratic well-being of all of us. As magazines and newspapers die and go under, so dies the oversight of a free nation.

I see, she's a humor writer. See, she's smiling:

Switching to WAWA

Every been to Starbucks? They’re precious. When I enter, I have the feeling I’m entering the set of “Frasier.” Remember that show? “Café Nervosa” is modeled after Starbucks and it’s the coffee shop in which the pretentious Frasier brothers hung out, ordering “half-caf cappuccino with non-fat foam and a hint of cinnamon.”

We got into the habit of going to Starbucks after church on Sunday. I could not make myself tell the girl behind the counter that I wanted a “Tall” coffee when all I wanted was a small coffee. The official Starbucks size naming scheme is a pretentious use of Italian, with their smallest cup labeled “Tall”, “Grande” being their name for medium sized cups and “Venti” for their large cups; Venti being Italian for 20 which is the size of their largest cup.

So I have always walked up to the counter and ordered a small regular coffee, feeling like a rebel as people ahead and behind me parroted the ridiculous names that Starbucks assigned to its drinks.

If I’m in Italy, I order using Italian terms, but it seemed the height of fakery to go into a coffee shop using inaccurate Italian to describe the size of my coffee order. Rather like employees at Disney’s theme parks referred to as “cast members.” It’s worse, much worse, than calling garbage men ‘sanitation workers.”

On top of that, Starbucks wears it politics on its sleeve. Unwilling to let its coffee speak for itself, every cup and every bag comes with a message that is impeccably, ineffably, politically correct. They have my e-mail address and just advised me that if I bought their coffee 5 cents from every order would go to AIDS research and/or the Global Fund. It’s the sort of “big picture” disembodied charity that Liberals love; one that never seems to help the poor in my town or neighborhood. It’s always the starving in Africa or Asia, thousands of miles away, never the people who call the local churches because they can’t afford to pay their electric bills. Starbucks gives to Conservation International, the African Wildlife Foundation, Save the Children (helping Mayan kids), and they are very much into reversing climate change (good luck on that).

Mind you, I’m sure the AIDS sufferers may benefit, as will the tree huggers, Africa’s elephants and Mayan children. About making the earth climate stand still, I have my doubts. But they strike me as the same as paying your taxes and saying that you have just helped the poor. It’s the charity of Joe Biden: corporate, disembodied, impersonal and oh-so Liberal.

The company I have most admired for its business philosophy is Chick-Fil-A, which does for its employees what no other restaurant chain is willing to do: close on Sunday and give its employees the day off. Now THAT’s corporate responsibility. And I love their ads with the cows.

On a recent trip from our home in Virginia to New Jersey we stopped for gas and a cup of coffee at a Wawa. Their coffee is every bit as good as Starbucks with a greater selection at half the price. And if you want one of those whipped concoctions for which Starbucks charges $3-4 dollars, the price is still just a little over a dollar with no long lines, pretentious names or people pondering whether to have half-caf, half skim low fat mocha with whipped cream on top. As my wife and I walked in, she laughed and said that we’re doing our part to cut expenses as the market tanks and household finances get tight. What better way to economize than to give Starbucks the boot?