That is all.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Mmmmm...Babybel!!!
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 5:27 PM 0 backtalks
File Under: stuff and nonsense
“Spider-Man Told Me To Vote!”
Best Line Candidate? "I can register to vote while pooping!"
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 4:34 PM 0 backtalks
Obama Bars Reporters From Papers That Don't Worship Him Properly.
How important is it for Obama to maintain his human shield of Treason Media reporters? He's tossed reporters from papers that endorsed McCain off his airplane:
The Obama campaign has decided to heave out three newspapers from its plane for the final days of its blitz across battleground states -- and all three endorsed Sen. John McCain for president!Holy cow! Other than the conservative blogosphere - especially Stanley Kurtz's in-depth (and probably in vain) reporting - and Fox News, he has gotten little actual scrutiny compared to say Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber, but he's being actively protected by outfits like the LA Times (which is hiding the video from that PLO guy's party) and the NY Times, who are being shown as liars by their own archives:
The NY POST, WASHINGTON TIMES and DALLAS MORNING NEWS have all been told to move out by Sunday to make room for network bigwigs -- and possibly for the inclusion of reporters from two black magazines, ESSENCE and JET, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
Despite pleas from top editors of the three newspapers that have covered the campaign for months at extraordinary cost, the Obama campaign says their reporters -- and possibly others -- will have to vacate their coveted seats so more power players can document the final days of Sen. Barack Obama's historic campaign to become the first black American president.
Some told the DRUDGE REPORT that the reporters are being ousted to bring on documentary film-makers to record the final days; others expect to see on board more sympathetic members of the media, including the NY TIMES' Maureen Dowd, who once complained that she was barred from McCain's Straight Talk Express airplane.
From today's circle-the-wagons smooch:Joseph Goebbels would be so proud of Barry. When McCain is mean to the press, they bash him for it. Will those still on the plane wonder what's going on or are they so enamored with The One that as long as they get to bask in the glorious aura of Dear Leader they'll go along with the program? (Duh.)[Khalidi] taught at universities in Lebanon until the mid-’80s, and some critics accuse him of having been a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Mr. Khalidi has denied working for the group, and says he was consulted as an expert by reporters seeking to understand it.Tom Friedman report for the New York Times, June 9, 1982:The Israelis are out to "crush the P.L.O.," said Rashid Khalidi, a director of the Palestinian press agency, Wafa. He said they hope that by doing so, they will undermine the international recognition the P.L.O. has gained and eliminate its demands for an independent Palestinian state as a rallying point for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 12:07 PM 0 backtalks
Four out of Five Pimps Register Democratic!
Based on the prostitutes' voter registration cards, they're destined to become Obama girls in November. That's because 78 percent of them registered as Democrats. Countywide, Dems make up only about 62 percent of voters, according to the Division of Elections.Any questions now as to why the Dems want to allow convicted felons to vote?
The Illinois senator also has the advantage with local "johns" -- 72 percent go Democratic. And convicted pimps: Four out of every five register Democratic. And for the most special of special interest groups -- male transvestite hookers -- they're batting a thousand for Dems, albeit in drag.
"For years and years we had politicians paying too much attention to hookers, so it's great to finally see hookers paying attention to politics," said Dan Fee, a top Philadelphia Democratic consultant who helped Obama's Pennsylvania primary campaign.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 2:25 AM 0 backtalks
File Under: politics, weird news
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Even If You Vote For Obama, You're Still A Racist!
I'd like to think Obama and his disciples constant playing of the race card would backfire as people resent being tarred as racist because they don't want to vote for a redistributionist fascist, but people filled with White Guilt may outnumber them. It's ironic that amongst that latter group, their guilty support of the Obamessiah may still not gain the absolution for their racism they so crave because an advisor to The One says that because Obama is bi-racial, he isn't truly black enough to qualify as a vote for a black man.
No, I'm not kidding. Yes, they are that crazy. This guy is being talked up as the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division during an Obama Regime.
/me goes to look into Australia immigration.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 12:27 PM 0 backtalks
Why Moving To Australia Might Not Be Too Bad.
Just as Jews had to flee post-Wiemar Germany, people not down with the fascist tyranny of an Obama Regime are going to need to find someplace else to live. Canada would be an option, but as Mark Steyn's persecution has shown, it's rapidly following the terminal England into the darkness of Islamofascism under the rubric of "diversity" and it is even worse than what America will become as far as speech freedoms go. With those two big English-speaking countries out, that leaves Australia to investigate as a new home.
One selling point is Natalie Tran of YouTube fame. She's cute, Asian, has the Ozzie accent and does funny self-deprecating videos like this one:
She was recently ranked #7 on G4's Women of the Web countdown (jump to :56 to see her bit) and her video mocking this was a hoot, too.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 12:04 PM 0 backtalks
File Under: babes, humor, stuff and nonsense, video
"The least qualified candidate in American history — at one of the most dangerous points in history."
Looking around at the vacant eyes of clueless people actually admitting that they stood and applauded The One's infomercial last night, I feel like I've taken crazy pills. These people are so ignorant that they don't even know that every vote for Obama is a bullet in the head of the security of the world. Thomas Sowell's sage column would pass right in one ear and out the other on these dolts.
Some elections are routine, some are important, and some are historic. If Senator John McCain wins this election, it will probably go down in history as routine. But if Senator Barack Obama wins, it is more likely to be historic — and catastrophic.I've given up trying to discuss the issues with these people because there is no room for facts and truth in their worlds. Their lives, souls, hearts and minds (such as they are) are devoted to Dear Leader and only when the jackboot of totalitarian fascism crushes their throats will they begin to understand just how gullible they were.
Once the election is over, the glittering generalities of rhetoric and style will mean nothing. Everything will depend on performance in facing huge challenges, domestic and foreign.
Performance is where Barack Obama has nothing to show for his political career, either in Illinois or in Washington.
Policies that he proposes under the banner of “change” are almost all policies that have been tried repeatedly in other countries — and failed repeatedly in other countries.
[snip]
Higher taxes to “spread the wealth around,” as Obama puts it? The idea of redistributing wealth has turned into the reality of redistributing poverty, in countries where wealth has fled and the production of new wealth has been stifled by a lack of incentives.
Economic disasters, however, may pale by comparison with the catastrophe of Iran with nuclear weapons. Glib rhetoric about Iran being “a small country,” as Obama called it, will be a bitter irony for Americans who will have to live in the shadow of a nuclear threat that cannot be deterred, as that of the Soviet Union could be, by the threat of a nuclear counter-attack.
Suicidal fanatics cannot be deterred. If they are willing to die and we are not, then we are at their mercy — and they have no mercy. Moreover, once they get nuclear weapons, that is a situation which cannot be reversed, either in this generation or in generations to come.
Is this the legacy we wish to leave our children and grandchildren, by voting on the basis of style and symbolism, rather than substance?
If Barack Obama thinks that such a catastrophe can be avoided by sitting down and talking with the leaders of Iran, then he is repeating a fallacy that helped bring on World War II.
In a nuclear age, one country does not have to send troops to occupy another country in order to conquer it. Osama bin Laden...threatened retaliation against places in the United States that voted for George W. Bush. But he didn’t have nuclear weapons to back up that threat — yet.
America has never been a conquered country, so it may be very hard for most Americans even to conceive what that can mean. After France was conquered in 1940, it was reduced to turning over some of its own innocent citizens to the Nazis to kill, just because those citizens were Jewish.
Do you think our leaders wouldn’t do that? Not even if the alternative was to see New York and Los Angeles go up in mushroom clouds? If I were Jewish, I wouldn’t bet my life on that.
What the Middle East fanatics want is not just our resources or even our lives, but our humiliation first, in whatever sadistic ways they can think of. Their lust for humiliation has already been repeatedly demonstrated in their videotaped beheadings that find such an eager market in the Middle East.
None of this can be prevented by glib talk, but only by character, courage and decisive actions — none of which Barack Obama has ever demonstrated.
And, yes, I will be saying I told them so. I will laugh at their misery because they will have been the ones who brought it down on their empty heads. This assumes, naturally, that I haven't been already interred in the Gulag by that time.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 10:47 AM 0 backtalks
File Under: commentary, obama
Yawn...
I'm sleepy. A couple nights staying up playing Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 makes Dirk a tired boy.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 10:15 AM 2 backtalks
File Under: stuff and nonsense
Defining Recession Down.
The economy contracted a tiny .3% in the last quarter and the media is calling it proof that we're in a recession. Traditionally, a recession was marked by two consecutive quarters of economic decline, but in the Newthink times we live in, the need to elect fascists to power requires the R-word to be slung around even when the economy was still growing. Of course, if Obama is elected Fuhrer, we'll be skidding rapidly past the R-word to the D-word.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 10:00 AM 3 backtalks
File Under: economics
Charlie Gibson Challenges Obama; The One Dodges FTW!
Charlie Gibson must be trying to reclaim a bit of his journalistic credibility after his sneering ambush of Moose-Slayer because he attempted to ask the Fuhrer-in-waiting about his broken promises about contributions. Notice how Obama never actually answers the questions.
GIBSON: You're going to have a half an hour broadcast tonight on a number of the networks. And the expense is not inconsiderable to buy that much time.Unpacking this bag of manure in reverse order:
OBAMA: Right.
GIBSON: Aren't you able to buy it only because you broke a promise on campaign financing?
OBAMA: Well, look, there is no doubt that the amount of money that we've raised in this campaign has been extraordinary and surprised me as much as anybody — maybe more than anybody. What I would simply point to is that the way we have raised this money has been by expanding the pool of small donors in this country in an unprecedented way.
GIBSON: But you haven't released their names.
OBAMA: We've got...
GIBSON: We don't know who they are.
OBAMA: Well, look, the — a whole bunch of them were out here today. I mean, you're looking the people who are giving 5, 10, $25. Ordinary folks who have gotten impassioned about this campaign in a way that is unprecedented. And that, really, is...
GIBSON: Shouldn't we know the names of that list?
OBAMA: Look, you know, 3.1 million donors would be a pretty hard thing for us to be able to process. And we have done everything that's been asked of us under the FEC guidelines. These are small donors. They're ordinary folks. And the idea behind all campaign finance reform is to make sure that the public official is not bought and sold; that that public official is accountable to the public, that they are not subject to undue influence by big special interests in Washington and lobbyists.
And we don't take lobbyists' money. We don't take money from PACs. And there's no industry, there's no group out there that I owe favors to as a consequence of this campaign. In fact, I would argue that probably — should I be successful, I may come into the White House with fewer strings attached to me than just about any presidential candidate in history. I wasn't even supported by the establishment in the Democratic Party when I started this race.
So I don't have a lot of — a lot of chits out there that are going to be collected.
1. He owes the George Soros/Can'tMoveOn.Argh/anti-war/race hustling/fascist-socialist groups and the Treason Media for their support and it's amusing that he thinks we're so gullible as to believe he's not beholden to all those people, especially Soros.
B. It's too hard to report 3.1 million names? Really? You can't just have someone pull the list of names from the database? Federal law doesn't require donations under $200 to be reported and thru this loophole Obama has created a massive criminal operation to launder illegal contributions through. The RNC has a website where you can search for donations under $200; Obama insists on hiding the sources of his money. As this American living in South Africa demonstrates, it is possible to contribute from people and places you shouldn't be able to. I know Obama is running for Emperor of the World, but under the laws of this tiny country, they world can't legally fund his propaganda machine.
3. He totally dodges the fact that he broke his promise to take public financing. The irony of this is that the Left has always been yammering for public financing of elections - allegedly to "get the money out of politics" - but when they find a cult leader who can fleece the flock and bamboozle a country into voting away their rights and freedoms, then, well, it's ka-CHING! time, innit? Hypocrisy is the coin of the liberal realm.
==============
INSTA-UPDATE: Heh. Just after posting this, I see Mark Steyn poo-poo'ed the idea that Gibson was anywhere near hard on Barry.
That's not a "hit", that's a Swedish massage by Princess Fluffy Bunny. That's Charlie Gibson appearing to cover himself while letting Obama get away with mush. A (Palin-style?) hit would have taken the conversation on a quite different tack:OBAMA: What I would simply point to is that the way we have raised this money has been by expanding the pool of small donors in this country in an unprecedented way.
INFORMED GIBSON QUESTION: What's unprecedented is that, unlike John McCain, your website disabled the standard credit-card security system used by almost all reputable online retailers. Why did you do that? And, given that of the record $150 million you raised in September two-thirds was raised under this systemically corrupted Internet operation, isn't it likely that a significant proportion of your half-hour infomercial was paid for by fraudulent donors? And, as to "expanding the pool of small donors in this country", what about the way you've expanded the pool of donors in other countries who've been able to make illegal contributions to your campaign because you switched off the AVS security checks?
OBAMA: I mean, you're looking the people who are giving 5, 10, $25. Ordinary folks who have gotten impassioned about this campaign in a way that is unprecedented. And that, really, is...
INFORMED GIBSON QUESTION: Also a lot of extraordinary folks have gotten impassioned about your campaign. You've received contributions from, among others, a Mr Saddam Hussein, Mr A Hitler and Mr K Marx? How do you propose to return those contributions given that all three "donors" are deceased?
OBAMA: Look, you know, 3.1 million donors would be a pretty hard thing for us to be able to process...
INFORMED GIBSON QUESTION: Why? I mean, you've had no problem "processing" the money, have you? And, if you hadn't monkeyed with the standard online retail data system, all you have to do is press a button and 3.1 million names and addresses pop right up. Ask Amazon. So why did you switch it off? And, if you yourself did not make that decision, who did?
The Senator terminates the interview to instruct an aide to have state and local officials look into this guy Gibson's child-support payments, tax liens, etc. Later, it emerges that Charlie the Anchor is not even a state-licensed interviewer.
Steyn = teh aW3s0m3Z!1!!!
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 9:35 AM 0 backtalks
Grace Jones: Ignorant On Top of Being Irrelevant
Starving for attention since no one has cared about her since long back in the last century, cultural footnote Grace Jones did the surest thing to get some ink these days: bashed Sarah Palin in a display of shocking courage against certain death for her heresy. (Yes, I'm being really, really sarcastic.)
"I can't stand Sarah Palin. I bet a woman like that has no sense of humour."I guess Grace was busy visually inspecting her colon and thus missed Moose-Slayer's appearance on "SNL" a few weeks back.
Pity the poor diva, folks, she's just following the herd.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 1:14 AM 0 backtalks
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Does Obama Know The Presidency is a 24/7 Job or Will He Show Up Late?
Jeez, I knew The One barely served six months as a Senator before striking out to become Emperor of the World, but this montage of his wandering into Senate hearings late more often than I have makes me wonder if he'll start his reign sometime in March or April next year.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 7:14 PM 0 backtalks
File Under: obama
Why a Speechwriter For Obama, Edwards, and Clinton is Voting For McCain.
How vile, extreme and radical have the fascist Democrats gotten? So bad that Wendy Button, a speechwriter for Obama, Edwards, and Clinton, has kissed her party goodbye and will vote for McCain:
Since I started writing speeches more than ten years ago, I have always believed in the Democratic Party. Not anymore. Not after the election of 2008. This transformation has been swift and complete and since I’m a woman writing in the election of 2008, “very emotional.”Wendy must surely realize that she has marked herself for destruction, which is why her brave testimonial should be heard by those "inertia Democrats" - those who vote Dem just because that's what they've always done, unaware of what the modern fascist-controlled Dem party has become - who going to pull the lever for Barry O'Bama just because he's the opposite of party of Dubya and the Stupids.
See campaigns get complicated when you’ve written for so many Democrats. Not only had I written for Senator Edwards, but I had also been Senator Hillary Clinton’s speechwriter. Senator Joe Biden is a “good looking” man and his care after my father almost died from an aneurysm is the kind of kindness you never forget. When I saw Edwards at a traffic light in D.C. about a year after our meeting, he asked for help and I did and it was an honor to help him with his concession speech. And when the primary ended, it was a privilege to help Michelle Obama with a stump speech, be considered as a speechwriter for the V.P. nominee again, and send friends in Chicago ideas until the financial crisis hit. This is what the Democratic Party has been for me; it’s family. Now, it doesn’t even feel like a distant cousin...[T]hat faith was dashed when I saw that someone had raided the Caligula set and planted the old columns at Invesco Field.
The final straw came the other week when Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (a.k.a Joe the Plumber) asked a question about higher taxes for small businesses. Instead of celebrating his aspirations, they were mocked. He wasn’t “a real plumber,” and “They’re fighting for Joe the Hedge-Fund manager,” and the patronizing, “I’ve got nothing but love for Joe the Plumber.”
Having worked in politics, I know that absolutely none of this is on the level. This back and forth is posturing, a charade, and a political game. These lines are what I refer to as “hooker lines”—a sure thing to get applause and the press to scribble as if they’re reporting meaningful news.
As the nation slouches toward disaster, the level of political discourse is unworthy of this moment in history. We have Republicans raising Ayers and Democrats fostering ageism with “erratic” and jokes about Depends. Sexism. Racism. Ageism and maybe some Socialism have all made their ugly cameos in election 2008. It’s not inspiring. Perhaps this is why I found the initial mocking of Joe so offensive and I realized an old line applied: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me.”
The party I believed in wouldn’t look down on working people under any circumstance. And Joe the Plumber is right. This is the absolutely worst time to raise taxes on anyone: the rich, the middle class, the poor, small businesses and corporations.
Our economy is in the tank for many complicated reasons, especially because people don’t have enough money. So let them keep it. Let businesses keep it so they can create jobs and stay here and weather this storm. And yet, the Democratic ideology remains the same. Our approach to problems—big government solutions paid for by taxing the rich and big and smaller companies—is just as tired and out of date as trickle down economics. How about a novel approach that simply finds a sane way to stop the bleeding?
That’s not exactly the philosophy of a Democrat. Not only has this party belittled working people in this campaign from Joe the Plumber to the bitter comments, it has also been part of tearing down two female candidates....Really, front-page news is how the Republican National Committee paid for Governor Sarah Palin’s wardrobe? Where’s the op-ed about how Obama tucks in his shirt when he plays basketball or how Senator Biden buttons the top button on his golf shirt?
Governor Palin and I don’t agree on a lot of things, mostly social issues. But I have grown to appreciate the Governor. I was one of those initial skeptics and would laugh at the pictures. Not anymore. When someone takes on a corrupt political machine and a sitting governor, that is not done by someone with a low I.Q. or a moral core made of tissue paper. When someone fights her way to get scholarships and work her way through college even in a jagged line, that shows determination and humility you can’t learn from reading Reinhold Niebuhr. When a mother brings her son with special needs onto the national stage with love, honesty, and pride, that gives hope to families like mine as my older brother lives with a mental disability. And when someone can sit on a stage during the Sarah Palin rap on Saturday Night Live, put her hands in the air and watch someone in a moose costume get shot—that’s a sign of both humor and humanity.
Has she made mistakes? Of course, she’s human too. But the attention paid to her mistakes has been unprecedented compared to Senator Obama’s “57 states” remarks or Senator Biden using a version of the Samuel Johnson quote, “There’s nothing like a hanging in the morning to focus a man’s thoughts.”
I was dead wrong about the surge and thought it would be a disaster. Senator John McCain led when many of us were ready to quit. Yet we march on as if nothing has changed, wedded to an old plan, and that too is a long way from the Democratic Party.
I can no longer justify what this party has done and can’t dismiss the treatment of women and working people as just part of the new kind of politics. It’s wrong and someone has to say that. And also say that the Democratic Party’s talking points—that Senator John McCain is just four more years of the same and that he’s President Bush—are now just hooker lines that fit a very effective and perhaps wave-winning political argument…doesn’t mean they’re true. After all, he is the only one who’s worked in a bipartisan way on big challenges.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 5:51 PM 2 backtalks
File Under: commentary, politics
Politico Pwns Their Own Lying Asses While Denying Their Bias!
It wasn't big enough to warrant a CFE post here, but when the Politico wasted three pages of pixels denying that they had any pro-Obama biases - any impression of that was due to a lame McCain campaign according to them - but I tossed in a comment: Headline: POLITICO CHECKS ITSELF FOR BIAS; FINDS NONE. Someone went a little further, as Beldar reported:
I believe the correct term for such a brazen attempt to misreport reality is "chutzpah!"The Politico today:
It is not our impression that many reporters are rooting for Obama personally. To the contrary, most colleagues on the trail we’ve spoken with seem to find him a distant and undefined figure.
The Politico, April 21, 2008:
The difference seems clear: Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon.
(Harris only here: As one who has assigned journalists to cover Obama at both Politico and The Washington Post, I have witnessed the phenomenon several times. Some reporters come back and need to go through detox, to cure their swooning over Obama’s political skill. Even VandeHei seemed to have been bitten by the bug after the Iowa caucus.)
(VandeHei only here: There is no doubt reporters are smitten with Obama’s speeches and promises to change politics. I find his speeches, when he’s on, pretty electric myself. It certainly helps his cause that reporters also seem very tired of the Clintons and their paint-by-polls approach to governing.)
All this is hardly the end of the world. Clinton is not behind principally because of media bias; Obama is not ahead principally because of media favoritism. McCain won the GOP nomination mainly through good luck and the infirmities of his opposition. But the fact that lots of reporters personally like the guy — and a few seem to have an open crush — did not hurt.
For a mostly online publication, these guys have not really caught onto that whole “the Internet will fact-check your ass” thing.
=================
ADD-ON: I don't want to make a full-blown CFE about this either, but in response to a vacuous article praising Obama's Internet
Politico has become indistinguishable from HuffPoo/DailyKos/MSNBC: factually devoid "articles" up top followed by hundreds of copypasta'ed talking points echoing the usual liberal memes - i.e. Palin sucks, McCain sucks, Obama is the Glorious Dear Leader, blah-blah-woof-woof.Politico really used to be an interesting and varied outfit without glaring biases. No longer. I'd pull them off the blog roll if I'd ever bothered to put them on, but I didn't; so there!
The sheer audacity to praise Obama's Internet fundraising operation which has been revealed to be a means for untraceable illegal and foreign contributions to pour in to circumvent the laws shows the Goebbels-like sycophants the Politico has become to Fuhrer Obama. Just as the L.A. Times has sacrificed the last scraps of credibility to cover up the video tape of Obama toasting a Jew-bashing Palestinian terrorist, Politico no longer cares who knows it's biased as long as they get to be stenographers to the power elites of the coming Obama Reich. Pathetic.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 10:50 AM 0 backtalks
File Under: media
Busiest. Month. Ever.
Even though I have a pile of un-blogged items - like a comprehensive post about the jihad Obama's Brownshirts have conducted against Joe the Plumber; despite many references to the situation elsewhere - I see that the post below this one was the 80th of the month, surpassing my previous one-month tally of 79 in August 2005. With a couple days to go, the bar is going to be set quite high, methinks.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 2:06 AM 2 backtalks
File Under: stuff and nonsense
VDH On Obama's "Messianic Style"; Power Line On His Gotti Style.
Historian Victor Davis Hanson totes up the increasingly creepy (and worrisome) accretion of convenient occurences that have paved The One's path to power:
Individually, the extra-electoral efforts are irrelevant. But in the aggregate, they start to add up. In 1996 Obama goes to court, challenges the petition signatures of mostly African-American voters, and gets all his rivals eliminated from the ballot and so de facto runs unopposed.Power Line compares Obama to John Gotti as they update on Obama's Ohio governmental Brownshirts who have attempted to smear and destroy Joe the Plumber for daring to ask a simple question that the Dear Leader botched the answer.
In 2004 sealed divorce records were strangely released destroying the chances of his chief Democratic rival Blair Hull; then in the general, lightning again struck, and Republican front-runner Jack Ryan's sealed divorce records were likewise mysteriously released—and he too crashed, in effect, leaving Obama without a serious primary or general election rival.
In this campaign, Acorn galvanizes to register voters and almost immediately runs into serial charges of voter registration fraud. Now an Obama ad runs asking Americans simply to take the day off to help get out the Obama vote: apparently American businesses, universities, and the government all are supposed to sacrifice hundreds of millions of dollars in lost collective work days to subsidize the Obama campaign in order "to change history"?
When one marries all that with the swarming of radio stations when someone like Stanley Kurtz goes on, the threats to go to court to stop ads, or the blacklisting of TV stations who dared to conduct tough interviews, the same old pattern reappears of by any means necessary. And in turn the explanation for all that?
The messianic style—the cosmic tug to "change history", or stop the seas from rising or the planet from heating, juxtaposed with the creepy faux-Greek columns, Michelle's "deign to enter" politics snippet, the fainting at rallies, the Victory Column mass address, the vero possumus presidential seal, and the 'we are the change we've been waiting for' mantra—reflects the omnipresent narcissism: the exalted ends of electing a prophet always justify the often crude and all too mortal means.
If this is considered 'right', I'd rather be wrong with McCain.
Barack Obama reminds me a bit of John Gotti. Obama is no murderer, of course, but here is the analogy: John Gotti (before his incarceration) was a well-dressed, genial, smooth-talking guy. Not a visible threat in sight. But if you crossed him, his thugs were very quickly at your door.They also claim to be the party of freedom and it's true; we are all free to worship the Obamessiah.
Likewise with Barack Obama. He is always at pains to seem high-minded, but his tactics are anything but. If you cross him, his goons, too, are sure to retaliate, albeit in less deadly fashion than Gotti's.
The case of Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher is an object lesson in how Obama and his supporters try to destroy anyone who even inadvertently gets in their way. Once Wurzelbacher was thrust into the limelight after Obama approached him in his driveway, Democrats swung into action to try to discredit the plumber by ransacking records on file with the State of Ohio. These efforts--the ones that have come to light so far--are recounted in the Columbus Dispatch:Authorities in Toledo and Cleveland confirmed today that workers accessed Wurzelbacher's driving record and vehicle information through state computer systems in checks uncovered by The Dispatch. ...Altogether, the Dispatch identifies four separate violations of Wurzelbacher's privacy by Democrats in Ohio's state bureaucracy who improperly accessed his records, hoping to find information helpful to the Obama campaign. This is the worst one:
The Toledo Police Department announced that a records clerk improperly pulled Wurzelbacher's information on behalf of a reporter for a Toledo television station the day after the Oct. 15 presidential debate. ...Inspector General Thomas P. Charles also is investigating why the director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services approved a check on Wurzelbacher through the state's child-support computer system.Is that disgusting, or what? They actually held a "team meeting" to decide to spy on Wurzelbacher on Obama's behalf. As it happens, Wurzelbacher doesn't pay child support, but they apparently thought there was no harm in checking. The Director of the Department of Job and Family Services denies that she was trying to help Obama:
Director Helen Jones-Kelley said that after a "team meeting," she OK'd the check because the department often runs inquiries to check for unpaid child support on people thrust into "the public spotlight."Jones-Kelley said there were no political motivations behind the check. The Democratic appointee has contributed the maximum $2,300 to the Obama campaign this year, according to Federal Election Commission records.Democrats often purport to be concerned about privacy rights, but those claims are about as credible as their claim to be tax-cutters.
Or else.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 1:36 AM 4 backtalks
File Under: obama
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
New Sig Time!
Combining my two favorite things: kittehs and annoyance!
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 11:58 PM 0 backtalks
File Under: stuff and nonsense
Obama Is Already Pissing Off the Rest of the World!
Seen at Power Line:
French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly views Barack Obama's position on Iran as as "utterly immature" and comprised of "formulations empty of all content." Sarkozy is also said to have remarked that it would be "arrogant" for Obama, if he is elected president, to ignore allies like France and open a direct dialogue with Iran without preconditions.The Messiah has his duped disciples believing that America will be less-hated with his beneficent awesomeness upon the throne, but with this and his threats to invade Pakistan - along with his and the Dems anti-trade policies - he is already making things much worse for the country than Dubya did, as wrongly maligned as his tenure was.As Emanuele Ottolenghi notes, Sarkozy's use of the term "arrogant" is interesting because Obama's (utterly immature) critique of U.S. foreign policy relies heavily on the notion that we have been "arrogant" in our dealings with the rest of the world. In fact, the reason Obama has advanced for engaging in talks with a series of anti-American dictatorships, not just Iran, is the need to overcome the perception that we are "arrogant."
"Arrogance" may be a useful concept for teenagers when they are explaining why they don't like certain classmates. The real lesson of Sarkozy's reported comments is how foolish it is to permit this concept to play a serious role in making foreign policy decisions.
Going it alone, bullying allies - aren't these the flaws of Dubya's foreign policy The One was supposed to fix?
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 3:53 PM 1 backtalks
Why Should We Accept Colin Powell's Character Judgement On Anything?
Alaskan scumbag and Senator Ted "the Internet is a series of tubes" Stevens was convicted of seven counts of public corruption yesterday and the news reports were gleeful that if he wasn't re-elected (as he shouldn't - he should've resigned ages ago) it could lead to their coveted filibuster-proof Democrat-controlled Senate.
What was surprising, though, was the mention that Colin Powell had testified as a character witness during the trial. Considering he was just touting the awesomeness of the Obamessiah last week and his learned wisdom was supposed to assuage any fears people may have that the Fuhrer-in-waiting would be bad for the country (and world), it's odd to see that he gave the same thumbs-up to a crook who a dozen civilians convicted anyway because he was a schnook.
Red State also noticed and had a similar reaction:
Colin Powell made news last week with his endorsement of Barack Obama for President. The idea, I guess, is that Colin Powell is a great and objective judge of character and we should all listen to him when he says that Obama will do a great job as President. There's no evidence that he's ever done anything that would constitute evidence that he will be a competent chief executive for the country and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, you understand, this is one of those Powell-looked-into-his-soul-and-so-please-trust-his-judgment things.No kidding.WASHINGTON - One of the nation's best-known retired Army generals, Colin Powell, described Sen. Ted Stevens in court today as a "trusted individual" and a man with a "sterling" reputation."He was someone whose word you could rely on," said Powell, secretary of state in President Bush's first term, who self-deprecatingly described himself as someone who retired as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then "dabbled a bit in diplomacy."
The former secretary of state said he had known Stevens for 25 years, mostly in the senator's role as the top defense appropriator on a Senate defense appropriations committee. In Stevens, "I had a guy who would tell me when I was off base, he would tell me when I had no clothes on, figuratively, that is, and would tell me when I was right and go for it," Powell said. "He's a guy who, as we said in the infantry, we would take on a long patrol."
When asked outside of the courtroom after his testimony whether Stevens asked him personally to testify to his character, Powell said he couldn't recall if it was the senator or one of his lawyers. But he didn't think twice about testifying, Powell said.
"Not at all," he said, snapping his fingers to signify it was a snap decision.
That's right, folks, Obama supporter Colin Powell vouched for the character for truthfulness of a man, less than three weeks before he was convicted of multiple counts of being a criminal liar.
To me, nothing says "trustworthy" and "reliable" like being convicted of seven felony counts of making false statements. It's very strange to me: it appears that 12 jurors heard Colin Powell's testimony about his judgment of Ted Stevens's character and unanimously disregarded it and convicted the guy about whom Powell was testifying of repeatedly lying. In light of this, one wonders why Powell's judgment about Obama's character is worth any of the air time it has been given.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 11:18 AM 0 backtalks
Ohio Government Brownshirts For Obama Accessed Joe the Plumber's Records.
I know I have a lot of liberal readers, so here's another Intellectual Honesty Test for you guys to fail: What would you say if John McCain's supporters looked into the personal governmental records of Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric in retaliation for their ambushes of Sarah Palin? You'd be upset, right? "Invasion of privacy!!!" and blah-blah-woof-woof, right?
Then what say you hypocrites about Ohio's Head of Job and Family Services Approv[ing] a Child-Support Search on Joe Wurzelbacher Immediately After Third Debate? She claims it's something they routinely do whenever someone catches the public spotlight, but if a McCain supporter, who'd given the maximum amount of $2300, pulled these sorts of shenanigans you'd be screeching loud enough to shatter glass in China. Why is it OK to tear apart a private citizen's life for no reason other than he ASKED A QUESTION which your candidate botched the answer?
Press your brown shirts and polish your jackboots to a high shine, guys, cuz you're planning to be very, very busy serving your Fuhrer, aren't you?
=========
UPDATE: A Toledo Police clerk has been charged with snooping as well. Boy, between Tony Rezko and all his Brownshirts, The One will be spending his first 100 days pardoning his criminal cronies.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 10:41 AM 1 backtalks
File Under: obama
Monday, October 27, 2008
Dirk's Dish du Jour: Lizzy Caplan
Jeez, after all the depressing Obama items, we need some brighter items, so here's Lizzy Caplan, whose topless hippie chick character on "True Blood" has made that schlockfest a little more bearable. I'm sure she'll be gone shortly, but for now, here is a SFW shot:
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 6:08 PM 0 backtalks
File Under: babes, stuff and nonsense
The Obama Temptation
Mark R. Levin posted this very cogent and sobering commentary Saturday night about how he can't believe how many people, supposedly intelligent and nominally conservative, are supporting what is clearly the most radical and fascist candidate to ever run as a major party candidate.
I've been thinking this for a while so I might as well air it here. I honestly never thought we'd see such a thing in our country - not yet anyway - but I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places. I can't help but observe that even some conservatives are caught in the moment as their attempts at explaining their support for Barack Obama are unpersuasive and even illogical. And the pull appears to be rather strong. Ken Adelman, Doug Kmiec, and others, reach for the usual platitudes in explaining themselves but are utterly incoherent. Even non-conservatives with significant public policy and real world experiences, such as Colin Powell and Charles Fried, find Obama alluring but can't explain themselves in an intelligent way.The Treason Media has worked diligently to install this Marxist as our national Fuhrer and fully anticipate receiving the beneficence of the Messiah in return for their loyal service as stenographers to the fascist elites and mythologizers of The One.
There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama's name on it, which adorns everything from Obama's plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama's name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff.
Even the media are drawn to the allure that is Obama. Yes, the media are liberal. Even so, it is obvious that this election is different. The media are open and brazen in their attempts to influence the outcome of this election. I've never seen anything like it. Virtually all evidence of Obama's past influences and radicalism — from Jeremiah Wright to William Ayers — have been raised by non-traditional news sources. The media's role has been to ignore it as long as possible, then mention it if they must, and finally dismiss it and those who raise it in the first place. It's as if the media use the Obama campaign's talking points — its preposterous assertions that Obama didn't hear Wright from the pulpit railing about black liberation, whites, Jews, etc., that Obama had no idea Ayers was a domestic terrorist despite their close political, social, and working relationship, etc. — to protect Obama from legitimate and routine scrutiny. And because journalists have also become commentators, it is hard to miss their almost uniform admiration for Obama and excitement about an Obama presidency. So in the tank are the media for Obama that for months we've read news stories and opinion pieces insisting that if Obama is not elected president it will be due to white racism. And, of course, while experience is crucial in assessing Sarah Palin's qualifications for vice president, no such standard is applied to Obama's qualifications for president. (No longer is it acceptable to minimize the work of a community organizer.) Charles Gibson and Katie Couric sought to humiliate Palin. They would never and have never tried such an approach with Obama.
But beyond the elites and the media, my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization. Obama's entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The "change" he peddles is not new. We've seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government. Obama's appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the "the proletariat," as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created. Rather than pursue the American Dream, he insists that the American Dream has arbitrary limits, limits Obama would set for the rest of us — today it's $250,000 for businesses and even less for individuals. If the individual dares to succeed beyond the limits set by Obama, he is punished for he's now officially "rich." The value of his physical and intellectual labor must be confiscated in greater amounts for the good of the proletariat (the middle class). And so it is that the middle class, the birth-child of capitalism, is both celebrated and enslaved — for its own good and the greater good. The "hope" Obama represents, therefore, is not hope at all. It is the misery of his utopianism imposed on the individual.
Unlike past Democrat presidential candidates, Obama is a hardened ideologue. He's not interested in playing around the edges. He seeks "fundamental change," i.e., to remake society. And if the Democrats control Congress with super-majorities led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he will get much of what he demands.
The question is whether enough Americans understand what's at stake in this election and, if they do, whether they care. Is the allure of a charismatic demagogue so strong that the usually sober American people are willing to risk an Obama presidency? After all, it ensnared Adelman, Kmiec, Powell, Fried, and numerous others. And while America will certainly survive, it will do so, in many respects, as a different place.
That the general public is more focused on who wins "Dancing with the Stars" or "American Idol" is part of the problem, but it's not as if the Treason Media has been putting the facts of the fascism they're being instructed to vote for under the rubric of "CHANGE! HOPE!" The truth is out there in the Blogosphere and on talk radio, but is that enough to balance the vast left-wing media leviathan?
But even with ignorant and apathetic voters brainwashed by a dishonest media, huge swaths of blame must be placed on Dubya and the Stupid Party for their feeble, incoherent, liberal, inarticulate muddling of just about everything in the past 8 years other than cutting taxes (without which we would've already been in a Depression) and defending America (which is the President's f*cking job, not that The One will do it!) The Stupid Party brand is worthless other than standing for a less-liberal, non-fascist flava of government.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 5:48 PM 0 backtalks
File Under: commentary, obama
Dean Barnett R.I.P.
The blogger and Hugh Hewitt fill-in has passed away at age 41 from cystic fibrosis. I'm sure Hugh Hewitt will be paying tribute to him tonight. I'll update with any obits when they come in.
UPDATE: Hugh's farewell is up now.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 4:28 PM 0 backtalks
Obama's Dreams of a Six-Man Ruling Junta...In His Own Words!
I need to sue my teachers. Those nincompoops taught me that there were three co-equal branches of government meant to govern us with checks and balances on each other. According to Obama, in this tape from 2001, this is wrong because the Supreme Court needs to do more to redistribute wealth. Take a listen:
Here's the money part for those without speakers:
If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendancy to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.Are you getting this? The guy who refused to vote to require medical assistance for abortion survivors thinks that the Supreme Court needs to move past what the Constitution says the government shouldn't do to its citizens to imposing new obligations. The way Roe vs. Wade fabricated the right to abortion out of thin air is the way Obama wants his fascist-Marxist-socialist agenda implemented.
Since all he needs is five Supreme Court justices - and he may get to appoint at least three of them in his first term - to enact his will, all the Fuhrer needs is to put his puppets on the court and hand them his commandments for them to enact. No need for a Congress to fuss about legislation anymore for the big issues, is there? Just let the Congress divvy up the pork and have your irreversible Court make the important laws. Nice. I wonder if the liberals who want Obama to pack the Court with pro-abortion puppets are cool with all the other fascism this setup would bring as well. Probably.
As loudly as the conservative media may try to trumpet this - and WTF is it coming out less than 10 days before an election where people are casting votes?!? - look for the "BFD" tone like the Politico's to rule as they blow it off as mere partisan blah-woof and not a problem they care to risk their Anointed One's prospects with. If you want an in-depth analysis of the terrifying importance of Barry's own words, you're going to have to look elsewhere and see just how epic a fail the Treason Media is:
I happen to know the person who found this audio. It is an individual person, with no more resources than a desire to know everything that he or she can about who might be the next president of the United States and the most powerful man in the world.I'll bet they'll be too busy toasting their success next Tuesday than soul-searching about the souls they sold to foist this fascist false Messiah upon the nation.
I know that this person does not have teams of highly paid professionals, does not work out of a corner office in a skyscraper in New York, does not have access to all of the subtle and hidden conduits of information … who possesses no network television stations, owns no satellite time, does not receive billions in advertising dollars, and has a staff of exactly one.
I do not blame Barack Obama for believing in wealth distribution. That’s his right as an American. I do blame him for lying about what he believes. But his entire life has been applying for the next job at the expense of the current one. He’s at the end of the line now.
I do, however, blame the press for allowing an individual citizen to do the work that they employ standing armies of so-called professionals for. I know they are capable of this kind of investigative journalism: It only took them a day or two to damage Sarah Palin with wild accusations about her baby’s paternity and less time than that to destroy a man who happened to be playing ball when the Messiah decided to roll up looking for a few more votes on the way to the inevitable coronation.
We no longer have an independent, fair, investigative press. That is abundantly clear to everyone — even the press. It is just another of the facts that they refuse to report, because it does not suit them.
Remember this, America: The press did not break this story. A single citizen, on the Internet did.
There is a special hell for you “journalists” out there, a hell made specifically for you narcissists and elitists who think you have the right to determine which information is passed on to the electorate and which is not.
That hell — your own personal hell — is a fiery lake of irrelevance, blinding clouds of obscurity, and burning, everlasting scorn.
You’ve earned it.
=============
UPDATE (10/29): Ed Whelan notices, too:
If America’s citizens care to wake up and pay attention before they elect as president a sweet-talking, moderate-posing left-wing ideologue with a history of alliances with anti-American radicals, one of the several matters they ought to think seriously about is the future of the Supreme Court. Simply put, the survival of the historic American experiment in representative government will be in serious jeopardy if Barack Obama is our next president.Note throughout the piece that the ability of the citizens to influence the direction of law-making via their selections of legistlators is irrelevant because the Supreme Court has granted itself the power to fabricate binding law out of thin air using whatever rationale suits its judicial fiat. Also note that the #1 fear of the Left is that Roe v. Wade could be reversed as easily as it was conjured in the first place and that they play upon the ignorance of the legal system of women who are afraid they may not be able to have that abortion they need to still look good in that cute bikini they picked up in Cabo.
Our Constitution establishes a constitutional republic, a system in which, within the broad bounds that the Constitution sets forth, policy issues are to be determined by American citizens through their elected representatives at the state (including local) and national levels. The great battle over the Supreme Court in recent decades is between the proponents of original meaning and judicial restraint, on the one hand, and judicial activists, or advocates of living constitutionalism, on the other. Proponents of original meaning and judicial restraint embrace an interpretive methodology that respects the vast realm of representative government. Advocates of judicial activism and living constitutionalism, by contrast, redefine the Constitution to mean whatever they wish it to mean. They willy-nilly invent rights that aren’t in the Constitution and ignore those that are. Theirs is a philosophy of government by judiciary, with the operations of representative government confined to those matters that the justices aren’t quite ready yet to take charge of or that they think don’t matter very much.
[big snip]
If we look to the future and take seriously the positions and principles that the five living-constitutionalists have already adopted, the Court, as it is now composed, may very well have five votes for, say, the imposition of a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage, five votes for stripping “under God” out of the Pledge of Allegiance and for complete secularization of the public square, five votes for continuing to abolish the death penalty on the installment plan, five votes for selectively importing into the Court’s interpretation of the American Constitution the favored policies of Europe’s leftist elites, five votes for further judicial micromanagement of the government’s war powers, and five votes for the invention of a constitutional right to human cloning.
[another big snip - go read the whole thing]
With its five living-constitutionalists, the Supreme Court is well to the left of the American public and threatens to engage in yet more wild acts of liberal judicial activism. The Court urgently needs to be transformed into an institution that practices judicial restraint. If Barack Obama is elected president, he will drive the Court further in the wrong direction, and the liberal judicial activists that he appoints will likely serve for two or three decades. Our system of representative government, already under siege, would be lucky to survive an Obama presidency.
Here's the ad they could run: "John McCain wants you to be fat and pregnant instead of pretty and gassed on Cosmos! I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message because I know you chumps will believe anything I tell you. Unicorns are real! Yes, we can!!!"
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 2:11 PM 0 backtalks
File Under: obama
The "Stupid Party Is Stupid" Story du Jour.
Swamped by the fund-raising juggernaut that is the Obama and Dem machines - made easier by jiggering the system to allow bogus donations - the National Republican Congressional Committee is economizing by throwing conservative candidates in tough fights to the wolves.
This image from Malkin's joint says it all:
Every time I see the meme pushed by the Treason Media that the GOP is losing people because they've gotten too conservative, I snort because the truth is the opposite: The Party is rushing to the left in the vain hope that the Treason Media will be nice to them and let them have some scraps of power. Losers.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 2:00 PM 0 backtalks
File Under: politics
"Can you imagine if an Obama effigy were hung from a noose?"
Malkin asks in the wake of a Sarah Palin effigy being hung in West Hollywood.
Conservatives are the ones being accused of "insane rage"?!? ORLY?
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 1:12 PM 0 backtalks
File Under: palin
A Journalist Bemoans His Profession's Suicide of Credibility.
Michael S. Malone is a long-time tech writer - as in, he was there at the beginning of the Silicon Valley boom - and columnist at ABC News.com, so this must be why this column expressing his distress over the atrocious bias of the Treason Media got into virtual print. I wonder how much longer he'll be allowed to work during an Obama Regime?
The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game -- with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.Go read the rest, because he makes the case for the editors being the bad guys. I disagree partially, because it's not as if there are reporters in the Treason Media looking to delve into Obama's past (or present) very vigorously, only to be squelched by their bosses. If there were, we'd be seeing the stories leaked to Drudge like the the spiked Clinton-Lewinsky affair story originally was. Editors may not be assigning reporters, but the reporters aren't approaching their editors saying, "Hey, Chief, I've got a lead on a tape showing Obama toasting a PLO terrorist and saying the Supreme Court should redistribute wealth. Can I go after it?"
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.
You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I'm cut. I am a fourth-generation newspaperman...So, when I say I'm deeply ashamed right now to be called a "journalist," you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.
Now, of course, there's always been bias in the media. Human beings are biased, so the work they do, including reporting, is inevitably colored. Hell, I can show you 10 different ways to color variations of the word "said" -- muttered, shouted, announced, reluctantly replied, responded, etc. -- to influence the way a reader will apprehend exactly the same quote. We all learn that in Reporting 101, or at least in the first few weeks working in a newsroom.
But what we are also supposed to learn during that same apprenticeship is to recognize the dangerous power of that technique, and many others, and develop built-in alarms against them.
That means constantly challenging our own prejudices, systematically presenting opposing views and never, ever burying stories that contradict our own world views or challenge people or institutions we admire. If we can't achieve Olympian detachment, than at least we can recognize human frailty -- especially in ourselves.
[snip]
Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation's leading newspapers, many of whom I'd written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.
But what really shattered my faith -- and I know the day and place where it happened -- was the war in Lebanon three summers ago...I sat there, first with my jaw hanging down, then actually shouting at the TV, as one field reporter after another reported the carnage of the Israeli attacks on Beirut, with almost no corresponding coverage of the Hezbollah missiles raining down on northern Israel. The reporting was so utterly and shamelessly biased that I sat there for hours watching, assuming that eventually CNNi would get around to telling the rest of the story & but it never happened.
The Presidential Campaign
But nothing, nothing I've seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.
Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass -- no, make that shameless support -- they've gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don't have a free and fair press.
I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather -- not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake -- but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.
No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.
If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.
That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.
Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven't we seen an interview with Sen. Obama's grad school drug dealer -- when we know all about Mrs. McCain's addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden's endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?
Joe the Plumber
The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber.
Middle America, even when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the little man. So much for speaking truth to power. So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 10:36 AM 0 backtalks
File Under: media
A Fun Way To Spread The Wealth (and Piss Off Your Server!)
In the comments of Michelle Malkin's report about the tape of Obama proclaiming that the Supreme Court needs to handle wealth redistribution - silly me, I was taught in school they were to interpret the laws passed by the legislative branch for Constitutionality - was this great comment by a "Wade":
Today on my way to lunch I passed a homeless guy with a sign that read ‘Vote Obama, I need the money.’ I laughed.Heh. Indeed. I tipped the barmaid at my gig the other night $1.50 on a $3.50 beer because she was dressed like an anime prostitute and not wearing Obama-supporting garb. If I hit someone like Wade's server, though, I'll give this a try because I know a (literally) starving artist who could use the cash. (I pre-paid a painting I've commissioned cuz she was so strapped.)
Once in the restaurant my server had on a ‘Obama 08′ tie, again I laughed–just imagine the coincidence.
When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need–the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.
I went outside, gave the homeless guy $5 and told him to thank the server inside as I decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful.
At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient was more in need of the money.
I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 10:24 AM 0 backtalks
L.A. Times Covers Up Obama-Toasting-Terrorist Tape.
Over the weekend, word came out that the L.A. Times has a tape that shows Obama partying and toasting a PLO spokesman at an event described as a "Jew-bash", but isn't going to release it, presumably because it would be detrimental to their Anointed One. Andrew McCarthy calls out the double-standard:
Let’s try a thought experiment. Say John McCain attended a party at which known racists and terror mongers were in attendance. Say testimonials were given, including a glowing one by McCain for the benefit of the guest of honor ... who happened to be a top apologist for terrorists. Say McCain not only gave a speech but stood by, in tacit approval and solidarity, while other racists and terror mongers gave speeches that reeked of hatred for an American ally and rationalizations of terror attacks.Go read it all, unless you're one of those people for whom inconvenient truths about The One are too inconvenient.
Now let’s say the Los Angeles Times obtained a videotape of the party.
Question: Is there any chance — any chance — the Times would not release the tape and publish front-page story after story about the gory details, with the usual accompanying chorus of sanctimony from the oped commentariat? Is there any chance, if the Times was the least bit reluctant about publishing (remember, we’re pretending here), that the rest of the mainstream media (y’know, the guys who drove Trent Lott out of his leadership position over a birthday-party toast) would not be screaming for the release of the tape?
Do we really have to ask?
So now, let’s leave thought experiments and return to reality: Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a videotape of the 2003 farewell bash in Chicago at which Barack Obama lavished praise on the guest of honor, Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat?
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 9:12 AM 0 backtalks
Friday, October 24, 2008
Obama the Race Hustler In His Own Words.
One of the biggest lies of this mythical Obamessiah campaign has been the ludicrous concept that he was "post-racial" due to his enlightened Holiness and his bi-racial parentage. Considering his mother was white you'd think he'd be a little more charitable toward gringos, but he has dealt nothing but race cards to deflect any and all criticisms; not one criticism of The One hasn't been met with cries of "RACISM!!!"; even calling him the socialist he is has been called "code" for his being black. Even the grandmother, whom He is currently visiting in her gravely ill state, got thrown under the bus in his cynical defense of his seething racist mentor Jeremiah Wright - she was the "typical white person." Post-racial, my arse.
With the myth in mind, take a look at some old tape of Obama slurring white people as those who don't want to pay taxes because the money will go to poor black children, and comparing Los Angeles to Bosnia because of all the oppression.
While the terminal White Guilt sufferers won't be dissuaded from their support of The One because they still hope for absolution from their racist guilt, I wonder how many people who think it'd be fun to vote for the "cool guy everyone seems to like" would react if the Treason Media ever actually exposed this material to them. (Thus the reason the TM isn't.) These idiots probably think Obama would be like David Palmer on "24", forgetting that a strong on defense Democrat can only exist in fiction these days. Barry O's appeal has been that he wasn't an obvious race hustling bomb-thrower like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, but as this tape and his decades-long associations with terrorists and black supremacist racists show, The One's "cool" exterior is just a trompe l'oeil veneer masking the same old destructive racial politics.
"Forget the wages of sin / These are the profits of rage" - "Profits of Rage" - Red September
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 5:51 PM 0 backtalks
Brutal Hockey - Checked Through The Glass!!!
We take a break from the tedious sadness that is politics to bring you some good clean hockey ultraviolence.
And they say videogames are too violent?!?
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 4:10 PM 0 backtalks
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Surprise! Media Coverage of McCain Is Negative!
The Washington Post admits the obvious:
Media coverage of John McCain has been heavily unfavorable since the political conventions, more than three times as negative as the portrayal of Barack Obama, a new study says.They try to attenuate the bias by implying that McCain's slippage in the polls is the driving force - no one's fault if there's bad news to report, right? - but that ignores the deliberate attempts to spin and smear McCain and Palin and the active cover-ups of Obama's myriad alliances with radicals, racists, and terrorists. Why is the media digging into Joe the Plumber's life when all he did was ask a question? Is ANYONE allowed to challenge the Obamessiah? If you think the coverage is slanted now, wait until Fuhrer Obama has the power to shut down any media outlet that criticizes him! Can you say "zero percent negative stories about Obama?" I knew you could!
Fifty-seven percent of the print and broadcast stories about the Republican nominee were decidedly negative, the Project for Excellence in Journalism says in a report out today, while 14 percent were positive. The McCain campaign has repeatedly complained that the mainstream media are biased toward the senator from Illinois.
Obama's coverage was more balanced during the six-week period from Sept. 8 through last Thursday, with 36 percent of the stories clearly positive, 35 percent neutral or mixed and 29 percent negative.
McCain has struggled during this period and slipped in the polls, which is one of the reasons for the more negative assessments by the 48 news outlets studied by the Washington-based group. But the imbalance is striking nonetheless.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 11:16 AM 0 backtalks
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
"Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? "
I'm reading Orson Scott Card's sci-fi classic Ender's Game, so it's an timely coincidence that he has called out the reprehensible bias of the Treason Media.
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.Go read the whole thing as I had to chop a ton of stuff to get it to a too-long length here. BTW, Card is a Democrat. (Not for long with that attitude; they'll surely see to that.)
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.
[snip]
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.)
[snip]
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.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?": "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
[snip]
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.
But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.
If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.
Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.
[snip]
You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.
You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.
Yesterday on Dennis Miller's radio show, Mike Allen of the Politico made a Freudian slip and used the word "we're" to describe what the press and Democrats have learned and are going to do. When Dennis asked if he wanted to leave the impression that he was a Democrat, Allen got really huffy and promptly bailed off the show. Dennis was far too contrite and felt he had put Allen on the spot, but Allen was bleating that Politico was "middle of the road", a description of where they were a couple of months ago, not the hard-Left Obama cheering section they are now.
The Treason Media's willingness to act as Goebbels to Obama and the fascist Dems is the untold story of this Election, but they'll never tell it. Why should they? The Big Lie is working, isn't it?
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 12:32 PM 0 backtalks
File Under: commentary, media
Why Isn't Obama Spreading His Campaign Wealth To McCain?
In his infamous gaffe with Joe the Plumber, The One said it was better for everyone when you "spread the wealth around." He is currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy the election thanks to his broken promise to take public financing allowing him to outspend McCain by a factor of 3 or 4-to-1.
If it's good to spread the wealth, why isn't he spreading some of his wealth to someone less fortunate like John McCain? He could give Mac $50-100 million without dent his war chest, and walk it like he talks it. Why won't he?
(That was a rhetorical question. He's a lying hypocrite like all liberals, that's why.)
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 12:27 PM 0 backtalks
File Under: obama
Obama Brownshirt Attack du Jour
Another day, another violent attack by one of the Obamessiah's disciples:
He rushed towards them, grabbed a McCain sign off a volunteer’s hands, and tore it apart. That didn’t seem enough.While The One cried like a lying bitch at the debate about violence that never happened, his followers are showing their tolerance for diversity of opinions the only way they know how: with VIOLENCE.
(The Victim reports) I said, “What are you doing? You can’t do that!” And he was red in the face screaming, “You people are ridiculous!” And I said, “Yeah, whatever, but you can’t do that.”
So I reached for the sign that he ripped up, and he grabbed another sign, broke it, and ripped it to shreds. And when I said, “You can’t do that,” he took the stick from the sign and started beating me on the head with it. He broke the skin on my head, he scratched my wrist, and almost broke my glasses, and then he left.
This is the party of Al Franken after all.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 11:25 AM 0 backtalks
Tears For Fears - "Head Over Heels (Literal Version)"
From the sick puppies who brought you the A-Ha "Take On Me (Literal Version)" video comes this even better one!
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 2:41 AM 0 backtalks
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Biden Predicts "Test" If Obama Is Elected. (Bumped)
(Note: Bumped up one day because it was getting pretty far down the page and is too important to miss.)
This is supposed to make us MORE enthusiastic to support The One?!?
"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."I though we were supposed to support the Obamessiah because he will make the world love us again? If His election is going to bring a "test" in the form of the bullies and tyrants of the world pushing the boundaries to see if Obama is going to be the punk he's advertised to be, shouldn't that be a concern? The feckless non-response of the Clinton Regime to multiple Al Queda provocations encouraged them to launch 9/11. After Dubya hit back, we've been safe since. If Obama reflexively accepts belligerence from the bad actors of the world (and I don't mean Paul Walker), then what's to say that terror wasn't destined to return to our shores.
"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."
The irony of this latest Biden gaffe is that it puts the lie to the meme that Republicans are trying to use the fear of terror to gain political advantage. Who's saying that America is likely to be attacked now? THE ONE'S OWN #2!!!!
A challenge to those who will excuse Biden: Is this guy really qualified to be one heartbeat away from the Big Chair? He's either rambling nonsense or inviting attack. Which is it?
=============
UPDATE & BUMP: Bill Kristol explains just how crazy this talk is:
So Biden expects a test of the kind Kennedy faced after his disastrous meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June, 1961, less than five months into Kennedy’s presidency. Biden’s presumably thinking of the Soviet-backed construction of the Berlin Wall a couple of months later. Kennedy did nothing, and was criticized for his weakness back home.Bill Bennett was talking about this on the drive in, saying that Biden's thesis is insane on its face. "If you elect this glorious Messiah, we will be tested by thugs to see how strong we are and it'll probably look like we screwed up, but I want you to rally in support for me and the Clean One instead of criticizing." (My paraphrase, not Bennett's.)
So--leaving aside the merits of what Kennedy did or didn’t do in 1961--Biden is forecasting that Obama will have what seems to be a weak response to a provocation from, say, Iran or Russia, and he’s urging the liberals of Seattle and elsewhere to stand with Obama against the expected domestic criticism.
In other words, Biden is forecasting inaction by Obama in the face of testing by a dictator. I suspect he’s right in this forecast. McCain might want to clarify this point. It’s not just that Obama’s own running mate expects an international crisis early in his presidency. It’s not just that Obama has a weak foreign policy record. It’s that Biden himself expects what will appear to be a weak response from Obama to testing by a dictator. (emphasis in original)
Can you imagine the outcry that would come if Moose-Slayer said the same thing - that Obama would come off as a screwup when tested? The shrieks would be ear-shattering, but when it's The One's Number Two, there's nothing to see here. Move along. No wonder Biden is hiding from doing press conferences while Palin is the most accessible of the four candidates.
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 1:16 PM 0 backtalks
Today's Obama Brownshirt Violence Update.
I wonder how many people don't put McCain/Moose-Slayer stickers on their car because they know that some unhinged liberal whacko will vandalize their car in retaliation for not worshiping The One?
Frank Armstrong was preparing to go for a jog this morning when he noticed his Lexus – adorned with a McCain-Palin sticker - had been vandalized with obscenities and a burned American flag.If you think this is bad, wait until the Obamessiah has control of the law enforcement apparatus and makes sure that no charges are laid on those who destroy - or even kill? - in His name.
Armstrong discovered the damage to his 2006 Lexus about 8:30 a.m. at his Sand Key condominium at 1400 Gulf Blvd. Clearwater police and Armstrong said someone etched obscenities and "KKK" into the paint, burned several areas of the car with cigarettes, set the flag on fire on his hood and may have urinated on the vehicle. Officers and Armstrong think the car was singled out because of its political stickers, including one reading "Nobama."
"This is definitely a hate crime," said Armstrong, a 41-year-old physician.
Police estimated damage at $4,500. Police classified the incident as "criminal mischief/hate crime" and said it appeared "to be politically/racially motivated because the victim affixed a bumper sticker supporting the McCain campaign as well as an anti-Obama bumper sticker."
Two weeks to go. Will the public wake up or have they been so narcotized that they'll vote for tyranny and fascism because they think it'll be CHANGE and HOPE?
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 9:42 AM 0 backtalks
File Under: crime
Chivalry Isn't Dead, But Manners Aren't Doing Too Good.
I was at Big Food (aka Costco, and yes, Supermodel Cashier was there) on Sunday and while walking in the side door, I held the door for my girlfriend and two women who were coming at the same time. Did the strangers say 'thank you' to the kind gentleman holding their door? HELL, NO!!! I'm guessing they were Democrats based on their selfish arrogance. YOU'RE WELCOME!!!
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 9:11 AM 0 backtalks
File Under: stuff and nonsense
Brian Austin Greene: Luckiest SOB Alive!
I'm not prone to envy, but in this case, Brian Austin Greene is slightly worthy of it because when the former "90210" star isn't home banging his girlfriend, Megan Fox...
...he's at work snogging his new co-star/love interest in "Hottie Terminator", Stephanie Jacobson, who was hawt and badass in the "Battlestar Galactica: Razor" film...
...and getting paid on top of it all. I hope he enjoys his eternity roasting in Hades he traded for this sweet period of mortal existence!
Smacked down by Dirk Belligerent at 2:49 AM 0 backtalks
File Under: babes, television