Help Soldier's Angels

Squidoo is giving away money to charity. The company has $80,000 to give away and they're letting people vote on what charities to give the money to.

Please scroll down and choose "Soldier's Angels." Each click = $2.

If you haven't heard about them before, check out Soldier's Angels and what they try to do. It's a good cause.

(Thanks to Rusty Shackleford for pointing this out).

The Media and Democratic Party Lied: Palin Did Not Charge For Rape Kits

We previously debunked this smear campaign here, here and here, but it is nice to now have Governor Palin on the record in her own words.

Flush another steaming, stinking, Associated Press-carried, Democratic Party-complicit, liberal-blogosphere- astroturfed lie down the toilet:

The entire notion of making a victim of a crime pay for anything is crazy. I do not believe, nor have I ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test. As governor, I worked in a variety of ways to tackle the problem of sexual assault and rape, including making domestic violence a priority of my administration.

A small liberal blog started the rumor, apparently after two Democratic Party researchers scoured the archives of the Frontiersman for dirt, and came up with an ambiguous story from 2000, that quickly bounced to an muckraking liberal blog.

Top Alaskan Democrats for Obama Tony Knowles (whom Palin beat in the governor's race) and Eric Croft, the sponsor of the law HB 270, both claimed in a recent press conference by Democrats falsely claimed the law was passed because of Wasilla's Police charged victims.

That is a demonstrable, bald-faced, and proven lie.

Read the committee minutes for yourself.

Palin, Fannon, and Wasilla are never mentioned.

Three expert witnesses testified that they knew of no police agencies in Alaska that billed victims. The law was needed because hospitals occasionally exercised bad judgment and billed victims.

The media and Democratic Party should be ashamed.

Update: The New York Times-owned Boston Globe is still attempting to carry on with the smear. Perhaps you should register for a free account and let them know what you think about their editorial standards--or lack thereof.

Campaign in Crisis: Obama Teleprompter Threatens Strike

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The HopeChange GroupThink Mindthoughts Song

Big Brother Approved! (not any more. The original video has been pulled. Enjoy this one while you can).

I'll let Kim Priestap delve into just how creepy and reminiscent of the concerts by kids in totalitarian states this is, and focus on those behind it.

While described as a grassroots effort, Kathy Sawada, who posted the video and can been seen directing the children in the video, is a bit more than just an enthusiastic music teacher you might find in your average public school.

Sawada is a teacher at an elite and expensive Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles as part of the Piano faculty. Colburn just built a $120 million 12-story high-rise addition for their musicians.

Does a concert-quality musician in an elite school in the middle of the most ego-centric city in the United States count as a "grassroots" effort?

Here's a partial list of those who helped produce this "grassroots" effort:

• Jeff Zucker — American television executive, and President & CEO of NBC Universal Gaffer, Chief Lighting Technician in Boogie Nights.
• Post-producer (former choreographer?) Holly Shiffer.
• Motion picture camera operator/steadicam specialist Peter Rosenfeld (appropriately enough, worked in Yes Man, a movie about " a guy challenges himself to say 'yes' to everything for an entire year."
• Darin Moran, another motion picture industry professional, who just finished filming — how appropriate — Land of the Lost.
• Andy Blumenthal, Hollywood film editor.

Grassroots all the way, baby

In Hollywoodland, anything is possible.

Update: The wrong entertainment industry Obamaphile named Jeff Zucker was originally credited above. Now corrected.

Update: Kindernacht seems to have been an embarrassment, so the original video has been pulled. IT has been replaced above by a copy... while it lasts.

The Peter Principle Goes To Washington

I still don't know a great deal more about economics than I did last week, and guess what: neither do you.

That hasn't stopped our fellow Americans from assaulting the Congressional switchboards over our current economic crisis, assuring that the bailout bill in the House of Representatives failed yesterday.

It wasn't even especially close, falling 207 for and 226 against it. Down party lines, Democrats voted for it 141-94, and Republicans against it 66-132.

Yes, more Democrats opposed it (94) that Republicans voted for it (66).

Nancy Pelosi could have passed this bill simply whipping Democratic votes into line, but she didn't. The conventional wisdom is that Democrats up for re-election voted against the bill in order to placate angry constituents that didn't want to be stuck with a $700 billion bailout. Speaker Pelosi, no doubt, didn't want the blame if there was backlash over the bill, and pulled a "Sir Robin, " and allowed her fellow Democrats to "bravely run away."

This doesn't let Congressional Republicans off the hook.

Many were hearing the same sort of howling from their constituents (and conservative bloggers) to kill the bill, and so they did. Later blaming Pelosi for her heated partisan rhetoric as a convenient excuse for the lack of Republican support was just as bad as Pelosi's idiotic and nonsensical rant assigning blame for the meltdown on the Bush Administration when the problems began during the Clinton Administration and were enabled by Congress.

Glass houses, Madame Speaker.

And so the bill died.

We're now headed into a sizable recession, and the sad fact is that most of us don't yet grasp what it means. The same people who have been crying out to their Congressmen and Senators to "kill the bill" on ideological grounds will quickly change course once that ideology causes their company to shut down, their small businesses to fail, and their life's savings to evaporate.

And sadly, it seemed that as a nation, we're poised to elect a President who will only make matters worse.

If anything was under-reported about the first McCain-Obama debate, it was the fact Barack Obama couldn't come up with a single program or entitlement he would cut to rein in the cost of government to our faltering economy, and in fact, he was pitching massive new outlays. He was also insisting that he could cut taxes for 95% of Americans, while making up the difference by soaking the rich and corporations.

The nasty, dirty truth is that the pending recession has made Obama's entire stated Peter Principle platform unobtainable.

He cannot expect to run the existing government we have by cutting personal income taxes for 95% of Americans. That claim always an overt fiction to begin with, as nearly one-third of Americans already pay no taxes:

One of the biggest challenges facing both John McCain and Barack Obama in their commitment to provide tax relief to working-class Americans is the simple fact that millions of them already pay no personal income taxes.

According to the most recent IRS statistics for 2006, some 45.6 million tax filers—one-third of all filers—have no tax liability after taking their credits and deductions. For good or ill, this is a dramatic 57 percent increase since 2000 in the number of Americans who pay no personal income taxes.

If Obama truly cut income taxes for the 95% of individuals currently paying taxes—which is what he means to imply with his campaign speeches— the government of the United States would simply shut down. Period. There would not be enough money coming into the Treasury to make the federal payroll and write checks to those in various entitlement programs.

Social Security, Medicare, etc... simply gone.

Granted, they're bound to fail anyway within my lifetime because they are unsustainable in any form remotely similar to what they already are, and always were, but Obama's "robbing the rich to give to the poor" socialist platform just slammed into the ground.

Obama's entire platform was premised on a bull market, and cannot pass even a cursory non-economist's scrutiny now.

Here's a brief visual demonstration of a Barack Obama economy.

As always happens under socialism in a bad economy, the people get burned.

Update: A New RNC Ad makes the case.

In the Tank, and Not Even Trying

As if there was any doubt about the media being nothing more than an extension of the Obama campaign:

A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS: "Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working." I asked permission to reprint without attribution and it was granted.

The Anchoress hears it also to no one's surprise.

If you recall, several weeks ago Charlie Gibson used a doctored quote when interviewing Sarah Palin.

Gene Johnson of the Associated Press was the person (I hesitate to use the term journalist at this point) who purposefully truncated the quote to make it mean something entirely different, and so I contacted his superior, and noted he had clearly violated APs code of ethics by doctoring the quote.

After a period of silence, I asked the AP "In what way is altering a subject's quote to change the entire context of the quote, and present an entirely false interpretation of what the subject clearly said, not at odds with the Associated Press' ethics policy?"

The response?

"the remark could be interpreted in different ways"

Yes, when you allow persons to slice and dice quotes until they sound like what the media wants the victim to sound like, it certainly can.

House Republicans: Pelosi's Rhetoric, Arrogance Derailed Bailout

House Minority Leader Boehner, Eric Cantor, and others just dropped the responsibility of the failure of the bailout bill to an extremely partisan statement by San Francisco liberal and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Fox confirms.

Does she not have the minimal common sense to save the partisan rhetoric until after the vote is passed?

Uh, obviously not.

Busted: Obama Lied About the Depth of His Relationship With Terrorist Ayers

While Barack Obama has long downplayed his connection to Bill Ayers, a co-founder of the violent Weather Underground radical group, new documents show the two worked much more closely together in starting an educational foundation than has been previously known.

Recently released board-meeting minutes for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge show the two were present together at least six times in 1995 as the foundation's members discussed how to organize and operate the project, which was Ayers' brainchild.

Ayers' wrote the grant proposal that led to the creation of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and saw Obama, who had no prior experience in education administration, installed to the Board of Directors, and then elevated over University presidents to the CAC chairmanship.

As chairman, Obama oversaw the awarding grants to radicals for indoctrination instead of education, including a grant to Ayers' Small Schools Workshop, which was run by Ayer's associate former SDS radical and founder of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), Mike Klonsky.

Klonsky, an Obama supporter, had his blog on BarackObama.com "disappeared" by the campaign earlier this year.

Barack Obama funneled money that was supposed to be used for education to radicals bent on far left agitation, indoctrination, and community activism, pissing away the education of a generation of Chicago school children to pursue a far left political agenda.

Kinda of makes you wonder what he would do with the power of the Presidency and an an ideologically-aligned Congress, doesn't?

Love the Financial Crisis? Thank Your Local "Community Organizer"

And yes, the one running for President has his hands all over it:

IT would be tough to find an "on the ground" community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama.

When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff.

He returned to Chicago in the early '90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. Chicago ACORN sought out Obama's legal services for a "motor voter" case and partnered with him on his 1992 "Project VOTE" registration drive.

In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN's up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott's drive against Chicago's banks.

More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago's Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation's board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers - and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift.

That committee's report on strategies for funding groups like ACORN features all the key names in Obama's organizer network. The report quotes Talbott more than any other figure; Sandra Maxwell, Talbott's ACORN ally in the bank battle, was also among the organizers consulted.

MORE, the Obama-supervised Woods Fund report acknowledges the problem of getting donors and foundations to contribute to radical groups like ACORN - whose confrontational tactics often scare off even liberal donors and foundations.

Indeed, the report brags about pulling the wool over the public's eye. The Woods Fund's claim to be "nonideological," it says, has "enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and government 'establishments' without undue risk of being criticized for partisanship."

Hmm. Radicalism disguised by a claim to be postideological. Sound familiar?

Oh, it sounds all too familiar.

The one constant of Barack Obama's rise to power is his ability to funnel money to radical groups without drawing undue attention to himself.

As chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama directed educational monies meant for elementary and secondary school improvement into a series of grants to radical organizations bent on activism and ideological indoctrination. You'll be shocked—shocked!—to find out that those millions were directed to groups identified by the Chicago School Reform Collaborative—headed by domestic terrorist and Obama fundraiser Bill Ayers.

Obama has also used the Woods Fund (as noted in the article above) and the Joyce Foundation to launder money from grant-giving organizations into funding for radical groups and causes that were too politically controversial to directly raise funds on their own. He's great for the economic welfare of radicals.

And don't you love the mess he's helped get us all into now?

The Fort Dix Terror Plot

A man who is a 21-year associate, business partner, fellow board member, and political supporter of the Democratic nominee for President led an organization that came within hours of carrying out the most deadly terrorist attack in American history prior to Timothy McVeigh's attack in Oklahoma City.

It's about time we talk about that.

Obama Implodes in Debate

The McCain camp didn't have to wait until the end of the debate to make a commercial:

Frankly, I think everyone, right and left, was expecting something far different than we saw here tonight.

Barack Obama, credited with being a great public speaker, stuttered frequently, interrupted McCain constantly, and got heated on several occasions. He was on the defensive, got visibly angry at least once, and just wasn't on his game.

I think Obama was expected to win, and McCain had him on his heels time and again.

John McCain won tonight, but in doing so, all he did was do was expected. Barack Obama simply came apart under the pressure, and it was not pretty for any of us who watched it.

If he can't handle a simple debate without falling apart, how is he going to handle a Presidency?

Update: I was reading and commenting at Ace's place during his liveblog, and several people noticed early in the debate that John McCain got inside Barack Obama's OODA loop.

Observe.
Orient.
Decide.
Act.

Then Observe...

Read Whittle for a full understanding of just how powerful this is, but let's be very clear in what occurred: John McCain out-thought Barack Obama early on, and increased that throughout the debate.

I don't pretend to know if John McCain is smarter than Barack Obama, but in their first head-to-head, it was clear that thinks faster on his feet.

Looking back through the campaign season at the various "3 A.M." moments and the candidate's reactions, this doesn't appear to be an isolated event.

So What if He Dies?

So far, I think the "heartbeat away" blitzkrieg against Sarah Palin has been wildly overblown, despite the fact it seems to have finally browbeat Kathleen Parker of National Review into submission.

Now I can only imagine the email she's getting at the moment, and hope none of my readers pile on, but really, how well thought out is this fear-mongering that John McCain could catch a cold/have a heart attack/mysteriously trip and impale himself on a nearby moose antler the week after he is inaugurated really thought out?

While I suspect McCain have several more decades of life in him if his still active mother's DNA has anything to say about it, let's play out the fear that President McCain dies early in his term in office.

Obviously, one of the first things that must be done upon a President's passing is the installation of the Constitutionally-designated successor, the Vice President, in this case, Sarah Palin.

Sure, watching a first-term governor better known for a love of big game hunting and having enough kids to field a basketball team get unexpectedly catapulted into the White House when the elected Republican President unexpectedly dies is going to be nerve-wracking, but you know what?

Last time, it turned out pretty damn well.

And it is also very much worth noting we're also at a point in history where there is simply too much going on for a President to be a master of any particular field, anyway. Presidents are the elected figureheads, but presidencies are a group effort.

There is simply too much knowledge being generated in astounding amounts on a daily basis, and Presidents, instead of being expected to know it all, have teams of extremely specialized advisers to help make important decisions on any and all subjects. Barack Obama isn't President, and yet he's had to build a staff of 300 or more advisers just to run a half-convincing campaign that he even now "um," ah," "uhs" his way through as he forgets what they try to impart (and the teleprompter isn't working).

If Palin becomes President, on of the very first thing she's going to do as a young, untested leader is select a wise and experienced political pro as her Vice President, someone who knows and excels in policy matters and had good judgment— the wonkish policy genius of a Newt Gingrich, or the reassuring baritone and rock-solid first principles of a Fred Thompson.

On the other hand we've got a untested Barack Obama running for President, being backed by Joe Biden, the gaffe-tastic, Zaphod-Beeblebrox-with-hair-plugs career politician that no one in either party takes seriously, who even the Democrats won't let chair anything important that mere seniority doesn't force them to give him.

So seriously... which is the scarier prospect?

Queering the Deal: Democratic Leaders Torpedo Bailout For Obama

Before I dive into this, let me say one thing: I am not an economist, and have no idea if the current proposal is a good one, if other proposals and amendments are better, or even if any of them will work.

What I do know is politics in action, and we saw it in spades last night, as noted chillingly in this article from David Rogers at The Politico:

At the White House, in fact, House Minority Leader John Boehner had bluntly warned about the lack of Republican support for the massive government intervention: "I can't invent votes," Boehner said. But House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) angrily accused the minority of trying to undercut Paulson by crafting a late-breaking alternative proposal—with the tacit support, Frank said, of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Both McCain and his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, would leave the White House without comment, and the meeting was described as among the wildest in memory. A beleaguered President Bush had to struggle to maintain order and reassert himself. And when Democrats left to caucus in the Roosevelt Room, Paulson pursued them, begging that they not "blow up" the legislation.

The former Goldman Sachs CEO even went down on one knee as if genuflecting, to which Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) is said to have joked, "I didn't know you were Catholic."

It was McCain who had urged Bush to call the White House meeting but Democrats made sure Obama had a prominent part. And much as they complained later of being blindsided, the whole event turned out to be something of an ambush on their part—aimed at McCain and House Republicans.

"Speaking professionally," said one Republican aide, "They did a very good job."

When Bush yielded early to Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nev.) to speak, they yielded to Obama to speak for the assembled Democrats. And it was Obama who raised the subject of the conservative alternative and pressed Paulson on what he thought of the idea.

It seems probable that a deal had been reached earlier yesterday as mid-day reports were indicating, but then the Democratic leadership—Pelosi, Reid, and Presidential nominee Obama—determined that they were willing to risk a national (and global) economic collapse in order to play Presidential politics and try to make this into a "McCain versus Obama and Obama is the hero" story.

Reid and Pelosi's judgment is notoriously bad (as their lowest recorded Congressional approval ratings in history and utter failure to pass any meaningful legislation in the last Congress proves), and Obama is preternaturally self-centered and ambitious, so it is not entirely surprising that they would go this route.

It is just that we've been hearing so much about how serious a bailout is needed, and that we need to pass something relatively quickly, and then they do this—a melodramatic hissy-fit—for no other reason than theatrics. All major democratic concerns had been met in eariler compromises.

It's disgusting.

Update: And for what little it is worth considering economics is far outside of my comfort zone, I'm falling into the camp of thinking that the bailout plan as proposed isn't that great of an idea.

Why?

It has a bit to do with the big picture view of capitalism that Bill Whittle wrote of in Trinity, (Part 1). As with most of Whittle's essays it is brilliant and insightful in a "why didn't I think of/see that?" sort of way, but it is a lengthy screed, so I'd set aside a good half-hour (and get a nice fresh cup of coffee) before you snuggle into it.

There is also a second part, helpfully titled Trinity, (Part 2) that I won't get a chance to dive into until this evening, but both are pushing me back to my fundamental, capitalist core beliefs that government intervention in most things is almost always bad.

Alien Obama

Professor David Demming lets cultural incongruity Barack Obama have it with both barrels:

When Obama refers to "my Muslim faith," the verbal gaffe resonates as a Freudian slip because of Obama's thinly veiled hatred for this country's unique culture and institutions. Obama sat for 20 years in a church where the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr preached "goddamn America." He only resigned from the congregation when it became politically expedient to do so. When earlier this year, Michelle Obama said "for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country," can we conclude that her husband disagrees? Is it not remarkable that Michelle Obama can be so small-minded as to find nothing in the history of the United States that merits her admiration but the personal success of her husband?

What is Barack Obama for? His campaign motto is "change." But even a 6-year-old child understands that "change" can be either good or bad. Lacking specifics, the invocation of "change" as policy is completely empty. As we witness Obama's minions mindlessly endorse the meaningless maxim of "change," it only can call to mind the barnyard animals in George Orwell's "Animal Farm" chanting "four legs good, two legs bad!"

The choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate has been devastating for the Obama campaign precisely because she is everything Obama is not. Palin is not ashamed of her culture or country. She is not embarrassed by being an American, but naively embraces her birthright. Unassisted by affirmative action, Palin has risen to national prominence on the basis of her character, intelligence and natural gifts. In a word, she has guts. This is a woman who is proud of her country, not because it has granted her personal success, but because she respects what America stands for: freedom, opportunity, and individualism.

Obama is a vapid demagogue, a hollow man that despises American culture. He is ill-suited to be president of the United States. As the weeks pass, more Americans will come to this realization and elect McCain/Palin in a landslide.

And he's right: Barack Obama's life story, half-lived and half-told in two self-aggrandizing auto-biographies, is not the story of America or of Americans, but the story of a "citizen of the world." Barack Obama cannot hold quintessential American values because he has not lived a life that celebrates or even respects American culture.

His mother Stanley Ann was the offshoot of an odd and vain man who was determined to name his child after himself, regardless of sex. She became radicalized in high school in Washington state, and met the freshman Senator's Kenyan communist father in a Russian language class in Hawaii. Three months after she became pregnant she married Obama's father, though he was still married to his first child's mother in Kenya (no doubt, we can expect Andrew Sullivan to launch an investigation into Obama's paternity any day now). Barack Obama, Junior was born six months later, abandoned by his foreign father within several years, and spent his youth in Indonesia with a new stepfather, boning up in his English via correspondence courses. Barack Junior finally left Asia many years later to move in with his grandparents and go to high school in Hawaii.

Barack Obama apparently never set foot on the U.S mainland until he graduated high school and went to Occidental College for two years, before transferring to Columbia and developing into the radical leftist we know today.

Barack Obama despises America and American values because he has never known or experienced them, as he did not grown up in a normal American culture.

The heartland of America, the small towns and suburbs, the "baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet" that forms the core of our cultural experience is alien to Barack Obama. He cannot love it, share it, or reflect it, because he does not know it.

What does Barack Obama know? What is his vision of America?

He never experienced his first taste of mainland American until he was already a grown man, and his experience was further indoctrination and immersion in universities with a radical leftist bent. He was further radicalized by 20 years of indoctrination in a Christian cult founded on the teaching of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X, one that taught a self-segregating, blame-casting "black values system" that added spiritual alienation to his pre-existing cultural alienation. He embraced an infamous domestic terrorist as a friend and partner in schemes designed to undermine core American cultural values to push small "c" communism and radicalism, and pissed away the future of a generation of Chicago's school children as he helped launder $150 million of educational grant money to former terrorists and radicals that sought to indoctrinate, instead of educate.

Barack Obama isn't anti-American, but he is un-American. Our cultural memory and experiences are something he read about in books, but never lived, and something he cannot feel.

He is not one of us.

Terrorist-Coddling Obama Bundler Brags About Meeting Ahmadinejad

As they fire up more centrifuges and continue to refine the rocket motors for their ICBMS, the Iranians hope that these useful idiots represent change they can believe in:

Calling it a "major step forward" in relations between Iran and the United States, leading activists Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans of CODEPINK Women for Peace — along with more than 150 other U.S. peace group representatives — met Wednesday afternoon with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here following his appearance at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.

[snip]

"U.S. government officials are quick to stir up hostilities with Iran, but the American people are tired of war," said Benjamin, co-founder of the nonpartisan women's peace group CODEPINK. "The peace movement represents the sentiment of the majority of Americans who want our two countries to find ways to work together and improve relations. We are modeling the behavior we want to see our government adopt."

As Hot Air notes, Evans is a major bundler for Barack Obama, pledged to raising over $600,000 for the freshman Senator, and here she is, trying to make nice with a regime that practices Holocaust denial, that publicly threatens the state of Israel with destruction on a regular basis, and that is working on nuclear weapons to carry out that threat.

Barack Obama has a close partnership with a domestic terrorist who's group bombed government buildings, fire-bombed a judge's family at home, and murdered law enforcement officers during a bank robbery. Obama and the terrorist used that relationship to abuse education grants and launder $150 million to radical groups to indoctrinate school children and their parents.

Now Obama gladly takes more than a half-million dollars collected from the founder of a group that wants us to lose in Iraq and Afghanistan, even as she idolizes the worst state sponsor of terrorism in modern history.

Who's side is Barack Obama on?

How About a Sub?

John McCain is suspending his presidential campaign tomorrow in order to return to Washington to work on the economy, and wants to postpone Friday's scheduled debate with Barack Obama.

The Obama campaign, however, wants the debate to continue.

What to do?

My friend Ray Robinson emailed me with an excellent compromise: have Sarah Palin step in Friday in McCain's place at the debate.

The proposal—if accepted by the Obama campaign—would solve several problems at once.

For better or ill, the national spotlight on Palin would reveal whether or not Palin is capable of holding her own in the national spotlight, and depending on the questions asked, could shred light on her suitability to lead if needed.

The Obama campaign has bent over backwards to belittle Palin as a small town mayor incapable of performing under the pressure.

Now is a great time to prove it.

Obama to Replace Biden

Obama/Sulzberger '08:

Though these facts are a matter of public record, the New York Times, in what can only be explained as a willful disregard of the truth, failed to research this story or present any semblance of a fairminded treatment of the facts closely at hand. The paper did manage to report one interesting but irrelevant fact: Mr. Davis did participate in a roundtable discussion on the political scene with...Paul Begala.

Again, let us be clear: The New York Times -- in the absence of any supporting evidence -- has insinuated some kind of impropriety on the part of Senator McCain and Rick Davis. But entirely missing from the story is any significant mention of Senator McCain's long advocacy for, and co-sponsorship of legislation to enact, stricter oversight and regulation of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- dating back to 2006. Please see the attached floor statement on this issue by Senator McCain from 2006.

To the central point our campaign has made in the last 48 hours: The New York Times has never published a single investigative piece, factually correct or otherwise, examining the relationship between Obama campaign chief strategist David Axelrod, his consulting and lobbying clients, and Senator Obama. Likewise, the New York Times never published an investigative report, factually correct or otherwise, examining the relationship between Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson and Senator Obama, who appointed Johnson head of his VP search committee, until the writing was on the wall and Johnson was under fire following reports from actual news organizations that he had received preferential loans from predatory mortgage lender Countrywide.

Therefore this "report" from the New York Times must be evaluated in the context of its intent and purpose. It is a partisan attack falsely labeled as objective news. And its most serious allegations are based entirely on the claims of anonymous sources, a familiar yet regretful tactic for the paper.

We all understand that partisan attacks are part of the political process in this country. The debate that stems from these grand and sometimes unruly conversations is what makes this country so exceptional. Indeed, our nation has a long and proud tradition of news organizations that are ideological and partisan in nature, the Huffington Post and the New York Times being two such publications. We celebrate their contribution to the political fabric of America. But while the Huffington Post is utterly transparent, the New York Times obscures its true intentions -- to undermine the candidacy of John McCain and boost the candidacy of Barack Obama -- under the cloak of objective journalism.

I'm not sure of Goldfarb's last claim. When was the last time anyone thought the Times practiced objective journalism?

Why We're Having an Economic Meltdown

Because Americans will piss away their money on anything, as long as they find it amusing.

Keep on bidding, folks. Can't we enthusiastically get behind this this empty, useless trash, and push it far higher than it deserves to be based on merit, for no reason at all?

Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can!

Oh, wait a minute...

A Wasilla Rape Kit Doc Emerges

From Chief Long of the Wasilla Police Department, via Kristie Smithers, City Clerk, with the notation:

While searching electronic files, I ran across the attached email sent to Chief Savage regarding SART exams paid for by the City of Wasilla in 2000 and 2001.

I have redacted the names of the victims in accordance with state law.

SART = Sexual Assault Response teams. These are the rape kits paid for by the City of Wasilla for rapes that occurred in 2000-2001.

All four of these rapes occurred after the law was signed in Alaska protecting sexual assault victims from having to pay for the cost of rape kits. Experts, including Del Smith, the Deputy Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Public Safety, Lauree Hugonin, Director, Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, and Trisha Gentle, Executive Director, Council on Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault, noted in committee testimony that no law enforcement agencies in Alaska were known to have billed rape victims for the cost of forensic medical exams, but that some hospitals had done so.

As noted above, the city of Wasilla paid for the only two rape kits used in in 2000, and the two used in 2001. Four kits were used over these two years, for a total of $2,238.

Considering the small number of sexual assaults reported during her six years as mayor, it is very plausible that Mayor Palin would not know about such small expenditures. Quite possibly, the city spent more on toilet paper and paper towels during that same time period.

Update: Jim Geraghty finishes off the faux scandal with the Wasilla Debunking Kit.

Is He Ready to Be Vice President?

Well, he's bad enough...

...but are we ready for this man to be a frayed strap away from the Presidency?

What's in a Terrorist's Name?

Should we take Marc Ambinder's critique of the Barack Obama/William Ayers story seriously, when he knows so little about it that he can't even spell the terrorist's name properly?

FactCheck.Org Misses the Target

My days of considering FactCheck.Org a reliable source are over.

In a release yesterday that targets NRA claims made against Barack Obama, FactCheck.Org simply failed to do their research in several instances, and were more than willing to take at face value claims made by the Obama campaign that were disputed or counterfactual.

Patterico does the bulk of debunking the debunkers, but I'll tackle one specific claim in more detail just to show how lacking their research really was.

The FactCheck.org article claimed stated:

NRA Claim: "Ban Rifle Ammunition Commonly Used for Hunting and Sport Shooting"

False: Obama is not proposing to ban hunting ammunition. And he did not, as claimed in an NRA TV spot featuring a Virginia hunter named Karl Rusch, vote to "ban virtually all deer hunting ammunition." What Obama voted for was a measure to ban "armor-piercing" ammunition, which the measure's sponsor has said repeatedly would not cover hunting ammunition.

This claim is based on Obama's vote on S. 397 in the U.S. Senate. Obama was one of 31 senators who voted in favor of S. Amdt. 1615 to S. 397 which sought to "expand the definition of armor piercing ammunition."

The amendment applied only to handgun ammunition "capable of penetrating body armor" and to rifle ammunition that is "designed or marketed as having armor piercing capability," however.

It's true that common high-powered rifle bullets are capable of penetrating the vests worn by police, which are a defense chiefly against lower-velocity handgun rounds. But does that mean hunting ammunition is "designed or marketed as having armor piercing capability"? That's the NRA's argument, and it was repeated on the floor of the Senate by Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. He said flatly that the measure "would ban nearly all hunting rifle ammunition," without any elaboration. However, the measure's sponsor, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, said his amendment was not intended to cover hunting ammunition:

Sen. Kennedy (July 29, 2005): This is not about hunting. We know duck and geese and deer do not wear armor vests; police officers do.

Kennedy's measure failed by a vote of 64 - 31.

By the way, the NRA has used this ploy before. It ran ads in 2004 claiming Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry had voted "to ban deer-hunting ammunition" when he had actually voted on an earlier occasion for this same Kennedy amendment on armor-piercing rounds. Kennedy said then:

Sen. Kennedy (March 2, 2004): My amendment will not apply to ammunition that is now routinely used in hunting rifles or other centerfire rifles. To the contrary, it only covers ammunition that is designed or marketed as having armor-piercing capability.

FactCheck refers to the Kennedy amendment, but let's read it for ourselves:

SA 1615. Mr. KENNEDY submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill S. 397, to prohibit civil liability actions from being brought or continued against manufacturers, distributors, dealers, or importers of firearms or ammunition for damages, injunctive or other relief resulting from the misuse of their products by others; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

     On page 13, after line 4, insert the following:

    SEC. 5. ARMOR PIERCING AMMUNITION.

     (a) EXPANSION OF DEFINITION OF ARMOR PIERCING AMMUNITION.--Section 921(a)(17)(B) of title 18, United States Code, is amended--

     (1) in clause (i), by striking "or" at the end;

     (2) in clause (ii), by striking the period at the end and inserting a semicolon; and

     (3) by adding at the end the following:

     "(iii) a projectile that may be used in a handgun and that the Attorney General determines, under section 926(d), to be capable of penetrating body armor; or

     "(iv) a projectile for a center-fire rifle, designed or marketed as having armor piercing capability, that the Attorney General determines, under section 926(d), to be more likely to penetrate body armor than standard ammunition of the same caliber.".

     (b) DETERMINATION OF THE CAPABILITY OF PROJECTILES TO PENETRATE BODY ARMOR.--Section 926 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:

     "(d)(1) Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this subsection, the Attorney General shall promulgate standards for the uniform testing of projectiles against Body Armor Exemplar.

     "(2) The standards promulgated under paragraph (1) shall take into account, among other factors, variations in performance that are related to the length of the barrel of the handgun or center-fire rifle from which the projectile is fired and the amount and kind of powder used to propel the projectile.

     "(3) As used in paragraph (1), the term `Body Armor Exemplar' means body armor that the Attorney General determines meets minimum standards for the protection of law enforcement officers.".

The following language would indeed ban most centerfire handgun hunting ammunition as being armor-piercing:

     "(iii) a projectile that may be used in a handgun and that the Attorney General determines, under section 926(d), to be capable of penetrating body armor; or

It may not have been Senator Kennedy's intention to ban handgun hunting ammunition, but the fact of the matter is that bullet-resistant vests used among uniformed police officers on patrol nationwide are designed to stop common low-to-medium velocity handgun bullets (SWAT teams typically wear much heavier ballistic vests featuring large plates such as those worn by the military, designed to stop common assault rifle rounds).

The overwhelming majority of commercial, factory-loaded ammunition for hunting-class centerfire handguns will penetrate bullet-resistant vests, because the majority of these handgun calibers are high-velocity. While most ballistic vests will typically stop common defense rounds such as low-to-moderate velocity .38 Special, 9mm, 40S&W, and 45ACP, they begin having problems with higher velocity +P and +P+ loadings that are increasingly more common in these calibers. We want our police protected against unduly dangerous ammunition, but none of these listed are properly classified as armor-piercing.

Likewise, .357 Magnum, .41 Magnum, .44 Magnum, .454 Casual, 500 S&W, and literally dozens of other hunting and long-distance target cartridges (.357 SuperMag, for example) will penetrate most common soft body armor worn by law enforcement agencies, and there is no language in the Kennedy Amendment that exempts these various cartridges, nor the various bullet designs commonly used in hunting or sport shooting in these calibers.

Based upon this alone, FactCheck.Org is at least partially incorrect, but the ambiguity in the Kennedy Amendment continues:

     "(iv) a projectile for a center-fire rifle, designed or marketed as having armor piercing capability, that the Attorney General determines, under section 926(d), to be more likely to penetrate body armor than standard ammunition of the same caliber.".

Kennedy, either by intent or negligence, does not define what constitutes a center-fire rifle bullet "designed" with armor piercing capability, nor does he define what constitutes "standard ammunition". Would that include hard cast lead bullets? Ammunition that uses bullets with full-metal jackets, commonly used as practice ammunition? How would this amendment view high velocity ballistic tip or hollowpoint ammunition? Does that affect higher velocity +P or +P+ loadings that are common in many centerfire loadings, including many kinds of ammunition designed for hunters, and self defense for both police and civilians?

We don't and can't know due to the vague language Kennedy used, and his proposed language to determine the capability of projectiles to penetrate body armor contains a "trojan horse."

     "(3) As used in paragraph (1), the term `Body Armor Exemplar' means body armor that the Attorney General determines meets minimum standards for the protection of law enforcement officers.".

"Body armor that the Attorney General determines meets minimum standards" could mean any armor classification arbitrarily determined by the Attorney General, whether that means almost useless (and therefore almost never issued) Category I armor, the slightly more effective and generally agreed-upon minimum of II-A, or perhaps even higher (and probably most commonly issued) Level II, or even Level III-A armor.

We simply don't know what level an Attorney General might determine to be the minimum, and the lower the level, the more common ammunition runs the risk of becoming unfairly classified as "armor-piercing."

FactCheck's fact check of the NRA claims largely consisted of taking politicians at their word and a shallow, almost negligent reading of the laws and language they've supported.

The rest of us have a word for that.

"Fiction."

The Terrorist's Partner

Stanley Kurtz has published his long-awaited research into the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and the conclusions he draws are not surprising—Barack Obama blatantly lied earlier year when he tried to dismiss his relationship with terrorist Bill Ayers.

As Kurtz shows in his Wall Street Journal article Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools, Obama and Ayers were partners in a radical program that was focused more on indoctrinating children and their parents than education. Working together, Obama and Ayers funneled $160 million to to community organizers and far left peers of Ayers such as former SDS radical and Maoist Mike Klonsky.

Ayers and Obama used grant money that was supposed to be used for improving the educational experience of Chicago's children for political activism and agitation.

Kurtz concludes:

Mr. Ayers's defenders claim that he has redeemed himself with public-spirited education work. That claim is hard to swallow if you understand that he views his education work as an effort to stoke resistance to an oppressive American system. He likes to stress that he learned of his first teaching job while in jail for a draft-board sit-in. For Mr. Ayers, teaching and his 1960s radicalism are two sides of the same coin.

Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

Barack Obama was either an infamous terrorist's long-time patsy, or an infamous terrorist's long-time partner, and no one thinks Obama is enough of a rube to be his patsy. Obama earned his partnership with Ayers through a shared vision of radical activism.

Professor Steve Diamond's blog provides much-needed historical context, which shows that Obama/Ayers were using the CAC to fund an insurgent campaign in the "Chicago School Wars" that occurred from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, and which was fought over the fate of Chicago's public schools.

One side in this war was controlled by Mayor Richard M. Daley, Jr., son of the legendary Mayor Daley.

And the other side was led by Ayers and a small group of reformers that had emerged several years earlier in 1988 during a battle to create a new power center in the Chicago schools, the so-called Local School Councils, or LSCs. The LSCs were an effort to rein in the power of unionized teachers, school principals and school administrators, in the wake of an unpopular teachers' strike in 1987.

This milieu around Ayers also included, as far back as the late 80s, Barack Obama and the Developing Communities Project (DCP) that had hired Obama as its Executive Director in 1985. The DCP was a leading participant in the campaign to establish the LSCs.

Thus, in fact, the "radical" Bill Ayers and his ally Barack Obama, a Democratic political activist and lawyer on the rise in Chicago, were engaged in an anti-union effort to influence the direction and nature of the entire Chicago public school system. It would lead them into a battle with Mayor Daley himself.

By all means, read all of Diamond's explanation to get a true understanding of just how radical of a leftist Barack Obama truly is.

Barack Obama is an authoritarian leftist, one who sacrificed the future of a generation of inner city children, using money meant to provide them with an education to further his political goals.

As parents, we can't risk giving him the opportunity to do so again.

The Palin Rape Kit Circus Continues

We have fresh information regarding poorly-researched claims made in the media (including CNN, US News & World Report, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, the Associated Press, and literally dozens of other "professional media") that Sarah Palin presided over a Wasilla, AK city government that charged rape victims for the forensic medical examinations designed to collected physical evidence of sexual assaults. With very little variation from one media source to the next, media accounts attempted to portray Palin as a callous monster out to re-abuse victims.

The best evidence available indicates these are entirely false claims.

As I reported earlier today, the City of Wasilla can find no evidence that anyone was ever billed for the cost of these examinations, a point reiterated in a second statement by Wasilla Police Chief Angela Long this afternoon:

I found no documents within the police department showing sexual assault victims were billed for forensic exams. Nor have I been able to find any documentation regarding a decision to bill those victims. Case reports don't contain financial billing information.

Financial records are retained by the Finance Department, and the Finance Director was unable to find any records of billing within records still being held.

The Wasilla PD can find no evidence that victims were billed for rape kits. The only other city government entity (the Finance Department) that would possibly have such information only keeps billing records for six years, and is therefore of little use, as it no longer keeps records that would have been created under Palin's administration.

Outside of Wasilla, however, other government officials and experts have testified that there were no known instances of rape victims being bill for examinations, and the best evidence of this may be the minutes of the committee that helped draft the state legislation.

On March 6, 2000, Del Smith, the Deputy Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Public Safety, testified in support of HB 270 (the bill outlawing the billing of rape kits) and the minutes noted:

He commented that he does not think that a victim ought to even see a bill related to sexual assault whether it is on their insurance form or not. He emphasized that a police agency investigating a crime should pay because that is the cost of doing business in the collection of evidence no matter what the crime; he does not know of any police agency that has requested payment.

Testifying in front of the same committee, Lauree Hugonin, Director, Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (ANDVSA) noted that "billings have not come from police agencies but have come from hospitals." Trisha Gentle, Executive Director, Council on Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault noted that police departments were willing to pay for the exams, but that it was an internal decision on the part of the hospital as to who pays the hospital bill.

Despite the spin recently being applied by astroturfing Obama supporters, there was never any evidence that victims were being charged by any police departments including Wasilla's Police Department under Palin. Testimony instead indicates it was callous hospitals that attempted to bill victims on rare occasions of insensitivity.

It is also true that protective mechanisms were in place in Alaska that would have picked up the cost of such kits, even if State law had not changed in 2000.

The State of Alaska Violent Crimes Compensation Board (VCCB) was "was established in 1971 by the Alaskan Legislature to help bring financial relief to innocent victims of violent crimes in Alaska."

Among the things the VCCB would pay for are the medical bills of victims of violent crimes (including sexual assaults), counseling, and transportation to medical and counseling services.

A former worker with VCCB notes via email:

Rape kits and other medical expenses of this type would be paid by the VCCB, 100% guaranteed. The City of Wasilla could have technically 'charged' the victim but even if they did, the VCCB would have paid the bill in full. I still know the a few of the Board members and the supervisor and I can tell you that they are very liberal with the way that they pay the victims bills.

Despite claims to the contrary, there is no record that the Wasilla Police Department ever charged rape victims under Sarah Palin's leadership, nor were State law enforcement or sexual assault victim's advocates aware of such attempts anywhere in Alaska as the proposed bill was being discussed. As committee minutes show, the offenders experts were worried about were hospitals, not police, and not Sarah Palin.

Pelosi, Dems Attempt to Cement "Worse Congress Ever" Legacy

After failing their effort to flee the field last week regarding the nation's financial crisis, the liberal Democratic leadership took another step towards record mediocrity today, when it was discovered they were trying to sneak in an extension to the ban on offshore drilling:

"Since the Democrats took control of Congress, Americans have seen prices at the pump increase by 75 percent. Americans watched as Democrats, led by Speaker Pelosi, took a five-week vacation this summer while they suffered. Americans also watched as Democrats brought a hoax, no energy-energy bill to the floor last week. And today, Americans watch as Democrats prevent access to American energy in a bill designed to keep the government functioning. Once again, when it comes to providing solutions to help lower fuel prices for Americans, Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats are more out of tune than a rusty piano.

"Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats have made clear their desire to appease environmental extremists while fooling the American people into thinking that they support Republican efforts to open up America’s energy resources."

Pelosi and House Democrats are attempting this even as oil prices are skyrocketing.

Were Rape Victims Billed in Wasilla, Or is This Just More Astroturfing?

Wasilla, Alaska got it's first full-time police force in 1993, when eight uniformed officers formed the city's "thin blue line." More than a decade later, the small-town police force has tripled in size, to 24 commissioned officers.

As with small town police forces everywhere, the majority of the WPD's work involves motor vehicle accidents (MVAs), petty theft (larceny), and DWIs. WPD also deals with sexual assaults.

CNN reports this morning that Palin's town charged women for rape exams, the latest in a series of media accounts dealing with the charges. The account is true enough, in that that Wasilla was one of several small Alaskan police forces with limited budgets that found it difficult to deal with the cost of forensic medical examinations. Wasilla had a policy of allowing the City to bill victims (or more likely, their insurers) for rape kits, which can cost up ot $1,000. The policies allowing billing the victims in these small towns was finally outlawed by the state in 2000.

Palin was mayor of Wasilla from 1996 until the time the state law (AS 18.68.040) banned the practice of charging victims August 12, 2000.

We also know, via contact with the Wasilla City Clerk, that there were no rape kits charged to victims or insurers in fiscal 2000 (their computerized system only goes back that far), meaning that there is only the possibility of the unknown number of rapes in the 49 (or less) sexual assaults prior to the beginning of fiscal 2000 in mid-1999.

From the beginning of 1996 until the end of 2000, there were 49 reported sexual assaults in Wasilla, which "includes all associated sex crimes."

Of those 49 (or less) sexual assaults, we don't how many were rapes, or how many of those rapes required rape kits for which the city billed the victims.

The current Wasilla Police Chief Angela Long, responded via City Clerk Kristie Smithers that:

The Finance Department searched all financial records on our system for fiscal year 2000, 2001 and 2002. There are no records of billings to or collections from rape victims or their insurance companies in our system. The financial computer system goes back to the beginning of fiscal year 2000, and accounts receivable backup documentation goes back six (6) years per our records retention schedule.

A review of files and case reports within the Wasilla Police Department has found no record of sexual assault victims being billed for forensic exams. State law AS 18.68.040, which was effective August 12, 2000, would have prohibited any such billings after that date.

The Wasilla City Finance Department can't provide us with much of anything useful, but the Police Chief seems to state that the Police Department records don't show any evidence that any victims were billed.

I'm attempting to clarify if that means that no rape victims were ever billed for rapes in Wasilla from 1996 to mid-1999 (the 2000-2002 data is irrelevant) despite the fact then Police Chief Charlie Fannon reserved the right to do so, but Fannon has declined multiple media requests for comment, and I doubt he'll start with me.

At the same time, current Police Chief Long's statement of, "A review of files and case reports within the Wasilla Police Department has found no record of sexual assault victims being billed for forensic exams" would seem to stand on it's own, would it not?

If current Police Chief Long's information is correct, then Mayor Palin didn't know that rape victims were charged for rape kits, because none were.

If that is indeed the case (and I'm not 100% sure that it is), why, then, is this story about nothing even making the rounds, and where did it come from?

The entire "scandal" seems to have been manufactured around September 9, when stories began to run through the progressive blogosphere, seemingly out of nowhere. Far left Americablog was the most-linked source, and he credits a small blog called Stop All Monsters.

The blog, features a tagline of "A blog dedicated to rooting out and stopping all monsters. Sarah Palin, for instance," has only been in existence since July, and is written by a character who claims to be a writer/stand-up comedian based in Los Angeles.

And while it is merely speculation, given current events and the way this meme spread from an obscure blog to the mainstream media in a matter of days, it may be fair to ask if the author has any ties with Winner & Associates and "astroturfing" expert David Axelrod of the Barack Obama campaign.

RE: $700 Billion Bailout

I'm not an economist, and won't attempt to try to influence your opinion on the Wall Street meltdown, or the bailout proposal presently in the news. I'm simply not qualified to comment meaningfully on the subject in any way, shape, or form.

What I will suggest is that readers go to Memeorandum.com, and follow the economic stories being posted there, and carefully read related blog posts. Most of the bloggers, of course, don't have any more expertise on economic policy than I, and all they are doing is echoing "fears and peers;" reacting to their own biases and prejudices and echoing the blog posts of like-minded pundits. That said, there are some ideas and reservations worth considering come from both sides of the aisle when people stop pointing fingers long enough.

Good luck, folks. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

Sects, Lies, and Videotape

Led by The Jawa Report, a group of bloggers that has used their skillset to target, investigate, and bring down al Qaeda Web sites, Rusty Shackleford has posted research that has identified a Obama-connected public relations firm and it's employees as being behind the creation, uploading and publicizing of anti-Palin smear ads using proven-false smears and a technique called astroturfing, a technique perfected by Obama Campaign manager, David Axelrod.

Within an hour of the report, those named in it have feverishly begun trying to remove evidence, including deleting videos and accounts used in the astroturfing effort.

I'm not a lawyer and won't pretend to know which campaign laws (if any) were broken, but it certainly appears that Barack Obama's campaign manager is involved if not orchestrating these efforts, and people have certainly gone to jail on far less evidence.

Watch the story develop in the blogosphere at Memeorandum.

Barack Obama's chickens may have finally come home to roost.

Huff-Po Writer Declares Imminent Coup; Openly Suggests Revolution

The imminent coup is coming from the Bush Crime Family, of course, and the revolution must come from left wing "patriots" if the Democratic Congress doesn't immediately begin impeachment proceedings.

No, I'm not kidding. She's serious as a heart attack:

As I see it now, we have but two options and I have long alluded to hoping against hope that one of these options would not be the only one left to a peaceful people. The first and frankly most preferable option is for Congress to immediately begin impeachment proceedings against the members of this latest Business Plot.

No time needs to be wasted on hearings as we already now have in writing, formally as presented to Congress, the intentions of this administration to nullify Congressional powers permanently, to alter Judicial powers permanently, and to openly steal public funds using as blackmail the total collapse of the US economy if these powers are not handed over. You do see how this is blackmail, do you not? You do see how this is a manufactured crisis precisely designed to be used as blackmail, do you not?

The other option, the one I have long prayed we would never need to even consider, is a total revolution. But, If Congress won't act in its own self-defense, in the defense of democracy, in defense of us - the people who have elected them to protect us from this very danger - then what is left for us to do? I don't want to see it come down to this, but I fear that it will.

It doesn't appear that the most extreme elements of the far left are willing to risk the possibility of losing another election.

I can only hope the lawful authorities are monitoring such enticements towards insurrection with all due seriousness, and find a nice, well-lit and cheery cell for those who require one.

Update: In an update, Alexandrovna is furiously trying to claim that what she wrote didn't mean what she so clearly did, and claims I must be " near ready to call 911 and report me to the secret police," before snorting that I must be "taking heroine with his [my] coffee."

Now not to brag, but yes, I've taken a heroine or two in my day.

What I haven't done is get tanked on Smirnoff (or perhaps heroin) and angrily belched out that there should be an immediate impeachment, or else:

The other option, the one I have long prayed we would never need to even consider, is a total revolution.

Words mean things, even if the writer later claims that they don't, and the thought of taking responsibility for those words becomes too much to bear.

Palin = Princess Di With A Rifle?

That is the interesting contention of Amanda Platell in the U.K. Daily Mail.

It is rather refreshing to see a media account about Gov. Palin that isn't spiteful or inartfully designed to tear her down from the outset, but genuinely curious in tone.

It's also pathetically sad that we have to go overseas to find it.

ACORN Cracked... Again

This sounds familiar:

Republican National Committee officials say they aren't surprised to hear a Durham County elections official suspects voter registration forms gathered by a community activist group may be fraudulent.

The RNC's chief counsel, Sean Cairncross, on Friday said the group, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has a history of gathering fraudulent or incomplete voter registration forms. Cairncross disputes ACORN's claim that it is a nonpartisan organization.

Refresh my memory: don't these thugs have ties to a certain community organizer?

And?

Some of the defenders of Scott Beauchamp's trio of fables in the New Republic simply can't let go of the fact that his stories were poorly written fiction. There's always been an odd attachment by some of them to justify his lies, almost as if his stories of minor atrocities were dismissed, then no atrocity claims would ever be taken seriously again.

Today, several left wing blogs have latched on to a story than has been simmering for months, the trial resulting from the execution of prisoners by members of Beauchamp's battalion between mid-March and mid-April of 2007 near Baghdad. They are trying to use that story to somehow resurrect Beauchamp's credibility.

"See? This guys in Beauchamp's battalion committed atrocities, so his stories must have been real!"

Uh, no.

During the debunking of Spencer Ackerman's cartoonishly bad "Notes on a Scandal" roughly a month ago, I compared the military investigation into Beauchamp's lies to that very same far more serious and still developing homicide investigation to make a point:

Ackerman’s biggest point of contention that Beauchamp's stories may be true are the claims that five soldiers contacted the New Republic to vouch for the accuracy of the claims made in the article — but that none of the soldiers were willing to go on the record in the magazine for fear of retaliation by the Army. Ackerman himself presents no evidence that he spoke to a single one of these soldiers, so we don't know if that claim has any merit, but I did get in touch with an officer yesterday involved in the saga who referred to claims of fears of retaliation as "a bald-faced lie."

The claims made in "Shock Troops" — insulting a burned woman, wearing bones as a hat, running over dogs — are barbaric, but at best are minimal crimes if true. Punishment for even those soldiers involved in acts such as those Beauchamp described would be administrative punishments carried out at the base, while those who would have witnessed such acts would face no penalty for reporting them. Lying on a sworn statement, however, is far more serious, and could potentially result in a court martial and prison time. Does anyone seriously want to argue that 22 men would risk their careers and freedom to lie for Scott Beauchamp, a soldier who had gone AWOL on several occasions and who many of these men did not trust?

In addition, whistleblower laws protect witnesses of crimes, whether minor cases of cruelty as reported by Beauchamp, or murder, and we need look no further than Beauchamp's own brigade for evidence proving this.

An Article 32 hearing for Staff Sgt. Jess Cunningham, Sgt. Charles Quigley, Spc. Stephen Ribordy, and Spc. Belmor Ramos will begin next week to determine whether these four soldiers in Beauchamp's battalion executed Iraqi prisoners.

It was other soldiers in Beauchamp's battalion that stepped forward and reported the far more serious crimes of executing captives. It is highly improbable that soldiers trained to do their duty would report their fellow soldiers for serious crimes, while men in the same battalion, presumably with the same training, would participate in a cover-up of far more minor violations, fearing non-existent reprisals, and risking their careers by participating in a cover-up to do so. The argument made by Beauchamp, swallowed so easily be Ackerman, is absurd.

The one particular detail of the murder investigation that has the left so suddenly feisty is that one of the soldiers facing charges (added as a defendent in the 1 1/2 months that has passed since the story cited was written) is SFC John E. Hatley, a soldier that has been cited for an email he wrote to milblogger SFC Cheryl MacElroy (RET).

Vietnam war historian Keith Nolan wrote this afternoon seeking my reaction to this development as he recalled I mentioned Hatley's email, and this is what I told him:

Mr Nolan,

Yes sir, I did quote from and refer to an email between SFC Cheryl McElroy and a SFC Hatley. I've contacted McElroy to see if she can contact the Sgt she emailed and determine it is the same Hatley. If it is the same Hatley, it would certainly destroys his credibility if he is judged to be guilty of such crimes.

What interests me is that Hatley isn't mentioned among the accused at all in this earlier article. I wonder what changed since late July.

As for how that impacts the overall case against Beauchamp? It doesn't.

It was still against SOP (not to mention suicidal) to change a HMMWV tire while on urban patrol in his area, and doubtful that a run-flat equipped vehicle would stop anyway.

There are still no such thing as a square-backed bullet in modern firearms, and Glocks are still among the most popular handguns in Iraqi culture, despite Beauchamp's claim that only Iraqi Police carry them.

There is still no burned female contractor. She simply never existed. I have an independent civilian contractor at that Kuwaiti base and military officers on the record supporting that.

Bradleys and other tracked vehicles still cannot maneuver as he described, and that comes straight from the company that manufactures them.

As for the most plausible story he told, that of someone abusing human remains, I've got two dozen signed affidavits in my hands (well, photocopied onto a CD) that makes the all sorts of slightly different claims you would expect regarding several bones found at a COP under construction, but not a single one of a guy wearing a rotting skullplate with flesh attached for part of the day and night.

Hatley's account was a supporting anecdote I relayed, but it played no significant role in my investigation or conclusions.

Hatley may very well prove to be guilty of murder and of lying in a email about how all of his soldiers are "consistently honorable."

But Hatley's guilt or innocence in a separate matter is of little more than a footnote in Beauchamp's stories, all three works of fiction that editor Franklin Foer finally decided that even he couldn't support.

Are We Fighting a Holy War?

(h/t Instapundit)

Elon Poll: McCain/Palin Appeal Crushes Obama/Biden in NC

It is fair to call a 54-37 advantage "crushing,": isn't it?

Republican presidential candidate John McCain fared better than his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, when North Carolinians were asked about their opinions of the two candidates.

Fifty-four percent of people surveyed in an Elon University Poll view McCain favorably, compared to 37 percent who view Obama favorably.

Asked about the vice presidential candidates, Republican Sarah Palin was viewed favorably by 49 percent. The Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, was viewed favorably by 41 percent.

Gut reaction? North Carolina is about as much a battleground state as New York, just leaning the opposite way.

Dreams From My Pastor

You can't have a mentoring relationship of over 20 years without some give and take and melding of ideas, and it looks like the reflexive tendency to stoke racial conspiracies that are a well-documented part of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's character have rooted and grown deeply in at least one member of his flock, Barack Obama.

This morning in the Wall Street Journal, talk show host Rush Limbaugh rightfully rips Barack Obama for a racially-charged Spanish-language campaign ad designed to bully Hispanic voters into the Democratic camp, using fear and distortions so great as to be outright lies:

I understand the rough and tumble of politics. But Barack Obama -- the supposedly postpartisan, postracial candidate of hope and change -- has gone where few modern candidates have gone before.

Mr. Obama's campaign is now trafficking in prejudice of its own making. And in doing so, it is playing with political dynamite. What kind of potential president would let his campaign knowingly extract two incomplete, out-of-context lines from two radio parodies and build a framework of hate around them in order to exploit racial tensions? The segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s were famous for such vile fear-mongering.

Limbaugh then shows that the Limbaugh "quotes" used by the Obama campaign came from several parodies before concluding:

The malignant aspect of this is that Mr. Obama and his advisers know exactly what they are doing. They had to listen to both monologues or read the transcripts. They then had to pick the particular excerpts they used in order to create a commercial of distortions. Their hoped-for result is to inflame racial tensions. In doing this, Mr. Obama and his advisers have demonstrated a pernicious contempt for American society.

We've made much racial progress in this country. Any candidate who employs the tactics of the old segregationists is unworthy of the presidency.

"Any candidate who employs the tactics of the old segregationists is unworthy of the presidency."

Indeed, that should be automatic and reflexive disqualification in this day and age. For that matter, a candidate that goes a radical church based on a racist cult theology advocating the killing of God if God isn't sufficiently committed to one race above all others shouldn't be a factor in his party's nomination process, but Barack Obama, who was a member of a church espousing Black Liberation Theology for 20 years, is still here.

It is the height of hilarity this campaign season that the same media and blogosphere critics who are in hysterics over Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin belonging to a Assemblies of God church—the world's largest Pentecostal denomination—until six years ago when she joined a more traditional church, is utterly unconcerned that Barack Obama was a proud member of a church build upon the principles of Black Liberation Theology—a faith breach-birthed from the the radical politics of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X—until the inherent racism seeped out into YouTube of Jeremiah Wright's sermons.

But Jeremiah Wright's influence still remains in Barack Obama, as does the influence of long-time terrorist friends and fundraisers, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

Perhaps Rush should consider himself lucky that he was merely the victim of racial slander, and not the target of a nail-studded pipe bomb.

Hacker Exposed. Guilty Party Remains Running For President

David Kernell, a 20-year-old University of Tennessee-Knoxville student and son of Tennessee state representative (D-Memphis), has been contacted by the Secret Service and FBI as part of a formal investigation into the hacking of the private email account of Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

We're sure to learn more about the case as it develops, but as it does, I think I'll largely echo Vanderleun's advice to cut the kid a little slack.

Certainly, he is an adult and is presumably intelligent enough to know what he did was both illegal and immoral, but it appears that he may also be a victim himself, of sorts. An entry on a blog alleged to be Kernell's speaks in the first person of having been institutionalized on several occasions for acute depression starting when he was just nine, and again when he was 14 or 15. In the tumultuous five years since his mid-teens until his current age of twenty, it would far from surprising to discover that this young man again needed inpatient medical care to deal with his personal demons. If he still is in such a state, I'll merely pray for him and hope that he can get the care that he needs.

What I am far less inclined to forgive is how we got to this point.

In less than a month, Sarah Palin has gone from the well-liked governor of a remote state to the most slurred and slandered politician in America today.

I'd like to be able to point a finger at an isolated source acting in bad faith as the culprit in the most vicious string of unfounded personal attacks I've seen against a politician and that politician's utterly blameless family in my lifetime. I'd like to be able to point my finger at Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic for all the vicious smears he has pushed as a political Perez Hilton (minus the charm and influence, of course). But Sully is just an angry boil; a sign of infection, wishing he could be the cause.

In the concerted effort to destroy Sarah Palin, her husband, and her children, we've seen the progressive blogosphere and professional media adopt the no-holds barred, street-fight viciousness of a community organizer fighting for scraps. The petty brutality has trickled down from the man they idolize, a man cool enough to befriend and use aging terrorists and racist ministers as they can help him, and callous enough to discard friendships decades old if it suits him, without a backward glance.

For all his eloquence behind a teleprompter, Barack Obama is still at heart a thug, and his disciples learned well from their master.

In Wasilla, Alaska, two Democratic National Committee "opposition researchers" are scouring the archives of the Palin's hometown paper for any hint of a scandal.

It will never stop.

Until it stops working.

Architects of Fanny Mae Collapse Are Core Obama Advisors

Ace has the Doomsday List of Obama advisors that had a hand in the collapse.

If Barack Obama respects the American people he should ask these individuals to step down from their roles in his campaign for the financial trauma they've helped cause.

Eeyore: Don't Vote For a Candidate Because "She's Cute"

Sound advice, I should think.

Likewise, you probably shouldn't vote for a candidate just because his wife is proud of her country for the first time.

WaPo Editorial Board Beclowns Itself

As much as we in the blogosphere love to the describe nonsensical utterings of journalists, pundits, and talking heads as "self-parodying," it is rare that national news outlets truly earn that as well as the Washington Post editorial board has done with their editorial lamenting the demise of the D.C. gun ban and the passage of a House Bill that seeks to normalize D.C. citizen's rights along the lines of those recognized throughout most of the rest of the country.

The hysteric and unsigned op-ed, Open Season on the District, is really quite a wonder to behold.

THE U.S. SENATE represents the last, best hope to stop the mindless push to enact a dangerous gun law in the District. And stop it the senators must.

That "dangerous gun law" would bring the district's gun laws in line with the majority of gun restrictions in the United States, areas that have far less gun crime that historically have far less gun crime than D.C. a fact the editors purposefully avoid mentioning.

The House voted yesterday to adopt a measure that would gut the District's gun laws and that goes far beyond the Supreme Court's finding this summer of an individual right to bear arms. The bill would prohibit the District from requiring that weapons be registered -- the most reasonable and benign of measures. It would allow ownership of semiautomatic handguns and rifles and would place no age restriction on gun possession. And it would effectively strip the District of the ability to enact any regulations that could be seen as unduly burdening gun ownership. If even registration is seen as unduly burdensome, that leaves little room and little hope for other reasonable provisions.

Weapons registration, far from being "reasonable and benign," is recognized as a prelude to confiscation, and historically been used as such around the world. As a result, registration is very unpopular in the United States and is shunned in most cities and states.

Likewise, semi-automatic handguns and rifles are by far the most popular firearms purchased and owned in America today. The Post editorial board, like many who have a visceral dislike of firearms and little or no practical experience with them, either confuses semi-automatic weapons with machine guns (fully automatic weapons), or seeks to confuse and alarm the uninformed reader.

As for the comment on age restrictions, that is a purposeful deception verging on outright fabrication by the Post, and demands a correction. By Federal law, citizens must be 18 to possess handguns or handgun-only ammunition, and 21 to purchase handguns in the United States. It is true person of any age may possess a long gun (shotgun or rifle), but must be 18 by federal law to purchase one. The applicable law was designed so that minors can possess (hold, use) a firearm to participate in shooting sports. Clearly, the Post is engaging in fear-mongering to scare their readership to adopt their fear-based point-of-view.

The bill is not only a slap in the face to home rule, it is an affront to common sense and safety. How are police supposed to trace guns used in crimes if they are unregistered?

This is a pair of non-sequiturs.

"Home rule" does not excuse governments on any level in the United States from violating the Constitution, and that includes the District of Columbia. Somehow, I rather doubt the Post would venture forth with the home rule argument if the subject in question was the restriction of their First Amendment freedoms to engage in deceptive editorializing.

The registration of a firearm is irrelevant in tracing a weapon actively being used in crime, and once such a gun is confiscation the serial number is used for an ATF trace, currently used in every state, including the vast majority of those without gun registration.

How are they to protect lawmakers, dignitaries, visitors, workers and residents when guns are treated like any other product to be bought and sold with no restrictions?

Again, the "no restrictions" claim is more than hyperbole, it is a purposeful, calculated lie, as the federal laws alluded to above make clear.

As for protecting Americans and visitors, we've been doing precisely that throughout the rest of the United States for several hundred years with most areas suffering a far lower gun-related felony crime rate than D.C., this is another misleading question based upon a false assertion.

While many gun rights advocates tout their bona fides as law-and-order types, they apparently have no trouble ignoring the testimony of scores of police chiefs and law enforcement officers across the country who believe that sensible regulation saves lives.

Of course many police chiefs view gun restrictions favorably. Their primary and most immediate concern is to keep their officers alive, and if forced to admit it, their secondary concern is to minimize legal risk to teh department. A disarmed citizenry poses a lower risk to the police both legally and practically, and minimizes the chances of police being successfully sued in court for wrongfully killing an armed citizen. As police know they cannot be sued for failing to prevent crimes, they would much rather have their officers encounter disarmed victims at a crime scene than show up to find an armed and agitated citizen standing over a dead rapist or armed robber.

It doesn't mean that their preferences are better for anyone than themselves.

And never mind that even Justice Antonin Scalia, among the most conservative jurists in the land, went out of his way in District of Columbia v. Heller to note that a constitutional right to keep and bear arms and reasonable government regulation -- including registration and a ban on assault weapons -- are not mutually exclusive propositions.

Another non-sequitur. Scalia's opinion as a SCOTUS justice is not designed to be a law unto itself. His job is to interpret laws and determine if they meet Constitutional standards. The author of this editorial can just as easily argue that Scalia's opinion in Heller would support H.R. 6842, the very law this editorial so obtusely and emotionally argues against.

The drafters and supporters of this bill have done what many thought was impossible: They've made Justice Scalia look like a liberal.

Again, hyperbole that does not advance their argument, but which perhaps further advances the argument that they are finding it difficult to base their opposition on anything other than gut-level fears.

The National Rifle Association championed the bill, and House Democratic leaders caved in to its demand that the bill be brought to a vote after the organization threatened to withhold endorsements of conservative Democrats in tight races this year. Conscientious senators of both parties must now stand up to these intimidation tactics and prevent a dangerously bad bill from becoming law.

Unlike the editors of the Post, who have decided that they will attempt to tell you how to think, I'll do what they will not.

Here is the full text of House Resolution 6842, otherwise know as the National Capital Security and Safety Act. Read it for yourself.

Note that the law merely extends Second Amendment rights commonly held in the rest of the 50 states to citizens of Washington, D.C, and abolishes a patently silly D.C. law that arbitrarily labeled nearly every magazine-fed firearm machine guns.

And once you've read the law, and noted how the Post has chosen to misrepresent it, wonder how you can ever trust them to objectively report or editorialize on any subject, ever again.

Josh Howard Expresses his Love of Country, Obama

"Star-Spangled Banner going on right now. I don't even celebrate that sh*t. I'm black, God d*mn it. Obama '08. Obama and all that sh*t."

Details here.

I've got nothing to say against the Democratic candidate here, but find the disrespect of country from a punk who makes millions of dollars a year for playing a game is infuriating.

"We Are The Vermin We've Been Waiting For."

Treacher unloads on the anti-free speech tactics of the "Obama Action Wires" talking points that left wing activists are using to try to intimidate opponents and overwhelm radio station phone systems.

It's the same oppressive mindset that is behind other intimidation tactics, such as the release and abuse of the Palin family's phone number, the hacking of Sarah Palin's email account, and the unrelenting "opposition research." They now go far beyond debating the qualifications and judgment of candidates, and now have adopted tactics meant to bully, slander, smear and humiliate the candidates, their spouses, and even minor children of candidates.

Today's progressive radicals still have the mindset of Bill Ayers, they've merely found new tactics to employ.

Bristol Palin is being harassed by a petty celebrity trying to goad her into having an abortion. Others, having discovered family telephone numbers, have left obscene messages demanding nude photos.

How long until unhinged "progressive" activists target Willow Palin, a 14 year-old girl, with unfounded rumors designed to sully her reputation? (Answer: They already have).

How about elementary school-aged Piper? When are they going to insist she's being molested, or is deviant in some way?

How about baby Trig? Many pro-abortionists are already irate the Down's Syndrome child was allowed to live.

What is next, Obamaphiles?

I shudder at the thought.

Update: The bullying tactics of the official Obama campaign revealed:

A message goes out over Barack Obama's Web site with the names, phone numbers and e-mails of editors and producers foolish enough to host Obama critics. With Mr. Obama's extensive digital following, and his extensive fund-raising and contact lists, shutting up the Democratic nominee's critics with a fraction of Mr. Obama's millions of supporters is relatively simple. The digital legions plug phone lines, crash servers and intimidate the advertisers of these media outlets. This must be another instance of the "new" politics that Mr. Obama frequently talks about.

These are just the official tactics admitted to by the Obama campaign. It kind of makes you wonder what they're up to that they won't admit.

Headlining Drudge now:

OBAMA TELLS SUPPORTERS: 'ARGUE AND GET IN THEIR FACE'

Hope and Change

A drug-abusing minor celebrity has offered 17-year-old Bristol Palin a $25,000 bounty to abort her child.

Hackers have broken into Palin family email accounts, and posted some of the contents, including family photos, online.

Another site claimed to have a Palin family phone number and left a message asking for nude pictures of 17-year-old Bristol.

For once, I'm at a loss for words.

Calabrese: Media Ignores Obama's Undermining His Own Country, Because They Want The Same Things

It is now becoming abundantly clear that Barack Obama, in a meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, tried to undermine his own country's negotiations with Iraq during his July visit to Baghdad. Even the Obama campaign can't deny it because there were multiple witnesses to the exchange.

So once again, conservatives begin raising the question: Why is the mainstream media ignoring this story? They're treating it like they treated the John Edwards affair story, which they ignored until they no longer could. But this is much more serious. The Democratic nominee for president of the United States attempted to scuttle a crucial status-of-forces agreement between the U.S. and the government of Iraq. He blatantly urged the Iraqis to stop negotiating with the Bush Administration and wait until the next president – presumably him, at least as far as he's concerned – takes office.

[snip]

Why is the mainstream media ignoring the story? Well, first and foremost, because they want Obama to win the election. But it goes deeper than that. They're ignoring the story because they don't see anything wrong with what Obama did.

I'd love to give you more but that would violate fair use guidelines, so go here to read the rest.

Barack Obama illegally interjected himself into U.S. foreign policy and blatantly attempted to undermine a sitting President, secure in the knowledge that the Justice Department will not charge him with a law that hasn't been enforced in over 200 years, and knowing that the media doesn't care.

Want media attention?

Have some half-wit bail bondsman, head-wound patient, or strung-out meth junkies thrown in jail for threatening to kill Obama, even though not a single one of them could be considered a serious threat.

You'll get coverage in every major national and international news outlet for days as they fall all over each other to report that these isolated incidents are an example of how average, inbred racist rubes (Americans) cannot stand the thought of a Halfrican-American President.

But when Obama meddles in affairs that touches the lives of 140,000 soldiers—white, black, brown, yellow, and red—in a combat zone, purely for his personal political advantage?

Dead silence.

Not. A. Word.

It's a matter of priorities, folks. They want to protect Barack Obama, no matter how many Americans he endangers.

But who is going to protect us from him?

The Freshman's Arrogance

New York Post columnist Amir Taheri continues to hammer Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama today for secretly meddling in U.S. foreign policy in Iraq for his own naked political gain. Taheri first made these allegations on Monday, quoting Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on the record as saying that when Obama visited Iraq in July, he tried to convince Iraqi government officials to not work with President Bush's Administration.

Obama told the Iraqis that President Bush's administration was in a "state of weakness and political confusion," and tried to convince the Iraqis to wait to negotiate on troop-level agreements until the next administration took office in 2009. At the time of his trip in July, Obama had a comfortable lead in the polls over John McCain and was assuming he would likely be President.

The American Spectator reports from sources inside the campaign that Obama's advisers were stumped for more than five hours trying to figure out a response to Taheri's article, because:

• the account was true
• there were at least three other witnesses to the conversation between Obama and Zebari
• the campaign felt there were enough reporters in Iraq that "were aggressive enough" to debunk a denial, causing the campaign even more embarrassment.

Instead, Obama's campaign attempted to rebut Taheri's article with a snide accusation that Taheri was confusing the Status of Forces agreement with a Strategic Framework Agreement, with a statement that read:

"This article bears as much resemblance to the truth as a McCain campaign commercial. Barack Obama has consistently called for any Strategic Framework Agreement to be submitted to the U.S. Congress so that the American people have the same opportunity for review as the Iraqi Parliament," said Obama spokeswoman Wendy Morigi. "Unlike John McCain, he supports a clear timetable to redeploy our troops that has the support of the Iraqi government. Barack Obama has never urged a delay in negotiations, nor has he urged a delay in immediately beginning a responsible drawdown of our combat brigades."

Tellingly, the Obama campaign never attempted to push the Post for a correction or retraction of Taheri's charges, and observers quickly noted the campaign's response seemed to confirm the story.

Taheri's response in today's New York Post gives the Obama campaign both barrels, first stating that if there was any confusion about the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA), the confusion came on the part of the Obama campaign, as the documents are closely intertwined. Tom Maguire notes the campaign's apparent confusion in Barack Versus Barack On Iraq, which shows Obama's own web site is consistent with Taheri's claims.

Ed Morrisey at Hot Air excoriates Obama for his "me first, country second" arrogance.

First, Senator Obama has no authority to negotiate on behalf of the executive branch, which has sole authority to conduct foreign policy. Second and most important, Obama attempted to interfere against the interests of the United States. He can ask all the questions he wants, but when Obama started pressing Iraqi officials to stop negotiations with the executive branch — in other words, break one level of diplomatic contact and freeze a military alliance in time of war — that crossed a line and clearly violated the Logan Act. It also makes clear that Obama would do anything to get elected, even harm diplomatic relations between the US and an ally.

And while many are focusing on Obama's interference in foreign policy, Taheri also noted in his Monday article that Obama tried to use his trip to pressure the military to support his political goals.

As he has made clear on numerous occasions, the first-term Senator has consistently pledged a date-based withdrawal built according to his own timetable, not a conditions-based withdrawal determined by upon security and political considerations and competencies on the ground.

Obama pressured U.S. commanders for a "realistic withdrawal date," a date that would have been used as a transparent sop to his radical left-wing political base, and an attempt to unethically put those U.S. military commanders in a position of potentially influencing the course of the 2008 U.S. presidential elections. Commanders declined to be baited.

Barack Obama attempted to compromise the pledge of military commanders to remain apolitical, while actively undermining the foreign policy of the current administration while our soldiers are still deployed.

Barack Obama clearly values what is best for Barack Obama, but does he value anything else?

U.S. Embassy in San'a, Yemen Survives Car Bombing, Assault

Word coming in right now claims that at least one primary blast thought to be a car bomb and numerous smaller blasts thought to be RPGs were detonated near the front gate of the U.S. Embassy compound in San'a, Yemen, and the blasts were followed by gunfire.

Sky News is saying the attackers were dressed as soldiers, and notes that the Yemeni branch of the Islamic Jihad had made threats just three days ago.

Reuters notes that the U.S. Embassy says no Americans were among the wounded.

According to CNN, ten police and civilians were killed, as were six attackers.

Developing...

Obama: Don't Listen to McCain. Do What He Says!

Barack Obama is presently droning on about the economy with the kind of rhetoric you would expect from a liberal of the bigger-the-government-the-better-the-government stripe, but what I thought was hilarious was his attack against John McCain for suggesting we need a 9/11 type commission to study what has gone wrong recently, only to turn around several minutes later and insist that we need a regulator's committee.

So we need a committee, not a commission.

Is that what Obama means by "change?"

Did Obama Attempt to Undermine the President in Iraq?

Amir Taheri raised the issue in yesterday's NY Post. I try to help provide some answers in my latest post at Pajamas Media.

Will Obama Honor His Commitment to the Af-Pak War? Will We?

As I write this I'm IM-ing Michael Yon on the far side of the world, and the Iraq War's most experienced embedded combat journalist is frustrated with the lack of interest in the Afghanistan-Pakistan War. Yon's Death in the Corn, Part 1 is a riveting story in a war the mainstream media has largely abandoned in order to cover far more pressing issues, such as developing new smears to float against Sarah Palin in a desperate attempt to extend the expiration date of Tina Fey's career on Saturday Night Live.

Yon's current series of combat dispatches from inside C- Company 2 Para of the British Army in Afghanistan's Helmand Province alludes to near constant war with the Taliban, but the reader interest simply doesn't seem to be there.

Ironically, the same media that tried to subvert the war in Iraq with a flood of biased reporting is far more effectively neutering support for the campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan through negligence and indifference.

Americans will support our soldiers when they can see what they are fighting for. Americans must be able to empathize with our soldiers, and those they would set free. That is the reason Yon's iconic photograph of the Iraq war, of Major Mark Bieger cradling an Iraqi girl named Farah as he rushed to get her aid when she was mortally wounded by an car bomb, mattered so much. It proved that humanizing element. But even as powerful as his photos are, and as compelling as his writing is, Yon cannot carry the coverage of the Af-Pak War on alone.

And the Af-Pak War promises to get far worse before it gets better.

Al Qaeda and the Taliban have been using the tribal regions of Pakistan along the Afghan border as a sanctuary with the blessing and support of the ISI, Pakistan's most powerful intelligence service. President Bush, frustrated by the refusal of the Pakistani government to more actively act as an ally against al Qaeda and the Taliban, secretly authorized cross-border special forces raids, the authorization of which was of course loudly trumpeted in pages of the New York Times.

As a result, an embarrassed Pakistani military was compelled to announce they would fire on U.S. forces if they crossed the border. Allies? Perhaps we never really were, though we certainly liked to pretend that it were so. That illusion now seems to be falling away.

Interestingly, Pakistan's involvement, and the need to take the fight into the tribal regions, may have been one of the things that Barack Obama's army of 300 policy advisers got right, and as Chrstopher Hitchen's notes, may lead a much more involved and bloody war.

Sen. Barack Obama has, if anything, been the more militant of the two presidential candidates in stressing the danger here and the need to act without too much sentiment about our so-called Islamabad ally. He began using this rhetoric when it was much simpler to counterpose the "good" war in Afghanistan with the "bad" one in Iraq. Never mind that now; he is committed in advance to a serious projection of American power into the heartland of our deadliest enemy. And that, I think, is another reason why so many people are reluctant to employ truthful descriptions for the emerging Afghan-Pakistan confrontation: American liberals can't quite face the fact that if their man does win in November, and if he has meant a single serious word he's ever said, it means more war, and more bitter and protracted war at that—not less.

Two-important questions are raised by Hitchens' article.

• Will Republican Presidential candidate John McCain adopt Obama's more muscular approach in dealing with Pakistan's support of the Taliban if elected?
• Will Barack Obama have the mettle for a rare and prolonged break with his base and the Democratic Party he has voted with 96-percent of the time if elected, to fight the war he argues must be fought?

If McCain adopts a more muscular support, his track records suggests that he is willing to shoulder the burden of being unpopular, if it means seeing the war through to victory.

Barack Obama? He's never had to stand on his own before, and I'm not sure he's even tried.

If he is elected, and rises to the challenge of his rhetoric, I suspect he'll be as surprised as the rest of us.

Infanticide-Attempt Survivor Speaks Out Against Obama

Hope is the reason Gianna Jesson won't be voting for Barack Obama.

Still Milli Vanilli

Kathy N, a reader from Barack Obama's home state of Hawaii, wrote this morning to say that in late August she came to the conclusion that Barack Obama has a lot in common with Milli Vanilla, and that she was rather impressed that I'd come to the same conclusion six months earlier.

Does the comparison still hold up?

As more comes out seeming to indicate that Barack Obama was nothing more than a lip-synching puppet for Bill Ayers funneling tens of millions of dollars in grant money to Ayers, Mike Klonsky, and other former radicals it seems only one conclusion is possible.

Girl you know it's true.

FYI: Yon From Afghanistan Tonight on BlogTalk Radio

Michael Yon, currently embedded with British Paras in a combat outpost in Afghanistan, will be a guest Sunday Sept 14 at 11:00 PM on The JihadiKiller Hour on BlogTalk Radio. Listen if you can.

Yon's next dispatch "Death In the Corn" will be posted at http://www.michaelyon-online.com/ tomorrow.

The Official Wasilla Banned Books List

Some panicky progressives keep claiming (erroneously) that while as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin banned book in the public library, or tried to ban books, and some of the rumors being passed around even attempt to named books that the rumor creators said were banned.

Want a full, official list of every book ever banned in Wasilla, AK?

Here you go, taken from the official source (PDF).

No books have ever been banned in Wasilla at the request of Sarah Palin, or anyone else. Further, only one of the five books challenged even occurred during her terms in office.

Reality, folks.

Try it sometime.

NY Times Advocates 3rd Bush Administration

After reading the NY Times rail against Sarah Palin's style of governance, making it very clear that they find it reprehensible when political appointees are replaced by incoming elected officials, I can only assume that they will protest loudly if the next President does not keep President Bush's appointees once he takes office.

It's good to know they support such a continuity in government, doesn't it?

The Best They Can Get?

Air America talk radio host Randi Rhodes, last seen here almost a year ago when she claimed she was assaulted, before it was exposed that the culprit who knocked out her teeth was her own liver acting in self defense, is back in the news again.

Rhodes asserted Sarah Palin was a potential child molester, and sadly, no, I'm not kidding.

Rhodes is the same Air America host that recently claimed John McCain was treated well by the North Vietnamese that tortured him, and he has a lengthy history of other embarrassing rants that make liberals look like mean-spirited, ignorant fools... kinda like Obama's latest ad against McCain over email.

I'm not surprised at all that Rhodes would chose to stay in the gutter as that is very much her shtick. But is she really the among the best liberal talk radio has to offer?

The Outing of Barack Obama

If you can warp time to imagine Richard Nixon consorting with Eric Robert Rudolph for more than 20 years on public policy issues, then you can begin to understand the relationship between Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama and one of the men who made him in Chicago machine politics, Bill Ayers. What you may not be able to understand is why Obama's campaign is apparently working with Ayers to suppress the extent of their relationship.

Who was Bill Ayers?

Ayers was a founder and leader of the Weather Underground, a terrorist group that declared war upon the United States, bombed government buildings, murdered law enforcement officers during armed robberies, fire-bombed a judge's home, and had planned what could have been the largest terrorist mass murder in America prior to 9/11. That attack was only thwarted by the premature detonation of massive roofing nail-studded pipe bombs by Ayer's girlfriend and fellow terrorist, Diana Oughton, bombs destined for a non-commissioned officers dance at Fort Dix. The blast of just some of the pipe bombs leveled a four-story Greenwich Village townhouse; four more nail-studded bombs were recovered in the rubble, along with 57 sticks of dynamite. The anti-personnel bombs created by the Weathermen were designed to kill hundreds.

That Obama and Ayers have long had a relationship has never been in doubt, but until recently, Obama attempted to minimize that relationship, describing Ayers as little more than an college professor, someone who lived in his neighborhood, with whom he'd had minimal contact. A compliant media has even tried to claim the Weathermen never killed anyone other than their own members, a transparent falsehood.

But the facade of a distant relationship the Obama campaign has constructed between the candidate and the aging terrorist is slipping. In a recent interview with Bill O'Reilly, Obama admitted a bit more about the extent of his relationship with Ayers.

Ayers and Obama had partnered together at the Woods Funds on various projects as members of the board of directors, in the legislature on striking down a crime bill that would have sentenced youth offends to an adult prison for a second violent crime, and most interestingly, on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), a school reform project written by Ayers that collected $49 million from the Annenberg Foundation and was tasked with raising and distributing $98 million more.

According to the NY Times, Obama was nominated to the CAC board in 1995 and was elected chairman, despite having a paltry resume in regards to education experience, and in spite of the fact that the board had far more qualified education experts on the board for consideration, including two college presidents.

The same article notes that Bill Ayer's helped write the CAC proposal and that as soon as Obama was seated, the board was pushed to start approving enrichment program grant proposals "quickly," with little apparent regard for the quality of the proposals. A board member stated in 1998 that "the project proposals by and large were awful," and ran counter to the goals and educational strategy of the Chicago Public Schools.

As Patterico notes, the enrichment programs that the CAC doled out money to under Obama's watch seemed geared more towards indoctrination than education, as at least some of the money Ayer's helped secure was funneled to Ayer's peers, including fellow 1960s radical Mike Klonsky, who received one of the first CAC grants of $175,000 for his Small Schools Workshop (Klonsky's blog was recently removed form the Obama campaign web site when Klonsky's radical past was exposed).

What do we know about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge other than it was deemed a disastrously-run failure, and just how close were Ayers and Obama working together?

That is a question that Professor Steve Diamond of Santa Clara University Law School would like answered, but instead of getting answers, he's run into a wall of Obama supporters that he claims is a part of a secret unit of the Obama-Biden campaign similar to Richard Nixon's =""Plumbers," a group designed to prevent leaks of information that could be damaging to the campaign.

Obama's Plumblers are tasked with limiting access to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge documents housed at the University of Illinois Library in Chicago, and according to Diamond, were behind attempts to blunt the efforts of Stanley Kurtz of the National Review to obtain the documents, some of which may have been removed before Kurtz was afforded access.

Who are Obama's Plumbers?

If a Democratic source of Diamond's is correct, the suppression effort is being led by none other than Bill Ayers himself, and includes other members of "Progressives for Obama" that have direct access to David Axelrod, Obama's campaign manager.

Another named member is former CAC executive director Ken Rolling. Rolling, as it turns out, was responsible for awarding the grant that brought Barack Obama to Chicago in his first job as a community organizer. Ayers later helped place Rolling as the CAC executive director.

It appears there is a distinct possibility that Barack Obama was brought onto the board the CAC by Bill Ayers and pushed into the chairmanship despite not being nearly as qualified as others of the board for one simple, central purpose; to help launder (for lack of a better word) grant money into the hands of Ayer's contemporaries in the far left extreme of Chicago's Marxist/Communist education community, such as the $175,000 funneled to Klonsky.

Ayers, Klonsky, and other radicals decided long ago that they cannot win with pipe bombs, and decided to continue their war against America by indoctrinating children via the application of Marxist educational theory. Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Mike Klonsky, and other radicals of the 1960s never gave up their attempts to undermine America.

They just went underground, until they had a suitably pliable champion to be their figurehead, and that champion, Barack Obama, would rather that relationship remain hidden.

Update: I contacted Professor Diamond via email to follow-up, and he is disputing substantial parts of what Batchelor attributes to him in the Human Events article, and I confused something Batchelor claimed and misreported it as Diamond's statement.

First, the mis-attribution I made.

Professor Diamond states that the does not have contacts in the Democratic Party, and he's right; it was Batchelor that claimed he had party sources. Diamond emphasises that based upon what he knows, there is "no basis to conclude... that Axelrod or anyone else from the campaign is involved" if such an effort is underway, and he did not hit any sort of a wall of Obama supporters, which was my attempt to describe the role of poltical plumbers as a barrier.

He further wants to clarify that he doesn't think anyone associated with Joe Biden would have anything to do with any CAC coverup attempt that may be underway, and he does not know if Obama's plumbers exist in fact. If they do, it doesn't seem they &qout;are committed to breaking the law" if necessary, as Nixon's were.

Everything else related to the Human Events article must stand or fall based upon John Batchelor's sources and claims.

And Barack Obama and Bill Ayers have a $150 million failure to explain.

Update: A closely related story of Obama using the Woods Fund to advance his career at Pajamas Media.

Oh, what a tangled web...

Naomi Wolf: Still Dumb as a Stump

On Fox News Live Desk discussing Sarah Palin's interview with Charlie Gibson, Wolf claimed that Palin "falsely linked al Qaeda to 9/11."

Uh-huh.

Drugs are bad, kids.

WaPo Reporter Distorts Palin Deployment Speech

The willingness of the press to lie to undercut Sarah Palin is really getting obscene:

Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. But it is widely agreed that militants allied with al-Qaeda have taken root in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.

Anne E. Kornblut, just stop.

Unless Kornblut buried the lede, Palin said precisely nothing about Saddam Hussein or his government at all or any roll they may have had in 9/11. Kornblut simply made that up, because she wanted Palin to say that.

When Palin referenced "...the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans," is was an obvious reference to al Qaeda in Iraq, an offshoot of the parent al Qaeda organization that plotted and executed the 9/11 attacks, and while still funds and loosely controls the failing Iraqi branch.

And the parent organization is not happy with the branch office:

Al Qaeda's senior leadership has lost confidence in its commander in Iraq and views the situation in the country as dire, according to a series of letters intercepted by Multinational Forces Iraq earlier this year.

The letters, which have been sent exclusively to The Long War Journal by Multinational Forces Iraq, are a series of communications between Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second in command, Abu Ayyub al Masri, al Qaeda in Iraq's leader, and Abu Omar al Baghdadi, the leader of al Qaeda's Islamic State of Iraq. These letters were intercepted by Coalition forces in Baghdad on April 24, 2008. One of the letters written by Zawahiri is dated March 6, 2008.

[snip]

"The letters confirmed our assessment that Al Qaeda has suffered significant damage and serious reverses in Iraq, including widespread rejection of [al Qaeda in Iraq's] indiscriminate violence, extremist ideology, and oppressive practices," General David Petraeus, the Commander of Multinational Forces Iraq told The Long War Journal. "Even Zawahiri recognized that [al Qaeda in Iraq] has lost credibility in Iraq."

Sarah Palin was obviously addressing the living al Qaeda terrorists that soldiers would face in Iraq, no the ghosts of a regime long dead. How biased or simply dishonest does a reporter have to be to twist that?

Here's a novel concept: why don't reporters limit themselves to reporting facts.

Or is that simply too much to ask for a media more interested in selecting a President than electing one?

Gibson Blows the Exclusive

You would think that a nationally-recognized news anchor who landed the most coveted interview of the 2008 elections would have done his research to be fully prepared, so that when the interview aired, he wouldn't look like a fumbling, pretentious ass.

And then there's Charlie Gibson of ABC News, a journalist I respected until just hours ago.

Given the opportunity to interview Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin—and some would argue, given the responsibility to be both thorough and fair—Gibson attempted to trap Palin with a question designed to portray her as a religious fundementalist:

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words when he said -- first, he suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words.

But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side.

That's what that comment was all about, Charlie.

But Gibson's "quote" of Palin's "exact words" was anything but an exact quote; the statement Gibson attributed to Palin was for all intents and purposes fiction, real sentences ripped apart and rearranged to mean exactly what journalists wanted them to mean.

Here is what Palin really said:

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God," she exhorted the congregants. "That’s what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

The words in bold are those journalists simply removed from their report, in order to try to cast Palin as a religious extremist.

They tried turning a servant's simple prayer asking God for guidance, into the raving of a false prophet telling the congregation that she knows the mind of God.

Journalists doctored the quote so that this manufactured Palin would scare American voters.

Nice work trying to set a trap, Charlie.

And great work doctoring the original quote, Gene Johnson of the Associated Press.

I'm sure you've both made your bosses proud.

Another Nice, Normal, Entirely Sane American For Obama

So right, so wrong, and yet so perfect on many levels.

Spot the celebrity, kids.

Do you get the feeling Boy George and Sully want to make Barack Obama the meat filling in a manwich?

h/t Ace, who is getting my cleaning bill... KRYMB!

Thank you, Joe Klein

If it wasn't for you, I would not have realized that the easily-fooled, knuckle-dragging rubes that I call my neighbors are delusional morons, that the small towns I've lived in and around for most of my life are nothing more than bland and unimportant suburbs, and that the farmers I know are just corporate shills. Further, I would not know that all of us are part of a mythical America that is subservient and somewhat less important that the magnificence of that metropolis you call home, and of far less importance than the power and majesty of The One.

Amen.

This Day

Many of my fellow bloggers are posting tributes to those who fell on 9/11, or recollections of a sort — mine is closest to Ace's, if you care — but I can't form anything of which I'm proud.

I hate to say it, but can't be sure I clearly recall 9/11 anymore, and in fact, I'm pretty sure I don't.

I remember flashes of details, but what I archived of that September morning were little more than a swirl of naked unformed emotions I've never been able to articulate and I know I never will, and I know the memories of that day were rewritten and rewritten again in my mind in the days that followed.

One thing I recall with perfect certainty, without reservation. How unbelievably, beautifully crisp and blue the sky was that morning in the Hudson Valley after it all happened.

I lived in a little town on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River at the time called New Windsor.

In the days and weeks that followed, as the rest of the country was coming to grips with the magnitude of the total loss, we were watching funerals of our neighbors in the surrounding small towns, and hearing the survival stories of others. Again, I don't trust the memories and can't channel the emotions, and I won't cheapen the memories of those lost with what I do recall with forced sentimentality.

Those of you who lost someone that day or part of yourself, you have my sincere condolences. For my neighbor across the street, the NYPD cop that aged years in the months that followed, I'm sorry I could not take on part of your burden.

For the rest, I simply have nothing worth saying.

Sorry.

Glass Houses

Sure, I can understand Fox News wanting to laugh at CNN for not being able to spot a Photoshopped picture of Sarah Palin's head on another woman's gun-toting, bikini clad body as a fake...

...but if they are going to mock the incompetence of other news organizations for not spotting a obvious fake, then should we let Fox off the hook for letting the description of the weapon she is holding as an "AK-47" stand, when it is decidedly not?

I'll Ignore Media Requests, So Please Charge Me with Murder

I'm not going to link Andrew Sullivan nor The Atlantic, the magazine that continues to destroy their reputation by paying him a salary for unmitigated hate, but it is amusing, in an Amy Winehouse kind of way, as he allows his naked (and please, let it be only figurative) adoration of Barack Obama to combine with his irrational hatred of Sarah Palin to produce gemstone-quality insanity.

His latest?

In response to Sarah Palin's rather rational decision to not take questions from the same media that savaged her and her family for days after she was announced as John McCains running mate, Sullivan take umbrage with a primal squeak.

If you want to know what it's like to live in Putin's Russia, the Republican party is giving you a good taste. This is the most appalling dereliction of duty by the press that I have ever seen in my adult life. If they had any integrity, they would stop covering her at all under these conditions. We're now well into the second week in which someone who could be president of the United States next January has not been available to the press.

Why, it's a perfect metaphor, isn't it?

Freezing out those who attacked her and her family with a string of false rumors and innuendo (many of which can be traced directly to Sullivan itself) until she has a no-questions-barred interview with a talented journalist is exactly the same thing as journalists critical of Putin continuing to wind up dead!

Broken Man

Though he fronts a party that has tried hard to use the argument that John McCain doesn't have the temperament to be President, it is Barack Obama that seems to be falling apart under pressure:

Barack Obama responded Wednesday to the John McCain campaign's call for an apology concerning his "lipstick on a pig" remarks, by calling the controversy "phony and foolish" and defending it as an "innocent remark" that was taken out of context.

Obama said his comment was meant to compare the policies of McCain to those of President Bush, and was in no way a reference to Republican vice presidential Sarah Palin.

Obama accused the McCain campaign of "lies and phony outrage" and "Swift-boat politics." He said the "made-up controversy" was "cat nip for the news media."

The Illinois senator used the pig analogy at a campaign event in Lebanon, Va., on Tuesday while describing his Republican opponents.

"John McCain says he's about change, too, and so I guess his whole angle is, 'Watch out George Bush.' Except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics … That's not change. That's just calling something the same thing, something different," Obama said.

Oh, where to begin?

How about the accusation being levied by some that Obama's comment prior to the "lipstick" comment above was plagiarized from this Tom Toles cartoon? (h/t reader Andy B.)

Obama has already been accused of stealing lines from Deval Patrick, Mario Coumo, and Cesar Chavez, and chose a Vice Presidential candidate with his own history of oratory theft. If Barack Obama once again appropriated someone else's words, he is going to have some trouble finding credible people to explain it away this time.

As for his initial bad (whether by carelessness or malice) choice of words, the McCain-Palin campaign's charge of purposeful disparagement, and Obama's overly defensive, passive-agressive response, a clearly rattled Obama is becoming his own worst enemy.

FYI: Citizen Journalism Workshop at Blogworld

Dr. David Perlmutter, author of Blog Wars: The New Political Battleground and a really neat educator I've worked with in the past, asked me to mention the Citizen Journalism Workshop being held this year at Blogworld in Las Vegas.

Consider this a PSA for an excellent idea:

Citizen Journalism Workshop An Exclusive Event at BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2008 Date: Sept. 19, 2008 – 10:00AM – 4:45PM Location: Las Vegas Convention Ctr., Upper South Hall Conference Rooms; Room 221

PROGRAM OVERVIEW:

As blogs take their place as legitimate and respected sources for news, information and analysis, BLOGWORLD & NEW MEDIA EXPO 2008 introduces a new Citizen Journalism Workshop.

There are about 112 millions weblogs worldwide, and while many are blogging for casual reasons or for just a short time, others, especially news and information bloggers, are serious about their blogs' success in the greater marketplace of ideas.

How can someone "break in" as a news, politics or current events blogger and build a readership, get attention from major bloggers and mass media, and more important perhaps, affect or influence the traditional press agenda, politics, and public opinion?

Traditional news media outlets and bloggers have not always had the best relationship. And yet traditional media has tried to learn from the blogs. In 2008 most mainstream media outlets have blogs, or have their journalists blogging independently.

Now it's time for the bloggers and other new media journalists to mine the history, tradition and most importantly, the knowledge base of traditional journalists.

In 2008 BLOGWORLD & NEW MEDIA EXPO 2008 is introducing a journalism training certificate workshop for bloggers seeking to deepen and broaden their skills. This workshop focuses on tools and skills news and information bloggers can use to improve the quality, and impact of their blogs.

Bloggers will learn techniques of traditional journalists, including styles of opinion writing, investigative reporting techniques and fact-sourcing, avoiding legal pitfalls, and tips on what makes a post most likely to get one quoted or cited by larger blogs and even the mainstream media.

The instructors for the sessions are accomplished news & information practitioners and educators who have established skills in practical and applied areas of professional journalism training. Participants will receive a Citizen Journalism Certificate and Web icon that will allow them to display their dedication to improving their journalistic skills, and providing them with a distinct brand differentiation from the millions of other news and information bloggers.

WORKSHOP SESSION DESCRIPTIONS:

10:00AM - 11:15AM
Journalism Content & Style: How to Write & Sound for Impact (CJ1)
[Professor Steve Berry, U. Iowa]
You'll learn why substance and clarity trump flash and flair in the battle for readers. This session will teach you how to give your writing the power, lively freshness, style and needed to win hearts and minds. We'll talk about how you can focus your writing to a specific audience, how broadcast, print and website writing differ and why; and how you can use this knowledge to better target specific groups. We'll also examine the rhythms, structure, and succinctness of superior writing and provide you with examples of how the best writers make people see instead of just read.

11:30AM - 12:45PM
Finding What's Out There: Searching, Sifting, and Selecting the Best Information Online (CJ2)
[Professor Jay Perkins, LSU]
Finding information isn't a problem anymore, but avoiding suffocating under all that information can be. Investigative journalists know that government collects a ton of information that most people never find and that Google and Wikipedia can't touch. This session will look at some of the free, hidden treasure chests of information. You'll learn how to assemble a background profile on someone from public records, how to trace property, cars, boats and other transactions, and where to go to find people who can help you find these items. You also will learn how to obtain information from local and national federal agencies through the Freedom of Information Act and how to get around the bureaucrats when they bar the front door and refuse to hand over the key. We'll also talk about fact-checking and source-credibility strategies that will keep you on the path of accuracy--and hopefully, out of someone else's blog.

2:00PM - 3:15PM
Top 10 Ways to Blog Your Way Into a Lawsuit (CJ3)
[Nina Yablok, Law Office of Nina Yablok]
A fast paced romp through the biggest legal risks that both individual and group bloggers face. Emphasis will be on recognizing problems early, assessing risks, self-help measures to minimize risk, when not to call an attorney, and when to make the call and how to use attorneys efficiently. Detailed legal analysis will not be provided. This is very much a "how to reduce risk in the real world" program.

3:30PM - 4:45PM
Getting Mainstream Media Attention: How to Reach Out to Journalists (CJ4)
[Professor David Perlmutter, U. Kansas]
In a crowded online world, how does an independent blogger stand out and be heard? Being cited, quoted, published or used as a source by mainstream media is a significant way to build a larger and wider audience. We will review the basic selection techniques of how journalists deem someone an "approved source" or expert; we discuss how bloggers can enter the Rolodex of reliable sources for major media. Second, we show ways to have blog content picked up by traditional media, from blasting out a press release to writing and submitting an op-ed to contacting and working with mainstream reporters on stories. Finally, we will look at the ethical issues that affect how your blog is perceived by mainstream media.

PRESENTER BIOS:

STEPHEN J. BERRY, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter, is an associate professor of journalism at the University of Iowa, where he specializes in investigative reporting. He recently completed a stint as coordinator of the basic journalistic reporting program and taught a section in it for four years. His book, Watchdog Journalism: The Art of Investigative Reporting [Oxford University Press], was released July 2008. Before entering academia in 2003, Berry was a journalist for 33 years, having worked last at the Los Angeles Times. While at The Orlando Sentinel, he and a colleague won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. He has won numerous other honors for investigative and daily reporting, including the Associated Press Newspaper Executive Council Award for public service; the Benjamin Fine award for education reporting; the Los Angeles Times' Top of the Times Award, one of its Pulitzer nominations and its Editor and Publisher Prize; Society of Professional Journalists Award [Atlanta Chapter]; and others. His projects have examined race relations, the criminal justice system, police abuse of power, school district merger, medical malpractice, stock-car racing safety, guns, government and illegal drugs. More recently he has published "Reclaiming Objectivity" and "CBS News Lets the Pentagon Taint its News Process" in Nieman Reports. He holds an M.A. in American history from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

JAY PERKINS is an associate professor at the Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University. He specializes in teaching students how to find and use governmental documents and how to cross-check Internet sources. He has taught investigative, governmental and computer-assisted reporting classes at LSU for the past 25 years. He also teaches classes in the summer in the United Kingdom, has conducted seminars for reporters in Zambia twice, and frequently lectures on using Internet databases and sources to foreign journalists who are visiting the States on sponsored tours. Prior to coming to LSU, he was a political reporter in Washington, D.C., for the Associated Press.

DAVID D. PERLMUTTER is a professor at the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications, University of Kansas. He received his BA and MA from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He has served as a Board member of the American Association of Political Consultants and now sits on the National Law Enforcement Museum Advisory Committee for its Media Exhibit. A documentary photographer, he is the author or editor of seven books on political communication and persuasion: Photojournalism and Foreign Policy: Framing Icons of Outrage in International Crises (Praeger, 1998); Visions of War: Picturing Warfare from the Stone Age to the Cyberage (St. Martin's, 1999); (ed.) The Manship School Guide to Political Communication (LSU Press, 1999); Policing the Media: Street Cops and Public Perceptions of Law Enforcement (Sage, 2000); Picturing China in the American Press: The Visual Portrayal of Sino-American Relations in Time Magazine, 1949-1973 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); (ed., with John Hamilton) From Pigeons to News Portals: Foreign Reporting and the Challenge of New Technology (LSU Press, 2007) , and Blogwars: The New Political Battleground (Oxford, 2008). He has also written several dozen research articles for academic journals as well as over 150 essays for U.S. and international newspapers and magazines. He writes a regular column, "P&T Confidential," for the Chronicle of Higher Education. He has been interviewed by most major news networks and newspapers, from the New York Times to CNN and ABC and, most recently, The Daily Show. He is editor of the blog of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas (http://www.doleinstituteblog.org/) and his own blog about online politics, http://policybyblog.squarespace.com/.

NINA YABLOK is an attorney in private practice. Her firm provides a full range of legal and related services to privately held businesses in a wide range of fields. Areas of advice include, but are not limited to, business development, merger and acquisition consulting, licensing, labor, contract, business entity choice, independent contractor and intellectual property law. Nina has been general counsel to Pajamas Media since it was a twinkle in Charles Johnson's and Roger Simon's eyes. She still represents PJM as well as several other well-known blogs. Nina's first online client was one of the largest and busiest forums on Compuserve. There, she dealt with legal issues on message boards, file libraries, chat rooms and IMs before the term "Social Networking" had been invented, and 11 years before Facebook was launched. She received her law degree from St. John's University, School of Law. Her own blog is at http://www.bizblawg.com/.

It certainly sounds like something worth checking out.

BBQ'd

Ouch. From the McCain campaign.

I can't read Barack Obama's mind.

I can't tell you with certainty whether his use of the time-worn phrase "you can't put lipstick on a pig" was an innocent use of the phrase as it has traditionally been used, or if it was a not-so-subtle slap at Gov. Sarah Palin.

I can tell you that using such a loaded phrase, when so many Democrats are still furious at Obama's perceived disrespect towards Hillary Clinton (especially considering his previous incidents of sexism, such as when he dismissively addresses a reporter as "sweetie"), is the work of someone who is either a neophyte, or who has a political deathwish.

He may have thought he was being coy with his "pig" comment, but if he keeps generating controversial statements that can reasonably be interpreted as a personal attack, it's his campaign that is going to get cooked.

Update: CBS forced YouTube to remove the McCain ad linked above,but it can still be seen here.

The Left's Rhetorical Suicide Bombers

Sarah Palin fired the librarian who didn't want to let her ban books.

Sarah Palin endangered her son's military unit by announcing his deployment to Iraq.

When Governor Sarah Palin burst onto the national stage as John McCain's Vice Presidential pick, it set the journalistic and political pundits classes that considered her a dark horse candidate back on their heels in shocked surprise. The immediate, visceral delight among conservatives, moderates, and even a surprising number of Democrats to Palin's selection and unique biography triggered an immediate shift in media coverage.

Palin's coming out also triggered panic on the political left as they saw the "buzz" of the Democratic National Convention vanish into the ether, and the backlash against "Caribou Barbie" on the left was vicious and immediate as slur after slur were slung at her and her family the overwhelming majority of them false.

Palin never fired the Wasilla librarian or wanted to ban books, and the list of books  she is accused of wanting to ban was a list of books copied from a university Web site, and included books published after Palin became mayor.

Palin first registered as a Republican in 1982 and has always been a Republican; the Alaskan Independence Party official who first claimed Palin was a member quickly admitted her mistake the next day.

Instead of cutting spending for special needs programs as claimed in a Washington Post article, Palin actually increased funding by more than $3 million.

Sarah Palin did not fake her pregnancy with her youngest son Trig to cover up her daughter's teen pregnancy. Sarah and Bristol had concurrent pregnancies for a month, and Bristol is still carrying her child with Levi Johnston.

Sarah Palin is far from being a racist who slurs Eskimos; her husband's family and her children are part Yup'ik Eskimo.

While the venom and volume of the slurs begin launched against Sarah Palin are notable, they are unsurprising in today's politics. Barack Obama and John McCain have both had rumors and slurs directed against them during the campaign, some of them quite fierce.

What separates the smears against Sarah Palin from the directed at Obama and McCain is the apparent willingness of some of those creating and propagating the smears to put their names on the line in order to impeach Palin's reputation as a form of rhetorical suicide bombers.

Foremost among them is Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic. Sullivan is openly a Barack Obama supporter, and has been a key conduit of taking obscure smears into the public spotlight. Sullivan has attacked Palin as a Christian extremist, and went so far as to link and repost portions of a sermon from Palin's minister that were doctored to make him sound like Barack Obama's racist conspiracy theorist former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

Sullivan helped push the slur that Palin engaged in an extramarital affair with her husband's former business partner without any credible shred of evidence supporting such a claim, and was also among the first to actively promote the conspiracy theory that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy, claiming that her youngest son, Trig, was actually her daughter Bristol's child. Even after it was revealed that Bristol Palin was pregnant concurrently with her mother, Sullivan still pushed for Sarah Palin to release her medical records. In continuing to foist up on improbable smear after another against Sarah Palin no matter how obtuse or unhinged the attack was, Sullivan went a long way to destroying his reputation. He has also tarnished the reputation of The Atlantic in the process.

Paul Kane of the Washington Post infamously and daftly misrepresented a spending bill where Palin exercised her line item veto, and claimed that as governor, Palin "reduced funding for Covenant House Alaska by more than 20 percent." The reality is that Palin increased funding for Covenant House by $3.9 million, a three-fold increase. Despite widespread criticism and a debunking by FactCheck.org, Kane and the Post have refused to correct the false representation of Palin's record.

Jon Soltz, a former U.S. Army Captain, Iraq War veteran, and chairman of Votevets.org, is claiming that gov. Palin violated operational security by revealing that her eldest son, Track, would be deploying to Iraq. Soltz repeated the smear on another prominent political web site, the Huffington Post.

But the claim Gov. Palin violated operational security is demonstrably false, which Soltz, as a former soldier, should have know before posting his claims. CNN's Anderson Cooper dismantled Soltz's transparently partisan attack, pointing out that the Pentagon announced Track Palin's unit was deploying to Iraq back in May, and that the unit itself had announced a public deployment ceremony a month before Palin was announced as John McCain's running mate. Two separate field-grade officers contacted have confirmed that Palin in no way violated operational security.

Some news agencies have released far more about Track Palin's deployment and his unit, including claiming to know to which province his unit would be deploying in Iraq. Without the benefit of any evidence at all, Soltz claims that the McCain-Palin campaign must be behind this disclosure. Though it damages his credibility and tarnishes the veteran's group he chairs, Jon Soltz has put his credibility and that of VoteVets.org on the line in hopes of undermining a proud soldier's mother for releasing already public information.

Despite these smears directed at Gov. Palin--and some that are worse--Palin and John McCain have surged in the polls. In months to come, those who have sacrificed their reputations in hopes of tarnishing Palin's name may wonder if the sacrifice was worth it.

Yon: Where Eagles Dare

I had a few minutes with Micheal Yon this morning via IM. Mike is in Afghanistan, and joined up with a British unit several weeks ago. He has already seen lots of combat that the mainstream media simply isn't covering — rural and urban, ambushes and hit-and-run attacks, mostly small arms and RPGs that have cost the Taliban dearly. Organizationally, they simply aren't as sophisticated as the Iraqi insurgency was, and they're taking heavy casualties.

A case in point explaining the kind of fighting ISAF forces are facing in Afghanistan might be the battles that took place on a humanitarian mission Michael covered in Where Eagles Dare. Several hundred Taliban died trying to stop a convoy that had no other purpose than to help the Afghan people by providing them with more electric power.

It's well worth a read, and if you can donate a couple of bucks please do, as his coverage is all supported by reader donations.

But Wasn't he Worried It Was A Plot to Give Him AIDS?

Rev. Jeremiah Wright finds a use for part of the US of KKK-A.

Schooled

Barack Obama took the day off from campaigning Monday to accompany his daughters to their first day of school Monday, in Chicago's prestigious University of Chicago Lab School , a large, private facility.

It seems that the $50 million in Annenberg Challenge money he blew through creating social welfare programs for old leftist terrorists and other Ayers' allies couldn't quite bring Chicago's public schools up to his standards.

Confirming the Obvious: Palin Race Smears a Steaming Pile of Moose Hooey

It's been debunked, the author discredited, and key players in the smear apparently linked to the Obama campaign.

The smear is now being deleted fast and furiously by the very same liberal bloggers who hoped the manufactured hate would dupe moderates and independents into thinking Sarah Palin is a racist.

To go ahead and drive the stake deeply into the heart of this smear, through the coffin, and into the earth beyond, I contacted those who would know Sarah Palin the best, journalists in and around her hometown of Wasilla, AK.

Kari Sleight, publisher of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, Palin's hometown newspaper kills the slur dead, responding via email:

I have not heard the rumor about Barack Obama. Rumors of the Eskimo slurs surfaced during Gov. Palin’s gubernatorial campaign and were quickly dismissed as such.

I have personally known Sarah Palin for 11 years and have never heard her utter anything remotely racist. Her husband, Todd, is half Yup'ik Eskimo, and her children share the same heritage.

This slur is as dead, but don't worry... I'm sure others are just around the corner.

Update: Sean Cockerham, state politics reporter at the Anchorage Daily News concurs that the racist slurs against Palin are false, with a to-the-point:

We've heard nothing like this.

Yes, Adam. But Not For the Reasons You Think

Over at the Huffington Post, liberal writer/director Adam McKay laments of the 2008 Presidential elections that "We're Gonna Frickin' Lose This Thing," and goes on to prove that the far left wing may lose this election for Democrats. It won't be for the reasons he thinks, but because of their own inability to find common ground with vast majority of Americans.

Something is not right. We have a terrific candidate and a terrific VP candidate. We're coming off the worst eight years in our country's history. Six of those eight years the Congress, White House and even the Supreme Court were controlled by the Republicans and the last two years the R's have filibustered like tantrum throwing 4-year-olds, yet we're going to elect a Republican who voted with that leadership 90% of the time and a former sportscaster who wants to teach Adam and Eve as science? That's not odd as a difference of opinion, that's logically and mathematically queer.

There's a lot of self-delusion contained in that one paragraph.

Barack Obama is a brilliant orator with a great personal story, points almost everyone will concede. But narrative isn't leadership, and Barack Obama is one of the least experienced candidates the Democrats have ever offered up as a presidential candidate, and he arguably holds the title of the least experienced major party candidate in history. Obama also voted with the most unpopular Congress in the history of the United States 97-percent of the time.

Joe Biden, his selection for Vice President, is a man who has been in the Senate longer than many Obama supporters have been alive, yet his party never gave him a position of leadership that was required by seniority. In a campaign espousing "hope and change, " Americans see Biden as the consummate Washington insider; even his son is a lobbyist. Biden also voted along party lines 97-percent of the time last year.

As for claiming that the Bush presidency was the "worst eight years in our country's history" — well that kind of gross hyperbole may be fine in Hollywood, but is such an absurd statement that it doesn't justify addressing.

McKay's conspiracy theory of why Obama is in trouble is just as far-fetched and delusional as his understanding of history.

It reminds me of playing blackjack (a losers game). You make all the right moves, play the right hands but basically the House always wins. I know what you're going to say " But I won twelve hundred dollars last year in Atlantic City!" Of course there are victories. The odds aren't tilted crazy, but there is a 51%-49% advantage. And in the long run, the house has to win. The house will win.

So what is this house advantage the Republicans have? It's the press. There is no more fourth estate. Wait, hold on...I'm not going down some esoteric path with theories on the deregulation of the media and corporate bias and CNN versus Fox...I mean it: there is no more functioning press in this country. And without a real press the corporate and religious Republicans can lie all they want and get away with it. And that's the 51% advantage.

Obama is losing because the press is in the tank... for McCain.

Yes, McKay's quite sincere. And he's not done, either.

I'm not even getting into the fact that the religious right teaches closed mindedness so it's almost impossible to gain new voters from their pool because people who disagree with them are agents of the devil. I just want to look at two inarguable realities: A) we have no more press and B) the Repubs are screwing with the voters on the local level.

Adam McKay claims that Barack Obama and Joe Biden is a dream ticket for Democrats, thinks the mainstream media is in the tank for Republicans, and thinks that religion is being used to make Americans stupid, biased, and Republican.

But he has a solution.

1) We give definitive clear speeches like Biden and Obama gave the other day about how no one talked about any issues at the Republican Convention and how they outright lied. But we do them over and over again. 2) We use the one place where it's still a 50-50 game -- the internet -- as much as we can. 3) But most importantly we should bring up re-regulating the media and who owns it and what that conflict of interest is a lot more. By pretending there's no conflict of interest we're failing to alert the public that they're being lied to or given a looking at a coin at the bottom of a pool slanted truth. Every time a pundit or elected official is on any TV news program it should be a polite formality to mention that GE has made such and such billions off the war in Iraq by selling arms or that Murdoch is a right-wing activist with a clear stake in who wins and who taxes his profits the least. Disney, GE, Viacom, and Murdoch -- all want profits and the candidate and agenda that will get in their way the least.

Tell American they're too dumb to realize that politicians lie. Attempt to regulate free speech until only liberal speech is free. Make Marxist/Communist anti-capitalist rhetoric a required part of evening newscasts.

Congratulations, Adam McKay.

It is precisely this kind of delusional, arrogant, self-centered attitude that may very well make your nightmare come true.

Reality Checked at MSNBC

Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews have been relieved of their anchor duties at MSNBC:

MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel's coverage of the election.

That experiment appears to be over.

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.

The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel's perceived shift to the political left.

Frankly, I haven't watched Matthews or Olbermann during their stints as anchors, so I can't pretend to tell you with any certainty why they were pulled, but based upon why I know of them prior to their anchor duties, I would not be surprised if their was a perception of open Obama partisanship in their coverage that damaged MSNBC's credibility as a news organization.

I can tell you that news of the end of their run is helping create something of a Rorschach test exposing the biases of the political blogosphere. Simply scan the responses to the news of their dismissal and you'll see what I mean.

Of particular interest — from my perspective, anyway — was how some of the most radical leftist sites seemed to take their removal as a personal affront.

MSNBC may have tilted left as a business decision, but I wonder how carefully they calculated the downside of courting a politically-motivated audience that takes policy and programming so personally. Such a relationship may be advantageous if the network and audience remain on the same page, but such devotion is fickle as well as intense, and it appears that if a network deviates from the exact kind of coverage the audience prefers, then the backlash will be both intense and immediate.

By responding to the replacement of Matthews and Olbermann with such ferocity and anger towards MSNBC, the liberal audience may very well have dissuaded future forays into more liberal programming by MSNBC or other broadcasters.

Why should broadcasters take a programming risk, if the upside is minimal, and the downside can be so adverse?

By responding with such venom, the far left netroots have let their anger get the better of them once again.

Another Foreign Celebrity For Barack Obama

This time it was British comedian Russell Brand in his opening monologue at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards:

"Now as a representative of the global community, a vistor from abroad, I don't want to come across as a little bit biased, but could I please ask of you, people of America, to please elect Barack Obama. Please! On behalf of the world!

"Some people - I think they're called racists - say America is not ready for a black President.

"But I know America to be a forward-thinking country right? Because otherwise, you know, would you have let that retarded cowboy fellow be a President for eight years?

"We were very impressed. It was nice of you to let him have a go, because in England, George Bush wouldn't be trusted with a pair of scissors."

Update:The U.K. Telegraph adds:

Brand also took a shot at Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

Speaking of Palin's daughter's boyfriend, Levi Johnston, Brand said: "That is the safe sex message of all time. Use a condom or become a Republican!"

Biden's Senior Moment

o rly?

Obama's "Sambo" Smear Merchant Now Posting Prominently at BarackObama.com

Charley James, the expatriate, cartoonishly progressive blogger that smeared Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin as being the overtly racist and sexist governor of a racist and sexist state, now has his smears prominently linked and displayed at BarackObama.com:

Click image for full-screen)

The campaign can and does delete blogs created by "difficult" supporters, like the diary kept by long time Obama associate, SDS veteran, and Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) chairman Mike Klonsky.

Why is James' smear of Governor Palin still online?

Update: Charley James isn't even his real name, if this comment can be believed.

Shocker: L.A. Progressive Writer Who Smeared Palin as a Racist and Sexist is a Life-Long Liberal With a Severe Hatred of Republicans

The LA Progressive post attacking Sarah Palin as a racist and a sexist that has been swallowed unquestioningly by the dimmer lights of the progressive blogosphere is the work of one Charley James.

Who is Charley James?

James is a far left-wing blogger that views radical activist web site Democracy Now! as "one of the few news and public affairs programs delivering real news"... perhaps not that surprising for the kind of person shocked that some damnable Americans in progressive Canada didn't appreciate his "Bush Lied/They Died" tee shirt.

James, who has been blogging at The Political Curmudgeon since June of this year, claims to be an independent investigative journalist, and I have no doubt that he is.

Why, just check out his unimpeachable fact-checking methodology:

To verify what friends were writing, I called the St. Paul Mayor’s Office (615.266.8510) where I was directed to the police (651.291.1111). A PR woman for the cops said I had to talk to the Secret Service (612.348.1800), which refused to answer any questions but asked for the spelling of my name before telling me to call Homeland Security (202.282.8000) where repeated calls were not returned. I tracked down the cell phone number of the St. Paul convention office of the Republican National Committee where the man who answered claimed to have no idea what I was talking about, helpfully suggesting I call the police before suddenly asking how I got the number. Ring around the rosy.

It was like trying to get an answer from Dick Cheney’s office. Translation: The e-mails were accurate.

This stellar journalist uses the long-validated "Olbermann method" of confirmation, where the inability to collect evidence to the contrary proves the worse rumors about your enemies are true.

So by all means, when Charley James writes that Sarah Palin is a racist that hates Eskimos, don't let the fact that she's been married to one for the past 20 years get in the way.

Meet One Of Barack's Bosses

Sorry, Michelle. It isn't you. Who is it?

Here are some clues:

• Official member of Barack Obama's campaign. You know, one of those folks eligible for something Obama calls "firing" should they attack a candidate's family --- properly or otherwise.
• Only one of 35 bundlers to raise over $500,000 for Obama, on par with Hollywood moguls Daivd Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg
• Not only a registered lobbyist, but Lobbyist of the Year (2006)
• Not only Lobbyist of the Year, but he played a lobbyist (himself) on HBO's K Street

You'll have th click over to Perfunction to get the details.

This goon is such a a powerful lobbyist and Obama campaign figure that he can go directly against Barack Obama's explicit public promise to fire anyone who attacks Sarah Palin's family during the same week Obama made the promise (and it's still fresh in everyone's minds), and walk away without a scratch.

Barack Obama isn't in charge of his campaign, and Obama's puppeteers such as this man are arrogant enough to show that in public, without fear of Obama living up to his promise.

Obama Slips, Admits He'd Favor A Gun Ban

In Pennsylvania for a campaign event before a hand-picked crowd, Barack Obama stumbled badly when thrown by a skeptical supporter with a question about his noted anti-gun stance:

A woman in the crowd told Obama she had "heard a rumor" that he might be planning some sort of gun ban upon being elected president. Obama trotted out his standard policy stance, that he had a deep respect for the "traditions of gun ownership" but favored measures in big cities to keep guns out of the hands of "gang bangers and drug dealers" in big cities "who already have them and are shooting people."

"If you've got a gun in your house, I'm not taking it," Obama said. But the Illinois senator could still see skeptics in the crowd, particularly on the faces of several men at the back of the room.

So he tried again. "Even if I want to take them away, I don't have the votes in Congress," he said. "This can't be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I'm not going to take away your guns."

So Obama concedes that he wants to "take them away," but then he claims that he doesn't have the votes to push through a gun ban. Far left liberal Democrats control both houses of the most unpopular Congress in recorded history. Do they have anything to lose by trying to push another gun ban, and does anyone want to take the risk, knowing Obama would sign any gun control bill that crosses the President's desk?

Update: Several folks I respect are disputing my contention that Obama's comments amount to an admission of favoring a gun ban, and think I'm distorting what he said.

What do you think?

In my experience as a reader and author, the construct "Even if I wanted to do 'x'..." is an admission that the actor desires 'x' but merely lacks the means to obtain it.

Further breaking down Obama's statements, he says, "Even if I want to take them away, I don't have the votes in Congress. This can't be the reason not to vote for me." I read this as an admission that he desires a ban, but that he lacks the means so you should not hold his views against him.

Taken in the context of a politician that refuses to recognize the right of gun ownership for anything beyond hunting and target shooting on his own campaign web site, who has a documented record of working to fund anti-gun groups as a Woods Fund board member, who had called for the banning of all semi-automatic firearms and handguns, and who has attempted to zone gun stores out of business, is my interpretation illogical?

Much Ado About Nothing

TS Hannah certainly may have had a more substantial impact south and east of here (and certainly along the beaches), but what I've seen thus far isn't anything you'd recognize from the ground as anything more than a series of showers... and I've got a pretty good vantage point:

In this satellite image snagged the image from the Weather Channel just a few minutes ago, I'm just inside the right side of the nasty little red dot, and we're not seeing much of anything right now, even though we've had an estimated 4 inches of rain overnight.

Let's hope everyone makes it out with as little damage as we have thus far.

Races High

The only card in his deck.

Image via PLZMARRYMEKTHX

As a far-left liberal, Obama just can't help himself. Identity politics is simply part of who he is.

Update:comments closed due to spammers.

This is Your Brain on (D)

(H/t The Crescat via The Anchoress)

Organize This

Some folks are having way too much fun making light of (or tearing apart) the community organizer line on Barack Obama's already thin resume, and left-wing bloggers and media types are not amused.

They got their marching orders (no doubt an "important action alert!") and have begun astroturfing blogs and news sites with the following absurd comparison virtually overnight:

Jesus was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor.

That's a fun gross exaggeration to play with.

Let's do our own moronic comparison, using actual Democrats from this millennia for comparison instead of religious figures born thousands of years ago.

Bull Conner was a community organizer and George Wallace was a governor.

Their work, of course, was assisted by decades-earlier work of another Democrat community organizer, Nathan Bedford Forrest. Does anyone remember the community he helped pull together?

Of course you do.

Is it fair in any way to put Obama into this company? Of course it isn't. But Barack Obama has as much (or more) in common with these segregationists and Klansman as he does Jesus.

Actually, that isn't true.

To the best of my knowledge, none of these men were part of to a cultish theology that said if God didn't favor their race, then he should be murdered. Barack Obama went to a radical church that practiced this God-threatening Black Liberation Theology for more than 20 years.

A little more relevant for Barack Obama are a few other folks a little closer to his physical and ideological homes.

Charles Manson organized a community of his own, one that Bernadine Dorhn was certainly impressed with. You remember Bernie Dorhn, don't you? She and her husband Bill Ayers had helped form yet another community, one called the Weather Underground. Years later, when they were done with their declared war against the United States, they helped community organizer and friend Barack Obama organize his first political fundraiser in their home.

If liberals want to play games about the meaning and definition of the words community organizer, then by all means, lets play.

It will be a lot more fun for us than them.

Texas Family Kills Guns Down Home Invaders With Their Own Guns

Or as Sarah Palin calls it, "trash day."

With Kellie Hoehn clinging to the weapon's muzzle, her husband tackled the man who held the shotgun. She knocked the intruder in the head with a jar candle, giving her husband a chance to wrest the shotgun.

By then the tussle had spilled out onto the front lawn. Keith Hoehn shot one of the men who had a pistol, police said. Wounded, that man ran away.

Then the intruder who initially had the shotgun charged Keith Hoehn.

Kellie Hoehn told The Dallas Morning News that she screamed at her husband, "Shoot him, shoot him, shoot him."

Her husband fired the shotgun and the man fell to the ground. Then the shot man lunged a second time.

"Well, I shot him again, and I guess that was it," Keith Hoehn said.

Over at The Atlantic, a certain blogger just launched an "investigation" demanding that the Hoehn's provide DNA to prove that they are the parents of their children, and paperwork showing that the home is really their own.

Obama/Biden Email Spam Machine Blast Out Another Whopper

Talk about phoning it in:

Bob --

John McCain just accepted the Republican nomination and adopted the most conservative platform in the history of his party.

After days of negative attacks -- and no mention of real proposals to fix our economy, get more people health care, or make America safer -- the party that brought you eight years of disastrous policies is asking for four more.

Well, not if we have anything to say about it.

Across this nation, people like you have joined this movement because you believe that we are better than the past eight years. And now that we are entering the final stretch, it's going to take all of us to bring the change we need.

Step up at this crucial moment and make a donation of $5 or more to change our country.

After the last eight years, it's up to you to keep America's promise alive.

How can John McCain pull us out of the deep hole we're in when he voted with George Bush more than 90% of the time?

The American people deserve more than a 10% chance at change.

No matter what McCain says, we can't bring about change by relying on the same ideas that have failed us for the last eight years.

Show the McCain campaign that people coming together, giving what they can afford, and working toward a common purpose will transform this country.

Change begins with you. Please make a donation of $5 or more now:

https://donate.barackobama.com/changeweneed

Thanks for everything you're doing,

Joe

Seriously, "the most conservative platform in the history of his party"?

John McCain?

I knew some were alleging that Barack Obama was smoking again due to the pressures of the campaign trail, but I'd just assumed they meant cigarettes.

Media Play Dumb To Smear McCain/Palin

MSNBC's Mark Murray and ABC News' Jake Tapper seem to have found a new way to help Barack Obama, playing dumb and purposefully misconstruing a McCain/Palin fundraising letter in order to claim the Republican ticket is being dishonest.

Murray writes:

This afternoon, the McCain campaign issued a Palin fundraising solicitation for the joint McCain-Palin-RNC fund. (After this week, McCain no longer can raise money after accepting $84.1 million in public funds, but the Republican National Committee and state parties can.)

"I cannot tell you how special last night was for me and how enthused I am to be John McCain's running mate," Palin said in the email solicitation, adding: "Unfortunately, as you've seen this week, the Obama/Biden Democrats have been vicious in their attacks directed toward me, my family and John McCain. The misinformation and flat-out lies must be corrected."

Unless we're mistaken, neither Obama nor Biden nor the campaign has attacked Palin's family.

Echoing Murray hours later with unerring precision, Tapper writes:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin sent out a fundraising solicitation today that charged that "the Obama/Biden Democrats have been vicious in their attacks directed toward me, my family and John McCain."

I asked spokespeople of the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee just which "Obama/Biden Democrats" they're referring to.

The response I got was that Obama spokesman Mark Bubriski erroneously attacked Palin as a supporter of Pat Buchanan.

That's it. That's the evidence.

An attack on Palin herself.

In other words, they can't name one person affiliated with the Obama-Biden campaign who attacked the Palin family.

So, the only "Obama/Biden Democrats" in existence are those staffers in the Obama campaign?

Sorry, all you folks with Obama '08 bumper stickers, Obama buttons, and Obama-Biden bumper stickers on your car, you aren't "Obama/Biden Democrats." Even though you've contributed money to the campaign, and think Obama is the best thing since sliced bread, and your proudly think of your self as an Obama Democrat, you aren't. Why? Because Jake Tapper and Mark Murray say so.

As I wrote to Tapper in his comments (and this being ABC News, we'll see how it stays up):

Please, Jake, you're better than this.

The actual candidates will of course take the high road, but it is rabid Obama/Biden supporters in the blogosphere and media--including your counterpart Brian Ross--that smear Palin and her family.

On the Blotter, Ross tried to portray a 1997 lawsuit filed against thrown out by a judge as a current scandal. The judge dismissed it for having no merit. But spin away, boys! It is what you do.

Gust this week Obama-supporting media have accused Obama of slashing funding for special needs programs when she actually raised them 175%, just as she was accused of slashing funding for pregnancy prevention programs when she raised those as well.

The Obama media lies about Sarah Palin, and then won't retract.

But are you referring to lies against her family only? How about the fevered insistence of left-wing "journalists" that Trig Palin was the son of his sister? How about media claims that Levi Johnston was being forced into a "shotgun marriage" with Bristol Palin, when they were already hoping to get married before they found out she was pregnant?

Americans have had a declining respect for the media at least since I was in j-school in the early 1990s. That decline is part of the reason I switched majors.

It looks like I made a smart choice.

John McCain and Sarah Palin have terrified the mainstream media/leftwing blogosphere, to the point they are now reduced to reporting direct lies.

CNNs Soledad O'Brien claimed that Palin, the mother of a Down's Syndrome child, cut funding for special needs programs 62-percent, a lie so blatant that even the openly pro-Obama partisans at the Daily Kos felt compelled to call them on it.

The Washington Post tried to claim that Governor Palin slashed funding for teen moms, when the very documents they show prove that she expanded funding by $3.9 million dollars.

At The Atlantic, the same out-of-control Obama partisan-who-will-not-be-named who demanded medical evidence to prove that Bristol Palin wasn't her brother's mother (even after she revealed her own concurrent pregnancy) doctored the headline of old news story to insinuate that while Sarah Palin was a mayor of town of thousands, that she was at fault for a rise in methamphetamine in an area the size of West Virginia.

Mainstream media journalists at the Associated Press lied and claimed Palin said the Iraq war was a mission from God. They lied. The truth of the matter is that only three suited fools from Chicago think they're on a mission from God, and Jake and Elwood aren't running.

The media—yes, those cheering fans spotted during Obama's acceptance speech—are more willing than ever to lie, cheat, and steal their way to an Obama advantage in this election.

It is pathetic. But it is what they have become.

Update: The comment cited above at ABC News? Deleted in less than a half-hour. Good thing there are such things as screen captures.

The last time this happened, Jake Tapper wrote to tell me he wasn't responsible for deleting comments and that he'd ask ABC News about it. Now he has another example to cite. He also just said via email that referring to him a s a member of the Obama-supporting media was "nonsense."

McCain vs. Bush?

We all know Barack Obama is a lightweight, but even his own partisan cable news channel sometimes forgets he's running.

Nice job, morons.

Like Hell

At The Politico, NBC political director Chuck Todd weighed in on last night's speech by Republican Vice Presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin, and claimed that "Conservatives have found their Obama."

The Republican National Committee and conservatives in both parties should angrily demand an immediate retraction.

Less than seven years after the terror attacks of 9/11, no conservative would dream of nominating for president a candidate who has a deeply-layered 21-year relationship with a terrorist who managed to bomb the U.S. Capitol Building that Obama bin Laden failed to strike.

No conservative would tolerate the ascension of a candidate who belonged to a radical cult whose pastor shrieked that God should damn America, or who followed a theology for two decades that said their God must chose their race alone above all others, or be murdered.

No conservative Democrat or Republican would stomach the though of an insufferable first spouse whose patriotism just arrived as a current event, and that exists only as a fickle emotion that will evaporate away again with a November loss.

Sarah Palin has a real track record as a reformer in two elective offices, not just empty words.

Sarah Palin lives as a proud example of what America's heartland can produce, not as arrogant elite who laughs at American workers when he thinks no one is listening.

No sir, Sarah Palin is not our Barack Obama.

And you, sir, owe the Governor an apology.

Andrew Sullivan Lies Again

Andrew Sullivan, never been burdened with the weight of intellectual honesty, feels attacking a 17-year-old girl and the paternity of her Down's Syndrome infant brother in a national publication is fair game.

Rightfully ridiculed and mocked for his below-the-belt personal attacks again Sarah Palin's children, Sullivan moved on to another smear against Palin, in an entry he titled (and one which will not be linked) "Wasilla: The Meth Capital Of Alaska"

The problem with this particular smear?

The original article is called Troopers dub Mat-Su area the meth capital of Alaska, and Sarah Palin was only in charge of the small town of Wasilla. Mat-Su or more formally, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley area, is roughly the size of West Virginia.

Frankly, Sullivan's continued willingness to lie in support of naked partisanship for Barack Obama is an embarrassment for The Atlantic, and an affront to the other talented writers who call the magazine home, and I wonder if the magazine's advertisers appreciate the kind of writing with which their products are now being associated.

Questioning His Judgment

Barack Obama's "great friend" is off to jail.

Tony Resko?

A good guess, but no, I wasn't talking about Obama fundraiser, friend, and kickback artist Tony Rezko. He's in jail already.

Bill Ayers?

No, Barack's friendly neighborhood terrorist, part of a group who formally declared war upon the United States before joining Obama in a close 21-year relationship spanning multiple left-wing organizations, is still "guilty as hell, free as a bird."

Bernadine Dohrn?

No, the Weather Underground terrorist and Charles Manson groupie that idolized Sharon Tate's murder—especially the part where a fork was stabbed into Tate's eight-months-pregnant womb—who spent time on the FBI's Most Wanted list before hostessing Barack Obama's very first political fundraiser, was never charged with any of the bombings she is though to have been a part of, including the San Francisco Police station bombing that killed one police officer and wounded many more.

Um... Corrupt Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick?

Took you long enough:

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and will step down as the mayor of the nation's 11th-largest city as part of a plea deal in a sex-and-misconduct scandal that has plagued the Motor City for months.

As part of the deal, Kilpatrick also pleaded no contest to assaulting or obstructing a public officer. He'll serve two concurrent four-month jail sentences and pay the city $1 million over a five-year probationary period.

Barack Obama talks about having the "judgment to lead."

The question is, which cell block?

After Palin Speech, Media Supporters Still Claim Obama is the Better Candidate

Of course, they aren't running against each other, though you would be hard-pressed to notice that in most mainstream media/liberal blogosphere reactions to her speech last night.

Jonathan Alter of Newsweek tries to argue that Obama's longer exposure as an inexperienced candidate on the national stage some how makes him a more qualified leader than Palin, claiming that Obama's "countless tough interviews" and media-created "reputation for fluency in discussing affairs of state" is in some way a replacement for executive experience. Can you imagine any sane person trying to make that argument outside of the bizarre standards of liberal politics?

Job candidate: "No sir, I don't have any experience running a factory, but I've been going to tough interviews for 18 months, and I can sound like a plant manager in conversation."

Good look with that argument, Jonathan.

At the far left The Nation, Ari Melber wrote convincingly, " Owwie! Stoooooop!" He also (reflexively) mentioned the Karl Rove boogeyman, assuring that some of his readers will splatter their Depends.

Gloria Steinem embarrassed herself and other dormitory feminists in the L.A. Times this morning, trying to claim that a highly-successful self-made leader, a governor with a nation-leading 86-percent approval rating, is the wrong woman, with the wrong message. Uh-huh.

Sarah Palin isn't "qualified" in Steinem's rheumy eyes because Palin made her way to the top her own way, on her own merits, bucking all conventions and societal mores. But Palin didn't follow Steinem's approved path, and so an increasingly irrelevant Steinem, like all oppression junkies, frets that other women might begin to ignore the stilted, one dimensional feminism she offers when they see a confident, competent leader of another ideology who has proven she can "have it all," and it well on her way to doing it all. Steinem instead insists that the candidate that calls dismissively addresses female reporters as "sweetie," is the new standard-bearer for women's rights.

On the air and in print, liberal pundits are attacking Palin today. Some attack her record, some disgusting still attack her family, and some attack her for merely being a woman (prompting Hillary Clinton's aides to go on the record decrying these sexist attacks). These liberal bloggers/journalists—the line between them all but removed— continue insisting that Obama, a candidate with far less executive experience than Palin, is a better choice.

That's an interesting argument to make... if they were running for the same job.

Palin Delivers

Just over, and on first pass, it looked like Obambi versus Godzilla.

And the Beast Shall Eat Itself

A hot microphone, a revelation of dishonesty, and the violation of a long-held gentleman's agreement destroyed the credibility of the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan today, and may have changed the complexion of the American news media forever.

Noonan published an article just this morning labeling Sarah Palin as "a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy."

This same afternoon on MSNBC after a segment with NBC's Chuck Todd, Republican consultant Mike Murphy and Noonan were captured on still-live microphones ridiculing McCain's running mate.

Every indication is that the raw video was leaked directly from an increasingly partisan MSNBC to liberal blog Talking Points Memo.

With that leak, Noonan's credibility as a columnist was severely damaged if not destroyed, a fact she seems to realize even as she becomes the first casualty as a long held gentleman's agreement among journalists to overlook each others biases, faults, mistakes and lies has been ripped apart. The media now no longer looks after their own, and naked partisanship is now the order of the day.

After being exposed, Noonan wrote that she was "mugged by the nature of modern media," which is both absolutely true and utterly irrelevant.

Noonan revealed herself a hypocrite, and MSNBC, a network that has abandoned all illusions of objective journalism in favor of naked advocacy for Barack Obama and an exclusive allegiance to partisan politics of the far left wing of the Democratic Party, shattered a common courtesy between journalists, in order to tear another journalist down for a minor temporary gain.

All bets are off now, all gentleman's agreements dead.

Welcome to the real world, kids.

Biden: My Opponent is Ready. My Running Mate is Not.

Who says there's no more honesty in politics?

Granted, the comments are made roughly a year apart. The question remains: what has Barack Obama done in that timespan—other than merely running for the job—to make himself suitable to lead America?

Right Where She Wants Them

(image courtesy: www.GetLiberty.org)

It is worth noting that Governor Palin vigorously supports the culling of wolves.

A Child of Many Fathers

In all fairness, his mom's first name was Stanley.

(h/t Snapped Shot)

Brian Ross: Caught in the Smear

Brian Ross of ABC News is letting his political biases show in a most unseemly way.

Ross' article, Another Controversy for Sarah Palin, attempts to undermine the Republican Vice Presidential candidate by insinuating there is still some some controversy surrounding Palin's firing of the Wasilla Police Chief more than a decade ago.

Says Ross in his lede:

Gov. Sarah Palin is already facing ethical questions over her firing of the Alaska public safety commissioner, and now she faces questions over the firing of a longtime local police chief.

Now faces?

The lawsuit filed in 1997 by the police chief, Irl Stambaugh, was dismissed by the judge, as Palin had every right to replace him and other town officials. As a matter of public record, other officials were also pushed out of office on Palin's reform pledge, but Ross inexplicably refuses to mention their firings. Ross seeks to frame resolved history as a current scandal, and then tie it the dismissal of public safety commissioner, Walter Monegan, roughly a decade later.

This is dishonest advocacy journalism at it's most naked, and ABC News owes Sarah Palin a retraction and an apology.

Sign of the Times

It says quite a bit about the state of modern journalism that one of the last national media outlets to post a story about the family of Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin is the National Equirer—and something else again that the Enquirer article is less partisan in tone and apparently more solid in their sourcing than network and cable news channels, national newspapers, and magazines that have published outlandish claims that even Bat Boy would know better than to report.

The venom and vigor with which journalists have gone after Palin and her family is unsurprising. According to the practitioners of liberal theology, Palin is a gender traitor for being a conservative, and perhaps even worse, an embarrassing reminder of their own self-centeredness. Palin is guilty of what many of the left consider a most serious offense, knowingly carry to term a child with disabilities and furthermore, pledging to love and care for him.

Such a reminder of self-sacrifice cuts those who use abortion as a political tool and rallying cry. For those souls who have been in the position of being forced to choose, and chose to terminate their pregnancies, the delivery of Trig Palin and the joy he obviously brings to his family re-opens those old wounds.

Bristol Palin's pregnancy is even worse for liberal Democrats who view abortion as little more than a post-coital "easy button," and the baby is precisely the kind of pregnancy that Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama advocates killing. Barack Obama is a man who voted to refuse medical care for babies that survive abortions, and then unashamedly lied about it.

Obama was also quite blunt about the fact that if his daughters got pregnant at roughly the same age as Bristol Palin, that he would advocate the killing of his grandchild, stating:

...I've got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby. I don't want them punished with an STD at the age of 16.

Barack Obama's advocacy to his daughters is an unmistakable reflection of his character, or rather, his lack of it. In Barack Obama's responsibility-free zone, children are not a blessing to be celebrated, but an illness to be cured. He considers a growing human child in the womb a STD—a sexually transmitted disease.

Barack Obama equates unborn children with bacteria, viruses, and parasites. That certainly explains why he could oppose an act to provide medical care to abortion survivors, even the federal version of the bill that was unopposed by so much as a single liberal in the Senate. By his own words, Barack Obama views abortion as nothing more than a form of disease control, and the unwanted children as the disease.

Bristol Palin's family, however, views children as most Americans outside of certain community-based realities do, as a blessing, as the promise of new life, of joy... and of hope. And most certainly of a wonderful change.

But the live birth of babies from atypical pregnancies aren't "a change we can believe in" if we're Obama supporters in the media.

Pitted against a Vice Presidential candidate Mark Steyn correctly categorized as hyper-American, the cadaverous, sullen selfishness of Obama's all-too-typical campaign is exposed as being "just words."

Barack Obama is a lawmaker who has passed no important laws, a community organizer who renounced his community, a Senator who has spent more time with those who have declared war against America than with Americans defending our country.

His only real accomplishments are autobiographies he hopes some will confuse with the truth. But we know the truth. He is a husk of a man. There is no substance inside.

And so when Barack the Anointed was confronted by the unexpected choice of a real reformer, a self-made leader who not just fought against machine politics, but dared to have a rich life full beyond what Obama could allow others to have, it is unsurprising that his supporters in the libel blogosphere and libel media—let's address them for what the really are—rushed out to undercut her and her family.

For Barack Obama to thrive, there must be woe in America. Recessions must always be just around the corner. Ever expanding government must be your key to success and happiness. There can be no other way.

Sarah Palin and her family aren't perfect, and they don't claim to be.

Her sister made a bad choice, and married a bad cop, a man who drank in his patrol vehicle, who uttered death threats again her, her father, and even the governor. He was and is animal who broke laws, shot animals out of season, and tasered his own son. You read the affidavit for yourself, and tell me Sarah Palin did anything unethical or out of line in response.

Todd Palin got a DWI in 1984. The media wants to make a big deal about that. They purposefully avoid mentioning that Barack Obama admits using cocaine and marijuana far more recently.

Bristol Palin and her boyfriend Levi Johnson are having a child. Some want to crow that this is proof of the failure of the Palin family as parents, and of abstinence education. They purposefully turn a blind eye to the fact that parents can only guide children so far. Parents teach, but children have to make their own way, their own decisions, and their own mistakes. It is how they respond to their mistakes that shows their character and how they were raised. That the Johnson and Palin families have rallied around their children and the child resulting from their union thus far is impressive.

Her husband was the member of Alaska's 3rd largest political party, a group that championed Alaskan sovereignty. Some in the media have decided this is a huge scandal, while they've ignored for years that Hawaiian Democrats (including Senate Democrat Daniel Akaka in every session of Congress since 2000) have championed that state's sovereignty as a kingdom. Has anyone ever question Obama on his views of Hawaii's independence? Don't make me laugh.

We don't expect the media to be non-partisan or unbiased. We should, however, expect them to be reasonably honest, a lowered standard that still sadly seems far too high.

The National Enquirer can no longer be laughed at as "just" a tabloid. It isn't because that publication has raised it standards. It's because other journalists have so nakedly abandoned their own.

Liebs

Wasn't planning on blogging the RNC tonight, but during Joe Lieberman's speech, my wife made a good point.

Lieberman's speech espousing John McCain's and Sarah Palin's "America First" beliefs also reflects Lieberman's own belief in America over party.

The Democrats are going to strip Lieberman of the positions and power he's earned during his time in the Senate for the speech he's giving now. He's willing to put America ahead of party as well.

You Know...

...I've been watching the debates rage on conservative and liberals blogs, television news programs, and print op-ed pages for four days about their resumes, their values, and their suitability to be on a national ticket with so little experience, and now more than ever, I'm firmly convinced that Palin vs. Obama is shaping up to be one hell of a Vice Presidential debate.

Totally Rational Columnist of Indeterminate Political Persuasion Threatens Race War if Obama Isn't Elected

If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness - and hopelessness!

Always sunny in Philadelphia, indeed.

What Day Will Barack Obama Drop Out?

For reasons only "progressive" minds can fathom, several bloggers on the left think—or more likely, are perhaps wishing—that Sarah Palin, John McCain's newly-announced choice for Vice President, will drop out of the Presidential race.

Jeralyn Merritt, probably once the most consistently rational member of the leftist blogosphere, is actively promoting a drop-out pool.

Merritt claims that McCain must force Palin out because she wasn't adequately vetted, and then quite seriously suggests that Obama was:

Obama presented himself for 17 months to the American people, they heard him debate more than a dozen times, they made their own decision that he was ready for the job and the Democrats voted him their nominee.

Obama wasn't unilaterally appointed by a party's nominee in a transparent play for the evangelical and female vote. As if Sarah Palin could fill Hillary Clinton's shoes by virtue of her gender. As if women wouldn't see that Sarah Palin is the antithesis of Hillary Clinton on issues. As if anything would evoke Palin's lack of qualifications more than to compare them to Hillary's.

We now know far more about Sarah Palin in just four days than we've learned about Barack Obama in 17 months. That is just sad. It's a pathetic reflection of the mainstream media's unwillingness to do their jobs for fear of finding stories that would hurt the candidate so many of them openly desire to win.

But periodically appearing to read teleprompters isn't vetting, not matter how many months a candidate has done it, and Obama's ability to perform in set-piece debates is both dubious—Hillary once famously took him apart—and irrelevant. Barack Obama really has never been fully vetted. He hasn't even come close.

You want examples?

If Obama does not share the radical cultural and religious views of Jeremiah Wright, then why was he a member of Trinity United Church of Christ for more than two decades?

Of all the churches in Chicago, why did Obama chose a church that espouses Black Liberation Theology? The doctrine was conceived by James Cone, based upon the rhetoric of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X and the civil rights movement. It is a radical religion primarily based upon the oppression of blacks by whites. How can Barack Obama make the claim that he is a post-racial candidate, when his entire religious focal point was one of bitter victimization?

We don't know, because no one has ever vetted Obama over his radical and openly racial faith, which is a cult that views whites as an enemy incapable of redemption, and views the Trinity as either "black" in spirit, or deems God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit to be false and not only not worth following, but worth killing.

Cone writes in A Black Theology of Liberation:

"Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love."

Jeralyn, does Barack Obama believe God a murderer if he isn't racially-biased toward blacks, as Obama's church and pastor for more than 20 years believes? We don't know, because Barack Obama has never been vetted in depth about his belief system.

To their great dishonor, the media has focused more energy on Sarah Palin's religious background in just the few days since her announcement as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate than they have on Obama's in the entire campaign. The extent they've explored Obama's faith stops at his declaration that he isn't a Muslim and that he is a Christian, even though he goes to a church that stretches the definition of Christianity to the breaking point, if not beyond.

And what, my dear friends, of Obama's three decades-long relationship with terrorists?

If John McCain had so much as ever shaken Eric Robert Rudolph's hand in an anonymous campaign stop, is there any doubt that the far left blogosphere would use such information to push the candidate out of the race?

You do remember Rudolph, don't you? He was behind the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. He bombed a lesbian nightclub and abortion clinics as well. A relationship to someone like Rudolph should be a career-killer for any politician.

But Barack Obama is closely aligned with not one, but two infamous domestic terrorists, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. What is remarkable about their relationship is that Barack Obama befriended Ayers and Dohrn well after their status as terrorists was well known. Despite knowing Ayers and Dohrn were terrorists, he befriended them, and worked with them.

The Weather Underground that Ayers helped found and Dohn helped lead are responsible for bombings and armed robberies that left law enforcement officers dead and wounded in at least two states.

They declared war upon the United States. They bombed American government buildings. They bombed police stations, and conducted armed robberies. Their attempt at mass murder—the planned bombing of a soldier's dance at Fort Dix—only failed because Ayers' then-girlfriend Diana Oughten screwed up while building the massive roofing nails and dynamite bombs (the same key components Rudolph used, it is worth noting) and blew herself and two other terrorists up as well.

Barack Obama knew Bill Ayers was a terrorist when they first met. Barack Obama knew that Bernadine Dohrn was a terrorist when they met, and probably knew she was a fan of Charles Manson's murderous cult as well. He still chose to work with Ayers in numerous groups in leadership positions, and the relationship was close enough for Obama to start his his political career with a fundraiser at Ayers' and Dohrn's home.

What makes it all the more fascinating is that Barack Obama will not repudiate his 21-year relationship with Bill Ayers and Bernie Dohrn. Barack Obama threw his own grandmother under the bus without a thought, portraying her as a racist for short-term political sympathy.

He tossed his friend and mentor Jeremiah Wright under the bus when it became politically advantageous for him to do so, then his church and congregation, and he hasn't looked back. Father Michael Fleger, the radical priest who advocated lynching a gun store owner, was also a friend of many years (at least 22) tossed aside by Obama without a look back.

But Barack Obama won't repudiate his relationship with American terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernie Dorhn. He repudiates what they did, but makes a point of not assailing who they are or what they believe. Of all the people in his life that have popped up during this campaign, Barack Obama has shown more loyalty to these two terrorists that he has shown anyone else, including his own pastor, church, and grandmother.

But the media hasn't pressed Obama about this relationship, and why Obama started and still maintains this relationship. They refuse to investigate the $100 million in education grants that Ayers and Obama burned through in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge with no results, some of which was funneled to their friends.

Barack Obama simply hasn't be vetted about key aspects of his life that would reveal his character and his potential suitability as a leader.

So, Jeralyn, when are you going to push for him to step down?

Update: wrong word choice above; switched from "refute" to "repudiate."