Free Republic

Tim Shipman's secondhand reporting twists a nothing of a story into a scary headline: Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against Barack Obama But you read down into the story and there's nothing to support the lede except:

ACORN, the organization whose foot soldiers faked voter registration applications in Missouri in 2004 and Seattle in 2006, has been in full battle mode this fall, signing up thousands of previously unregistered voters. Included were Mickey Mouse and, in Nevada, the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys. In Cleveland one young man was approached by ACORN registrars 73 times and signed up each time for a simple reward of a cigarette or a dollar bill.

The contrast between, on the one hand, the huge amount of material about Obama’s radical associations that has been published in on-line journals and in a few brave newspapers, and on the other the refusal by big media to address it and to vilify those who do, becomes more astounding by the day. The Obamaniacs are spinning the relationship between Obama and William Ayers, former of Weather Undergound Terrorism Inc, as of no consequence because this was supposedly a chance acquaintance and because the educational project they worked on, the Annenberg Challenge, was a worthy one. Stanley Kurtz now nails...

Republicans have started sounding the alarm about the presidential race now that John McCain is trailing Barack Obama by anywhere from two to 11 percentage points. The battleground states aren't looking much better, with Obama leading in the polling averages for even Florida, Virginia, and Missouri. Understandable that Republicans would be worried. But have they taken a look at the Senate races? For the last two years, your humble servant has been saying to anyone who will listen: The more Democratic next year's Senate, the more liberal the next two years' legislation will be no matter who wins the White...

As an example of the deranged reaction to Sarah Palin and the astounding hatred and bile she has provoked, this article by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone is hard to beat. All the Palin smears are gathered together in one foam-flecked scream of rage – not just at Palin, mark you, but most significantly at John Public who supports her, because she appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because the image on TV reminds him of the mean, brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning. What respect for Taibbi's fellow human beings! Showing zero...

....I was walking out of the library and spotted George Soros's new book on the "Just Arrived" shelf. Why not give it a try? I grind my teeth over Soros just as much as any other conservative. ... Still, Soros has made billions playing the international currency markets. He must know something. Soros, it turns out, has a very good perspective on the current meltdown. He says it's a system-wide overextension of credit, mainly through novel financial instruments and the housing market. Conservatives may fret that it all comes down to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their subprime mortgages...

This might be the single most irresponsible piece the Associated Press has EVER run. Not only does it badly misstate the level of Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, but it goes to phenomenally bizarre lengths to claim that Sarah Palin's repeated references to Ayers -- who is white -- somehow "carry a racially tinged subtext." This is sick. Literally sick. Have things really reached the point where ANY criticism of Obama is racist? Next thing you know, criticism of Obama for having the most liberal voting record in the Senate will be called racist. Criticism of Obama for being against...

Of late, at least in conservative quarters, reports have made clear how much of the current financial crisis may be laid at the feet of Democrats and their social engineering policies. Jeff Jacoby, the lone conservative columnist at the Boston Globe, wrote Sunday, "Barney Frank's talking points notwithstanding, mortgage lenders didn't wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to unqualified borrowers. It would be closer to the truth to say they woke up to find the government twisting their arms and demanding that they do so -- or else."...

[Second section...after the eye-popping Obama fund raising story] FAN, FRED, AND FRANK House Democrats are concerned that it wasn't just Rep. Barney Frank who was having extracurricular relations with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives, and that those relationships will come to light before the election a month from now. According to a former Democrat staffer working for the House Committee on Financial Services, there were a number of stories involving Democrat members of the committee, as well as staffers for those Democrats, participating in retreats and getaway weekends paid for by Fan and Fred executives and lobbyists. "Republicans were...

As soon as someone tells me that one particular political measure or decision is the right or moral choice and the alternatives to it are irresponsible and immoral, I start to feel an almost irresistible urge to do the immoral, the forbidden thing. It's not that I am a willful reprobate. Or not just that, anyway. I simply don't believe it. This assertion looks way too much like moral blackmail to me, and hence it is itself at least as likely to be immoral as the thing it deprecates. American politics for reasons that I go into in detail in...

A New Opportunity for McCain By Peter Ferrara Published 10/1/2008 12:08:01 AM According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the financial crisis is all due to the Bush Administration's "right wing ideology of anything goes, no supervision, no oversight, no regulation." But at a hearing in the House in 2004, now available in video on YouTube, the Republicans sought to expand supervision and regulation, over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Federal regulators testified that the reckless financial practices of these two government-sponsored enterprises threatened the entire financial system. Republican after Republican called for a new regulatory authority to supervise Fannie and...

McCain's Suspension Blunder - Monday, September 29, 2008 @ 6:12:24 PM I just got off of a conference call with McCain economic adviser Doug Holz-Eakin reacting to the failure of the bailout package, and it did nothing but reinforce my view that the decision to suspend his campaign was a major blunder that may very well have cost McCain the election. McCain's entire argument for why he should be elected is that he has the experience to lead and record of forging bi-partisan compromises to get things done. He's supposed to be a doer, rather than just a talker. The...

DROP-BY DEMOCRATSSecretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson allowed his staff to let Sen. Chuck Schumer, among others, into the negotiating room over objections from the Republican negotiators also sitting there, Sen. Judd Gregg and House Minority Whip Roy Blunt. As part of the agreement in setting up the negotiations taking place in the Capitol office Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, there would be four negotiators present in the room. But by late Saturday afternoon, Democrats had broken that agreement, sending Schumer, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, Sen. Max Baucus, and Sen. Jack Reed in and out of the...

"The government has to do something to keep markets from falling and the economy from getting worse." How many times have you heard that mantra this past week from President Bush, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Democrat leaders, the news media, and even some ostensibly conservative periodicals? But what if the bailout, as originally proposed and in its latest incarnation, would spend $700 billion of taxpayers' money and actually make the economy worse? Believe it or not, there is good evidence this may happen. The inflationary prospects of the bailout price tag may lead to spikes in oil and crop prices...

Senator Joe Biden is spending between three to four hours a day prepping for his debate with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, with that time to be increased over the next two weeks. According to campaign insiders, at least ten to 15 outside volunteers -- beyond those already working on the campaign -- are assisting in both Biden's and Obama's debate prep. Debate prep for both John McCain and Palin hasn't been made public, though it is known that Palin is putting in study time for her October 2nd debate in St. Louis. Of biggest concern to Biden, and the focus...

Today's banking crisis demonstrates that keeping our banks safe is the President's highest responsibility. If our banks are collapsing, we can't pay our bills, and our government can't fund health care, fight wars to defend us, rebuild our roads, or make our cities safe from hurricanes and other natural disasters. Franklin Roosevelt's first "fireside chat" famously began, "I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking." Our next President's first words to the nation are also likely to be "about banking." So which man do we want to be talking to us...

John McCain's campaign is under fire for his campaign manager's ties to Freddie Mac. Rick Davis's lobbying firm, it turns out, was still receiving monthly payments until very recently, despite previous assurances that the relationship had ended three years ago. Meanwhile, McCain is running television ads tying Sen. Barack Obama to Franklin Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who was forced out for misstating the company's earnings. Obama vigorously protests that Raines isn't really one of his advisers, though Raines had previously said that he advised the campaign. But McCain doesn't need to focus on Raines. Obama selected another Fannie...

Watching three of Wall Street's top-five investment banks -- Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch -- vanishing as independent entities, Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf recently warned that "the brave new U.S. financial system is melting away before our eyes." What went wrong? Pro-capitalist candidate John McCain, saying that the American economy's underlying fundamentals remained strong, blamed "the greed by some based in Wall Street." He could have added that over-interference in the economy by Washington's liberal politicians and Obama-style community organizers had pushed banks for decades to loosen their lending requirement in order to expand mortgage loans to...

The Obama campaign spent more than five hours on Monday attempting to figure out the best refutation of the explosive New York Post report that quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying that Barack Obama during his July visit to Baghdad demanded that Iraq not negotiate with the Bush Administration on the withdrawal of American troops. Instead, he asked that they delay such negotiations until after the presidential handover at the end of January. The three problems, according to campaign sources: The report was true, there were at least three other people in the room with Obama and Zebari...

DIRTY TOOLS As Obama operatives scour records in Alaska for dirt on Gov. Sarah Palin, they are also seeking embarrassing materials about her husband. And it isn't just the Obama campaign. Several left-wing groups with ties to MoveOn.org have used their network to offer as to $5,000 for damaging employment or personal information about him. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign has asked the DNC to coordinate surrogates that appear on camera to attack Gov. Palin. "Last Friday, the Democrat women they put all looked old and tired, nothing like what folks were seeing from Palin," says an Obama media adviser. "It...