DUBOB 11- more tales from the Dark UnderBelly Of the Beast...

McCain has nothing to worry about. First off, he was found not guilty. Second, all of the CNN, MSNBC, etc. documentaries have already reported this in their "exposes" - it's old news.

If the 0bomber campaign wants to somehow connect this to the economic downturn, let 'em. McCain has the hammer and it's called the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac - BHO payoff scheme.

Robert Bennett, a Washington lawyer and big dem, was the special prosecutor for the Keating scandal. He has many times that John McCain should never have been included in the Keating 5. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331651,00.html

McCain and the OODA Loop

The OBAMA Fix Is On-And the Media is Part of It

Mark Steyn: A cuppa Joe, but Sarah pours

........The Hollywood-staged script, aptly entitled the Democratic National Convention, was supposed to make the American people believe a man who removed the American flag from the tail of his jet plane ...........

Is that interpretation true? Was it temporary or permanant?

If it is, I didn't know that and I pay attention. I would be willing to bet many voters do not know that. I bet those voters would be enraged.

He is running for President of the United States. He has had Secret Service protection for a long time. And yet he removes the American Flag from the plane?

My opinion is that this could be an issue which tips the scale IF it is factually correct.

18

Palin says voters don't know 'the real Barack Obama' ('John, take the gloves off.')

Take that, Tina: Palin wants to spoof her spoofer

John McCain Better for All Americans, Not Just Gays

=================================================

$700 billion — now what?

So what other segment of the economy can the government nationalize?

Blocked pipes (interbank-loan frozen: banking system on the brink)

Obama Campaign PURGES Donation Data

Barack's Chill: Liberals Rethink Free Speech

Voter Fraud Expected to Be Rampant

Thousands Of Dead People On Connecticut's Voter Rolls

Registration Gains Favor Democrats

Musicians Use Both Sides Of Their Brains More Frequently Than Average People

Scientists Delve Into Ladybug Mystery

Government will spy on every call and e-mail (UK)

A challenge to caging of food animals; PROPOSITION 2 (It's About California Chicken Rights)

Border bloodshed likely to worsen, experts warn;Over 50 Killed in Tijuana This Week

EDITORIAL: Drill, and drill now

Why He’s Voting for McCain/Palin

Use the link, dammit!

I love this fellow - his videos are all great. He’s smart, lively, charismatic and courageous as hell. This 9.5 minute riff is astounding. He covers all the bases from the spurious, politically expedient, manipulative, baseless and contrived charges of racism (because it is racist to tell the truth about Obama, if it’s not “positive”, you know) to Pamela Anderson (made me laugh out loud) to liberal “open-mindedness” and absolutely throws down the gauntlet, challenging liberals, and particularly minority Democrats, to look at where they are and how they got there. Stunning. Applause!

More on McCain vs Obama: Kathy Shaidle gives the McCain/Palin ticket a bit of a boot in the behind for not going full fury (we know Kathy likes fury) on the Obama-Ayers connection. She says:

The McCain campaign needs to spin this as an anti-hippie, anti-lefty, culture wars story:
Ayers and his wife are dangerous criminals and traitors who got away with it, and are now well off and respected. At least the Rosenbergs got the chair…
Look at how average Americans view O.J. — make Ayers the hippie O.J.
Ask folks how they’d feel if Charles Mason was a professor now too?
…
Look: a guy who has been photographed, as late as 2001, stomping on the American flag is one of Obama’s supporters.
It doesn’t matter if Obama denounces Ayers tomorrow.
It doesn’t matter if their connection is/was “tenuous”.
Here’s what matters: What does it tell you about Obama and his policies and his worldview that people like Ayers and his ilk are obviously going to vote for the guy?
Do you really want to vote for the same guy that unrepentant, unpunished domestic terrorists vote for?
Yes or no? Pretty simple, but the McCain camp is blowing it.

H/T Ed Driscoll who has another great video up that you should go see! Also, see Gateway Pundit airing video with Obama - earlier in his career - talking up his relationship to Ayers. Gloves off.

And one more thing: I don’t think Obama really likes Israel as much as he says he does. Just a hunch.

The Federalist Paupers pinged back with This Guy’s got Guts

by TheAnchoress @ 7:38 pm. Filed under America, Barack Obama, Bush Good, Culture of Life/Death, Dumb Democrat moves, Election 2008, Race in America, The Fourth Estate, Touch of evil

[Comments (2)] [Trackback URL] [link]

Obama "Fights the Smears" by Smearing Ken Blackwell, and Lying

This little snippet alone from
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/samgrahamfelsen/gGC7zm
shows Obama lies:

When Obama met with ACORN leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with ACORN and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer, a nonprofit focused on voter rights and education. Senator Obama said, “I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That’s what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That’s the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”

Want eight years of this idiocy?

Reparations sought in 1898 riots

How the Left Hijacked the Magic Words

Solution? Have the “objective” media turn an empirical fact — William Ayers is not only a terrorist, but a proudly unrepentant one — into a “coded” message of racism.

Here’s the APs Douglass Daniel, “Analysis: Palin’s words carry racial tinge”:

By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is “palling around with terrorists” and doesn’t see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.
And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.
[...]
“Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,” Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo. A deliberate attempt to smear Obama, McCain’s ticket-mate echoed the line at three separate events Saturday.
“This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America,” she said. “We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism.”
Her reference to Obama’s relationship with William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground, was exaggerated at best if not outright false. No evidence shows they were “pals” or even close when they worked on community boards years ago and Ayers hosted a political event for Obama early in his career.

No evidence? Well, Stanley Kurtz and Steve Diamond, two of the only journalists actually interested enough to look into the relationship, would beg to differ about the extent of Obama’s relationship with Ayers — though in this case, Mr Daniel appears to be playing a semantic game that he knows to be disingenuous, saving his faux outrage for the suggestion that Obama and Ayers are bestest “pals” (which he infers is a charge made by the colloquial “palling around,” with the Alaskan beauty queen suddenly held to lawyerly standards of linguistic precision), while ignoring the real thrust of Governor Palin’s attack: namely, Obama, we have found out, lied about the extent of his relationship with Ayers (Mr. Daniel appears unfazed by Senator Obama’s dishonesty); he has never given an account of his CAC activities, and Ayers’ role in those activities (and has in fact tried to keep Kurtz and other journalists from telling their stories, issuing “action alerts” directing supporters to try to shout down his critics).

That “no evidence shows they were “pals” or even close when they worked on community boards years ago and Ayers hosted a political event for Obama early in his career” is, therefore, a rhetorical dodge — one that really begs the question: what Mr Daniel intentionally brackets from his overview is the very real possibility that the lack of “evidence” of the kind that might convince him (others are indeed convinced, including a mutual friend of Ayers and Obama, and have repeatedly shown their work) is the result of a failure on the part of the mainstream press to investigate the connection with the same tenacity with which they went after Governor Palin’s tanning bed, or Bristol Palin’s baby daddy’s facebook page.

So what begins with a lack of professionalism on the part of the press — and the defensive rationalization that nearly always follows from those who know they’ve been called out for blatant favoritism and a willingness to carry water for their chosen One — quickly turns to the old Stanley Fish technique of projecting dark, coded “meanings” to what are, on their face, already straightforward accusations on the part of Palin (and, before her, McCain himself).

Here’s Daniel, following the race-baiting progressive playbook to bold-stroked perfection:

Obama, who was a child when the Weathermen were planting bombs, has denounced Ayers’ radical views and actions.

— well, unless you count his glowing endorsement of those radical views as put into action, including an endorsement of Ayers’ book on education (which is nothing if not in keeping with Ayers’ radical views about the US-as-villain-and-oppressor), and the funding he funneled, through CAC, to Ayers’-backed “educational” programs that eschewed thing like math and science for courses based around progressive and radical notions of “social justice” and the politicizing of curricula through the “small schools” initiative.

Other than that, though, yeah: consider Ayers and his radicalism denounced in the strongest terms! Mr Daniel again:

The larger purpose behind Palin’s broadside is to reintroduce the question of Obama’s associations. Millions of voters, many of them open to being swayed to one side or the other, are starting to pay attention to an election a month away.
For the McCain campaign, that makes Obama’s ties to Ayers as well as convicted felon Antoin “Tony” Rezko and the controversial minister Jeremiah Wright ripe for renewed criticism. And Palin brings a fresh voice to the argument.
[...]
Palin’s words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee “palling around” with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn’t see their America?

Note the rhetorical maneuver here: first, Mr Daniel repeats the charge that Obama’s relationship with Ayers creates a “false image” — seizing still on the semantic game of turning “palling” into a suggestion on Palin’s part that Ayers and Obama are practically lovers, rather than embracing the much more obvious interpretation that, colloquially speaking, Palin was calling Obama and Mr Ayers ideological fellow travelers who share certain progressive and radical beliefs, and who have in the past had a working relationship that has, as a matter of record, produced “education reform” projects that speak directly to those shared beliefs.

Then, doubling down on his intentional misreading, Mr Daniel takes the next step toward racial demagoguery:

In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers’ day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.
Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as “not like us” is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.

[my emphasis]

There is so much sloppy thinking stuffed into these four sentences that I hardly know where to begin.

First, Mr Daniel suggests that Americans, when they hear the word “terrorist,” will envision “dark-skinned radical Muslim” — even when the terrorist in question, it was clear from the context, was Ayers himself, and that the word “domestic” was used as a qualifier in Governon Palin’s remarks. Translation: Americans are essentially racist at heart (forcing them to jump to conclusions that context should clearly disabuse them of), not to mention stupid, rendering them unable to make distinctions between individuals, historical contexts, and types of terrorism.

Having turned use of the word “terrorist” into a de facto coded referent to dark-skinned Muslims (owing to the pliability of the tiny reptilian brains of conservatives), Mr Daniel then proceeds to connect Palin’s remarks yesterday to “internet rumors” that, he suggests, are buried deep in the racist hearts of the American people. Which is why the mention of “terrorist” is dangerous to Obama: it could convince Americans to turn their backs on what’s best for the country — Obama! — and instead vote for McCain/Palin out of fear that Obama, once elected, will decree we all follow Sharia law.

– Of course, the only people who seem to believe that do cover art for New York Magazine — or rather, they know that such is what the conservative cartoons they’ve constructed in their own minds believe.

Second, playing on that bigoted caricature of conservatives, Mr Daniel goes on to note that, “whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as “not like us” is another potential appeal to racism” — though to arrive at that point he’s had first to bracket Palin’s use of “domestic” as a qualifier, ignore her use of the NYT and Chicago as indices to the referent, Mr Ayers, and cast her target audience as ignorant rubes looking for any excuse to allow their latent racism to rear its head.

Importantly, Mr Daniel is not even concerned with the intent: he is worried that the muddle-brained xenophobes who make up McCain Palin voters — along with (white) undecideds — will not be able to differentiate between Mr Ayers and “dark-skinned radical Muslims,” even if Governor Palin can.

This maneuver works on two levels: it distances itself from making a direct accusation of racism against McCain/Palin, and places the onus of “misinterpretation” on the kinds of people (non-Obama-committed whites) who populate the (latently) racist city of Englewood, CO.; and it makes the implied argument that those who don’t vote for Obama are likely failing to do so out of some sort of xenophobia or racialist mistrust.

Couldn’t possibly be his policies that these voters are disturbed by. Nor could it be that they question the judgment of a man who sung the praises of a radical education primer written by an unreconstructed domestic terrorist whose wife celebrated the Manson family slayings of pigs. After all, what sane person can vote against Hope and Change?

And of course, Mr Daniel, in his self-righteous pique, fails to mention that “portraying Obama as ‘not like us’” is — rather than “another potential appeal to racism” — another instance of Obama’s own racial demagoguery: after all, it is Obama who peppers his stump speeches with accusations that the ideological opponents he caricatures will be frightened that we don’t see anyone like him on our currency, or that he has a “funny name.”

I shouldn’t have to remind Mr Daniel that one doesn’t see many who look like Sarah Palin on our currency, either — and that she’s been drawn in the media as everything from a ditzy bimbo to a snowbilly trailerpark queen, a shallow Inuit-humper playing government in the great frozen kindergarten state of Alaska.

Because that kind of bigotry is acceptable — particularly when the target falls outside the establishment idea of who gets to be a “feminist”, and so who is member in good standing of a “protected” class.

Concludes Daniel:

Palin’s words raise questions about whether the last month of the campaign will feature a new focus by McCain’s camp on Obama’s associations with Ayers, Rezko and Wright.
Bringing up Wright would contradict McCain’s promise that Obama’s former pastor is was off-limits. McCain, the victim himself of racially-tinged smear campaign in 2000, has promised a new kind of politics.
But the fact is that allowing racism to creep into the discussion serves a purpose for McCain. As the fallout from Wright’s sermons showed earlier this year, forcing Obama to abandon issues to talk about race leads to unresolved arguments about America’s promise to treat all people equally.

Ah yes! Naming as your spiritual adviser a man whose Black Liberation Theology represents a political viewpoint is a way of distracting from the “issues” (evidently, “what is Obama’s political philosophy” is not a valid issue, unless and until he is nominated for the Supreme Court, I suppose); extrapolating from “BLACK LIBERATION THEOLOGY” a racial element is, itself, dangerously close to racist; and exploring a worldview in which Obama immersed himself — one that preaches the evil of Whitey and the danger of Jews — “leads to unresolved arguments about America’s promise to treat all people equally.”

Up is down. Black is white. Eva is Zsa-Zsa.

– Whereas exploring the pregnancy of the VP’s daughter? A necessary and perfectly legitimate exploration of her fitness as both a mother and a potential VP.

John McCain occasionally looks back on decisions with regret. He has apologized for opposing a holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr. He has apologized for refusing to call for the removal of a Confederate flag from South Carolina’s Capitol.
When the 2008 campaign is over McCain might regret appeals such as Palin’s perhaps more so if he wins.

Or perhaps he’ll be perfectly content that he didn’t run away from racial bullying and raised as a legitimate question of judgment and governing philosophy, the influence of those with whom Barack Obama has long surrounded himself.

After all, the willingness to take on race baiting and attempts to chill free speech is, to some of us, at least, still a sign of strength.

(h/t TerryH)

***
update similar thoughts, from Jonah Goldberg:

The analysis falls apart according to its own logic since Daniel admits that the McCain campaign’s strategy is hardly different than Republican tactics of previous campaigns. Daniel more or less concedes this, but argues that because Obama is black, using these tactics against Obama is in effect racist.
The whole argument ultimately depends on the assumption that Americans are too stupid and racist to make any meaningful distinctions about anything.

****
update 2: More from Darleen, who attended a Palin event yesterday and shares pics.

****
update 3: Even more from Hot Air. Plus, the McCain campaign, and Palin in particular, fires back at the Obama campaign over questions of “smears” — refusing (thus far) to cave to PC pressure and racial demagoguery:

“The last four weeks of this election will be about whether the American people are willing to turn our economy and national security over to Barack Obama, a man with little record, questionable judgment, and ties to radical figures like unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers. Americans need to ask themselves if they’ve ever befriended an unrepentant terrorist, or had a convicted felon help them buy their house — because those aren’t smears, those are true facts about Barack Obama.” —Tucker Bounds, spokesman McCain-Palin 2008

Posted by Jeff G. @ 11:43 am
Comments (212)

Took the family to the gun range for practice yesterday, clinging as we are. America has been made a more dangerous place by the appearance of Obama and his Nagin-sized bus collection loaded with Marxists, terrorists, thugs, celebrities, and assorted nitwits. Its a racist observation, and I condemn myself in advance, but 100% of the people at the gun range were caucasians, mostly families. All firing lanes were filled and a line of shooters were waiting to get on the range. I don’t know if fear of the Obama cult members and his Marxist crowd are fueling it, but gun and ammo sales were brisk yesterday. Not everyone is warm and fuzzy about the potential for racial violence from blacks around November 5th. Be armed or be harmed seems to be the wisdom of the day. Comment by twolaneflash on 10/5 @ 12:17 pm #

... it’s racist to bring up Ayers, but perfectly ok to call Palin a bimbo and a c*nt.

Pingback by Sarah Palin on Obama-Ayers: As Fast as Others Uncover, The MSM Covers Up | DBKP - The Worldwide Leader in Weird on 10/6 @ 1:50 am #
[...] Patterico is sick of Any Argument Against Barack Obama Is By Definition Racist: I’m sick of the race card being played whenever someone criticizes Barack Obama. Making the Ayers connection is hardly a racist ploy, but that’s what we’re being told by the AP today. There is literally no argument you can make against this man that will not be countered by cries of racism. [...]

Ayers, Obama shared stage in 1997; Michelle Obama praised

Charlie Gibson: 'It's Important to Expose' Sarah Palin

Senator McCain, it’s time man up and demand answers to these questions

THE $700 BILLION MEN; PAULSON PICKING RESCUE ADVISERS (scavengers gorging on US carcass?)

Senator Barack Obama in Kenya > Obama and Odinga: The True Story

Michelle Obama's Law Firm Boss: She Was An Insufferable Complainer

Obama to Face New Opposition in Michigan!

SOME OF THE ADS THAT WILL RUN IN MICHIGAN:

WATCH OBAMA'S HIGHER TAXES - HERE

WATCH HILLARY RIPS OBAMA - HERE

WATCH OBAMA'S WRONG VALUES - HERE

WATCH OBAMA'S PATRIOTISM PROBLEMS - HERE

WATCH SARAH PALIN'S A FIGHTER - HERE

1 posted on Monday, October 06, 2008 8:46:38 AM by Impeach98

The Great Sonny Perdue Gas Debacle of 2008

Conservatives question McCain’s attack strategy (If McCain's going down, take the MSM with him)

Tell the Nervous Nellies to get out of the way. We have a campaign to run. People absolutely need to see what an abomination (Obamanation) would look like as it relates to his association with guys like Ayers. Last night’s one hour on Obama’s terrorist friends was incredible and I hope it re-airs up to the election. These associations need to be OUT THERE and we know the MSM isn’t going to help. But this is the information people need to understand the nature of Obama’s community service experience. A real eye opener.

How the Republicans Can Turn the Economy to Their Advantage

Palin Video from Clearwater

SARAH IS SAYING IT IN FLORIDA!!YESSSSS!!

Sarah is Solid..........(turn her loose, forget Moose and Salmon, it's dRAT time)

Palin criticizes Obama's ties to Wright, Ayers

Obama and the Attempt to Destroy the Second Amendment

LA Times Won't Release Video of Obama Publically Praising Former PLO Operative & Jew Hater

William Ayers' Role In Obama's Appointment As Annenberg Challenge Chairman

Obama launches website on McCain/Keating link

Robert Bennett, a Washington lawyer and big dem, was the special prosecutor for the Keating scandal. He has many times that John McCain should never have been included in the Keating 5. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331651,00.html

Use this for Keating 5 lies about McCain:

http://boards.historychannel.com/topic/Current-Events/Ann-Coulter-Keating/520013428

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28714

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_5#Glenn_and_McCain:_cleared_of_impropriety_but_criticized_for_poor_judgment

They say that McCain wasn’t guilty of anything except bad judgment.

"Wasn’t McCain found not guilty in the Keating Five Scandal?"

McCain has nothing to worry about. First off, he was found not guilty. Second, all of the CNN, MSNBC, etc. documentaries have already reported this in their "exposes" - it's old news.

BARACK OBAMA AND JOE BIDEN’S PLAN FOR SMALL BUSINESS

Barack Obama: Powered by HATE (or, "Barack Obama: HATE We Can Believe In")

A Month Away, Some Voters Can't Decide (Undecideds worried about Obama's radical friends)

Obama Camp Denies He Knew Ayers's Background

3 in 5 voters: Boot every congressman (No incumbent is safe after bailout)

So You Want To Hit Obama Hard With Bill Ayers? Try This Video on For Size

Obama, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and the current financial mess

NRA's second wave (ad/video at link)

Worst-case scenario is approaching rapidly (crisis growing at Warp 9)

================================================

4D Video Scans of Developing Baby

http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1001039&sid=45963d4861fb6c3baa5068110308ae62#1001039

By my lights, a Classic Liberal espoused a large amount of personal freedom, and a lot of responsibility for exercising said freedom-- views compatible with mine.

Ronald Reagan once said it was not so much a matter of left and right, but rather up, or down.

Up, to more liberty, or down, to less.

In the States, the left in general, and the Democrats in particular, have been seized by noisy special-interest groups who see people as a sort of collective-- they are lumped into groups, rather than seen as individuals.

Orson Scott Card is an example of a Sane Democrat- we used to have a lot more of them in this country.

Indeed, prior to the Reagan Revolution, my area was about 80% Democrat- Republicans almost never won office locally or statewide.

Nonetheless, I had little trouble voting for the old conservative Southern Democrats, because they were strong supporters of the military, and strong defenders of the Bill of Rights, especially the First & Second Amendments.

Frankly, I miss them- these new Republicans who replaced them don't seem to stand for much of anything, except clinging to office forever.

I strongly recommend visiting his site, and reading his writings- you may quibble over certain points, but I believe you will find yourselves agreeing more than disagreeing.

- The Ornery American

A move to secede on California-Oregon border

The Man Who Predicted the Yom Kippur War

Devastating Video, Obama talks about job Ayers gave him

Fox News Special- Obama "History of Radicalism"

Panic: S&P down over 6%, Dow down over 5%

The Obama Fan-Dance Must End (Mark Levin)

What Did Barack Obama Know, and When Did He Know It?

Sarah Palin's calling out of Barack Obama over the Bill Ayers connection has finally caused some mainstream outlets to report the story (albeit generally in misleading fashion) and has compelled the Obama campaign to respond. That response is surprising, to say the least: Obama now claims that he didn't know about Bill Ayers' terrorist past through all the years when he worked with Ayers in Chicago!

Ed Morrissey has a report. Here is Obama campaign manager David Axelrod explaining Obama's association with Ayers on CNN:

JIM ACOSTA: Now a college professor in Chicago, Ayers and Obama served together several years on a nonprofit board. And in 1995 Ayers hosted a coffee for Obama when the young community organizer was making his first run for the State Senate. At this point looking back, should he not have done that?
DAVID AXELROD: Well I mean, when he went, he certainly — he didn’t know the history.
ACOSTA: The Democratic nominee’s chief strategist David Axelrod maintains Obama at that time had no idea about Ayers’ violent past.

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs seconded Axelrod, but seemingly without much conviction:

Look, if that’s what David said, that is true.

This strikes me as a rather stunning development. Obama appears to be admitting that if he knew about Ayers' terrorist history, and the fact that he still takes pride in that history and despises America, it would be an error in judgment to form a close association with him.

But it is inconceivable that Barack Obama knew Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn well enough to kick off his first political campaign in their living room, but didn't know that Ayers and Dohrn were Communists who led the Weatherman faction of SDS, urged young people to "kill your parents," carried out approximately 30 bombings, including New York City's police headquarters, the Capitol and the Pentagon, celebrated the Charles Manson murders, spent years living underground to avoid criminal prosecution, and continued to express their lifelong hatred for the United States in books, magazine articles, and public speeches. This is rather like a person claiming that he had worked closely with Arnold Schwarzenegger for years, but had no idea that he was once a bodybuilder and movie actor. Ayers' and Dohrn's radical past is their only claim to fame.

There must be a great many people who can attest that Obama was well aware of Ayers' and Dohrn's history. It will be interesting to see whether any of them are willing to blow the whistle on Obama's latest evasion.

PAUL adds: A defense that Obama didn't knew in the 1990s that Ayers was unrepentant would be plausible. However, the campaign must have concluded that this defense isn't good enough.. A defense that Obama didn't know about any of the underlying terrorism is preposterous.

To comment on this post, go here.

Posted by John at 9:34 AM | Permalink

Sarah In Silicon Valley

I thought just about everyone in Silicon Valley--the wealthy ones, anyway--were Democrats. Not so, apparently. Earlier today our friend Joe Malchow attended an event in Burlingame, California, that starred Governor Palin. The appearance originally was slated to be held in a Republican's back yard, Joe says, but demand by Silicon Valley Republicans to see Palin was such that it was moved to a ballroom.

Joe reports at Dartblog:

So what played to this audience? What caused genuine applause? Well, one line, in particular: near the end of her twenty-minute speech, Sarah Palin told the audience that out on the hustings one comment from supporters has dominated, in frequency, all others: tell people about the real Barack Obama. She said this quietly, without drama. But: thunder, hoots, an ovation. It was the one real firework in her stump speech; yet from the cadence of the speech one could tell that it was not intended thus.

Barack Obama is running for President as a blank slate, a formless alternative to whatever you don't like about the last eight years of history. In fact, though, he has a record, and a small minority of voters have some idea what that record is. It's understandable that, in the few remaining days of this campaign, they want John McCain and Sarah Palin to spread the word.

To comment on this post, go here.

Posted by John at 10:09 PM | Permalink

Doing well by doing no-good

If it turns out to be the financial crisis that puts Barack Obama over the top in his quest for the White House, the irony will be difficult to overstate. First, the biggest driver of the financial crisis was not any conservative policy such as the kind of deregulation John McCain supports. Rather, as Diana West argues, the biggest driver was the “race-based social engineering” that “virtually created the sub-prime mortgage industry.” The implosion of that industry, in turn, triggered the present crisis.

The operative vision, then, was leftist and racialist, not free-market. As West puts it, the social engineers decided that not “enough” minorities had homes because not “enough” minorities were eligible for mortgages. The solution was to junk the bottom-line, non-racial markers of mortgage eligibility traditionally used by banks to distinguish between good and bad credit risks -- steady employment, clean credit, and a down payment. Obama, then, is the beneficiary of the terrible failure of affirmative action style policies in the mortgage banking sector.

But the irony extends further. For it turns out that intimidating banks into making bad loans to minorities was a major activity of “community organizations” during the 1990s. And, according to Stanley Kurtz, Obama himself trained and funded ACORN activists who engaged in such intimidation.

Using a combination of intimidation and white guilt to plunge the banking industry into the crisis that brings a radical activist to power – even Saul Alinsky couldn’t have drawn it up this well.

To comment on this post, go here.

Posted by Paul at 8:30 PM | Permalink

ACORN — The Flow Chart

Graphic does not come over correctly- click this to see it:

this link

Democratic Counsel Robert Bennett on John McCain and Keating Five: 'Pure Politics'

Know Enough? (Obama & Bill Ayers ad)

NRA plans a wider ad assault on Barack Obama in battleground states

US STOCKS-Wall St. sinks; Dow drops below 9,700 level

The MSM is driving fear and panic now. All so Obama can provide Socialism as the answer.

Everyone paying attention knows it is coming.

The scariest part is an economically weakened United States is going to be a very appealing target to our Islamo-Fascist enemies. Obama's "solution" will mark the end of the United States as we know it.

http://www.redstate.com/

BREAKING: The Gloves are well and truly off on Fannie Mae.

"I don’t need lessons about telling the truth to American people. And were I ever to need any improvement in that regard, I probably wouldn’t seek advice from a Chicago politician."

Posted by: Moe Lane

Monday, October 6, 2008 at 12:53PM

77 Comments

Last veteran of Hood sinking dies

A sentimental favorite of mine:

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b5d8b70471f.htm
We’ve done it. We’ve found her ... H.M.S. Hood found at last!

US STOCKS-Wall St. sinks; Dow drops below 9,700 level

When did the economy start to “TANK”?

When the democrats took over congress in 2007.

At the beginning of 2007, here is where we stood, economic wise.

DOW around 13,000
Gas less than $2 dollars per gallon
Interest rates at historic lows
Inflation under control
Unemployment rate at historic low (less than 5%)

Democrats have been in control of control 2 YEARS, and where are we now?

Dow at 9700 (25% drop in 2 years)
Gas at $4 dollars per gallon
Unemployment over 6%
Inflation growing quickly

SO WHO IS TO BLAME? Looks like the democrats and a lame duck president. The DEMS created this financial meltdown and the repubs and McCain are getting blamed. Obama has got to be laughing at his luck.

Why doesn’t McCain point these facts out?

76 posted on Monday, October 06, 2008 3:29:10 PM by gswilder

McCain in NM live feed now (ON THE ATTACK BIG TIME)

McCain Unloads on Obama's Character, Record

Video - McCain Nukes Obama: Who is This Guy With the Thin Skin and No Record?

The Weathermen tried to kill my family.

Michigan Republicans Not Giving Up

http://pajamasmedia.com/edgelings/2008/10/03/the-end-of-an-era/

“The End Of An Era”

“What if the current Mortgage/Credit Crunch is not just an isolated financial crisis, but in fact the signal for the death of one era, and the (painful) birth of another?”

From where I sit, the United States government has embarked on two pieces of social engineering in the last few years. One was to make oil expensive as expensive as possible to drive people to greater use of alternative energy sources - because anything less would be irresponsible and destructive to the environment. The other was to enshrine home ownership (i.e., easy-to-obtain mortgages) as a new American right - because anything less would be unequal and racist.

None of us voted on these decisions - indeed, neither was even spoken about directly, much less debated. But nevertheless, both became national policy… and both have sparked national, now international, crises. Then, once they became crises, both were blamed on ‘greedy capitalism’, instead of what they really were: legislative interference into market forces.

Fine. We’ve been through this before, and no doubt we will see similar, government-induced crises again - inevitably accompanied by Administration officials and our elected representatives pointing at everyone but themselves.

But what makes this particular economic crisis so appalling, at least from this vantage point, is the sheer scumminess, corruption, short-sightedness and general incompetence of everyone involved. At least in the business world, especially in the take-no-prisoners world of high-tech that kind of venality and ineptitude either gets you fired or kills the company; by comparison, in Washington, it puts you in charge of the recovery effort.”

Read it All!

Want eight years of this?

Looking Down the Barrel of an Ad (loathsome Rosenthal billboard slanders gun owners again)

Vote the New Black Jesus...

Sarah Palin in Burlingame, California

WHO IS THE REAL OBAMA

McCain: ‘Who is the real Barack Obama?’

McCain in NM live feed now (ON THE ATTACK BIG TIME)

There you go John.
I knew you could do it.
Just follow my lead.

Transcript of McCain taking Obama to the woodshed.

What effect will Sarah Palin have?

Russia Military Exercises Venezuela & NEAR ALASKA

We'll just let Barack "jaw" 'em out of being bloodthirsty tyrants...

Obama calls for a national health plan, mandatory coverage for children

Close-up on juvenile justice (Golden Oldie Obama / Ayres)

Arab 'Palestinian' Savagery - Animalism

More Bogus Obama Donors Surface

Obama's "Fight the Smears" disclaims ACORN Links (Total Nonsense)

Bank of America dividend cut, to raise capital(CEO just endorsed Obama, welcome to Obama's America)

HuffPo Blogger: Landslide Needed to Defeat 'Unheroic Killer' McCain

Fact Check: "Obama tried to reign-in Freddie Mack and Fannie May in 2006"

Factcheck.org -> Annenberg
Obama -> Annenberg

Here is the letter Obama keeps refering to:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2098904/posts

I broke it down paragraph by paragraph. It isn’t a warning about financial meltdown. It is a warning that we need MORE sub-prime loans.

Read it. It is amazing they can get away with saying Obama warned about the current crisis. Had they followed the advice in Obama’s “warning” letter, the crisis would have been WORSE.

Devastating Video, Obama talks about job Ayers gave him (Authors spelling :) )

THEY REMOVED OBAMA YOUTH TEEN VIDEO!! (FR Exclusive)

Video of John McCain's Remarks in NM

BOB OWENS: Obama, Ayers, and Dohrn, Oh My. "The ties between Barack Obama and terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn go back over 21 years."

Winning [Jim Manzi]

I’ve written extensively about the seriousness of the risks to the economy created by the current financial crisis. That said, I’ve also tried to show that with diligent management of the dangers, the foreseeable probability of catastrophe can be reduced enormously.

Today's huge market declines certainly serve to underscore the risks, but I think that it’s also useful to see this in a broader context. Suppose that we fail, and the worst comes. Suppose, in fact, we have a repeat of events on the order of the Great Depression. It would be terrible, but here’s something to keep in mind:

By many measures, the Great Depression is the worst economic crisis that America has ever faced, and it was really just a temporary pause in the ongoing growth of the economy.

At times of obvious economic difficulties, it’s traditional to trot out two kinds of quotes: (1) statements from whoever is in power saying that “the fundamentals of the economy are sound” in order to show foolish lack of awareness, and (2) statements by thoughtful pundits that the characteristic American, or Anglo-Saxon, approach of economic liberty has failed, and more statist economies will now become globally dominant. But at the level of decades, the fundamentals of the American economy have always been sound, and the political institutions, technical capacity and social mores that define the American system have always found a way to prevail.

None of this is cause for complacency. This growth is not some law of nature; it has taken millions of lifetimes of exacting work, risk-taking and careful management to achieve. But we shouldn’t lose our nerve.

I’m reminded of something I saw a stock market trader say on about September 12th or 13th, 2001, with the smoldering skyline of lower Manhattan behind him: “Nobody’s ever made money betting against the United States of America.”

10/06 03:34 PM

===============================================

KEEPING THE MACHINERY OF CIVILIZATION GOING: "It's funny. People are taught all about ecology and the rain forest, yet almost nothing about the infrastructures that actually keep them alive." I was discussing this with a plumber yesterday.

ACORN is Stealing the Vote in Ohio (5 videos)

Call ACORN what it is, an organized criminal organization (Prosecute them under the RICO act)

Ex SDS Behind Obama’s Anti-War Speech

October 6th, 2008

A former SDS member and friend of Bill Ayers, Marilyn Katz, was the woman who got Barack Obama to speak at the rally where he first spoke out against the war in Iraq.

From the May 15-21 issue of Time Out Chicago:

Marilyn Katz speaks out in Lincoln Park in August 1968

Take action! Freedom fighters

Six protesters from the ’68 Democratic National Convention rally together again to debate their movement’s legacy and how times have changed.
By Julia Borcherts
Whether you view them as righteous or as radical demons, the 1968 Democratic National Convention protesters had an undeniable impact. The protests and the resulting police riots changed the way the media covered the news, heightened awareness of political, military and social issues and led to changes in the way our primaries impact the general elections. In an effort to understand what went down in our backyard 40 years ago, we found six Chicagoans who participated in the demonstrations, gathered them peaceably in a police- and National Guard–free zone (okay, the TOC offices) and watched some ’68 protest footage to get everyone riled up to discuss that world-changing week…
[Caption for the photo at right:] Marilyn Katz — Then Head of security for MOBE (National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam)
What did you accomplish?
Katz We have a congressional delegation that was forged out of ’68—Danny Davis, antiwar, civil rights; Luis Gutierrez, Young Lords; Jan Schakowsky, consumer and antiwar advocate. It was the ending, for better or for worse, of an illusion which all of us children of the ’50s grew up with—that the U.S. was a total democracy and that our foreign policy was benign. It changed the way power was shared and policy was forged in this country.
Did your participation lead to any difficulties or consequences?
Katz: I don’t know for other people; I mean, I think I probably have the longest arrest record of anyone here, since the older Daley really hated me. The longest arrest record—17 arrests in that period of time. But in the end, I think it also made me who I was. And it gave me every skill as an organizer, as an intellectual, as a writer—who left school because I believed there was a revolution. Michael recruited me as a young kid in my sophomore year.
Knowing what you know now, what might you have done differently?
Katz Nothing!
… I think I was who I was now. I think that by the summer of ’68, women were pretty strong, while we were fighting in SDS around women’s stuff, I think Bernardine [Dohrn] and I felt pretty—leadership, in that nobody was going to push us around.
Do you think people were more passionate then?
Katz: Well, men were, as there was a draft—and it very directly affected them. In general, I don’t think the issue was passion, but a sense of possibility. We felt very empowered in the ’60s, that what we did would/could make a difference. The world was a revolutionary place from Paris to Prague, with socialist and progressive countries thriving, and liberation movements throughout Africa. I think today there is a greater sense of desperation, a sense—a reality—that nothing we do will affect Bush, et al. (proven to be true). More people demonstrated against Iraq and Bush just told them, us, and the world to go screw—that no amount of opposition would stop their folly. Thus, the pull of electoral politics this time around…a feeling that only taking over the government can stop the madness.

We learn from The New Republic that it was this same Marilyn Katz who gave Barack Obama the platform where he first spoke out against the Iraq war:

Cinderella Story by Michael Crowley

Is Obama’s Iraq record really a fairy tale?
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
On the last weekend of September 2002, Marilyn Katz, a p.r. maven and former aide to Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, was awoken by a phone call from her old friend Betty Lu Saltzman. “We have to do something about Bush’s drive to war, ” said Saltzman, a wealthy political gadfly in her seventies. Katz agreed. The two women contacted friends on the local liberal-activist circuit–”a bunch of old sixties radicals,” says Katz–about staging a demonstration. A slew of local politicians were invited to speak. Few accepted. One of them was Obama…

From this Washington Post article we learn that this was Barack Obama’s “coming out” as a speaker, according Ms. Katz:

Finding Political Strength in the Power of Words

Oratory Has Helped Drive Obama’s Career — and Critics’ Questions
By Alec MacGillis
Tuesday, February 26, 2008; Page A01
Obama’s first real chance to address matters of higher import came in 2002, when he spoke at a rally against invading Iraq. Marilyn Katz, a longtime Chicago public relations consultant who helped organize the event, recalls it as a kind of coming-out for Obama as a public speaker.
“People who’d never heard of him said, ‘Who is this guy?’ ” Katz said.

From this New York Times article we learn that Ms. Katz organized Vietnam War protests, threw nails in the street, and more recently, has hosted fundraisers for Barack Obama:

Pragmatic Politics, Forged on the South Side

By JO BECKER and CHRISTOPHER DREW
Published: May 11, 2008
As a leader of Students for a Democratic Society then, Ms. Katz organized Vietnam War protests, throwing nails in the street to thwart the police…
“For better or worse, this is Chicago,” said Ms. Katz, who has held fund-raisers for Mr. Obama at her home. “Everyone is connected to everyone.” …

Indeed, Ms. Katz has become one of Mr. Obama’s top bundlers, according to the Obama campaign website:

Raising from $50,000 to $100,000:

Wendy Abrams (Highland Park, IL)
Charles Adams (Geneva, Switzerland)
…
Marilyn Katz (Chicago, IL)

Meanwhile, when the relationship between Obama and Bill Ayers first surfaced back in April, Ms. Katz stepped forward to explain why this was not an issue.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Who is Bill Ayers?

2008 CAMPAIGN | Former radical or respected prof, he’s a liability if Obama’s nominated, Hillary warns.
April 18, 2008
BY CHRIS FUSCO AND ABDON M. PALLASCH Staff Reporters
Reached by the Sun-Times on her cell phone, Dohrn declined to comment. Ayers, who was traveling, did not return messages.
But friends like Chicago political strategist Marilyn Katz said Ayers should not be a campaign issue.
Katz met Ayers when he was 17 and they were members of Students for a Democratic Society, a group from which the Weather Underground splintered…
“What Bill Ayers and Bobby Rush … did 40 years ago has nothing to do with” the presidential campaign, Katz said…

Funny she would say that.

It is ALWAYS a privilege to hear what wise old political commentators have to say (even if its from prison).

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/09/06/conrad-black-americans-face-the-most-important-election-choice-since-ronald-reagan.aspx

Conrad Black & the National Post wrote:

The policy and ideological differences between the Unites States’ Democrats and Republicans this year are greater than in all the elections since the Second World War, except for Barry Goldwater’s quixotic challenge to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society in 1964; George McGovern’s kamikaze mission against Richard Nixon in 1972; and Ronald Reagan’s release of Jimmy Carter to spend more time with his family in 1980.

The differences over taxes, the economy and medical care are profound -- and very complicated. Obama is proposing one of the greatest tax increases in world history, entirely on the wealthiest 40% of the U.S. population -- who already contribute more than 100% (yes, you read that correctly) of the U.S. government’s personal income tax revenue. He is disguising it behind a welter of largely fictitious refundable tax credits. The increased tax on people of substantial income will be paid out to people who pay small amounts of tax or none at all. No part of this familiar process is a “tax-cut,” which is how it has been presented.

The top tax-rate and the tax on capital gains and dividends would all rise by a full third, estate taxes would be raised to 45% and social-security payroll taxes would be raised for families earning over $250,000 a year. The Obama claims that all this would keep taxes at 18.2% of GDP, and would cover his vast spending plans, are nonsense.

McCain would tax-incentivize productivity increases and legitimate industrial research and new technology, and would accelerate depreciation allowances, thereby encouraging capital investment; and would moderately reduce corporate and personal taxes. And he would distribute health-care tax credits to every adult, encouraging the public to seek care at the lowest prices.

Obama, on the other hand, is proposing compulsory medical insurance, in a way that ensures that about half the population will get their coverage from the federal government. Neither candidate proposes caps on malpractice awards, insurance premiums or drug prices; thus assuring that under either candidate’s proposal, annual U.S. medical costs will rise substantially above their present staggering $2-trillion, and 16% of GDP, the highest of any country.

The new president will face tough economic decisions, which would be better met by McCain’s than by Obama’s program. Raising taxes when their economy’s on the verge of a possible recession, which the Democrats endlessly claim is already upon the country, is an economic recovery plan that went out of fashion with Herbert Hoover 75 years ago.

The differences between the candidates over traditional litmus-test issues such as abortion and gun control, are more stark, though Obama fudged them rhetorically in his convention acceptance speech. He professed to respect the constitutional right to bear arms, but said he didn’t want to sell AK-47 machine guns to criminals -- as if anyone were asking for that. (Readers will be aware that I am at the moment, technically a criminal in the United States, thanks to the perversities of the country’s justice system. I can attest that distributing AK-47’s to all the residents here, on their release, would not raise the crime rate whatsoever. Those few who might want an AK-47 will lay hands on one whatever the federal government thinks about it.)

Senator Obama said he respects the right to life, but that there were “too many unwanted babies” a supply-side take on abortion, in other words. McCain and his running mate, on the other hand, hold views of gun control and abortion that are unambiguously negative, but not authoritarian.

Even more important are the seismic sociological appeals to white voters by the Democratic candidate, and to female voters by the Republicans. Senator Obama has told the black community to shape up, stop the disintegration of the African-American family and stop playing the victim card.

The unspoken bargain is that if elevated to the White House by white America, he will end the moral oppression of white Americans by guilt-mongering black charlatans such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Charlie Rangel. (Hence, Jackson’s recent bitter complaint that Obama had abandoned his gonzo spiritual advisor, Jeremiah Wright, a stentorian peddler of black victimhood and white guilt.) Such people have led the black political community in the United States since the assassination of Martin Luther King 40 years ago.

The vice-presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin is, in part, an effort to wrest the leadership of the feminist movement from the elite and militant left, and to put it in the hands of a silent majority of relatively traditional but ambitious women. It is a bold move to try to separate abortion from other issues generally associated with women’s rights.

The Democrats and the feminist media establishment failed in their effort to represent Governor Palin as a Dan Quayle dunce in drag, a trigger-happy Stepford Wife and negligent mother (because she would choose to run for vice president despite her young family and 17-year old unmarried, pregnant daughter). The frenzy of the initial assault, and the sanctimonious conceit that American women would be offended by the candidacy of such an allegedly ditzy yokel, showed that McCain had remembered the basic military strategic lessons to apply maximum force at the decisive point and achieve complete surprise: If the liberal Democrats are taking the high ground on extramarital sex and working motherhood, you know they are frightened.

But even the Republicans were not prepared for the virtuosity of Ms. Palin’s debut on Wednesday night. Managing to be winsome and even ingenuous, while witty; hard-hitting without being a harridan; an authentic feminist about what women can aspire to, while being a traditionalist; a clean government achiever and a populist enemy of the oil companies’ excesses and the proverbial special interests; a spunky and endearing, yet effective, attack dog; she touched all the buttons. The early Democratic and media ripostes of offended American womanhood, lumpenbourgeois mediocrity and the primitive frontierswoman with a rifle in one hand and a Bible in the other, were completely inadequate.

She is a naturally popular person, and a contrast with Joe Biden, a monotonous leftist journeyman, full of pretension and loquacity, a plagiarist (from Neil Kinnock of all people) with hair plugs. When Ms. Palin quoted the noisy nonentity the Democrats have inflicted on the Senate as majority leader, Harry Reid, as detesting John McCain, and said that was the greatest compliment the Republican nominee could receive, to deafening applause, a resonant tocsin sounded. George W. Bush has a low but far from unprecedented approval rating of about 30%. But the equivalent figure for the Congress is in single figures, a smaller percentage than the proportion of Americans who think Elvis Presley is alive. The Democrats have assumed for the last two years that all they had to do was mention the outgoing president and set out giant dumpsters to collect all the Democratic votes. Persevering readers will recall that I never thought so.

The Democratic candidates propose a foreign policy of endless negotiation, punctuated only by Obama’s apparent shot-from-the-hip promise that in search of Osama bin Laden, he would invade Pakistan, a nuclear power and ostensible ally, that has a population eight times that of Iraq.

McCain, the veteran, ex-POW, son and grandson of admirals, is uninhibited about the use of the U.S.’s immense military power in the legitimate national interest. He believes that the Vietnam War could and should have been won, and has not wavered in his support of the Iraq War, although he was rightly critical of the way the occupation was conducted prior to the surge. Obama and Biden believe recourse to military force is almost never justified. McCain and Palin believe in maintaining credible deterrence by measured retaliation when justified. These philosophical differences could lead to sharply different responses to international events.

Senator Obama is and will be the political leader of African-Americans, whether he is the next president or not. This election should durably put the leadership of that community in his responsible hands; it could put the feminist political leadership in play between the militants and traditionalists; will determine whether the United States moves toward or further away from greater public sector influence on the economy and social services; and decide whether the U.S. armed forces become an Ozymandian white elephant or continue to be the most powerful geopolitical factor in the world.

This is the most important election in the world since the rise of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Obama/Ayers: Palin DID handle that well! - UPDATED

Ann Althouse first made the observation, and she linked to a reporter shouting a question and Palin answering. You’ll want to go see it before it - like the SNL skit on the sub-prime markets/financial crisis - gets pulled. Because we live in an era where anything that doesn’t fit the narrative gets pulled.

And let me point out that it is not President George (the “evil nazi who is squashing our civil rights”) Bush or anyone in his administration, who keeps doing all this information yanking and video disappearing. Just thought I’d mention that. Can’t be mentioned enough. What puzzles me is how Democrats who care about free-speech can consent to and stand for what is becoming Standard Operating Procedures on the left: if it hurts the cause, it never happened. Things get erased and disappeared, pretty regularly, these days. Seems wrong, doesn’t it? Why is no one on the left speaking up? If nothing else, the issue of FREE SPEECH should be one upon which both left and right can agree.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has a plausible theory on why the skit has been pulled. It involves billionaire Democrats.

Anyway, in case the video does get pulled: The reporter asks Palin what she thinks of the AP calling her “palling around with terrorists” remark as “racially tinged.”

PALIN: The Associated Press is wrong. The comments are about the association that has been known but hasn’t been talked about. And I think it’s fair to talk about where Barack Obama kicked off his political career, in the guy’s living room. And he, of course, having been associated with that group, a known domestic terrorist group, it’s important for Americans to know. It’s really important for Americans to start knowing who the real Barack Obama is.

Now, read Stanley Kurtz: (h/t Ace)

Obama was perfectly aware of Ayers’ radical views, since he read and publically endorsed, without qualification, Ayers’ book on juvenile crime. That book is quite radical, expressing doubts about whether we ought to have a prison system at all, comparing America to South Africa’s apartheid system, and contemptuously dismissing the idea of the United States as a kind or just country.

As you know, our friend Joseph, in the comments, said Palin went “over the line” in daring to bring this issue up. For some weeks now, it has been “over the line” to say pretty much anything negative about Obama. And of course, racist, to boot. But really, what is “over the line” or “racist” about bringing up the fact that Obama’s ties to Ayers and Dohrn go back over 20 years. Apparently Obama doesn’t read the news? Had no idea who and what Ayers was when Michelle Obama booked him to speak?

Unafraid of being called an “over the line racist” John McCain finally started fighting. And yes, now it’s racist to talk about Fannie Mae. All subjects that might harm Barack Obama’s chances in November: racist. The Dems are finally dulling the effect of that word with their overuse.

Also unafraid to be called names, Palin warns it’s gonna get rough. Being who she is, and having been treated as she has been treated, I guess she’s up for it. Let’s see what happens. Tapscott says the Reagan era ain’t over. I was a liberal Democrat back then. I wouldn’t mind experiencing it from this side, now.

Off topic but a don’t miss article. I hope someone shows it to McCain.

Hot Air has several videos on Obama/Ayers worth watching. And more nuggets here.

Texas Rainmaker has a LOT of videos and Hannity stuff. More here.

Bookworm saw Palin speak and says “keep the faith.”

A variation of “fake but accurate” here.

Surprisingly, CBS is actually sort of reporting on the questionable Obama donations. Gee, if only he’d have stuck with the public funding, like he said he would.

Meanwhile…the reading continues.. If you check the live feed, they’re up to 1 Samuel as I write this. (H/T & instructions).

I know I had promised to write more on all that (and President Bush), but I’m feeling a bit punk, tonight, with chills, so it will have to wait.

by TheAnchoress @ 8:37 pm. Filed under Alternative Media, America, Answers & Questions, Barack Obama, Bush Good, Culture of Treason?, Economic woe, Election 2008, Free Speech?, John Paul II, Sarah Palin, The Fourth Estate

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Sarah handles a heckler

October 6, 2008 10:01 PM by Michelle Malkin75 Comments

WHO ARE THE RUBES? You get the sense that he believes everyone can be played. It's worked for him so far.

Aaaaaand…we’re off!

Geraghty:

John McCain, today, finally starts talking about Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the irresponsible leadership at both, and the Democrats’ efforts to prevent serious oversight:
Our current economic crisis is a good case in point. What was his actual record in the years before the great economic crisis of our lifetimes?
This crisis started in our housing market in the form of subprime loans that were pushed on people who could not afford them. Bad mortgages were being backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it was only a matter of time before a contagion of unsustainable debt began to spread. This corruption was encouraged by Democrats in Congress, and abetted by Senator Obama.
Senator Obama has accused me of opposing regulation to avert this crisis. I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed. But the truth is I was the one who called at the time for tighter restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that could have helped prevent this crisis from happening in the first place.
Senator Obama was silent on the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and his Democratic allies in Congress opposed every effort to rein them in. As recently as September of last year he said that subprime loans had been, quote, “a good idea.” Well, Senator Obama, that “good idea” has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
To hear him talk now, you’d think he’d always opposed the dangerous practices at these institutions. But there is absolutely nothing in his record to suggest he did. He was surely familiar with the people who were creating this problem. The executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have advised him, and he has taken their money for his campaign. He has received more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than any other senator in history, with the exception of the chairman of the committee overseeing them. Did he ever talk to the executives at Fannie and Freddie about these reckless loans? Did he ever discuss with them the stronger oversight I proposed? If Senator Obama is such a champion of financial regulation, why didn’t he support these regulations that could have prevented this crisis in the first place? He won’t tell you, but you deserve an answer.
Amen. Finally. Keep doing it — don’t let this be a one-speech wonder. This has to be a huge part of the message for the coming days.
Never mind for the presidential election — if the country is to avoid a similar run of reckless bets in the future, we have to be clear-eyed about what got us into this mess in the first place.

Notes Moe Lane at Red State:

Looks like we’re going to have one whale of a debate tomorrow, assuming of course that we can get past the junior Senator from Illinois whining for twenty minutes about how mean we’re being to him. And racist! Mustn’t forget the racism; God knows that his supporters never do. So let’s rock and roll. It’ll be a thing.

I’ll add only what I’ve added on several other occasions here this past week, namely, that McCain and Palin should embrace the chance to take on the race-baiters and the establishment feminists — both constituencies against which I think ordinary Americans will happily rebel, given the impetus and the political cover to do so.

Earlier, USNews and World Reports noted that McCain was avoiding the Fannie Freddie mess because he feared being labeled an enemy of the poor and “racist” by Democrats; he also believed an explanation for the mortgage meltdown was beyond the comprehension of ordinary voters.

Thankfully, someone in his campaign convinced him to listen to the conservative base (and even those like me who viewed his unwillingness to make a tough case as a sign of his weakness), who have been pleading with him to take the case to the American people, and to confront Senator Obama on his ties to the crisis (and his campaign’s ties, on the advisory level, to those principally responsible).

– Or maybe it finally occurred to Senator McCain that those most unlikely to either understand the crisis or care about what brought it about were already voting for Senator Obama, anyway.. So what’s the harm in aiming above the low-information voters who are going to pull the lever for the younger charismat even were he to show up at the next debate dressed in a big sable hat and answering every question with quotes from the Huey Newton Reader.*

****
see also, Hot Air.

Bonus: Palin zeroes in on Obama/Wright connection.

Looks like ANWR is not the only thing on which Palin and McCain disagree.

Posted by Jeff G. @ 1:00 pm
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“Obama and the Attempt to Destroy the Second Amendment”

David Hardy, PJM, gives us some insight into the workings of “grassroots” fascism of the kind favored by “progressives” — in this case, “moderate” Barack Obama, who has shown a very troubling tendency to insist upon control of any and every narrative, even going so far as to threaten legal action, or send out Action Alerts intended to direct his followers to shout down and smear those holding opposing viewponts:

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama must demonstrate executive experience, but he remains strangely silent about his eight years (1994-2002) as a director of the Joyce Foundation, a billion dollar tax-exempt organization. He has one obvious reason: during his time as director, Joyce Foundation spent millions creating and supporting anti-gun organizations.
There is another, less known, reason.
During Obama’s tenure, the Joyce Foundation board planned and implemented a program targeting the Supreme Court. The work began five years into Obama’s directorship, when the Foundation had experience in turning its millions into anti-gun “grassroots” organizations, but none at converting cash into legal scholarship.
The plan’s objective was bold: the judicial obliteration of the Second Amendment.
Joyce’s directors found a vulnerable point. When judges cannot rely upon past decisions, they sometimes turn to law review articles. Law reviews are impartial, and famed for meticulous cite-checking. They are also produced on a shoestring. Authors of articles receive no compensation; editors are law students who work for a tiny stipend.
In 1999, midway through Obama’s tenure, the Joyce board voted [.pdf available at link] to grant the Chicago-Kent Law Review $84,000, a staggering sum by law review standards. The Review promptly published an issue in which all articles attacked the individual right view of the Second Amendment.
In a breach of law review custom, Chicago-Kent let an “outsider” serve as editor; he was Carl Bogus, a faculty member of a different law school. Bogus had a unique distinction [.pdf available at link]: he had been a director of Handgun Control Inc. (today’s Brady Campaign), and was on the advisory board of the Joyce-funded Violence Policy Center.
Bogus solicited only articles hostile to the individual right view of the Second Amendment, offering authors $5,000 each. But word leaked out, and Prof. Randy Barnett of Boston University volunteered to write in defense of the individual right to arms. Bogus refused to allow him to write for the review, later explaining that “sometimes a more balanced debate is best served by an unbalanced symposium.” Prof. James Lindgren, a former Chicago-Kent faculty member, remembers that when Barnett sought an explanation he “was given conflicting reasons, but the opposition of the Joyce Foundation was one that surfaced at some time.” Joyce had bought a veto power over the review’s content.

[my emphasis]

The thrust here is that Obama, as director of the tax-exempt Joyce Foundation, was instrumental in a proliferating a scheme under which the SCOTUS would be unduly influenced by a carefully manipulated “grassroots” groundswell of attacks on the individual rights view of the Second Amendment (a movement that reached one of its peaks — and then valleys — with Michael Bellesiles Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, a fraudulent book embraced by anti-individual rights scholars of the Second Amendment).

What we see here are academic elites attempting to game the system in order to both influence legal thinking and circumvent organic debate by way of “manufacturing consent” — something that is easily justified by those who come out of the progressive / New Left tradition, where the ends justify the means once the means are rationalized as the Greater Good (as decided upon not by voters, but by those who presume to think it appropriate to “teach” voters how to think, even if in doing so these teachers have to take certain liberties).

Continues Hardy:

The plan worked smoothly. One court, in the course of ruling [.pdf available at link] that there was no individual right to arms, cited the Chicago-Kent articles eight times. Then, in 2001, a federal Court of Appeals in Texas determined that the Second Amendment was an individual right.
The Joyce Foundation board (which still included Obama) responded by expanding its attack on the Second Amendment. Its next move came when Ohio State University announced it was establishing the “Second Amendment Research Center” as a thinktank headed by anti-individual-right historian Saul Cornell. Joyce put up no less than $400,000 to bankroll its creation. The grant was awarded at the board’s December 2002 meeting, Obama’s last function as a Joyce director. [.pdf available at link]. In reporting the grant, the OSU magazine Making History made clear that the purpose was to influence a future Supreme Court case:
“The effort is timely: a series of test cases - based on a new wave of scholarship, a recent decision by a federal Court of Appeals in Texas, and a revised Justice Department policy-are working their way through the courts. The litigants challenge the courts’ traditional reading of the Second Amendment as a protection of the states’ right to organize militia, asserting that the Amendment confers a much broader right for individuals to own guns. The United States Supreme Court is likely to resolve the debate within the next three to five years.”
(45:17-18; online link [.pdf available at link]; slow).
The Center proceeded to generate articles denying the individual right to arms. The OSU connection also gave Joyce an academic money laundry. When it decided to buy an issue of the Stanford Law and Policy Review, it had a cover. Joyce handed OSU $125,000 [.pdf available at link] for that purpose; all the law review editors knew was that OSU’s Foundation granted them that breathtaking sum, and a helpful Prof. Cornell volunteered to organize the issue. (The review was later sufficiently embarassed to publish an open letter [.pdf available at link] on the affair).
The Joyce directorate’s plan almost succeeded. The individual rights view won out in the Heller Supreme Court appeal, but only by 5-4. The four dissenters were persuaded in part by Joyce-funded writings, down to relying on an article which misled them on critical historical documents.
Having lost that fight, Obama now claims he always held the individual rights view of the Second Amendment, and that he “respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms.” [.pdf available at link] But as a Joyce director, Obama was involved in a wealthy foundation’s attempt to manipulate the Supreme Court, buy legal scholarship, and obliterate the individual right to arms.
Voters who value the Constitution should ask whether someone who was party to that plan should be nominating future Supreme Court justices.

[my emphases]

All of which points to one simple fact: It is easy to promote a Living Constitution when you are convinced that it is you who controls both the oxygen and the blood supply. And as postmodern pragmatism gains purchase among the academic class (moreso out of its usefulness than out of any profound discovery offered in its description of the world), the justifications and rationalizations for “guiding” policy toward its “appropriate” legislative end is a natural as breathing to those who believe whole-heartedly in their own intellectual entitlement as social engineers.

Obama has show himself again and again to be a man willing to use the press and his followers to “win” debates by anything other than the strength of his ideas in a free marketplace of ideology.

For that reason alone, we should fear his Presidency.

Of course, as a self-styled “progressive,” Obama can really act no other way; for someone who believes he is manipulating history, Obama’s failure to see how his progressive ideology determines his every move is quite sadly ironic.

Posted by Jeff G. @ 11:24 am
Comments (103)

Hypocrisy Doesn’t Begin To Describe It

Jennifer Rubin - 10.06.2008 - 10:56 PM

Ross Douthat writes:

Obama’s obfuscation regarding Ayers is, in a sense, the homage that vice pays to virtue - a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that the political culture of Chicago, and especially of Hyde Park, is more accommodating than perhaps it should be to a morally dubious figure like Ayers, and that having accommodated himself to those accommodations Obama now recognizes the need to behave as if he didn’t.

But this is true of Obama’s entire circle of comrades and associates, of course. He didn’t know who they were, or wasn’t all that close to them, or never happened to be there when their life-long habit of excoriating evil America was demonstrated. It is all of a piece.

But more than hypocrisy is at work here. It is not just far Left, American-hating radicals he now disowns. You get the sense that he believes everyone can be played. Rashid Khalidi can believe that Obama finds no one suffers more than the Palestinians. Jews can buy that he was moved by the Holocaust from a summer camp experience. Voters in his Congressional race in 1990 can be told that there is no difference ideologically between him and 100% ADA-rated Bobby Rush, but the rest of the state in 2004 (and eventually the country) can buy that he’s a post-partisan reformer. Terrorists come to believe he shares their scorn for America, but Iowa voters hear him talk about his appreciation that only in America could his story have happened. Primary voters in Ohio are coddled with protectionist promises - and then privately scorned while he is talking to San Fransciso liberal donors.

There is no end to it — everyone gets the version of Obama that perfectly fits his own world view. It is not hypocrisy. It’s fraud. Whatever he told or shared with Ayers, Dohrn, Wright, or Pfleger counts for no more that what he told or shared with other now inconvenient groups and individuals. He’s sold the same piece of political real estate to multiple buyers for multiple, conflicting uses.

But one thing has been consistent. He has never, ever attacked political corruption, whether in Chicago or Washington. To the contrary, at the Woods Fund, the Annenberg Challenge and the U.S. Senate he’s laddled out earmarks and goodies to a long list of friends and associates — Wright, Pfleger, Will County ( home of FBI target Larry Walsh), Allison S. Davis, ACORN, etc. The one consistency has been his fidelity to political supporters. Everyone else and every political position were disposable.

Now is precisely the time for firm convictions, strict ethical propriety and the firmness to turn away those who put private interests above the public good. We may be on the verge of electing a candidate who lacks any of these traits.

MacLeans (It Is Going To Get Worse)

RON BAILEY:

As European stock markets tank, the Irish government guarantees bank deposits, the Benelux countries nationalize Fortis bank, Germany bails out Hypo Real Estate Holdings, and Denmark also guarantees bank deposits and dismally so forth, the question arises: Who knew that Europe, of all places, was so under-regulated? Or maybe de-regulation is not the chief cause for the outbreak of financial chaos? Just wondering.

When the answer to "what to do?" is always "regulate more," the answer to "what went wrong?" must always be "not enough regulation."

Megan McArdle has related thoughts: "Europe's ongoing disaster is starting to match ours. This not only seriously challenges the idea that the main problem is American bank regulation--everyone is having the same problem, despite different regulatory regimes--but also puts us in much deeper jeopardy." Yes, just over a week ago, Europeans were gloating at American problems. We shouldn't return the favor, because, alas, the problems are all connected.

The forbidden skit: Full transcript and screenshots of SNL’s Soros/Sandler bailout satire

October 7, 2008 01:06 AM by Michelle Malkin18 Comments

Settling the Bill

by Baron Bodissey

As a result of the current financial crisis and the recent bailout, we have reached a historic milestone: The people of the United States have finally paid reparations to the descendants of African slaves.

Admittedly, it was a stealth form of payment. It wasn’t a straightforward check written from the Treasury to the people involved. The voters weren’t consulted about the arrangement. It was something that just kind of happened.

Members of Congress didn’t actually vote for legislation ordering reparations — not as such. What they did was cobble together a “Christmas tree” of a bank bailout bill, one larded down with so much pork that it was guaranteed to squeak by and be signed by the President. No incumbent politician stood to benefit from a complete financial meltdown, so the Senators and Congressmen voted for the bailout in an attempt to ~~save their sorry fundaments~~ enhance their chances of re-election.

Click to enlarge
The crafting of legislative sausages is not a process for the squeamish, even at the best of times, and the bailout required a massive collective suppression of our gag reflex. But after all the blood, entrails, gore, and ordure of the last few weeks, all we have to show for it is this shriveled little wiener with a $700 billion price tag. Nice sausage, guys!

I don’t know how many taxpayers there are in the USA (and I’m too lazy to look it up), but just for mathematical simplicity, let’s assume there are a hundred million of us. That averages out to $7,000 per taxpayer to rescue the banks and the financial institutions from the mess they got themselves into.

So what did you get for your seven grand, Mr. Joe Taxpayer? You can sleep better at night knowing that your money rescued AIG and innumerable other corporations from bankruptcy. Thanks to you, the officers of these corporations can continue to collect their munificent salaries and preserve their golden parachutes. Your generosity helped ensure that in future there will be no such thing as a “bad debt”, at least not as far as mortgages are concerned.

The subprime mortgage crisis started three decades ago, but didn’t reach its maturity until the last years of the Clinton administration. Civil rights leaders and well-meaning liberals noticed that members of minority groups were being turned down for mortgages much more frequently than white people. The only possible explanation was lingering discrimination — what else could it be? Despite all the affirmative action laws, the American financial system was riddled through with racism.

In order to rectify this injustice — and incidentally to comply with UN resolutions mandating “fairness” in lending — Congress pushed through a series of measures that in effect required banks to issue mortgages to minority borrowers who would not otherwise have qualified for them.

Anybody who is even semi-literate in the laws of economics could have predicted disaster, and a number of voices — including John McCain’s — were raised in objection to this foolishness. But democracy, alas, favors demagoguery and short-term profit over common sense. A lot of money could be made trading these subprime mortgages as securities, and a lot of congressmen dreaded the attention of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. So the deal was cut, and it made complete political sense at the time.
- - - - - - - - -
Now the chickens have come home to roost, as we all knew they had to. Banks lent money to people who — based on their income, assets, and prior credit history — could never reasonably be expected to pay it back. These profligate decisions were based solely on the color of the borrowers’ skin, with the hot breath of the federal government breathing down the bankers’ fiscal necks.

Now that Congress has decided to rescue the banks from the consequences of stupid decisions mandated by the same federal government, the effective result is an immense transfer of wealth from the US Treasury to the people who bought property and couldn’t pay for it. The Treasury doesn’t actually have that money — it’s already in hock up to the eye in the pyramid — so it will have to pull it out of the pockets of taxpayers, sawbuck by sawbuck, over the next few years or decades.

So we’ve paid our reparations at last, even if we didn’t agree to it or intend to do it.

Does that mean the argument about race in this country is over, and that we can finally talk about other things?

What do you think?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Unfortunately, the fleecing of the American taxpayer is probably not quite done. The $700 billion price tag on the bailout bill is just a down payment. Some analysts estimate that the final price tag will be as much as seven times higher, to the tune of five trillion dollars. That’s $50,000 on average from each and every taxpayer. Since millions of taxpayers don’t pay that much federal income tax in five years, that means that the bloated plutocrats of the middle class are going to have to bear the brunt of the sacrifice. Middle America is going to have to tighten its belt.

If President Obama is inaugurated in January with a comfortable Democratic majority in Congress, it’s a safe bet that even more will be added to the tax burden. Mr. Obama has ambitious plans for the country — nationalized health care, expanded social programs, aid to education, job training, child care, etc., etc. — and none of them comes cheap. He’s already promised to raise taxes — only on the “rich”, mind you — and the extra trillions required by the bailout will necessitate further increases.

And all of this in the face of a likely recession. Lean times are ahead.

The net result of the whole mess is that the American economy has now been socialized. Maybe not to the level customarily found in European countries, but much more socialized than it has ever been before, beyond the wildest dreams of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

If the stock market reacts positively to the bailout — results have been mixed so far — it will be pricing the futures of socialized financial instruments. That is, if there’s no such thing as a bad debt, the market will never penalize those businesses that lend (or borrow) foolishly.

Unfortunately, with that kind of distorted information flowing through the system, the wealth-generating capabilities of American capitalism will be significantly reduced. We will all be poorer for it.

But, hey, that’s a small price to pay if you want to combat racism, right?

Read further... "The rules were rewritten so that nobody, white or black or any color of the rainbow, would have to demonstrate ability to repay. Those were the only rules---no rules at all---that would permit the banks to meet their minority quotas without discriminating against everybody else.
Everybody else got into the game. As demand for housing soared, prices soared too. That stimulated further demand. It was evidently a game where everybody came away a winner. Mr. Ponzi would have been proud."

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