Thursday, October 23, 2008

Great Moments in Election-Year Blogging

No matter what happens in this year’s election, the conservative blogosphere deserves to win a collective Pulitzer Prize for its election-year coverage. While the mainstream media has given Americans a very distorted picture of Barack Obama, portraying him as a thoughtful, intelligent, unflappable, decent family man who has the temperament and judgment to be President, the conservative blogosphere has been the only place where you can get the real story. Hampered by quaint, old-fashioned rules of journalism that require citing evidence and reputable sources, the mainstream media has failed to report a number of important stories about Obama and the conservative blogosphere has had to step up and do the media’s job for them. As a public service I have collected some of the most important of these stories in one place. Pulitzer Prize judges, take note!

Some of the stories below are shocking and even hard to believe, but they weren’t published on crazy, fringe websites. They appeared on some of the most distinguished and well-respected sites on the Internet. The bloggers and online journalists who published them have staked their reputations and their sacred honor on the veracity of these reports. To doubt the truth of their findings, you would have to believe that an entire segment of the blogosphere has suddenly been gripped by hysteria and gone collectively insane, which is a pretty unlikely scenario.

During Obama’s dark, mysterious years at Columbia, he was involved in domestic terrorist bombings

Although some mainstream media sources have alluded to Obama’s mysterious years at Columbia, only one intrepid reporter, Tom Maguire of Just One Minute has made the cognitive leap required to connect all of the dots. Noting that Obama admitted in his book Dreams of My Father that he was “interested in South Africa divestment,” Maguire does some digging and discovers that some protests against 1981 tour by the South African Springboks rugby team resulted in violence and even some bombings. Guess who “was involved in some fashion” in these bombings? The Weather Underground! “These are just dots and it may be impossible to connect them,” says Maguire, modestly, “but we have Barack Obama at Columbia working on South African divestment (as were many peaceful protestors) while other radical elements with a Weather Underground flavor are setting bombs, killing cops, and working on South African divestment. As a bonus, Bill Ayers is studying at Bank Street College a quarter mile from Columbia.” Wow! How can the mainstream media possibly ignore the fact that Obama must have been “involved in some fashion” in domestic terrorism because he was “interested in South African divestment.” “Tom Maguire steps pretty far out on a limb with this bit of speculation,” says CPAC Blogger of the Year Ace of Spades, who links to the story. “But it would explain why Barack Obama's ‘lost years’ at Columbia have remained so very very secret.” It makes me wonder how my friend Tom Watson, who was at Columbia at the same time as Obama and was also “interested in South African divestment,” was connected to the Weather Underground, not to mention hundreds of other former Columbia students who today freely walk the streets despite their terrorist connections. I wonder if Tom has mentioned his radical connections in his upcoming book CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World, or if like Obama, he mysteriously left it out.

Obama didn’t actually write Dreams of My Father. In fact, it was ghost-written by none other than Bill Ayers!

Jack Cashill at the aptly named American Thinker found it difficult to believe that Barack Obama, who is not one of the most articulate politicians around, could possibly have written a whole book all by himself. He must have had help. Probably from someone evil. So on a hunch Cashill decided to compare Obama’s book with a book written by Bill Ayers and lo and behold, he discovered some shocking similarities, including the use of nautical imagery and the fact that a very scientific test to determine the grade level of the prose was a match. This wasn’t the first story Cashill broke. Cashill also proved that Arab terrorists and not Eric Rudolph were responsible for the 1996 Olympics bombing in Atlanta and that the Clintons covered up the real cause of the death of Ron Brown and the downing of TWA Flight 800. Unfortunately, Cashill’s overwhelming evidence wasn’t enough to convince the mainstream media to report on his theories, but Ann Althouse, who is a tenured professor at the 36th most prestigious law school in the country according to U.S. News & World Report, took them very seriously. “Mere confirmation bias? Or is Cashill onto something?” wrote the respected professor ominously after presenting her exhaustive analysis. Former U.S. prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy, who now writes for the National Review’s The Corner, wrote that while he didn’t “want to feed into what sounds, at first blush, like Vince Fosteresque paranoia,” after reading Cashill’s analysis he found it “thorough, thoughtful, and alarming.” Scott Johnson at Powerline called Cashill's work "interesting" and said that while "Cashill could also make the case that John Hinderaker and I qualify for recognition as Obama's secret collaborator" they didn't live in Obama's neighborhood, as Ayers did, which is in itself pretty damning. “Nautical metaphors may sink Obama,” Ace of Spades wrote hopefully. Flopping Aces saw Ayers’ ghost-writing of Obama’s book as just one part of a vast conspiracy to get a socialist elected President. “Eventually, if successful, their dreams of a Communist nation can be realized,” wrote Flopping Aces. “Sounds crazy….I know.” By the way, before Cashill hit on his theory, I noted some eerie similarities between Dreams of My Father and the Horatio Hornblower novels of C.S. Forester, which also contain nautical references and are written on a high school level, but I gave up my investigation when I realized that Forrester died in 1966 and probably could not have written Obama’s book. Why didn't I think of comparing Obama’s book to Ayers’ book instead? I guess that's why I'm not one of the A-list bloggers.

Michelle Obama attacks “American white racists” in an interview with obscure online news site

I bet you probably didn’t know that Michelle Obama gave an exclusive interview to the obscure online journalism site African Press International in which she said that “American white racists” are trying to derail her husband's candidacy by claiming that Obama was adopted by his Indonesian stepfather, which would make him ineligible to be President under one of the secret, little-known provisions of the U.S. Constitution. Mrs. Obama was apparently so disturbed by these charges that she decided to call this press agency, which most people have never heard of, and vent Martha Mitchell-like, even though her words might scuttle her husband’s chances of becoming President. Although the mainstream media hasn’t yet picked up the story, and the Obama campaign denies the interview took place, Gateway Pundit, Protein Wisdom, Right Pundits, Stop the ACLU, Maggies Notebook, Death by 1000 Paperecuts, Strata-Sphere, News Busters, World Net Daily, Jim Treacher, Townhall and a number of other conservative blogs and news sites ran with it. Although some cynical bloggers were skeptical of the story for some reason and demanded more proof, API assured them that it had tapes of the conversations and was just waiting for the right moment to release them. Although API still hasn’t managed to work out the logistics yet, and several deadlines have already come and gone, conservative bloggers are very patient and understanding and just hope that API can work everything out before the election. “We will know soon enough,” writes Gateway Pundit. “It is amazing how the media will believe a hoax that some Republican yelled ‘kill him’ at a Palin rally with no evidence but will disregard a harsh story on Michelle Obama from the start. It's interesting how that works.” It is funny how that works, Gateway Pundit.

Obama had a girlfriend that his wife found out about and forced her to move to the Caribbean.

What would an election be without a sex scandal? If you only read the American mainstream media, you might not know that the U.K.’s Daily Mail reported that Obama was “the target of a shadowy smear campaign designed to derail his bid for the US Presidency by falsely claiming he had a close friendship with an attractive African-American female employee…. The woman, now 33, vigorously denies the vicious and unsubstantiated gossip.” Unfortunately, the American mainstream media apparently has some kind of silly rules about publishing stories about unsubstantiated rumors as a way of writing about those rumors, but conservative bloggers have been all over the story like white bloggers on rice. Once again the conservative blogosphere’s most respected blogger Ace of Spades led the way. “Having now spoken to someone tracking the story, I can say: 1) It's not just a silly little rumor. 2) It will break in some form shortly,” he wrote. Ace even noticed that Obama had vacationed in the Caribbean, noting his source “hadn't even made that connection.” That’s just how Ace’s mind works, making connections that don’t even occur to peddlers of sleazy gossip.

Unfortunately, the story hasn’t broken yet in some form, except on a number of prominent conservative blogs. Jammie Wearing Fool presented a very credible case for why the story might be true, writing, “If you're Obama and you're married to the modern-day incarnation of Aunt Esther, you've got to figure the temptation to get your thang on must be pretty strong.” Say Anything advised Obama to “disclose this woman’s pay records, her travel records and her job history as it relates to working for his Senate staff and/or campaign.” Stop the ACLU cautioned, “Just remember…this is only a rumor until the media get off their behinds and actually investigate this,” but that didn’t stop Right Voices, Protein Wisdom, Hill Buzz or Black Five from discussing it. Unfortunately, these bloggers have been unable to offer any evidence that the story is true, but just because there is no evidence that something is true, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

There is a tape of Michelle Obama with Louis Farrakhan talking about “whitey”

Larry Johnson of No Quarter used to be a liberal until the Democrats decided to nominate an unqualified African-American for President. In a last-ditch attempt to get Democrats to come to their senses, he revealed the existence of a secret videotape featuring Michelle Obama speaking to a group that included the wife of Louis Farrakhan and maybe even Farrakhan himself in which she confirms the most feverish nightmares of some white Americans by ranting about “whitey.” Johnson claimed that Republicans had a copy of this tape, which they were holding onto until October, when it would do the most damage. Although he didn’t actually see the tape himself, he had many friends and friends of friends who did see it. Stop the ACLU wrote, "This is all a rumor, but if you read Michelle’s college thesis on race you will find it is most likely true." Macranger reported, "Too many insiders are talking about it to outright dismiss it." Jim Geraghty of National Review's The Corner initially believed the tape existed but later grew skeptical, writing, "I note that despite my readers' hopes, this fits the pattern for rumors like this — they're always simultaneously vague but hyped to be huge, and they're always coming just around the corner." Killjoy. If Johnson is right, and there is no reason to doubt him, we should be seeing that tape any day now. But you might want to send him a note and remind him that there are only two more weeks left in October so they better release that tape quick.

Obama was not born in the United States and his birth certificate has been forged.

What would happen if we elected a President who was not born in this country and is not eligible to be President? Some of the best minds in the conservative blogosphere are doing everything they can to stop this horrifying scenario from happening before it is too late. “This is serious: Barack Obama's campaign has endorsed the accuracy of what is almost certainly a forged birth certificate for Obama,” writes Right Wing News. According to Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, Doug Ross of Director Blue and Israel Insider, the birth certificate the Obama campaign released is without a doubt a forgery, which they have proven using all kinds of scientific analysis that involves anti-aliasing and kerning, which makes my head spin but looks really convincing. Tiger Hawk was really concerned about this: “I do not think that it would be good for anybody, including Republicans, if it turned out that Barack Obama was not 'natural born' under the law. What a mess that would be for the whole country.” And Andrew McCarthy of the National Review’s The Corner also wanted answers, adding, in case anyone had any doubt, “I am not a conspiracy theorist.”

So if Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii, where was he born? Prestigious conservative news organization World Net Daily reports, “Pennsylvania Democrat Philip J. Berg, who filed a lawsuit demanding Sen. Barack Obama present proof of his American citizenship, now says that by failing to respond Obama has legally ‘admitted’ to the lawsuit's accusations, including the charge that the Democratic candidate was born in Mombosa [sic], Kenya.” Berg claims he spoke to Obama’s grandmother and she said she was in the delivery room when he was born in a hospital in Mombassa. Although Philip Berg once filed a RICO lawsuit against Bush and others blaming them for the events of 9/11, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong now. As if being Kenyan weren’t bad enough, John Ray at Stop the ACLU reports that Obama is also Indonesian according to another birth certificate and that he traveled to Pakistan in 1981 on an Indonesian passport where he no doubt met with members of Al Qaeda. “I suspect that Obama may have dumped his Indonesian citizenship at some point along the way, to advance his political career,” writes Ray of the wily, ambitious politician. “But I would not be shocked if he still holds it. This question, however, should not overshadow the serious problem of hiding his Indonesian identity from the electorate….. What else is he hiding?” Despite so much evidence that Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen, some conservative bloggers have been as dismissive of this story as the mainstream media. “Let’s stop chasing absurd conspiracy theories that make it more difficult to win the real arguments in this election,” Ed Morrissey of Hot Air wrote, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, who is the Father of Konservative Kerning Analysis has banned mention of the birth certificate story on his site and AJ Strata of Strata-Sphere did his own scientific analysis to disprove it. Who got to them, I wonder?

Barack Obama had an underage, gay “affair” with a pedophile.

When the National Enquirer reported that one of Obama’s childhood mentors wrote a semi-autobiographical book that includes passages about sex with an underage girl, the conservative blogosphere collectively made the next logical leap that even the Enquirer was too skittish to make: Obama must have had sex with this man when he was nine years old. “The National Enquirer now suggests Barack Obama had an underage, gay affair with a pedophile,” wrote Erick Erickson of Red State. “Yup. That Frank Marshall Davis guy Barry says was his good friend? Turns out he was a perv of the first order and liked young boys." In case anyone should make unfair accusations against him, Erickson added, "This post is not intended to spread that rumor.” Indeed, that post was only intended as a public service to pass on information that was right there between the lines of the Enquirer story for all to see. “That may be worse than his having been counseled by Jeremiah Wright,” wrote Dan Riehl. “No wonder he says "Pakit-stan" in that funny way of his! heh!” Confederate Yankee wondered why this very important story was being buried by the mainstream media, explaining, “Barack Obama's list of known mentors now includes child rapists ('Uncle Frank' Marshall), racists (Rev. Jeremiah Wright) and terrorists (Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn). When is someone going to question how these associations must have warped Obama's views and render him unstable, and unsuitable for the Presidency?” Jules Crittenden, who called the story an “October Surprise,” dismissed Obama’s being “mentored by a suspected commie pervert in underage late-night drinking/dirty limerick slams” as a “youthful indiscretion,” but added, “with the subsequent adult pattern … 20 years in the pews of a frothing America-bashing bigot and the professional palling around with an unrepentant ex-terrorist … you begin to see what they mean when with that ‘doesn’t look like us’ line. Turns out it’s not a racial cue at all.” Dan Collins of Protein Wisdom also reported on the story, but as usual, I have no idea what he was trying to say. “No doubt Obama will claim this as a desperate smear by the forces of evil who are afraid of change,” said Jammie Wearing Fool, with that delightful sarcasm he uses when not smearing people.

You might think that the fact that Obama was palling around with pedophiles when he was nine years old, which is the exact same time that William Ayers was blowing up the Pentagon, would be an important story, but once again the mainstream media ignored it. Conservative blogger Don Surber also demurred, writing, “Some bloggers are calling this an October surprise. I call it stupidity” and predictably liberal bloggers proceeded to shoot the messengers. “When people discuss (possible) sexual contact between ten-year-old boys who are not their political enemies and grown men, they usually refer to the 'underage gay affairs' as sexual abuse,” wrote Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings. “They also recognize that adults who have been abused may or may not wish to tell the whole world the details, and they respect it. Admittedly, most people are not members of the NAMBLA wing of the Republican Party, or, failing that, curdled into pure meanness. Maybe Erickson just holds with the more sweeping theories about the cultural construction of the age of consent. Whatever the reason, he’s sure that that little vixen, ten-year-old Barry Obama, was asking for it man.”

Obama had cocaine-fueled gay sex in the back of a limousine with a not-very-attractive disabled man with a criminal background

While the mainstream media requires their sources practically to be saints before they will even think of publishing sensational allegations, the prestigious World Net Daily is under no such constraints. It reported on Larry Sinclair’s allegations that he did cocaine and had sex with Barack Obama in the back of a limousine without making him jump through all the hoops a mainstream media organization or even the National Enquirer would have required. Although some people didn't find Larry Sinclair's story credible considering his criminal record and the fact that he failed a lie detector test, WND decided to publish the allegations and let the people decide. Although many in the conservative blogoshpere also doubted Sinclair’s veracity, some, like Rusty Shackleford at Jawa Report, decided the gloves were off after the National Enquirer ran a salacious report on Sarah Palin, and reluctantly decided to link to the story anyway, because, as he explains, “this kind of slime is now in play.” Mick Stockinger at Uncorrelated agreed that “it’s only fair” to bring it up and Rude News called it “tit for tat.” That oughta teach the National Enquirer.

Obama was getting answers in the first debate through a clear plastic hearing aid in his ear

Ann Althouse has a unique ability to see things that no one else sees, not unlike my Aunt Agatha, until she was sent away to a rest home and forced to take medication that took away her abilities. During the primaries, Althouse discovered that a Hillary Clinton ad included the subliminal message “Nig” written on a child's pajamas. Then during the debates, Althouse noticed on her high definition television that Obama was wearing a clear plastic hearing aid in his ear and noted that he spoke haltingly as if someone was giving him the answers in the debate. “It's clearly there, a crescent of clear plastic,” she said in response to some skeptical comments (note her use of the word "crescent," a clever reference to Obama's secret Muslim heritage). Although Althouse later backed away from the story, which Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit linked to, she didn’t repudiate it entirely, concluding in the comments, "You know, just because the thing I saw wasn't there doesn't mean there wasn't something there that I didn't see." I don’t know if this is an acceptable standard of evidence in courts of law since I am not a law professor like Ms. Althouse, but it has come to be the standard of evidence in the conservative blogosphere, and I don’t see why the fuddy-duddy mainstream media can’t adopt this way of thinking, too.

Ace of Spades’ Super-Secret Unified Field Story That Connects All the Dots

For weeks Ace of Spades has been working on a super-secret story about Obama, which "called Obama a straight-up liar on his supposed 'flimsy' relationship with The Terrorist William Ayers" and finally connected all the dots, linking Obama and Bill Ayers, Acorn, Tony Reszko, Charles Manson, the Chicago mob, the Illuminati, Freemasons, the Trilateral Commission, Jewish bankers, Nazis living in South America, Fidel Castro, the KGB, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Bigfoot, Area 51, the Harlem Globetrotters, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Bermuda Triangle, Mrs. Calabash and Mr. Gorsky. Apparently, Ben Smith at Politico, had the story, too, according to Ace and Hill Buzz, and he was just sitting on it (though Smith denied it). Then just as Ace was on the verge of breaking the story, he made this heart-breaking announcement: “The source was considering dropping his demand for anonymity. Thus likely moving the story forward. (He wasn't considering going forward with the Politico, by the way: but with the other, more important organization.) And now, today? After witnessing Politico, among others, savage Joe Wurtzelbacher? Cold feet.” Curse you, mainstream media and your accursed fact-checking! Will your cover-up of the truth about Barack Obama never end!

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Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Pro-America vs. Anti-America

There has been some confusion over what Sarah Palin meant when she said, “The best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation." Unfortunately, Palin did not elaborate in her speech on just what she meant by “pro-America” and conversely, what constitutes “anti-America.” McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer offered one example of what Palin meant by pointing out that northern Virginia is not “real Virginia.” Rep. Michelle Bachmann then went on Hardball and told Chris Matthews, “I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think the people would love to see an expose like that.” But many Americans are still unclear as to what is pro-America and what is anti-America, so I have made a handy chart that will give you some examples. This list is by no means exhaustive so please feel free to provide your own examples in the comments. (Photo by Stanley J. Forman)

Pro-America

Anti-America

Republicans

Democrats

Small towns

Cities (except for Ground Zero in New York)

The South (except northern Virginia and the parts of Florida where liberal New York Jews live), the Midwest (except for Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin), the West (except for the Pacific Coast and Colorado), western Pennsylvania

The East (except western Pennsylvania), the Pacific Coast, Colorado, parts of the Midwest that have turned against God, northern Virginia

Christians (except for Unitarians), Neocons

Liberal Jews, Unitarians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and other atheists

Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader

Saturday Night Live

Country music (except for the Dixie Chicks), Christian rock

Non-Christian rock, hip hop, electronica, classical, jazz, folk, blues, salsa, reggae, bossa nova, sea shanties, etc.

Hank Williams, Jr.

Hank Williams, Sr.

A six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon

A venti soy milk latte

Iceberg lettuce

Arugula

American Idol Project Runway
American Carol A Christmas Carol

Homeschooling

Daycare

Regent University

The Ivy League

Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush

Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton

Leaving Gs off the ends of words

Pronouncing “nuclear” correctly

Soccer moms

Soccer

Professional wrestling

Olympic wrestling

A wide stance

Coming out

Shotgun marriages

Gay marriages

SUVs

Hybrids

Twilight

His Dark Materials

Chronicles of Narnia

Harry Potter

Conservapedia

Wikipedia

Pregnant teens who keep their babies

Teens who use birth control

Intelligent Design

Interior design

Seven houses

One house you can’t afford

Anger

Compassion

Myspace

Facebook

Godtube

Youtube

Abstinence-only sex education

Biology

The Rapture

Global Warming

Fargo (the accent)

Fargo (the movie)

Guns

Lawsuits

Death penalty

Abortion

Waterboarding

Skateboarding

Talk radio

NPR

Aspirin

Socialized medicine

Dr. Phil

Oprah Winfrey

Anna Nicole Smith

Princess Diana

Supreme Court cases whose names I can’t remember where Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas are in the majority

Roe v. Wade

William Buckley

Christopher Buckley, Lord Buckley

Sexy librarians

American Library Association

Robocalls that interrupt your dinner

Polls that interrupt your dinner

Legacy admissions

Affirmative action

Second Amendment

Ninth Amendment

G. Gordon Liddy, Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh

The Weather Underground

Social Darwinism

Theory of Evolution

Signing statements

Legislation

Joe Lieberman

Colin Powell

Pakistan

Spain

Stephen Baldwin

Alec Baldwin

Red Dawn

Dawn of the Dead

White

Black



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Thursday, October 16, 2008

Please Help Joe the Plumber

As we face one of the worst economic crises in our history, Americans are wondering, What can we do to help Joe the Plumber? While Barack Obama showed he is out of touch during the last presidential debate by talking about health care, education, taxes, energy policy, 401ks, mortgages and other boring middle class issues most Americans don’t really care about, John McCain focused almost exclusively on the problems of Joe the Plumber. No matter what issue debate moderator Bob Scheiffer raised, McCain always brought it back to Joe the Plumber, and what a McCain presidency would do to make him richer.

Joe the Plumber (whose real name is Joe Wurzelbacher, which may be unpronounceable but at least sounds more American than Obama) came to the nation’s attention when Obama went traipsing through a suburban Ohio neighborhood whose residents breathed a sigh of relief when they realized he was just a presidential candidate and that they could unlock their doors and didn’t need to dial 911 after all. Joe went up to Obama and said, “I'm getting ready to buy a company that makes 250 to 280 thousand dollars a year. Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" It turns out that Joe the Plumber doesn't actually have an extra $250,000 yet, and would probably get a tax cut under Obama's plan, but Joe is a dreamer and he dreams that he will earn this money someday the good old-fashioned American way, by charging average Americans $100 an hour, including the time he has to wait around for his partner to get “special parts.”

Instead of telling Joe what he wanted to hear, which is what a politician experienced enough to be President would have done, Obama replied, "I’m gonna cut taxes a little bit more for the folks who are most in need and for the 5% of the folks who are doing very well – even though they’ve been working hard and I appreciate that – I just want to make sure they’re paying a little bit more in order to pay for those other tax cuts. . . . My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. If you’ve got a plumbing business, you’re gonna be better off if you’ve got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you, and right now everybody’s so pinched that business is bad for everybody and I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody."

The most famous plumber in America said he was not happy with Obama’s answer, calling it "a tap dance...almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr," referring to the only black entertainer he could think of off the top of his head. If he had been given more time to come up with an answer he might also have said Obama “moonwalked like Michael Jackson,” “crooned like Nat King Cole,” “tickled the ivories like Stevie Wonder,” “twisted like Chubby Checkers,” “blew his horn like Dizzy Gillespie,” “talked jive like Cab Calloway,” “gave up the funk like George Clinton,” “rapped like Tupac Shakur,” or “shuffled like Step’n Fetchit.” Joe also told Fox News that he thought Obama’s answer was a “socialist viewpoint.”

It turns out that Joe is right. The idea that the wealthy should pay more taxes than the less well off, which economists call a “progressive tax system,” was proposed by Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto, and he got the idea from socialist economist Adam Smith, who is also not American.

Why should people who are too lazy to make $250,000 get a tax cut, as most of them will under Obama’s tax plan, while people like Joe (in his dreams) and Exxon-Mobile Corporation will be left out in the cold? McCain thinks that’s unfair. “Joe, I want to tell you, I’ll not only help that — you buy that business that you worked your whole life for and be able — and I’ll keep your taxes low and I’ll provide available and affordable health care for you and your employees,” said McCain.

McCain didn’t say how he would specifically help Joe the Plumber, whether he will earmark some of the money he intends to use to take bad mortgages off the hands of banks so their CEOs will get their Christmas bonuses this year and use it to buy Joe’s business, whether he will temporarily suspend his presidency and ask Congress to pass special legislation to bail out Joe or whether he will ask his wife for permission to dip into her fortune to lend Joe the money personally. But the choice for the American people is clear: They can vote for Obama and greedily line their pockets with the tax cut they would get under Obama’s plan or they can vote for McCain and help Joe the Plumber. And since Joe is apparently not registered to vote himself, he is going to need you to vote for him.

I think Americans are a generous people and I am sure they wouldn’t mind sacrificing a little to help out Joe the Plumber. Once McCain gets into office and makes sure Joe the Plumber has gotten all the help he needs, then we can move on to solve some of the other less pressing problems with the economy.

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Obama's Secret Plan To Repeal the First Amendment

A number of conservative bloggers are warning that if Obama is elected one of the first things he will do is to take away our right to free speech. Of course, I am a big supporter of free speech, except when it comes to yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater (or even in not-so-crowded theaters showing An American Carol), indecency (Playboy, books by James Joyce and Vladimir Nabokov, anything gay), and anything that undermines the war effort (The Dixie Chicks, news organizations). But an Obama presidency will take us back to 1984; the book, that is, not the year (which wouldn't be so bad).

“Conservative-friendly media better get ready,” warns Brian C. Anderson. “Should Barack Obama win the presidency and the Democrats control Congress, as now seems likely, they will launch a full-scale war to drive critics — especially on political talk radio — right out of legitimate public debate.”

He cites some shocking proof of Obama’s intention to curtail the free speech rights of conservatives. When the NRA tried to run ads targeting Obama, his lawyers sent “bullying” letters to stations that ran them, according to Anderson. If Obama is elected, lawyers will be free to send bullying letters to anyone they want. You will have to be careful of what you say or write lest a lawyer get wind of it and fire off a bullying letter.

But there’s more. When a 527 group, the American Issues Project, tried to get stations to run ads linking Obama to terrorists, says Anderson, Obama’s campaign “complained” about the ads to the Department of Justice that AIP had broken campaign finance laws and “spooked” some stations from running them. Republicans value the free speech rights of 527 groups and would never do such a thing. If 527 groups can be stopped from smearing political opponents, our democracy is certainly in peril.

But that’s not all. When two conservative writers appeared on Chicago's WGN-AM Radio attacking Obama, Obama supporters flooded the station with, Anderson reports, “rage-filled phone calls and e-mails, making the program more difficult to conduct.” Have you ever heard anything so frightening? Imagine if conservatives bombarded someone with rage-filled phone calls and emails, not that we would, of course. Liberals would be horrified. According to Anderson, the show had “invited the Obama campaign to send a representative to respond; the campaign preferred to answer with digital brownshirts.” If the Nazis had been able to send rage-filled emails and make harassing phone calls to Jewish shopowners instead of beating them up, smashing everything in their shops and sending them to concentration camps, we might all be speaking German today.

“These crude efforts are only a start,” says Anderson. As soon as Obama gets in office he will restore the Fairness Doctrine, which could force radio and TV stations to let liberals on the air! Sure, Obama says he is opposed to reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine, but Obama is a liar, which means that the opposite is true of whatever he says. So we can be fairly certain that he actually does support reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine, unlike John McCain who also says he is opposed to the Fairness Doctrine but is not a liar.

If the Fairness Doctrine is reinstated, warns Glenn Reynolds, “I think I'll start an organization to flood the FCC with complaints whenever there's media bias from any of the big networks.” This will give the FCC less time to investigate all the complaints it now gets from people concerned about dirty words and wardrobe malfunctions. Bono will have free reign to curse whenever he wants and Janet Jackson will be able to go on television, even on Sesame Street, wearing only pasties. I'm sure Reynolds would hate for that to happen, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

When Obama reinstates the Fairness Doctrine, there’s an “even chance,” according to Stephen Green, that it will apply to blogs! “If (when?) it happens, I’ll break that law,” says Green, trying to put on a brave face. “I will break it with all due malice and in full knowledge of the possible consequences. I’ll shout ‘Fire Obama!’ in a crowded theater. And then, for the first time ever, I’ll ask for reader donations. Because I’ll going to need them, lots of them, to pay for the lawyers.” I think I'll start asking for donations now.

Although Green admits he was drunk when he wrote this, it can’t be dismissed as the paranoid ramblings of an aging, drug-addled Libertarian. “Republicans, given the kind of power the Democrats are about to accrue, would maybe take away your right to get a completely totally naked chick to grind on your lap in a publicly licensed bar,” says Green. “The Democrats will do their damnedest to take away your right to speak.” I’m sure we can all agree that putting the Pussycat Dolls in jail would be preferable to shutting up Rush Limbaugh.

But even if you take Obama at his word (and who would be naïve and stupid enough to do that?), and he doesn’t impose the Fairness Doctrine on blogs, if he is elected this modest blog and all other conservative blogs will have to shut down. That’s because Obama supports something called "network neutrality," which would prevent telecom companies from charging exorbitant rates for use of the Internet that only conservatives can afford. By letting just anyone use the Internet at low prices, corporations would be forced to let liberals stay on the web (unlike, say, on talk radio) and the Internet will slow to a crawl, which will cause people to start reading newspapers, which are all controlled by liberals. The conservative voice will be virtually silenced, except for the homeless guy ranting on the corner.

I am taking a great risk in writing this. By publishing this on my blog, I have probably earned a spot on Obama’s enemies list. If he is elected, he will probably shut down my blog, have the IRS initiate a tax audit against me, eavesdrop on my phone calls and break into my office looking for embarrassing information. Imagine electing a President who would do harass its enemies like that.

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Saturday, October 11, 2008

In Defense of Angry Mobs

This week pundits were all in a tizzy about the angry mobs showing up at John McCain and Sarah Palin rallies. “Those who press this Ayers line of attack are whipping Republicans and conservatives into a fury that is going to be very hard to calm after November,” fretted former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum. “Is it really wise to send conservatives into opposition in a mood of disdain and fury for a man who may well be the next president of the United States, incidentally the first African-American president?” David Gergen warned, “There is this free floating sort of whipping around anger that could really lead to some violence.” Andrew Sullivan intoned ominously, “This is a moment of maximal physical danger for the young Democratic nominee. And McCain is playing with fire.” And there are signs that John McCain is now looking on the passion he has stirred up the way Frankenstein looked on his monster. But I’d like to know, What’s so bad about angry mobs? After all, angry mobs made our country -- and the Republican Party -- what it is today.

This country wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for an angry mob that decided it wanted a tax cut and threw English tea into Boston Harbor. Angry mobs once enforced local justice without interference from the meddlesome federal government in the Old West and in the south after Reconstruction, just as our Founding Fathers had envisioned in The Federalist Papers. And we would probably all be Muslims now if an angry mob hadn’t chosen Barabbas over Jesus 2,000 years ago.

The Republican Party certainly owes a lot to angry mobs. Angry mobs in Little Rock and Selma deeply concerned about the issue of state’s rights, angry mobs of parents in Boston who didn’t want their kids bussed across town and angry mobs of Chicago homeowners who didn’t want their property values to go down all helped give birth to the modern conservative movement. The Democrats had angry mobs of their own rioting in the cities and burning flags at antiwar protests and conservatives realized that the only way we would win is if we had better, angrier mobs. What was Nixon’s Silent Majority but a very quiet, very angry mob?

But some conservative “intellectuals” like David Brooks subscribe to the canard that the conservative movement was defined by pointy-headed eastern elites like William Buckley, whose “entire life,” Brooks recently wrote, “was a celebration of urbane values, sophistication and the rigorous and constant application of intellect. Driven by a need to engage elite opinion, conservatives tried to build an intellectual counterestablishment with think tanks and magazines, they disdained the ideas of the liberal professoriate, but they did not disdain the idea of a cultivated mind.” Now Brooks laments, “What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole.” Brooks even goes so far as to claim that conservatives once valued “constant reading, historical understanding and sophisticated thinking.” We did? Since when? Does he honestly believe that the conservative movement was based on people who read books? Reagan wasn’t elected by the Harvard faculty. It was an angry mob tired of welfare queens and pinko fellow travelers selling us out to the Soviet Union that put him in office. And when Al Gore tried to steal the election in Florida in 2000 it took an angry mob of bussed in Young Republicans to remind Americans that you don’t get to be President just because you have the most votes. That’s not how democracies work.

So when people like David Brooks and David Gergen act like scared little rabbits over a good old American red-blooded angry mob, I wonder, where have you been all these years? How do you think Nixon, Reagan and Bush got elected?

Some conservative “thinkers” now act shocked when angry conservative mobs don’t bow down to their precious ivory tower thoughts. When Kathleen Parker treasonously wrote that Sarah Palin should quit the ticket, they responded with justifiable outrage, sending her 12,000 emails calling her a traitor and an idiot and saying she should have been aborted. But suddenly Parker no longer wants to have a frank dialogue with her readers. “When we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an opinion different from one's own, we cross into territory that puts all freedoms at risk,” she writes self-righteously, acting as if the scales just fell from her eyes. Is this the same Kathleen Parker who excoriated Scott McLellan for being disloyal to President Bush just to sell his book? Is this the same Kathleen Parker who defended a man who pointed out that Barack Obama is not a “full-blooded American” by saying, “Some Americans do feel antipathy toward ‘people who aren't like them,’ but that antipathy isn't about racial or ethnic differences. It is not necessary to repair antipathy appropriately directed toward people who disregard the laws of the land and who dismiss the struggles that resulted in their creation. Full-blooded Americans get this.” I’m sorry, Kathleen Parker, but you are just not like us.

And whether Ms. Parker likes it or not, how else to characterize the endorsement of Barack Obama by William Buckley’s son Christopher Buckley as anything but a betrayal? Buckley was too much of a coward to make his endorsement in his father’s magazine. He made it on The Daily Beast because he said he didn’t want to receive “foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails” from National Review readers. Why is Buckley turning his back on those who have kept the magazine in business all these years? If National Review cut all of its foaming-at-the-mouth readers from its subscriber rolls who would be left to read the magazine? Now, suddenly, Buckley thinks foaming at the mouth is a bad thing?

Sure, angry mobs can get a little rambunctious and overenthusiastic at times. Some members of the angry mobs that have been attending McCain/Palin rallies (otherwise known as “the Republican base”) got a tad carried away when they reacted to hearing Obama’s name by screaming “Kill him” and “Off with his head.” But it’s easy to go overboard in the heat of the moment. Who wouldn’t be furious at the prospect of a terrorist who went to Pakistan on an Indonesian passport, where he probably had secret meetings with Osama Bin Laden, the Weather Underground and the Illuminati, getting elected President? Can you blame them?

At first it looked like John McCain and Sarah Palin were not only prepared to ride this angry mob to victory but were even willing to egg them on a little. But yesterday it seemed McCain suddenly got cold feet. On Friday he rebuffed a woman at one of his rallies who said that Obama was an “Arab,” telling her, “No, ma'am. He's a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign's all about. He's not [an Arab].” He told another man that he didn’t have to be “scared” if Obama is elected President. Now you tell us. Don’t you want to win this election?

I don’t know why McCain now seems to be turning his back on his base, which never trusted him anyway. Maybe it was the memory of the angry Vietnamese mob that pulled McCain out of his plane when it went down in Hanoi and nearly beat him to death that gave him second thoughts. But now is not the time for McCain to suddenly find his moral scruples. Pandering to the eastern elites won’t get McCain elected. If McCain wants to win, he’s going to have to put aside whatever principles he is still clinging to and embrace the angry mob the way Ronald Reagan and George Bush did before him. Because if he loses there is no telling what this angry mob will do next. There could be rioting in the streets or worse. So let’s hope for all of our sakes that McCain has the stomach to win this election.

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Thursday, October 09, 2008

Let McCain Be McCain

In this week’s lackluster debate something seemed to be holding John McCain back. This was supposed to be the debate where McCain finally took the gloves off, but he seemed uncharacteristically restrained as if he was trying with all of his willpower to keep the real McCain bottled up inside. Many conservatives were disappointed that McCain didn’t call his opponent a “terrorist” or threaten to kill him as some of his supporters at rallies have done. I know I wasn’t alone in thinking that McCain just wasn’t mean or angry enough during the debates. So with one more debate and less than a month to go before the election, it’s time his handlers let McCain be McCain. It may be the only chance we have to keep That One from winning the election.

You would think the McCain campaign had already learned its lesson when it excessively coached Sarah Palin. Trying to get her to read newspapers and study the issues of the day was a disaster. Americans saw right through their attempts to make her seem like someone she was not. But once she was free to be herself and no longer constrained by the idea that she actually had to answer questions posed to her, Palin was able to wink herself into the hearts of the American people. Americans love the unleashed Palin and I'm sure they would love an unhinged McCain, too.

But the McCain that his colleagues have grown to know and love is not the man who showed up at the last two debates. Sure, there were flashes of the real McCain in the first debate when he refused to look at his opponent (which David Broder thought was very manly), and in the second debate when he referred to Obama as “That One” and refused to shake his hand. But these refreshing moments of candor just made his supporters wonder where the real McCain had been stashed away the rest of the time.

Where was the McCain who had a “spirited exchange” (as McCain’s spokesman called it) with Sen. John Cornyn about the immigration bill and said to him, "F--- you! I know more about this than anyone else in the room." Where was the John McCain who called a questioner “you little jerk” and responded to questions of the Des Moines Register editorial board with sarcasm and contempt? Where was the John McCain who delighted audiences and the press with jokes about Chelsea Clinton’s looks and women who enjoy rape and sang “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”? Where was the John McCain who angrily poked Sen. Tim Wirth in the chest and shoved the wife of an MIA? This John McCain has himself been missing in action at the debates.

Many pundits are saying that McCain needs a game changer. If McCain had poked Obama in the chest or slapped Tom Brokaw or called one of the questioners a “little jerk,” it certainly would have changed the election. McCain can’t afford to miss another opportunity to shake things up.

Back in September pollster Peter Hart said, "John McCain has become the Howard Beale of this election," referring to the “mad prophet of the airwaves” played by Peter Finch in the movie Network. When Hart compared McCain to Beale, I don’t think he was referring to the fact that Beale threatened to commit suicide live on the air (although, admittedly, a lot of people would tune in to the next debate to watch McCain self-destruct), but to the way Beale channeled Americans' anger with passionate rants about “bull----” and the moment he urged Americans to go to their windows and shout, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore." Imagine if in the next debate John McCain told Americans (or "my fellow prisoners" as he likes to call us) to go to our windows and scream at the tops of our lungs. The election would be over.

Americans don’t want a President like Obama who is calm and cool in a crisis and never seems to break a sweat. They want a President who is as angry as they are, someone who will lash out unpredictably at our enemies. They want a President who thinks with his gut instead of his brain. They want a man who will pick up the phone at 3 a.m. and tell the person on the other end what he can do with himself before slamming the receiver down. Do you think anyone will dare to mess with America when a man like John McCain has his finger on the button?

If only Americans could see the real John McCain, instead of the one who calls everyone “my friends” when he doesn’t really mean it and hides his contempt behind a smile of gritted teeth. And let’s see how calm Obama is when McCain gets in his face and shoves him off his stool. So in the next debate let McCain be McCain and let the chips fall where they may. At this point it may be his only chance to win.

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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Can Happy Days Be Here Again?

Now that Congress has rejected the terrible Wall Street bailout, we have two options: enact a good bill or do nothing. Either of these options would be better than trying to pass the bill that was rejected by Republicans and even some Democrats.

If we are going to try to do something before the election, here are some provisions that a new bill must include if Republicans are going to support it:

1. The worst provision of the bailout bill was the cap on executive compensation. Many of these executives are already underpaid and they are suffering terribly as their stock options become worthless. One reason why some companies have not performed as well as they should have was that their executives were too distracted trying to make ends meet to focus on their jobs and they were worried about what will happen to them if they become unemployed. They are no doubt chilled by what happened to AIG CEO Martin J Sullivan when he resigned in July after AIG wrote down $20 billion in losses on assets linked to subprime mortgages. He got a measly severance package that only amounted to $47 million, which will be worth even less in 2009 dollars if the economy continues in the direction it’s headed. What incentive are executives going to have to work hard and pull their companies out of debt if we cap their compensation and how are we going to convince some poorly performing executives to resign if we don’t promise them hefty golden parachutes?

2. Even worse, the bailout bill contained no provisions guaranteeing Christmas bonuses for Wall Street workers. Doesn’t anyone in Congress understand how Wall Street works? Telling Wall Street workers that Santa Claus might not come this year would be devastating for our economy, which depends on the infusion of cash it gets each Christmas as investment bankers spend their bonus checks buying condominiums and boats and indulging in lavish meals in luxury restaurants. How can we hope to get out of this economic slump if we do not guarantee the Christmas bonuses that keep our economy going?

3. As Larry Kudlow pointed out the bailout bill went “beyond France into pure socialism” and we all know that socialism (not to mention anything French) is just about the worst thing there is. “If the U.S. government is going to start to own all of our financial institutions,” wrote Kudlow, “all these markets will sink like stones.” So how can the government buy up all of these assets but avoid owning financial institutions? There is a very simple solution. The government could immediately privatize these assets by giving them away to outgoing members of the Bush Administration, who will be losing their jobs in January and forced to fend for themselves in an uncertain economy. That would kill two birds with one stone: America would be saved from socialism and former members of the Bush Administration would be spared the indignity of having to take jobs as lobbyists or beg their friends for seats on corporate boards.

4. If Democrats expect Republicans to vote for any bailout bill, it must include a gag rule that prevents Democrats from saying nasty things about them. According to House Minority Leader John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi’s very mean and partisan speech “poisoned” the debate and “caused a number of members we thought we could get to go south.” Although Barney Frank promised to talk “uncharacteristically nice” to Republicans who decided not to vote for the bill because of Pelosi’s statements, that will not be enough. Republicans are not fools. They need a guarantee in writing that Democrats will not ridicule Republicans in the days leading up to the election and try to blame them for the financial crisis. “Now is not the time to fix the blame," said John McCain, blaming "Senator Obama and his allies in Congress" for infusing "unnecessary partisanship into the process."

5. The bill must include anti-illegal immigrant provisions. As Rep. Tom Tancredo pointed out, this economic crisis is mostly the fault of illegal aliens. Although he didn’t have exact figures on the number of illegal aliens who fraudulently purchased homes, he is certain that illegal aliens are somehow to blame. “We need to ensure that the ‘American Dream’ remains within reach of American families – and that means enacting some long overdue safeguards that prevent illegal aliens and their unscrupulous allies in the financial industry from undermining its integrity,” said Tancredo in a press release. Although he promised to oppose any bill that did not include safeguards forcing illegal aliens to live on the streets (with an exception, of course, for any “wealthy foreign real estate investor or financier of a vacation home”) and then voted for the bill anyway and deleted this press release from his website, I’m sure he won’t make that mistake again. If Democrats expect Tancredo and other Republicans to vote for the next bill, it must include these safeguards and a statement blaming illegal immigrants for our financial woes, written in English only.

6. The bill must include a cut in the capital gains tax. Why? Because Republicans will not vote for any finance bill that does not include a cut in the capital gains tax, which will eventually trickle down and help average Americans.

If a bill does not include all of these provisions then Republicans should vote against it, which brings us to Option 2: doing nothing. Some economists believe that doing nothing could result in another Great Depression, but is that such a bad thing? There is a reason it was called the Great Depression and not, say, the Terrible Depression. According to economist J. Bradford Delong, members of the Hoover Administration, influenced by the theories of Austrian economists like Friedrich von Hayek and Joesph Schumpeter, believed “that in the long run the Great Depression would turn out to have been ‘good medicine’ for the economy.” Unfortunately, Hoover was swept out of office before this theory could be tested and Franklin Roosevelt enacted all kinds of socialistic policies that bedevil us to this day. So perhaps the best thing we could do is do nothing and bring on another Great Depression, but let’s do it right this time. Sure, there would be some temporary pain, and some people might be forced to wait in bread lines and sell apples in the street, but in the long run it would be better for our economy to shake out the weak links. Some Republicans might be reluctant to come out in support of triggering a new Great Depression in an election year so John McCain is going to have to show some leadership, the kind of leadership he showed in scuttling the first bill, to bring Republicans in Congress around. Coming out in favor of a Great Depression would show voters that John McCain really is a new kind of leader and it might just be the Hail Mary pass that wins him the election.

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