Category: 08 Presidential Campaign

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All Dressed Up and No Place to Go

Michelle Malkin has one of the better (of many good posts at various sites) posts/discussion threads up about the Palin email “hack”. MQ? Glad you asked. It’s from a “tech-savvy reader who monitors the hackers’ site” who emailed Malkin what he’d discovered of the original invader’s own comments:

I read though the emails… ALL OF THEM… before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor…. And pictures of her family

So, all the hoopla, hype and spin the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind has put on it in the last coupla days (the “She was hiding state business/’Troopergate’!” bullshit) leaves the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind drowning in the Obamassiah tank with no place (legitimate) to go.

Of course, that won’t stop them from going all sorts of illegitimate places in their attempts to make radishes out of bunny poop.

The real gem in all this? The Obamassiah hands out marching orders,

“I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face…” [emphasis in the original bloviation by the Obamassiah]

And–surprise! surprise!–an Obamabot takes him seriously:

David Kernell Named in Sarah Palin E-Mail Hack, Son of Democrat Mike Kernell
By Jon Shanks
Sep 19, 2008

Who hacked the e-mail of Sarah Palin? Right now it appears that authorities are looking at David Kernell. Tennessee state Rep. Mike Kernell [D-Negligent Father–twc] became nationally known this afternoon. He can thank his son, David. Look out as this just got very partisan and this does not bode well for Democrats who now appear they will do anything to try and defeat John McCain and Sarah Palin including breaking the law.

Who woulda thunk it? *heh*

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Election Map 08?

Dick Morris, the slimy polpundit we all love to despise, has a new map of the current presidential race as he sees it. Caveat: this is a snapshot from a political junnkie’s take. Any relationship to real reality is largely a construct of his own imagination.

Now, keep in mind, The Obamassiah has been flaling around for a while trying to find some sort of issue he can fake speaking to with convincing “authority” and believes he’s found one in the economy. The degree to which he can convince people to believe his lies about his tax policy will be critical to his success. I think the degree to which McCain talks about the effects of his own tax policy and the degree to which Palin hammers the energy issue in terms of both the economy and national security will be key for them. Biden, of course, is of no consequence at all.

Actually, recent polls showing McCain within 5 points in New York (!?!), within 2(!!!) in Washington and closing even in Minnesota (now, that’s gotta be giving my Wonder Woman’s sibs a rash!) may be even better signs.

But. It all depends on how much McCain/Palin can overcome The Obamassiah’s lies and the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind endorsement of those lies.

The critical factor that’s lost in all this noise: how is the presidential race, which gets almost all the airtime and ink, going to affect senate, house and state and local races? An encouraging note is how much Dhimmicrappic contestants are sliding away from identifying with or even mentioning The One. If (still a pretty big IF) McCain/Palin can overcome the lies, damned lies and Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind “news” to a significant degree, their Electoral College victory may be large enough to provide fairly sweeping coat tails. I’m unsure just how beneficial a Repugnican’t majority in one or both houses combined with a MCCain/Palin administration would be, though. Maybe I’d have to rely on a Palin check and balance on some of Juan Mexicain’s tendencies…

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Listing Starboard–again

First, a note about my browsing habits (part of which are noted here). After 13 years of using the Opera browser (during most of which I paid for the privilege–it was that good in its early years as opposed to the competition), I have developed habits some of which may be becoming a new habit for recent Firefox and IE7 users, notably humongous numbers of open tabs. In fact, since I may be running two or three instances of Opera–different versions, for different OSes–at once in the same machine, I may have b etween 50 and 80 different tabs open at once. Hence, I sometimes lose track–bad habit!–of what led me to a particular link. And, since some of the Opera installs I run are THE latest snapshots of works-in-progress, I do see this come into play every now and then:

WARNING: This is a development snapshots: it contains the latest changes, but may also have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations. In fact, it may not work at all.

*heh*

That said, here are a few recent “starboard leaning” lost links:

Essential reading on recent Wall Street/Banking events.: How the Masters of the Universe ran amok and cost us the earth

“The first casualty of an American presidential campaign is context…” (*heh*) Paul Greenberg notes in his column, “In the Pigs and Lipstick Dept., Context Can Be All”

In “The Gibson Doctrine” Dennis Prager, the epitome of a “kinder, gentler” conservative columnist, deconstructs Charlie Gibson–oh so kindly and gently–and leaves the bastard bleeding on the floor. An excerpt:

When he asked Palin whether she agreed with the Bush Doctrine without defining it, he gave the game away. He lost any pretense of fairness. Asking the same unanswerable question three times had one purpose — to humiliate the woman. That was not merely partisan. It was mean.

I couldn’t answer it — and I have been steeped in international affairs since I was a Fellow at the Columbia University School of International Affairs in the 1970s. I have since been to 82 countries, and have lectured in Russian in Russia and in Hebrew in Israel. Most Americans would consider a candidate for national office who had such a resume qualified as regards international relations. Yet I had no clue how to answer Gibson’s question.

I had no clue because there is no right answer…

Charlie Gibson trying to assume Dan Rather’s mantle: “Exact words”=”Fake but accurate” for an audience that cannot keep its eye on the ball.

Obama and His Blankie. Just read it.

Grading Obama’s essay on economics. *heh*

I can actually recall the web search that led to these next couple of links. I had reason to recall The Third World County Great Blackout of January 2007 and thought to doublecheck my emergency preparedness:

Disaster Survival Food Pantry Basics

Survival Guide More priented toward TEOTWAWKI events, but a useful check on preparedness for events like The Third World County Great Blackout of January 2007.

One of the best Palin stories yet.

Found under, “Things That Make Me Go, ‘Hmm…'”–

Top Clinton fundraiser backing McCain, not Obama

Obama’s “community organizer” resume bullet point demolished.

That should about do it for today.

Trackposted to , The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, and The World According to Carl, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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The Obamassiah’s New Release: “I Took My Prompter To The Rodeo”

I don’t know how it’s doing on the charts–heck, I didn’t even know The One sang Country!–but it’s a hit with folks here in America’s Third World County who already think he’s a bad joke.

(CNN) — It appears Barack Obama’s teleprompter is hitting the campaign trail.

The Democratic presidential nominee has never tried to hide the fact he delivers speeches off the device, though normally he doesn’t use one at standard campaign rallies and town hall events.

But the Illinois senator used a teleprompter at both his Colorado events Monday — making for a particularly peculiar scene in Pueblo, where the prompter was set up in the middle of what is normally a rodeo ring.

As Mark Steyn notes, this could be even more amusing if The Obamabot uses a teleprompter at the debates…

h.t. Tim Blair

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One Democrat At a Time

McCain is so far inside The Obamassiah’s OODA Loop now it’s beginning to get scary for the Dhimmicrap Party elite. Lifelong Dhimms, PUMAs and self-labeled independants are all seeing something different, but a Bethesda p-sych shows one typical response to the McCain Palin pick(among many–and that’s what’s so devastating: many different “typical responses”):

Right now, for me, gender trumps everything else. If Democratic women wait for the perfect woman to come along, we will never elect a woman. I will vote for McCain-Palin. I urge other women to do the same. I promise to be the first person knocking on her door if Roe v. Wade or any other legislation that goes against the rights of women is threatened. But in Governor Palin, I find a woman of integrity, who not only talks the talk but walks the walk. I can work with that. I will work with that.

While I disagree with a one-issue litmus test for political candidates (heck, I’ll admit I came close with my two-issue-based distaste for Juan Mexicain), I find it interesting that Governor Palin’s obvious authenticity in a field of manufactured political personalities is what apparently won over this commenter–and others like her I’ve read.

More, please.

Glad I asked me. Here’s more:

It’s time to build, and build big. As PUMAs let us make it our personal mission to personally recruit 3 people to our cause between now and election day. What is our cause? Taking as many votes away from Obama/Biden as possible. Those two should NOT and must NOT be elected in 2008.

And there’s plenty more at the site linked. More?

Go McCain!! Sarah Palin may be the best choice this year. I wanted, will want, will always want Hillary. Since I am deprived of her, this ticket will get my vote. If it is a political maneuver, I don’t care. At least he wants my vote. Big Donna told me to stay home. Ain’t gonna happen folks…….I’m a McCain voting PUMA.

And

I am for Palin. I think she is courageous in her convictions. I was for Hillary, but now I am in the thak for McCain/Palin.
PumsaForPalin!!!

And the tin eared attacks on Palin haven’t helped The Obamassiah’s case, either, since his best weapon–the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind in the tank for him, is discrediting itself with abandon:

“Courtney Hazlett over at MSNBC’s “The Scoop” is reporting that thousands of “Us Weekly” subscribers have not only called the magazine to cancel their subscriptions — some reports say up to 10,000 cancellations have occurred — but have also contacted advertisers and expressed their outrage that they are advertising with the celebrity news magazine that would so blatantly try to destroy Governor Palin.

Hazlett is hearing that the editorial board of “Us Weekly” had thought they pegged it right that media pressure and attacks would see Palin pulled from the McCain ticket even before her debut speech. Because the media had so quickly swarmed to destroy her, they thought she was toast before she even had the chance to accept the nomination.”

Oh, Hivemind, please, please don’t throw Sarah into that briar patch! *heh*

And thanks to the folks at Puma08.com for running down the pic of Sarah Palin and the hog. A nice contrast with Urkle on a Bike:

Hmmm… doesn’t The One know he’s contributing excess CO2 because he didn’t check his tire pressure?

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Birds of a Feather

Before going off to law school in the early 90s, Obama directed ACORN’s partner organization, Project Vote. Meeting with ACORN leaders in November, he reminded them of this, saying, “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.”1

About ACORN…

So, less than a week before the midterm elections, four workers from Acorn, the liberal activist group that has registered millions of voters, have been indicted by a federal grand jury for submitting false voter registration forms to the Kansas City, Missouri, election board. But hey, who needs voter ID laws?

We wish this were an aberration, but allegations of fraud have tainted Acorn voter drives across the country. Acorn workers have been convicted in Wisconsin and Colorado, and investigations are still under way in Ohio, Tennessee and Pennsylvania 2(WSJ, Friday, November 3, 2006)

And,

Acorn and its affiliates have pulled some real stunts in recent years. In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a Congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained Acorn’s practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier.

“You have to wonder what’s the point of that, if not to overwhelm the system and get phony registrations on the voter rolls,” says Thor Hearne of the American Center for Voting Rights, who also testified at the hearing. “These were Democratic officials saying that they felt their election system in Ohio was under assault by these kinds of efforts to game the system.” 2

And,

…if photo I.D. requirements had been the law in Washington state, the voter fraud scandal involving ACORN in 2006 would never have happened. According to Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed, the incident “was the worst case of election fraud in our state’s history. It was an outrage.”

Two years ago ACORN submitted just over 1,800 new voter registration forms, but there was a problem. The names were made up — all but six of the 1,800 submissions were fakes. Reed said he was appalled.

“There is nothing more fundamental to a democratic republic and to a citizen of the United States than participating in selecting your public officials. For people to undermine that and try to perpetuate fraud on the system is an outrage,” he said.
The ACORN workers told state investigators that they went to the Seattle public library, sat at a table and filled out the voter registration forms. They made up names, addresses, and Social Security numbers and in some cases plucked names from the phone book. One worker said it was a lot of hard work making up all those names and another said he would sit at home, smoke marijuana and fill out the forms. 3

And this is an organization The One claims as comrades, fellow travelers, on his political pilgrimage?

Birds of a feather, folks. ‘Nuff said.

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Lazy and careless is as lazy and careless does…

Or is that “Stupid is as stupid does”?

[Note: originally, “careless” above read the interestingly typo-ed, “carfeless”-careless of me, eh? ;-)]

Which one did their homework and which one just took The Obamassiah’s press release straight to print?

Washington Wire – WSJ.com : Obama Camp Routed Out Illegal Donations from Palestinians

August 5, 2008, 5:13 pm

Obama Camp Routed Out Illegal Donations from Palestinians

Glenn R. Simpson reports on the presidential race.

Obama campaign officials said a trio of Palestinian brothers in the Middle East attempted last year to make $33,000 in illegal donations to the campaign via the internet.

The brothers sought to buy “Obama for President” T-shirts in some 97 attempts, 32 of which were initially successful.

They wrongly identified themselves as American citizens, campaign officials said, and listed their address as “GA”, the abbreviation for Georgia, when in fact they live in a refugee camp in Gaza, a rump city-state between Israel and Egypt that is under the control of Hamas.

The donations came in between Sept. 20 and Dec. 6 and virtually all of the money, about $33,500, was returned by December 6. But the refunds weren’t reported to the Federal Election Commission due to a technical error, campaign officials said.

Washington Wire – WSJ.com : Obama Camp Routed Out Illegal Donations from Palestinians.

But for another view…

ELECTION 2008
Arabs deny Obama camp returned illegal donations
Candidate’s staffers insist Gaza brothers refunded, but men say, ‘We did not receive any money back’
Posted: August 06, 2008
10:48 am Eastern

By Aaron Klein
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign contends it returned $33,500 in illegal contributions from Palestinians in Hamas-controlled Gaza, but the donors told WND today they have not received any money…

… The Obama camp insisted the remaining $2,500 was refunded Monday and all of the refunds will be reflected soon in an amended report. The campaign said new controls are in place to prevent any similar attempts in the future.

But WND asked two of the brothers – Monir and Hasam Edwan – to respond to the campaign’s claims.

“No, we did not receive any money back from the Obama campaign at any time,” said Monir Edwan.

Shame on the WSJ for simply running with a press release from The One’s Obamabots. Ask questions, guys. Look for sources to verify or refute claims. What? Is the WSj in the tank for The Obamassiah now, too?

h.t. Right Voices

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Mending Walls: Politics

“Good fences make good neighbors.”

In several posts over the years here at twc, I’ve invoked the principles of Classicism. Usually these invocations are in aid of addressing the artistic merits–or more often lack thereof–of different expressions claiming artistic merit, but I think the principles have a broader application to society at large, as well. For review, here they are:

Aside from technical matters of form, the principles of Classicism, as found in Classical Music, were

  • balance
  • clarity
  • accessibility
  • expressiveness
  • edification

Think about it a bit. Wouldn’t it be better were political discourse to be balanced? No more thumb on the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind scales or being in the tank for one viewpoint or candidate over another, just balanced reports by reporters who are aware of their biases and attempt to be fair in reporting the viewpoints and positions of those with whom they disagree? And wouldn’t it be amazing if that behavior were to spill over into political speech by candidates? What a boon for participatory government that would be!

And how about clarity? If politicians would seek to be clear, open and transparent instead of obfuscating their views with obscurantist babble and long-winded perorations and rambling perambulations designed to conceal the fact that they’re avoiding questions, people might actually listen with understanding (even appreciation! Amazing thought). Clear, unequivocal statements that lean heavily on fact and reason to persuade would be refreshing in politics, don’t you think?

And with clarity, accessibility goes hand-in-hand. If politicians were accessible, open to honest inquiry and continually aiming to make themselves available for discussion with The People, continually striving to make their policies, goals and purposes understandable instead of hiding behind doubletalk, perhaps we’d be able to have more political discussions about policy than about personality.

Expressiveness. Is anyone else besides me tired almost to death with the low quality of political speaking? Persuasive speech that depends on projecting phony emotion rather than full of genuine emotion powered by real reasons is a paper tiger. Even reading from teleprompters, it seems most contemporary politicians have the persuasive speaking ability of a doped chimp. Not pointing fingers, exactly, but when The One is held up as an example of expressive and persuasive public speaking, I begin to suspect the ones describing him so of being lobotomized and deaf.

Or perhaps it’s just that they’ve been around contemporary examples of political speech too long and have become effectively brain damaged by those examples. Could be. Rather in the manner of a public that laps up the artistic poison that is top 40 “artists'” manufactured “music” because their ears have been long dulled by exposure to similar noise.

Could it be that Sarah Palin’s convention speech electrified so many in part because it embodied at least some elements of Classical principles? My exhortation to her would be: Punch up the good stuff, Sarah. More clarity, please. Be balanced and restrained when dealing with jackasses like Charlie Gibson. Remain accessible. You need no lessons on expressiveness; just keep it up; more, please. And continue to build up (edify) our coutry, our people, by talking about what’s right about America. Proudly display the confidence that faith trumps doubt, that real hope and real change, as opposed to the phony hope n change (or is that “shuck n jive”–oops! now I’ll be accused of being a racist! My bad. *yawn*) of empty rhetoric, must come from the People.

Maybe some of it’ll rub off on the smart pols. I’ll not hold my breath, but maybe.

Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Phastidio.net, Wingless, Political Byline, Conservative Cat, and Stageleft, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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The Bell Curve

No, not that one (although there are strong corelations); I’m talking about the reality bell curve, where the left-hand side indicates propensity toward fantasy unrelated to reality (or “reality-based fantasy” among its most rational inhabitants) and the right-hand side indicates a propensity toward a connection with “real” reality in ones thinking. Or think of such a bell curve as left-hand side: arational; right-hand side: rational.

In such a model, the political Left/Right divide begins to make sense…

Those of us stuck in the middle can only fantasize about politics driven by reason.

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Hmmm… Harvey has another take on the issue.

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Palin Watch: Gibson Interview 0.02

Second part of the Gibson interview of Palin. Best response so far? From a commenter at Hot Air,

She’s so awesome. She’s like fillet mignon after two years of eating turd sandwiches.

I might have said “A breath of fresh air after two years of noxious B.S.,” but I’m happy to go with the assessment above.

Abortion: check.

Homosexuality: check.

2nd Amendment: check.

Sexism: check.

Charlie Gibson stifled: check.

What’s not to like?