Van crashes, burns

Obama's "green job" Czar, Van Jones, resigned at midnight on a Saturday night during the long labor day weekend. The 9-11 truther and a race-baiter blamed a smear campaign against him rather than his own past comments and actions for his (un)timely demise. Hardcore Liberals are apoplectic about this resignation saying things like, "Whenever I got sick to my stomach at the thought of Obama's Team of Corporate Zombies - people like Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Jim Messina - running the show, I was able to at least tell myself that hey, someone like Van Jones is at least in there somewhere fighting the good fight as he always has. "

I guess we'll have to see how it goes with the "corporate zombies".

The timing of the release of this news is about as blatant of an attempt to bury a story that I've ever seen. Another example of what I call 'The Opacity of Hope'. Things are really start to unravel for the Obama Campaign, er... Administration.

the politics of grievance and resentment

In words, Obama is a uniter instead of a divider. In deeds, he has spent years promoting polarization. That is what a "community organizer" does, creating a sense of grievance, envy and resentment, in order to mobilize political action to get more of the taxpayers' money or to force banks to lend to people they don't consider good risks, as the community organizing group ACORN did.


After Barack Obama moved beyond the role of a community organizer, he promoted the same polarization in his other roles.

That is what he did when he spent the money of the Woods Fund bankrolling programs to spread the politics of grievance and resentment into the schools. That is what he did when he spent the taxpayers' money bankrolling the grievance and resentment ideology of Michael Pfleger.

When Barack Obama donated $20,000 to Jeremiah Wright, does anyone imagine that he was unaware that Wright was the epitome of grievance, envy and resentment hype? Or were Wright's sermons too subtle for Obama to pick up that message?

How subtle is "Goddamn America!"?

Barack Obama has carried election-year makeovers to a new high, presenting himself a uniter of people, someone reaching across the partisan divide and the racial divide-- after decades of promoting polarization in each of his successive roles and each of his choices of political allies.

Yet the media treat exposing a fraudulent election-year image as far worse than letting someone acquire the powers of the highest office in the land through sheer deception.

-Thomas Sowell

Keith Olbermann Brown

I believe that Keith Olbermann has been reincarnated.

As Campbell Brown.

The tip off isn't necessarily the ridiculously obvious pro-Obama bent as much as it is the sanctimonious delivery and snide yet sing- song tone of voice as she recites what some lefty wrote on the tele-prompter.

Who does Ms. Brown think she's fooling, I wonder, when everybody knows that she's so in the tank for Obama, she's soaking wet.

I love the fact that Sarah Palin is pissing off the MSM.

If Campbell Olbermann Brown is angry, then the McCain campaign is doing something good.

Doctrinal confusion

"Charlie Gibson's gaffe..." Damn right.

unreal

In an effort to influence the election by influencing voters, ABC News apparently edited out whole chunks of the Sarah Palin Charlie Gibson interview.

Here we go again with blatant left leaning media bias. I'm sure ABC News would argue that they edited for time constraints or some other lame argument, but the effect of editing out certain key passages of what Palin was saying had the obviously intended effect of making her appear less coherent on matters of foreign policy.

Why do liberals have to constantly cheat in a pathetic attempt to win the argument?

Here's some advice to ABC News: If you don't want to be accused of cheating and being guilty of left leaning media bias, just run the interview of a Republican candidate in it's entirety. Don't edit out whole passages of the strongest arguments of the candidate! Because we're gonna find out what you did, you stupid bastards.

Would it even be possible to have someone at ABC News editing the interview who isn't in the tank for Obama?

If Charlie Gibson had any knowledge of this insipid editing then he's no better than Dan Rather (who I'm sure most lefties privately regard as a hero for fraudulently trying to take down President Bush on the eve of the 2004 election).

Here's the full context of the foreign policy discussion with the bold and underlined sections being those that were conveniently left out in order to shape people's impression of Sarah Palin's grasp of the issues being discussed.

The fine art of moral equivalency

"If you were watching Sean Hannity consistently..."

Huh? Is that Obama telling us that he watches Sean Hannity more than Bill O'Reilly does? I don't doubt it.

At least Obama tried to explain (away) his associations with Reverend Wright et al.

He was unconvincing, yet refreshingly candid.

Liberals and the media

Sometimes I wonder if liberals even understand what it is that every one else objects to about the biased and slanted general news coverage provided by the predominantly left leaning mainstream media.

Keith Olbermann and Chris Mathews were today relieved of their duties as MSNBC news general election anchors.

It seems that the more the left leaning media digs it heels in, the more ground it loses. Yet amazingly, declining readership of liberal publications and bottom of the barrel ratings for liberal television and radio enterprises have served only to somehow embolden far left influenced media rather than discourage it.

When your enemy is in the process of destroying itself it is unwise to point it out, but in this case I can't resist.

How it is that these supposedly intelligent lefty media types could have such a tin ear when it comes to what is expected of them in the realm of journalism? It must have to do with their own high opinion of themselves that causes them to fail to realize that their own audiences, those that cling to guns and religion, are not as stupid as they think. This is what Sarah Palin means when she speaks of the 'elite media', who in her case, have taken media bias to new levels of tawdriness and hypocrisy.

I mean, does the left at least grasp what people objected to when Dan Rather capsized his own career in a blatant effort to influence a political campaign by promoting a fraudulent Bush National Guard story on the eve of the 2004 presidential election?

That fact that many of those on the left are inclined to defend Dan Rather in "Rathergate" essentially dictates that they are doomed to repeat similar, if not the same, mistakes. Because this narrative of left leaning media bias has been around for so long at this point, it has fully taken hold in the public consciousness at large as a normal feature of the political landscape.

So when people see Keith Olbermann berating 9-11 victims or Chris Mathews "getting a thrill up his leg" for Obama they have clear confirmation of the insidious permeation and general brazenness of left leaning political bias bleeding into what is presented supposedly as hard news.

They never learn, so they're gone. Do Olbermann and Mathews even understand why they were taken off their assignment of delivering general coverage during the rest of the campaign? They seem so stubborn and one-sided that I'm sure that they have some sort of rationale that blames Haliburton or George Bush rather than the real culprit: their own failure to comprehend the difference between commentary and general news coverage.

Couric vs. Obama

Katie Couric actually committed journalism the other day when she asked Obama some pointed questions about the war in Iraq and the war on terror. More significantly, she followed up doggedly when Obama did his usual equivocation and obfuscation. In the following excerpt, Obama becomes noticeably peeved when it becomes apparent that Couric was not going to be conducting the standard MSM softball interview that Obama has grown accustomed to at this point. In fact Obama routinely avoids situations where he might be pinned down to decide on an actual stance on an issue or answer even mildly difficult questions about his 'evolving' policy positions.

Couric: But talking microcosmically, did the surge, the addition of 30,000 additional troops ... help the situation in Iraq?

Obama: Katie, as ... you've asked me three different times, and I have said repeatedly that there is no doubt that our troops helped to reduce violence. There's no doubt.

Couric: But yet you're saying ... given what you know now, you still wouldn't support it ... so I'm just trying to understand this.

Obama: Because ... it's pretty straightforward. By us putting $10 billion to $12 billion a month, $200 billion, that's money that could have gone into Afghanistan. Those additional troops could have gone into Afghanistan. That money also could have been used to shore up a declining economic situation in the United States. That money could have been applied to having a serious energy security plan so that we were reducing our demand on oil, which is helping to fund the insurgents in many countries. So those are all factors that would be taken into consideration in my decision-- to deal with a specific tactic or strategy inside of Iraq.

Couric: And I really don't mean to belabor this, Senator, because I'm really, I'm trying ... to figure out your position. Do you think the level of security in Iraq ...

Obama: Yes.

Couric ... would exist today without the surge?

Obama: Katie, I have no idea what would have happened had we applied my approach, which was to put more pressure on the Iraqis to arrive at a political reconciliation. So this is all hypotheticals. What I can say is that there's no doubt that our U.S. troops have contributed to a reduction of violence in Iraq. I said that, not just today, not just yesterday, but I've said that previously. What that doesn't change is that we've got to have a different strategic approach if we're going to make America as safe as possible.

Couric: If you believe, Senator, Afghanistan is, in fact, the central front in the war on terror, why was this your first trip there? And why didn't you hold a single hearing as chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the fighting force there?

Obama: Well, the, actually, the subcommittee that I chair is the European subcommittee. And any issues related to Afghanistan were always dealt with in the full committee, precisely because it's so important. That's not a matter that you would deal with in a subcommittee setting. And the fact that I didn't visit Afghanistan doesn't detract from my accurate assessment that this has been the central front on terror.

Clearly Obama has difficulty figuring out what his own stance is on Iraq, yet he ceaselessly insists that he has always been consistent on every related topic. You name the topic, Obama has always held the same position all along. It's just us not listening closely enough, you see. What's more disturbing than Obama changing his mind on Iraq (and a host of other issues) is that he now apparently imagines himself to be infallible.

...and the world didn't end

Hillary Clinton was on the O'Reilly Factor and the world didn't stop rotating on its axis. Barack Obama and Howard Dean have appeared this week on the Fox News Channel and yet there was no disturbance in the the space time continuum.

All this despite the urgings of the far left. The far lefties at The Daily Kos and Moveon.org have been demanding that all prominent Democrats and Democratic candidates boycott FNC, the most watched cable news network. The far left brain trust behind the Fox News boycott have been ignored by any Democrat that matters at this point.

The far left inner circle would have us believe that somehow left leaning individuals receive unfavorable and/or blatantly unfair treatment on Fox. This interpretation of FNC is pure fiction. There just isn’t a moment someone can point to where a left leaning individual is somehow not allowed to make their point. Fox continues to do well in any kind of objective study of their general coverage.

Any pundit with an argument worth making has full access to be heard on Fox News, period. The “Fox News is an evil and unfair right wing hate machine” narrative is so lame at this point, it's laughable. It's merely a smokescreen used to obfuscate the real reason as to why the far left despise and are afraid of Fox News.

The truth is that the far left is terrified that their candidates or their ideas cannot stand on the merits without the safety net of the liberal MSM and/or the lefty blogosphere constantly propping them up.

This speaks to the intellectual cowardice that runs deep in the far left echo-chambers of Moveon.org, The Daily Kos, and Media Matters.

As was the case with the censorship of Stalinist Russia or even modern day Red China, it's funny how it is always the forces of the political left that are afraid of information and the free exchange of ideas.

This inability or disinclination to engage in honest debate, manifested in one way by an irrational conception of Fox News, is fundamentally why I can never be one of them.

Olbermann Jumps the Shark

This guy is a complete and utter pseudo intellectual tool.

He's from the school of "the more quasi-big words I use, the smarter I sound".

Ugh.. he's so laughable. "Events insist" indeed. Events insist that you are a moron, Mr Olbermann for castigating so thoroughly Geraldine Ferraro for making benign comments when compared to the recently revealed teachings from the spiritual adviser of the candidate that you are so painfully obviously promoting while you masquerade as a journalist.

This is what passes for great thinking on the left.

meanwhile, I have been silenced on this matter when attempting to discuss it on this pro-Obama blog, that for some reason I'm being denied access to

Romney & Hannity

redound against them

old media, old guard

The New York Times, standard bearer of the old school left-wing dinosaur media, has endorsed Hillary Clinton and John McCain. To anyone who finds themselves agreeing with the New York Times editorial pages more often than not, these are your candidates.

Those of us who do not agree with the New York Times editorial pages on a regular basis should take notice of these endorsements and vote accordingly.

If the New York Times were to endorse Mitt Romney, for example, it could be a crippling blow to his campaign. But somehow, since McCain is already the media darling, the fact that the far left bastion of the New York Times has endorsed him will most likely go unnoticed and underreported.

"Manifestly the best candidate."

Ann Coulter has written a very illuminating and somewhat scathing article explaining to Republican voters, hopefully once and for all, that Mitt Romney is "...manifestly the best candidate."

Coulter makes an argument that I have been making for about six months now and that Rush Limbaugh has been hinting at lately. The argument is essentially this:

"The candidate Republicans should be clamoring for is the one liberals are feverishly denouncing. That is Mitt Romney by a landslide."

Coulter chides voters who have thus far supported Mike Huckabee and/or John McCain. And as I have pointed out in various formats, the votes for McCain or Huckabee are derived from almost any other method than critical thinking. Emotion, identity politics, popularity contest, nostalgia, random implulses ... pick your poison, but those who take a moment to think things through in only even the most minor of ways will arrive at the same unmistakable conclusion that Ms. Coulter has.

"One clue that Romney is our strongest candidate is the fact that Democrats keep viciously attacking him while expressing their deep respect for Mike Huckabee and John McCain."

Coulter brazenly chastises her own audience, urging Republican voters to "...please do one-tenth as much research before casting a vote in a presidential election as you do before buying a new car."

I share her frustration with some of the voters so far who, other than in Michigan and Wyoming, seem to treat the election with a noticeable lack of seriousness and due diligence. It would be nice if voters could take a break from watching American Idol and tracking the latest Britney Spears news long enough to put at least some thought into who should be elected as the next leader of the free world.

the Silver (lining)

While real conservatives may be disappointed with a second place finish by Governor Romney in Tuesday's NH primary election, I would hasten to point out several items.

The state of New Hampshire, which allows independents to vote in either primary, is one well suited to a centrist like John McCain. Before the results were revealed last night, many pundits believed that there would be a heavy independent break towards Barack Obama resulting in the trouncing of Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, this analysis was woefully incorrect. Perhaps it was a case of the media shaping the results by leading independents to believe that since Obama was going to win resoundingly, independents could now vote for McCain in what may have been perceived by the public to have been the closer race. Whatever the case may be, McCain was able to garner the affections of moderate and even probably some left leaning voters and Romney did well amongst conservatives, as in, those of us you want the borders closed, want lower taxes and less government intrusion into our daily lives. The AP is reporting that, “In New Hampshire, McCain won among moderates and independents — despite his strong right-leaning Senate voting record — while Romney had an edge with hard-core conservatives.” If you also keep in mind the fact that McCain skipped Iowa to do several straight weeks of campaigning in the Granite State, I think it's fair to conclude that McCain had a kind of unnatural advantage. McCain may have been able to win over independents in New Hampshire using largely an emotional appeal, but it will be interesting to see how he does in states in which he cannot rely on voters who might usually vote for Democrats. Many anti-Romney pundits assert that since Romney has his own personal fortune to contribute to his campaign that there is no excuse as to why he did not win in NH. These same pundits never mention the fact that Romney out raised McCain in NH by nearly 2 to 1. So, the anti-Romney pundits can bash Romney for having the ability to contribute to his own campaign and spin it as a somehow a bad thing, but the fact remains that Romney is raising more money than all other Republican candidates. How you can construe either the ability to contribute to your own campaign or the ability to raise more money than your opponents, as a negative is certainly foreign to my way of thinking. How do these various right leaning, in some cases, pundits imagine that a Republican candidate would be better poised to defeat the now back on track Hillary Clinton coronation machine? The idea that raising or having more money for your campaign is a drawback is ludicrous.

Mike Huckabee proved in Iowa that in a presidential race, money isn’t everything. If you have a fairly mindless voting bloc that votes on the basis of identity politics and/or an ‘us vs. them’ message of economic populism, all the money in the world won’t stem a lemming-like tsunami of voters who vote more by mood than they do critical thinking. There are, luckily, objective criteria one can use for determining who is leading in a given presidential race. If you throw out all of the media noise, either the anti-Romney noise or the swooning media support for Huckabee and McCain, you can look at the actual scoreboard of the contest so far. On that scoreboard, otherwise known as the delegate count, Romney is way out in front of all other Republican candidates. The scoreboard is as follows, in terms of total delegates: Romney 30, Huckabee 21, McCain 10, Thompson 6, Ron Paul 2, Giuliani 1.

So, at this early phase of the race, Romney is leading all other candidates if you look at the most objective criterion, the delegate count. On top of that, Romney is raising more money than the other candidates and, as the anti-Romney press loves to point out, he has more money of his own to theoretically contribute to his campaign. The only evidence that I see that Romney is not doing well overall comes from the fact that the media keeps telling me to think so. As someone who is able to look at the facts of the situation rather than the media spin, it is clear to me that Romney is leading all other candidates at this point. Anyone who preaches that Romney is not doing well overall is either a closet liberal who wants the most articulate champion of conservative principles out of the race or they are a very confused conservative who is not familiar with the not-so-conservative records of Mike Huckabee and John McCain. To be fair, Fred Thompson and Giuliani haven’t started to really compete yet but certainly their supporters would not claim that their guy is beating Romney at this point.

I welcome any explanation of the position that Romney is not leading at this point in the race. Hopefully you would agree that, while it was disappointing for Romney voters to see another ‘silver’ in NH, there is still plenty of upside to his campaign's performance thus far overall. By looking at objective criteria such as the delegate count and money raised, Mitt Romney is beating all other Republican candidates at this point in the race.