Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Republicans Control Congress?

Wall Street turmoil gives Dems opening - CNN.com

I could have swore that in '06 the Republicans went down in the fall elections because of "insufficient oversight", "corruption" and "the poor economy". We have now had nearly 2 years (or all the time we ever get to vote for) of Democrats running both the House and Senate. But ONLY the PRESIDENT is responsible for the economy?

Wait, we had a really good economy in '06 -- does that mean that the MSM thinks that REPUBLICANS did a good job to bring that about?

I'd think that we have a classic case of "a pox on both your houses" here with the R in the WH and the D in Congress, but the MSM seems to think that is not the case. Wonder why?

Change You Can Taste!

Obama Waffles.com: Edible Election 08 Souvenir

The Rev Wright "missing" on the side is pretty cool. These guys have at least as much creativity as the Bush "mis-speak" calendar"!

Income, Giving, Biden, Democrats

Joe Biden and American Charity by Byron York on National Review Online

Joe Biden is one of those really nice Democrats. He makes about $250K a year, yet only finds it in his heart to give $300 or so to charity. He believes that "Charity begins in Washington" I suppose. It is also odd that something in the $200K+ income range is suddenly "poor" when it is associated with a Democrat.

That is VERY odd considering that the TOP income group in the US looks as follows:


Note that nearly 10% of the US population makes from 100-149K! Do you know why that is? Hint, Hint -- at $150K the cutoff for a WHOLE bunch of things like Roth IRA's kick in. I'm SURE that has NOTHING to do with it though, because "people aren't negatively affected by government tax policy"! Just ask BO and the MSM.

Note also though that > $200K puts you in the Top 2% of earners! So "poor Joe"-he is in the top 2% of earners, yet he is "poor", and his chairity contributions don't need to be scrutinized.

Here is a chart of the Bidens’ giving for the years covered by the tax returns copied from the article:

Right Wing Coverage Only

E-mail to Obama: dishonest TV ad, wrong audience - Los Angeles Times

Predictably, the BO Ad with the McCain e-mail deficiency is getting no MSM coverage of the obvious mistakes involved. Here are a couple:

First, the ad is dishonest. McCain has been one of the Senate's leading authorities on telecom and the Internet.

In
2000, Forbes magazine called him the "Senate's savviest technologist."
That same year, Slate's Jacob Weisberg gushed that McCain was the most
"cybersavvy" of all the presidential candidates that year, a crop that
included none other than Al Gore. Being chairman of the Senate Commerce
Committee, Weisberg explained, "forced him to learn about the Internet
early on, and young Web entrepreneurs such as Jerry Yang and Jeff Bezos
fascinate him."

Weisberg, an Obama booster, now disingenuously mocks McCain as "flummoxed by that newfangled doodad, the personal computer."

One
reason McCain is not versed in the mechanical details of sending e-mail
and typing on a keyboard is that the North Vietnamese broke his fingers
and shattered both of his arms. As Forbes, Slate and the Boston Globe
reported in 2000, McCain's injuries make using a keyboard painfully
laborious. He mostly relies on his wife and staff to show him e-mails
and websites, though he says he's getting up to speed.

"It's
extraordinary," Obama spokesman Dan Pfeiffer said, "that someone who
wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn't know how
to send an e-mail." For the record, President Clinton sent exactly two
e-mails while in office, according to the archives in his presidential
library.

Besides, by this logic, Obama is even less qualified
to be commander in chief because, unlike McCain, Obama has never fired
a gun, flown a plane or led men during wartime.

Ever Hear of Tony Rezko?

Palin aide says Obama backers politicizing Alaska investigation - CNN.com

Does the MSM treat Republicans any different? One would think that Tony Rezko was a classified individual--maybe a REAL deep cover CIA spook. Being the convicted felon that helped BO get his multi-million dollar home.

Meanwhile, working to get a guy that Tazers a kid and drinks beer in his squad car removed from a police force is a "scandal" that is worthy of the absolute top headline on CNN.

Monday, September 15, 2008

BO in the Kerry, Gore, Dukakis, Mondale, McGovern, Humphrey Role

ReviewJournal.com - Opinion - JOHN BRUMMETT: He's Kerry; she's Reagan

Good little sour grapes lefty view of what has happened to "The One". BO certainly wasn't going the Slick Willie route, so either he was going to be coronated without a fight (the MSM plan), make a "completely new way", or be sort of a "Jimmy Carter stealth far lefty win because folks don't like Bush" (I believe the BO plan to the extent he does planning), or he was going to lose like all the other admited lefty candidates have for a long time.

Carter was an aberration -- he barely beat Ford anyway, who was not much of a campaigner. People were mad as hell, and the "outsider" looked good to them. BUT, at least SOME folks may have learned their lesson there.

Slick was really slick, but without Perot and the breaking of the "read my lips" pledge, he would have went down in flames.

Rollin's on Palin Game Change

Commentary: How Palin changed the game - CNN.com

Ed Rollins does a good job here and puts the right analogy out. "Now McCain as a 2 yard lead with 98 yards to go to score". HOPEFULLY McCain is smart enough to not get complacent like BO.

Good, relatively short read, especially liked this section:

Then his world stopped with Sen. John McCain's shocking selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin
for the vice presidential nomination. And over the last two weeks, the
governor of Alaska has deflected the arc of Obama's campaign. She can
match his pretty words. The outdoor game has changed from "horse" to
"moose," and only one candidate in this race has shot "moose."


Obama's campaign diminished itself by challenging her experience. The
candidate who ranked 99th in Senate seniority, with one of the thinnest
resumes ever when he began his presidential quest, looked foolish
challenging a governor who made decisions every day while he was
missing votes in the Senate running for president.


BO Tried to Stall Withdrawl?

OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS' IRAQ WITHDRAWAL - New York Post

I'm not going to put a big bet on the veracity of this, but it does sound like something that BO might at least WANT to do. The following sounds like a pretty good analysis of BO from "foreigners":

Iraqi leaders are divided over the US election. Iraqi President
Jalal Talabani (whose party is a member of the Socialist International)
sees Obama as "a man of the Left" - who, once elected, might change his
opposition to Iraq's liberation. Indeed, say Talabani's advisers, a
President Obama might be tempted to appropriate the victory that
America has already won in Iraq by claiming that his intervention transformed failure into success.

Maliki's advisers have persuaded him that Obama will win - but the
prime minister worries about the senator's "political debt to the
anti-war lobby" - which is determined to transform Iraq into a disaster
to prove that toppling Saddam Hussein was "the biggest strategic
blunder in US history."


One has to go outside of the US to get really accurate analysis of how our left wing thinks! I really like the understanding that a good thing for a "man of the left" to do is to pick up someone else's success and declare it his! Great bunch of folks!



Sunday, September 14, 2008

Barone Ought Not Have Written This

McCain Flies His Campaign Past Obama by Michael Barone on National Review Online

Barone is a genius, and they often are too willing to share their knowledge. I suspect that BO has never read much in the way of military fighter strategy, but I've read a little, and of course McCain has EXPERIENCED a lot! Is it "fair" to try to get inside your oponents head? I'm sure that Putin, Bin Ladin and a ton of other folks out there spend all day long worrying about that issue! You want to play in the big leagues, you better be able to handle the big leagues. HOPEFULLY that is what a real Presidential campaign will show.

So far, all BO and the MSM are doing since McCain launched the Palin offensive is cry "foul", "sleaze", call names, and try to pick on old war wounds. The #1 on one ticket going after the #2 on the other ticket isn't really good strategy in any case, and the unspoken dynamic is that it is likely even LESS good when the #1 is a man and the #2 is a woman.

BO and the MSM are in high dudgeon, that is for sure. They had this all figured out (and I sure thought they did as well), and now it appears to be unraveling pretty fast. Let us hope it accelerates!!

Little Interview Comparison

Power Line: Sarah Palin unexpurgated

I suppose that anyone that still thinks the MSM is unbiased probably thinks that Sarah Palin is the devil and BO is god, so the difference in questioning is just fine. But for those that are still in this world, it is easy to see the bias.

Biden Admits Hillary Better VP Pick



There you have it, His Supreme Worshipfulness BO picked the wrong VP!

Saturday, September 13, 2008

BO Jumps the Shark

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Obama's Altitude Sickness

For anyone that wonders what happened to BO, I think Charles has it pretty much covered. It is WELL worth reading the whole deal, but like all retrospectives, it is simple in hindsight.

BO based his candidacy on smooth speaking, "hope", and the idea that he could run against Bush. He selected Slow Joe Biden as a "run out the clock" running mate. He felt he was ahead by two touchdowns at least, running out the clock was prudent.

What he didn't realize is that novelty is a VERY important part of celebrity. When you choose to base your appeal on celebrity, you better not let the novelty wear off, or worse yet, get eclipsed. His Sermon to the Germans was certainly over the top-it was "presidential", but BO was just plain old celebrity BO, NOT the President. People tend to not like posers. Last January, we all knew that the Pats would win the Super Bowl. Sure, America likes an underdog, but we KNEW the answer. Oh, wait, the game still had to be played and wonder of wonders, the Giants won and the Pats lost. BO forgot that the presidential election game has to be played through--until the fat lady sings.

So McCain threw the Palin hail mary, and if trends continue, the end will have been "obvious". Of course, I'm far from certain that will happen-it is more like half-time in the Superbowl and the underdogs are ahead. There are A LOT of things that almost certainly WILL go wrong, and they may well be fatal to McCain / Palin.

One thing is clear, BO can make strategic mistakes, and a lot of them. BUT, is he going to be able to equal George Bush and recover his election as Bush recovered the Iraq war with the surge? That is the kind of thing that leadership is about, so maybe it is a good test. BO has never faced a challenge even close to this large, but McCain has. Right now it appears that the only answer BO has is to pull out the negative stops in ways beyond any political hack job I've ever seen. Make fun of the fact that a war hero can't use a computer because of injuries solved in the service of our country? Seems "out there", but that is where BO is at now. Does that help him win? Wow, I hope not, it OUGHT to BURY him, but with the MSM on his side it is always hard to predict. It certainly seems to to lower than "Willie Horton" or "Swift Boating"--we need a cool one-liner. "BO POW Attack"? "POW O-Bashing"?

Friday, September 12, 2008

BO Not Being Bullied, But Being an Idiot

Power Line: Obama Gets Tough, Shoots Self In Head

Gee, McCain "can't send and e-mail or use a computer". Wonder if BO ever thought to check "why"? Ever notice how John holds his arms kinda funny? Gee, I wonder why that is? Oops, it is because they have been broken so badly he can't hold his hands right to type. THAT is why he "can't send an e-mail or use a computer". Gee BO, you "community organizers" are really tough guys!!

BO is claiming that "he won't be bullied"! Where I come from, that kinda depends on who the bully is and how they are doing the bullying. If they have a gun to the head of your wife or kids, you might feel quite "bullied", no matter how tough you actually are. If you actually ARE tough at all, you likely know that there is ALWAYS someone tougher. In BOs case, I'd say Sarah Barracuda could take him out in just about any way she picked (hand to hand, guns, knives, wits, tiddly winks, etc). Of course I'd say she could probably take out close to 50% of the male population as well, so BO isn't really THAT bad off.

Headline News: Biden's Sister Supports HIm!!

Biden a born leader, sister says - CNN.com

Wow we get the important news that his sister supports him and the answer to the age-old question of if leaders are "born or made" all in one headline. Who says the MSM isn't valuable?

I wonder if they have found any other supporters for him? People are sort of forgetting who the VP candidate on the Dem side is, so it is good to show that he has a supporter!

MSM Mad as Hell

Power Line: The Press: Mad As Hell, and Not Going to Take It Any More

It all needs to be read, but Mark Steyn really "get it" in a couple paragraphs I stole, "Howie" refers to Howard Kurtz, the author of the original column on how mad the press is getting that McCain has "manipulated them":

Howie feels the press is being "manipulated" by the McCain campaign.

Maybe it is. A conventional launch strategy for a little-known vice-presidential nominee might have involved "manipulating" the media into running umpteen front-pagers on Sarah Palin's amazing primary challenge of a sitting governor and getting the sob-sisters to slough off a ton of heartwarming stories about her son shipping out to Iraq.

But, if you were really savvy, you'd "manipulate" the media into a stampede of lurid drivel deriding her as a Stepford wife and a dominatrix, comparing her to Islamic fundamentalists, Pontius Pilate and porn stars, and dismissing her as a dysfunctional brood mare who can't possibly be the biological mother of the kid she was too dumb to abort. Who knows? It's a long shot, but if you could pull it off, a really cunning media manipulator might succeed in manipulating Howie's buddies into spending the month after Labor Day outbidding each other in some insane Who Wants To Be An Effete Condescending Media Snob? death-match. You'd not only make the press look like bozos, but that in turn might tarnish just a little the fellow these geniuses have chosen to anoint.


I sincerely doubt that that McCain had any idea that the MSM would implode with buckets of hate speech, but if he did, he is the biggest surprise of political brilliance ever.