UNCoRRELATED

Obama Socialist New Party News

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 14:22:03 -0700

The Obama camp is denying he's a member of the socialist New Party. More secrecy and deceit from The One. And the MSM ignores this and tries to suggest the American people don't need to know Barack Obama was a member of an extreme Left party? Who needs democracy anyway? Especially if you're an elitist leftist defending The One. Our Kiwi friend New Zeal who knows a socialist when he sees one dug this up. (HT Powerline.):

New Party members won three other primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State Senate), Michael Chandler (Democratic Party Committee) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary)..."these victories prove that small 'd' democracy can work" said Obama.

ACORN Fraud in Pennsylvania, Ohio

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:59:07 -0700

UPDATE: The NY Times notices ACORN (More of "the McCain campaign made me do it". It's all an eeevil conspiracy against The One, despite the fact that all these creepy people keep springing full-grown from the head of Zeus, The One.) More ACORN fraud in Ohio. Barack and ACORN go way back. Way back. Ace of Spades:

Tip: Two Big Stories About ACORN Fraud in Ohio About to Hit Don't Be Frontin': The Radical New Party Obama Was Once a Member of and Project Vote, Whom Obama Admits Working For, Share Same Office with... ACORN

Here's the address, per Ace:

Ya'll think it interesting that ACORN, Project VOTE and The NEW Party share the same address?
88 Third Avenue, Third Floor Brooklyn, NY 11217

Um, ACORN is supposed to be non-partisan.

Palin Exonerated in Troopergate

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:54:40 -0700

The Alaska Legislature's investigation of "Troopergate" came to a 12-0 consensus on the nature of Governor Palin's actions. Now comes the tricky part--how does one characterize the consensus? The conclusions are as follows:

...a workers compensation claim filed by Wooten was handled appropriately.

...Palin's firing of Monegan was "a proper and lawful exercise" of the governor's authority.

Of course, those aren't the headlines, although they are the only concrete conclusions produced by the investigative committee. What lead is this.

"Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda ... to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired," Branchflower's report says. "Compliance with the code of ethics is not optional. It is an individual responsibility imposed by law, and any effort to benefit a personal interest through official action is a violation of that trust. ... The term ‘benefit' is very broadly defined, and includes anything that is to the person's advantage or personal self-interest."

We can gather two things from this statement. Sarah Palin had no personal involvement in the dispute, and two--you have to stretch pretty far to make the firing a Trooper Wooten a matter of personal benefit, in fact so far that no one who isn't a complete a-hole can make this kind of allegation with a straight face. Unlike say Governor Eliot Spitzer of NY, who tried to frame the NY legislature's Speaker (normal Democrat stuff...), Palin could derive no political benefit from the firing of Wooten. Clearly there was no finanical benefit either. How about a personal benefit? I know lots of people going through divorces and I don't know any of them that want their spouses to lose their jobs, in fact--and you should know this--they want their spouse in healthy financial condition so they can support an children of the marriage or minimize the financial impact of the divorce on the other spouse. Its pretty lcear that firing Wooten would go against the financial interest of the Wooten family, and thus presumable agains the interest of the extended Palin family. So whose interests does firing poacher-Taser boy serve? Well, judging from his superior's report, it serves the public interest. If I had a cop like this working on the local force, I would camp out on the Mayor's doorstep with a hundred of my closest friends to be sure the guy (or gal) was removed from service. The report is so transparently a matter of hard ball politics that every participant should be driven from office, and preferably the state. They'd be more comfortable in New York or New Jersey anyways. Final note: No penalty to the governor. I think that says it all.

Barack's October Surprise

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:40:02 -0700

Poor Barack, he's got his close relationship with unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers getting long overdue scrutiny (?), a video from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan surfaces endorsing him in a big way, his latest Muslim outreach director meets with Hamas and Hezbollah supporters. And Barack's corrupt money man Tony Rezko keeps taking little trips from his cell to see the Feds. He'd like to feel the fresh air of freedom on his face. AP, "Obama fundraiser, convicted of fraud, spills beans":

Obama's name has not surfaced in accounts of the investigation since the trial. But Rezko himself raised it in a letter to the judge months ago.
"Your Honor, the prosecutors have been overzealous in pursuing a crime that never happened," he wrote. "They are pressuring me to tell them the wrong things that I supposedly know about Gov. Blagojevich and Sen. Barack Obama."

Feeling the heat Barack? And then there's

Obamessiah, Hamas, Hezbollah

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:34:20 -0700

This Farrakhan video has surfaced of the Nation of Islam leader pronouncing Barack the Messiah. Apparently it was taken back in February. (Wonder what the rest of the speech was about.) In other news, Obama's latest Muslim outreach director met with Hamas and Hezbollah supporters. Video: --crossposted at BackyardConservative

Paglia on Palin

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:01:52 -0700

Camille Paglia on Sarah Palin. One excerpt:

The next phase of feminism must circle back and reappropriate the ancient persona of the mother — without losing career ambition or power of assertion. Betty Friedan, who had first attacked the cult of postwar domesticity, had long warned second-wave feminists such as Gloria Steinem about the damaging exclusion of homemakers from their value system. The animus of liberal feminists toward religion must also end (I am speaking as an atheist). Feminism must reexamine all of its assumptions, including its death grip on abortion, if it wishes to survive. The hysterical emotionalism and eruptions of amoral malice at the arrival of Sarah Palin exposed the weaknesses and limitations of current feminism. But I am convinced that Palin’s bracing mix of male and female voices, as well as her grounding in frontier grit and audacity, will prove to be a galvanizing influence on aspiring Democratic women politicians too, from the municipal level on up. Palin has shown a brand-new way of defining female ambition — without losing femininity, spontaneity or humor. She’s no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she’s pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite — which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend.

Fevered Swamp for Obama

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:04:17 -0700

The Chicago Tribune's The Swamp is in the fever swamp. Quoting the nearly unhinged Andrew Sullivan. Don't be ridiculous. Questions about Obama's judgment on Bill Ayers, to mention only one of his unsavory friends, are entirely legitimate--soft on unrepentant domestic terrorist Ayers, soft on Ahmadinejad. Even SNL has their doubts. Barack Obama has not been vetted. We have only his word for many particulars of his life, and often not even that.

Chauncy Obama

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 09:37:17 -0700

[Those of you not old enough to have seen the film "Being There", can understand the reference to Chauncy Gardner by renting the DVD...] Obama predictably ends up where he did on the Jeremiah Wright controversy--he had no idea how radical Bill Ayers was.

"Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that he had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was eight years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated," Obama said.

You know, this might have actually been a plausible explanation if he didn't have to use it every month to explain his relationship to a racist, a crook or a terrorist. Obama seems to be giving voters the choice between thinking that he's smart, but cynical, or one of the dumbest guys to ever run for higher office. Back in the eighties, when I was working on the east coast, there were several occasions when I got calls to meet with companies I had not done business with before, particularly in the Miami area and up in New Jersey. The meetings generally lasted an hour to ninety minutes including the tour of the facility and invariably, before I got out of there, I would know with near certainty that it was a front company for an illegal enterprise. Bear in mind, I was in my twenties, still wet behind the ears, but I knew enough about the economics of the industry I was in to know that there was an inordinate amount of cash being thrown around. It wouldn't take me twenty years to figure out that I was attending a racist church (it certainly didn't take Oprah very long to figure it out...). Tony Rezko would take about five seconds to figure out where he was coming from--a developer cozying up to politicians who is also in the restaurant business? Please--he might has well have hung a sign around his neck--"I'm a crook". Bill Ayer's rehabilitated? Look, I know people who've been "rehabilitated", and in every case, the public malfeasance is followed by the equally public rehabilitation. Eldridge Cleaver was the Black Panther's spokesman. After a shootout in Oakland where a police officer was killed, Cleaver fled to Algeria, where he enjoyed the celebrity typical of the left's radicals. He however became disillusioned with socialism while in exile as he observed the grinding poverty of the common people and the luxurious life of the elites. In a continuing search for a solution for "his people", Cleaver converted to Christianity, became a Republican, and then later a Mormon (evidently coming to the conclusion that the quality of black family life was the real problem...). You never had to guess about Cleaver's rehabilitation, but there was no evidence at all for Ayer's "conversion", so why would anyone assume he'd been rehabilitated? It doesn't pass the smell test, and I think you'd have to be willfully credulous to accept this explanation.

Campaign Comedy That Isn't Funny

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:39:36 -0700

The McCain campaign should just forget about Ayers and focus on the issues. People are scared--they are looking into the economic abyss and what they really want to know is what the candidates are going to do to fix it. I'm am hearing this over and over again, from Democrat operatives, assuring me what the American people really want--solutions, not recriminations. Let's be clear here--no one, not Obama or McCain is presenting solutions. There are no "solutions" to a problem, only 'A' solution, which only becomes such after its demonstrated to have worked. The Surge was not a solution when it was proposed, it was a plan. Now its a solution. OK, so the candidates should be presenting 'plans' for a solution, but no one is presenting plans. Plans are a matter of consensus by people who will actually undertake the actions that lead to a solution. No presidential candidate can actually present a plan, because Presidents are not dictators. Congress is an equal partner in the process, and there are stark philosophical differences between its socialist and free market advocates, or in other words, people with proposals that could work, and people with proposals that will never work. So we've got a presidential campaign between two people who have proposals--no plans, no solutions by proposals. I ask you, what are the conditions under which you would accept a proposal? I know a great deal about this because I'm making business proposals all of the time and my success or failure is based on a number of factors, but overwhelmingly on one factor. Credibility.

Investment Dressing

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:42:55 -0700

My LadyBlog post: Get Your Candy Blanket

Dreams of My Ghost Writer

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:31:49 -0700

I've enjoyed writing since I was a child. I might claim that the dog ate my math problems, but I never missed writing a single essay, and when I was in school, we wrote a lot in comparison to the rising generation of illiterates. I didn't write much in university because I was an engineering major, but I was nevertheless incensed to get a B+ in a technical writing class because one of my papers got an A- instead of an A. Only six 'A's were awarded in the class, and six people didn't get an A- on that paper. I'm still annoyed. I did an enormous amount of technical writing during the eighties. An enormous amount of propositional and rhetorical writing in the nineties, and a very steady, high volume of blogging since 2008. Why am I telling you this? Because even after decades of daily writing, I know for a fact that I would need a few years, perhaps as much as a decade to develop the skill of writing book-length narratives (I started that process a couple of years ago, and I find myself in a relentless editing process as I keep finding myself dissatisfied with my prior efforts). Each form of writing is a unique skill set, and excellence in one format doesn't automatically transfer to another. It is why, after discovering the near absence of any kind of published writing from Barack Obama prior to his two autobiographies, that I developed the suspicion that his books were ghost-written, and that he's a damn liar for claiming authorship. I kept those thoughts to myself because all I had was suspicions, not proof. Perhaps 'that one' has been honing his craft in private, but is it likely that someone Time magazine represents as a literary giant wouldn't turn his talent to public use, if for no other reason that to serve his political interests? The dawning reality that Obama is a modern Jay Gatsby makes it a lot easier to give these suspicions credence, and some people who ought to know are voicing their concerns.

Obama Ayers Khalidi

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:18:53 -0700

At a time when much of America is just learning that Barack Obama's chosen political mentor in Chicago is an unrepentant domestic terrorist--the one The One chose early on to closely associate himself with, how does it feel to find out that Bill Ayers' best friend is Rashid Khalidi? Khalidi was also a family friend of Obama's and a spokesman for the PLO at a time it was classified as a terrorist organization by the State Dept. Quite a coup for Barack Obama--friendship with terrorists at home and abroad--is this the change we've been waiting for? Radical to be sure. Barack Obama's only claim to executive experience allied him with bomber of the US Capitol Bill Ayers--an educator who advocates turning children into little radicals rather than teaching them reading, math and science. Together they wasted millions in grant money and failed miserably in lifting achievement in Chicago's public schools, among the worst in the country. Barack Obama's only claim to executive experience saw him start his political career in the home of the same man, a domestic terrorist who is unrepentant to this day. Bill Ayers, who tried to kill the family of a judge. Barack Obama has yet to tell us the truth of this relationship--the story keeps changing. How can we believe anything Barack Obama says? After all, all he has is words--he has a very thin track record and the record he has is the most liberal in the Senate. In the majority Democrat Illinois legislature he voted present on centrist stuff--moderation was too controversial for Barack Obama--he happily voted for liberal measures. Take a look at Rashid Khalidi, former PLO spokesman when the PLO was classified as a terrorist organization. Bill Ayers' best friend and part of Barack Obama's cozy political circle in Hyde Park.

A Return to Common Sense

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 08:14:39 -0700

Well, in all this economic mess, conservatives instinctively shudder at the thought of the government taking over more and more of the economy, given the abysmal performance of the Democrats' housing subsidy piggie banks Fannie and Freddie. At the debate the other night, Sen. McCain made a good faith proposal to address the fact that one in six homeowners are under water--which impacts their neighbors' home prices as well. The Journal weighs in on the McCain plan:

Truth Stranger Than Fiction--Obama the Real Manchurian Candidate

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:22:57 -0700

Obama's radical ties just keep getting more and more significant--it all sort of reminds me of Kerry's pathetic push back against the Swiftboat veterans--every answer just created more and more questions.

In June sources released information that during his campaign for the State Senate in Illinois, Barack Obama was endorsed by an organization known as the Chicago "New Party". The 'New Party' was a political party established by the Democratic Socialists of America (the DSA) to push forth the socialist principles of the DSA by focusing on winnable elections at a local level and spreading the Socialist movement upwards. The admittedly Socialist Organization experienced a moderate rise in numbers between 1995 and 1999. By 1999, however, the Socialist 'New Party' was essentially defunct after losing a supreme court challenge that ruled the organizations "fusion" reform platform as unconstitutional.

The New Party was one of several "fusion" parties that operated on the principle that a candidate could fuse the votes of the Democrat and New Parties to overwhelm the centrist elements of 1990s Clinton Democrats. Say a far-left candidate got 600 votes in the Democrat primary, while his centrist rival got 1000 votes, then say the far-left candidate also got 500 New Party votes. He would beat his centrist rival by 100 votes. It worked pretty well, electing 16 of 24 New Party candidates, of which Barack Obama was one. The Supreme Court ruled the practice unconstitutional, but Barack was already in office. The Obama campaign denied all of this, and since much of this happened before it became a Google world, investigators had to rely on Lexis Nexis. However, some webpages were archived in the late nineties, including a New Party newsletter saved in the wayback machine.

From the October 1996 Update of the DSA 'New Party': "New Party members are busy knocking on doors, hammering down lawn signs, and phoning voters to support NP candidates this fall. Here are some of our key races... Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary)."

Pierre Trudeau

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:11:24 -0700

Kathy Shaidle provides a unique Canadian perspective on Obama.

Obama has improved -- we'll have to dump the teleprompter jokes. Being Canadian, I watched his super cool, calm, smooth, sophisticated demeanor and thought: Trudeau. And Trudeau was Prime Minister through most of my life. And that was bad, people.

Most Americans have no idea who Pierre Trudeau is, so I'll just describe him as Prime Minister of Canada twice between 1968 and 1984. As a matter of personal style, he was much closer to Bill Clinton than Barack Obama--immensely charismatic, politically clever, articulate, astute, sexually adventurous (he dated a series of Hollywood luminaries, married a woman 30 years his junior and fathered his only daughter when he was John McCain's age...), exuding a reptilian charm. Where he would resemble Barack Obama is in his politics--Trudeau was an unreconstructed socialist who oversaw a doubling of Canada's debt as a proportion of GDP (from 18 billion in 1968 to 200 billion in 1984). Canada has been in a nearly two decade long depression ever since, having lost control of its economy as a result of the massive national (not counting the provinicial) debt. I can see the moral lesson though--elect a stylish President or Prime Minister at your economic peril. Thinking about Canada, its ironic to consider the Democrats bemoaning the lost respect of our European allies. Canada was at it zenith of international respect in the late fifties and early sixties after negotiate an end to the Suez Crisis and establishing UN peace keeping as an institution. While no one hates Canada (except perhaps Quebecois), its long term economic malaise has served to make it about as internationally relevant as Belgium. With the destruction of the private economic, and the soul of American exceptionalism, the U.S. won't be hated anymore because you don't hate nobodies. The Democrats will have indeed given us change and kept their promises.