Saturday, September 06, 2008

Robert Novak

The main reason I am writing this column is that many people have asked me how I first realized I was suffering from a brain tumor and what I have done about it.

But I also want to relate the reaction to my disease, mostly compassionate, that belies Washington's reputation.

The first sign that I was in trouble came on Wednesday, July 23, when my 2004 black Corvette struck a pedestrian on 18th Street in downtown Washington while I was on my way to my office.

Dear Mr. Obama

Obama Calls Penn State The

And I guess the The Packers play in Lambert Field

Friday, September 05, 2008

Now I know what a community organizer is

Dave at Iowahawk finally explains what a community organizer is...
  • reach out and work with communities in various ways.
  • liaison with, and for, community agencies for service within affected areas.
  • fight to make a difference.
  • raise awareness.
  • deal with community issues.
  • raise awareness in the community of how we are making differences about undealt-with issues .
  • when necessary, refer inquiries to outreach coordinators.
  • Help coordination agency administrators identify and address outreach opportunities.
  • model timetables and conceptualize benchmarks.
  • issue guidelines for poster contests and interpretive dance festivals.
  • Gather voter registrations, win valuable prizes.

And that's just the beginning. Let me give you some specific examples of how community organizer organizations like CFBH are making a difference right here in Majestic Oakewoods, a subdivision off exit 242. As you know, in the year since I moved here my community has experienced a rash of crime, despair, and abandoned homes. To address these community problems, I reached out to local groups of disaffected dropout youths who were struggling with unemployment. During a rap-session kegger at my home, I spoke with them about ways they could get involved with the community and help protect the environment. Together we organized an innovative free community bicycle / metal recycling program. I am proud to say that it has been so successful that our private sector partner, Kyle's Salvage, has encouraged us to create an expanded free community car program.

More....

How to make friends and influence people - Bill Maher

How is it that those gun clinging, god fearing, small town types seem to lean to the GOP even when democrats say they're looking out for them?

Well it might be the patronizing way ass clowns like Bill Maher refer to them....
Barack Obama can't help it if he's a magna cum laude Harvard grad and you're a Wal-Mart shopper who resurfaces driveways with your brother-in-law. Americans are so narcissistic that our candidates have to be just like us. That's why George Bush is president. And that's where the McCain camp gets its campaign strategy: Paint Obama as cocky and arrogant and wait for America to vote him off, like the black guy in every reality show. A black president? Half of Pennsylvania isn't ready for black quarterbacks. Forget Obama, they think Will Smith needs to be taken down a peg.

More.....

The negative candidate

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, a break down of Palin and Obama's speeches line by line for negative and/or sarcastic comments about the other candidate.

Who's speech was more negative and/or sarcastic? You might be surprised. Only if you're a democrat.

Who will he vote for? #49

Meet anonymous protester at the RNC convention.

Mr. anonymous decided that this window was a symbol of oppression throughout the world and, as a result, would probably vote for John McCain. So, of course, he needed to destroy it.

Or... maybe... Mr. Anonymous is actually a McCain supporter and this is what republicans do when they're at party functions.

You tell me. Is the person who would randomly vandalize someone's property more likely to be an Obama voter or a McCain voter? Why?

What does it say about you if you and this clown share the same taste in candidates?

Matthews vs Buchanan Dust Up Over Palin Media Coverage

Obama and abortion

Terrible Ted

The Nuge with a take on Palin.....
With grave suspicion and reservations, I nonetheless rejoice that the fading embers of conservatism may have indeed caught fire once more. That fireball is Gov.Sarah Palin of Alaska, I pray the next Vice President of the United States. Now I know why I have seen no one with any guts in the Republican Party in so long: the governor of Alaska has them all. Her speech last night was clearly a grand slam out-of-the-park home run. America, we have liftoff!

By selecting Gov. Palin to be his running mate, Sen. McCain has finally electrified the conservative base -- the very base he desperately needs to defeat Sen.Obama in November. I, for one, am greatly relieved and inspired by her message, delivery, confidence, poise, class and grace.

To borrow a relative quote from Michelle Obama, with the selection of Gov. Palin, it’s the first time in quite some time that I’m proud of the Republican Party.


More.....

Rangel's tax problem

Charlie Rangel apparently didn't know that he needed to pay taxes on rental income despite the fact that the committee he chairs only WRITES THE TAX LAWS....
Representative Charles B. Rangel has earned more than $75,000 in rental income from a villa he has owned in the Dominican Republic since 1988, but never reported it on his federal or state tax returns, according to a lawyer for the congressman and documents from the resort.

Mr. Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes the federal tax code, bought the beachfront villa at the Punta Cana Yacht Club and has received twice-yearly payments from the resort, which rents the property for $500 or more per night.

Records from the development, now called the Punta Cana Resort and Club, indicated that Mr. Rangel’s rental profits varied from year to year, from $2,700 in 2004 to $7,600 in 1994.


What's so "progressive" about tax evasion?

What is a "community orgainzer"?

Apparently, Obama has his buns in a bind after Sarah Palin questioned what no one else had the balls ask. What the hell is a "community organizer"?
Sen. Barack Obama ditched his normal languid cool today, punching back at Gov. Sarah Palin as he spoke with reporters in York, Pa, hotly defending his work as a community organizer. He said he assumes Palin "wants to be treated same way guys want to be treated, which means their records are under scrutinty. I've been through this for 19 months. She's been through it, what four days?"

Obama's hackles were clearly raised by Palin's dismissal of his community organizing --a response to his earlier dismissal of her record as a small-town mayor. "Why would that kind of work be ridiculed?" Obama said. "Who are they fighting for?" The idea that community organizing is not relevant to the presidency, he said, just shows why Republicans "are out of touch and don't get it."

He is right. We republicans already live in organized communities. That's probably why we don't have to worry about 235 murders IN ONE SUMMER.

I've got a question apparently missed by all the traditional media while vetting Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter.

Who actually paid Obama during this so called "community organizer" activity? Was it a non profit group? We already know that he has some affiliation with ACORN. Was that who paid him?

Where did his paychecks come from?

What was his primary mission? Was he providing free legal advice? During the convention, I must have missed all those testimonials of people who Obama helped doing this "community organizing". Who are these people?

Maybe the NY Times can pull one of their 100 reporters in Juneau and ask the same questions.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Where's that community organizer when you need one?

So you're looking for a nice quiet life in that tony, little, democratic enclave known as Chicago.

You may want to consider moving to Iraq or Afghanistan, it's safer.
An estimated 123 people were shot and killed over the summer. That's nearly double the number of soldiers killed in Iraq over the same time period.

In May, cbs2chicago.com began tracking city shootings and posting them on Google maps. Information compiled from our reporters, wire service reports and the Chicago Police Major Incidents log indicated that 123 people were shot and killed throughout the city between the start of Memorial Day weekend on May 26, and the end of Labor Day on Sept. 1.

According to the Defense Department, 65 soldiers were killed in combat in Iraq. About the same number were killed in Afghanistan over that same period.

In the same time period, an estimated 245 people were shot and wounded in the city.

For you progressive types, I have a question. How is it that all the cities you run have all these murders?

A take on the Palin speech

A take on the Palin speech at Reason....
The aw-shucks quality and class warfare elements here are familiar. The indirection, sarcasm, and unembarrassed intelligence are new. It's a measure of how surprising Palin's style was that so many of her detractors could respond only with rage, incomprehension, and irrelevant complaints. In particular, Palin's Democratic counterpart Joseph Biden's predictable-as-Pickett's-Charge objection that the speech lacked substance sets up a very plausible scenario for the vice presidential debate: I'm willing to predict that the hyper-informed Biden will demonstrate his mastery of the facts, leave no doubt about his flair for complex policy questions, get his ass handed to him in the debate, and never understand what went wrong.

Is love for Palin irrational?

David Frum with some salient points on his doubt about Palin....
Sarah Palin is exciting and appealing. But what kind of executive is she? None of us have even the remotest idea. We don't know whether she takes advice from a wide circle or a narrow one, whether she tends to decide quickly or slowly, whether her budgets are realistic, whether she is calm or excitable in a crisis. We have no idea whether she is decisive or vacillating, prompt or procrastinating, curious or incurious. These things matter enormously in a president.

He has a good observation here but this is what I think he's missing about what the conservative base sees in Palin.

First, when you are grounded in principle, decisions are actually quite easy. Reagan was effective because he had a belief system he actually believed in. As a result, he was able to attract, recruit and delegate authority to people who bought into his belief system. He never needed to micromanage his presidency and no one cared.

Reagan's team was enrolled in his vision and they were able to execute. You don't need to sit around and create a management "style" when you're committed to a larger purpose. People get it and advise and counsel accordingly.

Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers is a total result of a politician incorporating political calculus in front of principle. It was a disaster.

Second, in Palin's case, if she is truly a conservative, conservatives will pick up the baton and run with it when it's needed.

For instance, how does a moderate like McCain rally his "base" for support on a tax cut when that same "base" sense that he'll sell them out on immigration reform? Using the word base is actually a misnomer since there is no "base" for moderates. Every issue becomes an advocacy play.

So once again, management style becomes important when you're evaluating a candidate who has no core principles.

Third, without saying one thing in a speech, conservatives can already see what a government looks like through Palin's eyes more than they ever will be able to do with the other three bozos in this race.

Who were the other people available with this quality? Newt Gingrich is the only one who comes to mind and he's unelectable.

In my mind, the other available candidates here were variations of McCain (Romney, Giuliani, Huckabee, etc.). Just how do conservatives get any love there?

These conservatives are willing to risk the details of a management style to share in a conservative vision. This is especially true when the republican "brand" has been so bastardized it's hardly recogizable to anyone, much less conservatives.

Frum is probably correct in that conservatives may have jumped the gun in their unconditional love for Palin. But how do undecideds get enrolled in a republican candidate when conservatives can't?

Maybe they'll vet this

I wonder if the NY Times will pull away one of their three hundred investigative staff members from Sarah Palin's home town library long enough to vet this?.....
Nigerian anti-graft investigators have seized money raised by the head of the Nigerian Stock Exchange to support US presidential candidate Barack Obama.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission said it would give the money back to those who attended a gala dinner in Lagos last month.

The EFCC said it had seized 74m naira ($630,000, £314,000), but said no Nigerian laws had been broken.

US political parties are not allowed to receive contributions from abroad.

Stock exchange chairwoman Ndi Okereke-Onyuike is also the head of Africans for Obama, a Nigeria-based support group.


More....

Obama Endorses Kwame Kilpatrick

Another one bites the Obama bus.

Don't worry Kwame. You're a democrat. Next year, you can run again and win in a landslide. It doesn't matter how corrupt and/or incompetent you are. Just ask Marion Berry, William "Cold Cash" Jefferson, BJ Clinton, Ray Nagin, and Ted Kennedy.

Do democrats or republicans run this mess?

From My Way...

A decade behind schedule, a $350 million downtown high school finally opened on Wednesday after years of environmental, seismic and legal troubles.

"We've been waiting a long time to get this," said Uriel Rivera, an 18-year-old senior at the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center. "A lot of people in the community were supposed to graduate from here, but they didn't. I thought it was going to be the same for me."

Rivera was among more than 2,400 students who streamed into the school on its first day - long after what had been expected to be a late 1990s debut of an education showplace to relieve sorely overcrowded classrooms.

Much of what was then called the Belmont Learning Center was already constructed before fears grew about toxic gases rising from an old oil field upon which it was built.

Construction was halted in 2000, then resumed in 2002 only to be thwarted again, this time by the discovery of an earthquake fault that crosses the site.

Lengthy investigations by the county district attorney's office, the city attorney and the California attorney general found no criminal wrongdoing, but in 2003 District Attorney Steve Cooley labeled the project "a public works disaster of biblical proportions."


So what do you think? Are the republicans or democrats responsible for this debacle?

Sick day measure pulled

Maggie, Right Runner and WMD all have posts on the paid sick day proposal off the ballot.

Ms. Williams said the decision "was not easy nor made lightly," but was reached after "it became clear that a shrill and vitriolic ballot campaign marred by misinformation and disinformation would be impossible to avoid."

Wait a damn minute here. Either this law was a good proposal or it was not. Since when has a "shrill and vitriolic ballot campaign" ever dissuaded a union from moving ahead on any issue. In fact, I believe everything unions touch is surrounded with "shrill and vitriolic". What's makes this so different?

There's more going on here that's not being reported. My guess is that Ted promised something big to these guys.

The good news is at least this one has been put to bed; for now.

Wait 'til next year


The NFL kicks off tonight. I'd like to say that Cincinnati has an NFL team although I'd like to maintain my credibility as a semi intelligent person.

At least we're getting pretty used to saying "wait til next year" around week five.

For the life of me, I will never understand why people support an organization as lousy and awful as the Bengals. For 1/5th the price, you can cruise right up to Clifton and see a decent college football product. But people insist on spending hundreds of dollars a week to watch this miserable display of football.

I used to think that being a US Senator was the most disgusting, dishonorable profession in the world until I started reading about Mike Brown.

Think about it, Mike Brown could be a US Senator...

1) He has basically voted "present" since he inherited the team in 1990.
2) No matter how horrible of an owner he is, his pockets are always full.
3) If he failed to show up for work for, say, the next fifteen years, would anyone notice?
4) He's single handedly extracted hundred of millions of dollars from taxpayer's and provided absolutely nothing in return.
5) After the taxpayer's were bent over for millions upon millions of dollars, he got to name the stadium they paid for after himself (OK it was his dad).
6) Every six years or so(election time), he fires a coach, tells us things are going to be different and it's exactly the same.

In all seriousness, Mike Brown is said to have a soft spot for players who have run afoul of the law. In fact, he's given some players chance, upon chance, upon chance. Just one time, I'd like to see Senator Brown shows some compassion for the people who lined his pockets with $700 million bucks.

The rules in the NFL make it an almost mathematical possibility to be so horrible for so long. If you want to run a successful NFL franchise, read Mike Brown's business plan (assuming he has one) ..... then do the opposite.

By the way, the over under for this season's team wins is at 7.5. Have you ever seen a Bengals team over achieve? Take the under.

Until then. Go Bears!!!!!

Biden

This is the lunacy we get to look forward to if the President and Congress is dominated by liberals.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

That "community organizer" experience

Are these the same Chicago city schools where Obamamania worked as a "community organizer" and, along with uber patriot William Ayers, pumped $100 million into those same schools?

Say it ain't so.

Life in "Progress City"

You know you live in a crappy community when NFL players steal other players stuff.

In this case, Detroit....
A strange thing happened to running back Rudi Johnson when he visited with the Detroit Lions

on Monday.

Someone stole his stuff.

Seriously.

Specifically, and as we’re told by a reliable source (i.e., not the person who told Mort that Joey Harrington had agreed to terms with the Ravens on Monday, or the person who told John Clayton that Todd Bouman had agreed to terms with the Ravens on Tuesday), Johnson left his bags outside CEO Matt Millen’s office while he met with team officials and, ultimately, worked out a deal with the team.

So when Johnson came back to get his bags, they were nowhere to be found. Johnson and Millen were stumped.

Enter the eye in the sky.

The team checked the videotapes generated by the team’s in-house surveillance system, and they quickly identified the culprit.

So who might it have been? None other than Tatum Bell, who lost his gig with the Lions after Rudi arrived.


More....

From hot to cool

I go from hot to cool on the Palin nomination, right now I'm a blazing hot.

During the vetting process, one of McCain's advisers allegedly gave her a warning about the media attacks coming which prompted this exchange....

"You know the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?"

No.

"The lipstick"

The one thing that is frequently overlooked in her biography is the total lack of "play along to get along" game. It tells me that she's more about principle than resume.

She could have climbed up the macho ladder of Alaskan GOP politics by playing the game of winks and nods that has made Alaskan GOP politics the corrupt machine that it is today.

But she didn't.

Each and every step of her political rise has been due to actually doing something. Namely, getting rid of the stench of political "business as usual".

No wonder she has an 80% approval rating. The voters get that.

The previous Newt video really says it all. Has their been one time in either Biden's or Obama's careers where they put their political aspirations on the line, bucked the party machinery and stepped up for principle on an issue?

(cricket chirps)

I'm always saying that I think the person most qualified for the job of President is the person who least wants it. The person who believes they are called to take on all the crap. The person who, when they chose colleges and jobs, didn't do it with their eye on their political "viability".

When Sarah Palin went to the University of Idaho, took her job as a sports broadcaster, and became a city council member, I don't think she had designs on working up her resume to be a VP candidate.

Contrast this to Joe Biden, who's spent the better part of 36 years longing to be president one day and who still lives in the delusion that he would be president if "he had hair".

Two America's

A must read piece at the American Thinker on the "Two America's" and where Palin fits in the puzzle...
Liberals have long lamented the existence of two nations in America. They are right to do so today, but in a way they never meant. It is not the divide between rich and poor which soon will be causing serious pain on the left. Sarah Palin's pending nomination for Vice President is exposing the depth of the cultural divide between Middle America and the leftists who have taken over the education, media, and cultural establishment of our country.

Newt on MSNBC

Building Stonehenge - This Man can Move Anything

Like Sarah Palin, the genius is in the simplicity.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Underestimating Palin

A must read piece about Sarah Palin from an unlikely source, The New Republic....

That the Republicans missed about Sarah Palin then--and what the Democrats seem poised to miss now--is that she is a true political savant; a candidate with a knack for identifying the key gripes of the populace and packaging herself as the solution. That keen political nose has enabled her to routinely outperform her resume. Nearly two years into her administration, she still racks up approval ratings of 80 per cent or better.

One might reasonably ask to what extent her local popularity is buoyed by the high price of oil (and thus, a budget surplus, and thus, the ability to carry a stick into meetings with big oil). One might speculate about the durability of her anti-corruption stance in light of her conflict of interest in the dismissal of her director of public safety. And only the truly feckless would not concern themselves about her dearth of foreign policy experience. But in probing this candidate, it would behoove the Democrats and the pundits to shed the notion that they are dealing with some dimwitted bumpkin (Dan Quayle seems to come up a lot lately) who’s going to start crying when they ask her to name the president of Azerbaijan; or that Palin is the townie who was brought into the Skull & Bones initiation night for the amusement of all; or that somehow the prom queen ballots got mixed up with the Alaska gubernatorial poll. Trivialize her at your own peril.

Sarah Palin is a living reminder that the ultimate source of political power in this country is not the Kennedy School or the Davos Summit or an Ariana Huffington salon; even now, power emanates from the electorate itself. More precisely, power in 2008 emanates from the working class electorates of Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Sooner or later, the Obama camp will realize that the beauty pageant queen is an enormously talented populist in a year that is ripe for populism. For their own sake, it had better be sooner.

And more vetting

I guess opposition research just isn't complete without revealing someone's personal phone numbers and social security number.

And you wonder why people aren't flocking to go into politics.

Read here. Page 58

HT redstate

Vetting, vetting & more vetting

By now, we all know about the horrible sin of Palin's seventeen year old daughter but how about the Biden's.... (HT WMD)
A son and a brother of Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware are accused in two lawsuits of defrauding a former business partner and an investor of millions of dollars in a hedge fund deal that went sour, The Washington Post reported, citing court records.

The Democratic vice presidential candidate’s son Hunter, 38, and brother James, 59, meanwhile say it was they who were defrauded by their former partner, whom they have accused of misrepresenting his experience in the hedge fund industry, The Post said.

According to the legal skirmishes, which have been playing out in New York State Supreme Court since 2007, Anthony Lotito Jr. said that he agreed to help set up Paradigm Companies, a hedge fund group for the Bidens, because the V.P. nominee was concerned on how his son Hunter’s lobbying activities would reflect on his campaign.


WHOOAAAA cowboy. I see hedge funds, fraud, lobbying. Aren't these the three mortal sins of democratic politics?

But then again, we have the 22 year old DUI for her husband but nary a word about the Big O's admitted cocaine use.

Long before the national media spotlight began to shine on every twist and turn of his life's journey,
Barack Obama had this to say about himself: "Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man. . . . I got high [to] push questions of who I was out of my mind."

I guess Todd's biggest mistake was not to drown any witnesses. If he had, they would have thrown a tribute for him at the DNC convention.

UC Bearcat

Right where my seats were

Even P. Diddy gets it



See, I agree totally with P.Diddy, Puff Daddy, Sean Combs, whatever the hell his name is.

He's right. Alaska; no crack heads, no crime, etc. That's because it's republican. I guess if you want a quality of life that includes these things you need to go to vote for the democrat. Don't take my word for it. Even the Diddy says so.

Just think. If you vote for Obamamania, you'll share the same political acumen as this ding dong.

HT Rush

Second Amendment


Senate testimony on the 2nd Amendment. From the Luby's cafeteria shooting.

Thanks to reader Fred for a reminder as to why I detest liberalism.

Photo's from the "green" convention


More at Brian Thomas

Pregnancy politics

Over the weekend, I tried to do a weekend news blackout. Unfortunately, the first thing I get when I finally turn on the news is the Palin pregnancy issue.

A couple of thoughts.

1) If Palin's daughter had decided to have an abortion, no one would have known and all would have been A-OK. Right? Can you imagine the feminist outrage if the media had disclosed an abortion for someone exercising her "choice"? Why shouldn't the daughter have the same protection for having the baby?

Yet, because she decides to have a baby, she get to have the whole issue spread all over the media. Today, on Drudge, is a picture of the boyfriend.

2) Even if the Palin VP choice doesn't work for an election victory, I think the social lessons of the Palin will be profound. Basically, it sends the message to women that pregnancy, no matter how "inconvenient", doesn't have to be a liability for the mother. Why make a baby pay with death for one of life's "inconveniences".

3) A lot of people on the left are crucifying Palin for both of these pregancies. I believe many who will criticize don't like the mirror that Palin puts in front of them. For instance, how many women have had abortions knowing their child would have Down's Syndrome or when an unplanned pregancy would interupt a great career path, etc.

Seeing the Palin family forces people who have exercised their choice to deal with the consequences of that choice. Something many are not willing to do.

After all, misery loves company.

Comparison of experience

Gerald Baker with a thorough comparison of "experience" between Pail and Obamamania...

Political experience

Obama: Worked his way to the top by cultivating, pandering to and stroking the most powerful interest groups in the all-pervasive Chicago political machine, ensuring his views were aligned with the power brokers there.

Palin: Worked her way to the top by challenging, attacking and actively undermining the Republican party establishment in her native Alaska. She ran against incumbent Republicans as a candidate willing and able to clean the Augean Stables of her state's government.

More....

The party of change?

From Bloomberg News
There was much talk about change last week at the Democratic convention. But are the Democrats really offering any substantive change?

To find out, I pulled out John Kerry's 2004 Democratic national platform and compared its fiscal policy with that contained in today's Barack Obama-inspired missive.

The documents are so similar it's creepy. While there are a number of new minor policies, and fresh details on old targets such as health care, the big picture has stayed the same.

When Democrats say they offer change, what they really mean is that things will be different if voters accept the policies they rejected last time.

To be fair, there are some alterations this year.

Both platforms promise to extend the Bush income-tax cuts for the middle class, but repeal them for the rich. In 2004, Kerry defined rich as those making more than $200,000. Today, Obama promises not to increase taxes on anyone making less than $250,000.

So the definition of rich has increased from $200,000 to $250,000. That's change you can believe in that will be especially appreciated by everyone making between $200,000 and $249,999.

More....