The dastardly, freedom-hating press is covering up the fact that Paul took a whopping 16% of the vote in the closed Pennsylvania Republican primary. Its a whopping percentage for Paul, anyway.
What, with all of those Operation Chaos Republicans crossing over for Hillary, the best Paul could muster was 16%? He had no opposition, in that McCain already has the nomination nailed and didn't bother to show up.
Persistence: it seems to be the only thing Paul and the Bots have.
Two mutually reinforcing theories on why Obama cancelled a debate next Sunday with Hillary Clinton: one, he is going to win North Carolina anyway, so why give the desperate Hillary a shot at him, and two, he is afraid of another dismal performance.
There is plausible deniability here, because normally you would expect Obama to turn down a debate when victory is a foregone conclusion, as it was last February when Obama refused a debate in Wisconsin.
Now that the focus is on Obama's debating skills or lack thereof however, it feels a bit different. Shouldn't Obama get back on that horse to prove that his poor performance in Pennsylvania was a fluke? Isn't he running a risk of confirming insinuations that he is indeed a wimp?
Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't, because if he does debate Hillary, he is also running the risk of proving again that his only real skill is reading prepared text from a teleprompter.
Get this: some pointy-headed writer for the New Yorker Magazine is complaining that last week's debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was 'something akin to a federal crime.'
Yes, how dare anyone ask Obama about his terrorist connections, or Hillary's brazen lies! Why, that time could have better spent trying to wedge a piece of paper into the policy differences between the two, just like all the previous debates. Or bashing a president who isn't even running for office.
Finally, in one debate, the Democrats got treated the way Republicans get treated in every debate.
At long last, Clinton and Obama were forced to confront their failings and their monumental judgement lapses before the American people. Character, judgement and truthfulness are always the top issues in a campaign, and no wonder the Democrats pretend they are trivial issues, and whine and complain with calls about how 'unfair' it is to even mention them.
It always turns out to be their downfall.
Ed Driscoll provides us with this vid of the admittedly great, but whitewashed, career of architect Philip Johnson:
It cannot be repeated too often: fascism is a disease of the left, not the right.
It's the biggest scandal of this campaign: why are Hillary, Obama and McCain not addressing the potential threat of zombie hordes rampaging through our neighborhoods? When is the press going to force them to discuss this critical issue?
If Obama says he is going to speak directly with the zombies, he will certainly lose my vote.
I urge all readers to take heed of the valuable advice provided in this article.
(h/t Hot Air)
You betcha that first one is going to make the caption contest rounds this week.
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McCain seems to genuinely enjoy Hillary's company in these pics. Why not? They have all of those war stories to share with each other . . .
Barack Obama may or may not have been in church to hear 'Reverend' Wright's bigoted greatest hits as shown on YouTube, but Obama most certainly did hear Wright preach that "white folks greed runs a world in need", perhaps the most racist statement by Wright yet uncovered.
How do we know Obama heard this in person? He himself says it, in this excerpt from the audiobook of Dreams From My Father:
Not only does Obama not criticize this in the slightest, Obama took the title of his book The Audacity of Hope from Wright's sermon that day.
Thanks to Powerline for generously offering the audio clip for the public to use, and thanks to Barack Obama for the fair use of the audiobook excerpt, not that he can Say Anything about it.
Jim Manzi at The Corner points us to a WaPo article about New Jersey restauranteur Bobby Egan, who serves up BBQ ribs and also dabbles in amateur diplomacy with the North Koreans:
"You couldn't put Condoleezza Rice or Madeleine Albright on a level with me in dealing with the Koreans," he says. "They've never even been in a fistfight. I've been in fistfights — including with the Koreans. These are tough guys. Condoleezza Rice is a piano player."
It is a fascinating story about how this guy just stepped in and made connections with both North Korean and Saddam-era Iraqi diplomats. He befriended them with fishing trips and ribs slathered in sauce, and proved his bona fides by willingly undergoing a 'chemical interrogation' by his North Korean handlers.
About a year ago, serious questions were raised about 'Damascus' Nancy Pelosi and whether her amateur attempt at mideast diplomacy violated the Logan Act. You could argue that Egan's forays too might have run afoul of the Act, except Egan seems to have been quite cooperative with the State Department and other arms of the federal government, and sometimes operated at their behest.
I disagree with Egan's fatuous statement that 'we got a few political differences, that's all' between the U.S. and North Korea. That Americans eat ribs while North Koreans eat bark demonstrates slightly more than a mere difference with the North Korean regime. But what Egan is doing is creative and is at least somewhat effective (the idea that he somehow prevented nuclear war in the Korean peninsula is, however, ridiculous), and it is great that the feds have enough imagination to work with him cooperatively instead of just dismissing him as 'obnoxious and pushy' as one agent described him.
Talk is cheap, so why not?
I used to think working class voters had conservative values because they were bitter about their economic circumstances--welfare and immigrants were "scapegoats," part of the false consciousness that would disappear when everyone was guaranteed a good job at good wages. Then I left college. ...
There is video and a transcript of Obama hatin' on the poor country folk of Pennsylvania (it's from the Huffington Post, so it must be true):
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Perhaps this is Obama's odd pitch to make people cling to government instead. Does he really think that 'frustrations' are the only reasons people turn to religion, or choose to exercise their Second Amendment rights? Or that economic frustrations (and the inherent bigotry of the white man, perhaps?) are the only reasons to oppose immigration or trade?
This is probably just a tin-eared moment for a guy normally adept at avoiding such things. It does give a glimpse into his worldview, however.
Who knew that Bill Clinton lying could still be considered 'news'? Clinton served up some hot, tasty whoppers yesterday in Boonville, Indiana:
"A lot of the way this whole campaign has been covered has amused me," he said. "But there was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995. Did y'all see all that. Oh, they blew it up. Let me just tell you. The president of Bosnia and Gen. Wesley Clark -- who was there making peace where we'd lost three peacekeepers who had to ride on a dangerous mountain road because it was too dangerous to go the regular, safe way -- both defended her because they pointed out that when her plane landed in Bosnia, she had to go up to the bulletproof part of the plane, in the front. Everybody else had to put their flack jackets underneath the seat in case they got shot at. And everywhere they went they were covered by Apache helicopters. So they just abbreviated the arrival ceremony. Now I say that because, what really has mattered is that even then she was interested in our troops. And I think she was the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone. And you woulda thought, you know, that she'd robbed a bank the way they carried on about this. And some of them when they're 60 they'll forget something when they're tired at 11:00 at night, too."
What a not-so-subtle way for Bill Clinton to torpedo his wife's campaign. He gratuitously reopens the Tuzla Lie just as it was fading away, subverts the idea of Hillary's 3 a.m. prowess at handling problems, reminds everyone that both Bill and Hillary are pathological liars, and points out that Hillary is old.
But, Bill Clinton did set a personal best here for stuffing the most crap into a sock. It is a masterpiece: interlocking lies, fibs, exaggerations, omissions, misdirections and mischaracterizations so profuse and well-crafted that one is only left saying, bravo! Except, in the YouTube age, this little game no longer works. And that, ultimately, is what is bringing the Clinton era to a close.
Just incredible.
Barack Obama, while he was sitting on the board of the Woods Fund with his America-hating terrorist buddy Bill Ayers, helped fund a new organization by Rashid Khalidi, a mouthpiece for the terrorist PLO. From The Obama Files by John Batchelor:
In Chicago in 1995, Mr. Khalidi and his wife Mona founded the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), a group associated with confrontational statements of support for Palestinians and antagonism toward Israel. In 2001 and again in 2002, the Woods Fund of Chicago, with directors Ayers and Obama, made grants of $40,000 and $35,000 to the AAAN. Importantly, the AAAN vice-president Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada has remembered Mr. Obama's speaking in 1999 against "Israeli occupation" at a charity event for a West Bank refugee camp; and Mr. Abunimah, an American citizen, Hyde Park resident and Princeton graduate, has also recalled Mr. and Mrs. Obama at a fundraiser held for the then-Congressional candidate Obama in 2000 at Rashid and Mona Khalidi's home, where Mr. Obama made convincing statements in support of the Palestinian cause.
Batchelor's article is a must-read distillation of all the shady deals Obama is involved in, linking Tony Rezko, William Ayers, Nadhmi Auchi and Rashid Khalidi in a disturbing alliance of corruption and sociopathology.
You think Jeremiah Wright is bad? That guy is just a lot of hot air compared to Ayers, a Weatherman terrorist who planned multiple attacks against military targets inside the U.S., or Nadhmi Auchi, a crooked billionaire who helped Saddam Hussein rise to power.
Actions speak louder than words, and Obama's actions show where he really stands on the Palestine-Israel question. It shows where he stands on a lot of other questions, as well.
Greeley says that Thomas Sowell has a 'sick mind', but I'll put Sowell's intellect up against Greeley's (or just about anyone else's) any day of the week. In comparison, the paucity of Greeley's ability to reason shows itself quite clearly:
Neither expert, I daresay, ever drove by the church on 95th Street on Sunday morning. The people, including the young ones, are the best dressed and best groomed congregants I have ever seen, and they emerge from the most elegant collection of cars displayed in Sunday morning Chicago. No Catholic parish in Chicago I know of displays such relaxed prosperity on a Sunday. This is not Rev. Jess territory nor do the congregants look like radical white-haters.
They don't look like white-haters, therefore they cannot be white-haters? Greeley is trying to imply that he has familiarity with Chicago's South Side here. Well, he must have missed all of those impeccably dressed followers of Louis Farrakhan on the South Side, who are all unquestionably white-haters.
Here is Greeley's evidence of Sowell's 'sick mind':
Professor Sowell asserts that Barack Obama had to abandon his radical stance when he became a national public figure; he had to "project an entirely different persona, that of a post-racial leader who can heal divisiveness and bring us all together. The ease with which he has accomplished his chameleonlike change is a tribute to the man's talent and a warning about his reliability."
Yep, that Thomas Sowell is a raving lunatic, alright.
P.S. I'd like to add that I have met some members of the Nation of Islam, and their hatred of me simply because of the color of my skin was palpable. I tried to have a conversation with one young man, and I actually had to speak to him through another young black man (not a NOI member) because he would not speak to the blue-eyed devil directly. Even my 'interpreter' was put off and annoyed by it. I wasn't insulted really, but I remember thinking that as a black man, he of all people should know better than to treat others in such a racist fashion. Which is exactly why this whole Rev. Wright black racism thing is so disheartening, sad and hypocritical.
Hillary is outraged by huge oil profits. Unless they end up in her pockets, of course:
A Texas oilman who’s accused of defrauding the Nigerian government by illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil is a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Matthew Yglesias has a reputation for being a 'reasonable' liberal blogger, but does this seem 'reasonable' to you?
Ed Kilgore has an excellent post on the oddly backward nature of John McCain's current "biography tour" and the general weirdness of the campaign emphasizing the idea that their candidate is genetically programmed to monger war through his jingoistic heritage (or something). Ed notes the analogy to Bob Dole's 1996 campaign, the last time the GOP thought having an old man talk fondly about long-past suffering was a good way to win elections. Relatedly, I think it was Matt Stoller who pointed out recently that the candidate with the more impressive military record lost in 1992 and 1996 and 2000 and 2004 so there's reason to doubt that McCain's genuinely impressive military record will serve as an ace in the hole for his campaign.
What I'll say on behalf of this strategy is that it's the best way I can think of to try to take advantage of older people's potential discomfort with the idea of a woman or a black man in the White House that doesn't involve exploiting racism or sexism in a discreditable way. McCain's putting together an identity politics counter-narrative steeped in nostalgia; it didn't work against a white southerner running on a very cautious agenda, but 2008 is going to see the Democrats nominating an unorthodox candidate running on a more liberal agenda.
Yglesias is arguing, incredibly, that McCain's focus on his military record is both racist and sexist at the same time. Matt might actually believe this - he seems to be the type who sees racism lurking under every rock. Check out this Blogginheads.tv diavlog with Ann Althouse and go to the section called 'racists on a place' and tell me if he isn't all too willing to hurl the charge of racism in a very knee-jerk and unreasonable way.
The charges of 'racism' from the left seem to be coming much quicker and heavier in the aftermath of the Wright debacle. For example, check out this post entitled "John McCain's Racist Dogwhistle in Meridian, Mississippi" in which Matt Stoller claims that John McCain gave a speech at Meridian, Mississippi because it is only 40 miles from Philadelphia, Mississippi, which is where the Mississippi Burning murders took place.
Stoller says that "McCain also has some military history in the town", conveniently forgetting to mention that the airfield there is named after McCain's grandfather, and that McCain was a flight instructor there. But no, the real reason McCain went to Meridian is so he can send coded signals to all the KKK cells out there that he is their guy.
Get used to it, this is just the tip of the iceberg. If Obama wins the nomination, we will have many more liberal bloggers and pundits interpreting and translating all the coded racism out there for our convenience. How these liberals all became experts in this field will go unexplained, but never mind you racist.
P.S. Now the left is starting to experiment with 'swiftboating' McCain as well, such as this comment under a different Yglesias post:
Remember, the highlight of McCain's military career was his losing his airplane.What do you expect?
This is pretty odious. I wonder if this commenter knows about the fire aboard the U.S.S. Forrestal that killed 134 sailors, which was started by a Zuni rocket misfired from McCain's plane. Is the left really going to try to make fun of things like that?
Somehow, I don't see this John 'Crash' McCain meme taking off the way the memes about Kerry's Vietnam service did.
Who knew Air America was still around? Rhodes also compares Geraldine Ferraro to David Duke in this 'standup' routine. Oh yeah, that's some big funny right there.
Language Warning: typical foul-mouthed liberal rant follows:
Good thing she only got suspended. She needs that day job.
Update: The Campaign Spot at NRO compares Rhodes' suspension to getting kicked out of Guns And Roses, as in this Dennis Miller bit.
Language Warning Again: but at least Miller shows Rhodes how it is supposed to be done -
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We have been told ad infinitum how President Bush and the War on Terror have caused every man, woman and child on the face of the planet to hate America, but according to the BBC this hardly seems to be the case.
If these poll results are to be believed, that is. Is it really true that only 19% of Israelis believe that the U.S. has a positive influence in the world, but that fully 23% of North Koreans believe the same thing? (Are these North Koreans all eating dirt in 'reeducation camps' now?) Just who was actually pounding the pavement to conduct that polling in North Korea, anyway? My guess is that it was not John Zogby.
The results showing that more Russians than Americans believe America is a positive influence in the world is a bit of a head-scratcher as well. I guess no one is a hero in their home town.
Who was voted the "second meanest" member of the federal House of Representatives, as well the "biggest windbag" and "show horse" in a 2006 Washingtonian article?
Huh?
But, hey, at least Clinton can make the case that she won big states like Texas, right? Sadly, no. Final numbers are still trickling in from the district and county conventions Texas held on Saturday (Step 2 in the state's electoral freak show), but it looks like Obama won the day—and, by extension, the state's March 4 vote. Clinton netted five delegates in the primary, but Obama's estimated nine-delegate net in the caucus puts him ahead of her. Clinton will continue to say she won Texas, but if you're talking about delegates, she didn't.
I remember reading that Texas had an arcane way of alloting delegates. This proves it, I think.
This comes from the Hillary DeathWatch at Slate.com, which puts her at a precise 9.4% chance of success in winning the nomination. Ann Coulter must be getting nervous.
Woah . . . this is some serious cash:
NEW YORK - Alex Rodriguez makes more this year than his hometown Florida Marlins. Boosted by his new deal with the New York Yankees, A-Rod tops the major league baseball salary list at $28 million, according to a study of contract terms by The Associated Press. The 33 players on the Marlins' opening-day roster and disabled list total $21.8 million.Yes, there is no crying in baseball.
WABC 77AM in New York City is reporting that Robert Mugabe is stepping down as president of Zimbabwe.
Mugabe was in negotiations with challenger Morgan Tsvangirai to arrange a settlement after Mugabe lost the national election for president.
Hard-core leftist Mugabe single-handedly destroyed the Zimbabwean economy by appropriating white-owned farm lands, printing money that caused 1,000+ percent inflation, and instituting price controls that caused shortages and literally starved his people.
If he has really been forced out, this is a day of celebration for those who treasure liberty.
