46
3DHS / Tech question
« on: October 07, 2008, 02:52:40 PM »
I want to post something that contains multiple links within the body of the text....how do I convert words or phrases into clickable links?
Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
47
3DHS / Obama channels The West Wing
« on: October 06, 2008, 07:30:31 AM »
Is it Jed Obama? ... Or is it Barack Bartlett?
by Andy McCarthy
I just heard some tape of a speech by Sen. Obama explaining how we can't be a Christian nation because it might require imposing biblical standards on everyone, and that would permit slavery in accordance with Leviticus. I found a site that repeats Obama's riff:
[G]iven the increasing diversity of America?s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.
And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson?s, or Al Sharpton?s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it?s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let?s read our bibles. Folks haven?t been reading their bibles.
I thought to myself, "hmm self, that sounds awfully familiar." Then it hit me: President Jed Bartlett, played by Martin Sheen on the long-running series, The West Wing. There was a dramatic scene when the Left's fantasy Ivy League chief executive ? so erudite, such an accomplished writer and thinker ? browbeats one of those evil, hypocritical evangelical Christians from Talk Radio:
I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I wanted to sell my youngest daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She?s a Georgetown Sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be?
While thinking about that, can I ask another? My chief of staff, Leo McGary, insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself? Or is it okay to call the police?
Here?s one that?s really important, because we?ve got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads?
Probably just a coincidence ...
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODQ4NDY2OGY1NTIxNTRjODAxMjg1MzEwMWE2OTIxN2M=
by Andy McCarthy
I just heard some tape of a speech by Sen. Obama explaining how we can't be a Christian nation because it might require imposing biblical standards on everyone, and that would permit slavery in accordance with Leviticus. I found a site that repeats Obama's riff:
[G]iven the increasing diversity of America?s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.
And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson?s, or Al Sharpton?s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it?s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let?s read our bibles. Folks haven?t been reading their bibles.
I thought to myself, "hmm self, that sounds awfully familiar." Then it hit me: President Jed Bartlett, played by Martin Sheen on the long-running series, The West Wing. There was a dramatic scene when the Left's fantasy Ivy League chief executive ? so erudite, such an accomplished writer and thinker ? browbeats one of those evil, hypocritical evangelical Christians from Talk Radio:
I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I wanted to sell my youngest daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She?s a Georgetown Sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be?
While thinking about that, can I ask another? My chief of staff, Leo McGary, insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself? Or is it okay to call the police?
Here?s one that?s really important, because we?ve got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads?
Probably just a coincidence ...
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODQ4NDY2OGY1NTIxNTRjODAxMjg1MzEwMWE2OTIxN2M=
48
3DHS / Do Facts Matter?
« on: October 05, 2008, 10:48:48 PM »
Recriminations.
By Thomas Sowell
Abraham Lincoln said, ?You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can?t fool all the people all the time.?
Unfortunately, the future of this country, as well as the fate of the Western world, depends on how many people can be fooled on Election Day, just a few weeks from now.
Right now, the polls indicate that a whole lot of the people are being fooled a whole lot of the time.
The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain ? which is astonishing in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis.
It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama?s rhetoric and the media?s spin enough to make facts irrelevant?
Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years ? including the present year ? denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.
It was Sen. Dodd, Congressman Frank, and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today?s financial crisis.
Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the president. So did Bush?s secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.
Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration ?right-wing ideology? of ?de-regulation? that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?
We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn?t.
Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?
Then there is the question of being against the ?greed? of CEOs and for ?the people.? Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis.
Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom referred to the ?lynching? of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him to the same standard as white CEOs.
Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!
The Washington Post criticized the McCain campaign for calling Raines an adviser to Obama, even though that fact was reported in the Washington Post itself on July 16th. The technicality and the spin here is that Raines is not officially listed as an adviser. But someone who advises is an adviser, whether or not his name appears on a letterhead.
The tie between Barack Obama and Franklin Raines is not all one-way. Obama has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae?s financial contributions, right after Sen. Christopher Dodd.
But ties between Obama and Raines? Not if you read the mainstream media.
Facts don?t matter much politically if they are not reported.
The media alone are not alone in keeping the facts from the public. Republicans, for reasons unknown, don?t seem to know what it is to counterattack. They deserve to lose.
But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed their hatred of America.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGRjODM1MTJlOGZiZDk2ODI4NTUzMWMxYjgwMjliMGQ=
By Thomas Sowell
Abraham Lincoln said, ?You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can?t fool all the people all the time.?
Unfortunately, the future of this country, as well as the fate of the Western world, depends on how many people can be fooled on Election Day, just a few weeks from now.
Right now, the polls indicate that a whole lot of the people are being fooled a whole lot of the time.
The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain ? which is astonishing in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis.
It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama?s rhetoric and the media?s spin enough to make facts irrelevant?
Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years ? including the present year ? denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.
It was Sen. Dodd, Congressman Frank, and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today?s financial crisis.
Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the president. So did Bush?s secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.
Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration ?right-wing ideology? of ?de-regulation? that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?
We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn?t.
Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?
Then there is the question of being against the ?greed? of CEOs and for ?the people.? Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis.
Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom referred to the ?lynching? of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him to the same standard as white CEOs.
Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!
The Washington Post criticized the McCain campaign for calling Raines an adviser to Obama, even though that fact was reported in the Washington Post itself on July 16th. The technicality and the spin here is that Raines is not officially listed as an adviser. But someone who advises is an adviser, whether or not his name appears on a letterhead.
The tie between Barack Obama and Franklin Raines is not all one-way. Obama has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae?s financial contributions, right after Sen. Christopher Dodd.
But ties between Obama and Raines? Not if you read the mainstream media.
Facts don?t matter much politically if they are not reported.
The media alone are not alone in keeping the facts from the public. Republicans, for reasons unknown, don?t seem to know what it is to counterattack. They deserve to lose.
But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed their hatred of America.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGRjODM1MTJlOGZiZDk2ODI4NTUzMWMxYjgwMjliMGQ=
49
3DHS / Steyn on Palin
« on: October 05, 2008, 03:01:34 AM »
With a Wink and a Smile
A citizen-politician runs for veep.
By Mark Steyn
Back in February, several political lifetimes ago, I was on the radio with Laura Ingraham and she played Stevie Wonder?s campaign song for Barack Obama, whose lyric, in its entirety, runs:
Ba-rack O-ba-ma
Ba-a-rack O-ba-a-ma
Ba-ra-ack Obama-a...
(Repeat until coronation.)
And Laura and I had a good laugh about it, until it occurred to me that, in politics as in pop, the tune is more important than the words. A guy can run for president with all the right lyrics ? on the war, the economy, the social issues ? but what matters is whether people respond to the underlying music: not what he?s saying, but how he?s saying it. At the time, I was reflecting on Mitt Romney: The song looked great on paper, but when he stuck it on the stand and started to warble it never quite soared.
That?s where Sarah Palin scored in the vice-presidential showdown. A lot of the grandees in the post-debate analysis reviewed the lyrics and missed the music. Whereas, I would wager, a big chunk of uncommitted voters out in TV land listened to Governor Palin, and liked the tune they were hearing. If you?re one of those coastal feminists who despise Alaska?s sweetheart as a chillbilly breeder whose knowledge of foreign policy is as full of holes as the last moose to make the mistake of strolling past her deck, Thursday night?s folksy performance isn?t going to change your view. But, if your contempt for her wasn?t already chiseled in granite, she came over as genuine, confident ?and different. Change you can believe in, to coin a phrase.
I was a bit alarmed at first. I hadn?t seen her for awhile, not since the halfwits at the McCain campaign walled her up in the witness protection program and permitted visitations only by selected poobahs of the Metamucil networks. When she walked out on stage, her famous reach-for-the-skies up-do seemed a bit subdued and earthbound, like a low-budget remake of the famous scene in There?s Something About Mary. Then she started speaking. The lyrics were workmanlike, but the music was effective. I have a couple of favorite snapshots from the evening. One was when Governor Sarah Palin said that John McCain hadn?t required her to check her principles at the door, and she still believed in drilling in ANWR and she was hoping to bring him round on that. And then she grinned and gave a mischievous wink into the camera, and to the nation.
?Don?t sell the American people short,? said Obama honcho David Axelrod. ?They need more than a wink and a smile.? Okay, so how about this? Joe Biden mocked the McCain campaign?s energy policy as ?Drill, drill, drill?, and the governor came back to correct the line: ?It?s not ?Drill, drill, drill?,? she grinned. ?It?s ?Drill, baby, drill!??
To be sure, if you listened to the lyrics ? the policy, the facts, the platform ? they weren?t always what you wanted to hear. Governor Palin?s riff on education quickly descended into a rote call for more spending, even though America already spends more per pupil than any advanced nation other than Switzerland and has less to show for it. And more than once you pined for a more devastating putdown: The Obama ?plan? to ?end? the war was, more precisely, a plan to lose the war, and in a healthy political culture would disqualify him from serious contention. If I?d been in charge of ?coaching? Governor Palin, I?d take her out back, and set up the various Obama policy platforms as cardboard elk, lurking in the protective undergrowth of the mainstream media but still eminently hittable to a crack shot.
By contrast, Senator Biden was glib and fluent and in command of the facts ? if by ?in command of the facts? you mean ?talks complete blithering balderdash and hogwash.? He flatly declared that Obama never said he would meet Ahmadinejad without preconditions. But, on Debate Night, the official Obama website was still boasting that he would meet Ahmadinejad ?without preconditions?. He said America spends more in a month in Iraq than it?s spent in seven years in Afghanistan. Er, America has spent over $700 billion in Afghanistan since 2001. It?s spending about $10 billion a month in Iraq. But no matter. To demonstrate his command of the ?facts?, Senator Biden sportingly offered up his own instant replays:
?My friend John McCain voted 422 times against tax cuts for the middle classes. Let me repeat that so the American people are clear on this. My friend John McCain voted 673 times against tax cuts for the middle classes.?
The problem was that it all sounded drearily senatorial. Mention any global crisis ? civil war in Bosnia, genocide in Darfur, Russian aggression in Georgia, the lack of five-star restaurants in Wales ? and Biden has been there, usually within the last two weeks, and always at public expense. What the American taxpayer gets for the Emir of Delaware?s frequent-flyer miles is harder to discern. Biden was doing his best to turn in a decent karaoke version of Lloyd Bentsen, but, unfortunately, Governor Palin declined to play Dan Quayle. That left Joe sounding like an ancient pol being generically vice-presidential. Sarah, at her best, sounded like the citizen-politician this country?s Founders intended. She hasn?t voted 397 times against this or that in the U.S. Senate, because she?s been running a state, and a town, and a commercial fishing operation. She?s a doer, not a talker, which is why so many of my fellow professional talkers disdain her.
When Regular Joe Six-Pack Bluecollar Biden tried to match her on the Main Street cred, it rang slightly wacky. ?Look,? he said, ?All you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie?s Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me, where I spend a lot of time.? Why? Is he moonlighting as a checkout clerk on the evening shift? Or is he stalking that nice lady in Lighting Fixtures? As for Katie?s Restaurant, ah, I?m sure it was grand but apparently it closed in 1990. In the Diner of the Mind, the refills are endless and Senator Joe is sitting shootin? the breeze over a cuppa joe with a couple other regular joes on adjoining stools while Betty-Jo, the sassy waitress who?s tough as nails but with a heart of gold, says Ol? Joe, the short-order cook who?s doing his Sloppy Joes just the way the Senator likes ?em, really appreciates the way that, despite 78 years in Washington, Joe Biden is still just the same regular Joe Six-Pack he was when he and Norman Rockwell first came in for a sarsaparilla all those years ago. But, alas, while he was jetting off for one-to-one talks with the Deputy Tourism Minister of Waziristan, the old neighborhood changed.
In a conventional presidential environment, Bidenesque fake authenticity would be enough. Up against Sarah Palin?s authentic authenticity, I?m not so sure. All I know is that the McCain campaign should have her out on the road and doing every interview she can over this final month. Oh, and send her snowmobiling hubby to Maine, which splits its electoral college votes. He?ll put their Second Congressional District back in the red camp, and the way things are looking that could be the 270th vote that saves McCain?s bacon.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmNjYTc3NzFiZGU1NjM2YmQ3NmMzNTM3NjJlNGMzMjU=
A citizen-politician runs for veep.
By Mark Steyn
Back in February, several political lifetimes ago, I was on the radio with Laura Ingraham and she played Stevie Wonder?s campaign song for Barack Obama, whose lyric, in its entirety, runs:
Ba-rack O-ba-ma
Ba-a-rack O-ba-a-ma
Ba-ra-ack Obama-a...
(Repeat until coronation.)
And Laura and I had a good laugh about it, until it occurred to me that, in politics as in pop, the tune is more important than the words. A guy can run for president with all the right lyrics ? on the war, the economy, the social issues ? but what matters is whether people respond to the underlying music: not what he?s saying, but how he?s saying it. At the time, I was reflecting on Mitt Romney: The song looked great on paper, but when he stuck it on the stand and started to warble it never quite soared.
That?s where Sarah Palin scored in the vice-presidential showdown. A lot of the grandees in the post-debate analysis reviewed the lyrics and missed the music. Whereas, I would wager, a big chunk of uncommitted voters out in TV land listened to Governor Palin, and liked the tune they were hearing. If you?re one of those coastal feminists who despise Alaska?s sweetheart as a chillbilly breeder whose knowledge of foreign policy is as full of holes as the last moose to make the mistake of strolling past her deck, Thursday night?s folksy performance isn?t going to change your view. But, if your contempt for her wasn?t already chiseled in granite, she came over as genuine, confident ?and different. Change you can believe in, to coin a phrase.
I was a bit alarmed at first. I hadn?t seen her for awhile, not since the halfwits at the McCain campaign walled her up in the witness protection program and permitted visitations only by selected poobahs of the Metamucil networks. When she walked out on stage, her famous reach-for-the-skies up-do seemed a bit subdued and earthbound, like a low-budget remake of the famous scene in There?s Something About Mary. Then she started speaking. The lyrics were workmanlike, but the music was effective. I have a couple of favorite snapshots from the evening. One was when Governor Sarah Palin said that John McCain hadn?t required her to check her principles at the door, and she still believed in drilling in ANWR and she was hoping to bring him round on that. And then she grinned and gave a mischievous wink into the camera, and to the nation.
?Don?t sell the American people short,? said Obama honcho David Axelrod. ?They need more than a wink and a smile.? Okay, so how about this? Joe Biden mocked the McCain campaign?s energy policy as ?Drill, drill, drill?, and the governor came back to correct the line: ?It?s not ?Drill, drill, drill?,? she grinned. ?It?s ?Drill, baby, drill!??
To be sure, if you listened to the lyrics ? the policy, the facts, the platform ? they weren?t always what you wanted to hear. Governor Palin?s riff on education quickly descended into a rote call for more spending, even though America already spends more per pupil than any advanced nation other than Switzerland and has less to show for it. And more than once you pined for a more devastating putdown: The Obama ?plan? to ?end? the war was, more precisely, a plan to lose the war, and in a healthy political culture would disqualify him from serious contention. If I?d been in charge of ?coaching? Governor Palin, I?d take her out back, and set up the various Obama policy platforms as cardboard elk, lurking in the protective undergrowth of the mainstream media but still eminently hittable to a crack shot.
By contrast, Senator Biden was glib and fluent and in command of the facts ? if by ?in command of the facts? you mean ?talks complete blithering balderdash and hogwash.? He flatly declared that Obama never said he would meet Ahmadinejad without preconditions. But, on Debate Night, the official Obama website was still boasting that he would meet Ahmadinejad ?without preconditions?. He said America spends more in a month in Iraq than it?s spent in seven years in Afghanistan. Er, America has spent over $700 billion in Afghanistan since 2001. It?s spending about $10 billion a month in Iraq. But no matter. To demonstrate his command of the ?facts?, Senator Biden sportingly offered up his own instant replays:
?My friend John McCain voted 422 times against tax cuts for the middle classes. Let me repeat that so the American people are clear on this. My friend John McCain voted 673 times against tax cuts for the middle classes.?
The problem was that it all sounded drearily senatorial. Mention any global crisis ? civil war in Bosnia, genocide in Darfur, Russian aggression in Georgia, the lack of five-star restaurants in Wales ? and Biden has been there, usually within the last two weeks, and always at public expense. What the American taxpayer gets for the Emir of Delaware?s frequent-flyer miles is harder to discern. Biden was doing his best to turn in a decent karaoke version of Lloyd Bentsen, but, unfortunately, Governor Palin declined to play Dan Quayle. That left Joe sounding like an ancient pol being generically vice-presidential. Sarah, at her best, sounded like the citizen-politician this country?s Founders intended. She hasn?t voted 397 times against this or that in the U.S. Senate, because she?s been running a state, and a town, and a commercial fishing operation. She?s a doer, not a talker, which is why so many of my fellow professional talkers disdain her.
When Regular Joe Six-Pack Bluecollar Biden tried to match her on the Main Street cred, it rang slightly wacky. ?Look,? he said, ?All you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie?s Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me, where I spend a lot of time.? Why? Is he moonlighting as a checkout clerk on the evening shift? Or is he stalking that nice lady in Lighting Fixtures? As for Katie?s Restaurant, ah, I?m sure it was grand but apparently it closed in 1990. In the Diner of the Mind, the refills are endless and Senator Joe is sitting shootin? the breeze over a cuppa joe with a couple other regular joes on adjoining stools while Betty-Jo, the sassy waitress who?s tough as nails but with a heart of gold, says Ol? Joe, the short-order cook who?s doing his Sloppy Joes just the way the Senator likes ?em, really appreciates the way that, despite 78 years in Washington, Joe Biden is still just the same regular Joe Six-Pack he was when he and Norman Rockwell first came in for a sarsaparilla all those years ago. But, alas, while he was jetting off for one-to-one talks with the Deputy Tourism Minister of Waziristan, the old neighborhood changed.
In a conventional presidential environment, Bidenesque fake authenticity would be enough. Up against Sarah Palin?s authentic authenticity, I?m not so sure. All I know is that the McCain campaign should have her out on the road and doing every interview she can over this final month. Oh, and send her snowmobiling hubby to Maine, which splits its electoral college votes. He?ll put their Second Congressional District back in the red camp, and the way things are looking that could be the 270th vote that saves McCain?s bacon.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmNjYTc3NzFiZGU1NjM2YmQ3NmMzNTM3NjJlNGMzMjU=
50
3DHS / The Left takes a stand on ... winking.
« on: October 03, 2008, 09:27:26 PM »
Sarah Palin, the Winner by a Wink
Team Obama tries to understand her performance.
By Byron York
St. Louis ? In the hours before Sarah Palin and Joseph Biden took the stage here at Washington University, Barack Obama?s top advisers went out of their way to talk up Palin?s debating skills. ?I expect that Gov. Palin is going to be very effective tonight,? chief strategist David Axelrod told reporters. ?She?s been working hard at this.? David Plouffe, the campaign manager, upped the ante when he called Palin ?one of the best debaters in American politics.?
Maybe they were just trying to raise expectations, set about a millimeter off the ground after Palin?s interview with CBS?s Katie Couric. Maybe they really thought Palin would do well. In any event, their statements before the debate allowed them to stride into the Spin Room after the session and say, See? ? I told you she was good.
?Everybody thinks I was joking about it,? Axelrod said after the debate ended. ?I was not joking about it. Sarah Palin is a good performer.?
No argument there. Despite a few weak moments, Palin delivered a strong and sure performance Thursday night. After enduring weeks of derision, Palin didn?t just beat the low expectations for her performance; she ran all over them.
But how? Superior debating ability? Commanding logic? A winning manner? No, not at all. If you listened to Team Obama after the debate late Thursday, you learned Palin accomplished her impressive performance by . . . winking.
?Don?t sell the American people short,? Axelrod told reporters after the debate. ?I?m sure they liked Gov. Palin, but they need more than a wink and a smile.? Axelrod also said Biden gave people hope, ?rather than offering them a wink and a smile.? And he added that, ?The American people are asking for more ? they want more than a wink and a nod and a smile.?
A few minutes later, I talked to Bob Barnett, the Washington lawyer who has played key roles in past Democratic debate preparation and who this time represented the Obama campaign in negotiating ground rules between the two candidates. Barnett knows how to watch and evaluate a debate, so I asked him to critique Palin?s performance. ?She played her tapes,? Barnett said, meaning that Palin repeated pre-planned statements. ?She came in with ten things to say and six winks to perform, and she did them.?
?Six winks??
?Yeah. Did you see? Six. I counted six.?
?You were watching closely.?
?Well, I was counting.?
It?s probably safe to say that this was the first national debate in which one side explained that the other had done its best work by winking. By a few hours after the debate, the great wink issue had driven some commentators on the Left nearly to distraction. ?The next person that winks at me, I?m not sure I?m going to be able to take it after tonight,? said MSNBC?s Rachel Maddow.
Representatives of the McCain campaign had a different explanation for Palin?s performance. ?Smart, tough, and together,? said Sen. Lindsey Graham, a key member of the McCain Posse. ?I thought she understood where the country would go and articulated how the country would be different with McCain-Palin vs. Obama-Biden, and she had a personable nature that said, ?I am different and new to Washington.??
I asked Graham whether the Palin on stage seemed different from the Palin of those CBS and ABC interviews. ?Yeah,? he said. ?I think she just hit her stride. I think over 90 minutes you can understand who the person is . . . she had a level of confidence and likeability, for lack of a better word, that shone tonight that you?ll never see in a 15-second sound bite.?
Graham?s words brought up the complaint, going around in Republican circles, that the McCain campaign has mishandled Palin, keeping her under wraps except for those high-profile, old-fashioned broadcast network interviews. Insiders concede that there was something wrong in Camp Palin ? a problem that was fixed, at least somewhat, by the intervention of top campaign officials as debate prep got underway. Now, everyone has signed on to the idea of letting Palin be Palin. ?I think we ought to use her more,? Graham said. ?I think one of the biggest mistakes we made was not to showcase her to the people.?
Well, she is showcased now. From the very beginning, Palin came out strong in a way that overshadowed Biden. For example, if it is vitally important in this campaign for a candidate to convey the impression that he or she understands a typical family?s economic anxieties ? well, Palin passed the test easily. She was solid throughout on taxes, and even though she pressed too hard on the issue of predatory lending, she also acknowledged the role that bad personal decisions have played in today?s financial mess. ?Let?s do what our parents told us before we probably even got that first credit card,? Palin said. ?Don?t live outside of our means.?
For the first time in any extensive way, Palin also stressed her own experience ?as a mayor and business owner and oil-and-gas regulator and then as a governor.? She talked at some length about energy, both her own record and that of Obama and Biden, and she spoke with real authority. Even when the subject was Darfur, she mentioned something she had done in Alaska.
On foreign policy in general, Palin showed vast improvement over her performance in the network interviews. But it?s not her strong suit ? can you name a governor other than Reagan who has been elected president for whom foreign policy was a strong suit? ? and she had less command of the issues than did Biden. On the other hand, Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, used his long experience to make some points that were simply preposterous. For example, he continued to deny that Barack Obama had ever pledged to meet with Iran?s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions. ?This is simply not true about Barack Obama,? Biden said, pointing out that Ahmadinejad ?does not control the security apparatus? in Iran.
Just for the record, in a Democratic debate on July 23, 2007, Obama was asked whether he would be ?willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?? Obama answered, ?I would.? Any reasonable reading of that would say that Obama pledged to meet the leader of Iran ? be it Ahmadinejad or someone else ? without precondition. On another occasion, Obama said it specifically with reference to Ahmadinejad. So score some points for Palin even in her weak area.
On the other hand, Palin delivered some answers that left viewers scratching their heads. On climate change, she said:
I?m not one to attribute every man ? activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man?s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet. But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don?t want to argue about the causes, what I want to argue is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?
It was one of those answers that, if you were sympathetic to Palin, you said, ?I understand what she means.? If you were unsympathetic to Palin, you said it was gibberish.
Palin should also probably not have wandered into the question, explored by Dick Cheney and few others, of whether the vice president has the authority to play a greater role in the Senate than previously thought.
But if you were looking for Palin to stumble ? and Democrats wouldn?t have minded that one bit, despite all their pre-show praise of Palin?s debating skills ? you just didn?t see it onstage Thursday night. Palin emerged from a couple of weeks of misguided Team McCain handling with her Palin-ness intact, and she showed it onstage when it counted.
And that, for a lot of Republicans, was a deeply satisfying turn of events. ?One of the reasons I feel so good for her, just as a human being,? said former Sen. Fred Thompson, ?is I have never seen anybody undergo the ridicule, the slanders and the lies, and the blogosphere and what they?re doing, and breaking into her private e-mail, rumors and things about her, and now, most recently, belittling her, taking little snippets of interviews and laughing at her and satirizing her. Those people ought to be ashamed of themselves, if they?re capable of shame, because they?ve proven that what they were doing does not represent who she was and who she is. Thank goodness, just as she said, that this was an unfiltered event for an hour and a half. She could stand toe-to-toe with Joe Biden, who?s been around for all these many, many years, and basically take him to the woodshed.?
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=ODQ0NWQzODAyMWFlYTkzMDRiYmYzNDU4OWE3M2YzZDY=
Team Obama tries to understand her performance.
By Byron York
St. Louis ? In the hours before Sarah Palin and Joseph Biden took the stage here at Washington University, Barack Obama?s top advisers went out of their way to talk up Palin?s debating skills. ?I expect that Gov. Palin is going to be very effective tonight,? chief strategist David Axelrod told reporters. ?She?s been working hard at this.? David Plouffe, the campaign manager, upped the ante when he called Palin ?one of the best debaters in American politics.?
Maybe they were just trying to raise expectations, set about a millimeter off the ground after Palin?s interview with CBS?s Katie Couric. Maybe they really thought Palin would do well. In any event, their statements before the debate allowed them to stride into the Spin Room after the session and say, See? ? I told you she was good.
?Everybody thinks I was joking about it,? Axelrod said after the debate ended. ?I was not joking about it. Sarah Palin is a good performer.?
No argument there. Despite a few weak moments, Palin delivered a strong and sure performance Thursday night. After enduring weeks of derision, Palin didn?t just beat the low expectations for her performance; she ran all over them.
But how? Superior debating ability? Commanding logic? A winning manner? No, not at all. If you listened to Team Obama after the debate late Thursday, you learned Palin accomplished her impressive performance by . . . winking.
?Don?t sell the American people short,? Axelrod told reporters after the debate. ?I?m sure they liked Gov. Palin, but they need more than a wink and a smile.? Axelrod also said Biden gave people hope, ?rather than offering them a wink and a smile.? And he added that, ?The American people are asking for more ? they want more than a wink and a nod and a smile.?
A few minutes later, I talked to Bob Barnett, the Washington lawyer who has played key roles in past Democratic debate preparation and who this time represented the Obama campaign in negotiating ground rules between the two candidates. Barnett knows how to watch and evaluate a debate, so I asked him to critique Palin?s performance. ?She played her tapes,? Barnett said, meaning that Palin repeated pre-planned statements. ?She came in with ten things to say and six winks to perform, and she did them.?
?Six winks??
?Yeah. Did you see? Six. I counted six.?
?You were watching closely.?
?Well, I was counting.?
It?s probably safe to say that this was the first national debate in which one side explained that the other had done its best work by winking. By a few hours after the debate, the great wink issue had driven some commentators on the Left nearly to distraction. ?The next person that winks at me, I?m not sure I?m going to be able to take it after tonight,? said MSNBC?s Rachel Maddow.
Representatives of the McCain campaign had a different explanation for Palin?s performance. ?Smart, tough, and together,? said Sen. Lindsey Graham, a key member of the McCain Posse. ?I thought she understood where the country would go and articulated how the country would be different with McCain-Palin vs. Obama-Biden, and she had a personable nature that said, ?I am different and new to Washington.??
I asked Graham whether the Palin on stage seemed different from the Palin of those CBS and ABC interviews. ?Yeah,? he said. ?I think she just hit her stride. I think over 90 minutes you can understand who the person is . . . she had a level of confidence and likeability, for lack of a better word, that shone tonight that you?ll never see in a 15-second sound bite.?
Graham?s words brought up the complaint, going around in Republican circles, that the McCain campaign has mishandled Palin, keeping her under wraps except for those high-profile, old-fashioned broadcast network interviews. Insiders concede that there was something wrong in Camp Palin ? a problem that was fixed, at least somewhat, by the intervention of top campaign officials as debate prep got underway. Now, everyone has signed on to the idea of letting Palin be Palin. ?I think we ought to use her more,? Graham said. ?I think one of the biggest mistakes we made was not to showcase her to the people.?
Well, she is showcased now. From the very beginning, Palin came out strong in a way that overshadowed Biden. For example, if it is vitally important in this campaign for a candidate to convey the impression that he or she understands a typical family?s economic anxieties ? well, Palin passed the test easily. She was solid throughout on taxes, and even though she pressed too hard on the issue of predatory lending, she also acknowledged the role that bad personal decisions have played in today?s financial mess. ?Let?s do what our parents told us before we probably even got that first credit card,? Palin said. ?Don?t live outside of our means.?
For the first time in any extensive way, Palin also stressed her own experience ?as a mayor and business owner and oil-and-gas regulator and then as a governor.? She talked at some length about energy, both her own record and that of Obama and Biden, and she spoke with real authority. Even when the subject was Darfur, she mentioned something she had done in Alaska.
On foreign policy in general, Palin showed vast improvement over her performance in the network interviews. But it?s not her strong suit ? can you name a governor other than Reagan who has been elected president for whom foreign policy was a strong suit? ? and she had less command of the issues than did Biden. On the other hand, Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, used his long experience to make some points that were simply preposterous. For example, he continued to deny that Barack Obama had ever pledged to meet with Iran?s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions. ?This is simply not true about Barack Obama,? Biden said, pointing out that Ahmadinejad ?does not control the security apparatus? in Iran.
Just for the record, in a Democratic debate on July 23, 2007, Obama was asked whether he would be ?willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?? Obama answered, ?I would.? Any reasonable reading of that would say that Obama pledged to meet the leader of Iran ? be it Ahmadinejad or someone else ? without precondition. On another occasion, Obama said it specifically with reference to Ahmadinejad. So score some points for Palin even in her weak area.
On the other hand, Palin delivered some answers that left viewers scratching their heads. On climate change, she said:
I?m not one to attribute every man ? activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man?s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet. But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don?t want to argue about the causes, what I want to argue is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?
It was one of those answers that, if you were sympathetic to Palin, you said, ?I understand what she means.? If you were unsympathetic to Palin, you said it was gibberish.
Palin should also probably not have wandered into the question, explored by Dick Cheney and few others, of whether the vice president has the authority to play a greater role in the Senate than previously thought.
But if you were looking for Palin to stumble ? and Democrats wouldn?t have minded that one bit, despite all their pre-show praise of Palin?s debating skills ? you just didn?t see it onstage Thursday night. Palin emerged from a couple of weeks of misguided Team McCain handling with her Palin-ness intact, and she showed it onstage when it counted.
And that, for a lot of Republicans, was a deeply satisfying turn of events. ?One of the reasons I feel so good for her, just as a human being,? said former Sen. Fred Thompson, ?is I have never seen anybody undergo the ridicule, the slanders and the lies, and the blogosphere and what they?re doing, and breaking into her private e-mail, rumors and things about her, and now, most recently, belittling her, taking little snippets of interviews and laughing at her and satirizing her. Those people ought to be ashamed of themselves, if they?re capable of shame, because they?ve proven that what they were doing does not represent who she was and who she is. Thank goodness, just as she said, that this was an unfiltered event for an hour and a half. She could stand toe-to-toe with Joe Biden, who?s been around for all these many, many years, and basically take him to the woodshed.?
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=ODQ0NWQzODAyMWFlYTkzMDRiYmYzNDU4OWE3M2YzZDY=
51
3DHS / The Age of Celebrity Journalists
« on: October 02, 2008, 09:59:55 PM »
Ifill courts a second, lesser, conflict of interest tonight. Millions of viewers will be tuning in. That's millions of potential book buyers. Ifill's not a household name. Tonight is a marketing opportunity to raise her profile and be a part of the Election 2008 story. With a book due in January, there's a natural temptation to make a star turn of her own. I can certainly think of certain TV journalists/personalities who would succumb.
That's not to say that journalists who cover elections shouldn't write books on elections. But should they be moderating televised debates while writing said books? Maybe I'm too suspicious. But one can't help but suspect that Ms. Ifill was on some level aware of the problem. As we've learned, she didn't take it upon herself to inform the commission of her literary efforts and let the chips fall where they may.
Update: I just heard Chris Wallace suggest that she should disclose to viewers that she has a book coming out on Obama. Millions of free advertising dollars dressed up in the guise of "journalistic integrity"? If I were her publicist, I'd tell her to go for it!: "I'm Gwen Ifill of PBS. In the interest of full disclosure, I want to alert viewers that I have a book coming out on the stunning rise of Barack Obama due in bookstores January 20th, Inauguration Day. It's also available right now on pre-sale at Amazon.com."
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NThlODkzNGI5YjdjMzNiYjk4Njc4NDhhMTc0Y2JiZDE=
That's not to say that journalists who cover elections shouldn't write books on elections. But should they be moderating televised debates while writing said books? Maybe I'm too suspicious. But one can't help but suspect that Ms. Ifill was on some level aware of the problem. As we've learned, she didn't take it upon herself to inform the commission of her literary efforts and let the chips fall where they may.
Update: I just heard Chris Wallace suggest that she should disclose to viewers that she has a book coming out on Obama. Millions of free advertising dollars dressed up in the guise of "journalistic integrity"? If I were her publicist, I'd tell her to go for it!: "I'm Gwen Ifill of PBS. In the interest of full disclosure, I want to alert viewers that I have a book coming out on the stunning rise of Barack Obama due in bookstores January 20th, Inauguration Day. It's also available right now on pre-sale at Amazon.com."
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NThlODkzNGI5YjdjMzNiYjk4Njc4NDhhMTc0Y2JiZDE=
52
3DHS / The Candidates On Their Personal Flaws
« on: October 02, 2008, 04:37:33 AM »
Katie Couric: What one personal flaw do you think might hinder your ability to be president?
Barack Obama: I don't think there's ? a flaw that would hinder my ability to function as president. I think that all of us have things we need to improve. You know, I said during the primary that my management of paper can sometimes be a problem.
Couric: You can come up with something better than that, though, can't you?
Obama: I just use it as an example of something that I'm constantly tryin' to work on. What is often a strength can be a weakness. So, you know, for me there are times where I want to think through all our options. At some point you've gotta make sure that we're making a decision. So far, at least I've proven to be pretty good about knowing when that time is.
I think, as president, with all the information that's coming at you constantly, you're never gonna have 100 percent information. And you've just gotta make the call quickly and surely. And I think ? that's a capacity that I've shown myself to have.
John McCain: You know, I'm not an objective observer. I would think that probably, I think that would have to be, to make sure, that I don't make any decisions that are not fully informed by every source of information that's credible I can possibly get. When I see and read history, I see sometimes that presidents make judgments that they only consulted a small circle of people. And sometimes, those were only those who agreed with that president.
I've got to make sure that I reach out to Democrats, to Republicans, to people who have opposing views. Because when we're making decisions about the future of the country, you cannot discount practically any viewpoint. So what happens to presidents in history is they get in bubbles and they don't get all the information they need to make the best judgments. I've got to guard against that.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/17/eveningnews/main4456430.shtml
Barack Obama: I don't think there's ? a flaw that would hinder my ability to function as president. I think that all of us have things we need to improve. You know, I said during the primary that my management of paper can sometimes be a problem.
Couric: You can come up with something better than that, though, can't you?
Obama: I just use it as an example of something that I'm constantly tryin' to work on. What is often a strength can be a weakness. So, you know, for me there are times where I want to think through all our options. At some point you've gotta make sure that we're making a decision. So far, at least I've proven to be pretty good about knowing when that time is.
I think, as president, with all the information that's coming at you constantly, you're never gonna have 100 percent information. And you've just gotta make the call quickly and surely. And I think ? that's a capacity that I've shown myself to have.
John McCain: You know, I'm not an objective observer. I would think that probably, I think that would have to be, to make sure, that I don't make any decisions that are not fully informed by every source of information that's credible I can possibly get. When I see and read history, I see sometimes that presidents make judgments that they only consulted a small circle of people. And sometimes, those were only those who agreed with that president.
I've got to make sure that I reach out to Democrats, to Republicans, to people who have opposing views. Because when we're making decisions about the future of the country, you cannot discount practically any viewpoint. So what happens to presidents in history is they get in bubbles and they don't get all the information they need to make the best judgments. I've got to guard against that.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/17/eveningnews/main4456430.shtml
53
3DHS / Will 7-11 coffee drinkers correctly predict election outcome again?
« on: September 29, 2008, 03:24:13 PM »
7-Eleven brings back coffee cup presidential vote
7-Eleven Inc. is giving Americans the chance to vote early and often.
The Dallas-based chain is bringing back its to-go coffee cup promotion that proved prescient in the 2000 and '04 presidential elections.
Voting begins Wednesday and ends on Election Day, Nov. 4. Customers vote by filling red to-go hot beverage cups for Republican nominee Sen. John McCain or blue cups for Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama.
Anyone abstaining or undecided but still in need of caffeine can fill a regular 7-Eleven cup.
7-Election has attracted 6 million voters each election, and the company expects at least that many this year.
The retailer says that past interim results closely mirrored the official surveys by the country's top political pollsters. Final results were right on.
Cup counts predicted President Bush's close against Democratic nominee Al Gore in 2000. Likewise in 2004, President Bush out-cupped Sen. John Kerry, 51 percent to 49 percent.
Joe DePinto, 7-Eleven president and chief executive, said the company doesn't bill the poll as scientific, but its stores do reach regular Americans "just going about their everyday lives."
Cups are instantly tabulated at the register when the sale is made. National and state results will be posted daily on www.7-election.com, a Web site created for the hot beverage poll.
7-Eleven says coffee is a nonpartisan beverage choice and notes it was named the national beverage by the First Continental Congress after the Boston Tea Party.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-7eleven_29bus.State.Edition1.1adbf8f.html
7-Eleven Inc. is giving Americans the chance to vote early and often.
The Dallas-based chain is bringing back its to-go coffee cup promotion that proved prescient in the 2000 and '04 presidential elections.
Voting begins Wednesday and ends on Election Day, Nov. 4. Customers vote by filling red to-go hot beverage cups for Republican nominee Sen. John McCain or blue cups for Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama.
Anyone abstaining or undecided but still in need of caffeine can fill a regular 7-Eleven cup.
7-Election has attracted 6 million voters each election, and the company expects at least that many this year.
The retailer says that past interim results closely mirrored the official surveys by the country's top political pollsters. Final results were right on.
Cup counts predicted President Bush's close against Democratic nominee Al Gore in 2000. Likewise in 2004, President Bush out-cupped Sen. John Kerry, 51 percent to 49 percent.
Joe DePinto, 7-Eleven president and chief executive, said the company doesn't bill the poll as scientific, but its stores do reach regular Americans "just going about their everyday lives."
Cups are instantly tabulated at the register when the sale is made. National and state results will be posted daily on www.7-election.com, a Web site created for the hot beverage poll.
7-Eleven says coffee is a nonpartisan beverage choice and notes it was named the national beverage by the First Continental Congress after the Boston Tea Party.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-7eleven_29bus.State.Edition1.1adbf8f.html
54
3DHS / "We Do Not Have a Crisis at Freddie Mac ... "
« on: September 29, 2008, 02:31:31 PM »[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs[/youtube]
55
3DHS / What exactly does a "community organizer" do?
« on: September 29, 2008, 01:39:29 PM »
O'S DANGEROUS PALS
By STANLEY KURTZ
WHAT exactly does a "community organizer" do? Barack Obama's rise has left many Americans asking themselves that question. Here's a big part of the answer: Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.
In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes - and thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers.
In other words, community organizers help to undermine the US economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama has spent years training and funding the organizers who do it.
THE seeds of today's financial meltdown lie in the Community Reinvestment Act - a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades.
CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in "subprime" loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers.
Any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has complied with CRA - and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN.
In fact, intimidation tactics, public charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansion have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America's financial institutions.
Banks already overexposed by these shaky loans were pushed still further in the wrong direction when government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up their bad loans and offering them for sale on world markets.
Fannie and Freddie acted in response to Clinton administration pressure to boost homeownership rates among minorities and the poor. However compassionate the motive, the result of this systematic disregard for normal credit standards has been financial disaster.
ONE key pioneer of ACORN's subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott - an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae's mortgage policies.
Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in "direct action" - organizers' term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a "living wage" law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans.
In February 1990, Illinois regulators held what was believed to be the first-ever state hearing to consider blocking a thrift merger for lack of compliance with CRA. The challenge was filed by ACORN, led by Talbott. Officials of Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association, her target, complained that ACORN pressure was undermining its ability to meet strict financial requirements it was obligated to uphold and protested being boxed into an "affirmative-action lending policy." The following years saw Talbott featured in dozens of news stories about pressuring banks into higher-risk minority loans.
IN April 1992, Talbott filed an other precedent-setting complaint using the "community support requirements" of the 1989 savings-and-loan bailout, this time against Avondale Federal Bank for Savings. Within a month, Chicago ACORN had organized its first "bank fair" at Malcolm X College and found 16 Chicago-area financial institutions willing to participate.
Two months later, aided by ACORN organizer Sandra Maxwell, Talbott announced plans to conduct demonstrations in the lobbies of area banks that refused to attend an ACORN-sponsored national bank "summit" in New York. She insisted that banks show a commitment to minority lending by lowering their standards on downpayments and underwriting - for example, by overlooking bad credit histories.
By September 1992, The Chicago Tribune was describing Talbott's program as "affirmative-action lending" and ACORN was issuing fact sheets bragging about relaxations of credit standards that it had won on behalf of minorities.
And Talbott continued her effort to, as she put it, drag banks "kicking and screaming" into high-risk loans. A September 1993 story in The Chicago Sun-Times presents her as the leader of an initiative in which five area financial institutions (including two of her former targets, now plainly cowed - Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal Savings) were "participating in a $55 million national pilot program with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and moderate-income people with troubled credit histories."
What made this program different from others, the paper added, was the participation of Fannie Mae - which had agreed to buy up the loans. "If this pilot program works," crowed Talbott, "it will send a message to the lending community that it's OK to make these kind of loans."
Well, the pilot program "worked," and Fannie Mae's message that risky loans to minorities were "OK" was sent. The rest is financial-meltdown history.
IT would be tough to find an "on the ground" community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama.
When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff.
He returned to Chicago in the early '90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. Chicago ACORN sought out Obama's legal services for a "motor voter" case and partnered with him on his 1992 "Project VOTE" registration drive.
In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN's up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott's drive against Chicago's banks.
More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago's Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation's board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers - and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift.
That committee's report on strategies for funding groups like ACORN features all the key names in Obama's organizer network. The report quotes Talbott more than any other figure; Sandra Maxwell, Talbott's ACORN ally in the bank battle, was also among the organizers consulted.
MORE, the Obama-supervised Woods Fund report acknowledges the problem of getting donors and foundations to contribute to radical groups like ACORN - whose confrontational tactics often scare off even liberal donors and foundations.
Indeed, the report brags about pulling the wool over the public's eye. The Woods Fund's claim to be "nonideological," it says, has "enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and government 'establishments' without undue risk of being criticized for partisanship."
Hmm. Radicalism disguised by a claim to be postideological. Sound familiar?
The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by ACORN's Madeline Talbott in her pioneering efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards. Yet he supported Talbott in every conceivable way. He trained her personal staff and other aspiring ACORN leaders, he consulted with her extensively, and he arranged a major boost in foundation funding for her efforts.
And, as the leader of another charity, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama channeled more funding Talbott's way - ostensibly for education projects but surely supportive of ACORN's overall efforts.
In return, Talbott proudly announced her support of Obama's first campaign for state Senate, saying, "We accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer."
IN short, to understand the roots of the subprime-mort gage crisis, look to ACORN's Madeline Talbott. And to see how Talbott was able to work her mischief, look to Barack Obama.
Then you'll truly know what community organizers do.
Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC.
http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/09292008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/os_dangerous_pals_131216.htm
By STANLEY KURTZ
WHAT exactly does a "community organizer" do? Barack Obama's rise has left many Americans asking themselves that question. Here's a big part of the answer: Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.
In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes - and thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers.
In other words, community organizers help to undermine the US economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama has spent years training and funding the organizers who do it.
THE seeds of today's financial meltdown lie in the Community Reinvestment Act - a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades.
CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in "subprime" loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers.
Any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has complied with CRA - and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN.
In fact, intimidation tactics, public charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansion have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America's financial institutions.
Banks already overexposed by these shaky loans were pushed still further in the wrong direction when government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up their bad loans and offering them for sale on world markets.
Fannie and Freddie acted in response to Clinton administration pressure to boost homeownership rates among minorities and the poor. However compassionate the motive, the result of this systematic disregard for normal credit standards has been financial disaster.
ONE key pioneer of ACORN's subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott - an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae's mortgage policies.
Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in "direct action" - organizers' term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a "living wage" law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans.
In February 1990, Illinois regulators held what was believed to be the first-ever state hearing to consider blocking a thrift merger for lack of compliance with CRA. The challenge was filed by ACORN, led by Talbott. Officials of Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association, her target, complained that ACORN pressure was undermining its ability to meet strict financial requirements it was obligated to uphold and protested being boxed into an "affirmative-action lending policy." The following years saw Talbott featured in dozens of news stories about pressuring banks into higher-risk minority loans.
IN April 1992, Talbott filed an other precedent-setting complaint using the "community support requirements" of the 1989 savings-and-loan bailout, this time against Avondale Federal Bank for Savings. Within a month, Chicago ACORN had organized its first "bank fair" at Malcolm X College and found 16 Chicago-area financial institutions willing to participate.
Two months later, aided by ACORN organizer Sandra Maxwell, Talbott announced plans to conduct demonstrations in the lobbies of area banks that refused to attend an ACORN-sponsored national bank "summit" in New York. She insisted that banks show a commitment to minority lending by lowering their standards on downpayments and underwriting - for example, by overlooking bad credit histories.
By September 1992, The Chicago Tribune was describing Talbott's program as "affirmative-action lending" and ACORN was issuing fact sheets bragging about relaxations of credit standards that it had won on behalf of minorities.
And Talbott continued her effort to, as she put it, drag banks "kicking and screaming" into high-risk loans. A September 1993 story in The Chicago Sun-Times presents her as the leader of an initiative in which five area financial institutions (including two of her former targets, now plainly cowed - Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal Savings) were "participating in a $55 million national pilot program with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and moderate-income people with troubled credit histories."
What made this program different from others, the paper added, was the participation of Fannie Mae - which had agreed to buy up the loans. "If this pilot program works," crowed Talbott, "it will send a message to the lending community that it's OK to make these kind of loans."
Well, the pilot program "worked," and Fannie Mae's message that risky loans to minorities were "OK" was sent. The rest is financial-meltdown history.
IT would be tough to find an "on the ground" community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama.
When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff.
He returned to Chicago in the early '90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. Chicago ACORN sought out Obama's legal services for a "motor voter" case and partnered with him on his 1992 "Project VOTE" registration drive.
In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN's up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott's drive against Chicago's banks.
More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago's Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation's board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers - and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift.
That committee's report on strategies for funding groups like ACORN features all the key names in Obama's organizer network. The report quotes Talbott more than any other figure; Sandra Maxwell, Talbott's ACORN ally in the bank battle, was also among the organizers consulted.
MORE, the Obama-supervised Woods Fund report acknowledges the problem of getting donors and foundations to contribute to radical groups like ACORN - whose confrontational tactics often scare off even liberal donors and foundations.
Indeed, the report brags about pulling the wool over the public's eye. The Woods Fund's claim to be "nonideological," it says, has "enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and government 'establishments' without undue risk of being criticized for partisanship."
Hmm. Radicalism disguised by a claim to be postideological. Sound familiar?
The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by ACORN's Madeline Talbott in her pioneering efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards. Yet he supported Talbott in every conceivable way. He trained her personal staff and other aspiring ACORN leaders, he consulted with her extensively, and he arranged a major boost in foundation funding for her efforts.
And, as the leader of another charity, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama channeled more funding Talbott's way - ostensibly for education projects but surely supportive of ACORN's overall efforts.
In return, Talbott proudly announced her support of Obama's first campaign for state Senate, saying, "We accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer."
IN short, to understand the roots of the subprime-mort gage crisis, look to ACORN's Madeline Talbott. And to see how Talbott was able to work her mischief, look to Barack Obama.
Then you'll truly know what community organizers do.
Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC.
http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/09292008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/os_dangerous_pals_131216.htm
56
3DHS / From a mighty ACORN an even mightier crisis did grow
« on: September 29, 2008, 01:32:07 PM »
New York Post editorial, 9/29/08:
As Congress slogged toward an apparent financial-market rescue bill over the weekend, the time arrived for a closer look at the roots of the crisis.
Who were the culprits?
Many and varied.
But as Election Day grows ever nearer, the role of one candidate in particular stands out: that of Barack Obama.
As Stanley Kurtz details on the opposite page (story posted separately - MissusDe), Obama spent many years cultivating ties with, working with - and even funding - the very folks who pushed for the risky lending that underlies the current mess.
That is, "community organizer" groups like ACORN.
ACORN is especially noteworthy, not only because of its prominence in the drive to relax mortgage requirements, but also because of its shady tactics.
And its links to Obama.
Various ACORN chapters across the country, led by folks like Chicago's Madeline Talbott, staged in-your-face protests in bank lobbies and filed complaints meant to hold up mergers sought by targeted banking firms.
Unless the banks agreed to ACORN's terms - which many (understandably) did.
Talbott & Co. generally wanted them to ease down-payment requirements and ignore weak credit histories. And their intimidating tactics often necessitated police action, as at a '97 protest at Pulaski Bank & Trust in Arkansas, where activists blocked drive-through lanes.
The movement's biggest victory, of course, came when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up the riskier loans - providing fresh incentive for banks to make even more of them.
No need to recount where all that led.
Meanwhile, Obama was right there by ACORN's side all along.
"I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career," he told the group last November.
Indeed, in the early '90s, Obama was recruited by Talbott herself to run training sessions for ACORN activists.
ACORN also got funding from two charities, the Woods Fund and the Joyce Foundation, when Obama served on their boards, and from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge - the radical "education reform" outfit Obama ran from '95 to '99.
Ironically, the group stood to be a key beneficiary of the goodies Democrats were loading into Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's rescue plan - including one demand that 20 percent of any profits the feds make from reselling mortgage securities go to fund groups like ACORN.
Happily, that add-insult-to-injury bit appears to have been eliminated from the rescue bill - thanks essentially to Republican objections.
(In that context, it's worth noting that John McCain worked for years to rein in Fannie and Freddie. Had Democrats not blocked action, the whole mortgage mess might well have been avoided.)
Debate over the rescue plan begins in earnest today - and much disapprobation will be heaped on "Wall Street greed" as it proceeds.
Don't be misled, though.
In the end, from a mighty ACORN an even mightier crisis did grow.
With Barack Obama's help.
http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/09292008/postopinion/editorials/the_meltdowns_acorn_131274.htm
As Congress slogged toward an apparent financial-market rescue bill over the weekend, the time arrived for a closer look at the roots of the crisis.
Who were the culprits?
Many and varied.
But as Election Day grows ever nearer, the role of one candidate in particular stands out: that of Barack Obama.
As Stanley Kurtz details on the opposite page (story posted separately - MissusDe), Obama spent many years cultivating ties with, working with - and even funding - the very folks who pushed for the risky lending that underlies the current mess.
That is, "community organizer" groups like ACORN.
ACORN is especially noteworthy, not only because of its prominence in the drive to relax mortgage requirements, but also because of its shady tactics.
And its links to Obama.
Various ACORN chapters across the country, led by folks like Chicago's Madeline Talbott, staged in-your-face protests in bank lobbies and filed complaints meant to hold up mergers sought by targeted banking firms.
Unless the banks agreed to ACORN's terms - which many (understandably) did.
Talbott & Co. generally wanted them to ease down-payment requirements and ignore weak credit histories. And their intimidating tactics often necessitated police action, as at a '97 protest at Pulaski Bank & Trust in Arkansas, where activists blocked drive-through lanes.
The movement's biggest victory, of course, came when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up the riskier loans - providing fresh incentive for banks to make even more of them.
No need to recount where all that led.
Meanwhile, Obama was right there by ACORN's side all along.
"I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career," he told the group last November.
Indeed, in the early '90s, Obama was recruited by Talbott herself to run training sessions for ACORN activists.
ACORN also got funding from two charities, the Woods Fund and the Joyce Foundation, when Obama served on their boards, and from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge - the radical "education reform" outfit Obama ran from '95 to '99.
Ironically, the group stood to be a key beneficiary of the goodies Democrats were loading into Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's rescue plan - including one demand that 20 percent of any profits the feds make from reselling mortgage securities go to fund groups like ACORN.
Happily, that add-insult-to-injury bit appears to have been eliminated from the rescue bill - thanks essentially to Republican objections.
(In that context, it's worth noting that John McCain worked for years to rein in Fannie and Freddie. Had Democrats not blocked action, the whole mortgage mess might well have been avoided.)
Debate over the rescue plan begins in earnest today - and much disapprobation will be heaped on "Wall Street greed" as it proceeds.
Don't be misled, though.
In the end, from a mighty ACORN an even mightier crisis did grow.
With Barack Obama's help.
http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/09292008/postopinion/editorials/the_meltdowns_acorn_131274.htm
57
3DHS / Three Campaign Lessons So Far
« on: September 28, 2008, 10:44:07 PM »
By Mark Davis
We all have breathless questions about how the next five weeks will unfold. But with the vast majority of the 2008 presidential campaign behind us, the ink is drying on three lasting lessons no matter who wins:
1. Attempts to change the nature of campaigning are futile.
The two things that everyone complains about - the costs of campaigns and their negativity - will be with us for the foreseeable future. I recommend embracing one and shrugging about the other.
Campaign spending is free speech. Candidates have to spend millions because they have to start running a full year before the Iowa caucuses. (Surely you know fundraising meetings are already underway for 2012.) But why lament this? Candidates ask for money, we give it to them, they run ads, and we either pay attention or not. Campaigns start absurdly early because we pay attention that early. The system works.
As for the tone of ads, every candidate's pledge to campaign less negatively lasts until his chops are busted in an opponent's negative ad. Then comes the "you have to fight back" logic, which may or may not be true because virtually no one has ever failed to fight back.
But, again, is this such a huge problem? Plenty of campaign ads stick to the issues, despite the impossibility of thoroughly addressing any issue in 30 or 60 seconds. Since ads are a terrible basis for making a choice in any election, try ignoring them in favor of the more thoughtful exercise of watching debates and reading multiple sources reporting from the campaign trail.
2. In an irony for the ages, liberal bias in the media culture's ivory towers grew to its shameful worst, and it didn't even matter.
This is the year a Republican convention crowd mocked NBC with derisive chants because that proud network allowed its MSNBC brand to pass off the hateful spewage of Keith Olbermann and others as fair commentary.
This is the year the likable and respectable Charles Gibson risked that reputation on ABC to lay a clumsy trap for Sarah Palin with the absurd "Bush doctrine" question.
This is the year that the mightiest networks and newspapers shed all pretense of even-handedness and willfully joined the Barack Obama campaign in a blood oath to defeat John McCain and savage Ms. Palin in the process.
This will make a McCain-Palin victory particularly sweet for those of us who have had it up to our eyeballs with the advocacy and outright cheerleading that have poisoned newscasts and front pages for decades.
But even if the campaign staffers posing as reporters manage to succeed, the celebration will soon be dampened by the cold realization that the clout they once enjoyed is fading fast, hastened by the damage they have done to the standards of their own profession.
The "new media" - blogs, talk radio, podcasts - are a cauldron of loosely reined info-bits shot from a cannon that never stops firing. But even with their wildly divergent standards and often spotty reliability, these sources offer balance and insights their dinosaur brethren refuse to provide.
Complaining about media bias is so 1996. Millions have simply moved on. The once-venerable media giants who used to be our only spigot for news may strive to win back audiences by rediscovering objectivity, but one wonders how many will notice that they are even trying.
3. To end on an uplifting note, all the haranguing over gender and race has without a doubt moved us toward the goal of toppling both barriers.
No matter which ticket wins, the next candidate of color will have an easier time because of the trail Barack Obama has blazed. The next woman to reach for the White House will benefit from a nation somewhat more used to the prospect because of Ms. Palin's candidacy.
And it is clearer than ever that politics mean far more to Americans than sex or skin color. Plenty of men love Ms. Palin; plenty of women don't. Mr. Obama's count will include more than 90 percent of black votes, yes, but millions of white votes, too. This is nothing but a good thing. The history-making rollercoaster of 2008 should provide a burst of pride for every American.
I would say pride and joy, but the joy part probably hinges on the actual results 37 days from now.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/three_campaign_lessons_so_far.html
We all have breathless questions about how the next five weeks will unfold. But with the vast majority of the 2008 presidential campaign behind us, the ink is drying on three lasting lessons no matter who wins:
1. Attempts to change the nature of campaigning are futile.
The two things that everyone complains about - the costs of campaigns and their negativity - will be with us for the foreseeable future. I recommend embracing one and shrugging about the other.
Campaign spending is free speech. Candidates have to spend millions because they have to start running a full year before the Iowa caucuses. (Surely you know fundraising meetings are already underway for 2012.) But why lament this? Candidates ask for money, we give it to them, they run ads, and we either pay attention or not. Campaigns start absurdly early because we pay attention that early. The system works.
As for the tone of ads, every candidate's pledge to campaign less negatively lasts until his chops are busted in an opponent's negative ad. Then comes the "you have to fight back" logic, which may or may not be true because virtually no one has ever failed to fight back.
But, again, is this such a huge problem? Plenty of campaign ads stick to the issues, despite the impossibility of thoroughly addressing any issue in 30 or 60 seconds. Since ads are a terrible basis for making a choice in any election, try ignoring them in favor of the more thoughtful exercise of watching debates and reading multiple sources reporting from the campaign trail.
2. In an irony for the ages, liberal bias in the media culture's ivory towers grew to its shameful worst, and it didn't even matter.
This is the year a Republican convention crowd mocked NBC with derisive chants because that proud network allowed its MSNBC brand to pass off the hateful spewage of Keith Olbermann and others as fair commentary.
This is the year the likable and respectable Charles Gibson risked that reputation on ABC to lay a clumsy trap for Sarah Palin with the absurd "Bush doctrine" question.
This is the year that the mightiest networks and newspapers shed all pretense of even-handedness and willfully joined the Barack Obama campaign in a blood oath to defeat John McCain and savage Ms. Palin in the process.
This will make a McCain-Palin victory particularly sweet for those of us who have had it up to our eyeballs with the advocacy and outright cheerleading that have poisoned newscasts and front pages for decades.
But even if the campaign staffers posing as reporters manage to succeed, the celebration will soon be dampened by the cold realization that the clout they once enjoyed is fading fast, hastened by the damage they have done to the standards of their own profession.
The "new media" - blogs, talk radio, podcasts - are a cauldron of loosely reined info-bits shot from a cannon that never stops firing. But even with their wildly divergent standards and often spotty reliability, these sources offer balance and insights their dinosaur brethren refuse to provide.
Complaining about media bias is so 1996. Millions have simply moved on. The once-venerable media giants who used to be our only spigot for news may strive to win back audiences by rediscovering objectivity, but one wonders how many will notice that they are even trying.
3. To end on an uplifting note, all the haranguing over gender and race has without a doubt moved us toward the goal of toppling both barriers.
No matter which ticket wins, the next candidate of color will have an easier time because of the trail Barack Obama has blazed. The next woman to reach for the White House will benefit from a nation somewhat more used to the prospect because of Ms. Palin's candidacy.
And it is clearer than ever that politics mean far more to Americans than sex or skin color. Plenty of men love Ms. Palin; plenty of women don't. Mr. Obama's count will include more than 90 percent of black votes, yes, but millions of white votes, too. This is nothing but a good thing. The history-making rollercoaster of 2008 should provide a burst of pride for every American.
I would say pride and joy, but the joy part probably hinges on the actual results 37 days from now.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/three_campaign_lessons_so_far.html
58
3DHS / Family Told Obama NOT To Wear Soldier Son's Bracelet... Where is Media?
« on: September 28, 2008, 04:22:04 PM »
Barack Obama played the "me too" game during the Friday debates on September 26 after Senator John McCain mentioned that he was wearing a bracelet with the name of Cpl. Matthew Stanley, a resident of New Hampshire and a soldier that lost his life in Iraq in 2006. Obama said that he too had a bracelet. After fumbling and straining to remember the name, he revealed that his had the name of Sergeant Ryan David Jopek of Merrill, Wisconsin.
Shockingly, however, Madison resident Brian Jopek, the father of Ryan Jopek, the young soldier who tragically lost his life to a roadside bomb in 2006, recently said on a Wisconsin Public Radio show that his family had asked Barack Obama to stop wearing the bracelet with his son's name on it. Yet Obama continues to do so despite the wishes of the family.
Radio host Glenn Moberg of the show "Route 51" asked Mr. Jopek, a man who believes in the efforts in Iraq and is not in favor of Obama's positions on the war, what he and his ex-wife think of Obama continually using their son's name on the campaign trail. (h/t D. Keith Howington of www.dehavelle.com)
Jopek began by saying that his ex-wife was taken aback, even upset, that Obama has made the death of her son a campaign issue. Jopek says his wife gave Obama the bracelet because "she just wanted Mr. Obama to know Ryan's name." Jopek went on to say that "she wasn't looking to turn it into a big media event" and "just wanted it to be something between Barack Obama and herself." Apparently, they were all shocked it became such a big deal.
But, he also said that his ex-wife has refused further interviews on the matter and that she wanted Obama to stop wearing the reminder of her son's sacrifice that he keeps turning into a campaign soundbyte. This begins at about 10 minutes into the radio program.
TRANSCRIPT
Brian Jopek: Because of some of the negative feedback she's gotten on the Internet, you know Internet blogs, you know people accusing her of... or accusing Obama of trying to get votes doing it... and that sort of thing.
Radio Host Moberg: Yeah
Jopek: She has turned down any subsequent interviews with the media because she just didn't want it to get turned into something that it wasn't. She had told me in an email that she had asked, actually asked Mr. Obama to not wear the bracelet any more at any of his public appearances. Which I don't think he's...
Moberg: It has been a while since he's brought it up.
Jopek: Right. But, the other night I was watching the news and he was on, uh, speaking somewhere and he was still wearing it on his right wrist. I could see it on his right wrist. So, that's his own choice. I mean that's something Barack Obama, that's a choice that he continues to wear it despite Tracy asking him not to... Because she is a Barack Obama supporter and she didn't want to do anything to sabotage his campaign, so, if he's still wearing the bracelet then, uh, that of course is entirely up to him.
Moberg: Maybe there's a difference between wearing it and making a point to bring it up in your speeches?
Even the snow job that the radio host tried to pull off to cover for Barack's refusing the wishes of the family of the KIA soldier who's bracelet he wears doesn't pass the smell test. After all, now that Obama has made it a big point in the debates, I guess the silent observance of Sgt. Jopek is no longer so silent and Obama is back to exploiting the death of a soldier even when he was asked NOT to do so by that soldier's parents.
To pile insult onto injury here, the Mother doesn't even want to force the issue of telling Obama to stop exploiting her son because she wants to see him win the election. Obama is not only taking advantage of this brave soldier's death, he is taking advantage of the good wishes of the man's Mother who doesn't want to hurt the campaign.
And, why is the media not playing this story? The radio show on which this interview is heard happened all the way back in March. How is it the media missed this? Is it because they are also don't want to hurt Obama's campaign?
I can only say that if the parents of the soldier whose bracelet John McCain is wearing had said in public that they want him to stop wearing their son's bracelet the news would have been coast to coast, and wall to wall, not just ignored in Madison, Wisconsin.
Obama's use of this soldier that fell in the line of duty is tainted by his ambition and callousness. And the media is letting him get away with it.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/09/28/family-told-obama-not-wear-soldier-sons-bracelet-where-media
Shockingly, however, Madison resident Brian Jopek, the father of Ryan Jopek, the young soldier who tragically lost his life to a roadside bomb in 2006, recently said on a Wisconsin Public Radio show that his family had asked Barack Obama to stop wearing the bracelet with his son's name on it. Yet Obama continues to do so despite the wishes of the family.
Radio host Glenn Moberg of the show "Route 51" asked Mr. Jopek, a man who believes in the efforts in Iraq and is not in favor of Obama's positions on the war, what he and his ex-wife think of Obama continually using their son's name on the campaign trail. (h/t D. Keith Howington of www.dehavelle.com)
Jopek began by saying that his ex-wife was taken aback, even upset, that Obama has made the death of her son a campaign issue. Jopek says his wife gave Obama the bracelet because "she just wanted Mr. Obama to know Ryan's name." Jopek went on to say that "she wasn't looking to turn it into a big media event" and "just wanted it to be something between Barack Obama and herself." Apparently, they were all shocked it became such a big deal.
But, he also said that his ex-wife has refused further interviews on the matter and that she wanted Obama to stop wearing the reminder of her son's sacrifice that he keeps turning into a campaign soundbyte. This begins at about 10 minutes into the radio program.
TRANSCRIPT
Brian Jopek: Because of some of the negative feedback she's gotten on the Internet, you know Internet blogs, you know people accusing her of... or accusing Obama of trying to get votes doing it... and that sort of thing.
Radio Host Moberg: Yeah
Jopek: She has turned down any subsequent interviews with the media because she just didn't want it to get turned into something that it wasn't. She had told me in an email that she had asked, actually asked Mr. Obama to not wear the bracelet any more at any of his public appearances. Which I don't think he's...
Moberg: It has been a while since he's brought it up.
Jopek: Right. But, the other night I was watching the news and he was on, uh, speaking somewhere and he was still wearing it on his right wrist. I could see it on his right wrist. So, that's his own choice. I mean that's something Barack Obama, that's a choice that he continues to wear it despite Tracy asking him not to... Because she is a Barack Obama supporter and she didn't want to do anything to sabotage his campaign, so, if he's still wearing the bracelet then, uh, that of course is entirely up to him.
Moberg: Maybe there's a difference between wearing it and making a point to bring it up in your speeches?
Even the snow job that the radio host tried to pull off to cover for Barack's refusing the wishes of the family of the KIA soldier who's bracelet he wears doesn't pass the smell test. After all, now that Obama has made it a big point in the debates, I guess the silent observance of Sgt. Jopek is no longer so silent and Obama is back to exploiting the death of a soldier even when he was asked NOT to do so by that soldier's parents.
To pile insult onto injury here, the Mother doesn't even want to force the issue of telling Obama to stop exploiting her son because she wants to see him win the election. Obama is not only taking advantage of this brave soldier's death, he is taking advantage of the good wishes of the man's Mother who doesn't want to hurt the campaign.
And, why is the media not playing this story? The radio show on which this interview is heard happened all the way back in March. How is it the media missed this? Is it because they are also don't want to hurt Obama's campaign?
I can only say that if the parents of the soldier whose bracelet John McCain is wearing had said in public that they want him to stop wearing their son's bracelet the news would have been coast to coast, and wall to wall, not just ignored in Madison, Wisconsin.
Obama's use of this soldier that fell in the line of duty is tainted by his ambition and callousness. And the media is letting him get away with it.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/09/28/family-told-obama-not-wear-soldier-sons-bracelet-where-media
59
3DHS / This is the election you wouldn't want to win
« on: September 27, 2008, 04:28:28 AM »
The bad news: November's victor could be a one-term disaster. The good news: a great president may follow him
Gerard Baker
Victorious Roman generals were reminded of the fickleness of their glory by a slave carefully positioned in earshot on the triumphal parade route.
?Memento mori,? the hapless servant would whisper to the wreathed victor as his chariot rattled along Rome's jubilant streets: ?Remember you are mortal.?
They don't have slaves in America any more but perhaps the winner of November's presidential election should consider having one of his lower-paid deputy-assistants mutter something similar in his ear as he takes the tribute on Inauguration Day next January.
It is highly probable that that moment, the very hour that he takes office, will be the high point of his presidency. Whoever wins on November 4 will be ascending to the job at one of the most difficult times for an American chief executive in at least half a century. When the votes are counted his people might ruefully conclude that the victor is not Barack Obama or John McCain. The real winner will be Hillary Clinton, or Mitt Romney, or Mike Huckabee, or some now happily anonymous figure whose star will rise in the next four turbulent years.
2008 may be the best year there has been to lose an election.
This sobering reality was startlingly underscored this week by none other than Tom Daschle, the former leader of the Senate Democrats, the national co-chairman of Mr Obama's presidential campaign, and the likely White House chief of staff in an Obama administration. He told a Washington power breakfast that he thought the winner of the election would have a 50 per cent chance at best - at best - of winning a second term in 2012.
Consider the challenges.
The financial crisis and Washington's response to it have transformed the economic and fiscal environment in which the new president will take office.
The bailout/rescue plan/socialisation of the banking system - whichever you prefer - has, in effect, already rendered null and void almost everything that the presidential candidates have been proposing for the past six months. It may not end up adding a straight $700 billion to the deficit over the next couple of years - the Treasury is surely right to insist that it will get some of that money back when the bad assets acquired from banks are sold off. But it would certainly not be prudent to expect there to be any room left over for promised tax cuts, spending increases on health, education or anything else.
The US already faced daunting fiscal challenges (admittedly smaller than those confronting most European and Asian countries). At some point reality will bite hard and politicians will discover that they simply cannot go on funding two wars, cutting taxes, creating vast new government health and pension programmes and doing the other essential things that the Federal Government does - all those bridges and roads and light-rail systems in parts of the country with closely fought congressional districts.
As some observers have noted, the bailout plan may simply have shifted the locus of the next financial crisis from the private to the public sector. This fiscal challenge is not just economic, but also geopolitical in nature. More government debt increases America's dependence on the financial interest of strangers; and not just any foreigners, but countries that hardly count as America's friends, such as China and Russia.
All this, and we almost certainly haven't even seen the worst of economic times yet.
For the past six months there's been a rather pointless debate in the US about whether the country is or is not in a ?technical? recession, whatever that is. What is certain is that unemployment has risen and real incomes have declined, but now it seems that things are getting much worse. Yesterday - in one day - economic reports said that durable goods orders, everything from aeroplanes to television sets, dropped by more last month than in any month in almost two years; that jobless claims rose to their highest level since September 11, 2001; and that new home sales fell to their lowest in 17 years.
The US is now indisputably entering the darkest phase of a period that will not only produce real hardship, but could send further shocks through financial markets and cause deeper fiscal damage.
Then there is energy policy. Weaning America off its oil addiction might actually need to be a policy rather than a slogan in the next four years; but that will place new burdens on the budget and require sacrifices difficult to make in good times, let alone in economically distressed ones.
Compared with all this, foreign policy looks like a doddle.
The next president has only to complete the process of transition in Iraq, win the war in Afghanistan, face down a resurgent Russia, continue to keep its foot on the throat of stateless Islamist terrorism, stop Iran from going nuclear and figure out what to do about the challenge from China - the most serious threat to US global hegemony since America became top nation.
Oh, and I didn't mention Pakistan. Conversations this week with advisers to both campaigns suggest that both now see Pakistan - especially after last week's terrorist attack in Islamabad - as perhaps the most intractable and serious challenge of all in the next few years: they candidly admit that no one has much of a clue what to do about it.
You don't have to loathe President Bush to acknowledge that America's capabilities and standing in the world are seriously diminished at a time when its tasks are larger and more complex than they have been in decades. With its economic wherewithal now further impaired, the prospects for real success anywhere in the next four years look constrained.
Yet all this might be too gloomy a prognosis. Previous periods of apparently existential crisis in the US have certainly produced one-term disasters: James Buchanan in 1857, Herbert Hoover in 1929, Jimmy Carter in 1977 spring unpleasantly to mind. But the genius of America is that apocalyptic challenges have also, in time, produced the men to match them: Abraham Lincoln in 1861, Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, Ronald Reagan in 1981.
So perhaps, rather than simply assuring us that the man who wins in November is a sure loser, history suggests an unsettlingly binary possibility. Either the next president is destined for the cruel obscurity of one-term failure. Or he is set to join the pantheon.
Then again, look carefully at those dates and consider a crueller possibility for this year's winner: that desperate times like these actually produce both types of president, sequentially: a one-term disaster who paves the way for a true giant.
The Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article4827820.ece
Gerard Baker
Victorious Roman generals were reminded of the fickleness of their glory by a slave carefully positioned in earshot on the triumphal parade route.
?Memento mori,? the hapless servant would whisper to the wreathed victor as his chariot rattled along Rome's jubilant streets: ?Remember you are mortal.?
They don't have slaves in America any more but perhaps the winner of November's presidential election should consider having one of his lower-paid deputy-assistants mutter something similar in his ear as he takes the tribute on Inauguration Day next January.
It is highly probable that that moment, the very hour that he takes office, will be the high point of his presidency. Whoever wins on November 4 will be ascending to the job at one of the most difficult times for an American chief executive in at least half a century. When the votes are counted his people might ruefully conclude that the victor is not Barack Obama or John McCain. The real winner will be Hillary Clinton, or Mitt Romney, or Mike Huckabee, or some now happily anonymous figure whose star will rise in the next four turbulent years.
2008 may be the best year there has been to lose an election.
This sobering reality was startlingly underscored this week by none other than Tom Daschle, the former leader of the Senate Democrats, the national co-chairman of Mr Obama's presidential campaign, and the likely White House chief of staff in an Obama administration. He told a Washington power breakfast that he thought the winner of the election would have a 50 per cent chance at best - at best - of winning a second term in 2012.
Consider the challenges.
The financial crisis and Washington's response to it have transformed the economic and fiscal environment in which the new president will take office.
The bailout/rescue plan/socialisation of the banking system - whichever you prefer - has, in effect, already rendered null and void almost everything that the presidential candidates have been proposing for the past six months. It may not end up adding a straight $700 billion to the deficit over the next couple of years - the Treasury is surely right to insist that it will get some of that money back when the bad assets acquired from banks are sold off. But it would certainly not be prudent to expect there to be any room left over for promised tax cuts, spending increases on health, education or anything else.
The US already faced daunting fiscal challenges (admittedly smaller than those confronting most European and Asian countries). At some point reality will bite hard and politicians will discover that they simply cannot go on funding two wars, cutting taxes, creating vast new government health and pension programmes and doing the other essential things that the Federal Government does - all those bridges and roads and light-rail systems in parts of the country with closely fought congressional districts.
As some observers have noted, the bailout plan may simply have shifted the locus of the next financial crisis from the private to the public sector. This fiscal challenge is not just economic, but also geopolitical in nature. More government debt increases America's dependence on the financial interest of strangers; and not just any foreigners, but countries that hardly count as America's friends, such as China and Russia.
All this, and we almost certainly haven't even seen the worst of economic times yet.
For the past six months there's been a rather pointless debate in the US about whether the country is or is not in a ?technical? recession, whatever that is. What is certain is that unemployment has risen and real incomes have declined, but now it seems that things are getting much worse. Yesterday - in one day - economic reports said that durable goods orders, everything from aeroplanes to television sets, dropped by more last month than in any month in almost two years; that jobless claims rose to their highest level since September 11, 2001; and that new home sales fell to their lowest in 17 years.
The US is now indisputably entering the darkest phase of a period that will not only produce real hardship, but could send further shocks through financial markets and cause deeper fiscal damage.
Then there is energy policy. Weaning America off its oil addiction might actually need to be a policy rather than a slogan in the next four years; but that will place new burdens on the budget and require sacrifices difficult to make in good times, let alone in economically distressed ones.
Compared with all this, foreign policy looks like a doddle.
The next president has only to complete the process of transition in Iraq, win the war in Afghanistan, face down a resurgent Russia, continue to keep its foot on the throat of stateless Islamist terrorism, stop Iran from going nuclear and figure out what to do about the challenge from China - the most serious threat to US global hegemony since America became top nation.
Oh, and I didn't mention Pakistan. Conversations this week with advisers to both campaigns suggest that both now see Pakistan - especially after last week's terrorist attack in Islamabad - as perhaps the most intractable and serious challenge of all in the next few years: they candidly admit that no one has much of a clue what to do about it.
You don't have to loathe President Bush to acknowledge that America's capabilities and standing in the world are seriously diminished at a time when its tasks are larger and more complex than they have been in decades. With its economic wherewithal now further impaired, the prospects for real success anywhere in the next four years look constrained.
Yet all this might be too gloomy a prognosis. Previous periods of apparently existential crisis in the US have certainly produced one-term disasters: James Buchanan in 1857, Herbert Hoover in 1929, Jimmy Carter in 1977 spring unpleasantly to mind. But the genius of America is that apocalyptic challenges have also, in time, produced the men to match them: Abraham Lincoln in 1861, Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, Ronald Reagan in 1981.
So perhaps, rather than simply assuring us that the man who wins in November is a sure loser, history suggests an unsettlingly binary possibility. Either the next president is destined for the cruel obscurity of one-term failure. Or he is set to join the pantheon.
Then again, look carefully at those dates and consider a crueller possibility for this year's winner: that desperate times like these actually produce both types of president, sequentially: a one-term disaster who paves the way for a true giant.
The Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article4827820.ece
60
3DHS / Henry Kissinger is not happy
« on: September 27, 2008, 03:47:56 AM »
From Scoring the Debate:
Obama claimed that Kissinger approved of his view that an American president should meet with adversaries without preconditions. John McCain disagreed. And Kissinger, who is advising McCain?s presidential campaign, not surprisingly thinks that McCain is right.
?Senator McCain is right,? said Kissinger. ?I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level. My views on this issue are entirely compatible with the views of my friend Senator John McCain. We do not agree on everything, but we do agree that any negotiations with Iran must be geared to reality.?
Indeed, in a recent appearance at George Washington University, Kissinger said that while he is ?in favor of negotiating with Iran,? he ?preferred doing it at the secretary of state level.?
http://weeklystandard.com/Weblogs/TWSFP/TWSFPView.asp#8891
Obama claimed that Kissinger approved of his view that an American president should meet with adversaries without preconditions. John McCain disagreed. And Kissinger, who is advising McCain?s presidential campaign, not surprisingly thinks that McCain is right.
?Senator McCain is right,? said Kissinger. ?I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level. My views on this issue are entirely compatible with the views of my friend Senator John McCain. We do not agree on everything, but we do agree that any negotiations with Iran must be geared to reality.?
Indeed, in a recent appearance at George Washington University, Kissinger said that while he is ?in favor of negotiating with Iran,? he ?preferred doing it at the secretary of state level.?
http://weeklystandard.com/Weblogs/TWSFP/TWSFPView.asp#8891