September 17, 2008
September 15, 2008
McCain on the financial crisis in Wall Street.
"The crisis in our financial markets has taken an enormous toll on our economy and the American people -- first the decline of our housing markets followed by the collapse of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and now Lehman Brothers. I am glad to see that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department have said no to using taxpayer money to bailout Lehman Brothers, a position I have spoken about throughout this campaign. We are carefully monitoring the financial markets, including the duress at Lehman Brothers that is the latest reminder of ineffective regulation and management. Efforts must also be focused on ensuring that the deposits of hardworking Americans are protected.
It is essential for us to make sure that the U.S. remains the pre-eminent financial market of the world. This will be a highest priority of my Administration. In order to do this, major reform must be made in Washington and on Wall Street. We cannot tolerate a system that handicaps our markets and our banks and places at risk the savings of hard-working Americans and investors. The McCain-Palin Administration will replace the outdated and ineffective patchwork quilt of regulatory oversight in Washington and bring transparency and accountability to Wall Street. We will rebuild confidence in our markets and restore our leadership in the financial world."
The Official Wasilla Banned Books List...
that, supposedly, Sarah Palin pushed. Thanks to Tigerhawk.
Putting gender first.
Lynette Long:
I have given my loyalty to the Democratic Party for decades. My party, which is comprised primarily of women, has not put a woman on a presidential ticket for 24 years. My party stood silently by as Hillary Clinton was eviscerated by the mainstream media. My party and its candidate gave their tacit approval for the attacks on Mrs. Clinton (and, consequently, women in general).
I can vote for my party and its candidates, which have demonstrated a blatant disrespect for women and a fundamental lack of integrity. Or I can vote for the Republican ticket, which has heard our concerns and put a woman on the ticket, but with which I fundamentally don't agree on most issues.
Right now, for me, gender trumps everything else. If Democratic women wait for the perfect woman to come along, we will never elect a woman. I will vote for McCain-Palin. I urge other women to do the same. I promise to be the first person knocking on her door if Roe v. Wade or any other legislation that goes against the rights of women is threatened. But in Governor Palin, I find a woman of integrity, who not only talks the talk but walks the walk. I can work with that. I will work with that.
Forum sells 'Obama Waffles' with racial stereotype
Little Green Footballs:
Whether the intent was racist or not, it’s hard to believe that the producers didn’t know it would be taken that way. So the end result of this little stunt is to reinforce the image that the GOP condones racism (with help from the media, of course). Thanks a lot, guys.
Media bias.
From Gallup:
Today, there is much more controversy among Americans about the media's coverage of Palin. More than half are dissatisfied with the nature of coverage of her, saying it is either too positive or too negative. This seems to reflect the raging political pundit debate over whether the media's commentary on Palin's governmental qualifications and personal life has gone too far.
Whether valid, or merely a political tactic, the election-year shots at the media for biased coverage seem to be eroding public confidence in the entire news media as a reputable institution.
September 14, 2008
Palin Deranged Syndrome (someone lost it).
From Pravda, English version: Palin – the Devil in disguise
"Barack Obama the speechmaker is being rumbled"
From TimesOnline:
This election is a struggle between the followers of American exceptionalism and the supporters of global universalism. Democrats are more eager than ever to align the US with the rest of the Western world, especially Europe. This is true not just in terms of a commitment to multilateral diplomacy that would restore the United Nations to its rightful place as arbiter of international justice. It is also reflected in the type of place they'd like America to be - a country with higher taxes, more business regulation, a much larger welfare safety net and universal health insurance. The Republicans, who still believe America should follow the beat of its own drum, are pretty much against all of that.
September 13, 2008
"Barack Obama is so much more appealing to the British."
To a middle-class, liberal-minded white in this country, Obama seems to fit the bill. The physical appearance is very important. He is black but, as Colin Powell once joked about himself, "not that black".
He fulfils none of the subliminal caricatures of black men, such as the angry youth who (as Obama himself notes) makes a woman want to clutch her bag tight when he gets into the lift. He is tall and slim and handsome, but not too masculine.
Shameful.
Reactions on the Obama ad ridiculing McCain's inability to use a computer:
InstaPundit has a whole roundup of reactions.OKAY, I THOUGHT THE OBAMA COMMERCIAL MOCKING MCCAIN for not using a computer was dumb because it would alienate older voters. But it turns out it's a lot dumber than that:
The reason he doesn't send email is that he can't use a keyboard because of the relentless beatings he received from the Viet Cong in service to our country. . . . McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes.
Oops. Another unforced error from the Obama campaign, which seems to have had a lot of those lately. The above is from 2000 -- don't these people know how to use Google? Or NEXIS? Or something?
September 12, 2008
The Palin fright.
***John McCain only endangers Democratic chances of victory this November, but Sarah Palin is an existential threat to the Democratic Party.
She threatens a core element of the party's base - women.
When an African-American like Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell or Condi Rice rises to prominence as a Republican, he or she endangers the Democratic coalition. So would a Republican labor leader.
And so, above all, does the woman Republican running for vice president.
Democrats can't stomach seeing the feminist movement's impetus for greater female political participation and empowerment "hijacked" by a pro-life woman who espouses traditional values. They must obliterate her, lest her popularity eat away at their party's core.
Hillary's present.
The Daily Telegraph of London:
Palin, and what picking her telegraphed about McCain, could be Obama's nemesis. Hillary Clinton brought us Palin. The Alaska governor is her gift to Obama.
A sprinkling of overseas' media reactions to Sarah Palin:
Sarah Palin stumbles in first TV interview
Sarah Palin first major interview: 'Ready to lead the nation'
Palin amenaza a Rusia con una guerra si vuelve a invadir Georgia
Palin will not 'blink' in America's 'righteous' cause
Sarah Palin: «Guerra alla Russia? Forse»
Palin y su feminismo conservador, a la caza de medio EE.UU.
Sarah Palin first major interview: 'Ready to lead the nation'
Palin amenaza a Rusia con una guerra si vuelve a invadir Georgia
Palin will not 'blink' in America's 'righteous' cause
Sarah Palin: «Guerra alla Russia? Forse»
Palin y su feminismo conservador, a la caza de medio EE.UU.
Tantalizing words...
...from Charles Krauthammer. Excerpts:
The Democrats are in a panic. ***OUCH!
Meanwhile, a posse of Democratic lawyers, mainstream reporters, lefty bloggers, and various other Obamaphiles are scouring the vast tundra of Alaska for something, anything, to bring down Sarah Palin***
But Palin is not just a problem for Obama. She is also a symptom of what ails him. ***
***Obama had managed to stay aloft for four full years. But no one can levitate forever.
***The problem is that Obama began believing in his own magical powers — the chants, the swoons, the “we are the ones” self-infatuation. ***
***To top himself, Obama had to reach. Hence his triumphal declaration that history would note that night, his victory, his ascension, as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
Clang. But Obama heard only the cheers of the invited crowd. Not yet seeing how the pseudo-messianism was wearing thin, he did Berlin (#4) and finally jumped the shark. That grandiloquent proclamation of universalist puffery popped the bubble. The grandiosity had become bizarre.
From there it was but a short step to Paris Hilton. ***
One star fades, another is born.
*** in the celebrity game, novelty is trump. With her narrative, her persona, her charisma carrying the McCain campaign to places it has never been — and by all logic has no right to be — she’s pulling an Obama.
More media madness.
Mark Steyn on The Washington Post's media man, Howard Kurtz:
if you were really savvy, you'd "manipulate" the media into a stampede of lurid drivel deriding her [Sarah Palin] as a Stepford wife and a dominatrix, comparing her to Islamic fundamentalists, Pontius Pilate and porn stars, and dismissing her as a dysfunctional brood mare who can't possibly be the biological mother of the kid she was too dumb to abort. Who knows? It's a long shot, but if you could pull it off, a really cunning media manipulator might succeed in manipulating Howie's buddies into spending the month after Labor Day outbidding each other in some insane Who Wants To Be An Effete Condescending Media Snob? death-match. You'd not only make the press look like bozos, but that in turn might tarnish just a little the fellow these geniuses have chosen to anoint.
Media bias.
Bill Kristol from the Weekly Standard:
People can debate how intimate that connection is, and how much of the fight in Iraq is now against al Qaeda in Iraq--but it’s simply the case that Palin is not saying what Kornblut says she is, and that the Washington Post is, right now, leading its paper with a clear distortion of what Palin said.
"THE POLITICS OF BLACKNESS: Bias at its best"
Excerpt:
CNN made no mention about Obama’s use of marijuana, cocaine and alcohol in high school and college yet discussed at length Cindy McCain’s addiction and theft of prescription drugs.
They focused only on McCain’s shortcomings and Obama’s strengths.
There was no mention that Obama steered millions of dollars to Chicago’s low-income housing developers, who left slums, or that he authored only three bills that survived in the Illinois legislature, two of which had to be totally rewritten. Yet CNN reported that he was instrumental in hundreds of pieces of legislation (only because he added his name to them).
All the mainstream media have followed the same biased reporting on McCain and Obama as CNN. For example, Vanity Fair made a big deal about one of Cindy McCain’s outfits during the Republican National Convention costing $300,000. Yet, a jeweler said her three-carat diamond earrings cost more like $60,000 instead of the $280,000 estimate.
So what? Who cares? She’s rich and it’s her money. Yet there has been no mention of the hundreds of thousands of dollars she and McCain have donated to charities, including the $25,000 they just gave to the Hurricane Gustav relief effort as they raised millions at the Republican convention.
The mainstream media have become the Fourth Estate in Obama’s campaign, even going after McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Isn’t it strange that the media praised Michelle Obama on her appearance at the Democratic Convention, swooning over their two lovely daughters standing on stage; yet demeaned Sarah Palin for “parading” her family out on stage at the Republican convention?
The bias is blatant. The only news organization giving positive news about McCain and Palin is FOX News, and the liberal left wants to shut them down.
More on the Sarah Palin-Charlie Gibson interview:
Gateway Pundit has more on the interview here and here.
UPDATE: And from PowerLine:
What's happening here is that America's least respected, least talented and least honorable interest group, our reporters and editors, are trying to ram their choice for President down our throats. The AP directs its "news" account, which might as well be an Obama campaign press release, toward the ignorant, that is, those who weren't able to see or read the interview, or otherwise judge for themselves. Will the media's effort to force the election of Barack Obama work? It's hard to say. There is no precedent for this sort of mass mis-reporting of the news.
"If John McCain is as lucky as he is smart,
the lefty pundits and bloggers -- for example -- and their allies in the press will keeping hammering Saracuda all the way to Halloween." So says TigerHawk.
September 11, 2008
How Obama could replace Biden:
Here's what The Charter & The Bylaws of the Democratic Party of the United States Article Two, Section 7(C) says about how Barack Obama would go about chosing another running mate at this point in the general election.
And the world wants...
Obama?
More than 22,000 people were questioned by pollster GlobeScan in countries ranging from Australia to India and across Africa, Europe and South America.
The margin in favour of Senator Obama ranged from 9 per cent in India to 82 per cent in Kenya, while an average of 49 per cent across the 22 countries preferred Senator Obama compared with 12 per cent preferring Senator McCain. Some four in 10 did not take a view.
"Sexism, Misogyny, whatever you call it seems to be coming from the left not the right. "
Ace of Spades:
What's interesting -- and new -- is that this guy isn't just looking at this from a personality perspective -- that is, support of Hillary, distaste for Obama. That sort of thing is nice and might even swing an election but has no actual long-term impact.
He's actually re-examining his entire devotion to the liberal (or non-liberal, really) project.
Questioning Sarah Palin's "womanhood".
InstaPundit: ANOTHER SARAH PALIN CRITICISM: "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman." I dunno, she had me fooled. But perhaps she can respond, "Ain't I a woman?"
September 10, 2008
Political campaign ads.
Check out this great link from the Wall Street Journal, which has a compilation of the political campaign ads by both parties and respective supporters.
Playing a game ...
with Victor Davis Hanson:
So I invite readers to play a small game with me, and recall in various fields as many liberal feminist icons as they can, especially in politics or the media. Ponder their pedigrees and then speculate just how they reached their present celebrity and influence. And, lastly, ask whether it has anything to do with the much reviled old-boy patrimonial lineage or the much caricatured old-boy matrimonial connections. Here I mean again politicians like Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, Diane Feinstein, Mary Landrieu, Nancy Pelosi, or a media person like Campbell Brown, Gail Collins, Andrea Mitchell, or Sally Quinn.
Let’s briefly collate some, and then see just how many powerhouse-feminists were either (a) themselves the daughters of powerful politicians; (b) married insider politicians or government officials, or influential media figures, or (c) inherited substantial money or found plenty of income by marrying wealthy men who energized their careers.
***
I predict we will be astonished that in comparison to their normal cursus honorum, Sarah Palin’s up-by-the-bootstraps background is itself nothing short of astonishing. Here, I don’t wish to suggest that one finds enormous success without talent, or is to be criticized de factis for being lucky by birth or in marriage, only to suggest that all these women who themselves tsk, tsk Palin should take a deep breath and ask themselves whether they would have made it as Vice Presidential candidate should they have shared the Palin background.
A feminist's view on the vice presidential candidate.
Tammy Bruce's take on Sarah Palin's candidacy:
Make no mistake - the Democratic Party and its nominee have created the powerhouse that is Sarah Palin, and the party's increased attacks on her (and even on her daughter) reflect that panic.
Read the whole thing.
The party has moved from taking the female vote for granted to outright contempt for women. That's why Palin represents the most serious conservative threat ever to the modern liberal claim on issues of cultural and social superiority. Why? Because men and women who never before would have considered voting for a Republican have either decided, or are seriously considering, doing so.
***
Palin's candidacy brings both figurative and literal feminist change. The simple act of thinking outside the liberal box, which has insisted for generations that only liberals and Democrats can be trusted on issues of import to women, is the political equivalent of a nuclear explosion.
The idea of feminists willing to look to the right changes not only electoral politics, but will put more women in power at lightning speed as we move from being taken for granted to being pursued, nominated and appointed and ultimately, sworn in.
***
On the day McCain announced her selection as his running mate, Palin thanked Clinton and Ferraro for blazing her trail. A day later, Ferraro noted her shock at Palin's comment. You see, none of her peers, no one, had ever publicly thanked her in the 24 years since her historic run for the White House. Ferraro has since refused to divulge for whom she's voting. Many more now are realizing that it does indeed take a woman - who happens to be a Republican named Sarah Palin.
Judging presidential candidates.
Do age and experience count in judging presidential candidates? Investor's Business Daily's answer: "If history is any guide, the answer is "absolutely".
Media bias.
Following the money:
An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans, with $225,563 going to Democrats, only $16,298 to Republicans .
Read the Investor's Business Daily's editorial.
Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, just 20 gave to Republicans — a margin greater than 10-to-1. An even greater disparity, 20-to-1, exists between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain.
"Why, why, why can't WE have a Sarah Palin?"
Most of all, though, the Palin sensation makes our own Westminster politics look as grey and dull as the leaden September skies. It’s dire.
We need a moose loose in our Hoose.
Political campaign ads.
McCain's camp seems to have produced more, or at least, seems to have made these ads more accessible.
Here are more samples:
And here are some spoofs from The Nose on Your Face:T
Character and integrity are essential attributes of a leader.
Thomas Sowell's reflections on the US elections, one candidate, and war:
There is no office where the character and values of the person in that office matter more than the office of President of the United States. He holds the destiny of 300 million Americans in his hands and the fate of generations yet unborn.Read the whole thing here.
That was never more true than today, with Iran moving ever closer to a nuclear bomb, while the United Nations wrings its hands and Congress fritters away its time on everything from steroids in sports to earmarks for pet projects back home.
Does anyone seriously consider what it would mean for Iran to have nuclear weapons? They are already supplying terrorists with the means of killing people in other countries, including killing American troops in Iraq.
****
Not only Senator Obama, but too many other Americans, seem to have no concept of the seething hatred that can lead people to destroy their own lives in order to lash out at others.
But terrorists have been doing this repeatedly, not only in Iraq and in Israel, but in other countries around the world-- including the United States on 9/11.
Have we already forgotten how the Palestinians were cheering in the streets over the news of the attack on the World Trade Center? How videotapes of sadistic beheadings of innocent people by terrorists have found an eager audience in the Middle East?
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