Obama Censors the Press

Barack Obama is making sure there are no cracks in the presentation by removing anyone not lockstep with his message.  According to DrudgeReport,

The NY POST, WASHINGTON TIMES and DALLAS MORNING NEWS have all been told to move out by Sunday to make room for network bigwigs — and possibly for the inclusion of reporters from two black magazines, ESSENCE and JET.

What made Obama take such drastic step?  The papers all endorsed McCain! 

What’s troubling is that the election is supposed to be the open time, and then politicians retreat to secrecy after being elected.  If this is the “open” Obama, what will we know about his plans once in office?  Where is the first Amendment in this?  Are other Amendments at risk?

Make no mistake about how scripted the campaign is.  We know virtually nothing about the man, except what he has told us.  Any affiliations before 2001 are gone, unless he wants to tell us. 

For example, Boston Herald reported only today that his aunt was discovered living in Boston, and even the media was surprised to find her.  Briebart says she’s been here illegally since 2004, but still managed to live in subsidized housing!

Michelle Obama for VP?

As rumors continue about Joe Biden’s health (he’s had 2 brain anuerisms)m speculation is already beginning about who’s going to replace him.  Everyone assumes it won’t be someone safe – that was Biden’s job for the election.  No, he’ll get someone we would have never voted for.

Like Michelle

http://community.mccainspace.com/kickapps/_Michelle-Obama-as-First-Lady/blog/106669/41158.html?b=

There’s a tape of her speaking in 2004 in Chicago, IL at the Rainbow Push Coalition Conference at Trinty United Church.

At least there used to be.  It’s so vile, it’s not available.

For about 30 minutes, Michelle Obama launched into a rant about the evils of America, and how America is to blame for the problems in Africa.  Michelle personally blamed Bill Clinton for the deaths of millions of Africans.

She said America is responsible for the genocide of the Tutsis and other ethnic groups.  She then launched into an attack on “WHITEY”, and talked about solutions to black on black crime in the realm of diverting those actions onto White America.

Her rant was fueled by the crowd; they reacted strongly to what she said, so she got more passionate and enraged, and that’s when she completely loses it and says things that have made the mouths drop of everyone who’s seen this.

The tape is a DVD that Trinity United sold on it’s website, and possibly offered free for download up until March 2008 when Trinity’s site was scrubbed and the DVDs were no longer offered for sale.  The YouTube version is also gone.  http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1-5tfUmHl4&feature=related

What are they hiding?  Is She the smoking gun?

Looking Forward After the Election

On KayInMaine’s WhiteNoiseInsanity blog, a reply on Sep 22 by “Grant in Texas” makes sense.

Rumors are rampant on some of the blogs that Joe Biden will have a health problem soon and resign so Hillary can be named to take his place. This one is on a McCain blog:

http://community.mccainspace.com/kickapps/_Will-Biden-step-down/BLOG/104562/41158.html

Why would McCain supporters want Hillary? Republicans hate the Clintons and I would think Bill and Hill would further energize the Republican base like Palin has already done with the fundies.

I have been disappointed in the Clintons’ “support” for Obama. Hillary doesn’t attack Palin in her speeches and being a woman, she can do a better job than Barack or Biden who will have to “walk on eggs” for fear of saying the slightest thing that sexism can be attached to. Hillary’s speeches I have seen on You Tube sound much like her primary stump speeches about what SHE wants to see done in this nation, then she give some less enthusiastic praise for Obama sometimes sounding like an afterthought. I had hopes for the Clintons at the convention, but were their “uniting” speeches only to keep Democrats in their good graces?

First Bill mentioned last month that Obama wasn’t “ready” but then like an afterthought, said “nobody was ready” but it was a strange and not an enthusiastic “endorsement”. Then this past week to ABC, Bill had some glowing things to say about Sarah Palin and John McCain and once again was lukewarm for Obama. Is he pissed that Barack prevented him for having a “third term”???

Many do believe the behind their masks, the Clintons want to run Hillary in 2012 against Palin, as either John won’t live that long or he will opt for the ONE TERM presidency he has already commented about.

Is that good, or what?

source:  http://whitenoiseinsanity.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/barack-obama-has-a-fantastic-plan-to-bonk-wall-street-with/ (comment 3)

Obama’s Challenge Explained

In mid-September, I wrote about Barack Obama’s leadership of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and why it that experiment was a phenominal waste of taxpayer and foundation resources.

I say taxpayer resources, because the Annenberg funds were tax free, and the matching funds given to the Chicago Better Schools Foundation were tax free.  Tax revenues for $110M were removed from the public treasury for failed ideas about reforming education.  If most of that cash came from top tier earners at a 28% rate, then Obama’s experiement cost you and me  $30M.

The records of what the Chicago Annenberg Challenge funded were hidden until just recently.  It says that during his 7 years running that fund, Obama funded a number of questionable initiatives.

• In 2001, he had The Woods Fund of Chicago give $75k to ACORN.
• In 2001, the fund gave $6k to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ “for special purposes”
• The fund gave $60k to the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University, which was founded and run by Bernardine Dohrn, the wife of 70s radical William Ayers.
  
• That year they gave $50k to the Small Schools Network, which was also founded by Ayers, and run by Michael Klonsky, a friend of Ayers’ and the former chairman of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), an offshoot of the 1960s radical group Students for a Democratic Society
• It gave $40,000 to the Arab American Action Network, which critics have accused of being anti-Semitic.

My concern is that Obama has a history of taking public funds to try questionable proposals, often with negligible or even onerous results.  If he makes it to the Presidency, I hope we won’t see the same there, but I don’t believe he can change that pattern.

Is this a “better history”?

Background:  FoxNews

How the Republican Party Machine Lost Their Way

First it was rampant spending for the war without cutting back at home.  Then the party was afraid of the best candidates – Huckabee and Romney, falling back on giving McCain his turn.  Romney supporters didn’t fully trust McCain and Huckabee supporters considered boycotting the election.  All because the party in power didn’t really want to be reformed.

The selection Palin as VP surprised a lot of people.  There are some poor choices she’s made in the past that should have been caught before her name was announced, and gave fodder for the Democrat operatives.  But it was the kind of un-managed selection that energized the base and pulled them back into the election.

Until the party bosses got ahold of her.

$150,000 for new clothes!  She would have been more genuine in the same three outfits over and over.  Show off her working class cred instead of trying to act like the Washington elite she railed against so often.

She’s got a great message, and is a great debater on issues, but the party has coached her into saying nothing.  No press conferences.  No town halls.  Few independent campaign appearances (don’t want to out-draw the headliner!)

The party advisers are also telling McCain to stump tired speeches over and over.  He was unimpressive in the debate and looks like an angry old guy on the campaign trail, so much that “thoughtful Obama” almost doesn’t have to campaign any more.  He expects to get to the top job on momentum.

And if Obama wins, the Republican party bosses can go back to their comfortable back rooms and pat each other on the back.  The “maverick reformer” will be returned to the back bench for the remainder of his Senate term and then retire to obscurity.  Palin they assume is damaged enough they’ll never have to hear from her again.

The seeds of a 2010 mid-term election upset are already planted.  Look for fertilizer next spring.

Obama to be Tested

Joe Biden has been in the senate 36 years and has, by his own words, has “forgotten more policy than most other politicians.”  He’s seen a lot of politics.  And his professional opinion is that “Barack Obama will face an international crisis early in his presidency.”  With this statement, even Joe Biden admits Obama is a blank slate in the face of coming national security threats.

“Remember I said it standing here. if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he’s gonna have to make some really tough — I don’t know what the decision’s gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it’s gonna happen,” Biden continued.

In response, the McCain campaign had to agree.

“Senator Obama won’t have the right response, and we know that because we’ve seen the wrong response from him over and over during this campaign. … We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: hoping for our luck to change at home and abroad. We have to act. We need a new direction, and we have to fight for it,” the statement said.

I’m afraid I have to agree.  We haven’t seen Obama lead anything.  He’s been a teacher, a behind-the-scenes organizer, one who supports someone else in charge.  He thinks he’s ready, but he’s never put himself in a position to check it out.  Now he wants to learn on the job.

I think I agree with Biden.  Obama’s not ready.

Reference:  Fox News

Why McCain?

As the election gets closer, the daily polls are swinging wider.  These are uncertain times.  Unlike past elections, where it looked close but all was goodness and policy difference, the politics of hate from outlets like Daily Kos and Huffington Post have poisoned the political well so that even honest opinion comes out looking like bile.

And so I go read Orson Scott Card’s commentaries.  He primarily a science fiction writer, but that makes him a student of contemporary culture and a futurist.  He sees what is and imagines what could be from it.

His column last week was insightful:

“the media have helped Obama sell the lie that he is the moderate who can bring us together; in fact, Obama is the most radically leftist candidate ever to run as a major party nominee, and he has never shown the slightest willingness to compromise on anything. His judicial appointees would be committed dictator-judges, without exception.

Card says we should elect a candidate who will “appoint and confirm judges who did not usurp power, and who would pass laws denying any state court the right to redefine” the established laws of the land, including the definition of marriage.

“Your ability to raise your children to believe in your religion is already under attack; the New Puritans are quite prepared to use force to take your children and propagandize them to believe the scientifically indefensible dogma that gay marriage is “just the same as” marriage.”

“Anyone who doesn’t accept homosexual couplings as marriages will be called names and persecuted. Our children will be propagandized to accept “marriages” that we repudiate.”

His final warning is to “choose pro-Constitution candidates in the states” and “vote for state legislators who are likely to be willing, when it becomes necessary, to … correct these abuses. … We can prevail in restoring Constitutional government to America — if we have the courage to pay the price along the way.”

Implications if Obama Wins

Politically speaking, what happens to the political landscape is Obama wins?

1.  McCain will finish his current senate term, probably without much to show for it, and then retire.

2.  Sarah Palin will go back to Alaska, fight with the legislature for the balance of her term, and not be re-elected.  She may try for Ted Steven’s seat if he wins but has to leave office early, but there’s a 50/50 chance she’s done for.

3.  Obama takes over  the Democratic party and Hillary gets no more chances to be President.  She can’t challenge him in 12 and is pushing “too old” by 16.

4.  Biden will serve one term and Obama will pick a replacement heir-apparent for the 2012 election.

5.  The governors of Illinois and Delaware will pick the replacements of Obama and Biden (assuming Biden also wins his Senate seat).  Since both are Democrats, no net change in the senate makeup.

As unpalitable as it is, an Obama win keeps Hillary out of the White House for good, lets the Republican party refocus – Huckabee is poised to emerge as the emotional leader and conservative soul, especially with his own talk show.  Obama will face tough challenges and will not be able to deliver on half he’s promised.

Unless McCain wins in 2008 and Palin becomes the defacto successor, it’s unlikely she’s got the horsepower to emerge as a contender for the 2012 presidential race, though many will suggest it.  She’s too damaged.  Even if McCain wins, it’s not clear whether she can survive the Alaska allegations long enough to finish her first term as VP.

Looking to the future, the Republican’s best chance to win in 2012 is for Obama to win in 2008.

Has Obama Won?

This is the post I’ve been avoiding writing for a week.  McCain’s performance in the debate was shameful.  There was no substance there, only attacks on Obama and continual references to Joe the Plumber. On the other hand, Obama was poised, confident, with coherent answers and kept trying to steer the conversation back to issues.

I don’t trust Obama.  There’s too much he’s done he refuses to talk about.  His friends have weird and unworkable ideas.  It’s too much we don’t know.  And we don’t know ANYTHING about Biden.  It’s as if he doesn’t exist.

But McCain is becoming a disappointment.  I was embarrassed during the debates. AIl he talks about since then is Joe the plumber.  I didn’t know who the guy was at the time, but since then, I’ve learned I’m noting like Joe.  Joe is a cheat and a tax scofflaw.

And Sarah.  A year ago, when almost no one else knew who she was, she was my choice for Huckabee’s running mate.  Now, I’m not sure she’s electable.  It’s a one-message speech, and that message sounds like “the little lady” – not a successful governor.

Sarah’s ethical problems are also troubling.  I’ve been a government employee a long time, so I know about travel regulations and try to err on the side of conservatism.  It’s clear she’s been abusing the rules and treating a public service position as her private cash cow.

I’ve gone from stongly McCain to undecided, but I’ve got to decide soon, since I’ll be voting absentee.  (I’ll be out of state on election day.)

Somebody tell me McCain is safe to trust.

Obama lacks the experience we should demand

The lead editorial of the Daily Press, the leading newspaper in southeast Virginia, says “John McCain is the better choice, whether we look at the past or the future.”  They praise Senator Obama’s accomplishment, his vision, and appeal to young voters.  But when you look at his accomplishments and values, their reasoned opinion is that he’s not ready, and not good for the country.

“…when the hopeful message of change is subjected to the glare of factual light, Obama does not emerge as the best candidate to lead the world’s most powerful nation during a time of threats both domestic and abroad, both economic and military.”

This is significant in part because the Hampton Roads region is still considered “undecided” territory, in a state that is considered a swing state.  Senator Obama was there only 3 weeks ago, and will be in nearby Richmond later this week.  It’s both heavily military (every service is represented) and with a significant Black population, with Hampton University and Norfolk State, both Historically Black Colleges.   The economy is struggling, but holding its own. It could go either way.

And so the leading information source in the region came out with a well-reasoned thought piece on what an Obama Presidency would mean for the nation.

“Obama lacks the experience we should demand from the world’s most powerful man, and his fundamental political beliefs are better suited to a more statist European nation such as France than America’s energetic capitalist culture, which demands individual responsibility as the price for maximizing our potential as humans.”

The editorial notes that when you look at his service in both the Illinois state Senate and the U.S. Senate, the resume is “thin.”  I reminds us “we look to what applicants have accomplished in their previous jobs as an indicator of what they will want to and be able to accomplish.”  There’s not much there.  He hasn’t submitted many bills, engaged in much debate, or made many public policy statements, except for his memoirs.

What we do know is what he’s proposed for his Presidency.  And it looks expensive.  Senator Obama wants to “dip into our wallets to achieve its ambitious aims.”  This does not match the lessons of history.  “America succeeds, despite down cycles that affect all nations, thanks not to government but to its citizens’ hard work and economic enterprise.”

If you want to learn more about his character, you’re out of luck there, too.  The Senator has “an inclination to turn his back on stated beliefs when it suits him, probably the most telling cautionary tale about Obama’s character. … (his) modus operandi has been to deny, then defend and eventually distance himself from political embarrassments. All of which makes one wonder what Obama truly believes.”

And McCain?  The Daily Press notes hihs “long and public record, and his forthrightness about his values and plans, leave fewer doubts about where he will take this nation, and whether he’s capable of getting there. He will focus on building the infrastructure of success — freedom, responsibility, judicious regulation, well-placed incentives — instead of hoping to achieve success by extending government’s reach and responsibilities.”

They – and I – recommend Senator McCain for President.

Source:  Daily Press, Newport News, VA