Showing posts with label Election 2008. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Election 2008. Show all posts

Sunday, August 26, 2018

John McCain, 'Maverick' War Hero, Senator, and Presidential Candidate, Dies at 81

By now you've heard the sad news.

I never met John McCain, but during the 2008 presidential campaign, he was my personal hero. My longtime blog readers will know why. "American Power" was among the very first of conservative blogw to come out in support of McCain's bid for the GOP nomination in 2007. That's when I basically went into full-time politics blog mode, and when McCain won the nomination I felt a sense of euphoria and accomplishment. I hope in some small way that I contributed to his success. That, of course, can't be said of the general election campaign in 2008. When the Kenyan interloper won the election I was in a funk not unlike the one that afflicted leftists after Shrillary's loss in 2016. I know the feeling.

In any case, at the New York Times, via Memorandum, "John McCain, War Hero, Senator, Presidential Contender, Dies at 81," and "John McCain to Lie in State at Capitols in Washington and Arizona."

And do read Mark Barabak's excellent obituary, at the Los Angeles Times:



Friday, January 26, 2018

HIllary Clinton Protected Top Aide Accused of Sexual Harassment in 2008

Hmm, this should be a blockbuster today.

 It's a NYT breaking scoop, "Hillary Clinton Chose to Shield a Top Adviser Accused of Harassment in 2008."

And at the Hill as well.

Hillary Clinton protected a top staffer accused of sexual harassment during her 2008 presidential campaign, The New York Times reported Friday.

Clinton's then-senior faith adviser, Burns Strider, was accused in 2008 of sexually harassing a young female staffer, according to the Times. Instead of firing Strider, as Clinton's campaign manager recommended, the campaign kept him on, docked him several weeks of pay and ordered him to undergo counseling.

The young woman who accused him was moved to a new job.

Strider was accused by a woman who shared an office with him of rubbing her shoulders without permission, kissing her on the forehead and sending her a number of sexually suggestive emails. The woman shared the complaint with Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton's then-campaign manager, who brought it to the candidate's attention.

But Clinton personally requested that Strider remain on staff. The young woman signed a non-disclosure agreement upon leaving the campaign and declined to comment for the Times story...

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Remembering JournoList and the Leftist Media's Bag of Tricks

From John Sexton, at Hot Air, "Remembering JournoList and Progressive Media’s Bag of Tricks":
A couple weeks ago I came across an old article about Journolist which I found striking. In particular, I was struck by the ways in which some of the debates taking place among left-leaning journalists back in 2008 still seem to encompass the ways the left-wing media operates today.

For those who don’t remember it, Journolist was just a listserv created by Ezra Klein. The list was invitation only and was mostly made up of progressive journalists. In theory, the list was a kind of digital water cooler where like-minded people could talk to others in the field. That may have been all it was much of the time, but when candidate Obama got in trouble in 2008, it also became a place for partisans to discuss a coordinated media strategy.

Author Jonathan Strong wrote this particular piece about the Journolist response to a crisis in the 2008 campaign. Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as you probably remember, was the pastor of the church Obama attended. He was the pastor who married Barack and Michelle and the person who inspired the title of Obama’s book: The Audacity of Hope. Wright was also a far-left crank who regularly denounced America. From ABC News, March 2008:

[VIDEO]

Obama would eventually denounce Wright and quit the church in June, but in the interim, it seemed possible the issue could seriously damage his campaign. Journolist members discussed various ways to respond to the Rev. Wright story. Michael Tomasky (now at the Daily Beast) wanted members of the list to “kill ABC” and thereby kill the story:
Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”

“Richard Kim got this right above: ‘a horrible glimpse of general election press strategy.’ He’s dead on,” Tomasky continued. “We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease.”
Chris Hayes, then at the Nation and now an MSNBC host, gave an impassioned plea (which sounded a bit like Rev. Wright) suggesting people in the mainstream media simply refuse to cover the story at all...
Keep reading.

Heh. Good times, good times.

Friday, February 10, 2017

Let's Remember Just How Bad the Obama Presidency Was

Well, how can anyone forget? Heh.

At Post-Libertarian, "The Obama Presidency Was Bad":
We’re already caught up in how terrible the Trump presidency is, but over the next four years, it will be important to remember just how bad the Obama presidency was. When overcome with frustration at the current administration, I would urge readers to come back to this post and remember that the last president was also quite terrible. In his farewell speech, Obama tried to make the argument for his presidency’s accomplishments, but many of them were simply court cases that were decided while he was president, or decisions that were nice but had little real policy impact.

There have been plenty of reflections on the Obama presidency, but I think a high level overview of everything Obama did would put in perspective just how awful he’s been, especially as we experience the incompetency and horrible policy decisions of the current administration. I’ve done this by letter grades A through F.
Actually, I'm quite enjoying the current administration, thank you.

But keep reading.

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Donald Trump's Tightly Controlled Chaos

Following-up from previously, "Donald Trump's Strength Points to New Campaing Dynamic in New Hampshire."

At the Los Angeles Times, "Analysis: Donald Trump's campaign: It's less chaotic and more calculated than it looks":
Louise Sunshine, a former New York lobbyist and real estate executive, has known Donald Trump for more than 40 years. She shared a small office with Trump just as his career as a developer began to take off. She helped him cajole politicians for tax breaks on his first buildings.

Knowing how Trump operates, Sunshine was surprised to hear his rival Jeb Bush brand him last week as a “chaos candidate.” Trump, she said, “is the least chaotic person I know.”

“The least,” she added to underline the point. “And the most determined person I know.”

Trump’s raw, in-your-face style of politics can come off as random ranting. Over the weekend, he called Hillary Clinton a liar and Bush a loser.

“Dumb as a rock!” he wrote on Twitter of the former Florida governor.

But if Trump sows chaos, it is tightly controlled chaos. The bluster and put-downs are part of a meticulously calculated strategy by a surprisingly disciplined front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump is the rare first-time candidate whose mastery of basic political skills seems unmatched by most, if not all, of his rivals in a crowded Republican field.

Trump’s history as a builder of major Manhattan real estate projects schooled him in the real-world give-and-take of politics at a level where enormous amounts of money and power are at stake. For New York developers whose business model depends on taxpayer subsidies, a keen understanding of how governors and mayors operate can make or break a real estate empire.

Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was a major New York City developer with deep ties to elected officials. In the 1970s, Donald Trump began forging his own ties with politicians — among them Mayor Ed Koch and Gov. Hugh Carey — as he sought tax breaks on midtown high-rise projects with a higher profile than anything his father had built.

Bill Cunningham, a veteran New York political operative, said the city’s big developers must weather bad press, but stay focused on their goals as they battle unions, contractors, public agencies, environmental groups and property owners who refuse to sell their land.

“You learn to take a lot of hits and keep on going, and that’s Donald Trump,” Cunningham said.

Trump, 69, jokes that he hates being a politician after six months in the trade. He also boasts of using no teleprompter, giving crowds the impression that his remarks, sometimes salted with profanity, are spontaneous.

“I speak for an hour and a half with no notes, no nothing,” he told a recent rally of supporters in Las Vegas.

But in city after city, Trump hews closely to his stump speech, staying on message as faithfully as the best of career politicians. The words vary, but the themes stay the same — all in service of solidifying and expanding his core audience of blue-collar white men...
Still more.

Donald Trump's Strength Points to New Campaing Dynamic in New Hampshire

Following-up from previously, "Poll: Donald Trump Firmly Consolidates Lead Atop GOP Primary Field (VIDEO)."

Trump's allegedly falling behind on the ground-game in Iowa, and now in New Hampshire, he leads the polls despite a light presence. Trump's campaign is a major test of established models of presidential campaigning.

And at the Wall Street Journal, "In a state that values retail politics, the Republican presidential front-runner maintains his lead despite few visits":
BERLIN, N.H.—New Hampshire voters take their first-in-the-nation primary very seriously, ribbing their early-voting compatriots in the Midwest with the expression, “In Iowa, they pick corn. Here, we pick presidents.”

But now, the success of Donald Trump, who has topped polls of Republicans here for nearly five straight months, is unnerving those who cherish the small state’s tradition of shoe-leather campaigns, with candidates trekking from bingo hall to barnyard to answer policy questions from voters face to face.

The New York businessman has held only 23 events in the state this year, according to the New England Cable News candidate tracker—even fewer than former rivals Scott Walker and Rick Perry, who dropped out of the race during September.

“The entire justification for New Hampshire being the first in the nation is that you can meet people one on one,” said Drew Cline, former editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper. “If New Hampshire goes for Trump, who is connecting with voters via debates and celebrity status, it is potentially fatal,” he said.

Mr. Trump’s popularity in New Hampshire reflects the decades-long trend away from state-by-state ground games and toward a national, media-driven presidential campaign. This year, the daily grind of the campaign trail has been overshadowed by record-setting debate audiences, the expanding reach of social media (Mr. Trump has 5.4 million Twitter followers) and the sheer size of the field, making it harder for voters to check out all the candidates before the Feb. 9 primary.

Mr. Trump can reach twice the population of New Hampshire by simply calling, as he did this past Sunday, into NBC’s “Meet the Press,” which traditionally conducts in-studio interviews of major guests.

Corey Lewandowski, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, said he has “seen tens of thousands of New Hampshire residents on his numerous trips” and will return next week. His campaign Tuesday announced the appointment of 200 volunteer “town chairs” in communities throughout the state.

“Mr. Trump loves the people of New Hampshire and they love him, as is indicated by every poll that shows he is the clear front-runner,” he said.

Mr. Trump’s critics dismiss his enduring lead in the polls, pointing to a history of late decision-making in a state that lets voters register to vote on Election Day. Forty-six percent of the voters in the 2012 New Hampshire GOP primary—held early on Jan. 10—said they made their decision that day or in the past few days, according to exit polling.

New Hampshire has traditionally rewarded Republican candidates who hunker down in the frigid weeks leading up to its primary. Most recently, that was 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, who conveniently owned a vacation home in the state, and 2008 nominee John McCain, who staged a comeback from here after his campaign verged on collapse...
More.

Poll: Donald Trump Firmly Consolidates Lead Atop GOP Primary Field (VIDEO)

At CNN, via Memeorandum, "Trump dominates GOP field heading into 2016."

And at WSJ, "Donald Trump Poised to Enter New Year as Clear GOP Front-Runner":


Donald Trump is poised to enter the new year as the clear front-runner in the GOP presidential contest, with support for the celebrity businessman growing in the latest CNN/ORC poll.

The new survey finds Mr. Trump leading the GOP field with 39% of the vote — up from 36% earlier this month. He leads his closest rival Sen. Ted Cruz by more than 20 points. Mr. Trump has been on top of the Republican field, according to CNN’s polling, since July.

As he has consolidated his position atop the GOP field, Mr. Trump has turned his attention to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton — marking a new phase in the primary campaign.

He has demanded an apology from Mrs. Clinton for suggesting his words were being used by Islamic State for recruitment, deployed a vulgar term to describe her 2008 loss to Barack Obama, and said it was “disgusting” that she took a bathroom break during last week’s debate.

Mr. Cruz has surged in the polls, though he trails Mr. Trump significantly. He now draws 18% in the latest CNN poll — up from 4% in October. A Quinnipiac poll this week showed a much closer race, with Messrs. Cruz and Trump within four points of one other and each drawing about a quarter of the Republican vote.

Former neurosurgeon Ben Carson has slipped in the polls in recent months, drawing 10% support in the latest poll. That’s down from 14% in early December and and 22% in October. His campaign has been rocked by questions about his command of foreign affairs and allegations he invented key portions of his life story.

Sen. Marco Rubio also draws 10% of the GOP vote in the latest poll, with no one else in the field cracking double-digits.

Support for Mr. Trump is based on his perceived competence on the issues. In CNN’s poll, 57% of Republicans said he was best able to handle the economy, 55% said he was the best candidate to tackle immigration and 47% said he would be the strongest in fighting the terrorist group Islamic State.

Republicans seem split on Mr. Trump’s electability, with 50% saying that the party has a better shot of winning the presidency in 2016 with a different candidate. By contrast, 46% said Mr. Trump was the strongest candidate. That’s up from August, when just 38% of Republicans said Mr. Trump was the party’s best shot at winning back the White House.

The CNN poll was conducted between Dec. 17-21 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points...
More.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

'With Trump's call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, several of the nation's most esteemed journalists and influential news outlets have set aside traditional notions of balance and given themselves license to label the Republican front-runner a liar, a demagogue, a racist and worse…'

The quote's from Politico's Dylan Byers, at Jay Rosen's PressThink, "Something happened in journalism two weeks ago that I want to examine before we all forget about it and election season rolls on."

"Traditional notions" of media objectivity went out the window decades ago, if there were any such notions in the first place.

Let's face it: the U.S. has descended into a miasma of leftist political correctness, with the Democrat Media Complex leading the crash all the way down.

In case you missed it, go back and read the much-too-clear David Horowitz essay from yesterday, "Donald Trump and the American Future."

Muslims are not like any other minority group. They want to kill us. And leftists will be among the first of those slaughtered, which I suppose is poetic justice.

Donald Trump and the American Future

From David Horowitz, at FrontPage Magazine:
I have to confess that of late I have become increasingly pessimistic about the future of our country. For awhile I was hopeful that the electorate would finally cut through the fog of political correctness: the racist, collectivist, America-and-white people-are-guilty party line of the Democratic Party. Not so any more. Both the conservative punditry (with a few notable exceptions) and the Republican establishment are proving as feckless in resisting the left’s attacks, and as unfocused on the Democratic adversary as the Republican congress. The Democrats are at it full bore. Having gotten away with disarming the nation in the face of its enemies, and with promoting systematic racial discrimination, along with racist lynch mobs in the streets, the Democrats are busy on the attack. In their election campaign year, they are accusing Republican candidates of being racist and recruiters for ISIS. The only serious - i.e., bloody-minded - fire coming from the Republican side is directed at Donald Trump.  (Think about it – all the Democrats need is a damaged Trump. Then they can condemn Republicans for merely associating with him.) If Republicans want to join Democrats and match their viciousness in taking down the Republican front-runner, Hillary Clinton is going to be our next president.

The most recent explosion of outrage at Trump is his proposal for a temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration “until we figure it out” – i.e., figure out how to vet Muslim immigrants so that we don’t allow anymore Tashfeen Malik’s into the country where they are determined to kill innocent Americans. Otherwise perfectly intelligent conservatives have joined the Democrat smear squad in denouncing Trump’s suggestion as unconstitutional, illegal, and un-American. In fact, as a cursory Internet search should convince anyone free of anti-Republican bigotry, Trump’s proposal is not only constitutional (foreigners seeking entry into the country have no rights under the US Constitution – only US citizens do. It is also perfectly legal. There is an actual U.S. code that says the president has the authority to ban “any class” of individuals he deems a threat to the American citizens.

Moreover, Trump’s proposal is obviously sensible – i.e., is justified by a realistic confrontation with the facts. According to a Pew Poll, 64% of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan believe that leaving the Muslim faith should be punished by death. In Afghanistan the figure is 78%. While 64% of Muslims are not active terrorists, there was not a single member of the Muslim community in San Bernardino willing to alert authorities to the hateful, indeed murderous ideas of the shooter couple. Punishing apostasy by death is only a crystallization of the jihadists’ belief that all non-Muslims who refuse to submit to the Islamic faith should be killed. That is what the war that Islamists have declared on us is about. Donald Trump has done the country a service by putting this issue – previously unmentionable – before the American public. Thus far he is the only candidate with the guts to do this, and that is why he is leading in the polls by a wide margin.

According to a 2009 “World Opinion Poll” conducted by the University of Maryland, between 30% and 50% of Muslims in Muslim countries approve of the terrorist attacks on America. If 64% of Muslims think that infidels deserve death – and an impressive percentage approve of the attacks on America and the West – that amounts to between 500 million and 800 million sworn enemies of our country and our culture.  Say it’s only a tenth of those numbers. That’s 50 million or more potential killers for Allah, and supporters of killers for Allah. Keep in mind that these terrorists already have chemical and biological weapons. Is there any person not blinded by leftwing ideas that doesn’t think this presents a vetting problem for us in dealing with Muslim immigrants and visitors? Moreover, a vetting problem that we obviously haven’t begun to solve? However, perhaps Trump’s blanket ban, though constitutional, legal and temporary - is also impractical. The details as Trump himself would be the first to admit are still negotiable. A practical plan even one of reduced scope is better than none.

So why are conservatives treating Trump as a pariah? Clinton and Obama have the blood of hundreds of thousands of Christians and non-ISIS Muslims on their hands not to mention the American victims of their rules of engagement. It is they and their party who have undermined the war on radical Islamists for 22 years since Bill Clinton refused to visit the thousand victims of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Democrats have fought to try terrorist soldiers in civil courts where they would be given the rights of American citizens; they have fought to close Guantanamo, and have deliberately released terrorist generals to return to the battlefield and kill more Americans; Democrats have fought to abandon our military presence in Iraq, surrendering a hard won victory to ISIS and Iran; Obama and Hillary overthrew – illegally, immorally and unconstitutionally – the anti-al Qaeda government of Libya and turned that country into a terrorist hunting ground. Where are the Republican litanies high-lighting these betrayals?

In the meantime, jihadist mosques protected by Democrats continue to function – including the one attended by the San Bernardino shooters – the city of New York continues to bar first responders from monitoring mosques to see what they are preaching, 350 Sanctuary cities still refuse to cooperate with Homeland Security. All under the enemy-friendly doctrine that all Muslims belong to a protected species that cannot be scrutinized about their commitment to a religion that preaches hatred of non-Muslims, particularly Jews, and whose avowed goal is the political submission of the entire world to the Islamic faith.  On the other side, a Republican/conservative chorus has so tarred and feathered the Republican front-runner who is doing by default the work that they should be doing, that they have made it virtually impossible for him to win a general election. And make no mistake, they have also made it virtually impossible for any Republican candidate to speak frankly about the Democrats’ perfidy and the danger it poses to our country.

How much innocent blood do Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have on their hands? How much innocent blood will be spilled in the next four years if Clinton is elected? These are the questions Republicans should be asking, not whether Donald Trump is a bigot. He obviously is not.  Impolitic yes. Racist no. Donald Trump has many faults but lack of political courage is not one of them. He seems motivated by concern for the pit into which this country has fallen under an administration with catastrophic priorities and uncertain loyalties. That is what Republicans need to think about when framing their next attacks. Otherwise the future is dim indeed.

Donald Trump Hilariously Reports That Barack Obama 'Schlonged' Hillary Clinton in 2008 Election (VIDEO)

Raw Story, Talking Points Memo, and Think Progress have blown gaskets at this hilarious story, via Memeorandum, "‘Schlonged’: Watch Trump's Astonishingly Sexist Attack on Hillary."

What a freakin' riot!

Here's the video, "Trump Says Obama 'Schlonged' Hillary."

It's actually hard to make out the "schlonged" reference. Trump's kinda saying it under his breath. But Think Progress has the quote, so you be the judge. Either way, given the twisted leftist panties, it's the best, lol.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Hillary Clinton: Deja Vu

The bottom line is that Hillary can be beat.

At the Washington Post, "Backers fear old weaknesses stalk Clinton campaign":
It was supposed to be different this time. After the wounds of 2008, many of them self-inflicted, Hillary Rodham Clinton rebooted for 2016 with a new message, new advisers and new energy.

But two dynamics have crystallized this month, suggesting the New Hillary is hobbled by old weaknesses. Once again, worried supporters see signs of a bunker mentality in response to bad news about her e-mail server and other controversies, and they see a candidate who can seem strangely blinkered to the threat posed by a lesser-known challenger.

“A lot of the people who were hired by the campaign were new to the Clintons,” said a prominent Democrat who counts both Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton as friends. “I kind of assumed it would be different. But it hasn’t changed.”

That Democrat and other supporters requested anonymity in order to discuss the shortcomings of a candidate whom they still overwhelmingly support and think can win the White House. Several supporters said that while no one is pulling the fire alarm, they see worrisome patterns emerging.

Among them: insularity, rigidity and a sense that the operation is tone-deaf to changes happening around it...
Keep reading.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Obama to Force Government Contractors to Reveal Salary Breakdowns by Sex and Race in Equal Pay Drive

Well, it's not like Dear Leader's diktats are a surprise anymore or anything.

A Blazing Cat Fur.

Strange though, notes Instapundit, "Once you impose the ‘ceteris paribus’ condition, the alleged 23% gender pay gap starts to quickly evaporate."

Well, O' Great One! prolly didn't do so well in economics, although we'll never know with those Columbia academic transcripts nailed down tighter than the gold at New York's Federal Reserve Bank, lol.

Friday, January 31, 2014

Left-Wing Whackjobs Prove Tom Perkins' Point

At the Wall Street Journal, "Perkinsnacht: Liberal vituperation makes our letter writer's point":
Five days on, the commentariat continues to drop anvils on Tom Perkins, who may have written the most-read letter to the editor in the history of The Wall Street Journal. The irony is that the vituperation is making our friend's point about liberal intolerance—maybe better than he did.

"I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent," wrote the legendary venture capitalist and a founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Mr. Perkins called it "a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendant 'progressive' radicalism unthinkable now?"

That comparison was unfortunate, albeit provocative. It's not always easy to be subtle in 186 words, as Mr. Perkins learned, though a useful rule of thumb is not to liken anything to Nazi Germany unless it happens to be the Stalinist Soviet Union. Amid the ongoing media furor and an ungallant rebuke from Kleiner Perkins, Mr. Perkins has apologized for the comparison, without repudiating his larger argument.

While claiming to be outraged at the Nazi reference, the critics seem more incensed that Mr. Perkins dared to question the politics of economic class warfare. The boys at Bloomberg View—we read them since no one else does—devoted an entire editorial to inequality and Mr. Perkins's "unhinged Nazi rant." Others denounced him for defending his former wife Danielle Steel, and even for owning too many Rolex watches.

Maybe the critics are afraid that Mr. Perkins is onto something about the left's political method. Consider the recent record of liberals in power. They're the ones obsessed with the Koch brothers and other billionaires contributing to conservative causes, siccing journalists to trash them and federal agencies to shut them down.More at the link.
Keep reading.

The Nazi comparison was indeed over the top. But as WSJ points out, the left's attack on the rich is indeed unhinged, demonstrated by the meltdown over Perkins.

Neo-Neocon had a nice post on this the other day, "The war on the 1% and the war on the opposition":
Does this mean Kristallnacht and then the camps are coming? I happen to think what’s happening today will take a different form, a form it is already showing: continuing legal persecution and rhetorical demonization of those who dare to question the liberal line, minus the death camps and the rest. But I also believe that, if killing people ends up being necessary for some reason, the hard left here would have absolutely no hesitation in doing so. I just think, as I’ve written before, that this movement in the US has the earmarks of Chavez more than Hitler or Stalin. That could change.
As I've said many times, leftists would kill you if they had the chance. Kristallnacht is over the top. I just don't go for Nazi analogies, because they demeans the enormity of the Holocaust. That's not to say that the left isn't composed of a similar evil. It is. We've witnessed leftist evil first hand for some time now. But this is America in the 21st century. Things won't play out as they did in the 1930s. Or at least not yet. Not yet. Good people will not surrender decency to the regressive mobs.

PREVIOUSLY: "Barack's Pogrom: The Rising Tide of Hatred Against the 'Evil' One Percent."

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Barack's Pogrom: The Rising Tide of Hatred Against the 'Evil' One Percent

You gotta read this letter at WSJ, from Tom Perkins, "Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?" (at Memeorandum):
From the Occupy movement to the demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent. There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these "techno geeks" can pay....

This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent "progressive" radicalism unthinkable now?
Actually, Kristallnacht is a pretty good analogy. I wrote about the emerging evil in the Bay Area day before yesterday, "Unhinged Leftists Escalate 'Google Bus' Protests to Home of Driverless Car Designer Anthony Levandowski." You're likely to get hurt with people like this, if not killed. They went to the guy's house and knocked on his door! And this Levandowski guy's probably Jewish!

And here's yesterday's front-page story at the Los Angeles Times, "Tech industry in San Francisco addresses backlash":

Kristallnacht photo KNachtNYT600pxwCr_zpsf566f2c0.png
With the cost of living here at levels that almost no one but the most affluent can afford, protesters have taken to the streets to block luxury shuttles ferrying tech workers to Silicon Valley companies.

In an incident signaling growing tensions, a protester hurled a rock through the window of a Google bus in Oakland in December. On Wednesday, demonstrators stood outside the Berkeley home of a Google engineer, protesting the company's work on military robots and the tech industry's role in driving up rents and evictions in San Francisco.
See all the responses at Memeorandum.

Here's idiot Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog, "Look, I'm not sure about tactics like slashing Google buses' tires, but if Perkins is going to have the bad taste to equate his fellow richies with the victims of the Holocaust, tell me: Who's the Hitler in all this? Where's the state power?"

Actually, look no farther than the White House for your state leader. Herr Barack has been exhorting his progressive Brownshirts to violence since taking office. [Before taking office, actually.]

Everything is proceeding as conservatives warned back in 2008. See, "It's the 1930s, and You Are There."

And it's all coming to a head this year, "Obama to make inequality the defining issue of 2014."

Bring it you leftist scum. Just f-king bring it.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Sarah Palin: 'I was banned from talking about Rev. Jeremiah Wright...'

Well, Republicans were basically banned from winning the election.

If you don't talk about the treason and anti-Americanism of the Democrat Party and its vile nominee, no one else is going to do if for you, last of all the leftist media complex.

At Twitchy, "Sarah Palin tells Greta Van Susteren: ‘I was banned from talking about Rev. Wright’ [video]."



Thursday, February 28, 2013

Marilyn Musgrave: 'I Don't Think There's Anything More Important Out There Than the Marriage Issue...'

Former U.S. Representative Marilyn Musgrave is pushing back hard against a New York Times report that claimed she'd changed her position on homosexual marriage.

At KDVR Fox 31 Denver, "Marilyn Musgrave denies NYT report that she supports gay marriage."

DENVER — Finally, a concession from Marilyn Musgrave.

Or so it seemed for a short time on the website of the New York Times, which initially reported Wednesday that the former Colorado Congresswoman, who never officially conceded her 2008 defeat to Democrat Betsy Markey, had done a complete reversal on what has always been her signature issue: gay marriage.

But Musgrave, who sponsored a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and famously said that there was no bigger threat to the country, tells FOX31 Denver that the report is flat-out wrong.

“I’m very befuddled by this story,” Musgrave told FOX31 Denver. “There’s absolutely no truth to that. I’m reading it thinking, ‘what in the world?’

“I wasn’t even aware of it. I have not changed my position. I’m trying to imagine where anyone would get that information and I can’t figure it out.”

The brief, organized by former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, who is openly gay, urges the Supreme Court to declare that gay and lesbian couples have a Constitutional right to marry.

Musgrave was cited in the lede paragraph of a story by the New York Times’ Sheryl Gay Stolberg as part of a growing group of conservative Republicans supporting Mehlman’s brief.
Here's the piece, which was riddled with errors, "Brief Supporting Same-Sex Marriage Gets More Republican Support."

And listen to Musgrave at the clip, in a speech to the Family Research Council in 2008. (She lost her seat that year.)

Sunday, February 17, 2013

What is 'Natural Born'?

I'm not sure why it's important, but William Jacobson feels he must respond to attacks from "birther" conspiracy-mongers. I guess these are not infrequent, as William explains, "This will be dealt with."

Read it all at the link above. The email William posts in pretty fascinating:
JACOBSON: First you display your inexcusable contempt for the law by keeping the fact of Obama’s ineligibility from your readers, for whatever discreditable reasons. Now you double down and defend and promote the candidacies of two more ineligibles, Rubio and Jindal. (The reason the Democrats have to paint Rubio and Jindal as crazies is because they know that thanks to people like you, the Republicans would actually put up an ineligible candidate.) What is wrong with you? Don’t you have any respect for the Constitution? Or for a government of laws? You enable, aid and abet lawbreakers. You are a Professor of Law and your conduct is so egregious you are an indelible stain on the profession.

Debate me, defend your conduct in any public setting. Or defend in writing your enablement of Obama and promotion of other ineligible candidates. You can’t, can you? There is no honorable defense, is there? No. You and your ilk are largely responsible for Obama’s tremendously destructive foreign and domestic policies of the past four years. Had you and your colleagues in the Conservative MSM spoken up four years ago, the Federal Courts would have removed Obama and avoided so much damage done and so much damage yet to be done.

Such lawlessness. Such dishonesty. Such cowardice.
I can't comment on Jindal et al.'s eligibility just yet, but if folks are making a natural born case against Obama then they're accepting as fact that he was born in Hawaii (which would confer automatic eligibility under the 14th Amendment) but that it takes two American parents for a child to be considered natural born (and that's apparently regardless of the same birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment). I always thought the question of Obama's birth certification by the State of Hawaii a bit fishy, and Obama hasn't helped matters by refusing to release his full authenticated birth certificate (with vital medical information, witnesses, etc.) rather than the cheap-ass computer print-out claiming "certification of live birth." (Obama is all about hiding who is he, on his academic transcripts, as another example; the left fears the truth, while the right has obsessed over it.) No matter. The courts ruled against challenges to Obama's eligibility and after awhile it gets to be a bit like Captain Ahab. In any case, William must be facing a lot of hostility because he's researching it and will post his findings for the record. A quick search turned up some information, which is interesting, no matter how you view the issues: "Birther Claims Debunked: Two Citizen Parents." What's also interesting is that this president has engendered so much hatred, so much conspiracy theorizing, that no matter how deranged it is, there's some kind of weird legitimacy to the movement in the sense that Obama really is "post-American" in his ideological outlook and Marxist orientation to the state and political culture. It's definitely a unique manifestation. It's what drives most of our polarization. The question is centrally about the meaning of being an American and living under the law and according to a traditional set of values that are exceptional. The left has abandoned that exceptionalism. The president is the standard bearer for the destruction of that decency and history. All of this was inevitable when the Democrat Party ended up nominating Obama and when the American people bought the lies and elected him. We'll be digging out from this monstrosity for decades, if we ever fully recover.

As for the citizenship thing, at this point it's moot, in any case. Barack Hussein ain't going anywhere. So I'll be interested to see what happens with Jindal and the others. Stay tuned as far as that goes.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Barack Obama and Other Has-Beens

You have to read this in full, the best ever essay from Bret Stephens, at the Wall Street Journal.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Corruption: Exposing Barack Obama's Illegal Foreign Campaign Money Loophole

From Katie Pavlich, at Townhall:
A new report obtained by Townhall from the non-partisan Government Accountability Institute [GAI] shows the Obama campaign has potentially violated federal election law by failing to prevent the use of fraudulent or foreign credit card transactions on the official Obama for America [OFA] donation webpage.

For the past eight months, GAI has been investigating the potential influence of foreign online campaign donations in House, Senate and presidential elections. The report was conducted using spidering software and found thousands of foreign sites linking to campaign donation pages. The investigation was conducted with the guidance of a former U.S. attorney. GAI is led by Peter Schweizer, who recently exposed congressional insider trading in his book Throw Them All Out.

“As FBI surveillance tapes have previously shown, foreign governments understand and are eager to exploit the weaknesses of American campaigns,” the report says. “This, combined with the Internet’s ability to disintermediate campaign contributions on a mass scale, as well as outmoded and lax Federal Election Commission rules, make U.S. elections vulnerable to foreign influence.”

OFA seems to be taking advantage of a “foreign donor loophole” by not using CVV on their campaign donation page. When you donate online to the Obama campaign using a credit card, the contribution webpage does not require donors to enter a secure CVV number (also known as CSC, CVV2 or CVN), the three-digit securing code on the back of credit cards. This code, although not 100 percent effective, is used to ensure a person making a purchase physically possesses the card. According to the report, 90 percent of e-commerce and 19 of the 20 largest charities in the United States use a CVV code, making its use standard industry practice in order to prevent fraud. Another anti-fraud security measure includes software, better known as an Address Verification System, to verify a donor’s address matches the address on file with the credit card company. The investigation could not determine whether OFA is using this type of software to prevent fraudulent or illegal donations.
Hmm...

Sounds familiar. I wonder where I've heard this story before?

Oh yeah: "Obama’s Fundraising Fraud."

Maybe the dead-tree press will do something about it this year? You know, like reporting it.

There's more from Pavlich at the link.

I'm not holding my breath. The FEC never goes after campaign finance fraud. The system's a joke.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Obama Was Honest When He Said He Wanted to Remake America

At the Wall Street Journal, "Transformers 2":

Who You Are...
For all the spin and deception of politics, sooner or later every politician reveals his true purposes. For Barack Obama, one of those moments came when he declared shortly before the 2008 election that "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." Above all else, the President who asked voters for a second term Thursday night sees himself as destined to transform America according to his own progressive dreams.

For most of 2008, Mr. Obama was able to disguise this ambition behind his gauzy rhetoric of hope and post-partisanship. The fine print of his agenda betrayed his plans to expand and entrench the entitlement state, but most voters ignored that as they chose his cool confidence over John McCain's manic intensity amid a financial panic.

Candidate Obama was eloquent and likable. His personal story echoed of America's history as a land of opportunity. Voters put aside any worry about his ideology and took a chance on his promise of a better tomorrow.

Four years later the shooting liberal star, as we called him then, has come down to earth. What should have been a buoyant recovery coming out of a deep recession was lackluster to start and has grown weaker. The partisanship he claimed to want to dampen has become more fierce. The middle-class incomes he sought to lift have fallen. These results aren't bad luck or the lingering effects of a crash four years ago. They flow directly from his "transforming" purposes.
Continue reading.

IMAGE CREDIT: The Looking Spoon.