Crazy Joe the Senator is hedging his bets

Did you know that Joe Biden is also running for re-election for his Senate seat?

Looks like our favorite plagiarist isn't 100% confident.

Cuban Digest: All Embargo All the Time

As we all know the yearly ritual of the UN vote against the embargo ended in the same result. This year, though, Perez Roque was particularly impassioned as he waxed eloquent, pointing out that the embargo is older than Obama. Also older than Obama is the oppression of the Cuban people by the Cuban Capos not mentioned by the same Perez Roque nor condemned by the UN. But that's nothing new.

Today's headlines, however, present an interesting proposition. Not content with the UN results, the "Latin American Leaders" at the IberoAmerican Summit in San Salvador on Friday also urged the repeal of the embargo because it hurts the Cuban people. Frankly, their concern for the wellbeing of the Cuban people has been less inspiring than conspiring.

On the very same page is a story about the Cuban regime owing Sherritt $393 million. Prospect of repayment looks shaky, although the debt will be "restructured." Sure is a lot of that restructuring going around. Sherritt is a familiar name here. As the story indicates in something of an understatement, Sherritt International is one of the "pioneers of foreign investment" in the country. Recently, they were in the headlines when they pulled out of a deal to develop Cuba's purportedly boundless offshore oil deposits.

Connect the dots. As at least one presidential candidate knows, it sure is easy to give away other people's money.

Pictue of the Buttmunch Who Stole My McCain Sign

Even though there's no Obama signs in my neighborhood, there's a lot of McCain signs. But in any event, some buttmunch decided to steal my sign.

Here's his photo .... his good side

May the ticks of 1000 mice infested with the plague infest your crotch you assmunch.

Thank you.

Race to democratic socialism

I disagree with about 95% of this oped, and I loathe the fact that the author put Marx and Marti in the same sentence, but the second-to-last sentence poses a very interesting question:

"Which country, Cuba or the United States, will make the transition to democratic socialism first?"

Predictions?

The (revised) Lord's Prayer

A modification of the original, made especially for our times:

OUR OBAMA WHO ART IN THE WHITE HOUSE
HALLOWED BE THY NAME

OBAMA

What side is inciting violence?

I didn't know Erica Jong was a conservative. Go figure.

Going...going....Gone!

First Obama promised that only the rich, those that made more than 250K a year would see a tax increase. Then he brought it down to 200K. Then Biden foot-in-mouthed it to 150K.

Today, Obama pal and ardent supporter governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico dropped that down to $120,000.

Boy, you gotta hand it to Obama, still five days from the election, and America already has more rich folks.

Obamaman Can

The Candyman cometh:

Of course, if she doesnt have to work to gas up her car and pay her mortgage, it will be your duty, as patriotic Americans, to work for her.

Obamaman Can!

Stay classy, Democrats! (Part 3,873,388)

Voter, Poll Worker Get Into Physical Fight At Kendall Poll Location

Obama: Do as I say, not as I do

Yesterday the London Times published a story about Barack Obama’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango, who lives in a rundown housing project in Boston. Aunt Zeituni is not an unknown Kenyan relative Obama just found out about, but instead an aunt he recalled with fondness and affection in his book, Dreams from my Father. Strangely enough, for a man who purports to care so deeply for his Kenyan family and roots, it is surprising to find out that Aunt Zeituni lives in a derelict housing project when she has a famous and influential nephew of considerable wealth.

Now most of us have relatives that are either better off or worse off than ourselves, and outside of a family emergency, few of us expect either to be subsidized by those relatives with more resources, or to have to support those who have less. With that said, I respect whatever the reason Obama may have for not wanting to “share his wealth” with his poor Aunt Zeituni. But where I do have a problem is that Obama wants me, and the rest of the country, to share our wealth with Aunt Zeituni, and the many others like her who find themselves in similar or worse situations. If Obama did not feel a pressing need to send his Aunt money, why should the rest of the nation be forced to do so?

This is not a question of whether this country should help those in need, but more of a question of who decides who gets the help and who is going to provide it. Obama had an opportunity to put his philosophy of “spreading the wealth” into practice with his own Aunt, yet he chose not to do so. However, he has no issue with forcing the entire nation to spread their wealth.

For his own personal reasons, Obama did not feel compelled to extend financial help to his own relative, and I will not judge him for that decision. It is his money, his wealth, and he is free to disburse it as he chooses. I will judge him, however, for his decision to pursue a tax law that will compel the citizens of this nation to share their wealth. Obama had a choice, but he is not willing to give Americans the same choice.

A real leader, an effective leader, an honest leader, leads by example. Obama should consider giving Americans the option to follow his own personal example.

This year's No. 1 Halloween costume

Pretty scary:

The Purge has begun

This may sound familiar to those that experienced a similar event in Cuba right after the 1959 revolution. Obama and his campaign have decided that there is no room on the campaign airplane for journalists whose editorial boards did not endorse him for president. With only four days left in the presidential race, Obama has effectively purged his campaign of the reporters from the Washington Times, the New York Post, and the Dallas Morning News, all of which have endorsed McCain for president through their editorial boards.

Even though this should not be a surprise, especially coming from a campaign of "Interview Nazis," the sheer brazenness of this move should send chills down the spines of all of us who value one of the cornerstones of this country's foundation: the freedom of the press.

Obama's campaign, of course, does not see this as a purge, but rather, they are just making room for some other journalists. Which begs the question: In an Obama presidency, just how much room will there be for a free and unfettered press?

You can read about the purge, HERE, and HERE.

Trick 'r Treat

The Howard Stern show went to Harlem and asked some of the locals about their support for Obama while ascribing McCain's policies to the one. The resulting responses are very interesting.

Listen to this, and you tell me why they are voting for Obama.

H/T: The Mrs.

Happy Halloween

The question I ask of you infidels as you go around evading spooks and goblins tonight, will we be freer next year on Halloween? Frankly, President Obama, or the thought of it is scarier than any ghost or goblin. At least we know there are no such things as ghosts.

Boo!

Another wonderful endorsement for Obama

Heh heh heh. This is a beauty. It seems a white supremacist is supporting Obama.

Tom Metzger, Director, White Aryan Resistance

Likes: White people, karaoke, environmentalists

Dislikes: Race-mixing, Jews, the federal government, capitalism

Career Highlights: Was Grand Dragon of Ku Klux Klan in the 70s; won the Democratic primary during his bid for Congress in 1980; appeared on the episode of Geraldo Rivera’s show in 1988 when Rivera’s nose was broken in a brawl.

"The corporations are running things now, so it’s not going to make much difference who's in there, but McCain would be much worse. He’s a warmonger. He’s a scary, scary person--more dangerous than Bush. Obama, according to his book, Dreams Of My Father, is a racist and I have no problem with black racists. I’ve got the quote right here: 'I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s white race.' The problem with Obama is he’s being dishonest about his racial views. I’d respect him if he’d just come out and say, 'Yeah, I’m a black racist.' I don’t hate black people. I just think it’s in the best interest of the races to be separated as much as possible. See, I’m a leftist. I’m not a rightist. I hate the transnational corporations far more than any black person."

Oy vey.

(H/T STACLU)

Ominous

Via Gates of Vienna comes this report from Israel National News about a possible Iranian nuclear weapon test last weekend.

A weekend 5.0 Richter earthquake in Iran was actually a nuclear bomb test, says an Iranian nuclear scientist claiming to be working on the project.

The report is an Israel Insider exclusive.

This past Saturday night, southern Iran experienced what was reported as a significant earthquake - a seismic event measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale. Its epicenter was just north of the strategic Straits of Hormuz, which separates Iran from Abu Dhabi and Oman and which is the gateway to the Persian Gulf.

I guess we Obama now more than ever to talk to 'em and convince 'em of the error of their ways...

Why?

I spoke on the phone today with a friend, Juan Amador Rodriguez. Some of you may know the name. He's a guy about my age that came from Cuba in the 1990s. He participated in the famous Maleconazo of 1994. He was also a political prisoner in Cuba. He often appears on Radio Mambi and when he does, he invites Alberto de la Cruz and I to come along and give the Cuban-American perspective. Juan Amador has a way with words. It's a shame he doesn't speak much English because he's very articulate.

Anyway, today we were talking about the election and he said to me:

Henry, Barack Obama is the son of a black man and a white woman who was born during a time of incredible discrimination. He was raised mainly by his grandparents and despite their modest lifestyle he was afforded the opportunity to attend the best universities. He became a lawyer and a politician and now is a step away from being president. He's a testament to the greatness of this country. So why does he want to change it so badly? I just want my daughter to have the same chance he did. Nothing more, nothing less. Why does he want to change that?

Fascinating Obama Audio

Read about it here.

Then listen to it here.

Go Back Home, Peter Frampton!!

These lame Limey pinko millionaires flee to America to evade socialist Britain's confiscatory taxes--then they campaign to convert the U.S to socialism! If "you--you-YOU--feel Like I do!" Then let's "show him the way"--back across the big water, where he can hob-knob with his fellow Fabians.

And by the way: Joe Perry's burning riffs stomp your lame strumming ANYDAY, Frampton!

Check it out here

No shit! Really?!

You just figure that out Sherlock? One more liberal theory lie down the toilet...

Boston (MA) - Scientists at MIT have recorded a nearly simultaneous world-wide increase in methane levels. This is the first increase in ten years, and what baffles science is that this data contradicts theories stating man is the primary source of increase for this greenhouse gas. It takes about one full year for gases generated in the highly industrial northern hemisphere to cycle through and reach the southern hemisphere. However, since all worldwide levels rose simultaneously throughout the same year, it is now believed this may be part of a natural cycle in mother nature - and not the direct result of man's contributions.

DUH!

The 31 years of failed Democrat economic policies

Over the last month I've had to explain the sub-prime mortgage crisis that led to the collapse of various investment banks and the culminating bailout to a wide variety of family members, friends and acquaintances. As someone who for 18 years was in the belly of the beast that was (and is) the financial services industry, I know a little about the subject. One of the main canards I hear from the preternaturally stupid people on the left is the mantra of "Bush's eight years of failed economic policies" have led us to where we are today. In addition to being a lie, it is also indicative of the blind, cultish fanaticism that pervades the left. When I attempt to compare the economic realities that existed in 2006, when Dems were voted into a majority in the House and Senate, versus where we are today, none of it filters through. None. There is no reasoning, no talking, no exposition of facts detailed enough to convince these people. It is a seemingly impossible task.

In The American Thinker on October 26, M. Jay Wells wrote what I think is a definitive essay on the real reasons for our financial crisis, going back (as I stated in a post a month ago) with the passage of a little law called the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). In "Why the Mortgage Crisis Happened," Wells details the history of the crisis from the tipping point of CRA, and the organizations like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and ACORN, who took full advantage of it, doing their level, mostly unintentional, best in almost destroying our banking system with trillions of dollars of bad loans. Wells writes that "[c]ontrary to the Obama narrative [...] it is not free-market capitalism at the root of the current mortgage industry crisis, but rather the very socialism [he] hawks. The historical record makes this fact unmistakably clear."

The entire article is included below the fold. Read it and keep it close. Facts are stubborn things, Ronald Reagan was fond of saying; they can't be denied. The sad fact is that the country is witnessing the consequences of failed Socialist policies -- and possibly heading further into the abyss with its eyes closed and its mind, such as it is, made up.

Why the Mortgage Crisis Happened
By M. Jay Wells

Obama's economic narrative of the mortgage crisis ignores the facts. He has put free-market capitalism at the root of the current mortgage industry debacle, denying the real history of government interference in that market.

On September 15, with banking giant Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy protection, Obama was given the opening to begin weaving his anti-capitalist storyline. And that he did. Artfully blurring the mortgage industry crisis with generalized tax policy, Obama declared,

"I certainly don't fault Senator McCain for these problems, but I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to. It's a philosophy we've had for the last eight years, one that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else."

The words were carefully chosen. That day in Colorado marked his return to the teleprompter and a strictly refocused campaign message intent on surreptitiously fusing the mortgage industry woes and free-market capitalism in general. Confident the American people are primed for his socialist brand of "change," Obama maintained his anti-capitalist theme, "What we have seen in the last few days is nothing less than the final verdict on an economic philosophy that has completely failed." According to Obama, capitalism has been "rendered . . . a colossal failure."

His chat with a Toledo, Ohio, plumber showcases his socialist, redistributionist ideology:

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too. . . . I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

He had already said as much at an April debate where he said his plan was to "look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness" (after having just admitted that raising the tax would reduce revenues!). For Obama, increased federal revenue be damned, tax increases are nonetheless necessary for redistributionist "fairness."

Contrary to the Obama narrative, however, it is not free-market capitalism at the root of the current mortgage industry crisis, but rather the very socialism Obama hawks. The historical record makes this fact unmistakably clear.

The Growing Government Hand

1933-1938

President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated a series of "New Deal" reform programs designed to affect the mortgage market and homeownership. Fannie Mae, the Federal National Mortgage Association, was established to facilitate liquidity among lending institutions.

1968

As part of President Johnson's Great Society reform plan, much of Fannie Mae became a private owned yet government chartered company, a government sponsored enterprise (GSE) providing authority to issue mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Fannie Mae buys home mortgages in order to preserve liquidity in the secondary mortgage market. Though private, it remained backed by the Federal government.

1970

President Nixon chartered Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, as a GSE to compete with Fannie Mae. Designed to help grow the secondary mortgage market, Freddie Mac purchases mortgages from lending institutions to either be securitized as MBS and sold in the secondary market or held by Freddie Mac. At this time the secondary market for conventional mortgages was small.

1977

Sen. Proxmire (D-Wisconsin) introduced a "creeping socialism" community reinvestment Senate bill. Opponents argued the bill would allocate credit without regard for merits of loan applications, thereby threatening depository institutions. Proponents countered that it was only to ensure that lenders did not ignore good borrowing prospects in their communities. The bill's sponsor stressed it would neither force high-risk lending nor substitute the views of regulators or those of banks.

President Carter, pressed by grassroots organizations -- though opposed by the banking industry, signed into law the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). In the years following the Act has undergone several revisions.

To boost community development laws, CRA was a provision designed to stem bank "redlining," the practice of drawing a red line around low-income communities and denying lending in these areas. The original intent of CRA was to encourage banks to foster homeownership opportunities in these underserved communities in which the lending institutions are chartered.

According to Section 801 of title VIII, "regulated financial institutions are required by law to demonstrate that their deposit facilities serve the convenience and needs [i.e., credit and deposit services] of the communities in which they are chartered to do business." Accordingly, "regulated financial institutions have continuing and affirmative obligation" to meet these needs. Moreover, the title required each "appropriate Federal financial supervisory agency to use its authority when examining financial institutions, to encourage such institutions."

1980s

With CRA came increased oversight of lending institutions to ensure they were giving credit to low- and moderate-income communities. Regulators expressed that CRA was not designed to compel credit allocation, nor did it require risky lending practices. Moreover, ECOA (Equal Credit Opportunity Act) and FHA, not CRA, were in place to address discrimination in lending. But community organization groups like the radical ACORN began efforts to reshape CRA into government-imposition, in accord with what "affirmative obligation" might suggest. They began pressing the semantic open door and stretching the "discrimination" provision to complain about enforcement of the regulations as lending institutions resisted bad lending practices in poor minority communities.

August 1989

To deal with the savings & loan fallout of the 1980s, Congress enacted the Financial Institutions Reform Recovery and Enforcement Act. In a move with ominous portent, FIRREA mandated public release of lender evaluations and performance ratings, resulting in added pressure on the banking industry. Such public oversight enabled bullying abuses of community organization groups like ACORN to further influence bank lending practices.

1990s

With the mechanisms in place, the community organizing groups began developing directed strategies to exert more and more pressure on the lending industry in the cloak of complicity with CRA. Community organizer Barack Obama worked closely with ACORN activists. Employing the radical Alinsky intimidation tactics Obama had learned and was teaching -- "direct action" -- activists crowded bank lobbies, blocked drive-up teller lanes and demonstrated at the homes of bankers to browbeat risky lending in poor and minority communities. Those who resisted were accused of racism to the media and government officials.

The agitators could now stall or hijack bank mergers by filing complaints of non-compliance against the institutions. Lawsuits alleging redlining and racism began flooding the court system. With the prospect of expansions and mergers threatened, banks settled cases and, significantly, increasingly made loans they would not have normally made. The net effect, as ACORN litigation increased, was that credit standards lowered.

Initially the GSEs resisted purchasing these risky mortgages but eventually the Clinton Administration instructed them to substantially increase the percentage of these mortgages in their portfolios. The government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac of the Clinton reforms became "a feeding trough," in the phrase of Peter Ferrara.

The poor communities and their exploitive leaders benefited from the capitalization with a surge of homeownership, at least on the surface. Wall Street benefited from increased sales of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and guaranteed mortgage-backed securities, as the housing market benefited from new capital channeled from Fannie and Freddie. And the GSE heads profited, with political support in Washington in the form of campaign contributions.

In the period 1989-2008, topping the list of recipients of contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Dodd (D-Connecticut), who received $165,400. Second on the list is Sen. Obama (D-Illinois), receiving $126,349 with only three years in the Senate. Rep. Frank (D-Massachusetts), received $42,350.

February 1990

Madeline Talbott, a well-known radical ACORN leader and banking industry agitator, challenged the merger of a Chicago thrift, Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association, who responded that they were being bullied into irresponsible "affirmative-action lending policy."

1991

ACORN interfered with a House Banking Committee meeting for two days protesting a move to bring CRA reform.

1992

Enforcement of CRA was "sporadic," as the Washington Times notes, until a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston study asserted that there were "substantially higher denial rates for black and Hispanic applicants than for white applicants." Co-author Lynn Browne was approached by co-author Alicia Munnell to do the study because "community activists were complaining that mortgage loans were not being made in minority communities."

According to the Times, however, "the study had mishandled statistics on minority default rates. When the errors were accounted for, the same study showed no evidence that nonwhite mortgage applicants were being discriminated against."

Frank Quaratiello, writing in the Boston Herald, cites Stan Liebowitz, "My guess is that they were interested in finding a particular result." Said Liebowitz, "Richard Syron was head of the Boston Fed at the time. He went on to be the head of Freddie Mac. They were looking for mortgage discrimination and they found it."

According to Quaratiello, Syron became Freddie Mac CEO and chairman in 2003 and "faced increasing pressure to buy up more and more risky mortgages, some of which the Boston Fed's guide had, in effect, served to legitimize." Regarding Syron's total compensation in 2007 of $18.3 million, Liebowitz reportedly quipped, "Nice reward for presiding over unprofessional research behavior, bankrupting Freddie Mac and crippling our financial system, all in the name of politically correct lending."

September 1992

The Chicago Tribune described the ACORN agenda as "affirmative action lending." And, writes Kurtz, "ACORN was issuing fact sheets bragging about relaxations of credit standards that it had won on behalf of minorities."

October 1992

Congress, enacting the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992, allowed legislation to "amend and extend certain laws relating to housing and community development." The Act created the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) within HUD to "ensure that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are adequately capitalized and operating safely." It also "established HUD-imposed housing goals for financing of affordable housing and housing in central cities and other rural and underserved areas."

Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) warned about the impending danger non-regulated GSEs posed. As the Washington Post reports, his concern was that Congress was "hamstringing" the regulator. Complaint was that OFHEO was a "weak regulator." Leach worried that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were changing "from being agencies of the public at large to money machines for the stockholding few."

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) countered, as the Post reports, "the companies served a public purpose. They were in the business of lowering the price of mortgage loans."

September 1993

The Chicago Sun-Times reports an initiative led by ACORN's Talbott with five area lenders "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." Kurtz notes that the initiative included two of her former targets, Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal Savings, who had apparently capitulated under pressure.

July 1994

Represented by Obama and others, Plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit alleging that Citibank had "intentionally discriminated against the Plaintiffs on the basis of race with respect to a credit transaction," calling their action "racial discrimination and discriminatory redlining practices."

November 1994

President Clinton addresses homeownership: "I think we all agree that more Americans should own their own homes, for reasons that are economic and tangible and reasons that are emotional and intangible but go to the heart of what it means to harbor, to nourish, to expand the American dream. . . . I am determined to see that you have the opportunity and together we can make that opportunity for the young families of our country. I am committed to a new and unprecedented partnership between industry leaders and community leaders and Government to recommit our Nation to the idea of homeownership and to create more homeowners than ever before."

June 1995

Republicans had won control of Congress and planned CRA reforms. The Clinton Administration, however, allied with Rep. Frank, Sen. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and Rep. Waters (D-California), did an end-around by directing HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo to inject GSEs into the subprime mortgage market.

As Kurtz notes,"ACORN had come to Congress not only to protect the CRA from GOP reforms but also to expand the reach of quota-based lending to Fannie, Freddie and beyond." What resulted was the broadening of the "acceptability of risky subprime loans throughout the financial system, thus precipitating our current crisis."

The administration announced the bold new homeownership strategy which included monumental loosening of credit standards and imposition of subprime lending quotas. HUD reported that President Clinton had committed "to increasing the homeownership rate to 67.5 percent by the year 2000." The plan was "to reduce the financial, information, and systemic barriers to homeownership" which was "amplified by local partnerships at work in over 100 cities."

Kurtz concludes, "Urged on by ACORN, congressional Democrats and the Clinton administration helped push tolerance for high-risk loans through every sector of the banking system -- far beyond the sort of banks originally subject to the CRA. So it was the efforts of ACORN and its Democratic allies that first spread the subprime virus from the CRA to Fannie and Freddie and thence to the entire financial system. Soon, Democratic politicians and regulators actually began to take pride in lowered credit standards as a sign of ‘fairness' -- and the contagion spread."

Attorney General Janet Reno, with a number of bank lending discrimination settlements already, sternly announces, "We will tackle lending discrimination wherever it appears." With the new policy in full force, "No loan is exempt; no bank is immune." "For those who thumb their nose at us, I promise vigorous enforcement," reiterated Reno.

1997

HUD Secretary Cuomo said "GSE presence in the subprime market could be of significant benefit to lower-income families, minorities, and families living in underserved areas . . ."

1998

By falsifying signatures on Fannie Mae accounting transactions, $200 million in expenses was shifted from 1998 to later periods, thereby triggering $27.1 million in bonuses for top executives. James A. Johnson received $1.932 million; Franklin D. Raines received $1.11 million; Lawrence M. Small received $1.108 million; Jamie S. Gorelick received $779,625; Timothy Howard received $493,750; Robert J. Levin received $493,750.

April 1998

HUD announced a $2.1 billion settlement with AccuBanc Mortgage Corp. for alleged discrimination against minority loan applicants. The funds would provide poor families with down payments and low interest mortgages. Announcing the Accubank settlement, Secretary Cuomo said, "discrimination isn't always that obvious. Sometimes more subtle but in many ways more insidious, an institutionalized discrimination that's hidden behind a smiling face."

Before the camera, Cuomo admitted the mandate amounted to "affirmative action" lending that would result in a "higher default rate." The institution would "take a greater risk on these mortgages, yes; to give families mortgages who they would not have given otherwise, yes; they would not have qualified but for this affirmative action on the part of the bank, yes. It is by income, and is it also by minorities? Yes. . . . With the 2.1 billion, lending that amount in mortgages which will be a higher risk, and I'm sure there will be a higher default rate on those mortgages than on the rest of the portfolio."

May 1999

The LA Times reports that African Americans homeownership is increasing three times as fast as that of whites, with Latino homeowners is growing five times as fast, attributing the growth to breathing "the first real life into enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act." This breath of "life" mandated that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages with deviant down-payments and debt-to-income ratios which allowed lenders to approve mortgages for lower-income families that would have been denied otherwise.

By now all pretense had disappeared, lending practices were based upon concerns of discrimination in the banking system regardless the consequences. The administration threatened to veto a bill passed by the Senate which had "shortsightedly voted to retrench" CRA, as the advocative Times put it.

Under pressure, Fannie Mae was resisting increased targeting, arguing that the result would be more loan defaults. Barry Zigas, heading Fannie Mae's low-income efforts, argued, "There is obviously a limit beyond which [we] can't push [the banks] to produce," the Times reported.

Fall of 1999

Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers warned, "Debates about systemic risk should also now include government-sponsored enterprises, which are large and growing rapidly."

September 1999

With pressure from the Clinton Administration, Fannie Mae eased credit requirements on loans it would purchase from lenders, making it easier for banks to lend to borrowers unqualified for conventional loans. Raines explained that "there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market," reported the New York Times.

With this action, Fannie Mae put itself at substantial risk in the event of an economic downturn. "From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us," warned Peter Wallison. "If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry." The danger was known.

September 1999

A study by Freddie Mac, confirming earlier Federal Reserve and FDIC studies, contradicts race discrimination arguments for CRA. The study found that African-Americans with annual incomes of $65-$75,000 have on average worse credit records than whites making under $25,000, showing that the difficulty in qualifying was not because of race but because of bad credit records. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas accordingly entitled a paper "Red Lining or Red Herring?"

2000

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition instructed on how to exploit the new CRA regulations, "Timely comments can have a strong influence on a bank's CRA rating." NCRC asserted, "To avoid the possibility of a denied or delayed application, lending institutions have an incentive to make formal agreements with community organizations." That is, the mere threat to intervene in the CRA review process had equipped the ACORN groups for the massive shakedown.

Moreover, ACORN had been given a compelling incentive, as CRA allowed the organizations to collect a fee from the banks for their services in marketing the loans. The Senate Banking Committee had estimated that, as a result of CRA, $9.5 billion had gone to pay for services and salaries of the organizers.

Winter 2000

City Journal warned that the Clinton administration had turned CRA into "a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks," committing $1 trillion for mortgages and development projects, most of it funneled through the community organizers.

March 2000

Rep. Richard Baker (R-Louisiana) proposed a bill to reform Fannie and Freddie's oversight in a House Subcommittee on Capital Markets.

Rep. Frank (D-Massachusetts) dismissed the idea, saying concerns about the two were "overblown" and that there was "no federal liability there whatsoever."

Treasury Undersecretary Gary Gensler testified in favor of GSE regulation. He argued that the bill would promote private market discipline, increase transparency and preserve market competition, reducing the potential for subsidized competitors to distort financial markets.

Fannie Mae spokesmen responded by calling the testimony "inept," "irresponsible," and "unprofessional."

Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute testified to the subcommittee that the bill was "a milestone in Congressional efforts to gain control of the Government Sponsored Enterprises." He added that the "political courage and stamina that was required to introduce this bill and to continue to press it forward cannot be overstated." He emphasized that the bill was only an "interim step in the necessary process of dismantling the GSEs and eliminating both their threat to the taxpayers and to the private financial sector of our economy."

Wallison explained why Fannie and Freddie "pose a serious problem for both the public and private sectors." First, they contain an inherent contradiction. "It is a shareholder-owned company, with the fiduciary obligation to maximize profits, and a government-chartered and empowered agency with a public mission. It should be obvious that it cannot achieve both objectives. If it maximizes profits, it will fail to perform its government mission to its full potential. If it performs its government mission fully, it will fail to maximize profits."

He sounded an alarm on a "vicious and dangerous cycle." "Fannie and Freddie must grow in order to maintain their profitability and hence their high stock prices, but there is no countervailing check on their growth - no effective competition, no required government approvals, and no fear in the financial markets that there is any risk associated with financing this growth. Moreover, their fiduciary obligations to their shareholders require them to exploit their subsidy to the fullest extent possible. These are agencies that are - in the fullest sense of the phrase - out of control."

Congressional Democrats and GSE representatives vigorously attacked any such criticism. "We think that the statements evidence a contempt for the nation's housing and mortgage markets," rebuffed Sharon McHale, Freddie Mac spokeswoman. Congressional Democrats and GSE representatives prevailed.

June 2000

Fred L. Smith Jr., writing in Investor's Business Daily, recalls testifying before the House Financial Services Committee that GSE "special privileges create a serious hazard to the market, to taxpayers [and] to the economy." He warned that these GSEs were "strange organizations, neither private-sector fish nor political-sector fowl" and that "as a result, no one is quite sure how these entities should be evaluated or held accountable." These new debt portfolios "will certainly increase the likelihood of a Fannie-Freddie default."

Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pennsylvania): "Mr. Smith, that is almost a fallacious argument," adding that rapid growth of GSE debt holdings was nothing to worry about as it simply reflected "inflation and the growth of population. "Everything, proportionately, is that much larger."

Rep. Marge Roukema (R-New Jersey): "very few banks or S&Ls could, even in this day and age, even now, meet the stress-testing requirements which Fannie and Freddie are required to meet."

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-New York) regarding the Treasury Department line of credit: "It is really symbolic, it is obsolete, it has never been used." "Would you explain why it would be important to repeal something that seems to be of little use?"

Smith: "as long as the pipeline is there, it is like it is very expandable. . . . It is only $2 billion today. It could be $200 billion tomorrow."

Because of Democrat obfuscation, Smith's "tomorrow" arrived in 2008 when Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson put Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship.

April 2001

Fiscal Year 2002 Budget declares that the size of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is "a potential problem," because "financial trouble of a large GSE could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting Federally insured entities and economic activity," says a White House release.

July 2001

Subcommittee hearing on a bill proposed by Rep. Baker to transfer supervisory and regulatory authority over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and abolish the OFHEO.

Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pennsylvania) responded: "This bill would dramatically restructure the current regulatory system for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In my opinion, it also represents a solution in search of a problem. Nearly a decade ago, Congress created a rational, reasonable, and responsive system for supervising GSE activities, and that system with two regulators is operating increasingly effectively. H.R. 1409 would unfortunately interrupt this continual progress."

March 2002

Business Week interview with Fannie Mae Vice-Chairman Jamie Gorelick about the prospects for the coming year:

Gorelick: "we are expecting a very, very strong 2002."

Gorelick: "We believe we are managed safely. . . . Fannie Mae is among the handful of top-quality institutions. . . . . And we have consistently exceeded every standard that the examiners have set for us."

May 2002

In an OMB Prompt Letter to OFHEO, the President calls for the disclosure and corporate governance principles contained in his 10-point plan for corporate responsibility to apply to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

February 2003

OFHEO reports that "although investors perceive an implicit Federal guarantee of [GSE] obligations . . . the government has provided no explicit legal backing for them," warning that unexpected problems at a GSE could immediately spread into financial sectors beyond the housing market, according to a White House release.

2003

Rep. Richard Baker (R-Louisiana), chairman of the House Financial Services subcommittee with GSE oversight over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was informed by OFHEO "on the salaries paid to executives at both companies," according to the Washington Post. Reportedly, "Fannie Mae threatened to sue Baker if he released it, he recalled. Fearing the expense of a court battle, he kept the data secret for a year." "The political arrogance exhibited in their heyday, there has never been before or since a private entity that exerted that kind of political power," he said.

June 2003

Freddie Mac reported it had understated its profits by $6.9 billion. OFHEO director Armando Falcon Jr. requested that the White House audit Fannie Mae.

July 2003

Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), Elizabeth Dole (R-North Carolina) and John Sununu (R-New Hampshire) introduced legislation to address Regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The bill was blocked by Democrats.

September 2003

In an interview with Ron Insana for CNN Money, Rep. Baker warned, "I have concerns that if appropriate resources aren't allocated for internal risk management, the consequences will be far more severe than just a real estate slowdown. The losses would fall quickly through the capital these companies have and down to shareholders and taxpayers. These companies have some of the lowest capital margins of any financial institution in the nation, yet, at the same time, they are two of the largest. The concern is that if something doesn't work out the way they predict, the American taxpayer could be called on to pay off the debt in some sort of bailout."

The New York Times reports that the Administration recommended "the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago," calling for new supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the Treasury Department. Reportedly, Congressional Democrats "fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing."

Treasury Secretary John Snow testifies that Congress enact "legislation to create a new Federal agency to regulate and supervise the financial activities of our housing-related government sponsored enterprises" and set prudent and appropriate minimum capital adequacy requirements, says a White House release.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts): "I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two government sponsored enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. . . . I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury. . . . I believe that we, as the Federal Government, have probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing and to set reasonable goals.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts): "These two entities - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - are not facing any kind of financial crisis. . . . The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

Rep. Melvin Watt (D-North Carolina): "I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing."

October 2003

Fannie Mae discloses $1.2 billion accounting error.

November 2003

Council of the Economic Advisers Chairman Greg Mankiw warned, "The enormous size of the mortgage-backed securities market means that any problems at the GSEs matter for the financial system as a whole. This risk is a systemic issue also because the debt obligations of the housing GSEs are widely held by other financial institutions. The importance of GSE debt in the portfolios of other financial entities means that even a small mistake in GSE risk management could have ripple effects throughout the financial system," from a White House release.

Mankiw explains that any "legislation to reform GSE regulation should empower the new regulator with sufficient strength and credibility to reduce systemic risk." To reduce the potential for systemic instability, the regulator would have "broad authority to set both risk-based and minimum capital standards" and "receivership powers necessary to wind down the affairs of a troubled GSE," says a White House release.

February 2004

Fiscal Year 2005 Budget again highlights the risk posed by the explosive growth of the GSEs and their low levels of required capital, and called for creation of a new, world-class regulator: "The Administration has determined that the safety and soundness regulators of the housing GSEs lack sufficient power and stature to meet their responsibilities, and therefore . . . should be replaced with a new strengthened regulator," reports a White House release.

Mankiw cautions Congress to "not take [the financial market's] strength for granted." Again, the call from the Administration was to reduce this risk by "ensuring that the housing GSEs are overseen by an effective regulator," says a White House release.

June 2004

Deputy Secretary of Treasury Samuel Bodman spotlights the risk posed by the GSEs and called for reform, saying "We do not have a world-class system of supervision of the housing government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), even though the importance of the housing financial system that the GSEs serve demands the best in supervision to ensure the long-term vitality of that system. Therefore, the Administration has called for a new, first class, regulatory supervisor for the three housing GSEs: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banking System," the White House reports.

September 2004

OFHEO reported that Fannie Mae and CEO Raines had manipulated its accounting to overstate its profits. Congress and the Bush administration sought strong new regulation and authority to put the GSEs under conservatorship if necessary. As the Washington Post reports, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac responded by orchestrating a major campaign "by traditional allies including real estate agents, home builders and mortgage lenders. Fannie Mae ran radio and television ads ahead of a key Senate committee meeting, depicting a Latino couple who fretted that if the bill passed, mortgage rates would go up." Again, GSE pressure prevailed.

October 2004

Rep. Baker again warned about the coming crisis in the Wall Street Journal: "Then there's the lesson of a company, Frankenstein-like, seemingly grown so powerful that it can intimidate and arrogantly flout all accountability to the very government that created it."

Baker adds, "Although their bonds bear the disclaimer ‘not backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government,' the market does not believe it and looks right past the companies' risk strategies to the taxpayers' pockets."

In a subcommittee testimony, Democrats vehemently reject regulation of Fannie Mae in the face of dire warning of a Fannie Mae oversight report. A few of them, Black Caucus members in particular, are very angry at the OFHEO Director as they attempt to defend Fannie Mae and protect their CRA extortion racket.

Chairman Baker (R-Louisiana): "It is indeed a very troubling report, but it is a report of extraordinary importance not only to those who wish to own a home, but as to the taxpayers of this country who would pay the cost of the clean up of an enterprise failure. . . . The analysis makes clear that more resources must be brought to bear to ensure the highest standards of conduct are not only required, but more importantly, they are actually met."

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California): "Through nearly a dozen hearings where, frankly, we were trying to fix something that wasn't broke."

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California): "Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and particularly at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines."

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-New York): "And as well as the fact that I'm just pissed off at OFHEO, because if it wasn't for you I don't think that we'd be here in the first place, and now the problem that we have and that we're faced with is: maybe some individuals who wanted to do away with GSEs in the first place, you've given them an excuse to try to have this forum so that we can talk about it and maybe change the, uh, the direction and the mission of what the GSEs had, which they've done a tremendous job. There's been nothing that was indicated that's wrong, you know, with uh Fannie Mae. Freddie Mac has come up on its own. And the question that then presents is the competence that, that, that, that your agency has, uh, with reference to, uh, uh, deciding and regulating these GSEs. Uh, and so, uh, I wish I could sit here and say that I'm not upset with you, but I am very upset because, you know, what you do is give, you know, maybe giving any reason to, as Mr. Gonzales said, to give someone a heart surgery when they really don't need it."

Rep. Ed Royce (R-California): "In addition to our important oversight role in this committee, I hope that we will move swiftly to create a new regulatory structure for Fannie Mae, for Freddie Mac, and the federal home loan banks."

Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Missouri): "This hearing is about the political lynching of Franklin Raines."

Rep. Ed Royce (R-California): "There is a very simple solution. Congress must create a new regulator with powers at least equal to those of other financial regulators, such as the OCC or Federal Reserve."

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-New York): "What would make you, why should I have confidence? Why should anyone have confidence, and uh, in, in you as a regulator at this point?"

Armando Falcon, OFHEO Director: "Sir, Congressman, OFHEO did not improperly apply accounting rules. Freddie Mac did. OFHEO did not fail to manage earnings properly. Freddie Mac did. So this isn't about the agency engaging in improper conduct. It's about Freddie Mac."

Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Connecticut): "And we passed Sarbanes-Oxley, which was a very tough response to that, and then I realized that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac wouldn't even come under it. They weren't under the ‘34 act, they weren't under the ‘33 act, they play by their own rules, and I and I'm tempted to ask how many people in this room are on the payroll of Fannie Mae, because what they do is they basically hire every lobbyist they can possibly hire. They hire some people to lobby and they hire some people not to lobby so that the opposition can't hire them."

Rep. Artur Davis (D-Alabama): "So the concern that I have is you're making very specific, what you have correctly acknowledged, broad and categorical judgments about the management of this institution, about the willfulness of practices that may or may not be in controversy. You've imputed various motives to the people running the organization. You went to the board and put a 48-hour ultimatum on them without having any specific regulatory authority to put that kind of ultimatum on ‘em. Uh, that sounds like some kind of an invisible line has been crossed."

Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Connecticut): "Fannie Mae has manipulated, in my judgment, OFHEO for years. And for OFHEO to finally come out with a report as strong as it is, tells me that's got to be the minimum not the maximum."

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts): "Uh, I, this, you, you, you seem to me saying, ‘Well, these are in areas which could raise safety and soundness problems.' I don't see anything in your report that raises safety and soundness problems."

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California): "Under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines, everything in the 1992 Act has worked just fine. In fact, the GSEs have exceeded their housing goals. What we need to do today is to focus on the regulator, and this must be done in a manner so as not to impede their affordable housing mission, a mission that has seen innovation flourish from desktop underwriting to 100% loans."

Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Missouri): "I find this to be inconsistent and a and a rush to judgment. I get the feeling that the markets are not worried about the safety and soundness of Fannie Mae as OFHEO says that it is, but of course the markets are not political."

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts): "But I have seen nothing in here that suggests that the safety and soundness are at issue, and I think it serves us badly to raise safety and soundness as kind of a general shibboleth when it does not seem to me to be an issue."

Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Illinois): "Mr. Raines, 1.1 million bonus and a $526,000 salary. Jamie Gorelick, $779,000 bonus on a salary of 567,000. This is, what you state on page eleven is nothing less than staggering."

Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Illinois): "The 1998 earnings per share number turned out to be $3.23 and 9 mills, a result that Fannie Mae met the EPS maximum payout goal right down to the penny."

Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Illinois): "Fannie Mae understood the rules and simply chose not to follow them that if Fannie Mae had followed the practices, there wouldn't have been a bonus that year."

Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Connecticut): "And you have about 3% of your portfolio set aside. If a bank gets below 4%, they are in deep trouble. So I just want you to explain to me why I shouldn't be satisfied with 3%?"

Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae CEO: "Because banks don't, there aren't any banks who only have multifamily and single-family loans."

Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae CEO: "These assets are so riskless that their capital for holding them should be under 2%."

January 2005-July 2006

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), co-sponsored by Sens. Sununu and Dole and later Sen. McCain, re-introduced legislation to address GSE regulation.

"The bill prohibited the GSEs from holding portfolios, and gave their regulator prudential authority (such as setting capital requirements) roughly equivalent to a bank regulator. In light of the current financial crisis, this bill was probably the most important piece of financial regulation before Congress in 2005 and 2006," reports the Wall Street Journal.

Greenspan testified that the size of GSE portfolios "poses a risk to the global financial system. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to bail out the lenders [GSEs] . . . should one get into financial trouble." He added, "If we fail to strengthen GSE regulation, we increase the possibility of insolvency and crisis . . . We put at risk our ability to preserve safe and sound financial markets in the United States, a key ingredient of support for homeownership."

Greenspan warned that if the GSEs "continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road . . . We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk."

Bloomberg writes, "If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. . . . But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter. That such a reckless political stand could have been taken by the Democrats was obscene even then."

April 2005

Treasury Secretary John Snow again calls for GSE reform, "Events that have transpired since I testified before this Committee in 2003 reinforce concerns over the systemic risks posed by the GSEs and further highlight the need for real GSE reform to ensure that our housing finance system remains a strong and vibrant source of funding for expanding homeownership opportunities in America. . . . Half-measures will only exacerbate the risks to our financial system," from a White House release.

May 2005

At AEI Online, Wallison warned that "allowing Fannie and Freddie to continue on their present course is simply to create risks for the taxpayers, and to the economy generally, in order to improve the profits of their shareholders and the compensation of their managements. It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit."

January 2006

Chairman Greenspan, in a letter to Sens. Sununu, Hagel and Dole, warned that the GSE practice of buying their own MBS "creates substantial systemic risk while yielding negligible additional benefits for homeowners, renters, or mortgage originators." He stated, ". . . the GSEs and their government regulator need specific and unambiguous Congressional guidance about the intended purpose and functions of Fannie's and Freddie's investment portfolios."

March 2006

Sens. Sununu and Hagel introduced an amendment to a Lobbying Reform Bill directing GAO to study GSE lobbying and requiring HUD to audit the GSEs annually.

May 2006

After years of Democrats blocking the legislation, Sens. Hagel, Sununu, Dole and McCain write a letter to Majority Leader William Frist and Chairman Richard Shelby expressing demanding that GSE regulatory reform be "enacted this year" to avoid "the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the Housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole."

May 2006

Sen. McCain (R-Arizona) addressed the Senate, "Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae's regulator reported that the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were ‘illusions deliberately and systematically created' by the company's senior management. . . . Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator's examination of the company's accounting problems. . . . OFHEO's report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay."

McCain stressed, "If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole. I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation."

April 2007

Sens. Sununu, Hagel, Dole, and Mel Martinez (R-Florida) re-introduced legislation to improve GSE oversight.

April 2007

In "A Nightmare Grows Darker," the New York Times writes that the "democratization of credit" is "turning the American dream of homeownership into a nightmare for many borrowers." The "newfangled mortgage loans" called "affordability loans" "represent 60 percent of foreclosures."

September 2007

President Bush: "These institutions provide liquidity in the mortgage market that benefits millions of homeowners, and it is vital they operate safely and operate soundly. So I've called on Congress to pass legislation that strengthens independent regulation of the GSEs . . . the United States Senate needs to pass this legislation soon."

2007-2008

The housing bubble began to burst, bad mortgages began to default, and finally the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac portfolios were revealed to be what they were, in collapse. And the testimony is evident as to why. As Wallison noted, "Fannie and Freddie were, I would say, the poster children for corporate welfare."

September 2008

Rep. Arthur Davis, whose testimony is found above in October 2004, now admits Democrats were in error: "Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable homeownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong."

Today 2008

The narrative is of another socialist experiment failed, this time a massive federal effort, imperiling the whole US banking industry. Facing this economic disaster, will an informed American people put their trust Obama's socialist ideology to bring remedy? To do so is to trust in an acetylene torch to put out the fire.

Over Hill and Tale

The ending of this article which posits San Juan Hill as emblematic of US-Cuba relations could have been written by the regime. Oh, wait, it probably was, at least indirectly. I'll dispense with the usual explanations, except to say that the comparison is oversimiplified and not quite accurate. Still, there is truth there, particularly the notion that the perspective of American History is different than that of even precastro Cuba.

Like many of my generation, the Cuban history I know is a mix of American textbooks, familial retelling, and research. That's why the earliest chapters of Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause by Tom Gjelten which focus on the family and its ties to Santiago prove valuable. Mr. Gjelten attempts to convey the Cuban view of the American intervention and its results within the context of telling the story of los Bacardi. Doubtless a delight for students of history and Bacardiphiles, I've been unable to finish it in the one week time frame decreed by my local public library, even with fines. Still from what I've managed to read in the interim, it strikes me as an important book.

Translation: I can't vouch for his treatment of the brothers castro. I leave you with this excerpt from the author's website:

Over many tellings, the Cuba story has hardened around a few stale themes—Havana in its debauched heyday or Fidel [c]astro and his dour revolution—and it has lost much of its vitality and wholeness. This book originated in my search for a new narrative, with new Cuban characters and a plot that does justice to this island that produced the conga line and “Guantanamera” as well as Che Guevara’s five-year-plans. I have tried to give a nuanced view of the nation’s experience over the last century and a half. Cuban history was not preordained. There were choices made and paths not taken, and the men and women who were excluded and then exiled deserve to have their contributions recognized, if only to understand why so many became so angry. The Bacardi saga serves all these purposes.

If anyone's read it, I'd love to hear your impressions.

Cross-posted at ninetymilesaway

The Streak Continues

This just in...

the United Nations has voted against the "embargo" for the 17th straight year.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Rich? Who's rich?

Dear Mr. Obama:

An Iraqi war veteran explains to Obama why he is voting for McCain. The end left me speechless, and is more powerful, real, and moving than any rhetoric Obama could ever eloquently recite from a teleprompter.

SoFla Sports Journo voted for Obama and Lincoln Diaz-Balart

Omar Kelly, the Dolphins beat writer for the Sun-Sentinel was a guest on Sid Rosenberg's show and asked Sid who he's voting for. Sid responds that he's voting for McCain. Then Sid asks Kelly who he's voting for and Kelly, who is African American, responded that he voted for Obama. At the end of the segment, Sid asks Kelly about Raul Martinez and Kelly says:

I actually, I know Diaz-Balart so I actually voted for him...I'm an independent thinker... Raul Martinez has got a little too much dirt underneath his nails for me.

It's a lose-lose proposition for Obama's supporters

On November 4th, Barack Obama just might win the presidential election. But regardless of whether he wins or loses, the vast majority of his supporters will lose. If McCain wins the election, they will feel the sting of watching the candidate they placed all their hopes in be defeated. But it stands to be much worse for them if their candidate wins.

By placing their hopes and aspirations in the hands of Obama, they have in effect transferred the individual faith they have in themselves to another person. A person who has promised to make their dreams come true for them. No longer will they have to fight, or struggle, or even work to achieve their dreams; Obama promises to do it all for them. But sooner, rather than later, they will realize that Obama can never deliver on this impossible promise. It is then when they will experience a pain much greater than they can imagine; the pain of realizing that you gave up not only your most sacred dreams and hopes to someone else, but that you gave up hope on yourself so that someone else can do it for you.

Fouad Ajami has an excellent editorial in the Wall Street Journal. He sees a disturbing similarity between the throngs of Obama supporters and to what he used to see in Egypt during his youth.

My boyhood, and the Arab political culture I have been chronicling for well over three decades, are anchored in the Arab world. And the tragedy of Arab political culture has been the unending expectation of the crowd -- the street, we call it -- in the redeemer who will put an end to the decline, who will restore faded splendor and greatness. When I came into my own, in the late 1950s and '60s, those hopes were invested in the Egyptian Gamal Abdul Nasser. He faltered, and broke the hearts of generations of Arabs. But the faith in the Awaited One lives on, and it would forever circle the Arab world looking for the next redeemer.

America is a different land, for me exceptional in all the ways that matter. In recent days, those vast Obama crowds, though, have recalled for me the politics of charisma that wrecked Arab and Muslim societies. A leader does not have to say much, or be much. The crowd is left to its most powerful possession -- its imagination.

* * * The morning after the election, the disappointment will begin to settle upon the Obama crowd. Defeat -- by now unthinkable to the devotees -- will bring heartbreak. Victory will steadily deliver the sobering verdict that our troubles won't be solved by a leader's magic.

Unable to deliver anything of substance, Obama has built his entire campaign, and for that matter, his career, on addressing only the ethereal. This gives him the latitude to be everything to everyone. To the steelworker, he portrays himself as a blue-collar man; to college students, he talks of intellectual hypothesis; to the regular Jane and Joe on the street, he transforms himself into a regular Barry. He accomplishes all of this not by providing substance but by instead providing himself as the vessel, the incarnation for all these people to realize their dreams.

It will be a sad day indeed when Obama’s supporters realize he is really just merely a mortal.

The inimitable Mark Steyn

Funny and on-target, as usual.

This is an amazing race. The incumbent president has approval ratings somewhere between Robert Mugabe and the ebola virus. The economy is supposedly on the brink of global Armageddon. McCain has only $80 million to spend, while Obama's burning through $600 mil as fast as he can, and he doesn't really need to spend a dime given the wall-to-wall media adoration. And tonight Chris Matthews' doctors announced that his leg tingle has metastasized leaving his entire body like a vibrating cellphone whose ringtone is locked on "I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love With A Wonderful Guy." And yet an old cranky broke loser is within two or three points of the King of the World. Strange.

(H/T The American Spectator)

If we vote for Obama will you stop calling "racist"?

No. Sorry. Can't do it Sally.

Even if you vote for Obama, you’re still probably a racist, according to Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, in his remarks at a recent panel discussion at my alma mater. Ogletree, Obama’s top advisor on race issues, explains that since Obama is “biracial,” his election won’t prove that racism has receded. White America won’t vote for blacks, Ogletree argues, and Obama’s election is possible only because he’s partly white. The ABA Journal predicts that Ogletree, who has long advocated race-based reparations, will be the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration.

Election Fatigue from Marta's Cuban American Kitchen

I apologize in advance. Yes, I know it's Thursday, but no, there’s no recipe today.

With all the tension we’ve been experiencing this election season, I, like many of you, have lost my appetite for the moment. (Only for the moment.)

But fear not, I do have plans to post some more of my wonderful recipes very soon; like boliche, and my croquetas and even an awesome sopa de chicharros. For you non-Cubans, that translates to a Cuban-style pot roast, croquettes, and split pea soup.

And I swear to you, my Split Pea Soup is to die for. I will be posting those recipes soon after the election.

So until then, my fellow Babalúsians, “visualize whirled peas.” =D

Keep the faith.
~ Marta

Mc Cain Rocks a Rocker's Vote!

So the Dems get the hag Streisand and the fruity pretty- boy Bon Jovi. We get Joe Perry from the absolute Ass-Kickingest (American) rock band, Aerosmith!

Sweet Emotions-- INDEED!

Check it out!

The Song That Liberals Love to Hate

Yes folks, has your party been crashed by audacious liberals who won't keep their traps shut? Or are you minding your own business only to have a liberal rip you for not agreeing with them? Or are you tired of being called stupid by tight ass leftists?

Well, here is the cure. You play this song, and you play it loud, and liberals will cringe. They will run away faster than banshee from hell. You play this song and you play it loud and liberals will cry for mercy.

This song is like kryptonite to leftists.

Don't believe me? Try it.

See you at the polls infidels.

Cold War 2.0

My latest column for Pajamas Media.

McCain's Miami

"Comunismo," said Michael Garcia, 30, the son of Cuban émigrés who works at his family-owned accounting business.

"I shouldn't have to pay more taxes because I work harder than other people," he said. "The things that Obama say scare me because that's everything that Fidel said. These things are associated in my mind with going down the path to communism."

More on McCain's Miami visit at Gateway Pundit.

A Paper Every American Should Read Including the Pinhead Obama

Just who is Austan Goolsbee? He is a top economist from the University of Chicago. He is also an Obama advisor. One would think someone like Obama, who knows about economics as well as say perhaps George W. Bush knows about theoretical physics, would pay attention to Professor Goolsbee.

You see infidels, Professor Goodsbee wrote an interesting paper in 1999 entitled: "WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TAX THE RICH? EVIDENCE FROM EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION."

In his paper, which can be found here, the professor notes:

This paper examines the responsiveness of taxable income to changes in marginal tax rates using detailed compensation data on several thousand corporate executives from 1991 to 1995. The data confirm that the higher marginal rates of 1993 led to a significant decline in taxable income. Indeed, this small group of executives can account for as much as 20% of the aggregate change in wage and salary income for approximately the one million richest taxpayers; one person alone can account for more than 2%. The decline, however, is almost entirely a short-run shift in the timing of compensation rather than a permanent reduction in taxable income. The short-run elasticity of taxable income with respect to the net of tax share exceeds one but the elasticity after one year is at most 0.4 and probably closer to zero. Breaking out the tax responsiveness of different types of compensation shows that the large short-run responses come almost entirely from a large increase in the exercise of stock options by the highest income executives in anticipation of the rate increases. Executives without stock options, executives with relatively lower incomes, and more conventional forms of taxable compensation such as salary and bonus show little responsiveness to tax changes.

The article is technical but not a difficult read. But this article like many others have proven that raising marginal tax rates results in less taxable income. As you will recall from the Democratic debate, Charlie Gibson hammered Obama on the capricious rationale of raising tax rates if they produce less revenue. The dimwit's response was "fairness."

You see infidels, fairness in Obama's mind, is akin of punishing success. Or as the lefties like to say, "sticking it to da man." These pud whackers are so capricious and arrogant that in the name of "fairness and equality", folks have to be patriotic by paying higher taxes, even though it will result in less tax revenue to the US Treasury. I'm sure this makes sense to those dingbats who love to rip us and call us "wingnuts", but as George Carlin used to say, you can call shit shineola, but at the end of the day, it's still shit.

You see infidels, no matter what label or what tag you want to call Obama's plan, it is still shit my friends. Those that peddle it are simply shit salesmen. What he wants to promulgate on the American public has not and will not work. But simply because this dude is a slick hipster from Harvard, we should somehow trust him.

Liberals somehow think that Obama's shit don't stink. Wake up people. It's not chocolate mousse he's peddling out there.

UPDATE: I'm sure even our favorite blogger on the left, Mr. Whoopee, who proclaims that everyone who does not agree with him is a clueless idiot, might learn something by reading this as well. Picture of the anonymous professor seen below.

Los Bobs

Yoani has been nominated in two categories for this year's The Bobs: Best Blog and Best Reporter without Border.

Please take a few moments of your day and vote for Yoani - Generacion Y, right here.

Obama ain't no Billy Mays (Updated)

Last night I missed Barack Obama’s half-hour long televised political ad. Well, in all honesty, I should say that I did not exactly miss it; truth be told, I simply ignored Obama’s infomercial. I find Billy Mays and his plethora of outstanding household product commercials to be more informative, honest, and entertaining—and at least Billy demonstrates how well the products he is selling work.

Obama, on the other hand, just talks, and talks, and talks… a never-ending stream of nebulous concepts and buzz words intended not to pique the conscious and intellectual parts of your brain, but instead to trigger that tingling-feeling-down-my-leg reaction. Well, I like that tingling-feeling-down-my-leg as much as the next guy, but not from a presidential candidate.

According to what I have read and heard, Obama said nothing new last night. He did an exceptional job of reading a teleprompter, as he always does, and he spent thirty minutes saying many words without actually saying anything. He repeated what he has been saying for the past two years; he will solve all of America’s problems. But with less than a week left before Election Day, he still has not explained how he intends to do it other than to say he will bring change and hope. We are all still waiting to hear just what Obama intends to change, and it seems that the hope he is referring to, is the hope that no one will ask him what he is talking about.

Perhaps to the few who are satisfied with that tingling-feeling-down-my-leg feeling, such details are superfluous. But the majority of America needs to see how things are going to work. If they did not, Billy Mays would not have to show those stains lifting right out, or that adhesive putty pulling a 7-ton, fully loaded tractor-trailer.

Interestingly enough it seems that, of all people, the AP found Obama’s infomercial quite lacking in substance, too. This morning I found this headline:

Obama's prime-time ad skips over budget realities

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was less than upfront in his half-hour commercial Wednesday night about the costs of his programs and the crushing budget pressures he would face in office.

Say what you will of Billy Mays and his annoying loud voice, but if he were running for president, he would show you exactly how things would get done.

UPDATE

It seems that I am not the only one underwhelmed by Obama's infomercial skills.

TV'S TOP AD STARS PAN BAM

By SALLY GOLDENBERG

Posted: 3:56 am
October 30, 2008

Two leading infomercial stars agree: Barack Obama's half-hour self-promotion last night was a flop.

"I don't see enough smiling. Doom and gloom totally," said Anthony Sullivan, one of the biggest names in infomercial history.

"I feel depressed right now," added Sullivan, an Englishman famous for his infomercials touting the Swivel Sweeper and Smart Chopper. The only thing saving Obama, Sullivan said, was when the candidate appeared live at the end speaking at a rally in Florida.

"I think it needed it. I was about to throw myself through a window because it was depressing," Sullivan said.

He and AJ Khubani, who has produced infomercials for 25 years, said Obama also fell short of offering solutions to the dire problems he laid out.

"I didn't see a payoff. Classic infomercial is you show the before and you show the after. I didn't see the music or the crashing waves of the Pacific," Sullivan said.

He joked the producer "needs a spanking" for lacking optimism.

Khubani said: "Every infomercial lays out common problems, whether it's a flabby belly or acne, and then it gives a solution. In this case the solution is Obama."

But Obama didn't pitch the product - himself - convincingly enough, he argued.

"We always spend much more time on the solution than the problem and he did the opposite," Khubani added.

Payback

If -- and it's a big if -- Obama is elected next Tuesday, one of the more pleasant things for me will be to see, borrowing a phrase from Minister Wright, liberal's chickens coming home to roost. Take your 401(k) for example. No really. I meant that. They're thinking about "nationalizing" your 401(k). Read this:

I hate to use the "S" word, but the American government would never do something as, well, socialist as seize private pension funds, right? This is exactly what cash-strapped Argentina just did in the name of protecting workers' retirement accounts (Efharisto, Fausta's Blog). Now, even Uncle Sam isn't that stupid, but some Democrats might try something almost as loopy: kill 401(k) plans.

House Democrats recently invited Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School of Social Research, to testify before a subcommittee on her idea to eliminate the preferential tax treatment of the popular retirement plans. In place of 401(k) plans, she would have workers transfer their dough into government-created "guaranteed retirement accounts" for every worker. The government would deposit $600 (inflation indexed) every year into the GRAs. Each worker would also have to save 5 percent of pay into the accounts, to which the government would pay a measly 3 percent return. Rep. Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee's Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, said that since "the savings rate isn't going up for the investment of $80 billion [in 401(k) tax breaks], we have to start to think about whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that's not generating what we now say it should."

The joy of seeing the look on the faces of these morons, these ignorant, uneducated clowns, when their wonderful, compassionate party takes their retirement cash away from them, is almost worth the price for conservatives to lose theirs.

You idiots want change? Well, you may just get it.

Three must-reads from The American Thinker

"Red Diaper Baby" is particularly good.

• "Do-it-yourself Fact Checking"

• "Obama: Red Diaper Baby"

• "Dreams from Frank Marshall Davis"

Kindred spirits

I've been receiving Martin Kramer's postings on the Middle East for quite a while now. They are never less than interesting and always illuminating. Like this entry received this morning:

Khalidi and Obama: kindred spirits
Thursday, 30 October 2008

"He has family literally all over the world. I feel a kindred spirit from that." —Rashid Khalidi on Barack Obama

The link between Palestinian-American agitprof Rashid Khalidi and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has finally been picked up by the mainstream media. It's something they should have looked at long ago, and even now, they aren't really digging. They're simply reporting the demand of the McCain campaign that the Los Angeles Times release the video of Obama's praise of Khalidi, at a farewell gathering for Khalidi in 2003. Obama and Khalidi (and their wives) became friends in the 1990s, when Obama began to teach at the University of Chicago, where Khalidi also taught. In 2003, Khalidi accepted the Edward Said Professorship of Arab Studies at Columbia; the videotaped event was his Chicago farewell party. The Los Angeles Times, which refuses to release the tape (and which endorsed Obama on October 19) reported last spring that Obama praised Khalidi's "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." Other speakers reportedly said incendiary things against Israel. Whether or how Obama reacted, only the videotape might tell.

That Obama spoke on this important occasion suggests that his attachment to Khalidi wasn't a superficial acquaintance. As Obama admits, the two had many "conversations" over dinner at the Khalidis' home, and these may well have constituted Obama's primer on the Middle East. Yet Obama has given no account of these conversations, even as he has repeatedly emphasized other ones which would seem far less significant.

For example, Obama, in an interview and in his spring AIPAC speech, recalled conversations with a Jewish-American camp counselor he encountered—when he was all of eleven years old. "During the course of this two-week camp he shared with me the idea of returning to a homeland and what that meant for people who had suffered from the Holocaust, and he talked about the idea of preserving a culture when a people had been uprooted with the view of eventually returning home. There was something so powerful and compelling for me, maybe because I was a kid who never entirely felt like he was rooted." (In the same interview, Obama said Israel "speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus.")

Of course, the story of someone like Khalidi could have just as readily spoken to Obama's history of uprootedness, exodus, preserving a culture, and longing to return home. (So too would the story of the late Edward Said, who was photographed seated at a dinner with Obama in 1998, and who entitled his memoir Out of Place. Obama has never said anything about the impact, if any, of that conversation.) And indeed, it stretches credulity to believe that a two-week childhood encounter at a summer camp was more significant to Obama that his decade-long association, as a mature adult, with his senior university colleague, Khalidi.

Nor does it seem far-fetched that the sense of "kindred spirit" felt by Khalidi toward Obama was mutual. One particularly striking parallel deserves mention. Obama, it will be recalled, was born to a nominally Muslim father (a Kenyan bureaucat) and an American Christian mother, which has created some confusion as to the religious tradition in which he was raised. Khalidi's father, a nominally Muslim Palestinian (and a bureaucrat who worked for the United Nations) married his mother, a Lebanese Christian, in a Unitarian Church in Brooklyn, where Khalidi would later attend Sunday school. For such people caught between traditions, Third Worldist sympathies often serve as ecumenical substitutes for religion. (Obama himself allows that as an undergraduate, "in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy." One wonders how Israel fared in those conversations.)

Were we to see the videotape, it might give us some sense of how far down the road Obama went in that direction—and not all that long ago. It would be interesting to know, for example, if there was reference to Iraq. In 2003, when Khalidi's friends gave him his goodbye party, he was deep into propagandizing against the Iraq war. Among his arguments, he included this one:

This war will be fought because these neoconservatives desire to make the Middle East safe not for democracy, but for Israeli hegemony. They are convinced that the Middle East is irremediably hostile to both the United States and Israel; and they firmly hold the racist view that Middle Easterners understand only force. For these American Likudniks and their Israeli counterparts, sad to say, the tragedy of September 11 was a godsend: It enabled them to draft the United States to help fight Israel's enemies.

This argument against the war was not at all unusual on the faculty of the University of Chicago at the time. Another professor of Middle East history, Fred Donner, gave it blatant expression on the pages of the Chicago Tribune, calling the Iraq war "a vision deriving from Likud-oriented members of the president's team—particularly Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith." So perhaps it is not surprising that Obama, in his October 2002 antiwar speech, declared: "What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne." No mention of Cheney or Rumsfeld—and no need to mention them, to a constituency that knew who was really behind the push for war, and why. (Later, the same argument would figure prominently in The Israel Lobby, co-authored by another Chicago professor, John Mearsheimer.)

Obama, when pressed during an appearance before a Jewish audience, admitted that "I do know him [Khalidi] because I taught at the University of Chicago." This sounds wholly innocuous; I also know Khalidi because I taught at the University of Chicago—twice, in 1990 and 1991, when I had an office on the same hall. Obama continues: "And I do know him and I have had conversations." Well, even I've had conversations with Khalidi. (A former Chicago graduate student who must keep meticulous records writes to me that he spotted me on December 6, 1990, at the Quad Club lunching with Khalidi.) Nor does it mean much if Khalidi introduced Obama to Edward Said; Khalidi introduced me to Edward Said in New York in November 1986.

The difference is that while I came away from these encounters convinced that Khalidi's purported moderation was a sham, and have said so, Obama went the other direction, maintaining their friendship right up to Khalidi's send-off from Chicago, to which he contributed an encomium. Which is why I'd really like to see that videotape. I'm just curious which of Rashid Khalidi's virtues I somehow missed, and Barack Obama saw.

Pointer: The next public sighting of Khalidi will be at a Columbia conference entitled "Orientalism from the Standpoint of its Victims—An Edward Said Conference," on November 7. Khalidi will deliver the opening address.

You can download Kramer's excellent book, Ivory Towers on Sand, as a free download here.

Just fixin' the Constitution!

More here.

Wishful thinking from castro's Canadian business partners

Sherritt International is a Canadian firm that's been in bed with castro, inc. for many years now. This is from their quarterly report which was released yesterday:

[Sherritt's] Oil and Gas [division] has historically sold all of its Cuban oil production to an agency of the Government of Cuba. As at September 30, 2008, the Oil and Gas credit risk exposure related to its share of accounts receivable with its businesses in Cuba was approximately $392.8 million...

Although the past hurricane season and the current global economic conditions have negatively impacted Cuba, the Cuban Government has stated its intention to work with the Corporation and its businesses in order to provide for the appropriate agencies to meet their respective financial obligations to the Corporation. As part of these deliberations, the Corporation believes that an acceptable framework for the orderly collection of revenues and an appropriate capital spending program will be agreed to prior to the initiation of the 2009 drilling season.

The Power [division's] credit risk exposure related to its share of cash, accounts receivable and loans associated with its businesses in Cuba was approximately $20.4 million as at September 30, 2008. Power is party to a similar series of arrangements as Oil and Gas with agencies of the Government of Cuba that provide for an orderly payment of receivables.

The Cuban government owes Sherritt just shy of half a billion dollars but "The corporation believes that orderly collection of revenue will be agreed to..."

Yeah agreed to, but agreeing and paying are two different things. Suckers!

No comment yet from Sherritt's U.S. lobbyist, Phil Peters.

From the disclaimer:

There is significant risk that predictions, forecasts, conclusions or projections will not prove to be accurate, that those assumptions may not be correct and that actual results may differ materially from such predictions, forecasts, conclusions or projections. Sherritt cautions readers of this press release not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements as a number of factors could cause actual future results, conditions, actions or events to differ materially from the targets, expectations, estimates or intentions expressed in the forward-looking statements. By their nature, forward-looking statements require Sherritt to make assumptions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. Key factors that may result in material differences between actual results and developments and those contemplated by this press release include business and economic conditions in Canada, Cuba, Madagascar, and the principal markets for Sherritt’s products. Other such factors include, but are not limited to... risks related to collecting accounts receivable and repatriating profits and dividends from Cuba; risks related to foreign-exchange controls on Cuban government enterprises to transact in foreign currency; risks associated with the United States embargo on Cuba and the Helms-Burton legislation...

Sherritt's shareholders? Double suckers.

Congratulations, Claudia! Oh, and the Phillies, too!

World Series Champions.

Yay.

"Hope-Nosis"

We have all seen the Obamatons. They’re our co-workers, friends, sometimes even our family members.

They walk around like zombies chanting “hope” and “change.”

We assumed that they were drinking Kool-Aid.

But now the truth comes out.

They’re really suffering from “Hope-Nosis”

We all know what the symptoms are, but no one is sure what the long lasting effects may be.

Keep your kids away from the TV.

'Twas the Night Before Elections

It's not the quite the night before the election but we could all use a chuckle today, especially at 8:03 pm.
Courtesy of Aymee

'Twas the night before elections and all through the town, tempers were flaring,

IF YOU DONT WANT SOCIALISM--GET OUT AND VOTE!!!!

The BabaluBlog Radio Hour | Special Obama Antidote Edition tonight 8:00 PM EDT

Tonight, as a public service, the BabaluBlog Radio Hour will be on from 8:00 to 8:30 PM, as a sort of antidote to the thirty-minute campaign/deification/reprogramming video that the Obama campaign will be running tonight on NBC and CBS will be running tonight. ABC News, for whatever reason, will not be broadcasting it. The call-in number is (646) 652-4506, or you can send an email to Henry and I with questions or comments. The show begins at 8:00 PM EDT. Don't miss the opportunity to call in, participate, and piss off the Obamatons!

Well, looky here

Ladies and gentlemen, the national polls are getting TIGHT.

The latest Rasmussen poll has Obama ahead by only 3 percentage points.

Gallup, using their turnout model that's based on the 2004 election has Obama ahead by only 2 percentage points. They also have an expanded model which is based on certain groups having higher than usual participation rates which has Obama ahead by 7 percentage points.

Zogby has Obama ahead by 5 points and Investors Business Daily has Obama ahead by 3 points.

Remember that if these polls are done correctly they will have a correct proportion of representation from the 50 states. The two most populous states also happen to be where many of the liberal Obamunists live. Those states are not necessary to win this election.

We need to ensure a McCain win in Florida. Things are looking up. If only the L.A. Times would release the damned tape!

Instead of Watching the Obama the Marxist Infomercial Tonight, You Can Watch Groucho Marx

It should say "well founded fears"

UK Guardian on Cubans not falling Obamunist propaganda. Unfortunately the author of the article does fall for it at the end of the piece.

The most corrupt politician you will ever see in your life

Who owns your money?

Newt Gingrich says it best, "The Barack Obama Democrats may think it’s their right to redistribute wealth, but it surely isn’t the view of the average American worker, and it’s clearly wrong."

We know that government should focus on creating the economic conditions that will allow all Americans to prosper, not to try and redistribute wealth more evenly among Americans. We also know that the way for America to prosper is to leave Americans with more of their income, allowing them to do what they do best -- create the businesses, jobs, and opportunities that drive our vast economy.

Joe the Plumber has struck a chord because he reminds us (and should remind politicians in Washington) that government, no matter how well intentioned, has to be paid for, and that money comes from guys like Joe. Politicians can either bleed him dry to fund their programs, or they can encourage Americans to create more jobs and more wealth – and keep government limited and effective.

That’s the choice we face in this election.

The entire article is posted below the fold.

“The state cannot get a cent for any man without taking it from
some other man, and this latter must be a man who has produced
and saved it. This latter is the Forgotten Man.”

-- William Graham Sumner

Dear Fellow American,

Almost 100 years ago, economist William Graham Sumner aptly described the way a big government philosophy – the same philosophy Barack Obama espouses today - treats the productive American worker, calling him the “Forgotten Man.”

Well, last week Americans learned about one of those Forgotten Men – Joe the Plumber. And Joe the Plumber helped us all see what an Obama White House will mean for working Americans.

When Joe confronted Senator Obama on the campaign trail with the question of what would happen to his taxes under an Obama Administration should he realize his dream of owning his own business, Joe cast the decision that faces us in this election in stark relief.

Which is better for our economy: Politicians redistributing our wealth or growing more wealth?

And Senator Obama gave us an equally stark answer: Under his leadership, America will focus on “spreading around” the Forgotten Man’s wealth, not encouraging him to create more of it.

So while Obama claims he will cut taxes for 95% of working families, what he really plans is to take more money from the Americans who already pay the great majority of income taxes and “spread the wealth” to many who don’t even pay taxes to begin with in the form of a government check.

The Barack Obama Democrats may think it’s their right to redistribute wealth, but it surely isn’t the view of the average American worker, and it’s clearly wrong.

We know that government should focus on creating the economic conditions that will allow all Americans to prosper, not to try and redistribute wealth more evenly among Americans. We also know that the way for America to prosper is to leave Americans with more of their income, allowing them to do what they do best -- create the businesses, jobs, and opportunities that drive our vast economy.

Joe the Plumber has struck a chord because he reminds us (and should remind politicians in Washington) that government, no matter how well intentioned, has to be paid for, and that money comes from guys like Joe. Politicians can either bleed him dry to fund their programs, or they can encourage Americans to create more jobs and more wealth – and keep government limited and effective.

That’s the choice we face in this election.

If you agree with me that we cannot afford a Barack Obama White House -- sharing complete Democrat control of our government with the Nancy Pelosi-Harry Reid Congress too -- then I’m asking for your help today.

Please make a secure online campaign contribution of $2,000, $1,000, $500, $100, $50, or $35 to RNC Victory 2008 to help defeat the Obama Democrats and elect John McCain and principled, conservative Republican candidates who will cut our already too high taxes, rein in spending, and return sound fiscal policy to Washington.

Barack Obama wants to drastically raise taxes on Americans who earn more than $250,000 a year. He wants to help Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid “spread the wealth around” to their allies and pay for more of their big government programs. But you have an opportunity now to support our campaign for Republican victory and lower taxes before he gets the chance.

Please give whatever you can afford today.

Obama: Bailando en las casas de los trompos

This is the 10,000th actual post on Babalu Blog

And on this occassion, I just want to humbly thank our readers for their continued support and their continued visits and for being part of this family. And to our contributors: guys, what can I say. You all are the heart and soul of Babalu.

When I started this blog, I had no idea where it would lead. Today I know exactly where it has led.

All of you - readers, commenters, lurkers, linkers, contributors, writers, fellow bloggers...every single one of you - have come here to this little island on the net and made me a much better human being.

Thank you for letting me be a part of your lives and for being such a wonderful part of mine.

The tape! The tape! Our Kingdom for the tape! (UPDATED x 2)

Rand Simberg:

OK, since we're apparently free to use our imagination, here's what I think happened at that party.

There are PLO and Hamas flags decorating the room, along with Che and Mao posters. Khalidi, Ayers and Obama are slapping each others' backs, raising their glasses and toasting the upcoming destruction of the racist Zionist entity, all the while laughing at the thought of the final Final Solution. Obama says, "You know, when I take over, the first thing I'll do is withdraw all aid from those fascist kikes, and I'll give the Palis a couple nukes." Then he turns to Ayers, and asks him if he's come up with any fresh schemes for mass murder of the millions of recalcitrant capitalists, so that they can be implemented in the first one hundred days. After dessert, they get out an American flag, crumple it up on the floor, and jump up and down on it, shouting "Death to Capitalism, Death to America."

No?

That's not how it went down? Well, prove me wrong, LA Times. Show the tape.

He's got more, right here.

Quotes from Hidden LA Times Video of Obama at Jew Bash?

Doug Ross gets a note from a reliable source:

Saw a clip from the tape. Reason we can’t release it is because statements Obama said to rile audience up during toast. He congratulates Khalidi for his work saying “Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine” plus there’s been “genocide against the Palestinian people by Israelis.” It would be really controversial if it got out. Tha’s why they will not even let a transcript get out.

If the above is true, no wonder the LA Times won’t release it. However, if its true that tape needs released more than ever. I trust Doug, but right now the above quote is only rumor. It will remain to be only rumor until we have evidence. We can not have evidence without the tape being released.

Prove us wrong, LA Times.

Verified Information

Location:
Burbank Manor, 6312 W 79th St., Burbank, Illinois

Time: Friday, August 1, 2003
6pm - Reception
7pm - Dinner and Reception

Those who attended:

1. AAAN (Arab American Action Network)
2. Not In My Name
3. Ali Abunimah (a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, who met Obama in 2000)
4. Bernadine Dorhn and Bill Ayers
5. Barack Obama
6. Mayor of Chicago Richard Daley
7. Rashid Khalidi
8. Mona Khalidi
9. Gihad Ali, a Palestinian spoken word poet
10. NPR Worldview host Jerome McDonnell (not McDonald as written in the e-mail)
11. Camilia Odeh (director of SWYC Southwest Youth Collaborative)
12. Sanabel debka troupe (traditional Palestinian dance group)
13. Hatem Abudayyeh
14. Others - Up to 50 to 500 guests

(H/T Little Green Footballs)

Judge not, lest ye be right.

Ramirez:

Can these people actucally be Cuban-Americans?

“Many people today are failing to get their medicine or they are in a house they can’t pay for,” said Raul Martinez, the Cuban-American former mayor of Hialeah who is running against the Republican incumbent, Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart. “That is not the America we came to.” The audience cheered; he shouted louder.

The rest here.

No Martinez, that is PRECISELY "the America we came to." And most of your current supporters came to it PRECISELY because it was NOT socialist, because socialism had a made a nauseating mess of their own birthplace. You and your supporters are perfectly free to return to your country of origin, where such items are paid for by the state. Instead of campaigning to supplant the means for your supporters' improvidence and stupidity from productive Americans, why not--simply GO BACK TO CUBA!

In case you haven't heard: that system has been tried. And your district is full of refugees from it.

"Present" but Tardy

A pre-lunch apéritif

What does it say about a candidate?

What does it say about a Presidential candidate when the only retort he and his campaign can come up with to tough statements by his opponent is to say that said opponent is "erratic" or "desperate." Time and time again, whenever Smokin' Joe Biden (he must be smoking something) sticks his foot in his mouth, or Obama lets loose one of his leftist propaganda slogans and the McCain campaign or the press calls them on it, the only explanation they can come up with is to attack the messenger.

I know Obama is promising change, and hope, and all that wonderful, feel-good, tingles-running-down-your-leg type feelings, but how is he going to reverse global warming, stop the rising seas, and usher in his Utopian societal dreamworld if he cannot even defend himself against mere mortals?

Just what does it say about a candidate whose best defense is hiding?

Remember this column...

Just in case McCain pulls it out.

Yes, we know the media will say it's because of racism and the horseshit "Bradley Effect" and the left will cry that it was voter suppression and intimidation but the real reasons McCain still has a chance in this race are all in that column.

P.S. The Rasmussen Poll has McCain within 3 points now.

Journo web sites ignore L.A. Times/Obama/Khalidi flap

As we've been telling you here at Babalu, the L.A. Times published an article about a party held for Rashid Khalidi at which Barack Obama was present. The article detailed some anti-Israel rhetoric that was spoken by some of the guests there. Yet the Times refuses to release the video they used to write the report.

Since I do a bit of blogging about journalism at Herald Watch I'm always checking out sites like Editor & Publisher and Romenesko. Neither of these sites that focuses on issues of journalistic ethics has even mentioned the controversy that's all over the internet and cable news.

McCain rally in Miami

I have a correspondent on the scene at the McCain rally here in Miami and will report later today. Suffice to say that the yelling and cheering in the background during the phone call was pretty loud. Conservatives are energized as I haven't seen since the days of Ronald Reagan.

Krauthammer on Biden (UPDATED)

On the Dennis Miller Show yesterday, Charles Krauthammer, in a wide-ranging interview, broached the subject of Obama's VP nominee, Joe Biden, by calling him "preternaturally stupid and dangerous." Krauthammer added something which, ironically, can apply to most liberals: He's dangerous because he is stupid but thinks himself smart.

Bingo.

You need a reason to vote for McCain/Palin?

When all is said and done, when all the points are placed on the table, when all the rhetoric and speeches are done, this is the pure essence of why we have to vote McCain/Palin:

Our Constitution establishes a constitutional republic, a system in which, within the broad bounds that the Constitution sets forth, policy issues are to be determined by American citizens through their elected representatives at the state (including local) and national levels. The great battle over the Supreme Court in recent decades is between the proponents of original meaning and judicial restraint, on the one hand, and judicial activists, or advocates of living constitutionalism, on the other. Proponents of original meaning and judicial restraint embrace an interpretive methodology that respects the vast realm of representative government. Advocates of judicial activism and living constitutionalism, by contrast, redefine the Constitution to mean whatever they wish it to mean. They willy-nilly invent rights that aren’t in the Constitution and ignore those that are. Theirs is a philosophy of government by judiciary, with the operations of representative government confined to those matters that the justices aren’t quite ready yet to take charge of or that they think don’t matter very much.

A Mockery

Photo ID's needed to vote for the next leader of the free world? Obama will have none of it. Voter disenfranchisement and all that.

Photo ID's needed to join Obama at his Election Night Event? Absolutely. No ticket, no laundry.

MSM casualty #1?

In 2009, the Monitor will become the first nationally circulated newspaper to replace its daily print edition with its website; the 100 year-old news organization will also offer subscribers weekly print and daily e-mail editions.

Politics, fears, and videotape (UPDATED x 2)

Feeling extreme pressure from the public as well as the McCain campaign, the L.A. Times is still refusing to release the videotape it has of a Palestinian banquet/Israel Hate Fest held in 2003 and attended by Barack Obama. One can only imagine what is on this video that the L.A. Times is so willing to give up the last bit of journalistic integrity it has to keep it suppressed. Yesterday the newspaper offered up a feeble excuse for not releasing the video; they claimed that they had promised the confidential source that provided them with the tape that they would not release it publicly. Besides, they tried to reassure its readers, there is nothing on the tape they did not report on.

"More than six months ago the Los Angeles Times published a detailed account of the events shown on the videotape. The Times is not suppressing anything. Just the opposite -- the L.A. Times brought the matter to light."

Instead of putting the matter to rest, however, this statement causes the critical reader to question why, if a detailed account of the events shown on the tape was reported by their paper, what difference would it make then to release the videotape? Why would their confidential source have no issue with them publishing a detailed account of the events on the tape and yet object to having the historical video record of those events released? The only reason could be that either the L.A. Times did not give a detailed account of the events as they say they did, or, they fear something much greater than the sensibilities of their confidential source.

What could it be that has the L.A. Times so terrified and so frightened that it is willing to give up the last few shreds of credibility it may posses to keep this video suppressed?

Considering the pattern we have all seen during this presidential campaign, one explanation seems to rise above all others: the L.A. Times fears the Interview Nazis more than they fear public opinion.

Come to think of it, if I were them, I would be scared, too.

Indeed.

How can anyone have any doubts about who the real Obama is?

Listen to the two embedded MP3 files in this Little Green Footballs link. Any doubts left Obama is a Marxist? Thought not.

People who know, know.

Russian-Americans hop on the Cuban-American voting block bandwagon:

U.S. Russian community will vote for John McCain - poll

MOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) - The majority among the Russian community in the United States are going to vote for Republican John McCain at the U.S. presidential election, the Moscow Bureau of Human Rights (MBHR) told Interfax on Friday, after conducting a survey among the Russian community in the U.S.

MBHR experts are monitoring the U.S. elections and are planning to be in the U.S. on election day on November 4, human rights activists said in a statement.

MBHR cited figures provided by the institute for studies of new Americans, which conducted a social poll among Russian immigrants in New York, California, Georgia, New Jersey, Florida and Massachusetts between August 30 and October 10 in cooperation with the American Jewish Congress.

"Of the total number of respondents 79% (80 % New Yorkers) are certain to go to the polls. Fifty-six percent (65% New Yorkers) are going to vote for John McCain, 10% - for Barack Obama. Twenty-eight percent (19% New Yorkers) are still undecided. Of those who are likely to go to the polls 63% will vote for McCain, 11% for Obama, and 25% are still undecided," MBHR said in the statement.

H/T Gateway Pundit.

Spanish government abandons Human Rights for Cubans

You may remember the 2007 BUCL campaign denouncing the government of Spain's complicity with the castro regime's exploitation and oppression of the Cuban people. There was a lot of criticism directed at that campaign, but I am proud of having taken a stand against the current socialist government of Spain and their collaboration with the murderous, repressive castro regime.

Especially so after reading this:

Venezuelan and Spanish ministers refuse to recognize democracy project in Cuba

Havana, Oct 28, 2008 / 06:35 pm (CNA).- The founder of the Christian Liberation Movement and promoter of the Varela Project—which seeks peaceful democratic change in Cuba—Oswaldo Paya, criticized the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela and Spain for offending Cubans by their lack of support for the re-launching of the initiative.

Last week at a press conference held by the Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs Nicolas Maduro and his Spanish counterpart Miguel Angel Moratinos in Madrid, Maduro said that the Varela Project had “little credibility,” and Moratinos decline to comment.

Oswaldo Paya responded to the comments in a letter to reporters saying, Maduro “offended Cuban citizens who have promoted the ‘Varela Project’ and the Spanish minister seconded me by his silence, thus avoiding having to speak the truth.”

“These officials have offended thousands of Cuban citizens who have signed this petition for a referendum, which is also a demand for fundamental rights and which the Cuban government is denying its citizens,” Paya said.

“Lord willing, the people of Venezuela will learn of this,” he continued, “and whatever is left of the free press there will report this so that the Venezuelans will see the rights they will totally lose” if they live under a regime like the one in Cuba.

Paya explained that the “Venezuelan government needs totalitarianism to continue in Cuba because Cuba is its sanctuary and the model for its plan to have permanent and total power.”

What happened to those reasurances from Spain that they would include the issue of Human Rights in their negotiations with Cuba? I'll tell you, Spain asks about Political Prisoners, and Roque reassures that there are no political prisoners in Cuba. End of conversation, and no doubt Spain is relieved not to have been required to mess themselves with such "untidy" details.

I may not agree with Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas engagement premise for the Varela Project, but for Spain to snub him, and by extension, all those brave citizens who signed the project, is an outrageous violation of international diplomatic protocol for nations supporting the UN Declaration of Human Rights. The Spanish people should be ashamed for electing this socialist groupie to dictators.

Meanwhile my friends, here we are, witnessing one more notch carved into Cuba’s belt tally towards international "normalization."

$25,000 reward for Obama/Ayers/Dohrn/Khalidi Tape

More at Ace.

Perhaps H. Wayne Huizenga can pony up a little bit more.

Who You Foolin? First it was $ 250K, then $200K, and now $150K

To all those smarmy liberals out there, and you know who you are, I bid you a "PISS OFF WANKER!" salute for continuing to defend Obama's tax increase who essentially want to take my money for whatever piss ant projects they want to do.

First Obama says, his tax increase is only going to tax families who make more than $ 250K. Remember that? Look at this ad of his which now says $ 200K. And then look at this interview with Biden who says $ 150K.

Yes infidels, just like this arrogant penile implant from Chicago swore that he would take public financing, and did the opposite, he will break his promise on taxes if elected and will tax everyone except those who are not paying taxes right now. When asked, he will says, "circumstances have changed and we have no choice." He will be a bigger bullshit artist than GHW Bush when he went back on his "Read My Lips" word. I guarantee it. Just see the clips below. Frankly, I'd rather trust an used car salesman before I trust this guy.

And then of course there’s the hatred that comes towards me. You know the big sellout and Uncle Tom and stuff.

A Black man that says that he loves his Black sisters so much but gets her knocked up and leaves her to raise that child on her own, that’s a sellout.

Hating whitey been berry berry good to me...

Presenting Jeremiah Wright's new mansion -- in a rich White neighborhood...

Pelosi tells us not to be afraid of Democrat control of Congress

Of course not, Nancy. We won't afraid. Terrified, maybe. But not afraid.

Jorge Mas Santos, the Liar

The destroyer of the Cuban-American National Foundation was on local TV tonight touting Barack Obama and claiming that Obama would not meet with Raul Castro unconditionally.

Obviously he's aware of Obama's own words:

After initially making this the cornerstone of his foreign policy Obama has since backtracked by saying "preparations" would have to take place. But he still has not taken back the statement.

Mas Santos unfortunately has disgraced himself. Obama's buddy Ayers is a Castroite but Mas doesn't care. Obama was against the embargo that CANF is supposedly for but Mas doesn't care. I guess Mas just doesn't care.

Dime con quien andas...

Obama's buddy Ayers is a Castroite.

Again I'll ask how any self-respecting Cuban-American can vote for scumbag Obama

All animals are equal, but...

Joe Garcia thinks city Animals are more equal than rural animals.

Take a listen to Joe Garcia make this asinine comment in his own voice:

People don't have the courage to say a bunch of farmers shouldn't get to pick the president of the United States. You know why they shouldn't get to pick the president of the United States? Because this country, most of the people live in large urban centers which are important to deciding issues that of substance to Americans.

And they say the Democrats aren't elitist. Has someone bothered to tell Joe that according to the Census Bureau there are more than 7,000 people living in the district he wants to represent (but doesn't live in) who work in farming, fishing, and forestry occupations?

What an idiot. Yes friends the libs don't like the electoral college system because the framers of our constitution feared accumulation of power in those urban centers where everyone is so "enlightened". They'd like nothing better than to jam their liberal agenda down the collective throat of those who live in the heartland.

Catch the Sky TV replay with the Babalu Boys

Click here and then scroll down to where it says "White House Unplugged".

Babalu on British TV - UPDATED

Val, George and I are in Miami Beach where we'll be participating with Sky News from the UK.

You should be able to view here starting at 3:30 PM

If you're on a mac and can't see the feed, try using firefox as your browser.

UPDATED - We're still here. We just did a segment. Stay tuned for more.

Plumbers and intellectuals

"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."

--John W. Gardner, Secretary of Health Education and Welfare under JFK

Murtha may be in trouble

Interesting information about Murtha and his chances. He may lose his seat yet...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The National Republican Campaign Committee is using some its scarce resources to target one of the most senior Democrats in the House -- Rep. John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania.

(H/T Ace of Spades, CNN)

My fair city

We have a beautiful view of the intracoastal from the studios of Sky TV here in Miami (Beach).

All hail the Red Star!

And I don't mean Macy's, folks!

Wow. Effing wow.

(H/T The American Thinker)

Update: Cigar Mike - Goes well with this quote from Obama:

"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully," ... "The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists."
--- Barack Obama from "Dreams from our Fathers"

Tell Zell to release the tape!

Sam Zell is basically the owner of the L.A. Times. Please send him a fax telling him that the L.A. Times has an obligation to the American people to release the video of Obama at the going away party for PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi.

Here is the Fax# at the L.A. Times: 213-237-3535.

You can send a fax from your computer using Fax Zero

Move along, nothing to see here

Obama's Education Groups Funded Controversial Organizations in the '90s, Tax Returns Show

Just another telling story of Obama's background that illustrates his extremists views and counters the centrist image he is trying to portray. Therefore, please, whatever you do, for the love of God and everything that is sacred, do not, I repeat, do not click on the above story!

Keep moving, just ignore it.

From the time before he was under the (crowded) bus...

(H/T STACLU)

Mace! It's what's for breakfast.

Stay classy, Oh peaceful, fraternal, Democrats!

What was that you said about Obama, General Powell?

Delicious.

Powell was recently a "character witness" in the corruption trial of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens - as in a character witness for Stevens' "good character" (cough cough).

"He was a trusted individual whose word you could rely on," said Powell, also saying Stevens' word was "sterling".

"When you shook hands with Ted Stevens, it would benefit the nation in the long run." Powell said (well, it sure benefited those contractors and Stevens himself, with that nice little chalet. Perhaps Stevens was just doing what he could to stimulate the economy in his own little way).

The only problem was that less than 2 days later, after a mere 5 hours of deliberation, Stevens is convicted on all 7 felony charges of lying and for making false statements by failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts from Bill Allen, the former head of Veco Corp., and other friends.

Now we know what to do based on your endorsement of Barack Obama: do the exact opposite.

It Ain't Over Until We Say It's Over

These cocky weenies may get a surprise come Tuesday. Stay tuned ....

All these liberal wankers and media elitists would have hated Truman. He spoke like a regular mid westerner. He wasn't an Ivy Leaguer. And he enjoyed simple stuff like playing the piano, drinking and playing cards with his friends.

But he was tough as nails and could make a decision without waffling. The Dems are the complete antithesis of what Harry Truman was and stood far. They counted him out. But Surprise.

We'll know next week if history will repeat itself.

Closing the deal

With seven days left until Election Day, the Obama campaign and the mainstream media would like us all to think that the presidential race is over. To them it is a forgone conclusion that in January Messiah Obama will be crowned the supreme leader of the world and we should all be prepared to bow down on bended knees and hail The One. I cannot blame Obama, nor the MSM (the largest and most extensive public relations organization to ever run a presidential campaign) for trying to convince us all of this; they hope that the perception of an undefeatable Obama will cause his detractors to stay home on November 4th and accept the inevitable ascension of their Savior.

But with only one week left it has become obvious that this tactic is not so much a display of arrogant confidence by Obama and his supporters, but more a sign of their fear and desperation. Sure, all the polls have him ahead, but with only one week left, the lead is not large enough to guarantee him a victory. After out raising and out spending his opponent by a margin of over 2-to-1, and having the vast majority of the media on his side disseminating his campaign’s talking points while maintaining hidden the copious amount of skeletons in his closet, Obama cannot seem to close the deal. The Obama campaign’s panic is evident in their outlandish and thuggish treatment of any media outlet that does not cooperate: they have in essence become the “Interview Nazis,” refusing service to anyone that disagrees with them.

With all the advantages Obama has, why then has he not been able to pull away? It seems that there is something about Obama that is preventing the American public from fully embracing him. Of course, his mouthpieces and the complicit media attribute this disconnect to his race, but that is simply not the case. If it were, the Obama campaign would not be playing the race card as often as they have. If America truly had an issue electing a black president, the last thing you would want to do, from a public relations standpoint, is remind everyone that they have an issue electing a black president. The disconnect between Obama and America is not a superficial racial one, but instead one that goes to the core of America’s identity.

For all our problems America is still, by far, the greatest nation in the world. And although Obama’s success so far is a perfect example of this nation’s greatness, he has built his campaign, and his entire adult career, on the premise that America is really not that great. No matter how many times he extols the virtues of the American dream, he does it in the context of fixing what is wrong with America. This negative perception, regardless of the flowery words and rhetoric he dresses them up in, is what is preventing Obama from fully connecting to the American people and closing this deal. With one week left before America decides its next leader, it is too late for Obama to address this chasm between his perception of America and the perception held by the vast majority of Americans. And ideologically speaking, it would be impossible for him to view America as anything more than a broken nation in need of repair.

Obama can try to hide his disdain for this country behind his inspirational speeches and catchy slogans, but in the end, the gist of his perception of this country will not be lost upon the American people. And it is this fundamental difference, I believe, that will prevent Obama from closing the deal come November 4th.

Obama's Ambassadors

Anti-American terrorist and Obama pal, mentor and confidant Bill Ayers took a quick hop down South last month, bringing co-conspirator and terrorist wife Bernardine Dohrn along with other "intellectuals" to the island of Cuba.

Janice Misurell-Mitchell: “I traveled to Cuba for six days this past September with several colleagues as part of a conference on ‘Useful Art’, or art that includes aspects of social activism. Sponsored by Cáthedra de Arte Conducta, an arts program hosted by the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, the project was conceived by Cuban visual artist and University of Chicago faculty member Tania Bruguera. My colleagues were Chicagoans Tom Mitchell, Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers; our group, ‘Team Havana’ thus included a scholar, two political activists and an artist. Our work was to present lectures and informal sessions, films and videos, and performances. While Tom, Bernadine and Bill met with visual art students at the offices of the journal Criterio, I presented three sessions to music students at the Instituto Superior de Arte.”

As is the norm in these "cultural exchanges," we're led to believe that the visit was all about art and music, yet anyone with a modicum of common sense and anyone familiar with the castro regime knows that these trips are all about two things: politics and propaganda. We know both of these terrorists are self-proclaimed communists, we know that at least one of them, Dohrn, traveled to Cuba inthe late sixties to meet with VietCong and we know that the Weather Underground recieved instructions back then from the Cuban DGI:

An FBI Agent Testified In 1980 That That The Weather Underground Had Received Instructions From Intelligence Officers With Cuba’s Mission To The United Nations. “A Federal Bureau of Investigation agent [James Vermeersch] who followed the activities of the Weather Underground organization in the early 1970's testified today that some members of the militant antiwar group ‘received instructions’ from intelligence officers attached to Cuba's mission to the United Nations.” (Robert Pear, “F.B.I. Agent Says Cuba Officials At U.N. Instructed Weatherman,” The New York Times, 9/25/80)

Make no bones about it, folks. Ayers and Dohrn were in Cuba doing Barrack Obama's legwork. Paving the way for future tete-a-tete's should Obama prevail come November.

From the mouth of a feminist

Here's a message about Palin to the RINOs and moderates, the squishy wimps responsible for the demise of Ronald Reagan's conservative coalition in the Republican Party:

I'm a Democrat, but I've worked as a consultant with the McCain campaign since shortly after Palin's nomination. Last week, there was the thought that as a former editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine as well as a feminist activist in my pre-journalism days, I might be helpful in contributing to a speech that Palin had long wanted to give on women's rights.

Now by “smart,” I don't refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don't really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable [sic] pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I'd heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.

Bombshell: L.A. Times is concealing damning video of Obama!

From Little Green Footballs:

in a closely contested election, the Los Angeles Times is concealing a video showing Barack Obama at a going-away party for former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi, attended by radical Palestinian activists and former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

The Times recently published an article about the party that included this line:

The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times.

But they won't make the video public. Contact the L.A. Times today and demand that they release the video.

More from Bill O'Reilly:

More from National Review.

H/T: gateway pundit

Interesting stuff

At Herald Watch

Obama Supporter / Ohio State employee authorized record search for dirt on Joe the Plumber

When Joe the Plumber broke into the public consciousness we immediately learned that he was divorced, that he has a tax lien on his property and that he doesn't have a plumber's license. Some folks like Michelle Malkin began to ask themselves, how did all this information about a private citizen get out there so fast? Who in Ohio's state government used their access to such information for political purposes. Well now we know at least one of the answers to that question. And surprise: she's an Obama donor.

Prepare barf bags now

Bill Ayers wearing Cuban baseball jersey.

Supporters of Barack Obama

I'm a Republican, and I approve this message:





Brought to you by the American Political Action Committee, for more information click here.

Balls and urns

From the great Iowahawk comes one of the most uplifting statistics problems I have ever read. (And I loathed, detested and hated my stat classes.) Do yourselves a favor and read it. Tell me you don't feel better about next Tuesday after reading that!

CBS Exposes The Obama Campaign's Financing

Contrary to his rhetoric, and unlike McCain who has made his donor list public, Obama refuses to reveal the names behind his record breaking fund raising.

Watch this:

Joedilocks: The Distance Candidate

I've been saying this all year:

Remembering Claudio E. Ponce

Yesterday, Jorge Ponce's father, Claudio Emerio Ponce, passed away at the age of 87. Jorge is a friend of this blog and has been interviewed here as well as on Radio Mambi, sharing his perspective on Cuban-related issues. I'd like to take a minute to tell you about the elder Mr. Ponce and how he brought a little bit of Cuba to Washington's exile community (as well as to Americans) through his work with Casa Cuba.

Mr. Ponce, Sr. brought his family here from Cuba in 1966 and moved to the D.C. area. A native of Caibarien, he worked for the Ministerio de Haciendas (Treasury Department) as an accountant in Cuba and then in the US and became the president of Casa Cuba in DC. In this capacity he brought famous Cuban musicians to D.C. like Miguelito Valdes (Mr. Babalu), Celia Cruz and La Sonora Mantancera (the first time that they performed in the DC area), Xiomara Alfaro, Roberto Ledesma, Primitivo Santos and Vicentico Valdes. In 1976 he planned an event to mark the bicentennial of the United States which was held at the Kennedy Center and brought entertainment luminaries like Don Pedro Vargas and Fernando Albuerne to perform.

Mr. Ponce moved to Miami after he retired to escape the cold and the snow. He had suffered several strokes before succombing to heart failure. He is survived by his wife, Hilda Mencia de Ponce, his sons, Jorge and Mateo; his daughter, Teresita, and seven grandchildren. He will be remembered as a meticulous planner of social events, a man whose heart never forgot Cuba, and a great father.

We extend our condolences to Jorge and his family.

Cross posted on Claudia4Libertad.com

Moderate Republicans? You can keep 'em

An excerpt from a column that nails these RINOs to the wall:

Given our current situation, it's deeply ironic that moderate Republicans spent the last few years completely ignoring conservative concerns and insisting that if only the dumb right-wingers would listen to them, they'd create a majority that would last for 40 years.

Let's see, there was Campaign Finance Reform, the Medicare Prescription Drug Program, No Child Left Behind, The Gang-of-14, Harriet Miers, the Dubai Port Deal, illegal immigration, out-of-control earmarking, deficit spending, the bailout, and probably another half dozen different disasters that I'm blocking out because they're too painful to think about.

Then, after all of that, these RINOS helped to nominate the least conservative GOP nominee since Richard Nixon and only a few months later, many of those same people turned right around and supported his opponent, the most liberal Democratic nominee in American history.

You know their names: Lincoln Chafee, William Weld, Colin Powell, Christopher Buckley, Wayne Gilchrest, Richard Riordan, Douglas Kmiec, Scott McClellan, Ken Adelman, & Michael Smerconish among others.

At least one of them should have the common decency to reprise that great line from Animal House,

(Y)ou can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You (screwed) up - you trusted us! Hey, make the best of it!

Oh, and these RINOs are already blaming Sarah Palin for McCain's defeat. May I remind these assholes that Palin is the ONLY reason McCain has the numbers he has today. Period. They should unleash her without all the idiotic stage management and stupid media decisions they've made.

We ♥ Megyn Kelly

(H/T HotAir)

I'm a Republican and I approve this message

Good riddance

It's time to get these dishonest MFs out of the Republican Party.

The interview Nazis

Like the infamous character from the Seinfeld episode, Joe Biden and the Obama campaign have transformed themselves into the "Interview Nazis."

Ask a tough question? NO INTERVIEW FOR YOU!

Question the past of the Messiah? NO INTERVIEW FOR YOU!

Ask Biden about the $1.8 million dollars he has paid his family members from his campaign coffers? NO INTERVIEW FOR YOU!

Bring up Joe the Plumber? NO INTERVIEW FOR YOU!

Well, you asked for change, and there you have it.

ATF foils "skinhead" plot to assassinate Obama

Breaking now.

The ATF says it has broken up a plot to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 102 black people in a Tennessee murder spree.

In court records unsealed Monday, agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target an unnamed by predominantly African-American high school by two neo-Nazi skinheads.

Can you say "thin skinned"?

I knew that you could.

(H/T Michelle Malkin)

Why Obamanomics will destroy our economy

Monica posted an interesting item about H. Wayne Huizenga, the long-time owner of the Miami Dolphins. He's weighing the sale of his 50% stake in the team to Stephen Ross (who previously purchased the other half).

Huizenga is worried about the capital gains tax increases that Barack Obama is proposing. Let's pretend we're not multi-billionaires like Huizenga but instead we're normal professionals making $100,000. Let's say you take 10% of your after-tax income (well say it's $8,500) and invest it in stocks because you want to be part of the investor class. And let's say that the value of the shares grows doubles in five years to $17,000 then the $8,500 profit you make when you sell it is subject to a tax. Currently that rate is 15%. Now Obama wants to take that rate up to 28%. Do you have any incentive to sell those shares? Do you have any incentive to invest more into the markets or will you be looking for other investments?

The fact is that Clinton and Bush both cut capital gains taxes and both times the government came out winning on the other end because more investment created more growth and thus more tax revenues. But Barack Obama, when confronted with these facts, talks about "fairness". Because in his mind it's more important that the rich man doesn't make money than it is for the government to benefit from the rich man's success. Don't believe me? Listen for yourself.

Do you trust Obama with your money? Huizenga doesn't...

I can't believe I actually agree with Wayne Huizenga, who broke my 11-year old heart in 1997, but the man has a point:

Dolphins owner H. Wayne Huizenga said Sunday no date has been set for selling up to 45 percent more of the team to Stephen Ross, but the presidential election is among the issues weighing on his decision.

That's because a Barack Obama administration is expected to mean higher capital-gains taxes.

"He wants to double the capital gains tax, or almost double it," Huizenga said. "I'd rather give it to charity than to him."

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/football/pro/dolphins/sfl-flspdolwayne27sboct27,0,1382404.story

Impactful images from Cuba

See the rest here: http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/photos/2008/10/016439.html

"McCain Pals around with Terrorists TOO! So THERE!"

When John McCain addressed a crowd of Bay of Pigs veterans and former Cuban political prisoners last year he learned that he and his fellow POW's in North Vietnam had shared torturers with the Cuban-American freedom fighters then hosting and applauding him, which included the longest-suffering political prisoners in modern history, having suffered prison camps, forced labor and torture chambers for a period three times as long in the Castro/Che Gulag as Alexander Solzhenytzin suffered in Stalin's Gulag.

"Anything that I and my friends might have experienced is nothing - nothing -- compared with what some of the men in this room went through," a gracious John McCain said as many of his hosts misted up.

"I'm introducing a man who suffered the prisons, as I did," said Roberto Martin-Perez, who introduced McCain on the podium.``This honor that's been conferred upon me is not only mine but the thousands of victims who have suffered because of this terrible doctrine' (Communism.)" Senor Martin-Perez suffered 28 years in Castro's Gulag, repeatedly spitting in the face of the Communist torturers who demanded his "confession." Thus The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and Democratic Underground all recently denounced Senor Roberto Martin-Perez (who also narrates a McCain campaign ad) as a "terrorist," and McCain's association with him as the Republicans' own Ayers scandal.

Fine. Let Democrats equate an anti-communist U.S. citizen who honorably stood up to 28 years of torture by sadists serving a Stalinist regime that denounced the U.S. as "a vulture preying on humanity!" and came closest to nuking us, to Bill Ayers. And let that Stalinist regime's dictator endorse their candidate. No Republican campaign ad could make the ramifications of this election any clearer.

Much more on the details of this torture in this article.

You've Come A Long Way, Baby

The Democratic Party has come a long way....

PDS in West Hollywood, California, Halloween Style!

A mannequin hanging from a home in West
Hollywood has been outfitted to look like Governor Sarah Palin.



Also displayed at the West Hollywood home was
a mannequin of John McCain emerging from flames.

The Constitution and Obama

The Constitution of the United States of America is the only thing that has ensured that this country has been the freest nation in the world for the past 232 years. The forefathers of this great republic wrote a brilliant document that safeguards the citizens of this country against tyranny and absolute power by any one person or group. If all else fails, the Constitution is the backstop, the impenetrable wall that protects our freedom and civil liberties. This country has seen moderate, liberal, and conservative presidents and congresses, but they have all adhered--at times, reluctantly-- to the separation of powers and the checks and balances provided by this remarkable document.

With such a powerful document defending our inalienable rights, it is easy to imagine how most Americans do not fear the erosion of those rights. Even if Barack Obama turns out to be as extreme as his past associations and friends apparently are, the Constitution would prevent him from dismantling our free and democratic society. That is, I believe, what makes Obama palatable to those who have decided to vote for him yet do not feel comfortable with his past associations or his Marxist rhetoric. The Constitution, they believe, would prevent an Obama administration from taking absolute control, and in theory they would be correct.

But what happens when the president believes the Constitution is fundamentally flawed?

For our Constitution to do its intended task of protecting us, our government must believe in it and adhere to it. And here is where an Obama presidency gets scary. As you can see from this interview from 2001, Obama believes that the Constitution has a fundamental flaw.

If Obama believes our Constitution has a fundamental flaw, why would he then feel bound by its tenets?

It is a question that everyone who votes on November 4th should ask themselves.

Obama October Surprises Himself

We've all become acquainted with the political lingo these days. "Swift boating" means telling the truth about a Democrat. An "October Surprise" is telling the truth right about a Democrat, right before the election.

Obama and his supporters have been wary of "Swift Boats" and "October Surprises" throughout this election, they have been "girding their loins" for it.

But as they tried to silence critics and avoid the tough questions, they forgot to muzzle one person: Barack Hussein Obama.

Obama happened upon a plumber in Ohio and was knocked off his prepared talking points when that plumber had the temerity to question Obama's tax plan. Joe the Plumber became an instant celebrity to the right and public enemy number one to the left.

But the important thing is that Obama's mask fell askew and many Americans were able to see what was behind it for the first time: socialist tendencies toward punishing the wealthy. This is not "change", this is not new.

Many of us already knew Obama's true colors. We had seen how Obama told Charlie Gibson how higher taxes were the right thing to do even if they resulted in LESS revenues to the federal treasury. It was a matter of "fairness" you see. But not everyone is a political news junkie. Most Americans simply missed the exchange.

Well, the internet is now abuzz with something new. Actually it's something old. A 2001 Barack Obama who could not have envisioned himself running for president just seven years later, an unguarded Barack Obama talking to friendly constituents in Chicago, a town where the corruption at city hall is revered and domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers are just guys who live in the neighborhood. In the clip from 2001, Obama makes no bones about his view on wealth and how it must be distributed. He explains that regrettably the Earl Warren Supreme Court wasn't "that radical". He then tells a caller that the courts aren't the best venue for redistributing wealth anyway. It's an administrative process.

What will the Democratic nominee say next? Will he disavow himself like he has so many others who were once useful to him? Will he call a press conference, look into the cameras and say with a straight face: That's not the Barack Obama I knew.

Many on the right have been frustrated by Barack Obama's short resume and therefore the lack of dirt on him. But this, of course, has been aided and abetted by the cheerleading news media in our country. A variety of bloggers and non-traditional journalists have dug up the most damning material on Obama. It begs the question, what the hell were Hillary's aids doing?

If Obama loses this race (a big if) there will be a lot excuses thrown around. Racism, the Bradley effect, fraud, etc. But the truth is that if John McCain gets elected it will be because Obama surprised himself by telling the truth to a plumber in Ohio within earshot of a microphone. He will have been hoisted by his own petard (or Swift Boat, if you will).

A message to Jorge Mas Santos

You are an embarrassment.

I suppose I could write a lengthy, detailed essay on why I believe the aforementioned to be true. But what would be the point, really? You already know it to be true in the grape seed that seems to be your conscience, whether or not you choose to accept it.

Your editorial in the Washington Post -purporting to speak on my behalf as a Cuban-American- endorsing Barrack Obama for President, proves one thing and one thing only: you have placed politics - and money - before convictions and, thus, learned absolutely nothing from your father.

Russia to Help Cuba with Military Air Defense

Reuters is reporting:

Russia will offer to share its air defence expertise with Cuba when a military delegation visits the Caribbean island this week, Interfax news agency reported on Monday.

A Russian officer takes a picture of a TU-95 bomber, or Bear, at a military airbase in …More Enlarge photo

"The Russian and Cuban military will exchange experience in organising tactical air defence and in training officers," Interfax quoted Russian Land Forces spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying.

The two sides will "discuss the prospect of training Cuban servicemen at the tactical air defence academies and training centres in Russia, using upgraded Russian-made military hardware," Interfax quoted him as saying.

The delegation, led by the chief of Russia's tactical air defence headquarters, Lieutenant General Alexander Maslov, will also look at "ways to strengthen relations between the Russian armed forces and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba," Konashenkov was quoted as saying.

The delegation will be in Cuba from Monday until November 3, Konashenkov was quoted as saying. Reuters could not immediately reach Konashenkov for comment.

In 1962, Cuba became the focus of the deepest crisis of the Cold War after the Soviet Union installed missiles there, prompting a standoff with Washington. The island's government remains hostile to the United States.

In the past few months, Moscow has stepped up contacts with both Cuba and Venezuela, another South American critic of the United States.

(Reporting by Conor Sweeney; Editing by Caroline Drees)

Yep, these are nice people we need to sit down with without any preconditions folks.They want to be our friends.

Horsesh*t!

Only in Hialeah

H/T Ile.

The Axis of Taxes & The End of Prosperity

There is a chill in the air infidels and it ain't the weather. If the polls are right and barring a Harry Truman like upset, the country will elect its first socialist President. It's a sign of what happens when people get panicked. They make rash decisions. There are some panicky people out there and to them they think the change offered by the Junior Senator from Illinois is the Answer. But the wind is chilly indeed infidels. The signs are there for a long cold winter. The writing is on the wall. An Obama administration will see a chilling of the First Amendment which cannot be imagined. It will be akin to what Hugo Chavez and Putin are doing with their media. Their bringing back of the [un]Fairness Doctrine to stifle opposing viewpoints is just the start. Ask a cross question of Mr. Obama or his lackeys are you will be blackballed. Speak contrary to Mr. Obama and your background will be investigated and your private affairs will be plastered all over the media. This is hardball Chicago politics infidels. Speak cross to the fuhrer from the south side of Chicago and you'll have your Tax Returns audited or you'll all of a sudden you'll be investigated in front of a grand jury or simply harassed by Obama's brown shirt liberal lackeys. Or you'll be unfairly labeled a racist.

Am I insane? Heck, the signs are there right now - conservatives are afraid to express themselves for fear of chastisement or worse, bodily injury. It's that ugly infidels. Wear or hold up a McCain sign and you'll get the finger from an absolute stranger or you'll have your property vandalized. You thought that the Nixon and Bush 43 Administrations played fast and loose with civil liberties? Those guys pale in comparison to the mob style Chicago politics that you will experience under the Axis of Taxes. We will see where the true patriots are in the darkest of times. Those who scream the loudest on civil liberties now, will they continue to scream when their boy is in power? The silence will be deafening.

You will see a bear market akin to the one that lasted from JFK to Ronald Reagan. You will see the rebirth of the nanny state. There is a chill in the air infidels and it ain't "El Dia de los Muertos." The Axis of Taxes will be in full power and so will be a total socialist takeover of the United States. Why? Because people panic; Bush panicked, the Congress panicked, and the Fed panicked.

This administration and congress will be remembered like Herbert Hoover for all of history. And those who support and follow the Junior Senator from Illinois and who ascribe Messianic qualities to him and who worship him and who see their salvation in him, because of their fear and hatred shall be responsible.

The Axis of Taxes will not just "spread the wealth", they will "spread the misery." I hope I'm totally wrong on this one folks. I truly hope I am wrong. The reality is folks, that four years from now, I truly hope that things are better for us all for unlike those on the extreme left, I don't root for things to tank because they help me politically. The left puts party first, not country first.

You see infidels, as a trial lawyer, I stand to gain under an Obama administration. It will be easier to sue companies and more legislation will be created to allow more lawsuits. Unionization and labor fights will rise. I'm a labor lawyer and that's good for my business. So I will be kept busy under an Obama administration. So by all means, I should vote for Obama, right? I vote for the health of the country first. Just listen to the Obama interview on NPR and you'll see what is on the horizon. I cannot in good conscience vote for the Junior Senator from Illinois, even if it will benefit me in the short run. I cannot fathom the possibility of Supreme Court justices in the mold of Obama sitting on the High Court for the next 30 years. I cannot fathom the dismantling of our military and our national security as Barney Frank has promised. While the people are out there working hard so they can have their wealth spread around, there will be champagne and caviar flowing in the White House with the new kid in town and their media elites. But my hands are clean folks. Don't blame me for what we're about to experience. That is why I voted for John McCain.

Read the chilling article here from today's WSJ.

About that "redistribution of wealth" thing...

Bill Whittle on the Obama tape George linked below.

Today's must read.

URGENT: Here's a wealth of Obama's "Redistribution of Wealth" philosophy -- from 2001!

Drudge has it as a headline. Heh heh heh.

(H/T Maggie from PatDollard)

Best description of Obama to date

Courtesy of PJ-Comix Charles Henrickson:

an inexperienced, narcissistic socialist who wants to "spread the wealth around" and whose closest mentors for decades have been anti-American, hatemongering Marxists.

Why turnout models are so important in polling

One of the untold stories of this election is the turnout modeling used by pollsters. Each has his own model and thus each one has a chance at being right or wrong. The first thing you need to know is that any poll of "registered voters" is bogus. That's because registered voters don't necessarily vote. In presidential elections you have higher voter turnout than in other elections but still you don't get anywhere near full participation.

The Florida Division of elections shows that only 74% of Florida's voters cast a vote in the 2004 general election. With all of the money being spent on "get out the vote" efforts and voter registration drives we can assume that turnout will be greater in 2008 than 2004 but how much greater? And who is most likely to actually go out there and cast a ballot.

Well I was looking at some 2004 general election statistics from the Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor and found them enlightening.

When we register to vote in Florida we basically put ourselves into one of four racial/ethnic buckets: Black, White, Hispanic and Other.

And we also put ourselves into one of three party affiliation buckets: Republican, Democrat and Other.

That's 12 different combinations. And in 2004, each one had a distinct rate of voter turnout:

As you can see from the table, the combination that followed through and voted at the highest rate for the 2004 general election in Miami-Dade was Hispanic Republicans followed by White Democrats. Hispanic Democrats and Hispanic Other had much lower turnout rates as did Black Democrats. No wonder "community organizing" is so important to the Dems. Their constituencies apparently don't seem to do too well when left to their own devices.

Now this election has a lot imponderables to it. For one thing the top of the ticket for the Democrats is Black (or portrays himself as Black despite the differences between him and most Black voters, White mother, African father, Harvard education, etc.). This should effect the historically lower turnout rates for Black Democrats. But those historical differences are not insignificant.

You can easily see how a pollster is faced with a dilemma when he gets a respondent on the phone. He needs to determine what the likelihood of that respondent actually following through and voting is.

I'll leave you with this last bit of cheerful news. There's a blogger out there that is claiming that the election is a lot closer than many of the polls are letting on because of the turnout models being used. That blogger mentions the Investors Business Daily/TIPP poll as being the most accurate. And in 2004, the IBD/TIPP poll was indeed the most accurate in predicting the popular vote. On Sunday IBD/TIPP had Obama ahead by only 3.2% with 10.1% undecided.

By the way, the blended turnout rates by party in 2004's general election for Miami-Dade County were:

Republicans: 78.81%
Democrats: 72.64%
Other: 64.85%

Must read on media bias

The media's bias and outright campaigning is starting to get noticed by its own members:

...what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.

That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Barack is not a Socialist!

Then again, these records may prove otherwise:

Beyond the archived web page from the Socialist New Party is the recognition by the "Progressive Populist" magazine in November 1996 that Obama was indeed an acknowledged member of the Socialist Party.

New Party members and supported candidates won 16 of 23 races, including an at-large race for the Little Rock, Ark., City Council, a seat on the county board for Little Rock and the school board for Prince George's County, Md. Chicago is sending the first New Party member to Congress, as Danny Davis, who ran as a Democrat, won an overwhelming 85% victory. New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago.

Link To The November 1996 Progressive Populist Article

The Democratic Socialist Party of America published in their July/August Edition of New Ground 47 Newsletter.

The Chicago New Party is increasely becoming a viable political organization that can make a different in Chicago politics. It is crucial for a political organization to have a solid infrastructure and visible results in its political program. The New Party has continued to solidify this base...

[T]he NP's '96 Political Program has been enormously successful with 3 of 4 endorsed candidates winning electoral primaries. All four candidates attended the NP membership meeting on April 11th to express their gratitude. Danny Davis, winner in the 7th Congressional District, invited NPers to join his Campaign Steering Committee. Patricia Martin, who won the race for Judge in 7th Subcircuit Court, explained that due to the NP she was able to network and get experienced advice from progressives like Davis. Barack Obama, victor in the 13th State Senate District, encouraged NPers to join in his task forces on Voter Education and Voter Registration.

Link to the DSA article.

I guess he was lying to them, too...

(H/T Ziva)

Obama sure has nice friends... (UPDATED)

Here's an update I just caught in my RSS reader: It seems Ayers and Dohrn attended the dinner as well:

In Chicago, the Khalidis founded the Arab American Action Network, and Mona Khalidi served as its president. A big farewell dinner was held in their honor by AAAN with a commemorative book filled with testimonials from their friends and political allies. These included the left wing anti-war group Not In My Name, the Electronic Intifada, and the ex-Weatherman domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. (There were also testimonials from then-state Senator Barack Obama and the mayor of Chicago.)

Just a guy from the neighborhood? Is that what you said, Barry?

A message to all my liberal Jewish acquaintances and friends: an Obama administration will not be good for Israel. At all. Be warned that Obama, and his allies and associates, are enemies of Jewish state.

[Gateway Pundit] talked with Peter Wallston from the Los Angeles Times about the article on Obama and [former Palestinian operative and Jew-hater Rashid] Khalidi:

Wallsten was one of the few mainstream media reporters to report on this radical Obama associate.

Wallsten said that the article was written after he watched video taken at the Khalidi going away party. When I asked him about the video he said that as far as he was concerned he was through with the story.

I asked him if he was planning on releasing this video of Obama toasting the radical Khalidi at this Jew-bash. He told me he was not releasing the video. He also would not comment on his source for the video. Wallsten also said he did not know if Khalidi's good friend Bill Ayers was at the event or not.

So, there you have it. The LA Times has video of Obama toasting a former PLO operative at a Jew-bash but will not release the video. This is outrageous. Obviously, this video would do great damage to Obama who struggles with Jewish voters due to his circle of close anti-Semitic friends. Maybe this is the reason it is not being released?

Read the whole disturbing post. The nation is walking straight into a hornet's nest...

(H/T The American Thinker)

"The Obama Temptation"

Brilliant piece by Mark Levin in NRO's The Corner. I'm copying the entire article because it is vital you read it:

The Obama Temptation
Mark R. Levin

I've been thinking this for a while so I might as well air it here. I honestly never thought we'd see such a thing in our country - not yet anyway - but I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places. I can't help but observe that even some conservatives are caught in the moment as their attempts at explaining their support for Barack Obama are unpersuasive and even illogical. And the pull appears to be rather strong. Ken Adelman, Doug Kmiec, and others, reach for the usual platitudes in explaining themselves but are utterly incoherent. Even non-conservatives with significant public policy and real world experiences, such as Colin Powell and Charles Fried, find Obama alluring but can't explain themselves in an intelligent way.

There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama's name on it, which adorns everything from Obama's plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama's name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff.

Even the media are drawn to the allure that is Obama. Yes, the media are liberal. Even so, it is obvious that this election is different. The media are open and brazen in their attempts to influence the outcome of this election. I've never seen anything like it. Virtually all evidence of Obama's past influences and radicalism — from Jeremiah Wright to William Ayers — have been raised by non-traditional news sources. The media's role has been to ignore it as long as possible, then mention it if they must, and finally dismiss it and those who raise it in the first place. It's as if the media use the Obama campaign's talking points — its preposterous assertions that Obama didn't hear Wright from the pulpit railing about black liberation, whites, Jews, etc., that Obama had no idea Ayers was a domestic terrorist despite their close political, social, and working relationship, etc. — to protect Obama from legitimate and routine scrutiny. And because journalists have also become commentators, it is hard to miss their almost uniform admiration for Obama and excitement about an Obama presidency. So in the tank are the media for Obama that for months we've read news stories and opinion pieces insisting that if Obama is not elected president it will be due to white racism. And, of course, while experience is crucial in assessing Sarah Palin's qualifications for vice president, no such standard is applied to Obama's qualifications for president. (No longer is it acceptable to minimize the work of a community organizer.) Charles Gibson and Katie Couric sought to humiliate Palin. They would never and have never tried such an approach with Obama.

But beyond the elites and the media, my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization. Obama's entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The "change" he peddles is not new. We've seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government. Obama's appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the "the proletariat," as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created. Rather than pursue the American Dream, he insists that the American Dream has arbitrary limits, limits Obama would set for the rest of us — today it's $250,000 for businesses and even less for individuals. If the individual dares to succeed beyond the limits set by Obama, he is punished for he's now officially "rich." The value of his physical and intellectual labor must be confiscated in greater amounts for the good of the proletariat (the middle class). And so it is that the middle class, the birth-child of capitalism, is both celebrated and enslaved — for its own good and the greater good. The "hope" Obama represents, therefore, is not hope at all. It is the misery of his utopianism imposed on the individual.

Unlike past Democrat presidential candidates, Obama is a hardened ideologue. He's not interested in playing around the edges. He seeks "fundamental change," i.e., to remake society. And if the Democrats control Congress with super-majorities led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he will get much of what he demands.

The question is whether enough Americans understand what's at stake in this election and, if they do, whether they care. Is the allure of a charismatic demagogue so strong that the usually sober American people are willing to risk an Obama presidency? After all, it ensnared Adelman, Kmiec, Powell, Fried, and numerous others. And while America will certainly survive, it will do so, in many respects, as a different place.

Solid as Barack

There is nothing this man can do to get me to tune in to his 30 minute "address" this week, especially when it bumps the World Series. However, this is a funny alternative, thanks to SNL.

But I'm still not watching it.

Thanks to Aymee.

Washington Post publishes article by a Cuban-American!

So what's the catch, you ask?

It's from Jorge Mas Santos, who proclaims that:

"Both presidential candidates have made clear that they want to help the Cuban people achieve freedom. But Barack Obama's forward-looking and proactive approach toward empowering the Cuban people is more in line with these proposals than John McCain's vow to continue the Bush administration's policy."

Jorgito goes on:

"Cuban Americans are wary of empty promises. But on Nov. 4, before casting ballots, we will ask ourselves two important questions: Who will adopt a proactive policy toward Cuba, and if dissidents in Cuba had a vote in our election, for whom would they vote?"

But wait a minute? I thought the whole "vote for Democrats Obama, Joe Garcia, Raul Martinez" point was based on us finally shucking stale and pointless concerns regarding Cuba and adopting mainline U.S. voters' rational and timely concerns such as health-care, jobs, etc.?

Jorgito, make up your mind.

No one (outside Miami) reading his article titled How to Win the Cuban-American Vote would guess that John Mc Cain enjoys the support of 70-80 per cent of Cuban-American voters, the most lopsided percentage from any ethnic group in the U.S, and indeed in the world.

Another example of lazy media trying its best for Obama and the Dems

Ruth posted a link to a Time magazine video which I found fascinating. The video is about the "generational shift among Cuban-Americans" to the Democrats that I have thoroughly debunked. But what is astonishing to me is that the star of the the video is Giancarlo Sopo.

Why is that astonishing to me? Well because Sopo is a surrogate of the Obama campaign. Here's just one TV appearance that he has made on behalf of Obama.

Not only that, Sopo is a paid employee of Democrat Joe Garcia's campaign for congress. Garcia paid him $1,800 during the last quarter, mainly for blogging about Joe's campaign. In short he and his employer have a vested interest in propagating the myth about the generational shift. Yet Sopo is never identified as a political operative. One is given to believe he's just some guy that the reporter found that represents "a new generation".

But I don't blame Obama, Joe Garcia, or even Sopo for trying to get over on the media. That's their business. I blame the media that is so easy to get over on.

The Wall Street Journal published a nearly identical SEPTEMBER 2007 story about Sopo and the "shift".

Hedcut Stipple illustration of Sopo from
similar piece run by the WSJ

Time essentially repackaged the same story. Note that there's nobody in the Time video that even tries to refute the claim of the shift. Instead they show some dingbat who claims to be a Republican who "like uh doesn't care about castro and the embargo and stuff, uh."

Why didn't they interview any of the young Cuban-Americans that I've met over the last year that are supporting McCain and other Republican candidates and that do believe in a hard line against the castro brothers? They aren't that hard to find. There's a facebook group called "Young people for the Diaz-Balart Brothers". I guess that line of thinking wasn't convenient to the story Time wanted to tell.

Such shabby reporting is the exact reason the mainstream media is losing all credibility. When we know more about Joe the Plumber than we do about Barack Obama, something is wrong.

What, Cuba hasn't struck it rich?

NINE days after castro, inc.'s claim of newfound oil deposits quantified at 20 billion barrels, we see the first MSM report that questions the claim.

I'm betting on the claim being horseshit and only being floated out there as another "reason" why "now is the perfect time to lift the embargo."

Almost every mention of this "newfound oil wealth" also mentions the embargo. And still there are those who believe that in the most Machiavellian way the regime secretly loves the embargo.

For Your Edification: A Quickie

Thought you'd like to know that Time has entered the lists with this video. Yes, my friends, we are now hardline, intransigent dinosaurs.

Go ahead and click "yes," it will make you feel better

All Hail!

Your thoughts and words are not yours to share

Dymphna of Gates of Vienna has an excellent essay up that examines the very real issue of government censorship and a future Obama administration, what with all of the politically correct speech rules that may be enshrined in law. Fairness Doctrine, anyone?

What never ceases to amaze and appall me is the ongoing attempt to silence dissent by fiat: ordinary words that cannot be intellectually countered can be arbitrarily ruled off the turf with no possible appeal to reason. In the case of Obama, any criticism at all is a priori “racist” by the very nature of its critical form. And reason is the one faculty that will not be allowed in play. It’s all about “feelings” and having “dreams” and “fairness”.

George Orwell could not have conceived such a fabulist scheme. Nor would anyone have bothered to read anything so... so predictable and yet so beyond the realm of even satire. Some ideas are just too far-fetched... that is, until you are forced to live them or suffer ostracism for your refusal to bow down to the self-appointed little emperors who man the language gates.

[...]

Is Obama a forecast of censorship by the Left? How many times do you censor your own conversation for fear of being considered “one of them”? Back during our fundraising, I received a very sad note from a businesswoman in Berkeley who was a conservative with absolutely no one to talk to in an honest way about her political philosophy. She felt as though she were drowning in her own unspoken words.

What will happen to all of us when the words are gone?

What is the outcome when that unique human faculty, speech, has become strangled down to a handful of stuttered sanctioned syllables?

Will our ability to think critically and to form independent opinions simply fail to take form, the way cortical blindness occurs in a mammal kept in darkness during the crucial development of its optic nerves?

These are not rhetorical questions. Remember that the Gramscians in our universities — as exemplified by Obama’s friend, the urban terrorist Bill Ayers — want to change the very underpinnings of the American spirit. This is not about changing laws, this is about Gramscian hegemony over our culture.

Read the whole thing.

Not here, right?

While America ponders the implications of Obama's "spread the wealth" philosophy, a couple of thousand miles to the south we can see how another leader who is an ardent proponent of the same philosophy is dealing with opposition to that ideology.

Venezuela's Chavez wants to jail rival

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened on Saturday to imprison his main political rival, intensifying a campaign against a man he calls a crime boss just a month before he faces tough regional elections.

Opposition leader Manuel Rosales, who lost to Chavez in the 2006 presidential vote, is governor of the oil producing state of Zulia and is running for mayor of its capital Maracaibo.

"I am determined to put Manuel Rosales behind bars. A swine like that has to be in prison," Chavez said.

Chavez railed against Rosales at a gathering of businessmen in Zulia, urging the audience to vote against his rival for allegedly plotting to assassinate him, running crime gangs and illegally acquiring cattle ranches.

Chavez provided no specific evidence for the charges against the main leader of a fragmented opposition who has solid support in the oil-producing west of the OPEC nation.

Human rights groups say Chavez has increasingly exerted control over branches of power such as the judiciary and become intolerant of critics in almost a decade in power.

The former soldier typically takes to the offensive to stem a rise in support for potential rivals.

Chavez has been campaigning vigorously for his candidates in gubernatorial and mayoral races in the November 23 election but may lose some key posts as Venezuelans worry about crime, inflation and poor public services, pollsters say.

Chavez often makes dramatic threats in speeches without immediately carrying them out. Still, he does follow through on enough of them over time for his threats to concern the people he targets.

But of course, we have nothing to worry about here; this is, after all, America. It is not like Venezuela before Chavez was a free country with a democratic constitution that had built-in safeguards and checks and balances to ensure it would never fall into the dark abyss of a leftist totalitarian dictatorship.

Wait a second... oops, my bad. Venezuela was a free democracy. Nevermind.

Vote Democrat or sleep with the fishes

Luca Brasi assaulting a protester:

Oliver Stone's flick sinks like a stone

There's nothing better than watch these assholes lose money:

There's been tremdous [sic] interest by the public in the box office fate of Oliver Stone's W. for its second weekend in release. Well, it ran out of steam. QED International/Lionsgate's Bush biopic sank 58% to No. 8 with $1.5 million Friday from 2,050 dates [sic] for what will probably be a $5.2M weekend. The $30M negative cost film should end up with $23M domestic box office gross by the end of its North American run. That means, with a $25M P&A investment and Lionsgate's distribution fees, the film won't recoup.

Obama camp doesn't like tough questions

Fallout:

Why did Barack Obama's campaign cancel a WFTV-Channel 9 interview with Jill Biden, wife of Sen. Joe Biden? The campaign cited "an unprofessional interview" WFTV's Barbara West did Thursday with Joe Biden. In a statement Friday, Adrianne Marsh, Florida spokeswoman for Obama's campaign, said the station, in talking with Sen. Biden, was "both combative and woefully uninformed about simple facts." Marsh said West's insistence that Obama was an organizer for ACORN was "100 percent false." "In a line of questioning that would make Rush Limbaugh proud, West even went as far as to quote Karl Marx, a Communist icon, in a disturbing attempt to associate Barack Obama with socialism," Marsh wrote. West said, "I think I asked him some pointed questions. . . . I don't think I was rude or inconsiderate to him."

ObaMarx

Here.

Measuring the drapes

and drafting the inauguration speech.

Jeri Thompson blasts Alan Colmes & Lib Media on Palin

H/T: Joe

Crystal ball, what is our future?

Thank you, Mark Steyn.

A vote for an Obama-Pelosi-Barney Frank-ACORN supermajority is a vote for a Europeanized domestic policy that is, as the eco-types like to say, “unsustainable.”

If Cuba could vote for America's president

The Economist magazine is conducting a worldwide online poll to determine which of the two candidates for president of the United States of America is favored by all the people of the world. It is no surprise, as the map below illustrates, that Obama is the overwhelming favorite. It is hard to go against a guy that 1) you know nothing about other than he is the Messiah, and 2) you have yet to hear anything even approaching negative in the media in regards to him.

McCain, on the other hand, has been demonized, he has been villianized, and his running mate, Sarah Palin, has been called every contemptible name in the book, and a few names that have yet to make it into the latest version of Webster's.

There is something interesting about this "Global Electoral College" map, though. Notice who are the few countries that prefer McCain. You have Iraq, Georgia, Sudan, and most interesting of all, Cuba.

Perhaps the Cubans on the island are seeing something that most of the world is missing.

Ayers confronted -- and aks the "pigs" for help!

Notice the red star on his shirt. It may be a Macy's shirt, but I'm sure the good professor wears it as a symbol for something else. Also, notice how he says, "this is my property." I thought you miserable motherfucking sonofabitch Communists didn't believe in private property, Bill? He's nothing but a fucking pussy, like the rest of the left.

Surprise! Cuban DGI helped Ayers and the Weather Underground

From Dave In Texas at Ace of Spades, quoting a New York Times article on Dr. Antonio de la Cova's excellent website:

NYT: Cuban Intel Agency Aided the Weathermen; DGI Intended to Recruit Prospects to Work in US Government

According to this article in the Times from October of 1977, reporting on a leaked FBI report.

Shocking, I know. A leaked FBI report through the NYT.

I purchased the article from the archives too, just in case, here's the .pdf

-Three years before militant members of the students for a Democratic Society split off to form the Weather Underground Organization in 1970, North Vietnamese and Cuban officials were influencing radical antiwar strategy through foreign meetings. Many of these meetings were held in Communist countries, including Hungary, Czechoslovakia and North Vietnam.

-The conduit for contact in the United States was a group of intelligence agents assigned to the staff of the Cuban Mission to the United Nations in New York. These agents arranged for American youths to be inculcated with revolutionary fervor and, occasionally, to be trained in practical weaponry by Cuban military officers through the so-called Venceremos Brigades.

-After the Weathermen went "underground" in 1970 and many of them were being sought by the F.B.I. on criminal charges, Cuban intelligence officers were in touch with them from both the New York mission and the Cuban Embassy in Canada.

-Cuban officials helped several Weather Underground adherents who feared arrest in the United States to travel to Prague, Czechoslovakia, and then to reenter the United Slates surreptitiously.

The report linked the growing militancy of certain members of the Students for a Democratic Society, which resulted in the so-called Days of Rage in Chicago in 1969; to North Vietnamese advice the year before to choose youngsters who would battle with the police.

The North Vietnamese, according to S.D.S. literature of the time, had suggested that the antiwar movement needed not just intellectual protesters but also physically rugged recruits.

So, which WeatherUndergrounders did they help?

In another incident, the report said, four Weathermen who had been in Cuba with the Venceremos Brigades were sent back to the United States through Czechoslovakia rather than through Canada with other brigade members to lessen their chances of being arrested by the United States authorities. The four wanted to get back to the United States safely after the explosion of a house in Greenwich Village killed two members of the Weather group, Dianna Oughton and Ted Gold, and the Cubans "obliged" them by making the European travel arrangements, the report said.

Informant Larry Grathwohl [...] said he'd been given instructions from Bill Ayers on the code system for contact set up by the DGI.

"In February 1970, leading WUO member Bill Ayers told fellow underground WUO member Larry Grathwohl that if communication could not be made through these Canadian numbers, an individual should get in touch with the Cuban Embassy in Canada in order to establish contact with other members of the WUO," the report said.

"To do this an individual should use the code name 'Delgado' when referring to himself and the person with whom he desired to make contact," it said.

Was Ayers one of the 4 they brought back through Prague? I don't know, but I'd sure as hell like someone in the media to ask him.

If they actually gave a shit about Ayers, which of course, they don't.

Not relevant to Obama's campaign at all. At all. Move along, now. These aren't the droids you're looking for...

What’s your favorite movie?

“We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them.” Stephen Vizinczey

Thinking about the morphing rhetoric coming from "the one," I would say that Mr. Vizinczey is correct.

In this culture of the stupid, Hollywood reigns supreme. No other medium compares as purveyor of information; think Michael Moore, think Oliver Stone, think The Motorcycle Diaries, the truth cannot compete with a successful big screen image. Films engage all our senses; at their best they validate our humanity, and inspire personal achievement. In an earlier era, good patriotic films helped unite and sustain Americans through war and depression, and did much to construct the national identity of those we now call the greatest generation. We all have a list of our favorites, the movies we love, and I believe that list reveals much about who we are.

William Kristol takes a look at the campaign, and brilliantly analysis the candidates choices for favorite film in last weeks edition of The Weekly Standard. Here's an excerpt from “Viva McCain.”

Katie Couric asked each candidate recently what his favorite movie was. Obama gave an utterly conventional answer: "Oh, I think it would have to be The Godfather. One and two. Three not so much. Umm. So-so, but, but that--that saga--I love that movie."

Couric asked him to explain a bit.

Obama: I mean there's this combination of old world gentility and, you know, ritual with this savagery underneath. It's all about family. So it's a great movie. Lawrence of Arabia. Great film. One of my favorites--and then Casablanca. Who doesn't like Casablanca?

Couric: I asked for one.

Obama: I'm a movie guy. I can rattle off a bunch of movies. But that Casablanca, you know.

That's Obama. He's glib, conventional, won't make a real choice, shows nothing about himself, and says nothing offputting and says nothing impressive.

McCain's answer was in no way conventional:

Viva Zapata! It's a movie made by Elia Kazan. It was one of the trilogy of A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront and Viva Zapata! Marlon Brando stars in it. He plays Zapata. It's a heroic tale of a person who sacrificed everything for what he believed in, and there's some of the most moving scenes in that movie that I've ever seen. And one of them is he gets married--the night of his wedding night--he gets up and he and Jean Peters are in their hotel room--this little room and she says "What's the matter?" And he says, "I gotta go to Mexico City tomorrow. I've gotta be with Pancho Villa and Modero and these people." He says "I can't read." And she reaches over and takes the bible from the--table and opens it up and starts, "In the beginning." You know, it's a great scene. It's great and there's many others that are wonderful too, especially when he dies--when he gives everything for his country and what he believes in.

Which one of these two men do you want to be president in a time of crisis and difficulty? Viva McCain!

Disclaimer: I do not believe that McCain's choice of "Viva Zapata" implies that he is sympathetic to communists, and in truth, although I'm not a Zapata scholar, I'm not sure that the communist label applied to him is accurate. I don't believe that he was anti-American or anti-democracy.

Is Obama like JFK? Unfortunately, yes

The passage of time can have a peculiar effect on one’s memory. Some recollections can be magnified, increasing their perceived significance, while others diminish, lessening their importance and effect. And then you have instances where recollections take on a whole new incarnation. These memories ignore facts and realities and instead are built upon feelings. The specifics of the past events take a back seat to the feelings one gets when recalling such event.

America, in general, tends to suffer from this distorted recollection whenever the topic of President John F. Kennedy comes up. They forget the facts of his administration and instead conjure up the feelings they felt when they watched the footage of the toddler John-John saluting the passing horse drawn coffin of his assassinated father. It is a strong image, to say the least, and regardless of one’s opinion of JFK’s administration, it is an image that will stir the soul of all but those who have no heart. The lasting effects of those images, however, do not even come close to defining the Kennedy administration; an administration fraught with political novices and idealist intentions that brought this nation, and the world, to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Nevertheless, nostalgia has overtaken the realities of Kennedy’s mistakes, and whenever great presidents are mentioned his name always seems to make the top of the list.

It comes as no surprise then that many people are comparing Barrack Obama to Kennedy. Just like the catholic from Massachusetts, Obama is different from anything they have ever seen before in a presidential candidate. He is relatively young, handsome, and an eloquent speaker that knows how to deliver the right words to a crowd to make them feel good. He does not burden his speeches with harsh realities or onerous substance. Rather, he taps into the emotions of the American people in order to invoke an emotional response. Like Kennedy, Obama realizes that emotion is a much stronger motivator than reality. Given the choice, most Americans would rather feel good about a concept unencumbered by confusing details (CHANGE) than to face the veracity of facts (Exactly what does this mantra of CHANGE mean?).

But these are not the only similarities Obama shares with Kennedy. He also shares the same inexperience and idealistic notions. Charm and superior communicatory skills are great assets for a presidential candidate, but they count for little, if anything, when facing down the sworn enemies of this country. Nikita Kruschev anticipated as much from Kennedy, and from their first meeting, realized he was correct. Kennedy’s oratory expertise and impressive public persona did nothing to deter Kruschev from taking advantage of his American counterpart’s weakness and lack of experience. For all of Kennedy’s abilities to deliver a good speech and tap into the American public’s emotions, he could not elicit the same from the Soviets. Sizing him up as a weak leader, Kruschev proceeded to build the Berlin Wall and deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba, ninety miles away from US shores.

Today, not much has changed in the world from forty-eight years ago. The players are different, but the same hatred against the United States exists and there is no shortage of enemies that would like to hurt this country. America survived the dark and terrifying times of the Kennedy administration, but that was due more to circumstance than by anything JFK ever did. In spite of his grave errors in judgment, we were able to eventually overcome the Soviet threat and win the cold war. It ended up taking decades and the strong, unflinching hand of Ronald Reagan to finally put an end to the Soviets and their deadly aggression.

On November 4th, America will be faced with a decision similar to the one they faced in November of 1960. Back then, they went for the candidate that made them feel good, and that candidate’s inexperience and idealism brought this great nation to the brink of nuclear war.

It remains to be seen who America will choose this Election Day. If they do elect what many have proclaimed to be the next JFK, his supporters will not be the only ones celebrating—our enemies will be celebrating, too.

Cross posted on www.albertodelacruz.com

Are we awake yet?

Where the hell is everybody?

Superb self-examination of journalism today

A rare treat, this piece is, in that a working, professional journalist says what all of us "regular Joes" have been saying for years.

Editing Their Way to Oblivion: Journalism Sacrificed For Power and Pensions

By Michael S. Malone

The traditional media is playing a very, very dangerous game. With its readers, with the Constitution, and with its own fate.

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer,” because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist.

You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I’m cut. I am a fourth generation newspaperman. As family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in Abilene, Kansas during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian). My hard-living - and when I knew her, scary - grandmother was one of the first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times. And my father, though profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful freelance writer. I’ve spent thirty years in every part of journalism, from beat reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the family business, so to speak, earned his first national by-line before he earned his drivers license.

So, when I say I’m deeply ashamed right now to be called a “journalist”, you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.

Now, of course, there’s always been bias in the media. Human beings are biased, so the work they do, including reporting, is inevitably colored. Hell, I can show you ten different ways to color variations of the word “said” - muttered, shouted, announced, reluctantly replied, responded, etc. - to influence the way a reader will apprehend exactly the same quote. We all learn that in Reporting 101, or at least in the first few weeks working in a newsroom. But what we are also supposed to learn during that same apprenticeship is to recognize the dangerous power of that technique, and many others, and develop built-in alarms against their unconscious.

But even more important, we are also supposed to be taught that even though there is no such thing as pure, Platonic objectivity in reporting, we are to spend our careers struggling to approach that ideal as closely as possible. That means constantly challenging our own prejudices, systematically presenting opposing views, and never, ever burying stories that contradict our own world views or challenge people or institutions we admire. If we can’t achieve Olympian detachment, than at least we can recognize human frailty - especially in ourselves.

Read the entire essay. It's worth your time.

(H/T Little Green Footballs)

"I am Bill"

Iowahawk does it again with a brilliant send-up of that great American, Bill Ayers:

I AM BILL. I'm still married my to my college sweetheart, and we believe in family values. Especially Manson Family values. After all these years she still hands me my lunchbox at the door every morning, which she has packed with a chocolate kiss and a tiny pinch of Semtex from her hope chest. I can't imagine where I'd be without this woman and her law school salary. Because no matter what I accomplish in this world, this beautiful, insane bitch will always be the real psychopath in the house.

I AM BILL. I believe in upholding America's great traditions, like the Days of Rage and Wounded Knee the Haymarket Riots. Call me sentimental, but my heart still swells with pride whenever I see a Boy Scout color guard parading Old Glory down the street, and a young anarchist rips it away from the those fascists and starts it on fire.

I AM BILL. I fervently believe in educating all our children, whether they are Black like Mumia, or Asian like Pol Pot, or Palestinian like Sirhan Sirhan, or recovering whiteys like me. Children are our future. They need funding for programs in aboriginal physics and political consciousness, so they can rebuild the collectivist agrarian labor camp society that once made this country great.

I AM BILL. Unlike Joe the Plumber, I pay my taxes. Because I know that until the inevitable violent overthrow of the dystopian AmeriKKKan nightmare, taxes are the necessary price we all must pay for critical government services like roads, and ACORN, and my university pension. Plus according to my attorney it's harder to beat the rap on tax evasion.

I AM BILL. I love the Cubs. There's nothing I enjoy more than sitting in the grandstands of Wrigley Field sipping a cold one, dreaming of the day when my beloved Chicago People's Cubbies bring home the Castro trophy at the World Series of Socialist Peace and Beisbol. And, after the Yanquis are executed during 7th inning stretch, there will be free nationalized People's Budweiser for everybody. As we Cub fans say, "wait 'til next year!"

Read the whole thing.

How taxes work

My lovely wife sent me this and I thought I'd share it. Liberals, pay close attention: this is absolutely true...

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

• The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
• The fifth would pay $1.
• The sixth would pay $3.
• The seventh would pay $7.
• The eighth would pay $12.
• The ninth would pay $18.
• The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers, he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

• The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
• The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
• The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
• The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
• The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
• The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

'I only got a dollar out of the $20', declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,' but he got $10!'

'Yeah, that's right', exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!'

'That's true!!' shouted the seventh man. 'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!'

'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!'

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

I don't know who wrote this, but I'd love to buy him or her a case of beer...

Gun control, explained

Shame on the New York Times

So the old gray lady has finally come out of the closet, although her ample rump has been peeking out of the garderobe for quite a while now. The New York Times has made it official by endorsing Obama in an editorial liberally laced with oil of vitriol. For added emphasis, the endorsement was not on the editorial page but on page 1.

That Obama is the chosen one is fine by me. I would expect no less from them. But I am fed up with mealy-mouthed individuals and entities donning the cloak of self-righteousness to complain about McCain's "negative campaigning." If the media, starting with the Times itself had been doing its job vetting the candidate, had they made clear to the public what all of BO's rhetorical flourishes meant, the McCain campaign would not have been forced to do it. Had Senator McCain been as unscrupulous as they are accusing him of being, he could have made great hay out of the Rev. Wright angle.

Where is the indignation and the outrage at all of the "code words" for old the Obama camp has been hurling McCain's way or the sneers directed at "Joe the Plumber" by the same? Not to mention the treatment of Governor Palin. To scathingly dismiss Palin as completely unfit for the office, at the same time they endorse a man for his rhetoric, his vision, his composure reeks of the whited sepulchre.

What makes me see red, however, is the treatment they have visited on Senator McCain, a man who has done more for this country than the entire lot of them at the New York Times, and they do so in the service of a man who has spent his whole life seeking out those who hate this country even as he was availing himself of everything it had to offer, who has not one legislative achievement to his name. It is vile.

To adopt their reasoning, the validity of anything they had to say is lost in the scurrilous nature of their attack on a man who most definitely does not deserve it. Dirty, dirty, dirty.

** >> !! BREAKING NEWS !! << **

The New York Times endorses Barack Obama for President.

Elections 2008: Antagonism and condescension

I voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin this week.

As a result, many of my liberal friends have “lost their respect for me.” It’s not just my friends, though. Anywhere I go in New York or Boston, I proceed to get attacked for not voting for Obama. Note, it’s not because I chose McCain, it’s because I didn’t vote for Obama. There have been instances when I actually felt afraid to express my political opinion. Yes, I am a strong Cuban woman and I was afraid to express my opinion. If that doesn’t speak volumes, then maybe the following phrases thrown at me will:

“Are you stupid?”
“Well then you’re an asshole.”
“I can’t believe you.”
“I thought you were smart.”
“I’ve lost so much respect for you.”
“You’re a selfish banker, you just want lower taxes.”
“It’s because you’re Cuban, isn’t it?”

Welcome to my life as a quiet, moderate Independent transplanted from Miami to the northeast. I rarely speak out about American politics; it’s just not my thing. I don’t like to argue with my friends. I like to laugh and joke with them, but since we went to school in Boston that means I have to avoid politics.

After extensively following the primaries, I decided to vote for John McCain. I’m not going to go into the drivers behind this decision – that’s not the topic I wish to address here.

Most of my acquaintances didn’t know I decided to vote for McCain until recently. I only talked about it with fellow supporters in hushed tones, over the Internet, or in empty rooms, but after a certain point I couldn’t keep it in anymore. People noticed the pained expressions on my face when Obama’s “awesomeness” became the topic of discussion. Now, they attack me.

One of my closest friends, who knows how passionate and proud I am of my Cuban heritage, actually compared the Cuban flag to the Confederate flag. Why? She decided that I’m only voting for McCain as a result of the influence of the Cuban-American community. I don't know how she went from Cuban to Confederate, but she might as well have stabbed me with a knife and ripped out my heart.

Don’t get me wrong here -- I love the passion and zeal this election has provoked in our country. It’s about time the general public began to care about and engage in a national election.

I do, however, hate the overzealousness with which Obama’s supporters are approaching this election. I can’t help but think that this is how it felt to be skeptical or critical of Fidel Castro in Cuba circa 1959. I would never say anything like the above quotes to any of my friends. I respect that they idealistically believe that their candidate can do the job. I disagree with them, but I would never insult them for their beliefs.

Debate and free thought are some of the fundamental values of this country, or so I thought. Last time I checked, antagonism and condescension were not qualities embraced by our founding fathers. The fact that I frequently encounter these traits amongst Obama supporters scares the living daylights out of me. This country doesn’t feel like a free country anymore. Instead of conversing, they attack. Instead of debating, they judge. Instead of respecting, they scorn.

Congressman Tim Mahoney (D- FL)

It appears Mr. Family Values didnt just dip his pen in company ink.

Stay classy, Democrats!

There's no "B" is "hoax"

Police confirm mugging story is a hoax.

Update by Pitbull: I wrote last night that I hoped this was not a hoax, but in the end Michelle Malkin's instincts proved correct once again. This kind of behavior is so despicable and vile, whether it comes from the left or from our side, whether it's the story of the Duke Lacrosse players being falsely accused of rape, or this sad, misguided idiot who probably thought the publicity would help McCain. My fervent wish is that Ashley get prosecuted for whatever local crime she committed when she filed a false police report.

Sacrifice and Respect

I love this country.

Via Blackfive.

Responsible Change

A message from Fred Thompson:

Question...

With their control of Congress, did the Democrats deliberately tank the economy in order to win the Presidential election?

NPD

McCain for President

Charles Krauthammer has an excellent editorial today in the Washington Post where he brilliantly articulates the choice America will have on November 4th. The choice on election day is not about "Change," it is about who of the two candidates is the most qualified and has the record to back up those qualifications.

Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe -- neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) -- yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

First, I'll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The "erratic" temperament issue, for example. As if McCain's risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.

McCain the "erratic" is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.

Nor will I countenance the "dirty campaign" pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed that McCain supports "cutting Social Security benefits in half." And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama's most egregious association -- with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the past year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

There's just no comparison. Obama's own running mate warned this week that Obama's youth and inexperience will invite a crisis -- indeed a crisis "generated" precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he's been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

Shooting Michael Moore

The movie that Michael Moore doesn't want you to see:





Kevin Leffler, the director of "Shooting Michael Moore," grew up with Moore in Davison, a suburb of Flint, Michigan. Not only does this film reveal what a hypocrite Moore is, it also debunks the myths about Cuban health care as portrayed in Moore's "Sicko."

Leffler traveled to Cuba, and with the help of Cuban dissident Dr. Darsi Ferrer, he was able to film inside several Cuban hospitals using a concealed camera. One of those hospitals was the Hermanos Ameijeiras, the same hospital where Michael Moore took his guests. According to Moore, any Cuba can receive medical care at that hospital, but "Shooting Michael Moore" proves that he was lying.

"Shooting Michael Moore" premieres in Miami TONIGHT, October 24 at the AMC Theatres at the Mall of the Americas - 7795 West Flagler St.

David E. Baker Entertainment will open the film in Los Angeles, New York, and select cities in Michigan on December 5.

To watch the trailers, click here.

T/T: The Real Cuba, and a humble, heartfelt thanks to the brave and tireless Dr. Darsi Ferrer for all that he does.

Airport Observations

They completely changed the security areas for the American Airlines terminals at MIA. It's slower now. I had to show my boarding pass to FIVE DIFFERENT employees. How is this efficient in any way?

They still don't check your ID at the gate, the one place they really should to ensure that the people who are supposed to be on the plane are.

FOUR flights to Havana today, ONE flight to Holguin. Oh that terrible embargo. George Bush is the devil.

Spread the wealth (1995 version)

(H/T Gateway Pundit)

Briefing the press Obama style

Is this a preview of White House press briefings Obama style?

From OneNewsNow:

Obama selling election spots to media

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet notes the Obama campaign is planning to charge reporters $935 for a package that includes access to a heated file tent, power, cable TV, Internet, and food. The cheapest place a reporter could stand on a riser with a view is $880. Members of the media will also be charged $300 for an unlimited long distance phone line and $275 for high-speed wired Internet.

Do you find it presumptuous for the Obama campaign to charge media representatives for access to resources on election night?

According to Sweet, "This is an outrageous pay-to-play plan that caters to national elite outlets with deep pockets." Bob Knight, director of the Culture and Media Institute, agrees.

"Some folks might feel that this shows that Obama doesn't believe in a free press, but one he would charge for," he says, chuckling. "Really, it's kind of funny because the media have done so much to boost his candidacy that you'd think the least he could do is give them a few hors d'oeuvres on the night of his coronation, if he is elected."

Knight says the Obama campaign's "pay-to-play plan" is unprecedented. "In all my years as a reporter and editor, I have never heard of anything like that," he shares, "and I just asked a colleague at a major newspaper if he had [ever heard of such a thing] and he said, 'No.' He finds it very strange."

The media analyst doubts the major media will care about the pricey election night packages because, as he puts it, they "love Obama" and "have deep pockets."

If elected, perhaps the one's White House will publish a newsletter telling the people what to think informing the people about the latest White House news. He could name it Granma En La Yuma.

Sowell: 'Change' Can Lead to Catastrophe

'Change' Can Lead to Catastrophe
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 12:33 PM
By: Thomas Sowell

Telling a friend that the love of his life is a phony and dangerous is not likely to get him to change his mind. But it may cost you a friend.

It is much the same story with true believers in Barack Obama. They have made up their minds and not only don't want to be confused by the facts, they resent being told the facts.

An e-mail from a reader mentioned trying to tell his sister why he was voting against Obama but, when he tried to argue some facts, she cut him short: "You don't like him and I do!" she said. End of discussion.

When one thinks of all the men who have put their lives on the line in battle to defend and preserve this country, it is especially painful to think that there are people living in the safety and comfort of civilian life who cannot be bothered to find out the facts about candidates before voting to put the fate of this nation, and of generations yet to come, in the hands of someone chosen because they like his words or style.

Of the four people running for president and vice president on the Republican and Democratic tickets, the one we know the least about is the one leading in the polls -- Barack Obama.

Some of Sen. Obama's most fervent supporters could not tell you what he has actually done on such issues as crime, education, or financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, much less what he plans to do to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear nation supplying nuclear weapons to the international terrorist networks that it has supplied with other weapons.

The magic word "change" makes specifics unnecessary. If things are going bad, some think that what is needed is blank-check "change." But history shows any number of countries in crises worse than ours, where "change" turned problems into catastrophes.

In czarist Russia, for example, the economy was worse than ours is today and World War I was going far worse for the Russians than anything we have faced in Iraq. Moreover, Russians had nothing like the rights of Americans today. So they went for "change."

That "change" brought on a totalitarian regime that made the czars' despotism look like child's play. The communists killed more people in one year than the czars killed in more than 90 years, not counting the millions who died in a government-created famine in the 1930s.

Other despotic regimes in China, Cuba, and Iran were similarly replaced by people who promised "change" that turned out to be even worse than what went before.

Yet, many today seem to assume that if things are bad, "change" will make them better. Specifics don't interest them nearly as much as inspiring rhetoric and a confident style. But many 20th century leaders with inspiring rhetoric and great self-confidence led their followers or their countries into utter disasters.

These ranged from Jim Jones who led hundreds to their deaths in Jonestown to Hitler and Mao who led millions to their deaths.

What specifics do we know about Barack Obama's track record that might give us some clue as to what kinds of "changes" to expect if he is elected?

We know that he opposed the practice of putting violent young felons on trial as adults. We know that he was against a law forbidding physicians to kill a baby that was born alive despite an attempt to abort it.

We know that Obama opposed attempts to put stricter regulations on Fannie Mae -- and that he was the second largest recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae. We know that this very year his campaign sought the advice of disgraced former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines.

Fannie Mae and Raines were at the heart of "the mess in Washington" that Barack Obama claims he is going to clean up under the banner of "change."

The public has been told very little about what this man with the wonderful rhetoric has actually done. What we know is enough to make us wonder about what we don't know. Or it ought to. For the true believers -- which includes many in the media -- it is just a question of whether you like him or not.

"negotiating" with castro, inc.

You know people who don't know jack shit about Cuba always ask why the United States can't sit down and negotiate with the regime in Havana. The answer is so simple: you can't negotiate with someone that doesn't want to concede anything.

Case in point. In 2003 the castro brothers cracked down on the fledgling dissident movement in Cuba. They rounded up 75 independent journalist, librarians and others. They tried them for various and sundry crimes against the revolution and sentenced them to long jail terms. More than 50 remain in prison 5 years later. At the time the European Union imposed some sanctions against Cuba in protest. But then a socialist government was elected in Spain and that country began to lobby the rest of the EU to remove the sanctions. The sanctions were suspended and then ultimately removed altogether. We were told that Europe was giving Cuba the carrot first and then there would be a "dialogue" about human rights.

But the regime is not interested in a dialogue on human rights or any other issue for that matter. They publicly state that the the way treat Cubans is an internal matter and that anything any other government says on the matter is an affront to Cuban sovereignty. No, the regime does not want a dialogue, it wants MONEY as long as the sanctions were in place (even suspended) Cuba could not get the economic cooperation agreement with the EU that it wanted.

Well today we learn that the E.U. is committing $38.8 million dollars "in financing next year". The European Union, that is involved in its own financial mess, will be lending Cuba (the biggest deadbeat borrower in the world) almost $40 million.

What about the dialogue?

[Cuban foreign minister] Perez Roque said Cuba welcomed the agreement because it imposed no conditions on the communist-run country, while still opening a path for dialogue "without interference in international affairs, and with mutual respect for political independence."

In other words, Europe just got played.

Suckers.

No, suckers is too soft. If the only downside was that Europe lost some cash they would be suckers. The truth is that Europeans are enablers. Their money will help finance the continued operations of the repressive machinery that they supposedly condemned in 2003.

Must see TV tonight

Our very own George Utset from therealcuba.com will be on two different shows tonight with director Kevin Leffler to talk about his new movie, Shooting Michael Moore. Leffler traveled to Cuba to see for himself just how wonderful the Cuban health care system that Michael Moore told us about in Sicko really is. With the help of Dr. Darsi Ferrer, however, Kevin got to see the reality of the misery Cubans suffer day-in and day-out at the hands of the vile Castro regime.

George and Kevin will be on at 7 pm on Ninoska Perez's show, Ultima Palabra on channel 8, GenTV, here in Miami.

Later on, at 8 pm, they will be on Maria Elvira Live on channel 22, MegaTV, also here in Miami.

Also, if you live in Miami, make sure to check out Kevin's movie, which be playing all weekend at the AMC Theater at the Mall of the Americas on Flagler street and the Palmetto.

"Vote Obama, I need the money"

Income redistribution? Not my with money, motherf*****r! This is from an MSNBC forum referenced on The Schnitt Show today:

Today on my way to lunch I passed a homeless guy with a sign that read "Vote Obama, I need the money." I laughed.

Once in the restaurant my server had on a "Obama 08" tie, again I laughed as he had given away his political preference--just imagine the coincidence.

When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need--the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.

I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I've decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful.

At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient needed money more.

I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.

It most certainly is...

(H/T Lou)

More Obama-inspired violence (UPDATED: POSSIBLE HOAX?)

This time in Pittsburgh. More details as they become available.

"SHOCK: MCCAIN VOLUNTEER ATTACKED AND MUTILATED IN PITTSBURGH
'B' CARVED INTO 20-YEAR OLD WOMAN'S FACE... DEVELOPING..."

Woman Attacked At ATM, Assailant Carves Letter Into Her Face

PITTSBURGH -- A 20-year-old woman who was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield was also maimed by her attacker, police said.

Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard tells Channel 4 Action News that the victim was robbed at knifepoint on Wednesday night outside of a Citizens Bank near Liberty Avenue and Pearl Street just before 9 p.m.

Richard said the robber took $60 from the woman, then became angry when he saw a McCain bumper sticker on the victim's car. The attacker then punched and kicked the victim, before using the knife to scratch the letter "B" into her face, Richard said.

Richard said the woman refused medical treatment after the assault, which happened outside the view of the bank's surveillance cameras.

The robber is described as a dark-skinned black man, 6 feet 4 inches tall, 200 pounds with a medium build, short black hair and brown eyes. The man was wearing dark colored jeans, a black undershirt and black shoes.

Watch Channel 4 Action News at 5 p.m. for updates on this story

Michelle Malkin suspects this may be a hoax. Here's her take:

Throughout my career, I’ve covered dozens of fake hate crimes — campus hate crime hoaxes, Muslim hate crime hoaxes, fake noose hangings, etc., etc., etc. Most were perpetrated by liberals, but there have been some shameful ones on our side of the aisle as well.

I’ve reported on the great lengths that warped attention-seekers have gone to in perpetrating fake hate crimes, including beating themselves up, carving swastikas on their dorm room doors and walls, locking themselves in bathroom stalls, and burning down their own houses.

Which is why I’m not jumping up and down with outrage over Drudge-promoted story of a McCain volunteer claiming to have been attacked by a black man whom she accused of carving a “B” in her face after spotting her McCain bumper sticker.

She refused medical treatment after reporting the incident to police. Why on earth would she do that?

I hope she's wrong that is is a hoax. But when someone like Michelle Malkin starts getting a twitchy nose, I start listening to what she has to say...

How the Dems and their Union Friends Will Screw You in an Obama Administration

What we have to look forward to under an Obama administration with a filibuster proof democratic Congress.

First is the passing of the Employee Free Choice Act. This bill which can be found here:

This language is significant:

(a) In General- Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act (29 U.S.C. 159(c)) is amended by adding at the end the following:

`(6) Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, whenever a petition shall have been filed by an employee or group of employees or any individual or labor organization acting in their behalf alleging that a majority of employees in a unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining wish to be represented by an individual or labor organization for such purposes, the Board shall investigate the petition. If the Board finds that a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations designating the individual or labor organization specified in the petition as their bargaining representative and that no other individual or labor organization is currently certified or recognized as the exclusive representative of any of the employees in the unit, the Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative described in subsection (a).

What this means is that the US Labor laws will be changed such that Unions will be allowed to claim themselves as the recognized bargaining agent of the employees based solely by a showing of signed union cards. The law up to now has been unchanged since the NLRA was enacted in the New Deal that the employees are entitled to vote by secret ballot as to whether they want the union to be their bargaining agent. (Even George McGovern opposes this law if you believe that). What this means is that the unions will be able to coerce people into signing the cards. Don’t believe in union coercion? What kind of dope are you taking? The Unions are more interested in their own self interest rather than that of its bargaining unit. By increasing labor costs what will company’s do? Move to China of course or close down. Not a good sign. And what’s even scarier … is that with a Democratic super majority, the Dems are looking to repeal this provision of the Taft/Hartley Act (what is known as section 14:

29 U.S.C. § 164 b) Agreements requiring union membership in violation of State law: “Nothing in this subchapter shall be construed as authorizing the execution or application of agreements requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment in any State or Territory in which such execution or application is prohibited by State or Territorial law.”

What is section 14? It is the federal law that allows states to choose whether they want to be right to work states. What that means is that in a right to work state, one has a protected right to be employed without having to be part of a labor union. Twenty-two states have right-to-work laws. Florida is an at-will state. If this section of the Taft Hartley Act is repealed, then Union membership may be mandatory if you want a certain job.

This is big labor’s dream come true. The White House, The House and The Senate in their pocket.

You have been warned!

Happy Halloween

A rant for this political season

I am blessed with a great family and a core group of wonderful friends. Most of my friends, thank the Good Lord, are conservatives, or moderates that lean towards conservatism. One of my friends, whom I've known for over twenty years, has been a project of mine since we met. A liberal in his youth, he nevertheless embarked on his own personal intellectual journey that has finally allowed him to see how important the core principles of (real) conservatism are. I've seen him gradually change over the last ten years into a very thoughtful conservative, unafraid of the opposition.

Due to his hectic schedule -- plus a wife and two kids -- he and I get to talk only once or twice a month. This morning, unbidden, I received his stream-of-consciousness rant that I'd like to share with the Babalu readership.

Feeling the need to rant...finally

I'm really just writing this email to myself because I feel suffocated, claustrophobic, and need to vent...but if you want to read some of it or all of it, being my friend, you're welcome to a glimpse inside my head. Or you can delete it from your inbox after reading this far. Truth is, I'll never know.

Off the cuff and without rehearsal, here I go:

I've just about had it with the unfairness of this presidential campaign.

Last night I'm watching an interview of Sarah Palin on CNN and the interviewer said something I couldn't believe was true. Sarah herself was in disbelief. So I switched to FOX and found that the CNN interviewer had deliberately misquoted the article from which that quote came! They were trying to corner Sarah Palin AGAIN!! Trying to make her look bad. Then later that night, CNN refused to admit the mistake...even though it clearly was one. FOX even brought out the author of the article, Byron York, who was incensed that CNN had quoted him out of context. But was in vain.

I've had it, man! I've been sitting on the sidelines relatively quiet for so long watching McCain and Palin get hammered by the press AND my friends...and I barely fight back, feeling outnumbered. But this election has been blatantly unfair and, I believe in my heart, that all those in favor of Obama know it...and quietly and conveniently ignore it. They just let it happen. I've pasted the transcript of the interview misquote at the bottom of this email in case you haven't seen it yet.

An independent report came out yesterday showing that only 25% of Obama's $600 million in campaign funds have come from donors of $200 or less. Only 25%!!!

So 75% of Obama's donors have been big-money corporations and big-money rich people. So much for the "grass roots movement", huh? And this is in addition to Obama's early claim that he would not accept corporate funding. Yeah, right.

Here, check this out: A CNN interviewer giggling and admitting to bias.

Sometimes it's even subliminal or subconscious. Check out this video I found where CNN's Kyra Phillips has a Democrat and a Republican strategist on her show...and calls the Republican strategist a CUNT! TWICE!!! Yeah, yeah, it's a mistake...a funny one...but in which way was the mistake directed?

Am I paranoid? maybe

Should I be? probably

You'll love this.

When a woman tried to label Obama incorrectly as an "arab", McCain immediately took the mic away from her and corrected her publicly. He then praised Obama as a decent man. Well done! And expected from a decent man such as McCain.

But Obama does nothing and says nothing at his rallies when people insult McCain and wear t-shirts showing McCain in a wheelchair. At the last debate, McCain publicly asked Obama to please stand up to those people with the nasty t-shirts. Obama just changed the subject. Go back and look at it. We have yet to hear Obama say anything. If you can find video of Obama calling people out on this and asking them to cut it out, I'd love to see it. Seriously, I would...because I'd love to be wrong on this one.

McCain public correction.

Then there's "The View". I don't even have the space in this email to post all the videos where "The View" praises Obama and slams McCain...or how Whoopi, Joy and Barbara WaWa pounce on the one conservative on the show, Elizabeth Hasselbeck...shouting her down. Nice balanced job there...4 liberals and 1 conservative on the show. Why does Elizabeth even DO that show?!

Then there's Katie Couric carefully editing her interview with Sarah Palin in order to air only the parts where Sarah stumbled, and admittedly Sarah stumbled....then Letterman....then Maher...then Oprah...all the celebrities...all the musicians...the band HEART refusing to let McCain use the song "Barracuda"...the band FOO FIGHTERS refusing to let McCain use the song "My Hero"...Jack Nicholson smoking cigars with Castro...Carlos Santana calling Che Guevara "The MAN!" on the red carpet...Sean Penn visiting his "friend" Hugo Chavez in Venezuela last week and praising him as he supports Obama...it goes on and on...

Let's face it and admit it: it's CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, The New York Times and Newsweek, vs. FOX. Nice balanced journalism there!

I feel afraid to speak up. The few times I have spoken up about my support of McCain in public, I have been angrily attacked and insulted by Obama supporters. Ridiculed in my own driveway by campaigners and shouted down on an airplane. Friends of mine have witnessed this (you know who you are) and even felt bad for me...admitting that it's not right. Of course it's not right! Are we not all Americans? Don't we have an election process whereby we supposedly campaign fairly and choose between a small group of patriots for our next president? Why all the hatred and anger coming from Obama's supporters? Sure there's some from the McCain side as well, but it doesn't compare. Do you know that I am witness to family members who have STOPPED TALKING TO EACH OTHER because they support opposite candidates? What the hell's going on?

I have yet to insult or demean an Obama supporter. Quite the opposite, I praise Obama's appeal and charisma...and I say it clearly every time.

I've walked down the street (in Miami and LA) where I see people wearing HUGE oversized Obama t-shirts screaming of "HOPE" and they have this smug look on their face because they think everyone around them agrees with them (they MUST!) but what they don't know is that the McCain supporters are simply quiet. We don't wear the HUGE t-shirts or the high-fiving smug attitudes and we don't scream from bumper stickers on our cars. We simply and intelligently discuss amongst ourselves about keeping America and it's founding principles as strong as they always been. We discuss morals, family, free market, and "keeping your hard-earned wealth". We believe in giving to the needy via charity and not by force of government. I give plenty by charity every year and I feel great about doing so. But how will I feel when I am FORCED by government to do so? Not very good...and neither will anybody else. Then what does that lead to? People cheating on taxes and looking for loopholes to get out of it. And they will. It's only natural. And all this Obama talk about "making the corporations pay"...what bullshit...we all know that corporations who are forced to pay more will pass on their new expenses directly to the consumer. Every business does it...including mine. Prices go up, people buy less, economy crashes. Period. Good job there, Obama. At least McCain has vowed to go after the INDIVIDUALS of the corporations who are greedy and leave the corporation itself alone. After all, it's not the corporations' fault but the greedy few who run them. They will be held accountable under McCain. He has promised that. He will go after them.

Republicans (and I am not one of them) discuss keeping government small and keeping the people in charge. Sounds good to me.

While Obama hammers away loudly at huge rallies filled with people who have been brainwashed by his beautiful rhetoric, ( who does that remind you of, by the way? Any central or South American countries perhaps?) McCain and his supporters will quietly continue forward.

We still believe we can win this. I believe we have to.

I have been quiet for so long. Maybe too long. I'm starting to feel that if McCain loses, I am partly to blame because perhaps I didn't speak up sooner...or louder.

I let Obama and his supporters get in my face and tell me my ideas are wrong...and I just stood there and shrugged my shoulders, all the while feeling I was right... but afraid to speak up because yet another shouting match would surely ensue.

Wimpy...just friggin wimpy on my part.

And speaking of shouting...can you imagine what would happen if Obama loses? The riot squads will have to come out in full force in all major U.S. cities to prevent cities from going up in flames. There will be shootings, riots, looting, screams of "unfair! Cheaters!!!" all that stuff that happens when sports teams lose...or sometimes even when they win! The sort of stuff that happens when a black man is found guilty or a white cop is acquitted. If Obama loses, I'm heading for the hills.

I had no idea this email would go on for so long. Honestly, I couldn't stop myself. I've ranted more in this one email than I have this entire election campaign, and I feel it's about time. I just woke up this morning and felt I had to say something.

I'll send this email to only a few select friends. If you read this far, it's unbelievable to me...but thanks.

Sincerely,

NAME WITHHELD

Sirhan Sirhan, Bill Ayers' hero

A reader sent me a note regarding my earlier post about Prairie Fire, the manifesto of The Weather Underground which was co-authored by Obama's buddy Bill "Billy" Ayers. She notes that I failed to mention the dedication page where The Weather Underground dedicates the work "To All Political Prisoners in the U.S."

And then there's a list of those that they considered to be political prisoners. One of the names is Sirhan Sirhan the assassin of Bobby Kennedy.

How ironic is it that Obama has been positioned as the political heir to the Kennedy brothers when his friends idolize Bobby's assassin?

25,000,000 million was the goal

(H/T Ace)

Is Barack Obama a socialist?

We've been hearing the word "socialism" in connection to Barack Obama in the news lately. We can thank "Joe the Plumber" for that. But many of us on the conservative end of the political spectrum have been talking about Obama's socialist tendencies for some time without the big media taking notice. Obama and his supporters vehemently deny that he is a socialist as if that's a dirty word. Perhaps it is a dirty word for many Americans because of what it conjures up in their minds and Obama's campaign doesn't want to be associated with those conjured thoughts. But words mean something and we should try to determine whether or not this label fits.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines socialism as:

1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. 2. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.

In the first definition we see that socialism mainly deals with ownership of "means of producing and distributing goods". Essentially that's property. Socialists believe that the most important property in society should be owned by "the collective". But the reality is that there is no collective. The closest thing to it is the government. So socialists believe that the government, as an agent of the people, should control goods-producing property.

Now it's important to understand that this stands in stark contrast to the DNA of our country which was founded in the belief that life, liberty and property were fundamental rights bestowed upon us by our creator that couldn't be taken away. The founders and framers of the constitution believed that property rights were the key to maintaining liberty. That's why since the founding of the country many of the political battles have rightly been to extend those property rights to people who didn't previously have them. Blacks, women, etc.

It's important to understand that the government already controls or owns a significant part of "goods-producing property". The government has authority to tax and regulate which means it has the power to compel individuals to do things they would not ordinarily do. There can be no argument that the role and size of government has increased dramatically over the last 80 years.

So is Barack Obama a socialist? Would he continue this trend of more government ownership or control of "goods-producing property"?

One of the things that mentioned in passing in a piece I linked to yesterday was Obama's voting record in the U.S. Senate. Obama was rated by the non-partisan National Journal as being the most liberal Senator in that chamber. Why is this important? Well because the Senate contains a self-proclaimed socialist named Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders ran as an independent in Vermont 2006 and won. In 2007, the only full year in which Sanders and Obama were in the Senate together Obama out-liberaled Sanders the self-proclaimed socialist by a composite score of 95.5 to 93.7.

Now Obama can claim he's a centrist and that he'll govern from the center but the track record belies that claim. Why would anyone believe Obama is anything more than what he's been up until now?

John McCain gets his balls busted by conservatives like me because he truly is a moderate and I think conservatism is a winning ideology that works. What I don't understand is why so many self-described moderates would vote for a candidate that is so easily described as liberal and is in fact more liberal than his socialist colleague.

A guy in Obama's neighborhood

Ladies and gentlemen, today most Americans know more about Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, his tax lien, his divorce and his failure to have the appropriate license than they do about Bill Ayers. Bill Ayers, a guy in Obama's neighborhood. Bill Ayers, a guy who sat on two boards of directors with Obama. Bill Ayers, the guy who helped launch Obama's political career. Bill Ayers, the guy Obama would rather you not know anything about.

Well you are about to get a crash course on Bill "Billy" Ayers and the terrorist group he helped created, The Weather Underground. A web site called Zombie Time has obtained a copy of the Weather Underground's ideological manifesto which is entitled: Prairie Fire.

How do we know the Bill Ayers had anything to do with Prairie Fire? Simple he is one of the signers of the introduction:

Now the as Zombie Time points out the media has called Bill Ayers a 60s era radical and a Vietnam War protester. But that's not exactly correct. Praire Fire explains:

Zombie Time explains why this is important:

There's nothing illegal about being a communist. People in this country are free to hold whatever political beliefs they so choose...

Ayers was not simply protesting "against" the Vietnam War. Firstly, he wasn't against war in principle, he was agitating for the victory of the communist forces in Vietnam. In other words: He wasn't against the war, he was against our side in the war.

Ayers and his co-authors freely brag about their bombings and other violent and illegal acts, and even provide a detailed list...

Just because Ayers tries to appear respectable now doesn't mean that he wasn't a violent revolutionary in the past....

After his stint as the leader of the Weather Underground, he shifted to a different tactic: to spread his ideology under the aegis of academia. But the goal remains the same: to turn America into a communist nation. Ayers' contemporary writings contain many of the same ideas (and even the same phrases) found in Prairie Fire, just toned down to make them more palatable in polite society.

Even more disturbing for those of us who are Cuban is the role model that Ayers and his comrades cite in Praire Fire:

THE BANNER OF CHE

The only path to the final defeat of imperialism and the building of socialism is revolutionary war. Revolution is the most powerful resource of the people. To wait, to not prepare people for the fight, is to seriously mislead about what kind of fierce struggle lies ahead.

Revolutionary war will be complicated and protracted. It includes mass struggle and clandestine struggle, peaceful and violent, political and economic, cultural and military, where all forms are developed in harmony with the armed struggle.

Without mass struggle there can be no revolution.

Without armed struggle there can be no victory.

It will not be immediate, for the enemy is entrenched and intractable.

So here you have a man who called for the violent overthrow of our democracy in favor of a communist state. He committed violent actions in an effort to bring about that overthrow. He became a fugitive. He changed his tactics and became an academic without ever renouncing his goals and then he launches the political career of the Democratic nominee for president.

Ask yourself one question. If Bill Ayers believes Obama is right for this country, how can you?

Read more at Zombie Time

H/T: MichelleMalkin.com

The First and Second Amendments

Submitted without commentary:

A Drive Through Maine

I bring you this photo as a break from the bombardment of the political BS which I'm sure we're all sick of.

Nothing like a drive through the Autumn colors to get away from the world for a while.

Image taken in Camden Maine.

Sacrifice and a life of service.

While Obama's pals and mentors were busy planning and bombing buildings, robbing banks and killing cops, John McCain was busy elsewhere:

One-hundred forty-three days on a Senate seat voting "present" 90% of the time versus over 40 years of service and sacrifice to this country.

Obama prides himself as being the "anti-war" candidate. I submit to you, folks, that no one, NO ONE, is more anti-war than the soldier who has to fight it.

Just words

"I am not a Communist for three reasons -- and I'm telling you this for your peace of mind. First, because Communism is a dictatorship of one class; I have fought against dictatorships my entire life and I am not going to fall into the trap of a dictatorship of the proletariat. The second reason is that Communism is nothing more than hate and class struggle and I am totally against that philosophy. And third, because Communism is against God and the Church." --[f]idel [c]astro [r]uz, April 1959, in conversation with the Catholic journalist Ignacio Rasco

“No soy comunista por tres razones, y te lo digo para tu tranquilidad espiritual. Primero, porque el comunismo es la dictadura de una sola clase y yo he luchado toda mi vida contra las dictaduras y no voy a caer en una dictadura del proletariado. La segunda razón, porque el comunismo significa odio y luchas de clases y yo estoy en contra completamente de esa filosofía. Y la tercera porque el comunismo lucha contra Dios y la Iglesia.” --[f]idel [c]astro [r]uz, Abril de 1959. Conversación con el periodista católico Ignacio Rasco

A little reminder to all of you that certain "leaders" will say anything at any time to further their agenda -- or get elected.

(H/T Jose Reyes)

Start the presses!!!

A huge thanks to Carol H. for designing this rather excellent bumper sticker.

If anyone out there is interested in gettinga few of these printed up, either drop me a line in the comments or email me and Ill send you the vector graphics or pdf files.

For my fellow firearms owners

Momma Always Said, "Stupid Is As Stupid Does."

Can someone please explain to me how a person running for re-election (18th term, no less) would be stupid enough to call his own district "rednecks" and racists? Especially after his party's presidential candidate called the same part of the state "bitter" and said they "cling to their guns and religion" and "feel antipathy toward those who aren't like them." (Read: RACISTS)

Well, Momma always said "Stupid is as stupid does" and Jack Murtha, an embarrassment to my state of Pennsylvania, has issued a half-hearted apology to Pennsylvanians in the southwestern part of the state (that would be the Johnstown and suburban Pittsburgh area). He did so by saying that 5 to 10 years ago, the entire area was really redneck. Now, they are just (plain old) "redneck." Well, thanks. That means a lot, Jack. He continued to back pedal by saying:

"It's better than it was a few weeks ago. It's better than it was a few months ago."

Ah, yes, all those "rednecks" were hypnotized into accepting cultural diversity, right?

Now, add this to Barack Obama's stupid comments made at a private fundraiser in San Francisco some months ago(thanks for taping it, and posting it on the Huffington Post, whoever did that) about small-town Pennsylvanians:

“It’s not surprising, then, that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Now, I may be a Philly girl, but I have lived in a small town outside of Philly for seven years-- so small, that we have a corner store that sells ring bologna AND ammo. And, I lived for six years in an even smaller town in central PA. In neither place would I say that I felt people were bitter or a bunch of fanatical gun slingers. Or clingers. What does Barack Obama know about my state? What does he know about... anything? He's a rich elistist senator who went to Harvard and grew up on the mean streets of Hawaii with a stint in Jakarta- both completely foreign to life in Pennsylvania.

Maybe Pennsylvanians cling to religion because of our faith in God, not out of bitterness. And maybe we use guns to hunt, not to go out and hold up the local ring bologna and ammo store. He smacked the small town Pensylvanians-- the blue collar workers-- right in the face with his snobbery- in front of a group of wealthy Californians. Religious, gun-slinging, antipathetic, xenophobes- that's us!

Problem is, Mr. Obama did not do his homework. 25% per cent of Pennsylvanians, according to the 2002 census, are Black, Hispanic, Asian, foreign born or speak another language at home. That's a big chunk of the population to be callin' anti-immigrant and racist, doncha think, Senator? (And I won'teven mention all the racist statements he has made in his book or in Philly this year about his grandmother. Oops, I just did.)

So, to Jack Murtha, THANKS for bringing Obama's out-of-touch comments back into focus at this crucial time in Pennsylvania where he leads McCain by as little as 2%. Between the open mouth, insert foot comments of both of them, that gap might just close up in 13 days.

Cubanology Biweekly

Available here.

What happens when...

the voter in the exact middle of the earnings spectrum receives more in benefits from Washington than he pays in taxes?

Find out here.

Dancing to the White House!

We Cubans like dancing, right? Well, Hot Damn! Let's settle this thing here and now and the right way.

Linked fixed.

Biden's Comments: Will Obama Abandon Israel if Iran Attacks?

Interesting article by James Tarranto vis a vis what Biden meant by his recent comments about Obama being tested in the 1st months of his presidency:

The Continuing Crisis: Maybe you can figure out Biden's warning.
By JAMES TARANTO

We realize we are at risk of sounding like a broken record, but that Biden comment--which we noted Monday and wrote about again yesterday--is really bothering us. And not just us. In a column for the New York Post, Kirstin Powers, a Democrat, says the media's "scattered coverage" of Joe Biden's disturbing remarks reflect an "incredible bias." Powers and NewsBusters.org both note that even Dan Rather said, "Certainly if Sarah Palin had said this it would be above the fold in most newspapers today."

CBS News reports that Barack Obama pooh-poohed his running mate's comments: "You know I think that Joe sometimes engages in rhetorical flourishes." Or, to put it another way: "We're gonna have an international crisis. . . . It's not gonna be apparent initially . . . that we're right." Only words!

The idea that America's adversaries are likely to test a new administration is not shocking. It seems prudent to prepare for such an eventuality. What's disturbing about Biden's remarks is that he seems to anticipate a domestic crisis of sorts as well--that Obama's response to the crisis will be unpoular among the public, or some segment of it, and that his backers will simply have to have faith. But Biden gives us no clue as to what he thinks Obama will do that will prompt a backlash--or which segment of the public he expects to lash back. To hear Biden tell it, a vote for Obama is a vote for God-and-Joe-Biden-only-know-what.

In the absence of clarity from Biden and Obama, people have begun speculating as to what may lie in store. The Boston Globe reports that in a speech yesterday, Palin picked up on the Biden remarks:

Yesterday in Reno, Nev., Palin told supporters, "I guess we gotta say, 'Well, thanks for the warning, Joe.' " She then imagined the "crisis scenarios," based on what she described as Obama's foreign policy agenda: his pledge to meet with rogue leaders without preconditions, though he has amended that vow; and Obama saying he would go into the tribal areas of Pakistan to go after Osama bin Laden if the Pakistani government wouldn't, though Palin has supported a similar policy.

"Crisis scenario number three," she said, is that Obama's plan for withdrawing US combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office would leave "some 25 million Iraqis at the mercy of Iranian-supported Shi'ite extremists and Al Qaeda in Iraq" and could force US troops to return.

Palin asserted that after the Russian invasion of Georgia in August, "Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence," which could encourage Russia to invade Ukraine next. "That would be crisis scenario number four," she said.

"But I guess the looming crisis that most worries the Obama campaign right now is Joe Biden's next speaking engagement. Let's call that crisis number five," Palin said as supporters laughed uproariously.

But this is not a joke--well, OK, it's not just a joke. There really could be an international crisis--or more than one--in the early days of a new administration, and more specificity about this Biden warning would be helpful in evaluating whether an Obama presidency is too risky--or whether we should take comfort that his instincts would be the right ones.

The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz points to one possible crisis:

Senior Tehran officials are recommending a preemptive strike against Israel to prevent an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear reactors, a senior Islamic Republic official told foreign diplomats two weeks ago in London.
The official, Dr. Seyed G. Safavi, said recent threats by Israeli authorities strengthened this position, but that as of yet, a preemptive strike has not been integrated into Iranian policy.

The Ha'aretz report does not discuss the U.S. response to a possible Iranian strike against Israel, although Safavi does say "that a victory by U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama would pave the way for dialogue with Washington, while a John McCain presidency would bolster Iran's extreme right, which opposes dialogue."

Yesterday we noted Hugh Hewitt's theory that Biden was warning that an Obama administration would not support Israel in a confrontation with Iran. We noted that Biden's remark was open to multiple interpretation and asked for clarification for voters' sake. Reader Ray Hendel observes: "What may be more important is a clarification so Iran does not interpret Biden's remarks the way Hugh Hewitt does and see it as a green light."

Meanwhile, "IJane," a contributor to the Hillary Clinton Forum, a dead-ender Web site, speculates that Obama's response to whatever crisis arises will be to impose a military draft. She quotes from Obama's comment at a widely ignored Columbia University forum last month:

But it's also important that a president speaks to military service as an obligation not just of some, but of many. You know, I traveled, obviously, a lot over the last 19 months. And if you go to small towns, throughout the Midwest or the Southwest or the South, every town has tons of young people who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's not always the case in other parts of the country, in more urban centers. And I think it's important for the president to say, this is an important obligation. If we are going into war, then all of us go, not just some.

Let's throw this open and see if we can shed some light on Biden's mysterious and troubling remark. If you have an idea of what he meant, email us at opinionjournal@wsj.com. We'll compile the best ones and include them in a column soon. If Obama and Biden won't tell us what they mean, maybe we can figure it out ourselves.

A preview of what is perhaps coming?

What will happen when the ACORNS and the Code Pinkos of this world feel they have an administration they can control and a congress that will do nothing to stop them?

I get the feeling we will be seeing a lot more of this.

One picture, countless words...

Halloween - Obama Style

H/T Lyanna V.

Why David Corn is a dishonest Douche

Val linked to a video earlier today. The video was of a guy named Tito who went to a McCain rally and was calling out the media. Tito, a construction worker who is Colombian by birth, was upset that the media began to dig up dirt on "Joe the Plumber" who has become sort of a folk hero.

If you watch the video I think there's something very telling about it. Corn tries to spin his encounter in a certain way:

Question from unknown media member: Why are you here?

Tito the Construction Worker: Because I'm disgusted with these guys. I support McCain but I've come to face you guys because I'm disgusted with you guys. How the hell you guys going after Joe the Plumber. This is...

Lady: Tell me why is it that you can go and find out about Joe the Plumber's tax lien and when he divorced his wife but you can [unintelligible] Barack Obama [unintelligible] William Ayers, why? Why you do not tell us the facts? Joe the Plumber is me. I'm Joe the Plumber. When you attack Joe the Plumber you attack me.

David the Douche: Do you pay your taxes?

Lady: Yes I do.

David the Douche: You're better than Joe the Plumber.

Tito the Construction Worker: You don't know that. No, no you don't know that. No, no, you don't know. You don't know the circumstances.

David the Douche: Do you believe that the Republican party never attacks the personality, character or background of the candidates they run against?

Did you see that bait and switch that Corn tried to pull? He questions Tito asking if the Republican party attacks opposing candidates. But Tito isn't mad at the Democrats. He's mad at the media who are supposed to be impartial. Now I don't expect any writer for Mother Jones to be impartial. But Tito's point about the MSM is certainly valid. This isn't about parties and candidates attacking each other it's about the media "watchdog" being used as a pitbull by one party to attack the other.

Again we have to remind ourselves that Joe the Plumber is a civilian who is not running for any office. Obama's campaign came to his neighborhood and Obama revealed a bit too much of his mind-set in answering an unexpected question. The media has since completely investigated Joe the Plumber and ALL of his peccadillos but as the lady and Tito the Construction Worker point out they have been very lax in reporting on Obama's track record.

The only reason we even know the names Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers in connection with Obama is because the few conservative media outlets and the blogosphere did the work of the negligent mainstream press.

USA vs Cuba World Cup Qualifier - Recap

This post is long overdue and I apologize for that. As stated in previous posts, I attended the USA vs Cuba World Cup Qualifier match on October 11 in Washington, D.C. It was an amazing and unforgettable experience for me for many reasons.

I equipped myself with 1) a Cuban flag, 2) an American flag and 3) a t-shirt I found fitting for the occasion "Made in the U.S.A. with Cuban parts"... shipped to me straight from la Calle Ocho.

I went with a few non-Cuban soccer fan friends from college... in other words, not as part of a rambunctious Cuban-American group. Prior to the game, I realized that I had never sung the Cuban national anthem before. I made it a point to memorize the anthem and sang it with the few other Cuban-Americans in the stands, with the players, and with the delegation from Cuba. Talk about conflicting emotions...

What I don't understand is how the Cuban players can sing the following verse:

"En cadenas vivir es morir, en apena y oprobio sumido"
"To live in chains is to die in dishonor and ignonimy"

But I digress. U.S.A. scored right away, the first of six goals, but the game itself wasn't as eventful for me as the people and encounters I experienced.

I met a few girls in the bathroom with "Cuba B.C." shirts -- Cuba Before Castro. It was awesome -- and a big relief for me to know that there were others in the stands who shared my passion and viewpoints.

But, I froze when several people decked out head-to-toe in Cuba gear walked by me on two separate occasions. I know you can't get that sort of apparel in the United States, and I assumed they were part of some sort of official delegation. I totally froze. So many things wanted to come out of my mouth, but all I did was put more beer in it. I still debate whether or not I should have tried to start a conversation...

The game ended with a triumphant 6-1 U.S.A. victory, but the best part was the three old men who, as they were walking out of the stadium, began to yell "Cuba Si! Castro No!" I didn't freeze that time... I joined them loud and clear. Maybe the beer had a little bit to do with it but hell, I had been dying to do it all night.

Nailing jello to the wall

A few years ago I recall purchasing a reprint of a 1959 Bohemia magazine from Cuba. Several Cuban-owned stores and cafeterias here in Miami were selling them as nostalgia items. Just for the heck of it, I purchased one since I had only heard of the magazine but had never read it.

Other than the articles and pictures about Cuban socialites, the majority of the magazine contained stories and pictures of the newly crowned leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro. I distinctly recall one article in particular that purported to explain how contrary to the rumors going around the island and the world, Fidel was not, and had never been a communist. The caption on one of the pictures of the bearded so-called revolutionary even had one of his quotes, which I believe said, "The revolution is not red; it is as green as the palms."

It did not take long for Cubans to realize that was an outright lie. And along with the myriad of lies Castro said before and after that period, it did not take Cubans very long to realize that he would say anything he needed to say, and do whatever he needed to do, at any particular moment, to ensure he remained in power.

With that said, it is quite disturbing to see how similar Obama and his campaign are to the campaign led by Castro and his thugs fifty-years ago. Just like Castro, they will say anything they need to say to ensure an Obama victory. If the public does not like the language of one of their policies, they simply pull out the thesaurus and use a different word. If the McCain campaign hammers away at a weakness in one of their proposals, they just change it to take the argument away from their opponent. They are not changing these things because they believe it is right to do so--they are changing it so that they can win.

Here we have a major change in Obama's tax plan done for no other reason than to take the argument away from McCain.

It is the most despicable trait a politician can have--no convictions other than to gain total power. Fidel Castro possesses that trait, and it seems Obama does, too.

The comprehensive argument against Barack Obama

Ed Morissey, Mary Katharine Ham and Guy Benson have together what is probably the single best resource on Obama's candidacy on the blogosphere. Here is the intro:

Allow us to put our cards on the table at the outset: We are two young conservative journalists—both in our 20s. Unlike many of our peers, we are not swept up in Obamamania and would prefer John McCain to win the election. We’ve teamed up with seasoned blogger extraordinaire, Ed Morrissey, whose careful and thoughtful pursuit of the truth—even when it benefits his political opponents—is respected across the blogosphere. In that spirit, we are not at all interested in perpetuating lies, rumors, and innuendo about Barack Obama. Promoting such information does America a disservice, allows Obama’s supporters to justifiably cry “smear,” and damages our own credibility.

What follows is by no means comprehensive, but it does shed some much-needed light on a number of Obama’s positions, statements, and associations about which he has been less than honest. We’ve attempted to boil each issue down to a succinct explanation with an accompanying, brief video clip—often starring Barack Obama in his own words. Before pulling the lever for someone who hopes voters will ignore his paper-thin resume, unsavory associations, and hard-left voting record, each citizen has a duty to do his due diligence.

In short, we hope this “closing argument” is compelling and clear, and we encourage you to share this essay with undecided or wavering family members, friends, and co-workers.

Do yourselves -- and anyone in your orbit who is not spellbound -- a favor and read the post and view the videos. With his own words he is unmasked...

Change We Can Believe In!

Stuck on Sanctimony

You know, the very same people that spent a good deal of their time and effort the past couple of years denigrating and criticizing the Cuban-American community for their "association" with Luis Posada Carriles are now mind numbingly and blindly extolling the virtues of and supporting a US Presidential candidate whose mentor and political catalyst is one unrepentant terrorist by the name of William Ayers.

Hypocrisy, thy name is...well, you know who you are.

And so do we.

Reporters Hit by Clue Bricks

If you can get past the hubris laden intro from the commie Mother Jones "reporter" David Corn without throwing up, you can now watch Tito the Construction Worker stick it to the MSM, right here.

"...born in Colombia. Made in the U.S.A."

McCain supporter indicted for assaulting Obama supporter

Oops. Sorry. Got the headline wrong. Been readin' the MSM so much lately that they've got me believin' we're just a bunch of nasty, violent thugs! The headline should read, "Obama supporter indicted for assaulting McCain supporter." I guess the tolerant. compassionate left just can't take dissent...

While the unsubstantiated reports of nasty remarks and advocacy of violence from attendees at McCain’s rallies remains the buzz from the Old Media establishment and as the Old Media points its accusing finger at Gov. Palin, constantly calling her a racist, real violence has been perpetrated on a McCain supporter at the hands of an Obamaton. Yet, strangely enough, the media has remained silent on the incident.

Oleg Atbashian informs us that the District Attorney of New York has indicted an Obama supporter that ripped a McCain sign out of the hands of a McCain supporter and beat her in the face with the wooden stick to which the sign was attached.

The complaint reads, “Defendant grabbed the sign [informant] was holding, broke the wood stick that was attached to it, and then struck informant in informant’s face thereby causing informant to sustain redness, swelling, and bruising to informant’s face and further causing informant to sustain substantial pain.”

More here.

Coincidence?

I was thinking about this yesterday as I watched the news reports of McCain pounding away at Joe Biden's remarks at a fundraiser this past Sunday that within six months of an Obama administration, he would be tested with a manufactured international crisis by one of America's enemies. When I first heard Biden's remarks, I could only marvel at how just when you think he cannot say anything dumber, Biden finds a new and improved way to shoot himself and the Obama campaign in the foot. I had a difficult time understanding how this man can actually utter such ridiculous statements, one right after the other, and so close to election day.

Then, I recalled another news story I read on Sunday:

For the first time in American history, the FBI is already vetting members of the next administration in an effort to make sure that whether John McCain or Barack Obama is the next president, their staffs will be ready to handle any national security threats.

Could it be that "Say it ain't so" Joe knows something we don't know? Could it be that US intelligence has picked up on some chatter among terrorists salivating over an Obama presidency?

This is all conjecture, of course, but is it really a coincidence that just a few days after being briefed by the FBI on national security risks, Biden would make such a boneheaded remark?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Committees for the Defense of Obama

CDO's at work in Tennessee:

Overnight, the Republican Party’s office on the courthouse square in downtown Murfreesboro was attacked. A large brick with a symbol for anarchy written on it was thrown through a window, taking out the entire glass front.

No word yet on whether these "anarchists" attacked the Democratic Party's offices.

Protecting their turf

The Cuban regime is cracking down on individual Cubans who are price gouging or stealing government materials after the island was ravaged by two hurricanes. They have a zero tolerance policy for any Cubans who dare steal things such as downed power lines, or the most heinous of all crimes in Cuba, illegally slaughtering large farm animals. According to the dictatorship's mouthpiece Granma, a quarter of all those arrested for these crimes against the state have been sentenced to to jail terms.

This crackdown comes as no surprise. On the island, there is only room for one criminal enterprise: Castro, Inc. All others must either work for them and kick-up their share to the crime boss, or risk a sudden end to their careers. The regime takes the protection of their turf quite seriously.

I found the last sentence in the AP article linked in this post to be very amusing, however:

"Cuban authorities earlier promised to crack down on people who tried to take advantage of the hurricane hardships to get rich."

Get rich? I guess having some food for your children to eat and some materials to cover the holes in the roof of your home equates to being rich.

Historial revisionism + race baiting = shut up, racist conservatives!

Here's an editorial piece from the Kansas City Star titled, "Shame on McCain and Palin for using an old code word for black," by Lewis Diuguid in its entirety:

The "socialist" label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots.

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality.

Those freedom fighters included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who led the Civil Rights Movement; W.E.B. Du Bois, who in 1909 helped found the NAACP which is still the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization; Paul Robeson, a famous singer, actor and political activist who in the 1930s became involved in national and international movements for better labor relations, peace and racial justice; and A. Philip Randolph, who founded and was the longtime head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and a leading advocate for civil rights for African Americans.

McCain and Palin have simply reached back in history to use an old code word for black. It set whites apart from those deemed unAmerican and those who could not be trusted during the communism scare.

Earth to Lewis: Du Bois and Robeson were self-admitted and proud Communists. Robeson, in fact, liked Stalin -- a lot! I'm sorry if the truth hurts, but there it is.

One more thing. I don't give a rat's ass about the color of Obama's skin or whether he is of African descent. I've said it here before and I'll say it again: Alan Keyes, who is also Black, would make a better President. Bobbie Jindal, of Indian heritage, as well. Why? Because they have conservative principles. They believe what I believe. And that, my race-baiting hack, is all that matters.

P.S., Obama is not a Socialist. He's a Marxist.

(H/T Little Green Footballs)

I just had to post this: "Ted Nugent Says, 'F*ck You' "

Just to piss off the pussy liberals...

Ted Nugent Says, "Fuck You"
Posted by John DeSio at 11:30 AM, October 20, 2008

"I can't wait to hear how you translate this in the Village Voice, cause them motherfuckers need this."

Over the course of a 40 minute phone conversation rock legend and conservative firebrand Ted Nugent discussed his new book, Ted, White and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto, his charity work, the state of the presidential race, gun control and even Mayor Bloomberg's attempt to change the term limit laws. Nugent is planning two new books, including a tell-all on his rock lifestyle slated for 2010.

"I'm a pretty exciting young man, at the tender age of 60," said Nugent, adding that the perfect response to almost any situation is a big "fuck you." Here are some highlights.

VV: Since I know you're such a big fan of Mike Bloomberg's, you might be interested to know that he's currently leading an effort to have our term limit laws, which were passed by voter referendum, overturned through legislation so that he can run for a third term.

TN: Well, you know what they always say, John, "Fuck those voters!" Good one there, Mikey. By all means, fuck the voters! What the fuck! Welcome to Planet of the Fucking Apes. Hey Mikey, eat me. That guy's a punk.

VV: So tell me a little about why you put the book together?

TN: Well, I woke up one morning, as I do every morning, for the last 60 years. My middle finger was on fire. I roasted adequate amounts of marshmallows upon said flames and I thought I would share it with my fellow civilians. I'm a live motherfucker, man. I actually participate in this experiment in self-government. I think guitar players qualify as "we the fucking people." Quality of life is my demand, quality of life is certainly my modus operandi. I just had the greatest tour of my life. I have saluted way too many flag-draped coffins to take this lightly, to take anything for granted. I am privileged, honored and humbled to share campfires, both literally and figuratively, with the most courageous warriors in the history of humankind of the U.S. military who have willingly and voluntarily sacrificed their limbs and their eyes and their skin, many of them their lives, to chase down terror and to chase down evil and confront it and neutralize it at great cost.

And when you spend time with this level of humanity, this supreme dynamic of humanity, you are hopelessly humbled to give back. The "Ted, White and Blue" Nugent manifesto was not a project, my music is not a project, I don't promote current projects. I have no current projects, my projects began on December 13, 1948. And this precious gift of life that I lovingly refer to as the "runaway freight train," demands on an intellectual and spiritual level that I fight hard for the things I believe in as voiced and corroborated by people vastly superior to me, who fortify my conviction to do so. This is merely my written manifesto of how I live my daily life. I put my heart and soul into being the best that I can be, I am irrefutably and conclusively in the asset column at the end of every day of my life. I'm not for myself, I'm for my family, and my neighborhood and this country and mankind and the good mother earth. Those that would argue with that are either stoned or so recently stoned their logic is all but gone.

And this is a documentation of not just the Nugent family lifestyle, but of people I have had tons of communication with. Seventy-one concerts in 71 cities in 82 days this summer, and I'm a gregarious chap, so I hang out and bullshit. You've got people from every imaginable walk of life, and they all live like I live, in variations thereof. But it all includes an alarm clock, it all includes an insatiable craving and drive to be the best that they can be, to earn the playing card with massive amounts of working hard, and to just do the right damn thing. And don't ask for anyone to give ‘em shit, but rather demand of themselves to produce to their maximum capability and give and give and give and give and give. I thought it was time to shine the spotlight on the outrageously wonderful, positive good in America while also spotlighting the cockroaches and the bad and the ugly, so that those that care about eliminating the bad and the ugly can join me in my stomping as the cockroaches run for cover and we squish them between the cleats of our hunting boots.

VV: The book does have a very "take care of yourself," libertarian feel to it.

TN: That has to be qualified. I would literally alter my pursuit of happiness if I saw that it compromised yours. And I mean that. Let's say I just love to shit in the river. That's my pursuit of happiness. I've got a less than desirable pursuit of happiness. I would make sure that I didn't shit upstream of you. You know what I mean. I can't pursue that pursuit of happiness because it would fuck up yours if you're downstream. It's about cause and effect. It's about being cognizant of your cause and effect and altering it so that, not only don't we want anyone to tread on us, we review our treading to make sure we're not treading on anyone else. So, yeah, libertarian, but with a sense of consciousness. I don't want my pursuit of happiness to fuck yours.

I think that's even beyond libertarian. Like Ron Paul, for Gods sake. So, you don't think that we have to go after terror? You think we just need to secure the Pacific Ocean, Canadian, Mexican and Atlantic borders, that's it? You don't think we have to go chase down assholes? I think you're wrong, Ron. Next.

VV: What do you think if the different bailout packages that we've had in the last few weeks?

TN: I don't think anything, but I know that it's criminal and abysmal and phenomenally counterproductive. The very concept of a bailout, as a rule, is to encourage irresponsible behavior because someone might be there to bail you out. I'm no economist, I mean I write about this in my book and I talk about it whenever I can, I'm a pretty simple guy. I'm cognizant of my income, and I'm cognizant of my expenses, and when I was selling night crawlers for a living I didn't spend outside of my means, I didn't live outside my means. When I was selling a couple thousand albums a year I didn't live beyond my means. I've never, and never will, live beyond my means. I only purchase a home and a vehicle with credit. I can't imagine using a credit card to the degree that I can't pay it off the minute it became due. I can't even conceive of that mindset.

Yet Uncle Sam is like a stoned, dirty, stinkin' hippie with a credit card. It's gluttonous, it's slovenly, it's indulgent. For anybody to bail anybody out is wrong. It's counterproductive and disgusting. When Fedzilla is going to bail people out with my fuckin' money, you might think he would have consulted with me first. It's just bizarre. It's beyond Planet of the Apes.

VV: You talk in the book about raising kids, and say that kids today are not being raised in a real world atmosphere…

TN: Yeah, it's abysmal. It's the abandonment of self-evident truth, common sense based parenting. Just the blubber factor alone is beyond the pail I puke in. At what point do you dry Johnny off from the bathtub, where you actually have to insert the towel between slabs? And then allow Johnny to continue on Tuesday the system by which the slabs were created on Monday? What the fuck is going on here? That pandemic of obesity and rotund, sperm whale-like children, is really a manifestation of an overall culture of depravation. If you can't monitor, in a responsible and disciplined fashion, the nutritional diet of your children, I contend you can't manage anything. Not only about your children, but about your life. Who, and at what time, determined that blubber on a human being was OK?

And I need to clarify this. You're on the phone with a guy who lives to eat. I could eat the whole fucking moose. I love to eat. It would be nothing to eat a mountain of fucking food the way I cook everyday. But I'm a disciplined man. I'm 60 years old, and I've gained about 20 pounds since I graduated from high school, mostly muscle, by the way. But I want to remain reasonable svelte and athletic. So that's an incredible discipline on my part. Cause I could eat ten times what I feed myself.

Who could be in the same house with some of these children and look at their faces, that resemble the asses of hippos, and not intervene. I am stunned at the disconnect. And the way they slouch. There's no posture. It's not universal, but it's way out of control.

It all points to an increasing abandonment of discipline and awareness. There's still mass quantities of good in my travels and in my relationships and my connections. There's incredible amounts of heartwarming, optimistic good. But there's a painful increase in the bad and the ugly. And it's all self-inflicted. Poverty doesn't have anything to do with hygiene. Poverty doesn't have anything to do, well maybe it does have something to do with your bad breath. If you're poor, how the fuck do you rationalize buying cigarettes? You know what I mean? I just come from a different planet where you think, and you know the stuff on the bad list. I bet you got the same bad list I do. I bet drinking and driving is on your bad list. I bet eating massive quantities of Pop-Tarts is probably on the bad list. I don't occasionally visit the bad list. I avoid it like the fucking plague.

So when I see the Obamas of the world literally rewarding irresponsible and deadly behavior, and blowtorching more of our tax dollars. If you really study what Obama and Biden claim are the poverty level, how about this… fuck you. How about double fuck you. I do federal raids with federal marshals and the Texas rangers, and we kick down the doors of these fuckin' mongrels. And they're under the poverty level. But they've all got meth, they've all got crack, they all got whiskey, they all got a Monte Carlo with new fuckin' wheels on it. And there's the kid, living in the shit of their Rottweiler. How dare they buy a Rottweiler if you can't buy pajamas for your fuckin' kid? But they're at the poverty level. They need help. Fuck you.

VV: How do you think the presidential race is shaping up?

TN: It's pretty ugly. I can't wait to hear how you translate this in the Village Voice, cause them motherfuckers need this. By the way, I am the fuckin' village voice. Fuck you! Here's the village voice, (screams) fuck you! That's the voice of the village I come from, motherfucker.

Is that what that is, the presidential race? I thought it was the fuckin' gong show. If it wasn't for Sarah Palin, I'd move to fuckin' Sweden. It's pretty pathetic. I don't think you can be "pretty pathetic." It's mighty pathetic. Barack Obama, I guess if you want to be Mao Tse Tung I suppose you can be. I just don't think you should be the president of America. Call me weird. If you really study the Communist Party of America, if you go to their website and check out their bullet points, it is the Democrat Party bullet points. It is Barack Obama. And if I'm not mistaken…didn't the wall come down? My family thought that communism had proven wrongheaded. Am I out of line here? Did I miss the reintroduction of communism and how it benefitted society? Maybe that chapter evaded me. Remember a minute ago, when I said "fuck you?" You might want to play that over the loudspeaker system wherever you go.

Barack, fuck you. Joe, fuck you. John McCain, God bless you for discovering a Republican with massive amounts of balls. The good governor, Sarah Palin, is the bureaucrat-crushing, status quo-punching conservative that I've been looking for. I knew of her before John did, I had worked with Gov. Palin on numerous issues up in Alaska, where she proved she was a "we the people" person and not a bureaucrat monger. We are voting Republican this year, not because of John McCain as much as for Sarah Palin.

Though, I feel embarrassed to even say this, I have seen minor indicators of late, maybe starting 30 days ago, that John McCain is starting to come back to the basics, at least acknowledging the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and maybe even the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments, dare I say. We are voting Republican, because we see that Barack Obama's voting record, not what he has been so cleverly scripted to say, but his voting record. If the guy likes France so much, why won't he just go there? Why would you want to turn America into France? There's already a France. That's the way I see it. It's a clusterfuck, and it's heartbreaking, really.

Especially when I spend time with men and women who have given so much. Their legs, guys with no arms, no skin, to fight for the America way. Self-evident truth, God-given individual rights and freedoms and liberty is clearly the last best place. And then to have someone like Obama and Biden just shit on them is very discouraging.

VV: Have you ever thought about running for office yourself?

TN: Oh, I've been prodded and I've threatened to do so. My campaign manager, Mrs. Nugent, is in charge of that. At the tender age of 60 I believe I'm doing God's work as a participating ‘we the people" guy. I'm raising as much hell as I can. The biggest curse isn't Obama or Biden or the left or communism. That's not the biggest curse. The biggest curse is Americans who know better and do nothing about it. It's the apathy that is strangling this great country. It's really abysmal. People, if they've got a six pack and some sports event on the TV, you could probably rape their wife in the next room, and they'll get at it soon. It's not pretty.

I, being the eternal optimist, I think McCain and Palin still have a chance, contrary to the world of public opinion. I believe they've got a chance. I believe that the productive, "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" Americans outnumber the alternative. I hope so. If Obama and Mao win, I'll just turn up my activism. I'll raise more hell… and spend the next years shortstopping the destructo derby of the American dream. I know we can. I'd rather get McCain and Palin in, but we'd still have to turn up the activism to make sure McCain doesn't fall back into McCain/Feingold and amnesty for invaders of America. I'm not giving up. And I'm a force to reckon with. Just ask this deer hanging in front of me right now. She didn't have a fuckin' prayer. But we will dine on her gift of protein this evening.

VV: You mentioned illegal immigration there…

TN: The Nugent family has no invaders. We don't have any welfare, we don't have any crime, we don't need anymore money thrown at our education. We don't need a prosecuting attorney or a punk in a black robe to make any judgments for our lives. We're ruggedly individual and declared independent. And we certainly don't have any invaders, because the message is loud and clear: invade the Nugent property and die. I'm not gonna say "hey you," I'm gonna shoot you in the fuckin' head. Just like all my fellow Texans. Be nice, I'll by you a fuckin' brisket. Steal from my neighbor, I'll kill ya.

Come on. Illegal invaders, especially during the war on terror, should die. Illegal invaders, war on terror, don't invade or we'll kill ya. That's the message we should send. And it works.

VV: Why is New York so different from Texas? Why is New York filled with so many liberals?

TN: First of all, let's identify the most egregious example of the difference, the line drawn in the sand, between New York and Texas. I just gave you my preferred scenario: thieves, ransacking your neighbors home, kill ‘em. New York City, a hero of the United States Navy, recently transferred to Manhattan, wakes up in the middle of the night where a multiple paroled felon is in his little boy's room. The hero of the U.S. Navy, who had never been arrested for anything in his life, grabs his U.S.-issued Beretta .92 and shoots the motherfucker. Who goes to jail, John? The fuckin' hero of the Navy! For defending his child from a recidivistic monster that the Bloomberg's and all these other assholes decided it was OK for him to run around the streets and go into this guys fuckin' apartment. You tell me where you'd rather live.

The system is bizarre. The guy should have got a new gun, a lifetime supply of improved ammo and $100,000. And a message should be sent. Number one, you cocksuckers in the black robes, quit paroling monsters. Put ‘em in a cage, leave ‘em in a cage, let them eat each other. And citizens of America, if you catch a paroled monster in your kid's room, you get a lifetime supply of quality ammo, a new gun and $100,000 if you shoot the fucker dead.

VV: Maybe you should run for mayor here.

TN: God help us all. It's a phenomena. Bernie Goetz should have been given the key to the city. Except that he used inferior ammo. He should have probably been disciplined for using inferior ammo. A fuckin' .38, I use bigger guns than that on rabbits.

Out of the Mouths of Foreigners

American conservatives aren't the only ones to have doubts about OB. Have to share this goody from The Manila Times. Although the English is somewhat stilted, the opinion piece relies on both Sowell and Freddoso to express doubts about the candidate. Most charming, however, is the following assertion:

Most non-Americans -except perhaps the Cubans both in Cuba and in Miami—are somewhat anti- American.

Mexican Shove-Off

There have been some items of interest lately. In addition to the announcements of untold oil wealth beneath the waters of Cuba, celebrations of "Russia Day" and the like, two items caught my attention. On Monday there was the announcement that Mexico will begin repatriating Cubans fleeing the island. On Tuesday came the proclamation of increased amity and trade between the two countries.

Given the recent "restructuring" of over 400 million worth of debt Cuba owes Mexico, it's not surprising that trade has increased 80 % in the first 8 months of this year. Nor given their long history of doing so, only sporadically interrupted, is it surprising that the Mexican government has chosen to side with the oppressors. Guess it just goes to show the only illegal immigrants they deem worthy of compassion are their own citizens.

Memo to Barry...

Shut the F*ck up already. I mean you went back on your pledge (LIED) to accept public financing of your campaign and also limits to spending so that you could raise more than half a BILLION bucks and wallpaper every available minute of airspace with your mug, trophy ears and "mesmerizing" oratory.

People should vote against you just because they're already tired of you. Obama fatigue. I've had it for a year already.

The comprehensive argument against Barack Obama

Guy Benson, Mary Katharine Ham and Ed Morrissey have written a closing argument against Barack Obama. PLEASE read it. Watch the videos. Think about it. And pass it on.

Click here to read the comprehensive argument against Barack Obama.

Before you dismiss this as "right wing propaganda" trust me and click the ling above. The videos in the piece are ALL of Barack Obama's own words and analysis from such "right wing" sources as CNN.

Conversa Cuba Companioni

Val's cousin, Companioni, is hosting an internet radio show with Agustin Blasquez the noted documentarian right now.

Covering Cuba documentarian Agustin Blazquez Joins us for a special show Tues 21 October 7pm-8:30 pm Eastern time on Free Cuban Perspectives.

We'll be promoting the Upcoming Cuban Cinema Forum At the New York Film Academy
100 East 17th St. & Park Ave NYC Saturday 25 October 8am-8pm.
More Info Call 212-677-9377

Tune In live to chat or replay later at your leisure here on Blog talk radio's Conversa Cuba

Obama's Tax Plan Starring Penn & Teller

This is amusing .... sad, but true.

Peace and love

A group of conservatives wearing hoods and masks attacked Joe Biden's motorcade and...

Oh, wait, I'm sorry. I have the story wrong. It was a group of masked (leftist/anarchist) protesters that attacked Sarah Palin's motorcade. Be sure to watch the video (since CNN can't write EMBED code to save their lives.)

I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face. --Barack Obama

That sounds about right...

CDO's™

The new American incarnation of Cuba's dreaded CDR's: CDO's - Committees for the Defense of Obama.

“a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as our military..."

Barrack Hussein Obama - July 2, 2008

***DELIVERY CHARGES MAY APPLY

Hey, if you can make it past the dogs and the 9mm hollowpoints, not only can you have my McCain Sign, Ill bake you the pizza myself from scratch.

Via The Birthday Girl.

The Manifesto of the Silenced Majority

Today's absolute must read.

When you're done, pass it along.

The lessons of history

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" --George Santayana, The Life of Reason

The Cuban people wanted change. They got it.



Do the American People really want change?

Be careful what you wish for

Gird your loins

"Say it ain't so" Joe Biden warned his supporters to prepare for a test of Obama's mettle within the first six months of his presidency by America's enemies. He warned them to "gird their loins," and stand up to defend Berracko Obama because as Joe apparently sees it, President Berracko is going to look pretty bad.

But while Berracko's supporters figure out how to back their empty suit candidate, the rest of America should be girding their loins to what is coming if this country is subjected to a Democrat president, a Democrat controlled congress, and a Democrat controlled senate.

The distinguished congressman, Barney Frank, offers us a... well, a frank description of what is to come.

I guess the tax increases are only for 5% of the population, huh Barney?

Who am I voting for in two weeks?

Feel free to copy the image and place it on your blogs.

Standout journalist loses her job while Herald hacks err

The Miami Herald reported last Friday that Ileana Varela and Jade Alexander has been "let go". But of course they got the details wrong:

The financial crisis is hitting the media industry harder, and faster, than expected. On Friday WBFS-My33, the sister station to WFOR-CBS4, let go several popular on-air personalities and cut its original programming.

Jim & Jade in the Morning, which aired weekdays from 7 to 9 a.m. and was hosted by Jim Berry and Jade Alexander, had its last broadcast on Friday. The My33 Weekend Newscast, anchored by Ileana Varela, has been canceled and will not run this weekend.

Alexander and Varela have been let go. Berry, who also anchors CBS 4 This Morning, will stay on in that position. Several production and technical jobs associated with the two programs were also cut.

''In today's economic climate you have to be competitive,'' said Lee Zimmerman, spokesman for WFOR. ``Unfortunately those shows were not performing as well as we hoped.''

WFOR is making it sound like Varela is losing her job because her gig on their sister station My33 wasn't getting good ratings. But I've learned that Varela was not even paid for that broadcast, it was an additional responsibility given to her when her colleague Jawan Strader moved to weekdays. Ileana has been the weekend anchor for the mothership WFOR for the past 10 years. She has been at WFOR for almost 20 years.

Now this upsets me greatly. Not because both Jade Alexander and Ileana Varela are Cuban-Americans (though I have to admit that that stings) but because in the case of Varela she was one of the few local journalists with a clue about Cuba, a story that has been in local headlines for 50 years. And of those few she was the best.

WFOR had been my favorite source for local news and Varela was no small part of that, I even hosted a banner ad for them at Herald Watch. Now I'm going to have find another source, not that there are any better alternatives. It's a small futile gesture but I'll be removing that banner ad.

Colors You Don't See in Hialeah

Just got back from Coastal Maine. I think everyone, especially those who live full time here in Florida or other year round green states, should take some time in their lives to visit the North East in Autumn. It had been 11 years since I'd seen the fall and I must say that Autumn is calming somehow.

You tend to chill when you drive down highways and roads and see Autumn colors. The crisp air helps too. It was 30 degrees and there was ice on my windshield when I got up yesterday to drive back to the airport in Portland.

I'm back in Florida and it's 80+ degrees. I drove through Hialeah yesterday, and boy what a contrast. So for my fellow infidels, here are some reflections of Autumn for you to start your day.

Obama says he didn't know...

But considering how outspoken Bill Ayers is, how could he not?





According to Stop the ACLU, Ayers did this interview during a week he was working with Obama.

Wake up America.

They eat their own - Part 7,826,523,127

While we have all seen what the left is capable of doing to those on the right they disagree with, we sometimes forget that they can be just as vicious and nasty towards their own whenever one strays off the proverbial plantation. No one who dares challenge the liberal establishment is safe from their fury--not even Code Pinko's, Cindy Sheehan.

Sheehan claims her campaign against Pelosi is being sabotaged

By Jeff Mitchell

Cindy Sheehan, the peace-activist-mom who lost a son in Iraq and who gained national prominence by protesting outside of President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, says she has been the victim of "dirty tricks" in her campaign to dislodge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in CA-08.

In her campaign blog earlier this week, Sheehan says that:

--Her hotel phone in Denver during the Democratic National Convention was "bugged."

--Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa personally intervened to stop her from speaking at a music festival.

--She was forced to file for a restraining order against a former volunteer who she says was sending threatening e-mails and who she now thinks was a "spy" for Nancy Pelosi.

--She was the victim of intentional vandalism when the tail lights of her RV were busted out.

--That one of her campaign interns was assaulted when she struggled against four men who walked into her office feigning that they wanted to register to vote but apparently intended to computer equipment instead.

--That she has been summoned to begin jury duty in San Francisco on the week of the Nov. 4 elections.

--That a recent round "robo calls" that she paid for began contacting voters at 10:30 p.m. on a recent weekend night instead of the early week night time slot she had scheduled.

It is almost like watching a National Geographic special on wild animals eating their own.

Justice: a few Cubans at a time

After nearly fifty-years of slavery and the dearth of hope, once in a while a ray of light pierces through the black fog of tyranny in Cuba to shine on a few. As I posted back in July, three escaped Cubans who had been sent to Curacao to work as slave labor for the regime filed a lawsuit against the Curacao based shipyard for being complicit with their slave master, the Castro regime. At the time I wondered how the regime's apologist would reconcile the fact that their "workers' paradise" was selling slave labor to repay its debts. Naturally, nary a word has been mentioned about this case except for the paltry local coverage it has received.

The three Cubans won the lawsuit back in August, and yesterday, the judge awarded them an $80-million dollar settlement. All that money, however, cannot buy back these men the ten years they spent as slaves in squalid conditions. Nor can it help their family members in Cuba who are being targeted by the regime in retaliation for their quest to be free men.

Justice is not about money; money cannot buy freedom. But as we can see from this case, it can certainly enslave an entire nation.

Obama the Weasel Mocks Joe the Plumber

What class.

Are there any honest reporters left?

The writer Orson Scott Card has some interesting things to say about the state of journalism in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

Read the whole excellent piece here.

They didn't know each other at all, no sir, not at all!

The lying liar caught in another lie.

Barack Obama’s Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) office and William Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop shared the same address for a number of years - three years that can be proven by tax returns.

Visit Jon at Verum Serum for a look at his verifying screen shots and updates on the monies directly distributed by Barack Obama through the CAC (more than previously known), and a note about the $750,000.00 given to John Ayers, William Ayers’ father, from the coffers of the CAC.

Remember, Obama has faced the cameras and told the voters that Weather Underground terrorist, William Ayers, is just “a guy in the neighborhood.” He lied, yet again. To Verum Serum, great reporting!

Obama's Castro endorsement "dicussed" on Radio this morn.

Pretty good morning show on San Francisco's KSFO this morn....despite the raving, bambi-killing chusma at the very end.

I shit you not...

Mark Steyn on National Review reporting that a reader saw this at a street fair at Hayes and Octavia in San Francisco and snapped a pic:

Doesn't this pure Cult of Personality scare the hell out of you? This is Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and fidel redux, for crying out loud! This is Republic, Goddamnit! Not a fucking monarchy or a dictatorship!

People: WAKE THE FUCK UP!

When Hillary Clinton is more palatable you've got a problem

Even Powell endorses Obama

Frequent commenter "honey" had this to say about the Colin Powell endorsement:

Now Colin Powell graduates to becoming another "even" for the msm as in "Even Colin Powell endorses Obama." He must be so proud.

The interesting thing in these promotions is not who is endorsing Obama, but the new way the press will report on these people. At the Al Smith dinner McCain said, "Chris Matthews used to like me." That was when McCain was an "even". Every time our maverick went against Bush, what a hero he was.

But when Obama arose and McCain stubbornly stayed in favor of the Iraq war, how easily Matthews and the rest of the drive-by's made McCain public enemy number one.

Likewise when Powell supported Bush, oh how he was the enemy. Now that he is an "even" he must be so much happier being popular again.

Pipe

(H/T The American Thinker)

Ground Control to Uncle Tom

I suppose this week's big news is that Collin Powell endorsed "The One". The in-the-tank media are like sailors at a whorehouse with fists full of fifties and lefty bloggers are elated. What I wanna know is, are the lefties still gonna refer to Powell an Uncle Tom, this time stumping for massah Obama?

Violence?! On the left? Who knew?

Say it ain't so! My image of the tolerant, compassionate liberal has been forever shattered...

EXCLUSIVE: .22 Gunshot, paint balls fired at McCain / Palin Straight Talk Express October 19th, 2008

(Sunday, October 19 - Filed by Mark Williams in Raton, New Mexico with the Stop Obama Tour) We learned at this morning’s Stop Obama Rally here that the McCain/Palin Straight Talk Express came through town yesterday. It arrived with a window shattered by a .22 caliber weapon. It had also been hit by an unknown number of paint balls from a paint ball gun or guns. There were reportedly no injuries and neither candidate was on board.

One local man who saw the damage and spoke with the McCain/Palin staffers said the attack(s) had occured in southern New Mexico that same day. The Express is traveling the country independent of the candidates, handing out campaign materials.

Sarah Palin is stumping in of all places Roswell, New Mexico today and then roughly back the way we came with an event at the Henderson, Nevada Pavilion tomorrow and a stop in Elko, Nevada.

I'm glad that Cuba has struck it rich

I really am glad that Cuba has 20 billion barrels of newly discovered oil. That means there is absolutely no reason to remove the embargo. I mean going forward Cuba should have plenty of money to build infrastructure, housing, get rid of food rationing etc. The castro brothers have hit the proverbial lottery and now nobody can blame the embargo for Cuba's human rights abuses (though I never understood how they were connected to begin with). The U.S. is now officially irrelevant to Cuba's economic situation. I for one am glad. We can now say "not our fault" and everyone will just have to believe us.

Yeah right.

Joe the Senator Speaks

Maybe is a good thing Joe Biden has loose lips. If people would actually listen to him instead of tuning him out after he utters his first “let me repeat that ,” he just might sink the Obama ship with one of his verbal torpedoes.

ABC reports that Joe Biden is actually correct about (gasp!) a foreign policy subject. Biden boasts the he’s “forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know.” (Joe the braggard.) But he goes on to admit that our enemies are chomping at the bit to test the “brilliant” 47 year old junior senator from Illinois in his first six months as president through perhaps a “generated crisis.” Hmmm…maybe our enemies have been reading some Alinsky too?

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. 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."

This is an interesting admission coming from a presidential ticket that blames American foreign policy for most of humanity’s problems. Not only does Biden admit that there are foreign powers out there that proactively plot to harm the United States regardless of America’s “dangerous policies”, but he also admits that electing Obama is a perilous move because it might embolden one or more of our enemies “to test the mettle of this guy” (Joe the realist). If JFK’s handling of his “tests” are any indications of what’s to come, buckle up because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Senator Biden warns his liberal Seattle audience to “Gird your loins.” I’m assuming that he’s cautioning them about the sharp left turn that the Obama express is going to make- a turn so sharp to the left that it might irk even Seattle’s Liberal elite. (Joe the tour guide)

I assume a left turn because well, it’s Obama’s bus and Senator Biden goes on to refer to the current economic crisis as “systemic”

… this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets. This is a systemic problem we have with this economy.

That’s two really good reasons not to vote for Obama-Biden and let Joe the Senator, well stay Joe the Senator.

MSM gets verbal Colombian necktie

Via Dave in Texas at Ace's:

Someone asked why Munoz had come to the rally. “I support McCain, but I’ve come to face you guys because I’m disgusted with you guys,” he said. “Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong? Everything is possible in America. I made it. Joe the Plumber could make it even better than me. . . . I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A.”

Tito's last line there gave me goosebumps.

Read all about Tito the Construction worker - and Rosie the Teacher and Phil the Bricklayer and a bunnch of other "Joe the Plumbers" - right here.

UPDATE (Henry):

Quote of the day:

I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A.

-Tito the Construction Worker

You really have to read the piece at NRO.

Pirates killed by radioactive cargo going from Iran to Israel

A mystery story in the Middle East I've been following for a few weeks finally gets solved. And it's not good news.

Sticks and Stones

Remember last week when I posted about my great Friday morning? And how Mr. Nice Volvo Driver pulled a Jekyll and Hyde when he saw my McCain bumper sticker and called me a fascist?

Well, I received a few emails calling me a liar and saying that I'd made the whole thing up and that it was nonsense and that I was a liar and that I lied and, did I mention that I am a lying liar when I'm not being a lying racist liar?

Because the left would never, ever, resort a vitriolic response, straight from the gutter.

Update: The left would never, ever, resort to hate filled potentiallly lethal physical attacks, either.

The "Cuban Oil" Carnival

Dont miss this week's Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean at Fausta's which is all about OIL, baby OIL. Cuban oil, that is.

Well the first thing you know ol fidel's a millionaire,
Kinfolk said "hey move away from there"
Said "Varadero is the place you ought to be"
So he loaded up the jeep and grabbed his colostomy.

Newsweek debunks "kill him" rumors

Newsweek, that bastion of conservative writing, debunks the "kill him" rumors spread by liars, idiots, and the Kool-Aid drinkers on the blogosphere.

During a heated moment in his final presidential debate with Sen. John McCain, Sen. Barack Obama noted the anger of some supporters at rallies for McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. "All the public reports suggested," Obama said, that people shouted "things like 'terrorist' and 'kill him'." Making a death threat against a presidential candidate can be a crime. But even before Obama cited "reports" of the threats at the debate, the U.S. Secret Service had told media outlets, including NEWSWEEK, that it was unable to corroborate accounts of the "kill him" remarks -- and according to a law-enforcement official, who asked for anonymity when discussing a political matter, the Obama campaign knew as much. Now some officials are disgruntled that Obama gave added credence to the threat by mentioning it in front of 60 million viewers. At this point in the campaign, said one, candidates will "say anything to make a particular point."

During a warm-up speech for Palin at an Oct. 15 rally in Scranton, Pa., a journalist with the city's Times-Tribune paper, David Singleton, reported hearing someone say "kill him"; he told NEWSWEEK that the remark was made casually, rather than angrily, by a male voice. Singleton stands by his account, but he acknowledges that he was unable to identify who made the remark. Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren says his agency examined videotape from an earlier Palin event in Clearwater, Fla., at which a similar threat was supposedly made, and concluded that the voice could've been saying "tell him" or "tell them." But Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank, who was in Clearwater, said "the guy was a few feet in front of me … '[T]ell him' doesn't make any sense as a response to what Palin was saying." An Obama campaign spokesman told NEWSWEEK that "whether or not the [Secret Service] is investigating that particular comment is irrelevant. What is true is that the tone of the rhetoric at McCain-Palin campaign events has gotten out of hand."

It's not whether it actually happened, it's the about the seriousness of the charge, whether the charge is bogus or not. Jeez, these folks would embarrass the president of Pathological Liars Anonymous...

(H/T Townhall and Stop the ACLU)

Truth in journalism, imported from Canada

Great article in Today's Toronto Sun about how fidel castro is playing the part of Nero quite well:

Castro writes while Cuba sinks
HAVANA -- Hidden away in a secret lair, the old revolutionary dictator writes.

Since he has not been seen in public for 30 months, we'll have to take their word for it that it is actually Fidel Castro.

There are some who believe he is dead and frozen while brother, Raul, tries to find the right time to announce it. But not many.

It's Fidel's writings, or perhaps rantings, in the Communist Party's Granma newspaper and on Cuban web sites that has helped quell those rumours.

Read the rest.

Here's a little history lesson for the Kool-Aid drinkers

Randall Hoven of The American Thinker has written a great piece about the collapse, not of the last eight years, but of the last two. The two that had the Dems in control of Congress. Very educational, although it'll completely mystify the shrunken head-sized brains of the opposition:

In December 2006, after six years of Bush and the last month before the Democrats took over both houses of the national legislature, a snapshot of our economy looked like this.

• Unemployment stood at 4.4%.
• Real GDP growth over the previous four years (under a Republican President, House and Senate) averaged 3% per year.
• A gallon of regular gasoline cost $2.30.
• The S&P 500 stock index stood at 1418, or 84% above its post-911 low and more than 7% higher than when Bush took office.
• Every year of Bush's Presidency, real (inflation-adjusted) disposable income per person went up. By the end of 2006, the average person was making 9% more in real terms than before Bush became President .

As Hoven writes in the piece, "Let's vote for change. Let's undo what we did in 2006."

Obama's threat to free speech

High on the democrats wish list should they achieve the votes, is to bring back the Fairness Doctrine. Obama has said, if you can trust his word, that he does not seek to re-impose this legislation.

He does however plan more subtle regulations to muzzle the right. Brian C. Anderson, editor of City Journal and co-author of "A Manifesto for Media Freedom", explains:

Even with control of Washington and public support, Dems would have a big fight in passing a Fairness Doctrine. Rush Limbaugh & Co. wouldn't sit by idly and let themselves be regulated into silence, making the outcome of any battle uncertain. But Obama and the Democrats also plan other, more subtle regulations that would achieve much the same outcome.

He and most Democrats want to expand broadcasters' public-interest duties. One such measure would be to impose greater "local accountability" on them - requiring stations to carry more local programming whether the public wants it or not. The reform would entail setting up community boards to make their demands known when station licenses come up for renewal. The measure is clearly aimed at national syndicators like Clear Channel that offer conservative shows. It's a Fairness Doctrine by subterfuge.

Obama also wants to relicense stations every two years (not eight, as is the case now), so these monitors would be a constant worry for stations. Finally, the Democrats also want more minority-owned stations and plan to intervene in the radio marketplace to ensure that outcome.

It's worth noting, as Jesse Walker does in the latest Reason magazine, that Trinity Church, the controversial church Obama attended for many years, is heavily involved in the media-reform movement, having sought to restore the Fairness Doctrine, prevent media consolidation and deny licenses to stations that refuse to carry enough children's programming.

Regrettably, media freedom hasn't been made an issue by the McCain campaign, perhaps because the maverick senator is himself no fan of unbridled political speech, as his long support of aggressive campaign-finance regulation underscores. But the threat to free speech is real - and profoundly disturbing.

Read the New York Post article here.

No National Anthem for The One

I guess one more laudatory speaker had to be jammed in. No time for The Star Spangled Banner:

When there is no time for the National Anthem, which takes but 3 minutes to pause for, the indicator is impossible to ignore. Add it to past indicators involving the National Anthem. And add it to the rest of your stack of things you aren't sure if you should wonder about. Right on top of the destruction of Joe the Plumber, and right beneath the next public smiling dismissal of Obama's long associations with radical agitators, nay domestic terrorists. Let me know if you can see over it.

Read the whole WizBang post here.

Featuring Alec Baldwin as Himself

In case you missed it, HotAir has the videos of the Saturday Night Live skits with future Vice President Sarah Palin, right here.

Nordlinger gets letters

Jay Nordlinger, a longtime champion of Cuban freedom, has gotten an interesting email about Cuba and has responded here and here.

Coming soon to a video discount rack near you

Oliver Stone stung by bees.

Was just watching the 11:00 news and they had the weekend's top box office movies. I was surprised to see that the Oliver Stone hit piece on George W. Bush came in FOURTH. But what's really telling is which movies came out ahead of W. this weekend:

1. Max Payne (a movie developed from a video game concept) $18,000,000

2. Beverly Hills Chihuahua (a movie about, well, about a chihuahua that lives in Beverly Hills) $11,200,000

3. The Secret Life of Bees (a movie I've never heard of) $11,050,000

W. brought in $10,550,000. Granted it was only shown in 2,000 theaters but that was still more than 400 more than The Secret Life of Bees.

W. reportedly cost $25 million to make and they've spent a pretty penny advertising. The Secret Life of Bees cost $11 million to make.

More on Obama and those cancelled debates

California blogger Omri Ceren, my fave among Jewish bloggers nails it:

Barack Obama’s campaign has decided advisers and representatives of the Democratic nominee for president will no longer debate officials from the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC). This prohibition led Wednesday to the canceling of a debate scheduled for Sunday at Valley Cities Jewish Community Center in Van Nuys organized by the Council of Israeli Community in Los Angeles [CIC]. Larry Greenfield, California director of the RJC, said he still plans to show up. His counterpart, former Rep. Mel Levine, who is a Middle East adviser for Obama, will not participate in what would have been his fourth debate with Greenfield.

That's the nice way to describe it. What actually happened is that the Obama campaign demanded that the CIC ban Greenfield from the debate as a condition for their participation. They're doing the same thing all over the country: no preconditions for meeting Iran but thuggish demands before they'll sit down with American Jews. And they're getting really good at this game: have someone spend months organizing a non-partisan event, pull their people out right at the end, and then shriek about partisanship. The only thing left is for them to threaten legal action. Then it would be a perfect replay of how they detonated the anti-Ahmadinejad rally. The CIC, for its part, is pissed:

"My appearing with him gives him a prominence that he doesn’t deserve," Levine said when asked about the cancellation Wednesday afternoon by the Journal. "The RJC’s tactics have been continually dishonest, and the campaign has made a decision to not keep getting on the same stage with them." Levine pointed specifically to the RJC’s constant attacks on Israel-critic Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is an Obama foreign policy adviser but not concerning Obama’s Israel policy, and its claims that Obama would meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions. Indeed, Obama has said he would meet with leaders of rogue nations, but Ahmadinejad, a rabid anti-Semite, isn’t the head of Iran. Ayatollah Khamenei is.

Two things going on here. One, the Obama campaign is embarrassingly pathetic when it comes to addressing the valid concerns of American Jews. Two, they seem hell-bent on using their political power to prevent anyone from pointing that out.

"It will be perceived as they are chickening out from a debate and they are ignoring the Israeli community and don’t want to face the truth that the McCain campaign is putting out," Linder said. "You are leaving Larry on a stage to put out the information he wants without being rebutted. The Israeli community needs to hear, face to face, both sides, so that people can decide who they want to vote for."
The Obama campaign is saying that they won't debate because of the RJC's "continual dishonesty." Which would already be incoherent if the RJC was actually being dishonest - in democracies, debates are exactly how we settle these things. But it's an especially disingenuous move given how the RJC's accusations are demonstrably true.

Read the whole thing here.

Still don't see a connection between Obama, Ayers and ACORN? Take a lookie.

It's a little long but worth watching every second. Send to anyone who remains undecided.

Thanks to AM

WHO IS BARACK OBAMA?

Watch Hannity's America, tonight, Sunday on Fox News 9 P.M.

Sean Hannity, of Hannity & Colmes - FOX News, is going to air a very important documentary about Barack Obama, Sunday night at 9:00 PM. He stated on the air this evening that no one in the news media was willing to do this.

Hannity is going back to Obama's earlier days, showing even then his ties to radical professors, friends, spiritual advisers, etc. He stated this evening that he will show in detail his ties to Rev. Wright for 20+ years (which we all know) how he was participating with this man, and not for the reasons he states! he has uncovered more of Obama's radical leaders and we will see things that no one in the media is willing to put out there. This will be a night that you will know more about Obama than ever before.

Hannity is very passionate about this program and asked that everyone please, please watch sunday night, 9 PM.

Hannity is determined this information be put out there because as Americans, we still do not know about Obama! Wake up America! This is serious, everyone. I know most of you watch FOX News, and you know who you are voting for, but if you can, please pass this on to everyone you know.

From NetforCuba with collaboration of US ALERT.

Surprise! Miami Herald Endorses Obama

Not exactly a surprise that the Miami Herald endorsed Obama, of course, and I debated whether it's even worth mentioning in light of the Herald's less than significant stature in the grand scheme of things.

Nevertheless, there are a few things the Herald Editorial Board mentions in its endorsement that struck me as odd, contradictory, or both. Here's a sample:

Foreign policy differences

Sen. McCain also showed strength in the primaries. Deemed political roadkill at one time, he revived his fortunes with a strong showing in New Hampshire and clinched victory in Florida with straight talk and a surer feel for what voters wanted. A turning point came during the Republican convention, when he chose a long-shot for a running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, out of an apparent need to appease the right wing of the party. For all of her rhetorical skills on the campaign trail -- particularly in the attack mode -- Gov. Palin appears to know little about the issues and simply is not qualified to be commander in chief.

Much has been made of Sen. Obama's relative inexperience, particularly in foreign policy. His résumé is thin, but he surrounds himself with experienced advisors -- as evidenced in his choice of Sen. Joe Biden to be vice president --and with people who offer differing points of view. His style is to build consensus and seek workable, pragmatic solutions -- a refreshing change from the last eight years.

So the esteemed editors at the Herald think it's OK for a presidencial candidate to have limited experience as long as you have "experienced advisors", but accuses Palin of knowing "little about the issues" and thus not qualified to be Vice-President. Ohh-kayyyyyy.

The edtorial presents Sen. Biden as one of those experienced advisors, and seems to dismiss McCain's selection of Palin as "an apparent need to appease the right wing of the party". Can someone please remind the Herald why Obama chose Biden, besides his "experience"? Perhaps it was to appease moderate Democrats?

Here's more:

Sen. McCain has much experience in foreign policy and a hero's life story dating back to his days as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. An avid supporter of the war in Iraq, Sen. McCain was among the first to call for more troops. He draws strength from the success of the ''surge.'' Today, though, Iraq is stable, but the war itself remains a huge and costly error. The invasion was a strategic mistake; the surge a tactical success.

Sen. Obama's early dissent amid the war fever of 2002-03 took courage. It reflects a clear-eyed appreciation for the proper use of U.S firepower and a cool temperament that rejects employing military force except as a last, necessary resort. His insistence that U.S. power be focused on the conflict in Afghanistan -- which he rightly calls the central front of the war on terror -- represents a better, more effective use of military resources.

I guess Obama's "cool temperament" will also serve him well when he sits across the table from evil men intent on harming their people and OURS. Whether it serves US well is another story. Speaking of courage, where was Obama's in admitting that the surge was not only successful, but vital to our success in the war on terror? It appears that the Herald gladly skipped over that detail, just as they skipped over the fact that McCain himself showed great courage in calling for the surge.

All in all, a very weak endorsement, fitting for The Miami Herald circa 2008. Where was the mention of taxes? Energy? I don't care who they decide to endorse, but let's see some solid, thought-out and elaborated reasons, not simply partisan talking points.

Read the full endorsement here.

Death of a dictator?

Castro Death Watch is linking to a Sky News article about a big announcement that's supposed to be coming out of North Korea tomorrow. Apparently a Japanese newspaper is speculating that Kim Jong Il may be dead. There have been rumors of a stroke or other health incident by the "dear leader" for several weeks.

If the past is prologue...

...Then get ready for what's in store: http://www.obamaspast.com/.

(H/T The Underground Conservative)

Some Common Joe Sense

Reacting to the media's scrutiny of his past and present, here's your daily dose of common sense courtesy of "Joe The Plumber", via the Toledo Blade:

"I am a plumber, and just a plumber, and here Barack Obama or John McCain, I mean these guys are going to deal with some serious issues coming up shortly. The media's worried about whether I paid my taxes, they're worried about any number of silly things that have nothing to do with America. They really don't. I asked a question. When you can't ask a question to your leaders anymore, that gets scary. That bothers me."

Colin Powell on Castro

"Fidel Castro has done some good things for his people," Secretary of State Colin Powell to Congress on April 27, 2001.

Colin Powell endorses Obama

"I think he is a transformational figure coming into the world stage and for that reason I'll be voting for Barack Obama."

Powell is right in that Obama's gonna be "transformational." Just not in the way he thinks.

(H/T Scott Gillies)

Trends

The MSM has been telling us for weeks now that polls of American voters are indicating a trend towards a landslide victory by Barrack Obama come this November 4th. Well, since they want to talk about trends, let's see if they talk about the trends this latest Zogby poll is indicating, which has Obama's lead over McCain slowly and steadily shrinking.

Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby Poll: Obama 47.8%, McCain 45.1%

McCain slowly gains on Obama

UTICA, New York - Republican John McCain continued a slow advance on Democrat Barack Obama in the race for President, moving back within three percentage points as the race begins to head down the stretch run, the latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby daily tracking poll shows.

McCain now trails Obama by 2.7 points, down from the 3.9 point deficit he faced 24 hours earlier.

Seven-point-one percent of the likely voters surveyed said they remain undecided.

Obama lost five-tenths of a point from yesterday's report, while McCain gained another six-tenths of a point. It was the third consecutive day in which Obama's numbers slipped and McCain's numbers increased.

McCain has once again moved above 45% support overall, a mark he has not seen since the second day of daily tracking reports. Obama's slip under 48% support is the first time at that level in nearly a week. He now stands within one-tenth of a percent of where he stood when the Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby daily tracking began almost two weeks ago. McCain is within two-tenths of a percent of where he was when the tracking poll began.

During the 13 days of the tracking poll, Obama has led by as much as 6.2 points and as little as 1.9 points.

Except for a few hours of polling, this three-day rolling average of telephone polling now includes a sample taken entirely after the final presidential debate last Wednesday.

The tracking poll includes 1,211 likely voters across the country who were surveyed between Oct. 16-18, 2008, at the rate of about 400 per day. The survey, conducted using live telephone interviewers calling from Zogby's call center in Upstate New York, carries a margin of error of +/- 2.9 percentage points.

McCain made a big move Saturday among independent voters, cutting's Obama lead from 16 points to just 8 points. Now, Obama leads by a 46% to 38% margin, with the balance of independents either unsure or supporting someone else. McCain's strong performance at the Alfred E. Smith charity dinner in New York City Thursday, combined with his appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman Thursday night, may have had a positive effect. Other Zogby polling has recently shown that independent undecided voters tend to prefer consuming their politics in such entertainment venues. Obama was also praised for his performance at the Alfred E. Smith dinner.

Both candidates have remained strong among their political bases - McCain wins 90% of Republicans, compared to 88% of Democrats who support Obama.

Men are now, again, tilting very slightly in favor of McCain, who leads by just two percentage points among the group. Among women, Obama leads, but only by six points.

Obama continues to win 18% support among conservative voters, while McCain wins only seven percent among liberals. Among moderates, a demographic that includes substantially more Democrats than Republicans, Obama leads, 61% to 33% for McCain.

Among those who consider themselves investors, McCain retains a small, four-point lead - helpful but no where near as large a margin as Republican George W. Bush enjoyed over his Democratic rival four years ago.

The Weather is here, I wish you were Beautiful

Greetings from Bar Harbor Maine. Got a lot of pics to post. Here's one of the Bass Harbor Lighthouse at Sunset.

Maine is beautiful and the lobster is plentiful. See you along the coast!

Cuckoo's Nest II: The Housing Crisis Denial Sessions

I am Joe

Iowahawk has written a great post about "Joe the Plumber" who has quickly become public enemy number 1 to the moveon.org, nutroots, codepink, types:

Politicians -- Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, et al. -- obviously have to put up with some rude, nasty shit, but it's right there in the jobs description. Joe the Plumber is different. He was a guy tossing a football with his kid in the front yard of his $125,000 house when a politician picked him out as a prop for a 30 second newsbite for the cable news cameras. Joe simply had the temerity to speak truth (or, if you prefer, an uninformed opinion) to power, for which the politico-media axis apparently determined that he must be humiliated, harassed, smashed, destroyed. The viciousness and glee with which they set about the task ought to concern anyone who still cares about citizen participation, and freedom of speech, and all that old crap they taught in Civics class before politics turned into Narrative Deathrace 3000, and Web 2.0 turned into Berlin 1932.0.

That's right folks, Joe Wurzelbacher was playing football in his front yard when the Obamessiah came over with his throngs of followers to evangelize. Yet Wurzelbacher had the unmitigated gall to reject the salvation that the messiah was offering. Of course it would have ended right there if McCain, and the conservative blogosphere hadn't decided to publicize the encounter. But that's not Joe's fault. Since then every aspect of Joe's life has been scrutinized. It seems that all the left's attorneys and investigators have made it back to the lower 48 and are now looking for dirt on a civilian who isn't even running for office.

Just remember that all Joe the Plumber did was ask a question. It was Obama's answer that set this whole thing off:

"My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

I have a friend that tells me that have nothing to fear from Obama, after all I'm in the 7th-10th percentile of wage earners (not the the top five Obama is currently targeting). He says Obama has great economic advisers like Warren Buffet. Well I'm here to tell you that if they are telling him that economic growth comes from the "bottom up" then they are sadly mistaken regardless of how much money they may have.

Socialism works. Really. it does, it does.

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the future.

(H/T Ziva)

Soak the rich!

These are the latest figures from the IRS according to the National Taxpayers Union.

Obama says he's only going to raise taxes on people who make $250,000 or more. But he also says he'll roll back the Bush tax cuts on the top 5 percent. Notice that to be in the top 5% you need an Adjusted Gross Income of $153,542. Now a taxpayer that has an AGI of $150k is doing quite well, but is this person rich? Well that depends. That money goes a lot further in Wyoming than Manhattan. Do you know someone who you suspect has an AGI in the $150k range? Would you say they are "rich"? Or do you think that besides having a few more toys they basically live the same way you do, trying to make ends meet? Do you think they keep a pot of gold in their closets or do you think that less money in their pockets means less money they can put in the pockets of waiters, dry cleaners, car washers, etc.?

Also notice that if you have an AGI of $108k or more that you are part of the the 10% of the taxpaying population that pays 71% of the federal income taxes.

All you need to know about the Cuban "revolution"

Our new blog neighbor, Sunrise in Havana captures the heatbreak and tragedy of castro's damned revolution in one post, "The Ghosts of Communism".

Here is an excerpt, it was hard not to post the entire moving eloquent whole, but this should really only be read in its very poignant entirety. I hope this will lead you to do so:

I was six years old, my brother was one, when my father left Cuba and I will never forget that day, for as long I live. His flight had been canceled two times before, so when he carried me on his shoulders that day I thought he would be back, just like the other times, but he didn't. The following weeks are very blurry, but I recall my mother telling to stop waiting, because he was not ever coming back.

We were denied an exit visa. It was standard procedure to let the husband leave without his family. It was their way of punishing us for not conforming and when young kids where involved, they had the opportunity to indoctrinate them. It would be another eight years before we could see my father again. Every family had someone that had left Cuba, via somewhere in the world.

Please read this heartbreaking, beautiful memoir, here, and take tissue, a lot of tissue.

Friday night escape

It has been a long week my friends, and I don't know about you but I'm beat. If this were an earlier time, say 1957, I would know just where to go to shake off workweek fatigue. I'd pack a bag, head to the airport, and grab a flight on the nightclub in the sky.





Patrons of the high-flying bistro enjoy the show and drinks at 10,000 feet above the ocean on way to Cuba .





Once the party warms up, it's mambo time!







H/T: Fernando

Credits: Henry Durling

Say it ain't so, Jethro

Sherritt drops plans for drilling off Cuba.

Cuba's state-owned Cubapetroleo (Cupet) reported that Sherritt International Corp. has canceled its agreement for operations in Cuban waters, saying the ventures were not viable.

Sherritt's evaluation was that exploration activity was not worth continuing, an option available within its contract, said Cupet Exploration Director Rafael Tenreyro. "They have their reasons for not continuing," he said.

What a shame, especially now that Cuba is swimming in crude oil. The Havana Hillbillies are gonna have to pack of their jeep again.

No comment from Sherritt's mouthpiece, Phil Peters.

A Little Friday Humor

Featuring Little O'Reilly:

Cuban-Americans as Canaries in Coal Mine

Regarding snootiness and backstabbery toward mainstream Republicans, Kathleen Parker is probably outdoing Peggy Noonan. I noticed something interesting: both of these "conservatives" were dissing Cuban-Americans years ago--not overtly, but snidely, in a Wayne Smith/ Phil Peters sort of way.

It seems we're the canaries in the coal mine to detect Republican turncoats. First they turn on us (the supreme chusma-yokels, and the safest to diss within their social circles) shortly they turn on their native chusmas, as in Palin and her supporters.

Regarding the Bay of Pigs, Noonan wrote: "The battle lasted half a day and the invaders quickly surrendered." The muchachos down at the Bay of Pigs vets assoc. could enlighten Ms Noonan on that issue. Upon Castro's debilitation in summer 2006, she wrote an article calling for an end to the embargo, despite the political pressure of Cuban-Americans.

And This column by Parker could have been written by Wayne Smith or Julia Sweig.

I just found this interesting.

Media bias? What in the world would make you think that?

Earlier today I posted about the new AP/Yahoo and Gallup polls, which have the Presidential race in pretty much a statistical dead heat. This comes after the American public has been bombarded for the last couple of weeks with news that polls were indicating an increasing lead by Obama over McCain. So imagine the surprise we all received this morning when Gallup released their newest poll showing Obama only 2-points over McCain, and then the AP/Yahoo poll came out showing the same 2-point lead. Both leads, it is worth noting, are well within the margin of error for the polls.

But for the AP this sudden tightening of the race, it seems, is not the most important feature of the poll. In fact, it is not even worth mentioning. Instead, they write a 1,088 word article titled, "Poll: Voters souring on McCain, Obama stays steady," that delves deep into McCain's falling favorability ratings and how all of America is fed up with the negative ads from McCain's campaign. Not one mention -- NOT ONE -- is made of the slim 2-point margin Obama has over McCain. As a matter of fact, only one mention is made of head-to-head polling, and they actually refer to other polls.

Less than three weeks from Election Day, Obama has taken a solid lead over McCain in most national and swing-state polls. The AP-Yahoo News survey underscores the morale problem McCain faces.

That is true in some polls, but it is certainly not true in their own poll. Obama's lead, in fact, has all but evaporated. But the AP does not want to dwell on such esoteric polling data such as head-to-head match-ups. They prefer instead to tell the American people what percentage of voters are "excited" about their candidate and what percentage are not, and if they prefer boxers or briefs.

They are not being biased, they are just telling the American people the important news.

Proud to say it

I was among the first conservatives to say this about Peggy Noonan when she was caught speaking out of both sides of her mouth:

I can guarantee all of you that this is the last Peggy Noonan piece I ever link to. One thing I always put in my writing is searing honesty regardless of the consequences. Noonan's off-hand remarks make me sick. She's no better than the "bubbleheads" she criticizes. [...]

Today, read an open letter to Ms. Noonan by Jack M. of Ace. Ms. Noonan, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Operation DESTROY THE AMERICAN WORKING STIFF

How many of you are aware of the intense efforts underway to destroy Joe Wurzelbacher? For having the temerity, the gall, to call Obama what he is, a Socialist, he is being systematically destroyed by the tolerant and compassionate liberals of America. Here's one on his mortal sin of -- GASP! -- being unlicensed (untrue, by the way) and another one explaining the newly coined JTPDS (Joe The Plumber Derangement Syndrome), and one from Lori Byrd at TownHall.com.

And finally, from The American Thinker, here's a piece called Joe and the Devil, and another on what awaits us if...

Consider: 16 years ago I was statistically in poverty, but I had dreams and a plan. At the time, the remnants of Reaganomics still set the economic tone and a fired up Newt Gingrich was forcing conservatism on the Clinton White House every time Bill and Hillary tried to move left. There were actually politicians who praised business owners and business in general. Against that backdrop, I've had a pretty good run. It's been extremely challenging and the move up was not a straight line, but I am better off than I was 16 years ago. And 8 years ago. And 4 years ago. And so are a lot of folks who have been on this ride with me.

But Joe, I am not better off than I was just 2 years ago. That's when decades of liberal energy policy came home to roost and four dollar gas took several hundred thousands from my bottom line faster than I could possibly react. That same gas price slammed my customers -- and my customer's customers -- forcing our company into a vice of rapidly rising costs and rapidly dropping revenues. Oh, and for fun, slower payments from our customers.

That started the ripple through the sub prime mortgage industry, and we have all seen the unraveling of our financial system which was more or less totally underpinned by real estate "values." Those assumed valuations were the basis for any number of derivatives and credit swaps and so on. Well, forget all that Wall Street talk. To you and me it means employees are more desperate for money, customers are less willing to buy, slower to pay and banks less willing to lend. It certainly means whatever homes and 401K's you have are worth less too which makes your bank even less anxious to lend to your business. It is the main street carnage of "unfettered government" onto small business. It is the destructive fruit of environmental leftists, the Fannie-Freddie cronies in government and other corrupt liberals in positions of power.

And sadly, this is also the result of George Bush giving into these folks all too often in defense of his "new tone." (That worked out well, didn't it?) This was helped ironically by John McCain "reaching across the aisle" to vote against tax cuts and vote for energy restrictions and so on. All of this was nicely summed up by Mitt Romney when he said that our problems stem from "too many Republicans acting too much like Democrats." Now, if the polls are anywhere near accurate, we are going to get a taste of "real Democrats acting too much like Marxists" for at least a few years.

(H/T Michelle Malkin)

Not only has the fat lady not sung yet...

it seems she may be coming down with a severe case of laryngitis and just might not recover in time to sing at Berracko Obama's election night shindig.

A new AP/Yahoo poll, which sampled 7% more democrats than republicans on the premise that more democrats will turn out to vote this year than republicans, has the Presidential race tightening also:

Unconfirmed reports state that Obama campaign staff have been seen taking hot tea, lemons, and honey to the fat lady's house.

Might as well call him "Jose"

Ive been keepng up with the Joe the plumber story the past couple of days and what the MSM and the lefty blogosphere are doing to this man is basically an acto de repudio.

Apparently, we now live in a country where we cant question "el Maximo Lider."

Obama campaign PROUD of Fidel Castro's endorsement!

"Recent newspaper endorsements of the presidential candidates," boasts the Community Blog section of the official Obama/Biden website, "selected for the quality of their writing and the depths of their insights "

At first I thought I was reading it wrong. Thought maybe the Obama people had googled "endorsements Obama" and listed them without looking. BUT NO. Apparently it was no oversight.

"The first compendium of the best endorsement editorials from many states, & the top 3 papers in Tennessee! & one by Fidel Castro & the Republicans Lugar and Hagel endorsements."

I'm not the only one saying it

Thanks to my buddy Tony S. for sending this. This clash is bigger than we all realize.

The rebellion has begun and it is not a partisan fight

Sandy Rios - Guest Columnist - 10/16/2008 10:00:00 AM

What is that spirit that we recognize and can build on? What is that spirit that we want to connect to...that spirit of rebellion? The spirit of resistance...the spirit of insurgency! It's that spirit we should be talking about. (Bill Ayers, 2007, on the occasion of the 40-year anniversary of the Weather Underground)

Perhaps Ayers' wife, Bernadine Dohrn, expressed that "spirit" best in a public warning at the zenith of the Weather Underground's influence:

Now we are everywhere and next week families and tribes will attack the enemy around the country. We're not just attacking targets; we're bringing the pitiful, helpless giant (the USA) to its knees. Guard your planes...guard your colleges...guard your banks...guard your children...guard your doors.

This election long ago ceased to be a partisan battle between Republicans and Democrats. It really isn't a contest over big and small government, higher or lower taxes, or even abortion and homosexual rights.

Somewhere along the way -- while most of us were enjoying our precious freedoms, taking kids to soccer, ordering pizza and listening to our iPods -- there was another group of people who were at work to destroy America. Even as they enjoyed with us its benefits, they schemed and planned and, moment by moment, inch by inch, gained a footing and we never realized the ground was shifting.

You could say the groundwork was laid in the '50s when radicals who were often synonymous with communists made a concerted attempt to destroy America through infiltration of media, government, and labor unions. Top-secret documents were leaked to the Soviets which resulted in the charge of treason for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. America believed in punishing its traitors then and they paid with their lives.

The children of the '60s, raised in postwar prosperity on the "don't discipline" philosophy of the wildly popular Dr. Benjamin Spock, were fertile young plants for leftist fodder. Throwing off all constraints, they embraced "free love," unbridled drug use and turned with a vengeance on the parents whose system of values they had come from. Their indulgent refusal to embrace rules, coupled with legitimate simmering emotions of the black community over cruelty and discrimination, created the "perfect storm" of protest and violence -- one group rejecting any restraint, the other rebelling from too much of it.

Surely the protest methods were as different as the participants. Hippies were often little more than clueless, spoiled brats dulled by drugs, but others were serious radicals who preyed upon trouble and agitated it with the stated purpose of revolution. They wanted to overthrow the government of the United States of America. The black movement was characterized on the one hand by the high-minded non-violence o