May 21, 2012
FSM HOT TOPICS
Exclusive: Tuesday, September 9
by PRESIDENTIAL WATCH September 9, 2008
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John McCain - The Master Strategist
Caroline Glick, JWR.com
McCain's undoing of the elite, leftist media provides a universal lesson for contending with the Left. At base, the Left's ideology, whether relating to women's rights, human rights, academic inquiry or war and peace is not universal but tribal. Moreover, when the Left is challenged on any one of its signature issues, because it cannot actually make a case for the universal applicability or even logic of its views, it tends instead to embrace the politics of personal destruction while ignoring the obvious contradictions between its stated beliefs and actual behavior.
Although a necessary component of political warfare against the Left is the ability to expose its hypocrisy, exposing its hypocrisy alone will not bring victory. Leaders and policies capable of supplanting the Leftist elite and their failed ideas are also required. In the case at hand, had Palin been perceived as under-qualified to serve as Vice President on Wednesday night, McCain's chances of winning the Presidency would have been vastly diminished despite McCain's successful unmasking of the Left's hypocrisy.
McCain's strategic grasp of the requirements for a successful presidential race provide an important lesson for policymakers and political leaders. To win in politics and war you must be willing to acknowledge both your strengths and your weaknesses and those of your opponent. It is never easy to look reality in the face. But unless leaders are willing to do so, they will never win. What's more, they will lose. Read article.
Palin Bashing Press Keeps Swinging and Missing: No on the Eagleton Option.
Jonah Goldberg, NRO.com
“What is wrong with these people?” was the nigh-upon-universal reaction among conservatives at the GOP convention this week. Liberal reporters inquired of conservative journalists, Republican delegates, right-leaning janitors, free-market short-order cooks, even the guys walking around in elephant suits: Will Sarah Palin drop out? What about the Eagleton Option?
For those who don’t know, the Eagleton Option refers to Thomas Eagleton, George McGovern’s first VP pick in 1972, who was forced to withdraw because of allegations of mental illness.
A hybrid of myth and deceit peddled by the chattering bandersnatches of the Democratic Party’s backup communications offices at MSNBC and other press-release transmission belts of the Obama campaign, the whole pseudo-story was surely the brightest flare in the bonfire of asininity in St. Paul this week.
But it was the Eagleton canard that spoke volumes. First, just as a matter of reportorial fact, as opposed to Keith Olbermann clicking his ruby-red slippers and wishing it were so, the idea that the rank and file of the GOP wanted her gone before her speech was distilled nonsense. Now, it’s plain hilarious.
One good barometer of conservative support: Rush Limbaugh, who is rumored to kick his cat across the room in rage when he hears the name “McCain,” now calls the Arizona senator “John McBrilliant.”
The Eagleton Option exposed the press’ gut instincts, and the viscera are not pretty. Eagleton dropped out because it was leaked that he’d received shock therapy for ill-defined mental problems. Many of those who expected Palin to withdraw see her values and her choices as proof of a mental problem.
How long before the Palin-haters insist she needs shock therapy, too? For her own good, of course. Read article.
Media scrutinzes Palin; gives Obama a Pass
Roger Kimball, Pajamas Media.com
Linda Chavez posted a thoughtful essay comparing the way the press has treated Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. “The biggest story to emerge from the Republican National Convention,” she wrote in “The Unexamined Life,” “was the media’s effort to destroy Gov. Sarah Palin.”
So far, that effort has failed - indeed backfired spectacularly.
Chavez documents more of the same and wonders–in approximately the same rhetorical sense as Mark Steyn’s correspondent–why the media, which has lavished such intense personal curiosity on Palin, her husband, and her children, has displayed such reticence about Barck Obama’s past. The fact that Mr. Palin was cited for DUI in 1986 is dragged out and displayed as evidence of grievous moral failing and, by implication, the political unworthiness of his wife. But what about Obama’s drug use? In his memoir, Obama acknowledges that, as a teenager, he indulged in marijuana, alcohol and “maybe a little blow when you could afford it.” But why hasn’t that admission been followed up on by the bloodhounds of the Fourth Estate? What if it came to light that Sarah Palin had used “maybe a little” cocaine some time in her past? Do you think the press would erect a discreet border labeled noli me tangere around the issue as they have done for Obama? Fat chance.
Chavez ends her post with the observation that “it will be a test of the media’s integrity to see if they devote as much time delving into Sen. Obama’s drug use as they did into Bristol Palin’s sex life.” Personally, I believe that the full story of Obama’s relations with folks like Tony Rezko, Bill Ayres, and Jeremiah Wright is likely to be far more troubling than his teenage (but was it only teenage?) use of drugs. But we’re unlikely to get to the bottom of all that before the election unless Stanley Kurtz has some rapid breakthroughs, which he might. Even then, though, one wonders what the media at large would make of the revelations. Read article.
What do women want now?
Suzanne Fields, JWR.com
Like none before it, this presidential campaign is redefining what it can mean to be a woman. That wizened Austrian doctor who famously asked, "What do women want?" finally concluded that he didn't have a clue. Freud understood, like men before and after him, that women were a mysterious mixture of the good, the bad and the beautiful.
When Geraldine Ferarro, a Democrat, became the first woman vice presidential candidate, she had to put up with questions about her recipe for blueberry muffins. Ultimately, it was questions about her husband's business dealings that did her in.
When Bill Clinton first ran for president, he boasted that voters would get Hillary, too: "Buy one, get one free." Hillary was soon "the Lady MacBeth of Little Rock," resented for her reach for unelected power, and she devised a health care plan that only her husband would support.
When he betrayed her with adultery in the Oval Office, she became the victim, and rode "wifely vulnerability" into the U.S. Senate. When she came close but fell short of the Democratic presidential nomination, feminists cried "sexism" was to blame.
The Palin family has reignited the Mommy Wars, with a vengeance. Can a mother of five, about to be a grandmother of one, have it all? In the abstract, she's a feminist's dream. In the particulars where most of us live, it's harder to say. McCain doesn't think any of these particulars disqualify her. They surely wouldn't disqualify a man.
So the wheel of sexual politics turns again. Mother Nature will out, as she always will, and if biology is not destiny she sure has a lot to say about how men and women live their lives — even candidates for president and vice president of the United States. But Sarah Palin's parents were right: This is America, and every woman can walk through every door of opportunity. Read article.
Sexism in the Twin Cities
Salena Zito. PittsburghLive.com
The one thing that Democrats, Republicans and analysts agreed on regarding Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin was that the double standards on parenting directed toward her crossed all kinds of lines.
"I think it is highly sexist to suggest that Sarah Palin cannot be a good mom and run for office," said Kate Michelman, an adviser to Democrat Barack Obama.
Michelman, a premier advocate of abortion rights, faced a different form of sexism during the run-up to the Democrats' primaries: MSNBC hardballer Chris Matthews asserted that she had "abandoned her commitment to the women's movement" by backing Obama instead of Hillary Clinton.
So much for the glass ceiling being broken.
"Sexism is all over the place," said Purdue political science professor Bert Rockman. "It's assumed that the mom will do everything at home and maybe work 60 hours a week, too. But if things go wrong, it's her fault, not dad's."
Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate, says what he heard and saw while attending last week's GOP convention here was "sexism from the media in the worst way." Read article.
Hillary Plans a "Dem' Fatale - Will Stump in Florida to Parry Palin Appeal
NY Post.com
With the presidential race in a dead heat, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been enlisted to blunt the formidable impact of GOP running mate Sarah Palin by stumping for Barack Obama in Florida tomorrow.
The Alaska governor's powerhouse speech at the Republican convention last week bounced John McCain back into a tie with Obama - wiping out a six-point lead Democrats held after their Denver convention.
That's a significant drop from polls taken right after Obama's Invesco Field speech, when the Illinois senator was a clear front-runner. The convention "bounces" canceled each other out.
The Rasmussen survey also indicated McCain was peeling away Obama's female support. Obama's 14-point lead among women as of last Tuesday had been cut in half - down to 51 to 44 percent. Among men, McCain retained his average three-point lead.
Her Tampa appearance on Sept. 8 had been coordinated before Palin was named to the GOP ticket, after Clinton had signed on to the roster of heavy-hitting female Democrats like Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, whom Obama's camp deploys as surrogates across the nation. Read article.
Who Financed Obama's Law School Education - and why?
Judith Klinghoffer, HNN US blogs.com
I have always assumed that Barack Hussein Obama paid for his law school in the manner most students do, by taking out loans. Not so, reports Kenneth R. Timmerman. In his autobiography he describes the qualms he had about leaving "his people" to go to Harvard and better himself. Apparently he did more than that. He used his community organizing ties to raise funds to finance his legal education. His good fairy was a Muslim radical named Dr. Khalid al Mansour. A lawyer with close ties to Saudi princes. As they were not sure Obama can get in on his own merits, Mansour got Percy Sutton to write letters to all his Harvard buddies.
In other words, he financed his education in the same manner he financed his house, with a little help from his unsavory friends who also happened to be Muslims.
But why are they so "helpful?" Is he groomed for something very "special?" Read article.
Liberal Media, Liberal Garbage, Liberal Rewards
AJ DeCintio, NMJ.us
You’ve got to give liberals one thing: If they’re nothing else, they’re consistent about spewing garbage, thereby proving that those who make a religion of politics and gods of politicians will lie any lie, hiss any hypocrisy, sell out any mother, and Sister Souljah any principle if they believe doing so might earn them a scrap of political power.
That thought comes to mind because no sooner had I finished writing that Governor Palin must prepare herself to bear “the worst slings and arrows of outrageous presidential politics” than, like everyone else, I found myself up to my nose in reeking liberal filth that seeks to make political hay of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy.
Here, if you will hold your noses, is some of the rotten stuff.
Let’s begin with a post the Daily Kos was happy to print: Read article.
Obama May Bring Criminal Charges Against Bush
Jim Meyers, NewsMax.com
Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden said he and presidential hopeful Barack Obama could bring criminal charges against the Bush administration if they are elected in November.
“If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued,” Biden said during a campaign stop in Florida on Monday, ABC News reported.
“Not out of vengeance, not out of retribution. Out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president — no one is above the law.”
Biden promised that an Obama-Biden government would go through Bush administration data with "a fine-toothed comb" and pursue criminal charges if necessary. Read article.
Hypocrisy in the Kultursmog
Editorial, NY Sun.com
In this election year, "change" has been the catnip of the liberals. It renders them blissful. Change will put an end to the dominance of American politics by the "Washington insiders." And the instrumentality of that "change" will be a first-term senator of unassailable probity, Senator Obama, who curiously enough began his career a decade ago in Chicago as a cog in the political machine of Mayor Daley.
To the critics' charges that Prophet Obama is short on experience his supporters respond that he has enormous experience, which is obviously untrue. Also he has chosen as his running mate Senator Biden, a six-term Washington insider, who is a rough and tough Irish guy from the hell's kitchen of Scranton, Penn., which is about the first time that the public has heard that stretcher.
Yet these palpably absurd claims have taken on the dimension of commonplace truth in the political press. A presidential candidate running on the claim that he is new to the dirty game of politics can claim he is sufficiently experienced to hold the highest office in the land. What is more, he can claim that he is unencumbered by Washington insiders, while boasting of his Washington insider running mate, whose record, by the way, as an airhead and occasional plagiarist is apparently going to be officially overlooked. Read article.
Sarah Palin: the Left’s Latest “Emmanuel Goldstein”
Arnold Ahlert, Political Mavens.com
In George Orwell’s “1984″ the totalitarian government created a character named Emmanuel Goldstein whose image was broadcast every day during a period called “Two Minutes Hate.” The idea was that giving the people an enemy to regularly despise would keep them ideologically loyal. The American left’s treatment of Sarah Palin looks remarkably similar.
If one was unaware of the current state of liberal politics and “unbiased” journalism, one could be forgiven for thinking that John McCain has nominated a spawn of Satan to be his running mate. Or perhaps that is a stretch since one would assume that a devil’s disciple would have some “experience.”
Why such frenzied anger and vitriol directed at a newcomer to the national stage? Necessity. For almost eight years, the left and its media lapdogs have had their Emmanuel Goldstein, aka George W. Bush, to demonize absent any sense of balance or restraint. They have made character assassination such an integral part of their political strategy that the end of his administration has literally created a vacuum. Read article.
Michelle's Boot Camps For Radicals
IBD Editorials.com
Democrats' reintroduction of militant Michelle Obama in Denver was supposed to show her softer side. But it only highlighted a radical part of her resume: Public Allies.
Barack Obama was a founding member of the board of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife became executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies in 1993. Obama plans to use the nonprofit group, which he features on his campaign Web site, as the model for a national service corps. He calls his Orwellian program, "Universal Voluntary Public Service."
Big Brother had nothing on the Obamas. They plan to herd American youth into government-funded reeducation camps where they'll be brainwashed into thinking America is a racist, oppressive place in need of "social change."
The pitch Public Allies makes on its Web site doesn't seem all that radical. It promises to place young adults (18-30) in paid one-year "community leadership" positions with nonprofit or government agencies. They'll also be required to attend weekly training workshops and three retreats.
In exchange, they'll get a monthly stipend of up to $1,800, plus paid health and child care. They also get a post-service education award of $4,725 that can be used to pay off past student loans or fund future education.
But its real mission is to radicalize American youth and use them to bring about "social change" through threats, pressure, tension and confrontation — the tactics used by the father of community organizing, Saul "The Red" Alinsky. Read article.
Hurricane Sarah Shakes Up the Race
Richard Baehr, American Thinker.com
We are dealing now with two transformational candidates, who create lots of energy among their supporters, in the same race. Obama is a demigod to African Americans, the hard left and many young people. Palin is an inspiration to many women, and conservatives. The momentum may be with the McCain Palin ticket at this point, since suddenly the Republicans will have the ground troops in states like Ohio, as the Bush campaign did, to compete with Obama's large ground operation.
Rasmussen's survey also shows that the Democrats' partisan identification advantage has fallen each of the last three months, and is now only 6%. The Democrats' lead had been as much as 10% earlier in the year.
The Palin pick lifted GOP support for McCain to the 90% level. Higher support among a growing group is good news for McCain. With some blander running mate, McCain would have been out-hustled on the ground. Now he may hold his own.
Obama has been in the public eye for nearly two years. Palin is fresher, newer, and arguably more appealing, an advantage in a short general election season of but 60 remaining days. A record number of people will likely watch the VP debate, and they will not be tuning in to see Joe Biden. Read article.
Election Woes Defined by Prose
Jerry Molen, Dale Design.net
"We just experienced an over hyped, positively outrageous primary election season that has left me cold and wondering where the heads of our citizens are hiding out. Must be someplace where the sun doesn't get to very often.
At one time in my life I was a determined, dedicated and ever loyal registered Democrat. Then something happened (Lyndon Baines Johnson) that turned my life around and gave me much pause as to the veracity of a party that dwelt on and fed off of the most unfortunate among us.
Some of those unfortunates were in their positions in life by way of their own choosing and others were there by circumstance. But always, always with a door open to them to reach for new heights, achieve new goals, change their lives for the better. And also, always ever present were the bottom feeders doing everything they could to take advantage of those who had not or have not seen the light of better days and times nor realizing they were in fact the masters of their own destiny. They had come to believe that they were dependent on those in power in Washington and that they would look out for them and take care of their every need. They are still waiting and expecting all those promised freebies.
Most people aren't even aware that the Democrats ruled Washington for over 40 years. It wasn't until 1994 when the so called Gingrich Revolution changed that for a short period of time. Nor do people realize that it was the Dem's that created the failed policies of the many entitlement programs that are falling apart right before our eyes. Please do not think I find the Republicans blameless in all this. They too, suffer from ego inflation and greed motivators built into the system. It's just that the past few months I've listened to the rantings and railings of the left in America calling for more giveaways and better ways to obtain the proverbial 'free lunch'.
I think that to sum up my feelings and why I am so set apart from those within the circles of political power and influence can be illustrated best by a quote by noted basketball legend and talk show co-host Charles Barkley:
"Poor people have been voting for Democrats for the last fifty years
and they are still poor." Read article.
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Occupy Chicago freakout: The LRAD is coming, the LRAD is coming!
May 21, 2012 00:57 AM
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Michael Moore spreads hysterical, anti-police fable from his Occupy comrades
May 21, 2012 00:37 AM
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May 20, 2012 11:09 PM
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Marion Barry has change of heart after being saved by Filipino hospital staff
May 20, 2012 10:00 PM
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May 20, 2012 06:15 PM
Violence erupts at the end of the NATO Summit protests. Earlier today, members of Black Bloc were arrested for plotting to attack police stations, Mayor Emanuel's home and President Obama's campaign headquarters. Their violence then turned to the protest; police in riot gear move in, wearing gas masks. Protesters are throwing things at police according to video, live photos and reports from on the ground in Chicago.
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