May 21, 2012
FSM HOT TOPICS
Exclusive: Thursday, September 11
by PRESIDENTIAL WATCH September 11, 2008
Would Obama like to take back his "Lipstick on a Pig" remark? - SEE HERE.
Interesting facts, comparisons on Obama-Biden on gun, 2nd Amendment issue - SEE HERE.
Treasure trove of information about Barack Obama - GO HERE.
For the truth about Sarah Palin, CLICK RIGHT HERE.
Team Clinton Says Obama Intimidated By Palin Factor
Jason Horowitz, NY Observer.com
With the McCain campaign running tactical circles every day around the Obama outfit—which has failed, somewhat unbelievably, to come up with even a semi-compelling response to the Palin selection—one might think Mrs. Clinton, to say nothing of her sidelined husband, would be a useful surrogate on the counterattack right about now. Apparently, the Obama campaign does not agree.
“My concern is that I see them as totally reactive right now as opposed to getting out there on their own and saying what the hell they are about,” said Leon Panetta, a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton who has advised Mr. Obama. “They seem to be intimidated by the Palin pick. They seem to be intimidated by how the Republicans are coming at them on change. And you cannot win if you are constantly on defense.”
Mr. Panetta added, “As president of the United States you are going to have to learn how to deal with people you may not particularly like, because if you are trying to get things done, you have got to use everything and everybody that you can to get it done. I do think that they absolutely in this race have got to make use of the Clintons in every possible way, because they need them. He has clearly got some problems out there.” Read article.
Who Vetted Obama - Inspector Clouseau or Maxwell Smart?
Don Feder, GrasstopsUSA.com
Ever since John McCain announced Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, the left has been in irony overdrive.
Among other raps, McCain is charged with tokenism for choosing a woman as his running mate -- unlike the Democrats, whose choice for president had nothing to do with race, which is why they remind us at least hourly that Barack Obama is the first major-party African-American presidential candidate.
Regarding Palin, the left and its lapdog media are fixated on the following: 1. Her alleged lack of experience (2 years in the governorship versus Obama’s 3 ½ years in the Senate) 2. Her unmarried, 17-year-old daughter’s pregnancy, with the implication that this calls into question her parenting skills (never mind that the left created the culture in which it’s all too common for teens to get pregnant) and 3. The allegation that, as governor, one of her firings was politically motivated. (Appoint a special prosecutor, posthaste!)
The foregoing caused knee-jerk commentators to question whether the McCain campaign had properly and thoroughly vetted Palin.
The McCain camp is charged with gross negligence in vetting Palin. Is she really, truly qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? they rhetorically inquire.
I'd like to know who vetted Barack Obama? Certainly not the millions who voted for him in the Democratic primaries, the party regulars who lined up solidly behind him, the mainstream media who catapulted a one-term, celebrity Senator into the presidential race, or the 50% of the electorate who currently say they’ll vote for him.
There are enough skeletons in Obama’s closet to decorate Halloween Town. Other than his charisma and teleprompter talent, everything about him screams Red Alert. Read article.
Palin’s Torpedo Should Sink NBC
Jed Babbin, Human Events.com
Back in the good old days -- when MSNBC’s liberal bias was merely overt -- the network was capable of embarrassment. Now, the network has chosen sides in the presidential election, and it is engaging in political activism.
Apparently at the direction of corporate parent GE, both MSNBC and its broadcast sister NBC have become Obama surrogates, so Republicans must tackle them just as they’ll have to tackle Hillary Clinton, CBS and the New York Times. If they were doing to Obama what they’re doing to McCain and Palin, Jesse Jackson would have organized a boycott of GE.
Maybe the RNC should outsource a GE boycott to Jackson.
Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough reported that on his first night at MSNBC -- the night of George Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address -- “…I was shocked because there were actually people in the newsroom that were booing the president actually from the beginning to the end.” Scarborough said he talked to then MSNBC executive (now MSNBC president) Phil Griffin about it, and Griffin “turned red very quickly.”
That was when MSNBC management upheld the pretense of journalism. No longer.
During the Republican Convention, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said Sarah Palin was a torpedo aimed at Obama and Biden. But Chris should look at the angle of the deck beneath him, because NBC -- much more than Sen. Obama -- was hit by Palin, and it’s sinking quickly. Read article.
Wooten tells CNN he made mistakes: Trooper says he feels stressed from media spotlight.
Wesley Loy, Flopping Aces.net
Embattled state Trooper Mike Wooten, in an interview aired Friday on the CNN cable news network, admitted he'd made some mistakes and is feeling stress from having his troubles with the Palin family splashed across the national news media.
Wooten didn't directly discuss allegations that Gov. Sarah Palin abused her powers by pressuring her former public safety commissioner to fire the trooper, who was involved in a rough divorce with Palin's sister.
Wooten told CNN: "You know, I was young and I made mistakes and I was punished for those mistakes. I learned my lesson. They're behind me and I'm trying to move on and be the best dad I can be to my children and be the best trooper that I can be. You know, I love my job and I love this state." Read article.
Biden Has Experience But No Expertise In Foreign Policy
Joe Bell, Opinion Editorials.com
After Senator Barack Obama chose Senator Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate the media gushed over what a tremendous choice it was and how it strengthened the Democrat's ticket. Biden, the public was told, is an expert in foreign relations. It would have been accurate to say Biden has dealt with foreign policy issues. However, the policies he has championed reveals he is no expert. In fact, on the great issues that have faced the nation since he entered office Biden has generally been wrong. Experience is useless if the decisions you have made while gaining that experience have been incorrect. Yes, Biden has experience but he has demonstrated consistently poor judgment.
In December 2001, President Bush announced the United States would withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. It was the right decision for a variety of reasons. First, the U.S. had signed the document with a nation (the Soviet Union) that no longer existed. Second, the threats facing America had changed between 1972 and 2001. As far back as May 1999, former CIA director James Woolsey testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that withdrawal from the ABM Treaty was “a reasonable position.”
Woolsey cited reasons to view the treaty differently: The possibility of an accidental or unauthorized missile launch from Russia; the increase of a nuclear threat from rogue nations; China’s increasingly bellicose position with respect to Taiwan and its missile threat against the United States.
Despite the solid reasons to abandon a treaty that had outlived its purpose, as well as one of its signers, Biden wanted the U.S. to remain tethered to the Cold War relic.
During the Reagan years Biden opposed the president’s proposal to place intermediate range nuclear missiles in Europe to counter Soviet missiles. The plan was for the U.S. to introduce missiles into the theater while negotiating for a mutual reduction with Moscow. Senator Joe ‘The Expert’ Biden considered Reagan’s plan a greater threat to peace than the Soviet Union, which had violated the status quo by placing its missiles in Europe. Read article.
Palin Should Come Out Swinging in Debate
Doug Patton, Reality Check.com
On the night of Thursday, October 2nd, first-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will face off against six-term U.S. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware in their only scheduled debate of this campaign season. The conventional wisdom says that Biden, while being careful not to appear mean or condescending toward Gov. Palin, must simply display the fruits of his 35 years of experience in Washington in order to hold his own. But as is so often the case, conventional wisdom fails to take into account how wrong Biden has been on almost everything over the years.
While John McCain was still being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton, Joe Biden, like every flippant Democrat of that time, came to the U.S. Senate opposing the Vietnam War. Once elected, he voted to cut off funds to the South Vietnamese government, thereby ensuring a Communist victory.
In the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan was facing down the Soviet Union’s “evil empire,” Joe Biden favored the utopian notion of a nuclear freeze and opposed the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative, saying, “The president’s continued adherence to SDI constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft.”
Biden supported Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega and fought Reagan’s attempts to support the Contras opposing him. He also opposed many other necessary weapons systems, such as the Trident submarine, the B-2 bomber and the Pershing ballistic missile.
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the whole world rose up to support the coalition led by President George H.W. Bush. Not Joe Biden. He opposed the use of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf War, thereby voting to allow Saddam Hussein to continue raping and pillaging a neighboring country, stealing their oil and threatening the nearby Saudi Arabian oil fields. Read article.
A Heartbeat Away
William Kristol, NY Times.com
"We’re not running against Governor Palin.” - David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s chief strategist, on “Fox News Sunday,” Sept. 7, 2008.
Actually, the Obama campaign is running (in part) against Sarah Palin. Her name will appear with John McCain’s on the ballot. She’ll debate Joe Biden on Oct. 2. And as the new kid on the block, she’ll continue to get substantial media coverage over the next two months.
Will that coverage continue to be as belittling of Palin as much of it has been so far? Probably. It’s not just that many in the media don’t like her politics and don’t identify with her socially or culturally. They’re offended that McCain picked Palin without, so to speak, consulting them. The establishment media take pride in their role as gatekeeper to our political process and social discourse.
So the gatekeeper media’s reaction has been: Who is Sarah Palin to suddenly show up on the national stage? We didn’t vet her. And we don’t approve of her. Read article.
The End of Boomer Weirdness?
James Lewis, American Thinker.com
"Boomer Weirdness" is the great eruption of irrationality that seized the West three decades ago, when the Boomer Left rose to positions of power. I don't think the Boom Generation as a whole is any madder than other generations; but the Boomer Left --- ah, now we're talkin' several curlicues short of a plumb line.
When the Boomer Left "Marched Through the Institutions" (as they called it) in the 1970s and 80s, you could actually see a sudden wild swerve in our news media, our universities and politics. The Democratic Party was seized by the Far Left after the 1968 Chicago convention. The New York Times went PC in the 70s, and you could actually see the new, Far Left orthodoxy lock down in a matter of months. It hasn't recovered yet.
But it wasn't just the US. Today the old, high-brow Times of London reads like a tabloid, with girlie pics and all. Britain is now a shadow of its former self; nobody knows if it will ever recover. Europe has become a defense parasite on the United States, and we tolerate it. The Western world went from rational thinking to the Planet of the Weird. It's been slip-slidin' away ever since. Normal people watch it happening everywhere, and they feel utterly helpless to stem this epidemic weirdness, often rising to the level of criminality.
Our Leftist politicians are all kind of weird. From Howard Dean's Scream to Obama's uncontrollable God Complex, from Hillary Who Must be Queen to Bill's sly seductions, all the way to John Kerry's delusions of Swiftboat heroics, and Algore's weird idea that NASA should launch a hundred-million dollar satellite specifically to beam TV pictures of a rotating Planet Earth back to all of us -- these people are not planted on terra firma. They have little planetoids going around their heads. Read article.
A Negotiator Without Preconditions
James P. Lucier, Spectator.org
Would you trust Sarah Palin to negotiate with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions?
Well, why not?
Palin came into the governor's office and found a mess on her desk. The oil deal struck by defeated Republican governor Frank Murkowski wasn't working. Through creative accounting by big oil and ambiguous reporting standards, the Murkowski plan just wasn't giving the State of Alaska the pay-off that was expected. So the former mayor of Wasilla (population 9,000, as the MSM always points out) demanded that the agreement be renegotiated and the terms be nailed down.
They laughed when she sat down to negotiate, but in the end she had a new deal that delivered 50 percent of the oil revenues to the Alaska Permanent Fund, and enabled Palin to send a check for $1,200 to every qualified Alaskan citizen.
Despite its advertising campaign trying to suggest that BP means "Beyond Petroleum," the company has one of the worst environmental records in the United States with its refineries blowing up and its pipelines bursting, the result -- as testimony showed -- of parsimonious budgets for maintenance. It is a formidable corporation.
So enter the PTA community organizer from Wasilla. Without preconditions she took on a company that has a market cap of $205 billion and annual revenues of $291 billion in worldwide operations. Its budget is larger than that those of most sovereign countries, yet she won on her terms. If she can outsmart BP, the company that started the Middle East conflict, she can easily outsmart Ahmadinejad, if need be. Read article.
Who is Leo Thorsness and why is he supporting John McCain?
PowerlineBlog.com
When the McCain campaign invited me to meet with Leo Thorsness yesterday, I vaguely recalled him as a Vietnam veteran who had narrowly lost a 1974 Senate race to George McGovern in the toxic afermath of Watergate. That recollection proved accurate, but his record contains a few other items of interest. He is a native Minnesotan, having been born into a farm family near Walnut Grove, Minnesota, and graduated from Walnut Grove High School in 1950. He attended South Dakota State College, where he met his wife in the freshman registration line. In January 1951 he enlisted in the Air Force and graduated from pilot school in 1954. He was a career fighter pilot, reaching the rank of colonel and accumulating 5,000 hours of flying time.
Colonel Thorsness flew 92 S Wild Weasel missions over North Vietnam. He earned the Medal of Honor for a Wild Weasel mission he flew on April 19, 1967, 11 days before being shot down. His Medal of Honor citation tells the story, but the Air Force account of his heroics makes a somewhat more readable narrative: Read article.
Obama: I Am Qualified For President Because I Am Running For President
Charles Signorile, Gather.com
Will someone please get this man a teleprompter! As much as I enjoy watching Obama stutter and look utterly confused when asked an off the cuff question, it is now becoming somewhat embarrassing to see a man who may be our next President look so helpless when asked questions by media pundits. On Anderson Cooper Sunday night Barack Obama was asked the difference between his own experience, and that of Sarah Palin. This is a question Obama should have been well prepared for, as his own campaign opened that door when questioning her experience. Here is his response:
AC: Some Republican critics say, you don't have the experience to handle a situation like this [Hurricane Gustav]. They've in fact said that Governor Palin has more executive experience as mayor of a small town and as governor of a big state like Alaska. What's your response?
BO: Well, you know, my understanding is that, uh, Governor Palin's town of Wasilly [sic] has, uh, 50 employees, uh, uh, we've got 2500, uh, in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. Uh, uh, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. Uh, so I think that, uh, our ability to manage large systems, uh, and to, uh, execute, uh, I think has been made clear over the last couple of years. Uh, and certainly, in terms of, uh, the legislation that I've passed just dealing with this issue post-Katrina, uh, of how we handle emergency management. The fact that, uh, many of my recommendations were adopted and are being put in place, uh, as we speak indicates to extent to which we can provide the kinds of support and good service that the American people expect.
Barack Obama has chosen to ignore Palin’s time spent as Governor in the same manner as the majority of his followers have. By concentrating on her time as Mayor of a small town he believes he can downplay her experience. The glaring problem with this plan is that he is referring to her as Governor Palin. As a sitting Governor, Sarah Palin’s responsibilities dwarf those of Barack Obama’s, to a point where Obama looks naive for even attempting to compare the two. Read article.
Organizer in Chief - Obama's Controversial Roots
Steven Malanga, NY Post.com
Barack Obama represents the first appearance in a presidential race of a rela tively new political type: the community organizer.
His past as a local activist in Chicago has provoked sneers from Republicans and questions from most voters. What the heck is a community organizer, where do these folks get their money - and why are they so controversial?
The roots of community organizing stretch back to the 1930s and the efforts of organizer Saul Alinsky, founder of the Industrial Areas Foundation and author of "Rules for Radicals," to organize people in low-income areas into a political force to combat the political machine that ran Chicago.
Alinsky won many admirers on the Left, but it took President Lyndon Johnson's War On Poverty to supercharge community organizing by directing billions of federal dollars to neighborhood groups with the naive and ambiguous goal of "empowering" communities. Read article.
Democrats and Community Disorganizing
Russ Vaughn, American Thinker.com
[Reader comment: Spot on accurate, and this is proven by the simple fact that the worst economies in the country are almost always in the states that have had the most liberal Governors, the most union activities, and no doubt the most "community organizing."
Union guys keep voting Democrats who keep ruining the business climate. What's the old saying about doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results?]
In response to Rudy Giuliani's and Sarah Palin's convention jibes at The O's experiences as a community organizer, the Obama campaign is issuing statements of outrage, reminding us all that Barack Obama was ministering to South Chicago residents whose lives had been devastated by the recent closing of nearby steel mills which had been the economic engine driving that community.
What the O's minions are failing to take into consideration is that much of the economic hardship brought upon his unfortunate constituents was the consequence of actions by two other major Democrat Party constituencies, Big Labor and environmentalists, both over-empowered by an over-regulating federal government.
Too-high wages with too-cushy benefits, too-extreme environmental demands and harassing over-regulation by big government drove the steel industry from America and straight into the hands of growing Asian economies, leaving those unfortunates in South Chicago to wonder just what the hell had happened to their high-paying jobs and the rosy retirements their union-backed, Democratic political machine had promised them.
Under an Obama administration, a similar fate awaits larger segments of America, fired by the same union-driven, high wage, protectionist policies and environmental extremism of those earlier times. Democrats, socialists, Marxists and union leaders (yes I know those terms are redundant) never seem to grasp the truth of hoary aphorisms such as, "Don't bite the hand that feeds you," or "Don't kill the golden goose," and "Don't foul your own nest." Read article.
The Importance Of Age And Experience
IBD Editorials.com
Are age and experience important in judging presidential candidates? If history is any guide, the answer is "absolutely."
America's most productive and successful presidents since the end of World War II were Harry Truman, a Democrat, and Ronald Reagan, a Republican. Truman took office one month from his 62nd birthday and left office a few months before his 70th. Reagan became president 17 days before his 70th birthday and left office 17 days before his 78th.
The average age of the first nine U.S. presidents, who served from 1789 to 1829, was 59 when they were first inaugurated, and five of them served eight years in office. U.S. life expectancy at the time was only 49 years. How would you relate those ages to the situation today, when people live much longer?
A presidential candidate with an extra 15 or 20 years of practical executive experience over his opponent has an irreplaceable advantage. With that experience comes greater wisdom, better judgment and fewer serious mistakes, particularly in the critically complex and dangerous decisions involving national security and foreign policy. Read article.
Help! I'm a Hollywood Republican
Robert J. Avrech, FrontpageMag.com
I'm a Republican. A heretofore secret Hollywood Republican. I know men and women who are heavy drug addicts and they have no problem finding employment in Hollywood. I know men and women who are gambling addicts and they work pretty regularly. There's even a director who was arrested for child molestation and yet was hired by Disney - yes, Disney - to helm a picture, and people defended this decision by saying even child molesters have a right to work. I would bet my bottom dollar that all these people are on the correct side of the political spectrum. They are liberal democrats.
Me, I'm a Republican. A conservative Republican. I believe passionately in free market capitalism. I believe in the Second Amendment, i.e., the right to bear arms (I even own several guns and go to the shooting range with friends from shul several times a month). I despise communism and fascism, and I believe there is a special place in hell for Islamic totalitarians and their Western apologists - probably 99.9 percent of Hollywood people.
Let's be clear about one thing. Hollywood people are glamorous. But that's about it. They are ill informed about jihad. They are ill informed about Islam. They are ill informed about Israel, the PA, Iraq, Afghanistan. They are ill informed about U.S. history, the Constitution, etc. The truth is, the movie people I've met are ignorant about most everything - save the weekend grosses of the top ten films. That they know like human computers. Read article.
Biden's Son, Brother Named in Two Suits
Washington Post.com
A son and a brother of Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate, are accused in two lawsuits of defrauding a former business partner and an investor of millions of dollars in a suspect hedge fund deal that went sour, court records show.
The Democratic vice presidential candidate’s son Hunter, 38, and brother James, 59, assert instead that their former partner defrauded them by misrepresenting his experience in the hedge fund industry and recommending that they hire a lawyer with felony convictions.
The legal actions have been playing out in New York State Supreme Court since 2007, and they focus on Hunter and James Biden’s involvement in Paradigm Companies LLC, a hedge fund group. Hunter Biden, a Washington lobbyist, briefly served as president of the firm.
A lawsuit filed by their former partner Anthony Lotito Jr. asserts in court papers that the deal was crafted to get Hunter Biden out of lobbying because his father was concerned about the impact it would have on his bid for the White House. Biden was running for the Democratic nomination at the time the suit was filed.
Hunter Biden was made president with an annual salary of $1.2 million, despite his inexperience in the hedge fund industry, the lawsuit said. Before that, he had been part of the Washington law firm Oldaker, Biden & Belair, which earned $1.76 million in lobbying revenue in the first half of 2006, according to Congressional Quarterly’s CQ MoneyLine. One of its biggest clients is the National Association of Shareholder and Consumer Attorneys, a District-based group representing law firms specializing in investment and corporate law.
Hunter Biden is one of many children and relatives of prominent members of Congress who have made their careers as lobbyists. He returned to lobbying after less than a year with Paradigm. Lotito’s lawsuit alleges that James Biden called him in January 2006 to arrange a job for Hunter Biden. Read article.
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