May 21, 2012
FSM HOT TOPICS
Exclusive: Friday, September 12
by PRESIDENTIAL WATCH September 12, 2008
Dennis Prager: What I saw at the two conventions - CLICK HERE.
“Values Voters” to hold mini-convention - GO HERE.
Listen to Mike Gravel commenting on Sarah Palin - CLICK HERE.
Obama And 9/11
IBD Editorials.com
Eight days after terrorism declared war on America, a young state senator blamed it on "a failure of empathy" — yet another reason why Barack Obama should never be commander in chief.
According to Barack Obama, the madness that drove terrorists to turn passenger jets into manned cruise missiles aimed at our centers of finance, government and military power "grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair."
As if the answer to the attacks should have been food stamps for al-Qaida.
He wrote, "We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle Eastern descent."
We should also be just as concerned, he felt, with "American anger and bigotry" as we were about al-Qaida. Read article.
Plagiarism Alert: Did Obama Steal His Lines from The Washington Post?
No QuarterUSA.net
Just a short while ago, in live comments aired on CNN, Barack Obama had the audacity to say that his lipstick-on-a-pig line was an “innocent remark.”
Excuse me? “Innocent”? Firstly, it was clear from your own crowd’s reaction (gasps followed by applause) that they believed you were referring to Sarah Palin. Secondly, you may think that most of us are bitter, gun-clinging, Bible-totting “white trash,” but we’re not dumb enough to buy that you didn’t mean exactly what you said, Barack. Your remark was a direct response to Sarah Palin’s now forever-famous and -beloved ad lib about hockey moms in her RNC acceptance speech. And, you elitist, by calling Sarah Palin and John McCain “pigs,” you’re reinforcing the stereotype adopted by the D.C. elitists that anybody for McCain/Palin has to be “white trash.”
NOW look at what reporter Warner Todd Huston at Newsbusters.org discovered (via Memeorandum.com):
It is looking like Obama’s comments were not off the cuff, but scripted. And, not only were they scripted, but they were stolen without attribution from a Washington Post political cartoon by Tom Toles from September 5. Will the media notice? Read article.
Was McCain the stinky old fish?
Victor Davis Hanson, NRO.com
In all the furor over the Obama "pig" quote, commentators forgot to examine his entire attack:
"You can put lipstick on a pig. "It's still a pig."
"You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink."
When read in the entire context you can see what he seems to mean with his dual animate male/female references and why he probably evoked two metaphors: most would think that Obama is talking about both on the ticket and his anger how each has expropriated his change motif.
So in that sense he appears both to insult the 72-year old McCain as the "old fish" that is still going to "stink", and to refer to Palin, who had famously evoked the metaphor of lipstick in a nationally televised address, as still the pig despite the lipstick.
The fact that he used two metaphors to attack the two, and used expressions referring both to age and Palin's recent use of "lipstick" don't seem to be accidents and that's why the cooing crowd got the old fish=McCain;lipsticked pig=Palin immediately.
Someone in the campaign has got to manage the ex tempore carelessness. Read article.
The reason for the news media's panic is clear
Jack Kelly, JWR.com
"We need to throw every last molecule of s**t we've got at McCain and Palin," said a poster at the Democratic Underground. "Demonize them. Dehumanize them."
Panic brings out the ugliness in ugly people. And ugliness of this sort is not restricted to moonbat bloggers.
"In the press galleries at the convention, journalists wrinkled their noses in disgust when Piper, Ms. Palin's youngest daughter, was filmed kitty-licking her baby brother's hair in place," wrote David Carr in the New York Times Sunday.
How black must your soul be for you to be "disgusted" by a six-year-old girl who is behaving lovingly toward her baby brother?
News organizations have flooded Alaska with investigative reporters, hoping to dig up something — anything — bad to say about Sarah Palin. As mayor of Wasilla in 1996, did she try to ban from the public library books that weren't published until 1998?
The sewer that is the left-wing blogosphere pumps its bilge directly into the "mainstream" media. Read article.
The GOP Resurrection
Tony Blankley, Rasmussen Reports.com
In the past 30 years or so, since presidential conventions no longer actually have decided the nominees, their usual purpose has been to focus and project a positive image of the already chosen candidate (and, of course, disparage the opponent). But last week in St. Paul, Minn., the GOP convention was different. It not only enhanced but also -- at least for the moment -- reversed-fielded the image of the Republican ticket.
In the aftermath of that reversal, the entire presidential contest has been upended. It also hastened (or perhaps even made possible at all) the change of the human image of the GOP from Bush/Cheney to McCain/Palin.
Until last week, Sen. McCain was running as the boring candidate of experience and was unable to substantially replace Bush as the image of the party. With Bush having a 70 percent negative image, he not only was dragging down McCain but also constituted a drowning weight on the buoyancy of Republican candidates at the federal, state and local levels.
But with the addition of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the ticket, suddenly and spontaneously, McCain the reformer, McCain the maverick stopped being a GOP talking point and became incarnate. It is not only that the Alaska governor is a genuine reformer but also that by every aspect of her being, she is fresh, different, recognizably normal, and thus, the un-Washingtonian. The power of her image has supercharged McCain's image. Read article.
If Sarah can take on Big Oil, she can take on Putin
Judith A. Klinghoffer, Political Mavens.com
Not ready to lead? Inexperienced? Demonstrates McCain’s faulty judgment?
Consider the story of How Palin Beat Big Oil. My favorite bit has to do with the pipe line deal she revived. It reads like a Frank Capra movie script. Read article.
Sarah Palin Battles Energy Cartels
Jerome Zeifman, AIM.org
After retiring as the Democratic Chief Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee and its Subcommittee on Monopolies, I was retained from 1975 until 1980 by both Republican Governor Hammond and the legislature of Alaska as a non-partisan consultant on the taxation and regulation of multi-national oil companies.
In my view, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has had by far more personal experience in battling multinational energy cartels than any current members of Congress. She is also the first elected official in Alaska to successfully wage such battles since Jay Hammond.
Under Jay Hammond Alaska instituted tax measures treating international monopolies as “unitary businesses” and measuring their tax base as a portion of their worldwide income. He also oversaw the creation of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the famous Alaska Permanent Fund, which invested oil royalties to cover future state budgets, and has since the early 1980s also paid out annual dividends to residents of the state of Alaska.
During her tenure as Governor of Alaska Mrs. Palin, with no aid from federal anti-trust enforcers, has fought alone in the front line of the battle against multinational energy cartels. While Congressional Democrats have capitulated to the oil cartels, she has increased taxes on their OPEC induced profits, launched a gas pipeline, balanced Alaska’s budget, and also remitted earnings from oil royalties to Alaska’s citizens.
Hopefully, as John McCain’s Vice President Mrs. Palin will help revive the Progressive Republicanism of Theodore Roosevelt, who was a staunch advocate of the conservation of all of our natural resources and destroyed the monopoly of Standard Oil of New Jersey and some 40 other cartels. Read article.
South Side Veterans for Truth
James Taranto, Online WSJ.com
Last week we wrote that " 'community organizer' is to Barack Obama what 'war hero' was to John Kerry." We didn't know the half of it.
Kerry staked his claim to the presidency on the pretense that he was a war hero, notwithstanding his showy repudiation decades earlier of the war and his fellow veterans. According to a new exposé in the liberal New Republic, Obama, before embarking on a career in politics, similarly, albeit quietly, repudiated "community organizing," only to re-embrace it decades later, apparently out of political expediency.
TNR's John Judis tracked down Jerry Kellman, who in 1985 "hired Obama to organize residents of Chicago's South Side." Kellman describes a conversation the two "community organizers" had at a conference on "social justice" in October 1987.
Before Obama's arrival in Chicago, Kellman and his "partner," Mike Kruglik, set out "to revive the region's manufacturing base--and preserve what remained of its steel industry--by working with unions and church groups to pressure companies and the city; but those hopes were quickly dashed." Apparently the presence of "community organizers" is not a strong selling point for companies making location decisions. Go figure.
Obama set his sights lower, but still missed the mark. He "got community members to demand a job center that would provide job referrals, but there were few jobs to distribute." Then "he tried to create what he called a 'second-level consumer economy' . . . consisting of shops, restaurants, and theaters. This, too, went nowhere." Read article.
What Did Obama Do As A Community Organizer? And is it really a qualification to be president?
Byron York, NRO.com
Barack Obama often cites his time as a community organizer here in Chicago as one of the experiences that qualify him to hold the nation’s highest office. “I can bring this country together,” he said in a debate last February. “I have a track record, starting from the days I moved to Chicago as a community organizer.”
When Obama says such things, the reaction among many observers is: Huh?
Audiences understand when he mentions his years as an Illinois state legislator, or his brief tenure in the U.S. Senate. But a community organizer? What’s that?
Even Obama didn’t know when he first gave it a try back in 1985. “When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn’t answer them directly,” Obama wrote in his memoir, Dreams from My Father. “Instead, I’d pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won’t come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.”
If you substitute “Bush” for “Reagan,” you have a fairly accurate description of Obama’s 2008 campaign. That’s not a coincidence; it suggests that something about community organizing was central to Obama’s world view back then, and has remained central to his development as the politician he is today. What was it? Read article.
We Can't Tax Our Way Out of the Entitlement Crisis
R. Glenn Hubbard, Online WSJ.com
Mr. Obama has revealed his plans in stages. First, on his campaign Web site, he indicated he would solve the long-run solvency of Social Security (a good thing). In a Sept. 21, 2007, op-ed in Iowa's Quad-City Times, he ruled out benefit cuts to achieve solvency and looked first to payroll taxes (a bad thing). Last week, on this page, his economic advisers clarified his evolving tax proposals.
The spending shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare are large. According to the Congressional Budget Office, Social Security and Medicare spending left unchecked would, after a generation, consume about 10 percentage points more of GDP than it does today. Simple arithmetic suggests that with this much more of GDP eaten up by the two programs, all federal taxes on average would have to be raised by more than 50% to make up the shortfall. Research by economists Eric Engen of the Federal Reserve Board and Jonathan Skinner of Dartmouth suggests that such a tax increase would reduce long-term GDP growth by about a full percentage point. This is no small matter: Think of it as reversing all of the gains in our long-term growth rate from the productivity boom of the past 15 years.
Simple arithmetic suggests that with this much more of GDP eaten up by the two programs, all federal taxes on average would have to be raised by more than 50% to make up the shortfall. Research by economists Eric Engen of the Federal Reserve Board and Jonathan Skinner of Dartmouth suggests that such a tax increase would reduce long-term GDP growth by about a full percentage point. This is no small matter: Think of it as reversing all of the gains in our long-term growth rate from the productivity boom of the past 15 years. Read article.
What Sarah Knows
Brian M. Carney, Online WSJ.com
Sarah Palin has gotten some rough treatment from the media since John McCain announced his vice presidential pick. In her speech last week, she gave a little jab back at "all those reporters and commentators." That won't likely win her many new admirers in the Washington press corps. But Rasmussen has a new poll out that suggests that piling on Mrs. Palin may do more to harm the media's own image than hers.
According to Rasmussen, fully 68% of voters believe that "most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win." And -- no surprise -- 49% of those surveyed believe reporters are backing Barack Obama, while just 14% think the media is in the tank for Sen. McCain.
Meanwhile, 51% of those surveyed thought the press was "trying to hurt" Mrs. Palin with its coverage.
Perhaps most troubling for the press corps, though, was this finding: "55% said media bias is a bigger problem for the electoral process than large campaign donations." Read article.
Who says Palin has no foreign policy bona fides? What about Biden's foreign policy judgment?
Wes Vernon, Renew America.us
The propaganda carpet-bombers keep telling us that Governor Sarah20Palin's lack of foreign policy experience makes her unfit to be "one heartbeat away" from the presidency. By contrast — our betters instruct us, Joe Biden, as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is all-wise and is prepared to help Obama (be his seeing eye dog?) to guide America through the waters of international danger and intrigue.
Well, let's review that:
Just for starters, on an issue this column intends to explore more in depth in the future, award-winning author and journalist Paul Williams reports Al-Qaida plans attacks on seven to ten American cities. In addition to New York, Washington and the other obvious targets, one of the ten cities is Valdez, Alaska. That is where the tankers are filled with oil from the Trans-Alaska pipeline that Palin has mentioned in her speeches. Anyone who is governor of Alaska would take more than a casual interest in the pipeline's security from attack.
There's more. Read article.
The Politics of Personal Destruction
Ken Connor, Townhall.com
"Here ruining people is considered sport," so concluded Vince Foster in what many believe was his suicide note. "Here" is Washington D.C., and the instrument of ruination is the politics of personal destruction.
Alaska's Governor Sarah Palin is the latest person to find herself in the crosshairs of those aiming for her ruination. Her offense? She accepted Senator John McCain's invitation to be his running mate for the 2008 Presidential election. This historic milestone of a woman running on the Republican ticket was soon transformed into histrionics. Any real analysis of Governor Palin's public record was jettisoned in favor of digging up dirt about her personal life, real or concocted.
First came the snide comments on Governor Palin's looks. Most of those comments came from feminists, the same women who decry sexism and complain that too much attention is paid to how a woman looks. Nevertheless, they are the same women who keep us abreast of Hilary Clinton's changing hair styles and her preference for pantsuits. Who can forget the vitriol aimed at Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris during the 2000 Florida recount? How she applied her makeup became more important than how she applied the law. We may have come a long way baby, but cattiness persists among the feminists. Read article.
Dissecting Liberals
Burt Prelutsky, Townhall.com
If at times, it is not easy to determine what a liberal is, it’s because during presidential election campaigns, politicians who have been voting like liberals, talking like liberals and boasting about their liberal credentials, suddenly insist that they’re really centrists as they go about trying to garner the votes of gullible Republicans and Independents. It’s rather like Michelle Obama trying to convince us that she’s just another stay-at-home mom who loves America and her kids, and in exactly that order.
Most of us on the right can spot a liberal a mile away, just as easily as experienced bird watchers can identify cuckoos, parrots and pigeons. But just in case you’re not as proficient at recognizing the odd ducks that populate the left, allow me to be your guide through the wilderness.
In America, more than 80% of African-American and Jewish voters can be safely assumed to favor liberals in any and all elections. The reason that poor blacks vote overwhelmingly for Democrats is because they have been told over and over again by plantation owners like Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, that it’s only through the federal government’s largesse that they can manage to survive at all. I suppose even if an able-bodied person is told from childhood on that he lacks the ability to walk, let alone run, he will come to believe he needs a wheelchair or at least a pair of crutches. Read article.
About that 'civilian national security force'
Joseph Farah, WND.com
The pieces are coming together.
We're getting a more complete picture of Barack Obama's draconian plans to create a domestic army of radical extremists promoting bigger and more intrusive government.
The plan is to create a boot camp for community agitators – paid for by you, the U.S. taxpayer.
Investor's Business Daily deserves credit for putting together the elaborate jigsaw puzzle. I merely saw the smoke. IBD discovered the fire. But for reference, you will want to read about what I found previously regarding Obama's calls for a "civilian national security force."
It seems Obama was a founding member of a group called Public Allies in 1992. In 1993, he resigned before his wife, Michelle, took over as executive director of the Chicago chapter.
This little-known, but well-funded, band of taxpayer-supported social misfits will, according to IBD, serve as the centerpiece of his "Universal Voluntary Public Service" program.
"Universal voluntary?" Isn't that an oxymoron? Yes, but just consider the moron who is advocating it. Read article.
Fact Checking the AP’s Fact Check on Sarah Palin
Brian Cherry, NMJ.us
Nobody should be surprised that the day after Sarah Palin knocked the ball out of the park with her acceptance speech; the Associated Press ran an article claiming she was using a corked bat. This is because the mainstream media, while completely in the tank for Obama, isn’t so blinded by the Messiah’s divine light that they can’t see a huge threat when it appears. In the case of Mz. Palin, her appearance on the political scene has given the liberal press the same sense of dread that the people of Alderaan must have felt when a moon sized space station unexpectedly appeared in their orbit.
On Wednesday, September 3rd Yahoo plastered an AP article on their front page claiming to be a fact checking Sarah Palin’s speech and other comments made at the RNC convention. True to form, their “fact check” was about as accurate as the 2004 Presidential exit polls that declared John Kerry the new leader of the free world.
The following are comments made by Sarah Palin and others, the AP’s version of a fact check, and the truth. Nobody will be taken by surprise to discover that what the Associated Press has to say is far removed from what the truth actually is: Read article.
Sarah Palin brings the Hillary Clinton era to an end
Anne Applebaum, Telegraph.co.uk
She wasn’t going to “stay home and bake cookies”, she was going to reform the health-care system: if we elected her husband, we were thus going to get “two for the price of one”. With those words, Hillary Clinton launched herself into America’s national consciousness, and began a political career that very nearly brought her the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this year. Though she lost that contest, along the way she succeeded in making herself into something more than an ordinary woman in politics. She became an archetype, the Female American Politician.
More than that: she became the archetype of the Powerful American Woman. She herself once explained the hostility she inspires as the misdirected fury of men who were angry at a “female boss” or other female authority figure. They felt bad about being subordinate to a woman at work, so they took it out on her.
This was not entirely accurate: some people disliked Hillary just because she was Hillary. But it’s true that her personal style – frequently chilly, determinedly frumpy, visibly calculating, pointedly humorless – did come to seem like a kind of norm. That’s why, when she lost the Democratic nomination, it wasn’t hard for some to see it as a defeat for all women. If Hillary couldn’t make it in national politics, her disappointed supporters declared, then no woman could.
As anybody who has been watching the news for the past week will already know, that statement turned out to be dead wrong. As it turns out, there are numerous ways for women to be politically powerful in America, and they don’t all involve wearing shapeless trouser suits and looking frosty: Sarah Palin, enter stage right. Read article.
'Economic disaster'? It's Obama
Ralph R. Reiland, Pittsburgh Live.com
The top concern of voters this year is the economy, with 40 percent of respondents in a recent New York Times/CBS News poll rating the "economy and jobs" as their primary issue in the election and another 15 percent ranking the economic issues of "gas prices and energy policy" as their chief concern.
That combined total of 55 percent is more than double the 21 percent of respondents who ranked "terrorism and national security" as their chief concern.
Obama, adding to the negativity about the economy in order to sell "change," regularly portrays the U.S. economy as in a state of near-collapse. "Economic disaster is already here," he declared at a recent campaign stop in Virginia.
In fact, the economy is not in a state of "disaster," and "change" in the wrong direction would only make things worse.
With high gas prices, for instance, the most likely consequence of Obama's calls for restrictions on drilling and higher taxes on oil companies would be less supply and even higher prices at the pump. Keith Marsden provides a more accurate and less-politicized description of the current condition of the American economy than the picture Obama paints at his rallies. Read article.
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