Three Reporters From McCain-Endorsing Newspapers Removed From Obama's Plane.

The funny thing is that a lot of the members of the press that are putting up with this now will in relatively short period of time begin to tire of it and even begin to criticize it.

The only question is what industry will they be working in at that point.

He says that he is going to give a tax break to 95% of the taxpayers in this country...and that wanting lower taxes is selfish.

The top 20% of wage earners in the country pay almost 70% of the total tax bill and the bottom 20% of wage earners pay only about 2.5% of the total tax burden.

Keep that in mind when The One is calling the bigger wage earners "selfish".

My immediate reaction was to come up with some snark about how electing Obama would mean that I won't have to worry about upgrading to Windows 7 because The One will take care of it for me.

I can see why electing Obama would be a transforming thing in a lot of ways for a lot of people. And all things remaining equal I would like to see it happen also. John McCain isn't my fav but he is right about more of the important issues than is Barack Obama. If Thomas Sowell were running, I wouldn't just be voting for him, I would be phone-banking for him.

When the video above started I was thinking that the lady was moved emotionally just by the very fact of the Obama candidacy and, whether he wins or not, by its actual viability. And that she took her daughters out of school to show her all of this in the same way that I would always point out female astronauts to my young daughter. And there is probably some of that.

But the last part proved to be disappointing to me. That it came down to Obama taking care of her gas bill worries and her mortgage worries.

But in the disappointment area, I am getting off easy compared to her should Obama be elected. Because there will come a time when she realizes that he isn't going to pay her gas bill or her mortgage for her. I only hope that she doesn't run up even bigger bills thinking that they, too, will be taken care of by an Obama government.

Nobody is stupid enough to do such a thing, you say?

Two words: Fannie Mae.

How many of the Iraqis interviewed in this article would be dead today if Barack Obama had been President two years ago and had surrendered...yes, that is the word for it....and bailed out of Iraq?

What would Iraq look like today if Mr. Obama (and pretty much the entire Democrat party) had retreated from Iraq without attempting "The Surge" or began retreating at the point when they were elbowing their way toward every camera or microphone to declare "The Surge" a failure almost immediately after it began?

It would have been wholesale slaughter.

Mr. Obama is on the record saying that "The Surge" succeeded beyond anyone's imagination. While every operation holds its own share of risks and none are a guarantee it is more likely that the level of Mr. Obama's experience leaves him completely unable to even begin to make such determinations one way or the other. He couldn't foresee success because he doesn't possess enough knowledge in the areas and disciplines involved to do so.

The same argument can and has been leveled at Sarah Palin, and not without some cause. But in a context where Mr. Obama is running for the top job, Sarah Palin's experience level is rendered moot. How many days as Vice President would she really have to serve before she is as up to speed on national issues as Mr. Obama is right now? Not many given the shortness of his resume'.

How many days would Obama have to serve before...in his wildest imagination...he could see that the American military just might succeed in an operation so important to us, to the Iraqi people, and in the war on terror?

Given Mr. Obama's worldview, would he ever be able to imagine it?

I can dream, can't I?

Yawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn.

Do you think a Beverly Hills Realtor has ever even gotten a call from one of these a**hats?

The picture becomes clearer on just exactly exactly whose wealth Barack Obama plans on spreading around. A few months ago a foreign newspaper...(doing the work that Americans won't do!) located Barack Obama's half-brother George living in a hut in Africa, somehow managing to survive on an income of $12USD per year. Twelve. Dollars. Per. Year.

Now we find that Obama's cherished great aunt, Zeituni Onyango, has been located living in a Boston housing project. Some reports describe her conditions as living in squalor. Or in a slum. I don't really know. You can pretty much guess that Aunt Zeituni is getting by on much less than what it takes to keep the Obama kids in dance lessons, though.

Plus, it took a newspaper (again, a foreign paper) to locate this cherished aunt.

Keep in mind that John and Cindy McCain have actually adopted a child out of the Third World and all we hear about is the number of houses he owns. At the same time Barack Obama talks about "spreading the wealth" and "how we should treat the least of our brothers" and his fanboys in the American media swoon....while their foreign counterparts are out actually earning their paychecks locating two examples of weapons-grade hypocrisy on The One's part.

Now I realize that nobody should be compelled to use their hard earned dollars to alleviate the difficulties of their cherished relatives.

No, that money is to be used for total strangers selected by the government.

From the Washington Post...finally.

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.

They'll refund any improper donations, okay, racist? Move along. Show's over. Nothing to see here.

Oh, wait. How are they going to do that, exactly?

In recent weeks, questionable contributions have created headaches for Obama's accounting team as it has tried to explain why campaign finance filings have included itemized donations from individuals using fake names, such as Es Esh or Doodad Pro. Those revelations prompted conservative bloggers to further test Obama's finance vetting by giving money using the kind of prepaid cards that can be bought at a drugstore and cannot be traced to a donor.

The problem with such cards, campaign finance lawyers said, is that they make it impossible to tell whether foreign nationals, donors who have exceeded the limits, government contractors or others who are barred from giving to a federal campaign are making contributions.

So Team Obama....so scary smart and web-saavy that it made fun of McCain for not using e-mail...sets up its donations web page and deliberately cripples the address verification system and also set it up to allow donations from untraceable pre-paid credit cards. So that not only will it allow illegal over-contributions from known individuals, it will allow anyone, anywhere to make any number and amount of donations using a payment method that is untraceable.

This is the Hope that we have been waiting for? This is the Change?

No.

This is crooked. This is dishonest. This is good old fashioned Chicago machine style politics.

And on Tuesday of next week we get to see if Mr. Obama gets to begin staffing the federal government with the same type of people that are running his campaign and that run Chicago.

From Yahoo news:

Palestinian Ibrahim Abu Jayab, 24, is seen next to his computer, in his family house in Nusayrat refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008. A young Palestinian in a Gaza refugee camp is doing his part to get out the vote for Barack Obama. With a little help from the Internet, 24-year-old Ibrahim Abu Jayab is cold calling random American families from his parent's home imploring them to vote Obama. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

This is here, as least for now.

Say you have an incriminating video tape that is so sensitive that you really don't want it released to the public. Do what every rational person would do in the same situation.

Send it to a newspaper for safe-keeping.

Sure, makes perfect sense.

The MRT has published the latest reports from the Texas Ethics Commission on the Craddick vs. Dingus race.

The dollar amounts raised and spent by each candidate are breathtaking for a local race.

Curious though are some of the contribution amounts to each candidate:

$3,694.19 - $15,674.80 - $5,299.67

While a vast majority of the donation amounts are in nice round numbers, these donations are for seemingly arbitrary sums. Odd.

Taking a brief breather from Obamanausea, here is a little something on something big.

In this post Drew Thornley of the Texas Public Policy Foundation highlights the research and documentation I wish I could do.

The greatest impediment to wind's large-scale contribution to our energy supply is its intermittent nature. The wind must blow in order for wind turbines to produce power -- peak capacity comes when the wind blows at about 31 miles per hour. But because those conditions are rare, wind turbines typically produce only around 30 percent of their installed capacity over time. As in many other places, the wind in Texas blows least when we need it the most. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) relies on a mere 8.7 percent of wind power's installed capacity when determining available power during peak summer hours.

Eight point seven percent. So if your local ex-oilman installs his 110 wind turbines, the state counts 10. That actually seems generous on stiflingly hot, still, summer day. I have to crank up all the nat gas generation we have just to run everyone's AC. Wind energy, for all of its "coolness" makes little sense.

Drew Thorley has the job I wish I did. Go read his whole report. Good stuff.

Now back to all Nobama, all Nobiden, all the time.

A couple of days ago I posted a comment with a video from You Tube showing a reporter asking Joe Biden a question.

The video has been removed.

You Tube is owned by Google.

One of the first signs of fascism is the suppression of dissent.

However, here it is in another place

Some friends of mine will download a video and then upload it to YouTube without any flags to avoid the left-wing fascisti.

Do you realize that we now have samizdat press?

Samizdat press. In America.

Update: I have downloaded the video from You Tube to my computer and have it in a .mov (Quicktime) file. If this copy goes away, I'll find another place to upload it. I will not let them do this.

A short video showing a rumble between the forces of Mac and the forces of PC.

How do I put this, exactly?

One look at the video and you realize that everyone appearing in it uses a Mac.

Hint: Christopher Buckley

But they refuse to release it.

Did you see that amazing video obtained by the Los Angeles Times of Sen. Barack Obama toasting a prominent former PLO member at an Arab American Action Network meeting in 2003? The video in which Obama gives Yasser Arafat's frontman a warm embrace, as Bill Ayers look on?

I have no doubt that the contents of this video would be an issue for some and a non-issue for others, but the problem is that when it involves The Chosen One, Barack Obama, the LA Times doesn't consider their readers (or anyone else) fit to decide this for themselves.

What do you think that the LA Times would do if they attained a video tape of Sarah Palin toasting and hugging some members of whatever Alaskan seccesionist group that they tried to pin her to? Do you think we would be seeing that video so that we could "decide for ourselves"?

Hell, yes we would. Three times an hour on every cable news show.

But Barack Obama hanging with the PLO with William Ayers...you know, that guy from the neighborhood that Obama barely knows...looking on approvingly?

Just like Obama's redistributionist comments from as far back as 2001 (No, it didn't start with Joe the Plumber).

Just like the Obama campaign website's donation page deliberate crippling of the standard address matching and verification system found on every other e-commerce site on the planet so that it would accept illegal amounts from illegal locations.

No. Nothing to see here. Move along.

The Media has a Transformative Figure to elect and if us rubes out here in flyover country actually have access to all of the information we may screw it all up.

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

The gentleman selling his interest in the Dolphins understands what's going on. He. Gets. It. Just like a lot of people do. Lots of properties of all types on the market now. I wonder if the market for NFL teams is better than the real estate market? Or the energy property market? T.B. Pickens might have a wind farm for sale. He has taken a bath in the energy trading market lately and his wind generators aren't so attractive competing with $70 oil and $6 natural gas.

The nut of the matter is Higher Taxation. Job killer. Market killer. Retirement killer. Economy killer. And ultimately, a killer of tax revenue to the Feds, but the Dims have not figured that out yet.

The former member of the Weather Underground beamed at the attention paid by the audience of about 60 people, many of whom were decked out in Obama gear.

The crowd gave Ayers a warm welcome, guffawed at jokes about "redistributing the wealth" and nodded at his complaints about the "Republican revolution."

There's more here. Interesting to be basking in the adoration of core Obamaniacs, eh?

We are all very familiar with the inbred national media and their devotion to a chosen narrative whatever else the real story may be but this little blog is a great illustration of it all tied up in a nice package.

It isn't just the media that decided that Joe "The Plumber" Wurzlebacher's life needed to be made an open book for his questioning of The One. The media obviously had help from official Ohio or at least parts of it.

Ohio's inspector general is investigating why a state agency director approved checking the state child-support computer system for information on "Joe the Plumber."

Helen Jones-Kelly, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, confirmed today that she OK'd the check on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher following the Oct. 15 presidential debate.

She said there were no political reasons for the check on the sudden presidential campaign fixture though the Support Enforcement Tracking System.

[snip]

At least four state computer checks on Wurzelbacher were conducted shortly after Republican John McCain frequently brought up "Joe the Plumber" during his final presidential debate with Democrat Barack Obama on Oct. 15.

Is Helen Jones-Kelly, the Ohio official who accessed Joe's record an Obama supporter?

Well, perhaps she is.

I am sure the media will get right on that.

UPDATE: Note to National Media Head Lice: Don't bother. The blogosphere has done your damned job for you. Again.

At least one that won't roll over.

Barbara West, anchor for WFTV in Florida, asked Joe Biden a question. Here's the clip:

At last. Someone interviewing a Democrat without a softball question. And calling Obama's "share the wealth" Marxist. How vulgar to bring up the truth. And of course Biden, insulated, had no answer.

The Obama/Biden campaign instantly reacted with outrage, so much more useful than truth, and cancelled any more interviews with that station. Biden's wife Jill had an interview coming up, and that too was cancelled. Spake Laura McGinnis, the central Florida communications director for the Anointed One's campaign:

This [Jill Biden's] cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election."

A sniff, a snarl, and a slap on the hand.

Last week we saw reports of the decline in viewership of the major news networks. This in a year featuring a profoundly historic election by anyone's account.

Today from Editor & Publisher Magazine:

For those holding out for some improvement in print circulation, this morning brings disappointment. The Audit Bureau of Circulations released the latest figures for the six- month period ending September 2008 and the report shows major drops in circulation at the big metros.

According to ABC for the 507 newspapers reporting in this period, daily circulation slipped 4.6% to 38,165,848 copies. For the 571 papers, Sunday dropped 4.8% to 43,631,646 copies.

Newsrooms are cutting staff. NBC itself is slashing almost $500 million in expenses to remain profitable.

Obviously, many, many major media outlets are either over the edge or just on it.

And instead of doing any real and even-handed reporting, we know that these news outlets are In The Tank for the Dems in general and Obama in particular. And while this may work for the Dems and Obama this time around these news outlets are extremely vulnerable now.

I know that many conservatives (or even just fans of real reporting) are fed up and say that they don't "get their news" from their paper. I know I don't rely on the local for the news. But I still do for, say, the Obits and local sports. Even the classifieds. So while I don't at all rely on the paper for news I still subscribe for the print version.

So what would happen if everyone in the same situation decided that we would just rely on these news outlets' online versions for the local things that we need for a while?

Cancel the print subscription. Read the web version to get the local news, local sports, local classifieds, etc.

They are on the edge.

Let's give them a gentle nudge.

Sunday night, the Empower Texans PAC sponsored a Conference Call with Speaker Craddick. I listened in to Speaker Craddick's answers and his response to a question about reapportionment and redistricting was interesting.

To paraphrase, Speaker Craddick noted that although Texas is poised to receive 3 or 4 additional US House seats, the growth of the Metro areas has been faster than the rural areas, with some rural areas having lost population. So it was his assessment that rural representation will become less influential. He then noted that this trend will most likely mean he will be the last rural Speaker of the Texas House.

When the Texas House meets after the 2010 Census they will have to contend with reapportioning the 150 members of the Texas House and the U.S. Congressional districts, and without a doubt, many rural representatives will find their territories larger, or will have to sway Urban voters and Rural voters.

As with the U.S. Congress, when the average Texas House member represents more people who are mostly urbanized, and thus more dependent on public services than rural folk, I think we will see more poor decision making in Austin, like we already do from Washington.

Rural folk know they need the Urban Folk, but I'm not always sure Urban Folk know they need the Rural Folk, which is what I think makes State and National political leaders from mostly Rural areas (either through upbringing or residence) way better than those from urban areas.

If Speaker Craddick's prediction comes true, I for one will mourn the Last Rural Texas Speaker.

Daniel Pipes on B.H. Obama's ability to get a security clearance:

Obama's multiple links to anti-Americans and subversives mean he would fail the standard security clearance process for Federal employees. Islamic aggression represents America's strategic enemy; Obama's many insalubrious connections raise grave doubts about his fitness to serve as America's commander-in-chief.

Go read the whole thing. More from Pipes can be found here.

The Spectator's Melanie Phillips is on the case of what this means for the free world: the West:

The impact of the financial crisis on the American presidential election has somewhat obscured the most important reason why the prospect of an Obama presidency is giving so many people nightmares. This is the fear that, if he wins, US defences will be emasculated at a time of unprecedented international peril and the enemies of America and the free world will seize their opportunity to destroy the west.

...snip...

He has said he will 'cut investments in unproven missile defense systems'; he will 'not weaponize space'; he will 'slow our development of future combat systems'; and he will also 'not develop nuclear weapons,' pledging to seek 'deep cuts' in America's arsenal, thus unilaterally disabling its nuclear deterrent as Russia and China engage in massive military buildups.

Emphasis mine.

McCain believes in protecting and defending America as it is. Obama tells the world he is ashamed of America and wants to change it into something else. McCain stands for American exceptionalism, the belief that American values are superior to tyrannies. Obama stands for the expiation of America's original sin in oppressing black people, the third world and the poor.

...snip...

There are, alas, many in the west for whom all this is music to their ears. Whether through wickedness, ideology, stupidity or derangement, they firmly believe that the ultimate source of conflict in the world derives at root from America and Israel, whose societies, culture and values they want to see emasculated or destroyed altogether. They are drooling at the prospect that an Obama presidency will bring that about. The rest of us can't sleep at night.

Please read the whole thing. Then forward the links to those you think can have their minds changed: those who are leaning Obama and those who are leaning McCain but may not make it to the polls.

We have rarely had as much at stake in an election... We do not need any more uncertainty on the future of the West.

After all, as I've noted, Obama was channeling hundreds of thousands of dollars in supposedly non-partisan foundation money to ACORN, at the very same moment when ACORN's de facto electoral arm, the New Party, was endorsing him - and even, arguably, when ACORN/New Party-members were acting as his campaign foot-soldiers.

...snip...

I don't doubt that Obama needed to be cautious, even at the time, about publicizing his highly questionable conduct. But the evidence of his party membership is credible, in writing, and published in contemporary documents. The denials, on the other hand, are self-interested, illogical, and many years after the fact.

Stanley Kurtz has done yeoman's work in covering a subject that the ex-media won't touch: B.H. Obama's being a member of an Illinois socialist party when he ran for elective office in his home state. Read a current synopsis here. And follow the links to his articles. The left and the ex-media are about to get us a real socialist in the White House.

Thank you, Mr. Kurtz, for your work!

The question now is not whether or not there is significant fraud in B.H. Obama's fundraising. That is proven. The question now is "how much is 'significant'?"

Maybe after the campaign is safely over someone will be interested enough to find out how much of Obama's record campaign fundraising was criminal. Ten percent? Twenty? Fifty? On some other planet, with different reporters and editors, one might expect this to be a significant news story. Of course, in the world we live in, our reporters are too busy covering Sarah Palin's shoes and hair stylist to have time to notice that Barack Obama's entire campaign may be based on a foundation of criminal fraud.

Read the whole thing here.

S&P has reduced the The New York Times Co. to junk.

This gives me a deep-seated, glowing pleasure, making me squirm in my seat with pleasure. To think that all of these sniffing, self-righteous, sneering lefties are worrying about their jobs because they are who they are (read that again), is the best thing I've heard in weeks.

Merry Christmas.

Ever since the utter collapse in creditability of the MSM, self-imposed, we are led to the blogs and sometimes to the tabloid press. Recall that the John Edwards story was exposed by The National Enquirer. Which is no guarantee of truth. But that could be said for the New York Times, too. Must be said.

For a long time I've loved The Weekly World News . It's the most absurd of the tabloids and for a long time they balanced on what I thought was a knife's edge between gulling the gullible and amusing me. I'm pretending that the two aren't sometimes the same thing.

In the last few years though they've thrown caution to the winds. I suspect that they simply don't think that they can be stupid enough and are having fun for smart-asses like themselves, and me. This has happened, I notice, since 2000 and they are published in Florida.

One of their characters is Bat Boy. It seems that he and Obama's mutant half brother, Obatma, are touring the US.

This excellent paper, which I highly recommend subscribing to--I do--gives us this story. It is on the whole a lot better than the last couple I've read from the the Paper of Spin.

Since then, Obatma has been on a road tour with Bat Boy rallying support for the Democratic candidate. The two are making appearances in key swing states, happily handing out stickers and posing for pictures. As a result, voter registration centers around the country have been flooded with new-voter requests checking the ethnicity box as "Other: Mutant."

The joke writes itself.

...Jimmy the P's blog Sticky Doorknobs. And timely, especially for the next 11 days:

...a priest friend had happened by and offered the nuns the following advice when praying for an election. The priest said a prayer during the campaign season should be:

'Lord, give us the leaders we need, not the ones we deserve.'

Amen.

Headlines need to be short and to the point so the above is what was shown instead of the more complete, "Gannett profit falls short on weak advertising brought on by a lower readership that is the result of a product that is viewed as biased and inferior and one that generally sucks."

I know you guys think we are kidding about some sort of media bailout should a total (and grateful) Democrat controlled government come about, either through outright financial help or legislation designed specifically to cripple competing "New Media" news and opinion sources, but we are not.

Charles Krauthammer on why he is voting for McCain:

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.

Krauthammer is no fan of McCain and I feel his pain there. Truly, I do.

More:

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.

I would say, "Amen" here, but to some that would seem like an inappropriate intrusion of religion. Or something.

I don't see the problem here. 527 organizations are not supposed to make money.

From Mark Steyn:

The reason the press are going to such shameless lengths to drag Obama across the finish line is because he's their last best hope at restoring the old media environment, including a new Unfairness Doctrine for radio, and regulation of the Internet. The Obama's-already-won-give-it-up-you-GOP-losers stories are intended only to demoralize turnout.

From our own Walsingham (earlier that day):

With 12 days left the major media is in a race to see if they can drag Obama over the finish line before they run out of audience. At that point they will just have to hope that The One and The Dems in congress will return the favor by legislating some of their audience back to them with a resurrection of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine."

Walsingham to begin getting the Big Head in three....two....one.....

I think a run at a new "Fairness Doctrine" is a given. And should one be imposed upon Talk Radio the AM band may collapse, in which case Rush Limbaugh may just go on to save satellite radio just as he saved AM radio.

But to accomplish what those pushing the "Fairness Doctrine" really want to accomplish...disabling the ability of new media to detect "damage" (read Elite Media gatekeeping here) in the flow of information and re-route around it...they will have to find some way to apply this "fairness" to the internet also.

So look for an attempt to regulate political speech on blogs also.

The Austin American Statesman has posted a rather scathing Op-Ed criticism of Speaker Craddick's reign from a rather influential sounding member of the "Texas State Republican Executive Committee" Mark McCaig.

Republican Executive Committee Member Mark McCaig puts it rather bluntly:

The only way to prevent further erosion of the Republican majority in the Texas House is for Tom Craddick to immediately announce that he will not seek another term as speaker.

Now who is Mark McCaig? He sure sounds official. Well, he's really not. According the Trailblazer Blog over at the Morning News:

McCaig is a young (four or so years out of college, give or take) Republican type who at one point was a frequent contributor on the Empower Texans blog, a self-proclaimed "small-government" conservative, and hardly can be considered a GOP defector by any other measure than his apparent opposition to Craddick.

Actually, he is a 2005 graduate of Texas A&M University with a BBA in Marketing where he made a name for himself by starting a petition to recall a Student Senator at Texas A&M and writing for a Right-Leaning Blog Empower Texans

The Statesman printing an Op-Ed from a Conservative, Republican, Aggie, Right Leaning Blogger?

He's young, and I think he has just learned that he is nothing more than a tool in the eyes of the Statesman, who unabashedly inflated his credentials and gravitas for a cheap shot at Craddick.

Eleven days away from election day and though things will tighten it could go either way. If Obama wins then the Dems will control the White House, the Senate, and the Congress.

The Heller case and The One's previous "acknowledgements" about an individual right to own a gun notwithstanding, an Obama administration will move to infringe on the rights of gun owners as soon as possible.

Plus, if the Obamessiah wins on November 4 then on November 5 I will be bitter. And clingy.

Naturally, I will want to alleviate my clingyness and do so in a way that will make a lib somewhere shudder a bit even if he doesn't know why.

I will add a gun to my collection.

And If I am going to do this I may as well get something that is sure to be on the Obama Banned Guns List.

So, a bit of a bleg: What should I get? Or "What Will Barry Ban?"

The Official Mainstream Press reaction to reports that the Obama campaign has regularly been accepting contributions over the $4,600 legal limit:

"You mean we could have given more?"

The Obama online donation system takes money from all comers, from any country, and doesn't even bother matching up names and addresses on card charges.

From Ace:

I have a credit card issued by a bank in Hong Kong.

I've just made 5 donations of $5 each using the card. I listed fake addresses in North Korea, Iran, Gaza, Venezuela and Kenya. The names and addresses were made up, each was different, I listed real Yahoo email addresses that forward to me.

Fake Name
Not A. Realperson
Finance Violation
Fraudulent Charge
Over Donation Limit

All 5 went through without a problem. I'm already being solicited for more money.

Follow the link over to Ace because he is actually getting input from people in the credit card transaction business and who know what the proper standards and procedures are for processing charges. Standards and procedures that Obama obviously Hopes to Change.

This is a story that is developing only in the blogosphere because the Elite National Media has their resources tied up trying to find out if Joe the Plumber has let his nutgrass problem spill over into his neighbor's lawn.

Now just imagine the reporting we would see on a Republican presidential campaign that had raised $600 million dollars and simply wouldn't comment on or publish the origins of about a third of the total going against a Democrat opponent that had vowed to take only public financing....and one that then actually honored his own pledge.

With 12 days left the major media is in a race to see if they can drag Obama over the finish line before they run out of audience. At that point they will just have to hope that The One and The Dems in congress will return the favor by legislating some of their audience back to them with a resurrection of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine."

Apparently, we have too many plumbers but not enough movies.

I am not sure what the In-The-Tank Media consider the scandal here. That the RNC shelled out $150,000 (about the same amount of money that someone paid for a certain set of Greek columns) in wardrobe purchases for Palin AND her family members for use on the campaign trail...or that any real woman would have had all that stuff already in her closet ready to go.

A few weeks ago it was, "How many houses does McCain have?"

Now it is *GASP*, "Sarah Palin didn't have enough clothes in her closet to make it through 10 weeks of constant appearances, interviews, and travel."

Do I even need to mention that Nancy Pelosi has probably spent more on jewelry alone than what the Palins paid for their house?

The Bad News: "Despite having some of the world's largest energy reserves, Venezuela is increasingly struggling to maintain basic electrical service, a growing challenge for leftist President Hugo Chavez."

The Good News: He is "Spreading the Wealth" around down there.

At least that is what I get from SupportBillAyers.org, a web site dedicated to obfuscating the fact that William Ayers is an unrepentant bomber/killer who is still very enthusiastic about the overthrow of the American form of government.

Not a bomber. Not a killer. Not a domestic terrorist out of jail because of a technicality.

No, it's only true "that Professor Ayers participated passionately in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, as did hundreds of thousands of Americans."

And you have to love the opening sentence of that particular blog post over at this site:

It seems that the character assassination and slander of Bill Ayers and other people who have known Obama is not about to let up.

As opposed to actual assassination, I suppose....something William Ayers is actually guilty of.

And just a point of clarification: Ayers is not being pilloried because he knows Obama. He is being pilloried because he is a proven domestic terrorist/bomber/killer.

Obama is being pilloried because of his association with Ayers. Not the other way around.

What is the bigger question: What does Obama see in Ayers that he really likes? Or...what does Ayers see in Obama that he really likes?

(h/t Volokh Conspiracy)

Realist posted a comment on an article which I did called Senator Joe.

This has nothing to do with the above post from Theocritus, probably more to do with the MSNBC post from the other day, but I thought it worth the read. The author may be a little controversial (a google search of his name says plenty), but his statement on the issue of present day journalism is spot on in my opinion. Do what you want with it, I just thought jw would find it very enlightening, as do I.

The article is here and it's worth reading.

It points the finger for the current financial crisis directly toward the Democrats, which we all knew, specifically naming Chris Dodd and Bonny Fwank, sorry, Barney Frank, as being the culprits who refused to let the Bush Administration set up a regulatory authority over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and agitated for even more relaxed lending standards. And yet that is buried. Also buried from mainstream press scrutiny is Barack Obama's role in ACORN, which pressured for these bad loans which are destroying wealth all over the world.

Orson Scott Card:

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

I find it sourly amusing that this sorry lot are now the ones blaming the victim.

"Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy," said Biden to a roomful of donors. "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," Biden continued. "Watch, we're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it's going happen. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate."

This is no doubt true--the pennyweight bullies of the world never waste a chance to see what they can get away with, and some of the bigger ones would jump in too. And we have the Chosen One who wants to sit down and talk to the most repugnant leaders, or dictators, on earth, without preconditions. Or even talk to them at all without unilaterally foretelling their future, which is the obligation of the civilized when talking to thugs.

Is this Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment? Are we going to have, in the squared circle, the Chosen One and Ahmadinejad? Joe the Biden tells us that fireworks are coming. Is this a playbill that we should welcome? Armageddon? It fits in with the messianic nature of this entire campaign. Is this just the blather of a man addicted to the sound of his voice? Or is it in vino veritas?

Dear Senator John Kerry, the victim of those pernicious and obviously untrue, because they were not respectful, Swift Boat attacks, was speaking in Massachusetts.

He referred to one of the most trivializing moments in modern politics, when some bubblehead asked Bill Clinton "boxers or briefs" and the man, whose mind we were to find out never got out his pants, answered.

Kerry graced his audience with that condescension that comes so naturally to an accomplished gigolo entombed in the Senate:

"Barack got asked the famous boxers or briefs question. I was tempted to say commando."

"Then they asked McCain and McCain said, 'Depends.'"

The arrogance of this sorry lot.

How many houses does your wife have, Senator Kerry?

From iowahawk:

We've all witnessed a lot of insanity in American politics over the last few years. Up until the last few days, none of it has seriously bothered me; hey, just more grist for the satire mill. But after witnessing the media's blitzkreig on Joe 'the Plumber' Wurzelbacher, I can only muster anger, and no small amount of fear.

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.

Godwin's Law! you say? If the jackboot fits, wear it.

If it's meta-memes and meta-meta-narratives these media headlice want, so be it. I hope you will join me in expressing a simple bit of solidarity with this guy, Spartacus style. I AM JOE. I am a Wal Mart schlub in flyover country who changes my own oil and unclogs drains without a license. I smoke and drink beer and toss the football in the front yard with my kid, and I figure I can fend my way without handouts from some Magic Messiah's candy bags. Most everyone in my family and most everyone I grew up with is another Joe, and if you screw with them, you screw with me.

And that is only what his campaign will have taken in and spent by the time it is all over. The value of a fawning, incurious, and completely in the tank Mainstream media has to be worth almost as much, making The One's campaign a billion dollar quest for the White House.

And this was the guy who pledged to take public financing until he decided that he needed to rise above his principles in order to....you know...change the world and spread the wealth around.

When Republicans do this...well frankly, nobody has ever done this...but when Republicans enjoy a money advantage they are accused of trying to buy the election.

When Mr. Obama does it he knows that he doesn't even have to disclose who or where a lot of the money is even coming from because he knows that the Press won't ask about any of this before the election if at all.

Plus, he probably has it on good authority that he won't be bothered by an Obama Justice Department should he win. After all, Mr. Obama has passed through the inner workings of both the Chicago Political machine and the industrialized voter fraud machine that is ACORN and saw no need for any changes to be made to two of the most corrupt political organizations in American history.

So millions of dollars in untraceable and probably illegal foreign contributions will become just another "distraction".

Hope. Change. Judgment to Lead.

The Chicago Way.

As those of us with the digestions to watch it know, NBC news has been overshadowed by the MSNBC of Keith Olbermann, whose Obamolatry would make Miss Lewinski blush. There was some huffing by some of the less obviously ideologically tainted people at NBC that the news, which they fancy is respected, ought not be hijacked by Mr. Olberman and his fanciful ideas. But his ratings are enough with the religious left, and his message evidently agreeable enough, that Mr. Olberman continues without hindrance.

Until today, when I learned that NBC is cutting a half a billion dollars from its budget.

Microsoft is advertising...Windows. Two years ago that would have been like advertising municipal water. First, with bait-and-switch. The man on the street is asked to look at something and when he's told it's Vista, he does that wonderful, man-on-the-street surprised look that--hey!--it's not as awful as he thought it would be. Lame, and sad. Or was until the next one when I lost patience.

The second commercial uses, first rattle out of the box, the PC guy in the Apple commercials. There follows a list of people who use Windows, and one of them says his office is in the outdoors. He's a graffiti "artist" and is posing in front of a building that he defaced. The Site Admin. complained that when he switched out a hard drive he had to call Macroshaft to authorize Windows to work. Is there a special Windows for vandals? And Gates has the nerve to fret about theft?

I'm reading a book so exiguous that it could be evanescent and it's made out of the small reading room only to be copied from for this. It's one by Timothy James Beck. A character suggested that Spanish Harlem, with its urban blight, might not be the place to raise children. The protagonist suspected that her family were Republicans and that's when I nearly threw it away. But he redeemed himself with this description of a trip to the theater:

...but I agreed with him about the gloomy musical I'd just squirmed through. Asphalt and Battery was the story of Edward J. de Smedt, a Belgian immigrant who invented asphalt. Among the places it was first used was Battery Park, and according to the show's Playbill, Edward's ghost felt guilty about his role in the "proliferation of automobiles, urbanization, pollution, and global warming." Most of Martin's time onstage had involved a dance in which he unrolled bolts of black fabric until it covered the floor, the backdrops, and the props, before he finally smothered all the actors with it. The last had gotten the most enthusiastic applause of the night."

Irony in a liberal? Well, Ed Koch called himself a liberal with sanity. There may be two of them.

Here is Mark Steyn on the socialist Obama with a little insight on his policy development process.

Supposedly, under the Obama tax plan, 95 per cent of the American people will get a tax cut. You'd think that at this point the natural skepticism of any sentient being other than six-week-old puppies might kick in, but apparently not. If you're wondering why Obama didn't simply announce that under his plan 112 per cent of the American people will get a tax cut, well, they ran it past the focus groups who said that that was all very generous but they'd really like it if he could find a way to stick it to Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove and whatnot. So 95 per cent it is.

I've just figured that the 95% thing has been a lie all along, but it really didn't matter since I was going to get bulldozed no matter what. But this is what it is really all about:

The heart of the American Dream is aspiration. That's why people came here from all over the world. Back in eastern Europe, the Joe Bidens and Diane Sawyers of the day were telling Joe the Peasant: "Hey, look, man. You're a peasant in the 19th century, just like your forebears were peasants in the 12th century and your descendants will be peasants in the 26th century. So you're never gonna be earning 250 groats a year. Don't worry about it. Leave it to us. We know better." And Joe the Peasant eventually figured that one day he'd like to be able to afford the Premium Gruel with just a hint of arugula and got on the boat to Ellis Island. Because America is the land where a guy who doesn't have a 250-grand business today might just have one in five or ten years' time.

Not if our incoming Socialist Masters have anything to do with it.

Read the whole thing.

I have commented that people are creatures of tastes rather than ethics but nowhere is this more strongly shown than in this excerpt from The Howard Stern Show.

Sal went to Harlem and asked people whom they'd vote for. In this clip all were for Obama. But he presented nothing but McCain's views, which they endorsed because they thought they were Obama's.

Every time in this clip the person being interviewed was asked if he'd be okay with Sarah Palin as Obama's vice president and every time he was told yes.

Not a single interviewee had any concept whatsoever of what Obama had said, only that he was saying it. Or that it was represented that Obama was saying it. The words, stances, history, and politics meant nothing. The messenger was all.

It's all marketing, isn't it? Nothing but marketing. There is no such thing as substance, or thinking, or truth. It's all marketing. My only consolation is that capitalism and democracy are the best systems devised so far for devolving power from the top dogs and ensuring a better spread of wealth. Despite the utter and complete indifference of people enjoying these freedoms and liberties to what it takes to ensure their continuation.

Putin is all over the news with Tiger Hunts, Tiger Cub Birthday presents, but this latest report about getting a GPS collar for his dog just comes across as foreboding:

Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, a close friend of Putin, said the collar, which weighs 170 grams (6 ounces) and is equipped with transmitters, had been ready for Koni some time ago and now was the time to test it.

It was immediately slipped on the dog.

"She looks sad," Ivanov said. "Her free life is over."

"She is wagging her tail. That means she likes it," Putin said.

Joe the Plumber has tax liens filed against him! This is BIG NEWS!

So does Barack Obama's campaign Treasurer. Move along, nothing to see here.

I wonder if this kind of thing even causes any discussions or internal debates in newsrooms around the country...or even here in Midland.

How is this for a personal nightmare? You are given the opportunity to give your honest opinion to a candidate who sought you out ostensibly looking for an honest answer.

So far, so good.

If the candidate is John McCain and you are generally supportive there is no story. You go back home and the world never hears of you and leaves you alone.

If the candidate is John McCain and you are critical of him you make the news as hero everyman, a speaker-of-truth-to-power. Congratulations, you have gotten your 15 minutes of fame.

If the candidate is Barack Obama?

If you are supportive of The Chosen One: Congratulations, you achieve everyman hero status as one of the massive throng of those wanting Hope and Change brought to Washington. Collect your 15 minutes of fame and go home.

If you are not supportive and through some freak of serial occurrences actually end up on YouTube asking The One a question that causes him to reveal himself as the re-distributionist that he is?

Well, you will get your 15 minutes of fame alright plus whatever extra time is required to guarantee your personal destruction.

Do you think I overstate?

Remember, Joe Wurzelbacher's exchange with The One took place in front of his own home as the Obama campaign swept through his neighborhood.

In. Front. Of. His. Own. Home.

Keeping that in mind, now consider this article alone from the Toledo Blade. Read it all the way through.

The article contains information about Mr. Wurzelbacher that necessarily came from a very thorough search through public records, i.e. tax rolls, licensing status, voter status and party affiliation, and even his divorce record. It looks as though there may even be some "official" retribution from his town's government given the status of his plumber's license or lack thereof. (Imagine what would happen if an illegal alien was critical of McCain and the McCain campaign then tried to point out that he was...you know...an illegal alien.)

All of this in three days. If the MSM/Obama Campaign Consortium can find anyone with a personal grudge against Mr. Wurzelbacher we will begin hearing from them also.

In. Front. Of. His. Own. Home.

Put yourself in Joe's place. The Great Uniter, The One, Hopey McChangey is passing through your neighborhood asking for input.

And fate delivers the chance to provide you, Joe Citizen, to provide feedback to the man who may end up running the country in this great exercise in democracy.

If you agree with him, then by all means tell him and collect your 15 minutes.

If you don't, then go back inside your house so that the Mainstream Press won't publish everything they can to embarrass you.

With the markets moving up and down like the Judge Roy Scream I tend to drop by Marketwatch.com during the day to watch the graphs.

Marketwatch used to be a CBS property, but it was recently snapped up by the Wall Street Journal and integrated into their online buffet. I might have expected this quote from the editor in chief, David Callaway when CBS was in charge, but I thought the WSJ at least tried to be a little less partisan, even in comentary.

In the wake of such colossal and universal misjudgment about oil prices and runaway economic growth from India to China, might we now be overshooting in our dire predictions of where the global economy is heading? Sure, we're in a recession now. And we'll be in one when the Obama administration takes over in January. But will it really be as bad as everybody is now collectively predicting?

That's a pretty bold statement about Obama right there, but he's out of San Fransisco, so I guess the phrase, "the next presidential administration" never crossed his mind.

Meet Joe Wurzelbacher, plumber. The man who was told by Barack Obama that he needs to spread his "wealth" around. Joe, who lives in an America where income is gained by hard work and dedication and true service and utility to others, speaks about Barack Obama, who lives in an America where income is gained by loans, grants, and a dipping into the stream of the campaign contribution-earmark feedback loop.

UPDATE: Now meet Mark the Trucker.

The headline reads, "Justifiable homicides at highest in more than a decade" but check out the very first paragraph:

The number of justifiable homicides committed by police and private citizens has been rising in the past two years to their highest levels in more than a decade, reflecting a shoot-first philosophy in dealing with crime, say law enforcement analysts.

[Emphasis mine]

Get the sneering "shoot first" reference.

Remember....the topic here is justifiable homicide.

Justifiable.

Homicide.

Message to Major Media gun weenies: The alternative is a "die first" philosophy.

Okay, so it is not so much an accomplishment so much as it is overcoming my tendency to procrastinate, but I have expanded the "Midland Blogs" area of the blogroll to the right to include many of the (non-commercial) blogs that have cropped up since the last time I updated.

Four blogs of note are those attached to the newly launched LiveMidlandTexas.com site that is a joint project of the Midland Development Corporation. A joint project with who? Well, I am not sure.

Those blogs are The Sounding of Two Canons, Green and Growing, Living It and Loving It, and Downtown Junkie.

Welcome to Midland's battery of local blogs.

Chances of a link swap? I would guess...um...zero.

Here is the link to the new site.

Update: This is interesting. Is the City of Midland planning to buy a parking garage in downtown Midland?

Are you growing tired of this ACORN thing? It's fine with you if the 'disadvantaged' vote more than once 'cause they have so little else to look forward to?

And you think it's OK to let someone who's never held a job for more than 3 weeks and can't make his or her payments "buy" a house down the street from you so they can live the american dream? Wondering what all the Freddie-meenie and Fannie-moe fuss is about...it's just them poor folks on the other side of town?

Well, where do you stand on killing babies the Democrat/leftist policy of abortion? Isn't the most fundamental right we receive through God and our Constitution the right to life, without which all other rights are literally meaningless? I wonder where Senator Obama stands on this issue?

Watch this.

You really don't have to wonder. With everything else going on, the first - The. First. - legislation The One intends to pass will be the Freedom of Choice Act. It'll probably start in the first 5 days of Miss Nancy's November 5th Post-Election House Special Session and Pajama Party. Then The ObaMassiah can vote for it as senator and have the bill waiting on his Oval Office desk when he gets there in January. Nice?

E. Vil.

How many transactions does Amazon.com handle in a single day? Or iTunes? Or any number of commercial sites which handle nothing of importance compared to the sanctity of the principle of one man, one vote?

Yet while Amazon.com et al continue to hum along handling all of these transactions and the attendant user data almost flawlessly, state governments don't have a program in place that can keep ineligible voters from voting and can't keep fraudulent voters from voting over and over.

How hard would it be on a state-wide basis to have a central voter database that could immediately detect duplicate voters based on Social Security Numbers or birth dates, etc. or combinations thereof? You voted in Precinct 407? Precinct 408 knows about it before you can drive be driven over there to vote a second time.

With the current state of computer technology and the pervasiveness of broadband connections, I can't imagine that this is even a challenge.......technologically.

It has to be the Lawyers.

Of course, there is a vested interest by some in such free-wheeling access to the polls, but when you look at the outright organized fraud that is ACORN-based voter registration drives, surely this is something that should appall anyone and everyone.

Anyone and everyone who thinks that it is a good idea to allow voting at all, I mean.

From the white, racist Wall Street Journal:

In 1992 [Obama] led voter registration efforts as the director of Project Vote, which included Acorn. This past November, he lauded Acorn's leaders for being "smack dab in the middle" of that effort. Mr. Obama also served as a lawyer for Acorn in 1995, in a case against Illinois to increase access to the polls.

During his tenure on the board of Chicago's Woods Fund, that body funneled more than $200,000 to Acorn. More recently, the Obama campaign paid $832,000 to an Acorn affiliate. The campaign initially told the Federal Election Commission this money was for "staging, sound, lighting." It later admitted the cash was to get out the vote.

The Obama campaign is now distancing itself from Acorn, claiming Mr. Obama never organized with it and has nothing to do with illegal voter registration. Yet it's disingenuous to channel cash into an operation with a history of fraud and then claim you're shocked to discover reports of fraud. As with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, Mr. Obama was happy to associate with Acorn when it suited his purposes. But now that he's on the brink of the Presidency, he wants to disavow his ties.

The Justice Department needs to treat these fraud reports as something larger than a few local violators. The question is whether Acorn is systematically subverting U.S. election law - on the taxpayer's dime.

The non-racist media will only begin to examine or report on any of this after the election. If then.

Right now, even if they don't think Obama is tied to this essentially criminal enterprise called ACORN, they still won't report on it because the rubes in Pennsylclingy and Alabitter might...you know...mistakenly link Obama with the only organization through which he can claim any executive experience at all.

Not that it matters, "executive experience" being an invalid white, racist construct to begin with, of course.

All right, this might be a bit hyperbolic, I say only because I don't want to believe it. And the video is edited to show what the presenter wants, not like there's anything new in that. But there is no doubt that the Chosen One is intending to invite his friends the community organizers in to help set his administration's policy.

The Nevada Secretary of State seized ACORN's records owing to voter fraud. ACORN was involved in Ohio's voter fraud--the Democratic SoS Jennifer Brunner was at least overruled by a federal judge who ordered her office to verify the identities of newly registered voters. Meaning that she didn't intend to. Get this: the Secretary of State of Ohio was complicit in an attempt to suborn one of her office's most sacred duties: defending democracy. A Democrat, in office, helping to steal an election. The very word Democrat has become oxymoronic.

More on the Dem Presidential candidate here.

For his next trick, the Great Obama will jumpstart the economy, and he'll do it by raising taxes on the very businesses that are today adrift in a financial tsunami! That will include all those among the top 1% of taxpayers who are in fact small-business owners, and the nation's biggest employers who currently pay some of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. Mr. Obama will, with a flick of his fingers, show them how to create more jobs with less money. It's simple, really. He has a wand.

Read the piece and follow the links. Great stuff, well written.

UPDATE: Here is more via Instapundit Saturday morning.

The thumbnail future market history of this month is likely to include the phrase "correctly discounting the economic fallout of an Obama presidency and hard-left Congress repeating the failed frenetic economic policies of the 1930s". Let's just hope it doesn't take a re-run of the 1940s to extract us.

Well said, and scary as all-get-out.

More reading on The One.

My guess is that Obama supporters who have just seen their net worth decline by 30% or 40% won't be very interested in paying over half their incomes in taxes for the next four years. That would make it more difficult, and likely impossible, to rebuild the wealth that they have lost in the current collapse.

Obamanomics may not work out the way he thinks they well. Dropping oil prices are just going to lower gas prices below where he thinks they should be. Lower energy costs are going to make you want to just do what you want travel-wise, home-ownership-wise and greenhouse gas-wise and you won't want the government asking telling you to cut back anyway. And won't The One's alternative energy fantasies require more subsidization from the government if the un-alternative energy costs are low?

Charles Krauthammer on The One.

Obama's political career was launched with Ayers giving him a fundraiser in his living room. If a Republican candidate had launched his political career at the home of an abortion-clinic bomber - even a repentant one - he would not have been able to run for dogcatcher in Podunk. And Ayers shows no remorse. His only regret is that he "didn't do enough."

Please read the whole thing. Twice.

Many of the rest of The Obamassiah's relationships, only now seeing the light of day, are just as odious. Rezko, Wright, Pfleger. Dodd, Frank, Raines. 2000 donors with no address. China money (haven't we been here before?). Huge kickbacks donations from "sub-prime" lending banks. ACORN and voter fraud. Dead people on the rolls in Chicago. Illegal aliens fast tracked for mortgages. Entire neighborhoods in foreclosure. All foreseeable and forseen. By Bush and McCain. Not the Dems. Not Dodd. Not Frank. And certainly not Obama.

God help us if this inexperienced, self-absorbed, socialist, radical, terrorist-sympathizing, dictator-cuddling (and -envying) Senator from Illinois is elected President.

S N L had a skit about the bailout, which for perhaps the first time ever told the truth about the Democrats. In particular it took a whack at George Soros, and also some people whose names I shall not mention to avoid, probably not out of unjustified paranoia, the Google robots. But they built up a California savings and loan by offering ARM mortgages to people with bad credit, which is like giving a child a loaded gun. Or a Muslim terrorist a nuke. Then they sold that S&L to Wachovia for $24 billion and hence Wachovia's near-death trouble.

The skit was brutal--brutally honest. And the people who are mentioned had enough stroke to get the skit pulled from NBC and from YouTube. NBC restored the skit, although bowdlerized, claiming that the people had death threats, which I find entirely unconvincing.

The full skit, however, has been uploaded to YouTube but without any flags which would allow for a search, and here it is.

Obama's lawyers have threatened suit against television stations which ran some ads critical of the Chosen One.

The MSM doesn't even try to cover its love affair with the Chosen One and ignores any evidence of his hard-left associations.

One of the first signs of fascism is suppression of dissent.

It has been said, with justice, that this is the first election in which the MSM has made no pretense whatsoever at being fair. A friend, who is an Obama supporter, said that she had to turn off MSNBC because was all Obama, all the time. Hagiography.

You've seen the various changes rung on the Obama circle, in which all minorities are supposed to cast aside their indissoluble differences for a second to come together in support the Chosen One.

There is a modified logo for Republicans for Obama, one for Asians for Obama, one for LGBT for Obama, Emancipated Kitchen Appliances for Obama, People Waiting on a Mountaintop for Obama--is that redundant?--and so forth, each with some cutsey little embellishment on the Obamessiah's ideograph.

A friend has come up with the new Obama ideograph for journalists, which I'll put on the second page. Nothing naughty but I thought I'd at least pay lip service to decorum.

[As requested by Walsingham]

Current Commissioner, and Candidate, Jimmy Smith said some interesting things regarding the Horseshoe Arena at a recent LWV forum. From the MRT Article:

[Midland County Commissioner Jimmy] Smith said Midland County built the Horseshoe, a multipurpose facility, to increase Midland's ability to attract large events and it has been a catalyst for creating 1,500 jobs and more development along Interstate 20.

[Midland County Commissioner Jimmy] Smith said the county knew when the Horseshoe was built its benefits would take a while to kick in. He said the event center lost $400,000 its first year and not all the revenue been counted yet. He said the facility has also brought $3 million into the community.

According to the CSL Convention Center Feasibility Study for the Expanded Midland Center (pg 98), the proposed $68 Million dollar center in year five would generate about $14 Million a year in net new spending (direct and indirect) and create 237 net new jobs (direct and indirect).

Using the ratios of jobs to annual spending in CSL's report, and Commissioner Smith's $3 Million figure, seems like the number is closer to 51 jobs. About 1,449 jobs less than claimed. Though according to the MRT report on the Horseshoe in August, the 2-year impact was reported at $10 Million, even if this last year accounted for $7 Million you are still only looking at 118 jobs.

As to the loss, since the County conveniently neglects to include the debt service payments for the series 2004 certificates of obligation let in the amount of $8,920.000 for the expressed purpose of building the horseshoe or considers refunding monies taken from the Reserve Funds of the County to cover total construction costs of around $14 Million not anticipated by the C.O.'s, there is no such thing as a just $400,000 loss, in any year. Let's look at 2009.

Here are the numbers the way the County presents them to the Public:

2009 Budgeted Expenses: $975,800

2009 Budgeted Revenue: $205,000 (Rentals/Concessions/Insurance)

2009 Budgeted Bed Tax Revenue: $360,000

2009 Projected "Official" Operating Deficit: $410,000

Here's how it really shakes out:

2009 Budgeted Expenses: $975,800
2009 Debt Service Payment on 2004 C.O.'s: $630,000
2009 Refunding Reserve Funds ($5M/20yr/0%): $250,000

2009 Budgeted Revenue: $205,000 (Rentals/Concessions/Insurance)

2009 Real Deficit: $1,650,000

2009 Budgeted Bed Tax Levy: $360,000

2009 Additional Local Sales and Use and Ad Valorem Tax Levy: $1,290,000

Yeah that's right, for the Horseshoe to operate, the County levies about $1.65 Million in taxes.

The short of the matter is these facilities NEVER turn a profit. If they did, local governments would never be asked for a dime to build and maintain them, private developers would do it.

The Horseshoe, or something like it, is probably a necessary quality of life project, but our elected officials need to stop deceiving the public by spinning yarns that the losses will turn around and the facilities will make money. Let's call a spade a spade, it is a taxpayer funded enterprise that pays a small percentage of its way on its own.

I seem to recall one of the reasons for building the Horseshoe to replace the Expo Building, was because the Expo building was such a drain on the budget....by todays ChamberMath(tm) Logic that facility should have been overflowing with cash as long as it had been there.

Economists are predicting a 2% decline in this upcoming quarter. Many substantial markets went down 5-10% today alone. We were lucky--only 2%. The Fed is for the first time lending directly to major corporations to inject liquidity for banks won't lend to each other, because of the financial instruments whose risk simply cannot be determined. You don't know if your bank is solvent and haven't a clue about the one across the street.

Madeline Talbott is a far-left radical activist, and is the Chicago director of Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN, the radical group which pressured lenders to make risky loans to people with bad credit or no credit. She intimidated lenders to make these loans, and got Fannie Mae to agree to buy them.

When Obama was a budding community organizer in Chicago, having turned down, I have heard, a clerkship for the Supreme Court, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her ACORN staff, I presume in doing what they do: disruption and force for a political end.

According to Stanley Kurtz

ACORN protesters will break into private offices, show up at a banker's home to intimidate his family [emphasis mine], or pour protesters into bank lobbies to scare away customers, all in an effort to force a lowering of credit standards for poor and minority customers. According to Swarts, long-term ACORN organizers "tend to see the organization as a solitary vanguard of principled leftists...the only truly radical community organization."

Obama was on the board of the Chicago Woods Fund, and became a consistent and powerful voice urging the support of ACORN, which was happily mugging lenders to make bad loans. The bad loans which are causing the world's financial meltdown today. Obama was funding ACORN, which was happily mugging lenders to make bad loans. The bad loans destroying trillions of dollars of wealth today.

Here is a nice concise take on significant credentials of Mr. Obama.

We cannot afford this guy, no way, no how, even though he'd like to have folks think he'd govern from the center.

And, don't even think about forgetting his potential impact on the Supreme Court. Other damage could be reversed in 4 to 8 years after he leaves office. Supreme Court justices will be for a generation or more.

Over at the Midland County Auditor's web page.

Maybe our Master Municipal Budget Parser and Odds-Maker Ospurt can provide the Over/Under on the Midland Horseshoe's Operating Loss for 2009.

I used Patterico's headline because it cannot be improved upon.

The story is here.

In unrelated news, newspaper readership continues to decline forcing major metropolitan newspapers to make further layoffs.

Check your ticket stub.

I can't imagine this would be a problem here in Midland. Although, according to reports from the Associated Press it really sounded like all of Midland turned out with pitchforks, clubs, and burning effigies for President Bush's visit last Saturday.

The low point for Sarah Palin thus far had to be her interview with Katie Couric in which she [Palin] came up dry when discussing various Supreme Court cases. Much hooting was made by the left about this.

Of course, Mr. Obama, being an Ivy-draped Lawyer and former Professor of Constituional Law could no doubt go on for hours about any number of cases that have been argued before the courts, either Supreme or lower.

Advantage Obama, right? On the face of it, sure.

But in the real world? No.

What good is Obama's knowledge of the First Amendment when his campaign has made serial attempts not to rebut arguments and critics, but to outright silence them? (Prediction: Should Obama win the election look for the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" to be revived. If it gets to his desk he will sign it.)

And on the Second Amendment: With all of his vast knowledge and training in this area Obama looks into the Second Amendment and sees.....protection for duck hunters, essentially. The guy is a natural gun-grabber.

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama must demonstrate executive experience, but he remains strangely silent about his eight years (1994-2002) as a director of the Joyce Foundation, a billion dollar tax-exempt organization. He has one obvious reason: during his time as director, Joyce Foundation spent millions creating and supporting anti-gun organizations.

There is another, less known, reason.

During Obama's tenure, the Joyce Foundation board planned and implemented a program targeting the Supreme Court. The work began five years into Obama's directorship, when the Foundation had experience in turning its millions into anti-gun "grassroots" organizations, but none at converting cash into legal scholarship.

The plan's objective was bold: the judicial obliteration of the Second Amendment.

Joyce's directors found a vulnerable point. When judges cannot rely upon past decisions, they sometimes turn to law review articles. Law reviews are impartial, and famed for meticulous cite-checking. They are also produced on a shoestring. Authors of articles receive no compensation; editors are law students who work for a tiny stipend.

In 1999, midway through Obama's tenure, the Joyce board voted to grant the Chicago-Kent Law Review $84,000, a staggering sum by law review standards. The Review promptly published an issue in which all articles attacked the individual right view of the Second Amendment.

As far as everything that has been argued about either amendment over the years I will take Mr. Obama's knowledge over Mrs. Palin's.

But as far as knowing what these two amendments were actually meant to afford the American people?

Hands down, Sarah Palin.

While I was on vacation the MDC met. Buried in the agenda was this little item:

10. Consider a resolution cancelling and rescinding the economic development agreement between the Midland Development Corporation and Reliant Holdings, Ltd.

So, did the MDC pass a resolution to rescind the $250,000 development agreement with Reliant Holdings and their proposed CO2 facility out near County Road 60 and 1788? If so, that project almost made it a year before the deal was abandoned.

So let's see, Countrywide, Endura, W Light and Power.....at least we get clawbacks.

This joke has come to me twice, in slightly different forms, but so much has my lip-curling contempt for equivocators and moral relativists grown that I find it better now than before.

For those of you (few) who haven't seen it, an Internet joke:

Are you a Democrat, a Republican or a Texan?

Here is a little test that will help you decide.

The answer can be found by posing the following question:

You're walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children.

Suddenly, an Islamic Terrorist with a huge knife comes around the
corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, praises Allah,
raises the knife, and charges at you.

You are carrying a Colt 1911 cal. 45 semiautomatic pistol, and you are
an expert shot. You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your
family. What do you do?

...................................................

THINK CAREFULLY AND THEN SCROLL DOWN:

Democrat's Answer :

Well, that's not enough information to answer the question!

Does the man look poor or oppressed?

Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire him to attack?

Could we run away?

What does my wife think?

What about the kids?

Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand?

What does the law say about this situation?

Does the Colt have appropriate safety built into it?

Why am I carrying a loaded gun anyway, and what kind of message does
this send to society and to my children?

Is it possible he'd be happy with just killing me? Does he definitely
want to kill me, or would he be content just to wound me?

If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family get away
while he was stabbing me?

Should I call 9-1-1?

Why is this street so deserted?

We need to raise taxes, have paint and weed day and make this happier,
healthier street that would discourage such behavior.

This is all so confusing! I need to debate this with some friends for
few days and try to come to a consensus.

...................................................

Republican's Answer:

BANG!

...................................................

Texan's Answer:

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

BANG! Click..... (Sounds of reloading)

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

BANG! Click

Daughter: "Nice grouping, Daddy! Were those the Winchester Silver Tips
or Hollow Points?"

Son: "Can I shoot the next one?"

Wife: "You are not taking that to the taxidermist."

Judge says that Sharon Stone over-reacted to her son's smelly feet.

With Bush being declared "the lamest of Lame Duck Presidents" by the MSM, you would think the National Media might decide it is OK to just write an objective and factual story about W. every once in a while. I guess old habits are hard to break, or Obama/Biden needs the MSM's help to keep W. in the negative.

The Story filed on the wires by AFP came right out of the gate and beat W. with his low approval ratings and used his trip home as a setup to take him down a couple of more notches. What should have been a pretty cut and dry President visits home story, turns into a not so subtle hit piece..

With approval ratings at a record low, President George W. Bush on Saturday stopped for a morale-boosting visit to his childhood home in the west Texas oil town of Midland.

Morale-boosting is just a decoy to add punch to this paragraph

On Saturday small knots of onlookers gathered to see the president as he drove through Midland to the fundraiser -- a sharp contrast to his last visit, when thousands met for send-off rally for the new president on January 17, 2001, just days before he first took office.

A CBS News poll out October 1 put the president's approval rating at 22 percent, the lowest ever of his presidency. A Gallup poll out September 30 showed Bush's approval rating at 27 percent.

It is obvious that the AFP writer is trying to infer that things are so bad for Bush he is even experiencing lower approval and excitement levels in his own hometown by pointing out the "sharp contrast to his last visit." I guess there is no expectation of crowd size differences between a private party and an everyone come pep-rally send off.

Ohh well it is all fruit salad in the MSM these days when it comes to conservatives, because that is the only way apples and oranges are the same.

UPDATE: The Washington Post expands on the meme.

Nearly eight years ago, 15,000 well-wishers crowded downtown Midland for a rousing send-off to favorite son George W. Bush, who was on his way to Washington to become the nation's 43rd president.

Bush returned to this windswept West Texas oil city Saturday on a much quieter note, hosting a closed-door fundraiser and then, in an unannounced detour, visiting the humble three-bedroom rambler that was, for a while, home to two future presidents.

Struggling in Washington with two wars, a collapsing economy and record disapproval ratings, Bush seemed a bit wistful after a quick tour of his refurbished boyhood home.

.......

Now at the end of his presidency, Bush's return was greeted by a smattering of small crowds lining the route the motorcade took to a fundraiser at the spacious home of GOP Rep. K. Michael Conaway.

Here is a compilation of the inaccuracies, hallucinations and lies stated by Sen Joe Biden in the debate Thursday night. My favorite:

"Look, all you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie's Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me where I spend a lot of time and you ask anybody in there whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this administration has made them better off in the last eight years."

According to this Delaware site, Katie's Restaurant is no longer in business; locals remember it on Union Street 25 to 30 years ago.

I can't imagine why Biden would believe that we would believe he ever set foot in Home Depot. Except HE believes he has because he has said it so often. Hallucination.

And I think that many Delaware residents recognize the foreign policy of "this administration" has in fact made them better off: any bombs going off next door in DC during the last 7 years? any dirty nukes being detonated in Baltimore harbor in that time? No? Gee, we all thought that was eminent during the winter of '01-'02. You think the average Delaware resident has forgotten that? No. More hallucination by Biden.

He is on the ticket for his foreign policy "experience". He has been consistantly wrong on almost every foreign policy issue of substance since he ran for public office 35 years ago. Wrong ideas, wrong tactics, wrong side of disagreements...just wrong.

Biden: "President Bush insisted on elections in the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, 'Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them.'"

The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler notes that "Obama had been a senator for only a few days when the election took place, but if he made such statements, they did not appear in news reports or transcripts that are contained in the Nexis or Factiva databases."

Yeah, that's right, the WaPo fact checking their own candidates...that's how bad the lies are: the Post is actually concerned about its credibility in supporting Obama/Biden.

Also, his continuing to talk the economy down when we are in a difficult spot for ONE segment of the economy (mortgage lenders and bundlers of their products, see previous posts here by other, more knowledgable, contributors), is irresponsible at best.

If Plagarism Joe and The Obamassiah are elected in a month, I will likely not leave the country, at least for good. I will, however, avoid seeing their smarmy faces on the TV (watched very little already) and withdraw from the economy and taxation exposure as much as possible.

As has been mentioned here before, there is a movie being released this weekend, tonight actually. A couple of reviews here and here indicate that it is really worth watching. Sadly, the Midland theater is not showing An American Carol. You'll have to go to Odessa, at least for this weekend. See you there?

Another plug: Ghosttown is a surprisingly good flick. Catch it before it gets away. Oops! It already has...gotta go to Odessa for it, too.

Recently the British armed forces wanted to limit recruits to 15% of the service and there was an outcry. The Equality Commission said the move would fall foul of the Race Relations Act by treating foreigners less favorably than British citizens. Well that's okay, isn't it? Seems to me that you want people in the services who might identify with you, love your land, and be prepared to pay the ultimate price if they had to and treating them well might be part of the deal. But perhaps I'm insensitive because I don't object to Muslim terrorists in Gitmo being treated less favorably than the people they are trying to kill. One of the things that I'll never understand about the left is that to them the special part of being an American is the shame of being an American. Their shame.

The Brits are in for it. These pictures come from a London march, by the adherents of the Religion of Peace:

And here's what it's really about:

If you don't believe Islam is the religion of peace, they'll cut your head off. The lefties don't seem to realize that their heads will be the first on the chopping block. Can you say, "Useful idiot"?

The FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign has identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. Only $39.6 million of that amount comes from donors the Obama campaign has identified.

It is the largest pool of unidentified money that has ever flooded into the U.S. election system, before or after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms of 2002.

And how much of the total is from foreign sources...read illegal....looking to help elect "Citizen of the World" Barack Obama?

The FEC has compiled a separate database of potentially questionable overseas donations that contains more than 11,500 contributions totaling $33.8 million. More than 520 listed their "state" as "IR," often an abbreviation for Iran. Another 63 listed it as "UK," the United Kingdom.

More than 1,400 of the overseas entries clearly were U.S. diplomats or military personnel, who gave an APO address overseas. Their total contributions came to just $201,680.

But others came from places as far afield as Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Beijing, Fallujah, Florence, Italy, and a wide selection of towns and cities in France.

Until recently, the Obama Web site allowed a contributor to select the country where he resided from the entire membership of the United Nations, including such friendly places as North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Unlike McCain's or Sen. Hillary Clinton's online donation pages, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship until just recently. Clinton's presidential campaign required U.S. citizens living abroad to actually fax a copy of their passport before a donation would be accepted.

With such lax vetting of foreign contributions, the Obama campaign may have indirectly contributed to questionable fundraising by foreigners.

Yet another story that I am sure the In The Tank National Press is working on in order to deliver Obama a nasty "December Surprise".

Hope. Change. The Chicago way.

[Film-maker] Theo van Gogh's murder was a declaration of war which appears to have gone unnoticed by the Dutch government with the exception of Deputy Minister Geert van de Zalm and VVD chairman Jozias Aartsen . In an outrageous move,Chris Ripken a Dutch painter who attempted to memorialize the slain filmmaker with the words "Thou Shalt Not Kill" was ordered by the police and Rotterdam mayor Oberstelt to remove the work because the words according to the Volkskrant were "too sensitive for our multi cultural society".

But remember....America is the one that needs to regain it's moral standing in the world.

The rest is here.