Obama Presidency in the Eyes of the Muslims, and Israel; The Coming Fairness Doctrine

Tonight on Political Pistachio Radio after Founding Truth at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern: Walid Shoebat, former Palestinian Terrorist, joins us to explain why Muslims are happy about the Obama win, and why Israel is worried. Will we see vitriolic anti-Semitism in America?

And, also tonight, in the second hour of the show: Is the Fairness Doctrine coming? Will we see the sudden rise of an Orwellian America? Truth Squads? Thought Police? Political Censorship? Dr. Kenneth Hill will explain the real threats on the horizon, and how the Fairness Doctrine will open the door for all of them!

Catch it all tonight on the Political Pistachio Revolution - Conservative Commentary

Founding Truth Examines The Constitutional Questions Surrounding the Obama Birth Certificate Debate

Last Sunday on Political Pistachio Radio an explosive episode that has attracted thousands of listeners regarding Obama’s Birth Certificate aired. During that episode, a number of Constitutional questions arose from the relationship of the 14th amendment with Article 2 to who becomes president should Barack Obama be found to be ineligible.

Philip J. Berg’s case is heading to the Supreme Court, and the Obama Camp claims they have a Constitutional argument out of it. Do they? Did the 14th amendment change the meaning of Article 2? If Obama is in fact ineligible, who becomes president? Will there be a special election? What if the decision comes down before January 20th? What if the decision comes down after January 20th?

Tune in to Founding Truth tonight at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern to find out!

After the episode you may also go to Blog Talk Radio for the archive of the show.

Remember the Great Ohio Heist? Might that naked Obama/ACORN vote fraud attempt have proven somewhat….underachieving?:

A weeklong period in which Ohioans could register to vote and immediately cast a ballot ended Monday with turnout that didn’t quite match the expectations of election officials — or the campaign predictions that preceded it.

As of Monday evening with polling sites still open, projections were that about 4,000 to 5,000 voters in the state’s four largest counties would have taken advantage of the policy, which survived multiple court challenges.

Elections officials were surprised by the low turnout.

“With all the hoopla we were anticipating a whole lot more,” said Steve Harsman, the elections director in Montgomery County, home to Dayton.

Overall, between 20,000 and 25,000 people were expected to have voted early in person in the four counties, beginning September 30. The four counties include the state’s largest urban areas — Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo and Dayton — and the focal points of campaign get-out-the-vote efforts.

About 1,300 people had taken advantage of the opportunity in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland and is the state’s most populous.

The early voting window was expected to benefit Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, as his campaign and supportive advocacy groups drove members of typically Democratic constituencies — the homeless, college students and poor people — to the polls.

Wow. It’s a good thing for Barry that he’s going to carry Ohio by at least several hundred thousand votes, or else this could be very embarrassing indeed.

[cross-posted at ]

Democrats destroy the financial sector and Republicans take the blame - Is the Wall Street Meltdown the perfect political crime?

One thing remains secure - nobody, but nobody….

….will make a patsy out of him.

Saturdays, 1PM Eastern/10AM Pacific

and/or

Sundays, 6PM Eastern/3PM Pacific

You can just see her sequel vitriolicly partisan floor speech warming up, cantcha?:

While the Senate will pass its version of the rescue bill with more than seventy votes according to Senate sources [It passed 75-24 - what are the odds the missing vote was the junior senator from Illinois?], senators have taken the partisan bickering over the rescue bill and added a stalled disagreement over a separate issue — “tax extenders,” or extending various tax relief provisions that are due to expire — into the mix…

But some conservative Democrats have expressed serious concerns about the fact that extending these tax cuts is not being paid for in the budget. Adding the provision may attract House Republicans, but it could alienate these fiscally-conscious Democrats, causing them to abandon the one hundred forty House Democrats who voted for the bill to join the ninety five who voted against it…

The implication: not only will Boehner need to provide the entire thirteen-vote margin that the bill lost by on Monday, but also that the addition of the unpaid-for “tax extenders” could cause up to seventeen Democrats who voted for the bill Monday to walk. If not more.

Crazy Nancy’s remarks write themselves, don’t they? “Our Republican colleagues called repeatedly for a ‘clean’ Wall Street ‘rescue’ bill. I tried to pass one on Monday to save the American economy and all the working families that are depending on it, but the Republicans in this House stood in the way and sent the stock market plummeting. Now their counterparts in the Senate pass a version of the same bill that they have crammed full of the very same sort of giveaways to the wealthy that got us into this financial crisis in the first place. As Speaker of this House, I cannot in good conscious, etc., etc., etc.”

Oh, but have no fear, there were quite a few “sweeteners” lipoinjected into the Senate “rescue” bill for Dems as well. Disincentives for House Republican support, to be sure - though not too much for Senator “Porkinator” to nonetheless vote for.

So here’s John Boehner’s mission, should he choose to accept it:

1) Flip thirteen members of his caucus who voted “nay” on Monday despite the bill’s identical unpopular, statist core and now all the swine flesh Christmas treed onto it;

2) Flip an additional seventeen more on the same grounds with only the modest tax relief provisions as mitigation;

3) Be prepared for Crazy Nancy to flip thirty-ONE more of her caucus to torpedo the bill AGAIN, wipe out a trillion MORE dollars of private sector wealth, and blame the Republicans for it AGAIN.

Aren’t you glad you’re not John Boehner?

UPDATE: BTW, after the Senate passed this “economy-saving” “rescue” bill last night, the Dow immediately….plunged over three hundred points at this morning’s opening bell. Raising the rather obvious next question: What if a Wall Street bailout gets passed, and, like each of its piecemeal predecessors over the past month, it doesn’t loosen up the credit markets? And if that proves to be the case, suppose the federal government can’t unload all that worthless paper for a profit, or even a modest loss, as has been advertised? How long until the federal government itself begins [heh] to financially destabilize? And people think the dollar is in the toilet NOW?  Is anybody in Washington, D.C. thinking that far ahead?

[cross-posted at ]

When Bill Clinton was first elected president in 1992, it was a chilling experience. I become politically aware in the late 1970s, my conservatism weaned on the foreign policy platform of the Committee For The Present Danger, writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and the free market economics writings of Nixon/Ford Treasury Secretary William Simon. The 1980 presidential campaign was the first one I seriously paid attention to, and I backed the eventual winner, Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Ask older seasoned citizens who their formative president was, and they’ll tell you FDR. The second Roosevelt was the only national leader they had ever known in their youth and formative years. So it was for me with President Reagan. So much so that when 1988 rolled around, I confronted the rather emotionally, if not intellectually, jarring realization that Reagan was retiring, and oh by the way, Michael Dukakis is leading Reagan’s veep by seventeen points.

Didn’t last for long, of course. Neither did the Bush41 presidency. So when I went to bed on Election Night ‘92 to stare at the bedroom ceiling for eight hours, I was very fearful for the future of both my then-embryonic family and the country.

There were some close calls the first two years, which fortunately and blessedly brought the GOP to power in Congress as a counterbalance to Mr. Bill. The remaining six years were a tabloid’s wet dream come true, but the country itself (9/11 aside) was not measurably further endangered.

I try to tell myself the same thing about the eventual Barack Hussein Obama administration. “Oh, life will be a little tougher, economic life will be a bit leaner, we’ll have to absorb another wave of homeland terrorist attacks that hopefully won’t involve WMD, libs will be as insufferable as they were in Clinton’s first biennium, but we’ll get through it, and the voters, with the next few years as stark contrast to the HIGHLY underrated Bush43 years, will return to their senses in 2010 and 2012.

Whether that last sentence pans out is the subject of another post - suffice it for now to say I have my doubts - but the almost self-hypnosis that precedes it is distressingly undermined by items like the following.

***Just exactly what is the ultimate source (or sources) of the thirty-three million dollars in campaign cash that has tsunamied into Barry O’s campaign coffers from abroad?:

More than half of the whopping $426.9 million Barack Obama has raised has come from small donors whose names the Obama campaign won’t disclose.

And questions have arisen about millions more in foreign donations the Obama campaign has received that apparently have not been vetted as legitimate….

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 Senator 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.

Which, let us all remember, IS ILLEGAL. Who would ever have believed that there’d be a Democrat presidential candidate even more corrupt, and more “indiscriminate” about accepting campaign subsidies, from America’s enemies than La Clinton Nostra? Bill Clinton’s 1996 ChiComm funny money shenanigans didn’t end up hurting him much, but at least earned him a Senate investigation. With the Democrats knocking on the door of a filibuster-proof majority, who will investigate B.O.’s literal sell out to Iran, Hamas, and God knows who else?

***How many Obamunists are characterized by this waif?:

My interest was piqued, but the dark time lived on until my faith in others was renewed on January 4 in the Iowa state primary. Obama had beat out squeaky clean southern boy John Edwards and former first lady and next in the line of political succession Hillary Clinton. I was in shock. And then I came to Jesus/Obama.

I donated to the campaign. I followed every primary with bated breath, and muttered my prayers to the political gods while proselytizing the miracle of my new prophet. I got a car magnet, I bought a t-shirt; a pin and bumper sticker are on their way to my campus mailbox. Then the media and right wing questioning began: what is he? A rock star, or the next president? Bono or Britney? The naysayers used his popularity among young people against him. Who had ever heard of political posters in college dorm rooms? Bumper stickers on the back of your high school neighbor’s Jetta? Guess what those “Jesus is my homeboy” t-shirts were replaced with at Urban Outfitters? A smiling Obama under his own cutesy sayings like “Obama for yo Mama.” …

I’ve officially been saved, and soon, whether they like it or not, the rest of the country will be too. I will follow him, all the way to the White House, and I’ll be standing there in our nation’s capital in January 2009, when Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States of America.

In the name of Obama, Amen.

Parody or epiphany? J-Ger has the same queasy feeling I do:

This [children singing about Obama] video illustrates a phenomenon that I’ve periodically underestimated in assessing politics this cycle.

A large number of Americans, like the poster on Mulder’s wall, Want To Believe.

They want to believe in a political leader who they can describe in Messianic terms. They want to touch hands that have touched him. They want the face of their leader staring down on them on posters in public places.

They want to indoctrinate their children about his greatness before they can think for themselves, as we saw in the “children singing” video.

They want to sing songs about him, and credit him for “healing people’s souls.” They want to get together in groups of tens of thousands and chant their leader’s name. They want to make that silly “O” salute.

Cam, you and I have talked offline about the Founding Fathers and their vision of what a citizen of the new nation would be: fiercely independent, largely self-reliant, skeptical of government power, fearful of the passions of the public at large, and modest in his national ambitions. A large swath of the public is the exact opposite of this.

“A Republic, if you can keep it.” It’s tough to keep it if enough of the citizenry wants to see the chief executive as a Xersian God-King.

What percentage of The Chosen One’s fifty-one percent (latest Rasmussen three-day tracking poll) is in his column at the moment because he, like Bill Clinton sixteen years ago, is just “the other guy” in visceral reaction to an outgoing prez surnamed for a slang term for a certain subcategory of body hair, and what percentage can’t wait to throw the Constitution aside (if they even remember that we HAVE one, much less what it says) and annoint Godbama “king of kings” for life? And in which direction is the latter proportion likely to go when the nation’s Fourth Estate “that screamed bloody murder over John Ashcroft holding prayer meetings with some staffers before work is now shrugging its shoulders (and shaking its tingly legs) at the fact that a portion of the national conversation includes, ‘In the Name of Obama, Amen.’”?

***Lastly, what do the above two questions matter when The Great Post-Partisan Unifier” is giving every indication of not waiting for his worshipful disciples to throw aside the Constitution but doing so quite proactively himself?:

I’ll be blunt: Senator Obama and his supporters despise free expression, the bedrock of American self-determinism and hence American democracy. What’s more, like garden-variety despots, they see law not as a means of ensuring liberty but as a tool to intimidate and quell dissent.

We London conferees were fretting over speech codes, “hate speech” restrictions, “Islamophobia” provisions, and “libel tourism” — the use of less journalist-friendly defamation laws in foreign jurisdictions to eviscerate our First Amendment freedom to report, for example, on the nexus between ostensible Islamic charity and the funding of terrorist operations.

All the while, in St. Louis, local law-enforcement authorities, dominated by Democrat-party activists, were threatening libel prosecutions against Obama’s political opposition. County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, abetted by a local sheriff and encouraged by the Obama campaign, warned that members of the public who dared speak out against Obama during the campaign’s crucial final weeks would face criminal libel charges — if, in the judgment of these conflicted officials, such criticism of their champion was “false.”

The chill wind was bracing. The Taliban could not better rig matters. The Prophet of Change is only to be admired, not questioned. In the stretch run of an American election, there is to be no examination of a candidate for the world’s most powerful office — whether about his radical record, the fringe Leftism that lies beneath his thin, centrist veneer, his enabling of infanticide, his history of race-conscious politics, his proposals for unprecedented confiscation and distribution of private property (including a massive transfer of American wealth to third-world dictators through international bureaucrats), his ruinous economic policies that have helped leave Illinois a financial wreck, his place at the vortex of the credit market implosion that has put the U.S. economy on the brink of meltdown, his aggressive push for American withdrawal and defeat in Iraq, his easy gravitation to America-hating activists, be they preachers like Jeremiah Wright, terrorists like Bill Ayers, or Communists like Frank Marshall Davis. Comment on any of this and risk indictment or, at the very least, government harassment and exorbitant legal fees. [emphases added]

I’m trying to keep myself grounded, centered, and calm so that I can at least sleep at night. I want to believe, too - that President Nixon was right when he said that no one president can destroy the country in just four years. I want to believe the Democrats that were so mean, so vicious, so treasonous, and so irresponsible in opposition for Dubya’s first six years, and so clumsy, incompetent, and ineffectual at the helm of Congress in the last two, won’t really go an a vengeful rampage against the opposition party, its supporters, and the nation’s institutions once given one of their own in the White House even more radically to the Left than they are. I want to believe that the 2008 victors won’t govern as Alinsky Marxists once given unfettered power over the country and stubbornly and heedlessly bulldoze America into economic depression and unprecented calamity overseas that comes boomeraging home, 9/11 style, to roost. I want to believe that Obamunists will not, after all, see ruling an impoverished, poisoned realm as preferable to governing in conventional and minimally responsible center-left fashion (if even that can be called either).

I want to believe that “life in these United States” will go on more or less like it has for my entire life. But the events of the past couple of weeks, and the accumulation of facts about Barack Hussein Obama that is fueling the growing center-right alarm of which I am but a small part, make that desire exceedingly difficult to attain.

Over twenty years ago, noted author and eschatologist Hal Lindsey wrote a book entitled Combat Faith. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for many moons. Now looks like a particularly opportune occasion to give it a fresh perusal.  There will be a deep and widespread need for its contents in the bleak years to come.

[cross-posted at ]

Multiple I-told-you-so’s vindicating my “you can never be too cynical about the ‘Destructocrats’” instincts:

***My, how the “compassion” of liberals is leavened by the crassness of their partisan mendacities:

Representative Hank Johnson, D-GA, told me yesterday that he felt no pressure at all to vote for the bill.

“For me it was an easy decision,” Johnson said. “The bill has nothing in there that mandates workouts of these foreclosures that are pending. We have up to 5 million that are meant to occur over the next year.”

“It was a Republican-caused bill and the Republicans, it looks like they failed to muster enough support to get this thing passed,” Johnson told me.

What about the Dow going down 778 points?

“The stock market goes up, the stock market goes down, that’s not something that I am particularly concerned with,” he said. “I believe that the market will get over this initial shock that the corporate bailout plan did not go through, and that it will recover.”

1) IT IS NOT A “REPUBLICAN-CAUSED” BILL!!!!! You may notice a slight level of frustration on my part at this !#$%^&* LIE becoming the conventional wisdom, and Republicans not doing a blessed thing to correct it.

2) No, Congressman, it was YOUR party that “failed to muster enough support to get this thing passed.” YOUR party is in the majority, which makes it YOUR party’s responsibility, if you TRULY have the best interests of the country at heart - and if you are capable of separating them from those of….your party.

3) I’m guessing Johnson is from a gerrymandered district. Still, I cannot help but wonder what his constituents think of the cavalier fashion in which he dismisses his Speaker’s wanton erasure of seven percent of their retirement stash.

***Some additional insight into why it wasn’t Crazy Nancy pissing in their faces that whittled GOP support for the bailout compromise to one out of three:

While the vote was being made, I was listening to Chris Van Hollen, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, speaking on National Public Radio, who was basically saying that we’re going to use this issue against the Republicans in the fall. Now, then I went and took a look at the vote, and then talked to some members. Now, when you’ve got a big issue like this, and we’ve been through a number of them, the pit of the house in a big important vital vote like this is an emotional place, as people contemplate, literally, whether or not they are going to end their political futures by their vote.

And so you’ve got Republicans there who are being asked to vote for this, and they’re hearing Chris Van Hollen, literally, there are sixteen vulnerable House Democrat freshman who are allowed to vote no. And they’re being told on the floor by Van Hollen and others, ‘you can vote against this.’ There are five committee chairs who owe their positions to Nancy Pelosi — John Conyers, chairman of judiciary. Colin Peterson, chairman of agriculture, Filner, head of veterans, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, head of homeland security, Gene Green gead of the Ethics Commission - and those five committee chairs are voting no.

You have senior Democrats like Solomon Ortiz, Pete Stark, the number two guy on the Ways and Means Committee, Fazio of Oregon, Clay of Missouri, Costello of Illinois - Jesse - you know, all of whom are close to the speaker, and they’re voting no. You have some of her close friends and allies like the Sanchez sisters of California and Lynn Woolsey and Herseth Sandlin from South Dakota and Barbara Lee close friends and allies voting no.

Republicans are sitting on the floor seeing her take a two-by-four to them and then let these people who are her allies and supporters and friends and committee chairs and members of her leadership vote no. I mean, what was the Speaker thinking?

She was thinking of leading a three-hundred-seat House majority in the 111th Congress, Architect. Either by double-crossing Republicans into defying public opposition ot the bailout while giving her own vulnerable Members a pass, or by torpedoing the bill through her infuriating bellicosity and “benign neglect” at failing to whip her caucus behind it (or malign neglect by whipping her caucus against it) and then blaming an economic collapse on those same Republicans. Another “heads she wins/tails we lose” proposition. And now, perhaps both at the same time! Almost as if Nora Desmond wants to pretend her party is still in the minority or something.

I wonder if the Dow recovering nearly five hundred of the points it shed yesterday will calm public jitters enough to hold public bailout opposition steady. In which case the Speakerette would (presumeably) be deterred from ramming through the Donk version of the bailout on a party-line vote, but could in turn produce a legislative Mexican standoff - at least until the next Dow plunge. This leads straight into the next question: At what point would the “It’s all the Republicans’ fault!” BS finally start to wear thin with the public watching their savings go up in smoke and a Congress run by the Democrats fiddling and diddling in the midst of it? Isn’t this hand overplayable at some point? Or has the “Bankrupt the people/screw the Republicans” baton already been handed off to Harry “We’ve got to end the partisan bickering” Reid, with the hard-left goodies stripped out of the original compromise to be put back in in conference? And will he be able to get cloture when only a third of the Senate is up for re-election this year, most of them Republicans who are headed for electoral butchering regardless of the outcome? Yeah, Mitch McConnell was also peddling the “bipartisan” Kool-Aid, but didn’t John Boehner pretty much do the same thing?

***See, I told you so again, and not just from Michael Moore:

The bail out will take place simply to avoid that depression. But depressions have some salutary effects - the scoundrels go belly up, the weakest get purged. And, in the wake of the disaster, people demand strict regulation of the money lenders to keep their greed in check, and government spends money on the real economy to put people back to work.”

“Money-lenders” = entrepreneuers/pro-growthers/wealth-creaters/supply-siders/free market capitalists; “Government spends money on the real economy” = complete decimation and absorption of the private sector. Sheesh, at least Lenin had to sneak into Russia on a camouflaged train. Pinkos like Bob Borosage get to run around in plain, unfettered sight. One would like to ask him where the government is supposed to get this money it is supposed to spend in the “real economy” once he and his subversives have killed the golden goose. And he calls the “money-lenders” - which in this case were all DEMOCRATS, don’t forget - “greedy”?

Get a load of one of the commenters to Borosage’s post:

Let the whole damned system burn to the ground. Whatever their ideological leanings, left or right or in between, the elites of our society have proven themselves corrupt, craven, foolish, brutal, heartless, anti-democratic, and anti-human. Yes, let the whole damned society burn to the ground, sweep away the pathetic ashes of the malevolent, disgusting, warped edifice the elites have erected to imprison the people, and build a new, better America atop the grave.”

Afraid yet of this “who’s who of American liberalism,” my friends? Can’t this….candor be interpreted just as easily as an engraved invitation to let al Qaeda set off a series of suitcase nukes in American cities? Or Iran to EMP us back to the nineteenth century? Wouldn’t “letting the whole damned society burn to the ground” be a convenient opportunity to get rid of people they disagree with, the easier to “build a new, better [communist] America” atop our [mass] graves”? To say this rhetoric sounds Naziesque is to be exceedingly charitable. And you think I’m exaggerating when I refer to these animals as “neoBolsheviks”?

J-Ger is very concerned. He even echoes my line from last week, and beats me to the apropo pop-culture quotation:

I’m reminded of that line from The Dark Knight: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

The murder of the Republic is three months and twenty days away. We, The People, have five weeks, and one chance, to save it.

Elsewise, see you at the cattlecars….

[cross-posted at ]

The Paulson Sting holds the American economy hostage, hoists John McCain on his own “country first” petard, and guarantees a generation of unchallengable Democrat rule.

A scheme so nefarious and diabolical….

….as to put even this devastatingly handsome ghost villain to shame.

Saturdays, 1PM Eastern/10AM Pacific

and/or

Sundays, 6PM Eastern/3PM Pacific

My fellow Americans, the “New Tone” chickens have finally, fully, devastatingly come home to roost. And their name is Henry Paulson.

You remember the “New Tone,” right? It’s what President George W. Bush wanted to bring to Washington, D.C. after years of “partisan bickering” between congressional Republicans and the Clinton administration. He wanted things in the nation’s capital to work the way he made them work in Texas state government: friendly, cordial, civil - one might even say “post-partisan”. In Austin, Dubya succeeded, because the Democrats he worked with there weren’t the same kind of Democrats he was inheriting in Washington. In Texas, most Dems are “blue dog” centrists, not very far philosophically or ideologically from Bush himself. In Washington, most Dems are vicious, corrupt, Marxist scumbags. And they had the long knives out for him from day one after the failure of Al Gore’s Florida Insurrection.

But the President persevered anyway. It’s cost him again and again over the past eight years. It’s a wonder - neigh MIRACLE - that it didn’t cost him a second term. It’s the reason that his approval ratings have been subterranean almost ever since he was re-elected, arguably a factor in the GOP losing Congress in 2006, and why John Sith McCain has such a steep hill to climb to somehow succeed him in five and a half weeks.

But never has it cost his party and his possible successor more than it has with the Paulson Sting.

Henry Paulson is George W. Bush’s third Secretary of the Treasury. Bush has never had a free-market conservative SecTres. I have no idea why. For a President that ran on supply-side tax-cutting, one would have thought he’d have dialed up Steve Forbes or Larry Kudlow even before he got on the blower to Colin Powell to ask him to run Foggy Bottom. Instead he has invariably tapped either non-ideological or ideologically hostile types like the ever-loyal Paul O’Neill, the non-descript John Snow, and the now-treacherous Hank Paulson.

Paulson’s selection two years ago was particularly pregnant given current circumstances. As the ex-chairman of Goldman Sachs, he’s not exactly a neutral, disinterested observer in the “Wall Street Meltdown,” and as a Democrat, his loyalties to President Bush would, to any other Republican but he, have to be considered questionable at best.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Paulson has horns, a pitchfork, hooves, and a pointed tail. But in light of what took place yesterday, he sure looks like a Donk mole in the heart of the “enemy” camp.

Let’s reestablish the week’s baseline, shall we?

1) TUESDAY: Paulson calls South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham - one of Darth Queeg’s RINO Sith apprentices - and begs him to get McCain involved in the b[uy]out negotiations. More specifically, to talk House Republicans into getting involved in the b[uy]out negotiations (even though the Dems had pointedly excluded them to that point) because without them, according to Paulson, no “bipartisan” deal will be possible (flag this in your thoughts for immediate future reference).

2) WEDNESDAY: Graham relays Paulson’s message. McCain, incapable of resisting a “call to duty” and any opportunity to “put country above party” - EVEN IN THE MIDDLE OF A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN - answers the call, and just as predictably calls Barack Obama and invites The One to join him in a show of bipartisan unity in the midst of a national “crisis”. Barry blows him off, and Maverick suspends his campaign (including pulling down all his ads) anyway and jets back to D.C.

Later in the day, at McCain’s urging, President Bush invites both him AND Senator Hussein, along with the party leaders and Banking Committee Chairs and ranking members of both houses, to a “bipartisan crisis summit” at the White House to hammer out a “bipartisan deal” that will “save the country”. Having been directly summoned by the President of the United States, B.O. decides that invitation is too big and too public to snub.

3) THURSDAY: I’m listening to Sean Hannity on the way back from lunch. He says that the big powwow at the White House has broken up. McCain and Obama were supposed to come out and jointly speak to the press hordes on the front lawn, but Hannity reports that McCain exited via the West Wing, ducked into his transportation conveyance, and sped away without a word. I figured Obama would come out and brag about having “saved the day” himself, and wondered why McCain would let him do that, but evidently Barry didn’t have much to say, either.

This morning we found out why:

When Senator Barack Obama was given the floor to speak during White House negotiations, according to White House aides, he did so raising concerns about a House Republican alternative to the Paulson/Bernanke $700 billion bailout. But those concerns weren’t necessarily his, as he was not aware of the GOP plan before reviewing notes provided him by Paulson loyalists in Treasury prior to entering the meeting.

According to an Obama campaign source, the notes were passed to Obama via senior aides traveling with him, who had been emailed the document via a current Goldman Sachs employee and Wall Street fundraiser for the Obama campaign. “It was made clear that the memo was from ‘friends’ and was reliable,” says the campaign source.

The memo allowed Obama and his fellow Democrats to box in Republican attendees and essentially took what President Bush had billed as a negotiating meeting off the rails.

“Paulson and his team have not acted in good faith for this President or the Administration for which they serve,” says a House Republican leader who was not present at the White House meeting, but who instead is part of the team hammering out the House GOP alternative. “We keep hearing about how Secretary Paulson is working with Democrats on this or that, yet he never seems to consider working with the party that essentially hired him. Perhaps he’s auditioning for a Democratic administration job. Our proposal didn’t just spring forth fully formed; we’ve been working on this for several days, and Treasury staff has known about it.” [emphases added]

Here’s Limbaugh’s version, with some interesting additional details:

The President, in order to let everybody be heard, deferred to various Democrats, and every one of the Democrats - Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, and Frank - declined to speak and deferred to Obama. So Obama became the official Democrat spokesman in the meeting. This was to hype Obama’s leadership and presidential aura and so forth. What happened next, the first thing out of Obama’s mouth - Paulson is in the meeting - is he starts ripping the House Republican proposal and asks Paulson what he thinks of it.

This led Boehner and the other Republicans in there to think they have been sandbagged. We found out this morning that Obama had no clue - because he was in transit doing other things, he had no clue - what the House Republican position was….It ended up with Obama essentially chairing the meeting, with the meeting falling apart. The President was described as “beleaguered,” trying to regain control of the meeting. McCain [hardly said] anything. Everybody was yelling and screaming in there. McCain did not. He said, “We’ve gotta put these differences aside, work together,” you know, typical McCain. [emphases added]

How pathetic is that? If you had any doubts about just how lame a duck George W. Bush has become, this ought to lay it to nauseating rest. Once again, Dubya “deferred” to these creatures; once again he tried to “reach out” to them to “put partisan differences aside” to “work together” to “do what’s best for the country.” And once again they pissed in his face and kicked him in the nuts. The “New Tone” produces its latest harvest of bitter, foolish fruit.

No, wait, I take that back; the Dems acted like Bush wasn’t even there. As far as they were concerned, this was Obama’s meeting. Consequently, it was McCain they were humiliating.

Here, though, is where I diverge from the Maha Rushie’s take:

So this whole meeting yesterday essentially was established to show off Obama’s leadership skills and negotiating skills, and he blew it! People who disagree with him, he has no idea how to negotiate with. Even Obama ended up last night on TV. I think the Democrats were so frightened that the truth would come out about what happened in this meeting.

Departure #1: The Democrats own majorities in both Houses of Congress. On the House side, the minority is essentially powerless to stop the majority, and the majority can do anything it wants. Consequently, Speakerette Pelosi could simply bring the House GOP counter-proposal to a vote, crush it, then ram through the Donk/Paulson nationalization bill on a party line vote and take all the credit for having “saved the country” from another “Great Depression”. What need is there to get House ‘Pubbies to “negotiate”?

Three letters: C…Y…A. Polls are showing the public substantially if not overwhelmingly against a Donk/Paulson-style b[uy]out, which also helps explain why Lucifer wants to tack on an extra $50 billion of worthless deficit spending (i.e. to make sure there’s something in it for “Main Street” as well as “Wall Street”). As per usual, House Pachyderms are responding to the will of the people, heeding the voice of “Main Street,” and Donks are trying to scheme there way around it. The most direct route to doing so is to [DRUMROLL] “sandbag” House GOPers into caving in order to provide “bipartisan” cover for a Wall Street b[uy]out Main Street doesn’t want, after which any credit will be glommed by the Dems and any blame will fall on Republicans.

Departure #2: I don’t think Obama “blew” anything. I think Pelosi and Reid and Dodd and Frank knew he was clueless about the House GOP proposal and used that cluelessness AND their nominee to DELIBERATELY SABOTAGE A DEAL and then MAKE SURE McCAIN WAS BLAMED FOR IT.

Scroll down the Limbaugh link. After echoing Paulson earlier in the week that McCain’s presence was absolutely crucial to getting a deal done, there were Dirty Harry and close Paulson pal Chucky Schumer and other Donks this morning claiming that they already HAD a deal done (which was BS) and McCain blew it up by not ordering House ‘Pubbies to surrender (or failing to compel their compliance). Indeed, Schumer actually “respectfully” instructed President Bush to tell McCain to “get out of town.” Which, of course, Sailor had little choice but to do.

What have I been saying all week about McCain’s “bailing out for the b[uy]out? That he was setting himself up to fail because the Democrats have exactly ZERO reasons to negotiate and EVERY reason to hold out and, if it happens, let the economy collapse.

Let’s review:

1) In any negotiation, the side that can afford to wait longer ALWAYS has the upper hand.

2) The Democrats are going to gain seats in Congress in November no matter how this b[uy]out business turns out, and in the event of a total economic meltdown they’ll benefit from that even more. And in the meantime, the longer they hold out, the greater their chance of getting everything they want in a deal and more.

Consequently the Democrats have had the upper hand in the whole Wall Street Meltdown from day one (conceded to them by John McCain’s RINO fecklessness), arguably promulgated the policies that created it with such an eventual outcome in mind, and used their man in the Bush Cabinet, Henry Paulson, to lure John McCain into a trap that would destroy both his credibility and his candidacy on the issue that will dominate the rest of the campaign, and thus guarantee the election of Barack Hussein Obama as the next president of the United States.

The Democrats have achieved what may be the ultimate coup: they will be the ones responsible for destroying the economy, and their reward will be total, unchecked power over it. And they have exploited John McCain’s own maverick gimmick to pull it off.

A fitting end for a decade of perfidy against his own. A bitter tragedy that the rest of us have to accompany him to this political perdition.

[cross-posted at ]

Compare and contrast….

Look who Obamanoids look upon favorably, regard as friends, and whose favor they obsequiously curry:

Calling it a “major step forward” in relations between Iran and the United States, leading activists Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans of CODEPINK Women for Peace — along with more than one hundred fifty other U.S. peace group representatives — met Wednesday afternoon with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here following his appearance at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday….

The CODEPINK women proposed inviting American and Iranian artists to build a “peace park” in Tehran, a memorial dedicated to people-to-people commitment to peace and diplomacy between our two countries.

They also proposed a plan to invest funds in an Iranian business, one that produces green and sustainable products, such as bicycles. This grassroots investment would be the opposite of efforts by the Bush Administration and Congress to tighten sanctions, a move which CODEPINK thinks would only hurt ordinary, everyday Iranians. Such a symbolic CODEPINK investment in a green, sustainable business would challenge U.S. regulations blocking trade with Iran and would show how diplomacy and trade are preferable to war and sanctions.

This is, of course, the same Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who wants to finish the Holocaust job Adolph Hitler started, who calls Israel a “stinking corpse,” who has openly proclaimed his intention to “wipe Israel off the map,” and whose regime has vowed to bring the United States to its knees. But to these Obama bundlers, he’s scarcely any less of a rock star than their god himself.

Now look who Obamanoids hate and loathe, treat as an enemy, for whom their quasi-murderous hostility knows no bounds:

Representative Alcee Hastings told an audience of Jewish Democrats Wednesday that they should be wary of Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin because “anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks.”

“If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention,” Representative Alcee Hastings of Florida said at a panel about the shared agenda of Jewish and African-American Democrats Wednesday. Hastings, who is African-American, was explaining what he intended to tell his Jewish constituents about the presidential race. “Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through,” Hastings added as the room erupted in laughter and applause.

So, just to get everything straight, in the eyes of Obamanation Sarah Palin is the mass-murdering neoNazi, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the tree-hugging, guitar-strumming, kumbayah-singing peace-lover.

Just a little piece of information you might want to take with you into the voting booth in forty days.

UPDATE: Leave us not omit Obamanation’s vast and unshakeable reverence for the First Amendment:

St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch are threatening to bring libel charges against those who speak out falsely against Barack Obama.

KMOV aired a story last night, that stated that St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, both Obama supporters, are threatening to bring criminal libel charges against anyone who levels what turns out to be false criticisms of their chosen candidate for President.

Since when do libel laws apply to politics?  If George W. Bush had pursued the same avenue of attack, the entire Democrat Party would have been imprisoned before his first Inauguration.  And, of course, he’d have never been elected in the first place, denounced by the Dems as…well, pretty much everything they’ve called him over the past eight years.

Even more to the point, how can this be legal if they’re only targeting Obama critics?  Doesn’t such a policy HAVE to work both ways?

Obamanation considers the First Amendment to be bathroom tissue, folks.  They don’t give a rat’s ass about “truth” OR freedom of speech for all.  Think they won’t reimpose the Fairness Doctrine at the earliest opportunity?

UPDATE II: One of the few, courageous truth-tellers about The One responds appropriately:

“This is an outrageous and shocking attempt by the Obama campaign to again employ Stalinist, police state tactics against those who dare to disagree with Barack Obama,” said Ed Martin, American Issues Projects president.   “I am frankly stunned to see public officials like McCullough and Joyce abusing their official prosecutorial positions to serve as attack dogs for a national political campaign.  I am quite certain Missourians elected these individuals to enforce the laws and arrest criminals, not to throw people in jail for daring to practicing free speech.

“The Obama campaign continues to provide a chilling preview of what would happen to political freedom in an Obama administration.”

This new effort is only the most recent attempt by the Obama campaign to crack down on free speech.  Obama’s lawyers twice demanded the Department of Justice investigate and prosecute the American Issues Project, its officers, board of directors, and donors.  The campaign also threatened stations running American Issues Project’s ad in an unsuccessful attempt to compel them to pull the spot, and ran its own ad in response. 

Notably, this ad failed to dispute a single fact the American Issues Project has put forth.

[cross-posted at ]

Ed Morrissey is calling this a “concession” of defeat; I think it’s just a stall:

Democrats have decided to allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week, conceding defeat in an months-long battle with the White House and Republicans set off by $4 a gallon gasoline prices this summer.

Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-WI, told reporters Tuesday that a provision continuing the moratorium will be dropped this year from a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running after Congress recesses for the election.

Republicans have made lifting the ban a key campaign issue after gasoline prices spiked this summer and public opinion turned in favor of more drilling. President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling in July.

“If true, this capitulation by Democrats following months of Republican pressure is a big victory for Americans struggling with record gasoline prices,” said House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio.

Is it? Remember the gist of Crazy Nancy’s anti-drilling “drilling” bill, denying coastal states the right to share in the estimated $2.6 trillion of tax revenue that would flow from opening the full continental shelves to energy exploration. That bill was DOA in the Senate, but the end of the drilling moratorium brings pretty much the same set of conditions: drilling is fair game, but states can’t cash in on it without federal legislation. Additionally, it doesn’t take a crystal ball to look into the near future and see an avalanche of greenstremist lawsuits blocking every single last Big Oil attempt at opening up any additional fields or building so much as a single new drilling platform.

And let us not forget that, despite the 110th Congress being an almost total bust for the Dems - no defeat in Iraq, no new taxes, no double-impeachment of Bush and Cheney, no President Pelosi - they are nevertheless going to increase their majorities significantly. Add to that dismal prospect President Hussein - who currently enjoys a slight Electoral College lead and very modest but undeniable momentum at the moment - and that drilling moratorium will be slapped back in place faster than a cheesy fry going down Bill Clinton’s gullet come January, locking away our energy resources and keeping us economic hostages to our enemies in Tehran and Caracas and Moscow for another generation - if we survive that long.

Even if John McCain somehow pulls this election out, the Left’s litigation hordes will still keep a lid on the OCS, and there’ll be little or nothing he can do about it.

The Speakerette may be crazy, but she knows that folding on one bad hand does not the game concedeth. Particularly when she’s the dealer of marked cards in a stacked deck.

[cross-posted at ]

~Snooper~

I don’t give a damn if “Bush Urges Congress to Pass Relief Bill” or not. I don’t want to bail or buy anyone out. It is not in the best interests of a nation in the long run if a government run “private industry” gets involved and saves the day in the moment of inconvenience. They soiled their own linen so let them lay in it and stink. Historically speaking, when the government gets involved in just about anything, that particular “issue” grows into a worse monster. Let this Democrat Party quagmire play itself out and allow the market to fix itself. This will be the best way to expose the culprits. This incremental socialism has got to stop and it has to stop now…before there is blood in our streets.

Chris Dodd has introduced a more “aggressive” - read that as more “progressive”; read that as more “socialist” - alternative bail/buy out of crooks and liars put into place by the Leftinistra within the Democrat Party. Chris Dodd, in case you don’t know this IS IN CHARGE of banking procedures in this country. Where in the hell was he when it was pointed out that there were major issues with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac accounting? Oh. Wait. He said that there WASN’T a problem until it became politically expedient to blame Bush - just like a good little lap sucker of Soros would. Damn Dodd and Soros to hell, thank you very much. You can listen to the moron here.

Are you tired of the “Congressional Shell Games” yet? I most assuredly am. Folks, it is primarily the Democrat Party that has caused this financial quagmire. Period. However, that doesn’t mean that some Republicans haven’t also got their whistles wet either.

[…] In the case of campaign account pass-alongs, incumbents take money that was raised ostensibly for their own re-election campaigns and contribute it to their colleagues’ accounts or to their national party committees. Incumbents, especially those without serious re-election challenges, pass along as much as 50 percent of the money they have raised. (Senators have exempted their own campaigns from certain spending disclosures, so it’s hard to know who’s received what from re-election campaign pass-alongs.) There is no requirement that the original contributor be informed that his or her money isn’t going for the purpose for which it was intended. In the case of a contribution from a congressman’s PAC, the pass-along amounts to “legalized” money-laundering. It’s a way to get around the lower limit on the size of contributions. (PACs may raise more money from individual donors - $5,000 per person - than the $2,300 per person that personal re-election campaign committees may raise.) And it’s a way to avoid full disclosure. In effect, the pass-along negates the laws intended to limit the influence of individual contributors, and it negates the laws intended to ensure that the public knows who is financing campaigns. Either way, the pass-along increases the pernicious effect of the seniority system, which gives greater power to members of Congress who have been in Washington the longest, and, thus, as a general rule, least share the values and interests of their constituents. […]

Had enough yet? Go read the rest at TAT to get the blood boiling.

Something else I could care less about is that “McCain will propose oversight board“. I am not impressed and neither should you be. I don’t want another useless oversight board because they all fail, as history reveals. I want criminal investigations…PERIOD. I want people in jail. I want the crooks’ assets seized and the proceeds used to pay off the debts accrued by these blatant criminals.

The screen shot to the left comes from HT to Douglas Ross. The entire piece is a must read by God. You want to know the morons that STOPPED President Bush and others from stepping in and averting the current crisis when it was affordable? Check the post out.

Why are there no calls for the head of Chris Dodd? And, why did he think that he could or would be a viable President of the United States?

Why are there no calls for the head of Barney Frank and why did he say that the views expressed way back then that the claims were exaggerated? Are they exaggerated now or is this one more political stunt in the realm of political expediency? Seeing that they were all wrong about the Iraq War, what makes anyone believe they are right about anything in the present? Some things boggle the mind, do they not?

$90, 128, 761 for Franklin Raines? $30, 155, 029 for Timothy Howard? $26, 466, 834 for Jamie Gorelick? Gorelick? Does she? $21, 000, 000 for Jim Johnson? Bonuses? For what? And the Leftinistra dare whine about oil executive Golden Parachutes? I smell the usual DNC Double Standard panties covered with fecal matter.

I say let the sleeping dogs lay and let the pieces which are crumbling fall where they may. Are people going to lose their homes? Yes. Are people going to lose their businesses? Yes. Perhaps people will then figure out that it is always best to live within your means and not a fabricated one. Perhaps they will learn that it isn’t a government program that will come to their rescue every time they make a foolish business or personal decision. Perhaps then and only then will they hold their political leaders accountable.

Then again, when one suffers from BDS, it is always easier to blame Bush for everything. As I do and a host of others know, “It’s an established fact that President Bush began to call for reform for Freddie Mac and Sally Mae long before it was politically fashionable, and long before the present crisis.” And that’s a fact Jack!

As others try and lie their way out of this, they become more exposed for what they represent…pure idiocy, dishonesty and their stature as known liars. More liars can be found at Memeorandum.

It has been government interference with our financial markets that has caused this and other crises. History also bares this out. As always, just say NO to all government bail outs and buy outs. Always from now until forever ends.

Looking for leadership in this current crisis? Don’t look towards Czarbie. He is #3 in pay-offs by the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac crooks and he waited until AFTER McCain said his piece on the issue to come out with the usual DNC tripe of “we can do it better” without EVER explaining what that means. Czarbie can’t even follow correctly. How in the hell can he even remotely think that he has what it takes to lead? Czarbie voted “present” as his answer to most everything…what a fraud he is.

As I have said for decades now…this is socialism at work and STACLU explains it fairly well. This is Socialism 101 at work no matter what you hear to the contrary. Socialism gets a death grip on a nation when it can get its filthy hands on the economy.

Gateway Pundit has the chronology of this crisis and the evidence is clear: Bush and McCain tried to stop this bleeding but Democrats stopped them. Naturally, the cowards on the left haven’t the courage to accept responsibility so they have to brush it off onto someone else. Such cowards they are indeed.

I agree with Newt Gingrich: “Gingrich on the Bailout: Before D.C. Gets Our Money, It Owes Us Some Answers“. Well. Actually, they owe us prison sentences.

Right Voices has something to say as well: “The Mother of All Bailouts = The Death of Fiscal Conservatism”. Indeed.

Then, again, cowards always try and lie their way out of truth.

More chatter and liars here at Memorandum…

Chris Dodd Chief Fraud also at Memeorandum…

Bloomberg explains how the Democrats ccreated this quagmire at Memeorandum…

More Dodd stupidity here at Memeorandum…

Related posts:
Democrats Want Economy To Tank
The Leftinistra Are Destroying the Economy…On Purpose
I Agree With Macsmind - OUTRAGED! UPDATES Below The Fold
The Federal Bail Out - Thanks But No Thanks
The Big Bail Out Double Standard

Having been driven out of Iraq despite Barack Obama’s heroic efforts on their behalf, al Qaeda’s western wing (as opposed to the eastern wing in Pakistan) has found a new home - which they, er, christened with a bang:

Yemen, the site of a car-bomb attack yesterday on the American Embassy, is quietly emerging as a base for Al Qaeda veterans of the Iraq war, who are seeking refuge there and are close to establishing the kind of safe haven the group enjoys on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

American intelligence officials believe that Osama bin Laden’s organization is regrouping in the governorates of Ma’rib, al-Jawf, and Hadhramaut along Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia, and that Al Qaeda in Yemen is now being led by a former military aide to Mr. bin Laden, Nasir al-Wahishi.

“The foreign-fighter flow in Iraq has slowed down to a trickle,” a retired four-star general and adviser to Multi-National Force-Iraq, General Jack Keane, told the New York Sun. “They can’t get to their operational cells to be a bomber or a fighter, so some of them are going to other safe havens. A lot of this has to do with where they came from. But two of the places certainly are Pakistan and Yemen.” That assessment was supported by two American intelligence officials whom the Sun contacted for comment on the bombing of the American Embassy yesterday in Sana’a. The attack killed sixteen Yemeni nationals but no Americans, the Associated Press reported, and the attackers included at least one suicide bomber, as well as gunmen wearing Yemeni military uniforms and armed with rocket-propelled grenades. One of the tasks of the FBI, which will investigate the attack, will be to determine whether members of Yemen’s armed forces participated in the attack.

Interesting, huh? Not so much the embassy attack, which wasn’t the first one even this year, but some of the attackers wearing Yemeni military uniforms. Could the jihadis have pilfered them? Sure; it’d be emblematic of  Yemen’s all around indifference to and marked lack of enthusiasm for aiding us in the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism. But if those “gunmen” were Yemeni military, that means either that they went rogue, or their government is now in passive cahoots with AQ, not unlike the even more hair-raising state of affairs in Pakistan.

As Ensign Ed observed, by the terms of the original Bush Doctrine, this would bring the Yemeni regime into our crosshairs for punitive action free of the complications of Islamic nuclear arsenals and keeping them out of the wrong hands. This would also be important in order to prevent a revival of the attempted Islamist takeover of Somalia that the Ethiopians crushed two years ago. The imperative of the (original) Bush Doctrine was to pre-empt mass-casuality Islamist terrorism by denying the enemy state sanctuaries where they can headquarter, gather resources, train, and mount offensives against Western targets. We’ve beaten them in Iraq (despite Barack Obama’s heroic efforts), we could beat them in Afghanistan did they not have a state-allowed sanctuary in northwest Pakistan. Gifting them much less isolated Yemen is a complacency we cannot afford.

Similarly, anybody who has consulted my thoughts on Iran and its quest for nuclear weapons knows that I have staunchly maintained since at least the end of “major combat operations” in Iraq over five years ago that Iran needs to be liberated by American military power even more urgently than Iraq did in order to avert the doomsday scenario of an irrational, theocratic, viciously anti-Semitic and anti-American Islamist regime launching a nuclear holocaust under the banner of a “holy” religious quest. Throw in the revanchist neo-Cold War hostilities with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the ever-arming, ever-scheming Red Chinese and the picture of the world that the next president is going to inherit is one of a world that will spin into bloody chaos in the absence of firm American leadership backed by unchallengable American power.

John Sith McCain, whatever his myriad perfidious faults, would provide such leadership on the world stage. This, on the other hand, exemplifies the leadership vacuum in store if the voters throw caution, prudence, and sanity to the four winds and opt to “make history” instead:

“We are pleased to inform you that the keynote speakers at the “Stop Iran. Now!” Rally are confirmed to be Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Governor Sarah Palin and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel,” read an e-mail from a leader of a Jewish group planning the event.

But the curtain came down on the comedy sketch-turned-reality before the duo ever hit the stage: Clinton officials soon said they had not been told Palin would be on hand — and that her presence, which made the event a political one, would mean the absence of the New York senator.

The McCain-Palin campaign has not yet said whether Palin herself will still be attending the event, but released a statement criticizing Clinton’s withdrawal. “Governor Palin believes that the danger of a nuclear Iran is greater than party or politics,” said spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt. “She hopes that all parties can rally together in opposition to this grave threat.”

Feel free to jump in at any time here if you think I’m in desperate need of advice, but wouldn’t the presence of ANY politician make this event “political,” by that broad a definition? Indeed, wouldn’t having a prominent member of BOTH parties present balance out the rostrum and drain the program of any partisan perceptions? AP correctly argues that Her Majesty’s fleeing Palinmania is what brought politics into this equation. What possible harm could come from Mrs. Clinton and Barracuda speaking jointly or severally on behalf of a cause that no truly “patriotic” American can possibly oppose? 

Answer: None, if your top priority is protecting our country and its allies from mortal threats; is avoiding the horrific spectre of American and/or European and/or Israeli civilian death tolls in the tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions; is doing everything possible to avoid one city after another going up in hellish mushroom-shaped pyres of atomic conflagration.

But if your top priority is to diminish the United States as a world power, is an incurable neurosis of post-modernist guilt and multicultural self-loathing, is the at-all-costs furtherance of suicidal pacifism, and most immediately is to keep your party’s neoBolshevik crazoid base from mutinying in a geyser of utter, shrieking rage, then letting Hillary Clinton even be in the same zip code at Sarah Palin is an act of fratricide that you dare not contemplate.

I tend to think, though, that snubbing the cause of denying the mullahgarchy nuclear weapons was secondary; after all, the Dems know that the window of gumption for a Bush strike against Iran has long-since closed, and Darth Queeg isn’t about to suggest re-opening it. Hell, the Bushies won’t even let the Israelis do it for them. They’ve been cowed and browbeaten and all but physically bludgeoned into submission, and are doing what Dubya once vowed he would never do: punt the issue to the next administration. Besides which, the Dems are convinced that False Messiah will “judge between the nations and settle disputes for many peoples. The [Iranians] will beat their [nuclear] swords into plowshares and their [atomic] spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”

No, the idea here wasn’t to defect to Tehran, but to deny Governor Palin a public appearance on an equal footing with the Feminazi Popette. A suspicion whose confirmation was not long in emerging:

The Obama campaign in turn offered to send Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida to the event, but the appearance that the non-partisan group was aligning with the Republican ticket put the group and its president, Malcolm Hoenlein, under heavy pressure from Jewish Democrats, including members of the conference, members of Congress, and the liberal group J Street, not to give Palin a platform, sources said. Hoenlein told the McCain campaign that he would have to rescind Palin’s invitation or cancel the rally.

The organizers, I’m told, have formally disinvited all elected and political officials, but the move was about Palin.

You know, the Robert Wexler who smeared Governor Palin as a “Nazi sympathizer” based on the lie that she backed Pat Buchanan for president in 2000 (in reality, she supported Steve Forbes) and the smear of PJB as a Nazi. Just the sort of “non-politician” to send to a “non-political event” sponsored by Jewish organizations.

These Jewish Donks - at Team Hussein’s usual insulated direction - weren’t playing around, either:

Sources tell CBS 2 HD that a decision to disinvite Palin from the high profile rally after Clinton pulled out in a huff came as the result of intense pressure from Democrats.

“This is insulting. This is embarrassing, especially to Governor Palin, to me and I think it should be to every single New Yorker,” Assemblyman Dov Hikind, D-Brooklyn, told CBS 2 HD.

Sources say the axes were out for Palin as soon as Senator Clinton pulled out because she did not want to attend the same event as the Republican vice presidential candidate…

The groups sponsoring the rally against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at the UN were reportedly told, “it could jeopardize their tax exempt status” if they had Palin and not Clinton or Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden on hand…

“It’s an absolute shame that this has happened,” Hikind said. “To threaten organizations … to threaten the Conference of Presidents that if you don’t withdraw the invitation to Governor Palin we’re going to look into your tax exempt status … that’s McCarthyism.”…

“I’m absolutely appalled at the behavior of the Democrats,” said Bob Kunst of Defenders.net. “I’m a Democrat and for the first time in my life I’m going to vote Republican. I can’t take it anymore.”

And who leaned on Hillary to back out on a booking to which she had committed months ago? Barack Hussein Obama. His dirty, rotten, slimy, stinking, McCarthyist surrogates took it from there. Because as we will all be re-educated to know, Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency is an infinitely greater threat to the national security of the United States than nuclear weapons in the hands of men who have openly and public declared their sacred intent and duty to commit anti-Semitic genocide and bring “The Great Satan” to its knees.  

Parting point to ponder: Pretend you are Adolph Ahmadinejad reading the following lament from “Stop Iran Now!” organizer and Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations chief Malcolm Hoenlein and ask yourself what your reaction to it would be:

Some Jewish activists are blaming Hillary Clinton for [the rally’s] collapse; in the interview, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations chief Malcolm Hoenlein blamed board members of some of the organizations involved, and a “vile” campaign by the National Jewish Democratic Council.

“Pressure really grows from the grassroots and from people on their boards. People feel very strongly these days. Irrationally strongly. I can’t even describe to you the kind of reactions and threats that they came under – and intimidation,” Hoenlein said. “It’s rampant. I have never seen an election that has evoked such deep division and response and emotion on the part of people – Jews and non-Jews.” [emphases added]

Is it any wonder that the Iranians are practically drooling at the prospect of President Obama? Or that Osama bin Laden, Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, the ChiComms, et al are rubbing their hands together with glee as well?  With B.O. in charge, they won’t even have to soften us up before they take us down. [cross-posted at ]

Wall Street melts down per Democrat design, Team Sith flounders for several days, but Team Messiah blows its big chance. A wash, or a dress rehersal for an even bigger meltdown to come?

Also, this entity….

….had a bit of a meltdown himself.

Saturdays, 1PM Eastern/10AM Pacific

and/or

Sundays, 6PM Eastern/3PM Pacific

Bad energy policy news, but not unexpected:

The House approved a package of energy initiatives yesterday, including measures that would allow oil drilling as close as fifty miles off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and finance the long-term development of alternative energy sources.

In the first substantive votes since gasoline prices rose above $4 a gallon this summer, the House divided largely along party lines, 236-189, with most Republicans rejecting the Democratic-sponsored legislation because it would prohibit exploration of much of the known oil reserves closer to the coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico.

As they reversed their long-held opposition to more offshore oil exploration, Democrats said the increased taxes on oil companies in the bill and the collection of royalty payments from the drilling would yield billions of dollars to help finance the development of cleaner, renewable energy sources.

“We’re not trying to give incentives to drill, we’re giving incentives to invest in renewables and natural gas that will take us where we need to go,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA) told reporters before the vote.

In other words, the Dems haven’t reversed their long-held opposition to more offshore oil exploration.  They’ve just slapped a “Drill, baby, drill” sticker on its front bumper and hope voters don’t notice what the sticker is attached to.  It’s the most dishonest and cynical fig leaf imaginable, but they believe they’ve done enough to cover themselves through November, after which they’ll return to their full, glorious anti-energy nakedness and sentence us to a permanent, government-imposed energy crisis.

Surely the Senate, which is similarly predisposed in nausea-inducingly bipartisan fashion, will put the Pelosi plot on the fast track to passage before the Donks’ precious offshore drilling ban expires at the end of this month, right?

Not necessarily:

• Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC): “We’re trying to be more aggressive on drilling,” said South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham – Congressional Quarterly
• Senator John Thune (R-ND): “If they’ve already passed the tax extenders, the sense of urgency about passing an energy bill lessens,” Senate Chief Deputy Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD) said. Thune added that the tax deal increases the likelihood that no energy bill reaches a filibuster-proof sixty-vote threshold.” — Roll Call
• Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL): Durbin agreed that the outlook appears bleak for Senate passage of any of the four energy measures on which Reid has said he would allow votes. “I think it’s a reach,” Durbin said. “Try to add up sixty votes on any one of these.” — Roll Call

On the bright side, no energy bill means no BAD energy bill.  On the, well, mixed side, no energy bill means one of two things, depending upon whether Republicans are willing to fight to the death on this wedge issue: either Democrats get the blame for obstructing the immediate domestic energy exploration that 70% of the American public wants, or the Dems put over the outrageous fiction that “We tried to pass a drilling bill, but the Republicans did the bidding of their Big Oil friends and stood in the way.”  As though “Big Oil” doesn’t want to drill for more oil.

Though the GOP has made great strides in closing their generic Congressional deficit, it’s difficult to escape the creeping conclusion that with oil prices down almost 40% from their early-summer highs, enough urgency has bled off the energy issue that that ridiculous fig leaf might just be enough.

Which makes this look like a Michael Moore cannonball in the deep end of the PR pool:

The Democratic-controlled Congress, acknowledging that it isn’t equipped to lead the way to a solution for the financial crisis and can’t agree on a path to follow, is likely to just get out of the way.

Lawmakers say they are unlikely to take action before, or to delay, their planned adjournments — September 26 for the House of Representatives, a week later for the Senate. While they haven’t ruled out returning after the November 4 elections, they would rather wait until next year unless Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who are leading efforts to contain the crisis, call for help.

One reason, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday, is that “no one knows what to do” at the moment.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is panic.  At least I don’t know any other explanation for this pell-mell retreat.  If Crazy Nancy and Dirty Harry thought there was a political advantage to their party in keeping Congress in session to investigate the “Wall Street Meltdown” and come up with a pre-election legislative fix, even a fricking bandaid, you know they’d be all over it.  C’mon, the chance to sock President Bush in the groin one more time and slap down John McCain at the same time?  You might as well try to confiscate the Kennedy family still.

No, they know that their party’s fingerprints are all over the financial mess, and the more scrutiny is centered on the it, the more it will redound to their detriment and the Republicans’ benefit.  Far better to slink out of D.C., keep as low a profile as possible, and let Barry and Joe keep “spewing invective on the Bush Administration” out one side of their mouths while demanding that those same Bushies fix the problem out the other.  That way any blowback will land on them, and at worst they’ll simply rejoin an expanded Donk Senate majority to go with an at least surviving Donk House majority to make peace with the Lieberman Democrat in the White House that will unmask himself, much to the angry dismay of the GOP base that got duped into backing him, after Election Day.

Hey, seven presidents have come and (as of next January 20th) gone since Joe Biden has been in the U.S. Senate.  His party knows where the REAL power is.  Or, to modify yet another old saying, “Diamonds are forever, and so is the Democrat Congress.”  And then their “fun” will REALLY begin.

[cross-posted at ]

What once, not so long ago, was a quiet little inquiry in a quiet little capital of a remote state better known for History Channel fodder has, thanks to the Democrats’ Palin Derangement Syndrome, erupted into just the sort of Donk witchhunt that is par for the course inside the Beltway.  Yep, now, even on The Last Frontier, the politics of personal destruction are alive and well.

And some non-Obamanoids in the Land of the Midnight Sun are fighting back:

Five Alaska Legislators, Representative Wes Keller, Representative Mike Kelly, Representative Bob Lynn, Senator Fred Dyson, and Senator Tom Wagoner, will file suit in state superior court in Anchorage tomorrow morning (9/16/08) at 9:00 am (Superior courthouse 4th Avenue) against Senator French, Senator Kim Elton, Stephen Branchflower and the Alaska Legislative Council in order to halt the investigation of Governor Sarah Palin and others because the investigators have lost the appearance of impartiality required under the Alaska Constitution. The Legislators will ask for declaratory and injunctive relief in the investigation, stating that it is an attempt to use the Alaska Legislative Council to further partisan politics.

The Legislators cite in their lawsuit that the investigation into the firing of former Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Public safety Walt Monegan, led by Sens. Hollis French and Kim Elton, with Stephen Branchflower and the Alaska Legislative Council, is being driven by partisan politics in an attempt to unlawfully smear Governor Palin and others.

“The Partisan actions of Senator French, Senator Elton and the Legislative Council have tainted the investigation beyond the appearance of impartiality required under the Alaska Constitution,” said Kevin Clarkson, Esq., of the firm Brena, Bell & Clarkson, P.C., and counsel in the suit.

The investigation, which began after Monegan’s dismissal in July 2008, is being led by outspoken supporters of Barack Obama and members of the Democratic Party. Senator Elton, the Chair of the Legislative Council donated $2,000 to the Obama campaign but has failed to disclose this to the Legislative Council and he continues to preside over the Council with respect to the investigation, refusing to convene meetings of the Council at the request of a majority of the Council’s membership. Senator French the investigation “project manager” failed to disclose to the Legislative Council the comments he made on a radio program criticizing the Governor’s conduct regarding the termination of Monegan as “criminal” prior to being appointed as the investigation “project manager” and even prior to a vote to investigate at all. Senator French also failed to disclose to the Legislative Council that he had a personal bone to pick with the Governor over the Monegan firing because Monegan was a friend and because he had worked closely with Monegan during the 2008 legislative session regarding attempts to include in the state budget items that Governor Palin had vetoed.

Some aren’t convinced that “impartiality” is legally required.  It would certainly seem to be a political requirement, though, and one which Senator French has wantonly thrown aside in his mad quest for the requisite fifteen minutes of fame as the man who produced the “October surprise” that would destroy Barracuda and doom her septuangenarian running mate.  If you wondered why Governor Palin stopped being so cooperative with this bloodworm and the subpoenas started flying, now you know.

Resistance is not limited to certain Alaska legislators, either.  A citizens group has filed a similar lawsuit, the probe may itself come under investigation for what French and Elton have hijacked it into, and Alaska Attorney-General Talis Colberg, a Palin appointee and darned proud of it, is flatly refusing to comply with the subpoenas short of the entire Legislature compelling him to do so.  Which is looking increasingly unlikely.

Just to leave no mistake about her being on the defensive on this matter, ‘cuda decided - belatedly, in my view - to release documents of her own accord setting forth just how ample was her case for the dismissal of Walt Monegan from his former post of Director of Public Safety beyond the threats of his star pupil Mike Wooten against her family:

Walt Monegan lost his job as public safety director because he resisted Governor Sarah Palin’s budget policies and showed “outright insubordination,” say papers the governor’s lawyer filed Monday with the state Personnel Board.

It was Palin’s strongest effort yet to snuff allegations she sacked Monegan because he refused to fire a state trooper involved in an ugly divorce with the governor’s sister.

Along with the papers filed Monday were a slew of e-mails from the governor’s office purporting to show Monegan’s “rogue mentality” as a member of Palin’s Cabinet.

In one message, the governor’s budget director, Karen Rehfeld, wrote that she was “stunned and amazed” that Monegan appeared to be working with a powerful state legislator, Anchorage Republican Representative Kevin Meyer, to seek funding for a project Palin previously had vetoed.

Ensign Ed has more:

• 12/9/07: Monegan holds a press conference with Hollis French to push his own budget plan.
• 1/29