The Ob amessiah's Acceptance Speech

Sounded like standard-issue Democratic Party talking points to me. I didn't have a problem with the stage.

Text here.

Why is it that Democrats always run on a platform of "America sucks, you need me to fix it"?

That Continuing Recession Meme

Aint' working out for the Democrats:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy grew at a solid 3.3 percent annual rate in the second quarter, much stronger than first thought, but many economists expect growth to flag as the year progresses.

I love that "but" clause at the end of the sentence, there to assure leftists that the mainstream media will continue to push the meme that the economy is collapsing or on the verge of collapsing. What alternate plane of existence does "the reality-based community" live on?

Democrats Against Porn

Bird porn.

Seriously.

I think, but who knows, it's James Lileks and Dave Barry. But, then, there is a guy with a megaphone who says something like, "Democrats against bird porn."

Apparently, in the Democratic Party, there's a grievance group for everything, including a group that thinks watching birds is wrong and should be stopped. And people think this is a serious political party why?

Going ... Going ...

As circulation plummets in the era of the hyper-informed news consumer, so goes the revenue of the average daily newspaper, writ large with the decline of the Gray Lady:

NEW YORK (AP) -- New York Times Co. said Tuesday that its July revenue from continuing operations fell 10.1 percent this year as advertising revenue slipped 16.2 percent.

Overall revenue dropped to $235.9 million in July from $262.3 million in July 2007, the publisher said.

A continuing drop in classified ads and cutbacks in spending by movie studios, car companies and hotels were offset only partially by a rise in revenue from media, financial services, advocacy and health care ads for a net drop of 16.2 percent.

The company's flagship The New York Times paper had 15.3 percent lower ad revenue. At its New England media group, which includes The Boston Globe, July ad revenue dropped 24.5 percent.

This trend will continue and not be reversed. The mainstream media has lost the trust of the average citizen, and with that loss of trust comes a loss of readership, loss of ad revenue, and, ultimately, the loss of The Narrative.

That Sinking Feeling

This can't be good for Team Obama:

PRINCETON, NJ -- The last Gallup Poll Daily tracking polling conducted before the beginning of the Democratic National Convention shows Barack Obama and John McCain tied at 45%.

This, after non-stop wall-to-wall boosterism from the mainstream media, plus the no-bounce vice presidential pick and, now, the Democratic National Convention in Denver. This does not bode well, and, as I've said before, if Obama doesn't get a double digit bounce out of the convention, he's done. Really, though, he needs to climb about 16 points above McCain to beat McCain by 1-2% in the popular vote come November (given the Bradley effect, and etc...).

It's clear at this point that most Americans aren't buying the phony persona being put forward by Obama. Whether Barry O can reinvent himself by Thursday night an convince a sizable amount of voters that he's worth a vote in November, or at least a second look in the meantime, remains to be seen. I doubt he can do it, and I'll bet he's going to double-down on the messianic shtick, heaping tons of hope and change on America when he addresses the adoring masses at Invesco Field on Thursday night.

That's preaching to the choir, though. Good luck with that.

Not Gonna Happen

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy:

How Barack Obama Might Reach 50% in the Polls.—Many pundits on the right are underestimating the ease with which Barack Obama has it within his power to get a 3-8% bump in support in the polls.

Uhh, he needs to be that "3-8%" higher already if he's going to get a bump in the polls that would push him to 50% in the general election turn-out. And, he's not. This week is the last week Obama has to figure out how to get the double-digit poll lead he needs over McCain to win this fall, and if he doesn't get it coming out of Denver, it's never coming.

And even if the media manages to generate a lead, it still doesn't mean inevitability. Lead balloons don't float, and the Obama campaign is a lead zeppelin full of hot air and phony enthusiasm.

Are You Better Off Now Than Eight Years Ago

For some people, well,t he answer will always be "no" if there's a Republican in the White House. Despite the facts:

Americans enjoyed higher average income in 2006 for the first time since 2000, when the last economic expansion ended, the latest tax data show.

Adjusted gross income reported on tax returns in 2006 averaged $58,029. In 2006 dollars that was an increase of $739, or 1.2 percent, from the $57,289 average in 2000, analysis of Internal Revenue Service data showed.

Total income increased by $619.2 billion or 8.3 percent, all of which went to those making more than $75,000, and 42 percent of which went to the roughly one in 400 taxpayers who made more than $1 million in 2006.

't'aint much, sure, but, as one former boss told me while giving me my annual performance review, at least it's in the right direction.

Obama's Latest Hymn to Him

More like this, please:

I can only imagine that more of this worshipful idiocy is harmful - extremely so - to Obama's presidential bid, because the average American is not looking for some Messianic figure to retard the rise of the oceans or change the future in the name of hope ... or whatever it is Obama is actually saying he'll do as president if he were to become president. Rather, this kind of super-creepy video is a sure-fire poison pill that will only ensure Obama doesn't crack the 40% popular vote figure come November.

The average Joe and Sally Sixpack might buy six packs of lite beer, scratch instant win lotto tickets, eat too much fast food and watch too much television, but he already has a church to go to and is already suspicious of politicians. More of this fairy tale nonsense - especially from bubble-headed celebrities - is only going to work against Obama.

Leftists might not think the average American is all that bright, but he and she are significantly more intelligent and informed than the average leftist thinks. That, and most people can recognize a snake oil salesman when they see one. Most, not all. Just under 40% either can't recognize a leftist or are leftist's themselves.

And some people can be fooled.

The Biden Factor

Well, that clearly didn't help:

It’s a dead heat in the race for the White House. The first national poll conducted entirely after Barack Obama publicly named Joe Biden as his running mate suggests that battle for the presidency between the Illinois senator and Republican rival John McCain is all tied up.

In a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll out Sunday night, 47 percent of those questioned are backing Obama with an equal amount supporting the Arizona senator.

“This looks like a step backward for Obama, who had a 51 to 44 percent advantage last month,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

What's next as the Democrats open up their convention amid the blossoming spectacle of nitwits, radicals, revolutionaries, counter-revolutionaries, peaceniks, anti-war clowns, Marxists, Leninists, Maoists, environmentalists, leftists, liberal fascists, Stalinists, animal rights activists, and progressives of all stripes parade through Denver making fools of themselves and otherwise undercutting the notion that the Democratic Party is a serious political party with serious policy prescriptions. Hope? Change? What does that mean?

The important question is this: will the giant papier mache heads show up this year, and, if so, will they burn in effigy?

The Forgotten War

In Afghanistan, the Taliban have a strategy the West needs to deal with, and quickly:

The Taliban are taking advantage of the unwillingness of many NATO contingents to fight. Groups of Taliban gunmen are being sent to the vicinity of Kabul, where many of these less warlike NATO operate, and have launched attacks. They got lucky and killed ten French troops in one of these operations, in an action that highlighted the degree to which these troops, and their leaders, were unprepared for combat. By attacking, and inflicting losses, on these troops, the Taliban stir up political controversy back in Europe, leading, the Taliban hope, to withdrawal of the NATO troops from Afghanistan.

The West needs to fight, and fight tenaciously. Also, it needs to deal with "the man on the moon" phenomenon:

The people of Afghanistan don’t realize that NATO has no overarching counterinsurgency strategy, or that many of the 70,000 troops cannot fire their weapons except in self defense. All they see is a degrading security situation, and since America is capable of anything if it can land a man on the moon, then there must be an ulterior motive, or so the Afghan people think.

A couple of more US brigades should help, but bucking up the backbone of our NATO allies would do wonders to show the world that the French, Germans and etc. aren't going to willingly go into the dark night of The World-Wide Caliphate.

Or, like I said, a couple of more US brigades.

Obama's History (Recent) Lesson

Barack Obama doesn't know much about history, recent, past or current:

“We’ve got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies,” Obama told a crowd of supporters in Virginia. “They can’t charge into other countries. Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point.”

Emphasis courtesy Gateway Pundit. Lemme see, there's no difference between invading a sovereign democracy and crushing it versus invading a totalitarian nightmare dictatorship and freeing the people from it? Really, Barry O?

More like this, please, Dear Leader Obama. This phony, empty suit, liberal fascist is going to sink quickly to the bottom once he starts selling himself to the America public next week. Americans can sniff out an inarticulate charlatan selling snake oil from a mile away, and that mile high stadium setting isn't going to be high enough to hide the stench of Obama's anti-American, anti-capitalism, anti-liberty inner core beliefs.

Hope? Change? The only thing Obama is offering America is a future filled with despair and mutually shared misery.

The Unexpected Happens

I didn't even realize it was possible for a Republican to lead a Democrat in the polls at this point of the race, given the non-stop wall-to-wall pro-Democrat media coverage the Dem candidate gets as in-kind political donations:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a sharp turnaround, Republican John McCain has opened a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential race and is seen as a stronger manager of the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

McCain leads Obama among likely U.S. voters by 46 percent to 41 percent, wiping out Obama's solid 7-point advantage in July and taking his first lead in the monthly Reuters/Zogby poll.

I suppose there'll be a bump after the Democrat National Convention, but if Obama's final-night coronation speech is limited to hope and change and short on concrete specifics, that bump will likely be in the low single digits. And then, I expect Obama's poll numbers to slowly sink until Election Day, where he will garner about 36-38% of the national vote.

Alternate Realities

From the Brits, of all people:



It's nice to see some other people in the world recognize the importance of the United State's military contribution to the world.

The Do-Nothing Congress

Actually, this is a good thing:

WASHINGTON -- The 110th Congress, whose term officially ends in January, hasn't passed any spending bills or attacked high gasoline prices. But it has used its powers to celebrate watermelons and to decree the origins of the word "baseball."

Barring a burst of legislative activity after Labor Day, this group of 535 men and women will have accomplished a rare feat. In two decades of record keeping, no sitting Congress has passed fewer public laws at this point in the session -- 294 so far -- than this one. That's not to say they've been idle. On the flip side, no Congress in the same 20 years has been so prolific when it comes to proposing resolutions -- more than 1,900, according to a tally by the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Personally, I don't want Congress doing things, especially a Congress run by leftist Democrats of the clinically insane variety. And, if it makes the members of Congress feel good about themselves by passing meaningless resolutions, so be it. At least they're not doing anything to the country.

Secret Prisons

Supposedly, the CIA has "secret prisons" scattered across the globe, where terrorists and brave dissenters of the Bush Administration are detained and tortured, and that's a bad thing. The Democrats, though, build a secret prison to house anti-Democrat leftist protestors at the Democratic Party National Convention, and, well, that's okay:

DENVER - Activist groups say the converted warehouse poses a threat to civil liberties. The city maintains the facility is needed in case of mass arrests during the Democratic National Convention.

The makeshift holding center, dubbed "Gitmo on the Platte" by activists, is located on city-owned property near Steele Street and 38th Avenue. Newly-installed security cameras guard the exterior, chain-link fences and barbed wire form cells inside.

Hmm. Let's see, the actual Gitmo is a cruel torture charnel house (where the prisoners gain wait, get medical treatment, and are catered to in ridiculous fashion) and the Democrats endlessly carp about it. But, when the focus is likely to be carping about Democrats, well, jail the brave dissenters!

And I thought dissent was patriotic...

It's Bush's Fault!!!

If the Tropical Storm turns to a hurricane and makes landfall, get ready for another round of Bush-bashing, no matter what happens:

The outer bands of Tropical Storm Fay are pelting parts of Broward County and approaching Palm Beach County as the system's center emerged off the coast of Cuba this morning.

Yeah, this is a rather straight-forward news story on the approach of a tropical storm, but the lefties will go bonkers if the storm does any real damage. But I thought this little nugget of info was precious, given the nature of the story:

Trash pickup will continue as scheduled today.

I don't know who's stupider, the government officials who decided to start the emergency procedures in advance of the storm while continuing trash pickup, or the idiot reporter who figured this was something relevant to the news story.

Knowing What You Know, Now, Only, Then

Why you should never, ever, listen to the news media when it comes to current events and their potential outcomes in the future:

The prevailing wisdom 18 months or so ago was that invading Iraq had been, in retrospect, a disastrous blunder. It had led to appalling sectarian fratricide and an ever-climbing body count. Iraqi democracy was deemed a naive pipe dream. Worst of all, it was said, the fighting in Iraq wasn't advancing the global struggle against Islamist terrorism; by rallying a new generation of jihadists, it was actually impeding it. Opponents of the war clamored loudly for pulling the plug - even if that meant, as The New York Times acknowledged in a bring-the-troops-home-now editorial last July, "that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave.

I used to argue all the time with friends that you couldn't judge the war based on media accounts, and that most politicians and pundits were judging the war based on media accounts, and you couldn't trust their analysis, either. History isn't written in the daily newspaper, it's written years later, when more of the actual facts are known and less anecdotal evidence is available. That, and the media never wanted to win the war in Iraq, and the Democrats wanted to lose, and the pundits - including so-called "sober" analysts on the right - didn't want to paint an overly-neutral/potentially positive picture of the war, the surge and the possibilities of success because they didn't want to be wrong (they all wanted a "yeah, but" future possibility if it all went to hell).

Shit, Michael Yon frequently wrote that the US was losing the war in Iraq (he says that now, of Agfhanistan) even though it was clearly impossible to tell if we were losing, winning, or merely continuing the fight. The reportage and analysis of this war, in the media and political circles, has been wrong, imprecise and hasty at almost every point. Everything remotely negative has been hyped to the heavens - Abu Ghraib, "torture," Gitmo, Haditha, & etc. - and everything positive has been largely ignored. You can't believe what you're told, especially if you're being told something by the mainstream media or a Democrat politician.

The United States has never lost a war (we didn't lose Vietnam, we won on the ground, sewed up the peace, left the country, and then the Democrats stopped funding South Vietnam's military efforts to continue defending against North Vietnam's aggression), and it is ridiculous and idiotic to think the United States can't win a war. The mainstream media isn't currently capable of telling the truth, it's too busy servicing a collectivist agenda to bother with that, and, if it ever willed that socialist nightmare to power, it wouldn't tell the truth, then, either.

Trust no one.

Bias, Acknowledged

Dick Polman of the Phinqy finally comes out and waves his partisan flag:

We denizens of the reality-based community are overburdened during this campaign season; it's impossible to track all the lies, much less deconstruct them. The only sane course of action is to focus on the lies that are most egregious, or most mendacious, or breathtakingly audacious.

Translated: "We members of the leftist, socialist, liberal fascist, environmentalist and animal rights activist community are overwhelmed by the truth this campaign season; it will be almost impossible to counter all the truths, much less obviate them. The only idiotic course of action is to focus on the truths that are the most essential, or most telling, or most dangerous to our collectivist vision."

And, then, comes the standard-issue pack of leftist lies.

First, Do No Harm

Eh, with Democrats, the Hippocratic Oath doesn't apply to human civilization:

Responding to various new scientific reports questioning the concept of global warming, Assemblyman Michael Doherty today called on Governor Corzine to hold off on proposing any new regulations associated with the state’s Global Warming Response Act and urged the Legislature to repeal that act when it returns to legislative business after Labor Day.

“There are many credible members of the scientific community who have questioned the theory of global warming, and now we have some scientists actually suggesting the earth’s temperatures may be entering a period of dramatic cooling,” said Doherty, R-Warren and Hunterdon. “With this growing level of scientific uncertainty, it makes no sense to enact a new set of economically damaging regulations prompted by the global warming hysteria of recent years.”

With Democrats, nee liberal fascists, the governing urge is to first control the means of governing, then to tax the shit out of everyone, regulate the fuck out of everything, then sit back and wonder why the hell everything is going to pieces instead of magically transforming into utopia.

If the millionaires who govern us won't first give up their millions, their limousines, their private jets and their second-homes in the country/beach, why should any of us give up another cent, especially to "save" the planet from the quixotic notion that is we humans who are "hurting" it by living on it.

Lead by example, Corzine, or go sit in your mansion and drink pina coladas and leave the rest of us the hell alone.

Albatross, Meet Neck

Oh, please please please please:

BOSTON (WBZ) ― Barack Obama has yet to name a vice presidential nominee and some are wondering if he might turn to Massachusetts to round out the ticket.

John Kerry for vice president?

Don't dismiss the notion just yet.

Some political insiders are telling WBZ it could happen.

Obama is just the exact kind of political neophyte that he might actually choose a failed presidential candidate, an anti-US politician, and a phony war hero to be his vice presidential candidate on the idiotic supposition that someone like Kerry has "gravitas" and "foreign policy experience." This would be the kind of choice that would immediately alert the electorate that Obama is a know-nothing lightweight, seeing as how, four years ago, Kerry couldn't convince the electorate to vote him into the highest office despite all the cheerleading from the mainstream media and the non-stop unending anti-Bush reportage. Yeah, that'll convince Joe and Sally Sixpack that they can hope for a change.

Right.

The Enthusiasm Gap

All year long, the mainstream media has subjected the public to "the enthusiasm gap," the belief among the media types that the Republican voter base is demoralized:

Republicans are looking to even out the financial playing field in this campaign, having trailed Democrats in overall fundraising for most of the election cycle. The disparity reflects the enthusiasm among Democrats that's lacking among the GOP.

I dunno. I know some of the popular righty bloggers and some of the conservative radio talk show hosts are a bit let down that McCain is what the base gave them to vote for, but I don't know if that translates into anything. Most of the people in the US haven't tuned in to politics, yet, so how the hell can they be demoralized?

If the right is demoralized, how the hell did it manage to pony up nearly $60 million in campaign contributions in July?

You have to remember this when reading a mainstream media account of what's going on in politics: they're lying sacks of shit trying to trick you. How else do you explain Obama?

Enthusiasm gap? Hell, I want to measure the temperature of the average Democrat blue collar/office park worker the day after the Democrat convention is over. What does the "My God, my God, why have thee forsaken me?" face look like?

If we're lucky, this translates into local races.

Going, Going ...

You just keep telling yourself that, big media:

Newsstand sales of U.S. magazines fell 6.3 percent in the first half of 2008, an industry group said Monday, as rising gas and food costs led consumers to cut back on nonessential spending.
...
"This is nothing more than really just the impact of the economy," said John Harrington, an industry analyst with Harrington Associates. "People are shopping very cautiously and less frequently, avoiding impulse buys, which are what magazine purchases are."

Actually, this is nothing more than the continuing rejection of the mainstream media by the average citizen, now that the average citizen realizes the content of most of these publications is little more than leftist ideological reinforcement filler material meant to obscure reality. People, thanks to the Internet, are realizing that more and more of their media outlets are little more than continuing progressive re-education outlets, meant to keep the collectivist meme in circulation throughout the media spectrum, from music magazine to sports magazines to beauty magazines.

People are not "shopping very cautiously and less frequently," and I know this because I work in retail. People are grousing about the cost of gasoline, but are still shopping like there's no tomorrow.

US Invaded! Again! And, Again! And, Again...

Yawn, apparently, at the highest levels. Mexican soldiers keep crossing the border and doing whatever, and our government doesn't seem to care:

Four Mexican army soldiers entered southern Arizona and pointed their rifles at a U.S. Border Patrol agent early this week, the Border Patrol said.

The incident Sunday was the Mexican military's 43rd incursion across the U.S. border since October, the agency said. However, it was unusual because firearms were involved. The Border Patrol and the Mexican government are investigating, Border Patrol spokesman Mike Scioli said.

Yeah, I'm totally sure our government is thinking, "Hey, they're Mexican soldiers, who the eff cares, they're totally useless and not a genuine threat to the nation." Apparently, we in the US have entered a Phony War when concerned with the southern border. We aren't going to do anything until something forces the political class to do something, because ... I don't know why the hell the political class won't keep the indigent illiterate third worlders from entering our country illegally. Honestly, I can't think of a single reason. They don't vote. They don't pay taxes. Quick, someone ask McCain...

The End is Near

The mainstream media finally decides it can't hide the John Edwards affair, thereby assuring any remaining skeptical customers that there is, indeed, leftist/progressive/liberal fascist/socialist enabling and protection going on in the legacy media. Roger L. Simon:

MEANWHILE, one of the few remaining reporters at the Los Angeles Times had this to say: Several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, had been pursuing the story prior to Friday. Oh, really? As I recall some nitwit editor over there was telling his bloggers not to report the story but to “Keep rockin’” (how sophisticated). No matter. There won’t be anybody left working at the LAT in a few years anyway. In fact, the absurd see-no-evil reaction to the Edwards Affair will be seen as a benchmark in know-nothing journalism by the MSM and one of the last nails in their coffin. Too bad most of their soon-to-be unemployed reporters are not good enough to get jobs at the National Enquirer.

It'll be interesting to see what rushes into the vacuum left behind when the current mainstream media finds itself unemployed. I'm guessing there'll be a million Internet "bloggers" with PayPal accounts, subscribers and a sense of personal integrity that ensurers readership because in the future, journalists - or whatever we'll call them, then - will realize that to generate food on their dinner plates, the content they produce for consumption will have to be transparently reported. Oh, yes, it can be partisan in tone, but it can't be pretend neutral like the current press is.

Edwards Admits Affair

Queue the Nelson Muntz laugh:

Poor, pathetic, former Democratic Party presidential candidate and super-douchebag John Edwards admits to having had an affair, but denies fathering the child:

John Edwards repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extramarital affair with a novice filmmaker, the former Senator admitted to ABC News today.

In an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.

He didn't love her? Ouch, that smarts. Downside: this Democratic Party demagogue has a wife with inoperable cancer who will likely go to her grave knowing she married an asshat. Upside: the nation will likely never be burdened with this bozo ever again.

Republican Idiots in the Time of Oil Peril

This is reason #8,395,478,309 why I'm not a Republican:

Politics has its puzzling moments. John McCain and most of the GOP experienced one late last week. That was when five of their own set about dismantling the best issue Republicans have in the upcoming election.
...
And so, last Friday, in stumbled Sens. Lindsey Graham, John Thune, Saxby Chambliss, Bob Corker and Johnny Isakson -- alongside five Senate Democrats. This "Gang of 10" announced a "sweeping" and "bipartisan" energy plan to break Washington's energy "stalemate." What they did was throw every vulnerable Democrat, and Mr. Obama, a life preserver.

The Republican Party is just filled to the gills with self-serving nitwits who can't shoot straight.

The Changing Narrative

For forty years or so, we've been subjected to The Narrative, the media-created notion that whenever Republicans are in charge of something, bad things result. That's why, despite incredibly low unemployment rates and steady albeit slow economic growth, the media narrative is that the economy is bad. Why? Because of George Bush political affiliation. Additionally, the application of American military power is always bad when used by Republicans, and ridiculously constrained when used by Democrats.

The idea of leftist collectivism has been a rising force in America since the 1920s, and it finally hollowed out the Democratic Party in the 1960s, turning a once America-friendly party into an anti-American party focussed on socializing/collectivizing our current capitalistic and free market economic system. But, Americans are intrinsically rugged individualists who rely on themselves, not governments. This explains why so many state governments are advertising for clients to apply for food stamps.

The rise of the Internet in the 1990s, combined with the rise of conservative talk radio, however, was the mainstream media's Stalingrad, and it was the masses who rose up in rebellion against the media establishment. Now, a decade into the struggle over control of The Narrative, the media no longer control the means of production and distribution. Heh, ironic, that, seeing as how the left controls the media and purports to want the workers be in charge of the means of production. Now, the lies exposed, The Narrative revealed, the people of America are fighting back.

How do we know this? Declining television evening news show ratings, declining cable news channel ratings, plunging newspaper circulation figures, decreasing numbers of employed newspaper journalists, and the explosion in center-right blogs. Plus, the arguments for change to the left put forward by the progressives aren't selling, while push-back books by center-right types are selling:

A pleasing sales update, via Bookscan:

Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg: 91,246

Great American Hypocrites by Glenn Greenwald: 3,854

Right Is Wrong by Arianna Huffington: 5,495

Heads in the Sand by Matthew Yglesias: 705

Not even the leftists are buying the reading material written by leftists. Odd, that.

Plus, this speaks volumes about receptiveness of the Average citizen of the republic to leftist information streams:

The most powerful woman in the history of American politics is suffering a humiliating defeat at the nation's bookstores, sales figures show.

In her first week at market, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sold just 2,737 copies of her book KNOW YOUR POWER, according to NIELSEN BOOKSCAN.

All of this is why the leftist mainstream media is pushing so hard for Obama to win, because it's the only way to continue to influence the average American with leftist drivel. The media knows they will have significantly less power to influence four years down the road and so is going all-out to get the guy from their side into the White House.

Time is running out for the leftist media, and the journalists inside know it. Just like the cut-off German Sixth Army inside Stalingrad, no help is coming and defeat is certain, but those in charge of The Narrative won't surrender, thinking help is on the way. It isn't.

Barack Obama's "Save the Oil" Plan

Tire pressure gauges? Really:

Of course, Barack could easily defuse this by admitting he was wrong, but as with the surge he will not. This is why Barack Obama’s team is scared to death of any debate format that doesn’t rely on teleprompters: he’s a walking gaffe-o-matic and too arrogant to admit when he’s wrong — probably partly because the MSM scrambles to explain his mistakes away:

Well, given the nature of the leftist echo chamber, Obama probably hasn't heard of any differing points of view on the oil drilling issue.

Fairness Under the Reign of Democratic Fascists

Want Obama in charge of the country, with maybe the other branches of government in Democratic Party hands, and the Supreme Court soon-to-be-stuffed with liberal progressives? Say goodbye to America as a constitutional republic as the Democrats - hollowed out by liberal fascists, socialists, communists, environmentalists and animal rights activists - hold the Bush Administration up for war crimes tribunals:

One thing that hasn't received much attention in conservative and Republicans circles is the ongoing conversation on the left about the possibility of Nuremberg-style war-crimes trials for members of the Bush administration should a Democratic president take office. I'm not exaggerating or introducing the Nazi analogy myself; they actually use the phrase "Nuremberg-style" when they discuss "war-crimes tribunals." And they are quite serious (although the more moderate of them prefer a "truth commission.")

If this happens, expect a low-grade civil war to break out in America, with political assassinations, bombings and the actual shredding of our civil liberties while the various police authorities - under Democratic Party control - try to pacify the nation by limiting what you can do or where you can go. The leftists have so enraged themselves during the last eight years that most of them no longer are able to see reality, and if they take control of the government and start doing the nutty stuff they say they want to do, expect the realists in the nation to fight back, hard.

I mean, seriously, do these people on the left think they can hold their political opponents up for criminal trials of some sort? Seriously? This is the United States of America, the election is the trial. Criminalizing contrarian political ideas will have some very deadly effects. Fortunately, Obama hasn't got a chance to win, so none of this will happen and the leftists will turn the dial on the outrage machine up to eleven. Won't that just be fun...

Nationalized Health Care ...

Universal health care? Well, in the United States, we've already got that. Nationalized health care? Well, fortunately, we don't have that. Why? Ask yourself: what government agency works well, delivers its service in a timely and cost-efficient manner, and is friendly to deal with? Then, ask yourself if you want the DMV mentality running your neighborhood hospital.

What? You think a government can run anything? Not even in the UK:

The cleanliness of most NHS hospitals in England is threatened by frequent invasions of rats, fleas, bedbugs, flies and cockroaches, a report claims.

The envy of the world, ain't it?

Lying for Obama: Dick Polman Style

Phinqy "political reporter" (cough, cough) Dick Polman's first August fakery foray into complete and total pro-Obama hackery:

August is typically the month when Democratic presidential candidates are shredded by Republican tacticians who hew to the proposition that politics is war by other means, and that, in war, truth is always the first casualty.

Case in point, right now, is the GOP's first '08 foray into August fakery.

Last Thursday, Barack Obama made the rather mild observation that Americans could actually conserve a lot of oil by "inflating their tires and getting regular tuneups." Yet in a matter of hours, and over the weekend and beyond, all the moving parts within the conservative/Republican message machine were humming with fact-free synchronicity.

Rush Limbaugh pronounced the idea "laughable" and "stupid." John McCain, the alleged "maverick" who has now embraced the traditional fakery as the best route to power, falsely suggested that Obama's car tips constituted the sum total of Obama's energy plan

First, we have the election-cycle mandated pronouncement by some mainstream media type that Republicans play dirty and mean and the Democrats are cowards trying to stand up for the common good. And, then, you get the media type outright lying about what's "really" going on in a shameless attempt to cover for whatever Democratic Party pol has said that is either wrong or stupid, or both.

Dick Polman: a leftist hack masquerading as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," or so his self-adulatory profile says of him, in his desperate attempt to burnish his bona fides as an honest observer of politics.

Here's what Rush Limbaugh said. Here's what Obama said:

So, Polman, Obama did say it. And, yeah, I know you're hanging you lie on the "sum total" line of your post, but you don't provide any proof anybody said anything of the sort. Lying hack.

That Racist Paris Obama Ad

For a moment, the leftists in America seethed that McCain's Celeb campaign commercial was racist because of idiot leftist ideas about "racism." But guess, what? Obama compared himself to Paris Hilton first, making Obama intrinsically an anti-black racist:

"Andy Warhol said we all get our 15 minutes of fame," says Barack Obama. "I've already had an hour and a half. I mean, I'm so overexposed, I'm making Paris Hilton look like a recluse."

Does Obama hate himself because he's half-black? Doubtful. Is the average leftist Democrat a complete moron? Likely. For the leftists, truth doesn't matter, facts don't matter, history doesn't matter. The only thing that matters to the left is control of the narrative, and the left has lost that control and is now reduced to hysterics and doom-mongering.

Operation KAOS: Phase 2

It occurs to me that Phase 2 of Operation KAOS should now commence. In Phase 2, everyone living in a district with a contested race needs to call or email their Democratic Party candidate and urge him or her to oppose drilling for oil because we can't drill our way out of the current crisis (read: we need a magical, unknown, non-polluting fairy-generated moonbeam form of energy as yet undiscovered by science) while also calling or emailing the Republican Party candidate and urging him or her to campaign on a pro-drilling stance (and urging more nuclear, wind, solar, hydro and other proven technologies, as appropriate).

Conventional wisdom has it that the Democrats will gain a couple of Senate seats and a handful of House seats this election. Not likely if the above strategy is adopted before enough Democrats are granted absolution by Nancy Pelosi to support drilling for oil. Oddly, if the Republicans can get their acts together in advance of November, they are entirely likely to not only crush Obama, but recover some if not most of their lost seats in Congress. Indeed, if the nation would only wake up from its 40-year long nightmare of a quiet socialist take-over of the nation, we could oust scores of the liberal fascists from government and begin to take back the country.

Not likely. But soon. The mainstream media is on the way out, and with it goes The Narrative.

Obama and The Surge

Obama and the "Can't Talk Straight Express" on The Surge:

On "Meet the Press" last Sunday, Tom Brokaw reminded Mr. Obama that on the day the surge strategy was announced, he had said: "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there; in fact, I think it'll do the reverse."
...

It wasn't until a Democratic debate on Jan. 5 of this year that Mr. Obama acknowledged violence was diminishing: "I said at the time, when I opposed the surge, that given how wonderfully our troops perform, then we would see an improvement in the security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence," he said.

But Mr. Obama had said precisely the opposite at the time, and for six months thereafter. What he did in the "Meet the Press" interview, Mr. Wehner said, "is to provide a misleading answer to a previously dishonest answer, in an effort to cover up his spectacularly wrong prediction."

A man who admits no mistakes is very different from a man who makes no mistakes.

Judgment to mislead.

Don't Drill Democrats

The Democrats don't want to do anything to staunch the rising price of a gallon of gasoline. Witness:

Yep. Even if it costs $10 a gallon, Democrats won't want to drill for additional resources.