Let the Markets Fail

The attempt to ram a bailout of the financial markets failed, yesterday, for who-knows-what-reason. Now, the reason it should fail if tried again:

Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.
...
So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending.

The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.

Well, the "someone" who ought to pay for this mess is Barney Frank, disgraced Congressman from Massachusetts who, oddly, is never held accountable for his many execrable acts of bad faith against the United States. I expect the voters in his district will return him to Congress in November, proving they are idiots.

Unclear on the Concept

During the top of the hour news briefs on my local AM station, I just heard the news reader say that the cost of a barrel of oil has gone down today by something like $6, but the stunner is how he described this decrease in oil. He said the price of oil was "tanking" today. Tanking. As if cheaper oil is a bad thing.

Here's how MSNBC describes it:

Oil prices tumbled more than $6 a barrel Monday, briefly slipping below the $100 level as traders bet that global demand for petroleum products will keep falling despite a planned $700 billion U.S. financial bailout.

Tumbled?

You can tumble $6?

Is that bad?

Idiots.

Obama's Head-fake to the Right

Obama on McCain:

1. Well, I think Senator McCain’s absolutely right that we need more responsibility …
2. Well, Senator McCain is absolutely right that the earmarks process has been abused …
3. And he’s also right that oftentimes lobbyists and special interests are the ones that are introducing these kinds of requests ….
4. Now, John mentioned the fact that business taxes on paper are high in this country, and he’s absolutely right.
5. But John is right we have to make cuts. [And then Obama refused to note even a single cut he'd be willing to make.]
6. Senator McCain is absolutely right that the violence has been reduced as a consequence of the extraordinary sacrifice of our troops and our military families.
7. And, John, I — you’re absolutely right that presidents have to be prudent in what they say.
8. Now, Senator McCain is also right that it’s difficult.
9. Senator McCain is absolutely right, we cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran.

Geez, if McCain is right that often, why not just elect him President?

I think we will, but the socialists are lying hard to steal this one, aren't they? Does Obama really think he can spin himself off as some sort of center-left moderate Democrat? Really? By pretending to think the above nine points? Really?

And the effing Republicans aren't helping, either.

Free Speech? For Whom?

From Patterico:

Let’s face it: this kind of thuggery is standard operating procedure for the left. In 2006, when ABC ran “The Path to 9/11,” Harry Reid & Co. wrote a mafia-style letter threatening ABC’s broadcast license. In 2004, a group of Democrat lawmakers wrote Rupert Murdoch and threatened Fox News’s broadcast license over what they believed was skewed reporting. And the DNC threatened Sinclair Broadcasting’s broadcast license over an anti-Kerry documentary called “Stolen Honor.” Kerry spokesthug Chad Clanton was quoted as saying: “I think they’re going to regret doing this, and they better hope we don’t win.” He hastened to add that it wasn’t a threat.

The leftists in America can't stand up to free speech and open debate, because their ideas always lose in the marketplace of ideas.

Financial Scam, or Scheme?

Via Instapundit, a series of links to info and opinion on the proposed $700 billion Wall Street rescue package. A funny thing to know about this whole proposed financial scam - I mean, "scheme" - is that both the Democrats and Bush want it, but the Democrats won't push it on America without Republican support, which isn't very forthcoming at the moment. That should tell you something important about the nature of the deal: Democrats want it, but are afraid to enact it without the political cover of bi-partisanship.

This probably means that it's a bad idea. But, for sure, it's a bad idea to push it through so quickly. The only thing I know for sure is that every time I read something about this bailout proposal, I change my mind about it, although, usually later reverting to "no deal."

Thoughtcrime's Baby Steps

Jeff G. points to the recent decision of the academy in the UK to ban certain words:

The list of allegedly racist words includes immigrants, developing
nations and black, while so-called "disablist" terms include patient,
the elderly and special needs.

It comes after one council outlawed the allegedly sexist phrase "man
on the street", and another banned staff from saying "brainstorm" in
case it offended people with epilepsy.

The coming age of the Oceania nation-state is on the way, and it has always been at war with Eastasia. "Soft totalitarianism?" How's that liberal fascism happy face treating you?

Now, the question is, how will they scrub all those words and ideas from all those pesky little books and DVDs so that history can be re-written? And, will anybody in the UK notice?

The Democrats and Your Mortgage

At Hot Air and Ace, explanations on how the Democrats in Congress screwed America with regards to the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapses. Now, if this is how Democrats control the mortgage market, do you think they'd do better with the health care system?

You don't want the federal government in control of anything, especially if the federal government is being run by idiot socialists pretending to be Democrats. But, more generally, you don't want the federal government running anything that private enterprise can run, which is pretty much just about everything outside of the military and law enforcement.

Government Savings Accounts

Pittsburgh has been ruled by Democrats for decades. As a result, it has been an over-spending financial mess for decades, always on the verge of total breakdown. So, this should give you pause:

Four years ago, when state fiscal forecasters looked at the year 2009, they saw a city of Pittsburgh bleeding red ink to the tune of $115 million -- a scenario that suggested massive layoffs or crushing tax hikes.

But yesterday, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's administration rolled out a budget for next year that is taking in more money than it spends, and grows the city's savings account to nearly $97 million.

The city's "savings account"? WTF is that? Cities don't have "savings accounts," unless by that you mean taxpayers. Cities don't tax residents and then put the money in the bank to earn interest in the event of a sudden need for a new wardrobe, or whatever the eff a city might want to have a "savings account" for. This is nice, the City of Pittsburgh can barely - if it can barely - meet its spending obligations and the mayor is trying to "grow" the city's "savings account."

It's your money, Pittsburghers, wake up. Would you rather save it in your own bank account and spend it on hot wings and beer or let the government "save" it and spend it on whatever the hell it wants?

The End of the Beginning

Americans are starting to notice what the socialists in the Democratic Party and mainstream media are up to:

Anger at the media was not just confined to the ranks of McCain's campaign braintrust on Monday.

At a rally Scranton, Pennsylvania, one woman stood up in the question-and-answer period, and berated journalists, pointed a journalists and accused them of exploiting the pregnancy of Palin's unwed teenaged daughter.

"They need to start doing their job and stop picking on little children because of their age and their pregnancies, shame on you," she shouted, provoking delighted cheers at the rally among the mainly Irish American audience.

Oddly, the mainstream media doesn't understand that people are waking up, which is the only explanation for why this bit made it into the article. Whether people have woken up in time to the socialist threat posed by the Democratic Party remains to be seen.

Compromise in California

Schwarzenegger gets the state legislature to bow his budgetary demands. Upon reading the article, it seems like small potoatoes to me. California is still headed to hell in a hand basket.

Do Nothing Democrats

Hugh Hewitt has a nice wrap-up of the current state of the Democratic Party:

Welcome to the Democrats, 2008: Lots of hysterical talk uncoupled to any action in the Congress they control, void of specifics about the future and smothered in fear. "Vote for us," is the summary, "even though we don't know what to do generally and won't do what must be done when it comes to drilling."

I don't know if there's ever been a greater collection of incompetent, corrupt, self-serving and cynical people allied against the people they claim to represent. But on the upside, at least they didn't do anything. Yet.

The Associated Press Makes a Stand

The Associated Press takes a brave stand in the illegal, felonious stealing of electronic mail and the illegal, felonious hacking of Sarah Palin's electronic mail account:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hackers broke into the Yahoo! e-mail account that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin used for official business as Alaska's governor, revealing as evidence a few inconsequential personal messages she has received since John McCain selected her as his running mate.

"This is a shocking invasion of the governor's privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them," the McCain campaign said in a statement.

The Secret Service contacted The Associated Press on Wednesday and asked for copies of the leaked e-mails, which circulated widely on the Internet. The AP did not comply.

We all know, of course, what the AP would do if someone hacked Obama's e-mail account and circulated the messages on the Internet. Nice, AP.

Obama and Free Speech

Obama doesn't believe in Freedom of Speech:

This is not free speech. This is not "people expressing their opinion." This is people expressing Obama's opinion. This is a powerful politician arrogantly abusing that power to try to silence his critics, without even bothering to hide behind Media Matters or Kos, because he knows he can get away with it. This is wrong.

Our would-be Dear Leader believes only he can speak for the people, that only his point-of-view is valid. Amazing, that. And he wants to be leader of "the free world."

The Financial Markets Crisis

Dean Barnett explains what's going on. Unfortunately, neither presidential campaign will likely read the post to figure out what is really going on.

Obama and the Communist Party USA

Where to start? Jeff G. excerpts the thing nearly in entirety, so go there if you want his perspective. I'd say read the whole thing, and note this bit:

Despite [Obama's] close early relationship with a role model and mentor who happened to be a Communist agitator and radical black activist, such matters might nevertheless have raised few eyebrows if Obama’s politics had matured with age. But he appears to have continued along this same radical trajectory – as his 20-year membership of the black power-promoting Trinity United Church of Christ would suggest. A dossier by Cliff Kincaid documents how in 1995 Senator Alice Palmer presented Barack Obama as her chosen successor and protege to a group of extreme left-wingers: William Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Dr Quentin Young. These were to play a significant role in Obama’s life and career. Yet Palmer was an official of a CPUSA front group; Young was accused of being a CPUSA member and having a financial connection with the violence that broke out at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968; and most notoriously of all, Ayers and Dohrn became members of the terrorist Weather Underground -- and yet have continued to have links with Obama, as outlined by Stanley Kurtz.

The more you find out about Obama, the more you realize is being hidden from you by a complicit mainstream media and a lying Democratic Party. Or, maybe, most of the aveage run-of-the-mill leftist progressive liberal Democrats in the party don't know anything about the manchild idiot who is Barack Obama. Couldn't blame them, though, seeing as how the mainstream media has been selling Gaffe Master Uh as some messianic super genius come to save us from the apocalypse.

Instead, we increasingly find out that Obama is a stealth candidate desperately trying to avoid being found out by the public at large as a far left radical liberal fascist bent on collectivizing America into the latest iteration of totalitarian nightmare states, this time with a smiley face stamped on top. Because despite a 100% failure rate of socialism, there's always some new super genius with a desire to forcibly install paradise on earth and make everyone suffer equally, because it's more fair.

If this story makes it out into the American information stream, expect the Obamessiah's campaign to collapse well in advance of election day, leaving the candidate standing before his teleprompter in big, empty auditorium's filled with only the most ardent of worshipers. Expect the mainstream media to furiously ignore this story.

Next Great Depression Same as the First

Has nobody in government learned anything from Hoover and Roosevelt? Will the US government please stop taking over failing businesses? The federal government - hell, any government - is not charged with running the economy of the country, businesses are in charge of running the economy. And, businesses fail. The last time the US government tried to fix the economy, we had a little period known as The Great Depression. Do the idiots in Washington want another one of those? If not, get out of the marketplace and let businessmen do business. Nobody volunteers to be poor, and the guys running the businesses will figure it out in time so people can make money. More government is never the answer.

I guess this is what you get when you mix Republican Party "compassionate conservatism" with progressive liberal Democratic Party socialism and a mainstream media that constantly sells fear, panic and dread about the economy.

Hell, meet handbasket.

The Trumped up Claims of Terrorism

The US embassy in Yemen was attacked - again:

SAN'A, Yemen (AP) -- A car bomb exploded at the front gate of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen's capital Wednesday, killing six Yemeni guards and four civilians, officials said. No American personnel were reported hurt.

Several "secondary explosions" followed the first blast, the embassy said in a statement. A Yemeni security official said the compound was hit by two car bombs, followed by heavy gunfire that lasted about 10 minutes.

Oddly, countless leftists in the US will ignore this latest attack against America and continue to pretend that the Islamist threat to the West is a fiction conjured up by Bush to allow for the US to intervene willy-nilly wherever it thinks it can find profits for the oil or military-industrial comples. Idiots. Look at the history of the Islamist threat to the United States vis-a-vis the embassy in Yemen:

In March 2002, a Yemeni man lobbed a sound grenade into the U.S. Embassy grounds a day after Vice President Dick Cheney made a stop for talks with officials at San'a airport.

The attacker, who allegedly sought to retaliate against what he called American bias toward Israel, was sentenced to 10 years in prison but the sentence was later reduced to seven years.

In March 2003, two people were fatally shot and dozens more were injured when police clashed with demonstrators trying to storm the embassy when tens of thousands rallied against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

In 2006, a gunman opened fire outside the embassy but was shot and arrested by Yemeni guards. The gunman, armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, claimed he wanted to kill Americans.

The group was blamed for the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole destroyer in the Yemeni port of Aden that killed 17 American sailors and an attack on a French oil tanker that killed one person two years later.

Yep, nothing to see there, move along liberal Democrats, ignore reality and go back to your "reality-based" communities.

Ordinary People and Taxes

When ordinary people can avoid government charges, they avoid them. Always. This is why rich liberals never mail in the "excess" money they have to the federal government, but advocate for higher taxes for "everyone." Look:

Commuter traffic rose Monday on the Tacony-Palmyra and Burlington-Bristol Bridges and dropped on the four Delaware River Port Authority bridges, apparently the result of drivers' looking for a bargain.

Monday was the first work day with higher tolls on the DRPA's Ben Franklin, Walt Whitman, Commodore Barry and Betsy Ross Bridges. Tolls on those bridges are now $4 for autos, up from $3.

That makes them twice as expensive to cross as the Tacony-Palmyra and Burlington-Bristol Bridges, where the Burlington County Bridge Commission is keeping fares at $2 and touting its spans as the "best bargain around."

We'll have to wait to see if the hassle factor causes people to go back to their previous commuting habits, but, clearly, the initial reaction of the average common person is to avoid the extra $250 charge a governmental body is trying to impose on them.

Palin Derangement Syndrome

From Lileks, something to consider:

Here’s your Sarah Palin overreaction of the day. Presumably she took out the entrails, dried them, and used them to lynch librarians. It’s really obvious, isn’t it? She wants to kill Lady Liberty and all she represents. The plane is included in the picture because she personally shoots polar bears from above, like she’s GOD OR SOMETHING. The comments have the usual reasoned evaluations – she’s a PSYCHO, a LUNATIC. That picture is so sad and so true.

I don’t know if anyone’s stated the obvious yet, but this might be the first time people have become unhinged in advance over a vice-presidential candidate. Not to say some aren’t painting McCain as something the devil blurted out in a distracted moment during his daily conference call with Cheney, but a Veep? It took a while for people to believe that Cheney commissioned private snuff films with runaways dressed up to resemble a portion of the Bill of Rights, but Palin is She-Wolf of the Tundra right off the bat. And god help us she can use email, which means she will control the government. The most Spy ever did with Quayle was stick him in a dunce hat. By the time we reach the election Oliphant will probably draw Palin sodomizing by an oil derrick with guns for arms. I have to confess: I think Palin is an interesting politician, but the people she's driving batty are much more fascinating.

imagine 12 years of this.

Imagine 16 years of this. The lunatics on the left are howling this ferociously because they know the US is mostly made up of people or are some degree of conservative, and when a conservative runs, conservatives usually win. Not always. But, on the national scale, usually.

The Master of Uh

Obama, stinging from attacks that he's an emtpy suit know-nothing chimera of a political candidate who can't speak extemporaneously and wanders off his talking points, is taking a telemprompter on the campaign trail.

Soccer Hooliganism

Soccer kills. Seriously, it might be the most deadly sport on the planet. The fans constantly go nuts in stadiums over the results of games, and, if you believe Green Street Hooligans, there are "clubs" of soccer "fans" who travel with their favorite teams for the joy of brawling with "fans" of opposing teams. But this is ridiculous:

Accusations that a soccer player was using witchcraft during a match in eastern Congo sparked a riot that killed 13 people, a U.N.-funded radio station reported yesterday.

Most of the victims were between the ages of 11 and 16, Radio Okapi said. They were suffocated as panicked crowds ran for the exits during the mayhem Sunday in Butembo in eastern Congo's North Kivu province.

First off, what's the UN doing funding a radio station? And, why is this important lede-paragraph information? I digress. Second, the whole suffocated-at-the-exits meme is typical with soccer, as panicked crowds try to make their way out of the arena pack against each other. This sport is dangerous.

And deadly boring. But that's beside the point.

But, then there's this:

He made no mention of witchcraft, but confirmed that soldiers had fired into the air to calm angry crowds. The shooting prompted panic instead, which became fatal "when the crowds all tried to leave at the same time."

Witchcraft? Damn third-worlders and their pagan belief systems. Or, rather, in what country do you have to live to have people who believe in witchcraft and have people who believe that soldiers firing their weapons into the air will calm an angry crowd?

Of course, the best part of the the news brief is the mention of the team names. Like anyone subscribing or reading the Phinqy would know or care. Idiot journalists.

Good-bye England, My Old Friend

The UK takes another step into the totalitarian nightmare future of the European Caliphate:

ISLAMIC law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.

In the future, it will be acceptable for any man to beat any woman in the UK. Also, it will take five witnesses to a rape for a woman to prove she didn't have it coming, providing the witnesses don't tell the court the woman had it coming, of course. Shame.

Now, tell me, which religion - faith tradition, sorry - was it the producers of V for Vendetta used to peddle their version of a totalitarian nightmare state? Yeah, I know, it was super right wing theocratic fundamentalists, is who.

The Real 9/11 Conspiracy

The truth the 9/11 Truthers - and the mainstream media and Democratic Party - don't want you to know about: They're afraid of the truth. Witness:

THE suits at Disney-owned ABC are too chicken to re-air or release on DVD their $40 million docudrama that accused Bill Clinton of squandering many chances to capture Osama bin Laden before the Twin Towers attacks.

That's the charge of John Ziegler, director of a new ABC-bashing documentary titled "Blocking 'The Path to 9/11.' " It focuses on why ABC delayed airing and severely re-edited its ambitious miniseries "The Path to 9/11" in 2006 after a furious Clinton and his cronies strong-armed the network.

Ziegler alleges that ABC's grand plan was to re-air the show, which starred Harvey Keitel and Donnie Wahlberg, every year around 9/11 but dumped the idea in 2007, fearing that it would hurt Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations - and will now never air it again. He charges that Disney chief Robert Iger told shareholders that it was "simply a business decision" not to issue a DVD - an "odd declaration" because a home video would help recoup the company's $40 million investment.

Reminding the public about which president really failed the American public vis-a-vis Osama bin Laden and his murderous plans against America just isn't in the interests of the mainstream media. It might hurt the Democrats if average voters realized just how feckless and irresolute Bill Clinton and his team really were. And, remember, this was the administration that, in 1998, made it official US state policy to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Clinton talked the talk, but didn't walk the walk.

I have a funny feeling that if they released the DVD of this movie for $1 a copy, they'd make $40 million by the end of the month.

Dead Silence

The Leftists and the idea of "American exceptionalism:"

McCain's passionate statement about American exceptionalism (and Woodruff's sense of disbelief that anyone could possibly think America was better than any other country) evoked absolute dead silence from the Columbia crowd. I think John McCain was somewhat taken aback that there was no response to this.

I think this perfectly exemplifies what it has come down to in this country: a great number of Americans--mostly of the Democrat and brainwashed leftist persuasion--don't think America is anything special. They live in the freest, best off, most productive, most generous country on the globe, and they don't think that's anything special.

They hate the freedom that lets them hate freedom. Odd, that.

Will Biden Bow Out?

How to tell your campaign is flailing helplessly:

“Make no mistake about this, Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Lets get that straight,” Biden said in Clinton’s defense.

“She’s easily qualified to be vice president … and quite frankly, might have been a better pick than me. But she’s first rate. I mean that sincerely. She is first rate. So let’s get that straight,” he said.

So, failure is clearly an option for the Obambi campaign if your No. 2 man- your super-experienced tough-as-nails attack dog VP pick - allows that he might not have been the best choice for the job. Wow. This isn't the kind of admission you make in public if you know in your heart you've got a winning team and a solid strategy. This is what you say when you're thinking of getting off before the ship sinks.

Clinton will never go for it, though. She and Bill both knew the Obamessiah wouldn't cross the finish line, couldn't cross the finish line because he's a hollow, empty, vapid, unthinking, shallow know-nothing candidate. And now, Obama's chickens are coming home to roost.

The Meltdown

By Sweasel.

Obama Whines, Complains

Obama can't handle the heat of the campaign, and took a few moments of time to dress down his No. 1 support team, the mainstream media:

Obama said the McCain campaign moved to "seize an innocent remark and take it out of context because they knew it's catnip for the news media."

"See, it would be funny, but the news media decided that would be the lead story yesterday. This happens every election cycle. Every four years, this is what we do. This is what they want to spend two of the last 55 days talking about...Enough!" he said.

Enough! ENOUGH! ENOUGH!! ENOUGH!!!



Does this idiot clown manchild realize what he's doing, who he's talking about, or what an asinine pinhead he comes across as? No, I doubt it. He's struggling. He's fading. He's not up to the challenge.

Obama's Education Policy: Failure & Terrorists

The latest Obama claim:

RIVERSIDE, Ohio -- Sen. Barack Obama yesterday charged rival Sen. John McCain with "three decades of indifference on education" as the Illinois Democrat sought to sharpen distinctions with the Republican ticket on a topic of special resonance to the white women voters who have shown renewed interest in McCain since Sarah Palin joined his ticket.

Now, let's just leave aside the issue that the federal government shouldn't have anything to do with the education of our children and focus on the actuality of Obama's track record when it comes to "fixing" or "improving" the public education system:

The cloak of media invisibility is slowly beginning to lift from Barack Obama's most important administrative leadership experience, helming an expensive educational reform effort in Chicago that failed to produce any measurable academic gains, according to the project's own final report.

Add in the fact that former Weatherman and admitted terrorist William Ayers (whom Obama described in the Philadelphia debate as merely a "neighbor") was head of the operating arm of the CAC, working with Obama on distributing scores of millions of dollars to grantees in the wards of the city, and you have a topic that the Obama campaign wishes to avoid at all costs.

I guess Obama doesn't want to avoid the topic because he figures the mainstream media won't print anything about it. Failure and terrorism, the core tenets of the Obama education policy.

The Fairness Doctrine

This is odd: most Democrats who support Barry O! in his desperate bid for the presidency think Supreme Court justices should decide cases before them by ignoring the Constitution and going with what they think is fair. Look:

While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree. Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree.

Which, you know, means that a serious contingent of Democrats are, to be blunt, inherently anti-American as regards the way this country is organized politically. Jeff G. has much, much more.

Collapsing in the Final Stretch

The left is afraid, very afraid of McCain-Palin. Because of Palin. Hell, I'll admit it: I'm going to vote for Palin, and elect McCain. Previously, I was going to vote against Barack Hussein Obama because he's an unimpressive garden-variety socialist using - or, well, had been using - liberal fascism to promote his candidacy. Obama is a tax-and-spender who never met an earmark he didn't like.

And then came Palin and Obama's campaign imploded. He couldn't handle the threat.

And now everybody is noticing.

I've been saying for a while that Obama couldn't win this election and will likely only get about 36-38% of the vote. Yeah, he'll get less votes than Bill Clinton got in his first bid for the presidency in 1992, and remember, Clinton only got 42% of the vote. Americans don't like liberal Democrats, and even "centrist" Bill Clinton never got 50% of the vote. It's going to be bad for Democrats come November.

Now, if only there are coattails.(Presuming, of course, there are any Republicans worthy of electing) [well, duh, compared to the socialist Democratic Party, but you know what I mean]

The End of the Beginning

The Obamessiah's failing evangelical outreach to middle America:

The latest Fox News/Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in Ohio, finds John McCain out in front of Barack Obama 51% to 44% (crosstabs available for Premium Members).

The latest numbers, which are the first to be released since the conclusion of both parties’ conventions, mark an improvement for the Republican nominee. In August, McCain had a slightly more modest advantage over the Democrat. In fact, the GOP hopeful has held a modest lead since July in the swing state that finally decided the 2004 election.

McCain is viewed favorably by 63% of Ohio voters and unfavorably by 35%. Obama’s ratings are 50% favorable, 48% unfavorable.

As I keep saying, Obama can't win this election, and now he's starting to realize it. He's an empty suite know-nothing inexperienced half-witted ideologue who doesn't know his US history, doesn't understand the average American, and thinks he knows better than you how you should live your life. He could spend the next two months touring only Pennsylvania and Ohio and still not win either of those states, and he needs to win them to have a chance of winning the country.

Of course, he doesn't have a chance of winning. Now all we have to do is wait for his cash flow to dry up as would-be supporters realize wasting their money on a false god isn't such a good idea.

Buh-bye O!

Culture of Fear

Or Culture of Fear of Being Sued for Being a Good Samaritan? Witness:

Without uttering a word, police said, the unidentified man whipped out a double-claw hammer and began bludgeoning a 20-year-old man who was dozing off in his seat.

For five long minutes, SEPTA surveillance cameras captured the deranged attacker - who was still on the loose late last night- digging his hammer into the man's head and neck.

Through it all, disgusted investigators said, at least 10 passengers stood by and did nothing as the random attack moved from the train to the platform, when the hammer-wielding maniac tried to push his victim down onto the train tracks.

When the beating was finished and the suspect fled with the little boy, the victim staggered back onto the train, bloodied, confused and alone, said Detective Kenneth Roach, of Central Detectives.

And even then, no one tried to help him.

You'd like to think that after 9/11, people would rise up against random, anonymous attackers, but, apparently, that lesson only goes so far. Here, a trainload of people sat by and did nothing as someone was viciously assaulted. And, this is nothing new. Average Americans no longer seem willing to help their fellow man in his time of need if that help carries with it the risk of harm to themselves.

This is not who we are.

Yet, it is who we have become.

People will donate checks to the Sierra Club to save trees and rodents, but they won't rise from their seats to save a fellow man. Disgusting.

O! The Places You'll Go!

Obama: complete and total moron, or most gaffe-prone presidential candidate in history?

I'm going with complete and total moron. I'm guessing this is one of those 57 states he's been to.

That Housing Crisis

There's no way this can be a good thing:

The Bush administration announced Sunday it was seizing troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a bid to help reverse a prolonged housing and credit crisis.

I have a funny feeling Bush and his advisers are reacting more to media spin on the "housing crisis" than they are to real facts. There is no crisis. People are not being pushed out of their houses by lenders. Nationally, there is no overarching problem with housing, mortgages or home sales. Your local conditions may vary, but here outside Philadelphia, where I live, they are building new homes like crazy.

The government should not be in charge of any aspect of the economy.

Obama's "Muslim Faith" Thing

Now, most people are going to write this off as just a normal, ordinary campaign gaffe, the kind of thing that happens bunches of times to someone who is always talking about himself. But you have to ask yourself, "Really, this is a normal gaffe?" Look at what The One said:

ST. LOUIS, Mo. - Sen. Barack Obama's foes seized Sunday upon a brief slip of the tongue, when the Democratic presidential nominee was outlining his Christianity but accidentally said, "my Muslim faith."

The three words -- immediately corrected -- were during an exchange with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on "This Week," when he was trying to criticize the quiet smear campaign suggesting he is a Muslim.

Now, I don't know why Obama thinks being a Muslim is a bad thing, but, clearly, he and others on the left see Islam as a political negative, which is why they minimize or ignore anything Muslim. But, and this is the weird thing, what person of faith would mistakenly claim to be of another faith when talking about their faith?

Answer: someone who is not a person of faith. Is Obama a secret Muslim who lived a lie as a Black Liberation Theory Christian? I don't know, but I doubt it, that would be too clever by half. I think Obama is merely a non-Muslim secular humanist "Christian" who went to church so he could check a box on a much-needed credibility issue when talking to voters about faith, religion and God.

But, seriously, someone from the Obama camp needs to explain why they think being called a Muslim is a "smear." Seriously.

The Beginning of the End for The One

If you're in the mainstream media, I guess you have to comfort yourself with the notion that this is merely "convention bounce:"

McCain leads Democrat Barack Obama by 50%-46% among registered voters, the Republican's biggest advantage since January and a turnaround from the USA TODAY poll taken just before the convention opened in St. Paul. Then, he lagged by 7 percentage points.

The convention bounce has helped not only McCain but also attitudes toward Republican congressional candidates and the GOP in general.

"The Republicans had a very successful convention and, at least initially, the selection of Sarah Palin has made a big difference," says political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. "He's in a far better position than his people imagined he would be in at this point."

In reality, what you have is an electorate that is increasingly coming to realize that Obama is a garden-variety socialist who wants to collectivize things, increase taxes, and regulate the hell out of everything, and most people in America don't want that. The leftists don't realize this, because they think they're smarter than everybody else, which is part of the reason the Democrats keep standing up leftists for national elections. Unfortunately for them, leftism doesn't sell on a national stage, and local elections never feature the leftist Democrats running as leftists, which is why they keep winning House and Senate seats. Expect this situation to change as more and more non-leftist voters realize the Democrat they usually vote for in November isn't a Truman-style Democrat, but a Stalin-style Democrat.

And this will happen.

The mainstream media will work mightily to mitigate this and try to portray Obama and Biden as normal work-a-day Joes, but the problem with that is that neither of them are even capable of pretending to act like normal ordinary Americans, and people are going to quickly realize that The One and The Idiot are leftist elitists who want to tax the hell out of them and tell them how to live their lives.

You get a sense of this with this answer:

“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it,’’ Obama said. But the Illinois senator could still see skeptics in the crowd, particularly on the faces of several men at the back of the room.

So he tried again. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’ he said. “This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’

"Even if I want to take them away" is not a good way to start a sentence about guns in America, because if exposes your real view on the subject, which is that you want to take them away. And this was a theoretically friendly audience hearing out the junior senator from Illinois. It only goes downhill from here.

That Sinking Feeling

McCain seems to have beaten the Obamessiah in the convention attention race:

Presidential candidate John McCain's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention drew more television viewers than his rival Barack Obama attracted at the Democratic party's event last week, according to preliminary ratings from Nielsen Media Research.

Across all broadcast networks Thursday, Sen. McCain’s speech ended the night with a 4.8 rating/7 share, compared to Sen. Obama’s 4.3/7 average, according to overnight numbers from metered households in 55 U.S. markets measured by Nielsen. These ratings are preliminary, however, and are subject to change.

NBC’s coverage of Sen. McCain’s speech started directly at the tail end of the opening game of NFL season, with the speech pulling in a 6.3 rating/10 share, topping Sen. Obama’s speech last week by 26%. That lead-in may have boosted audiences who last night turned out in droves to watch Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin introduce herself to the country.

I'm guessing leftist Democrats everywhere see the writing on the wall and can't be happy. Obama should be 15 points ahead of McCain right now, but, instead, the two are more-or-less dead even in the polls. I'm going to guess that McCain is going to start ascending while Obama starts sinking, and then Obama is going to go negative, big time.

And McCain will laugh it off.

Coming Soon: Headscarves and Burkhas

The EU takes another step toward the abyss:

MEPs want TV regulators in the EU to set guidelines which would see the end of anything deemed to portray women as sex objects or reinforce gender stereotypes.

This could potentially mean an end to attractive women advertising perfume, housewives in the kitchen or men doing DIY.

Such classic adverts as the Diet Coke commercial featuring the bare-chested builder, or Wonderbra's "Hello Boys" featuring model Eva Herzigova would have been banned.

The EU is a disastrophe in the making, and this is just the latest bit of nonsensical idiocy. What? Women aren't sex objects? What? There aren't gender stereotypes? Who's going to determine what's "attractive" or "sexy?" Who's going to determine what is or isn't a "stereotype?" These pretend-sexless secular leftists in Europe show clearly what kind of world they want to live in, and it's a world in which nobody really wants to live because everybody is the same, with the same stuff, similar jobs, similar incomes, similar clothing, similar commutes and nobody notices any differences in anybody else. I.e., you are all government robots, learn to act that way (and leave the government deciders alone with their hypocritically lavish lifestyles, they earned it telling you proles how to live your lives).

It's kind of funny that given the option between celebrating our differences and uniquenesses, the leftists of the world want to smooth over them and pretend they don't exist all in the effort to make the perfect world where we are all the same. I like that we're all different, it makes each one of us special.

Obama and Biden

Genuine, garden-variety liberal Democrat assholes:

Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden said earlier this week that he and running mate Barack Obama could pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration if they are elected in November.

Okay, to be fair, they aren't garden-variety liberal Democrat assholes, they are garden-variety standard-issue liberal fascist assholes trying to push the decades-long-disproved socialist agenda on the country, and, upset that it's taking too long, are starting to get pissy.

Palin's Hairstyle Irks MSM Reporterette

Sarah Palin hasn't even been a candidate for an entire week, but, already, some shit-for-brains newspaper reporter has decided to write about her hair style. Your asshole mainstream media at work:

“It’s about 20 years out of date,” said Boston stylist Mario Russo of the Alaska governor’s ’do. “Which goes to show how off she might be on current events.”

For readers who are rolling their eyes about this nonissue - get real. People talk about hair - from Mitt Romney’s perfectly sprayed coif, John Edward’s Breck do, McCain’s unfortunate combover and Barak’s No. 3 buzz cut.

Uhh, no. Nobody really talks about this nonissue. Some commentators crack jokes about this nonissue, but nobody talks about the hair of candidates (except when the candidates make it an issue, such as on-the-runway hair cuts, expensive hair cuts, and playing with your hair for a long time while looking at a mirror while being videotaped), nobody.

What you have here is your typical jackass news reporter weighing in -negatively, naturally - on a candidate's hair, and only doing so because the candidate is ideologically opposed to the reporter. Nice, that.

And, no, I have no idea why Mitt Romney's name is embedded with a hyperlink, the link doesn't go to any stories on Romney's hair. Idiot reporter.

That "Uh-Oh" Moment for Democrats

The Phinqy hosts a poll asking readers to rate the Sarah Palin convention speech from 1-5 (1=bad, 5=great), and 58% rated it a 5 (out of 3600+ votes) as of this writing. In liberal Philadelphia, of all places. My guess is the pit has dropped out of the stomachs of most liberal Democrats this morning as they stare at their anointed Obamessiah and his doltish number 2 choice. Good luck with that, Dems.

The NYT Loses the War in Iraq

At the Volokh Conspiracy, a compilation of quotes from New York Times "pundits" on how The Surge in Iraq was failing or would fail. Now that The Surge has worked and the United States has won the war in Iraq, the NYT and its mainstream media allies are strangely quiet about the situation in Iraq. When the NYT becomes just another Manhattan daily newspaper staffed with 20-something reporters who are bored covering the ins and outs of city government, nuisance crime and local trends, this will be one of the reasons.

The Power Behind the Throne

Well, maybe the ego behind the Obamessiah:

"I will be back, I'll be back to campaign in earnest," Biden said, "but today is not the moment for me to campaign. Today is the moment for me as a United States senator running for president to put aside the national politics and focus on what's happening down there" in the Gulf Coast.

Obama and Biden are the two most gaffe-prone people to ever run for the top two spots in the US government. That, and Biden is little more than a know-nothing idiot blowhard who is totally full of himself and probably thinks, somewhere in a dark, deep recess in his mind, that he is running for president, because he's being the best Joe Biden he can be.

The Lies that Bind

Ace is shocked - maybe - that the left would willingly lie so blatantly about something that might kinda be able to affect politics. Me. Not so much. I expect the left to lie about everything. Still, there's this:

The normal state we exist in is to assume most information we read is true, or sorta true, or true-ish.

We assume that people may be biased or just plain wrong. But we don't assume that hundreds of people conspire together to coordinate a lie they not only positively know is false, but they happen to know that first-hand, as they themselves invented the facts a couple of hours ago.

That's a weird thing: Coordinated mass lying. Shit is slipping by us that we're assuming might be true or somewhat true (those missing months of Bristol's when she was carrying baby Trig, that "Alaskan Airline crew members stated Palin didn't look pregnant," etc.) just because we're simply not used to thousands of people agreeing to spread deliberate lies to as many people as they can. The fact that multiple people on multiple websites are claiming it, seemingly independently, tricks us into thinking, subconsciously maybe, "Gee, they must have gotten that from some article; they all couldn't just be lying in unison."

Or could they?

They could. They are. The sad thing for the left is that with the rise of the Internet, especially the blogosphere, the left has totally lost control of The Narrative. Now, everything is knowable. And, everything is knowable. This is bad for the left, because without The Narrative, it will, over time, lose control of everything it now dominates. Everything. And, in the not-too-distant future, the left will, again, revert to a small percentage of nitwit lunatics nattering away on the fringes of society, ignored by everybody else.

Fascism failed.

Communism failed.

Social welfare statism is failing.

And, coming soon, the liberal fascism cum social-welfare-statism/neo-communism the American left is pushing - especially hard with the Obamessiah - will fail, too.

Buh-bye!

Friendly Fire

What some on the left are noticing about Barack Obama:

In other ways, Obama's liberal vision appears clouded, uncertain and even contradictory. During his four years in Washington, he has compiled one of the most predictably liberal voting records in the Senate—yet he presents himself as an advocate of bipartisanship and ideological flexibility. He has offered himself as the tribune of sweeping change—yet he also proclaims national unity, as if transformation can come without struggle. He has emerged as the champion of a new, post-racial politics, even though he has only grudgingly separated himself from his pastor of 20 years, who every week preached a gospel of "black liberation theology" that has everything to do with racial politics.

The most obvious change to liberal politics Obama has to offer is the color of his skin. Some of his supporters have, whether wittingly or not, been candid enough to say, as Sen. John Kerry did last March, that Obama's blackness is the rationale for making him president. But it is difficult to square such claims with Obama's appeal to a liberalism that transcends race. And when Obama himself subtly and not so subtly draws attention to his color, and charges that the John McCain Republicans will try to scare voters by saying he "doesn't look like all those presidents on the dollar bills," he turns voting for him into an intrinsically virtuous act, proof that one has resisted base appeals to racism (which, in fact, the McCain campaign has not made).

Read the whole thing.