What do the Ayers, Wright, Khalidi names have in common? Well, as far as this election is concerned, 1- all of them have been associated in some way or another with Obama; and 2- they all are notorious for their links to ideologies or ideologues that embrace hatred, even violence in some cases:
''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.'' Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground
"From 1976 to 1982, Mr. Khalidi was a director in Beirut of the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA. Later he served on the PLO "guidance committee" at the Madrid peace conference.
In bringing professor Khalidi to Morningside Heights from the University of Chicago, Columbia also got itself a twofer of Palestinian activism and advocacy. Mr. Khalidi's wife, Mona, who also served in Beirut as chief editor of the English section of the WAFA press agency, was hired as dean of foreign students at Columbia's SIPA, working under Dean Anderson. In Chicago, the Khalidis founded the Arab American Action Network, and Mona Khalidi served as its president. A big farewell dinner was held in their honor by AAAN with a commemorative book filled with testimonials from their friends and political allies. These included the left wing anti-war group Not In My Name, the Electronic Intifada, and the ex-Weatherman domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. (There were also testimonials from then-state Senator Barack Obama and the mayor of Chicago.)"
As anybody who has been following the campaign events this week will tell you, Obama has still to answer in a satisfactory manner the extent of his association with all these people. When the hatred-filled words of Jeremiah Wright surfaced back in the primary season, it took Obama quite a long time to finally disown him. It's very hard to believe that Obama didn't know of Wright's hate speeches given how close their relationship is described in this youtube video for instance. Then came the Ayers thing and he said he was a guy who lived in his neighborhood. But as the previous CNN investigation shows, their relationship was deeper than that. We see the same pattern with Khalidi.
Whoever brings race as the issue Obama's critics are trying to push when they question these associations doesn't seem to realize that Ayers is white, Wright is black and Khalidi is Palestinian. Racism against whom?
The McCain campaign is saying the the issue here is one of trust between Obama and the American people. I think that there is for sure a trust issue between Obama and Americans, but that's old news. After Obama's numerous flip-flops I am surprised that the issue of his untrustworthyness is brought up now. I, on the other hand, take issue with the associations themselves.
I have said numerous times in my comments that I know first hand the damage that these guys , and their ideologues, have caused in Spain. There too, there are very cheap politicians who don't mind to "pal around" with terrorists or their ideologues. I find each one of those cheap politicians despicable. And for the very same reason, and based only on what we know for sure about the extent of his dealings with the Ayers/Wright/Khalidi I find Obama a disgraceful individual totally unworthy of the US Presidency.
Investing is all about confidence in the future. While we could argue that the polls have shifted against Senator McCain because of the bailout plan, most of the bad news is behind us. So why isn’t the Dow Jones Industrial Average going up? Why has it continued to slide?
Is Senator Obama's lead in the polls depressing the Dow Jones Industrial Average? The Dow should be coming up with news of Treasury Department's activities to stabilize the market. However, the Dow continues to drop. Is this due to Obama's current lead in the polls? Did we lose $1,000,000,000,000 (i.e., trillion) of the two trillion lost in the New York Stock Exchange because Obama is ahead in the polls? Most likely, investors don’t see a bright future if Obama wins. The Dow dropped 300 points on the day Obama clinched the Democrat nomination. Investors are afraid of his plans for the economy. Tax and spend. Tax and spend. Tax and spend. The Obama plan is mostly the same old gibberish about increased investment not leading to job growth and that only the Federal government knows what is best.
Is the Dow dropping partially due to Obama's continuing lead in the polls? Yes, there was a huge mess on Wall Street that is now getting cleaned up, and the financial markets are being stabilized, but why isn't the Dow Jones Industrial Average going up? Isn’t it at least partially due to Obama's lead in the polls? Could it be because investors fear Obama's stated goal to raise taxes sharply and grow government? Socialist policies always panic Wall Street. The message of Robin Hood is to steal from the rich to give it to the poor. But is class warfare good economic policy? Many of Obama’s economic advisers are already involved in the economy through the Democrat-controlled Congress. Can we afford to have a Democrat in the White House, too?
Will electing Obama for President send the U.S. economy into another Great Depression? The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down almost $1 trillion dollars lower than it should be ($2 trillion down total since the financial crisis) and this seems to be because Obama is ahead in the polls. Will an Obama presidency destroy what is left of investor confidence and send the U.S. into another Great Depression? Yes, a Presidential candidate can hold sway over the stock market. Electing a candidate who is hostile toward investors can have a devastating effect on Wall Street.
The financial markets are down for a multitude of reasons. If Obama was seen as a savior who could help, the stock market would have recovered substantially. If my estimate is correct, imagine what the Dow will do if Obama is elected. Can America afford to elect Obama President? No!
This morning I checked what's currently going on with John McCain campaign. I was pleased to find out that he FINALLY listened to all of us, his supporters in the blogging world, who have been pleading for him to fight harder.
It is reported that Sen. John McCain today will lay plain the crisis on Wall Street - not to mention Main Street - firmly on the narrow shoulders of those who caused it in the first place: the Democratic Party in general, and Senator Barack Obama in particular. He's going to talk about it all. Here's the excerpt:
Senator Obama has accused me of opposing regulation to avert this crisis. I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed. But the truth is I was the one who called at the time for tighter restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that could have helped prevent this crisis from happening in the first place. Senator Obama was silent on the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and his Democratic allies in Congress opposed every effort to rein them in. As recently as September of last year he said that subprime loans had been, quote, “a good idea.” Well, Senator Obama, that “good idea” has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
To hear him talk now, you’d think he’d always opposed the dangerous practices at these institutions. But there is absolutely nothing in his record to suggest he did. He was surely familiar with the people who were creating this problem. The executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have advised him, and he has taken their money for his campaign. He has received more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than any other senator in history, with the exception of the chairman of the committee overseeing them. Did he ever talk to the executives at Fannie and Freddie about these reckless loans? Did he ever discuss with them the stronger oversight I proposed? If Senator Obama is such a champion of financial regulation, why didn’t he support these regulations that could have prevented this crisis in the first place? He won’t tell you, but you deserve an answer.
All I can say is we have to be prepared my friends. John McCain and Sarah Palin are ready to fight harder for us! The gloves are off. We have to do whatever we can to help them out! Even if we have to risk of being called racists! I guess when you can not defend the facts, name calling is always a convenient solution. I don't know about you but the thought of us having to say "VIVA BARACK" in less than 30 days has been keeping me up all night.
Today I visited JohnMcCain.com and found this article in his blog.
Weekly Radio Address
Today, we released our new Weekly Radio Address focusing on our nation's economic future. John McCain also discussed the philosophy he will bring to government, here's a quote:
"Instead of rejecting good ideas because we didn't think of them first, let's use the best ideas from both sides. This great country can do anything we put our minds to. I will ask Democrats and Independents to serve with me. And my administration will set a new standard for transparency and accountability. We're going to finally start getting things done for the people who are counting on us, and I won't care who gets the credit."
Honestly, I have been very disappointed with Senator McCain response to what's been happening currently, i.e. the economy meltdown. Did anybody see the latest polls, by the way? According to the latest Rasmussen poll, Obama is attracting 51% of the vote while John McCain earns 44%. And for each of the past ten days, Obama has been at 50% or 51% and McCain has been at 44% or 45%. Not a good trend for McCain.
Obama is where he is right now because of the current economy meltdown that was caused by the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama did not have to do anything substantial, something that he must be really familiar with, to be where he is right now in the poll. Obama did not have to do much to influence people to prove that he is the right leader that can take this country out of this dreadful economy. He has the Main Stream Media helping him out, propping him as the one that has been acting "presidential" in this whole messy $700 billion "pork" bailout discussions, by not "injecting" the presidential campaign into the discussions. All Obama had to do was open his mouth and preached about how this calamity happened because of the Bush's administration and the Republican congress policy of "deregulation". All Obama had to do was pick up his phone and called his colleagues in the senate to "encourage" them to vote yes for the $700 billion "pork" bailout, like his colleagues have ever needed any encouragement to spend the taxpayer money. It is probably like a second nature for them already. When problem occurs, throw money at it...and it will go away!
What's strangely missing from this whole picture is nobody ever questions Obama what specific policy of deregulation by the Bush's administration and the Republican congress that has caused this calamity. What everyone seems to be ignoring is the fact that the Bush administration in 2003 wanted to tighten oversight with a new regulatory board for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other government recipients for the express purpose of addressing bad loan practices? Also, how about the fact that Senator McCain tried to do the same in 2006? Why did this effort not go anywhere? Had this more oversight been implemented, we wouldn't have been in this disastrous financial situation. Thanks to the resistance to tighten oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the likes of Mr. Barney Frank, Ms. Maxine Water, and Mr. Chris Dodd, all Democrats, now we are forced to be the biggest creditors of bad mortgages!
But what has Senator McCain been doing? Instead of giving these facts out in his campaign trail, he gives speeches on bipartisanship! Nice! I'm just hoping that he will not squander the good work that Sarah Palin has done last Thursday in laying out the foundation for him to fight harder! That is...if he wants to win this election. The aforementioned facts are all over the internet now and even Fox News made a show out of it. Not talking about these facts is like ignoring a huge pink elephant in the room! And this is what Senator McCain has been doing. And that's why he's losing. This like handing the election to Obama on a silver platter. He might as well go home to Sedona, AZ, to rest.
To express my concern about how things are going, I wrote this letter that I will post as a comment in JohnMcCain.com blog that has the article I quoted above:
Dear Senator MCain,
Me & my family want you to win this election. We truly truly truly believe that you and Gov. Palin are the right kind of leadership that this country needs. The current financial crisis and war on terror require strong and trustworthy leadership with proven track records of conservative values in the white house.
Therefore, please don't give up the fight Senator McCain! Our future and this country future depend on you. We believe that your opponent with his radical associations and socialist beliefs of income redistribution will take this country to the wrong direction. And right now, you are the only one that can stop that from happening. We are deeply concerned that you're slipping away from winning. The whole thing about bipartisan talk is nice and gives folks the warm and fussy feeling. But apparently your opponents do not share this idea and has been attacking you and the economic conservative values incessantly. In all his campaign speeches, he has been telling lies to the American people about how the economic conservative values of personal responsibility and free enterprise are the culprit of the current financial mess that we're in. Sadly, this has been going on, unscrutinized and unchecked by everybody and the Main Stream Media.
Senator McCain, we have been fighting for you and will fight harder for you to win! But, you have to take the lead. Warm and fussy feelings are the last things we need right now. Feeling confident and secure about our future is what we need right now. You have the track records. Governor Palin has the track records. Your opponent does not. How he can get to be where he is now is beyond the pale. He is like a fictitious super hero that just came out of a marvel comic book and made live by the Main Stream Media. This is like a bad dream to us to have to face the possibility that he can be our next president. Unfortunately, with this bad dream, we can not just pinch ourselves to rid ourselves of this dream because it's becoming more and more real everyday.
Unless...you fight for us, Senator McCain! Please take the gloves off, for us! Please live up to your own invitation to fight in your acceptance speech! We will fight for you, if you lead us! Please don't kill our spirits by succumbing to the charges that conservative values are destructive and dangerous! Please stand up and make us proud of the values that we hold near and dear to our hearts and what has made this country great! You still have 30 days and two debates to fight. We will stand up and fight for you if you do the same for us.
If you will, Senator McCain, with all due respect, I found this article online that we, your constituents, believe what you should do to win this election.
I sincerely hope he'll listen to us. Otherwise, be prepared to be left with change in your pocket, cause the "Change We Need" train is coming faster than you can ever imagine.
Joshua Muravchik, a self-admitted Red Diaper baby, is now one of the best thinkers and writers on the conservative side of the political spectrum. I first came across him several years ago when I read one of his articles in Commentary Magazine, a conservative political magazine with a Jewish orientation. I wrote him praising the article, and he was kind enough to write back.
Through our email exchanges, he ended up recommending that I read his book, Heaven on Earth : the Rise and Fall of Socialism, which was one of the most eye-opening books I've read in years. Muravchik goes back to socialism's origins in 18th Century France and, in genuinely lively prose, examines all of the socialist experiments that have risen and failed -- with most failures etched in blood and tears.
Muravchik is too much the gentleman to speak harshly of Obama, but he does call into question Obama's early (and increasingly less repeated) comments that he would be a uniter, not a divider. In the introductory part of his article, after repeating the most salient parts of Obama's famous 2004 speech, in which he introduced halcyon images of bipartisan coaches at Little League games, Muravchik introduces the walk behind Obama's talk:
Four years later, Obama is the Democratic nominee, and even his occasional shrill attacks on his opponent seem to have chipped away little of the cornerstone of his own candidacy: the promise to bring us, all of us, together. Can he do that? Is he well-suited to raise the curtain on a new post-partisan, post-ideological era?
From his record in office, it would hardly seem so. Non-partisanship does not just mean Democrats coaching Little League, lovely as that is, but cooperating with members of the other party in developing compromise solutions to national problems. The Senate has a particularly rich tradition of such bipartisanship, but Obama appears never to have participated in it. On the contrary: according to Congressional Quarterly, which measures how often each member votes in accordance with or at variance from the majority of his own party, Obama has compiled one of the most partisan of all voting records.
Last year, for example, the average Senator voted with his own party 84 percent of the time; Obama voted with his party 96 percent of the time. In the prior two years, his number was 95 percent, making him the fourth most partisan member of the Senate. And not just partisan, but also highly ideological. In 2007, according to the National Journal, Obama’s voting record made him “the most liberal Senator.” Throughout his Senate career, according to Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the dean of liberal advocacy groups, Obama voted “right” 90 percent of the time. Actually this is misleading, since ADA counts an absence as if it were a vote on the “wrong” side. If we discount his absences, Obama voted to ADA’s approval more than 98 percent of the time.
That's just Obama's voting record, which is, euphemistically, merely "liberal." The meat of the article, however, examines his friends, such as Wright, Ayers, and Davis. Unsurprisingly, given Muravchik's intellectual background, the article doesn't just stop with looking at Wright's or Ayer's more inflammatory, stupid utterances, from which Obama has distanced themselves, but focuses on their life's work and meaning.
If you want to have a very good idea about the kind of man running for the White House (and currently in the lead), I strongly recommend that you read Muravchiks' article -- and then email it to your friends. It's an important article, as evidenced by the fact that Commentary is making it freely, rather than "fee-ly," available. Even those Americans put off by Palin's pro-Life stance may find themselves even more put off by Obama's pro-Left stance.
If there is a sentence that summarizes well, what happened in yesterday's debate is the Palin's punch to Biden about the latter's wish to run with John McCain. We have all watched the famous McCain ad in which Biden is quoted both praising McCain and bashing Obama. What some people might not know is the context of those quotations. In an August 2nd 2005 interview with Jon Stewart, when Joe Biden was giving serious thought to the idea of running for president, he expressed his honest belief that the country would be better off whether he run with or against McCain. When Jon Stewart pressed Biden about whether he'd really said "with"Biden said Yes.
Fast forward two years, in the August 19th 2007 Democratic primaries debate, Joe Biden is unapologetic that Obama isn't ready to be the President of the United States; he said stood by the statement
"I think he can be ready, but right now I don't believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training".
Did Obama go through any kind of transcendent, out of the body, type of experience that made him suddenly ready to be America's next President between August 2007 and August 2008? Not that I, or others, are aware of. What happened then in between so that yesterday Joe Biden tried to convince us that Obama is more qualified to be our next President than Senator John McCain with whom Joe Biden was willing to run in 2005? Plain and simple: Joe Biden lost the 2008 Democratic Primary and in August 2008 he was picked as Obama's running mate. Talking about judgment, what type of judgment does this show about Biden? I think that the best analysis about Biden's change of mind was provided by Governor Palin in yesterday's debate when she addressed a different topic, Biden's position in the Iraq war:
"Oh, yeah, it's so obvious I'm a Washington outsider. And someone just not used to the way you guys operate. Because here you voted for the war and now you oppose the war. You're one who says, as so many politicians do, I was for it before I was against it or vice- versa. Americans are craving that straight talk and just want to know, hey, if you voted for it, tell us why you voted for it and it was a war resolution"
So while pundits seem to agree that there was no real winner in yesterday's debate, they also seem to agree that those who were hoping to see Governor Palin implode not only were disappointed but they saw her in her A game. In fact, CNN'sDavid Gergensaid that Biden gave "the best debate performance of his life".
Wait a minute!!!!! A guy with a 30+ year record in the US Senate, twice a Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party giving the best debate performance of his life against Governor Palin, who had been all but called mentally retarded by the MSM in the previous two weeks, and all that the MSM can say is that the debate was a draw? My friends, let's call this by what really is: Governor Palin bested Joe Bidenbig time in yestersday's debate. By calling it a draw, the pundits of the MSM are just showing their embarrassment that they predicted Armageddon for Sarah Palin and what they got instead was Sarah PhoenixPalin proving all those MSM pundits, and Biden, wrong.
As for Joe Biden, it's too late to be McCain's running mate, as your original intent was, but it's never too late to recognize that the legacy of your 30+ years of service in the US Senate will be overshadowed by the phenomenal mistake you are making in pushing for a guy you genuinely know isn't qualified to be America's best president.
I’m not sure if MSNBC's Keith Olbermann is an idiot, but I think is it an interesting line of inquiry. Calling someone an idiot is such a classic put down, as long as you aren’t insulting the idiots out there. Still, I’m not calling Keith Olbermann an idiot in those words but just asking a simple question. Normally, I eschew writing what sounds like a personal attack, but I just can’t help myself this time… So let’s get to the business at hand. Is Keith Olbermann an idiot?
Olbermann seems to have a thing for Governor Sarah Palin that defies explanation. He constantly trashes her background and abilities. He is obsessed with putting her down and lampooning her every statement. Just look at his website. Palin this and Palin that, and there is feature entitled, Aunt Sarah’s Moose Stew. Is Olbermann obsessed with Sarah Palin?
Half of Olbermann’s show yesterday on MSNBC was devoted to trashing Senator McCain and Governor Palin. Ironically, Olbermann used to be a sportscaster on ESPN, who got too big for his britches. Now he’s broadcasting pseudo-journalism on MSNBC, which is watched by up to two dozen homes in California and New York. Yes, better add one home: mine. Does it matter what Keith Olbermann broadcasts to over two dozen American homes?
I watch Keith Olbermann’s show when I want to feel like the smartest man in the world. He’s like a uninformed version of Anderson Cooper blended with an unfunny version of Jon Stewart. Does he have any training in journalism, economics, or political science? He graduated from Cornell though… What’s up with that? Let’s make fun of where Keith went to college. High above Cayuga’s waters there’s an awful smell! Ha Ha! Is Cornell University taking full responsibility for Keith Olbermann’s journalistic prowess?
What did Keith Olbermann not know about being a journalist and when did he not know it? Let’s get some answers to these questions about whether Keith Olbermann is ready to serve one heartbeat away from the king of know-it-all journalists on MSNBC, Chris Matthews.
We're not going to lie to you. We're Bloggers for John McCain, a group of independent bloggers from various backgrounds who want Senator McCain in the White House. But through extensive research and sound reasoning, we'll lay out a case for McCain. Then you can decide whether we're wrong that McCain would make America stronger at home and abroad, while Senator Obama would further tear it apart. Last, but not least, our group is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
