Friday - October 24, 2008
I used to like MTV
Yes, I used to like MTV, back in the day of paid cable TV. Remember those days? Remember when the biggest selling point of cable TV was ‘because you pay for it, there are no commercials’?
Among my favorite channels was MTV. Why? That takes some background.
Meet the inventor, if you will of MTV:
According to Wikipedia
recorded a number of LPs for his label, and had a moderate worldwide hit in 1977 with his song “Rio”, the single taken from the album From A Radio Engine To The Photon Wing. More importantly, ------- created a video clip for “Rio” which, in a roundabout way, helped spur -------’s creation of a television program called Pop Clips for the Nickelodeon cable network. The concept was sold to Time Warner/Amex, who developed it into the MTV network. His single “Cruisin’” was the first video of the MTV generation.
Posted by Christopher
on 10/24/2008 at 02:37 PM
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff • Humor • Music •
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Permalink • Shovels and Hip Waders Required
Get a load of this whopping pile of bullshit.
Caught with their hand in the cookie jar yet again, our leftist superiors at ACORN lash out with the predictable argument worthy of a 3 year old: “I know you are, but what am I?”
The conservative media and the McCain campaign are involved in a voter suppression effort, according to a top official with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
“There is an orchestrated campaign – coming from the right – that is ultimately about voter suppression,” ACORN spokesman Brian Kettering said in an interview. “We know that conservative media – and CNS is probably one of them – conservative organizations and the McCain campaign are running a concerted, coordinated effort,” Kettering said.
“One of its key strategies is to attack and de-legitimize the work of ACORN,” he said.
The Associated Press reported last week that the “FBI is investigating whether the community activist group ACORN helped foster voter registration fraud around the nation before the presidential election.”
“We’re not saying that the FBI is involved in voter intimidation,” Kettering said. “The intent of the campaign is to draw law enforcement into the fight.”
When CNSNews.com asked Kettering whether conservatives had succeeded in drawing in the FBI, he answered, “Absolutely.”In an Oct. 18 statement, ACORN said the investigation was a partisan attempt to “taint” the election and undermine both its efforts and the Obama campaign.
“This is a right-wing attempt to set the stage for a massive voter suppression operation,” the statement read. It also characterized the FBI investigation as a “nakedly partisan attempt to taint the election, ACORN, and the candidacy of Barack Obama.”
Today’s ACORN statement is pure projection. Blatantly guilty and totally partisan, ACORN screams that they’re the victims and that it’s all a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Holy shiite!
Today’s smut is pure perfection. With or without a tan. Holy shiite also, but in a much better way!
Posted by Drew458
on 10/24/2008 at 12:30 PM
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Permalink • Obama and the 2nd Amendment
I’m not going to go into detail about the anti-2nd Amendment votes and policies of B. Hussein Obama. You can read about them at GunBaNObama.com
I’m on the mailing list for the U.S. Concealed Carry Association. I wanted to get their Armed American Report that is emailed every Friday. The problem is the daily spam urging me to join the USCCA. I can’t class it as ‘junk’ for my spam filter as it is from the same sender as what I want. (sigh.)
It’s likely that I will ultimately join the USCCA, but not until after at least getting some training with my new toys. (training was supposed to start this weekend, but I’ve been ORDERED to work tomorrow. . . heavy sigh! They tried to order me in today, but I had an appointment with the local county government to challenge my new property valuation. They couldn’t order me to cancel an appointment with a government agency.)
In this week’s edition of the Armed American Report was the following:
I’m sure you’ve heard of the organization called “Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership”
Err, actually, no I’ve not heard of it.
more commonly known simply as the JPFO. If you know anything about these guys, you’ll know that they pull absolutely ZERO punches with the way they operate, and they take our God-Given right to self defense, and the Second Amendment VERY, VERY seriously- and I have a LOT of respect for what they do.
Well, if I merely respected the JPFO before, I admire and honor them now. Just wait until you see the absolutely beautiful FREE video they have made about the Second Amendment.
It’s called “2A Today for the USA”, and that’s exactly the message that it conveys. It’s only about 20 minutes long, and it’s an absolute MUST watch.
Having now watched it I agree. It is a MUST. Well, they are a must, it’s divided into three segments, which I will include below the fold so as not to slow the page too much . . .
Posted by Christopher
on 10/24/2008 at 11:50 AM
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •
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Permalink • Police fear riots if Barack Obama loses US election. (News from the USA. Tell me you’re surprised)
Well, that’s the report from the USA to this newspaper. Funny thing, I was thinking the same and that was a week ago. Bet some of you were as well.
I really think you guys need to read ALL of this article. Much of this really causes some anger because it appears our side is ALWAYS automatically guilty.
Then too we know damn well there are certain life forms among a certain minority who will riot at the drop of a hat. It’s their national pastime and all they need is the slimmest of excuses. Or no excuse come to think of it.
If I start writing all I think at the moment, in between these lines in answer to various statements, I’ll end up with a book too long to read. But I do believe the headline. Don’t you?
Police fear riots if Barack Obama loses US election
US police fear riots could break out if John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, wins the election next month.
By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles
Last Updated: 7:51AM BST 24 Oct 2008
Barack Obama rally Indianapolis - Obama prepares massive operation to mobilise vote
Commentators point to the surge in voter registration and large turnout in the primaries as reasons why there could be problems on election day Photo: APLaw enforcement officials say the intense public interest and historic nature of the vote could lead to violent outbreaks if people are unhappy with the results, encounter problems casting their ballots or suspect voting irregularities.
Police departments say they cannot rule out disorder and are mobilising extra forces and putting SWAT teams on standby.
In Oakland, near San Francisco, police will have tactical squads, SWAT teams and officers trained in riot control on standby.
“We always try to prepare for the worst,” said Oakland police department spokesman Jeff Thomason.
“This election is going to mark in history a change in the presidency: you’re going to have a woman in the presidency or an African American as president. I think everybody around here is voting for Obama, so if he gets in the White House everybody’s going to be happy.“But we’ll have our SWAT teams on standby and traffic teams here, so if something goes off we’ll organise and take care of the problem.”
There have also been internet rumours about plans for protests or civil disobedience by supporters of Democratic candidate Barack Obama if he is beaten by Republican rival John McCain on November 4.
He said Oakland was prepared to deal with unrest as Oakland Raiders fans rioted in 2003 following their Super Bowl loss.
Other cities that have experienced unrest include Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia and are also planning to deploy extra officers on election day.
James Carville, a strategist for former President Bill Clinton and advisor to his wife Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign, hinted Democrat supporters could be angry if Mr Obama lost, given his lead in the polls.
“If Obama goes in and he has a consistent five-point lead and loses the election, it would be very, very, very dramatic out there,” he told CNN.
James Tate, of Detroit’s police department, which dealt with violent celebrations after the Detroit Tigers won the baseball World Series in 1984, told congressional newspaper The Hill that problems could flare whichever candidate wins.
“Either party will make history and we want to prepare for celebrations that will be on a larger scale than for our sports teams,” he said. “The worst-case scenario could be a situation that requires law enforcement.”
In Chicago, where Mr Obama will hold a rally on November 4, the police department has been meeting to discuss security plans for the night. Law enforcement departments in Philadelphia and Cincinnati are also making preparations in case of problems.
Commentators point to the surge in voter registration and large turnout in the primaries as reasons why there could be problems on election day, questioning whether the system will be able to handle so many extra voters.
Election officials in Virginia are stepping up security at polling booths amid concerns over long waits and issues such as voter registration and identity verification.
Despite efforts to improve voting systems after the problems of 2000 and 2004, the Pew Research Centre has warned high turnout could again cause problems such as lengthy delays at the polls. Unexpectedly high number of voters in states with early voting such as Florida have already encountered long waits.
Hilary Shelton, director of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People’s (NAACP) Washington bureau, said there could be a repeat of problems witnessed in some black inner cities in 2004, where voters waited for up to eight hours to cast their ballots.
In response to the expected high turnout among racial and ethnic minority voters, intense interest in the election and online rumours about unrest, the NAACP has written to election officials in every state asking them to try to prevent any problems that could lead to voters being “stymied” or “disenfranchised” such as too few voting machines or staff.
He was also concerned about the possibility of extra police presence causing intimidation.
“Our antennas go up in terms of what happens when law enforcement moves to provide additional security and support and what happens on election day and how that comes across.
“The issue we’re raising now is are they being sensitive to the issues and the possibilities of intimidation and disenfranchisement, which could very well come out of them being too heavy handed. (Sometimes) the wrong strategy by law enforcement can actually create a problem rather than prevent one and it is our hope that we don’t see those kinds of problems on election day and people are able to enjoy the security of our democracy.”
Right-wing websites and blogs have been fuelling speculation about election unrest with unconfirmed reports of an online petition that pledges “civil disobedience” if Mr McCain wins.
Meanwhile, in a blog posting entitled ‘A McCain “Win” Will Be Theft, Resistance Is Planned’, David Swanson, Washington director of Democrats.com and a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, writes: “If your television declares John McCain the president elect on the evening of November 4th, your television will be lying.
“You should immediately pick up your pre-packed bags and head straight to the White House in Washington, DC, which we will surround and shut down until this attempt at a third illegitimate presidency is reversed.
“We may be there for days or weeks or months. But we must be there. We must be there by the millions. We must show each other, and the nation, and the world that we have had enough, that we will not stand for one more stolen election, that we will not give in to fear, lies, theft, and intimidation.”
Mr Carville told The Hill that “a lot of Democrats would have a great deal of angst and anger,” if Mr Obama lost. He predicted that on November 4, “the voting system all around the country is going to be very stressed because there’s going to be enormous turnout.”
Posted by Drew458
on 10/24/2008 at 07:36 AM
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Permalink • Thursday - October 23, 2008
the REAL William Ayers
I bought up the subject of what’s going to happen after we take over the government. We, we become responsible, then, for administrating, you know, 250 million people.
And there was no answers. No one had given any thought to economics; how are you going to clothe and feed these people. The only thing that I could get, was that they expected that the Cubans and the North Vietnamese and Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States.
They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter-revolution. And they felt that this counter-revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing re-education centers in the southwest, where we would take all the people who needed to be re-educated into the new way of thinking and teach them… how things were going to be.
I asked, well, what’s going to happen to those people that we can’t re-educate; that are die-hard capitalists. And the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further, they estimated that they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these re-education centers. And when I say eliminate, I mean kill. 25 million people.
I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.
And they were dead serious.”
—Larry Grathwohl, former member of the Weather Underground
I found this at Pal2Pal, she found it at Confederate Yankee, he found it at Zombietime. It’s at The Jawa Report too, as does Little Green Footballs. Make it even more viral. Confederate Yankee has the video. Right now it’s still up on YouTube:
Information on the Weather Underground has been easily available for 20 to 30 years. And lest you think that this group dissolved in the 60s or 70s, they were still active in 1981, when they robbed a Brinks armored car at the Nanuet Mall in Nanuet NY (not 5 miles from where I was living at the time), killing and wounding several guards and several policemen a short time later. Susan L. Rosenberg was part of that gang and part of this robbery and these murders. She was also part of Ayers team that bombed the Capital in 1983. So was Linda Sue Evans. Both were sent to jail for their crimes, and they would still be there today, but Bill Clinton pardoned these terrorists at the end of his term as President.
Is that why the Weather Underground thing isn’t getting any press attention? Is it old news that doesn’t matter, because Clinton pardoned some of them and because Ayers got off on a technicality? THESE PEOPLE ARE MURDERERS. This isn’t some cutesy-poo “let’s play rebels while we’re in college” bullshit.
But it gets no traction in the media. Fuck no, it gets anti-traction: today the news is that over 3000 college professors, including fellow commies Rashid Khalidi from Columbia, and former University of Colorado Ward Churchill, have signed a petition to Leave Britney Alone!! protest what they say is the “demonization of Professor William Ayers,” asserting that his violent actions as the co-founder of the Weather Underground were just “history.” JUST HISTORY. College professors. Just history: without meaning or context or any possible relevancy to today. No more important than knowing whether it was King John or King William who signed the Magna Carta. These are the people who are teaching your children, at great cost to your bank account:
It seems that the character assassination and slander of Bill Ayers and other people who have known Obama is not about to let up. While an important concern is the dishonesty of this campaign and the slanderous McCarthyism they are using to attack Obama, we also feel an obligation to support our friend and colleague Bill Ayers. Many, many educators have reached out, asking what they could do, seeking a way to weigh in against fear and intimidation. Many of us have been talking and we agree that this one gesture, a joint statement signed by hundreds of hard-working educators, would be a great first step. Such a statement may be distributed through press releases or ads in the future.
ZombieTime has excerpts of Prairie Fire, the Weather Underground manifesto. It is a chilling document. Go and read it. And lest you think that, gosh, this happened 40 years ago when Obama was only 8 so it doesn’t matter, (even though the last of it happened only 27 years ago when Obama was 20) the contents of Prarie Fire are said to be in Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, and Communiqus of the Weather Underground 1970 - 1974, a book published in 2006, dedicated to RFK’s assassin Sirhan Sirhan and still for sale at Amazon today. Damned if I’m going to buy a copy just to prove that though. Just two years ago Ayers still believed in his cause enough to republish his manifesto in a new book.
William “guilty as hell, free as a bird” Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist; a communist riveted to the idea of the violent overthrow of America and the forced re-education of her people. Obama’s friend, coworker, and babysitter: a bomb throwing anarchist bent on the violent overthrow of this nation, willing to execute 10% of the population if necessary to force his views down everyone’s throats. This is the guy who baby sat Obama’s children, who introduced him to the political world from his own living room, who shared an office with him for 3 years, who served on several committees with Obama the Community Organizer, who even got Obama to do an endorsement blurb for his kiddie book. He IS NOT simply “some guy from the neighborhood”.
Does this make Obama a communist anarchist terrorist too? No, but it doesn’t matter. As commenter Will Collier put it, while troll stomping over at Confederate Yankee:
That anyone who would so much as agree to be in the same room with Billy Ayers or Bernadine Dohrn--much less launch their career from their living room--has no business holding any elected office in this country. Period, dot.
That’s not hard to understand, unless you’re a Leftist.
God Bless you Will Collier ... you’ve hit the nail directly on the head. Not one citizen with an active braincell and half a lick of common sense should vote for Obama. Not one.
Posted by Drew458
on 10/23/2008 at 09:32 PM
Filed Under: • Commies • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Terrorists •
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Permalink • minor hubris
Oh come on. This is just out of control. I don’t care if he’s ahead in the polls. I don’t care if the historical trend is to elect the other party’s guy after one party has been in power for 8 years. This is just unbelievable arrogance. Hey Obama, if you win, then give a speech on TV. Or rent a football stadium or something. Or hold a parade and walk down the street for 100 blocks shaking hands.
Obama Camp Plans Major Celebration in Chicago on Election Night Barack Obama took a lot of ribbing for setting up Greek columns on the larger-than-life set of his nomination acceptance speech in Denver two months ago. But at least he knew for certain then that when the ballgame was over—he was going to be the Democratic candidate for president.
Now, with the Nov. 4 general election still 12 days away, the front-running Illinois senator is planning an Election Night celebration that could put his Invesco Field party to shame. A huge stage is being constructed in Chicago’s Grant Park, where Obama hopes to declare victory before a cheering throng that could dwarf the one at the Democratic convention. Back then, “only” 80,000 fans were in attendance that night. This time, it could be hundreds of thousands in the park and its surroundings—closer to Berlin in July than Denver in August.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports the price tag of the fanfare has been pegged at $2 million, to be picked up by the Obama campaign.
Nervy bastage, ain’t he?
Posted by Drew458
on 10/23/2008 at 06:24 PM
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists •
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Permalink • New Ann
Dear Miss Coulter pulls both triggers on her double barreled keyboard. One shot for the press, and one shot for the Ivory Tower leftists. Damn shame that no one outside of the right wing blogosphere will hear the gunfire.
Back before the media realized it needed to lie about Obama launching his political career at Ayers’ house, the Los Angeles Times provided an eyewitness account from a liberal who attended the event.
“When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. They were launching him—introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread.”
The Times has now stripped this item from its Web page
Any other profession would have banned a person like Ayers. Universities not only accept former domestic terrorists, but also move them to the front of the line. In addition to Ayers, among those once on the FBI’s most-wanted list who ended up in cushy college teaching positions are Bernardine Dohrn (Northwestern University), Mark Rudd (a junior college in New Mexico) and Angela Davis (History of Consciousness Department, University of California at Santa Cruz).
While others were hard at work on Ph.D.s, Susan Rosenberg was conspiring to kill cops and blow up buildings, and was assembling massive caches of explosives. This put her on the fast track for a teaching position at Hamilton College!
Left-wing radicals swarm to free foundation money, where they can give gigantic grants to one another and they will never have to do a day’s work. That’s exactly what Obama and Ayers did with Annenberg’s money.
None of the Annenberg money went to schoolchildren. It went to Ayers’ left-wing crank friends to write moronic papers that we hope no one ever reads.
Instead of teaching students reading and writing, Ayers thinks they should be taught to rebel against America’s “imperialist” social structure. In 2006, Ayers was in Venezuela praising communist dictator Hugo Chavez, saying, “We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution.”
Nice work Ann, as usual.
Maybe what she writes here answers my question in my previous post. Perhaps the reason that the US has been so soft on terrorism is that half our population actually supports them? That’s a nauseating idea ... but look around you. Socialism is on the ascendancy. Socialists control the media agenda and the education system. Ultra leftism is popular, and any means necessary to further those goals - even violent or unscrupulous ones - seem to get a pass.
Posted by Drew458
on 10/23/2008 at 10:40 AM
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •
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Permalink • Remembering The Past But Forgetting It’s Lessons
Twenty five years ago, 241 US Service members, including 220 Marines were murdered in their beds by the very people they were in Lebanon trying to protect. In one of the worst mistakes of the Reagan years, 1600 Marines were sent into a war zone to be a buffer between the forces fighting there, but they themselves were not allowed to fight. Or even really allowed to protect themselves. And then the hotel they were sleeping in was truck bombed, and the few who got out of that were cut down by machine gun ambush. By Hezbollah. And the PLO. And those terrorist groups still exist today, even after a full seven years of fighting a Global War On Terror.
Bless the memories of these brave men who died trying to stop a war. Never again let our troops be used as an expendable cushion between opposing forces; instead stand with the just side and lay utter and unrelenting waste to the enemy. And if you can’t figure out which is the just side and which side is the enemy, then stay home.
Debbie Schlussel writes a very strong essay on this today, showing the horror and pain suffered then, and pointing out the weakness in our country’s foreign policy that allowed this kind of atrocity to happen again and again and again for nearly 20 years, and is still weak today. I call it required reading.
They were there as peacekeepers--to protect Palestinian Sunni Muslims who invaded Lebanon from Israeli forces who were trying to clean up Lebanon from these Palestinian terrorists, who raped Shi’ite daughters and murdered Shi’ite sons in front of their parents. The mass-murdered Marines were there to protect Muslim barbarians from Maronite Christians who were trying to hold on to their fragile majority in the country and control of its government so their country wouldn’t turn into the extremist hellhole it has now become.
Then read this article, which Debbie links to
The Beirut bombing “cut a hole in the soul of the Marine Corps,” says Jack Matthews, a retired lieutenant colonel who commanded the Marine battalion before the bombing and later wrote a doctoral dissertation about it.
It gave a boost to terrorism. “That’s where the bad guys in the world today got their first bragging rights,” says Eric Hammel, author of The Root: The Marines in Beirut, a history of the bombing.
It changed the way leaders thought about power:
• In a speech in 1984, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who had opposed the Beirut mission, enunciated the lesson he drew from Lebanon: Don’t commit insufficient military forces to an ill-defined mission with no clear national interest or exit strategy.
Weinberger gave the speech at the National Press Club nine months after President Reagan — who had said after the barracks bombing that the United States would never back down from terrorists — withdrew the Marines from Lebanon.
Weinberger’s warning did not prevent a similar debacle nine years later in Somalia, where U.S. forces had been sent in support of a United Nations humanitarian mission. After two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down by Somali militias, U.S. forces were withdrawn.
I can not understand how it is that Hezbollah yet lives. I can not understand why we have not laid waste to Palestine. And Syria. And Yemen. And Somalia. And at least embargoed Iran to the point that it’s government collapses. Even if we must fight this war with one hand tied behind us, why does the free hand have to be covered in a soft fluffy mitten so that it can not wield a sword?
Posted by Drew458
on 10/23/2008 at 09:53 AM
Filed Under: • War On Terror •
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Permalink • John McCain should realise: it’s the taxes, stupid. (OK, back to the USA for this)
Not too much too say.
Have lost musician friend of 30 years and will soon post.
But this stuff is very much alive and of interest to us all.
But it ain’t over yet. Not till the last ballot is accounted for on election day.
Catch the rest of Kim’s take on things: => http://www.theothersideofkim.com/index.php/tos/
“I would feel better about electing a President in times of economic uncertainty if either candidate had the slightest familiarity with economic issues.” Kim du Toit
John McCain should realise: it’s the taxes, stupid
By Frank Luntz
Last Updated: 11:01pm BST 22/10/2008Barack Obama will be the next President. For a pollster and message consultant to declare the outcome with 10 days to go is risky. But John McCain’s campaign has shown no capability to capitalise on events, and the Obama campaign just doesn’t make mistakes.
Republicans eye Palin for 2012 presidential campaignIt didn’t have to be this way.
McCain could have stood up and said no to the $700 billion “taxpayer-funded Wall Street bail-out”.
McCain could have been a hero for the middle-class
Sure, it’s now called an “economic rescue plan” by the White House, but the Bush Administration’s rebranding came too little and too late. He could have declared that “Main Street should not have to pay for the sins of Wall Street”, that it’s “time for the corporate con-men to do some time for costing us some dime”.That decision alone would have made him a hero to tens of millions of hard-working middle-class voters who resent seeing their tax dollars handed over to fund the retirement packages of the Billionaire Boys Club. But he didn’t.
McCain also could have personalised the taxes that every American pays. He could have leapt from his seat in the so-called “town hall” debate, his second televised clash with Obama, walked over to each person in the audience, and gone through the litany of taxes they all have to pay.
“When you wake up and have your first cup of coffee, you pay a sales tax. Go to your garage, pay an automobile tax. Drive to work, pay a gas tax. At work, you have an income tax. Come home, pay a property tax. Turn on your television, there’s a cable tax. Have a beer, pay an alcohol tax. Even when you die, you pay a death tax.” But he didn’t.
As for Obama, he could have done what the Left-wing blogs wanted him to do and ripped into his opponent the way John Kerry did to George W. Bush in 2004. Instead, he chose a conciliatory path, often agreeing with - and even praising - McCain for his positions on some issues and only occasionally going on the attack.
Voters awarded him victory for that strategy after all three debates. And in a survey of non-partisan “independent” voters released yesterday by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, Obama has opened up a double-digit lead among the voters who will decide the outcome.
The only time in the past 50 years where a candidate came from this far behind to overtake his opponent was Ronald Reagan in 1980. But that race featured a debate just five days before the election - and everything was melting down around Jimmy Carter.
There are no more debates - and McCain is hardly the Great Communicator. Everything is melting down around the Republican Party. With stock markets still plummeting, unemployment still rising and the entire global economic system in chaos, it’s tough to see how someone of the same party as the most unpopular president in modern times could possibly overcome such obvious barriers.
And when a lifetime’s worth of savings is now worth 30 per cent less than it was 100 days ago, it’s very difficult to listen to the candidates tear each other apart. The candidate who offers hope becomes a lot more appealing than the candidate on the attack.
In fact, the real untold story of 2008 is what is happening at state and local level. Republicans are in danger of losing the Senate seats they need to be able to block Obama’s legislation - and the House of Representatives looks even worse. This election is starting to look more like Britain in 1997 than anything America has seen in decades.
On election night, the polls in Virginia and Indiana close at 7pm, and both states could end up in the Democratic column for the first time in decades. It will be a long night for John McCain. If the current trends continue, it will be an even longer four years for the Republican Party.
Frank Luntz is a pollster and communications consultant
Posted by Drew458
on 10/23/2008 at 09:49 AM
Filed Under: • Politics • Republicans •
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Permalink • Banned from using Hoover or hot water under health and safety rules. (ere we go again matey)
Well, I guess this young feller won’t ever be able to work for Drew at this tender age. Jeesh, were she alive today, I could probably sue me own dear mum for making us help with housework on the wkends. Elf ‘N’ Safety yer knows.
This govt. really does take cradle to grave protection quite literally.
Boy, 16, banned from using Hoover or hot water under health and safety rules
A boy of 16 was told he could not work as a cleaner because he is too young to use a Hoover without health and safety clearance.
By Alastair Jamieson
Last Updated: 7:49AM BST 23 Oct 2008Karl Walker was told by a cleaning firm that he is not old enough to use hot water, washing up liquid and furniture polish or to empty bins.
The AS-level student and a friend were hired by Apollo Cleaning and worked in offices in Chippenham, Wiltshire, for a week until a regional manager ordered them to stop. The firm says it is following government guidelines by insisting on safety clearance.At 16, Karl is old enough to join the Army and fire a gun, play the lottery, have sex legally and get married, but the firm said he required special permission to use cleaning equipment, including vacuum cleaners.
Karl, who is studying for four AS levels, said: “I just don’t understand what is going on. How can I be too young to use a vacuum cleaner? It is so stupid. I want to earn a living.”His mother Susan, 47, said: “My son is legally old enough to get married or join the Army yet these people think he is too young to be able to hoover up. The entire situation is a joke.”
Paul Lundy, boss of London-based Apollo Cleaning, said: “When an employee is only 16 we have to be very careful with the tasks we set them as their bodies are not yet fully formed.
“But I am sure once the proper checks have been completed there will be no problem in re-employing these young people.”
Posted by Drew458
on 10/23/2008 at 09:34 AM
Filed Under: • Nanny State • Stoopid-People • UK • work and the workplace •
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Permalink • Wednesday - October 22, 2008
SSDD Part 3
It works both ways. The GOP drags out the same old junk time after time too.
Didn’t we hear the exact same thing about Kerry and Gore too? So it’s either part of the DNC platform, or just more of the same old same old. But coming out this late in the game it just seems like scare tactics. And I’m sick of that.
Next we’ll be hearing from AARP, crying how (insert Republican candidate here) wants to cut funding for Medicare, because they hate old people and want them all to starve to death in the snow. Then we’ll hear from the teacher’s union, demanding that you support Obama or else your children will become instant morons due to the Republican’s wish to eliminate all forms of school funding.
After that ... gak. I can’t take it any more. Are Americans really this stupid and gullible? Can’t we remember anything that happened more than a day ago? There was this big voice at the beginning of this election cycle promising Hope, and Change, and Not Politics As Usual. Funny, all I see is politics as usual. From both sides. And it gets so tiring.
If I had to guess, I’d say that at least 97% of the people who will actually vote had figured out who they were going to vote for at least 3 months ago. Heck, 6 months ago. A year? And they’d already figured out what they’d do if the person they liked didn’t survive the primaries. So I think this endless brain-numbing 24 hours a day assault from every possible direction is all for those indecisive idiot 3%ers. Thanks a lot, butt munchers. Please take part in yet another poll, and respond differently each time. Because none of us have even heard that there’s an election on, and we have to learn all we can in just a few weeks, so we need ten times as much political coverage and advertising.
Posted by Drew458
on 10/22/2008 at 04:33 PM
Filed Under: • Politics •
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Permalink • SSDD Part 2
As dependable as the sun coming up in the morning. This is the first iteration of this old saw I’ve seen, but you can expect every single news outlet to run something just like it.
Yeah, get rid of the Electoral College. Because it’s too complicated for us stupid Americans to understand. Because it’s OLD therefore no good. And most especially, because it would remove the quarantine around Chicago style ballot box stuffing, allowing that corrupt practice to have impacts beyond the Illinois border.
Ooh, looky, several of the stupider lefty states have this new idea, one that totally ignores how their citizens voted but allows them all to climb up on the Winner’s Bus. And isn’t that more important in the long run? Good looks and popularity; that’s all that really matters, right?
Is it time to scrap the Electoral College?
Is the Electoral College, America’s quirky system of choosing its presidents, on its way to extinction? Americans do not vote directly for president. They vote for slates of electors in each state.
...
All but two states (Maine and Nebraska) use the winner-take-all system. This means that the candidate who gets the most popular votes in a state gets all of its electoral votes.
...
The system is a relic of the early days of the republic when electors were supposed to be independent agents exercising their judgment in choosing a presidential candidate from a list of several contenders.Today, electors are party loyalists who almost always vote for their party’s nominee.
Scrapping the electoral vote system would likely require a constitutional amendment since the Constitution itself created the electoral system (Article II, section 1).
But a group called National Popular Vote says it has found another way.
So far, it has persuaded four Democratic-controlled legislatures (in Maryland, Illinois, Hawaii, and New Jersey) to pass a law which commits those states to give their electoral votes to whomever wins the national popular vote. The accord takes effect once states with a combined 270 electoral votes agree to it.The states would pledge to award their electoral votes to the popular vote winner even if he or she had not been the majority choice in their state.
Take Maryland as an example. Say 80 percent of voters in that state cast their ballots for the Democratic presidential candidate. But if a Republican candidate wins the national popular vote, under the state law, Maryland’s 10 electoral votes would go to that candidate.
And now we get down to the brass tacks ... the part where the MSM’s agenda comes bubbling up, like the more rancid floaters down at the waste treatment plant:
A margin of one-half of one percent
The difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000 was 540,000 votes out of more than 105 million total votes cast, a victory margin of only one-half of one percent. With such a slim margin, there’d be every incentive for both the loser and winner to seek recounts so as to get more votes in the states that each one won by a large margin. Another 50,000 votes for Bush in Utah, Georgia and Texas, for example, could have helped him erase the tiny popular vote edge that Gore had.
At the MIT conference, Yale University law professor Akhil Amar dismissed the dire nationwide recount scenario as an exaggerated fear.
Not even the most populous states pick their governors through an Electoral College system, Amar pointed out. If the popular vote is good enough to elect a governor in a state of 8.5 million voters, such as California, then it would work in a national electorate of 120 million voters.
If the States wish to do things their own way, that is their right. And that a system works at a small scale does not imply or prove that it works at a large scale. What if the states adopted an Electoral system based on land area? New York is utterly dominated by New York City - half or more of the population lives there, and another fifth within a 10 mile radius. Yet NYC isn’t 1/2 of 1% of the land area. Why not X Electoral Votes per square mile, which would utterly shift the power to the rural areas? What if some state decided on some other allocation system? Who cares? At the national level we use the Electoral College specifically to limit the power of states with large urban populations. It’s already weighted plenty in favor of population anyway: each state gets one Electoral Vote for each Representative they have, and the Reps are doled out based on population.
Amar said a direct national election would create healthy incentives for states to compete with each other in getting more of their people to vote — for example by allowing voter registration on Election Day and by mandating that Election Day be a day off, with pay, for all workers.
Dream on lefties. The Founding Fathers were smarter than you, and they knew what you’d try to do, 200 years before you were ever born. And that’s why they put this system in place. It’s only too bad that it doesn’t absolutely specify Winner Take All at the state level, because I think that the two states that went and did apportionment ought to be flogged. We stick with the system until we all decide together to change it.
Learn more about the Electoral College here and also here.
Posted by Drew458
on 10/22/2008 at 02:52 PM
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Media-Bias •
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Permalink • SSDD
CNN reminds us that it’s the Republicans that are out to rig and steal the election.
Ex-GOP operative tells cautionary tale about ‘how to rig an election’ Allen Raymond is living proof that political dirty tricksters do exist. The former Republican political operative went to federal prison after he pleaded guilty to charges of phone harassment. He jammed the phone lines of New Hampshire’s Democratic Party on Election Day six years ago.
...
The operation also jammed the lines inside a firefighter’s union hall in Manchester, New Hampshire, where Jeff Duval and other local firefighters were lining up car rides to help senior citizens get to the polls.“It almost felt to me like an election might have been stolen,” Duval said. “I know for a fact that we received calls a few days later from people saying ‘we tried to call you.’ And I say ‘did you get out and vote?’ And they said ‘no.’ ”
In his book, “How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative,” Raymond details how he got caught. An hour and a half into the jamming operation he received an e-mail from a Republican official, frantically telling him to shut down the calls. The e-mail read: “Chairman wishes not to proceed with this project ... insists it violates federal law.”
One of Raymond’s alleged co-conspirators, James Tobin, was a top official with the National Republican Senatorial Committee that year. He went on to serve as George W. Bush’s Northeastern regional re-election chairman in 2004. Tobin was initially convicted. But he succeeded in having that decision overturned by an appellate court. Just last week, Tobin was again indicted in the case on two counts of making false statements to a federal agent. His lawyer had no comment.
Another co-conspirator and former chairman of New Hampshire’s Republican Party, Charles McGee, pleaded guilty to phone harrassment in the case and served seven months in prison. Democrats insist the phone jamming operation in New Hampshire had national implications. The balance of power in the U.S. Senate was on the line that year and the Senate race between Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and Republican John Sununu was decided by just 19,000. Sununu won.
Some state Democrats remain convinced the phone jamming operation resulted in some votes lost.
“I think they were willing to do whatever it took to win, even if that meant breaking the law,” Sullivan said.
Allen Raymond learned that winning elections at all costs can come at a heavy price.
“I’m a felon,” Raymond said. “I think about it everyday. Everyday, everything that I do every day, I try to do in such a way that makes up for that mistake.”
Raymond doesn’t plan to stop talking about his trip to the political dark side. He told CNN a major Hollywood studio plans to begin production on a film version of his cautionary tale.
Oooh look! CNN puts this bit in to show how Fair & Balanced they are!
Conservative author and Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund points out there are dirty tricksters in both parties.
“No party has a monopoly on virtue,” said Fund.
Fund has also written a book about the problem, “Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens our Democracy.” His book focuses on the allegations facing more liberal groups like ACORN.
What, am I supposed to add some comment here? This is merely example 86,591,174 of media bias. Just a little reminder that Republicans are crooks. One guy messed with the phones of one office for an hour, therefore the election was rigged. Because that town must have had 25,000 senior citizens, all Democrats, who had never voted before and just had to call up DNC headquarters to find out where to vote. Because none of them figured it out ahead of time. And then they couldn’t call the union hall to arrange for a ride, because none of them had any means of personal transportation. Republicans, EVIL!! And then the crooks behind this horror rigged the judiciary system to get off scott-free! Republicans, CORRUPT!!!
And that all that exists against the other groups like ACORN (like implies some other group THAN actually ACORN) are mere allegations. Probably false. Made by evil corrupt Republicans!!!!!
Is this bullshit over yet? I can’t wait until November 5th. I’m just sick to death of the whole damn thing.
Posted by Drew458
on 10/22/2008 at 01:14 PM
Filed Under: • Media-Bias • Politics •
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Permalink • Crude Oil Price Plummets Again
Oil prices tumbled below $68 a barrel Wednesday after the government reported big increases in U.S. fuel supplies—more evidence that the economic downturn is drying up energy demand.
The Energy Information Administration said crude inventories jumped by 3.2 million barrels last week, above the 2.9 million barrel increase expected by analysts surveyed by energy research firm Platts. Gasoline inventories rose by 2.7 million barrels last week, and inventories of distillates, which include heating oil and diesel, rose by 2.2 million barrels.
In morning trading, light, sweet crude for December delivery fell $4.03 to $68.15 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier, it sank as low as $67.50 a barrel, the lowest level for a front-month contract since June 2007.
The energy markets have also been weighed down by the weak stock market, as investors grow more pessimistic about how long it will take the economy to recover from the current global financial turmoil.
“Oil is now highly correlated with the stock market,” said Clarence Chu, a trader with market maker Hudson Capital Energy in Singapore. “People are looking to the Dow for sentiment on the economy.”
The price of crude oil has tumbled 54 percent from its peak of $147.27 reached in mid-July.
In London, December Brent crude fell $3.72 to $66 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
Around here gas is going for $2.62.9 a gallon. If the crude price stays at this level for awhile I expect that price to drop to $2.35 or less. And it ought to cost less to heat your home this winter too. So there is a little bit of a silver lining to this recession at any rate.
Posted by Drew458
on 10/22/2008 at 12:22 PM
Filed Under: • Oil, Alternative Energy, and Gas Prices •
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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.
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