he Mainly Marginalized Media are hesitantly stepping up to the plate on the B-Rod scandal, noting the depth of B-Rod’s depravity, the longstanding, close-enough relationship between Obama and the scum-gov of Illinois, and the crossed messages within Camp Obama. Just witness this morning’s headlines, courtesy of memeorandum:
But the NY Times, for lack of a better expression, is busy this morning putting lipstick on a pig, proclaiming in its lead headline that Obama is really the hero of the story! Oh joy! Oh stretch!
In a sequence of events that neatly captures the contradictions of Barack Obama’s rise through Illinois politics, a phone call he made three months ago to urge passage of a state ethics bill indirectly contributed to the downfall of a fellow Democrat he twice supported, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich.
Mr. Obama placed the call to his political mentor, Emil Jones Jr., president of the Illinois Senate. Mr. Jones was a critic of the legislation, which sought to curb the influence of money in politics, as was Mr. Blagojevich, who had vetoed it.
I know, I know. It was a federal prosecutor and the FBI that busted B-Rod, not some state guys enforcing a state ethics law. Heck, there were enough federal laws violated to ensure headlines and punditry around the globe. So what’s with claiming a role for the Prez-O? The NYT, which has sold the Brooklyn Bridge a few times in support of Obama’s cause has it covered: B-Rod sped up his scamming in order to rake in as much cash as possible before the new Illinois ethics law went into effect Jan. 1.
But shucks, folks, with Congress starting up shortly after the first, the assumption was that B-Rod would fill the seat by the end of the year all along, ethics law or no ethics law, take or no take. No problem; if there’s a positive point to make about Obama – no matter how obscure – the NYT stands ready to make it.
Providing nifty cover for its hero seems to be what the NYT is all about nowdays, and it’s better at it than any other news outlet. So in a way, it is still the leader in journalism.
od Blagojevich – that’s him with his hand on the Holy Bible – has for months been the focus of corruption charges stemming from his ties to Tony Rezko’s scheme to squeeze companies for kickbacks in return for state contracts – but heck, he was just getting started.
Today, finally, Blagojevich is in jail (I presume), arrested this morning for trying to sell Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder, and for strong-arming the nearly broke Tribune Company, and for trying to get the Chicago Trib’s editorial board fired. As if that weren’t enough, he proved how blind to reality politicans can become by considering appointing his corrupted a$$ as Obama’s replacement:
Blagojevich considered appointing himself. The affidavit said that as late as Nov. 3, he told his deputy governor that if “they’re not going to offer me anything of value I might as well take it.”
“I’m going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain,” Blagojevich allegedly said later that day, according to the affidavit, which also quoted him as saying in a remark punctuated by profanity that the seat was “a valuable thing — you just don’t give it away for nothing.” (Source)
Blagojevich’s top aide was also arrested.
As a society we’re pretty well attuned to avarice, but Blogojevich is a reminder that there’s always someone out beyond the worst we can imagine. And when these cases come to light, there are always two sins prominent in the perp’s personality: Ego and greed.
Blagojevich’s ego made him think he deserved the money he craved so greedily, and also convinced him that he could fool everyone, even as investigators swarmed around his administration. The last two to manifest these sins, leading to their plummeting into infamy were Dems – Elliot Spitzer and now Blogojevich – but Duke Cunningham wasn’t that far in the past.
The lesson: Trust politicians with your vote, but not much else.
The title on the CNN screen says, for the full two minutes of this segment and probably much longer, “Special Investigations Unit/Registration Fraud Allegations/Hiring Homeless and Drug Addicts” and over that headline for most of the clip are pictures of Barack Obama.
This is CNN, folks, not Fox. That means the people who are listening to this are not largely already in the McCain camp and will therefore be questioning the candidate of their choice, not getting more negative news about a candidate they don’t like.
The report itself is not groundbreaking, but it’s quite good. Wolf Blitzer gives the reporter, Drew Griffen, an opportunity to cut the Obama campaign some slack, pawning off their involvement on “some third party that contracted with ACORN,” but he nixes that, quoting emails between CNN and the campaign that say, “Yes, we did use a subsidiary of ACORN.”
That is not what Obama told reporters today. In a press briefing outside the Maumee Bay Resort and Conference Center in Oregon, OH, he said:
“There is an ACORN organization in Chicago. They have been active. As an elected official, I’ve had interactions with them. But they are not advising our campaign. We’ve got the best voter registration and turnout and volunteer operation in politics right now and we don’t need ACORN’s help.”
He does not mention that he taught community organizing to ACORN, nor does he mention that he paid $800,000 to an ACORN subsidiary in the primaries to register voters – who knows how crookedly – so he could knock off Hillary. Instead he wiggles dishonestly, “… right now and we don’t need ACORN’s help.” Yeah, but “back then” they did.
As for ACORN’s fraudulent operations, Obama sees it differently than the rest of us:
“So there’s been fraud perpetrated on probably ACORN if they paid these individuals and they actually didn’t do registrations.”
Oh. It’s the poor voter registration workers, who are swamped by stacks of fraudulent ACORN voter registration forms dumped on them at the last minute, who are the bad guys. Thanks for that, Barack.Really, really classy.
Here’s another, longer, CNN clip that doesn’t tie ACORN and Obama, but when put together with CNN reporting on the connection will be damning because Griffen shows a signed ACORN registration card for a voter who died last year.
It also includes an ACORN attorney, Brian Mellor, who says ACORN fires people who cheat, but can’t adequately answer whether they fired people in Lake County, IN, after massive ACORN voter fraud was uncovered there. He then goes on, like Obama, to rag on election officials as the cause of the problem.
Mellor is, in a word, offensive, and all middle of the road (and right side of the road) Americans will see him as such, and will think his group’s association with Obama stinks to high heaven.
With CNN joining Fox and ABC, which have been hitting hard on this story for days, we now have a significant part of the TV news-watching electorate getting this nasty story front and center, which is why McCain needs to hammer on Obama and ACORN tomorrow night, much more than the Obama and Ayres hammering.
By the way, CBS hasn’t run an ACORN story since last Friday. NBC finally got around to running a story today (can you say “deliberately asleep at the wheel?”) positioning it as “a registration fraud story, not a voter fraud story.” In the tape they play Obama’s excuses (referenced above) and say the McCain campaign is overstating the Obama-ACORN connection because there’s “no evidence of an ongoing close relationship with ACORN at this point.”
If any of you would like to send me $800,000 I guarantee we’ll have a close relationship.
“We have no idea what the motive behind it is. It’s just overwhelming to us.” – Lake County IN Elections Board Official
T
he official – probably Dem. Sally Sota, but the CNN article is edited so badly we can’t tell for sure – was speaking of ACORN; specifically, the 2,000+ fraudulent voter registration forms found in the first 2,000+ ACORN-submitted forms.
To ACORN, free and fair elections are just a joke, as evidenced by the names they use on the forms – fast food restaurant names, sports team names – and the cavalier attitude they have about cheating Democracy:
“All the signatures looked exactly the same,” Ruthann Hoagland, a Republican on the board. “Everything on the card filled out looks exactly the same.”
Lake County includes Gary, which is 84% black. It’s not like the Obama campaign had to work overtime to dominate the vote in this county – one of the ones where the campaign is quite content that there’s racism, black racism, in America. Yet ACORN found it worthwhile to cheat the system. Why? So he could win 101% of the vote there?
ACORN of course refuses to admit blame; any criticism of its actions is just Big Brother in action:
“We believe their purpose is to attack ACORN and suppress votes,” [ACORN attorney Brian] Mellor said. “We believe that by attacking ACORN, they are going to discourage people that have registered to vote with ACORN from voting.”
A federal district court judge has found Democrat Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner guilty of violating federal election laws. The ruling goes to the heart of the ACORN-centered voter fraud epidemic spreading across the country. This is the second judgment against Brunner.
Says the Ohio GOP:
“For some reason, Jennifer Brunner does not want these new registrations checked,” said Ohio Republican Party Deputy Chairman Kevin DeWine. “Her refusal to comply with federal law raises serious concerns about her ability to objectively oversee this election. It’s especially troubling in light of her connection to ACORN and that group’s stunning confession this week of fraudulent registration activity happening right here in Ohio.”
Brunner’s effort to fight the court order comes just two days after the Democrat activist group ACORN admitted to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections that the group engages in fraudulent voter registration activity.
ACORN’s excuse for the fraud? You’ll love this:
Ohio ACORN officials “blamed the elections board for not scrutinizing ACORN’s suspicious cards,” claiming the group “can’t be expected to catch everything.”
“I Can’t Even Count How Many Registrations I’ve Filled Out”
Malkin’s story includes a film clip from Palestra.com, the college web-TV network, in which a young black woman says ACORN workers scrub the neighborhoods asking people again and again to register. “I can’t even count how many registrations I’ve filled out,” the woman says. She says she does it for her country – who taught her civics?
Here’s a YouTube copy of the Palestra clip, which I wasn’t able to post:
In addition to Indiana and Ohio, ACORN investigations are proceeding in, at a minimum, Nevada, Missouri, Connecticut and Wisconsin, plus North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee and Pennsylvania, and Washington. And that was just page one of the Google search.
Obama’s position? “I’ve never worked for ACORN.”
Sweetness & Light has the goods. He did work for Project Vote, which shares the same address in Washington DC and other cities with ACORN, shares the same job postings, and which multiple MSM outlets identified as an arm of ACORN. Not to mention the documentation provided by IRS tax forms.
“So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”
So he didn’t really work for ACORN, like he didn’t really listen to his pastor … but he did lawyer for ACORN. Media Circus has a page of a court settlement for a lawsuit brought by ACORN which includes the names of the settling attorneys:
What was the lawsuit? Well, glad you asked. It was a Community Reinvestment Act lawsuit charging redlining by a bank, the classic ACORN strategy to force banks to make bad mortgage loans and the genesis of the financial meltdown that’s giving us all intense heebie-jeebies today.
Plus, of course, he shoveled buckets of cash ACORN’s way while running the Annenberg Chicago Challenge.
So, class, to refresh: A group tied to Barack Obama is caught trying to throw the election. He denies he ever worked for them, but he’s lying, lying, lying. And his lie also covers up his direct involvement in the mortgage shell game that’s brought our economy to its knees.
The activists argued that they possessed a “lawful excuse” for trying to shut the plant down, because they were trying to prevent the coal plant from causing greater property damage around the world by way of global warming. An example of lawful excuse, as cited by the prosecution and quoted in a Greenpeace blog, would be breaking a window to rescue a child from a burning car.
Yes, you read that correctly.
I’m not going to freak out too much … yet. It’s England, not America. Incredibly bad decisions get overturned. Judges get impeached.
Were the decision to stand, it would mean that English law would allow crime based on an unproven and unprovable belief. This would not only open the door to an assault of similar crimes against property – and even persons – with no ability to use the courts and prisons as deterrence.
Why stop at “lawful excuse” for global warming related crimes? I believe aliens are using Big Ben as their homing signal for an imminent attack, so I plead lawful excuse to the non-crime of blowing that sucker up. I believe if my ex-wife continues to live, she’s going to make some other poor bloke’s life a living Hell, so what’s the difference between breaking a window to save a child and breaking her neck to save a man?
Worse because it’s a more direct and applicable outgrowth of the decision, the court has branded conventional power generation in England criminal – based, again, on an unproven and unprovable hypothesis. It’s easy enough to prove that death and economic disaster would follow if England’s conventional power sources were lawfully excused out of business. People would die of heat or cold, or because hospitals couldn’t function, and England’s economy would quickly return to pre-industrial levels because even if sufficient alternative energy sources were on the verge (that’s a joke, feel free to laugh), it would take conventional power to get them manufactured and installed. But that proof apparently cannot stand up against the mere belief in global warming.
We eagerly await the appeal, and the jail time these Greenpeace fruitcakes must serve, but our worries about the fate of England grow and grow.
“The court finds the memorial at Mt. Soledad, including its Latin cross, communicates the primarily nonreligious messages of military service, death and sacrifice. As such, despite its location on public land, the memorial is constitutional.”
-U.S. District Judge Larry Alan Burns
I
t’s a shame something so simple as placing a cross in an overwhelmingly Christian nation has become so difficult, and can be allowed only by so narrow a definition as this fine-grained parsing by Judge Burns. But still, a victory is a victory and the Soledad cross lives on.
And so does its opposition. According to the LA Times, the ACLU is considering an appeal to the very liberal 9th Circuit.
Ironically, it was another version of the sort of liberal craziness we see from the ACLU and the 9th Circuit that turned Judge Burns’ decision:
In his ruling Burns agreed that the cross is the preeminent symbol of Christianity, but said “it does not follow the cross has no other meaning or significance.” He pointed to the exhibits on public beaches, such as Santa Monica’s, where the group Veterans for Peace uses crosses in the sand to represent U.S. service members who died in Iraq.
Apparently the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy isn’t coordinating its messaging strategies effectively.
s a follow-up on my post yesterday on Greenies and forest fires – where I lamented that the “naturalists” in the environmental movement abhor facts about nature and forest management and will always fight any effort to log in national forests – here’s some startling good news:
Top federal judges ruled this week that their own court has gone too far in holding up logging projects, saying Western judges from now on must show more deference to the agencies planning the cutting.
The ruling involving an Idaho timber sale is a blow to environmental groups that have increasingly relied on federal courts to block projects they see as unsound. (source)
The court in question? The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals! And it was unanimous! The Ninth is not only is it the most green-crazed of all the federal appeals courts, it also has jurisdiction over more U.S. forestland than any other.
The ruling redefines the standards for when federal judges in much of the West can stop a logging project, tilting the playing field against critics of logging on public lands.
Mark Rey, the undersecretary of Agriculture who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, called the ruling the most important decision in a national forest environmental case in two decades.
He said the ruling clears a more direct path for projects designed to thin overgrown forests at high risk of wildfire and insect outbreaks. Federal courts have often slowed such thinning while they examine the environmental justification.
He noted the severe wildfires now burning in California, where the Western court panel that issued the ruling is based.
“One possibility is that the smoke helped improve their vision,” Rey said.
Nice line.
Another advantage to the ruling: Senseless greenie bans on logging have crimped the flow of cash into the Forest Service from the sale of logging leases. If more leases are issued as a result of this ruling, the Service will have access to more cash – which it can use not just to fight fires (which is where much of its budget goes now), but to more positive programs as well.
One more thing: The decision was written by Milan Smith, a Bush appointee. One more reason to be very, very afraid of Barack Obama and the ultra-liberal court appointments he’ll make.
ere’s the story of another Muslim honor killing here on our shores … but dressed up with enough crime lingo to make it appear to be just another case of an enraged father killing his daughter just because she’s disgraced the family. (I hope you see the sardonic humor in that!)
A Georgia man appeared in court Monday on charges he killed his own daughter for disgracing his family. …
Chaudhry Rashid, wearing a red jumpsuit and shackles around his ankles, went before Chief Judge Daphne Walker at the Clayton County Magistrate Court where he was arraigned on a murder charge. …
The 25-year-old victim, Sandeela Kanwal, was wed in Pakistan in an arranged marriage. Police said Kanwal hadn’t seen her husband, who lives in Chicago, for months.
According to police, there was “friction between father and victim” in the weeks leading up to the killing. Rashid had not spoken to his daughter in more than two months.
Police said Rashid was so angered that his daughter planned to divorce her husband that he killed her after a heated argument at the family’s home, FOX News affiliate MyFoxAtlanta reported. …
“The family is very upset and stressed,” said Shahid Malik of the Pakistani American Community of Atlanta. Malik told MyFoxAtlanta that he met with the family Sunday and said they were all traumatized. (Fox News)
Not quite as traumatized as the daughter, though.
In his native Pakistan, it’s likely Rashid would walk with little or no penalty. In America, it’s likely that many Muslims feel he did the honorable thing and should walk – one reason why we should scoff at any efforts to allow Sharia law for Muslims here.
In fact, if we allow greater punishments for so-called “hate crimes,” then it follows that we should do the same for “honor” killings, since Sandeela Kanwal would very likely be alive today were it not for her religion.
PROVIDENCE –– The state Board of Elections voted unanimously yesterday to preserve the voting rights of two men found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity some 20 years ago.
The panel overturned a nine-month-old decision by Cranston elections officials, who found that William Sarmento and John A. Sarro were too mentally ill to cast a ballot.
Inside the Beltway, my mom’s going about her mother’s day, no doubt anticipating a call from us later today. Despite our differences on politics and religion, which are enough to shatter any normal relationship, we are very close and I would not be who I am today without her — and I mean that in the best way possible.
She took mothering seriously. She wasn’t just raising kids (although she made sure there was a big dose of that in the program — people who know my mom might have trouble visualizing her as a Cub Scout mom, for example), she was raising two grown-up men. She wanted to make sure that when my older brother and I grew up, we would have a solid foundation in the old liberal arts tradition.
So thanks! And thanks also for the deep friendship you’ve made with the mother of my children. Having the two moms in my life so close is one of my great joys!
To my readers: Thanks for indulging me. In return, please feel free to pirate the tacky Mother’s Day greeting image above.
Muslims Cop Killers?
My brother-in-law, a Special Forces vet and police officer, is on the board of a group that watches out for the widows and orphans of police officers who are killed in the line of duty. He forwarded me this alert:
Sergeant Stephen Liczbinski Philadelphia Police Department Pennsylvania
End of Watch: Saturday, May 3, 2008
Biographical Info Age: 40 Tour of Duty: 12 years Badge Number: 486
Incident Details Cause of Death: Gunfire Date of Incident: Saturday, May 3, 2008 Weapon Used: Rifle; AK-47 Suspect Info: Shot and killed
Sergeant Stephen Liczbinski was shot and killed while responding to a bank robbery call at approximately 11:30 am.
Two men dressed in female Muslim garb had robbed a Bank of America on Aramingo Avenue. Sergeant Liczbinski encountered the suspects on East Schiller Street and stopped their car. As he exited his patrol car, a suspect opened fire with an AK-47, striking Sergeant Liczbinski several times. Several citizens who witnessed the incident rushed to assist Sergeant Liczbinski, wrapping his wounds in an effort to stop the bleeding. Sergeant Liczbinski told them “Tell my wife I love her”, before he fell into unconsciousness. Another officer and a citizen carried Sergeant Liczbinski into a patrol car and he was transported to a local hospital, where he died from his wounds.
The suspects continued to flee, but crashed their vehicle. One suspect fled and the second suspect stole another vehicle, but was shot and killed by responding K-9 officers. A second suspect was arrested the following day and an arrest warrant was issued for a third suspect.
Sergeant Liczbinski had served with the Philadelphia Police Department for 12 years. He is survived by his wife and three children.
There is no evidence the perps — Howard Cain, 33, who was shot and killed by police, Levon Warner, 38, who was arrested, and Eric DeShawn Floyd, 33, who is subject to a massive manhunt — are Muslims. The local news coverage is lauding a lot of praise on Liczbinski, but is drawing no conclusions about Islam and the crime.
At this point, there’s really just one point to be made from the story: It is perfectly sensible and valid for us to put restrictions on Muslim dress in the US for security reasons. It’s not racial profiling to poke, prod and scan every single Muslim man and woman in traditional clothing.
A woman required 20 stitches to her face after a pelican crashed into her in the sea off Florida, apparently diving for fish.
The bird, which died in Thursday’s collision, ripped a gash in Debbie Shoemaker’s face as she bathed near the city of St Petersburg.
The city fire chief said he had never heard of a diving pelican hit a person.
Pelicans grow to up to 30lb (13kg) and can dive from heights of 60 to 70 feet (18 to 21 metres).
Ms Shoemaker, 50, returned home on Friday, the Associated Press reports.
Being Harry
Harry Reid has said a lot of truly stupid things in his day, but this is toppers, what he said about Hillary Clinton’s recent racial analysis of her prospects vs. Howdy Obama’s, i.e., that she can be counted on for the scruffy but hard-working white vote while Obama can be assured of the snotty white vote and the lazy black vote.
Well done, Harry! I see why they made you Speaker, since you speak just so darn well.
Leaves Of The Other Guy’s Grass
In the scheme of Global Things, this is perhaps the most troubling squib I’ve read lately:
This week, Saudi Arabia announced plans to invest in overseas fisheries, livestock and food production, and is reportedly trying to partner with Thai rice farms to lock in future supplies. Libya is in talks with Ukraine about growing wheat there, and as China tries to feed its expanding middle class, it’s looking to buy up farmland in Africa and South America. Commodities analyst Richard Feltes, with MF Global, says for decades these countries relied on cheap and abundant world surpluses to meet their food needs. (source)
Let’s follow the line on this one. No, not the line where everything turns out all right. What fun is that?
Instead let’s follow the line where global food supplies run short and Chinese Army troops are needed to keep hungry locals away from the fields they bought with the interest they earned from US Treasuries. Then the People’s Army escorts the crops past the really hungry people to the docks, where underfed stevedores stare at the Chinese with their Type 56 AK-47 knockoffs, thinking, “If I pocket a handful of this wheat, will they shoot me?”
Yeah, that line. Anyone selling their country’s land to the Saudis or the Chinese should see that this is the endgame that’s in play, the endgame that everyone’s anticipating. Yet they sell.
The Obama administration told us that not only would they be very good at spending unfathomable sums of money, but they’d also be maestros at turning that cash into jobs for a job-hungry America. Like so many White House words, the Big Job Promise is turning out to be nothing more than hype-fuel for the [...]
With Obama winning the presidency by seven percent, we can't blame the media. Their laudatory coverage and refusal to extensively probe into Obama's background and [lack of] experience was at best responsible for five percent of his vote, the pundits tell us. Here is a compilation of over 100 significant instances of pro-Obama/anti-McCain bias during the 2008 campaign.
"Thank you for the Voice of the Victims films. The students really liked it, and it means so much to them to hear real stories and not watch a cheesy drama like so many other videos."
— a high school teacher.
Obama’s position? “I’ve never worked for ACORN.”
Top federal judges ruled this week that their own court has gone too far in holding up logging projects, saying Western judges from now on must show more deference to the agencies planning the cutting.
A Georgia man appeared in court Monday on charges he killed his own daughter for disgracing his family. …
