Kay Barnes, the Democrat running against Scott Graves in Missouri’s 6th Congressional District, got a debate question about the Fairness Doctrine.
I guarantee you she’d be in line to vote for the Fairness Doctrine even though she sure as heck has no idea what it is. Because, you know, it’s fair. Listen to her:
H/t to Insider Online.
Let’s all take a moment out of politics. Enjoy the family. Enjoy the kids. Family first.
Happy Halloween.
It has been interesting to observe the public debate over Barack Obama’s associations with individuals whose personal histories can only be categorized as radical. Bill Ayers is a former terrorist. Jeremiah Wright preaches race adversarialism. For the most part, Obama’s friendships with these men has been water off a duck’s back for the electorate.
Imagine a different scenario. There is an evangelical candidate. He is the best evangelical candidate ever. A Rhodes Scholar, a distinguished lawyer who has argued before the Supreme Court, astoundingly eloquent, you get the idea. This candidate is a conservative, but answers all questions in such a way as to avoid making anyone uncomfortable. He hits all the right chords.
Further imagine that the record shows this man was once heavily involved with Christian reconstructionists who believe stoning should be re-instituted for adultery. He went to a church for two decades where a Christian reconstructionist preached each Sunday. One of his mentors was part of a group that bombed abortion clinics.
Where would that candidate be right now? And how different would that candidate be in terms of associations from one Barack Obama?
I had no idea that the KGB were back in business:
A state agency has revealed that its checks of computer systems for potential information on “Joe the Plumber” were more extensive than it first acknowledged.
Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, disclosed today that computer inquiries on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher were not restricted to a child-support system.
The agency also checked Wurzelbacher in its computer systems to determine whether he was receiving welfare assistance or owed unemployment compensation taxes, she wrote.
Jones-Kelley made the revelations in a letter to Ohio Senate President Bill M. Harris, R-Ashland, who demanded answers on why state officials checked out Wurzelbacher.
Harris called the multiple records checks “questionable” and said he awaits more answers. “It’s kind of like Big Brother is looking in your pocket,” he said.
As the story indicates, Jones-Kelly donated $2,500 to the Obama campaign. The story “uncovered four uses of state computer systems to access personal information on Wurzelbacher.” As Auric Goldfinger put it, “once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action.”
What precisely do we call it when something nefarious happens for the fourth time?
There were a lot of errors and overstatements in last night’s Obamamercial. They are cataloged here. Since the election is coming up in a matter of days, we can assume that there will be a lot of attention paid to these errors–along with suitable and appropriate commentary concerning what these errors say about the campaign.
Right?
Courtesy of an Iraq war veteran. The video can also be found here.
I presume the terms “absolute moral authority” apply here.
Incidentally, this post does not presume that Barack Obama opposed or opposes the reconstruction effort in Iraq out of bad faith. Far from it. But it does argue that he is wrong to have opposed it and wrong to deny his error in denigrating the effects of the surge and the counterinsurgency effort that have radically transformed things for the better in Iraq.
I didn’t catch this evening’s Obamamercial, though being a political junkie, I am sure that I will find a way to watch a replay. But the Economist saw the broadcast and came away with some choice catches in its liveblogging of the event:
8:06: “Cut taxes for those making less than $200,000″. Didn’t that used to be $250,000?
[. . .]
8:25: I like the words that keep appearing next to Mr Obama. It’s very Stephen Colbert.
8:24: Mr Obama talks about how Mark Dowd in Louisville can’t make ends meet…as Mr Dowd piles his plate full of pork.
8:21: Wow, they are really exaggerating his legislative accomplishments. Did Mr Obama really change the way Washington works in his four years in the Senate?
For this, they delayed baseball? Oh, and be sure to read that 8:06 observation a few times. Evidently, the income levels to get tax cuts keeps shifting.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows Barack Obama attracting 50% of the vote nationwide while John McCain earns 47%. This is the first time McCain has been within three points of Obama in more than a month and the first time his support has topped 46% since September 24 (see trends). One percent (1%) of voters prefer a third-party option and 2% are undecided.
Read it all; McCain and Obama have virtually identical favorability ratings according to the poll. McCain campaign pollster Bill McInturff presents more evidence that the race is tightening. Gallup had Obama up by only two points–within the margin of error–yesterday, assuming a traditional turnout model.
We may yet be up longer than people expect us to be on Election Night. And whatever the outcome, the fact that McCain is keeping it this close in a year that is supposed to be nightmarish for GOP political prospects tells you that America essentially is a center-right country. Good luck in trying to push that “New New Deal” without encountering some serious voter backlash.
Let’s have more reporting on this. It seems kinda important:
Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor’s identity, campaign officials confirmed.
Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.
The Obama organization said its extensive review has ensured that the campaign has refunded any improper contributions, and noted that Federal Election Commission rules do not require front-end screening of donations.
In recent weeks, questionable contributions have created headaches for Obama’s accounting team as it has tried to explain why campaign finance filings have included itemized donations from individuals using fake names, such as Es Esh or Doodad Pro. Those revelations prompted conservative bloggers to further test Obama’s finance vetting by giving money using the kind of prepaid cards that can be bought at a drugstore and cannot be traced to a donor.
The problem with such cards, campaign finance lawyers said, is that they make it impossible to tell whether foreign nationals, donors who have exceeded the limits, government contractors or others who are barred from giving to a federal campaign are making contributions.
“They have opened the floodgates to all this money coming in,” said Sean Cairncross, chief counsel to the Republican National Committee. “I think they’ve made the determination that whatever money they have to refund on the back end doesn’t outweigh the benefit of taking all this money upfront.”
Yup. And how many people actually think that the Obama campaign would have given money back if there had not been at least some attention paid to the lax security measures and lack of disclosures surrounding its campaign contribution efforts?
I call shenanigans on this entire operation. Anyone would. There is a lot of funny business going on with the Obama campaign and that funny business could very well constitute actual fraud. Are we going to proceed directly to the coronation or are we actually going to have a discussion concerning whether the Obama campaign skirted campaign finance laws in its effort to get the best funded political operation on the planet?
Bill O’Reilly says tomorrow Rasmussen will release a poll saying Americans now trust McCain on the economy.
Watch the video:
Will Joe the Plumber enable McCain to accomplish what even the Clinton’s could not?
Yesterday, The Heritage Foundation formally requested that the Obama campaign stop misrepresenting the organization’s views in ads touting the candidate’s tax plan. The letter notes that Barack Obama’s economic adviser has known, unequivocally, for more than a month that Heritage analyst Rea Hederman considers the candidate’s tax plan to be far inferior to that of his rival, John McCain.
Obama campaign spokesperson Bill Burton has issued a wholly unsatisfactory response to the Heritage letter. He attempts to justify the campaign’s misrepresentation by arguing:
That it’s OK to pick up a line written by New York Sun reporter Russell Berman and present it as a direct quote from Hederman, even though Hederman never said it. Burton’s “justification”: “I don’t know of any correction or clarification The Sun ever ran….” Hey, Burton, before you ”quote” someone secondhand, how about checking with him first — to see if he ever said it or ever would say it? Otherwise, you’re just putting words in someone’s mouth.
That when Hederman called Obama’s climb down from his initial proposal to tax dividends and capital gains at 28% “a great step in the right direction,” this somehow amounts to ”praising” the plan. As Hederman’s Sept. 16 letter to the Wall Street Journal clearly stated, the climb-down merely made a bad plan less bad. That’s not praise.
That it’s “reasonable for to use [sic] a definition of ‘better off’ as ‘paying less.’ Maybe. But Hederman never said the middle class would ”pay less” under the Obama plan. Those are the reporter’s words, not Hederman’s. Burton acknowledges that the comment about paying less is, in fact, “Berman’s reporting,” not Hederman’s words. Hederman emphatically does not share Berman’s view. It is definitely not reasonable to suggest that Hederman believes the middle class would be better off under that plan. He doesn’t.
In fact, Hederman’s analyses show that the middle class would do much better under McCain’s tax plan because it would lead to twice as much job creation and economic growth.
If somehow the campaign didn’t know their tax ads were deceitful before, they certainly know that to be the case now. The question now is: Will they have the honesty and intergrity to pull them, or will they willfully continue misleading the American public?
As Ron noted in the diaries yesterday, the race in GA-08 is close. Congressman Jim Marshall’s internal polling has him up higher than most independent polls are showing. He is also banking on a large black voter turnout for Obama to help put him over the finish line.
But, there is a large undecided vote and the demographics favor General Rick Goddard, the Republican challenger. The undecideds will probably be going with General Goddard. The Goddard campaign has its final ad out, and I like it:
The polls narrow. And the McCain campaign claims ownership of the last 96 hours of this campaign season.
In fact, among undecided voters, the largest portion is now solidifying who will get the vote. And the Obama “spread the wealth” stuff and the LA Times video suppression are just helping ratify minds as the polls narrow.
Here’s what’s fun. Let’s assume the worst case scenario. Just for a minute. Here we have a situation with undecideds breaking for McCain, the media vetting of Obama beginning after the election, and a whole host of people who voted for Obama asking “WTF?” That helps us long term tremendously.
But let’s look at the best case scenario. We can a delight on election day as the undecideds break decisively for McCain, carrying him and Sarah! across the finish line. We’ll have a lot to savor. Good times people.
One way or the other, we know this: the trend has headed toward McCain at the same time the media and the McCain camp have finally gotten around to raising key questions about Barack Obama. Because of the failure to vet Obama early, those questions will continue after the election whether he wins or loses.
And both scenarios are ripe for our advancement as the seeds of doubt get sown. America won’t tolerate an unrepentant lefty in the White House. The Obama camp and media have gone out of their way to cover up who Obama really is. Whether we win or we lose, we’ll make sure the public knows the truth about what the media and Democrats did during this campaign.
How the hell is it news that Sarah Palin spent government money to fix up government property? Seriously.
The lady came in to office needing to fix up the Governor’s Mansion to make it appropriate for small kids and also fix up her office at the Capitol. After having the Murkowski’s there, you’d probably need a bio-hazard team.
Mind you, the work on her office area was not even for her.
The work on the Anchorage site created new offices for Kelly Goode, Palin’s legislative director, and Roseanne Hughes, director of external communications, McAllister said. The third office is reserved for “traveling staff,” who divide their time between Anchorage and Juneau, which are located 571 miles apart, McAllister said.
A Palin staffer said the Juneau mansion’s new blinds were installed to provide privacy.
“The residence manager determined that the blinds were necessary to prevent observation from the street of the family members,” administrative director Linda J. Perez said in an e-mail.
Mike McBride, past president of the Alaska Voters Organization, did not take issue with the expenses. “It’s not a tremendous amount of money. Things in Alaska cost substantially more than they do in other parts of the country,” McBride said. “It’s not an unreasonable number.”
Yeah, yeah, this can’t be media bias playing into the anti-Palin narrative. This paper endorsed McCain.
Pfffffffft.
If McCain pulls this off, I want media heads piled on the South Lawn of the White House. If he does not pull this off, I’ll take the scalps myself over the next few years in anticipating Governor Palin’s 2012 bid.
Joe Wurzelbacher is evidently a “neocon.” Check out the supposed “reason” why.
There are a lot of people who maintain that “neocon” is, in the hands of some, a way to smear a certain group of people–a group to which I proudly belong. Andrew Sullivan just went a long way towards justifying those concerns. And yes, others have noticed Sullivan’s tendency to engage in this kind of despicable rhetoric.
I always get amused by those who claim that Barack Obama will get along famously and wonderfully with leaders around the world and that his election would magically cause tensions between the United States and other countries to disappear. These assertions are nonsensical; nation-states have permanent interest that outlive and go beyond whatever influence is exercised on foreign policy by the specific personalities in charge of a particular nation-state.
In the event that we needed confirmation that Obama would not–contrary to popular opinion–be received like some conquering hero by the international community, I give you this:
Link:
Two people were arrested Monday afternoon after an altercation led to five Republican campaign workers being sprayed with Mace at their headquarters in Galax.
Galax Police Chief Rick Clark said officers were dispatched shortly before 1 p.m. to the Galax Republican headquarters on East Grayson Street when a caller reported someone had sprayed office workers with Mace.
Responding officers arrested Daniel Cason Meinecke, 29, and Cara Annis Hindman, 26, both of Galax.
[. . .]
I would add commentary, but this story speaks for itself:
In a room full of television industry executives, no one seemed inclined to defend MSNBC on Monday for what some were calling its lopsidedly liberal coverage of the presidential election.
Back in 2006, Democrats were telling us that we ought to vote them into office because one-party rule was bad and we wanted to have divided government.
Nowadays, they are telling us that there is nothing wrong with one-party rule . . . so long as they are the party that is doing the ruling:
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Monday that he’s looking forward to one party controlling all aspects of government, despite GOP charges that it would be a disastrous Nov. 4 outcome.
“Republicans had a chance to rule. They failed miserably. I think it’s time to give the other party a chance,” Dean said on MSNBC.
Of course, when Democrats had one-party rule from 1977-1981 and 1993-1995, the voters thought that Democrats made a hash of things and elected Republicans in droves, so one does not quite know what to make of Howard Dean’s statement.
But isn’t that always the case with Howard Dean?
Yesterday, I blogged about Romneybots trying to smear Sarah Palin. One of the ones who has been willing to do it on record is former John Boehner spokesman and, more recently, former Mitt Romney spokesman Kevin Madden.
Now Madden was a Hill guy. And he was good. Smooth, polished, a party man.
Then he went to Mitt Romney and was mostly smooth and polished, but not quite as good.
Well, where to go now? Oh . . . the private sector.
Where did Kevin Madden go in the private sector? The Glover Park Group.
The Glover Park Group is a Democrat group. Who is there?
Carter Eskew from Gore 2000; Michael Feldman from the Clinton White House; Gigi Gorges who worked with Hillary; Joel Johnson from Team Daschle; Joe Lockhart from the Clinton White House; Jonathan Sallet from the Clinton White House; Chip Smith from Gore 2000; and Howard Wolfson most recently of the Hillary Campaign.
They are good at what they do. Now they can play both sides having Kevin on board. But how much of the Palin bashing is Kevin trying to fit in and suck up to his new masters? Maybe he’s just killing two birds with one stone: sabotage Palin to help him get back on the Romney train in 2012 if he thinks Obama is going to win and make himself palatable in an all blue Washington. Still, so much for loyalties, etc.
This doesn’t explain the other Romneybots doing the same.
