McCain Favorables High Amid Record Public Dissatisfaction

Gallup's data on record low public satisfaction include surprisingly upbeat findings on John McCain's favorability ratings.

Although public satisfaction with the way thing are going has hit a record low of just 9 percent, McCain's favorables remain as high as at earlier points in the campaign:

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain are set to meet for the second presidential debate in Nashville Tuesday night at a time when only 9% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States -- the lowest such reading in Gallup Poll history.

The previous low point for Gallup's measure of satisfaction had been 12%, recorded back in 1979, in the midst of rising prices and gas shortages when Jimmy Carter was president.

The economic turmoil explains the trend, but the findings on McCain are remarkable:

Despite the fact that Obama has led McCain by a significant margin in Gallup's tracking of presidential preferences for 10 days now, the two presidential candidates continue to have positive images, with McCain's a little less positive than Obama's.

McCain's 40% unfavorable rating is slightly higher than he has been recorded so far this year, but his 55% favorable rating is no worse than it was in late August (after the Democratic National Convention) and earlier in the year. Similarly, Obama's favorable and unfavorable ratings are neither better nor worse than they have been at previous points over the last several months.

More about Obama though: The Wall Street Journal reports today on the Chicago Democrat's high negatives among all voters — and 40 percent of white voters - on Obama's ties to Jeremiah Wright and other controversial black leaders.

Does this mean McCain's still got a chance? Could be, according to Roger Simon of the Politico:

Greg Mueller was a senior adviser to Pat Buchanan and Steve Forbes in their presidential campaigns and is an expert on conservative politics.

“McCain can definitely win the race,” Mueller said. “McCain needs to change the discussion back to a referendum on Obama. He needs to define Obama’s agenda as dangerous to America.

“It is dangerous to the economy. Obama is calling for higher taxes, historical spending and a huge increase in regulation that will hamper American business. Contrast that with McCain’s message of lower taxes and freezing spending. On foreign policy and national security, Obama is a risky bet in a hostile world.

“McCain needs to keep banging those themes over and over again, so on Election Day voters think Obama is just not ready for this. The McCain campaign needs to feed the doubt people have about Barack Obama. There is a lot of doubt out there. I don’t care what the polls say.

Well, McCain/Palin have already started pounding hard on Obama's liabilities, and if the poll findings hold up, we may see some tightening in the numbers between now and the election.

Four weeks is a long time in politics. Much remains to be seen.

McCain's Path to the White House

With a month to go in the presidential campaign, predictions of a Barack Obama election blowout are getting as common as the shady Chicago socialist's discarded radical pals.

I'm optimistic but no Pollyanna.

Nevertheless, folks don't talk about October surprises for nothing. Tonight's debate may prove to be a crucial game-changer for the Republicans. John McCain needs to focus on what he can do for the country.

* He was out in front on market reforms of Freddie and Fannie, and he's got a legitimate record as a reformer and spending hawk: Run with it.

* He was right about Iraq from day one, never wavering amid a domestic antiwar campaign that at times has bordered on treason: Hammer it.

* He is the personification of patriotism and service to country for which people hunger: Tap it.

* Most of all, John McCain represents the historic center of America's political cuture and ideology. Don't run from it. Hammer the point. Show America over and over again what four years of a Barack Obama adimistration means for the nation's exceptionalism and ideals.

I do not believe that Americans are so worried about the economy that they are willing to abandon the American experiment of exceptionalism to the state-centralized lethargy of European socialist economics.

That said, politically, look at the map above. The Los Angeles Times reports that McCain's facing an uphill battle. True, but compared to 538 and RealClearPolitics, there's significant possiblities for the GOP ahead.

Here's a decent scenario on the state of the race:

National polls give Obama a small but steady lead over McCain, built as the financial crisis has consumed the country. But the race for president is actually a series of contests fought state by state or, in the case of Nebraska and Maine, congressional district by congressional district. (Most states are winner-take-all. After quitting Michigan, McCain strategists said they would redeploy forces to Maine, the other state that apportions its electoral votes, to fight for one its four electors.)

The attempt to split off a vote illustrates the lengths the candidates are going to win an electoral college majority, mindful of the exceedingly close outcomes in 2000 and 2004. "If you win an electoral vote from the other side, that's a swing of two votes," said Robert Hardaway, a University of Denver expert on the electoral college. "In a close race, that could make the difference."

Strategists for the two sides are sifting daily reams of data -- opinion polls, voter registration numbers, TV ad logs -- to decide how to spend their money and where to schedule the presidential hopefuls and their running mates. As they plot their maps, each candidate starts with the 2004 results. If nothing changed and McCain won every state Bush carried, the Arizona senator would have 286 electoral votes and keep the White House in Republican hands for a third straight term.

But replicating Bush's success is a tall order for McCain, given the unpopularity of the incumbent and the economic upheaval that, surveys indicate, is hurting Republicans more than Democrats. Polls show voters place more trust in Obama when it comes to handling the economy.

They also have McCain trailing or tied with Obama in a half dozen states Bush won in 2004: Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Virginia, North Carolina and Colorado. McCain is tied or only slightly ahead of Obama in two other Bush states, Missouri and Indiana.

McCain could afford to lose a few Bush states -- Iowa and New Mexico seem most likely -- if he wins some that Democrats carried in 2004. Topping his list is Pennsylvania, which has 21 electoral votes and may be the closest thing to a must-win for Obama. Polls show the race there is close.

The election's still close.

McCain needs to focus his core message now more that ever, hammering his ace cards of experience, accurate instincts on the economy, and unshakable patriotic convictions. That's the Maverick's path to the White House.

McCain Leads Independents, Whites in New CBS Poll

Well, if the new CBS poll on the presidential horse race is any indication, Barack Obama is nowhere near clinching the deal:

In a sign that the race for president has returned to about where it was before the first presidential debate, the Obama-Biden ticket leads the McCain-Palin ticket 47 percent to 43 percent among registered voters in a new CBS News poll.

The Obama-Biden ticket led by a wider margin, nine percentage points, in a CBS News poll released last Wednesday, before Joe Biden and Sarah Palin faced off in the vice presidential debate. Obama-Biden led by five percentage points on Sept. 25.

In the new poll, the Democratic ticket leads by 3 percentage points, 48 percent to 45 percent, among likely voters.

There's lots of favorable data for Obama, but check out these numbers:

McCain/Palin hold statistically significant leads among independent and white voters, and as data from the new Wall Street Journal poll indicate, many voters are still on the fence: "A Month Away, Some Voters Can't Decide."

Captain Ed shares this juicy quote from the Wall Street Journal's summary:

The poll suggests that the first African-American to win a major party nomination could be vulnerable to race-based attacks tying him to unpopular black figures such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor and Al Sharpton, an outspoken and controversial figure. Thirty-five percent of all voters — and 40% of white voters — said those connections bother them. This is absent any candidate or party pressing hard on those themes, something Republicans have hinted they may start to raise more aggressively in the campaign’s closing days.

These data indicate that it's not a waste of time and resources to hammer Obama on his radical associations, and they validate McCain/Palin's shift to a more combative style on the stump today.

Will Obama Health Care Plan Cover Late-Term Abortions?

Barack Obama's health care proposals "would require insurance companies to cover routine treatments like vaccines and mammograms":

John McCormack asks if the Obama plan goes beyond mandating coverage for "routine treatments," but would require insurance companies to pay for abortions, including third-trimester procedures:

Following a speech to Planned Parenthood in July 2007, Obama made a controversial pledge to require private insurers to cover abortions. He said:

In my mind reproductive care is essential care. It is basic care, and so it is at the center, the heart of the plan that I propose. …

we’re going to set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance. It’ll be a plan that will provide all essential services, including reproductive services...

We also will subsidize those who prefer to stay in the private insurance market except the insurers are going to have to abide by the same rules in terms of providing comprehensive care, including reproductive care.

Just in case there's any doubt that Obama's reference to "reproductive services" meant that he intends to mandate coverage for abortion, the Chicago Tribune's Mike Dorning reported after the speech:

Asked about his proposal for expanded access to health insurance, Obama said it would cover "reproductive-health services." Contacted afterward, an Obama spokesman said that included abortions.

Obama has not been perfectly clear on his support for the Supreme Court's broadly defined "health exception" that permits third trimester abortions “in the light of all factors--physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age--relevant to the wellbeing of the patient.”

McCormack contacted the Obama campaign to determine if the Obama health plan would mandate insurance coverage of all legal abortions, including "partial birth" abortions:

He's still waiting for a response, but because we know that Obama - aka Senator Infanticide - is the most extreme left-winger on abortion in America, it's not surprising that the campaign's not provided a definitive answer to the inquiry.

Who is the Real Barack Obama?

Who is the real Barack Obama?

That's the new question popping up along the GOP campaign trail today, and the answer among some McCain supporters is telling:

Here's Marc Ambinder's response to the video:

Judging by McCain's slightly startled reaction, he clearly didn't anticipate that reaction, and McCain's in no way responsible for the utterances of anybody in his audience. But he must have some idea of how deeply this fear/outsider/other meme has spread. A tripartite strategy isn't needed...

Who cares what kind of idea he has of this "meme"?

The main thing is that he's doing what he needs to do: go on the attack against the most left-wing Democratic nominee since George McGovern.

Mark Halperin has the transcript of McCain's speech.

Democrats and the Financial Crisis

John McCain can pick up his economic game a bit by highlighting the Democratic Party's role in the creation of the financial crisis, seen here in this ad from Right Change:

This is much more than smear politics.

As Ron Moody writes:

As we prepare to elect our next president we need to keep in mind that a president can do only as much as Congress allows him to do. Case in point, the Bush administration made an effort five years ago to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to prevent the mortgage mess. This move was aggressively opposed by congressional Democrats, specifically Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank, who are now trying to put blame [on] Bush.

Four years ago, Sen. John McCain pushed for federal regulations in regard to Fannie and Freddie to control their reckless business practices. Again, the Democrats put a halt to such regulations.

The top three U.S. senators getting big political bucks from Fannie and Freddie are Democrats, with Sen. Barack Obama in the number two position after only fours years in office. Dodd is number one, with more than $250,000 received.

So now we have Frank, chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, in hot water because of his past relationships with Fannie Mae, and Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, who accepted millions of donations from now-failing finance firms he oversees. They helped put together the deal to bail out the companies that line their pockets. Think wisely, people, when you cast your ballot in November.

See also Bloomberg's penetrating piece, "How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis," which provides additional information on how congressional Demcrats blocked regulation that might have contained - if not prevented - the Wall Street collapse.

Obama Supporters Attack Cinnamon Stillwell

Readers may recall my post last week, "American Power Fan Mail," which shares the hate e-mail I got from an angry Obama supporter.

Well, you should see the stuff Cinnamon Stillwell gets. In response to her essay, "Palin Derangement Syndrome: Obama's Worst Enemy?", Cinnamon got a big, nasty round of attacks.

Here's a sampling:

*****

Please look in a mirror, my dear. Do you have ONE person of color as a friend? (Ask the person you're thinking of, if there is one, not yourself -- you may delude yourself into thinking s/he's a friend, but it's not likely.) Your crap about who the "real America" is, well, that's basically KKK codespeak for "people of color don't count, they're not real Americans." Most people in this country live in cities, not in the Appalachian woods you and your ilk hold dear. Face it, baby, it won't be long before the country is less than half-white and you're a forgotten memory. THAT future looks bright.

*****

Live simply.

Love generously.

Care deeply.

Speak kindly. HATE REPUKES

Sin (the very existence of a neo-con is indeed that):

As a Vietnam vet, retired member of the US Army and proud father and father-in-law of members of the USAF, I just want to say that your fascist rant has just prompted me to send even more $ to Obama's well-filled coffers. Your Nazi slut's approval ratings are dropping daily, baby. I am pumped up with energy and, yes, hate, for Repukes, and there are millions more like me that are going to send you back to your Munich beer hall.

I sh*t on your stinking soul.

*****

That is some wicked demonology, and there's more at the link.

This goes with the territory, I guess ... but it takes a thick skin to be a conservative political commentator these days.

Obama for America? Dishonorable, Dangerous, Risky

Here's the new John McCain ad buy:

Narrator: Who is Barack Obama? He says our troops in Afghanistan are

Barack Obama: “… just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.”

Narrator: How dishonorable.

Congressional liberals voted repeatedly to cut off funding to our active troops. Increasing the risk on their lives. How dangerous.

Obama and Congressional liberals. Too risky for America.

Barack Obama is the candidate of the antiwar, anti-American left. Obama's backers advocate death to America.

It's not just Bill Ayers. An Obama administration will locate this dangerous ideology at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue.

Firedoglake: America Will Die in the Blood of Empire

Victory in Iraq was all but declared earlier this year.

Both major candidates have claimed success for the Petraeus surge, and each have proposed policy adjustments for the future of Iraq and global security. Even this week, the Associated Press conceded a major Bush administration argument on the conflict, that success in Iraq would stablize the Mideast and promote American interests in the region. Even American public opinion sees the administration's counterinsurgency strategy as improving security in Iraq, and making it possible for the eventual drawdown of American forces.

If we might expect policy disagreements between the right and left in American politics, it should be on the pace and scope of the forthcoming troop withdrawal, or one might think.

Not so for the folks at Firedoglake, who seem stuck in 2003, up in arms over the long-ago controversy surrounding the American decision to topple the Baghdad regime in furtherance of over a dozen U.N. resolutions finding Iraq to be in material breach of its disarmament commitments.

But there's more at issue tonight, for Firedoglake is essentially calling for the death of the United States as the Imperial hegemon, in its essay, "It is in Blood That Empires, Like Humans, Are Born, It is in Blood That They Die":

War ... is hell. This isn't news, everyone knows it. But as with most of what everyone "knows" they don't really get it, because most people don't get things that have never effected them or people they love. And if you're in Congress, well, with very few exceptions, no one you care about is going to fight, no one you know is going to risk their life and maybe even get captured and tortured. The same is true of most people serving in the administration....

And so we come back to the heart of the war. We rarely talk about it anymore, but it's simple enough. All those people who supported the war, and most especially all those who voted for it, bear the moral responsibility for the results of the war. At least 100,000 dead Iraqis (and probably closer to a million). 4,000 and rising dead US soldiers. Rape. Murder. Torture. Orphans who got to watch their parents being killed. Husbands who saw their wives die, or wives who watched their husbands gunned down or blown into bloody carrion. Families who have buried multiple children.

All because members of Congress didn't care and because they were gutless. Because they though [sic] to themselves "I might have to face attack ads if I vote against this war." Can you think of anything more weak, anything more pathetically evil, than to care more about your reelection than about thousands dying? Than about the certainty that from your vote will come rape and torture and murder?

And can you think of anything more pathetic, more redolent of bad judgment than to say "but I didn't know. I trusted George Bush?"

As far as I am concerned most of Congress doesn't just have blood on their hands, they are in it up to their chins. Their gutlessness, cupidity and selfishness is such that most of them, in a just world, would be preparing their defenses for a Nuremburg trial. They attacked a country which had not attacked the US, based on lies that were debunked at the time, for petty personal reasons of political ambition or cowardice.

We all know that won't happen, but what I will tell you is this. Without the Iraq war, the financial crisis happening right now either wouldn't be, or would be much less harsh. It is quite likely that Iraq is the last mistake of the American century and marks the end of America as a superpower.

Where to begin?

Well, for one thing, international relations scholars document a current sustained American preponderance in the international system, and as stressful as Iraq has been, the U.S. is not at risk of losing is status as the world's sole superpower. Who are the peer competitors likely to replace U.S. leadership of the world system? China? Russia. The European Union? Hardly... If we go down, they'll go down with us, as international interdependence creates overlapping sensitivities and vulnerabilties to global crises and shocks.

But, frankly, all this is just grist for the larger attack on the moral legitimacy of the United States altogether. Firedoglake represents classic far-left anti-Americanism, and the project here is to continue the push for war crimes proceedings upon the possible accession to power of a Barack Obama administration. Ultimately, though, the goal is the destruction of the United States itself, which is alleged as racist and oppressive to the core, an irredeemable abomination in the world of nations.

Here's Firedoglake's conclusion:

American hegemony rose out of the ashes of WWII. World War II was an unprovoked war. Germany attacked those that did not threaten it. At Nuremburg Americans hung Nazis who had not been involved in the Holocaust, for no crime other than unprovoked war, declaring that it was a capital offense. Out of that war, and out of Nuremburg, America was born as the leader of the free world. Not just the mightiest, but the nation that said "never again".

It is fitting then that an unprovoked war is what is bringing an end to America's leadership of the free world, to its economic and military hegemony. Having done what it once condemned, having proven unwilling or unable to correct itself, America has reaped what it sowed....

It is in blood that empires, like humans, are born.

It is in blood that they die.

Notice the obligatory moral equivalence between Hitler's Germany and Bush's America.

Readers should have no doubts: The ideas expressed here are identical to those expressed by William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, tenured-radicals who sought death and destruction for American institutions during the Vietnam era. Ayers has said of America, "What a country ... It makes me want to puke."

Firedoglake, founded by Jane Hamsher, is a leading online fundraising and advocacy blog for the hardline radical left. Hamsher's Blue America has been a central vehicle for netroots mobilization over the last few election cycles, and the organization has been central to Barack Obama's fundraising success this year.

When Firedoglake announces that American hegemony will die in the blood of empires, know that these same people, who routinely spout this nihilism mayhem, have raised millions to install in the White House a Marxist-trained Chicago community organizer with ties to black liberation theology and unrepentant Weather Underground terrorists.

Barack Obama and Chicago Machine Politics

Back in July, when the New Yorker published its satirical cover portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama decked out in Muslim garb and militant fatigues, the political backlash tended to overlook Ryan Lizza's accompanying feature story, "Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama."

That's too bad, because Lizza's portrait of Barack Obama as a Chicago machine politician deserved just as much attention as Obama's radical ties.

Now comes John Kass, however, at the Chicago Tribune, with a needed update exposing the essential graft in Obama's Chicago machine politics pedigree. Kass suggests that John McCain - at Tuesday's debate - may find a road paved with damaging materials from Obama's connections to the Cook County Democratic establishment, it's "the Chicago Way":

Obama definitely does not want to go there. It would be a forced march for him. Obama's gauzy references to Chicago involve baseball and where he met Michelle and those blissful hours he spent as a community organizer. What he doesn't want discussed is his evolution from independent Democrat to potential White House enabler of the corrupt Chicago Democratic machine.

The Chicago Way is a road the Beltway media establishment dare not travel. It must frighten them. It conflicts with their fairy tale about Obama as reformer, and they're much too busy rummaging through garbage cans in Alaska to bother about Chicago's political alleys.

But any child in Illinois knows the Chicago Way leads through the most politically corrupt city in America, in a politically corrupt state, where muscle trumps reason, where Democratic warlords brazenly promote their offspring into public office, where even souls are offered up for sale.

The national media have never wanted to understand, much less expose, political corruption here, or examine how Obama prospered under the Daley machine's guidance. A trip down the Chicago Way would force them to re-examine their ridiculous narrative that sets Obama as a political reformer riding a white horse, or is that a winged unicorn?

Not only does the press not want to understand, it has systematically abandoned any pretense of objectivity to fully engage in the most explicitly pro-Democratic media campaign in modern journalistic history.

Sarah 2.0 Brings Out Genuine Fear on Left

Over the last few weeks, Sarah Palin has been mercilessly ridiculed as a vapid right-wing piece of trailer park trash, and more.

Boy, what a change one vice-presidential debate makes.

Sure, while there's a new twist to the anti-Palin attacks (the "mindless populism" meme's a good one), some on the left are now speaking of Palin in a much more serious language, using enemy images to suggest an existential danger to the republic should the McCain/Palin ticket somehow squeak through on November 4th.

Jeralyn at Talk Left really captures the left's terror in its new comprehension of the Palin threat:

Nothing better shows the poor judgment of John McCain than his Hail Mary pass of choosing Sarah Palin, a politician with no relevant national experience, serious knowledge gaps on important issues and questionable ethical judgment to be his running mate. By putting his personal quest to be President over the well-being of our nation, he has demonstrated he lacks the character to be President. He sold us out for the sake of his own ambition. The radical right is now in a position to propel McCain/Palin to victory and then McCain will owe them...

If McCain wins it will be because the radical right leapt to his cause once he put evangelical Sarah Palin on the ticket. It is only their enthusiasm that can win the election for McCain.

What's interesting in this post is how Jeralyn speculates on what will happen if a McCain/Palin administration takes office (the Supreme Court will be radicalized?). Jeralyn, classier than most on the left (especially Amanda Marcotte), eschews the "country bumpkin" slurs and identifies Palin's core conservative beliefs as a powerful mobilizing agent on the right for a grassroots resurgence. What a fascinating thing to be attacked for energizing the party's own core base of support. Of course, the continuing potential for Palin to siphon working class voters from the Democratic column adds an unstated element to the horror.

Lefists this morning - responding to Palin's comments yesterday - are now bending over backward to prove that the Obama-Ayers connection is insignificant old news.

It's not, and the fact that Palin's taken up the charge is especially horrifying.

The Alaska Governor challenges all that is ideologically sacred to those on the left of the spectrum. Palin's strong performance Thursday night, and her willingness this weekend to attack Barack Obama's greatest vulnerabilities, have created a new "Sarah 2.0" dynamic. Her comeback is real, and it's sowed genuine fear in her opponents.

Palin Attacks Obama’s Radical Ties

Sarah Palin went after Barack Obama's terrorist ties yesterday in a Southern California campaign stop (via Memeorandum):

Stepping up the Republican ticket’s attacks on Senator Barack Obama, Gov. Sarah Palin on Saturday seized on a report about Mr. Obama’s relationship with a former 1960s radical to accuse him of “palling around with terrorists.”

“This is not a man who sees America as you see it, and how I see America,” Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, said in Colorado, according to a pool report. “We see America as the greatest force for good in this world. If we can be that beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy and can live in a country that would allow intolerance in the equal rights that again our military men and women fight for and die for all of us.

“Our opponent though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

This is why Palin strikes abject fear into the heart of the American left.

The Alaska Governor lays it out plain and simple: Barack Obama is at home with those who have sought to destroy the nation. Leftists can squirm and spin the Ayers connection any and every which way, but the association is real, and Obama's efforts to suppress any discussion of his Chicago radicalism is a real indicator of how damaging greater public knowledge of his terrorist ties will be.

Your Mood is Like a Circus Wheel...

There was a time, back in the mid-1990s, when it struck me one day that almost all of my then-favorite musical artists were women.

I don't know what it was, exactly, but I think I was listening to Cheryl Crow, Jewel, and Sarah McLachlan ... all the time (and I had a serious infatuation with Dolores O'Riordan, as well).

I'm reminded of those times whenever Christine McVie, one of my favorite female vocalists, comes on the radio - especially when she sings "Over My Head," with Fleetwood Mac: 




I don't really know McVie's critical acclaim. But I do know that there's something about her voice that's spine-tingling ... she's just wonderful.



I wanted to post Fleetwood Mac YouTubes back in the spring, around the time John McCain won the GOP nomination. Other things came up, and different things got posted. When "Over My Head" comes on the radio, I'm reminded that I've gotten behind in my "Lightening Up" series.

Notice the two videos, however: The first is from 1977, when I was in high school. My big sister was way more hip and into Fleetwood Mac, listening to "Rumours" all the time when that was the hot LP. "Over My Head" came out a little earlier, but whenever I hear the song I'm also reminded of those days as well. Lindsay Buckingham plays electric guitar in the 1977 concert above, with a longer instrumental introduction to the song. The second video is from the hyped tour in 1997, a reunion if I recall correctly, that got big television play on VH1 and so forth. I watched the concert a couple of times, if I recall. Buckingham plays acoustic, and McVie looks stunningly beautiful. Times go by so fast sometimes ... it's amazing.

Christine McVie retired from Fleetwood Mac in 1998, after the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I always wondered about that. It's hard to think of a band continuing when one of the core members leaves the ensemble.
In any case, please enjoy. I'll have more later...

Obama's Terrorist Connections

The big controversy today continues to be the New York Times' pro-Obama propaganda piece claiming that Barack Obama and William Ayers "do not appear to have been close."

Stanley Kurtz, who is at present probably the foremost expert on the Obama-Ayers relationship, called the Times' article a "white-wash":

... as New York Times reporter Scott Shane puts it ... since an initial lunchtime meeting in 1995, "their paths have crossed sporadically ... at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama’s first run for office, on the schools project (i.e. the Chicago Annenberg Challenge) and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde Park neighbors."

There is nothing "sporadic" about Barack Obama delivering hundreds of thousands of dollars over a period of many years to fund Bill Ayers’ radical education projects, not to mention many millions more to benefit Ayers’ radical education allies. We are talking about a substantial and lengthy working relationship here, one that does not depend on the quality of personal friendship or number of hours spent in the same room together (although the article greatly underestimates that as well).

Shane’s article buys the spin on Ayers’ supposed rehabilitation offered by the Obama campaign and Ayers’ supporters in Chicago. In this view, whatever Ayers did in the 1960's has somehow been redeemed by Ayers’ later turn to education work. As the Times quotes Mayor Daley saying, "People make mistakes. You judge a person by his whole life." The trouble with this is that Ayers doesn’t view his terrorism as a mistake. How can he be forgiven when he’s not repentant? Nor does Ayers see his education work as a repudiation of his early radicalism. On the contrary, Ayers sees his education work as carrying on his radicalism in a new guise. The point of Ayers’ education theory is that the United States is a fundamentally racist and oppressive nation. Students, Ayers believes, ought to be encouraged to resist this oppression. Obama was funding Ayers’ "small schools" project, built around this philosophy. Ayers’ radicalism isn’t something in the past. It’s something to which Obama gave moral and financial support as an adult. So when Shane says that Obama has never expressed sympathy for Ayers’ radicalism, he’s flat wrong. Obama’s funded it.

Obama was perfectly aware of Ayers’ radical views, since he read and publically endorsed, without qualification, Ayers’ book on juvenile crime. That book is quite radical, expressing doubts about whether we ought to have a prison system at all, comparing America to South Africa’s apartheid system, and contemptuously dismissing the idea of the United States as a kind or just country. Shane mentions the book endorsement, yet says nothing about the book’s actual content. Nor does Shane mention the panel about Ayers’ book, on which Obama spoke as part of a joint Ayers-Obama effort to sink the 1998 Illinois juvenile crime bill. Again, we have unmistakable evidence of a substantial political working relationship. (I’ve described it in detail here in "Barack Obama’s Lost Years.")

The Obama-Ayers connection is so damaging that the Obama campaign launched totalitarian efforts to suppress discussion of the evidence, for example, by issuing "Obama Action Wire" reports ordering supporters to shut down Chicago-area radio stations that had scheduled interviews with Kurtz and David Freddosso; and by attempting a cover-up of the intimacies of the Annenberg Challenge program.

The left's dismissal of the relationship as "guilt-by-association" is ludicrous. Over and over again, throughout the campaign, Barack Obama has had to defend his patriotism while simultaneously cutting ties to controversial America-bashers such as Jeremiah Wright. As Professor David Demming noted recently:

Obama is a vapid demagogue, a hollow man that despises American culture. He is ill-suited to be president of the United States.

The McCain campaign has now indicated that it will begin an aggressive push against Obama's past terrorist connections. In the meantime, here's an encore for these campaign videos, from The American Issues Project and DemocratsHateTheUS:

Stable Iraq Bolsters American Power in Mideast

As a rule, I don't use sources from the Associated Press (for obvious reasons), but their article on Iraq's role in stabilizing American power in the Middle East is noteworthy, "Stable Iraq Could Influence Mideast" (alternative link here):

Iraq is likely to play a significant role in America's Middle East policy for decades — even as the Pentagon scales down military operations here and ramps them up in Afghanistan.

The Middle East has long confounded forecasters, and the rosy predictions from the Bush administration that Iraq would emerge as a beacon of Western-style democracy in the Arab world have been long discredited.

However unlikely it may seem today, a relatively stable Iraq would have all the cards necessary to emerge as a major player in the Persian Gulf, where Saudi Arabia and Iran are competing for leadership.

Jules Crittenden's blown away, frankly, at AP's confirmation of the basic neoconservative argument on Iraq all along:

The news agency that more terrorists prefer you’ll recall was rather late to the surge table, if not nearly as fashionably late as Obama. The Associated Press and the scribbler of this particular analysis, Robert H. Reid, were still neck deep in body counts and failure-mongering when al-Qaeda was out of Anbar and on the run in Diyala in mid-2007. AP’s Baghdad bureauistas were asiduously scribbling everything they could to avoid or obscure the terrible truth of the surge’s growing success. But despite its shortcomings, Reid’s latest analysis does a relatively good job of laying out our vital interests in Iraq.

I'll update when we see the terrorist-enabling Newshoggers cover this story - it's going to be tough to clinch the argument that the Bush administration "paid for" this narrative.

Crossing Paths? Barack Obama and Williams Ayers

The conservative blogosphere's going to be saying, "give me a break"!

The New York Times has a big front-page story on the the intersecting lives of Barack Obama and William Ayers, the former Weatherman bomber who's now a radical professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

At a tumultuous meeting of anti-Vietnam War militants at the Chicago Coliseum in 1969, Bill Ayers helped found the radical Weathermen, launching a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and United States Capitol.

Twenty-six years later, at a lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper, Barack Obama met Mr. Ayers, by then an education professor. Their paths have crossed sporadically since then, at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama’s first run for office, on the schools project and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde Park neighbors.

Their relationship has become a touchstone for opponents of Mr. Obama, the Democratic senator, in his bid for the presidency. Video clips on YouTube, including a new advertisement that was broadcast on Friday, juxtapose Mr. Obama’s face with the young Mr. Ayers or grainy shots of the bombings.

In a televised interview last spring, Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, asked, “How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?”

More recently, conservative critics who accuse Mr. Obama of a stealth radical agenda have asserted that he has misleadingly minimized his relationship with Mr. Ayers, whom the candidate has dismissed as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” and “somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know.”

A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

Of course, everyone knows the Times is in the tank for Obama. But you've got to hand it to Bill Keller for his innovative in-text ad placement for the Illinios Democrat.

The piece is a joke.

Crossed paths? It's more like comrades-in-arms. Here's Captain Ed:

How close does Obama have to be to make this connection a valid point? The two men worked together on political projects in Chicago. The issue has nothing to do with the quality of their friendship, if one exists (and there seems to be some evidence of one), but with the kind of work the two men did together. Ayers still agitates for the overthrow of the capitalist system, and his educational project was designed to create little charter schools for churning out radicals.

The American public ought to be ashamed at the distrastrous journalism it's getting from the country's "unofficial newspaper of record."

See also, "Dead Cops, Dead Marines... and Their Killers":

Barack Obama is a radical leftist whose career was launched at the home of radical leftists and who has affiliated himself with terrorists, radicals and unapologetic haters of America.

Photo Credit: New York Times

White Trash Always Gets Dumped?

With Sarah Palin's dramatic comeback performance in last night's debate, radical leftists will be redoubling their efforts to attack, demonize, and destroy the Alaska Governor with everything they've got. Nothing will be considered beyond the pale, absolutely nothing.

So it goes with TBogg, the notorous demonic conservative ridicule machine, and his post tonight, "F-Me Pumps," an abbreviation of the Amy Winehouse namesake number:

If she did anything last night, it was to salvage some of her reputation but that's not going to get her and the "First Dude" out of Alaska unless it's to star in a sitcom ( I Love Lucy meets The Beverly Hillbillies).

This slime is to be expected, it seems, especially when that's all you're packing.

The left is supposed to be all about tolerance and difference, but as soon as someone comes along to break out of the pc-straightjacket, out come the big guns of villainy.

TBogg's trying to take down Palin, obviously, as if she's a slutty piece of white trash, a slur common among leftists blinded by Palin derangement:

This family is basically white trash ... Alaska Hillbillies ... as opposed to the Beverly Hillbillies who as the TV story went, actually did strike it rich with oil. No one in the Country Club/Wall Street Republican crowd would ever want anything do with a redneck family like the Palin's [sic] except to exploit them to win an election. Can't you just picture the entire Palin clan sitting down at a White House State dinner and opening their mouths to say something? You can only dress up a "redneck" to a point with expensive clothing and stylists. Despite all of the preparation and memorization and high end grooming, Sarah's ... still an ignoramus.

You know, folks often say that the evil we're seeing this campaign is relative, that it's just as bad on the right.

Sorry, but I'm not buying it - it just keeps comin' from the left side of the spectrum, like a sewage storm drain unplugged.

The Palins are not "hillbillies" - or if they are, so is the great majority of middle Americans; and thus Barack Obama's dismissal of working class Pennsylvanians as "bitter," clinging to "guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them," really is representative of the elitist big-city mandarin mindset that seeks totalitarian control of state and society come January.

Expect Obama Presidency as Most Left-Wing Ever

Lorie Byrd argues that John McCain has one month remaining to make the case to the nation that a Barack Obama presidency will be the most extreme left-wing administration in our lifetimes:

It should be obvious to voters that an Obama presidency along with a Democrat-controlled Congress would result in the most liberal policies many of us have seen in our lifetimes or imagined in our wildest nightmares. Add to that the very real possibility that a President Obama would appoint two or three Supreme Court judges. There would be virtually no check on the power held by liberal Democrats and they would feel emboldened by the election to claim a mandate for anything they proposed.

This is a scenario that should frighten all but those in the most extreme left wing of the Democrat Party, but I don’t think it is a scenario that most voters have really considered....

It would be no mystery to voters that an Obama presidency would be dominated by a far left liberal agenda if they were looking at the track records and associates of the candidates. Instead they are largely being shown an illusion of a modern day Messiah who is ready to unite the country and solve all its problems. They are being shown images of adorable children singing songs of worship and praise to Obama who is going to “rearrange” things to make them right. They are being given fluffy, puffy stories about the candidate by those who profess to be news reporters. The veil is so thin, really, if you know what stands behind it. Whether or not the McCain campaign can lift that veil in the final month of this campaign will determine the course of the country in ways we can only now imagine.

It's likely that most rank-and-file Obama supporters do not appreciate the genuine radicalism inherent in Barack Obama and his campaign for the White House (see youth indoctrination video, here). Of course, his most fanatical supporters worship Obama for exactly this reason - he's the change agent to shift the United States to a "progressive"-socialist political economy, with an agenda so radical that the administration in practice will have no enemies on the left.

Image Satire: The People's Cube

Palin Comeback Sparks New Round of Attacks

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin performed brilliantly during last night's vice-presidential debate.

The left's spin is that Palin "read her talking points," for example:

The wingers think Palin was a smashing success because when you pulled the string in her back, she looked down at her cue cards and recited her talking points perfectly.

Frankly, the Democratic-left is deeply disappointed the Palin didn't crash and burn (the leftist wet dream these last few nights saw Palin tearfully withdrawing after the debate).

To the left's great consternation, Palin hit a home run. So what to do? Simple. Fire up a new round of Palin derangement:

We simply haven't had an overtly fecund, butch, straight-woman sex symbol in so long. She's like Annie Oakley with her six-shooters and her polar bears, her caribou dressing and her moose stew. She's got five kids hanging off of her, and you're like "Hells bells, that woman can f**k in the morning, go out for a long hike on the Arctic tundra, take down a polar bear or two, and be back in time to pass some new creationist legislation." She just kicks ass. I mean, she's just so — mmm. So like a powerful woman.

It's exciting, isn't it?

That one's pre-debate, actually, but certainly a tasty appetizer before the main course:

The point is, she doesn’t know s**t about s**t ...

Look for more of this slime going forward, especially after the polls show the race tightening up over the weekend.

President Bush to Sign $700-billion Rescue Package

The House of Representatives approved a $700-billion bailout of the financial system, and President Bush is expected to sign the bill into law this afternoon (more links at Memeorandum):

The House today approved a $700-billion financial rescue plan - sweetened by $110 billion in tax cuts - on a 263-171 vote four days after rejecting it in a move that stunned both Wall Street and Washington.

"We've made this bill better," said House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio. "Is it perfect? No. But it clearly is better than it was a week ago."

House leaders were stunned Monday when members rejected the plan, 228-205, with Republicans charging that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) had politicized the issue by blaming President Bush's policies for the financial mess on Wall Street that has brought the economic system to a tipping point.

President Bush, in a Rose Garden comment after the vote, pledged to sign the legislation when it reaches his desk. He doled out praise to Democratic and Republican leaders alike. "By coming together on this legislation we have acted boldly," he said. "We have shown the world that the United States of America will stabilize our financial markets and maintain a leading role in the global economy."

I know many conservatives will rise up in outrage over the "bailout," and I'll have more on the partisan and practical implications of the legislation in upcoming essays.

However, readers should check out Kimberley Strassel's essay at today at the Wall Street Journal, "What Leadership Looks Like." Strassel discusses Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, a GOP fiscal conservative who voted for the bill after of years of dissent in Washington over Congress' Fannie and Freddie enablers:

The congressman was no fan of Mr. Paulson's plan, and initially rallied conservatives around a rival approach. When it became clear that the administration's approach was the only thing going, he spearheaded negotiations to rid it of its worst liberal elements and to include more taxpayer protections.

As credit spreads widened, he said he also realized this was a "Herbert Hoover moment, where he sat by and let a Wall Street crash turn into a Great Depression . . . There are times when free-markets stop and rational thinking goes out the window. It then isn't enough to be a laissez-faire conservative and let Rome burn . . . This bill is not perfect, but doing nothing is far worse than passing this bill."

Compare this to Mr. Ryan's GOP colleagues in Wisconsin. Jim Sensenbrenner and Tom Petri were among those 162 Republicans that let Fan and Fred bust the bank. Yet when this week's day of reckoning came, Mr. Petri complained it was a "half-baked plan," while Mr. Sensenbrenner declared he wouldn't "subsidize Wall Street." Oh, for this righteousness during the half-baked Fan-Fred subsidy days. And this from two guys in safe seats.

This has left Mr. Ryan alone to defend his position back home. It hasn't helped that his colleagues are spinning this as bravery, crowing that it was they who listened to constituents and they who acted on free-market principles. Never mind that these principles were nowhere in evidence back when it mattered. And never mind that should America crash, it will be the free market offered up as sacrifice to the regulatory mob.

What do you think?