Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
It's a no-brainer to figure out that Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama is the ultimate political mainstreaming device for the shady Illinois Democrat, who for many voters is an ideological radical and oppositional "other."
How come when Colin Powell promoted Bush's "lies," he was not someone to be believed or trusted, but now that he's endorsed Obama, he is someone to be . . . believed and trusted?
Powell's loyalty to George Bush appears to have extended to a willingness to deceive the United Nations, Americans, and the coalition troops about to be sent to kill and die in Iraq. He has never been held accountable for his actions, and it's extremely unlikely he ever will be.
There's no mention of all of this by lefty bloggers this morning, for example, Shaun Mullen, who screams:
The racist and xenophobic bile that has flowed from the right-wing Republican base and spokesmouths like Rush Limbaugh has been unprecedented in this campaign season, and it was easy to predict that the moment Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama that he was no longer a war hero and brilliant diplomat but just another uppity Negro.
John Heilemann has a nice overview of the conservative crisis that's taken over the Republican Party. It's all good, but this passage provides a nice summary:
With the prospect of defeat for John McCain growing more likely every day, the GOP destined to see its numbers reduced in both the House and Senate, and the Republican brand debased to the point of bankruptcy, the conservative intelligentsia is factionalized and feuding, criminating and recriminating, in a way that few of its members can recall in their political lifetimes. Populists attack Establishmentarians. Neocons assail theocons. And virtually everyone has something harsh to say about the party’s standard-bearer. Election Day may still be two weeks away, but already the idea-merchants of the right have formed a circular firing squad.
When the weapons of choice shift from pistols to Uzis after November 4, the ensuing massacre will be for Democrats a source of political opportunity, not to mention endless entertainment. But for Republicans it will be a necessary passage toward either the revival or reinvention of conservatism. Nobody serious on the right doubts that the overhaul is at once required and bound to be arduous—but it may take longer and prove even bloodier than anyone now imagines.
This is a debate among pundits, for the most part. We'll see more commentary and analysis on the conservative way forward in the weeks ahead, and of course post-mortems from all sides in the case of an Obama victory.
Meanwhile, Ross Douthat's had an exchange with Mark Steyn over the idea of a conservative "cocoon" (the walling-off of various ideological factions within the GOP).
Go back to Heilemann's piece for more background, for example, on the party's split over Sarah Palin's pick as GOP running mate. But here's Douthat, in any case, on how Palin's appeal to base conservative illustrates this notion of tribal cocoons:
Sarah Palin's Alaska is not the conservative cocoon. Neither is Tim Pawlenty's Minnesota, or Mike Huckabee's Arkansas, or any other place out in flyover country where a populist conservative became a popular and successful governor. The cocoon is the constellation of mutually-reinforcing conservative institutions - think tanks and advocacy groups, talk-radio shows and websites - that can create the same echo-chamber effect that the liberal media has long produced, and that at times makes it difficult for the Right to grapple with reality. The cocoon is the place where it took an awfully, awfully long time for conservatives to admit that the post-2004 crisis in Iraq wasn't just a matter of an MSM that wouldn't report the good news. The cocoon is the place where conservatives persuaded themselves, in defiance of most of the evidence, that the reason the GOP lost Congress in 2006 was excessive spending, and especially excessive pork. And today, the cocoon is the place where conservatives are busy convincing themselves that Sarah Palin's difficulties handling high-profile media appearances aren't terribly important, that her instincts are more important than her grasp of national policy, and that the best way to defeat Barack Obama is to start with the lines that Palin has used on the stump - Ayers, anti-Americanism and ACORN - and take them to eleven.
I like Douthat's writing, although I think folks are hashing things out more than is necessary. Had the Wall Street crash come after the election, it's quite likely that Demcratic-leftists would be the ones debating partisan "cocoons."
As I noted previously, this year's contest is shaping up to be an electoral earthquake. The economic crisis, and historic lows in "on the right track" polling data, have created the perfect environment for the party out of power. Indeed, it's counterintuitive that John McCain and the Republicans are doing as well as they are. As I argued, a large pick-up for the Democrats in the Congress - especially a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate - combined with a Barack Obama victory, could signal the kind of electoral change the country experienced in 1860 or 1932.
Even in the absence of a partisan realigment (which would be seen in a succession of Democratic victories over the next few presidential elections), there's certain to be a substantial change in the public philosphy.
Schlesinger offers a theory of political change that's less about partisan realignment than about transformations in national visions. Apparently, history moves through generations of private interest versus public purpose, between capitalistic indulgence and democratic involvement. The classic periods of private pursuit were the 1890s and 1920s, which were followed by periods of public purpose in the 1930s, 1950s, and 1960s.
Currently, in many respects we're still in the long period of private interest that came to fruition during President Reagan's administration, and hasn't been shaken loose since. The ideological underpinnings of the Reagan Revolution - limited government domestically, and robust internationalism in foreign policy, with a growing cultural conservative base - are now stretched to the breaking point after two terms of GOP rule, during which George W. Bush discarded any sense of commitment to the small-g conservatism that's driven much of the activist base of the Republican Party since Barry Goldwater's campaign in 1964.
In this respect, Barack Obama's rise to national prominence can be situated in a near-perfect storm of economic dislocations and decreasing public investment in people and infrastructure. The United States remains a center-right nation, but Americans are also pragmatic when dramatic challenges pose dilemmas for the prevailing public ethos.
In that sense, it's probably less John McCain's judgment or Sarah Palin's inexperience, than the overall crisis of conservative ideas and Republican governance, along with the failure to nurture a new conservative philosophy to lift up and revitalize the old.
All this being said, I'm not throwing my hands up at GOP prospects on November 4th. As noted, McCain's doing better than can be expected, and this year's got more electoral uncertainties than is usual.
Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama for the presidency (see Hot Air):
There's tremendous importance to Powell's move, and folks can sort though the former secretary of state's possible motivations. The main political implication is to give Obama considerable legitimacy where he needs it most: in foreign affairs. As Chris Cillizzanotes:
Powell’s endorsement complicates any attempt by John McCain and others within the Republican Party to cast Obama as naive on world affairs and unready to lead in a dangerous time. Obama now has a ready retort: “Well, Colin Powell seems to trust my judgment; that’s why he endorsed me.”
Powell is a brand unto himself in American politics, and clearly transcends the media's tendency to hype endorsements more than their actual importance to voters....
He is so trusted for his judgment on national security (even in the wake of his role in the current Iraq War) that his confidence in Obama to become commander-in-chief will resonate with many elites and voters. The Democrats' ability to play the Powell card for the next two weeks makes it much harder, even if there is an unexpected international crisis, for Republicans to suggest Obama simply isn't qualified to protect the country.
Even deeper than this is the question of race and culture: Colin Powell was a favorite for the GOP nomination in 1996, and during the first Bush administration he was more popular than any other figure at the White House.
If there's someone who personifies mainstream values, it's Colin Powell. He's the non-threatening black that Americans long for. It's not unlikely that we would have had similar race-baiting smear campaigns in the event of a Powell presidential run, but the former secretary of state's history as a soldier and public servant in previous presidential administrations would have made any attempt to "otherize" him positively ludicrous.
That's not the case with Barack Obama. At this point in the campaign, the opportunity for the Illinois Senator to roll the Powell endorsement off his lips is the most important mainstreaming push he could possibly have gotten. With the huge round of newspaper endorsements now lining up behind the Democratic nominee, it's going to be very difficult for John McCain to consolidate his recent improvements in the polls over the next few days.
Other than this, only time will tell how this election will end up. We have less than three weeks to go, and it's going to be close. The Powell endorsement is the kind of late variable that could make a difference.
A no vote on California's Proposition 8 could mean that kids in the state's classrooms may receive instruction on gay marriage. The Los Angeles Times reports:
It was supposed to be a 90-minute excursion, a noontime field trip for a group of San Francisco charter school students and their parents to see the kids' lesbian teacher marry her partner in a wedding performed by Mayor Gavin Newsom.
But after the event was reported in the San Francisco Chronicle and picked up by cable television and the Internet, the first-graders at Creative Arts Charter School found themselves at the center of the hottest battle in the campaign over gay marriage: the question of whether failure to pass Proposition 8 would result in widespread classroom discussions of same-sex unions.
Supporters of the constitutional amendment, under which marriage would be defined as only between a man and a woman, contend that if Proposition 8 does not pass, gay marriage will be taught in public schools. "We are already seeing that happen," said Frank Schubert, campaign manager for Yes on 8.
The opposing side insists that this is fear-mongering and notes that there is no mention of schools or curriculum in the language of the proposition.
I don't think it's fear-mongering. I don't want my own public-school children receiving instruction on gay marriage, especially my youngest son, who's in 1st grade.
Marc Sheppard argues that Barack Obama's presidential bid may benefit from his racial background:
Back in September, a quite topical McCain Ad [video] questioned Obama's economic experience and attacked his advisor "on mortgage and housing policy," former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines:
"Under Raines, Fannie Mae committed ‘extensive financial fraud.' Raines made millions. Fannie Mae collapsed. Taxpayers? Stuck with the bill. Barack Obama. Bad advice. Bad instincts. Not ready to lead."
Great Ad - and right on target. But amazingly, many in the media, including Time's Karen Tumulty, cried foul. Why? Because the video contained "sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman." The calculus: One black Obama plus one black Raines plus one white "stuck with the bill" taxpayer equals one subliminal interracial mugging.
Ridiculous? Try this one - the following month, when Sarah Palin mentioned at a California rally that Obama was "palling around with terrorists," the AP branded the comment as carrying "a racially tinged subtext." Hmmm. The Alaskan governor was referring to Obama's still inadequately explained close relationship with unrepentant home-grown terrorist William Ayers - who just happens to be white. Yet the preposterously twisted charge continues its regurgitation on cable news channels ad nauseam.
Such discussion-avoiding dishonesty would seem better suited to racial ambulance-chasers of the Jackson/Sharpton school than to the post-racial savior of man.
What makes this all the more dismaying is that it comes from Barack Obama, who has consistently presented himself as a healer, a man of a new generation above and beyond race, the man who would turn the page on the guilt-tripping grievance politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
Sen. Barack is Obama a Muslim of Kenyan origins who studied in Islamic schools and whose campaign may have been financed by people in the Islamic and African worlds, Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi said during a recent televised national rally.
"There are elections in America now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia. His name is Obama," said Gadhafi in little-noticed remarks he made at a rally marking the anniversary of the 1986 U.S. air raid on his country.
The remarks, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, MEMRI, were aired on Al Jazeera in June.
"All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man," continued Gadhafi. "They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency.
"We are hoping that this black man will take pride in his African and Islamic identity, and in his faith, and that [he will know] that he has rights in America, and that he will change America from evil to good, and that America will establish relations that will serve it well with other peoples, especially the Arabs," Gadhafi said.
Folks can question the legitimacy of this information, and World Net Daily doesn't add anything new to the initial MEMRI translation from June.
However, as Jennifer Rubin reported in September, Barack Obama, as a board member of the Woods Fund, received substantial support from the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), a non-profit group "supposedly dedicated to improving the conditions of Arab immigrants in the Chicago area."
One Woods board member was Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi, who helped organize Arab political donations to Barack Obama's election campaigns:
Khalidi, a former spokesman for Yasser Arafat, held a fundraiser for Obama in 2000 during his unsuccessful bid for Congress....
The pattern of funneling money to political allies and their allies is evident throughout Obama’s tenure at the Woods Fund. Tens and tens of thousands of dollars were granted to organizations including the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Business and Professional People for the Public Interest (BPPPI), the Center for Neighborhood Technology, Centers for New Horizons, the Chicago Jobs Council, the Chicago Education Fund, the Chicago Institute on Urban Poverty, the Chicago Urban League, The Gamaliel Foundation. Dozens of the board members and officials from these organizations in turn would donate money, in many instances up to the legal limit, for Obama’s Senate and Presidential races between 2004 and 2008.
For example the Woods Fund between 1999 and 2002 granted $60,000 to BPPPI. Board member and executives donated at least $16,950 to Obama’s political campaigns. The Woods Fund granted the Center of Neighborhood Technology $150,000 between 1999 and 2002. Obama received over $24,000 in campaign donations from its officials. And in turn Obama made sure to seek earmarks on their behalf once he reached the U.S. Senate.
A similar pattern of mutual financial help existed with regard to many of these organizations. While there is no evidence of an explicit quid pro quo, what is apparent is that the seeds of long term relationships and a network of financial support were sewn while Obama was a Woods board member.
While Obama's Arab/Palestian connections appear murky, the mainstream press reported on these relationships during the primaries, for example, in the Los Angeles Times' expose, "Allies of Palestinians See a Friend in Barack Obama."
Folks can question the significance and veracity of all of this, but as one more stream of Barack Obama's radical associations, I think the American people have a major interest in evaluating these facts for themselves.
I normally put aside partisanship for Saturday Night, but considering we have less than three weeks before the election, John Hinderaker makes a good point:
It's a mistake, I'm afraid. It's not that I lack confidence in Governor Palin; I don't. But I think it's almost always a mistake to visit an enemy's home turf without a clear understanding that you are among enemies.
The Saturday Night Live people are Democrats. That's all there is to it, and they will never give Sarah Palin, or any other Republican, a fair shake. Palin is, of course, more than a match for them in a fair fight. But for a fight to be fair, it must first be acknowledged that it's a fight. That won't happen tonight, and it will be almost a miracle if Palin gains from the exposure.
A reader notes the most striking feature [of the broadcast]: The Obama ads in the breaks pounding McCain. One is a new one focused on women's issues. The other nicely dovetails with Tina Fey's riff on angry McCain.
I'm going go easy here and suggest that perhaps Palin might have made some inroads with young independent viewers.
That said, it's good comedy, and I'll bet she really is hotter in person!
As you can see from the Chicago Tribune photo above, Obama noted that Ayers' book was, "A searing and timely account of the juvenile court system, and the courageous individuals who rescue hope from despair."
Interestingly, Obama and Ayers appeared together on a "juvenile justice" panel in 1997:
Children who kill are called “super predators,” “people with no conscience,” “feral pre-social beings” — and “adults.”
William Ayers, author of A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court (Beacon Press, 1997), says “We should call a child a child. A 13-year-old who picks up a gun isn’t suddenly an adult. We have to ask other questions: How did he get the gun? Where did it come from?”
Ayers, who spent a year observing the Cook County Temporary Juvenile Detention Center in Chicago, is one of four panelists who will speak on juvenile justice at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 20, in the C-Shop. The panel, which marks the 100th anniversary of the juvenile justice system in the United States, is part of the Community Service Center’s monthly discussion series on issues affecting the city of Chicago. The event is free and open to the public.
Ayers will be joined by Sen. Barack Obama, Senior Lecturer in the Law School, who is working to combat legislation that would put more juvenile offenders into the adult system; Randolph Stone, Director of the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic; Alex Correa, a reformed juvenile offender who spent seven years in Cook County Temporary Detention Center; Frank Tobin, a former priest and teacher at the Detention Center who helped Correa; and Willy Baldwin, who grew up in public housing and is currently a teacher at the Detention Center.
I find it very hard — no, make that impossible — to believe that Barack Obama had “no idea” who William Ayers really was, or that he had a past as a notorious domestic terrorist (as Obama’s campaign has claimed) while serving on panels with Ayers and simultaneously praising Ayers’ book in a major newspaper.
This story is likely to continue growing, and I thought that the image above would provide a good “visual” for the Obama-Ayers connection.
Actually, the campaign's getting late, and I'm not convinced that this story will "continue growing."
However, this information is extremely useful in documenting the depths of Barack Obama's deceit and evasion, and that's something that may work in turning back the tide a little in this last two weeks of campaigning.
Note: Obama's review of Ayers' book is digitally archived in Lexis-Nexus data files. Zombietime includes images of that proof as well, to satisy conspiracists arguing "hoax."
Michelle Obama issaid to have ordered lobster appetizers, two whole steamed lobsters, Iranian caviar, and French champagne while hanging out at the Waldorf-Astoria during a trip to New York with her husband, Barack, aka "The One."
While the "let them eat cake" quotation has been misattributed to Marie Antoinette, the phrase nevertheless remains perfectly descriptive of Michelle Obama's decadence, and the hypocrisy of her husband.
As Sweetness and Light indicates, Barack Obama's life and pursuit of the presidency has been about sacrifice and service:
Indeed, in his first autobiography, Dreams From My Father, page 293, Mr. Obama specifically cites a passage from Wright’s sermon “The Audacity To Hope” that helped inspire him to a life of public service and sacrifice:
It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere... That’s the world! On which hope sits!
Content Warning: If you're morally opposed to boxing don't watch the video below. My dad was a huge boxing fan (we watched many a fight together), and from a sports perspective Allen Green's 18-second knock-out of Jaidon Codrington is pure entertainment.
For perhaps the first time, I have to take strong exception to a TBogg post.
First, I find the boxing clip in really poor taste.
And, what is more important, I find overconfidence to be both uncalled for and genuinely misplaced. The polls are far too inconsistent and unreliable to justify any measure of overconfidence, which even in the best of circumstances is never an attractive trait.
I couldn't have said it better myself, except to add that DCRM's racist undertones add a particularly reprehensible tinge to the post.
Ben Smith's got a provocative piece up today at the Politico, "Racists for Obama?"
Anecdotes from across the battlegrounds suggest that there’s a significant minority of prejudiced white voters who will swallow hard and vote for the black man.
“I wouldn’t want a mixed marriage for my daughter, but I’m voting for Obama,” the wife of a retired Virginia coal miner, Sharon Fleming, told the Los Angeles Times recently.
You've got to love it!
All year I've been saying the genuine racism we've seen in campaign '08 has been on the Democratic side, and now the party's voters are just coming right out to confirm it!
As Jammie Wearing Fool notes, "So refreshing to see the Democrats openly admit they're racist scumbags..."
Until this fall, both campaigns viewed Michigan — a heavily Democratic state, but one with a history of tension between Detroit and its white suburbs — as Obama’s Achilles’ heel ....
But earlier this month, McCain gave up the state for lost as economic concerns appear to have trumped racial ones. “Obama’s personality — his speech, his look — he provides [white voters] with a non-threatening way to move forward on this issue, and that’s a very positive development,” said David Waymire, who led the unsuccessful opposition to the anti-affirmative action initiative. “He is not Kwame Kilpatrick,” he said, referring to the Detroit mayor who resigned last month after pleading guilty in a sex and misconduct scandal.
Just contemplate the loaded racism in that passage: Essentially, folks see Kwame Kilpatrick as a big, black threatening "nigga" (used here non-pejoratively, in the hip-hop sense, but perhaps differently by the working-class whites identified in the Politico).
I swear, one has to be a contortionist to make sense of Democratic Party racial politics.
I mean, think about it: What's the difference between Kwame Kilpatrick and Barack Obama?
Kilpatrick's headed for jail, sure, but besides Obama's interracial background, they're both dishonest big-city Democratic Party politicians who took advantage of insider connections and hardball mob-methods to climb the rungs of power. Of course, Obama's smarter, more attractive, and he's hasn't been caught in flagrant extramarital affairs (or drug-induced homesexual romps with two-bit political groupies). Other than that, Antoin Rezko, Bill Ayers and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and the spiritural guidance of Reverend "God Damn America" Jeremiah Wright ought to rate up there - at least in surreptitious subterranean sleaze - with Kilpatrick's one-party urban Democratic machine corruption and criminal prosecution.
This is much of today's Democratic Party, not to mention the bigoted rednecks, and they're all headed to the White House upon a possible Obama win on November 4th.
Dave Neiwert has made a career out of fanning the flames of partisan demonization. He has, for example, offered a theory of "pseudo fascism" which he uses as an all-purpose bludgeon to slander conservatives as the reincarnation of the Nazis.
As Classical Values once remarked, about Neiwart's "pseudo-fascist" thesis:
I think it is a heavy-handed appeal to the emotions, because for most people the word epitomizes all that is evil. Focusing on some characteristics of fascism (nationalism and one-party rule), and comparing these features to a supposedly monolithic "conservative movement" ignores such primary features as murderous suppression of all dissent and government regimentation of industry -- which American conservatives simply don't support. This trivializes genuine fascism, and further, by making all who want this country to win the war (or their party to win the election), would implicitly tar many millions of Americans with the "pseudo-fascist" smear.
Keep this in mind while watching Katrina vanden Heuvel respond to GOP Representative Michele Bachmann's attack on Barack Obama's anti-American associations:
Note the emphasis here on "struggle," which is in essence, "class struggle" in Marxist-Leninist ideololgy. Ms. Vanden Heuvel is the editor of the far-left wing journal the Nation, but she herself is the epitome of the "liberal elite" and her own personal history mocks the notion of struggle, revealing it as no more than a hypocritical "progressive" power grab.
A defining moment for Katrina vanden Heuvel came in May 2002 during one of her frequent appearances on MSNBC's Hardball. After vanden Heuvel spoke about how she lived in Harlem and understood the poor, host Chris Matthews let his audience know that in fact she lived in a multimillion-dollar townhouse in a posh section of Morningside Heights.
Did you notice the pure rage in Ms. Vanden Heuvel diatribe? There's a totally unveiled hatred of conservatives in this clip - it's an unmistakable anger at anything or anyone who might dare question the truly radical associations of Barack Obama, aka "The One."
In my post last night, "Is Barack Obama Anti-American?," I noted how today's radical left indeed hates American tradition and values, and hopes to turn this country into a social democratic regime. I suggested that anti-Americans aren't necessarily bomb-throwers; they're simply leftist ideologues who want a change of regime in the U.S., to turn the American state into something more like Canada or Denmark.
When people like Michele Bachmann are able to enunciate so perfectly the nature of that anti-Americanism, and Barack Obama's complete comfort in surrounding himself in it, the left has no other alternative than to resort to unhinged cries of McCarthyism and fascism.
It's all hypocritical and inflammatory - and is a preview of things to come under a possible Democratic administration in January.
With all the talk of a Democratic landslide in November (discussed here), it seems a measure of desperation on how far the left-wing media will go to smear John McCain and his family.
I've just read the article, and I frankly see nothing really new and newsworthy. The Times has hammered Mrs. McCain in a number of journalistic smears throughout the year, and today's article is just piling on.
In fact, the hatchet-job agenda of the article is revealed by Jodi Kantor's reprehensible rumor-trolling at Facebook, which is explained by Michael Goldfarb:
Today the New York Timeslaunched yet another in a series of vicious attacks on Senator John McCain, this time targeting not the candidate, but his wife Cindy. Under the guise of a 'profile' piece, the New York Times fails to cover any new ground or provide any discernible value to the reader other than to portray Mrs. McCain in the worst possible light. Though Mrs. McCain’s battle with drug addiction and even her miscarriages are again reported, the paper entirely ignores a life devoted to family and charity work in the most impoverished and violent corners of the world -- except when a detail can be quibbled with so as to imply some kind of deceit. This campaign made every effort to share personal accounts of Mrs. McCain’s good works with the paper, but apparently they were deemed unfit for publication in the New York Times. This is gutter journalism at its worst -- an unprecedented attack on a presidential candidate's spouse.
In order to assemble this barrage of petty and personal attacks, the New York Times employed tactics that are obviously unprofessional and almost certainly unethical. This campaign has obtained a copy of an email sent by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor to a 16-year-old girl and friend of Bridget McCain, the youngest of the McCain children. Ms. Kantor sought to dupe the unsuspecting minor by soliciting ‘advice’ on how best to approach the story, as if a top-flight investigative reporter at the New York Times would need the assistance of an underage girl in writing a hit piece.
The New York Times has stooped lower than this campaign ever imagined possible in an attempt to discredit a woman whose only apparent sin is being married to the man that would oppose that paper’s preferred candidate, Barack Obama, in his quest for the Presidency. It is a black mark on the record of a paper that was once widely respected, but is now little more than a propaganda organ for the Democratic party. The New York Times has accused John McCain of running a dishonorable campaign, but today it is plain to see where the real dishonor lies.
Goldfarb's post includes the text of an e-mail to Bridget McCain’s 16-year-old classmates, as well as the text of a letter to the Times from McCain family attorney, John M. Dowd, who wrote:
These allegations and efforts to hurt Cindy have been a matter of public record for sixteen years. Cindy has been quite open and frank about her issues for all these years. Any further attempts to harass and injure her ... will be met with an appropriate response. While she may be in the public eye, she is not public property nor the property of the press to abuse and defame.
The New York Times long ago transformed itself into an advocacy organization for Barack Obama. Trolling for dirt on Facebook among teenagers for hit pieces on a candidate’s spouse hits a new low. Does the National Enquirer even do that?
It's best to watch the whole interview to see Chris Matthews trying to pin down Bachmann to name names of anti-American legislators in Congress (and there's certainly a few).
But I'll say right now, though, frankly, Bachmann nails it: She singles out Barack Obama's radical associates one by one: William Ayers, Michael Pfleger, and Jeremiah Wright and tells it like it is. These folks by word and deed can't stand America? Obama himself has gone through a life of ideological contortions and scheming political machinations to get where he is today, which is in hot water for admitting he wants to take the private property of everyday Americans and "spread the wealth."
So, what's the problem? The left goes against center-right values all the time, right?
Oh, it's polically incorrect to allege that Democrats are anti-American? That liberals are anti-American?
It all boils down to definitions and usage. Do Democrats and leftists in overwhelming numbers want to blow up the United States? Absolutely not. But one can be anti-American without wanting to commit terror and treason against U.S. institutions and American citizens.
Anti-Americanism is for all intents and purposes a core element of contemporary left-wing ideology. Leftists do not like what America IS today and what it DOES now - that is, the left hates contemporary American PRAXIS.
The left loves American IDEALS - America's PROMISE - and leftists routinely uses them to excoriate the nation's alleged history of irredeemable racist oppression and xenophobia. These are the same people who look the other way at Ayers' history of unrepentent America-bashing to claim he's rehabilitated. These are the same people who have literally pulled for an American defeat in Iraq - that'll show those damned neocons that they can't just run around the world implanting proconsuls in Third World regimes! These are the same people who want the United Nations to exert sovereign power over American affairs, to rein in American hegemony gone wild.
I checked Google to see if I could come up with any good definitions of anti-Americanism. Most of what I found applied to international opinions of the United States, but Dennis Prager did offer a pretty good first cut of leftist hatred of America today:
Why does the left hate America...?
The answer ... is that ... American success refutes the socialist ideals of the left; American use of force to vanquish evil refutes the left's pacifist tendencies; America is the last great country that believes in putting some murderers to death, something that is anathema to the left; when America is governed by conservatives, it uses the language of good and evil, language regarded by the left as "Manichean"; most Americans still believe in the Judeo-Christian value system, another target of the left because the left regards all religions as equally valid (or more to the point, equally foolish and dangerous) and regards God-based morality as the moral equivalent of alchemy.
Gerhard Baker also had a nice take on leftists and anti-Americanism in the global context:
They want to construct an international system that will for ever prevent the US from pursuing its own objectives, a system designed to dilute, counterbalance and constrain America’s ability to govern itself. They prefer a world in which American democracy is subordinated to a kind of global government, rule by a global elite, tasked to make decisions on everyone’s behalf in the name of multilateralism.
This brings us back to Barack Obama.
Folks should go back and read his Foreign Affairs essay from July/August 2007, "Renewing American Leadership," which includes this nugget:
Today, we are ... called to provide visionary leadership. This century's threats are at least as dangerous as and in some ways more complex than those we have confronted in the past....
These threats demand a new vision of leadership in the twenty-first century - a vision that draws from the past but is not bound by outdated thinking. The Bush administration responded to the unconventional attacks of 9/11 with conventional thinking of the past, largely viewing problems as state-based and principally amenable to military solutions. It was this tragically misguided view that led us into a war in Iraq that never should have been authorized and never should have been waged. In the wake of Iraq and Abu Ghraib, the world has lost trust in our purposes and our principles.
A vision of blame America first...
These lines could have been written by Daily Kos, MoveOn.org, or any of the other Bush-bashing, America-hating leftists intent to tie-down American power like Gulliver and the Lilliputians.
Michelle Bachman is being vilified now because on these issues and more, she represents all that stands in the way of leftist nihilism, totalitarian control, and the radical march to destroy American traditionalism and exceptionalism.
Even the most sophisticated political science models are likely to exclude relevant variables contributing to the outcome of a presidential election, and thus - while often quite good - I've normally considered presidential forecasting research as knife-sharpening exercises rather than particularly reliable predictions of general election voting outcomes.
Campbell's model combines Gallup's Labor Day "trial-heat" poll findings (head-to-head polls) with second-quarter GDP growth rates into a forecasting model that - in its most recent specifications, from 1992 to 2004 - has been accurate within one-half a percentage point of Gallup's final pre-election survey.
In drawing heavily upon the preference polls, the models reflect both retrospective and (pre-campaign) prospective evaluations by the voters. While some voters may simply cast a verdict on whether they are satisfied with the performance of the in-party, other voters evaluate the issue positions, values, and character traits of the candidates and can do much of this even before the general-election campaign gets underway. Yet others may weigh both retrospective and prospective considerations in forming early vote inclinations. Unlike approval ratings, the trial-heat polls tap evaluations produced by whatever mix of prospective and retrospective considerations that voters in a particular year find convincing. The use of the early preference polls also allows the forecast to reflect the candidates’ relative success in uniting their parties’ bases at the outset of the campaign. This is an important aspect of the models since early party unity is more important to the overall vote than either the unity of partisans deciding later in the campaign or the division of later-deciding swing voters.
"Retrospective voting" refers to voters deciding their pick on the basis of the incumbent party's past policy performance: "What have you done for me lately?"
What Campbell finds, however, is that trial-heat models don't assume retrospective evaluations as a valid predictor of voter outcomes. What's key is that candidates matter, but also that open-seat elections are more closely decided presidential races (than when an incumbent is running for reelection), and that "dead-heat" contests are more likely in a open-seat election within a competitive party system environment.
Frankly, that sounds a lot like the state of the 2008 campaign is it now stands. As of today, Gallup shows a virtual dead-heat in the presidential horse race, with Barack Obama leading John McCain 49 to 47 percent among likely voters. As Campbell notes:
In short, the greater competition and less retrospective character of open-seat elections makes preferences polls particularly better suited than presidential approval ratings to predict the vote in open-seat elections.
"Preference polls" are those on the incumbent president's public approval ratings, and the implication here is that George W. Bush's historic low approval rates are likely to have a marginal impact on the outcome of the election.
Here's Campbell's conclusion:
There are ... however, good reasons to think that a big Obama win might not be in the cards. If voters are not purely retrospective or, at least, consider the presidential candidates’ records as well as the administration’s performance, if open-seat elections are more prospectively decided and more closely fought, and if elections for third-terms are fought on a level playing field rather than one tilted against the in-party, then we may be in for tight race....
So, what should we anticipate? What are the forecasts of the trial-heat forecast and its companion convention bump equation? First, the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ August release of the real GDP growth rate in the second quarter was 3.3%(annualized). Second, the preference poll conducted by Gallup from September 5 to 7, the first poll in September after the conventions, indicated that 49% expressed a preference for Senator John McCain, 44% expressed a preference for Senator Barack Obama, and that the remaining 7% favored a third-party candidate or were undecided. Converted to two-party preferences, Senator McCain as the in-party candidate had 52.7% of the two-party split. Plugging the second-quarter growth rate and the Labor Day preference poll numbers into the trial-heat equation produces a forecast that Senator McCain should be expected to receive 52.7% of the two-party popular vote. Based on the out-of-sample errors of this equation, the likelihood that Senator McCain will receive the vote plurality is 83%. The companion convention-bump equation predicts a vote of 52.2%. This is based on the pre-convention preference poll split of 50% for McCain, a net convention bump of 2.7%, and the secondquarter GDP growth rate used in the trial-heat forecast equation. Based on the out-of-sample errors of this equation, there is a 76% probability that Senator McCain will receive a plurality of the national two-party popular vote.
As noted in the introduction to this post, election forecasts are limited to the variables specified in the model, and Campbell's forecast doesn't seem to be catching the impact of dramatic late economic shocks (like the past few weeks), as well as other factors unique to this year, such as considerably likely variation between reported survey responses and actual election day vote-behavior (the possibility of a "Bradley effect" dampening the support for the Democratic ticket).
That said, given uncertain market trends (up-and-down again stock rallies), the potential effect on the polls from John McCain's improved debate performance, and the unknown impact of party mobilization and youth turnout on election day, this race is going down to the wire as a potentially 50-50 election.
Given this analysis, the GOP ticket is performing much better than would be expected in this year's prevailing electoral environment, and it's way too soon to be announcing a Democratic Party landslide.
Some hard-left Democrats see their chanceto even the score a bit, although all I'm seeing here is a collection of campaign memorabilia rather than a full-blown statement of revolutionary fervor at a Barack Obama campaign office (compare below).
Among the images that greeted visitors to the John McCain campaign office in Pompano Beach this week was a sign headlined "Barrack Hussein Obama” that compared the Democratic presidential candidate to Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler and Fidel Castro.
Shown a picture of the sign Thursday night, Broward Republican Chairman Chip LaMarca said he was "disgusted" by it and would immediately go to the office and remove it.
"I'm speechless at the ignorance," LaMarca said. "It's not something we can condone.
"We're trying to promote positive messages for our candidates. I understand people want their candidate to win. It's ridiculous. I'll find out who put it up there, and maybe they'll volunteer somewhere else."
The sign on an 8 1/2 by 14 inch sheet of paper looks as if it was printed from a personal computer. It's part of a gallery of posters and signs on the wall immediately inside the front door of the Pompano office, near the intersection of Sample Road and U.S. 1.
Others signs on the wall include a portrait of McCain and his wife, Cindy, Republican elephants, patriotic sayings, and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin holding a large hunting rifle.
The sign in question mocked Obama's call for change and asked what other figures "called for change in this fashion." The answer: Marx, Hitler, Castro, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini. "And you want Obama for President? Are you nuts,” the sign said.
So, the Broward Republican Chair moved quickly to have this volunteer's poster taken down...
Meanwhile, I don't recall a similar outrage on the left when Ohio's James Burge, a Lorain County Common Pleas Judge, mounted a companion set of wall-sized images of Che Guevara and Barack Obama in his county governmental office.
Hmm, maybe we're seeing a bit of desperation on the left...
Via CaptainEd: Election officials in Albany, Georgia, are investigating the case of Jack Justice, a developmentally-disabled adult, who was coerced to cast a ballot for Barack Obama in the state's early voting:
There's no word yet on possible ACORN involvement, although I doubt this will be the last of such outrages this year.
From Volusia County, Florida: Ashleigh Jones, a 7th grader at New Smyrna Beach Middle School, was called a racist for wearing a McCain-Palin campaign shirt on campus:
Jones is volunteering at the Republican Headquarters in New Smyrna Beach. The Palin t-shirt was a gift from her fellow volunteers.
But when she wore it to school she learned just how tough politics can be.
“Some of the students were calling me racist because I was Caucasian,” she said. “I wanted the Caucasian man to win. And I told them that’s not true. It’s my freedom of speech, it’s my opinion.”
Jones' parents are taking the attacks in stride, seeing this as a chance for their daughter to express her views appropriately.
Jones, the 7th grader, plans to wear her shirt to school again.
Recall that Democratic-leftists are assumed to be more "tolerant" of difference than conservatives, but as we've seen this season, the essential totalitarianism of left-wing ideology is on full display.
Charles Krauthammer offered a penetrating analysis of the left's racism double-standard:
Let me get this straight. A couple of agitated yahoos in a rally of thousands yell something offensive and incendiary, and John McCain and Sarah Palin are not just guilty by association - with total strangers, mind you - but worse: guilty according to The New York Times of "race-baiting and xenophobia."
But should you bring up Barack Obama's real associations - 20 years with Jeremiah Wright, working on two foundations and distributing money with William Ayers, citing the raving Michael Pfleger as one who helps him keep his moral compass (Chicago Sun-Times, April 2004) and the long-standing relationship with the left-wing vote-fraud specialist ACORN - you have crossed the line into illegitimate guilt by association. Moreover, it is tinged with racism.
Yep, racism - facism, even.
We need more kids like Ashleigh Jones out there, standing up for what's right.
Inside Higher Ed reported the other day that over 3,000 professional educators and university professors have signed a petition in support of William Ayers, the unrepentent '60s terrorist and known associate of Barack Obama.
His participation in political activity 40 years ago is history; what is most relevant now is his continued engagement in progressive causes, and his exemplary contribution — including publishing 16 books — to the field of education.
What is that "exemplary contribution"?
According to Sol Stern, at the Wall Street Journal, Ayers' educational pedagogy advocates the destruction of America as a social responsibility:
I've studied Mr. Ayers's work for years and read most of his books. His hatred of America is as virulent as when he planted a bomb at the Pentagon. And this hatred informs his educational "reform" efforts. Of course, Mr. Obama isn't going to appoint him to run the education department. But the media mainstreaming of a figure like Mr. Ayers could have terrible consequences for the country's politics and public schools....
Mr. Ayers was hired by the Chicago public schools to train teachers, and played a leading role in the $160 million Annenberg Challenge grant that distributed funds to a host of so-called school-reform projects, including some social-justice themed schools and schools organized by Acorn. Barack Obama became the first chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge organization in 1995. When asked for an opinion on the Obama/Ayers connection, Mayor Daley told the New York Times that Mr. Ayers had "done a lot of good in this city and nationally."
In fact, as one of the leaders of a movement for bringing radical social-justice teaching into our public school classrooms, Mr. Ayers is not a school reformer. He is a school destroyer.
He still hopes for a revolutionary upheaval that will finally bring down American capitalism and imperialism, but this time around Mr. Ayers sows the seeds of resistance and rebellion in America's future teachers. Thus, education students signing up for a course Mr. Ayers teaches at UIC, "On Urban Education," can read these exhortations from the course description: "Homelessness, crime, racism, oppression -- we have the resources and knowledge to fight and overcome these things. We need to look beyond our isolated situations, to define our problems globally. We cannot be child advocates . . . in Chicago or New York and ignore the web that links us with the children of India or Palestine."
The readings Mr. Ayers assigns to his university students are as intellectually diverse as a political commissar's indoctrination session in one of his favorite communist tyrannies. The list for his urban education course includes the bible of the critical pedagogy movement, Brazilian Marxist Paolo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"; two books by Mr. Ayers himself; and "Teaching to Transgress" by bell hooks (lower case), the radical black feminist writer.
Two years ago Mr. Ayers shared with his students a letter he wrote to a young radical friend: "I've been told to grow up from the time I was ten until this morning. Bullshit. Anyone who salutes your 'youthful idealism' is a patronizing reactionary. Resist! Don't grow up! I went to Camp Casey [Cindy Sheehan's vigil at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas] in August precisely because I'm an agnostic about how and where the rebellion will break out, but I know I want to be there and I know it will break out." (The letter is on his Web site, http://www.billayers.org/.)
America's ideal of public schooling as a means of assimilating all children (and particularly the children of new immigrants) into a common civic and democratic culture is already under assault from the multiculturalists and their race- and gender-centered pedagogy. Mr. Ayers has tried to give the civic culture ideal a coup de grace, contemptuously dismissing it as nothing more than what the critical pedagogy theorists commonly refer to as "capitalist hegemony."
In the world of the Ed schools, Mr. Ayers's movement has established a sizeable beachhead -- witness his election earlier this year as vice president for curriculum of the American Education Research Association, the nation's largest organization of education professors and researchers.
If Barack Obama wins on Nov. 4, the "guy in the neighborhood" is not likely to get an invitation to the Lincoln bedroom. But with the Democrats controlling all three branches of government, there's a real danger that Mr. Ayers's social-justice movement in the schools will get even more room to maneuver and grow.
Jack Donnelly and Adolph Reed, Jr., two political scientists whose works I've read, have signed on in support of Ayers. I'm sure I'd find more if I examined the petition more carefully.
Donnelly's a specialist in international human rights and a U.C. Berkeley alumnus, while Reed's an announced black-studies radical who sees Barack Obama as a race-accomodationist sell-out.
Whatever their motivations, as well as all of the others, it's clear to me that the ideological indoctrination they support is a disaster for the future of this nation.
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