Taxpayer Network's New Anti-Boxer Ad

The website is here:

Democrats Prepare for the Worst

Love it!

At CNN:

Washington (CNN) -- It has been said over and over again: The 2010 midterm is the anti-incumbent, anti-Washington and by virtue of their position in power, the anti-Democratic election.

A sputtering economy, 9.6 percent national unemployment rate, housing crisis and little hope for a quick turnaround on the jobs front has forced Democrats on the defense heading into November.

OK, that is an understatement.

Democrats are under siege all across the country and are in deep danger of losing control of the House and if a massive wave develops on November 2, perhaps even the Senate.

Fueled by a huge fundraising effort by the Republican Governors Association, the GOP is also in position to reclaim more than a half dozen governorships including in states that President Obama easily won in 2008 such as Iowa, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

The new CNN/Time/Opinion Research Corporation Polls offers data that shows Democrats running for Senate seats in four key states are in dire straits and a president with little juice to help propel them to victory.

Worlds Apart: Williams Episode Destroys the Left's 'Objective' Journalism Façade

Well, the Williams episode further destroys the left's façade of objective journalism. But I'm elaborating on the New York Times' piece, "Williams Episode Shows 2 Versions of Journalism."

NPR’s decision on Wednesday to fire Juan Williams and Fox News Channel’s decision on Thursday to give him a new contract put into sharp relief the two forms of journalism that compete every day for Americans’ attention.

Mr. Williams’s NPR contract was terminated two days after he said on an opinionated segment on Fox News that he worried when he saw people in “Muslim garb” on an airplane. He later said that he was reflecting his fears after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks nine years ago.

NPR said on Wednesday night that Mr. Williams’s comments were “inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices.” According to a report in The Los Angeles Times, Roger Ailes, the Fox News chairman, offered Mr. Williams, who was already a paid contributor to Fox, a new three-year contract worth nearly $2 million in total.

After dismissing Mr. Williams, who was one of its senior news analysts, NPR argued that he had violated the organization’s belief in impartiality, a core tenet of modern American journalism. By renewing Mr. Williams’s contract, Fox News showed its preference for point-of-view — rather than the view-from-nowhere — polemics. And it gave Fox news anchors and commentators an opportunity to jab NPR, the public radio organization that had long been a target of conservatives for what they perceived to be a liberal bias.

Those competing views of journalism have been highlighted by the success of Fox and MSNBC and the popularity of opinion media that beckons some traditional journalists. That Mr. Williams was employed by both Fox and NPR had been a source of consternation in the past.

Blah. Blah.

And this from the newspaper that long ago gave over its front page as an extension of the editorial suite. But I'll be fair: It's to the point when reading any purported "objective" news outlet that your bias radar should be set to maximum power. And we should be a bit grateful when we find a reasonable piece of unbiased news reporting. I never understood this until I became a blogger doing my own reporting. But as I've indicated numerous times here, today we have "a partisan press favoring the Democratic Party."

But be sure to read Juan Williams' essay at Fox News, "I Was Fired for Telling the Truth." (Via Memeorandum.) I've long admired Juan Williams (and I've read two of his books). But my admiration's only grown through all of this, and of course the response of the left simply confirms that ideology's complete intellectual and moral bankruptcy. There's is simply nothing beneath these people. Recall that NPR CEO Vivian Schiller slurred Williams by suggesting he should keep his feeling about Muslims between himself and "his psychiatrist or his publicist." The upside, and this is something that black Americans should think twice about, is that Williams was offered a new three-year contract totalling nearly $2 million. With so much poverty and lost opportunity in America's minority communities, we often lose sight of some of our greatest role models, and in Williams' case, one of our most thoughtful commentators.

NPR Finally Found a Way to Get Rid of Juan Williams

He had the wrong opinions, from WSJ:

Regarding the firing of Juan Williams ....

To fire someone because he said, even on television, that seeing passengers in Muslim garb on an airplane made him "nervous" would be preposterous. This is "bigotry"? Especially in that Mr. Williams then told Mr. Reilly it would be wrong to call all Muslims "extremists" because some are terrorists, just as Timothy McVeigh's murders do not indict all Christians.

No, as Ms. Schiller made clear in her memo to Mr. Williams's former colleagues at NPR, "this isn't the first time we have had serious concerns about some of Juan's public comments."

Mr. Williams has been sacked from NPR for engaging in a patter[n] of . . . opinion. This, Ms. Schiller, noted is a "critical distinction" because of NPR's "ethics code" that its "analysts" not participate in shows "that encourage punditry and speculation rather than fact-based analysis."

Translation from the Orwellian: They finally found a way to get rid of Juan Williams.

It has long been one of the most open secrets in the world of punditry (which needless to say, includes NPR's "analysts"), that NPR's progressive political base was unhappy with Mr. Williams's appearances on Fox as existentially incompatible with their worldview.

Meanwhile, Cokie Roberts, another longtime NPR analyst, sat for years on ABC's Sunday morning talk show, cheerfully expressing moderately left-of-center opinions more or less in the same ballpark as most of those offered by Mr. Williams. And Nina Totenberg, NPR's Supreme Court reporter, has long offered left-wing opinion on the show "Inside Washington," not to mention in her own reporting.

Anti-Muslim "bigotry," as we learned in the fight over the Ground Zero mosque, has become the latest progressive weapon for waving their opposition out of a public debate and now, we see, even out of a job.

Bill Whittle's Firewall: 'What We Believe, Part 3: Wealth Creation'

Via Instapundit:

Previously:

* "Bill Whittle's Firewall: 'What We Believe, Part 1: Small Government and Free Enterprise'."

* "Bill Whittle's Firewall: 'What We Believe, Part 2: The Problem with Elitism'."

NPR CEO Vivian Schiller Apologizes to Juan Williams

That was pretty harsh: "NPR CEO: Williams' Views Should Stay Between Himself And 'His Psychiatrist'."

"I spoke hastily and I apologize to Juan and others for my thoughtless remark."

And about that lawsuit?

See Fire Andrea Mitchell, "RACIST! NPR CEO Vivian Schiller Questions Juan Williams’ Sanity."

Fox News Signs Juan Williams to New Three-Year Contract Worth Nearly $2 Million!

At LAT and Memeorandum.

And Megyn Kelly asks: "Can Juan Williams sue National Public Radio for wrongful termination?"

Barbara Boxer Profiled at L.A. Times: 'Proudest' Moment is 2002 Vote Against Iraqi Freedom; Refuses Release of Fallujah Terror-Aid Letter

LAT calls it "ardor" and "tenacity." Carly Fiorina calls it "bitter partisanship":

And note this, from the Times' profile:

After the 2004 presidential election, for example, Boxer was the only senator to challenge electoral college votes from Ohio where some Democrats alleged vote fraud. The move infuriated Republicans and delayed certification of Bush's re-election for several hours. No other Democrat, including Kerry, Bush's Democratic opponent, supported her.

And when war fever swept Washington in 2002, Boxer resisted. She was one of the few senators who voted against authorizing Bush to use military force in Iraq.

Boxer calls that vote her proudest.

"I determined when I cast that vote that the Iraq war would be a disaster," she said. "I was right. That vote has been a comfort to me."

Barbara Boxer's a traitor.

See Big Peace, "Barbara Boxer Approved Code Pink Trip to Fallujah to Donate $600,000 to Extremists to Murder US Soldiers," and Gateway Pundit, "Barbara Boxer Won’t Provide Copy of Fallujah Letter to Military Mother."

I hope Carly will hammer this issue before November 2nd.

The 'Extremists' Are Actually Moderates...

Via Glenn Reynolds:

Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism

Stanley Kurtz's new book is out. I started it last night. I'm loving it. Click the image to order your copy.

And here's Kurtz at National Review, "Obama's Radical Past":

On the afternoon of April 1, 1983, Barack Obama, then a senior at Columbia University, made his way into the Great Hall of Manhattan’s Cooper Union to attend a “Socialist Scholars Conference.” There Obama discovered his vocation as a community organizer, as well as a political program to guide him throughout his life.

The conference itself was not a secret, but it held a secret, for it was there that a demoralized and frustrated socialist movement largely set aside strategies of nationalization and turned increasingly to local organizing as a way around the Reagan presidency — and its own spotty reputation. In the early 1980s, America’s socialists discovered what Saul Alinsky had always known: “Community organizing” is a euphemism behind which advocates of a radical vision of America could advance their cause without the bothersome label “socialist” drawing adverse attention to their efforts.

A loose accusation of his being a socialist has trailed Obama for years, but without real evidence that he saw himself as part of this radical tradition. But the evidence exists, if not in plain sight then in the archives — for example, the archived files of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which include Obama’s name on a conference registration list. That, along with some misleading admissions in the president’s memoir, Dreams from My Father, makes it clear that Obama attended the 1983 and 1984 Socialist Scholars conferences, and quite possibly the 1985 conclave as well. A detailed account of these conferences (along with many other events from Obama’s radical past) and the evidence for Obama’s attendance at them can be found in my new book, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism.

The 1983 Cooper Union Conference, billed as a tribute to Marx, was precisely when Obama discovered his vocation for community organizing. Obama’s account of his turn to community organizing doesn’t add up. He portrays it as a mere impulse based on little actual knowledge. But that impulse saw Obama through two years of failed job searches. Clearly he had a deeper motivation. The evidence suggests he found it at the Socialist Scholars conferences, where he encountered the entrancing double idea that America could be transformed by a kind of undercover socialism, and that African Americans would be the key figures in advancing community organizing.

The 1983 conference took place in the shadow of Harold Washington’s first race for mayor of Chicago. Washington was not only Obama’s political idol, he was the darling of America’s socialists in the mid-1980s. Washington assembled a “rainbow” coalition of blacks, Hispanics, and left-leaning whites to overturn the power of Chicago’s centrist Democratic machine. Washington worked eagerly and openly with Chicago’s small but influential contingent of socialists, many of whom brought the community organizations and labor unions they led onto the Washington bandwagon.

America’s socialists saw the Harold Washington campaign as a model for their ultimate goal of pushing the Democrats to the left by polarizing the country along class lines. This socialist “realignment” strategy envisioned driving business interests out of a newly radicalized Democratic party. The loss was to be more than made up for through a newly energized coalition of poor and minority voters, led by minority politicians on the model of Harold Washington. The new coalitions would draw on the open or quiet direction of socialist community organizers, from whose ranks new Harold Washingtons would emerge. Groups like ACORN and Project Vote would swell the Democrats with poor and minority voters and, with the country divided by class, socialism would emerge as the natural ideology of the have-nots.

Figures pushing this broader strategy at the 1983 Socialist Scholars Conference included ACORN adviser Frances Fox Piven and organizing theorist Peter Dreier, now a professor at Occidental College and an adviser to Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. That is to say, Obama’s connection to socialist ideologues didn’t end with his recruitment into the ranks of community organizers. It began there and blossomed into a quarter century of intricate relationships with both on-the-record and in-all-but-name socialists. I’ve spent the last two years in the archives unraveling the connections ....

As we move into the first national election of the Obama presidency, Americans are confronted with a fateful choice. Either we will continue to be subject to President Obama’s radical and only very partially revealed plans for our future, or we will place a strong check on the president’s ambitions. Knowing the truth about Obama’s past is the best way to safeguard our future.

Senate Races Tighten as Election Day Nears

Here's Barbara Boxer's latest attack on Carly Fiorina:

A desperate ad, especially with that picture of Sarah Palin included. Boxer's a blithering idiot and a pathological liar. California's identity politics demographic is propping her up, but a silent majority may well sweep her out with the tide on November 2.

WSJ has more on how the Senate is shaping up:

Key Senate races are tightening as candidates on both sides make unexpected gains, suggesting that the final days in the battle for control of the chamber could be as volatile as any in recent memory.

Democrats who were all but written off, including Rep. Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania and Sen. Michael Bennet in Colorado, have revived and are pulling even with their Republican opponents in some polls.

Meanwhile, Republican challengers, including Dino Rossi in Washington and Carly Fiorina in California, who polls showed had slipped behind two Democratic incumbents, have drawn even.

The trend could mean that party loyalists, who may have been undecided at the campaign's outset, are coming home to their candidates as election day nears. The seesaw poll numbers also reflect activists' counter-reaction whenever the other side starts to build a lead.

"The further it starts to move in one direction, the more it energizes the opposite party," said Lara Brown, a political scientist at Villanova University near Philadelphia.

If Republicans win the Senate, they could more easily control the agenda by sending President Barack Obama legislation he would have to sign or veto. Democratic control of the Senate would provide a tie-breaker of sorts between a Democratic White House and a House that Republicans are expected to win.

Republicans need to capture 10 seats now held by Democrats to win a 51-49 Senate majority. Eleven Democratic seats are in play. Three are likely GOP pickups and the rest are too close to call. Democrats are within striking distance of one Republican-held seat, in Kentucky.

More at the link.

Yawn — Racist NAACP and La Raza Allege Tea Party RAAAAACISM, Again...

NYT has the story, "N.A.A.C.P. Report Raises Concerns About Racism Within Tea Party Groups."

It's funny though: If David Neiwert's name is seen anywhere near the word "racism," you can rest assured the allegations are a bunch of hot air. This is an industry. And coming two weeks before the election, this latest wheezing gasp for relevance and impact on the part of the racist NAACP and its La Raza allies is deeply pathetic.

RELATED: From Roger L. Simon, "Why I Won’t Be Reading the NAACP’s Report on Tea Party Racism."

NPR Fires Juan Williams

For tame comments too, via Big Journalism and Memeorandum:

And Michelle adds:

Guess who stirred up the pot to get Williams fired?

Think Progress and the Huffington Post...

That’s right. Government-funded NPR has apparently caved into left-wing attack dogs on the Internet.

Also in the lynch mob: CAIR, of course.

And here’s excitable Andrew Sullivan giving Williams his “Malkin Award” nomination. Yeah, kiss of death.

As I’ve said many times before: Political correctness is the handmaiden of terror.

Condolences to Juan Williams, whom I’ve debated — vigorously, but always with respect and cordiality — many times over the years.

Hope this accelerates his journey on the ideological learning curve. And I hope he doesn’t back down.

Democrat Attack Ads Get Personal Before Midterms

From Howard Kurtz:

If the Republicans have their way, the election will turn on whether Democrats are the party of runaway government.

Now, with time running out, the Democratic Party is fighting back—and not just by trying to brand many GOP candidates as extremists. The new line is that they’re sleazebags.

We’re talking ugly stuff here, accusing one opponent of threatening his wife, another of indifference to employee deaths, a third of trying to evict a child.

An onslaught of negative ads has become standard procedure for both parties, with the most incendiary fare held in reserve until the final days.

Republicans have run some highly personal ads on immigration, with a Sharron Angle commercial, for instance, proclaiming that Harry Reid is the “best friend an illegal alien ever had.” (Angle and Reid are neck-in-neck, according to the Election Oracle.)

But the unmistakable theme of this eleventh-hour blitz by Democratic Party committees is that the Republican contenders are unethical and untrustworthy business types. While President Obama accuses the opposition of wanting to lurch backwards to the Bush years, Democratic strategists—those in the trenches—are playing a rougher game.

Kurtz includes the attacks, from top to bottom: A Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee attack on Linda McMahon in Connecticut; a DSCC attack on Ken Buck in Colorado; and on John Raese in West Virginia; plus, a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attack on Scott DesJarlais in Tennessee; a DCCC attack on David Schweikert in Arizona; and finally, the DSCC unloads on Christine O'Donnell in Delaware:

Democrats Supported 'Humanitarian Aid' to Fallujah Terrorists Killing U.S. Troops in Iraq

A little late getting this. At Gateway Pundit, "Breaking: Barbara Boxer Approved Code Pink Trip to Fallujah to Donate $600,000 to Extremists to Murder US Soldiers." Gateway links to American Thinker, "Barbara Boxer, Code Pink's Favorite Senator."

And at Big Peace, "Rep. Waxman Spokeswoman: ‘We Do Not Know’ If We Aided Fallujah Terrorists with Code Pink Letter."

IMAGE CREDIT: The People's Cube.

Fire Rachel Maddow: MSNBC Host Claims GOP Congressman 'Received Advance Notice' of Oklahoma City Bombing

Readers will recall the many times I've dismissed Rachel Maddow as a fever-swamp leftist who happens to have a TV show. Well we probably have the best case for that today, with Maddow's extreme claim that Republicans had "advance notice" of the terrorist attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in April 1995 (via Memeorandum):

Conservatives are pretty incensed with this. See especially Uncle Jimbo and JammieWearingFool, who writes:

If MSNBC has the slightest bit of credibility this woman would be unemployed by this afternoon.

Yeah. She should be fired. And MSNBC should be shunned for giving her this kind of platform. See, "Rachel Maddow Hosts 'The McVeigh Tapes' ... Rachel Maddow!!"

Former President George W. Bush Speaks to Sold-Out Crowd at University of Texas at Tyler

Now this is the former president I want to see: "Sold-Out Crowd Gives Former President Bush Three Standing Ovations During Speech."

Former President George W. Bush pulled back the curtain of the Oval Office and gave East Texans a picture of what his job was like during the high and low points.

With trademark humor and conviction, he said he sought to lead with vision and optimism and to leave the office equal to or better than it was when he arrived.

“Here's what you learn,” he said. “You realize you're not it. You're a part of something bigger than yourself.”

Bush spoke Tuesday before a sold-out crowd of 2,000 people during the 76th lecture as part of The University of Texas at Tyler's Distinguished Lecture Series.

He walked on the stage to a standing ovation. People in the audience were pumping their fists and whistling. One audience member shouted, “Bring back Bush,” at one point during the presentation.

He would receive at least two more standing ovations before the end of his speech.

The former president thanked East Texans for their role in electing him to office both as governor and president.

He also touted his book “Decision Points” which is set to be released in November.

“This will come as a shock to some people in our country who didn't think I could read a book, much less write one,” he quipped.

Bush said he misses certain aspects of the presidency.

FWIW, here's more on the former president I did see, from Tim Daniels, with video: "The Battle for America 2010: The Wave Keeps Building."

RELATED: The press release from University of Texas at Tyler, "MEDIA ADVISORY: Bush Lecture at UT Tyler."

GOP Poll Shows Sanchez and Tran Tied

At CQ Politics:

A new poll conducted for Republican Van Tran's campaign in California's 47th district indicates the race is tied and a number of voters remain up for grabs. The Republican is challenging Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez, whose re-election prospects took a hit recently because of controversial comments she made in a Spanish-language interview.

The Tran poll, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, found Tran and Sanchez with 39 percent each, while independent Ceci Iglesias got 5 percent and 17 percent were undecided.

"With 18 days to go, Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez is in the fight of her political life," Public Opinion Strategies' Rob Autry wrote in a polling memo. With 39 percent support, Sanchez is in "an extremely precarious position for an incumbent Member of Congress to be with less than three weeks to go."

The poll of 300 likely voters was conducted Oct. 13-14 and had a 5.7-point margin of error.

That's an awful small sample. Still, Tran was trailing by 2 in early September, so the new findings are probably solid, given the ongoing economic malaise. Yet Tran's campaign is badly underfunded compared to Sanchez (with limited television advertising), so that might be a critical disadvantage. Too close to call, basically. But if the GOP grassroots can really mobilize GOTV, this is definitely doable.

Obama Renews Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics

LBCC President Eloy Ortiz Oakley attended the signing ceremony yesterday for the reauthorization of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. The story's at the Long Beach Press-Telegram, "Long Beach Education Leaders See Obama Sign Order":

LONG BEACH - Three of Long Beach's top education leaders were present at the White House on Tuesday as President Barack Obama signed an executive order renewing the Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.

Long Beach Unified School District Superintendent Chris Steinhauser, Long Beach City College Superintendent-President Eloy Oakley and Cal State Long Beach President F. King Alexander were among the education officials who looked on as Obama praised the initiative, which aims to boost educational opportunities for Hispanic students.

Obama noted that Hispanic students, who account for one in five students in the United States, are more likely to attend low-performing schools and drop out of high school.

"This is not just a Latino problem, this is an American problem," Obama said. "If one community falls behind, we all fall behind."

The initiative was established in 1990 by President Bush.

Steinhauser, Oakley and Alexander were invited to attend the signing ceremony and give a presentation at the National Education Summit and Call to Action.

Long Beach was one of just two cities in the country whose school administrators were asked to present their model education plan in front of officials from the Obama administration and the U.S. Department of Education. The other city was San Bernardino.

CSULB, LBCC and LBUSD have been nationally recognized for their partnership, which includes a program called the Long Beach College Promise that aims to allow all local students to attend their first semester at LBCC tuition-free by 2011.
"Long Beach is so far ahead in working together, we've become a national model," Alexander said Tuesday.

Officials hope the newly- renewed initiative will bring additional aid and recognition to local schools. More than 50 percent of the students in the LBUSD are Hispanic.

"I think it energizes what we're already doing and hopefully gives us an opportunity to do more," Oakley said.

More at the link.

'Cos This is What We've Seen...

I'm down with the idealism, although not the policy implications. Among the band's very first political songs, "Driven to Tears":

How can you say that you're not responsible?
What does it have to do with me?
What is my reaction, what should it be?
Confronted by this latest atrocity

Driven to tears

Hide my face in my hands, shame wells in my throat
My comfortable existance is reduced to a shallow meaningless party
Seems that when some innocent die
All we can offer them is a page in a some magazine
Too many cameras and not enough food
'Cos this is what we've seen

Driven to tears

Protest is futile, nothing seems to get through
What's to become of our world, who knows what to do

Driven to tears