"Voter Registration"? No, That Is Not the Way to Describe ACORN's Moves…

This says it all:

After speaking, dramatically, of how others have “died so I can vote" and after evoking "one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all", Maryland ACORN president Rev. Gloria Swierenga adds that "the Palin campaign speaks for itself.”

If ACORN is non-partisan, as it claims to be, the attack on the Palin (or the McCain) campaign is out of bounds and shows its true colors.

True, this should not be surprising to anyone — as ACORN has publicly come out for Barack Obama — but the voter registration is depicted as a patriotic duty, and that ought to be non-partisan. But the people whom ACORN's workers are registering can't be described as voters, or even as American citizens; what they can only be described as is as Democrats — Democrats who think exactly like ACORN, to be specific… (Of course, some of the registered people can also be described as dead persons, but that's another story…)

So it isn't voter registration. It's Democrat registration, or, People-who-think-like-me registration. There's nothing incriminating in that in and of itself, of course… No…

Only: don't tell us that this is ACORN's patriotic gesture (as in its ALL-American gesture)!

Caption: Heeding the call, another voter feels it is his most solemn duty to join the Obama drive! (Merci à RV pour l'image et le hyperlien…)

Stealing the Election: The 1960 and the 2008 Contests Compared

If Obama Can't Win It He'll Steal It, note Floyd and Mary Beth Brown.

Obama's ties to ACORN go back much further than his presidential bid. In 1992, Obama worked as executive director of ACORN's voter-registration segment, Project Vote. Obama, along with two other South-Side Chicago community organizers, led the voter-registration drive that played a part in the election of Carol Moseley Braun to the U.S. Senate.

To tighten the connection, in 1993 Obama joined the civil-rights law firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, where he sued the state of Illinois on behalf of ACORN. Then-Governor Jim Edgar argued that the Clinton National Voter Registration Act ("Motor Voter" law) would invite voter fraud, and refused to implement it. Consequently Obama and ACORN sued the state. Edgar was proven right about the "Motor Voter" law. Fund says it has "imposed fraud-friendly rules on the states by requiring drivers' license bureaus to register anyone who applies for a license, to offer mail-in registration with no identification needed, and to forbid government workers to challenge new registrants, while making it difficult to purge" voters who have died or moved away.

Despite all the documented evidence tying Obama to ACORN and the overwhelming stench of impropriety, Barack Obama has the unmitigated gall to deny his connection to this far-left, socialist organization.

ACORN is the same group that pressured banking institutions into making the toxic loans that are at the heart of our current financial crisis.

Central to the successful working of our republic is honest elections. If citizens believe that politicians are winning elections by committing fraud, our entire governing consensus will break down. Cynicism and despair are the inevitable outcomes.

Paul Johnson goes into detail about how the 1960 election may well have been stolen and about how Richard Nixon decided, nobly and in spite of the evidence, not to contest the results. (Thank you, John McCain, for not choosing a similar path and being gallant and humble like a latter-day Abraham Lincoln.) Apart from that, Paul Johnson notes that

The gradual but cumulatively almost complete transfer of opinion-forming power from the owners and commercial managers of TV stations to the program-makers and presenters was one of the great new facts of life, unheard of before the 1950s, axiomatic by the end of the 1960s. And it was gradually paralleled by a similar shift in the newspaper world, especially on the great dailies and magazines of the East Coast, where political power, with few exceptions, passed from proprietors and major stockholders to editors and writers. Owners like Hearst and McCormick (of the Chicago Tribune), Pulitzer and Henry Luce (of Time-Life), who had once decided the political line of their publications in considerable detail, moved out of the picture and their places were taken by the working journalists. Since the latter tended to be overwhelmingly liberal in their views, this was not just a political but a cultural change of considerable importance. Indeed it is likely that nothing did more to cut America loose from its traditional moorings.

…The change could be seen in 1960, in the way the East Coast media (the New York Times and Washington Post, Time and Newsweek), handled the contest between Nixon and Kennedy. By all historical standards, Nixon should have been an American media hero. He was a natural candidate for laurels in the grand old tradition of self-help, of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. He came from nowhere…

Yet, from start to finish, the media, especially the 'quality' press, distrusted him, consistently denigrated him, and sought to destroy him, indeed in a sense did destroy him. At every crisis in his career — except the last — he had to appeal above the heads of the media to the great mass of the ordinary American people, the 'silent majority' as he called them…

The Hiss case did Nixon even more damage with the media, which, against all evidence, tried to turn this undoubted Soviet agent and perjurer into an American Dreyfus in order to portray Nixon as a McCarthyite witchhunter…

By contrast, the media did everything in its power to build up and sustain the beatific myth of John F. Kennedy, throughout his life and long after his death, until it finally collapsed in ruins under the weight of incontrovertible evidence. The media protected him, suppressed what it knew to be the truth about him, and if necessary lied about him, on a scale which it had never done even for Franklin Roosevelt. And this was all the more surprising because Kennedy had most of the characteristics of an American anti-hero…

The man who got it right at the time was the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. He grasped the important point that electing a Kennedy was not so much giving office to an individual as handing over power to a family business, a clan, almost a milieu, with a set of attitudes about how office was to be acquired and used which at no point coincided with the American ethic. Having paid his first visit after Kennedy's election as President, Macmillan was asked on his return what it was like in Kennedy's Washington. 'Oh,' said he, 'it's rather like watching the Borgia brothers take over a respectable North Italian city.'

J.H.C. on a rubber crutch!

Despite being possibly the only member of the NP staff (an admittedly junior member) who would consider voting for Senator Obama if possible, this editorial from the New York Times is beyond absolutely unbelievable and incredulous. Even a casual observer not living in the US is quite aware of what ACORN is and what they have been up to in terms of fraudulent activity. Still the NYT sticks its journalistic head (and its few remaining shreds of credibility) in the sand, deep:

In Wednesday night’s debate, John McCain warned that a group called Acorn is "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history" and "may be destroying the fabric of democracy." Viewers may have been wondering what Mr. McCain was talking about. So were we.

Acorn is a nonprofit group that advocates for low- and moderate-income people and has mounted a major voter-registration drive this year. Acorn says that it has paid more than 8,000 canvassers who have registered about 1.3 million new voters, many of them poor people and members of racial minorities.

In recent weeks, the McCain campaign has accused the group of perpetrating voter fraud by intentionally submitting invalid registration forms, including some with fictional names like Mickey Mouse and others for voters who are already registered.

Based on the information that has come to light so far, the charges appear to be wildly overblown — and intended to hobble Acorn’s efforts.

Someone needs to alert the FBI that they are wasting their time on the investigation into ACORN's activities.

Dissecting Some of the Questions that Daily Kos Asked Self-Identifed Republicans

The Daily Kos poll of Self-Identified Republicans seems to be creating quite a stir — "The results are nothing short of startling" exclaims Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga (better known as Kos) — especially given the fact that the questions seem straight-forward.

But the Research 2000 for Daily Kos questions (1/20-31) to Self-identified Republicans (MoE 2%) are not as straight-forward as they look at first sight, and how you phrase a question can bring a vast variety in the answers. (For instance, there is a difference between asking "Do you think Bush was right to start a(n illegal) war?", "Do you think the U.S. Army was right to invade (Saddam Hussein's) Iraq?", and "Do you think the United States was right to overthrow a dictator (who had killed 300,000 of his fellow citizens)?" Note that each question changes even more by simply adding — or, alternatively, removing — the respective phrase in parentheses.)

As I will be pointing out below, the main problem here is with either-or questions in which neither option is entirely satisfactory. The answers therefore help Kos make those questioned look ridiculous. Often, by voicing a question stating the exact opposite of what the original question is saying, you sense the problem with that original question — since the (unmentioned) alternative is unpalatable, or even more unpalatable, the person questioned has little choice but to accept the question, incongruous as it may be. As a matter of fact, I have reason to believe that in any case, these questions were reframed after they were asked in order to make Republicans look ridiculous — make them look more Taliban-like — but since I have no proof of this, I do not dwell into the issue. The conclusion (as I write later on): If you really want to get to know the population or a segment thereof (rather than make a caricature of them), it makes more sense to frame your queries as if they were multiple-choice questions.

As I've mentioned before, I'm putting the finishing touches on my new book, American Taliban, which catalogues the ways in which modern-day conservatives share the same agenda as radical Jihadists in the Islamic world.

As Ann Althouse states, "It turns out this poll was designed to help him with that theory." ("As far as Research2000 is concerned," according to a commentator on Althouse's post, "they had Coakley over Brown 49-41 on January 14th. So they were wrong by 13 points 5 days before that election.")

Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not?

Yes 39
No 32
Not Sure 29

For what? Who the heck knows.

The exact reverse of this question might sound something like "Has Barack Obama done nothing wrong — not a single thing — has he, in fact, been right on the money every time during his first year in the White House?" Now, this may come as a surprise for America's (and the planet's) blame-America-firsters, but for one thing a number of people do not think the nation's commander-in-chief should act as the nation's apologist-in-chief (for instance bowing to foreign monarchs). For another, some of us remember Obama's wanting (or, rather, his followers wanting) to change the U.S. Constitution so that he could be reelected endlessly, winning more than two elections (apparently — in the best of worlds — ending up as president-for-life). How about the attempts to take over one sixth of the economy and to ram that law through Congress — and down the American people's collective throats — with no input from the opposition, from the American people, and, indeed, from his own party members (this, in direct contradiction — I mention this for all the people who love the idea of impeaching an American president for his alleged lies — of his campaign promises concerning CSPAN's cameras)?

And how about Obama's wars on Fox News and talk radio, along with changes to the FCC rules which would make it harder for the latter to survive, which, even if his followers lap it up, strikes some of us as an attack on the First Amendment? Those may or may not warrant impeachment per se, but certainly it makes it understandable that some people think that those acts should be opposed with the (legal) weapons at hand… (PS: for those who think that conservatives' domination of the airwaves is truly a travesty, please realize that it is a reaction to liberal domination of the newspapers and to liberal domination of the TV networks…)

Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?

Yes 63
No 21
Not Sure 16

That's the power of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, after one year of relentlessly claiming Obama is the second coming of Lenin ... and Hitler!

If anybody has made anybody seem like the second coming of Hitler, it isn't the Republicans with Obama; it is the Democrats (and their like-minded European brethren) with George W Bush.

More to the point, the reason Kos can make Republicans seem lame-brained here is because the question, "Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?", makes it sound like people are being asked if they think the most preeminent member of America's Democratic Party is (really or otherwise) a full-fledged, card-carrying member of a totally different party (the Socialist Party) — "the second coming of Lenin", in Kos's leering words — but when you think about it (the obverse question would be "Do you think Barack Obama is not a socialist at all?"), isn't the underlying question, obviously — the one that people are indeed answering — has Barack Obama behaved, is he behaving (at least part of the time), like a socialist would?

How wrong (or how allegedly lame-brained) is it (for "homegrown teabaggers" or others) to refer to a man as a socialist when that man has taken over General Motors — whether or not you agree with that — and who has attempted— again, whether or not you agree with that — to take over a sixth of the economy? During which time, he and the Socialist — sorry, the Democratic — heads of the House and the Senate (remember when they passed the stimulus bill with no input from either the opposing party or the members of their own party?) tried to get the whole deal decided behind closed doors with a handful of actors, acting almost as if the country were a one-party state. (To return to the previous question, how inane does the threat of impeachment become in this case?) Notice that I haven't even mentioned Obama's support for (or lack of a stand against) known socialist strongmen such as the Castro brothers, Hugo Chávez, and their like-minded brethren…

"Given what their base demands, and this poll illustrates them perfectly, it's no wonder the GOP is the party of no" writes Kos, and he's damn right: when we see all these takeover attempts, we do say No — and we do so proudly — and we want our elected representatives to say No. "No" is not — necessarily — a sign of virulence and resentment: "No" can be a sign of logic, of common sense, and of (rightful) resistance.

Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not?

Yes 42
No 36
Not Sure 22

We still have over a half of Republicans who don't think Obama was born in the US or think it's a matter open to debate.

It may well be that most of the writings concerning the wherabouts of Obama's birth sound delusional, but, as far as I can tell, James L Lambert's arguments are far from nonsensical… There are two problems with the alleged deluded "Birther" conspiracy that are overseen by Kos (and everywhere else). They are, first, that the real, original "long" birth certificate never seems to have materialized (the certificate of live birth being, and please correct me if I'm mistaken, a recent production); second, that to believe that an American citizen born to a foreign father who lived much of his childhood abroad may indeed have been born in a foreign country is not that far-fetched.

[Update: Not until April 2011 did the White House finally release Barack Obama's original birth certificate.]

Indeed, the difference between the Truthers and the Birthers is that in the first case, we are being asked to believe that 1) hundreds, if not thousands, of government officials were approached with a view to conspire to kill thousands of their fellow citizens, all (or most) of them innocent civilians, that 2) hundreds, if not thousands, of government officials agreed (apparently without a moment of hesitation) to conspire to murder thousands of innocent civilians, and that 3) none of these hundreds (thousands) of government officials has ever had a single, even fleeting feeling of remorse, or let the cat out of the bag, say while having too much to drink (no remorse?) during a Saturday outing to a local bar.

In the second case, we do not even have a conspiracy, but basically one single man telling a falsehood — although it might even be termed a lie of omission — a lie about what offhand is a personal matter, but has turned into the only thing (allegedly) keeping him from power (Update: The New York Times' Double Standard on Conspiracy Theories).

Most damning of all, when you pause to think of it, the castigators' proof — if it can be called that — all lies in one fact (beyond the recently released certificate of live birth): and that fact is that Obama is a man, a person whose word should never be doubted, who is capable of no lying, no evil, no chicanery. If he tells you that, say, he is a Christian, then how dare you deny he is a religious man?! How dare you imply that he is a Muslim?! How dare you state he is a socialist?!

The person who ridicules the "Birther" theory as inane has no more proof than the born-in-Hawaii skeptic of where Obama was actually born [or didn't have any more proof until over two years into Obama's presidency]: his only argument only argument — beyond the fact that the certificate of live birth and the newspaper clipping are incontrovertible proof that are not, can not be, fakes, bureaucratic mistakes, or misinterpretations — is the indisputable "truth" that Obama is someone whose honesty should not — should never — be questioned. (Whether in regards to his private life or to his political plans for America's future.)
[Update: As it happens, we would learn in 2012 (over four years after Obama was first a candidate and over three years after he entered the White House) that a "New Book Raises Questions About Obama's Memoir" (The New York Times' Michael Shear) and that, indeed, it turns out that Obama's memories were a "fantasy (like most of the President's own memoir)" (The Daily Mail). Adds Toby Harnden: "'Barack Obama: The Story' by David Maraniss catalogues dozens of instances in which Obama deviated significantly from the truth in his book 'Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance'. The 641-page book punctures the carefully-crafted narrative of Obama’s life."]

When you think about it, it might be less worrying that some do not believe Obama was born in the United States (because of the circumstances linked to his entire childhood, much of it abroad) than that some are utterly convinced he must be born in the United States (because the Chicago pol is allegedly a sainted figure who can do, who can say no evil, who is incapable of lying or of falsifying documents). Again, remember the desires of some of his followers who want(ed) the constitution to be changed, only so Obama could win one election after another and end up, in one way or another and in the best of all possible outcomes, as (de facto if not de jure) president-for-life?

Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?

Yes 24
No 43
Not Sure 33

Not just a quarter of Republicans believe this ludicrous premise, but another third think it's a matter open to debate. How do you negotiate with a party whose rank and file are that divorced from reality?

Again, there is a difference between "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?" and "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the United States to win?" — or, alternatively, asking "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to lose?" or "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the United States to lose?" Barack Obama has said several times that in this new, reset world of ours, there should be no losers and winners (or words to that effect), he has pointed out the many times the United States has allegedly been wrong (while making all due apologies), and, especially, he has been (or seemed) more concerned with giving Miranda rights rather than to learn more about the thugs planning (further) terrorist attacks.

Alright, answering Yes to "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?" may seem far-fetched, but if it seems that he himself, BHO, would answer No to that question (or to "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the United States to lose?"), think of the opposing question — isn't it true that there are indications that BHO would not want to answer Yes to either "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the United States to win?" or "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to lose?"

[Update: a couple of days after the ISIS attacks on Paris in November 2015 killed some 130 people, Barack Obama (proudly?) declared that What I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning.]

Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?

Yes 21
No 24
Not Sure 55

One in five Republicans think ACORN is so powerful as to magically make 10 million votes appear. Another 55 are open to the theory. In other words, just 24 percent of Republicans have an even passing relationship with reality.

This is called Kos's grotesque caricature weapon. Check the opposite question (asked to either Republicans or Democrats): "Do you believe that ACORN is an entirely honest organization which is deserving of the utmost trust?" Or how about this one: "Do you think ACORN played no tricks during the 2008 elections?" Those options we do not have, nor do we have (in a MCQ format) the option simply to say that ACORN cheated, without perhaps without going so far as having the ability to turn the election one way or the other. Answering No on that question therefore becomes akin to saying ACORN is honest and deserving of trust, and that is not something many people think or want to say… And so Kos feels he is allowed to caricature the results in a ridiculous way ("One in five Republicans think ACORN is so powerful as to magically make 10 million votes appear").

Furthermore, nobody believes ACORN uses (or tries to use) magic (if only!). And, in any case, it's not a matter of either stealing as many as 10 million votes or even of stealing the nationwide election. All you need are (some of) the borderline states. For example, I think a number of people could easily make the case that if not ACORN, then Soros' Secretary of State Project, stole (or was instrumental in stealing) the Minnesota senate election, a theft which required no more than a few hundred fake or dead voter names and which brought enough power to Obama's party for it to act like a one-party state and do what it wanted (at least for a few months)…

Do you believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama?

Yes 53
No 14
Not Sure 33

Sigh...

Guess what, Kos. We also think Scott Brown more qualified to be president of the United States! (Not to mention Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, and even… John McCain.) For one thing, Sarah Palin was mayor of a town and governor of a state (which she became in spite of her party machine) for a couple of years; how that makes one many times less (or more) qualified than head of a community organization and in the national senate (with the backing of his party machine), also for a couple of years, is beyond a few of us.

For another, Sarah Palin would likely not have tried to take over General Motors and one sixth of the economy (as Don Surber says, "she would not have wasted $787 billion on a stimulus that tanked the economy"), and she would not even have thought of reading the Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights and putting the mastermind behind 911 on trial in Manhattan. Well, even if you disagree with any of those, that should make you understand why Palin seems more qualified to be President of the United States than Barack Obama in many of our minds. Note that the "sigh" rests on little else than, again, the uncontested "fact" that the grotesque caricature of Sarah Palin can only be real and that BHO is this holier-than-thou human being whose potential for leadership is self-evident and uncontested.

[Update: After Vladimir Putin annexed the Crimea in 2014, it transpired that one of the many things that Sarah Palin had been ridiculed for during the 2008 campaign was predicting that electing a pacifist like Obama to the White House would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine.]

Do you believe Barack Obama is a racist who hates White people?

Yes 31
No 36
Not Sure 33

I bet more people think Obama is racist, but were too afraid to tell a live operator the truth.

Again, think of the exact opposite of this question — in this case, "Do you believe Barack Obama is an unbiased uniter who loves white people?" — to see how the question is distorted. It is highly unlikely that most people — even Democrats — would answer Yes to the entire revised question. Even Democrats who might — who probably would — gladly say Yes to the first part of the revised question, would have trouble with the second part, sensing it goes too far. (This question is one of several that makes me believe that the questions have been changed since they were asked in order to make Republicans look more "Taliban-like" but, since I have no proof for that, assume that the question was asked as written here.)

There is more than a little evidence to believe that, for reasons good or bad, Obama is — to some extent — resentful of white America, not least his autobiographies, the "damn America" comment of his (former?) spiritual guide, and his "stupid" white policemen quote. Imagine a person being asked the (original) question above; if she answers No, she is effectively answering Yes to the revised question ("do you believe Barack Obama is an unbiased uniter who adores white people?"). If you do not believe the latter, you are in a dilemma in answering the original question and remaining honest.

What all this shows is that if you really want to get to know the population or a segment thereof (rather than make a caricature of them), it makes more sense to frame your queries in multiple-choice question format.

Do you believe your state should secede from the United States?

Yes 23
No 58
Not Sure 19

42 percent of Republicans aren't really patriotic. They pretend to love America only when they approve of the president. These traitors don't believe in democracy, in our nation's founding ideals, or in our flag. To them, those colors run. They are cowards.

What rot! First of all, notice that if anyone is saying anything far-fetched, it is Kos — who is effectively (read his comment again) equating opposition to Obama to being unpatriotic, traitorous, and cowardly. And the way for Kos to frame this is to say that Republicans (pretend to) love America "only when they approve of" who is in the White House, when in fact they are saying — as I have noted in the "socialist" and "impeachment" questions above — that they (might) no longer want to be part of a union if and when the government (never mind if the person in the White House is a Democrat or a Republican) threatens to take too much power…

Let's use our rule again: think of what the opposite question would sound like — "Do you believe your state should remain in the United States?" Your reaction would be, "What is this pollster talking about? Nothing of the sort is going on, why does she bring this up?" You don't have too much time, you have been talking — even if you answered No to all the questions so far — about Obama and socialism and (allegedly) impeachable offenses and presidents who (may) hate you for your race, and now you are asked: "Do you believe your state should secede from the United States?" Obviously, your answer has to do with the loss of liberty from the federal government (real or otherwise) — the feds' treason (so to speak), if anybody's — and not an absence (far from it) of patriotism.

Note, secession sentiment is MUCH stronger in the South than elsewhere -- 33 percent want out, compared to just 52 percent who want to stay. In the Northeast, "just" 10 percent want out, in the Midwest, its 18 percent, and in the West, it's 16 percent. Can we cram them all into the Texas Panhandle, create the state of Dumbfuckistan, and build a wall around them to keep them from coming into America illegally?

Notice how Kos reveals his (Stalinist?) masses-hoarding desires, allegedly uneducated masses for which the gulag-admirer (?) has nothing but contempt. The point with secession, Kos, would be to prevent contemptuous Koses like yourself from carrying out your emprison-'em-all-or-throw-'em-all-out desires.

Should Congress make it easier for workers to form and join labor unions?

Yes 7
No 68
Not Sure 25

No comments here: Notice how Kos refrains from addressing an issue that he knows will hardly prove popular (more power to the unions!). Again, think of what goes unmentioned: imagine if this question had been framed using the controversial card check objective, labor's desire to dump secret ballots, and other bullying tactics — which was/is undoubtedly on most people's minds.

Would you favor or oppose giving illegal immigrants now living in the United States the right to live here legally if they pay a fine and learn English?

Favor 26
Oppose 59
Not Sure 15

Again, Kos refrains from comment. But the reason behind this answer, I surmise, is that once illegal immigrants are in, they've already broken the law — and should not be rewarded from so doing.

Do you support the death penalty?

Yes 91
No 4
Not Sure 5

Again, no comment from Kos.

Should openly gay men and women be allowed to serve in the military?

Yes 26
No 55
Not Sure 19

Should same sex couples be allowed to marry?

Yes 7
No 77
Not Sure 16

Should gay couples receive any state or federal benefits?

Yes 11
No 68
Not Sure 21

Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?

Yes 8
No 73
Not Sure 19

Oof. That's some serious neanderthal action going on. Gays can't serve their country, teach children, get married, or even have civil unions. That's the GOP agenda for gays, which makes the existence of the Log Cabin Republicans that much more of a mystery.

A lot could be said on all of these questions. Note that what to a leftist is simply a "gay man or woman" (like a woman per se or an African-American or an Asian) is to many other people a "gay activist" and yes, it's true that we believe (and we have good reason to) that activism (homosexual or other) gets in the way, among other places, in schools and in the military. Moreover, a number of us believe that activists often mix rights up with privileges.

But to take only the last matter, the question "Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?" sounds innocuous until you realize that, in many minds (and not just in Republicans'), schools are failing, people feel that it is scandalous that there no longer is a concerted effort to teach the 3 R's (readin', writin', and arithmetic), and indeed they have in their stead brought in leftist social goals, not least of which is homosexual proselytizing, as in the mandatory reading of the book Heather Has Two Mommies and as with what has led to the ongoing scandal of Kevin Jennings. It's nor unfair here to say that the question that people heard was, "Should gay activists be allowed to teach in public schools (in which case the follow-up question becomes, to teach the 3 R's or to teach the GLSEN agenda)?"

Now, I will not judge here to what extent it is true that Obama's openly gay Safe School (sic) Czar is a member of NAMBLA and to what extent it is true that he really has held classes in which he has taught schoolkids about fisting — although it seems an undeniable fact that he once failed to protect a 15-year-old from a child predator — all I can say is that parents have a right not to like what they read about Jennings and they have a right to think that all this social activism and all these agendas (whatever the cause, gay or any other, and whether they can be termed extremist or not) are not what schools are about, not primarily and not even secondarily. To quote Matt:

I agree that every child should be valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation and that there should be no bullying in the schools, period. However, I do not feel that the schools should be promoting a gay lifestyle and or any particular lifestyle. They should stick to teaching the fundamentals of Reading, Writing, Math, Science, and History.

Think about it this way: "Should openly Muslim men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?" Most people, Republican or otherwise, would say yes (even on army bases), I believe, as long as we are pretty much sure they do teach reading (and not the Koran), they do teach writing (and not jihad), and they do teach arithmetic (and not about the 72 virgins that believers will get as a reward for killing infidels).

Should sex education be taught in the public schools?

Yes 42
No 51
Not Sure 7

Should public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world?

Yes 77
No 15
Not Sure 8

In all of these questions, respondents from the South are slightly crazier, and those from the Northeast slightly less crazier, than the average. In these two questions, the differences are particularly exaggerated. In the South, the sex-ed question comes out 39-56, compared to 47-45 in the Northwest. For the creationism question, it's 82-9 in the South, compared to 70-23 in the Northwest.

"Less crazier"? First, this may come as a surprise to Kos, but humans have mated for tens of thousands of years (unless you accept the version that says humanity is 4,500 years old or so), and have done so without the need of teachers and schools (public or otherwise). This may also come as a(nother) surprise, but — again — some parents simply want the schools to teach, basically, the 3 R's and leave other things best done at home… Whatever you think about creationism and evolution, notice that in the second question, the parents are not asked whether public schools should teach creationism (or even if they should teach creationism alone, i.e., and nothing else) but whether they should teach what the Bible says — not an entirely indifferent matter.

Are marrigiages equal partnerships, or are men the leaders of their households?

Men 13
Equal 76
Not Sure 11

Should women work outside the home?

Yes 86
No 4
Not Sure 10

Should contraceptive use be outlawed?

Yes 31
No 56
Not Sure 13

Do you believe the birth control pill is abortion?

Yes 34
No 48
Not Sure 18

Do you consider abortion to be murder?

Yes 76
No 8
Not Sure 16

Over a third of Republicans believe the birth control pill is abortion, which explains why nearly a third of them want contraceptive use outlawed. This is so wingnutty, it's hardly believable. But it's true, just a bare majority oppose outlawing contraceptives.

Is it truly beyond argumentation to say that abortion is akin to murder? As usual, Kos makes no argument against another position. All he does is say it's wingnutty, it's unbelievable, it's non-progressive, it's reactionary, it's crazy, etc… He states the politically correct position and assumes that all others are nutty, adding — in shock — that the very fact that there are undecided votes is a scandalous travesty.

What we didn't ask was whether the 76 percent who consider abortion to be murder would advocate executions for women who have them. Since 91 percent of respondents support the death penalty.

This, again, is thinking that Republicans — that people in general — are robots (come to think of it, that does seem to be what many élites do happen to think, doesn't it?) who if they think one thing (A) must think another thing (B — but certainly not C) as well. For one thing, all murderers need not automatically be assigned the death penalty — it depends, or it may depend, on the circumstances — and the usual reason for standing for this position, in any case, comes not from a desire to punish a given woman but to prevent society — i.e., its doctors — from offering the procedure, and thus encourage the woman to change her behavior. (Note that I say this not as someone who believes sine qua non that abortion is murder but as someone who believes sine qua non that conservatives, of whatever bent, should not be grotesquely caricatured.)

Do you believe that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is though Jesus Christ, or can one make it to heaven through another faith?

Christ 67
Other 15
Not Sure 18

Two-thirds of Republicans assume anyone that is not a Christian is going to hell. It certainly makes it easier for them to dehumanize their enemies, either real or perceived.

Although that is hardly an unreasonable conclusion to make, notice that hell is not mentioned anywhere in the question, nor is any type of hellish (or devilish) language. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but offhand, I think it is not unfair to say that Christians do not believe unbelievers should go to hell; they believe they will go to hell, which (they further believe) is nothing if not an unfortunate state of events. Offhand, Christians — certainly not, today's Christians — do not believe that they should help unbelievers go to hell, or act actively (and zealously) to send them there — which (are you listening, Kos?) is all the difference between Christians and conservatives on the one hand, and the Taliban and other members of militant Islam on the other.

And if anyone has been dehumanized, and demonized, these past years, these past decades — as enemies of (progressive) America, as enemies (real, not perceived) of the entire planet — it is America's Republicans and conservatives…

Another Decade, Another Contagion Created by Leftists

And yet more of that impulse for “government love” nearly shot down any effort to correct it. The Democrats were mad at the idea that an executive who has the choice between taking recapitalization from the treasury and taking a golden parachute for themselves needed an enducement to act on the public's interest. What they did nearly weasel in, was that a large percentage of the revenue derived by the eventual liquidation of the Treasury's investment would go to activists acting in the favor of the Democratic party.

Just like the cause of the banking broblem itself, it was all about the class warfare taunt. “Community organizers” wanted it, and we all got it – social manipulation laws requiring underqualifying people had to be offered loans they couldn't affrord in the interest of "social levelling". The purpose was to combat redlining, another grievance recited by the left dug up from 1930’s Philadelphia which supposes that racism was behind the lending of mortgages to people able to pay them off.

See? It succeeded! The “oppressed” who could not make enough to pay back loans got them! Happy now? No? Stlll at it, oh mighty "community organizers"?

“What we have here essentially are a pair of government slush funds created in July as part of the Economic Recovery Act that pump tax dollars into the coffers of low-income housing advocacy groups, such as Acorn.”

“Acorn, one of America’s most militant left-wing ‘community activist groups,’ is spending $16 million this year to register Democrats to vote in November. In the past several years, Acorn’s voter registration programs have come under investigation in Ohio, Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Washington, while several of their employees have been convicted of voter fraud…”

That’s right. Rather than returning any profits made in the long-term from the economic rescue package, Democrats want to first reward their radical allies at ACORN for their help – often illegal help – in getting Democrats elected to office. Families, seniors, small businesses, and all American taxpayers deserve better than what Democratic leaders are attempting to jam down their throats.

The JournoList Issue No One Is Bringing Up

Why is it that you believe — nay, why is it that you know — that the intricacies of, say, Barack Hussein Obama's relationship with the Reverend Wright are entirely unfounded, at best highly exaggerated, and, in the final analysis, not worth dwelling upon?

Is it because it is — is it because it happens to be — a fact?

And why is it that you believe — that you know — that, say, George W Bush is a helpless clod while Sarah Palin is a hopeless cause, and that Rush Limbaugh is a racist while Fox News is run by fascists or the equivalent thereof?

Is it because it is, is it because it happens to be, a fact?

Or is it because you have been told that it is a fact?

Is it because you have been told it is a fact by people with an undying commitment to neutrality, to objectivity, and to the truth (to the truth, to the whole truth, and to nothing but the truth)?

Or have you been told it is a fact, as it happens, not by nonpartisan truth seekers who are neutral and objective — although they claim to be (indeed, they are convinced that they are the epitome of neutrality and objectivity) — but by political activists and political tools who turn out to be, more or less secretly, (surprise!) pro-Democrat, pro-statist, and pro-Obama while being anti-Republican, anti-capitalist, and anti-conservative?

1. The JournoList and the Left's Demonization of Opponents

Some of the best articles on the JournoList scandal — what the Spectator's R Emmett Tyrrell Jr calls "a mother lode of left-wing bigotry, screeds, and semi-literate gibbering" — come from a fellow Spectator commentator: "as worldly wise as I like to think that I am," writes John R. Guardiano, "I have been stunned, shocked and appalled by the raw partisanship and animalistic lust for power displayed by this pack of left-wing journalists."

Of course I always [k]new most Washington journalists were leftists. But what I didn't realize were the depths of intellectual dishonesty and dishonor to which many Washington journalists would descend in order to protect leftist pols and smear conservatives.

Indeed, for anyone not familiar with the case (i.e., for anyone used to get his information from the mainstream media — or what (Glenn Reynolds agrees) should be called the One-Party Media), John R. Guardiano gives the run-down of the emails' "extremely troubling and reprehensible" content:

• the Journolisters' attempt, during the 2008 presidential campaign to kill and bury stories about Obama's relationship with "Reverend" Jeremiah Wright;
• their push to deliberately smear innocent conservative journalists and politicos as "racists" and "bigots";
• their twisted passion to see Rush Limbaugh killed off and dead;
• their intolerant desire to have the government censor and shut down Fox News; and
• their baldly partisan effort to coordinate liberal talking points that would discredit Sarah Palin and John McCain, while helping to elect Barack Obama president.

John R. Guardiano explains more in detail:

We always knew that most liberal journalists were biased. Now we know that many of them are dishonest — and that, like their leftist forbearers in the Soviet Union, they reserve unto themselves the right to lie and to cheat to further their political ends.

We know this because of the Daily Caller's astonishing report … that a cabal of liberal journalists, activists, and academics acted in concert, and with malice aforethought, to kill and bury stories that were unfavorable to their political masters: Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Indeed, these "journalists" were so blindly and zealously committed to the left-wing political agenda that they advocated smearing their political opponents with wholly unfounded charges of "racism" and "bigotry."

Thus Ackerman's call for his fellow lefty "journalists" to "pick one," any one conservative. After all, "who cares" who it is? Who cares about their innocence? Just pick a prominent conservative and call him a racist. Smear him! Show no mercy! Destroy his reputation and kill his public image! Now!

Reason's Michael C. Moynihan points out (via Glenn Reynolds's Instapundit) that "the charming and efficient pundits of Washington, D.C." turn out to be

members of a listserv inhabited by liberal journalists and academics expressed their desire to see Rush Limbaugh die of a heart attack; to toss their enemies through plate glass windows; to call random conservatives racists; and to rid the country of those “fucking NASCAR retards.” … While commenters have noted blogger Spencer Ackerman’s sleazy suggestion that liberals start labeling random Republicans “racist”—pick a conservative, like “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists"—few noticed the obsession with accusing opponents not of being misguided or wrong, but motivated by racial animus and Nazi-like…

In fact, as the Daily Caller's Jonathan Strong points out (thanks to Instapundit who has been following the controversy on a daily basis), it turns out that the JournoList membership included quite "a number of professional political operatives, including top White House economic advisors, key Obama political appointees, and Democratic campaign veterans."

What's more, according to Jonah Goldberg (who describes the Journolist members as speaking "freely about their political and personal biases, including their hatred of Fox and Rush Limbaugh, and their utter loyalty to the progressive cause and Democratic success"),

it turns out that the "O" in Journolist stands for "Obama."

The author of Liberal Fascism adds that during the 2008 campaign,

participants shared talking points about how to shape coverage to help Obama. They tried to paint any negative coverage of Obama's racist and hateful pastor, Jeremiah Wright, as out of bounds. Journalists at such "objective" news organizations as Newsweek, Bloomberg, Time and The Economist joined conversations with open partisans about the best way to criticize Sarah Palin.

Incidentally, one of the key passages of Goldberg's 405-page book reads as follows:

That is how the liberal Gleichschaltung works; contrary voices are regulated, barred, banned when possible, mocked and marginalized when not. Progressive voices are encouraged, lionized, amplified — in the name of "diversity," or "liberation," or "unity," and, most of all, "progress."

Now, let's see — what other subjects have been described as "out of bounds" and in what other Obama-related matters have the people interested in out-of-bounds subjects been described, with a smirk or with a snort — i.e., "mocked and marginalized" — as racists and/or as nutcases?

Well, just about everything regarding Barack Obama and his past. All of it has been declared off-bounds or of little interest, whether it is his connections to the Weather Underground, to Bill Ayers, to his university's law journal, and to Acorn — and, indeed, whether it is Acorn's own alleged dedication to fair and honest work methods. Did (any of) the JournoListers uncover anything worth knowing regarding Obama, or, indeed, did they even refuse to try to uncover, or even investigate, anything at all (unlike, say, the bogus report of John McCain's infidelity or the innumerable stories on Sarah Palin's family members)?

And so, we finally get to the subject of this post, the matter of Barack Hussein Obama's birth certificate…

2. The Obama Birth Certificate and the Alleged Racists and Nutjobs

As a reader of JustOneMinute told Tom Maguire (as linked by Glenn Reynolds):

I don’t think Obama was born in Kenya or any other place other than Hawaii.
But I find it outrageous and ridiculous that we know more about Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber than we know about [the occupant of the Oval Office].

Now, before you react to this by saying "Oh God there's another one!" or "Lord haven't they gotten over this yet?" — whether you are liberal or conservative or neutral (independent) — then ask yourself, am I rolling my eyes heavenwards while sighing and saying/thinking this because it is a fact that it is a tiring subject (since the people asking for Obama's birth certificate can only be racists and/or nutjobs) or because I have been told that (it is a fact that) it is a tiring subject (since the people asking for Obama's birth certificate can only be racists and/or nutjobs) — having been told so, again, by people who just happen to be supporters of the Democrats' élitist world view, people who just happen to have a tradition of progressivism, and people who just happen to have a tradition of… demonizing any and all members of the opposition?

As it happens, No Pasarán has written about Barack Obama's birth certificate a total of three times. Over a period of, say, three years where Barack Obama has been in the national limelight, and calculating an average of one post a day (it has often been more), this comes to one post out of 365 or an average of less than 0.3 % of our coverage, which, I take it, any neutral observer will agree can hardly be said to be the product of extremism or zealotry. (But then again, do we know that interest in Obama's birth certificate can only be explained by extremism or zealotry because it is a fact or because we have been told it is a fact? — you should be getting the idea by now…) What's more, in two of the three posts the birth certificate is not even the main topic of the post.

So, as you can see, No Pasarán has refrained from approaching the birth certificate issue — certainly, we feel safe to say, because it hasn't interested us, but then is the reason it hasn't interested us (sorry if this sounds repetitive, but it also happens to be necessary) been because it is a fact that it is an uninteresting (and — yawn — tiring) topic? Or because we have been told, because it has been hammered into our heads, that it is an uninteresting (and tiring) topic and that, furthermore, if we do approach the topic we will be denigrated (with reason or otherwise), by the liberal élites as well as by conservatives who think (I mean, who "know") that it is an uninteresting (and tiring) topic in which racists alone and/or nutjobs alone and/or extremists alone and/or zealots alone can be interested — yes, I know: you get the idea by now…

Let's be honest: Have you been reluctant to examine the "rants" of the "Birthers" and have I been reluctant to examine the "Birthers'" "rants" because they in fact are racists and/or nutjobs (something — conveniently — inherent in the very word, Birthers) or because we have been told that they are (as a fact) racists and/or nutjobs — told so by people with a slobbering love affair (thanks, Jenny Erikson, via Instapundit) with Barack Obama? It is entirely possible that a number of the "Birthers" may in fact turn out to be racists and/or nutjobs, but if we wander away from the (demonized) personalities and the ad hominems, what can we tell about the facts alone of the case? Can we see just the arguments, whether or not they are voiced by intelligent responsible people (like the members of… the JournoList?), by racists and/or nutjobs, or by whoever may be in-between?

Since the left's modus operandi is to go after opponents' personal lives (now that's a revelation) and portray them as racists and… nutjobs, can we simply review the facts, Ma'am?

3. A Dispassionate Examination of the Facts, of the Nutjobs, and of Obama's Youth

May we be allowed to examine this issue — fairly, coolly, and dispassionately?

[Update: Not until April 2011 did the White House finally release Barack Obama's original birth certificate.]

Let us find out to what degree it is demented, ludicrous, and/or offensive to put into doubt the Hawaiian birth of Barack Obama — a man who has complained that he can't spend all of my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead (something no one has asked him to do and thus turns out to be a(nother) straw man of his)…

Why are there some Americans who doubt the narrative that Barack Hussein Obama was not born in Hawaii, or elsewhere in the United States? After all, noone ever doubted that George W Bush was born in the United States or that John Kerry or Al Gore or Bill Clinton or Bob Dole or Ross Perot were born in the United States.

So, isn't this proof that only Obama's color is the only reason for these nutjobs, these racists, these birthers, to claim, preposterously, that Obama was born abroad — or that he is a Muslim, or a socialist, or indeed a communist?

But then, again, neither George W Bush nor John Kerry nor Al Gore nor Bill Clinton nor Bob Dole nor Ross Perot had a foreigner for a father (or for a mother) nor did they spend numerous years of their childhoods abroad — many years, if not most, of which were in a Muslim country.

Should Allen West, or JC Watts, or Thomas Sowell [or Herman Cain, or Ben Carson] run for president, noone would ask where they were born or demand to see their their (original) birth certificate as proof. But perhaps that is because those black men are Republicans (proving thereby that conservatives are biased)?

Hardly. That is because those African-Americans (emphasis on the "Americans" part) are known to have grown up in the United States and are known to have had parents who were not foreigners — certainly not at the time of their birth (i.e., if either of the parents was born abroad, he or she had become an American citizen by the time of his or her famous offspring's birth). And indeed, it is the same for left-leaning blacks (as it is for whites, left-leaning of otherwise).

Recall that Jesse Jackson tried running for president twice (in 1984 and 1988), and although he did not manage to become the Democratic Party's candidate, noone suggested that he was born abroad, and that for the simple reason that the Greenville, SC, native did not have a foreigner for a father (or for a mother) nor did he spend numerous years abroad. Similarly, it is unlikely that Al Sharpton (who grew up in Brooklyn) would ever be asked for his birth certificate. Neither Baptist minister would be likely accused of being a Muslim, although both might very well be described as socialists, or as communists — and that, for reasons that, in the final analysis, are pretty valid…

For the record, I am an American citizen (a dual citizen, actually), a WASP-ish blue-eyed blond white male who has a foreigner for a father and who spent many years of his childhood in foreign countries, and if ever I were to run for president, I would think it entirely normal for fellow citizens to ask for my birth certificate — indeed, I would think it abnormal if they did not. (In case you're interested, I was born in Prague, but because of the circumstances of my birth — comparable to John McCain's (I was born in a diplomatic family) — as far as I can tell, this should not prevent me from running… So: see you in the year 2024…)

But in the event that Jesse Jackson, or Allen West, or Bill Gore, or George W Bush should be asked for their birth certificates — what is the big deal? Provide the (original) birth certificate and put the controversy behind you (and behind us — behind us all)… The very fact that they (i.e., the promisers of an era of transparency) refuse to provide something so simple, as James L Lambert points out, and get the controversy over with, once and for all, tends to be — whether you like it or not — suspicious.

After all, Barack Obama is not being asked to provide his tax statements or medical records (both of which actually turn out to be the norm for politicians to provide to the public and each of which is a far more intrusive document than a simple statement about an infant's birth location), nor is he being asked to provide some sort of far-fetched Jim-Crowe-era certificate, such as, say, the birth certificate of a grand-parent.

Besides, there are many basic things that a president, that any president (whatever the pigment of his — or her — skin), owes his populace, i.e., the people who are his "masters"…

As I've written before, in one of No Pasarán's rare birth certificate posts (re "rare": notice how I feel constantly forced — even now [indeed, that's one reason I took so long to get around to the main subject] — to justify myself regarding the birth certificate controversy):

It may well be that most of the writings concerning the wherabouts of Obama's birth sound delusional, but, as far as I can tell, James L Lambert's arguments are far from nonsensical… There are two problems with the alleged deluded "Birther" conspiracy that are ignored by Kos (and everywhere else). They are, first, that the real, original "long" birth certificate never seems to have materialized (the certificate of live birth being, and please correct me if I'm mistaken, a recent production); second, that to believe that an American citizen (whatever the color of his skin) born to a foreign father who lived much of his childhood abroad may indeed have been born in a foreign country turns out not to be that far-fetched at all.

Indeed, the difference between the Truthers and the Birthers is that in the first case, we are being asked to believe that 1) hundreds, if not thousands, of government officials were approached with a view to conspire to kill thousands of their fellow citizens, all (or most) of them innocent civilians, that 2) hundreds, if not thousands, of government officials agreed (apparently without a moment of hesitation) to conspire to murder thousands of innocent civilians, and that 3) none of these hundreds (thousands) of government officials has ever had a single, even fleeting feeling of remorse, or let the cat out of the bag, say while having too much to drink (no remorse?) during a Saturday outing to a local bar.

In the second case, we do not even have a conspiracy, but basically one single man telling a falsehood — although it might even be termed a lie of omission — a lie about what offhand is a personal matter, but has turned into the only thing (allegedly) keeping him from power (Update: The New York Times' Double Standard on Conspiracy Theories).

Most damning of all, when you pause to think of it, the castigators' proof — if it can be called that — all lies in one fact (beyond the recently released certificate of live birth): and that fact is that Obama is a man, a person whose word should never be doubted, who is capable of no lying, no evil, no chicanery. If he tells you that, say, he is a Christian, then how dare you deny he is a religious man?! How dare you imply that he is a Muslim?! How dare you state he is a socialist?!

The person who ridicules the "Birther" theory as inane has no more proof than the born-in-Hawaii skeptic of where Obama was actually born [or didn't have any more proof until over two years into Obama's presidency]: his only argument — beyond the contention that the certificate of live birth and the newspaper clipping are incontrovertible proof that are not, can not be, fakes, bureaucratic mistakes, or misinterpretations — is the indisputable "truth" that Obama is someone whose honesty should not — should never — be questioned. (Whether in regards to his private life or to his political plans for America's future.)
[Update: As it happens, we would learn in 2012 (over four years after Obama was first a candidate and over three years after he entered the White House) that a "New Book Raises Questions About Obama's Memoir" (The New York Times' Michael Shear) and that, indeed, it turns out that Obama's memories were a "fantasy (like most of the President's own memoir)" (The Daily Mail). Adds Toby Harnden: "'Barack Obama: The Story' by David Maraniss catalogues dozens of instances in which Obama deviated significantly from the truth in his book 'Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance'. The 641-page book punctures the carefully-crafted narrative of Obama’s life."]

When you think about it, it might be less worrying that some do not believe Obama was born in the United States (because of the circumstances linked to his entire childhood, much of it abroad) than that some are utterly convinced he must be born in the United States (because the Chicago pol is allegedly a sainted figure who can do, who can say no evil, who is incapable of or of lying or of falsifying documents). Again, remember the desires of some of his followers who want(ed) the constitution to be changed, only so Obama could win one election after another and end up, in one way or another and in the best of all possible outcomes, as (de facto if not de jure) president-for-life? Let me ask everybody a simply question: Who is the truly terrifying fanatic, here?

To return to John R. Guardiano:

As the Daily Caller reports, several hundred journalists, activists and academics secretly conspired on Journolist. What did they know and when did they know it — and with whom did they conspire and why? … there are a lot of unanswered questions that still surround the lingering Journolist scandal. … We're not talking about private love letters, after all. We're talking about coordinated journalistic actions designed to shape and influence what is reported in the public prints.

For the type of people who didn't find it abnormal, in response to questions regarding a presidential candidate's relationship to a hate-filled pastor, for one of their number to call for picking one (or several) of the candidate's critics — “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists”, it sounds suspiciously like it was par for the course to agree, directly or not, overtly or otherwise, to call racist or fanatic anyone who brought up common-sensical questions regarding that candidate's (undetectable) birth certificate.

The question we need to ask, what is there about Obama's past — including the birth certificate, but not only that — that was discussed among JournoList members, on the surface or in depth, not necessarily to hide a particular secret, unpalatable or otherwise (I doubt that Ezra Klein, David Weigel, Jonathan Chait, Michael Tomasky, Matthew Yglesias, or Spencer Ackerman have any better idea than I do where a given politician was 49 years ago — and they certainly do not seem to have been interested in finding out), but simply to make sure the topic continued unexplored, that it would remain unperturbed — while at the same time demonizing anyone (as racist, as fascist, as extremist, as a nutjob) who might demonstrate a (far from unreasonable) interest therein.

Bush a Symbol of Injustice in America for Outspending Gore and Kerry! Obama? Ho-Hum…

Four of five years ago, a furious leftist in France lashed out at me, asking me (rhetorically) whether I thought it was democratic and whether America was a democracy when the Republican (the conservative) candidate outspent the Democratic (the leftist) candidate. The unspoken message being that when one candidate outspends the other, there is no democracy, such things ought not to happen, and that if a man with leftist ideals were at the helm, a measure of justice would be at work and such things would not occur.

Now, we learn not only that the leftist candidate is outspending the conservative one, but that Barack Obama alone (that is, the political machinery behind him alone) is spending as much as George W Bush and John Kerry did in 2004 together!

But do we hear any kind of questioning of this kind of inequality, from the usual purveyors of political correctness and social justice (and alleged electoral fair-play)? You know the answer, do you not?

Update: Similarly Kyle-Anne Shiver says (merci à rv):

For the past eight years, Americans have been bombarded nearly nonstop by cries of "Bush stole the White House," without a single proven shred of evidence, without a single indictment or conviction of Republicans on vote fraud, vote rigging or anything even close. Meanwhile the only group indicated and convicted in actual vote fraud cases in the last two elections -- ACORN -- is fully mobilized still, claims to have registered 1.3 million new voters this year, and is tied historically and inextricably to our front-running candidate for President, Barack Obama.

Acorn Continent

“[The recipients] do not question the EU to the extent they would if they were not being funded by it,” said Pieter Cleppe, from the euro sceptic think-tank Open Europe. “That’s the whole point of the grants”.

An outfit set up and funded to gin up good news for the EU puts in some mild criticism of NGOs, GONGOs, and other miscellaneous Astroturf flunkies for taking money. It’s kind of rich, and that’s where the fun starts, once you realize that they DO have a price... it’s more that the EU is giving them, but they do have a price.

But some argue that Clepp is ignoring the big budgets of some of Europe’s NGOs and think tanks.

For instance, the €146,000 the European Policy Centre receives, accounts for just over 5% of its budget, according to its chief Hans Martens. “You can’t buy us for that price […] We’ve never felt any pressure because of it,” he said.

No, no, of course not. Think about this, you either have SO little public interest in policy that the think-tank would never be funded by citizens, or funding is getting piped to it from other government funded interest-groups and universities as well as Brussels.

So you either have a bunch of clucks who just don’t see a reason to scrutinize governments, or a bunch of clucks who think getting funded for its’ own sake to effectively say nothing substantive is better than working for a living.

What Is It About Obama's Friends and Acquaintances That Stands Out? They All Belong to the Blame-America-First crowd

The problem with Barack Obama is not that he is an unknown quantity (or an unknown quality). We know enough about him to make this basic objective observation: Every time the veil is lifted on Barack Obama, it's to hear of yet another leftist radical that he has been fêting or who is fêting him.

All his life, the Illinois senator has associated with people and/or won the admiration of people — American and foreign — who blame America first (or America and its allies first), or, to be more precise, who blame America alone. The Reverend Wright, Billie Ayers, Rashid Khalidi, even Obama's wife (who said, famously, that she could, that she would, be proud of her country only if and only when her husband was elected president).

Beyond that, we have Obama — rightly characterized as "a creature of universities and churches and nonprofit institutions" by Fouad Ajami in the Wall Street Journal — surrounded by the ACORN crowd and the corrupt Southern Chicago machine. Abroad, we have leaders of Iran and spokesmen for Hamas who are rooting for Obama as well.

If it isn't "God damn America", it is "America is a damn-awful place to live in." If it isn't "a damn-awful place to live in," it is "Allah damn America".

Again, this might be less of a problem if Obama were known to associate with other types of people. But he is not. If he were known to count, say, some average, run-of-the-mill businessmen among his associates. But he is not. If he were known to have some average friends who, without being loud full-blooded patriots, simply appreciate the country they live in. But he is not.

For example, prior to the election (in which one single general — a political general — came out for him — Colin Powell has been out of the military and into politics for 15-odd years), the man who purports to have nothing but admiration for the military never seems to have interacted with a member of the armed forces in any substantive way.

Obama came to all his — simplistic — viewpoints about the Iraq war (and its Afghanistan counterpart) from the apocalyptic imagery of the university professors and the mainstream media (also part — obviously — of the blame-America-first crowd). He never seems to have asked a member of the military, let alone a tactician or a strategist, about the conflict.

On the contrary. We know his repetitions of the media's apocalyptic imagery as well as the mantras such as soldiers murdered civilians (not to mention the very few times he visited Iraq). While speaking, during the presidential election (!), of the "splendid" and the "heroic" work performed by American troops overseas, prior to the race (!), Obama famously refused to condemn an abusive ad — and its puerile rhyme — in the New York Times, the one stating that General Petraeus would betray us. He refused to condemn MoveOn's ad that claimed that this splendid member of America's heroic armed forces was worthy of nothing short of scorn.

Barack Obama is not an unknown quantity. It is all too clear what he is. And it is all too clear what office he is not fit to fill…

• Posted on the Cleveland Plain Dealer
• Posted on Red County