Watching this video has disturbed me more than almost anything I have seen in recent years. It is the kind of exploitation of children that reminds me of Young Pioneer Camps I saw when visiting the Soviet Union in the Eighties. You could say, as some have, that this is much like what happens with children in churches and synagogues across America, but this is about a political figure - one of two current presidential candidates and the one leading in the polls. The Drudge headline references the “Dear Leader.” Quite apt. Here for you edification are the words of the people who saw fit to put this together (there’s more at the link):
Sing for Change chronicles a recent Sunday afternoon, when 22 children, ages 5-12, gathered to sing original songs in the belief that their singing would lift up our communities for the coming election. Light, hope, courage and love shine through these nonvoting children who believe that their very best contribution to the Obama campaign is to sing.
And they complain about the religious right - can you imagine the reaction to a similar group of kids singing about McCain under the tutelage of an evangelical minister?
Someone wrote the following email to Glenn Reynolds today: “Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working.”
I don’t know who this is, but it’s easy to speculate on where he or she works. There are only a few places in this contracting media market, other than the cited New York Times, that can afford to send sizable staff to Arizona and Alaska. I could hazard a guess of my own, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if the person who wrote this email would come out of the closet and testify? Of course, in so doing, we would probably be asking her or him to give up their job, not a particularly fair requirement in current economic climate. Still, it would be a great act of courage and, dare I say it, patriotism for that person to own the content of the email and sign it, not that there is anything suprising in that content. In fact its very banality is what gives it force. The level of bias and de facto censorship it imputes is extreme, almost Soviet. But we knew that, didn’t we?
Feel free to put your own guesses here. I am curious to see if they track with mine.
Well, obviously she’s far from the only one, but Ms. Waters represents the kind of ultra-reactionary pseudo-liberal who, in the guise of helping her own people (bringing dirt cheap loans through Freddie and Fannie), not only wrecks their lives but pulls down everyone else in the process. Her views, if you can call them that, are embarrassingly on display here. (video via Instapundit)
And she will be reelected, no doubt (as will every other clown who created this mess - Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, etc). That is the way of the world. Democracy, as Churchill, E. M. Forster and Plato pointed out, has its limitations. The problem is - elitism may be worse. There are no real elites anyway–maybe there never have been–just a bunch of phonies pretending they are. And that is just part of the problem as we sit here at the brink of what few of us contemplated would occur in our lifetimes - a Depression.
Meanwhile, the leaders of our country run around like chickens with their heads cut off. Nancy Pelosi acts like a partisan lunatic with a cognitive disorder, Barack Obama remains sniffingly above the fray for fear of alienating a single voter… and, sad to say, John McCain hasn’t done much better, though, in retrospect, at least he made a show of doing something by returning to Washington.
Not that any of it matters. Tinseltown has once and for all come to Washington, I regret to say, because William Goldman’s famous words about Hollywood are now equally true for the nation’s capital: “Nobody Knows Anything.”
Is it entirely coincidence that two of the creepiest Americans - OJ Simpson and Cong. John Murtha - both have their legal problems headlined on Drudge today? Or is it, as Michael Moore would say, proof of the existence of God? It’s worth noting that both have had their brushes with the law before, OJ’s perhaps a bit better known than Murtha’s. But OJ, despicable a murderer as he is, could arguably be said to have suffered more than Murtha who has remained a member of Congress since his obvious culpability in the Abscam Scandal. It’s hard to imagine what’s going on in his Pennsylvania district that the citizenry continues to elect this criminal [Mass mental illness? Something in the water?-ed.] but with the advent of the Marine’s lawsuit, not to mention our current financial crisis, they may finally wake up. [Will the citizens of Connecticut wake up about Chris Dodd?-ed. We shall see.]
Now regarding the Marine’s lawsuit: The following exchange between Murtha and Wolf Blitzer has been cited as an example of the congressman’s violation of due process.
“There was an (improvised explosive device) attack, it killed one Marine, and then they overreacted and killed a number of civilians without anybody firing at them,” Murtha told Blitzer.
“That’s what you’re going to find out.”
As the story continues: At this point, though, seven of the eight servicemen charged in the incident have been cleared. They have been given honorable discharges, etc. It’s not amazing that a moral reprobate like Murtha would make accusations like this bassed entirely on hearsay and without an iota of proof. But what about the supposedly neutral Blitzer? Did he have anything to say in rejoinder? Will he now cover the lawsuit that, in essence, began on his own show? Want to take a bet?
It will be interesting to see how the mainstream media plays Barack Obama’s bizarre assertion during the first debate that Henry Kissinger (currently a McCain adviser) agreed with him (Obama) about negotiating with Ahmadinejad. Kissinger was clearly alarmed, issuing this response within minutes: “Senator McCain is right. I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level. My views on this issue are entirely compatible with the views of my friend Senator John McCain. We do not agree on everything, but we do agree that any negotiations with Iran must be geared to reality.”
My guess is the MSM will do its best to ignore this, because it certainly makes Obama look like a foreign policy amateur. My question is why he thought Kissinger would let such a statement pass? Is Obama clueless or just a sleazy liar? Either way it’s pretty disturbing. Now sure I am biased against Obama. I have long considered him the emptiest of suits. But nothing I heard tonight changed that viewpoint, though perhaps nothing could.
UPDATE: Do not miss this video.
For many months now we have been treated to Bill Clinton’s intermittent displeasure with Barack Obama. Sometimes it has been overt, sometimes covert. Most recently, while being fawned over by the ladies at The View, he allowed as how Hillary did not really want the vice-presidential nomination after all. (This makes sense to me, by the way.) At the Democratic Convention, he delivered a far better speech than the candidate, showing up the less experienced Illinois Senator without really doing anything for his presidential campaign. In fact, he seems to speak more postively of McCain–especially off the cuff–only the other day lavishing praise on the Arizonan and defending his decision to skip the first debate to work on the financial crisis with an obvious fact most of us had forgotten - McCain had previously asked Obama for repeated, even constant debates, which the Democratic candidate refused. (The mainstream media made nothing of this, needless to say.) Indeed it seems Clinton wants Obama to lose.
The explanation for this behavior, says the conventional wisdom, is that Clinton wants McCain to win to give his wife another shot at the presidency in 2012. I wouldn’t doubt there is validity to this. But I submit there is a second reason, perhaps equally important: Clinton genuinely wants McCain to win for the good of the country.
I have no proof of this, I know, other than my instincts watching the man. But we all have a lot of experience of Bill Clinton - the good Bill and the bad Bill, the charming, brilliant politician and the liar. When Clinton is at his most relaxed and spontaneous, he appears–and possibly is–the most truthful. When he is enraged and tense (as in the Monica finger-wagging episode), he has Pinnochio beaten around the block. There is also a middle ground, when Bill puts on a show, as in his speech praising Obama at the Convention. It was well done, but I didn’t believe a word of it. it. Since then, he hasn’t had much at all to say in favor of Obama.
Of course, I am not the only one to observe this. Katherine Seelye of the New York Times Caucus blog wrote today:
Clinton Continues to Praise McCain Barack Obama might be forgiven for wondering which side Bill Clinton is on.
All week, beginning with an appearance on “The View” and then on The Late Show With David Letterman, the former president has seemed to praise John McCain, while giving short-shrift to Mr. Obama.
It was just a month ago when Mr. Clinton lavished praise on Mr. Obama at the Democratic National Convention, asserting he was ready to be president. But now, as the campaign intensifies, Mr. Clinton seems to be taking every opportunity to promote his rival.
This morning, Mr. Clinton continued the pattern, giving a platform to Mr. McCain at the Clinton Global Initiative conference. (more…)
Sometime it’s fun being me. Sometimes it’s not. [Like reading troll comments in election season?-ed. No, that's not so bad. They provide comic relief. ] I just experienced one of the positive times (and then some). Bill Whittle and I just got to interview the former Australian Prime Minister John Howard of Pajamas TV. Then we got to go out to lunch with him.
The interview itself you can see on PJTV. The first seventeen minutes, on the War on Terror, will be streaming live today, other segments in the next day. All will be available archived on the site. No subscription necessary for this - we’d like your feedback. (First part of archived interview now available here.)
As for Howard himself, he is the kind of standup guy you would imagine him to be. And unaffected in that direct Aussie way. I was very impressed. He’s here in LA to receive the Churchill Prize of the American Freedom Alliance. They’re have a conference Remembering Munich: The Legacy of Appeasement at which Howard is speaking.
I suppose since the incompetents on Wall Street are about to be bailed out, we shouldn’t complain that the incompetents in the auto industry are for headed similar treatment. According to the Financial Times - House clears $25bn for carmakers - cheap loans to GM, etc. are in the offing and both presidential candidates are supporting this dole. Any more of this and people will start screwing up deliberately in order to get a government handout.
Incidentally, the bill is entitled the “Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Incentive Programme” - double m’s courtesy of the FT, which does not say if the loans are restricted to high tech energy saving cars. If so, there is more justification. Still, Detroit should have been working on these things years ago. Toyota did and is now cleaning their clocks, as we know. Why are we lending money to the same cowardly bunch that failed before?
As most of you know, John McCain has suspended his campaign to work on the economy and has proposed a delay of the Friday debate as well. Obama quickly demurred. McCain looked presidential in his statement. He may have trumped Obama here, though the MSM will do anything in its power to make it seem otherwise. My guess is that they don’t believe in Obama anymore, but they are too embarrassed to say so, too entrenched in their own system. Admitting you were wrong is very hard to do.
I don’t know if it’s conscious or unconscious, but it sure seems that way. First there’s the flip-flop on AIG, which seems to have caught his running mate’s attention, and now there’s the senior moment of senior moments, implying FDR was President when the stock market crashed in ‘29 and went on television (???) to calm the public. [I thought McCain was the geezer candidate.-ed. It's all in the mind... or mind-less.] If Palin had said something like that, the MSM would have sent her back to Alaska and frozen her in an iceberg with the wooly mammoths.
So what’s going on here? Is Biden trying to sabotage Obama? We all know that during the primary campaign he said McCain was prepared to be President but Obama wasn’t. Maybe that’s what he really thinks. And, as we all know, Biden has a high IQ - at least he says so.
