Please accept this as an article submission:
Article submission:
The Daily Beast
thedailybeast.com
Written by Christopher Buckley
The son of William F. Buckley has decided—shock!—to vote for a Democrat.
Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance.
Or would they? But let’s get that part out of the way. The only reason my vote would be of any interest to anyone is that my last name happens to be Buckley—a name I inherited. So in the event anyone notices or cares, the headline will be: “William F. Buckley’s Son Says He Is Pro-Obama.” I know, I know: It lacks the throw-weight of “Ron Reagan Jr. to Address Democratic Convention,” but it’ll have to do.
I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”
As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first.
As to the particulars, assuming anyone gives a fig, here goes:
I have known John McCain personally since 1982. I wrote a well-received speech for him. Earlier this year, I wrote in The New York Times—I’m beginning to sound like Paul Krugman, who cannot begin a column without saying, “As I warned the world in my last column...”—a highly favorable Op-Ed about McCain, taking Rush Limbaugh and the others in the Right Wing Sanhedrin to task for going after McCain for being insufficiently conservative. I don’t—still—doubt that McCain’s instincts remain fundamentally conservative. But the problem is otherwise.
McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, “The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor.” Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.
A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no—bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don’t see a whole lot of anymore.
But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?
All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.
As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.
I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.
But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.
Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.
So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.
Monday, October 27, 2008
For the First time in our Nation's History...
MAcciard said...
Please accept this as an Article Submission.
For the First time in our Nation's History...
By Mark Acciard
We have heard much debate, and histrionic catawauling about the relative merits, or lack thereof, of our two presidential contenders. But I would like to look at this a different way, if possible...
For a moment, cease the mindless recitation of either parties talking points, and lets look at the race, minus the personalities.
What would you say if I told you that of the two contenders for the Presidency of the United States of America;
One was a certified war hero, who wore the uniform, and served his country valiantly, even to the point of being captured, tortured daily, and when, his body broken, he was offered the opportunity to leave his prison, he declared not before my men. And that after this brave service, he served in the United States Senate for 26 years, where by all accounts, he has been considered something of a maverick, oftentimes reaching across the aisle to craft bi-partisan legislation, and often bucking the conventional wisdom of his own party, when his principles dictate.
The other has very little public track record on which to base an evaluation. He began his career as a community activist in Chicago, getting out the vote. He went on to obtain a law degree from Harvard, while most of his past remains shrouded in mystery. He served 4 years in the Illinois Legislature, authored no significant legislation, did not establish a reputation for leadership, voting present 137 times. Elected to U.S. House of Representatives, served 143 days before beginning his campaign for President, Authored no legislation at all. Has never held a leadership position.
Given those two resume’s who would you vote for, without inserting parties, and political spin?
Please accept this as an Article Submission.
For the First time in our Nation's History...
By Mark Acciard
We have heard much debate, and histrionic catawauling about the relative merits, or lack thereof, of our two presidential contenders. But I would like to look at this a different way, if possible...
For a moment, cease the mindless recitation of either parties talking points, and lets look at the race, minus the personalities.
What would you say if I told you that of the two contenders for the Presidency of the United States of America;
One was a certified war hero, who wore the uniform, and served his country valiantly, even to the point of being captured, tortured daily, and when, his body broken, he was offered the opportunity to leave his prison, he declared not before my men. And that after this brave service, he served in the United States Senate for 26 years, where by all accounts, he has been considered something of a maverick, oftentimes reaching across the aisle to craft bi-partisan legislation, and often bucking the conventional wisdom of his own party, when his principles dictate.
The other has very little public track record on which to base an evaluation. He began his career as a community activist in Chicago, getting out the vote. He went on to obtain a law degree from Harvard, while most of his past remains shrouded in mystery. He served 4 years in the Illinois Legislature, authored no significant legislation, did not establish a reputation for leadership, voting present 137 times. Elected to U.S. House of Representatives, served 143 days before beginning his campaign for President, Authored no legislation at all. Has never held a leadership position.
Given those two resume’s who would you vote for, without inserting parties, and political spin?
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Media's Presidential Bias and Decline
Media's Presidential Bias and Decline
Columnist Michael Malone Looks at Slanted Election Coverage and the Reasons Why
Column By MICHAEL S. MALONE
Oct. 24, 2008 —
The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game -- with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.
The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I've found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.
But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist.
You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I'm cut. I am a fourth-generation newspaperman. As family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in Abilene, Kan., during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian).
My hard-living -- and when I knew her, scary -- grandmother was one of the first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times. And my father, though profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful freelance writer. I've spent 30 years in every part of journalism, from beat reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the family business, so to speak, earned his first national byline before he earned his drivers license.
So, when I say I'm deeply ashamed right now to be called a "journalist," you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.
Now, of course, there's always been bias in the media. Human beings are biased, so the work they do, including reporting, is inevitably colored. Hell, I can show you 10 different ways to color variations of the word "said" -- muttered, shouted, announced, reluctantly replied, responded, etc. -- to influence the way a reader will apprehend exactly the same quote. We all learn that in Reporting 101, or at least in the first few weeks working in a newsroom.
But what we are also supposed to learn during that same apprenticeship is to recognize the dangerous power of that technique, and many others, and develop built-in alarms against them.
But even more important, we are also supposed to be taught that even though there is no such thing as pure, Platonic objectivity in reporting, we are to spend our careers struggling to approach that ideal as closely as possible.
That means constantly challenging our own prejudices, systematically presenting opposing views and never, ever burying stories that contradict our own world views or challenge people or institutions we admire. If we can't achieve Olympian detachment, than at least we can recognize human frailty -- especially in ourselves.
Reporting Bias
For many years, spotting bias in reporting was a little parlor game of mine, watching TV news or reading a newspaper article and spotting how the reporter had inserted, often unconsciously, his or her own preconceptions. But I always wrote it off as bad judgment and lack of professionalism, rather than bad faith and conscious advocacy.
Sure, being a child of the '60s I saw a lot of subjective "New" Journalism, and did a fair amount of it myself, but that kind of writing, like columns and editorials, was supposed to be segregated from "real" reporting, and, at least in mainstream media, usually was. The same was true for the emerging blogosphere, which by its very nature was opinionated and biased.
But my complacent faith in my peers first began to be shaken when some of the most admired journalists in the country were exposed as plagiarists, or worse, accused of making up stories from whole cloth.
I'd spent my entire professional career scrupulously pounding out endless dreary footnotes and double-checking sources to make sure that I never got accused of lying or stealing someone else's work -- not out of any native honesty, but out of fear: I'd always been told to fake or steal a story was a firing offense & indeed, it meant being blackballed out of the profession.
And yet, few of those worthies ever seemed to get fired for their crimes -- and if they did they were soon rehired into even more prestigious jobs. It seemed as if there were two sets of rules: one for us workaday journalists toiling out in the sticks, and another for folks who'd managed, through talent or deceit, to make it to the national level.
Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation's leading newspapers, many of whom I'd written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.
But what really shattered my faith -- and I know the day and place where it happened -- was the war in Lebanon three summers ago. The hotel I was staying at in Windhoek, Namibia, only carried CNN, a network I'd already learned to approach with skepticism. But this was CNN International, which is even worse.
I sat there, first with my jaw hanging down, then actually shouting at the TV, as one field reporter after another reported the carnage of the Israeli attacks on Beirut, with almost no corresponding coverage of the Hezbollah missiles raining down on northern Israel. The reporting was so utterly and shamelessly biased that I sat there for hours watching, assuming that eventually CNNi would get around to telling the rest of the story & but it never happened.
The Presidential Campaign
But nothing, nothing I've seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.
Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass -- no, make that shameless support -- they've gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don't have a free and fair press.
I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather -- not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake -- but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to her home state of Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the big leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play.
The few instances where I think the press has gone too far -- such as the Times reporter talking to prospective first lady Cindy McCain's daughter's MySpace friends -- can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha bureau.
No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.
If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.
That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.
Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven't we seen an interview with Sen. Obama's grad school drug dealer -- when we know all about Mrs. McCain's addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden's endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?
Joe the Plumber
The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber.
Middle America, even when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the little man. So much for speaking truth to power. So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.
I learned a long time ago that when people or institutions begin to behave in a matter that seems to be entirely against their own interests, it's because we don't understand what their motives really are. It would seem that by so exposing their biases and betting everything on one candidate over another, the traditional media is trying to commit suicide -- especially when, given our currently volatile world and economy, the chances of a successful Obama presidency, indeed any presidency, is probably less than 50/50.
Furthermore, I also happen to believe that most reporters, whatever their political bias, are human torpedoes & and, had they been unleashed, would have raced in and roughed up the Obama campaign as much as they did McCain's. That's what reporters do. I was proud to have been one, and I'm still drawn to a good story, any good story, like a shark to blood in the water.
So why weren't those legions of hungry reporters set loose on the Obama campaign? Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal?
The editors. The men and women you don't see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn't; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay out the editorial pages. They are the real culprits.
Bad Editors
Why? I think I know, because had my life taken a different path, I could have been one: Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you've spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power & only to discover that you're presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn't have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you'll lose your job before you cross that finish line, 10 years hence, of retirement and a pension.
In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -- and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway -- all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.
And then the opportunity presents itself -- an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career.
With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.
And besides, you tell yourself, it's all for the good of the country &
This is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News.
Michael S. Malone is one of the nation's best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation's first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world's largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling "Virtual Corporation." Malone has also hosted three public television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, "The New Heroes." He has been the ABCNews.com "Silicon Insider" columnist since 2000.
Columnist Michael Malone Looks at Slanted Election Coverage and the Reasons Why
Column By MICHAEL S. MALONE
Oct. 24, 2008 —
The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game -- with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.
The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I've found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.
But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist.
You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I'm cut. I am a fourth-generation newspaperman. As family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in Abilene, Kan., during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian).
My hard-living -- and when I knew her, scary -- grandmother was one of the first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times. And my father, though profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful freelance writer. I've spent 30 years in every part of journalism, from beat reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the family business, so to speak, earned his first national byline before he earned his drivers license.
So, when I say I'm deeply ashamed right now to be called a "journalist," you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.
Now, of course, there's always been bias in the media. Human beings are biased, so the work they do, including reporting, is inevitably colored. Hell, I can show you 10 different ways to color variations of the word "said" -- muttered, shouted, announced, reluctantly replied, responded, etc. -- to influence the way a reader will apprehend exactly the same quote. We all learn that in Reporting 101, or at least in the first few weeks working in a newsroom.
But what we are also supposed to learn during that same apprenticeship is to recognize the dangerous power of that technique, and many others, and develop built-in alarms against them.
But even more important, we are also supposed to be taught that even though there is no such thing as pure, Platonic objectivity in reporting, we are to spend our careers struggling to approach that ideal as closely as possible.
That means constantly challenging our own prejudices, systematically presenting opposing views and never, ever burying stories that contradict our own world views or challenge people or institutions we admire. If we can't achieve Olympian detachment, than at least we can recognize human frailty -- especially in ourselves.
Reporting Bias
For many years, spotting bias in reporting was a little parlor game of mine, watching TV news or reading a newspaper article and spotting how the reporter had inserted, often unconsciously, his or her own preconceptions. But I always wrote it off as bad judgment and lack of professionalism, rather than bad faith and conscious advocacy.
Sure, being a child of the '60s I saw a lot of subjective "New" Journalism, and did a fair amount of it myself, but that kind of writing, like columns and editorials, was supposed to be segregated from "real" reporting, and, at least in mainstream media, usually was. The same was true for the emerging blogosphere, which by its very nature was opinionated and biased.
But my complacent faith in my peers first began to be shaken when some of the most admired journalists in the country were exposed as plagiarists, or worse, accused of making up stories from whole cloth.
I'd spent my entire professional career scrupulously pounding out endless dreary footnotes and double-checking sources to make sure that I never got accused of lying or stealing someone else's work -- not out of any native honesty, but out of fear: I'd always been told to fake or steal a story was a firing offense & indeed, it meant being blackballed out of the profession.
And yet, few of those worthies ever seemed to get fired for their crimes -- and if they did they were soon rehired into even more prestigious jobs. It seemed as if there were two sets of rules: one for us workaday journalists toiling out in the sticks, and another for folks who'd managed, through talent or deceit, to make it to the national level.
Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation's leading newspapers, many of whom I'd written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.
But what really shattered my faith -- and I know the day and place where it happened -- was the war in Lebanon three summers ago. The hotel I was staying at in Windhoek, Namibia, only carried CNN, a network I'd already learned to approach with skepticism. But this was CNN International, which is even worse.
I sat there, first with my jaw hanging down, then actually shouting at the TV, as one field reporter after another reported the carnage of the Israeli attacks on Beirut, with almost no corresponding coverage of the Hezbollah missiles raining down on northern Israel. The reporting was so utterly and shamelessly biased that I sat there for hours watching, assuming that eventually CNNi would get around to telling the rest of the story & but it never happened.
The Presidential Campaign
But nothing, nothing I've seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.
Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass -- no, make that shameless support -- they've gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don't have a free and fair press.
I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather -- not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake -- but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to her home state of Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the big leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play.
The few instances where I think the press has gone too far -- such as the Times reporter talking to prospective first lady Cindy McCain's daughter's MySpace friends -- can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha bureau.
No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.
If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.
That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.
Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven't we seen an interview with Sen. Obama's grad school drug dealer -- when we know all about Mrs. McCain's addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden's endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?
Joe the Plumber
The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber.
Middle America, even when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the little man. So much for speaking truth to power. So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.
I learned a long time ago that when people or institutions begin to behave in a matter that seems to be entirely against their own interests, it's because we don't understand what their motives really are. It would seem that by so exposing their biases and betting everything on one candidate over another, the traditional media is trying to commit suicide -- especially when, given our currently volatile world and economy, the chances of a successful Obama presidency, indeed any presidency, is probably less than 50/50.
Furthermore, I also happen to believe that most reporters, whatever their political bias, are human torpedoes & and, had they been unleashed, would have raced in and roughed up the Obama campaign as much as they did McCain's. That's what reporters do. I was proud to have been one, and I'm still drawn to a good story, any good story, like a shark to blood in the water.
So why weren't those legions of hungry reporters set loose on the Obama campaign? Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal?
The editors. The men and women you don't see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn't; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay out the editorial pages. They are the real culprits.
Bad Editors
Why? I think I know, because had my life taken a different path, I could have been one: Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you've spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power & only to discover that you're presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn't have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you'll lose your job before you cross that finish line, 10 years hence, of retirement and a pension.
In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -- and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway -- all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.
And then the opportunity presents itself -- an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career.
With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.
And besides, you tell yourself, it's all for the good of the country &
This is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News.
Michael S. Malone is one of the nation's best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation's first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world's largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling "Virtual Corporation." Malone has also hosted three public television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, "The New Heroes." He has been the ABCNews.com "Silicon Insider" columnist since 2000.
Monday, October 20, 2008
You Ain't gonna like losing!
I know everyone has a different opinion on the war and our current President. But, this article makes a lot of sense,
take 2 minutes, read it and give it some thought.
When electing the next President, 'the only decision
you have to make is who you want sitting in that seat in
the White House when - not if - WHEN we get hit again and
millions of American lives are put at risk!'
This is from: 'You ain't gonna like losing.'
Author unknown.
President Bush did make a bad mistake in the war on
terrorism. But the mistake was not his decision to go to
war in Iraq . Bush's mistake came in his belief that
this country is the same one his father fought for in WWII.
It is not.
Back then, they had just come out of a vicious depression.
The country was steeled by the hardship of that depression,
but they still believed fervently in this country. They knew
that the people had elected their leaders, so it was the
people's duty to back those leaders.
Therefore, when the war broke out the people came together, rallied behind, and stuck with their leaders, whether they had voted for them or not or whether the war was going
badly or not.
And war was just as distasteful and the anguish just as
great then as it is today. Often there were more casualties
in one day in WWII than we have had in the entire Iraq war.
But that did not matter. The people stuck with the
President because it was their patriotic duty. Americans
put aside their differences in WWII and worked together to
win that war.
Everyone from every strata of society, from young to old
pitched in. Small children pulled little wagons around to
gather scrap metal for the war effort. Grade school
students saved their pennies to buy stamps for war bonds to help the effort.
Men who were too old or medically 4F lied about their age
or condition trying their best to join the military.
Women doubled their work to keep things going at home.
Harsh rationing of everything from gasoline to soap, to
butter was imposed, yet there was very little complaining.
You never heard prominent people on the radio belittling
the President. Interestingly enough in those days there
were no fat cat actors and entertainers who ran off to
visit and fawn over dictators of hostile countries and
complain to them about our President. Instead, they made
upbeat films and entertained our troops to help the
troops' morale. And a bunch even enlisted.
And imagine this: Teachers in schools actually started the
day off with a Pledge of Allegiance, and with prayers for
our country and our troops!
Back then, no newspaper would have dared point out certain weak spots in our cities where bombs could be set off to
cause the maximum damage. No newspaper would have dared complain about what we were doing to catch spies. A
newspaper would have been laughed out of existence if it
had complained that German or Japanese soldiers were being 'tortured' by being forced to wear women's
underwear, or subjected to interrogation by a woman, or
being scared by a dog or did not have air conditioning.
There were a lot of things different back then. We were not
subjected to a constant bombardment of pornography,
perversion and promiscuity in movies or on radio. We did
not have legions of crack heads, dope pushers and armed
gangs roaming our streets.
No, President Bush did not make a mistake in his handling
of terrorism. He made the mistake of believing that we
still had the courage and fortitude of our fathers. He
believed that this was still the country that our fathers
fought so dearly to preserve.
It is not the same country. It is now a cross between
Sodom and Gomorra and the land of Oz. We did unite for a
short while after 9/11, but our attitude changed when we
found out that defending our country would require some
sacrifices.
We are in great danger. The terrorists are fanatic
Muslims. They believe that it is okay, even their duty, to
kill anyone who will not convert to Islam. It has been
estimated that about one third or over three hundred
million Muslims are sympathetic to the terrorists cause...
Hitler and Tojo combined did not have nearly that many
potential recruits. So... We either win it - or lose it -
and you ain't gonna like losing.
America is not at war. The military is at war.
America is at the mall, or watching the movie stars.
(Remember Obama said in his book 'Audacity of
Hope', 'I will stand with the Muslims should the
political winds shift in an ugly direction'.....what
better place for the Muslins to control our country, than
in the office of the President of USA . If you ever
forwarded an e-mail, now's the time to do it!)
take 2 minutes, read it and give it some thought.
When electing the next President, 'the only decision
you have to make is who you want sitting in that seat in
the White House when - not if - WHEN we get hit again and
millions of American lives are put at risk!'
This is from: 'You ain't gonna like losing.'
Author unknown.
President Bush did make a bad mistake in the war on
terrorism. But the mistake was not his decision to go to
war in Iraq . Bush's mistake came in his belief that
this country is the same one his father fought for in WWII.
It is not.
Back then, they had just come out of a vicious depression.
The country was steeled by the hardship of that depression,
but they still believed fervently in this country. They knew
that the people had elected their leaders, so it was the
people's duty to back those leaders.
Therefore, when the war broke out the people came together, rallied behind, and stuck with their leaders, whether they had voted for them or not or whether the war was going
badly or not.
And war was just as distasteful and the anguish just as
great then as it is today. Often there were more casualties
in one day in WWII than we have had in the entire Iraq war.
But that did not matter. The people stuck with the
President because it was their patriotic duty. Americans
put aside their differences in WWII and worked together to
win that war.
Everyone from every strata of society, from young to old
pitched in. Small children pulled little wagons around to
gather scrap metal for the war effort. Grade school
students saved their pennies to buy stamps for war bonds to help the effort.
Men who were too old or medically 4F lied about their age
or condition trying their best to join the military.
Women doubled their work to keep things going at home.
Harsh rationing of everything from gasoline to soap, to
butter was imposed, yet there was very little complaining.
You never heard prominent people on the radio belittling
the President. Interestingly enough in those days there
were no fat cat actors and entertainers who ran off to
visit and fawn over dictators of hostile countries and
complain to them about our President. Instead, they made
upbeat films and entertained our troops to help the
troops' morale. And a bunch even enlisted.
And imagine this: Teachers in schools actually started the
day off with a Pledge of Allegiance, and with prayers for
our country and our troops!
Back then, no newspaper would have dared point out certain weak spots in our cities where bombs could be set off to
cause the maximum damage. No newspaper would have dared complain about what we were doing to catch spies. A
newspaper would have been laughed out of existence if it
had complained that German or Japanese soldiers were being 'tortured' by being forced to wear women's
underwear, or subjected to interrogation by a woman, or
being scared by a dog or did not have air conditioning.
There were a lot of things different back then. We were not
subjected to a constant bombardment of pornography,
perversion and promiscuity in movies or on radio. We did
not have legions of crack heads, dope pushers and armed
gangs roaming our streets.
No, President Bush did not make a mistake in his handling
of terrorism. He made the mistake of believing that we
still had the courage and fortitude of our fathers. He
believed that this was still the country that our fathers
fought so dearly to preserve.
It is not the same country. It is now a cross between
Sodom and Gomorra and the land of Oz. We did unite for a
short while after 9/11, but our attitude changed when we
found out that defending our country would require some
sacrifices.
We are in great danger. The terrorists are fanatic
Muslims. They believe that it is okay, even their duty, to
kill anyone who will not convert to Islam. It has been
estimated that about one third or over three hundred
million Muslims are sympathetic to the terrorists cause...
Hitler and Tojo combined did not have nearly that many
potential recruits. So... We either win it - or lose it -
and you ain't gonna like losing.
America is not at war. The military is at war.
America is at the mall, or watching the movie stars.
(Remember Obama said in his book 'Audacity of
Hope', 'I will stand with the Muslims should the
political winds shift in an ugly direction'.....what
better place for the Muslins to control our country, than
in the office of the President of USA . If you ever
forwarded an e-mail, now's the time to do it!)
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Palin’s Kind of Patriotism
An Article submission form a contributor;
Article submission:
Palin’s Kind of Patriotism
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, New York Times
Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”
What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.
I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.
Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”
I can understand someone saying that the government has no business bailing out the financial system, but I can’t understand someone arguing that we should do that but not pay for it with taxes. I can understand someone saying we have no business in Iraq, but I can’t understand someone who advocates staying in Iraq until “victory” declaring that paying taxes to fund that is not patriotic.
How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now?
We are in the middle of an economic perfect storm, and we don’t know how much worse it’s going to get. People all over the world are hoarding cash, and no bank feels that it can fully trust anyone it is doing business with anywhere in the world. Did you notice that the government of Iceland just seized the country’s second-largest bank and today is begging Russia for a $5 billion loan to stave off “national bankruptcy.” What does that say? It tells you that financial globalization has gone so much farther and faster than regulatory institutions could govern it. Our crisis could bankrupt Iceland! Who knew?
And we have not yet even felt the full economic brunt here. I fear we may be at that moment just before the tsunami hits — when the birds take flight and the insects stop chirping because their acute senses can feel what is coming before humans can. At this moment, only good governance can save us. I am not sure that this crisis will end without every government in every major economy guaranteeing the creditworthiness of every financial institution it regulates. That may be the only way to get lending going again. Organizing something that big and complex will take some really smart governance and seasoned leadership.
Whether or not I agree with John McCain, he is of presidential timber. But putting the country in the position where a total novice like Sarah Palin could be asked to steer us through possibly the most serious economic crisis of our lives is flat out reckless. It is the opposite of conservative.
And please don’t tell me she will hire smart advisers. What happens when her two smartest advisers disagree?
And please also don’t tell me she is an “energy expert.” She is an energy expert exactly the same way the king of Saudi Arabia is an energy expert — by accident of residence. Palin happens to be governor of the Saudi Arabia of America — Alaska — and the only energy expertise she has is the same as the king of Saudi Arabia’s. It’s about how the windfall profits from the oil in their respective kingdoms should be divided between the oil companies and the people.
At least the king of Saudi Arabia, in advocating “drill baby drill,” is serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. My problem with Palin is that she is also serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. That’s not patriotic. Patriotic is offering a plan to build our economy — not by tax cuts or punching more holes in the ground, but by empowering more Americans to work in productive and innovative jobs. If Palin has that kind of a plan, I haven’t heard it.
Article submission:
Palin’s Kind of Patriotism
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, New York Times
Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”
What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.
I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.
Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”
I can understand someone saying that the government has no business bailing out the financial system, but I can’t understand someone arguing that we should do that but not pay for it with taxes. I can understand someone saying we have no business in Iraq, but I can’t understand someone who advocates staying in Iraq until “victory” declaring that paying taxes to fund that is not patriotic.
How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now?
We are in the middle of an economic perfect storm, and we don’t know how much worse it’s going to get. People all over the world are hoarding cash, and no bank feels that it can fully trust anyone it is doing business with anywhere in the world. Did you notice that the government of Iceland just seized the country’s second-largest bank and today is begging Russia for a $5 billion loan to stave off “national bankruptcy.” What does that say? It tells you that financial globalization has gone so much farther and faster than regulatory institutions could govern it. Our crisis could bankrupt Iceland! Who knew?
And we have not yet even felt the full economic brunt here. I fear we may be at that moment just before the tsunami hits — when the birds take flight and the insects stop chirping because their acute senses can feel what is coming before humans can. At this moment, only good governance can save us. I am not sure that this crisis will end without every government in every major economy guaranteeing the creditworthiness of every financial institution it regulates. That may be the only way to get lending going again. Organizing something that big and complex will take some really smart governance and seasoned leadership.
Whether or not I agree with John McCain, he is of presidential timber. But putting the country in the position where a total novice like Sarah Palin could be asked to steer us through possibly the most serious economic crisis of our lives is flat out reckless. It is the opposite of conservative.
And please don’t tell me she will hire smart advisers. What happens when her two smartest advisers disagree?
And please also don’t tell me she is an “energy expert.” She is an energy expert exactly the same way the king of Saudi Arabia is an energy expert — by accident of residence. Palin happens to be governor of the Saudi Arabia of America — Alaska — and the only energy expertise she has is the same as the king of Saudi Arabia’s. It’s about how the windfall profits from the oil in their respective kingdoms should be divided between the oil companies and the people.
At least the king of Saudi Arabia, in advocating “drill baby drill,” is serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. My problem with Palin is that she is also serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. That’s not patriotic. Patriotic is offering a plan to build our economy — not by tax cuts or punching more holes in the ground, but by empowering more Americans to work in productive and innovative jobs. If Palin has that kind of a plan, I haven’t heard it.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Obama website revises Candidate's ACORN status!
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign has been forced to revise statements about their candidate's work for the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, a liberally-leaning non-profit roiled in allegations of voter registration fraud.
Obama’s website “Fight the Smears,” designed to counteract misinformation about the candidate’s record, contained false information about Obama’s connections to ACORN.
Before news outlets reported Obama worked as an ACORN trainer in 1992, the website said, “Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.”
The website later revised their “fact” to say: “Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.”
The conservative leaning blog Gateway Pundit published archived screenshots of the Fight the Smears site showing the discrepancy.
As a presidential candidate Obama has extensive ties to the group currently being accused of voter registration fraud in 11 states. He is the first national candidate ever to hire ACORN for get-out-the-vote activities. Obama’s campaign paid $800,000 to a subsidiary of the liberally-leaning non-profit Association of Community Organizers for Reform called Citizens Services Incorporated campaign to increase voter turnout, but initially did not properly disclose this information on financial disclosure reports.
The Obama campaign said it hired CSI to do “polling, advance work and staging events” according to reports submitted to the FEC during the Democratic primary. The FEC later said the Obama campaign needed to disclose ACORN was engaging in get out the vote activities last August. At the time the Obama campaign called the mistake a “clerical error.”
Obama sought ACORN’s endorsement in the Democratic primary telling ACORN members, “Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.” “Project Vote” is the name ACORN’s voter registration drives are called. Obama worked for Project Vote for a period of roughly seven months in 1992.
ACORN endorsed Obama for president in February 2008.
Before becoming a member of the Illinois State Senate, Obama represented ACORN in a lawsuit to help push for “Motor Voter” laws to make it easier for low-income persons to vote.
Later, as director of the Woods Fund and Chairman of the Board of Chicago Annenberg Challenge Obama helped steer funds to ACORN through various grants.
http://townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2008/10/13/obama_distorts_acorn_ties
ACORN's Rap Sheet
The Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now has compiled an irrefutable record of voter registration fraud in recent elections.
The non-profit is accused of submitting fraudulent voter registration applications in 13 states this election cycle. Seven of those states have already launched investigations into ACORN’s activities.
During the 2006 election cycle, ACORN submitted false applications to election officials in Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington.
Several of their organizers have already landed in jail. Seven ACORN workers were indicted for voter registration fraud in Washington last year for submitting nearly 3,400 fraudulent forms in King and Pierce County, which included applications for “Veronica Mars” and the deceased Army Ranger and NFL player Pat Tillman. Three of the workers eventually pled guilty and ACORN was ordered to pay a $25,000 settlement fee.
After the 2004 election, two former ACORN workers were convicted of perjury for submitting false voter registration forms in Denver, Colorado.
But ACORN continues to submit fraudulent voter applications.
A prosecutor in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County interviewed two witnesses who were harassed by ACORN officials on Monday. A 19-year old named Freddie Johnson said ACORN officials convinced him to register to vote 73 times. “They would come up with a sob story when they needed a signature,” Johnson told the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Monday.
Christopher Buckley, a Domino’s pizza delivery driver, also witnessed to the board. He said ACORN workers told him, “I could help them hold onto a job” by signing multiple registration forms.
State and federal authorities in Nevada announced they were launching a task force to investigate voter registration fraud in Clark County last week. Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he believes ACORN has submitted somewhere between 2,000-3,000 fraudulent applications a week, some of which have included forms for the entire starting line-up of the Dallas Cowboys.
Officials in Bridgeport, Connecticut say ACORN has cost their county thousands of dollars in overtime because their workers have been forced to sift through ACORN’s false applications. ACORN fired a worker in Seminole County, Florida after the group admitted filing fraudulent registration forms.
Obama’s website “Fight the Smears,” designed to counteract misinformation about the candidate’s record, contained false information about Obama’s connections to ACORN.
Before news outlets reported Obama worked as an ACORN trainer in 1992, the website said, “Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.”
The website later revised their “fact” to say: “Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.”
The conservative leaning blog Gateway Pundit published archived screenshots of the Fight the Smears site showing the discrepancy.
As a presidential candidate Obama has extensive ties to the group currently being accused of voter registration fraud in 11 states. He is the first national candidate ever to hire ACORN for get-out-the-vote activities. Obama’s campaign paid $800,000 to a subsidiary of the liberally-leaning non-profit Association of Community Organizers for Reform called Citizens Services Incorporated campaign to increase voter turnout, but initially did not properly disclose this information on financial disclosure reports.
The Obama campaign said it hired CSI to do “polling, advance work and staging events” according to reports submitted to the FEC during the Democratic primary. The FEC later said the Obama campaign needed to disclose ACORN was engaging in get out the vote activities last August. At the time the Obama campaign called the mistake a “clerical error.”
Obama sought ACORN’s endorsement in the Democratic primary telling ACORN members, “Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.” “Project Vote” is the name ACORN’s voter registration drives are called. Obama worked for Project Vote for a period of roughly seven months in 1992.
ACORN endorsed Obama for president in February 2008.
Before becoming a member of the Illinois State Senate, Obama represented ACORN in a lawsuit to help push for “Motor Voter” laws to make it easier for low-income persons to vote.
Later, as director of the Woods Fund and Chairman of the Board of Chicago Annenberg Challenge Obama helped steer funds to ACORN through various grants.
http://townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2008/10/13/obama_distorts_acorn_ties
ACORN's Rap Sheet
The Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now has compiled an irrefutable record of voter registration fraud in recent elections.
The non-profit is accused of submitting fraudulent voter registration applications in 13 states this election cycle. Seven of those states have already launched investigations into ACORN’s activities.
During the 2006 election cycle, ACORN submitted false applications to election officials in Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington.
Several of their organizers have already landed in jail. Seven ACORN workers were indicted for voter registration fraud in Washington last year for submitting nearly 3,400 fraudulent forms in King and Pierce County, which included applications for “Veronica Mars” and the deceased Army Ranger and NFL player Pat Tillman. Three of the workers eventually pled guilty and ACORN was ordered to pay a $25,000 settlement fee.
After the 2004 election, two former ACORN workers were convicted of perjury for submitting false voter registration forms in Denver, Colorado.
But ACORN continues to submit fraudulent voter applications.
A prosecutor in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County interviewed two witnesses who were harassed by ACORN officials on Monday. A 19-year old named Freddie Johnson said ACORN officials convinced him to register to vote 73 times. “They would come up with a sob story when they needed a signature,” Johnson told the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Monday.
Christopher Buckley, a Domino’s pizza delivery driver, also witnessed to the board. He said ACORN workers told him, “I could help them hold onto a job” by signing multiple registration forms.
State and federal authorities in Nevada announced they were launching a task force to investigate voter registration fraud in Clark County last week. Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he believes ACORN has submitted somewhere between 2,000-3,000 fraudulent applications a week, some of which have included forms for the entire starting line-up of the Dallas Cowboys.
Officials in Bridgeport, Connecticut say ACORN has cost their county thousands of dollars in overtime because their workers have been forced to sift through ACORN’s false applications. ACORN fired a worker in Seminole County, Florida after the group admitted filing fraudulent registration forms.
Obama deftly handles question from a plumber.
Socialism in action. Watch the video, listen to the plumber's question, and Barack's response.
The Place for Atkinsonian Presidential Politics
This is the new place for all discussions of National and Presidential Politics, far and away from the Atkinson Reporter 2, which will continue to discuss Issues of local importance to Atkinson.
McCain and Palin Are Playing With Fire
Anonymous said...
For submission to your blog:
McCain and Palin Are Playing With Fire
By Khaled Hosseini
Washington Post
Sunday, October 12, 2008; B05
I prefer to discuss politics through my novels, but I am truly dismayed these days. Twice last week alone, speakers at McCain-Palin rallies have referred to Sen. Barack Obama, with unveiled scorn, as Barack Hussein Obama.
Never mind that this evokes -- and brazenly tries to resurrect -- the unsavory, cruel days of our past that we thought we had left behind. Never mind that such jeers are deeply offensive to millions of peaceful, law-abiding Muslim Americans who must bear the unveiled charge, made by some supporters of Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin, that Obama's middle name makes him someone to distrust -- and, judging by some of the crowd reactions at these rallies, someone to persecute or even kill. As a secular Muslim, I too was offended. Obama's middle name differs from my last name by only two vowels. Does the McCain-Palin campaign view me as a pariah too? Do McCain and Palin think there's something wrong with my name?
But never mind any of that.
The real affront is the lack of firm response from either McCain or Palin. Neither has had the moral courage, when taking the stage, to grasp the microphone, turn to the presenter and, right then and there, denounce the use of Obama's middle name as an insult. Instead, they have simply delivered their stump speeches, lacing into Obama as if nothing out-of-bounds had just happened. The McCain-Palin ticket has given toxic speeches accusing Obama of being a friend of terrorists, then released short, meek repudiations of some of the rough stuff, including McCain's call Friday to "be respectful." Back in February, the Arizona senator apologized for the "disparaging remarks" from a talk-radio host who sneered repeatedly about "Barack Hussein Obama" before a McCain rally. "We will have a respectful debate," McCain insisted afterward. But pretending to douse flames that you are busy fanning does not qualify as straight talk.
What I find most unconscionable is the refusal of the McCain-Palin tandem to publicly condemn the cries of "traitor," "liar," "terrorist" and (worst of all) "kill him!" that could be heard at recent rallies. McCain is perfectly capable of telling hecklers off. But not once did he or his running mate bother to admonish the people yelling these obscene -- and potentially dangerous -- words. They may not have been able to hear the slurs at the rallies, but surely they have had ample time since to get on camera and warn that this sort of ugliness has no place in an election season. But they have not. Simply calling Obama "a decent person" is not enough.
Is inaction tantamount to consent? The McCain campaign certainly thinks so when it comes to Obama and incendiary remarks from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. By their own inaction, then, are McCain and Palin condoning these slurs? Or worse, are they willfully inciting the angry and venomous response that we have been witnessing at their rallies? If not, then what reaction are they hoping to evoke by their relentless public suggestions that Obama is basically an anti-American liar who won't put "country first" and has an affection for terrorists? Do they not understand the kind of fire they are playing with?
I -- and, I suspect, millions of Americans like me, Republicans and Democrats alike -- couldn't care less about Obama's middle name or the ridiculous six-degrees-of-separation game that is the William Ayers non-issue. The Taliban are clawing their way back in Afghanistan, the country that I hope many of my fellow Americans have come to understand better through my novels. People are losing their homes and their jobs and are watching the future slip away from them. But instead of addressing these problems, the McCain-Palin ticket is doing its best to distract Americans by provoking fear, anxiety and hatred. Country first? Hardly.
Khaled Hosseini is the author of "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns."
For submission to your blog:
McCain and Palin Are Playing With Fire
By Khaled Hosseini
Washington Post
Sunday, October 12, 2008; B05
I prefer to discuss politics through my novels, but I am truly dismayed these days. Twice last week alone, speakers at McCain-Palin rallies have referred to Sen. Barack Obama, with unveiled scorn, as Barack Hussein Obama.
Never mind that this evokes -- and brazenly tries to resurrect -- the unsavory, cruel days of our past that we thought we had left behind. Never mind that such jeers are deeply offensive to millions of peaceful, law-abiding Muslim Americans who must bear the unveiled charge, made by some supporters of Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin, that Obama's middle name makes him someone to distrust -- and, judging by some of the crowd reactions at these rallies, someone to persecute or even kill. As a secular Muslim, I too was offended. Obama's middle name differs from my last name by only two vowels. Does the McCain-Palin campaign view me as a pariah too? Do McCain and Palin think there's something wrong with my name?
But never mind any of that.
The real affront is the lack of firm response from either McCain or Palin. Neither has had the moral courage, when taking the stage, to grasp the microphone, turn to the presenter and, right then and there, denounce the use of Obama's middle name as an insult. Instead, they have simply delivered their stump speeches, lacing into Obama as if nothing out-of-bounds had just happened. The McCain-Palin ticket has given toxic speeches accusing Obama of being a friend of terrorists, then released short, meek repudiations of some of the rough stuff, including McCain's call Friday to "be respectful." Back in February, the Arizona senator apologized for the "disparaging remarks" from a talk-radio host who sneered repeatedly about "Barack Hussein Obama" before a McCain rally. "We will have a respectful debate," McCain insisted afterward. But pretending to douse flames that you are busy fanning does not qualify as straight talk.
What I find most unconscionable is the refusal of the McCain-Palin tandem to publicly condemn the cries of "traitor," "liar," "terrorist" and (worst of all) "kill him!" that could be heard at recent rallies. McCain is perfectly capable of telling hecklers off. But not once did he or his running mate bother to admonish the people yelling these obscene -- and potentially dangerous -- words. They may not have been able to hear the slurs at the rallies, but surely they have had ample time since to get on camera and warn that this sort of ugliness has no place in an election season. But they have not. Simply calling Obama "a decent person" is not enough.
Is inaction tantamount to consent? The McCain campaign certainly thinks so when it comes to Obama and incendiary remarks from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. By their own inaction, then, are McCain and Palin condoning these slurs? Or worse, are they willfully inciting the angry and venomous response that we have been witnessing at their rallies? If not, then what reaction are they hoping to evoke by their relentless public suggestions that Obama is basically an anti-American liar who won't put "country first" and has an affection for terrorists? Do they not understand the kind of fire they are playing with?
I -- and, I suspect, millions of Americans like me, Republicans and Democrats alike -- couldn't care less about Obama's middle name or the ridiculous six-degrees-of-separation game that is the William Ayers non-issue. The Taliban are clawing their way back in Afghanistan, the country that I hope many of my fellow Americans have come to understand better through my novels. People are losing their homes and their jobs and are watching the future slip away from them. But instead of addressing these problems, the McCain-Palin ticket is doing its best to distract Americans by provoking fear, anxiety and hatred. Country first? Hardly.
Khaled Hosseini is the author of "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns."
Everyone needs to watch This!
Everyone needs to watch this! This is what happens when your government fails you!
Another Must see video, courtesy of one of our contributors;
Posted by Atkinson Reporter at 8:47 AM
Another Must see video, courtesy of one of our contributors;
Posted by Atkinson Reporter at 8:47 AM
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