The Churchill Series – Sept. 26, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

In Their Finest Hour, the second volume of his World War II memoirs, Churchill notes the English Channel posed problems for the Luftwaffe as it sought to destroy the RAF and win control of the airspace over the Channel and the South of England, a necessary condition for an invasion.

Churchill then relates the Germans' initial response to one of those problems and how the British dealt with it:

[The Germans sought] to organize an efficient Sea Rescue Service. German transport planes, marked with the Red Cross, began to appear in some numbers over the Channel in July and August whenever there was an air fight.

We did not recognize this means of rescuing enemy pilots who had been shot down in action, in order that they might come and bomb our civil population again.

We rescued them ourselves whenever it was possible, and made them prisoners of war.

But all German air ambulances were forced or shot down by our fighters on definite orders approved by the War Cabinet.

The German crews and doctors on these machines proclaimed astonishment at being treated in this way, and protested that it was contrary to the Geneva Convention, which had not contemplated this form of warfare. The Germans were not it a strong position to complain, in view of all the treaties, laws of war, and solemn agreements which they had violated without compunction whenever it suited them.

They soon abandoned the experiment, and the work of sea rescue for both sides was carried out by our small craft, on which of course the Germans fired on every occasion. …

Regular series readers know I don’t often editorialize in series posts on current events.

However, I can’t let this post pass without saying that we are making a terrible mistake by granting terrorists the protections of the Geneva Convention.

The Convention was meant to provide certain basic protections to military and civilians who observed certain rules. Soldiers in uniform are generally accorded prisoner of war status. But that same soldier in battle in civilian clothes or wearing the uniform of the enemy loses the Convention protections and can be treated as a spy.

During the Battle of the Bulge a hand-picked, specially-trained group of German soldiers fluent in American English and familiar with American pop culture donned American uniforms. They then infiltrated our lines and sowed confusion by spreading rumors, switching road signs, and the like. They also sought to gain the confidence of sentries so and then kill them.

Any of those actions were acceptable under the “rules of war” for soldiers in uniform; and the Germans, if captured in their own uniforms, would have been entitled to POW status.

But out of uniform and in American uniforms, they could be treated as spies and they were.

I believe all such Germans captured during the Bulge (I think they numbered about a hundred) were summarily executed. I’m sure at least the great majority were.

Today, we allow terrorist in civilian clothes and uniforms of organizations they’re not members of to move through those groups spreading havoc and death.

If the terrorist are captured they’re accorded the rights of the Geneva Convention which was never intended to protect such monsters.

The Geneva Convention was meant to protect their victims.

We in the West are making a mockery of the Convention.

Moving now to end this post, I wish each of you a good weekend.

Best,

John
___________________________________________________
The Churchill extract is found on pgs. 322-323 of Their Finest Hour. (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1949)

"Senator McCain's absolutely right"

Even Senator Obama says so.

McCain's making two big mistakes

It's coming up to 10 PM ET.

There's still 30 minutes left, but it's already clear to me Sen. McCain's made two big mistakes.

One, he's not "talking to the camera."

Most of the time he's answering, he's looking at Jim Lehrer.

You'd think Lehrer had more electoral votes than Penn., Ohio and Mich. combined.

A big part of why John Kennedy did so well in the 1960 debates with Richard Nixon is he looked at the camera, and therefore the millions watching on TV while Nixon looked at his questioners.

Two, and I think a bigger mistake than not looking at the camera, is McCain's not looking at Sen. Obama.

Not doing so is making McCain look - choose your unattractive adjective.

By not making eye contact with Sen. Obama, McCain's coming across as looking angry and disrespectful. Somewhat isolated from the debate and defensive, too.

Interesting that Obama has continued to look at McCain.

Corner advice for McCain @ 8:50 PM ET

Just before the bell rings for Round 1, the fighter's corner man gives him a final few words of advice.

"Remember to jab. Watch his left."

If I were McCain's "corner man," my words would by:

"Stay cool. Don't talk about you. Tag him as a liberal."

Of course McCain has to avoid "gaffes."

So does Obama, but we all know MSM's Obama Tank Corps will downplay an egregious Obama gaffe while hyping even a small McCain gaffe.

If McCain can come out of tonight's debate without a gaffe, with having taken the fight to Obama and tagging him as a liberal, he'll have won Round 1.

How most MSM will spin it won't be about the truth.

Bailout deal includes ACORN money

Ed Morrissey blogs - - -

House Republicans refused to support the Henry Paulson/Chris Dodd compromise bailout plan yesterday afternoon, even after the New York Times reported that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson got down on one knee to beg Nancy Pelosi to compromise.

One of the sticking points, as Senator Lindsey Graham explained later, wasn’t a lack of begging but a poison pill that would push 20% of all profits from the bailout into the Housing Trust Fund — a boondoggle that Democrats in Congress has used to fund political-action groups like ACORN and the National Council of La Raza:

In the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.

“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson’s kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange. She went on: “It’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”

Mr. Paulson sighed. “I know. I know.”

Graham told Greta van Susteren that Democrats had their own priorities, and it wasn’t bailing out the financial sector:

And this deal that’s on the table now is not a very good deal. Twenty percent of the money that should go to retire debt that will be created to solve this problem winds up in a housing organization called ACORN that is an absolute ill-run enterprise, and I can’t believe we would take money away from debt retirement to put it in a housing program that doesn’t work.

Here’s the relevant part of the Dodd proposal:

TRANSFER OF A PERCENTAGE OF PROFITS.

1. DEPOSITS.Not less than 20 percent of any profit realized on the sale of each troubled asset purchased under this Act shall be deposited as provided in paragraph (2).
2. USE OF DEPOSITS.Of the amount referred to in paragraph (1)
   1. 65 percent shall be deposited into the Housing Trust Fund established under section 1338 of the Federal Housing Enterprises Regulatory Reform Act of 1992 (12 U.S.C. 4568); and
   2. 35 percent shall be deposited into the Capital Magnet Fund established under section 1339 of that Act (12 U.S.C. 4569).

REMAINDER DEPOSITED IN THE TREASURY.All amounts remaining after payments under paragraph (1) shall be paid into the General Fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt.

Profits? We’ll be lucky not to take a bath on the purchase of these toxic assets. If we get 70 cents on the dollar, that would be a success. ...

The rest of Morrissey's post's here.

Comments:

If you've followed posts here this past year concerning ACORN, you have to be troubled that its Dem friends in Congress are using the current financial markets mess to send more of your money to an organization that's flat out partisan for Dems and has a history of criminal activities involving voter fraud.

Obama's MSM Tank Corps loyalists aren't reporting this latest instance of Dems trying to use taxpayer money to fund ACORN.

And they sure aren't reporting on the three years Obama served as ACORN's general counsel.

The “ideal executive” & his "strong brand" bank

Less than three weeks ago we read at Market Watch:

Washington Mutual, one of the nation's leading banks for consumers and small businesses, announced today that Alan H. Fishman has been appointed chief executive officer and has joined WaMu's Board of Directors. …

He succeeds Kerry Killinger, who is leaving the company after serving as WaMu's chief executive officer since 1990.

Stephen E. Frank, chair of the Board, said, "We believe Alan Fishman is the ideal executive to succeed Kerry Killinger and lead WaMu through its current challenges.” …

Frank continued, "On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank Kerry Killinger for all of his contributions over the past 25 years. Kerry is a visionary who built WaMu into a nationally recognized brand and one of the country's largest banks. We wish him well in his retirement."

Fishman said, "WaMu's strong brand and irreplaceable retail banking franchise have enormous potential, especially in today's environment, and I am thrilled to have this opportunity to create value for shareholders.” …

Listening to Frank and Fishman, who'd blame Dems for wondering:“Why hasn’t Obama palled around with guys like that instead of Rezko, Ayers and Wright?”

Time marches on and today CNN reports:

Washington Mutual Chief Executive Alan Fishman could walk away with more than $18 million in salary, bonuses and severance after less than three weeks on the job, according to the terms of his employment agreement. …

JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) grabbed up the banking assets of WaMu on Thursday after federal regulators seized the company, making it the largest bank failure in history.

What? Eighteen million for less than three weeks work.

I thought only former Senator John Edwards and other trial lawyers who contribute heavily to Dems made that kind of money.

Steve in New Mexico put me on to the story. He calls the possibility Fishman could walk away with $18 million “very, very wrong.”

Steve’s right.

The Market Watch story’s here; the CNN story’s here.

Dionne today: What must liberals think?

The Washington Post Writers Group’s E. J. Dionne, Jr. is sometimes called “the thinking liberal’s pundit.”

Today Dionne tires to blame Sen. McCain for the White House and Congress’ failure to reach a deal on the current financial mess. Dionne ends with this:

[Rep. Barney] Frank [D-Mass.] did not need McCain to make him bipartisan, and he grumbled before yesterday's White House gathering that it was a mere "photo op." After the meeting, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) called it "political theater" that may have stalled an agreement.

While many in both parties contributed to the current mess, Frank and Dodd played – I’ve got to use the word – prime roles it bringing it about.

When I see and hear those two blaming everyone on the R side and then learn they’re "working on the bailout,” I get the feeling a bank teller must have gotten when he saw Jesse and Frank James walking up to his window.

Can you believe Dionne used Dodd and Frank to bolster his “blame McCain” column.

What must liberals think?

WaPo edit notes Iraq progress; cautions Obama

An editorial in today’s Washington Post begins - - -

While Washington was seized with congressional negotiations over the Wall Street bailout, Iraq's parliament on Wednesday took another major step toward political stabilization.

By a unanimous vote, the national legislature approved a plan for local elections in 14 of 18 provinces by early next year -- clearing the way for a new, more representative and more secular wave of politicians to take office. The legislation eliminates the party slate system that allowed religious authorities to dominate Iraq's previous elections, and it provides for women to hold 25 percent of seats.

Most important, it will allow Sunni leaders who boycotted the 2005 provincial elections -- and who have since allied themselves with U.S. forces against al-Qaeda in Iraq -- to compete for political power in the provinces that were once the heartland of the insurgency.

As always in Iraq's halting journey toward a new order, the reform was not complete. Elections were put off in the province surrounding the volatile city of Kirkuk, where Kurds, Sunni Arabs and other groups compete for power, and in three Kurd-run provinces.

Staging fair and peaceful elections will be another major challenge: In the south of Iraq, competition among Shiite parties, including those of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Mahdi Army leader Moqtada al-Sadr, could easily spill over into violence. The importance of securing the elections is one good reason for President Bush's decision to withdraw only 8,000 of the 146,000 remaining U.S. troops in Iraq between now and February.

Still, the precipitous drop in violence in Iraq during the past year offers strong reason for hope that a good election can be held -- and that the new Sunni and Shiite leaders who emerge will be well positioned to jump-start reconstruction in the provinces and negotiate with each other. …

[It’s] now clear that the political progress that the Bush administration hoped would follow the surge of U.S. forces in Iraq has finally begun.

How can the next president preserve that momentum?

Democrat Barack Obama continues to argue that only the systematic withdrawal of U.S. combat units will force Iraqi leaders to compromise.

Yet the empirical evidence of the past year suggests the opposite: that only the greater security produced and guaranteed by American troops allows a political environment in which legislative deals and free elections are feasible.

The entire editorial's here.

Comments:

I didn’t know enough to offer an informed opinion on whether the surge would work. So I kept quiet.

Naturally, I’m delighted it worked. I salute the President for his decision to back the surge and Gen. Petraeus and the troops for all they accomplished.

On the matter of troop drawdowns in Iraq, I do have an informed opinion: we need to move very cautiously on any troop withdrawal with a bias of having more troops there then are needed rather than risk having too few.

You can look all over the third world and see instances of nations now in chaos because they “gained their independence” before there were sufficiently strong governmental, military, civil, economic and social forces, structures and traditions in place to assure their survival as democratic and thriving nations.

Some people who know Zimbabwe only as a place of famine might be surprised to learn that as recently as the 1970s, before it fell into the murderous hands of Robert Mugabe and his thugs, the country’s population was well-fed and it was a net food exporter.

Iraq’s diverse population, with its history of religious and ethnic hatreds and wars, assures that for decades at least it will at best be a very fragile democracy in need of the stabilizing presence of the U. S. military.

There’s no other force in the world that can give Iraq the time and stability it needs to make progress.

For the foreseeable future, Iraq will be a prime target of terrorists who’ll do all they can to destabilize and destroy a civil, peaceful, and democratic Iraq.

Without the U. S. military’s involvement, Iraq will quickly become as unstable and dangerous as Lebanon, where terrorists find shelter and target not only Israel and American interests, but any place in the region moving toward modernization and broad-based prosperity.

Sen. Obama and all of us would do well to heed the caution the WaPo editors offered him today.

Debate is one - here's McCain statement

Politico reported about 5 minutes ago - - -

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announces: "The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the senator will travel to the debate this afternoon. Following the debate, he will return to Washington to ensure that all voices and interests are represented in the final agreement, especially those of taxpayers and homeowners."

Politico also published the text of a statement from his camapign at about 11:20 a.m. Eastern. It follows in full - - -

John McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign was made in the hopes that politics could be set aside to address our economic crisis. In response, Americans saw a familiar spectacle in Washington. At a moment of crisis that threatened the economic security of American families, Washington played the blame game rather than work together to find a solution that would avert a collapse of financial markets without squandering hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to bailout bankers and brokers who bet their fortunes on unsafe lending practices.

Both parties in both houses of Congress and the administration needed to come together to find a solution that would deserve the trust of the American people. And while there were attempts to do that, much of yesterday was spent fighting over who would get the credit for a deal and who would get the blame for failure.

There was no deal or offer yesterday that had a majority of support in Congress. There was no deal yesterday that included adequate protections for the taxpayers.

It is not enough to cut deals behind closed doors and then try to force it on the rest of Congress — especially when it amounts to thousands of dollars for every American family.

The difference between Barack Obama and John McCain was apparent during the White House meeting yesterday, where Barack Obama’s priority was political posturing in his opening monologue defending the package as it stands.

John McCain listened to all sides so he could help focus the debate on finding a bipartisan resolution that is in the interest of taxpayers and homeowners. The Democratic interests stood together in opposition to an agreement that would accommodate additional taxpayer protections.

Senator McCain has spent the morning talking to members of the administration, members of the Senate, and members of the House. He is optimistic that there has been significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement now that there is a framework for all parties to be represented in negotiations, including Representative Blunt as a designated negotiator for House Republicans.

The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the senator will travel to the debate this afternoon. Following the debate, he will return to Washington to ensure that all voices and interests are represented in the final agreement, especially those of taxpayers and homeowners.
__________________________________

I'll have more to say later today.

Law prof: "Doing My Patriotic Duty"

Folks,

Here’s a Volokh Conspiracy post by George Mason University School of Law professor David Bernstein that I’m glad to pass on to you.

I hope you follow the prof’s advice. My thanks go to JinC Regular AC who passed it to me.

John

_____________________________________

Doing My Patriotic Duty:

As co-blogger Jonathan reports below, the Obama campaign has sicced its lawyers on t.v. stations that might air a well-sourced NRA advertisement that correctly points out Obama's longstanding anti-gun record.

The proper response to such attempts to infringe on the First Amendment is to make sure that the video in question receives the widest circulation possible, to deter the Obama campaign, and other campaigns for that matter, from engaging in such tactics in the future.

So here it is. Share it with a friend, with a note that Obama is threatening legal action against stations that run it, in violation of the First Amendment.

Related Posts (on one page):

1. Doing My Patriotic Duty:
2. Obama Campaign Challenges NRA Ad:
3. FactCheck flubs Obama gun fact check:

The Churchill Series – Sept. 25, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

A few blocks from the Prime Minister’s office and residence at 10 Downing Street is The Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum. It was there that an underground facility served as Churchill’s principal shelter during bombing raids.

But why did Churchill use the shelter there instead of one at 10 Downing?

In Their Finest Hour, the second volume of his WWII memoirs, Churchill explains:

Downing Street consists of houses two hundred and fifty years old, shaky and lightly built by the profiteering contractor whose name they bear.

At the time of this Munich alarm, shelters had been constructed for the occupants of Number 10 and Number 11, and the rooms on the garden level had had their ceilings propped up with a wooden under-ceiling and strong timbers. It was believed that this would support the ruins if the building was blown or shaken down; but of course neither these rooms nor the shelters were effective against a direct hit.

During the last fortnight of September, preparations were made to transfer my Ministerial Headquarters to the more modern and solid Government offices looking over St. James’s Park by Storey’s Gate. These quarters we called “the Annexe.”

Below them were the War Room and a certain amount of bomb-proof sleeping accommodation. The bombs at this time were of course smaller than those of the later phases. Still, in the interval before the new apartments were ready, life at Downing Street was exciting. One might as well have been at a battalion headquarters in the line.

It’s often thought “the Annexe” was so named because it was a kind of functional annex (Amer. spelling) to the PM’s Downing Street office and residence.

But I’ve been told that’s not the case; and that the building which housed the War Rooms and shelter was called “the Annexe” because it was the annex to the Treasury office.

Does anyone know for certain?
____________________________________________________

The passage quoted above is found on pgs. 344-345 of Their Finest Hour( Houghton Mifflin Co., 1949)

Where'd "Obama's garden" tax money go?

Friends in Chicago say Sen. Obama’s involvement in this story of public corruption the Chicago Sun-Times reports today -

Obama grant being probed

$100,000 DEAL | State to charity: What happened to garden money, other cash?

- has been known and talked about by Chicagoans for years.

The Sun-Times begins - - -

A $100,000 state grant for a botanic garden in Englewood that then-state Sen. Barack Obama awarded in 2001 to a group headed by a onetime campaign volunteer is now under investigation by the Illinois attorney general amid new questions, prompted by Chicago Sun-Times reports, about whether the money might have been misspent.

The garden was never built. And now state records obtained by the Sun-Times show $65,000 of the grant money went to the wife of Kenny B. Smith, the Obama 2000 congressional campaign volunteer who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association, which was in charge of the project for the blighted South Side neighborhood.

Smith wrote another $20,000 in grant-related checks to K.D. Contractors, a construction company that his wife, Karen D. Smith, created five months after work on the garden was supposed to have begun, records show. K.D. is no longer in business.

Attorney General Lisa Madigan -- a Democrat who is supporting Obama's presidential bid -- is investigating "whether this charitable organization properly used its charitable assets, including the state funds it received," Cara Smith, Madigan's deputy chief of staff, said Wednesday.

In addition to the 2001 grant that Obama directed to the housing association as a "member initiative," the not-for-profit group got a separate $20,000 state grant in 2006.

Madigan's office has notified Obama's presidential campaign of the probe, which was launched this week. But Obama's actions in awarding the money are not a focus of the investigation, Smith said.

Questions about the grant, though, come as spending on local pet projects has become an issue in Obama's campaign against John McCain.

Obama and Kenny Smith announced the "Englewood Botanic Garden Project" at a January 2000 news conference at Englewood High School. Obama was in the midst of a failed bid to oust South Side Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush for a seat in Congress.

The garden -- planned near and under L tracks between 59th Place and 62nd Place -- fell outside of Obama's Illinois Senate district but within the congressional district's borders.

Obama vowed to "work tirelessly" to raise $1.1 million to help Smith's organization turn the City of Chicago-owned lot into an oasis of trees and paths.

But Obama lost the congressional race, no more money was raised, and today the garden site is a mess of weeds, chunks of concrete and garbage. The only noticeable improvement is a gazebo.

In a previous interview, Smith said the state grant money was legitimately spent, mostly on underground site preparation.

But no one ever took out construction permits required for such work, city records show. And a contractor who Smith said did most of the work told a reporter all he did was cut down trees and grade the site with a Bobcat.

Citing the garden's failure to take root, NeighborSpace -- an umbrella group for dozens of community gardens citywide -- moved Sept. 9 to return the site to the city. Its action followed a July 11 Sun-Times report on the grant. . . .

The relationship between Smith and Obama dates to at least 1997, when Obama wrote a letter that Smith used to help the housing association win city funding for an affordable-housing development near the garden site. Plans called for more than 50 homes; a dozen ultimately were built.

Smith also has donated $550 to Obama campaign funds.

The Sun-Times learned about Karen Smith's involvement in the project through an Aug. 12 Freedom of Information Act response from a lawyer for Blagojevich¹s Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

The department, according to the lawyer, had "discovered" 52 pages of "additional documents" ommitted from an initial response in May to a Sun-Times¹ Freedom of Information Act request about the grant. . . .

The entire Sun-Times story’s here.

Comments:

My friends say the “garden site” now littered with “weeds, chunks of concrete and garbage” is referred to by locals as “Obama’s garden.”

“Everyone knows it was really just a ‘graft hole’ and Obama was involved in getting money to friends. But the press has ignored the story for years,” one friend said.

I think most of us know why.

If instead of “Obama’s garden,” the “graft hole” was “Palin’s garden” in Wasilla, Sen. Obama’s MSM Tank Corps would’ve discovered it the day after Sen. McCain announced he’d selected Gov. Palin as his running-mate.

Has there ever been a presidential candidate whose gotten more MSM cover-up of his actions, beliefs and associations than convicted felon Tony Rezko’s close friend Barack Obama?

http://www.suntimes.com/news/watchdogs/1184049,CST-NWS-watchdog25.article

Freddie, Fannie video you won't find on the networks

Fox News aired the following news report

No wonder the Dems and their network and cable allies hate Brit Hume's nightly report.

I hope many of you pass the link to friends who faithfully watch network news and MSNBC. You can be sure what's in the video will be news to them.



Hat tip: AC

What are presidential polls saying now?

As you’d expect, Sen. Obama’s enthusiastic MSM Tank Corps is hyping the recent WaPo/ABC poll showing him with a 9 point lead over Sen. McCain.

And we’re not hearing much of this:

New polls show the presidential race tightening. A Washington Post/ABC News poll has Obama leading by single digits. But an NPR poll shows that McCain is leading by two points.

"We have to take all numbers with a huge grain of salt," Slate.com's chief political correspondent John Dickerson tells Alex Chadwick. He reads between the numbers and discusses whether we can expect a "historic debate moment."

You can read all of what Dickerson has to say here.

At RealClearPolitics.com today @ 1 PM ET Obama’s hold’s an RCP Average lead over McCain of 3.5%.

Here are results of the three most recent polls listed at RCP which include polling completed through yesterday, Sept. 24: Rasmusssen Obama +3; Hotline/FD Obama +4; and Battleground McCain +1.

There are ebbs and flows in every campaign.

As a McCain supporter, I wasn’t popping champagne a few weeks back when he began opening a lead and I’m not hanging crepe now.

It’s a long way to November.

What the polls are telling us now is there’s still a race to be run and won between now and then.

The Churchill Series - Sept. 24, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

From the first joint Anglo-American war planning conference in Washington in late Dec. 1941 and Jan. 1942, almost until the June 1944 Normandy invasion, the question of when the Allies should launch a cross-channel attack divided British and American leaders.

The British consistently argued for later dates; the Americans for earlier ones.

Their differences led to frequent arguments, often loud and fierce. Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, recorded in his diary one planning session between the two nations' chiefs of staff led to "the mother and father of all rows."

At times, leaders of each nation questioned the good sense and motives of leaders of the other nation. But that said, it must always be remembered that when the die was cast, the two nations stood together.

Now let's get Churchill in here.

Churchill argued for delay. He feared a cross-channel attack before Germany was near collapse would mean Allied casualties would be so high the channel would, as he put it, "run red with blood."

Roosevelt, backed by his military leaders, particularly Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, usually pushed for as early an invasion date as possible.

Given those circumstances, it's not surprising a certain joke began circulating among the Americans.

It seems late one night the telephone rang at 10 Downing Street.

A young operator, new to the job, answered.

Someone with a gruff, commanding voice demanded to speak to Churchill.

The operator, intimidated, put the call through without asking the caller's name.

But Churchill immediately recognized the voice.

"Ah, Marshall Stalin, how's everything in Moscow?"

"I don't know, Prime Minister. I'm here with my army in Calais."

Obama & Biden don't need real shovels

What a Congressman; what an audience

Gateway Pundit posts - - -

Dem Leader on Palin: "Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks"

Here's the latest Democratic attack on gun-toting Americans...

Dem leader Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) is seen here with fellow Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) who lives in Maryland.

Impeached Federal judge and Democratic House Leader Alcee Hastings attacked Sarah Palin today in a shameful racist rant.

The audience didn't mind. They cheered and laughed.

Sick.

CNN reported:

Rep. Alcee Hastings told an audience of Jewish Democrats Wednesday that they should be wary of Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin because "anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks."

"If Sarah Palin isn't enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention," Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida said at a panel about the shared agenda of Jewish and African-American Democrats Wednesday.

Hastings, who is African-American, was explaining what he intended to tell his Jewish constituents about the presidential race. "Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through," Hastings added as the room erupted in laughter and applause.

Let's face it.

There is no way a Republican could say anything this foul and still have a career.

Then again... There aren't any impeached Republican judges currently serving in the US House.
______________________________________________

Comments:

Some things are so obvious, you don't need to say much about them.

Hat tip to Gateway Pundit for bringing us news of a Congressman's racism and an audience's applause of it, both of which acts will offend all decent Americans.

Obama’s Leftism

Joshua Muravchik, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, writes about it at Commentary.

Here’s part of what Muravchik says - - -

Even after declaring his candidacy, and despite a certain inevitable sidling rightward, Obama still reflected the presuppositions of a radical worldview. In one notable remark, he said of voters in economic distress that in their desperation they “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

Chastised for his condescension, he responded: “I said something that everybody knows is true.”

This was elitism of a very specific kind—the mentality of the community organizer, according to which people in the grip of “false consciousness” need to be enlightened as to the true nature of their class interests, and to the nature of their true class enemies.

The same suppositions are again evident in Obama’s stances on international issues. Iraq, as he sees it, is only a symptom. “I don’t want to just end the war . . . I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.”

And what would that mindset be? In a 2002 speech that he frequently cites, he said the war resulted from

”the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors . . . to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne . . . the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income . . . the arms merchants in our own country . . . feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.”

In this litany of global perfidy, the issues of Saddam Hussein’s murderous dictatorship, of American security, of the future of freedom, shrink to inconsequentiality next to the struggle of the oppressed against their American capitalist overlords.

When it comes to Iran, Obama has acknowledged that the regime presents a problem. But his actions—he opposed the Kyl-Lieberman amendment designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization—as well as his rhetoric imply that the greater danger emanates from George W. Bush (who is allegedly seeking “any justification to extend the Iraq war or to attack Iran”).

Likewise on defeating terrorism, where he rejects the America-centric focus that Bush has given to the issue; instead, in the words of his aides, Obama’s main goal is to “restore . . . our moral standing”—that is, to put an end to our aggressive ways.

Even the events of 9/11 could not shake Obama from the mindset that the enemy is always ourselves. The bombings, he wrote, reflected

”the underlying struggle—between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together; and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us.”

In this reading, the lessons to be learned from the actions of Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Atta are that we must accept multiculturalism at home and share our wealth abroad. …

The entire article’s here.

It’s lengthy, detailed and filled with quotes from Sen. Obama and leftists who’ve helped shape his thinking.

So far this campaign season I’ve held off using the “if you read only one” cliché.
But the breath, depth, concision and scholarship of this article merits an: “If you read only one article this campaign season, Muravchik’s should be the one.”

Woman at McCain rally asks about MSM - video

Millions of us are asking the same questions the woman at a Sen. McCain rally asks.

Take a look.


Hat tip: Instapundit

MSM: “straight-out propagandists for the Obama”

Washington Times editor Tony Blankley today begins - - -

The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight-out propagandists for the Obama campaign.

While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08, for the first time, the major media consciously are covering for one candidate for president and consciously are knifing the other. This is no longer journalism; it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Völkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.)

And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly or even halfway honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs -- the press.

The image of Obama that the press has presented to the public is not a fair approximation of the real man. They consciously have ignored whole years of his life and have shown a lack of curiosity about such gaps, which bespeaks a lack of journalistic instinct. …

The mainstream media ruthlessly and endlessly repeat any McCain gaffes while ignoring Obama gaffes. You have to go to weird little Web sites to see all the stammering and stuttering that Obama needs before getting out a sentence fragment or two.

But all you see on the networks is an eventually clear sentence from Obama. You don't see Obama's ludicrous gaffe that Iran is a tiny country and no threat to us. Nor his 57 American states gaffe. Nor his forgetting, if he ever knew, that Russia has a veto in the U.N. Nor his whining and puerile "come on" when he is being challenged.

This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels' disciples, not Cronkite's.

More appalling, a skit on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" last weekend suggested that Gov. Palin's husband had sex with his own daughters. That show was written with the assistance of Al Franken, Democratic Party candidate in Minnesota for the U.S. Senate. Talk about incest.

But worse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting are the shocking gaps in Obama's life that are not reported at all.

The major media simply have not reported on Obama's two years at New York's Columbia University, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter-mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers. Later, they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Ayers.

Should the media be curious? In only two weeks, the media have focused on all the colleges Gov. Palin has attended, her husband's driving habits 20 years ago, and the close criticism of the political opponents Gov. Palin had when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

But in two years, they haven't bothered to see how close Obama was with the terrorist Ayers.

Nor have the media paid any serious attention to Obama's rise in Chicago politics. How did honest Obama rise in the famously sordid Chicago political machine with the full support of Boss Daley?

Despite the great -- and unflattering -- details on Obama's Chicago years presented in David Freddoso's new book on Obama, the mainstream media continue to ignore both the facts and the book.

It took a British publication, The Economist, to give Freddoso's book a review with fair comment.

The public image of Obama as an idealistic, post-race, post-partisan, well-spoken and honest young man with the wisdom and courage befitting a great national leader is a confection spun by a willing conspiracy of Obama, his publicist (David Axelrod) and most of the senior editors, producers and reporters of the national media.

Perhaps that is why the National Journal's respected correspondent Stuart Taylor wrote, "The media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis."

That conspiracy not only has Photoshopped out all of Obama's imperfections (and dirtied up his opponent McCain's image) but also has put most of his questionable history down the memory hole. …

Blankley’s entire column’s here. I hope you read it all.

It would be reassuring to be able to say Blankley has overstated the extent to which almost all of MSM’s tanked for Obama.

But if anything, Blankley understates the propagandizing and covering up. Example: He doesn’t mention in any detail Sen. Obama’s almost 20 year relationship with the anti-white, anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright.

The Churchill Series – Sept. 23, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

In July 1903 the social reformer Beatrice Webb met the then twenty-eight year old Winston Churchill at a London dinner party. He was then sitting in his first Parliament, had published two books and seemed to Webb quite full of himself.

Churchill’s official biographer Sir Martin Gilbert tells us Webb recorded in her diary

First impression: restless, almost intolerably so, without capacity for sustained and unexcited labour, egotistical, bumptious, shallow-minded and reactionary, but with a certain personal magnetism, great pluck and some originality, not of intellect but of character.

More of the American speculator than the English aristocrat.

Talked exclusively about himself and his electioneering plans, wanted me to tell him of someone who would get statistics for him. “I never do any brainwork that anyone else can do for me,” – an axion which shows organizing but not thinking capacity.

Replete with dodges for winning Oldham against the Labour and Liberal candidates. But I dare say he has a better side, which the ordinary cheap cynicism of his position and career covers up to a casual dinner acquaintance.

Bound to be unpopular, too unpleasant a flavor with his restless self-regarding personality and lack of moral or intellectual refinement. …

Webb’s diary entry is quoted on pgs. 118-119 of Gilbert’s In Search of Churchill: A Historian’s Journey (John Wiley & Sons, 1994).

Most descriptions I’ve read of Churchill during the first years of the twentieth century note some of the same characteristics Webb noted: too talkative (and almost always about himself) comes up in almost every description.

Webb’s assessment is most interesting for her seeing beyond his political side with its “dodges for winning Oldham” to what she dared to say, at least in her diary, was a possible “better side.”

That he surely had.

Here's the Biden "no coal in America" video

You know Sen. Obama with help from his MSM Tank Corps is going to dissemble on what Joe Biden said today about any kind of new coal plants in America.

Or maybe he'll just dismiss what Biden said as "a snippet."

In any case, here the Biden video with excellent sound quality.

Green Bay & the electoral college

Today’s Chicago Sun-Times headlines:

Uncharacteristically low turnout for Barack Obama in Green Bay, Wisc.

McCain/Palin drew 4, 000 more supporters at same venue a week ago

and follows with a story which begins - - -

Hoping to shore up support in his suddenly undependable backyard, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama flew here Monday to talk about how he’d handle economic crises as president.

Recent polls have shown that Wisconsin — once pretty solidly in Obama’s column — is now a statistical dead heat between Obama and Republican John McCain. …

The numbers in Wisconsin and Minnesota are getting close enough that the Obama campaign closed its 11 campaign offices in North Dakota and moved the 50 staffers there to these two states.

Just a week ago, John McCain and his vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin — who can bring out crowds the way Obama can — appeared in this same stadium, Resch Center, to a crowd of 10,000 fans. There were an uncharacteristic amount of empty orange seats for Obama’s rally.

In their defense, Obama's backers note their rally was held on Monday at noon, compared to a Thursday night rally for McCain and Palin. …

The entire Sun-Times story’s here.

Comments:

Today’s Sun-Times story is really two stories.

The headline writers focused only on comparative crowd sizes at the Obama and McCain/Palin rallies. That’s an interesting story given all the hype we keep hearing about how easily Obama can turn out crowds everywhere from LA to Berlin, Germany.

But time of day and the presence of Gov. Palin no doubt explain the crowd size difference.

So I wouldn’t at this point read too much into the crowd size story.

The other and much more important story is that McCain has pulled close in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

If McCain can carry both those states, he’ll very likely win.

Even if loses the two states, but keeps it close in both, he still has a good chance of winning because coming close in those states suggests he could win Ohio and Pennsylvania where he's expected to run more strongly than in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Turning back to the crowd size story, it does raise the question of whether Obamamania hasn’t peaked in many parts of America. He was here in North Carolina last week and didn't draw the size crowd one of his aides told me Team Obama was expecting.

Hat tip: Archer 05

A hat tip to Joe Biden (updated)

Readers alert: After I posted a reader alerted me to a WaPo story in which Joe Biden retracts the remarks for which I'd commended him.

What a downer for decency!

You can read about it here.

I'll post further on this tomorrow.

John
__________________________________________
The AP reports - - -

Barack Obama's running mate says a campaign ad that mocked Republican presidential candidate John McCain as an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate was "terrible" and would not have been done had he known about it.…

"He admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer, can't send an e-mail, still doesn't understand the economy, and favors $200 billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class," the ad says.

Asked about the negative tone of the campaign, and this ad in particular, during an interview broadcast Monday by the "CBS Evening News," Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, said he disapproved of it.

"I thought that was terrible, by the way," Biden said.

Asked why it was done, he said: "I didn't know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we'd have never done it."

The entire AP story’s here.

Comments:

I commend Sen. Biden for his boldness and decency in condemning Team Obama’s cheap and stupid ridicule of Sen. McCain who has considerable trouble using a keyboard because of injuries he received while a POW and being tortured.

To me, Biden’s comments represented a candidate putting “country before party.”

If you play Monopoly, you know about the “get out of jail free” card.

As a way of saluting Biden’s very decent action, I’m giving him a JinC “gaffe pass.”

So the next time he gaffes, you’ll hear nothing from me.

Thank you, Joe Biden.

Morrissey on Omama's partnering with terrorist Ayers

If you haven't yet read Stanley Kurtz' WSJ op-ed today detailing the close partnering of Sen. Barack Obama and terrorist Bill Ayers when they led the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, you'll find a link to it and my commentary in this post: Obama & Ayers: A downright close relationship.

Ed Morrissey has an outstanding post up in response to Kurtz' op-ed.

Here's some of what Morrissey says - - -

... However, Kurtz’ report provides a very interesting look at the early political life of Barack Obama. He had already entered politics at the time he joined the CAC, and even at that stage had allied himself with ACORN, which has found itself at the center of more than a dozen voter-fraud investigations.

Obama also allied himself with Ayers and helped the former Weather Underground fugitive push forward with his plans to radicalize an entire generation of schoolchildren in the area through the CAC.

Note well the parallels to community organizing that play out in the activities of the CAC, and recall again how Obama claims that activity as a major qualification for the presidency.

Ayers wanted teachers trained to instruct against “oppression” and to push schoolchildren towards political beliefs Ayers valued — apparently valuing them higher than actual education.

Barack Obama agreed, and for several years worked in close partnership with Ayers to implement that educational policy. Even had Ayers never tossed a single bomb, this kind of educational philosophy would likely raise eyebrows with most parents, who desire a real education for their children and not some sort of political indoctrination camp.

With the context of Ayers’ violent radicalism, however, it makes the CAC even worse — a breeding ground for future Weathermen, ready to follow Ayers’ lead when the time comes for the revolution that Ayers and his wife (and co-terrorist) Bernardine Dohrn to this day desire.

Barack Obama not only supported this, he helped run this program for several years. (emphasis added)

What does that say about Obama’s idea of mainstream, as he has repeatedly described Ayers and Dohrn? What does that say about his own politics, his own ideas on education, and what kind of philosophy he brings to American politics? ...

Morrissey's entire post's here.

Obama & Ayers: A downright close relationship

According to Sen. Barack Obama terrorist Bill Ayers is just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood [and] not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis."

But Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, discovered there’s a lot more to the Obama-Ayers relationship when the Democratic presidential nominee has ever admitted.

Based largely on documents found in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago Kurtz reports in today’s WSJ - - -

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.

The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.

The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis."

Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg.

In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters.

Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.

The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected.

The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.

One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation?

In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him.

Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit.

No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression.

His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education.

CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement. …

[Ayers] believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association."

Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle.

That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

Kurtz’ entire WSJ op-ed’s here.

Comments:

In case you weren’t sure before today, Kurtz’ findings remove any doubt Obama’s lied about his relationship with Ayers.

Obama’s been abetted in his lying by organizations such as the NY Times, WaPo, Newsweek, NPR, and the networks who refuse to take a serious, in-depth look at the long-standing, close and revealing Obama-Ayers relationship.

No doubt they know they’ll find the same things Kurtz has found which wouldn’t be good for their candidate.

And what about America?

Well, many people at MSM Obama Tank Corp orgs believe America’s a downright mean country with a history of “evil and racism, [and in need of forced] social transformation.”

So they have no problem with Ayers and what he wants to do.

Or with Obama’s relationship with Ayers, particularly his helping Ayers at CAC.

Or with Obama lying about it all.

Hat tips: AC, BN

The Churchill Series - Sept. 22, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Readers Note: Portions of this post first appeared in a Nov. 2006 post.

FDR, Ike, Harry Hopkins, George Marshall, and Bernard Baruch were just some of the Americans Churchill sought to learn more about and wanted to meet.

Two others who belong on that list are William Cody and Ulysses S. Grant.

In the summer of 1887, “Buffalo Bill” Cody brought his “Wild West Show” to London. The twelve year old Winnie Churchill, considered by some of his teachers and relatives “wild” himself, was eager to see the show.

Biographer Martin Gilbert in Churchill and America tells us about what happened:

[Cody’s] advertisement in The Times trumpeted its attractions in capital letters.” GRANDSTAND FOR 20,000 PEOPLE. BANDS OF SIOUX, ARAPAHOES, SHOSHONES, CHEYENNES, AND OTHER INDIANS, COWBOYS, SCOUTS AND MEXICAN VACQUEROS.”

There would be riding, shooting, lassoing and hunting, attacks on a stagecoach and on a settler’s cabin. […]

Churchill, then at boarding school in Brighton, wrote several times to his mother, urging her to write to the two sisters who ran the school to let him go up to London.

At first Jennie said no, but Churchill, a persistent campaigner even at age 12, kept at it until he got a “Yes.”

Needless to say, he enjoyed the show hugely and talked about it into old age.

Ulysses S. Grant?

That same year with Christmas, coming, Churchill, having just turned 13, told his mother one of the gifts he most wanted was Grant’s recently released two-volume memoirs.

What an extraordinary request from any 13 year old, and particularly one seen by some of his schoolmasters as not very bright and a problem student.

Churchill got the memories and devoured them.

Concerning young students with school problems it's been my experiences that if they’re independent readers of serious material, there’s a very good chance they'll turn out OK in the end.
_________________________________________________
Material drawn from Gilbert's Churchill and America is found on pgs. 8 & 9.

NYT “150%” tanked for Obama: The best short-form

Lorie Byrd at Wizbang provides essential facts and links to the McCain campaign’s exposure of the Times without its “print the news without fear or favor” cloak.

The Times was caught in an “anything for Obama” embrace which it tried to pass off as a straight news story.

You can read Lorie's post here.

Also, if you haven’t already done so, take a look at McCain aide: NY Times "150% in the tank" for Obama.

It explains why I believe McCain’s aides wanted to spotlight this latest instance of the Times tanking for Obama.

God, Patriotism, and Joe Biden

The Wall Street Journal editorializes today - - -

Joe Biden isn't backing down from his startling claim last week that raising taxes on the rich is the "patriotic" thing to do. On Thursday he upped the ante, thundering that he also has Jesus in his corner.

"Catholic social doctrine as I was taught it is, you take care of people who need the help the most," Mr. Biden preached to a group of union supporters on Thursday.

Heavens! The political left likes to score Republicans for claiming that God is on their side, but here we have Mr. Biden claiming support from both God and Caesar. If Sarah Palin tried this, she'd send the boys at the Daily Kos into cardiac arrest. . . .
The rest of WSJ’s editorial’s here.

Comments:

Catholic social doctrine, as I learned about, included a lot of charity work and financial giving.

Many cities in the North with large Catholic populations contain major medical centers built, for the most part, through charitable giving.

The same is true of parochial school systems, and Catholic colleges and universities across the country.

Did you know there’s an outstanding Catholic high school in New York City, Regis, that’s entirely a scholarship school. Think of the charitable giving needed to sustain such a school.

And what about Sen. Biden’s own charitable giving?

The WSJ editorial ends:

By the way, Mr. Biden and his wife recently released their tax returns, and they reported an average of $380, or 0.2% of their income, in annual charitable contributions over a 10-year period. The national average was about 2% of income.

Folks, I don’t want to sound mean-spirited, especially when I’m talking about charity, but I’ve got to tell you Biden seems to be just another liberal big-spender of other people’s money.

McCain aide: NY Times “150% in the tank” for Obama

Tom Bevan today at RealClearPolitics.com - -

On a conference call with reporters just now, McCain campaign senior adviser Steve Schmidt absolutely lit in to the New York Times.

Schmidt made his remarks after Rick Davis answered a question from CNN's Dana Bash about today's story in the Times regarding his former work for the Homeownership Alliance, an advocacy group of 19 member organizations which include Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Schmidt said:

But let's be clear and be honest with each other about something fundamental to this race, which is this: whatever the New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization.

It is pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin, and excuses Senator Obama.

There's no level of public vetting with regard to Senator Obama's record, his background, his past statements. There's no level of outrage directed at his deceitful ads.

This is an organization that is completely, totally, 150% in the tank for the Democratic candidate, which is their prerogative to be. But let's not be dishonest and call it something other than what it is.

Everything that is read in the New York Times that attacks this campaign should be evaluated by the American people from that perspective: that it is an organization that has made a decision to cast aside its journalistic integrity and tradition to advocate for the defeat of one candidate - in this case John McCain - and to advocate for the election of the other candidate, Barack Obama.

Bevan provides a link to the audio of the entire conference call. The entire NY Times story is here.

Comments:

If you first listen to the audio of Rick Davis’ explanation of exactly what he did for Homeowners Alliance, what its purpose was, and what influence, if any, the organization had on Sen. McCain’s actions in regard to Freddie and Fannie, and then you read the Times' reporting on the same matters, you’ll wonder whether your heard and read about the same people and events.

I don’t know enough to judge between the two accounts.

But I can tell you this:

The Times story leads readers to believe it’s just now learning about Davis’ association with Homeowners Alliance which, in fact, dates back to 2000 and with which he's not been connected for 3 years.

But in the story which led CNN’s Bash to ask her question, the Times makes it appear that it’s just now learned about Davis and Homeowners Alliance relationship which, by the way, was perfectly legal and about which there’s been no suggestion, even from the “150% in the tank” Times, that either Davis or Homeowners Alliance failed to comply with public disclosure requirements.

Here’s a sample of what I mean by the Times making it appear it's just now learning "the news":

Incensed by [McCain] advertisements [linking Sen. Obama to top Freddie and Fannie executives] , several current and former executives of the companies came forward to discuss the role that Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager and longtime adviser, played in helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beat back regulatory challenges when he served as president of their advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of 2000.

Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their descriptions.

The Times knows these people it describes as “incensed current and former executives [coming] forward” are not saying anything of substance that isn't public information Team Obama and its Times partner surely collected many months ago as part of their opposition research.

Collecting such information is routine for the presidential campaign organizations of both parties and for major news organizations as they prepare to cover the campaign.

Add to that the fact Obama plays down and dirty Chicago politics and the Times is the news organization that tried to break into the sealed adoption records of Chief Justice and Mrs. Roberts' daughters at the time their father was nominated to the Supreme Court.

There's no way the Times is just now learning about Davis and Homeowners Alliance.

But by presenting today’s story as the result of news its just obtained from people upset by what McCain's done, the Times casts its candidate as a victim and hides from readers the fact it's publishing a partisan hit piece timed to meet Obama's campaign needs.

Question for Times fans: Does it bother you that the Times has covered Gov. Palin and her family the way it has, but never asked the Obamas why they brought their children all those years to the anti-white, anti-American Jeremiah Wright’s church for their religious instruction?

Will Rangel get a race pass?

This morning I posted Congressman Charlie Rangel claims victim status.

The short of it: Instead of taking responsibility for his failure over many year to declare certain incomes and pay taxes on them, his using three rent-controlled apartments in his Harlem district when by law he’s only entitled to one, and his other abuses and sleaze, the Obama-supporting chair of the House’s tax-writing Ways and Means Committee whines he's a victim of Republicans and the few newspapers willing to expose his abuses of office and laws.

Tarheel Hawkeye comments:

I'll bet anything that Rangel gets away with this. One hard and firm rule in today's America: if you're a Democrat, if you're a Black Democrat especially, you get a pass no matter how many rules, laws, or ethical standards you break.

If necessary, Charlie will play the race card and make his accusers beg for mercy.

I wouldn’t bet against Tarheel Hawkeye.

Any day now Rangel may call a press conference to say something like: “This is all happening because I don’t look like those guys on the dollar bills. Sen. Obama warned the Republicans would inject race into the campaign. What’s happening to me is downright mean spirited. But it won't stop me. I’ll continue serving the people in the future as I have in the past.”

John Fund on ACORN-Obama connections

Here's a video of a Sept. 15 Hannity & Colmes segment which includes John Fund, IMO the best reporter today covering voter fraud, citing Sen. Obama's many connections to ACORN, an organization that's repeatedly been involved in voter fraud.

Alan Colmes starts off talking about Obama's "alleged" ACORN connections.

Yet for three years Obama was ACORN's general counsel.

That and many other Obama-ACORN connections are not "alleged." They're real. View the video and judge for yourself.

Congressman Charlie Rangel claims victim status

From a New Your Post editorial today - - -

[Rep. Charlie Rangel, a key supporter of Sen. Barack Obama, ] says he's the victim of a "guerrilla war" being waged by the Republican Party and various newspapers.

The papers, he says, have "pried into my private life and used insinuation and half-truths to write stories that sell papers - what car I drive; where I live; where I vacation with my family; and how I handle my personal finances."

For the record, this newspaper proudly pleads guilty to having examined the congressman's "personal finances."

We actually started the ball rolling. And if what's been published to date turns out to be even half true, as Rangel asserts, just imagine how fascinating the full truth is going to be.

"I've never violated the public trust," he says. Which is utter nonsense.

What about Rangel's four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem - and his admitted failure to report $75,000 in income from the Dominican villa?

Then there's the thousands and thousands of dollars in other real-estate profits that apparently never were reported. …

[Rangel] chairs the House Ways & Means Committee, one of the most powerful in Congress and - most importantly - the panel that writes the tax laws that Rangel holds in such personal contempt.

"Guerrilla war?"

Nonsense.

Charlie Rangel can't be trusted to pay the taxes he owes by virtue of the laws written by the committee he runs.

So he can't be trusted to run the committee, either.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi must fix the problem – and fix it fast.

The entire editorial’s here.

Don’t look for Speaker Pelosi to do anything to force Rangel to step down from his chairmanship, something she’d surely be demanding were Rangel a Republican.