my goodness

Did I really use the phrase “battlecry of freedom” in a blog post? If anyone actually read this blog, I’d be the laughingstock of the dextrosphere!

Here’s a couple doses of antidote:

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters to Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Obama Undertakes Presidential Internship

thank goodness it’s over

carry on

VDH: “The End of Journalism”

Victor Davis Hanson:

Sometime in 2008, journalism as we knew it died, and advocacy media took its place.

…

we have never quite seen anything like the current media infatuation with Barack Obama, and its collective desire not to raise key issues of concern to the American people. Here were four areas of national interest that were largely ignored.

I’ve listed his four points w/ brief notes.  Read the article to get the story on each one.

1. Campaign Financing: Imagine the reaction of the New York Times or the Washington Post had John McCain renounced his promise to participate in public campaign financing, proceeded instead to amass $600 million and outraise the publicly financed Barack Obama four-to-one, and begun airing special 30-minute unanswered infomercials during the last week of the campaign.
2. The VP Candidates: … we are about to elect a vice president about whom we know only that he has been around a long time, but little else — and nothing at all why exactly Joe Biden says the most astounding and often lunatic things.
3. The Past as Present: Imagine the reaction of CNN or NBC had John McCain’s pastor and spiritual advisor of 20 years been revealed as a white supremacist who damned a multiracial United States, or had he been a close acquaintance until 2005 of an unrepentant terrorist bomber of abortion clinics, or had McCain himself sued to eliminate congressional opponents by challenging the validity of African-American voters who signed petitions, or had both his primary and general election senatorial rivals imploded once their sealed divorce records were mysteriously leaked.
4. Socialism? Imagine the reaction of NPR and PBS had John McCain advocated something like abolishing all capital gains taxes, or repealing incomes taxes in favor of a national retail sales tax.

There are many other things the media has failed to properly inform the US public of.  A quick list would include things like:

1. Saddam’s bribery of France, Russia and China to keep himself in power
2. The Oil-for-Food scandal, which was bigger than Enron and possibly lead to the deaths of half a million Iraqis, but which got extremely little coverage
3. In Feb. 2003 Hans Blix listed 1000 tons of chemical weapons agent that Saddam declared he had in 1991 but had failed to turn over or prove he had destroyed as an example of what his team was searching for
4. That a number of foreign intelligence agencies confirmed CIA reports that Saddam had WMDs
5. That the deputy commander of CentCom, Gen. DeLong, claims we had intelligence assets on the ground before the invasion who saw WMDs being loaded into semi-trailer trucks bound for Syria
6. Joseph Wilson’s lying in his NYT article and the fact that the Bush administration response was to declassify his testimony to the CIA proving he lied
7. The actual conditions under which they reported from Iraq during the sanctions period (i.e., they failed to inform us Iraqi intelligence agents were with them constantly, that if they reported negative things about Saddam’s regime they would get kicked out of the country, etc.)

I could keep going, but I’m out of time tonight.

Bustin’ Palin rumors

Charles Martin has done good work, and had fun, busting a good number of lies rumors about Palin.

Here are a few of my favorites:

8. No, the Downs baby (Trig) isn’t Bristol’s kid, and no, the kid wasn’t born with Downs because (a) Palin flew on an airplane (b) went home to have the baby after an amniotic leak (c) because he was the result of incest between Todd Palin and Bristol.

…

30. yes, her 17 year old daughter is pregnant; no, the baby’s father is not an eighth grader; no, having sex at 16 is not statutory rape in Alaska. And no, there’s no way that a 17 year old can be 5 months pregnant as a result of having sex before she was 16. Learn to count for God’s sakes

31. yes, she did fire the public safety guy, Monegan — but he said in the Anchorage paper that, for the record, she never, and no one else in her administration ever, tried to make him fire her ex-brother-in-law.

32. and yes, the state trooper (her sister’s ex-husband) she was worried about did: tase her 10 year old nephew; drive his state patrol car while drinking or drunk; did threaten to “bring her down”; and did threaten to murder her father and sister if they dared to get an attorney to help with the divorce.

33. yes, the state trooper was suspended when he was put under a court protective order

34. no, the trooper wasn’t fired

…

66. No, she’s not a “global warming denier”, and when the crush dies down remind me to explain why the very phrasing “global warming denier” is anti-scientific, anti-intellectual, and a clear sign of a desire to impose your beliefs by coercion.

…

81. No, Sarah Palin doesn’t think that dinosaurs walked the earth with Adam and Eve 4000 years ago, In fact, this was a purposeful satire that comes from a post actually entitled Fake Governor Palin Quotes. This has, however, kept neither Matt Damon nor Maureen Dowd from propagating them as fact.

all joe the plumber all the time

Joe inspires a blog I intend to keep an eye on. I think Unfair Doctrine has a lot of promise. Here’s their “Why We’re Here”:

“I asked a question. When you can’t ask a question to your leaders anymore, that gets scary. That bothers me.” — Joe Wurzelbacher

Transterrestrial Musings plays time-traveling journalist:

71 BC

ROME (Routers) Diligent investigative reporters were shocked to learn today that many, indeed most of the captured slaves in yesterday’s battle in Lucania who proclaimed “I am Spartacus” were actually misleading military authorities, and not the famous rebel leader at all.

Claudia Rosett asks questions (dangerous! Watch out!):

But to squabble over Joe’s record is to miss the real point. Obama is the one running for public office, aspiring to the country’s highest position of power and public trust. Joe is not. He’s a private citizen, who had every right to ask a very good question. He wanted to know why he was being taxed “more and more for fulfilling the American dream?”

What he got from the well-heeled Senators Obama and Biden was mockery and contempt.

Most disturbing is this: If that’s how Joe the Plumber gets dealt with while Obama is still stumping for votes, then what happens to Joe, or anyone else who dares question Obama’s plans, should Obama win the White House?

Should we expect that that the answer will be targeted investigations, a public display of whatever can be dug up in the way of private laundry, and sneers from the Oval Office?

I am Joe the Plumber

It seems to have caught on a bit.

First thing out of the gate, I’d like to copy a bit (well, almost the whole thing) of Iowahawk’s post on this:

We’ve all witnessed a lot of insanity in American politics over the last few years. Up until the last few days, none of it has seriously bothered me; hey, just more grist for the satire mill. But after witnessing the media’s blitzkreig on Joe ‘the Plumber’ Wurzelbacher, I can only muster anger, and no small amount of fear.

Politicians — Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, et al. –  obviously have to put up with some rude, nasty shit, but it’s  right there in the jobs description. Joe the Plumber is different. He was a guy tossing a football with his kid in the front yard of his $125,000 house when a politician picked him out as a prop for a 30 second newsbite for the cable news cameras. Joe simply had the temerity to speak truth (or, if you prefer, an uninformed opinion) to power, for which the politico-media axis apparently determined that he must be humiliated, harassed, smashed, destroyed. The viciousness and glee with which they set about the task ought to concern anyone who still cares about citizen participation, and freedom of speech, and all that old crap they taught in Civics class before politics turned into Narrative Deathrace 3000, and Web 2.0 turned into Berlin 1932.0.

Godwin’s Law! you say? if the jackboot fits, wear it.

If it’s meta-memes and meta-meta-narratives these media headlice want, so be it. I hope you will join me in expressing a simple bit of solidarity with this guy, Spartacus style. I AM JOE. I am a Wal Mart schlub in flyover country who changes my own oil and unclogs drains without a license. I smoke and drink beer and toss the football in the front yard with my kid, and I figure I can fend my way without handouts from some Magic Messiah’s candy bags. Most everyone in my family and most everyone I grew up with is another Joe, and if you screw with them, you screw with me.

Amen, brother.

Volokh Conspiracy:

I was stunned to see some document showing Joe the Plumbers’ tax problems on my 10pm (CT)newscast on the local NBC affiliate in Chicago on Thursday night. They have very little time for any national news and they actually spent time on Joe the Plumbers’ tax problems. Amazing!

But when an actual candidate — Barack Obama — released his tax returns, which on their face seemed to show an ethics violation of Illinois law, the press couldn’t care less.

Just to remind you, Illinois prohibits state legislators from taking speaking fees, and Barack reported “speaking fees.”

CNN:

At a rally in Melbourne, Florida Friday evening, Senator McCain revealed he had called Joe Wurzelbacher.

“I talked to him this morning for the first time ever,” said McCain. “And I want to tell you his sprits [sic] are good and he’s a tough guy. He is what small business people all over this country are all about. They are tough and they are good and they want to get ahead and they want to keep their money.”

McCain did apologize to the Ohio resident for thrusting him into the media spotlight on the night of the debate according to McCain press secretary Brooke Buchanan.

…

Buchanan did say that the Arizona Senator invited Ohio’s most famous voter to meet up with the campaign but did not set up any specific stops.

…

Whether Joe is there in person or not, he is certainly a star at McCain events. …

And the crowd definitely seemed to be full of Joe supporters as well as John supporters, with people at the Melbourne rally were wearing tee shirts with a picture of a name tag on them that said, “My name is … Joe the Plumber” and holding signs about Joe like one on stage that said, “Joe’s dough, not Obama’s.”

But CNN’s Anderson Cooper is an idiot in this video.  He objects that Joe’s first name is really Sam and that he’s not a licensed plumber, so one CNN analyst he interviews call him ‘Sam the non-plumber’ and the other interviewees carry the joke.  Anderson notes Joe doesn’t make anywhere near $250,000 a year.  Never mind that Joe is actually employed as a plumber in an apprenticeship program, that a license isn’t required, and that Joe’s point was he wanted to buy a company that made $250,000 or so.  So Cooper is basically an idiot.  I wonder if Anderson Cooper is a licensed journalist?  If not, can we then call him Andy the non-journalist?

K. Daniel Glover at Video Done Right, in an excellent story on this:

Expect more of the same over coming days. In fact, don’t be surprised if all of those investigative reporters sent to Alaska after John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate suddenly get reassigned to the plumber beat in flyover country. Joe The Plumber must be discredited at all costs!

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

So what have we learned from this episode?

1. Thou shalt not offend The One by asking him a question.  Of any kind.
2. Anyone who questions The One will have to undergo a public pillorying of a kind unseen since the Red Scare, or perhaps the Inquisition.
3. The Tanning-Bed Media will happily participate in any inquisition, as long as it keeps them from investigating irrelevant issues like Obama’s ties to the Chicago Machine, William Ayers, ACORN, or his record on protecting infanticide.

Don’t ask questions. Don’t check the records of people running for political office, but do check the records of those who dare violate Rule #1.  No dissent will be tolerated.  Our political and media masters have spoken.

I only ask one favor of the Left and the media: please keep this story alive for another three weeks.  I can’t wait to read Michelle’s column tomorrow.

Free Republic.

But, because Joe the Plumber, a regular every-day Amereican playing catch with his child on a middle class American street, trying to earn a living for his family, was honest about the impact of the Obama plans from his perspective, and because he did not drink the Obama kool-aid, the MSM, the DNC, and the Obama campaign now consider that hard working, well spoken, young man as the enemy.

…

The truth is that the left, the Obama campaign, the DNC, and the MSM will lie, fabricate, misquote, commit fruad, beg, borrow, or steal in their effort to slow down what is happening on the ground with the McCain campaign right now, and particularly with the likes of Joe and especially Sarah Palin who is burrowing underneath all of their hype and drawing 25-30,000 people at a time to her rallies and getting the message of hope and conservative values out.

Jill Zuckman at the Tribune’s Washington Bureau:

Sen. John McCain offered a vigorous defense of Joe the Plumber today, accusing Barack Obama’s campaign of “digging through his personal life” because he asked Obama a tough question.

“I think Senator Obama could use a few more tough questions,” McCain said.

Joe Wurzelbacher, the plumber who questioned Obama about taxes in Holland, Ohio, turns out to owe back taxes and not hold a license for his plumbing work, according to news reports.

“The response from Senator Obama and his campaign yesterday was to attack Joe. People are digging through his personal life and he has TV crews camped out in front of his house,” McCain told a rowdy crowd at Florida International University. “He didn’t ask for Senator Obama to come to his house. He wasn’t recruited or prompted by our campaign. He just asked a question. And Americans ought to be able to ask Senator Obama tough questions without being smeared and targeted with political attacks.”

Good Morning America interviews Joe.

Copious Dissent has video of Bill Maher accusing Joe of racism.

Gateway Pundit links a YouTube video he says shows Joe’s reaction to the presidential debate, but YouTube says it’s no longer available.

Here’s a couple more Joe links, just for good measure:

Firefighter blog

Ace of Spades with an appropriate Photoshop.

Rove weighs in

Karl Rove, evil Machiavellian extraordinaire:*

Mr. McCain’s other adjustment is his schedule. His campaign understands the dire circumstances it faces and is narrowing his travels almost exclusively to Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Colorado and Nevada. If he carries those states, while losing only Iowa and New Mexico from the GOP’s 2004 total, Mr. McCain will carry 274 Electoral College votes and the White House. It’s threading the needle, but it’s come to that.

This task, while not impossible, will be difficult. By mid-September, the McCain camp was slightly ahead in the polls. Then came the financial crisis. The past month has taken an enormous toll on the McCain campaign.

Whether it can find the right formula in the next 19 days to dig out is a question. If Mr. McCain succeeds, he will have engineered the most impressive and improbable political comeback since Harry Truman in 1948. But having to reach back more than a half-century for inspiration is not the place campaign managers want to be now.

So, basically, there’s still hope for McCain, but maybe not much

###

*For those who don’t understand that Karl Rove rules the world from an undisclosed location (probably Atlantis), I say this facetiously.

a few notes while fishin’

There seems to be a consensus that McCain has already lost. Non-Obama pundits are planning what-next scenarios, and all of it sounds ugly. [See update below.]

Dr. Helen asks, “Is it time to go John Galt?”

Do you ever wonder after dealing with all that is going on with the economy and the upcoming election if it’s getting to be time to “go John Galt”? For those of you who have never read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the basic theme is that John Galt and his allies take actions that include withdrawing their talents, “stopping the motor of the world,” and leading the “strikers” (those who refuse to be exploited) against the “looters” (the exploiters, backed by the government).

Vodkapundit talks about “fighting words.”

If (when?) Obama is elected, by my estimation there’s an at least even chance that the newly-reconstructed FCC will reverse course and attempt to apply the New Fairness Doctrine to blogs.

If (when?) it happens, I’ll break that law. I will break it with all due malice and in full knowledge of the possible consequences. I’ll shout “Fire Obama!” in a crowded theater. And then, for the first time ever, I’ll ask for reader donations. Because I’ll going to need them, lots of them, to pay for the lawyers.

Primordial Slack declares “Obama will not be my President” and links a number of others with similar views.

I join VodkaPundit, DailyPundit, GuyK, Dogette, and a host of others who will, at the last, refuse to sit idly by while Freedom erodes.

Put my name on your list, Communist Nanny-Staters, it’s not too early.

Obama will not be my President. Nor will Hillary “for the common good” Clinton. Nor will anyone of any skin color or sex that embraces the deconstruction of Capitalism and Freedom as their political platform.

What’s up? What did I miss while reading dusty old documents? The blogosphere isn’t connecting with middle America and the Big Bad Media message is getting through? Duh. I don’t know the number of times I’ve read someone going on about how the MSM has dug its own grave, how it knows it won’t have any influence in the future so it’s squandering it all now to get Obama elected. Nonsense. They still buy ink (and pixels and airwaves) by the barrel*, and they still control what most of middle America reads, sees, and hears.

So what to do? Get in on it. “What?” you ask. Get in on it. We have to become the MSM, get in on the ground floor as reporters, work our way up. Get in on the fight, people. Cyberspace is important ground, but it’s not the main battlefield, it’s only one hill from which we can observe and call in artillery. We have to get down in the mud and the blood, get real ink, real video, real news all over us, and push back on the main field of battle. Win there, or lose.

Where else? Where are the other battles? Worried about all the big-government politicians? Worried about the lefty academy? Two more big battlefields. Stop whining, sign your name on the line, get elected and start leading or get a Ph.D. and start teaching.

That’s exactly how the left got where it is today, and that’s the only way that ground can be retaken.

Back to the ol’ fishin’ hole for me.

###

*Sorry for the mixed metaphor, but the alliteration should please you. Oh, sorry. I left my alliteration in the worm bucket when I came up the hill to write.

Update: The post hasn’t even been up for 10 minutes and Dana H. takes me to task in the comments over claiming the Dr. Helen post was part of the “McCain’s lost” movement. And rightly so, in all likelihood. Maybe it’s a broader, “Well, we’ve lost” attitude that I’m sensing, in the big, “our movement” way.

Update 2: Grim has picked up on the apocalyptic language as well.

There is a remarkable amount of ‘end times’ language surrounding the Obama candidacy, and as we’ve discussed, some of it is really his own fault. Obama is a scion of the Alinsky movement, and Saul Alinsky did dedicate his book on “community organizing” to Lucifer.

…

I hope Jim Webb is right, and I’m wrong: and it is comforting to find that there are people I respect who are Obama supporters. I know I can put some faith in them, even if I have none in the man himself. Jim Webb is out there, Phil Carter of Intel Dump, retired General Zinni — these are people I respect, whether or not we always agree and even when we rarely do. That’s comforting.

ABC & Charlie Gibson* Lie To Hurt Palin

This screenshot says a lot:

ABC ad misleadingly suggests Palin thinks Iraq War is a holy war.

The link is to the site I found the ad on, and there the ad links to a video of Charlie Gibson* slicing and dicing a prayer Palin gave in order to make it seem she believes Iraq is a task from God, when what she actually said was, “Pray that …” Rangel is lying scum, or a useful idiot.

Update: DANG did I screw up that headline! The interviewer was Charlie Gibson, not Rangel, as I had originally put. Hey, at least I didn’t just change it and move on as if nothing had happened, as ABC did earlier. That’ll teach me for posting before coffee. Mr. Rangel, I sincerely apologize for my mistake.

Also, while this pic seems to have only incensed (or been noticed by) me, the intertubes seem to be on fire with the topic. Here’s an op-ed in the NY Post noting the bias, and even TalkLeft mentions it. Of course, it’s everywhere. These are just two I thought were interesting.

Update (9/14/08): I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

Also, the Anchoress has an excellent comparison of Gibson’s softball interview with Obama and his hardball interview of Palin, along with takedowns of Newsweek and Whoopi Goldberg’s idiocy.

Chrenkoff! Lileks! Lucas!

Arthur Chrenkoff, that glorious Polish immigrant to Australia who insired so many of us in the dextrosphere, has an article up at Pajamas Media on Russia and Georgia. For those who know Chrenkoff, you’ve already clicked.

James Lileks serves up a piping hot screed, wherein a Canadian elitist gets her mooseburger:

I’m in a generous mood.

Or was, until I read this piece by a Canadian writer; it sums up with such delightful perfection what so many believe. So. Let’s have a look.

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted.

Hapless, confused old tool of the string yankers: check! Next, we see how it’s possible to put your head up your posterior while jerking your knee, a rather difficult maneuver they don’t teach until the fifth year of yoga class:

She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn’t already have sewn up, the white trash vote

And Lileks takes it to town from there as only Lileks can.

Moving along in our xenophobic theme, Rachel Lucas reveals that 95% of her readership are a huge disappointment to the rest of the world (and her comments suggest they aren’t properly concerned about that fact). Additionally, she grills up a big heaping plate of Americana for a UK columnist who warns of the dire consequences if the US elects McCain:

In all seriousness though. I can’t speak for any other Stupid American, but Europe and Rest of World? Wanna know why I don’t give a toss what you think? Because you’re doing it wrong.

You’re doing so many things wrong, in my view, that I want my country to be very different from yours.

As a bonus, there’s an excellent comment that wins the coveted Chuck Norris Action Jeans ‘Unique Hidden Gusset’ Award for Excellence in Commenting.