Monthly Archives: September 2008

Good Ol’ Joe

We knew we could count on Joe Biden to cheer up the campaign season. He gave Katie Couric this history lesson: When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed,” Biden told Couric. “He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.'” We’re beginning to understand why Barack Obama chose Biden: he was the only potential Veep candidate who knows even less »

Guilt by participation

In a post below, Scott links to Stanley Kurtz’s piece, “Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism on Schools.” This is a link worth following. For Kurtz demonstrates (1) the dishonesty of Obama on the subject of his association with Ayers and (2) the underlying radicalism of the Ayers-Obama joint project. Last April, Obama dismissed the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers as just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” and “not somebody »

Deep secrets of campaign 2008, part 4

Important developments on the investigation into the source of the video smearing Governor Palin took place during the day yesterday after Rusty Shackleford posted his original report, which was itself updated throughout the day. See Jawa Report (more here), Michelle Malkin, Patterico’s Pontifications, Ace of Spades (more here, and the Weekly Standard Blog (John McCormack). McCormack concludes: “[I]t appears that Winner & Associates–a professional PR firm with extensive connections to »

Deep secretes of campaign 2008, part 3

Yesterday in “Deep secrets of the campaign” I noted Barack Obama’s association with the repugnant terrorist Bill Ayers. Obama has described Ayers as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” Stanley Kurtz has suggested otherwise, in part based on Obama’s work with Ayers on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Kurtz first explored the subject in at NRO in “Chicago Annenberg Challenge Shutdown?” Today Kurtz returns after a visit to the CAC »

Progress in Iraq is a relative thing

Mithal al-Alusi is a member of the Iraqi parliament. A week ago, using a German passport, he visited Israel and attended a conference at the International Institute for Counterterrorism. His purpose was to support Israel in its battle with what he sees as a common enemy — Iranian backed terrorists. It wasn’t al-Alusi’s first visit to the Jewish state. He traveled there in 2005. Shortly thereafter, his two sons were »

The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus…

…seems to have been reading Power Line. Specifically, this post and this one. Today, in any event, she agreed with us: Obama has descended to similarly scurrilous tactics on the stump and on the air. On immigration, Obama is running a Spanish-language ad that unfairly lumps McCain together with Rush Limbaugh — and quotes Limbaugh out of context. … Obama has been furthest out of line, however, on Social Security, »

What happens now?

This piece on RedState by Francis Cianfrocca (hat tip to John Podhoretz) is as cogent an analysis of the Treasury and Fed’s Troubled Assets Relief Program (“TARP”) as I’ve seen. Cianfrocca argues that we face two huge crises — a liquidity crisis and a credit crisis. Under TARP, we will borrow money from world markets, guaranteed by the taxpayers, and use the money to buy up to 700 billion dollars’ »

The New York Times Won’t Say It, But…

…Joe Biden will. We noted here the outrageous Obama ad that ridiculed John McCain because, as a result of injuries he suffered as a prisoner of war, he is unable to type well on a keyboard. Obama has never apologized for this grotesque attack, but today Joe Biden did: 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 »

Why Did It Happen?

On the financial crisis of the past several months, a knowledgeable reader says that this column by Kevin Hassett is “all you need to know:” The economic history books will describe this episode in simple and understandable terms: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded, and many bystanders were injured in the blast, some fatally. Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled »

John McCain, Reformer

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Who lacks health insurance in America?

According to data recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of Americans officially classified as uninsured in 2007 was 45.7 million. This figure is being used, naturally, to promote the case for radical “reform” that in practice would amount to a government takeover of the health care industry. However, Sally Pipes, in her Sunday Examiner column, shows that the 45.7 million uninsured figure is misleading as a barometer »

McCain Campaign Calls Out the New York Times

I participated in on today’s press conference call with John McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis and senior adviser Steve Schmidt. Much was said that was of interest, but most striking to me was Schmidt’s teeing off on the New York Times. My notes reflect that he said something along the following lines: The New York Times is a pro-Obama advocacy organization, not a journalistic organization…the Times attacks McCain every day…the »

Deep secrets of campaign 2008, part 2

Rusty Shackleford has posted the results of his and his Jawa team’s investigation to determine the source of smears directed toward Sarah Palin. The smears include false allegations that she belonged to a secessionist political party and that she has radical anti-American views. Shackleford’s research suggests that a subdivision of one of the largest public relations firms in the world most likely started and promulgated the rumors, that the rumors »

Deep secrets of campaign 2008

The news regarding the presidential campaign has been delivered on two tracks. On one track the mainstream media have played their usual role of the Victorian gentleman described by Tom Wolfe in The Right Stuff. In this capacity, to borrow Wolfe’s formulation, the mainstream media have prescribed the proper emotion, the seemly sentiment, the fitting moral tone, that must be established; and all information that muddies the tone and weakens »

Andrew Meier Discusses The Lost Spy

The Lost Spy is an excellent new book by Andrew Meier, formerly Time magazine’s Russia correspondent. I wrote about the book here. It tells the story of Cy Oggins, an American who attended Columbia, became a Communist and, with his wife Nerma, spied for Josef Stalin. Oggins’ story reprises much of the history of pre-World War II Europe, as he served Stalin in Weimar Berlin, Paris, Spain and the Far »

The Times Judges Itself, Finds Itself Okay

In today’s column, New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt assesses two hit pieces that ran on the front page of the Times last weekend. The first hit piece was an attack on John McCain; it alleged that McCain had “regularly stretch[ed] the truth” in describing Barack Obama’s positions on the issues. Hoyt gives this article a clean bill of health, finding that it was based on “a solid foundation »

The Politics of Fear’

Is Barack Obama running the most disgraceful Presidential campaign of modern times? The evidence continues to mount, as Obama’s ads and speeches are filled not only with exaggerations and distortions, but with outright lies: claims about John McCain that Obama must know are false. Like many Democrats, Obama engages in the politics of fear. He tries, especially, to scare senior citizens. In one ad, he asserts that the “Bush-McCain privatization »