Crickets Chirping 
Here's an interesting column today by Jack Kelly from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Funny Money

I am sure the neutral media [sic] is throughly investigating who Mr. Good Will, Doodad Pro, and three Palestinian refugees are who have nothing better to do with $33K are as I type. /sarc

I particularly like this line:
CNN recently sent a reporter to Little Diomede Island, the westernmost part of Alaska (2.4 miles from Russia) to determine whether Sarah Palin had ever been there actually to see Russia with her own eyes. But CNN -- and the rest of the media -- have been incurious about the Obama campaign's fundraising.


No MSM bias, right.

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???????? 
On a scale of 1 to 5, five being zaniest, Joe Biden's recent comment that Hillary "might have been a better pick than me" for VP goes off the scale with an impressive eight question marks. Someone should start a competitive eating contest but instead of food, use shoes, because at the pace at which Biden puts his foot in his mouth, he'd win hands down each and every time.

Oh, and wouldn't it be interesting if Biden suddenly developed an "unspecified illness" or disclosed an "undisclosed extreme personal issue" and dropped out of the race? This, then, would pave the way for a woman veep for BHO. This is highly unlikely this late in the year but one never knows. Of course, this would send the bullcrap meter off the scale and even the MSM may not be able to cover for the Obama campaign on that one.


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The Move 
I was in Western PA this weekend and away from the TV, Internet, and radio on Friday when Sarah Palin was announced as McCain's running mate. So I missed all the initial hype and really didn't get to catch much about it over the rest of the weekend.

I had commented a few months ago that a woman for VP would be a bold move for McCain and that's what he did. She's a newbie, like BHO, the political front. She's got executive experience as a governor but she didn't make a speech in 2002 like BHO did. It's hard to tell how this plays out. Democrats will attack her inexperience and, as expected, so will the media; even though the media will forget to tell you that BHO was in office 143 days before he formed a presidential exploratory committee and has spent most of his time since then visiting the 61 states of the Union.

We'll find out a lot about Gov. Palin in the coming months and anything negative about her will be front and center, unlike fellow VP candidate Biden's plagiarism or his frequent verbal gaffes as well as her limited experience with no mention of Obama's. Oh, and look for a myriad of Hillary supporters on the Obama News Networks who will be brought in to say how they will not support McCain-Palin.

I applaud the move, even if she is relatively unknown. Sometimes you need to push for change.

As an aside, Palin has a son who is being deployed to Iraq soon and McCain has a son in the Marines and another in the naval academy. If this ticket wins it's possible that both the Pres. and Veep could both have sons deployed in war zones. I wonder if that has ever happened before?

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Typical Headline Slant from the AP 
So, let me get this straight: the McCain campaign airs an ad that features Hillary Clinton saying "I know Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And, Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002." This is a called a GOP attack? How? Hillary did the attacking here, not a Republican.

Clinton faces new GOP attacks ahead of her speech

In the article, Hillary says "I'm Hillary Clinton and I do not approve that message."

Well, too bad, Hillary, you said it so if you disapprove of it, then you are only disapproving yourself.

Poor Hillary. First, I believe she is more qualified than BHO to be president and second, I firmly believe that had she entered the race in '04, even if late, she probably would have won the election. She completely underestimated BHO and even she could not have predicted that the MSM would switch the lettering on their cheerleading uniforms from "HC" to an "O".

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Obama First, America Second, or Third, or Fourth, or Fifth.... 
Well, that's the theme BHO seems to convey by replacing an American flag on the tail of his airplane with his campaign symbol.

Of course, if John McCain did this, there would be a call for public "McCain symbol" burnings throughout the land. But, since McCain supporters are more refined, they will not stoop to an "Obama symbol" burning call.

To be fair, McCain's plane does not have a flag on its tail either. However, the point here is not whether or not the presumptive candidates have flags on the tails of their campaign planes but that BHO REMOVED an American flag and replaced with his campaign symbol. This is a sign of arrogance, entitlement, and a "me first" mentality. I will leave it at that for obvious reasons.

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22nd Amendment to be Repealed? 
In yet another verbal blunder, oft-bewildered BHO stated on Face the Nation that, if elected, he'll serve 8-10 years. Imagine the laughter if "crazy old coot" John McCain said this?

Interestingly, in the 109th, 108th, 107th, 105th, 104th, and 103rd Congresses, amendments were proposed* (in 109, 108, and 107 they were introduced by MD Rep. Steny Hoyer) to repeal the 22nd Amendment. There has been no bill in the current (110th) Congress to repeal it. If Steny proposes another bill and if it clears all the hurdles and passes, it is possible that BHO will serve three terms which, of course would be 12 years, not 10, if he's elected and the 22nd Amendment is repealed during his first or [if elected to a] second term. Since it seems unlikely that the 22nd Amendment will be repealed, let's cut him some slack and count 2008 as one year and add that on to a two-term presidency, that makes nine. But wait, silly me, if we take the mean of eight and ten, lo and behold, we get nine! Once again, BHO dazzles us with his repartee!

*Go to this link and type 'repeal 22nd' in the search box and be sure to check all.

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Election? No Problem. 

© 2008 Universal Press Syndicate All Rights Reserved.

...no problem if you have the media to carry you along, that is. I saw this comic in my local paper a few days ago and it's oh so true. It's amazing how the media goes gaga over Obama. His gaffes like saying he's visited 57 states or that 10,000 people died in a Kansas tornado, or that Arkansas is closer to Kentucky than Illinois or that his uncle helped liberate Auschwitz (the Russians found Auschwitz) go almost completely without notice from the media or, if they are noticed, they cover for him quite nicely. Imagine if McCain had claimed to have visited 57 states or that a myriad of people died in a tornado when, in fact, it didn't happen. It would be horns-a-blowin' and trumpets-a-blarin' about how clueless the man is. But, BHO has an unlimited amount of get out of jail free cards that the media always plays when he gaffes or shows his obvious inexperience on domestic and foreign matters.

Additionally, associations with nutjob Rev. Wright or domestic terrorist William Ayers or crooked Tony Rezko certainly should lead to a debate about his choice of acquaintances, but it hasn't; like the Dan Quayle-like gaffes, a free pass is issued by the press.

But, people want change, I suppose, never thinking that change can be negative as well as a positive. So, I ask people, what do you want to change? Less corruption and cronyism in Washington? Well, Obama's connections to some questionable individuals make that unlikely. Someone who is intelligent? Well, forgetting how many US states there are or hyper-inflating a recent tornado's death toll do little there, too. You want a better life for yourself? Then work harder, smarter, and challenge yourself by setting goals. Seek out government programs that help you find a better job or further your education, not just ones that give you a check and say "here you go, see you next month." From personal experience, I can say that my quality of living is more dependent on my actions than who the president is.

Nonetheless, since the media will carry Obama into November, we need not worry about his gaffes or choice of friends. The media will toss those into the ol' memory hole. Nothing to see here, move along, and when you see that man carrying Obama down the racetrack, get out of their way.

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Veep 
The race is on for a V.P. for both Obama and McCain. I don't think Hillary will be Obama's choice and if that's the case, he can't pick a woman at all. This is where McCain can make a bold move - select a woman as a running mate. Since Obama cannot choose a woman unless she's Hillary, he's in a bind. McCain has some play here and it might work for him if he does it right. However, does he choose a conservative woman to bring back some of the conservatives or does he stay moderate and try to win over the unhappy pro-Clinton women who may not vote for Obama? Hard to say. I don't think a McCain-Clinton ticket is likely but it would be interesting. He would likely loose more conservative votes this way but may win a lot of the Hillary backers, men and woman, with this move. I think both candidates are waiting to see who blinks first, too, in order to offer a strong counter to the other's pick.

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Quote of the Day 
...from George Will's column yesterday:

The green left understands that the direct route to government control of almost everything is to stigmatize, as a planetary menace, something involved in almost everything -- carbon.


Orwellian, for sure, and although Orwell doesn't explain how Big Brother came to power, I doubt this was how he did. Even Orwell could not have envisioned this route to a "license to intrude."

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Hawaii Six-O 



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Kwame Kilpatrick is a Democrat 
Heck, someone has to say it. NBC, CBS, and NBC can't bring themselves to say it. But when the accused is Larry Craig or David Vitter, according to that link, their party is mentioned without fail:
The big three broadcast networks have gone out of their way to avoid labeling scandal-scarred New York Governor Eliot Spitzer as a "Democrat." An examination of the fifteen ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows through Wednesday night finds Spitzer was called a Democrat just 20 percent of the time -- twice on CBS, once on ABC, and never on NBC. So, how do the networks treat Republicans involved in sex scandals? Always, always as "Republicans." Looking at the ABC, CBS, NBC morning and evening shows in the days after the most recent scandals broke, Republican Senators David Vitter (July) and Larry Craig (August) were labeled "Republican" on every show (100 percent). Yet for Democrat Spitzer, four out of five news programs (80 percent) have skipped his party identification....


A Google search for "Kwame Kilpatrick is a democrat" yields 6 - SIX - results.

A Google search for "Larry Craig is a republican" yields 12,000 results.

If the search is changed to something more likely to appear in print:

"Democrat Kwame Kilpatrick" - we get 341 results.

"Republican Larry Craig" - we get 10,400 results.

What does this prove? One, the actions of a US Senator are more newsworthy than the actions of the mayor of the 11th largest city in the US*. A city, by the way, that has been beset with economic woes, shrinking population, and rampant crime. So, I suppose that scandal, corruption, and criminal activity by the mayor isn't really surprising. Two, when a Republican does something wrong, his party label follows him like a shadow, almost becoming part of his name. However, when a Democrat is accused of all sorts of debauchery, the party affiliation is treated like a non-essential piece of information.

In the Eliot Spitzer vs. Larry Craig Google News watch, a Google News search for Eliot Spitzer still yields over 35,000 results and Larry Craig yields about 2,800. The Spitzer searches may be inflated some as many hits yield stories about the woman involved too. I tried to filter those out by inserting "-call" "-girl" and still get about 17,000. I am sure Google will fix this problem by late summer (there is an election this year) and make sure the Larry Craig stories outnumber Spitzer ones. As for Kilpatrick, he hits about 5,300 now on Google News so he'll be below the Craig number much sooner.


*Unless, of course, if Kilpatrick were Republican and Craig a Democrat, the question would be "Larry who?"

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Eliot Spitzer is a Democrat 
...but you wouldn't know it from this AP article. How about this CNN story? Nope, not there. Don't tell me the MSM doesn't have a liberal bias.

New York has 19.3 million residents.
Idaho has 1.5 million residents.

It will be interesting to see if this scandal about a governor of a state with nearly 20 million people gets even one-third the press a scandal about a senator from a state with about 1.5 million people got.

This story is still breaking as I type this so who knows where this will go.

Update 1: the Corner (National Review) points out a slideshow of scandals put together by ABC. In short, 13 people are identified six of the seven Republicans are identified as such but only one of the six Democrats is identified as such. The Corner also notes the absence of Mel Reynolds which is understandable because they can't have the number of Democratic scandals equal to or greater than Republican; D must never be greater than R-1. As the old saying goes: "he who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."

Update 2: Newsbusters points out how when the Larry Craig scandal broke in August, it was horns-a-blowin' and trumpets-a-blarin' time when it came to making sure we knew what party Larry Craig belonged to - the word 'Republican' was the fourth word out of Kate Snow's mouth on ABC and NBC's Brian Williams somehow managed to hold out until the middle of his second sentence.

The only way this Spitzer saga gets near the press Larry Craig did is if the media spends time discussing the good Spitzer has done.

Update 3: typing "eliot spitzer is a democrat" into Google does not yield a link to my site yet. Given how often Googlebot visits my site, this is suspicious.

Columns read: entry/hits/files/Kbytes/visits/hostname (March 2008 only)

1 579 8.05% 550 9.17% 16705 12.15% 73 5.59% crawl-66-249-67-207.googlebot.com

Alltheweb, it's sixth. Altavista, it's sixth also. Maybe Google has a quota on how many negative stories about Democrats it will return.

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