Sarah Palin Delivers the Goods

Relax, Andrew Sullivan, it isn't a baby I'm talking about.  It's votes.  Another post from Politco:

Palin's backing pays off for pals

by Andy Barr

Some of Sarah Palin’s riskiest endorsements scored major victories Tuesday for the former Alaska governor, showing off her power in Republican primaries.

Palin had four primary endorsements in play – Carly Fiorina, Nikki Haley, Terry Branstad and Cecile Bledsoe – and three won or moved on to a runoff.

Palin served different roles for each candidate – sometimes spotlighting conservatives not well known to the national scene while at others validating conservative credentials to an unsure grassroots and even stepping in to deflect nasty attacks.

Perhaps Palin’s most powerful demonstration came in South Carolina, where her endorsement propelled a major swing in the polls for Haley’s primary campaign for governor and sustained the state representative through accusations of two separate affairs.

While listening to Morning Joe on MSNBC this morning they were discussing how powerful her endorsement seemed to be.  Not a mention of her resignation speech where she said she could make a difference by not being a governor, "Told Ya!"

Read more here.

In this case the union is telling the truth

in the Politico:
AFL to White House: 'Labor isn't an arm of the Democratic Party'

The truth is that the Democratic Party is an arm of the Unions.
 That is my take on it.  Go read the article.  Poor union is mad at the Democrats, the Democrats are mad at the union for spending money on someone other than their candidate. This is the dispute:

The major labor federation AFL-CIO took sharp objection tonight to a White House official's assessment that they'd "flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet" in the "pointless exercise" of supporting the failed bid of Bill Halter to unseat Sen. Blanche Lincoln.

They really have some nerve in talking about how much money was spent,they are telling us how corrupt they are. This was provided by union dues. In many cases union dues paid in because they must pay the dues or be penalized.  When will teachers and others realize if they could keep that money they could spend it on something besides union bigwigs and politics. Money they could spend on their own children, their own homes, their own lives.

American Thinker on the Media and Anti-Semitism

Thomas is a symptom

Ethel C. Fenig

Writing at Big Journalism, Jeff Dunetz hits upon an aspect of the Helen Thomas rant and its continuing fallout by touching upon other ignored misbehavior that has bothered me for a long time. Stating that Thomas was a symptom of malpractice in journalism rather than the disease, considered to be a joke, an aging pet if you will, of the politically correct press corps and the MSM, he lays out the cold damning facts of miscreant journalists and others whose bigotry is glossed over.

Go to the American Thinker blog and read it all. A very important call out of some of the anti-Semtism in the press and how we tolerate it.

Is this supposed to be called treason?

I'm not sure of the definitions, but this is definitely not to be condoned.
From Wired.com:

U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe

By Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter

Federal officials have arrested an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site Wikileaks, Wired.com has learned.

SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he’s being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged.

Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online. In the course of their chats, Manning took credit for leaking a headline-making video of a helicopter attack that Wikileaks posted online in April. The video showed a deadly 2007 U.S. helicopter air strike in Baghdad that claimed the lives of several innocent civilians.
He said he also leaked three other items to Wikileaks: a separate video showing the notorious 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has previously acknowledged is in its possession; a classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March; and a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing “almost criminal political back dealings.”

If you read the rest of the article you see that this 22 year old punk truly thinks he  is entitled to leak security secrets because he knows best.  He is a true disciple of the lefists who came into being during the Vietnam war and were persuaded of their moral superiority over any honest American citizen. Read more here.

How do you like those pictures of President Obama observing D-Day? Oh wait, HE DIDN'T

He went to an event honoring Desmond Tutu instead.  I guess the schedulers didn't get the notice that D-Day is always on the sixth of June.

This is why Rush calls them "seminar callers"

From Ann Althouse:

Barack Obama shows you how to call in to radio shows to voice your support for Elena Kagan.

Complete with "calling tips":

Some hosts may challenge your views. Stay calm and firm....

And "discussion points":

Elena Kagan understands how the law affects ordinary Americans, giving a great deal of thought to legal issues which profoundly affect Americans’ everyday lives – including freedom of speech and government policy making.

If you say that, maybe the host will say: "What do you mean she's given a great deal of thought to government policy making? What does government policy making have to do with being a Supreme Court Justice and why should I care about the large amount of thought that's been given? Has she thought well and what does she think about law?" If that happens, stay calm and firm! And say what?

Thanks, Ann for giving a far better discussion than I could.  Be sure to go to the Organizing for America page: http://radio.barackobama.com/  We are always being conned by our current president.

Polling Observations from the LA Times

It's hard to believe they didn't know this all along:

More Obama change to believe in: Americans now see him as a partisan Democrat

One of the 2007-08 Obama presidential campaign's changes that Americans believed in by the many millions was his oft-repeated promise to work with all sides no matter what and change the harsh political tone of Washington.

Hard to believe, indeed. But wait, there's more!

Good luck with that tired professed aspiration. George W. Bush promised the same thing a decade ago. That worked well for several minutes.

Well, Bush is gone and the majority parties have switched places. Now Democrats run the whole D.C. show.

And after almost 17 months of Democrat Obama's White House administration, it appears Americans have given up on his promised bipartisanship, or even on less partisanship. It's an impressive squandering of good will from his inaugural glow.

A new Rasmussen Reports survey finds 61% of likely voters believe the nation's capitol will see more, not less, partisanship during the next year. Which includes, of course, the unfolding midterm election campaigns leading up to Nov. 2.

The figure expecting increased partisanship is 50% higher than during the early days of Obama's term when only 40% were pessimistic about political cooperation.

Meanwhile, another new poll out this morning from Gallup finds Obama's approval among Hispanics has slipped 12 points just since January, apparently due to unhappiness with the president's unwillingness to pursue comprehensive immigration reforms this year. Only 57% of that core Democratic audience now approve of Obama, a steady decline in 2010.

The Rasmussen survey found 52% now think Obama is governing as a partisan Democrat; 61% believe his party's majorities are governing Congress in a partisan way under the deficit-stimulating leaderships of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Independents think both Republicans (54%) and Democrats (61%) are acting in partisan ways.

Also, 19% of the 1,000 surveyed last week said they believe there will be more political cooperation in Washington during the next year. But they've probably sobered up by now.

-- Andrew Malcolm

An Alternative Universe, our surreal government

Four or five years ago when I first considered writing a blog the name I was planning to use was Surrealities.  Little did I know how surreal it would become.
This is how surreal it is:

Inspector General’s Memo: Census Says It Hired More Workers Than It Needed As a ‘Cost-Saving Measure’

By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief CNSNews

The U.S. Census purposefully hired more workers than it needed, telling the Office of the Inspector General of the Commerce Department that it did so as a “cost-saving measure,” according to a memorandum that Todd J. Zinser of the inspector general’s office sent to Census Bureau Director Robert Groves last week. 

“According to Census,” said Zinser’s May 26 memo to Groves, “‘frontloading’ its workforce (i.e. hiring and training more enumerators than necessary to offset turnover) is a cost-saving measure.” The inspector general’s memo, however, suggested that in at least one Census Bureau operation excessive staff had increased the “cost of operations” and that in another operation deployment of an unnecessarily large number of workers "increased the operation’s direct labor and travel costs." (ed. note: gee, ya think?)

It is bad enough to know of  this one specific instance, but when you multiply that by everything else going on in our government you may think you have entered the twilight zone. It is definitely a surreal time.

Remembering, this will bring tears to your eyes

A number of people are posting this today. It happened at a Herman Cain Teaparty event.



I have heard this verse before, but never as well as this.

D-Day, Remember it with reverence

If you are as old as I am you remember D-Day.  You remember the anxiety everyone felt for every newscast on the radio. You remember seeing the newsreels at the movie theater, or as we called it in my young days, the picture show. You remember knowing your favorite uncle was there and in the middle of it.  We didn't know at the time how very involved he was.

You remember that in the Pacific that other uncle was commanding one of the PT boats, and you were very proud of him. But you knew how very hard the battle of the Pacific was being fought, so you listened anxiously for news of that front, too. 

Remember them and their comrades.  Very few of them are left to tell the story.

D-Day, the sixth of June. Remember.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

The title of a book by Ray Bradbury, and a quote from Shakespeare.  And a truly scary scenario for the World. There is a rise of anti-Semitism going on and it is being enhanced now by the United States Government.

The recent Israeli/Gaza boat incident seems to have a been a contrived setup and Israel stepped right into the trap. The Gaza sympathizers had their press releases ready to go immediately and Israel played catch-up with videos showing the trap.

Last week Helen Thomas famously let slip her deep anti-Semitic feelings. She has since "apologized" but the horse is already out of the gate on that one. I have a feeling many in the news media share her liberal (ultra liberal) views.

Today I read this from yesterday's Powerline blog:

Earlier today, Attorney General Eric Holder reassured Muslims that the dark days of oppression are behind us: 

Attorney General Eric Holder promised the Arab-American community on Friday that the Justice Department will vigorously prosecute hate crimes and he said an ongoing dialogue between law enforcement agencies and Arab-Americans is one of the Obama administration's top priorities.

"The era of 'us versus them' that some of you have experienced must end. At long last, it is ending," Holder told the 30th anniversary conference of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. 

Yes, I remember that "era of 'us versus them.'" Apparently that was when President Bush was touring every mosque in the U.S., talking about how Islam is the religion of peace. What the hell is Holder talking about? Maybe the end of the era of "us versus them" was when we started allowing homicidal "psychiatrists" to care for our wounded soldiers, when we had every reason to know they were plotting violence. Maybe the era of "us versus them" ended when our government became "them."

If you read the blogs and internet news, you will have seen much more of this. Even the regular news shows (MSM) have quoted such things as if they are normal operating procedures, falling right into the line of the anti-semitic sources. Like I said, something wicked this way comes, it has already overtaken the European nations, was always in the middle -east and is apparently well established here.

 
There is was one bright light and you won't believe who it is. From Politico "On Tuesday in New York, Vice President Joe Biden was feeling Israel’s pain.

“I think Israel has an absolute right to deal with its security interest,” he told Charlie Rose on his interview show. “I mean again, look, you can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not and the — but the truth of the matter is, Israel has a right to know — they're at war with Hamas — has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in.”
“So what's the big deal here? What's the big deal of insisting [aid] go straight to Gaza?” Biden asked.

Read the rest of this to see how the administration rushed to backtrack on his views.

UPDATE: More here.  Mark Steyn on the forgotten Rachels.

Links on Obamacare, Chicago Politics, Liberal Press bias, Obama's Policies and other news of the day

Rod Blagojevich trial rattles insiders

Scary Chicago politics.... scary for the party in power.  Chicago politicians acting like Chicago politicians.  One pundit asked if this had anything to do with the recent visit over the Memorial Day weekend. If I find the link again I will add it.

From Michelle Malkin:

The Resurrection of Rod Blagojevich
From NRO Online by Jonah Goldberg:

In a Welfare State, How Much Is ‘Enough’?
That’s a question Democrats don’t tend to ask.
 
Stu Tarlow in The American Thinker blog:  
Don't be fooled by Obama's 'incompetence'

It is a tremendous mistake to think that the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will help convince Americans of Barack Obama's incompetence. Obama's true agenda is so insidious that even his inability to handle a crisis serves his greater strategy.

From The American Thinker:
A Sneak Preview of the Ground Zero Mega-Mosque
By Stella Paul
 
From Investor's Daily:
Reversing A Mistake

Medical Care: Monday's headline from Reuters — "Soaring costs force Canada to reassess health model" — is a warning. In the not-too-distant future, the headline will be used again, except "U.S." will replace "Canada."

Howie Carr in the Boston Herald:
Barack Obama didn’t part the waters - he just made them dirtier

On the day of the memorial service for the 11 dead on the oil rig last week, Barack flew to San Francisco for a fund-raiser on behalf of the hideous Sen. Barbara “Botox” Boxer. It was held in a mansion owned by a member of the Getty family, of Big Oil infamy. And yet nary a word among the usual Ivy League pukes on MSNBC and in The New York Times [NYT].

An IBD Editorial:
Colombia Election Skunks The Media

 Elections: Loopy Green candidate Antanas Mockus was hailed in the press as Colombia's next president. But the voters had someone else in mind and stunned with Sunday's result. It exposed Mockus' rise as pure media hype.

Just a start on the day's news and opinions.

Eric's Home!! Back from Afghanistan!!

My nephew is back from Afghanistan. I have the picture of him, his wife and baby he hadn't met on my desktop. I would put it here but haven't asked for permission yet.

Hallelujah!!

UPDATE: Thanks, Linda, for the permission.

Here they are:

Have we entered "the twilight zone" with the liberal change overs?

Another one is showing some strange inclinations of sanity.  Mickey Kaus in the Orange County Register is showing some sense on immigration.  Via Instapundit:

View from left: Dems kidding themselves on immigration

If you're a Democrat and resist the party's immigration stance -- which favors a "path to citizenship" for illegal immigrants as part of "comprehensive" reform -- you'll inevitably be called "anti-immigrant" or worse. So let me be clear up front: Immigrants are still good for America. They are especially good for California -- those who come from south of the border and those who come from overseas. Most are working hard to help their families. The place wouldn't function very well without them, including those who came here illegally.

But the Democrats' dogma on immigration -- they've never met an amnesty they didn't like -- is at odds with common sense. After all, why don't we have free, unfettered immigration – so-called "open borders"? Because half the world would happily move to our country if given a chance. Los Angeles and the Bay Area would soon look like Rio de Janeiro, with vast communities of shacks and slums.

 Mickey Kaus is a candidate for US Senate in the Democratic primary in California.  Real all his post to see his common sense ideas.

Good News on Babies in China

Apparently they are having more babies, more girls than the official count shows.  This from the Telegraph UK via Instapundit.

Chinese hiding three million babies a year

As many as three million Chinese babies are hidden by their parents every year in order to get around the country’s one-child policy, a researcher has discovered.

By Malcolm Moore in Xiamen

"I am the biggest offender against the one-child policy in China!" laughed Fu Yang, a wiry and energetic 47-year-old man, as he fidgeted and poured tea. "I had seven daughters in just ten years."

Mr Fu and his rather more reserved wife are among the millions of Chinese parents who risk threats, fines and even imprisonment in order to defy the country's one-child policy. The couple, who now live a prosperous life in a small village outside the southern city of Xiamen, have had to flee across three provinces and hide their children with friends in the past.

This is good news, a delightful and charming story.  Read it all, apparently the lack of wives for the boys is not as severe as the government thinks. 

I'm not the only one who has noticed some liberal back tracking

Ed Driscoll has a post on Pajamas Media with a good wrap up of several different ways they are realizing some mistakes, including Richard Cohen's I posted earlier.
Here is Driscoll's post:

The Cassandra Crossing

Just at the moment that President Obama’s “regime,” as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews would say, seemingly became entrenched in DC, there’s a curious reassessment of the current state of what passes as “liberalism” these days, particularly outside of America, where the damage inflicted by a century of the European-inspired “progressive” agenda is that much easier to diagnose:

* “Canada reconsidering health-care model in face of soaring costs.”

* “‘I hate to say it, but Mary Whitehouse was probably right’: Permissive society failed women,” says leftwing veteran BBC broadcaster Joan Bakewell.

* “In a welfare state, how much is ‘enough’?”

* “President Barack Obama spent the last year insisting he doesn’t want to turn the American health care system into a carbon copy of the government-run British system. But Obama’s pick to run Medicaid and Medicare — Donald Berwick — is a pediatrician and Harvard University professor with a self-professed ‘love’ of the British system. . . . Now Senate Republicans are vowing to press their case against Obama’s sweeping new health care law by challenging Berwick’s nomination — just in time to resurrect the brutal yearlong health reform battle ahead of the midterm elections.”

* “What Would a Euro Collapse Mean for the United States?”

And speaking of the US, at Big Government, Michael Zak explores the “Republican Roots of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” an extended post that dovetails well with Bruce Bartlett’s 2007 article in the Wall Street Journal on “Whitewash — The racist history the Democratic Party wants you to forget.”

Finally (at least for now), at Commentary’s “Contentions” blog, Jennifer Rubin spots Richard Cohen at the Washington Post, one of the biggest redoubts of establishment liberalism having a brief moment of second thought. Or as Jennifer puts it, “Poverty Doesn’t Create Crime? Who Knew?”

He goes on to discuss the Richard Cohen post, read the rest here.

States are of one mind about the case of heckling at funerals

From an ABC news story via Politico:

States Line Up Against Funeral Hecklers in Supreme Court Brief

Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church Picketed Marine's Funeral; Court to Decide if Protest Was Free Speech

By DEVIN DWYER

Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia are backing the family of fallen Marine Matthew Snyder in a pending U.S. Supreme Court case that could decide the constitutionality of laws restricting protests at private family funerals....

..... Now, all but two state attorneys general have signed a "friend of the court" brief, to be filed tomorrow, that argues the First Amendment should not apply to some "intrusive and harassing" forms of expression.

Read the rest here.

Our President Really, Really wants the British Healthcare System for the US

This story from Politico strives to make it look like it is all the mean ole GOP's fault.

GOP sees a way to revive old debate

By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN

President Barack Obama spent the last year insisting he doesn’t want to turn the American health care system into a carbon copy of the government-run British system.

But Obama’s pick to run Medicaid and Medicare — Donald Berwick — is a pediatrician and Harvard University professor with a self-professed “love” of the British system.

Berwick has called Britain’s National Health Service “one of the greatest health care institutions in human history” and “a global treasure.” He once said it sets an “example” for the United States to follow. And his decadelong efforts to improve the NHS were so well-regarded that Queen Elizabeth granted him an honorary knighthood in 2005.

Now Senate Republicans are vowing to press their case against Obama’s sweeping new health care law by challenging Berwick’s nomination — just in time to resurrect the brutal yearlong health reform battle ahead of the midterm elections.

And given Berwick’s long career and extensive writings, Republicans say they have a lot to work with.

We can only hope the GOP can stop this appointment.  It is an arrogant, in your face, show of power by President Obama.  Read the rest of the story here.

Another "Gee, Who Knew?" Moment, this time on criminals

Another Washington Post editorial by Richard Cohen

Did liberals get it wrong on crime?

This is a good news, bad news column. The good news is that crime is again down across the nation -- in big cities, small cities, flourishing cities and cities that are not for the timid. Surprisingly, this has happened in the teeth of the Great Recession, meaning that those disposed to attribute criminality to poverty -- my view at one time -- have some strenuous rethinking to do. It could be, as conservatives have insisted all along, that crime is committed by criminals. For liberals, this is bad news indeed.

The figures are rather startling. From 2008 to 2009, violent crime was down 5.5 percent overall and almost 7 percent in big cities. Some of those cities are as linked with crime as gin is with tonic or as John McCain is with political opportunism. In Detroit, for instance, with the auto industry shedding workers, violent crime was down 2.4 percent. In Washington, D.C., murder was down 23.1 percent, rape 19.4 percent and property crime 6 percent. Stats for political corruption are not available.

Probably the most surprising numbers come from Phoenix, which thought of itself as sinking in a sea of supposedly immoral and rapacious immigrants, all of them illegal and all waiting for nightfall and the chance for a nifty burglary or home invasion. If so, the crime reporting system has virtually collapsed. To the surprise no doubt of local TV news anchors, violent crime was down almost 17 percent. Back at 11.

What's going on? A number of things, say the experts. As is always the case, the police credited the police for magnificent police work, while others cited the decline in crack cocaine usage. Those answers, though, are only partially satisfying because, believe you me, if and when crime begins its almost inevitable ascent, the very same police authorities will blame economic or social conditions beyond their control -- not to mention the inevitable manpower shortage.

Whatever the reasons, it now seems fairly clear that something akin to culture and not economics is the root cause of crime. By and large everyday people do not go into a life of crime because they have been laid off or their home is worth less than their mortgage. They do something else, but whatever it is, it does not generally entail packing heat. Once this becomes an accepted truth, criminals will lose what status they still retain as victims.

I see this as good news, a lot of the criminals are already locked up.  Read the rest.

Another "Gee, Who Knew?" Moment, this time on the Detainess at Guantanamo

I don't know about you but I am getting so tired of these "who knew" moments. The truth is many of us did know, just the lefties didn't.  This op-ed by By Marc A. Thiessen discusses a report which came out as a Friday night document dump on a holiday weekend shows that 95% are actually people who would kill us on sight if they could. He faults the paper he is writing in for reporting a headline that falsely indicated just the opposite.  I'll  copy some of it here, then you need to read the whole editorial.

Where are the Gitmo goatherds?

by Marc A. Thiessen

For years the left has spun the myth that hundreds of Guantanamo detainees are really innocent goatherds and dirt farmers wrongly swept up in the war on terror. In an interview last year, Admiral A.T. Church III -- the former Navy inspector general who investigated detainee treatment Guantanamo -- told me this charge was "bull crap." As Church put it, "There may have been a couple of those, but most of these guys would slit your throat in a second. Most of them are very dangerous guys." 

Now an official investigation conducted by the Obama administration -- and unanimously approved by departments of Defense, State, Justice and Homeland Security, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence -- has concluded that Church was right.

On Friday, while most Americans headed to the beach, the Obama administration unceremoniously released the Final Report of its Guantanamo Review Task Force. The task force found that of the 240 detainees at Guantanamo when Obama took office, roughly 10 percent "played a direct role in plotting, executing, or facilitating" terrorist attacks against U.S. targets. Another 20 percent had "significant organizational roles within al-Qaeda or associated terrorist groups" including "individuals responsible for overseeing or providing logistical support to al-Qaeda's training operations in Afghanistan; facilitators who helped move money and personnel for al-Qaeda . . . and well trained operatives who were being groomed by al-Qaeda leaders for future terrorist operations." Another nearly 10 percent "occupied significant positions within the Taliban regime" or insurgent networks "implicated in attacks on Coalition forces." About 55 percent were rank and file "foreign fighters with varying degrees of connection to al-Qaeda , but who lacked a significant leadership or other specialized role." Only 5 percent did not "fit into any of the above categories."

In other words, 95 percent of those held at Guantanamo are confirmed terrorists.

Amazingly, the press played the report as a vindication for the Obama administration. The headline in Saturday's Washington Post read: "Most detainees low-level fighters." Well, if that was the real news, why wasn't the Obama administration trumpeting the results from the rooftops? Why did they leak the report on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, when the White House typically tries to bury bad news?

Because the report is bad news for the Obama administration and its allies on the left.

For one thing, it means Liz Cheney was right -- the folks she dubbed as al-Qaeda lawyers really are al-Qaeda lawyers. The task force "assembled large volumes of information from across the government . . . [and] examined this information critically" -- even accepting "written submissions made on behalf of individual detainees by their counsel or other representatives." After an exhaustive review, the Obama administration determined that 95 percent of the al-Qaeda bar's clients are in fact terrorist leaders, operatives or fighters.

Read the rest here.