WingRight

So, Barack comes up through the Chicago Democratic organization, likely the most corrupt big-city machine still in existence.

Obama’s crookedness continues, via The Corner on National Review:

So I went to the Obama website this afternoon and clicked on the “Donate” button.

I used my real MasterCard number (but was not asked for the 3 digit security code).

Used the following information and it was accepted…

First name: Fake
Last Name: Donor
Address: 1 Dollar To Prove A Point
City: Fraudulent
State: AL
Zip / Post: 33333
Email Address: allmyinfoismadeup@mediabias.com
Phone Number: 2125551212
Employer: Mainstream Media
Occupation: Being in the Tank

And incredibly, my $5 donation was ACCEPTED!!!

I then went to the McCain site and used the exact same information (and WAS asked for the 3 digit security code for my MasterCard).  There, my contribution was rejected with the following message: “Your transaction was not approved for the following reason(s): Invalid data”, and then: “We have found errors in the information that you have submitted.  Please review the information below and try again.”

What’s the political philosophy behind such blatant dishonesty and illegal behavior? Get the money, win the election, then see if you get caught. If Obama wins the election, he controls the Justice Department, so you can forget about any criminal prosecution. If the toothless FEC does anything, it will assess a fine against the Obama campaign - $250,000 is my bet, maybe a million. Chicago pol Obama figures that swapping a $250,000 fine for hundreds of millions in illegal donations and four years in the White House is a great deal.

Tags: Liberal Hypocrisy, Obama Problems by Publius
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Responding to an expanding blogosphere storm, the New York Times has decided that the Obama/Ayers connection needs to be massaged with Obama Has Met Ayers, but the Two Are Not Close.

Both Ayers and his wife, Bernadette Dohrn, refused to speak to the NYT despite numerous requests. The piece is most notable for what it doesn’t say, but first, some excerpts:

Twenty-six years later [after Ayers' terrorist violence], at a lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper, Barack Obama met Mr. Ayers, by then an education professor. Their paths have crossed sporadically since then, at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama’s first run for office, on the schools project and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde Park neighbors.

Who else was at the meeting? The NYT does not say that this was the first meeting between Obama and Ayers.

A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”.

Even the NYT acknowledges that Obama “played down” his Ayers relationship. Another view of this is that Obama lied about the nature of his relationship.

[Read more →]

Tags: Ayers, Liberal Hypocrisy, Liberal Media, Obama Problems by Publius
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McCain doesn’t understand what kind of a fight he is in with the MSM. This is not 1980 and we’re not looking at a gentle headwind from the liberal networks. They are in full-bore attack mode.

Powerline believes that

Ifill’s position is untenable. She will almost certainly be accused of (a) being unfair to Palin in order to sell her book, (b) being unfair to Biden in order to prevent accusation “a” or (c) both. Either the first of the second accusation will be quite plausible.

The unspoken assumption is that Ifil will be very carefull to look unbiased. What’s going to happen to her if she is biased? Is NPR going to fire her over a lot of criticisms by Rush, Glen and the conservative blogosphere? Is Random House going to cancel her book contract? I don’t think so.

For every conservative complaint, there will be a liberal defense - Republicans are trying to deflect attention from Palin’s poor showing, etc., etc. Advance sales of the book will go through the roof.

The left has constructed a political, social and economic ecosystem that rewards people who toe the party line. Within this ecosystem, there is no downside to screwing a conservative.

Additionally, Ifil lives in such a left-wing echo chamber, it will never occur to her that her reasonable questions and viewpoint will be anything but right down the middle of the political spectrum.

What should McCain have said? “This is an outrage! I demand that an immediate change of moderators be made or that, in the alternative, a second moderator who is not biased in favor of the Obama/Biden ticket be added to the debate. If this doesn’t happen, I will consider requesting that Gov. Palin not attend the debate. How can a fair debate when Ifil stands to financially benefit if Obama is elected?”

Under this strategy, Palin wouldn’t withdraw from the debate, but that won’t be certain until shortly before the debate begins. That would play havoc with Biden’s head and make it quite likely that Ifil would have to begin with a statement about her book and would have a very hard time appearing to be anything but hostile to Palin.

McCain isn’t bringing a knife to a gunfight, he’s bringing a frisbee.

UPDATE - Hot Air has some good comments on this.

Tags: Liberal Hypocrisy, Liberal Media by Publius
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New information on the moderator of the VP debates from Hot Air.

Gwen Ifill, the PBS host and author of an upcoming book on Barack Obama scheduled for publication on Inauguration Day

The book is entitled, “Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.”

Here’s a video of the non-partisan, purely neutral debate moderator talking about Barack:

Tags: Liberal Hypocrisy, Obama, Palin by Publius
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Looking back to the successful Clinton/Gore fund raising effort among the Communist Chinese, Barack Obama has raised millions of dollars in violation of the federal election financing laws, according to a Ken Timmerman column in Newsmax.

More than half of the whopping $426.9 million Barack Obama has raised has come from small donors whose names the Obama campaign won’t disclose.

And questions have arisen about millions more in foreign donations the Obama campaign has received that apparently have not been vetted as legitimate.

But Obama easily could outpace McCain by $50 million to $100 million or more in new donations before Election Day, thanks to a legion of small contributors whose names and addresses have been kept secret.

Unlike the McCain campaign, which has made its complete donor database available online, the Obama campaign has not identified donors for nearly half the amount he has raised, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).

Federal law does not require the campaigns to identify donors who give less than $200 during the election cycle. However, it does require that campaigns calculate running totals for each donor and report them once they go beyond the $200 mark.

Surprisingly, the great majority of Obama donors never break the $200 threshold.

“Contributions that come under $200 aggregated per person are not listed,” said Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the FEC. “They don’t appear anywhere, so there’s no way of knowing who they are.”

The FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign has identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. Only $39.6 million of that amount comes from donors the Obama campaign has identified.

It is the largest pool of unidentified money that has ever flooded into the U.S. election system, before or after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms of 2002.

[Read more →]

Tags: Liberal Hypocrisy, Obama Problems by Publius
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Following is a video of a 2004 congressional hearing focused on warnings by OHEA, the regulator of Fannie Mae, that the practices of Fannie Mae are setting the entity up for a giant crash. Additionally, OHEA warns about fraudulent accounting practices at Fannie Mae under the leadership of Franklin Raines.

The Democrats on the committee repeatedly say that Fannie is just fine and that the regulator is imagining problems where none exist. Franklin Raines was, of course, forced out of Fannie because of accounting fraud in the millions of dollars.

The Fannie/Freddie push for sub-prime mortgages is the single biggest cause of the current credit meltdown. Of course, the Democrats are blaming a failure of regulation when, as the video clearly demonstrates, they were trying to crucify the regulator who was warning them of serious problems with Fannie.

Tags: Credit Meltdown, Liberal Hypocrisy by Publius
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By their tax returns ye shall know them.

When it comes to managing their money, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are two peas in a pod.

Neither has any savings or investments other than their home and each is a tightwad when it comes to charitable giving.

Obama’s 2004 joint tax return shows $207,647 in income and not a cent in interest, capital gain or dividend income. His 2004 U.S. Senate disclosures reported not a single family bank or checking account with a balance of $1000 or more.

Biden’s 2004 joint return shows $234,271 in income and an impressive $129 in interest income with no dividends or capital gains.

Lest you think that this is an odd year, both Obama and Biden reported income of more than $220,000 per year in 2001, 2002 and 2003.

So these two guys are going to skillfully manage the US economy out of a serious financial crisis, dealing with issues involving complex credit instruments when they lived paycheck to paycheck and didn’t managed to accumulate any significant savings or investments when they were earning over 5 times the income of the average American household? (Median household income in 2004 was $43,389)

Maybe Obama and Biden didn’t have money for savings or investment because, being good liberals, they were dedicating a lot of their income to helping the poor. Forget that. In 2004, Obama’s tax return shows $2500 in charitable contributions (about 1%) and Biden shows $380 in charitable contributions.

HT to Hank Adler for an excellent analysis of the tax returns.

Tags: Biden, Liberal Hypocrisy, Obama, Taxes by Publius
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An excellent article in the Financial Times today, Democrats must learn some respect.

Excerpts:

Democrats speak up for the less prosperous; they have well-intentioned policies to help them; they are disturbed by inequality, and want to do something about it. Their concern is real and admirable. The trouble is, they lack respect for the objects of their solicitude. Their sympathy comes mixed with disdain, and even contempt.

Democrats regard their policies as self-evidently in the interests of the US working and middle classes. Yet those wide segments of US society keep helping to elect Republican presidents. How is one to account for this? Are those people idiots? Frankly, yes – or so many liberals are driven to conclude. Either that or bigots, clinging to guns, God and white supremacy; or else pathetic dupes, ever at the disposal of Republican strategists. If they only had the brains to vote in their interests, Democrats think, the party would never be out of power. But again and again, the Republicans tell their lies, and those stupid damned voters buy it.

Because it was so unexpected, Sarah Palin’s nomination for the vice-presidency jolted these attitudes to the surface. Ms Palin is a small-town American. It is said that she has only recently acquired a passport. Her husband is a fisherman and production worker. She represents a great slice of the country that the Democrats say they care about – yet her selection induced an apoplectic fit.

For days, the derision poured down from Democratic party talking heads and much of the media too. The idea that “this woman” might be vice-president or even president was literally incomprehensible. The popular liberal comedian Bill Maher, whose act is an endless sneer at the Republican party, noted that John McCain’s case for the presidency was that only he was capable of standing between the US and its enemies, but that should he die he had chosen “this stewardess” to take over. This joke was not – or not only – a complaint about lack of experience. It was also an expression of class disgust. I give Mr Maher credit for daring to say what many Democrats would only insinuate.

In the language of gender/race politics, Democrat leaders objectify the middle-class. They view them as worker bees who just need more honey. The idea that the middle-class has aspirations that are not purely material is one of the great mysteries of life for the Left.

Tags: Liberal Hypocrisy by Publius
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Good post at The Volokh Conspiracy on Hayak and another liberal, oops, excuse me, collectivist attempt to discredit his theories.

Larner also criticizes Hayek for ignoring the possibility that “collectivism” could be voluntary rather than imposed by the state. He suggests that Hayek was wrong to ignore the thought of socialist anarchists such as Proudhon and Kropotkin, who favored communal enterprise without state control.

Since when does the collective view seriously eliminate state control? What is “communal enterprise without state control?” should or will properly fit into the collectivist value system. In typical fashion, they will have a special definition, so a small acre garden plot in the city that is jointly owned by 10 people who all cultivate organic produce will qualify, but an oil company won’t.

• Let’s form a corporation to go discover new sources of oil.  Sounds like it would fit the definitition.
• Let’s get together and start a new church.  Ditto.
• Why don’t we buy some land outside of the city, divide it into 5 acre lots, keep a couple for ourselves and sell the rest to whoever wants to buy?  Ditto.

The problem (for collectivists) with all these is that they believe that “communal enterprises” should operate under their standards. Somewhere, there is always a secret definition that will approve of an urban garden plot jointly owned by 10 people where everyone grows organic produce and disapprove of an oil company owned by 10 people wanting to get rich.

The problem is that there is always coercion in a collectivist world. It may take the form of political correctness in a typical sociology department or legislation forcing private foundations to donate to certain favored ethnic groups, but it’s always there. See another Wall Street Journal op-ed about how many collectivist organizations use coercive tactics to prevent initiatives of which they disapprove from getting on the ballot so the public can vote on them - The Far Left’s War on Direct Democracy.

Tags: Liberal Hypocrisy by Publius
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Al Gore is big on reducing carbon emissions for everyone except himself (and family). Via Michelle Malkin. The best part is at the end.

Tags: Climate Change, Liberal Hypocrisy by Publius
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