Say Anything Blog

a listener who stated that when listening to Barack Obama speak, “it harkens back to when I was younger and I used to watch those deals with Hitler, how he would excite the crowd and they’d come to their feet and scream and yell.” Sullivan then played a “side-by-side comparison” of a Hitler speech and an Obama speech. Sullivan mimicked the crowd during both speeches, yelling, “Yay! Yay!” When a later caller complained that Sullivan was “denigrating” Obama with the comparison, Sullivan said he wouldn’t play it again
Do effective speakers make effective presidents?
Public speaking skills have long been a chief determinant of whom Americans elect as president. But should they be?

With the presidential primary season clomping toward its close, voters readying themselves for the general election must ask: Do effective communicators necessarily make effective commanders in chief?

You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage.

...We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, “The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.”

We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on earth.

Rosenthal is back in the headlines again. Last December, as part of a federal civil rights lawsuit into how justice is meted out in the county, he turned over the (partial) contents of his government e-mail account. And what a batch of e-mails it was. Black ministers called for the Republican to resign because of racist material, including a cartoon depicting an African-American suffering from a “fatal overdose” of watermelon and fried chicken. There were adult video clips and love notes from Rosenthal to his secretary, his mistress during a previous marriage. “I love you so much,” Rosenthal says in one. “I want to kiss you behind your right ear,” he says in another. “Go spend time with your family,” she admonishes him back.

Now it appears that Rosenthal’s on-the-job antics have done him in. In the wake of the e-mail revelations, local GOP leaders forced him to abort his re-election bid. Then, on Feb. 15, after Lloyd Kelley, the attorney in the civil rights case, brought a lawsuit accusing him of drinking on the job and “incompetence, or official misconduct,” Rosenthal resigned. But his problems may not be over. As eye-opening as his e-mails were, it’s the ones that disappeared that might cause him more trouble yet. Rosenthal deleted thousands of e-mails (even going so far as to delete them from the trash folder) that investigators in the civil rights case wanted; his actions could lead to obstruction of justice charges (the messages were destroyed after he had received a subpoena for them, he admitted in court). And during a contempt of court hearing earlier this month, Rosenthal appeared to contradict his sworn statements about the e-mails, leaving him open to perjury charges. The hearing was abruptly adjourned at the request of his lawyer and is scheduled to resume March 14. If found in contempt, the former top prosecutor could wind up in jail.

WASHINGTON - More than six years after the U.S. invaded to establish a stable central regime in Afghanistan, the Kabul government under President Hamid Karzai controls just 30 percent of the country, the top U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday.

National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the resurgent Taliban controls 10 percent to 11 percent of the country and Karzai’s government controls 30 percent to 31 percent. The majority of Afghanistan’s population and territory remains under local tribal control, he said.

In 2007, insurgency-related violence killed more than 6,500 people, including 222 foreign troops. Last year was the deadliest yet since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s three-man presidency council Wednesday announced that it’s vetoed legislation that U.S. officials two weeks ago hailed as significant political progress.

Also Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said he hoped that Turkey’s incursion into northern Iraq to fight Kurdish rebels would last a “week or two” but “not months.”

Turkish news agencies reported that as many as 77 guerrillas were killed the night before in the most violent night of the week-old incursion on Iraq’s northern border. A rebel spokesman said fighters for the Kurdish Workers Party, known as the PKK, had killed 18 Turkish soldiers.

The rejected bill, which sets out the political structure for Iraq’s provincial governments and establishes a basis for elections in October, was only the second of 18 U.S.-set political benchmarks that the war-tore nation needs to reach.

Parliament considered it in a bundle with two other bills, a general amnesty and a budget, and approved it on Feb. 12 in what was welcomed in Washington as an example of good government, compromise and progress toward national unity.

Now the question is whether parliament is willing to revise the measure.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) asked, “General, do you believe that waterboarding is consistent with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions?”

"Do you think it’s humane?" Levin asked.

"No, sir, I think it would go beyond that bound">After pausing a moment to think, Maples replied, “No, sir, I don’t.”

“Do you think it’s humane?” Levin asked.

“No, sir, I think it would go beyond that bound.”

Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Jim Gibbons is facing more tough questions on a whole new issue. These questions revolve around an illegal immigrant whom Gibbons and his wife Dawn employed as their housekeeper and babysitter.

The woman, Patricia Pastor Sandoval, says she worked for the Gibbons’ for years and the family occasionally made her hide in the basement to keep her illegal status a secret.

...Patty Pastor Sandoval, former Gibbons employee, said, “No, I don’t like hurting nobody because I’m Christian, but I read the newspaper about him, about immigration.”

Ah, the Irony of it all.  Rassmussen reports on some ongoing developing numbers that mirror those that Bat One brought us last week from Gallup:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows John McCain leading both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in general election match-ups. McCain now leads Obama 46% to 43% and Clinton 48% to 43%. McCain has consistently held a modest lead over Clinton but he moved ahead of Obama only after publication of the controversial New York Times article last week (see recent daily results and summary of recent state general election polls). Daily tracking results are collected via nightly telephone surveys and reported on a four-day rolling average basis. The next Presidential Tracking Poll update is scheduled for Thursday at 11:00 a.m.

Just 24% of voters have a favorable opinion on the New York Times in results that vary dramatically along partisan and ideological lines. By a three-to-one margin, those following the story believe the Times released last week’s story with the intent to hurt the McCain campaign rather than to report the news.

You hear that you MSM hacks.  People are catching on.  Perhaps Jason Blair is looking for work and can find some new dirt on McCain.

Nationwide, Obama is viewed favorably by 51% and unfavorably by 46%. McCain’s numbers are 55% favorable, 42% unfavorable. Clinton earns positive reviews from 47% of Likely Voters nationwide and negative assessments from 52% (see recent daily results). McCain is trusted more than Obama when it comes to National Security, the War in Iraq, and the Economy. Obama is trusted more on the issue of Reducing Government Corruption.

This is critical.  It is almost impossible to elect someone whose negatives are larger than their positives (Hillary).  Barack has the benefit of being a pretty face that folks don’t know much about, but as the election draws near, people will listen to what he has said and is saying.  I don’t know how he gets his unfavorables to come down because as of right now, he hasn’t laid out an agenda and already, his negatives are at 46%.

Striking is that McCain is viewed favorably by 55% of the American people and only 42% dislike him.  It is on Dems now to make Barack more likeable and attack McCain.  The NYT tried that last week and it blew up in their faces.  This presents real problems because Americans actually like McCain. He has been around and a major figure since 2000 when he ran for President last time. He has a strong track record and for the most part, folks know what they are getting from him. He has an established "brand" and people have well formented opinions. Obama has no real brand and no real substance. He is about as much of a one trick pony with his "change speech" as the Silk Pony himself with his "two Americas speech". Tough to build a brand when your only substance is being a good speaker.

Hence why it is important for McCain to control his temper and control his rhetoric by running a positive campaign.  Dems are beating the hell out of each other and if McCain runs on the issues against Obama, McCain wins this thing.

Let’s check the use of his name as a prop in the 2004 DNC speech to once and for all end the bullshit name calling about Hillary and her minions and the “right wing hate machine” obliging him by honoring his parents’ wishes:

They would give me an African name, Barack, or ”blessed,” believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined—They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential…

It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.

If the skinny kid’s parents gave him a funny name believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success, I would hate to deny the wishes of his parents and not call him openly and loudly by that name that they gave him.  It is no barrier to success in my mind, so why should he and others be afraid to call him by his full name?

I believe in hope.  In change.  Isn’t Barack all about changing all these negatives of the world and getting us to sit around the fire and hold hands and sing together?

His parents named him Barack Hussein Obama.  The fact that you don’t like him being refered to by his name is something you should probably take up with his parents, though they are dead now.  Tell them that their hope was misplaced.  That their dream of equality is dead too.  That they effed up and screwed their Messiah son out of his place in history by giving him a “funny name”.  Put this at their feet.

I recieved this email today from the Ralph Engelstad Arena Insiders. You would have thought they would have learned their lesson the last time that Ralph Engelstad Arena gave out free stuff. I can about bet there will be 5,000 of these noise makers laying on the ice. 

We’ve clinched home ice!
The University of North Dakota men’s hockey team has clinched home ice for the best-of-three WCHA first round playoffs! The games start Friday, March 14, and tickets are on sale now. Will you be there?

10,000 FREE pairs of Fighting Sioux Thundersticks will be given to fans Friday, March 14, to help cheer green to victory!

Get your adult ticket packages for the series for $40. Kid’s seats are $20.
Buy yours today at the UND Box Office at Ralph Engelstad Arena, online at Ticketmaster.com or by phone at 701.772.5151.

Christian couple told: ‘You can’t foster if you think it’s wrong to be gay’

They are devoted foster parents with an unblemished record of caring for almost 20 vulnerable children.

But Eunice and Owen Johns have been forced to abandon their good work because they refuse to tell children as young as ten that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle.

To do so, they say, would go against their Christian beliefs.

The devastated couple withdrew an application to their council to continue as foster carers after being told they must condone homosexuality to adhere to gay rights laws.

Gays demand tolerance, then legal acceptance and then either submit or be treated as criminals and socially undesireable. Before the Sixties homosexuality was over 90% in the closet and considered a perverse lifestyle choice condemned by God and socially unacceptable and now it is turned upside down; it is Christians that are perverse, ignorant evangelicals, red necks, criminals and socialy unacceptable.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again and again, “tolerate even a small sin and step by step, small sin after small sin and within less than five decades we have been forced to swallow a very large and very wicked camel and there is no getting the tide turned back.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=519311&in_page_id=1770

Dems Now Favored in Key Illinois House Race, as GOP Nominee Quits

By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff

House Republican campaign officials — already hindered by a big disadvantage in the number of “open” seats they have to defend this year — suffered a blow Friday in their efforts to hold one that already was particularly vulnerable to Democratic takeover. The GOP now faces an emergency recruiting job in Illinois’ politically competitive 11th District after local officeholder Tim Baldermann, the winner of a competitive primary just two and a half weeks earlier, unexpectedly declined the nomination.

In light of Baldermann’s withdrawal, CQ Politics has changed its rating on the Illinois 11 race to Democrat Favored from No Clear Favorite.

It is possible that GOP officials will consider one of the two Republicans who also ran in the Feb. 5 11th District primary: Terry Heenan, an airline pilot, and Jimmy Lee, a former executive director of the White House Initiative for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. But both lost decisively to Baldermann in the primary.

World Climate Report has some nice reviews of a flurry of recent publications in reputable scientific journals (Nature, Geophysical Research Letters, etc.) that are repudiating the alarmist meme that global warming equates with more intense storms and more strong storms making landfall.

There is plenty more, but the historical record speaks volumes.

Atlantic Storm landfalls:

Eastern Pacific Storms.:

In either case, the pattern is a reduced number of storms making landfall overtime.  The link above also summarizes the theoretical findings that explain why one would expect this to be the case.

At a Tuesday McCain rally in Cincinatti, local conservative talk-show host Bill Cunningham warmed up the crowd by lambasting the media, poking fun at Hillary Clinton and repeatedly referring to Barack Obama as Hussein Obama. After the rally concluded, John McCain held a brief press conference to repudiate Cunnimgham’s remarks.

Whatever suggestion that was made that was in any way disparaging to the integrity, character, honesty of either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton was wrong. I condemn it and if I have any responsibility, I will take the responsibility and I apologize for it.

Later, Cunningham fired back.

I’m very angry at McCain. Why would John McCain repudiate me? I’ve been able to unite McCain and Obama against me. I might become a supporter of Ralph Nader.

Earlier Cunningham had accused McCain of “throwing him under the bus” and vowed to support Hillary Clinton.

McCain went on to say that he had the highest respect for Senators Obama and Clinton, and that he would campaign only on the issues and not personal attacks.

All of which left folks on both sides of the political spectrum - liberals and conservatives -  in somewhat of a quandary.

John Odermann from the Dickinson Press takes a closer look at bighorn sheep in ND. Interesting insight that once mountain lions develop a taste for bighorn sheep they target them.



Lions arent having a devastating effect yet, but its something we need to keep our eyes on, Wiedmann said.

Studies have shown if a lion develops a taste for bighorn sheep, the lions tend to focus on those herds. Thats something Wiedmann said they have experienced to a limited degree.

Six of 20 sheep that were transplanted from Montana last year were lost to lions in the region.

here’s the full story