Say Anything Blog

More exploding leftie heads.  This is great!

By Mark Finkelstein

What kind of impact has the Palin pick had on MSM coverage? We’ve gone from wall-to-wall adoration of last night’s speech, to—literally within hours—Andrea Mitchell having to remind viewers of some guy named Barack Obama.  Mitchell was kibitzing the choice of Palin with Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson and Time editor Rick Stengel. Not merely did the liberal [see here and here] Stengel praise Palin, he even compared her favorably with . . . Hillary Clinton. And Mitchell closed the segment by acknowledging that Obama had been “overshadowed.”
[...]

ANDREA MITCHELL: And all this breaking news about the Republican ticket.  Barack Obama—remember Barack Obama?—after his successful kick-off and his acceptance speech last night, he’s now kicking off his general election campaign. Obama and his running mate Joe Biden, now about to land in Pittsburgh, where they will launch their bus tour, their bus tour of the Midwest. Pennsylvania only the first stop on the Democrats’ “Road to Change” of battleground states, I should say. They’re going to be in Ohio and Michigan over the weekend. Sunday in Michigan, then Detroit, also Michigan, on Monday.  All of this of course now, overshadowed by John McCain’s surprise pick of Alaska’s first female governor, Sarah Palin, as his female running mate. Republicans are matching the Democrats’ history-making ticket with one of their own.

We have no illusions: the MSM will train its sights on Palin.  Even in throwing it to Stengel, for example, Mitchell referred to McCain-Palin as a “fiercely anti-abortion” ticket.  When’s the last time Andrea referred to Obama as “fiercely pro-abortion,” I wonder?  Even so, there’s no doubt that the Palin pick has altered the media equation.

This reminds me of mid-’95, when Clinton had to plaintively tell the MSM that he was still significant, after the real thumping the Republicans gave the Dems in Congress.
Delicious!

Thomas Lifson

When Ron Dellums was elected mayor of Oakland, California, I knew that the city was heading for trouble. Combine hard leftism with self-absorption and a healthy dose of municipal corruption, and you have the crisis developing on Oakland.

“Red Ron” was an openly socialist member of Congress focusing on opposing Cold War weapons programs and supporting the Communist revolutionaries taking over Grenada. When US forces invaded and captured documents, Dellums was revealed in all his glory as a promoter of communist power in the Caribbean.

[...]

Today in the San Francisco Chronicle, the excellent columnist Chip Johnson describes the serious mess Oakland faces with its mayor nowhere to be found.

The mayor’s mother died recently, and of course we extend our sympathies. It’s understandable for Dellums to take time with his family. And it’s reasonable - never mind a 10-day holiday in South Africa in April - for the mayor to coordinate a vacation with the six-week annual council recess.

The problem is this: The city officials who’ve requested time with the mayor have been told there is no timeline for his return.

Unfortunately for Oakland’s mayor, perhaps the single biggest personal loss he’s ever dealt with coincided with the most important challenge of his political career.

For the remainder of his term, until 2010, Dellums’ main task will be to lead reconstruction of a municipal government that has literally fallen apart on his watch - and earn back some measure of public trust.

I lost my mother and understand the grieving process. But the mayor of Oakland is 72 and ought to be accustomed to losing friends and loved ones by this stage of the life cycle.  Here are just a few of the crises festering in Oakland:

On the financial side, Oakland faces a gaping - and growing - $50 million budget shortfall, $20 million in cash reserves are unaccounted for and the FBI has started a corruption probe into the city government.

Oakland has an acting city administrator and a temporary director at the Oakland Community and Economic Development Agency, which drives the city’s redevelopment efforts. Everything is up in the air.

The FBI is currently investigating extensive municipal corruption. Those familiar with the city expect there is lots for the feds to find.

Just in case anyone thinks that all the commies in the Bay Area are in SF.
Socialism just doesn’t work.  Let’s not elect any more socialists.

Journalism in action.

I think this funny, but opine that some won’t see the humor.

It’s 13 minutes long, but has lots of information.

Patrick Casey

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports today that the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections (Cleveland, Ohio) is investigating 75,000 voter registrations—many found to have been fraudulent—submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN):

Board employees said ACORN workers often handed in the same name on a number of voter registration cards, but showing that person living at different addresses. Other times, cards had the same name listed, but a different date of birth. Still another sign of possible fraud showed a number of people living at an address that turned out to be a restaurant.
“I’m obviously very concerned,” Board Chairman Jeff Hastings said. “This goes to the essence of our democracy.”

ACORN had a part-time staff of 30 who worked five days a week to find unregistered people. The workers made $8 an hour and were required to sign up 20 voters in each five-hour shift.

The elections board’s registration department said in a report that ACORN’s quota contributed to the possible fraud.

ACORN stopped the registration efforts of the part-timers on Aug. 15. Three salaried employees continue the drive to sign up voters.

Kristopher Harsh, head organizer for the agency’s Cleveland office, said it is unlikely a full-fledged movement will resume before the Nov. 4 election.

ACORN has submitted about 75,000 voter registration cards to the Cuyahoga board this year.

Board employees are unsure how many of the cards are fraudulent. But the voter registration department received so many suspicious cards that it began compiling a binder with evidence. The binder grew to be an inch-thick.

As Tom Blumer of BizzyBlog notes that ACORN has miraculously been able to find 75,000 new voters in a county that already has 200,000 more registered voters than adults, according to the Census Bureau.

[...]

Change we can believe in!

Funny; the Dems are always squealing about election fraud, when they are the ones who perpetrate it.

By Lyndsi Thomas

Christine Romans, CNN American Morning | NewsBusters.orgThursday’s edition of CNN’s “American Morning” featured a “fact checking” segment on the claims former President Bill Clinton made about his accomplishments as president during his speech to the Democratic National Convention. The segment wasn’t much of a “fact check” as CNN Business Correspondent Christine Romans mostly reminisced about the “glory days” of the ‘90’s. But what she did find was that the worst part of Clinton’s presidency was one of his more conservative actions: “He also signed into law a historic deregulation of the financial system, dismantling laws from the Great Depression that many say would have protected us against the current mortgage crisis.”

Other problems the correspondent found with Clinton’s presidency include: “the go-go days of the ‘90s also gave us the dotcom boom. And when that went bust, Allan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve lowered the interest rates to ease the pain. Dropping them so low, many now see the roots of the current housing mess way back in the dotcom boom. Plus, the ‘90s gave us this obsession with record home ownership with Clinton as a principal cheerleader.”

Romans, of course, included praise of Clinton in her report, saying “Well, you know, Bill Clinton is and rightfully credited with being the president who resided over the longest economic expansion in American history.” She also reminisced about the “incredible” ‘90’s, claiming, “But you can’t really argue with some of these job creation and poverty numbers from the ‘90s. It was an incredible period.”

However, Romans failed to investigate Clinton’s statements about the current Bush administration in which he argued, “They took us from record surpluses to an exploding debt. From over 22 million new jobs to just five million. From increasing working families’ incomes to nearly $7,500 a year to a decline of more than $2,000 a year. For almost eight million Americans lifted out of poverty to more than 5.5 million driven into poverty and millions more losing their health insurance.” It is possible to argue that a good number of the more than 5 million people “driven into poverty” Clinton noted are actually illegal immigrants who have entered the country in the past eight years.

[...]

To me, the funniest part of this is the unconscious association with prosperity as “conservative"(even though Clinton’s prosperity was illusory, to some extent).
I also thought the phrase “obsessed with home ownership” was very revealing.

By Warner Todd Huston

Members of Barack Obama’s campaign HQ in Chicago tried to shut down a local radio show on the City’s most powerful radio signal, WGN 720, because they didn’t like a conservative guest that was on going on the air to discuss Senator Barack Obama’s ties to local terrorist William Ayers. This is a shocking attempt at stifling political free speech and a bald attempt to quash debate by the office of the Democratic Party’s nominee. The funny thing is, WGN is the most liberal station in the City with every host but one slavishly supporting the junior Senator from Illinois.

Show host Milt Rosenberg, the station’s only conservative leaning host (probably to be considered more libertarian than Republican), had on short notice asked conservative writer Stanley Kurtz to come on the air to discuss his work on uncovering Obama’s ties to terrorist Wiliam Ayres and the Annenberg Challenge project. Kurtz was just in Chicago for his investigation and Rosenberg contacted Kurtz only that morning to appear. At the same time, Rosenberg’s producer contacted the Obama campaign’s HQ—which is but blocks from the radio station in downtown Chicago—to offer some time on the air with Kurtz to debate Kurtz’ claims about Obama and Ayres. The campaign, however, flatly refused the offer of the equal air time and instead tried to drum up via email a protest of the show, trying to get it stopped.

After the refusal of host Rosenberg’s offer to appear on the air with Kurtz, the Obama campaign issued an extensive email (The Chicago Tribune has the full text) to drum up protests of the radio station, which said in part…

In the next few hours, we have a crucial opportunity to fight one of the most cynical and offensive smears ever launched against Barack.

Tonight, WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears. He’s currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers.

Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse.

The email gave the Rosenberg show contact info and told people to call and protest Kurtz’ appearance. The email also lied to its supporters by acting as if the Obama campaign was not offered fair rebuttal time.

It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves. At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz’s lies.

I happen to live in Chicago and by chance was listening to the Milt Rosenberg show and heard for myself the host assure listeners that he offered the air time to the Obama campaign, an offer that was refused. Rosenberg even went so far as to offer any other show date for the Obama campaign’s rebuttal to Kurtz’ work.

Then, in compliance with the Obama campaign’s email instructions, a parade of callers was aired all telling Rosenberg to shut down the Kurtz interview. Each caller was quite insensible to the unAmerican reaction in which they were indulging and each one was entirely unreasonable and uninformed on the facts. Sadly, this anti-American attitude seems typical of Obama supporters nation wide.

[...]

So, for the Obama campaign to act as if this particular show is an affront to reasoned debate is an outrageous charge. Just as outrageous is the Obama campaign’s obvious desire to destroy free political speech. It makes one quake to wonder what sort of oppressive climate an Obama presidency would impose on the country?

Free speech for conservatives?  Not exactly.  Is this a preview of how an Obama administration will deal with dissent?

WASHINGTON—The U.S. economy was much stronger in the spring than first thought because of better exports and less inventory liquidation by businesses, according to a government report that surprised economists.

Gross domestic product rose at a seasonally adjusted 3.3% annual rate April through June, the Commerce Department said Thursday in a new, revised estimate of second-quarter GDP.

Originally, the government had estimated second-quarter 2008 GDP climbed 1.9%. First-quarter GDP increased 0.9%.

Separately, the number of U.S. workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell slightly as expected last week but remained at elevated levels consistent with more declines ...

[full article requires subscription]

Both Nutting and Isidore failed to mention the two arguably biggest economic challenges we face, both of them originating from the left: The Pelosi-Obama-Reid Economy's hammerlock on sensible energy policy, and current consumer spending restraint tied to the likelihood of punishing tax increases if there is an Obama victory in November.

Oh, and as to the jobs situation: With 1.3 million illegal immigrants having left the country in the past year, maybe the "mirage" is in the employment numbers. This year's seasonally adjusted jobs loss of 450,000 may reflect 750,000 or so illegal workers leaving -- and 300,000 citizen workers taking their place.

Find it here

If the media is able to install Obama in the White House, he won’t stop at borrowing Deval Patrick’s speeches; he’s likely to emulate the affirmative action governor’s policies too.

This should sound familiar: Patrick was elected as a Harvard-trained Chicago lawyer with little relevant experience, who ran to the left of the more established candidate. Once in office, he devoted himself to spending taxpayer money on $23,000 drapes, a Cadillac DTS, and an assistant for his wife. Meanwhile, his state is plunging toward insolvency:

This year’s state budget included a whopping $16 billion in new debt — that’s more than half the state’s entire annual budget. And that’s just the new debt. Massachusetts taxpayers were already carrying the highest debt burden per capita in the nation. But that hasn’t slowed down Gov. Patrick.

[...]

At least not all of the taxpayers’ money will be wasted hiring more useless bureauweenies:

And one of his pet projects is a $1 billion state “investment” in life sciences, a program using tax dollars to fund projects and facilities to benefit multi-billion dollar drug companies like Wyeth and Genzyme.

Unsurprisingly, executives from these companies are big Patrick supporters. I wonder what kind of federal funds President Obama would invest in the slumlords, terrorists, and racist demagogues who have provided him with such loyal support.

As an inexperienced post turtle elected primarily for his skin color, Patrick is easily dominated by Taxachusetts’s leftist legislature. Presumably the same would hold true under an Obama regime, effectively putting Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in charge of the country. Even that might be better than Barack the Teenage Marxist trying to run it himself.

It just keeps getting better and better.  /sarcasm

Rick Moran

As we wait for the press and others to go through the thousands of documents related to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge where Barack Obama served as President of the Board and terrorist William Ayers headed up the operations arm, we can say for certain that Obama is a liar of the first magnitude.

Barack Obama made it appear in public statements that he barely knew Ayers. Here is what he said at the Philadelphia debate in April about his relationship with the terrorist:

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense, George.

And here’s what the Annenberg docs show so far:

The UIC records show that Obama and Ayers attended board meetings, retreats and at least one news conference together as the education program got under way. The two continued to attend meetings together during the 1995-2001 operation of the program, records show.

“Not someone I exchange ideas with on a regular basis?” Assuming he had private meetings with Ayers in addition to the public ones, one could easily conclude that Obama did indeed “exchange ideas with Ayers on a regular basis.”

[...]

Obama is one shady character.

The first night of the Democratic National Convention, featuring an address by Michelle Obama, drew fewer broadcast television viewers than the event four years ago, when former President Bill Clinton kicked things off.

ABC, CBS and NBC brought in 12.1 million viewers in the 10 p.m. hour, down one million from 2004, according to preliminary, fast-national data from Nielsen Media Research. NBC scored the largest audience.

Later in the day, when final broadcast and cable ratings came in, it became clear that the cable news networks’ blanket coverage pushed audiences much higher.

Only ABC News’s convention special gained over its entertainment lead-in, picking up 1.6 million viewers following “Samantha Who?” to average 3.78 million viewers for the hour anchored by Charles Gibson, George Stephanopoulos and Diane Sawyer.

ABC finished second in the head-to-head competition to NBC News’s hour anchored by Brian Williams, which averaged 4.85 million viewers, down 2.6 million from the lead-in supplied by “America’s Toughest Jobs.”

In third place was the CBS News Hour anchored by Katie Couric, Bob Schieffer and Jeff Greenfield, which averaged 3.52 million viewers, down 3 million viewers from “The New Adventures of Old Christine.”

[...]

By Brad Wilmouth

Tuesday’s Special Report with Brit Hume on FNC highlighted recent criticisms from Catholic Church leaders toward Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her recent claims that “the doctors of the [Catholic] Church have not been able to make that definition” of whether human life begins at conception. Appearing on Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC, when host Tom Brokaw turned to the abortion issue and asked her when she believes human life begins, Pelosi responded: “I would say that, as an ardent practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time, and what I know is, over the centuries, the Doctors of the Church have not been able to make that definition.”

After Brit Hume ended Tuesday’s “From the Political Grapevine” segment noting that Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput had criticized Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden for his pro-choice position on abortion, the FNC host introduced a report by correspondent Shannon Bream. Hume: “Biden is not the only prominent Democrat who is out of favor with Church leaders because of abortion positions. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has also been publicly rebuked, and correspondent Shannon Bream reports on that from Washington.”

After playing the aforementioned clip of Pelosi, and, after noting that she has “been given a perfect voting score from the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League,” clips of two Archbishops were shown voicing their problems with her statement:

ARCHBISHOP DONALD WUERL: From the very beginning, first century on, the Church has said you can’t take an unborn life.

ARCHBISHOP CHARLES CHAPUT: What she said was scandalous. It could lead other people to error, and so we have a duty to correct it.

After Bream relayed that 10 Catholic Republican members of the House of Representatives had sent a letter of protest to Pelosi, another clip of Archbishop Wuerl was played: “You have to examine your conscience before you present yourself for communion, and if you are not truly living out what you believe and what you profess you believe, then the onus is on you to make the right decision about communion.”

[...]

Another leftie exposed.

A US federal appeals court ruled yesterday that 11 oil and gas companies should receive more than $1bn awarded to them in 2006 after the government effectively changed the terms of leases to drill off the California coast.

The US Court of Appeals was upholding a 2006 ruling that the government had breached the leases when changes in federal law materially interfered with the companies’ efforts to develop the oil and gas reserves off California.

The case points to the difficulties US oil and gas companies have developing oil and gas resources in the US.

Even when acreage is legally open to production, restrictive regulations about how properties can be developed have made it impossible for companies to follow through.

The US government had estimated the area contained more than 1bn barrels of oil equivalent.

[...]

The industry can point to this case as a good example of why not all leased properties in the US are under development.

[...]

The nearly three dozen leases in this case were sold in the 1980s by the US Department of Interior to the 11 companies, which included Devon Energy, the biggest US oil and gas company solely focused on exploration and production. The bigger companies, such as ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest publicly listed oil company, also do refining and marketing.

“When any person, company or organisation enters into a contractual agreement in this country, they must fulfil the terms or pay damages, even if that entity is the US government,’’ said Steven Rosenbaum, partner at Covington & Burling, which represented the 11 companies.