If Obama Was a Republican...

More Fuel For the "Birther" Fire?

Obama's literary agent published a booklet that clearly states that he was born in Kenya...



This is going to be a huge issue.  After all, I did post these photographs of Kenyan documents.

 Then there's this:

and,

and another,

and of course this,

At the time, these were written off as not being  important.  But, if you take the revelation from his literary agent...then Mr. Obama doesn't meet the constitutional requirements to be president.

I'm not a birther, but I think that the MSM has cast a blind eye on Mr. Obama's background.  They utterly failed to vet him, and are still ignoring many of the glaring issues of his past.  These are certainly questions that must be looked into...

Soledad O'Brien Melts Down....

Here's the video of Ms. O'Brien




This woman is an idiot.

Liberal Hypocrisy Alert: CNN Chapter

The hypocrisy of liberals knows no bounds...here's John King calling Mitt Romney, Governor Mormon.



But...since King is a liberal, it's ok for him to show his bigotry...and it'll only be reported in the right blogosphere...

It looks like the useful idiots of the "centrist" MSM outlets are finally realizing that they...screwed up backing Obama in 2008.  They fell in love with the idea of electing the "first black president," and instead of actually vetting him, gave him a pass on his lack of real credentials.  Mark Steyn has an excellent column in Invester's Business Daily on this.  Here's a quote:

"I'm a sap, a specific kind of sap. I'm an Obama Sap," admits David Brooks, the softest touch at the New York Times. Tina Brown, editor of Newsweek, now says of the president: "He wasn't ready, it turns out, really."...You would think this might prompt some sober reflection from an American mainstream media dying in part because of its dreary ideological conformity. After all, a key reason why 53% voted for a man who was not, in Tina Brown's word, "ready" is that Tina and all her pals assured us he was. Occidental, Columbia, Harvard Law, a little light community organizing, a couple of years timeserving in a state legislature: That's what America's elites regard as an impressive resume rather than a bleak indictment of contemporary notions of "accomplishment."  Obama would not have withstood scrutiny in any society with a healthy, skeptical press. Yet, like the high-rolling Wall Street moneybags, they failed to do due diligence.

Read the whole thing.

JounoList = SociaList

You can find an excellent breakdown of 106 members of the JournoList and their professional and political affiliations here.  With the passage of time, it's becoming more and more obvious that JournoList was more than just a place "progressives" could go for like minded conversations.  It was a place for the "unofficial campaign" to control the media message for Barack Obama to congregate and plan strategy for the 2008 election camapaign.    Since then, it had been used as a clearing house for talking points and plotting strategy for the Obama Agenda.

Obama's "Non-Official" Campaign...

In 2008, any one who wasn't a raving Obama supporter had some serious misgivings about the white wash coverage given to his campaign and his one sheet resume (he only  had 4 jobs prior to running for president).  Non, via the Daily Caller we're getting an insider's view of how the media was an active participant in his campaign.

Following the section of John McCain of then sitting  Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin as his running mate, there was a very serious discussion on JournoList on how to discredit her.  Michael Cohen of New America Foundation wanted to use the line that a one-term governor wasn't qualified to be president.  Jonathan Stein, of Mother Earth News retorted that the GOP would point to Mr. Obama's even thinner resume.  But the big money quote is where several member's referred to themselves as the "non-official campaign." 

Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation noted that Obama’s “non-official campaign” would need to work hard to discredit Palin. “This seems to me like an occasion when the non-official campaign has a big role to play in defining Palin, shaping the terms of the conversation and saying things that the official [Obama] campaign shouldn’t say – very hard-hitting stuff, including some of the things that people have been noting here – scare people about having this woefully inexperienced, no foreign policy/national security/right-wing christia wing-nut a heartbeat away …… bang away at McCain’s age making this unusually significant …. I think people should be replicating some of the not-so-pleasant viral email campaigns that were used against [Obama].”

Unfortunately for America, many journalists have continued this propagandistic line of attack upon Mr. Obama's opponents.  First and foremost, the members of JournoList have used the "racist" epithet on Mr. Obama's opponents...to the point where it's no longer a powerful tool of the left.  When you so label broad swaths of the electorate (see pretty much any poll of the past 6 months wherein Mr. Obama's favorable ratting has sunk below 50%), those people tend to get very very angry.  This will hurt the Democratic party dearly in this November's elections...but don't underestimate the ability of the GOP to FUBAR things up...

Implications of JournoList

A thought provoking article in BigJournalism.com has this,

The larger issue is the existence of the now-defunct “JournoList,” a listserv group of about 400 left-leaning journalists organized by Klein, the Post’s wunderkind blogger and nakedly partisan health-care advocate, and what it portends for the future of journalism.

Let’s start with this fact: in the old days of “dispassionate” professional journalism, there likely would not have been a place either for Weigel or Klein on a major newspaper, and certainly not on the national level. Both — were they hired at all — would have served several years down on the farm, learning the craft of reporting on the police beat in Boise and at sewer-district commission hearings in Hartford, before getting the call to the Show. Both would have learned that before opinions come facts and that in order to find facts, one must first divest oneself of opinions, in order to properly form them down the line. Weigel and Klein are not only what’s wrong with contemporary journalism, they’re emblematic of what plagues the whole country right now, which is being run by a collection of ardent adolescents, devoid of experience but brimming with fierce rectitude and a burning desire for payback against inherited or imaginary cultural grievances.

The implications of this merely scratches the surface.  If some 400+ "elite journalists" were speaking "privately" on a listserv...it only takes a very small leap to look at the past couple of years of reporting and seeing how quickly the Mainstream Media narrative lined up on various stories.

For example during the debate last summer on  ObamaCare I had found it amazing how rapidly the media narrative coalesced around the "racism" tag for those who opposed ObamaCare.  In a matter of a few days, across the spectrum of print, broadcast and internet reporting the rising Tea Party Movement was branded as racists for opposing the far left agenda being pushed by Mr. Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.   I thought at the time that this was very troubling how the talking points being reported in the media began to sound similar regardless of the outlet, whether TV, newspapers and NPR (the defacto liberal radio network).  Much the same thing occurred during the 2008 presidential campaign anytime Hillary Clinton came up with a new attack on Mr. Obama...in short order, the media began a near universal story line.

If the media, has begun to mainstream the use of "opinion journalism" then they have stepped across the boundry lines of reporting and entered into the realm, not just of advocacy, but the de facto dissemination of propaganda.  That's an ugly word in America, but it's one that we have to take a hard look at.  If you have reporters and news outlets advocating a particular  agenda, and doing so 24/7, then they have departed from what has become the accepted norm of journalistic standards.  It also go a long way to explain the genuine hatred for Fox News, the only right leaning media outlet in broadcast news.  Hypocrits usually despise in "the other" what they accept in themselves or their supporters.  If the left has accepted that the mainstream media is "in their court," then they will work overtime to marginalize those outlets that are not. 

While the MSM and those members of JournoList, may not consciously be coordinating their reporting, the evidence is that they in fact are.  Just look at the talking points from last summer's coverage of the ObamaCare debate.  In the NY Times, WaPo, LA Times, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NPR much of the reporting used very similar language and talking points.  This has had the effect of the large majority of the media becoming de facto, if not de jure, the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.  Thus, the huge loss in viewership/readership of much of the media today.  This country isn't a far left, or even middle left, leaning country, it's much more conservative on the whole, than out political "elites" want to admit.  If the media doesn't return to the standard of even-handed reporting, it's unlikely that the majority of left-leaning outlets will  survive...just look at circulation/viewership numbers.  That tells the whole story.

A reasonably non-partisan reporting by journalists is extraordinarily important to our Republic's survival.  Having a majority of media outlets that are merely cheerleaders for one party or the other will eventually destroy our country and change it into a place none of us desire.  Fair and balanced reporting of events is a necessary cornerstone of democracy and without it, ours becomes much less stable...

Where Is The MSM

I have to ask this simple question...Why is Jon Stewart and faux media the only one's to ask hard questions of the Obama Administration? 

The World Sees Obama As Incopmetent

Mort Zuckerman, the editor of US News and World Report has an excellent column on the world's view of Mr. Obama.  In that column he makes the point the much of the world sees Mr. Obama as being weak willed and naive.  That's fatal in the leader of the world's leading commercial and military power. 

Mr. Zuckerman correctly points out that when the President of France criticizes an American President as not being forceful enough, there's a huge problem. All emphasis is mine:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy openly criticized Obama for months, including a direct attack on his policies at the United Nations. Sarkozy cited the need to recognize the real world, not the virtual world, a clear reference to Obama's speech on nuclear weapons. When the French president is seen as tougher than the American president, you have to know that something is awry. Vladimir Putin of Russia has publicly scorned a number of Obama's visions.

But his best and most devasting comment is this, 

America right now appears to be unreliable to traditional friends, compliant to rivals, and weak to enemies. One renowned Asian leader stated recently at a private dinner in the United States, "We in Asia are convinced that Obama is not strong enough to confront his opponents, but we fear that he is not strong enough to support his friends."

Much of what is now unfolding could have been avoided had the media only followed the unwritten mandate of the fourth estate, that of properly vetting presidential candidates BEFORE elections...doing so afterwards is far too late.  Here's my comment from the comment's section: 

If you had taken the time to do some basic research, research that the MSM had, and continues to refuse to do, you would have seen a man of very little experience. America, historically prefers to have state governors as a stepping stone to the presidency because having run a state, gives a candidate important exective experience...something both Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain lacked.


Mr. Obama has never had to meet a payroll, nor has he ever had to remain within a budget...household budget notwithstanding. Looking at what he has said in the past 20 years. Looking at what he has written in the past 20 years would have given a sharply defined glimpse within the carefully maintained shroud of secrecy that he and his coterie have erected. His earliest mentor, Frank Marshall Davis was a member of the Chicago area communist party "organizer" who was sent to Hawaii to work. "The 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member."

His attendance at a radical church for twenty years, whose senior pastor, Jeremiah Wright, continually rants on racists and anti-semitic topics, was shrugged off. His political career was started in the living room of an American terrorist, who wasn't prosecuted due to police incompetence and was released on a techinicality...

All of these should have rung alarums throughout the media...but were quietly ignored by the media who was in love with the idea of electing "the First Black President" of the US. This same media has only just begun to realize the huge mistake they have made...hence the beginnings of the muted rumblings heard in the distance.

Mr. Obama is a Chicago machine politician, and they way he pursues policy, against the wishes of the public at large (see the passage of the "Health Care 'Reform'" bill, written and negotiated behind closed doors...along with painting anyone who opposes him and his policies as "racists" has angered a majority of the public. Look at his polls as they continue to slide, just as Mr. Carter's did in the last 2 yars of his presidency...but this is the FIRST two years of this president's tenure.

All of this will come to haunt the Democratic Party this fall...I believe that we will see a historic tidal wave against this party and president. At least 80 seats will change hands in the House and as many as 11 in the Senate. Because this President hasn't a clue nor do his closest advisors.

My most important  comment though is found in the title "Jimmy Cart Redux Is the Best We Can Hope For At This Point."  Unfortunately, we're well past that point.  We have a president who is seen as both weak and ineffectual internationally.  His standing at home is falling faster than any of his predecessors has, and his ramming through his economically crippling domestic agenda will have the effect of permanetly diminishing the ability of America to recover from what should have been a relatively short recession.

Edwards epilogue: Does the press really vet presidential candidates?

That's the headline from a story on Politico.com...my answer is simply only if they're Republicans. Democratic candidates are given passes on pretty much everything. If they weren't neither Edwards nor Obama would have made it past the first couple of primaries. Mr. Edwards wouldn't have been able to conceal his extramarital affair without the intentional blindness of major media organizations.

Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, said that there isn’t a “simple yes or no” answer when looking at whether Edwards was fully vetted. What news organizations can cover, he said, comes down to a question of resources.

“News organizations just don’t have the horsepower to go out when there’s fields of eight people in each party to do the level of vetting it would take to uncover that,” Lemann said of the Edwards affair.

And with numerous candidates in both parties to cover, it’s not surprising that news organizations largely ignored the report of a “love child” between Edwards and Hunter just a few weeks before the Iowa vote.

Still, simply because the media missed the affair doesn’t mean Edwards wasn’t given scrutiny as a candidate. Throughout 2007, there was a series of reports that undermined the image that Edwards had sought to project by contrasting his populist rhetoric and focus on poverty with the reality of a candidate with hedge fund ties and $400 haircuts.

Mr. Obama's associations with extremists, such as the domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, who were written off as "just some people who lived in the neighborhood". But in his formative years, Mr. Obama had a mentor/disciple relationship from 1971-1979, where he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Frank Marshall Davis, going so far as to get advice on his career path. Then of course there is Anita Dunn, who's heroes are Mao Tse Dung and Mother Theresa...and we can't forget Van Jones, a committed communist who was thrown under the bus when it became know he was a member of a 9/11 "truther" group. Last but not least...the Reverend Jeremiah Wright who's bombastic racist anti-American screeds from his pulpit was ignored until bloggers began reporting what he said.

All of these men and women have been known associates of Barrack Obama for years. None of their backgrounds came out during last presidential campaign, it was only AFTERWARD that their deeds and words came back to haunt them.

On the other hand, the Associated Press detailed 30 reporters to dig into Sarah Palin's past the day after John McCain's choice of a running mate was announced...so you tell me...who was vetted more thoroughly?

Journalistic Mysogyny

Just read a couple of posts on blogs that I would not have thought, ever in a million years, would comment derisively on a left leaning weekly glossy magazine. Bogth mediamatters.com and hulabuloo, left, to far left organizations are slamming Newsweek for the abysmal choice of cover photographs.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/gamming-up-works-by-digby-joan-walsh.html

Joan Walsh was just on MSNBC this morning arguing that it was sexist to put Palin on the cover of Newsweek in her running shorts, when she obviously didn't pose in that particular outfit for that particular cover. Others on the show disagreed, saying that Palin just happens to be a politician who has nice legs. I think Joan is right, especially considering what is being said about the Palin Phenomenon among the village media in general:

That's just for starters on hullabaloo. Digby goes to great lengths to rightly hammer Newsweek.

Media matters is even worse...

Newsweek should worry more about how to solve its problem with sexism
November 17, 2009 3:16 pm ET by Julie Millican

There are a lot of legitimate reasons to criticize Sarah Palin, her new book, and her policies, but you don't have to stoop to sexism to do it. Newsweek's November 23 issue, however, does just that by publishing on its cover a photo of Palin in short running shorts and a fitted top, leaning against the American flag. Making matters worse is the equally offensive headline Newsweek editors chose to run alongside the photo -- "How Do You Solve a Problem like Sarah?" -- presumably a reference to the Sound of Music song, "Maria," in which nuns fret about "how" to "solve a problem like Maria," a "girl" who "climbs trees" and whose "dress has a tear."

Needless to say, I was very surprised at both their headline, but the lead paragraph as well.

The treatment that Hillary Clinton (whom sometimes I used to think of as being the anti-christ...prior to the advent of Barack of course) has treated horrendously by the MSM during the run up to the primaries. Once actually voting started, major media's utter bias toward Barack Obama began to genuinely shine through, so much so, they utterly failed to vet him at all during the campaign.

On the other hand, their "vetting" of Mrs. Palin has been minute. It continues to this day with AP wire service devoting 11, ELEVEN journalists to use a fine toothed comb on Mrs. Palin's book. My question is, how many did they assign to Mr. Obama's two books? Any at all. I cound't find any record of any.

So, my hat is off to Media Matters and Digby of Hullabaloo for their posts. Thank you both for standing up and doing the right thing.

Obama Administration Attempting to Eliminate Freedom of the Press

The Obama Administration's attack on FoxNews is merely the 2nd salvo in it's attempt to subvert the freedom of American press outlets. The first was their absolute control over contact with the press during the 2008 presidential campaign.

The Obama campaign's press strategy leading up to his election last November focused on "making" the media cover what the campaign wanted and on exercising absolute "control" over coverage, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told an overseas crowd early this year.

In a video of the event, Dunn is seen describing in detail the media strategy used by then-Sen. Barack Obama's highly disciplined presidential campaign. The video is footage from a Jan. 12 forum hosted by the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development in the Dominican Republic.

"Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control," Dunn said, admitting that the strategy "did not always make us popular in the press."

The video drew attention after Dunn kicked off a war of words with Fox News last Sunday, calling the network "opinion journalism masquerading as news." The White House stopped providing guests to "Fox News Sunday" in August after host Chris Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/19/white-house-official-says-obama-team-controlled-media-coverage-campaign/

Additionally, last week, Ms. Dunn announced the Obama Administrations attack on FoxNews by stating:

"The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. And it is not ideological... what I think is fair to say about Fox, and the way we view it, is that it is more of a wing of the Republican Party. ..."

This is the same strategy that Hugo Chavez used in Venezuela to eliminate media opposition. There remains only 1 radio station and 1 television station there who are in public opposition to his regime. It's estimated that by next summer, neither will remain.

Here in the US, the FCC's announced plan to begin taxing media outlets that air "one point of view" with fee that will equal their operating costs will effectively close down most independent radio stations. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=31575

What we now also know is that the Obama Administration is circulating a proposal for a new "spectrum use" tax and another proposal for "diversity" of station ownership -- mandating racial and gender quotas as to who should be "allowed" to own radio stations.

What's at stake here ? Simply put--Free Speech on the Radio.

While the wider aim is to assert tighter government control over all radio programming, the immediate target here is conservative talk radio. The "progressive" tilt at publicly funded NPR, or the Big Business ownership of liberal leaning network news does not bother Obama. He knows that the executives at GE and NBC Universal will self censor to avoid criticism. In a recent meeting, GE CEO Jeff Immelt and NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker met to discuss how to limit criticism of Obama on MSNBC.

Thus, the Obama Administration while targeting FoxNews now, is actually assaulting the 1st Amendment freedoms of all Media outlets.

Donald Sensing, on his blogs believes (as do I) that, the Obama Administration is using the communist writer/theorist Saul Alinksy's playbook, who in his work, Rules for Radicals, wrote that one of the rules of "power tactics" is to,

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and 'frozen.'...

"...any target can always say, 'Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?' When your 'freeze the target,' you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments.... Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the 'others' come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target...'

"One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other." (pps.127-134)
Let's consider the first sentence, which has become probably the most-quoted of the whole work, seriatim.

Pick the target. Do not make the mistake of thinking that FoxNews Channel is the actual target. The bullseye target of this campaign is all the public media. FNC's role in this much broader attack is the next two precepts.

Freeze it. This does not mean to shock the target into inactivity, but to fix a certain perception about the target in the minds of the broader community, in this case the media figures in general and the minds of the community (in this case, the whole nation is the community) as a whole.

The White House strategy here is twofold. First, to freeze FNC away from being thought of as just one of the universe of media outlets. White House Communications Director Anita Dunn opened this volley by declaring that FNC is not really a news organization, but the propaganda arm of the Republican party.

http://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2009/10/attack-on-fox-news-right-out-of-alinsky.html

I hope and pray that the rest of the MSM wakes up in time to see that they have been played by the Obama Administration. Because if they don't we may well see the end of our Republic in my lifetime.

Anita Dunn, Disciple of Chairman Mao

Anita Dunn, in June of this year, addressed a graduating class. In her speech, she said in that Mao Tse Dung and Mother Teresa are, Ms. Dunn explained,

"the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is to say you are going to make choices, you are going to challenge, you are going to say why not." She then quoted a Mao statement about winning the Chinese civil war his way: "You fight your war and I will fight mine."

To make matters worse, she continued to invoke Chairman Mao, here is the truly damning statement:

"In 1947, when Mao Tse-tung was being challenged within his own party, on his plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side and people said how can you win, how can you do this, how can you do this against all odds against you, and Mao Tse-tung said 'You fight your war and I'll fight mine.' Think about that for a second, you don't have to accept the definition of how to do things and you don't have to follow other people's choices in the past."

Mr. Obama has surrounded himself with some very odd advisors. First there was Mr. Obama's very long standing friendship with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, two committed communist terrorists. Then, there was 9/11 "truther" Van Jones, who was thrown under the bus and lost his "green jobs" czar role for having made some very revealing statements, not the least of which was admitting to being a committed communist.

"I met all these young radical people of color - I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of... I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary...I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th..By August, I was a communist."

Then, there is science advisor John Holdren who advocates forced abortions and a "planetary regime" to forcibly control population and of course Mr. Obama's legal advisor Harold Koh.

Koh, has spoken out in support of enacting sharia law in the United States and regularly discounts the concept of the US Constitution as the supreme law of the land. His preference is for global, or transnational arrangements. Mr. Koh authored the still-confidential legal advice the Obama administration has used to brand the constitutional removal of Honduras's Chavezista president "a coup".

Of course, we can't leave out Valerie Jarret, who's father Vernon, was a die-hard communist in the Chicago Communist Party.

She’s {Valerie Jarret} always been the other side of Barack’s brain.” That’s how an Obama insider described Valerie Jarrett...Today Valerie Jarrett serves as one of three Senior Advisors to President Obama. She is Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement, and Chairs the White House Commission on Women and Girls...Frank Marshall Davis works closely in communist causes with Vernon Jarrett in Chicago. Davis moves to hawaii where he eventually meets and mentors a young Barack Obama. Then Obama moves to Chicago where his career is promoted by both Davis's old colleague Vernon Jarrett and the Communist Party. Vernon Jarrett's daughter-in-law employs Barack Obama's fiance, befriends the family and becomes one of President Obama's most trusted advisers. The Communist Party throws its entire weight behind Obama's presidential campaign.

See Newzeal.blogspot.com for an genuinely in depth vetting of Mr. Obama's closest advisors. http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2009/06/obama-file-78-smoking-gun-proof-that.html

These then are Mr. Obama's closest friends and advisors, yet, Major Media stil refuses to vet Mr. Obama, or his associates. Can we as a country afford to continue allow these kinds of advisers to continue. Especially if they despise what America stands for...can we?

Things that make you go Hmmmm...

I don't think that Mr. Obama wasn't born in Hawaii, but I do think his secrecy about his past, and those with whom he associated brings up questions that need to be answer. Nor do I agree with the "birthers" at all. On the otherhand,

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Yjg3ZmU1ODQwNWJmZWY2ZGZmZWQwMTc3ZWQyYTMyMDc=

But because the MSM has invested so much into seeing him succeed, first in the elections (allowing Hillary to be smeared as she was, then Sara Palin), then in their selective coverage since then. The MSM has, or rather had, a vested interest in vetting any public figure running for office. Unfortunately, in the case of Barack Obama, they have failed to do so in a way so complete as to be embarrassing.