Happy Halloween
“Thank you God.”
In last night’s prayers:
Thank you God for Batman and Joker, the latter being pronounced Joka.
Thank you God for the forest. (That’s the 100 acre wood in Winnie the Pooh).
The Romneybot Attack on Sarah Palin
When I was in St. Paul for the Republican Convention, I heard more than a dozen people say acolytes of Mitt Romney were feeding all the stories to the media portraying Palin in a negative light.
In fact, I heard that one of the biggest pushers of anti-Palin stories, including encouraging reporters to pursue the “Trooper-gate” story was Romney spokeshack Kevin Madden.
I did not blog on it at the time because I perceived it to be people trying to finish off Romney. It likewise seemed clear to me that if this was going on, it was people loyal to Romney who were still hoping for his come back and not Romney himself.
These days it is hard to miss Kathleen Parker’s savage attacks on Sarah Palin. She, along with several others listed here attacking Sarah Palin were also some of the first pundits in bed with the Romney campaign in 2007/8.
Again, it is hard for me to place the finger on Romney. It seems to me that these are people who are still convinced he’s the better nominee and don’t want Palin to be in any position to challenge him in 2012.
At this moment, however, it is absolutely clear — there is an effort, organized or not, by supporters of Mitt Romney to harm the reputation of Governor Sarah Palin.
The American Spectator documented it yesterday.
Former Mitt Romney presidential campaign staffers, some of whom are currently working for Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin’s bid for the White House, have been involved in spreading anti-Palin spin to reporters, seeking to diminish her standing after the election. “Sarah Palin is a lightweight, she won’t be the first, not even the third, person people will think of when it comes to 2012,” says one former Romney aide, now working for McCain-Palin. “The only serious candidate ready to challenge to lead the Republican Party is Mitt Romney. He’s in charge on November 5th.”
Though I initially dismissed the Kevin Madden rumors, Amanda Carpenter has Kevin in his own words going after Sarah Palin.
And it is not just Madden. It may be hard for you to believe, but there are Romney supporters now working on John McCain’s campaign who are, in fact, indisputably out to damage Sarah Palin’s reputation. I am not just convinced of it. I know it to be fact. That there are “conservative pundits” echoing the same talking points makes me deeply suspicious.
I agree with Matt Lewis. I doubt Mitt Romney is responsible or encouraging it. In fact, I suspect he’d be extremely disappointed to find this out. Nonetheless, whether organic or organized, it is happening.
And we must remember this. Contrary to the quote in the American Spectator, if November 5th ushers in President-elect Obama, I stand with Sarah.
Democrats Abuse Government To Go After Joe the Plumber
A couple of weeks ago, Michael Barone wrote
Obama supporters who found the campuses congenial and Obama himself, who has chosen to live all his adult life in university communities, seem to find it entirely natural to suppress speech that they don’t like and seem utterly oblivious to claims that this violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. In this campaign, we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead.
In Missouri, local Democrat sheriffs and prosecutors have planned to use the state’s police power to go after citizens perceived as making false statements about Barack Obama — using the police power to intimidate political opponents.
More troubling, comes a weekend report from the Columbus Dispatch that Obama supporters in government used government computers to access data with which to smear Joe Wurzelbacher a/k/a Joe the Plumber.
Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department. It has not been determined who checked on Wurzelbacher, or why. Direct access to driver’s license and vehicle registration information from BMV computers is restricted to legitimate law enforcement and government business.
We have one case of Obama supporters threatening to use the powers of the state to prosecute Obama’s political opponents and another case of Obama supporters actually abusing the powers of the state to target and smear a guy who was, in reality, an innocent bystander — a man who Obama went to randomly for a photo-op. The guy just happened to do the equivalent of the child in “The Emperor Has No Clothes.” In the fairy tale, the kid and his family were not hounded and smeared by the king. In reality though, Joe the Plumber was.
This is what third world despots in African Kleptocracies do. This is not what we do, or are supposed to do, in the United States of America.
Orrin’s Army
Orrin Hatch is fighting mad. He is fired up. I spoke with him late yesterday afternoon. He’s been out on the campaign trail explaining to people what would happen if the Democrats got to sixty votes in the Senate. And he is throwing punches.
He’d also kill me if I did not plug the NRSC’s website: http://www.nrsc.org
Go there and be a part of what he is calling “Orrin’s Army.” Say what you will about the NRSC’s operations from two years ago. John Ensign is doing an awesome job, but he needs help.
I asked Senator Hatch first about ACORN. “We’ve known for years that ACORN is an arm of the Democratic Party,” he said. They never talk about Republicans he said, just like the unions. He thinks ACORN does need to be investigated. But, he told me, the problem is that a lot of ACORN’s activities are at the state level and the Democrats won’t go after them. The Democratic officials at the state level “create a very bad situation,” he said. They are allowing ACORN to create “major defects in election laws.” Likewise, he said unions are a huge problem.
Unions covet a filibuster proof, Democrat controlled Senate relentlessly. “They are unaccountable. They’ll spend a billion dollars this election and $950 million will be soft money to get out the vote for Democrats,” he said. Meanwhile, the GOP must use hard dollars for GOTV operations. Senator Hatch used Gordon Smith as an example. “You have to agree that Gordon Smith is a fine Senator,” he said. “And despite massive spending against him, Gordon is even in the polls.” Nonetheless, it is a very tough race with union dollars and ACORN fraud trying to corrupt the election.
At this point in the conversation, he again plugs the NRSC’s website: http://www.nrsc.org.
Rep. Tim Walz (D-MN) As You’ve Never Seen Him
For some reason, the media in Minnesota has never thought it necessary to show this picture or track it down.
It’s Congressman Tim Walz being arrested for a DUI. The picture is 13 years old. Why is it still relevant? Because Tim Walz two years ago and more recently lied about being arrested for being drunk. But now the truth is trickling out that he claimed he was “deaf” and couldn’t hear the cop’s commands, despite a blood test showing he was drunk.
H/t to Minnesota Democrats Exposed
Oh . . . there is more coming too. Better go to MDE, because you probably won’t hear about it from the Minnesota press.
The Media’s “Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil” Approach to Covering Barack Obama
There is now ample, ample evidence that Barack Obama’s campaign is accepting donations from foreigners in violation of federal law.
There is now ample evidence that Barack Obama’s campaign has intentionally opted out of credit card address verification services (”AVS”) thereby making it extremely easy to contribute to his campaign while the campaign can claim ignorance to theft, excessive contributions, improper contributions, and illegal contributions.
See, here, here, here, here, and here.
As Patrick Ruffini notes,
The issue centers around the Address Verification Service (or AVS) that credit card processors use to sniff out phony transactions. I was able to contribute money using an address other than the one on file with my bank account (I used an address I control, just not the one on my account), showing that the Obama campaign deliberately disabled AVS for its online donors. AVS is generally the first line of defense against credit card fraud online. AVS ensures that not only is your credit card number accurate, but the street address you’ve submitted with a transaction matches the one on file with your bank. Authorize.net, the largest credit card gateway provider in the country, lists AVS as a “Standard Transaction Security Setting,” recommends merchants use it, and turns it on by default. So, in order for AVS to be turned off, it has to be intentional, at least with Authorize.net.
There have been ample stories since the first reports of questionable donations, but the campaign still has not turned on AVS.
To be clear: this cannot be done with John McCain’s website. This could not be done with Hillary Clinton’s website. This could not be done with Fred Thompson’s website. This could not be done with Joe Biden’s website. This could not be done with any other candidate’s website. Only Barack Obama’s website is set up to allow transactions without any screening for fraud or other inappropriate or illegal activity.
The media has patently, willfully failed to report this story.
There is nothing you or I can do to force the media to cover this story. Nothing.
But let us not be under any delusions. Were this George W. Bush in 2000 or 2004 when he saw record fundraising numbers from low dollar donors, the media would have been all over his campaign if AVS had been turned off.
The watch word for the media right now? Crickets.
Water Boarding and Chocolate Milk
Washing Evelyn’s hair is the equivalent of waterboarding her in her mind.
After the water boarding tonight, she demanded chocolate milk, which I readily obliged.
I then went downstairs leaving her to her own devices in the bathtub only to hear a very dramatic flailing in the tub and then silence.
I jumped up and called out to her to see if she was okay and only heard what was best described as some sort of moan.
I called out again and got an “uh-huh” but it was muffled.
So I ran upstairs to make sure she was okay.
She was laying back in the tub with the sippy cup of chocolate milk balanced on her face, sucking it down as quickly as possible. She popped right up, took the tip of the cup out of her mouth and said, “Oh daddy this is so good.”
The October Surprise
Don’t underestimate the McCain campaign.
What type of movie do Americans really like? Not the popcorn flicks, but the ones that leave you saying “holy sh**” at the end when the credits roll. The Usual Suspects comes to mind.
Here’s a movie where you have multiple story lines coming together toward the end, all connected to a central character, and when it finally dawns on you what just happened, wow — it is one heck of a movie. Separate plot elements dramatically merge into one coherent narrative and you realize had you been paying attention all along you would have seen it.
It really works. Those stories have powerful staying power.
For more than two months the Republicans have pushed the ACORN story — a corrupt, radical organization that operates through voter fraud to disrupt American democracy, destabilize our financial system, agitate against business, etc. Just this week the FBI raided ACORN in Nevada and discovered how prevalent their voter fraud operation is.
Separately, the GOP started painting a picture of Obama’s campaign donations. He’s been extremely secretive. In a bit of marxist doublespeak, the Obama campaign is saying it is the most transparent campaign ever, but won’t provide a list of its donors, destroyed Obama’s Illinois legislative files, won’t provide his health records, etc. The more we learn about his small donors, the more questions we have about foreigners trying to sway the American democratic system.
And then there is the McCain campaign. It has gone zealously after Bill Ayers’s connection to Obama. Ayers hired Obama to run the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, after launching Obama’s political career in his living room.
Bill Ayers, in applying for the Annenberg Challenge grant, said the purpose of the money would be to radicalize students to agitate for change. Who did he put in charge of the program? Barack Obama.
Who did Obama give the money to?
ACORN.
And the separate plots begin to connect. The ACORN narrative, the Ayers narrative, the foreign donor narrative — they intersect, combine, tangle, and paint a very ugly picture of Barack Obama
What Obama did on the board with the Annenberg money and what he’d do with your money come in to the narrative.
But I’m told there will be a surprise twist in this plot that will make it even neater to watch unfold.
The next month is going to be tumultuous and fun.
The October Surprise is that there is no “surprise.” It’s been in front of us all along. Only now the various story lines are getting connected.