Like Slimey Cockroaches & their crooked President, Liberals Spread Disease

[Warph]

Feds shut down criminal probe of Ariz. Sheriff Arpaio

           

PHOENIX -- The U.S. Attorney's Office has closed its long-running abuse-of-power investigation into Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- without any charges to be filed.

In a 5 p.m. Friday news release, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Birmingham Scheel, acting on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, announced her office "is closing its investigation into allegations of criminal conduct" by current and former members of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.

Federal prosecutors have advised Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery of the decision.

In a four-page letter to Montgomery, Scheel explained the reasoning for the decision.

Federal prosecutors decided to not prosecute matters tied to alleged misuse of county credit cards by sheriff's officials, alleged misspending of jail-enhancement funds and other matters. The U.S. Attorney's Office had already made public it would not pursue charges on those matters.

Scheel wrote that the agency declined to initiate any state criminal charges arising from its broader appointment to pursue state charges that may have come up in connection with the federal investigation. Several federal attorneys had been deputized to handle state crimes arising from the investigation.

"Law enforcement officials are rightfully afforded a wide swath of discretion in deciding how to conduct investigations and prosecutions," she wrote. "Unfortunately, such discretion can act as a double-edged sword: although it empowers fair-minded prosecutors and investigators to discharge their duties effectively, it also affords potential for abuse. Our limited role is to determine whether criminal charges are supportable. After careful review, we do not believe the allegations presented to us are prosecutable as crimes."

Scheel wrote that federal prosecutors reached the same conclusion on potential federal criminal violations, specifically related to the allegations involving retired Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe. Attorneys considered whether former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and his former Deputy County Attorney Lisa Aubuchon committed perjury in causing a complaint to be filed to avoid a court hearing, and whether their pursuit of criminal charges amounted to a violation of federal criminal civil rights laws.

Scheel wrote that the agency was mindful that a disciplinary panel had concluded Thomas, Aubuchon, Hendershott and Arpaio conspired in a criminal manner to violate Donahoe's civil rights.

"However, our obligation is different from the State Bar disciplinary panel, under its rules and burdens of proof, has reached certain conclusions about the conduct of Thomas and Aubuchon," she wrote. "We must weigh the evidence and law under the far heavier burden associated with criminal prosecution. Based on this review, we have concluded that allegations of criminal misconduct under federal statutes are not prosecutable."

She wrote it was "not enough to show that Judge Donahoe was subjected to conduct that was abusive or even unconstitutional. While Judge Donahoe suffered severe turmoil resulting from the criminal charges, as evidenced by the record in the Bar proceedings, we don't believe there is sufficient evidence to meet our burden that he suffered the sort of complete job depreciation contemplated by existing precedent."

Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, one of those who has sued Arpaio alleging she was improperly investigated, said she was shocked when contacted by The Republic.

"I can't imagine why they would do that when there's so much evidence there, particularly from the Thomas case and all the testimony that came out. I just am floored," Wilcox said.

Sheriff's Deputy Chief Jack MacIntyre commended federal prosecutors for their handling of the investigation that began in 2008.

MacIntyre also said the U.S. Attorney's Office recognized that many of the allegations related to the anti-corruption enforcement unit Arpaio started with former County Attorney Andrew Thomas were handled in the State Bar proceeding that resulted in Thomas being stripped of his license.

"The U.S. Attorney's Office and its investigators recognized what Sheriff's Office has said all along: We did not make any prosecutorial decisions, even through things were referred to the then-county attorney," MacIntyre said.

Thomas, a one-time Arpaio ally, was disbarred earlier this year. During the disbarment proceedings, testimony was given that Arpaio or his subordinates had abused the power the office.

The investigation began in December 2008.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-09-01/arizona-sheriff-arpaio/57492192/1?csp=34news&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+UsatodaycomNation-TopStories+%28News+-+Nation+-+Top+Stories%29

[Warph]

The Humpty-Dumpty Middle East

By Victor Davis Hanson
8/30/2012



The United States is backing off from the Middle East -- and the Middle East from the United States.

America is in the midst of the greatest domestic gas and oil revolution since the early 20th century. If even guarded predictions about new North American reserves are accurate, over the next decade the entire continent may become energy-independent, without much need of petroleum imports from the Middle East.

America's diminishing reliance on the Persian Gulf coincides with mounting Chinese dependency on Middle Eastern oil and gas. So as the Persian Gulf becomes less important to us, it grows even more critical to the oil-hungry, cash-laden -- and opportunistic -- Chinese.

After two wars in the Middle East, Americans are as tired of our forces being sent over there as Middle Easterners are of having us there.

The usual Arab complaint against the United States during the Cold War was that it supported anti-communist authoritarians in the oil-rich Gulf and ignored democratic reform. After the 1991 Gulf War, the next charge was that America fought Saddam Hussein only to free an oil-rich, pro-American monarchy in Kuwait, without any interest in helping reformists in either Kuwait or Iraq.

After the Gulf War of 2003, there was widespread new anger about the use of American arms to force-feed democracy down the throat of Iraq. Finally, during the 2011 Arab Spring, the Arab world charged that the United States was too tardy in offering political support for insurgents in Egypt and Tunisia, and again late in "leading from behind" in helping European nations remove Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Now the Arab world is hectoring America to help overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Let's get this all straight. America has been damned for its Machiavellian shenanigans in supporting authoritarian governments; for its naive idealism in using force to implant democracies; for its ambivalence in not using force to protect democratic protestors; and for its recent isolationism in ignoring ongoing Arab violence. Why, then, bother?

There are other growing fault lines. The old conventional wisdom was that Sunni Muslims shared Israeli fears of a Persian bomb on the horizon. The new conventional wisdom is that the Arab masses that are propelling the Muslim Brotherhood into power in Egypt prefer the idea of a nuked Israel to the danger of a nuclear Iran.

The subtext of Middle Eastern anti-Americanism is that the region, if given a chance, will embrace its own brand of freedom But that does not appear to be happening in Egypt or Libya. And for now, democracy does not seem to be the common glue that holds together various Syrians fighting to overthrow the odious Assad dictatorship.

Newly elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood attended college and later taught classes in California. Apparently Morsi once came here to enjoy American freedom and for his family to be protected by our tolerance and security. Is that why he is crushing liberal opponents and the Egyptian media -- to ensure that they never enjoy the protections and opportunities that were offered to him while a guest in the United States?

Note that anti-Americanism was often attributed to the unique unpopularity of Texan George W. Bush, who invaded two Middle Eastern countries, tried to foster democracies, and institutionalized a number of tough antiterrorism security policies. In turn, Barack Obama was supposed to be the antidote -- a Muslim family on his father's side, his middle name Hussein, early schooling in Muslim Indonesia, a number of pro-Islamic speeches and interviews, apologies abroad, and a postracial personal story.

Yet recent polls show that Obama is even less popular in the Middle East than was Bush.

Staggering U.S. debt also explains the impending divorce. With $5 trillion in new American borrowing in just the last four years, and talk of slashing $1 trillion from the defense budget over the next 10 years, America's options abroad may be narrowing. President Obama also envisions a more multilateral world in which former American responsibilities in the Middle East are outsourced to collective interests like the United Nations, the European Union and the Arab League.

Perhaps soon the problem will be that we simply will not have enough power to use it for much of anything -- and would have to ask the U.N. for permission if we did.

Usually nothing good comes from American isolationism, especially given our key support for a vulnerable democratic Israel. But for a variety of reasons, good and bad, our Humpty-Dumpty policy of Middle East engagement is now shattered.

And no one knows how to -- or whether we even should -- put it together again.

[Warph]

Why the World Hates Obama

by Dan Greenfield


                         



It's a good thing that Obama isn't running on his foreign policy record, because it's every bit as bad as his economic record. The Obama 2012 website only lists National Security as an issue. That is already a backhanded admission that the only thing he can run on is Bin Laden.

No U.S. president since John F. Kennedy has come to office with more global goodwill than Mr. Obama; no U.S. president since Jimmy Carter has been so widely rebuked.

So writes Bret Stephens and lists some of the highlights of the rolling disaster:

--His failed personal effort to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago.
--His failed personal effort to negotiate a climate-change deal at Copenhagen in 2009.
--His failed efforts to strike a nuclear deal with Iran that year and this year.
--His failed effort to improve America's public standing in the Muslim world with the now-forgotten Cairo speech.
--His failed reset with Russia. His failed effort to strong-arm Israel into a permanent settlement freeze.
--His failed (if half-hearted) effort to maintain a residual U.S. military force in Iraq.
--His failed efforts to cut deals with the Taliban and reach out to North Korea.
--His failed effort to win over China and Russia for even a symbolic U.N. condemnation of Syria's Bashar Assad.
--His failed efforts to intercede in Europe's economic crisis. ("Herr Obama should above all deal with the reduction of the American deficit" was the free advice German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble offered this year.)

                           

In June, the Pew Research Center released one of its periodic surveys of global opinion. It found that since 2009, favorable attitudes toward the U.S. had slipped nearly everywhere in the world except Russia and, go figure, Japan. George W. Bush was more popular in Egypt in the last year of his presidency than Mr. Obama is today.

The big glaring problem with Obama's approach is that he has gone in assuming that his anti-colonial resentments, so aptly documented by Dinesh D'Souza, will give him something in common with Ahmadinejad, Chavez and Putin. This was his mistake.

Obama's hostility to American power may make the Swedish Nobel committee love him, but it only earns him contempt from enemies and allies. Like most of the left, Obama is unable to distinguish between realpolitik and ideology. He is unable to understand that being on the left does not mean he has something in common with Islamists and Communists. It means he is their useful idiot.

Strong nations or nations wishing to be strong don't respect appeasement from their enemies, they despise it. Americans may see Obama as a foreigner, but foreigners see him as an American. Americans may see him as a Muslim, but Muslims see him as an apostate. Obama's soft power has won him no respect, because the countries whose respect he wants to win with soft power, despise soft power.
Obama's global failure is emblematic of the foreign policy failures of the left. The American left sees the world in terms of American politics. They think that the reason that other countries hate us is because we are on the right, rather than on the left. But other countries see us in terms of their politics. They don't react to what we do, they react to what they want.

Our soft power has fed their perceptions of their own strength. The more that Obama appeases Iran, the stronger Iran thinks it is and the more likely it is to get into a conflict with the United States because of that false perception of strength.

This is a basic lesson that the left never learns.

[Warph]

OMG.... DNC Erecting Creepy Giant Obama Sculpture
At The Democratic National Convention

                       


Forget the marble pillars, this time there will be a giant 16-foot sculpture of Obama made out of 15.5 tons of sand at the Democratic National Convention. Building a giant sand sculpture of a living leader might be considered a bit tacky with its worshipful implications, but building one during a hurricane in South Carolina is in particularly bad taste.

But if nothing else, at least Obama has found one "Shovel Ready Project". And this isn't even the creepiest giant Obama sand sculpture ever made. The winner of that particular competition is still Sudarsan Pattnaik with this nightmare made out of sand.

                         

[Warph]

           


Where are Milwaukee's "missing" black voters

posted at 1:01 pm on September 1, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/01/where-are-milwaukees-missing-black-voters/

Are 60% of Milwaukee's black voters from 2008 missing?

That's what a study from the New Organizing Institute claims, which estimates that as many as 160,000 black voters in the city from the last presidential election can no longer be found. Slate reports on this claim without any real skepticism or scrutiny, after noting NPR's speculation that the housing crisis would cause Democrats more trouble in finding their voters:


This spring, the League of Young Voters, which was created to mobilize young minority communities, collaborated with the liberal Wisconsin Voices coalition to dispatch teams of young canvassers. Starting in April, they spent eight weeks knocking on 120,882 doors across 208 of Milwaukee's 317 wards to raise awareness of the gubernatorial recall election scheduled for June. The doors had one thing in common: the voter file said they were all home to a registered voter whom a commercial data vendor had flagged as likely to be African-American.

But the voter file represented a fiction, or at least a reality that had rapidly become out of date. During those eight weeks, canvassers were able to successfully find and interact with only 31 percent of their targets. Twice that number were confirmed to no longer live at the address on file — either because a structure was abandoned or condemned, or if a current resident reported that the targeted voter no longer lived there.

Based on those results, the New Organizing Institute, a Washington-based best-practices lab for lefty field operations, extrapolated that nearly 160,000 African-American voters in Milwaukee were no longer reachable at their last documented address — representing 41 percent of the city's 2008 electorate. It is a staggering figure in a battleground state where Democratic prospects rely on turning out Milwaukee's urban population, an ever more urgent cause since Paul Ryan's presence on the ticket could help mobilize core Republican constituencies in the city's suburbs. Over half of those identified as displaced were under the age of 35, and thus also less likely to be reachable through traditional landline phones.

Simply put, this is an absurd conclusion to reach. It starts with an assumption that the "voter file" used in this search was accurate, both in identifying African-American voters and in identifying legitimate registrations. It ends with the assumption that a voter who no longer lives in the same place in 2012 that he or she did in 2008 is somehow "missing." And the result of this absurdity is the claim that 160,000 voters in a city population of only 594,833 — including non-voters — went "missing," and no one noticed.

If this is actually true, then we have a perfect way to corroborate this claim. The 2008 election, where Barack Obama became the first African-American President, was generally agreed to boost participation among black voters around the nation. In Wisconsin, that demo accounted for 5% of the overall vote, according to exit polling. In the 2010 gubernatorial election, it was 4%. Unlike most other states, Wisconsin held a statewide election as well as a primary — the recall election of Scott Walker, Rebecca Kleefisch, and several state senators. In exit polling from the June election, black voters once again comprised 5% of the vote, up from 2010′s gubernatorial election.

Obama won Wisconsin handily in 2008 by 13 points in an election where 2,939,604 votes were cast; five percent of that would be 146,980 votes cast by African-American voters in the entire state. In the 2010 election, 2,133,244 votes were cast, 4% of which would have been 85,330. The recall election won by Walker had 2,516,065 votes cast — almost perfectly between the two — and five percent of that comes to 125,803. None of these remotely indicate that Milwaukee had 160,000 extra black voters to go missing in the first place. That's more than the number of black voters who turned out statewide in 2008 in Obama's first presidential election.

By the way, the number of people who voted in Milwaukee County — not the city — in the 2008 election was 475,192. In 2012, it was 396,183, a difference of only 79,000 in a special election effort. It also produced almost exactly the same result as in the 2010 gubernatorial election, too.

Finally, let's go to the best data of all — the Census Bureau. The state of Wisconsin's population in the 2011 estimate was 5,711,767 people, of whom 6.5% identify as black. That's a statewide total of 371,265 black adults and children, up from 2000′s 304,460 and 5.7%, and slightly higher than 2010′s 359,148 and 6.3% rather than declining. The city of Milwaukee's population of 597,867 is 40% African-American, which comes to 239,147 adults and children. Assuming one child for every two adults, there would only be 157,837 African-American adults of voting age in the city altogether. In Milwaukee County, the population is 952,532, with 27% being African-American. That comes to 257,183 African-American adults and children (most of them live in the city itself, obviously), and using the same 2:1 ratio for adults to children, we get 169,741 voting-age-eligible adults.

In order to believe this survey, one would have to believe that every African-American adult had abandoned the city of Milwaukee, and nearly all from the county of Milwaukee, too, which demonstrates the absurdity of its conclusion. Furthermore, even if the claim were true, those voters would show up elsewhere — either elsewhere in Wisconsin, or elsewhere in the US. The percentage of black voters in Wisconsin exit polling from 2008 to 2012 should have cratered with that kind of exodus had it occurred, but instead it remained remarkably stable all the way through June of this year. The only conclusion is that the claim is absolutely and transparently nutty.

There are a few possible reasons for the New Organizing Institute to make this claim, and they're not mutually exclusive. One, they may be just that bad at math. Two, they may just be that bad at door knocking. Three, they may just be that bad at research. Four, the voter file from 2008 contained massive amounts of fraudulent registrations, and the state's new voter-ID law has respondents thinking twice about trying it again in 2012 — although 160,000 is as absurd a figure for that as it is for claiming people missing. Five, the New Organizing Institute wanted to stake a claim that a loss in Wisconsin wasn't due to their bad GOTV efforts but a result of both the housing crisis and voter suppression, and concocted the data to support the conclusion.

I suspect a bit of all these are at work in this claim, and arguably in the reporting of it too. It's very curious that Slate's Sasha Issenberg didn't bother to do the math herself to test NOI's ridiculous figures before writing the lead, "Sixty percent of Milwaukee's black voters have disappeared." This looks like agenda flogging rather than journalism.

[Warph]

           

This morning, Hurricane Racist Melissa Harris-Perry of Msnbc had a little temper tantrum today concerning Monica Mehta, columnist for Bloomberg Businessweek, and her comments concerning President Obama's "you didn't build that speech."

The point Mehta made, professionally, was that Obama could have focused on the risk that small business owners bring before themselves as they channel their entrepreneurial drive.  Well, that caused a meltdown with Perry who yelled:

Not only is this tantrum further evidence showing how left-wing American liberalism has become–but also highlights their abject lack of understanding concerning America's economic spirit.  As for the safety net, math and demographics are destined to destroy it if we continue down the road of liberal economics.  Furthermore, today, the safety net doesn't allow people to get back on their feet.  It has become a new area of policy wherein progressives can expand their agenda of dependency.

Get a grip Melissa.[/font][/size]

[Warph]

       

Heartbreak: Chinese government none
too happy with Romney's agenda

September 1, 2012 by Erika Johnsen

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/01/heartbreak-chinese-government-none-too-happy-with-romneys-agenda/

Wait, so the state-controlled media of a self-proclaimed communist nation that brutally oppresses its people and continuously flouts the rules of free-trade and international cooperation, isn't endorsing Romney for president? I think I can feel my heart breaking.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i8QrrsYvqcpfCm6wbiJ2GC0iOUFg?docId=CNG.87a09093caa84ac6dda35a7ddd223788.1f1


China's official news agency on Wednesday criticised what it called a "blame-China game" by US presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a day after he formally secured the Republican nomination. ...

"While it is convenient for US politicians to hammer China and blame China for their own problems, they should be fully aware that their words and deeds are poisoning the general atmosphere of US-China relations," it said. ...

He has pledged to brand China a "currency manipulator" on his first day in office, a move that could enable retaliatory sanctions and that the Obama administration declined to take in May. ...

Obama has issued tamer criticisms of the Asian giant, announcing during a campaign stop last month that his government had filed a complaint against it with the World Trade Organization over a tariff on American automobiles.

Oh, give me a break — blame, shmame. The Chinese ruling elites are overly-sensitive about anyone pointing out their very obvious, glaring flaws and daring to not be bullied by their endless effronteries, because they have to feed their own repressed populace with a constant stream of jingoistic waffle to keep their precarious governing situation locked down.

I have long maintained that the rise of a more wealthy China is in no way a necessarily scary prospect. The beautiful thing about prosperity is that there's no finite supply of it that we need to fight over — it just keeps on growing, and there's absolutely no reason that every single person on the planet couldn't enjoy the same level of material comfort that we by and large enjoy in the western world. Free trade is not a zero-sum game, everybody benefits, and a more productive, successful, competitive China would only help to heighten worldwide prosperity and innovation.

China has long since realized that they would indeed like to be an economic superpower, and if they're ever to have even the slightest hope of getting on our economic level (right now, they aren't even close), they're going to be forced to implement political reforms, too. Repressing your people's freedom of speech and religion and shutting down their opportunities for upward mobility is no way to unleash their ingenuity and entrepreneurship, and a more democratic China would benefit all parties.

Romney understands this.

"We will welcome the emergence of a peaceful and prosperous China, and we will welcome even more the development of a democratic China," the [RNC] draft platform reads. "Its rulers have discovered that economic freedom leads to national wealth. The next lesson is that political and religious freedom lead to national greatness. The exposure of the Chinese people to our way of lifecan be the greatest force for change in their country.

The problem is that, right now, China is still attempting to compete on a free-market level, without abiding by free-market rules. They're not trying to make China more democratic, they're trying to see how much they can accomplish by testing just how much the rest of the world will allow them to get away with: Intellectual piracy, currency manipulation, rampant corruption, mind-blowing fiscal failures, international perfidy, etcetera. But here's the thing: It's not working out too well for them.

The latest news from Beijing is indicative of Chinese weakness: a persistent slowdown of economic growth, a glut of unsold goods, rising bad bank loans, a bursting real estate bubble, and a vicious power struggle at the top, coupled with unending political scandals. Many factors that have powered China's rise, such as the demographic dividend, disregard for the environment, supercheap labor, and virtually unlimited access to external markets, are either receding or disappearing. ...

The current economic slowdown in Beijing is neither cyclical nor the result of weak external demand for Chinese goods. China's economic ills are far more deeply rooted: an overbearing state squandering capital and squeezing out the private sector, systemic inefficiency and lack of innovation, a rapacious ruling elite interested solely in self-enrichment and the perpetuation of its privileges, a woefully underdeveloped financial sector, and mounting ecological and demographic pressures.

I'm rather of the opinion that China's communist bubble is well on its way to popping almost regardless of what we do, but it's still important to stand up to their continual bullying and let them know that we are not easy subjects for a run-around. It's quite the sticky wicket, and I don't pretend to know all the exact answers, but Romney highlighting their underhanded security dealings, their widespread human rights abuses, and their refusal to abide by free-trade rules aren't a bad start — I know that communist regimes don't usually like it when they don't get their way and anybody in the wide world dares to challenge them, but tough beans.

And to finish, just two quick parting thoughts:

1. We often accuse China's communist government of being overly-protectionist with tariffs and whatnot, but we're guilty of plenty of that ourselves.

2. Heads up, greenies — you think that free enterprise is bad for the environment? Communism should be the Environmentalist Movement's Public Enemy Number One!

[Warph]

ON EASTWOOD

By: John Hayward
8/31/2012 09:17 AM

http://www.humanevents.com/2012/08/31/on-eastwood/

There isn't much point in trying to divine a grand strategy behind Clint Eastwood's appearance at the Republican National Convention. It seems strange to think that a crucial block of time would be given over to what was, by all accounts, an "improv" chat (Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom's description), given both the tightly scripted nature of the modern political convention, and Mitt Romney's penchant for careful planning.

But that's what we got. Condoleeza Rice's ability to deliver a powerful and complex speech largely from memory, with minimal reference to prepared material, is amazing... but she didn't just amble onto the stage and let 'er rip. I don't know that anyone has ever previously done that at a major political convention, certainly not in the modern media age.

Naturally, Clint (it just seems wrong to refer to him as "Eastwood") received mixed reviews for his performance. Enthusiastic Republican voters generally thought his "Invisible Obama" routine was hilarious. Obama supporters were considerably less amused. "Clint, my hero, is coming across as sad and pathetic," said film critic Roger Ebert via Twitter. "He didn't need to do this to himself. It's unworthy of him."

That's a pretty harsh curve for grading an 82-year-old man delivering an improvised speech in front of an enormous crowd, as the warm-up for a young superstar senator and the Republican candidate for President of the United States. But there's nothing surprising about Eastwood's jibes provoking anger among Obama supporters. I strongly suspect Clint isn't surprised, or that he cares very much. And if a comparable roasting of Mitt Romney occurs at the Democrat convention, Republicans will probably find it much less amusing than the convention delegates and liberal spectators.

Was talking to an invisible Obama in an empty chair demeaning to the President? Good. Now Obama knows how he made millions of business owners feel.

The point of Clint's appearance wasn't just to loosen up the crowd with a few laughs. He was there to provide more than humor or star power. The Man With No Name rode onto the high plains of the RNC stage to deliver something else: validation.

The intended recipient was not Mitt Romney, the convention delegates, or even Republican voters, but rather wavering independents. Clint was there to tell them it's OK to find Obama, his ugly campaign operation, and his increasingly shrill band of die-hard defenders ridiculous. It's OK to laugh at them. (You'd need a heart of stone not to laugh at the MSNBC panel's reaction to the entire evening. It's even funnier to think that there are people who still take MSNBC seriously as some sort of "news" network, instead of the longest Saturday Night Live skit in broadcast history.)

We already knew it was OK to make fun of the absurd Joe Biden – which should not diminish anyone's anger that such an vicious and foolish man was placed a heartbeat from the Presidency – but Clint took it up a notch: "Joe Biden is kind of a grin with a body behind it." Perfect.

It's OK to dismiss the brutal slander of the Obama campaign with humor, as Clint did when Invisible Obama supposedly gave him profane insults to relay to Mitt Romney. The silly notion of Obama as a serene, cool, Spock-like figure floating above the political fray is gone forever, but Clint shoveled a little dirt on its grave with those jokes. The pained over-reaction of Obama defenders does them no credit, and will not serve them well in the election. Americans are a humorous people who value the ability to take a joke. A thin-skinned campaign that appears to be cracking walnuts with its clenched butt cheeks usually turns them off.

And it's OK to let Obama go, as Eastwood said, in what I think will prove to be his most widely quoted line: "When somebody does not do the job, you've got to let them go." The significance of that statement, coupled with the raspy straight-shooting delivery of Dirty Harry, should not be underestimated.

A good deal of the Obama campaign effort, particular from his media allies, comes down to portraying votes against him as racism – as if the public has a moral duty to re-elect the First Black President, no matter how ghastly a failure he has been. (Swing by the MSNBC comedy show and check out Chris Matthews for the extreme low-brow version of this argument. Matthews portrays even relatively mild criticism of his beloved President as coded racism. The other day, he decided references to "Chicago" are encrypted racist appeals.) Independent voters really do need some inoculation against this argument.

There are people who await cultural and social permission to express their dissatisfaction with Obama. Mitt Romney gave it during his speech, in a more expanded and refined way – he said he understood the excitement of voting for Hope and Change, but for many of those voters, a profound sense of disappointment has set in. Clint did it by describing 23 million unemployed Americans as a "disgrace," pointing out that "politicians are employees of ours," and reminding voters that eventually it becomes necessary to dismiss under-performing employees.

Actually, it was interesting to note how hard some of Clint's deadly serious lines hit, because of the strange comedy surrounding them. Is that what he had in mind all along?

Who knows what impact this will have? Celebrity endorsements receive wide play with the public, thanks to the popularity of the celebs, but a lot of people tend to tune out whatever they actually say. Far more people are interested in hearing a favorite actor talk than seriously taking political advice from him. Maybe Clint will inspire more Hollywood conservatives and libertarians to come out of the closet and speak up. Or maybe his performance will ultimately be digested by the public as a strange moment of comedy, which produced a bit of short-lived controversy, but little lasting effect.

Either way, it was an interesting, amusing, and very unusual snapshot of a growing preference cascade against Barack Obama.

My comment: I always loved Clint Eastwood's movies and I thought his appearance at the 2012 RNC was (rambling, but) awesome.  I totally understand where he's coming from.  He is not one to suffer fools gladly and he's surrounded by fools (democrats) in Hollywood.  There has never been bigger fools in all of history than supporters of Barack Obama, and Clint just called it like he sees it.  I know what it's like to be brainwashed into being a democrat, and what it's like to realize that you have been lied to by our mainstream media and our educational system.  Finally I know what it's like to finally see the light.  Clint Eastwood sees the light too

Click here to watch a video clip of classic Eastwood
from "The Outlaw Josey Wales":

[Warph]

                           


I definitely hope and pray that Obuma is evicted from the White House in the coming election.  For one thing, it would dispose of the worst president we have ever had, a distinction I had assumed would be Jimmy Carter's in perpetuity.  Now even Carter's title as the worst ex-president we have ever had will be in jeopardy if Obuma somehow manages to live up to his potential.

But Obuma's defeat would also restore my faith in the American people.  Not all of them, you understand.  After all, even in defeat, Obuma and Biden will manage to carry several states and garner tens of millions of votes in spite of overseeing an administration that has somehow managed to make a terrible economy worse, gutted the military, offended our allies and encouraged the very worst of our enemies.

If Romney and Ryan win, and the GOP manages to regain control of the Senate, the celebration will be short-lived unless they repeal ObumaCare; institute long overdue changes in healthcare; do away with several federal departments and cabinet positions; undertake welfare reform, taking millions of undeserving people off food stamps; passing a federal law against lying about disabilities in order to fatten up pension checks; get America out of the U.N. and the U.N. out of America; and revoking public sector unions.

Even as radical a left-winger as FDR knew that the very idea of allowing civil servants to unionize was insane.  It was only after he saw how easily Robert F. Wagner, Jr., won re-election as New York's mayor after allowing city employees to unionize that John Kennedy decided that he would help assure his own re-election by doing the same for federal employees.

We see the result of this madness in cities and states across America, as more and more of them go bankrupt as a result of the sweetheart union contracts that gutless, self-serving, politicians have cut over the past several decades.

But it's not just the "what's-in-it-for-me?" attitude of SEIU members that's destroying the economy.  There's also a large group of old people who have reached an age where they no longer seem too concerned about the solvency of Medicare and Social Security, and whether those entitlements will be around for their children and grandchildren.  Even when they're assured that no major changes will be enacted in the near-future, they react as if those phony DNC commercials with a Paul Ryan lookalike pushing a dummy off a cliff were real-life videos.

Frankly, some of these people have forfeited title to being members of our greatest generation.  Instead, they're behaving very much like their own spoiled 20-something relatives, who whoop and holler every time that Obuma promises to cut the interest rates of their student loans or allows them to stay on their parents' health insurance policies until they're middle-aged.

Lately, I've been receiving an email message that's gone viral, insisting that Obama has ceded seven Alaskan islands to Russia, while getting nothing in return.  The reason it's so easy to believe is because Obuma has made it a practice to bestow so many things on President Putin, ranging from vowing to unilaterally decimate our nuclear arsenal to depriving Poland and the Czech Republic of a promised missile defense system, that Obuma has begun to resemble an ardent gay suitor, hopelessly smitten with Russia's macho dictator.

Furthermore, Broom Hilda Clinton's State Department has been more than willing to carry out Obuma's wishes, whether it's condemning Israel for building apartment houses in Jerusalem and protecting its borders from Arab and Turkish terrorists or by nixing the Keystone pipeline.

The truth in this case, however, is that back in 1991, G.H.W. Bush and the U.S. Senate, by a vote of 86-6, with Alaska's two senators voting with the majority, agreed that the U.S. had no right to the islands, which, being closer to Siberia than to Alaska, were well within Russia's territorial waters.

In the aftermath of the brouhaha involving Chick-fil-A and homosexuals, with gays calling for a boycott of the national franchise because its president had the audacity to state that, like most Americans, he was in favor of traditional marriage, I was reminded of the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote:

"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."

I would go so far as to suggest that blacks, Latino activists, MSNBC commentators, Occupy Wall Street blockheads, Hollywood pinheads, left-wing college students, and NY Times editorial writers, would also do well to take those 18 well-chosen words to heart.

[Warph]

Forward: A Look Ahead to the DNC

By Derek Hunter
9/2/2012


The Republican convention has ended, and it was a rousing success. We know this because of the amount of venom spewed on MSNBC. On the Chris Matthews Flying-Spittle Meter, it rated at least an 11 out of 10.

In a desperate attempt to distract from the positive vibe coming from Republicans in Tampa, Matthews, who I'm convinced is Charlie Brown and Lucy Van Pelt's illegitimate child, went from having a "thrill" running up his leg four years ago to having something running down it last week.

He, Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton flung the race card so freely and wildly you'd swear they were the featured acts at a tweaking meth-head magic show. The "whitewashing" of the speaker roster by MSNBC, refusing to show any speaker of color the first two days while complaining about a lack of diversity, will be taught in universities of future despotic dictatorships as how best to ignore reality and stick to your propaganda.

The reaction to Clint Eastwood's genius mocking of our failed president was nothing short of Bagdad Bob-ian in its earnest pitifulness. (Here's my take on that.)

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/the_rumble/2012/08/clint-eastwood-puts-liberals-in-full-panic-mode

But MSNBC is not about converting rational people to a way of thinking. It is about making sure people who subscribe to its special brand of willful ignorance don't stray from the herd. Much of what you see on MSNBC is designed to ensure its drones don't hop on the underground railroad – not to conservative media, but to the original source material – and risk thinking for themselves. They watch what happens and tell you what to think so you don't have to. It's a time-saver.

It's also a caring agenda, really, since people shouldn't work without the proper tools and thinking...You can finish that one yourself.

But this week it's the Democrats' turn.

Democrats, progressives, liberals and whatever the remaining mass of un-showered leftist mutant rabble are calling themselves this week will gather in Charlotte to re-nominate Barack Obama as their candidate for president.

What will we see on the stage at Time-Warner Arena and Bank of Panther Stadium?

My prediction: A tribute to parasites, anger and hate with a top-screwed-off salt shaker dash of race-baiting.

http://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2012/08/26/bank_of_panther_stadium_democrats_and_transparency/page/full/

President Obama and Congressional Democrats' legislative record will be the redheaded stepchild of the 3-day convention that easily could be renamed "Pretend the Last Four Years Didn't Happen-stock."

Its roster of speakers will consist of an endless stream of self-imposed victims and government parasite freaks that would make P.T. Barnum blush. And those are just the Congressional Democrats. The real mutant parade starts when every prominent abortionist in America gets her – and we use the term loosely here – 20 minutes at the mic and climaxes with Sandra Fluke.

Democrats hold up Fluke as an example of the strong, independent, modern woman who has replaced her societally imposed need for a man with government. You've come a long way baby...unfortunately you went a long way in the wrong direction.

The party of "Keep Your Laws Off My Body" will celebrate government takeover of health care. The party of "Keep Your Laws Out Of My Bedroom" will cheer government mandating contraception.

The party of "We Are Our Brother's Keeper" will re-nominate a multi-millionaire who has not sent his dirt-poor brother one penny to help with his own nephew's medical bills.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/16/how-became-george-obama-brother/

They will do all of this without any sense of irony or shame at their hypocrisy.

And the media, led by the bobble-headed quartet on MSNBC, will cheer the courage, promise and vision of a party whose overriding desire is to encourage people to have faith not in themselves but in government. They will cheer a philosophy of defeatism designed to squelch aspiration and celebrate envy.

"Yes We Can" has become "It's Someone Else's Fault." The only mention of a budget will be attacks against Paul Ryan's budget proposal. We won't hear a word about why the Democrat-controlled Senate hasn't bothered to pass one for nearly four years.

"Created or saved" will be held up as something to celebrate rather than the meaningless, conjured-out-of-nowhere measure to justify or obscure failure it is. The drinking-game word for the week will be "inherited." Take a sip of alcohol every time you hear that word this week, and you'll be dead ... or at least an honorary Kennedy.

The Democrat Convention will be a "Twilight Zone" event. Thousands will pretend the last four years didn't happen, last week's positive, forward-looking message from the RNC was, in fact, racist code and the authentically powerful, influential black, Hispanic and women speakers who took to the podium in Tampa didn't exist.

They will celebrate President Obama's meaningless campaign slogan: "Forward." But outside the convention hall in Real America, voters are beginning think we've gone about as far forward as we can down the dead-end street of one of history's spectacularly failed philosophies. They've begun to think in terms of turning things around, of getting back to work. They'll hear a lot of gauzy talk about the future, but they will get exactly zero look at the reality of what going "forward" down Obama Avenue has meant over the last four years. They will get spin, lies and enough smoke blown up where the sun doesn't shine that they'll run risk of getting colon cancer.

It won't all be sad. After all, the Democrats have a world-class comedian coming to their convention. What time is Joe Biden's speech anyway?