Category: Republicans

Mr. Silver, Nothing is wrong with Michigan, thank you very much

Posted on

I wasn’t going to Blog today. But there’s just too much being said, that requires my opinion here.

Liberal Blogger and Obama-bot, Nate Silver asks, What’s the Matter with Michigan?

Democrats have grown accustomed to winning Michigan by relatively comfortable margins. Bill Clinton flipped the state in 1992, bringing home the Reagan Democrats and giving the party its first win in the state since 1968. Clinton’s margin grew to 13 points in 1996–five points better than his national popular vote margin against Bob Dole–and he successfully passed the torch to both Al Gore and John Kerry, each of whom also finished 5-6 points ahead of their national margins in the state. The Tipping-Point States But Barack Obama has had trouble getting traction in the Wolverine State. Although nearly all polling since the Democrats resolved the state’s messy delegate situation in June has had him ahead, it has often been by uncomfortably small margins–just one point, for instance, in a Public Policy Polling survey released on Monday. For most of the election cycle, Michigan has polled no more than 1-3 points ahead of Obama’s national poll standing, placing it well within the range of a potential Republican takeover. All of this comes in spite of a seemingly favorable environment for the Democrats. Michigan, its fortunes still tied to the struggling domestic auto industry, has the nation’s highest unemployment rate at 8.5 percent. Its population is 14 percent African-American, among the highest figures outside of the South. And it has two huge university towns in East Lansing and Ann Arbor, potential ground zeroes for youth voter enthusiasm. Why, then, have Obama’s numbers been sluggish in Michigan?

Well, where do I start? As a former “Left of Center”, and someone who has had contact within the African-American community, I feel I am most qualified to answer this.

  1. Obama is not authentic. – Most African-Americans that I have spoken with, especially among the older African-Americans, they view him as an “Uncle-Tom”. Someone who has sold out to the White Community. They also feel that the only reason that the Democratic Party has chosen him, is to appeal to “White Guilt”. or another way of putting it, would be to say that, the only reason he was chosen, is because he would appeal to a segment of White America.
  2. Obama is too controversial. – Yes, the Jeremiah Wright scandal is still lingering around here. Most African-Americans feel that Jeremiah Wright unfairly smeared the Black Community. In fact, one person told me, that “We don’t all feel that way about America or White people”. That whole “Chickens coming home to roost” thing, was a bit much for many blacks in this area.
  3. Obama is unknown – Most African-Americans that I know, really do not know anything about him, at all. I mean, one person I know, told me, “A couple years ago, nobody knew anything about this man.”  This is not to infer that black believe that he is a Muslim. None of the people that I have encountered, have ever said that he is a Muslim. In fact, some have brought up that it really infuriated them, that many within White Conservative America were repeatedly inferring that Obama was a Muslim, because of his middle name.
  4. Obama is inexperienced – One African-American that I spoke with on this, asked me, “What has he done?” I proceeded to tell him, that he was a State Senator and then a US Senator, he asked me, “Well, what else?” I then told him, that he was a community organizer. He simply said this, “That’s not enough for me.” – So, based upon this, I am assuming that the African-America Community wants an more experienced leader.
  5. Fear of assassination – As much as I hate to bring this topic up, It has been, I am very much ashamed to admit, brought up by those I’ve spoken to. It is pretty much an unspoken thing among the African-American Community. One African-American man I talked to simply said, “He’ll do great….if they don’t get him.” -I really did not want to press to see as to whom, “They” was even referring to. It is very hard to communicate in words the look in that mans eyes, his expression, he was an older man, in his 60’s. I know what he lived through, what he experienced — The Kennedy’s Assassinations, Martin Luther King Jr. – All of that seemed to be what he was referring to. I guess some feel that it could happen again, and that is most likely why they’re not willing to look to another leader again.

I write this, not as a Conservative Blogger, or a “Right of Center” with an axe to grind. I write this as a citizen of the State of Michigan, a resident of Detroit area. Someone who grew up here. Someone who has spoken and interacted with the people here, in my many years of being here. As someone who used to work in and around the downtown Detroit area, as a delivery man. As someone who has driven in the area, where the 1967 riots took place. As someone who has watched this area change. Some for the good, and some, quite frankly, for the bad.  I spoken with and interacted with the people, you can see the scars of the past. You see it in the city. A city which elected it’s first black Mayor, who promised great changes in the city, only to find that he was just as corrupt as the white city officials who used to run the city before him.

A city that after 7 terms in office was able to get rid of that corrupt Mayor and put in a new one. Only to find that was nothing more than an “Uncle Tom”. Then, a ray of hope and promise, a young mayor, someone who could connect with the city.  He started out well, but, he too, fell into that cesspool of corruption.

I guess the best thing to say about this is, people in Detroit and yes here in the rest of Michigan are just cynical, we see this young guy out of Chicago, a Democrat, talking hope and change, and we just sit here and say ourselves. “Now, where have we heard that before?”

Others Blogging:  FiveThirtyEight.com, Washington Monthly, Michigan Messenger, Matthew Yglesias

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment: The Republicans Hijacked 9/11

Posted on

Finally, Keith Olbermann has his say on a subject that I wrote about a while back.

Transcript: (via MSNBC)

As promised, a Special Comment about our sad anniversary tomorrow.

Or, more correctly, what our sad anniversary tomorrow has been turned into by the presidential administration, and the current Republican candidates for President and Vice President.

This is supposed to be a day of remembrance. Remembrance of the attack, remembrance of the national unity which followed it.

Most important of all, remembrance of the dead.

But 9/11 has become a brand name. A Republican campaign slogan. Propaganda of the lowest form. 9/11 has become 9/11 with a trademark logo.

9/11 (TM) has sustained a president who long ago should have been dismissed, or impeached. It has kept him and his gang of financial and constitutional crooks in office without — literally — any visible means of support.

9/11 (TM) has made possible the greatest sleight-of-hand in our nation’s history.

The political party in office at the time of the attacks, at the local, state and national levels, the party which uniformly ignored the warnings and the presidential administration already through twenty percent of its first term and no longer wet behind the ears, have not only thus far escaped any blame for the malfeasance and criminal neglect that allowed the attacks to occur, but that presidency and that party, have managed to make it seem as if the other political party would be solely and irredeemably responsible for any similar catastrophe in the future.

Thus, Sen. McCain, were you able to accomplish a further inversion of reality at your party’s nominating convention last week.

There was the former Mayor of the City of New York,  the one who took no counter-terrorism measure in his seven years in office between the first attack on the World Trade Center, and the second attack.

Nothing, except to insist, despite all advice and warning, that his Emergency Command Center be moved directly into the World Trade Center.

Yet there was this man, Sir, Rudolph Giuliani, quite succinctly dismissed as “A Noun, a Verb, and 9/11,” and repudiated even by Republican voters,  transformed into the keynote speaker, Sen. McCain at your convention.

And his childish, squealing, braying, Tourette’s-like repetition of 9/11 (TM), was greeted not as conclusive evidence that he is consumed by massive guilt – hard-earned guilt, in fact  but rather as some kind of political tour-de-force, an endorsement of your Vice Presidential nominee, a rookie governor , a facile and slick con artist.

The blind endorsing the bland, to a chorus of 9/11 (TM), 9/11 (TM), 9/11 (TM.)

Your ringing mindless cheer of “We’ve Kept You Safe Since Then.”While nobody asks “doesn’t then count?”

All of this, sadistically disrespecting the dead of New York, and Washington, and Shanksville. Endorsed,  Sen. McCain. Exploited, Sen. McCain. Trademarked, Sen. McCain by you.

And yet of course the exact moment in which Sen. McCain’s Republicans showed the nation exactly how far they have fallen from the Better Angels of Mr. Lincoln’s Nature, came the next night.

The television networks were told that the Convention would pause, early in the evening, when children could still be watching, for a 9/11 Tribute, and they were encouraged to broadcast it.

What we got was not a tribute to the dead of 9/11, nor even a tribute to the responders, or the singularity of purpose we all felt. The Republicans gave us sociological pornography, a virtual snuff film.

Years ago, responsible television networks, to the applause of the nation, and the relief of its mental health authorities, voluntarily stopped showing the most graphic of the images of the World Trade Center, except with the strongest of warnings.

And yet, the Republicans, at their convention, having virtually seized control of the cable news operations, showed the worst of it.

This is all anyone with a conscience can show you of what the Republicans showed you. The actual collapse of the smoking towers.

A fleeting image of what might have been a victim leaping to his death from a thousand feet up. And something new. From this angle, ground-level, perfectly framed, images, of the fireball created when the second plane hit the second tower.

It was terrifying. After all its object was to terrify. Not to commemorate, not to call for unity, not to remember the dead. But to terrify.

To open again the horrible wounds, to brand the skin of this nation with the message — as hateful as the terrorists’ own, that you must vote Republican or this will happen again and you will die.

And just in case that was not enough, to also dishonestly and profanely conflate 9/11 with the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis, to stoke the flames of paranoia about another Middle Eastern Nation.

This was a 9/11 Tribute. Not to the dead, nor to the unity. But a tribute to how valuable 9/11 has been as a political tool for the Republican Party. 9/11… (TM.)

Sen. McCain, you had promised us a clean campaign. You could be Snow-White the rest of the way, Sir, yet that manipulative videotape from your convention should tar you always in the minds of decent Americans.

And still, as this seventh 9/11 (TM) approaches that, Sir, is not the worst of your contributions to the utter politicizing of a day that should be sacrosanct to all of us.

Hard to believe, but the Senator has done worse with 9/11 and the evil behind it.

We heard it last week in Minnesota, we’ve heard it off and on since January but Senator McCain said it most concisely in June.

“Look,” he said. “I know the area, I’ve been there, I know wars, I know how to win wars, and I know how to improve our capabilities so that we will capture Osama bin Laden — or put it this way, bring him to justice. We will do it. I know how to do it.”

Sen. McCain seems to be quite serious, that he and he alone, not the CIA, nor the U.S. Military, nor the current President  can capture bin Laden.

Thus we must take him at his word, that this is no mere ludicrous campaign boast.

We must assume Sen. McCain truly believes he is capable of doing this, and has been capable of doing this, since last January. “We will capture Osama bin Laden… we will do it. I know how to do it.”

Well then, Senator, you’d better go and do it hadn’t you?

Because, Sir, if a man or woman in this nation, Democrat or Republican, had a clear and effective means of capturing or killing Osama bin Laden…

If that person had been advertising his claim, Senator for eight months.

But if that person not only refused to go to responsible authorities in government and advise them of this plan to catch bin Laden, but further announced he would not even begin to enact this secret plan to corral the world’s most hated man until the end of next January.

What would be your description of such an individual, Senator? Charlatan? Do-nothing? Opportunist? Sen. McCain, if you have, if you have had a means of capturing Osama bin Laden, and you do not immediately inform some responsible authority of the full scope of that plan, you are to some degree great or small aiding and abetting Osama bin Laden.

If you could assist in capturing him now, Sen. McCain, but you have chosen not to you, Sir, have helped Osama bin Laden stay free.

Free to inspire and supervise the terrorists. Free to plan or execute attacks here.

You, Sir, are blackmailing some portion of the American electorate into voting for your party, by promising to help in the capture of bin Laden only if you are made president!

I’d rather win an election than catch bin Laden! No more cynical calculation has ever been made in this nation’s history, Sir. If you lose the election, Senator, are you not going to tell the President-Elect?

Are you intending to keep this a secret until the next election and your party’s next nominee? Senator, as you and your Republicans shed your phony, crocodile, opportunistic tears tomorrow on 9/11 TM, in front of the utterly disingenuous banner “Country First,” the fact is, you have shown that it is John McCain first, and the country last.

The fact is, Sir, by holding out on your secret plan to catch bin Laden by searing those images into our collective wounded American psyche at your nomination last week, terrorists are not what you, John McCain, fight. Terrorists are what you, John McCain, use.

Amen and Amen. This is why I will not be voting Republican, ever.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Libertarian Blogger attempts to make case for Obama….

Posted on1 Comment

Sorry, I’m not buying this one.

Marginal Revolution:

First, war.  War is the antithesis of the libertarian philosophy of consent, voluntarism and trade.  With every war in American history Leviathan has grown larger and our liberties have withered.  War is the health of the state. And now, fulfilling the dreams of Big Brother, we are in a perpetual war.

A country cannot long combine unlimited government abroad and limited government at home. The Republican party has become the party of war and thus the party of unlimited government.

With war has come FEAR, magnified many times over by the governing party. Fear is pulling Americans into the arms of the state. If only we were better at resisting. Alas, we Americans say that we love liberty but we are fair-weather lovers.  Liberty will flourish only with peace. 

Have libertarians gained on other margins in the past eight years? Not at all. Under the Republicans we have been sailing due South-West on the Nolan Chart – fewer civil liberties and more government, including the largest new government program in a generation, the Medicare prescription drug plan, and the biggest nationalization since the Great Depression. Tax cuts, the summum bonum of Republican economic policy, are a sham. The only way to cut taxes is to cut spending and that has not happened.

The libertarian voice has not been listened to in Republican politics for a long time. The Republicans take the libertarian wing of the party for granted and with phony rhetoric and empty phrases have bought our support on the cheap. Thus – since voice has failed – it is  time for exit.  Remember that if a political party can count on you then you cannot count on it.

Exit is the right strategy because if there is any hope for reform it is by casting the Republicans out of power and into the wilderness where they may relearn virtue. Libertarians understand better than anyone that power corrupts. The Republican party illustrates. Lack of power is no guarantee of virtue but Republicans are a far better – more libertarian – party out-of-power than they are in power. When in the wilderness, Republicans turn naturally to a critique of power and they ratchet up libertarian rhetoric about free trade, free enterprise, abuse of government power and even the defense of civil liberties.  We can hope that new leaders will arise in this libertarian milieu.

Nope, not buying this one at all. Why? I’ll tell you why, Because Barack Obama is the MOST liberal senator, and that’s left of Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi according to the National Journal.  I am sorry, I am not, I repeat, I am NOT voting for an outright socialist. This man, wants to punish the rich for the failures of the current administration, that’s the whole tax the rich, and give to the poor, that is the whole entire new Democrat platform. Well, really, it is not new, Ronald Reagan noted it in 1964:

“……Last February 19 at the University of Minnesota, Norman Thomas, six-time candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said, "If Barry Goldwater became President, he would stop the advance of socialism in the United States." I think that’s exactly what he will do.

As a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn’t the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration. Back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his party was taking the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to the day he died, because to this day, the leadership of that party has been taking that party, that honorable party, down the road in the image of the labor socialist party of England. Now it doesn’t require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? Such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment. Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men…that we are to choose just between two personalities.” — Address on behalf of Senator Barry Goldwater – Rendezvous with Destiny – October 27, 1964

I cannot, as a Christian, As a Libertarian, As a Independent Conservative, in good conscience, vote for a man who holds to that sort political philosophy. Some may disagree, but this Blogger an voter, is not swayed, and I will voting for what I believe in, come November 4, 2008.

There’s a fine line between reporting the facts and desperation

Posted on

….and wise is the man, that knows the difference between the two.

Someone needs to tell that to the Washington Post.

The Washington Post reports:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office,
charging a “per diem” allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd,
has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.

Asked Monday about the official policy on charging for children’s travel expenses, Garnero said: “We cover the expenses of anyone who’s
conducting state business. I can’t imagine kids could be doing that.”

The problem with that, in the same article it says:

Palin, who earns $125,000 a year, claimed and received $16,951 as her allowance, which officials say was permitted because her
official “duty station” is Juneau, according to an analysis of her travel documents by The Washington Post.

Gubernatorial spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said Monday that Palin’s expenses are not unusual and that, under state policy, the first family
could have claimed per diem expenses for each child taken on official business but has not done so.

“As a matter of protocol, the governor and the first family are expected to attend community events across the state,” she said. “It’s
absolutely reasonable that the first family participates in community events.”

The state finance director, Kim Garnero, said Alaska law exempts the governor’s office from elaborate travel regulations. Said Leighow: “The
governor is entitled to a per diem, and she claims it.”

and about her kids:

Leighow noted that under state policy, all of the governor’s children are entitled to per diem expenses, even her infant son. “The first
family declined the per diem [for] the children,” Leighow said. “The amount that they had declined was $4,461, as of August 5.”

and the money quote:

Gov. Palin has spent far less on her personal travel than her predecessor: $93,000 on airfare in 2007, compared with $463,000 spent
the year before by her predecessor, Frank Murkowski. He traveled often in an executive jet that Palin called an extravagance during her
campaign. She sold it after she was sworn into office.

Now, she didn’t sell it on E-Bay, she sold it through a broker, at a loss no less, but this idiotic stuff, is just that, idiotic. There’s no scandal here. She took the money, because she was entitled to it.

Looks like the MSM is really desperate for a story and they went with this. They’re channeling the New York Times here, and it could come back to haunt them.

I concur fully….

Posted on

This via Instapundit

NICE V.P. CHOICE, KID. DON’T GET COCKY. Lots of Republicans are excited about the Palin pick. My email is full of stuff (if I missed your email, sorry — I’ve been flooded even by my usual drinking-from-a-firehose standards), Memeorandum is overrun with items, and the enthusiasm of the G.O.P. grassroots is at levels that would have seemed impossible just a couple of weeks ago. But I think that Republicans should be careful about launching a cult of Sarah Palin. She’s the V.P. pick, not the head of the ticket. She’s still a relative newcomer to national politics. She’s virtually sure to commit at least one major mistake between now and November. And — yes, I know I said this before — she’s the V.P. pick, not the head of the ticket. The Dems built a cult around Barack Obama. It energized some folks, but it ultimately backfired. Republicans might want to restrain themselves just a bit, here.

I could not have put it better myself. The worst thing that the Republican Party could do right now, is the same thing that the Democrats are doing with Obama. Especially when stuff like this comes out, in the Wall Street Journal:

The Bridge to Nowhere argument isn’t going much of anywhere.

Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the McCain campaign continues to assert that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told the federal government “thanks but no thanks” to the now-famous bridge to an island in her home state.

The McCain campaign released a television advertisement Monday morning titled “Original Mavericks.” The narrator of the 30-second spot boasts about the pair: “He fights pork-barrel spending. She stopped the Bridge to Nowhere.”

Gov. Palin, who John McCain named as his running mate less than two weeks ago, quickly adopted a stump line bragging about her opposition to the pork-barrel project Sen. McCain routinely decries.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain (right) and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, at a campaign rally in Lee’s Summit, Mo.

But Gov. Palin’s claim comes with a serious caveat. She endorsed the multimillion dollar project during her gubernatorial race in 2006. And while she did take part in stopping the project after it became a national scandal, she did not return the federal money. She just allocated it elsewhere.

“We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge,” Gov. Palin said in August 2006, according to the local newspaper, “and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.” The bridge would have linked Ketchikan to the airport on Gravina Island. Travelers from Ketchikan (pop. 7,500) now rely on ferries.

A year ago, the governor issued a press release that the money for the project was being “redirected.”

“Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport, but the $398 million bridge is not the answer,” she said. “Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island. Much of the public’s attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here. But we need to focus on what we can do, rather than fight over what has happened.”

On Monday in Missouri, Gov. Palin put it this way: “I told Congress thanks but no thanks for that bridge to nowhere. If the state wanted to build a bridge we would built it ourselves.”

Something tells me, this whole narrative, as Peggy Noonan put it, could blow up in the Republicans faces. I’d be very careful, if I were them.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Blogs for Borders for September 8, 2008

Posted on

I missed this earlier today….:

Our weekly vlog — podcast on illegal immigration and border security. in this weeks edition…

Election 2008: What is SarahPalin’s position on illegal immigration, amnesty and border security and does it matter?

Thank you! We take a moment to thnk you who are working so hard for this nation.

100% Preventable! Americans continue to pay the bloody price for open borders, when will the madness end?

Video:

Download for your Ipod here.

Make sure to visit our sponsor….


Click on image


If you’d like to sponsor a show contact us here.

This has been the Blogs For Borders Video Blogburst. The Blogs For Borders Blogroll is dedicated to American sovereignty, border security and a sane immigration policy. If you’d like to join find out how right here.

Technorati Tags: illegal immigration, open borders, deportation, amnesty, vlog, podcast, invasion, insanity, mexico, rape, murders

Post McCain/Plain Speech poll bounce, But what’s it’s term?

Posted on

Short Term or Long Term? that, my friends, is the question of the hour.

According to the latest Gallop poll, John McCain is taken a nice 5 point lead, above the 2% margin of error, over Barack Obama.

Quote:

John McCain leads Barack Obama, 49% to 44%, in the immediate aftermath of the Republican National Convention, according to the latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking results.

These results are based on Sept. 5-7 interviewing, and are the first in which all interviews were conducted following the completion of the GOP convention. Immediately prior to the convention’s Sept. 1 start, Aug. 29-31 interviewing showed McCain with 43% support among registered voters, compared with 49% today. Thus, Gallup credits McCain with a six-point convention bounce.

That is slightly better than Barack Obama’s four-point bounce from 45% in Aug. 22-24 polling before the Democratic National Convention started to 49% immediately after it concluded. Since 1964, the typical convention bounce has been five percentage points.

Here are the charts:

080908DailyUpdateGraph1_n4b7v2

080908DailyUpdateGraph3_j6n8b4

This really nothing new because there’s been a bounce like this since 1964:

080909DailyUpdateGraph2_j8b6v3

Like I wrote yesterday. the big question is, will this bounce on McCain’s part be short term or long term? I’m sure that John McCain and the Republican Party is betting the farm that the bounce will remain and John McCain will simply glide into the White House. However, this is not 1980 and John McCain is not Ronald Reagan, neither is Sarah Palin, I mean, she’s a good speaker, and kinda cute, for an older Woman, but she’s no Reagan. Plus, the country is in a much different shape; politically and financially, plus, I think it is just a different world, we have two wars, that America wants to just see ended, preferably with good results.

Which leads me to my next point. I simply do not understand why Adam McKay had this Nuclear melt down on The Huffington Post. I mean, let’s not discount the Democratic Party or Barack Obama until the damn polls close on Novemeber 4, 2008, please. We’re very early in this race.

The best advice or comment that I can give, is watch the polls for the next few weeks, is about all I can truly say here. The long term polls will tell the story. I think that if Obama wants to regain his lead, he has to drive the point home the point that the Republican Party IS the Party of George W. Bush. They will have remind Americans of the nonsense of the Bush Administration, on FISA, on the Attorney General scandal, Valerie Plume gate, and on and on…. They need to remind America about John McCain’s ties to lobbyists, even possibly infer that he slept with one, They also need to remind and tell America how Sarah Palin lied about the Jet, her flip-flop on the bridge to nowhere and so on. That is what will win this.

So, the bottom line is:

This is a very early poll and there’s many more to come, before November 4, 2008.

Others: Hot Air, JammieWearingFool, Ace of Spades HQ, and more via Memeorandum

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Palin Makes Her First Gaffe, or perhaps not….

Posted on

Sam Stein is wetting his pants with glass that Palin supposedly Made Her First Gaffe.

Gov. Sarah Palin made her first potentially major gaffe during her time on the national scene while discussing the developments of the perilous housing market this past weekend. Speaking before voters in Colorado Springs, the Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.” The companies, as McClatchy reported, “aren’t taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization.

Well, there’s only one little problem with that whole thing. It was not exactly a gaffe at all. Because now that the United States Government has bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it is going to start costing the tax payers money, not to mention that it will cause housing prices to rise, to cover the bailout. After all, the Government will have to cover that loss.

So, it looks like, while she might have been wrong in the past. In this case, considering what has happened to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Palin was absolutely correct.

Others:
michellemalkin.com, McClatchy Washington Bureau, The Corner, Hot Air

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

MSNBC removes Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from election coverage

Posted on2 Comments

I hate to say this, But I kind of knew this was coming, I just did not know when.

Via The New York Times:

MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.

That experiment appears to be over.

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.

The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left.

“The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming,” said Davidson Goldin, formerly the editorial director of MSNBC and a co-founder of the reputation management firm DolceGoldin.

Executives at the channel’s parent company, NBC Universal, had high hopes for MSNBC’s coverage of the political conventions. Instead, the coverage frequently descended into on-air squabbles between the anchors, embarrassing some workers at NBC’s news division, and quite possibly alienating viewers. Although MSNBC nearly doubled its total audience compared with the 2004 conventions, its competitive position did not improve, as it remained in last place among the broadcast and cable news networks. In prime time, the channel averaged 2.2 million viewers during the Democratic convention and 1.7 million viewers during the Republican convention.

The success of the Fox News Channel in the past decade along with the growth of political blogs have convinced many media companies that provocative commentary attracts viewers and lures Web browsers more than straight news delivered dispassionately.

“In a rapidly changing media environment, this is the great philosophical debate,” Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, said in a telephone interview Saturday. Fighting the ratings game, he added, “the bottom line is that we’re experiencing incredible success.”

But as the past two weeks have shown, that success has a downside. When the vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin lamented media bias during her speech, attendees of the Republican convention loudly chanted “NBC.”

In interviews, 10 current and former staff members said that long-simmering tensions between MSNBC and NBC reached a boiling point during the conventions. “MSNBC is behaving like a heroin addict,” one senior staff member observed. “They’re living from fix to fix and swearing they’ll go into rehab the next week.”

You all most likely were thinking that I was going to terribly upset about this and was going to write a huge raging editorial about it. Well, guess again. I’m fully aware of Matthew’s and Olbermann’s editorial positions. Quite frankly, I am surprised that they even allowed Olbermann on there, during the election coverage. I mean, Chris is left of center, but Olbermann is obviously left wing all the way. I don’t think he’s far left, but far enough to make the Republicans feel uncomfortable with him. Which means he was really doing his job. The problem was, he was doing his job, when he was supposed to be neutral. I will admit, it is hard to choke back an opinion, especially when you’ve got some right wing gas bag, or shall I say, Republican gas bag, running a damn line, and you know he’s full of shit. It’s tough not to speak out.

The reason I like Keith Olbermann, as I said once before, I like Keith Olbermann because he gives a damn about our Constitution. Because it is quite obvious to this Libertarian-leaning, Paleo-Conservative, that Neo-Conservative Bush and Co. have totally trampled all over that damned Constitution. This is why I watched Keith’s show, not because I agreed with all of his Politics, but because I wanted to watch someone who wasn’t trying to kiss king George W. Bush’s ass on the air every night, like they do over on the Rupert Murdoch stooge network.

I’ll be straight and honest with you, I’m a Moderate Libertarian Conservative, but I totally find Joe Scarborough to be just an absolute asshole. I mean, I don’t know how the hell Mika Brzezinski does it. Scarborough is the perfect example of an damn male chauvinistic blowhard. The pay must be damn good for her to sit next to that guy and listen to his idiotic bullshit. This is why I do not watch the network in the mornings.

Anyhow, there’s my take on it.

The reactions are as expected, with the Republican Neo-Conservatives wetting themselves with glee, as usual and the left a bit ticked, but not all of them. and here they are: Hot Air, TalkLeft, Townhall.com, michellemalkin.com, Olbermann Watch, The WIZARD, fkap, First Draft, Little Green Footballs, Founding Bloggers, Liberal Values, The Confluence, Commentary, Patterico’s Pontifications, Dr. Melissa Clouthier, Ace of Spades HQ, TVNewser, NewsBusters.org, MyDD, The Sundries Shack, The Other McCain, The Campaign Spot, Oliver Willis, Macsmind, Wizbang, AMERICAblog News and The Strata-Sphere and more via Memeorandum

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Muslims Desecrate and Urinate in Jerusalem Holy Site

Posted on

(H/T to WorldNetDaily)

The Story Via Israel National News:

Video:

Quote:

The Cave of the Patriarchs is the tomb of the biblical founders of the Jewish faith, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their wives, Sarah, Rivka, and Leah.

The desecration occurred on one of the 10 days during the year that the holy site is open only to Muslims and is closed to Jews. The same arrangement also is accorded to Jews on 10 holy Jewish days.

Uri Karzen, a Hevron resident, reported that a Kohen, who recites the priestly blessings during the Sabbath morning service, told him he smelled urine next to the Holy Ark containing Torah scrolls. Karzen and other worshippers moved the table, where the Torah scrolls are placed during the reciting of the portion of the week, in order to avoid the foul smell.

This sort of thing is totally disgusting. It is also a reason why I have zero use for Muslims and their crazy Satanic Religion. As it says in that Video report, if the Jews had done this to Muslims, it would be all over the Liberal News, but because it is Muslims doing it to Jews, nobody cares. In fact, according the video, the local police even doubted that it even happened. What idiotic nonsense! Conservatives and Christians should be lighting up the media phones and demanding that they report this.

I must wonder, would B. Hussein Obama approve of something this repulsive? He’d most likely want to give those Muslims a medal.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

McCain enjoys a post convention poll bounce

Posted on1 Comment

John McCain coming out of the Republican Convention has enjoyed a bounce in the polls, of about 3%, above the 3% margin of error.

Gallop Poll reports the following:

These results are based on Sept. 4-6 interviewing, and include two full days of polling after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention last Thursday night. McCain has outpolled Obama on both Friday and Saturday, and is receiving a convention bounce just as Obama did last week.

Tomorrow’s report will be the first in which all interviews were conducted after the conclusion of the convention. Gallup measures convention bounces by comparing candidate support in the last poll done entirely before a party’s presidential nominating convention begins with the first polling conducted entirely after its conclusion.

McCain’s 48% share of the vote ties for his largest since Gallup tracking began in early March. He registered the same level of support in early May. This is also McCain’s largest advantage over Obama since early May, when he led by as much as six percentage points. Obama has led McCain for most of the campaign, and for nearly all of the time since clinching the Democratic nomination in early June.

The Charts:

080907DailyUpdateGraph1_s4m7a9

080907DailyUpdateGraph2_n3d9b1

I guess that I am in agreement with AllahPundit on this one. I don’t expect this really to be a long lasting bounce. What I predict will happen is, that the poll will either return to it’s previous state, or will turn in favor of McCain in a bigger percentage for the short term and will even back out, as we get closer to the election. With the news of the failing banking institutions, I believe Obama is going to have something to really nail McCain on, by blaming Bush for the housing crisis, which caused the run on the Banks, he will be able to push that message home to the people. He will do that by telling people, that McCain is basically Bush and Co. 2.0.

There is one cold hard fact that McCain cannot escape, that that is the quote, “A nation of whiners”. Which was given Phil Gramm, who is/was John McCain’s economic adviser. Who was also responsible for the deregulation of the housing loan industry. John McCain cannot escape that fact, at all, and it will come back to haunt him here, as we come closer and closer to election day. Especially seeing that McCain is very heartily trying to paint himself as somewhat of a maverick. McCain supposedly has broken ties with Phil Gramm, however, he has been spotting with McCain since then.

The bottom line here is, that more data is needed, to assess the actual bounce, if any at all.

Others Blogging: Don Surber, Blue Crab Boulevard, Scared Monkeys, Hot Air, FiveThirtyEight.com, Founding Bloggers, MyDD, Ace of Spades HQ, Fox News, The Strata-Sphere, Wizbang, The Moderate Voice, Donklephant, PSoTD, Stop The ACLU, Truthdig,The Volokh Conspiracy

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Double standards in Politics

Posted on

It isn’t every day that I agree with stuff that is written in my hometown paper. However, this particular article is an notable exception.

Stephen Henderson in the Detroit Free Press writes:

What if Palin were a black woman governor from, say, Illinois, who had been added to the Democratic ticket? What if her 17-year-old daughter had been impregnated by an 18-year-old, basketball-playing black kid from Chicago with no college plans or discernable means of income?

Bet the house that we’d have seen a number of insulting and demeaning stereotypes invoked — by some of the same folks praising the Palins’ handling of the situation — over and over again.

How many times would we have heard about the evils of the “rap culture,” its focus on promiscuity, and its influence on young people?

How many times would we have heard the term “baby daddy” used as a pejorative — rather than as a hip term in the celebrity press — against the father? (In June, Fox News even referred to Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, as his “baby mama.”)

How many times would we have been lectured about the rampant problem of teenage sex among African Americans, and how teaching kids about birth control, rather than preaching abstinence-only, just doesn’t work?

In short, how many times would this situation have been used to reinforce criticisms that African Americans endure — about rampant social ills, the collapse of the traditional family unit, a culture that supposedly doesn’t value stability — all the time?

Maybe those criticisms have some merit; but then why aren’t they being leveled as strongly against the Palins?

I hate to admit this, but he’s absolutely right. Because if it were Barack Obama’s daughters who were pregnant at age 17, the conservative press would be having a field day with them. It just seems to me that there is a large double standard, when it comes to Conservative women as opposed to Liberal women in the press in the blogging world and in the media in general.

Another example would be, what if it were Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea, and she was 17 years old and turned up pregnant? You can be absolutely sure, that the Conservative media and Bloggers would be having a field day with her.

Steven goes on to write:

This is what I call the persistent, tacit bigotry of double standards. It’s not an overt racism, like job or housing discrimination. It simply plays out in stark differences in the way Americans see things and react to them.

It’s not unrelated to the bizarre celebration of the idea that the Palins are white trash — a term I caught several conservative commentators using endearingly during the Republican convention. It’s meant harmlessly, as a way of saying the Palins share important cultural touchstones and life challenges with an awful lot of other Americans.

But you’d never see or hear such flattering references to a black candidate being “ghetto.”

The substantive difference between white trash and being ghetto is probably negligible, but the perceived difference is huge, and I say that has got almost everything to do with race. Black culture is seen as besotten with damaging, dangerous and undesirable problems, so much so that any association with it can pose a threat to a black candidate. (Remember the flap over the Obamas’ fist bump after one of the big primary wins?)

But set the same problems in the context of a white family, and they can be excused away, or even celebrated as paragons of American culture. Sarah Palin’s daughter and her fiance are being hailed as moral heroes because of the way they’ve handled their situation; black kids would be condemned and held up as a teachable example for just being in that situation in the first place.

Ugly as it is, that’s an indelible part of American culture, and however this campaign ends, I doubt we’ll leave it behind anytime soon.

I’ll tell you, I’ve never much agreed with anything that’s published in the Detroit Free Press, seeing that this is a liberal area around here and all, but Stephen makes a very valid point. Why is it that we as Americans, especially we white Americans, when we see a young black woman pregnant at 17 years old, we want to call her a slut, but when we see a 17 year old white Conservative female get knocked up, we want to give her a free pass?

Furthermore, it just seems very funny to me, that when Hillary Clinton was in this race, there were a lot of people, Conservative and not so conservative, who were telling Hillary Clinton that she needed to get out of the race, that she was nothing more than a distraction, but now that Sarah palin is in the race, Oh, that’s just perfectly fine. It’s because the United States of America has a double standard, a double standard on liberal vs. conservative when it comes to women, a double standard when it comes to teen pregnancy in conservative white women as opposed to liberal black women.

I believe that Sarah Palin should be held to the same exact standards as any other person that’s running in politics. The very idea that Sarah Palin should be treated with kid gloves, because she is a woman is preposterous. Because feminists have fought long and hard for years and years, to get the same exact rights as men, and so if she wants to be in this race she should be treated with the same exact harshness as any other person male or female who decides to enter into the field of politics. Furthermore, Sarah Palin should be subjected to the same open criticism as John McCain and Barack Obama. If they happen to catch Sarah Palin in a lie, like the one she just recently told about selling a jet on e-bay, it should be exposed and she should be criticized just as harshly, as she would be, if she was a man. I am very sorry, but just because Sarah Palin has two breasts and a Vagina does not excuse her from criticism from the mainstream media.

But we all know that in this era of double standards, when it comes to women vs. men, that Sarah palin will be treated with kid gloves by the media and by people in her own party, who will go as far as to excuse some of her actions because she’s a girl.

Of course, I feel personally as a Fundamentalist Christian, that putting Sarah Palin on the ticket, is a classic example of the watering down of true Conservatism in America. Because quite frankly, 50 years ago, a woman on the Republican ticket either for President or Vice President would have been totally unheard of. It is been said that politics is a reflection of society is a whole, and likewise the Republican party is a reflection of Conservative society as a whole, and the reflection of the Evangelical Christian Conservative movement as a whole. I feel, as a former Evangelical turned Fundamentalist Christian, that putting Sarah Palin on this ticket is a reflection of the abject compromise that is overtaken that movement. Furthermore, the putting of a female on the Vice President ticket of the Republican Party, is a clear and open manifestation of Conservative society’s moving away from its strict adherence to Biblical truths. After all the Bible does say:

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. (1 Timothy 2:11-14 KJV)

For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God. (1 Corinthians 11:8-12 KJV)

Now before anyonw bites my head off, and accuses me of being a sexist. Those words up there not my words, those words of the words of the Bible. The same Bible that Sarah Palin claims to believe in, it’s the same Bible that those Evangelical Christians claim to believe in as well. But yet, they totally ignore its words when they support a woman candidate for Vice President. It is truly a sad state of affairs.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Interesting:Democratic Party Convention flag story Bogus

Posted on3 Comments

Remember that Story that I reported on, about Democrats dumping flags? Turns out, it was bogus.

Via the Huffington Post:

UPDATE: DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney issues a statement: “American flags were proudly waved by the 75,000 people who joined Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention. John McCain should applaud that, but instead his supporters wrongfully took leftover bundles of our flags from the stadium to play a cheap political stunt calling into question our patriotism. On the same day he agrees to join Barack Obama at Ground Zero on September 11, John McCain attacks the patriotism of Obama supporters who so proudly waved the American flag at our historic event in Denver just days ago.”

UPDATE II: Another statement from the Democratic National Convention Committee: “Stories circulating about flags at the Democratic National Convention are false. We distributed more than 125,000 American made flags at the Convention – the flags removed from Invesco field were intended for other events and taken without permission. It’s disappointing that someone would take American flags without authorization and then falsely describe how they were being used. We have the utmost respect for the American flag, and it’s sad to see them being used for a cheap political stunt.”

I apologize for even Blogging about this, at all. If, in fact, John McCain’s campaign was responsible for this bogus story getting out, it shows the level of desperation by the campaign to discredit the Democrats in the election.

What levels will Neo-Conservatives stoop to, to win an election!

There’s more, TPM is also reporting:

According to a article just out from Huffington Post, the story about flags from the Democratic National Convention being thrown away is simply false. The story was jumped on and apparently authored by the McCain campaign. But the real tell is down in the Huffpo piece where it traces the story to none other than Fox News’ Carl Cameron.

Longtime readers of TPM will remember that back in October 2004 this site caught Cameron publishing a series of fabricated quotes attributed to John Kerry on the front page of the Fox News website.

After I placed a series of calls to Fox News inquiring about the Kerry story, the story was eventually pulled, and Fox was forced to issue an apology and retract the fabricated story. Fox spokesman Paul Schur told TPM: “Carl [Cameron] made a stupid mistake which he regrets. And he has been reprimanded for his lapse in judgment. It was a poor attempt at humor.”

Why anybody would believe anything this joker says is difficult to fathom. But he’s good enough for McCain.

I should have known Faux Noise would have been in on this whole thing. Not surprising at all. 🙄

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

To be fair, I don’t buy this one either….

Posted on3 Comments

Well, if I’m going to lash one side for being idiotic, I may as well do the other side as well.

This story here is so nutty, that even I don’t even buy it.

The story comes from the Liberal Blog called the LA Progressive, I will resist the temptation to pull a Michelle Malkin here and say, “Well, considering the name, it’s a lie.”

Quote:

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

“It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole.

Then, almost with a sigh, she added, “But that’s just Alaska.”

Sorry folks, but I, the free-thinking Libertarian Conservative, don’t even buy this one. Do you really expect me to believe that a Woman of her political clout and stature in Alaska would go into a public restaurant and bellow out something as horribly despicable as this?

I would have to say that one would need a “Out of Order” sign posted at the entrance to one’s brain to believe something as outlandish as this.

Yeah, she might have stretched the truth a little on the Jet, She might have done some other rather idiotic stuff, while Mayor of Alaska. But this one, sorry, I don’t buy it, at all.

Others Blogging:
michellemalkin.com, Comments from Left Field, Little Green Footballs, Mock, Paper, Scissors, The Other McCain, Hot Air, Macsmind, Wake up America, American Spectator and TBogg

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sorry guys, I don’t buy it

Posted on6 Comments

I happen to be reading over at HotAir.com.

It seems that Ed Morrissey was on the Northern Alliance Radio Network, and some guy, claiming to be a volunteer driver calls in and proceeds to tell them that MSNBC’s coverage was rigged, that MSNBC’s people basically lied about what they said on the air, and that Chris Matthew’s prescreened everyone, before interviewing them.

You can listen to the audio, by going here.

Okay, first of all, were any precautions taken to ensure that this guy was not some sort of crank caller? I highly doubt this.

Second of all, as much as I realize that MSNBC is now a left leaning network, mostly at night, this sort of “bottom of the barrel” type of scraping to find dirt on networks that don’t agree with your political ideologies is, quite frankly, childish and immature.

You think Fox News doesn’t pre-screen people on their network? Please. Don’t make me laugh.

If the Republican Bloggers want to be taken seriously by the rest of America, they need to focus on Blogging about factual issues that matter to people, and get away from this dirty flinging and gossip nonsense. Because when you do this, you become, as far as I am concerned, the Republican version of TMZ.COM.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sickening Story….

Posted on

This comes via WorldNetDaily.

The Story is about another Honor Killing. It comes from News.Com.Au:

DESPAIR among human rights workers in Pakistan over a rash of so-called “honour killings” intensified yesterday when it was disclosed that a girl forced into marriage with a 45-year-old man at the age of nine had been killed by her parents because she asked for an annulment.

The girl, 17, who had been fighting a lonely but successful legal battle, was coming out of court in the Punjabi city of Sahiwal after being granted the annulment by a judge when she was surrounded by a group of men and shot in view of police.

The death of Saira Nusrat Bibi has added further to concerns among human rights campaigners already outraged over the case of five women – among them three teenage schoolgirls – buried alive in the province of Baluchistan because they wanted to marry men of their choice in defiance of the wishes of tribal leaders.

The Baluchistan case was worsened by an attempt by a member of the country’s national parliament, senator Israr Ullah Zehri, to defend it, telling colleagues that “these are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them”, The Weekend Australian reports.

Members of the religious Jamaat-e-Islami party rounded on Senator Zehi, declaring: “We condemn this barbaric act. This is against Islam, against humanity and against civilised culture.”

Yesterday, the Government bowed to pressure and ordered an inquiry into the killings.

Details that have emerged from the village of Baba Kot in Baluchistan indicate that the three girls — aged between 16 and 18 – and two of their elderly relatives were “shot at” before being buried alive.

“When the fuming elders of the Umrani tribe came to know about the intentions of these girls, they picked them up from their homes along with two of their elderly relatives,” one account said.

“The crying girls were pushed into official cars and driven to a deserted area. There they were pushed out of the cars, made to stand in a queue, and volleys of shots fired at them. As the bleeding girls fell to the sand, the tribesmen dragged them into a nearby ditch and levelled it with earth and stones.

“As the two shocked elderly women tried to rescue the hapless girls, they too were gunned down and buried in the same manner. The killers after burying these women returned to their tribe like conquerors without any action taken against them.”

It amazes me, that people continue to try and defend Islam as some sort of religion of peace, when, in fact, that is nothing more than a bogus lie. I would be willing to bet tons of money that you will not see this story in the Liberal media at all.

If you would like to learn more about this insane religion, I suggest that you check out my Bookstore. Also, I personally recommend that you pick up these books as well. The only way we, as Christians will ever be able to overcome this Satanic false Religion is to provide the American people with information.

You see, I do not buy into the notion of “Honorable Muslims”, that’s a damn smoke screen, and I just don’t buy into it. Islam is a threat to our American values and way of life. I am praying that one day, God will raise up a real American President that will outlaw the practice of Islam in this country and deport EVERYONE who practices that Religion out of this country. It might be a pipe dream of mine. But it is one that I cling to.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

So much for that jet on Ebay…..

Posted on4 Comments

Turns out that Sarah Palin was not exactly honest about that either.

This comes via CNN:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin bolstered her fiscal-conservative credentials early in her term by putting her predecessor’s state jet up for auction online.

“That luxury jet was over the top,” she told Republican National Convention delegates when she accepted the party’s vice presidential nomination Wednesday night. “I put it on eBay.”

Since Palin was chosen as Arizona Sen. John McCain’s running mate last week, the story has become a cornerstone of the Republican effort to paint Palin as a reformer who took on her own party establishment.

“How many saw her speech a couple of nights ago? Wasn’t it fabulous?” McCain said Friday during a campaign stop in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. “You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was purchased by her predecessor and sold it on eBay — and made a profit.”

But it turns out the twin-engine Westwind II was a tough sell on the Web — and the state eventually pulled it offline and sold it through an ordinary brick-and-mortar brokerage, for a loss, a spokeswoman said Friday.

Now I could set here in very easily rip on Sarah Palin for this. However, I am simply gonna say this. If Sarah Palin wants to be the Vice President of United States of America, she’s going to have to be much more more forthcoming in her gubernatorial experience in Alaska. Telling the people the United States of America that you sold a plane on e-bay and then to find out that you did not, is not a good way to endear yourself to the Independents here in America.

Misstating facts is one thing, but outright lying is another. And it’s obvious that Sarah Palin tried to float a little white lie past the media, and failed horribly.

I just wonder if Michelle Malkin and the rest of the herd of Conservative Bloggers will accuse me of being sexist for reporting this little fact? Of course, I don’t expect Michelle Malkin to even report this, seeing she’s taking funding from the Heritage Foundation and from the Neo-Conservative Jewish lobby.

A pretty amazing Sarah Palin story, considering the source….

Posted on

I was rummaging around in my news feeds this morning, and I happen to see this story pop up.

Here is the quote:

The biggest project that Sarah Palin undertook as mayor of this small town was an indoor sports complex, where locals played hockey, soccer, and basketball, especially during the long, dark Alaskan winters.

The only catch was that the city began building roads and installing utilities for the project before it had unchallenged title to the land. The misstep led to years of litigation and at least $1.3 million in extra costs for a small municipality with a small budget. What was to be Ms. Palin’s legacy has turned into a financial mess that continues to plague Wasilla.

“It’s too bad that the city of Wasilla didn’t do their homework and secure the land before they began construction,” said Kathy Wells, a longtime activist here. “She was not your ceremonial mayor; she was in charge of running the city. So it was her job to make sure things were done correctly.”

And where did this come from? The New York Times? The Washington Post? No.  It came from none other than the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal!

To be fair, I reported this on this a while back here on my blog. For the record, this story was not originally published on the DailyKos, but rather was originally published in a in Alaska newspaper. So as far as that theory of this all being a great liberal slam against Sarah Palin, that’s a bunch of hooey. It’s a simple fact, you cannot whitewash history nor can you rewrite history, as much as the republicans would like to do that.

Of course, I expect the Republican Bloggers to attempt to whitewash this or try to spin it into something that it’s not or to outright lie about it which is what a lot of them do.

It should be interesting to watch the reaction from the conservative Blogosphere, on this story.

About my previous Sarah Palin entry

Posted on

An afternoon folks, I’m slow in getting started this afternoon.

I just wanted to post a small entry about my previous blog entry about Sarah Palin.

I did receive some emails over it. Let me be absolutely clear, I am not a Democrat. However, I do believe it is my responsibility as an Independent Conservative Blogger, that I report all information pertinent to Sarah Palin.

I do also realize that some of the information that is being reported is false. However, I believe that the majority of the information that is been reported about her, the ratio of true to false is probably about 8 to 1.  I believe in an election season such as this, it is important that we put away partisan blinders and focus on the facts.

The problem with most conservative Bloggers is this, Republican Bloggers would rather focus on her positives and to attempt to ignore the negatives. However, I feel that all information about her should be presented to the American people and let the American people decide who they want to be their President and Vice President. If some of you believe that my presenting of all the facts is overly partisan, then I apologize in advance, for that is not the case here, at all. I simply want to get the truth out about her, I just do not believe into accepting a Vice President sight unseen.

This is what separates me from the Republican Blogger base, because I am not a Republican, but rather a Paleo-Conservative, independent, who doesn’t buy into the neo-conservative political talking points.  In other words Rupert Murdoch, nor any other conservative special interest group controls what I write.

And that sets us up for next entry.

Think Palin is the real deal, think again

Posted on2 Comments

AN FYI….: (This is via a paper in Alaska.)

—–

From David Hulen in Anchorage —

The e-mail below has been bouncing around the Internet since Sunday. It was written by Anne Kilkenny of Wasilla – stay-at-home mom, letter-to-the-editor writer and longtime watcher of Valley politics. She’s a registered Democrat. She was one of the delegates to the Conference of Alaskans in Fairbanks back in 2004. Her bio from the conference is here.

She e-mailed this letter over the weekend to family and friends Outside, and (despite her request not to post it) it went viral on the Internet very quickly, showing up on blogs and Web sites all over. Since then, Kilkenny has been inundated with phone calls and e-mails. She said she stayed up until 3 a.m. last night answering e-mails, and found nearly 400 new ones waiting when she logged on this morning.

It’s posted here with her permission.

***

Dear friends,

So many people have asked me about what I know about Sarah Palin in the last 2 days that I decided to write something up . . .

Basically, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton have only 2 things in common: their gender and their good looks. 🙂

You have my permission to forward this to your friends/email contacts with my name and email address attached, but please do not post it on any websites, as there are too many kooks out there . . .

Thanks,
Anne

ABOUT SARAH PALIN

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child’s favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she’s like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and won’t vote for her can’t quit smiling when talking about her because she is a “babe”.

It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months.

She is “pro-life”. She recently gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby. There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby.

She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.

She is savvy. She doesn’t take positions; she just “puts things out there” and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.

Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin’s kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anything like that of native Alaskans.

Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters.

She’s smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents.

During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative”. During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later–to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once.

These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today’s surplus, borrow for needs.

She’s not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’s attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Sarah complained about the “old boy’s club” when she first ran for Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of “old boys”. Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal–loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the State’s top cop (see below).

As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla’s Police Chief because he “intimidated” her, she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska’s top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it’s pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn’t fire her sister’s ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than 2 dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal City Administrator; even people who didn’t like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.

Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.

When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job which paid $122,400/yr, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this Commission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the “old boys’ club” when she dramatically quit, exposing this man’s ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the “bridge to nowhere” after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.

As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects–which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance–but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as “anti-pork”.

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.

Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her “Sarah Barracuda” because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah’s mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as “AGIA” that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum.

Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned “as a private citizen” against a state initiaitive that would have either a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the State’s lawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior’s decision to list polar bears as threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being President.

There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she.

However, there’s a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.

CLAIM VS FACT
*”Hockey mom”: true for a few years.

*”PTA mom”: true years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since.

*”NRA supporter”: absolutely true

*social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, BUT vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she did this because it was unconsitutional).

*pro-creationism: mixed. Supports it, BUT did nothing as Governor to promote it.

*”Pro-life”: mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby BUT declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life legislation

*”Experienced”: Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.

*political maverick: not at all

*gutsy: absolutely!

*open & transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.

*has a developed philosophy of public policy: no

*”a Greenie”: no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.

*fiscal conservative: not by my definition!

*pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards.

*pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on residents

*pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla’s history.

*pro-labor/pro-union. No. Just because her husband works union doesn’t make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is pro-labor/pro-union.

WHY AM I WRITING THIS?

First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting programs in the schools. If you google my name (Anne Kilkenny + Alaska), you will find references to my participation in local government, education, and PTA/parent organizations.

Secondly, I’ve always operated in the belief that “Bad things happen when good people stay silent”. Few people know as much as I do because few have gone to as many City Council meetings.

Third, I am just a housewife. I don’t have a job she can bump me out of. I don’t belong to any organization that she can hurt. But, I am no fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow in the future: that’s life.

Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah’s attempt at censorship.

Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say anything because they were somehow vulnerable.

CAVEATS
I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in spending & taxation 2 years ago (when Palin was running for Governor) from information supplied to me by the Finance Director of the City of Wasilla, and I can’t recall exactly what I adjusted for: did I adjust for inflation? for population increases? Right now, it is impossible for a private person to get any info out of City Hall–they are swamped. So I can’t verify my numbers.

You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for the population of Wasilla, ranging from my “about 5,000”, up to 9,000. The day Palin’s selection was announced a city official told me that the current population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was 5,460. I have used about 5,000 because Palin was Mayor from 1996 to 2002, and the city was growing rapidly in the mid-90’s.

Anne Kilkenny
August 31, 2008

—-

Don’t bet the farm on Palin, you might just lose.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Editorial: What were the Republicans thinking?

Posted on2 Comments

I sit here tonight shocked, saddened and a bit angry. I am angry because the Republican Party did something that I feel was utterly abominable. The Republican National Committee actually had the audacity to use 2998 deaths, 6291 injuries for the sole purpose to make a morbid political point. Anyone else of a sane mentality would find this mortifying. However, we are dealing with Republicans. It just seems to me that conservatives, not all mind you, have used these attacks as a rallying cry to patriotism. My friend, that is the same thing that Adolf Hitler did during his tenure in Germany.

I was watching the coverage of the Republican National Committee’s convention on MSNBC, when the supposed tribute to the 9/11 attacks was played. It was not in so much that the attacks were shown, it was how they were presented, it was the announcer saying the words “and we will never allow it to happen again.” That, my friends, really bothered me. Because you see, what basically the Republican Party was trying to infer was that if the American people elected a Democratic party president that it is possible that the September 11 attacks could happen again.

The problem with that whole mentality is this, it was a Republican who was in the White House on September 10th 2001 and not a Democrat.

A Republican president knew that there was intelligence suggesting that Al-Qaeda planned attacks in the United States of America and did nothing about it, not a Democrat.

Furthermore, it was a Republican president, which he used the September 11 attacks; as a reason to go to war with a nation that had absolutely nothing to do with the September 11 attacks and not a Democrat. Further he based that on information that turned out to be outright false.

However, the Neo-Conservative faction of the Republican Party felt the absolute need to take the horrific scars of September 11, 2001 and use it as a political ploy. As much as I know this is going to sound like I am being condescending towards the Republican Party, as far as I am concerned the Republican Party pissed on the graves of those who died on September 11. I say that proudly and without one damned ounce of regret. The Republican Party, as a collective whole, had damned well better be thanking his or her lucky stars that I did not have anyone die on September 11, 2001, because if I did I would be out for blood, so to speak.

This my friends is why I will not be voting Republican come November 4, 2008. No, not because I do not agree with their conservative values, but because I do not wish to be associated with a party, that uses a tragic event such as September 11, 2001 as nothing more than a political prop. I do not wish to be associated to part with a party that treats a death as collateral damage. I do not wish to be associated with a political party that treats our United States Military as a billable part, to a machine called War.

If it sounds like I am angry in this editorial, it is because I am, I am angry as hell that the Republican Party has become the old Democratic Party.

Keith Olbermann, of whom I have the most enduring respect, made a small statement shortly after the tribute was aired. I will share with you the contents of that small statement, let me just go on record as saying that I absolutely agree with his sentiment exactly and if he does not issue a special comment on his show tomorrow, I will be very highly displeased with him.

Keith’s comments are here:

In closing, let me simply say this I may not be a Democrat, nor may I agree with their idea of big government, socialism, nor their promoting of the gay agenda. However, let me be clear, I do not support a party that believes in the fatal conception of perpetual war. Nor do I support a party that believes that the memories of those who died on September 11, 2001 can be used as a campaign wedge issue.

Thank you for reading.

Gloria Steinem says, “you must be kidding”

Posted on1 Comment

So much for all that female hope change, nonsense with the Republicans!

It seems that Gloria Steinem is not buying it.

It was an assumption on the part of John McCain, that adding Sarah Palin to the ticket would bring a flock of women voters to his herd. Well, apparently Gloria Steinem didn’t get the memo, Heck, she did not even come to the office meeting!

Gloria Steinem writes:

Here’s the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing — the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party — are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women — and to many men too — who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the “white-male-only” sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.
But here is even better news: It won’t work. This isn’t the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton’s candidacy stood for — and that Barack Obama’s still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, “Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.”

Ouch! So much for all that female unity amongst in the political spectrum! Truthfully, I don’t know how John McCain thought that he could fool the feminists into voting for Sarah Palin, if that in fact was what he wanted to do. It could very well be in fact that John McCain was simply wanting to throw some red meat to his base to garner support for his candidacy. The move was a maverick one, however I don’t believe that any self respecting feminist will vote for Sarah Palin. It just would not make any sense, because feminism and conservatism are, quite frankly, polar opposites.

Of coarse conservatives will interpret this as some sort of attack against Sarah Palin herself, when in fact Gloria Steinem stated that that was nothing personal against her it was just a simple difference in ideologies. It should be very interesting to watch this one play out in the media.

Others: PunditMom, TalkLeft, Salon, Corrente, Dr. Melissa Clouthier, Hot Air, Opinion L.A., BlogHer, American Street, TownHall Blog, Alan Colmes’ Liberaland, Anchor Rising, JammieWearingFool, Argghhh! and culturekitchen

Is Obama “uppity”?

Posted on8 Comments

Oh boy, here we go with a racial slurs again.

According to a story on thehill.com:

Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland used the racially-tinged term “uppity” to describe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama Thursday.

Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.

“Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” Westmoreland said.

Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

Other Democrats have charged that the Republican campaign to paint the Illinois senator as an “elitist” is racially charged, and accused them of using code words for “uppity” without using the word itself.

Now I am absolutely sure that the media is gonna go absolutely crazy over this one.  But one has to realize something here, this man is from Georgia, and this sort of language and lingo is quite common in that part of the country when it comes to the discussion of blacks. However, it does not justify it at all.

A problem with this sort of a thing is that it plays into the narrative by the Democrats that the Republican Party is the party of racism.  When in fact the very opposite is the truth.  History does show that the white supremacist movement was very prevalent amongst the Democrats, and not the Republicans.

I am hoping that Westmoreland does offer an apology right away, because this sort of rhetoric is not needed nor desired in a election season such as this.

Furthermore, making statements such as this, only gives the race hustlers ammunition to lay claim to racial bias during this election period.

Update: Okay guys, wrong word. I blew it. Sue me. 🙄 😉 😛 😀

Others: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Washington Monthly, First Draft, Balloon Juice, Washington Post, Think Progress, The Edge of the American West, Pam’s House Blend and The Debate Link

Gallup polls shows no dent in Obama’s lead

Posted on

The latest Gallup poll shows that Obama still holds a 7 point lead over John McCain.

The charts tell the story:

080904DailyUpdateGraph1_tyhnmbv

080904DailyUpdateGraph2_rtwsdcv

Now one must keep in mind that these polls were taken before Sarah Palin gave her speech at the Republican National Convention. However it does indicate that the Republican Party is not making much of a dent in Obama’s lead. If I were one of those professional speculators, and I’m not, I would possibly say something to the effect that the Republicans are selling a message that the American people are simply not buying, and this could possibly very well be the case.

However I will simply say this, Sarah Palin gave one hell of a speech last night and I believe that she is going to connect with a certain segment of society. The segment of society that she will connect with, will be the white suburbanite soccer mom part of society. However she will not connect withe the struggling single mom with three kids who can’t seem to find a job in the inner city of Detroit. But she will connect with the white Christians suburbanite mother who drives her child to school every day.

I will be interested to see the new polls after this speech once they are released.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ,

Bob Barr, The Right Choice for America…..

Posted on

Bob Barr For President 2008

So far, Bob Barr has raised $836, 686, 52.

Join Bob Barr’s effort to retake America. Donate today

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,