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Barack Obama supports community college for illegal aliens (North Carolina, "good citizens")

North Carolina is studying whether to allow illegal aliens to enroll in community colleges, and over the weekend Barack Obama brought his pander express there and told Greensboro's WUNC this:

"For us to deny [illegal aliens] access to community college, even though they've never lived in Mexico, at least as far as they can tell ... is to deny that this is how we've always built this country up"... Obama said many children of Mexican immigrants have spent nearly their entire lives in the U.S., and "for all practical purposes, they are an American kid... I think we don't want them in the underground economy... We want them contributing, and it makes sense for us to provide them some pathway. If they've been here a certain period of time, and they've been good citizens, let's try to figure out how we can work them into the fabric of our society."

1. If I were inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, I might say that "good citizens" doesn't necessarily imply that he thinks that citizens of Mexico are citizens of the U.S., it could just be a cutesy locution. However, based on his other statements, I'm not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I think he really is confused over the entire citizenship concept.

2. Needless to say, we haven't "built this country up" through illegal immigration and through allowing a corrupt neighboring country to send us 14% of their working age population.

3. The only solution to this problem that is good public policy is to encourage/"encourage" Mexico and other countries to take their citizens back and give them educations. Anything else will lead to more problems as more people bring their children here illegally and as educations are taken from U.S. citizens in order to give them to foreign citizens who are here illegally.

Posted to Immigration2008a at 02:44 PM

Are you scared of Barack Obama's followers yet? (kids singing video)

Please compare these two videos of children singing to their leader. If you aren't scared of Barack Obama and his followers now, it might just change your mind [SEE THE UPDATES; 'SING FOR CHANGE' REMOVED THE ORIGINAL VIDEO]:



Note that the second video was embedded at DailyKos, but none of the pages shown as linking to the video exist anymore. Apparently it's not yet time.

UPDATE: I don't know who did it, but it looks like "Bill Hawkins" - someone who is not me - posted the second video to BHO's site: my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/billhawkins If only I knew who "Bill Hawkins" was.

UPDATE 2: On the user's talk page, some people seem to be trying to spread the possibility that the second video was shot in a public school and not a private residence. That's certainly possible, but the hallway visible about 1:12 lined with framed pictures doesn't look very school-like.

Also, the BHO banner behind the conductor, visible at 1:57, seems to have part of it blacked out. Does anyone have a link to an original version of that banner?

UPDATE 3: A cache of the DK thread that was deleted is here. Out of 19 replies, only one was negative. Here's a list of those involved: Kathy Sawada, Barry Rosenbaum, Eriko Matsumoto, Wilma Wong, Jeff Zucker (apparently not the head of NBC but someone else), Ted Schilowitz, Holly Schiffer, Peter Rosenfeld, Darin Moran, Jean Martin, Andy Blumenthal, and Nick Phoenix. And, here's "Sing for Change":

Now’s the moment, lift each voice to sing
Sing with all your heart!
For our children, for our families,
Nations all joined as one.
Sing for joy and sing abundant peace,
Courage, justice, hope!
Sing together, hold each precious hand,
Lifting each other up;
Sing for vision, sing for unity,
Lifting our hearts to Sing!

UPDATE 4: As of 7pm on 9/30, the video has over 375,000 views, up from only a few thousand when Drudge first linked to it. Yet, the only honors its received have been Most Responded (#38 today over all, #13 today and #25 in News and Politics). And, the "Sites linking to this video" list has not changed all day. One might think that over 300,000 views in one day would easily propel a video into Youtube's Most Viewed lists, but I guess it's yet another "glitch".

UPDATE 5: As of 10pm, it's reached over half a million views and still Youtube hasn't given it any Most Viewed honors. That's quite a "glitch"!

Also, Kathy Sawada has finally logged back in to her account and has disabled comments, disabled ratings, marked several valid comments as spam, and deleted several video replies including four from me. However, she missed this highly appropriate video reply from someone else. Perhaps she got confused and thought they were another Obama supporter.

UPDATE 6: Kathy Sawada has taken her ball and gone home, making the original video private so only those invited to view it can access it. It was originally here and embedded above. However, I switched the embed above to a backup. You might also enjoy the versions here and here.

UPDATE 7 (10/1/08): The original video is back, this time with only three video replies and with the valid comments still marked as spam. Despite it having almost 550,000 views, the only honors it received from Youtube were the most responded ones mentioned above. How incredibly odd.

UPDATE 8 (10/2/08): Kathy Sawada has been busy! The video was marked private, then it was made public again, now it's either private or unavailable to those not logged-in. And, she had the replacement video I was using pulled, so I replaced the first replacement video with another one. If that goes missing too, just search for "sing for change" at Youtube.

And, according to the video description this was shot early last year at a charter school in Kansas City, Missouri. I don't have sound here but I assume they're singing about BHO.

Posted to Politics at 10:47 AM

FactCheck recompresses, removes EXIF data from Obama birth certificate photos

Back on August 21, FactCheck released photos apparently showing Barack Obama's birth certificate (actually his "Certificate of Live Birth" or "COLB"). At the time, I noted that the EXIF information (added by the camera) showed that the pictures had been shot months before and I mentioned such possibilities as them not setting up their camera correctly, a bad battery, and the like.

Now, FactCheck has recompressed those images and removed the EXIF information in so doing. However, their sidebar linking to the images still contains the old file sizes (factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html).

The only image I downloaded was birth_certificate_3.jpg, and I've included links to the version retrieved on August 21 and a version retrieved today below. I'm not a Gimp expert by any means, but a simple subtraction seemed to show that the images were the same other than the missing EXIF and the different file sizes. There's a discussion of this here, and if anyone else notices any other differences leave a comment.

August 21 (1.22MB)
Today (209kb)

Posted to Politics at 09:51 AM

CBP chief Ralph Basham downplays Iranian sleeper cells in U.S.

According to this, U.S. Customs and Border Protection chief Ralph Basham said this in a radio interview:

'If Iran has sleeper cells here, "we'd be doing something about it," ...I don't think we can sit here and give you a definition of exactly where the threat would come, what the assets are...'

As the article points out, that contradicts warnings from others:

U.S. intelligence officials have said that Iran-backed Hezbollah "retains the capability to strike in the U.S." as FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told Congress in 2005, or that it might launch attacks on U.S. targets "if it feels its Iranian patron is threatened," as John D. Negroponte put it when he was Director of National Intelligence in 2006.

But evidence that Iran has anything more than fundraising efforts remains scant.

The Iranian sleeper agents idea got another bounce this month with the publication of The Secret War With Iran, by the respected Israeli investigative reporter Ronen Bergman, who says that Iran has deployed underground cells in New York and elsewhere.

Whether Basham is speaking honestly, covering for George Bush, trying to give false comfort to Iran, or something else isn't known. Note that in 2006 - shortly after becoming the head of CBP - he came out against the border fence presumably under orders from Bush.

Posted to Immigration_terror at 03:40 PM

1150+ arrested in SoCal immigration fugitive sweeps

From this:

U.S. immigration authorities said Monday they arrested more than 1,150 people in California in a three-week sweep, the state's largest of its type since since 2003.

The sweep targeted immigration violators including those who have ignored deportation orders or returned to the U.S. illegally after being deported...

[U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice] said of the 1,157 immigrants arrested statewide, 595 had outstanding deportation orders and 346 had prior criminal convictions. Those arrested were from 34 countries, she said.

Expect the usual suspects to whine in 3, 2, 1...

UPDATE: As it turns out, this was part of ICE's annual Operation Community Sweep where they go after gangs. Cynthia Dizikes of the Los Angeles Times offers straightforward coverage here. Solomon Moore of the New York Times offers straightforward coverage here. I'm going to guess that the vast majority of their readers won't notice what's missing from both. If the raids were of, say, a sweatshop both sources would wave about sympathetic "victims" of the raid in order to support sweatshops and illegal activity. The LAT and the NYT might want to do that in cases like this, but if so they probably realize that would be going too far. (The LAT article does quote New Jersey Union City police department chief Charles Everett as saying something sanctuary city-like).

From the NYT article: "[a GA state official] said the government had provided invaluable assistance in an investigation of eight killings, from 2000 to 2006 in Cedartown, Ga., that were related to a methamphetamine-running operation". That town has a population of barely 10,000 and appears to be about 70 miles from Atlanta.

Also see the CIS report "Taking Back the Streets: ICE and Local Law Enforcement Target Immigrant Gangs" (link).

And, Julie Myers says Houston and Phoenix are trying block even this type of immigration enforcement.

Posted to Immigration2008a at 03:34 PM

Sarah Palin rape kit smear: chronology (Mary Pemberton/AP, DailyKos, Americablog, Eric Croft, Obama campaign)

Since around September 8, various sites and news organizations have tried to push the smear that Sarah Palin knowingly charged victims in Wasilla, Alaska for rape kits, and that her city stood alone in that practice. As it turns out, those claims are false (link). How did this start? A chronology is here [1], and an amplification is below.

One of the "hidden hands" behind the smear appears to be Alaskan Democrats, such as former Democratic state representative Eric Croft, quoted in the AP story on 9/11 and the CNN story on 9/23. The Obama campaign apparently first got involved around 9/15, although they knew about it as early as 9/12 after the 9/11 AP story. Whether they were involved before will probably never be known, absent obtaining emails to bloggers.

Timeline:

5/23/2000: the local Frontiersman paper published this article.

9/01/08: this blog post mentions it, but that doesn't appear to have been noticed by anyone else so its role as the origin of the smear is doubtful.

9/03/08: the blog "Indiscriminate and Arbitrary Deliberation" run by "George" mentions it here. He had only joined Blogger in August, and his other blog covers cooking pies (link). He doesn't appear to get much traffic, he appears to be a Dennis Kucinich fan, and he appears to be "writing above his pay grade". His sidebar links to some leftwing sites and presumably he also comments there. Perhaps this could be the origin of the smear.

9/08/08: this was the day the Frontiersman story "broke" across blogs. The first mention might have been at a site run by wannabe comic Dave Anthony (link). That was apparently posted at 4pm PST. It was picked up by Americablog [2] at 5pm PST and then at 6pm PST by "Steven R" at DailyKos [3] and then by "Jo Fish" at FDL [4]. Other sites involved were Op Edna [5] and Dave Harding at ProgressOhio [6].

9/09/08: it was picked up by Eric Schmeltzer at the Huffington Post [7].

9/11/08: Mary Pemberton of the Associated Press moved the smear from bloggers to major newspapers, offering this:

Former Democratic Rep. Eric Croft, who sponsored that bill, said he was disappointed that simply asking the Wasilla police department to stop didn't work. Croft said he doubts she was unaware of the practice.

9/12/08: Joe Sudbay of Americablog said this [8]:

Listened to the Obama campaign press conference call this morning. The very first question from a reporter is why the campaign hasn't highlighted the rape kit story. The reporter said, every time I tell someone that story they look at me like I said there is no Santa Claus... Obama campaign chief spokesman Bill Burton's response... "We're familiar with it. Saw the AP story. We are familiar with it."

If anyone knows which "reporter" it was that was trying to devise smears for the BHO campaign, please leave a comment.

9/15/08: the Barack Obama campaign began looking for a rape victim to appear in a TV ad (link).

Kiersten Steward, director of public policy at the Family Violence Prevention Fund, served as a conduit between the campaign and victims and women's advocates... though she never was told about the nature of the commercial, [victims advocate Mikele Shelton-Knight] said she thought that the focus of the ad may be about the practice in Wasilla, Alaska, to charge rape victims to pay for their own exams... Shelton-Knight said Palin should not be criticized for having governed a city with such a law as they were quite common until recent years... Alaska didn't pass a bill until 2000 requiring state and local law endorcement to pay for the exams. And Shelton-Knight said it wasn't until lobbying by her and others that Virginia last year put the financial burden on localities. Many states still charge victims for the cost of the exam.

9/21/08: Chicago writer Anne K. Ream offers "Fault lines in feminism" (link), continuing the smear.

9/23/08: Jessica Yellin of CNN offers "Palin's town charged women for rape exams" (link). From the second link in this post:

[Despite Croft's other claims] Farther down in the story, CNN does reveal that there are no records and no proof that Palin ever even knew about this charging the victim policy. CNN also finally mentions that Wasilla wasn't the only town in Alaska that had this policy.

9/24/08: FactCheck raises questions about the smear (link), and says:

Eric Croft, a former Alaska state representative who sponsored the 2000 legislation, told CNN that "I find it hard to believe that for six months a small town, a police chief, would lead the fight against a statewide piece of legislation receiving unanimous support and the mayor not know about it." But Croft, a Democrat, says he does not recall discussing the issue with Palin at the time.

9/25/08: the New York Times' "Editorial Observer" Dorothy Samuels continues the smear in "Wasilla Watch: Sarah Palin and the Rape Kits" (link). Eric Croft makes an appearance there as well.

10/01/08: Even after all of the above, the Boston Globe editorial "Wasilla made rape victims pay" continues the lies (link).

[1] Same article here:
newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/09/24/
old-media-pushes-false-rape-kit-charge-against-gov-palin
[2] americablog.com/2008/09/wasilla-charged-rape-victims-for-their.html
[3] That post got 395 Diggs: dailykos.com/story/2008/9/8/20552/56258/308/591588
[4] firedoglake.com/2008/09/08/norquists-bathtub
[5] That post got 144 Diggs: opedna.com/2008/09/08/
wasilla-police-billed-sexual-assault-victims-for-rape-kits
[6] progressohio.org/page/community/post/daveharding/CHRJ
[7] huffingtonpost.com/eric-schmeltzer/palins-wasilla-to-rape-vi_b_125047.html
[8] americablog.com/2008/09/its-about-rape-kits-stupid.html

Posted to Politics at 01:38 PM

GOP official removed for telling something that's true to a good extent (McCain)

Clark County GOP communications director Didi Lima recently said the following to the Associated Press:

"We don't want (Hispanics) to become the new African-American community... And that's what the Democratic Party is going to do to them, create more programs and give them handouts, food stamps and checks for this and checks for that. We don't want that... I'm very much afraid that the Democratic Party is going to do the same thing that they did with the African-American culture and make them all dependent on the government and we don't want that..."

What she said was to a good extent true, although it might be more PC to say it in a different way. And, it's especially true about the motivations of the Democratic Party.

Needless to say, the multiculturalists in the John McCain campaign prefer to live in a leftwing-created fantasy world where we're all singing Kumbaya (link):

"Didi Lima is no longer a part of this campaign, her comments don't reflect Senator McCain's beliefs and are not tolerated on his campaign," McCain spokesman Rick Gorka said after learning about her remarks.

Posted to Politics at 01:32 PM

UCLA professor Stephen Bainbridge deletes comments showing how he was wrong

UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge recently tried to debunk illegal immigration's role in the mortgage crisis. Along with issuing smears, his only data points in support of his position came from data that was over a decade old. Not only didn't he tell his readers that the data was incredibly out of date, but he deleted two comments pointing out that the data he was using was woefully out of date.

One of the comments he deleted was from me:

Bainbridge should be embarrassed: for relying on data that's over a decade old (h/t a previous comment). And, all to support illegal activity, to show that he's one of the "good conservatives", and in order to avoid pointing out the truth and then having the left call him names.

The previous comment referenced above was also deleted; it wasn't adversarial, simply stating that the data was out of date and suggesting that that made it worthless in this case. There was no link and I forget the person's name, but their email address was at watson.ibm.com.

The bottom line here is that you can't trust anything you read at Bainbridge's site, because he's willing to try to silence those who fact-check him. If you're a UCLA student in one of his classes, make sure and double-check every assignment he gives you for anything he left out.

Posted to Bloggage at 07:31 PM

Stephen Bainbridge, Matt Yglesias embarrass themselves in support of illegal immigration (minorities, bailout)

A few days ago, Michelle Malkin offered "Illegal immigration and the mortgage mess" (link).

Now, if there's one thing that the corrupt on both the right and the left can agree on it's that illegal immigration is the best thing since 8ulova watches.

Thus it is that UCLA Professor Stephen Bainbridge [1] offers "They Make You Embarrassed to be a Conservative" in which he ironically embarrasses himself (link):

...the raving of people like Malkin and Krikorian [2] should be taking place in a padded room in Arkham Asylum not in the public discourse... Put simply, the freezing up of the credit markets doesn’t have anything to do with either affirmative action or illegal immigration, and people who believe it does are on a par with the conspiracy theorists who think fluoridation is a Chicom plot... When you look at the data, it’s true that minorities are slightly over-represented in the sub-prime mortgage market...

In the above, the word "data" is linked to this PDF file, and that's the only data he provides. That PDF says:

Our sample was drawn from a population of borrowers originating mortgages between January 1996 and June 1997

In other words, Bainbridge is basing his smears on data that's over a decade old.

Needless to say, simply relying on someone else who relied on faulty data wasn't enough for Matt Yglesias, he needed to race bait and smear those who, unlike him, support our laws [3]:

This is one of these wingnut talking points that I can't even begin to unpack in a coherent argument, but white supremacist sentiment has always been an important element of the modern conservative movement so it's not surprising to see it rear its head even in odd contexts.

While I haven't looked into illegal immigration's links to the mortgage bailout, I will point out that many banks are eager to lend to illegal aliens. In fact, the FDIC was working with the Mexican consulate to give home loans to illegal aliens. See also this, this, this, this, and this. The issue of the "unbanked" - including dissembling by Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger - is related.

UPDATE: Steven Bainbridge deleted two comments pointing out how he was misleading.

[1] Bainbridge is such an idiot, he said "I like it, let's do it" about Bush's original "guest" worker scam.
[2] Bainbridge is misunderstanding a Corner post from Mark Krikorian, and probably doing so intentionally. I saw the update where Krikorian explained what he (pretty obviously) meant but can't locate it presently.
[2] yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/09/
did_minority_homeowners_cause_the_financial_crisis.php

Posted to Bloggage at 03:56 PM

Irish government gives $1.5 million to help immigrants to U.S., including lobbying for illegal aliens (ILIR)

The Irish government has given $1.5 million to 16 groups in the U.S. that help both legal immigrants and illegal aliens. That comes on top of an earlier $3.16 million they've given towards that effort this year.

Around $50,000 of the new amount went to the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform (source link), a group that lobbies for immigration "reform" (i.e., amnesty) and to which several major politicians have given speeches (John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and so on).

Per Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin (link):

"The allocations that I am announcing today are to organisations that are to the forefront in providing essential frontline services to Irish communities across the US, particularly to the elderly and those in need. They also work with the undocumented Irish, whose status remains an issue of the highest priority for the Government and which I have raised with key US legislators in the course of my visit."

Related:
John McCain promotes illegal alien amnesty to Irish group; Irish government link; no Barletta
Latino, Irish Catholics in illegal immigration march (Archdiocese of San Francisco, Irish government)
What Paula Zahn forgot: the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform gets money from the Irish government
Barack Hussein Obama promotes illegal immigration... to the Irish
Allen Martin of CBS 5 failed to note where ILIR gets its money, as did Tyche Hendricks of the S.F. Chronicle

Posted to Immigration2008a at 01:45 PM

Felipe Calderon bringing Mexican consulate to New Brunswick, New Jersey (Jim Cahill, Richard Kaplan)

On his way to a U.N. meeting, Mexican president Felipe Calderon recently visited their colonies (link) and met with the mayor of New Brunswick, New Jersey, Jim Cahill. That's him pictured right along with Calderon and his wife.

Among other things, Calderon promoted what's called "regional integration" and promised to build a new consulate in Cahill's city. You can contact him through officeofthemayor *at* cityofnewbrunswick.org

Not only that, but Calderon said that at a public school (Lord Stirling Elementary School). Contact the NBPS superintendent Richard Kaplan at richard_kaplan *at* nbps.k12.nj.us

Apparently the promise of the consulate was prompted by some groups [1], with Calderon saying:

"It seems to me a fair demand, so this is what we'll do, we'll put a consulate here in New Brunswick"... he said a regional approach is needed to build sound economies in North America, including the United States, Mexico and Canada. "Relaunching the economy will not happen if we don't think as a region," he said, adding that a strong in the United States must include immigration reform... "It is my personal conviction that migration is a natural social-economic phenomenon that cannot be stopped by decree... What we need to do is channel it and direct it for the prosperity of our society... One day Mexico will have the conditions to generate work and schools sufficient so that never again you have to leave due to hunger... [however, just not now]."

[1] Those quoted include the following:
* Cesar Zuniga, "who is in charge of health programs at New York City-based Casa Puebla"

* Teresa Vivar, 'the president of Lazos America Unida in New Brunswick"

* "Perth Amboy's Fernando Garcia, a construction worker studying small business management at Middlesex County College... [and] the treasurer of the Mexican Association of Perth Amboy

Posted to Immigration2008a at 02:57 PM

McCain-Obama debate 9/26/08 live coverage (everybody loses! edition)

They're both stiffs and incredibly bad. Frankly, McCain isn't exactly spry. BHO is, as usual, a smirking [person of negative repute] and I don't think anyone outside his circle is going to appreciate him laughing at McCain in the background. Both are stumbling over their talking points.

However, I think the upshot to most people will be that McCain took Obama to school.

I also wonder why we're doing things like this when their policies are crafted by others and formulating their responses to various actions would take far more than two minutes. Why not, for instance, "cross-examine" their advisors and give them time to formulate a response? Wouldn't that accurately model how either of the two stiffs would govern?

Also: How would one write that vocal tic Obama just engaged in? "Ek-ek ek-ek-ek"?

McCain gave a very heartfelt speech in support of the troops, and BHO launched into his stock speech about his father from Kenya. Kenya? After McCain just discussed support for our vets?

Clear win by McCain.

UPDATE: America's favorite former Secretary of State, phoning in from one of the countries that don't have arrest warrants for him, says that Obama lied about his stance on speaking with Iran: link. Ten days ago, Hank said that, per UPI (link), 'the next president should initiate high-level discussions with Iran "without conditions.' That might not be a contradiction; by "high-level discussions" he might mean diplomats and not the president.

Also, I should have mentioned before the moment when BHO had to look down to see whose name it was on his bracelet:

UPDATE 2: The mother of the sargeant BHO mentioned is "ecstatic" about being mentioned on TV, but apparently the sargeant's father - her ex-husband - isn't. She also sent an email to the BHO campaign earlier in the year asking him to stop using her son's name (link, link).

Posted to Politics at 07:23 PM

Financial crisis: should there be a bailout? What kind?

I have absolutely no even non-expert insight on whether there should be a bailout of troubled financial institutions or not. I do know that George Bush is for it and Larry Kudlow offers "A Paulson-Cantor Plan Is a Win-Win for Taxpayers" (link), and both of those are very strong indicators that any bailout should be strongly opposed. There's a round-up of sites and others against the bailout here. However, considering that my eyes glazed over by the second paragraph of the penultimate link, I have no interest in getting up to speed. All I know is that people should be extremely wary of proposed solutions from the Bush administration and those who got us into this mess in the first place.

Posted to Politics at 02:26 PM

How the Democrats rule online, Part #94295931

Yesterday I posted to FreeRepublic exhorting people to visit Time's Swampland and discredit house hacks Joe Klein, Karen Tumulty, and Ana Marie Cox, saying in part (link):

...almost all of the posts read like something from DailyKos, and almost all of the comments do as well... But, there's something you can do about it: sign up to post comments (it's free and easy) and then when they post something that's in error, point it out. The goal is to discredit Time's "reporters", so the comments have to show how those "reporters" are wrong...

A few people were interested in the idea. However, others said variants on the following:

I pushed back long ago by cancelling a subscription that had run for mre than 20 years... Vote with your dollars, people.

That itself is a variant on the old, "if you don't like the show, change the channel" argument. It ignores the fact that millions of people are not changing the "channel", and thus the "channel" has a great deal of influence. Simply turning off the "TV" won't lessen the impact on others. That's especially important to note in cases like this when the "channel" isn't telling the whole truth.

Related:
If only Ron Paul supporters had a brain
Digg Katie Couric Digging the Conventions
More proof of GOP stupidity (Digg division)

Posted to Bloggage at 12:15 PM

Open Debate Coalition: a failed format for fake debates

The "Open Debate Coalition" - a group consisting of people such as Glenn Reynolds ("Instapundit") and Stanford law professor Larry Lessig [1] - is calling on John McCain and Barack Obama to open the presidential debates by allowing questions chosen by regular people and not just the MSM.

However, what they support has not only been proven to be a failure, but two of the signatories helped show how such formats can be gamed and another was involved with the system that was gamed. In brief, their proposal is a farce and a setup.

From this:

They prefer use of bubble-up Internet technology, which they call "the essence of the internet as we know it." In effect, online users submit the questions and then vote on their favorites, pushing the most popular to the top of the list. Debate questions would be taken from the top 25 vote-getters.

The experience of 10Questions.com shows how that can be gamed. In November, Patrick Ruffini was able to propel a weak question to the top of the 10 Questions heap and it was asked of the candidates in some way. The month before, MoveOn was able to propel an even weaker question to the top of the heap, and that was asked of Obama during an MTV/MySpace televised debate. Not only that, but BHO had already stated his position on the topic months before.

Guess what: both Ruffini and two people from MoveOn are signatories on the current letter. And, another signatory is from TechPresident, the group that produced 10Questions. I guess they all want another crack at an "open debate".

I've already discussed how to make such systems work. And, in fact, I proposed that system to one of the groups behind 10Questions and they weren't interested. Instead, they joined forces with the New York Times and MSNBC to push the weak format that Ruffini and MoveOn were able to game.

Other systems show how a raw popularity vote pushes weak questions to the top and submerges the ones that partisan hacks don't want to discuss; for one example, see this.

So, why is the "Open Debate Coalition" proposing something that's a proven failure? Could it be that they don't really want real debates at all but are simply partisan hacks who want to manipulate the debates to their own advantage? Perish the thought!

UPDATE: In response to the first comment from Adam Green with MoveOn:

1. I'll take his word for it that Ruffini's question wasn't asked on TV. If it wasn't asked there, I assume it was asked of the candidates in some way. I've changed the above.

2. About the MoveOn/net neutrality question, this site says: "Obama's revelation wasn't exactly jaw-dropping" and I'll go a bit further. That question was akin to asking, "Comrade Lenin, do you agree that shoelace production is up 43%?" Ideally, questions should be adversarial and that was not.

3. There are literally thousands of bloggers and hundreds of various kinds of pundits who could vote under my plan, and all their votes would have the same weight. Under the "bubble-up" plan, Instapundit and others who get a large amount of traffic could cancel out the votes of almost everyone else simply by encouraging their readers to vote up certain questions. Under my plan, tough questions about immigration would stand a chance; under the "bubble-up" plan they'd be voted down by Party hacks who don't want that topic to be discussed.

4. No moderator, aside perhaps from those who'd never be selected as a moderator, would assuage my concerns about those who don't want tough subjects to be broached attempting to put their thumbs on the scale.

[1] Here are the members of the coalition. Almost all of the ones I'm familiar with are partisan hacks:
Lawrence Lessig – Professor, Stanford Law School & Founder, Center for Internet and Society
Glenn Reynolds – Professor, University of Tennessee Law, and founder of Instapundit.com blog
Craig Newmark – Founder, Craigslist
Jimmy Wales – Founder, Wikipedia
David Kralik – Director of Internet Strategy, Newt Gingrich's American Solutions
Eli Pariser – Executive Director, MoveOn.org Political Action
Adam Green – Director of Strategic Campaigns, MoveOn.org Political Action
Mindy Finn – Republican strategist, former Mitt Romney Online Director
Patrick Ruffini – Republican consultant, Bush/Cheney 2004 eCampaign Director
Arianna Huffington – Founder, Huffington Post
Markos Moulitsas – Founder, DailyKos.com
Jon Henke – New media consultant, including for Fred Thompson, George Allen, and Senate Republican
Caucus
Mike Krempasky – Founder of RedState.com
Matt Stoller – Founder/Editor, OpenLeft.com
James Rucker – Executive Director, ColorOfChange.org
Robert Greenwald – President, BraveNewFilms
Kim Gandy – President, National Organization for Women
Carl Pope – Executive Director, Sierra Club
Micah Sifry – Co-Founder, Personal Democracy Forum and TechPresident.com
Shari Steele, Executive Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Josh Silver – Executive Director, Free Press
Carl Malamud – Founder, Public.Resource.Org
Roger Hickey – Co-Director, Campaign for America's Future

Posted to Politics at 09:53 AM

Does Barack Obama support the First Amendment? (answer: well, it depends)

Is Barack Obama a strong proponent of the First Amendment? Does he support free speech, even by those who strongly disagree with him? The answer is: not really.

I'll keep track in reverse chronological order (note, of course, that there are other examples throughout the time period):

* 10/27/08: Student reporters who uncovered voter fraud receive threatening letters from an Obama attorney warning that he will "read what you write and watch what you say". He later apologizes. (link)

* 10/26/08: the BHO campaign was apparently angered over the questions asked by one or two other TV stations; see these videos: link, link, link. One of the questions asked concerned the report "Biden routes campaign cash to family, their firms" (link).

* 10/25/08: Angered by Joe Biden being asked semi-tough questions, the Obama campaign gives a cold shoulder to a Florida TV station.

* 10/17/08: Obama tells the New York Times: "I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls. If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn't vote for me, right? ...Because the way I'm portrayed 24/7 is as a freak! I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?" That doesn't mean that, if he becomes president, he'll push something like the Fairness Doctrine. However, he or his surrogates will probably use Fox as a scapegoat when his policies meet resistance and those surrogates might take action against Fox in some way.

* 10/8/08: ABC, NBC CBS, Time-Warner, CW, Fox, and others refuse to run ads for a WND book called "The Audacity of Deceit: Barack Obama's War on American Values". The ads may or may not cross the line, and some of the rejections may be due to pressure from the BHO campaign's lawyers (link).

* 9/27/08: According to the local paper, signs were banned from an Obama/Biden appearance at the public University of Mary Washington (link).

* 9/25/08: Public officials in St. Louis/Missouri threaten Obama opponents with criminal libel? (apparently under the direction of or with the input of the BHO campaign)

* 9/25/08: Barack Obama threatens licenses of stations running NRA ad (National Rifle Association)

* 9/15/08: The BHO campaign told their followers to call in to Chicago's WGN-AM in an attempt to prevent author David Freddoso from discussing his anti-BHO book; a spokesman says: "The Action Wire serves as a means of arming our supporters with the facts to take on those who spread lies about Barack Obama and respond forcefully with the truth, whether it's an author passing off fiction as biography, a Web site spreading baseless conspiracy theories or a TV station airing an ad that makes demonstrably false claims" (link, link).

* 8/27/08: the BHO campaign tried the same technique as they did with Freddoso (above) in an attempt to prevent National Review author Stanley Kurtz from discussing his attempts to obtain more information on Obama's work for the Annenberg Challenge (link).

* 8/26/08: the BHO campaign threatened TV stations over an ad from the American Issues Project, including trying to get the Department of Justice to investigate the group (link)

* 8/14/08: the Obama campaign's "debunking" of Obama Nation by Jerome Corsi included them "creatively editing" one of Corsi's quotes in order to make him look bad.

* 7/13/08: Obama quote: "[immigrants and illegal aliens are] counting on us to stop the hateful rhetoric filling our airwaves – rhetoric that poisons our political discourse, degrades our democracy, and has no place in this great nation." That's a reference to commentators such as Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs, two people that Obama has not only smeared but lied about. Clearly, he doesn't just disagree with them, he doesn't want them to have the right to speak.

There's another roundup here; apparently BHO's followers reported supportive reviews of the Corsi book to Amazon, resulting in some being pulled. And, an opinion piece/roundup is here.

Posted to Politics at 10:26 PM

Public officials in St. Louis/Missouri threaten Obama opponents with criminal libel? (Jennifer Joyce, Bob McCulloch)

I suggest taking this with a grain of salt and waiting for a report from others, but:

St. Louis and Missouri Democrat sheriffs and top prosecutors are planning to go after anyone who makes false statements against Obama during his campaign... St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch are threatening to bring [criminal] libel charges against those who speak out falsely against Barack Obama...

Those officials apparently said what they said under the direction of or with the input of the BHO campaign. More on that as it develops.

UPDATE: It's been confirmed, as Missouri governor Matt Blunt has issued a "Statement on Obama Campaign's Abusive Use of Missouri Law Enforcement" (link):

St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign... ...Enlisting Missouri law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent of the Sedition Acts - not a free society.

UPDATE 2: Joyce pretends it has "never been or never will be about prosecuting people" (link). Someone apparently spoke with McCulloch, who used the false pro-BHO spin on the kindergarten sex education story as an example of something he'd take action against (link). McCulloch admitted not having read the bill in question.

Posted to Politics at 10:21 PM

Barack Obama threatens licenses of stations running NRA ad (National Rifle Association)

The National Rifle Association is running an advertising campaign (their site) highlighting what they say is Barack Obama's "10 Point Plan to 'Change' the Second Amendment". Their various claims involve him wanting to ban handguns, certain types of ammunition, and so forth. Needless to say, the Obama campaign disagrees, and in fact they've gone as far as issue a not-so-veiled threat against the licenses of those radio stations that are running the ad. That might not be objectionable if the ads were issuing outrageous lies, but that doesn't appear to be the case. This is yet another example of BHO having "issues" with the First Amendment, and it should be both a warning sign to his supporters and further motivation to his detractors to make sure that he does not become president.

Regarding the NRA's claims, the Washington Post's "fact checker" Michael Dobbs gives the campaign three "Pinocchios" (link) and FactCheck agrees (link). While I'm not that familiar with the issues involved, somehow I find this post that says the NRA is right to be more persuasive because something I am very familiar with is how Barack Obama tends to lie.

The letter from BHO lead counsel Robert Bauer is in the PDF at this post. For an unknown reason, the language Bauer uses is highly similar to that used by John Petrone II, who was representing another Democratic politician, Michael Arcuri (PDF link). Others using a similar technique were conservative Mike Higgins (link), and a similar threat by Democrat Andy Levin succeeded in Michigan against Comcast (link).

Now, just because others have tried the same trick doesn't mean that the Hope, Change, and a Pony candidate should do it too. Consider this a preview.

Posted to Politics at 10:00 PM

Shailagh Murray offers WaPo's lightest weight coverage of Barack Obama yet?

Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post offers "Obama Answers Critical Question -- About Music" (link). It might just be the most lightweight coverage of Barack Obama from the WaPo yet, although I'm sure there are many other posts and articles from them that compete for that title.

Sen. Barack Obama stopped by his Senate office before heading over to the White House this afternoon for the big bipartisan meeting on the financial meltdown.

Met at the door by a few reporters, he answered a key question -- at least for his generation.

Beatles or Stones? asked a Congressional Quarterly reporter.

"Stones," Obama replied.

Now, of course, there's the possibility that Murray is trying to bring the WaPo down from the inside by offering weak coverage, or she's trying to point out how bad the MSM coverage of BHO is. However, based on her previous reports, I don't think that's likely at all.

Posted to Politics at 08:49 PM

Democrats incorrectly closed vote in order to support illegal immigration (August 2007)

From this report from today:

Democrats incorrectly closed a vote on the House floor in August 2007, which would have resulted in Republicans prevailing on an immigration issue, according to a special bipartisan House committee.

The committee found that "the vote tally of 212 yeas and 216 nays that was finally announced was incorrect. It is either 215 yeas and 213 nays, which would have reflected the tally at the time the chair prematurely announced the result, or 211 yeas and 217 nays."

From this contemporaneous report:

The GOP motion that touched off the furor would in effect have amended the spending bill (HR 3161) to bar use of funds to employ or provide housing for illegal immigrants. Instead, Democrats plowed ahead, eventually passing the bill by 237-18 on a roll call boycotted by most Republicans.

Posted to Politics at 04:24 PM

"Temporary" Protected Status extended until 2010 (El Salvador)

The government conducts "Temporary" Protected Status programs under which hundreds of thousands of those who are fleeing natural disasters, political turmoil, and the like get to stay in the U.S. on a "temporary" basis. And, oddly enough for a "temporary" program, its specific instances keep getting renewed when they expire, as they were in May 2007, February 2006, and earlier. However, it might not be available for all countries and all incidents; Alcee Hastings (recently in the news for despicable comments) wants it for those from Haiti (link). On the other hand, FAIR thinks the whole program should be terminated (link).

The latest extension of the "temporary" program for those from El Salvador follows our beloved president George W. Bush meeting with that country's president Tony Saca. Here it is in all its absurdity (whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080924-2.html):

...PRESIDENT BUSH: I want to let my friend know, and the people of El Salvador, that the United States will extend TPS status to El Salvadoreans living in our country. This is a decision that was made to improve the lives of El Salvadoreans.

I'm proud to make this announcement with you standing by my side. You've been a very strong and courageous leader, and you have been a friend. And I know this is an issue of concern to you, because you care deeply about the people of your country. And so when you get back home, you can tell the people that TPS has been extended.

PRESIDENT SACA: (Remarks are partially translated.) Thank you very much. Thank you very much, President, for extending for 18 months more the TPS for the people of El Salvador. This is going to benefit our Salvadorian people with -- (inaudible) -- in liberty, in democracy, and in integration.

Thank you very much this morning for this extension.

I'll leave figuring out what Saca meant by "integration" to your imagination.

Posted to Immigration2008a at 11:50 AM

Barack Obama bundler Jodie Evans meets with Iran's Ahmadinejad (Code Pink)

Code Pink says [1]

Calling it a "major step forward" in relations between Iran and the United States, leading activists Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans of CODEPINK Women for Peace — along with more than 150 other U.S. peace group representatives [2] — met Wednesday afternoon with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here following his appearance at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.

Then, a "thump" was heard as Jodie Evans - also a bundler for the BHO campaign - was run over by the Obama Bus. There's more on her from the GOP here and more here and here. Evans even has her own BHO page, although there isn't much there [3]. However, whether she's a formal member of the BHO campaign, an acknowledged and valued supporter, or just basically a hanger-on is not entirely clear. If anyone can clarify that, please leave a comment.

[1] codepink4peace.org/blog/2008/09/official-release-leading-codepink-activists-
and-other-peace-organizations-meet-with-iranian-president-in-new-york/
[2] The meeting was organized by the Fellowship of Reconciliation:
forpeace.net/news/2008/09/24/convenes-meeting-peace-activists-and-president-ahmadinejad
[3] students.barackobama.com/page/dashboard/public/Cpkq

Posted to Politics at 11:46 PM

Permanent U.S. Army brigade to help with "civil unrest and crowd control"... inside the U.S. (non-lethal weapons)

From this:

U.S. troops returning from duty in Iraq will be carrying out homeland patrols in America from October 1st in complete violation of Posse Comitatus for the purposes of helping with "civil unrest and crowd control" - which could include dealing with unruly Americans after a complete economic collapse.

This shocking admission was calmly reported on September 8th by the Army Times website [link], which reports that from the beginning of next month the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team "Will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks."

...The purpose of the unit's patrols includes helping "with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack."

And, from the AT article:

The 1st BCT's soldiers also will learn how to use "the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded," 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

"It's a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they're fielding. They've been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it."

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets...

There's more here.

Related:
"Bush grants presidency extraordinary powers" (in emergency; undercuts Congress)
Watch for the "Clergy Response Teams" (quell citizens after martial law)
Karl Rove supporting putting troops on the border
DC, media pushing greater military control for "safety" reasons

Posted to Miscellania at 11:34 PM

Arizona Chamber of Commerce, MATT.org, Raul Yzaguirre start immigration "reform" ad campaign; Mexican government link?

Earlier today, the Arizona Chamber of Commerce (chief executive: Glenn Hamer), hosted a press conference where they announced an ad campaign in support of immigration "reform", presumably including some form of "guest" worker scheme (link). The ads will run in Phoenix, Albuquerque, Denver and Las Vegas and they're spending "hundreds of thousands of dollars" on it. One of their guests at the announcement is the former president of the National Council of La Raza, Raul Yzaguirre. He's also a former co-chair of this year's Hillary Clinton campaign.

The ads are from MATT.org ("Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together"), a group headed by Lionel Sosa, someone who's working for John McCain. Earlier in the year he hinted that the Mexican government was going to give him money to conduct an ad campaign, and a very good question would be whether this is what he was refering to. Needless to say, it's one that Craig Harris of the Arizona Republic doesn't ask.

Others there were:

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, former Congressman Henry Bonilla [a spokesman for MATT]... Tucson Electric Power Chief Executive Jim Pignatelli and Ironco Enterprises president Sheridan Bailey.

UPDATE: On the midnight immediately before the press conference, the Arizona Republic printed the editorial "Arizona must lead" (link) promoting the effort. Needless to say, it reads like a hand-out from the AZ Chamber of Commerce.

UPDATE 2: From March comes this:

On January 16, 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported the following: “Mr. Sosa says he has raised $25 million for the campaign from one group he didn’t identify.” This massive donation concerns me and it should trouble every American during a presidential year. I’m all for political activism and free speech, but I want to know who is bankrolling efforts to alter our immigration laws.

More recently from the same paper comes this:

Although Sosa left the corporation [presumably MATT] to work with McCain, the organization’s entanglements with Sosa and Cesar Martinez — a video producer who has created Spanish-language TV ads for McCain (notably, one that depicts Barack Obama as a naïve fool willing to hang out with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez) — have created the appearance of a 501 organization that is acting more like a 527 political action committee... QueQue paid a visit to MATT.org’s downtown limestone-and-log-cabin offices this week and was told by staffers that Martinez maintains a video-production office at MATT.org and keeps his equipment there. With Sosa and Martinez working together to create Latino-targeting ads for McCain, and Martinez using MATT.org facilities to do his production work, this doesn’t pass the smell taste as defined in the organization’s Certificate of Formation, filed with the Texas Secretary of State... The issue is further complicated by the fact that new Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade, the person whose office accepts corporate filings, formerly served as executive director for MATT.org...

Posted to Immigration2008a at 09:18 PM

McCain suspends campaign, desperate stunt might work

John McCain is temporarily suspending his campaign, donning his cape, and rushing back to Washington in order to save the U.S. from financial ruin. He's also trying to reschedule the "debate" on foreign policy which was originally set for Friday. His full statement is here:

...I am confident that before the markets open on Monday we can achieve consensus on legislation that will stabilize our financial markets, protect taxpayers and homeowners, and earn the confidence of the American people. All we must do to achieve this is temporarily set politics aside, and I am committed to doing so...

Will this desperate, horse-race-to-the-max gambit work? Will it force Barack Obama to either admit McCain's seniority or appear to be (even more of) a political hack? Will BHO try to continue the "debate" and end up "debating" himself?

Er, developing...

UPDATE: The BHO talking point is that he can walk and chew gum at the same time. Needless to say, this has been echoed by several others and if anyone has a few minutes to spare it would be great to know how that talking point was spread. Did the BHO campaign come up with it? Did they pick it up from someone else? Was it spread from blogs to the MSM, or the other way around?

Someone might have already written something similar, but a spider that can track memes chronologically would be very valuable.

Posted to Politics at 12:41 PM

CNN "fact check" misleads about John McCain comprehensive immigration reform stance

Dear CNN:

JOHN MCCAIN SUPPORTS AMNESTY/COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM.

Sorry to shout, but I see that your "Fact Check: Is Obama ad right on McCain's immigration stance?" (link) continues the same lie that several of Barack Obama's other minions have tried to promulgate.

While McCain has said a wide range of things (including support for "reform" one day before you posted this), and his overall tactic at present is to support a secure border now followed by "reform" later, his overall goal of getting "reform" continues.

I don't know what game you and those others who push this lie are playing, but the simple fact is that McCain, Bush, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Mexican government, and Barack Obama all want the same basic thing. They might differ in the specific details and how they intend to get what they want, but their overall goal is the same.

P.S. Maybe you should mention the lies in the rest of the ad too.

Posted to Immigration2008a at 12:16 PM

FactCheck looks, can't find "Chicago Way" (McCain Obama ad)

Viveca Novak and Justin Bank of Fact Check offer "Guilt and Associations/McCain once again tries to tar Obama with the controversies of others" about the John McCain ad "Chicago Machine" (factcheck.org/elections-2008/guilt_and_associations.html). The ad links Barack Obama to William Daley, Emil Jones, Tony Rezko, Rod Blagojevich. Per them, the first isn't dirty, the second is only a little dirty, and there's no evidence that BHO was involved in any funny business with the last two. For instance:

Obama did have a past relationship with real estate developer Tony Rezko, but he is no longer Obama's "money man." Obama hasn't been associated with him since his indictment for wire fraud, bribery, money laundering and attempted extortion, and Obama donated all of the disgraced businessman's previous campaign contributions to charity.

So, just as soon as someone who very clearly had "issues" was indicted and the spotlight was even brighter, BHO threw him under the bus. I'm sure those who are more familiar with this story (link, link) might disagree with FactCheck's attempt to downplay BHO's involvement. Even Salon said:

Obama's dealings with his hinky friend have never led him afoul of the law, but they show that, despite his high-minded politics, he was no purer -- or no savvier -- than Illinois' biggest hacks in his weakness for a generous contributor. He wouldn't even say no when Rezko cooked up a deal to help the newly elected senator buy a gracious Georgian-revival home... Obama took Rezko's money even after the businessman was sued by the city of Chicago for failing to heat his low-income apartments, and even after Rezko was caught using a black business partner to obtain a minority set-aside for a fast-food franchise at O'Hare Airport.

I'll leave discussing all the other ways in which FactCheck isn't telling the whole truth about BHO's Chicago connections to those in that area.

Posted to Politics at 06:04 PM

U.S. Chamber of Commerce collaborating with Mexican government on trucks? (Thomas Donohue)

In 2006, Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. suggested that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce consider registering as a Foreign Agent. Now, from an article entitled "Mexican lobby fights for truck program" (link):

The House has made it veto-proof clear: The controversial pilot program allowing big Mexican trucks to cross the U.S. border and travel into the country must end.

The Senate has yet to act, though. And Mexico and its U.S. big-business allies are ramping up their efforts to block the repeal, including a renewed warning by Mexican officials to retaliate against U.S. exports if the program is abolished.

Mexican Embassy officials say the year-old pilot program has been a positive development for both countries...

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is bolstering Mexico’s efforts to save the program, arguing that the Mexican trucks are tightly regulated and offer unique business opportunities to the U.S. economy. And to highlight the issue, Chamber President Thomas Donohue recently traveled to Mexico to confer about the program with key officials.

"This whole issue is much more wrapped up in immigration and anti-Mexican sentiment that you see across the board," said Chamber lobbyist Janet Kavinoky, who leads the Americans for Transportation Mobility [fasterbettersafer.org]...

I'd like more information on to what extent the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is collaborating with the Mexican government.

Posted to Politics at 01:38 PM

Steve Benen/Washington Monthly continues proud tradition of deleting comments

During the Kevin Drum years at Washington Monthly, several of my on-topic, non-abusive comments were deleted. As pointed out here a few times, that means you can't trust anything you read there: everything has to be double-checked because they're willing to delete fact-checking by their readers. (I also noted that many of their old pages are full of spam, and if you link to those pages it might harm your search engine ranking.)

Now, Steve Benen continues that fine WM tradition. The following comment I left on washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_09/014836.php is no longer there. Here it is, as posted:

The latest BHO lie appears to be that McCain only supports "reform" for the Irish, when - just like Bush, the MexicanGovernment, and BHO - he wants it for almost everyone.

You can't trust those like Benen who try to mislead you about issues like this.

That's a reference to this sentence from the roundup at that WM page:

McCain wants a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants ... from Ireland.

It also references Benen's habit of trying to pretend that McCain has flip-flopped on amnesty.

Posted to Bloggage at 01:21 PM

Barack Obama Spanish-language ad continues misleading about McCain economy "strong" comment

Two new related Spanish-language ads from the Barack Obama campaign - unlike their previous effort - don't appear at first glance to contain outright lies in the misstatement of a fact sense. However, they do continue the proud BHO tradition of taking someone's words out of context.

In this case, it concerns the John McCain quote "the fundamentals of our economy are strong", which is followed immediately - literally without a pause - by "but, these are very very trying times" (video here). He's not only right about that, but to say something else would be to undermine confidence in the U.S. economy, something that could have far-reaching side-effects. Obviously, the BHO campaign isn't concerned about sending the wrong message to U.S. consumers and foreign investors.

These ads follow the BHO campaign doing the same thing last week in English. See this where Howard Kurtz fails to put McCain's quote into context, but does point out that McCain is right.

Here's the TV ad script with the video here, which is accompanied by graphics with figures for those unemployed and those losing their homes; checking those against reality is left as an exercise. Note also the chintzy sound editing as they cut off the second part of the McCain quote:

"For the thousands of parents who are left unemployed, for all the families at risk of losing their homes, for each child of the 45 million people who don't have health insurance, how is it possible that John McCain could opine, 'The fundamentals of our economy are strong?'... Perhaps John McCain and the Republicans don't want to preoccupy themselves with the prosperity of our families. But for us, there's no greater obligation."

The Florida version of the radio ad also includes this; checking these figures (and verifying that their transcription is correct) is left as an exercise, although the non-healthcare numbers seem very high:

John McCain and the Republicans have no clue about the struggles of the middle class and working people. We have the highest unemployment in Florida in 13 years. Forty-five million people are without health insurance. Nine thousand five-hundred homes are being foreclosed every day. In Florida, 1,400 families lose their homes on a daily basis. But John McCain and Republicans want to continue George Bush's same failed policies that led us to this collapse. How can McCain and the Republicans fix our economy if they don't know it's broken?

[1] Those failing to contextualize McCain's quote include Dan Balz (washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/09/17/ST2008091703422.html), and Michael Cooper of the New York Times waits until paragraph 13 to reveal McCain's full quote (link).

Posted to Politics at 10:58 AM

Blogwar undeclared against Naomi Wolf; psychiatrist called instead

Back in October, I declared Blogwar against Naomi Wolf because she didn't approve a comment or two I left on the HuffPost.

Now, I am rescinding that call, and instead am considering calling in a psychiatrist for her:

Almost everyone I work with on projects related to this campaign for liberty has been experiencing computer harassment: emails are stripped, messages disappear. That's not all: people's bank accounts are being tampered with: wire transfers to banks vanish in midair. I personally keep opening bank accounts that are quickly corrupted by fraud. Money vanishes. Coworkers of mine have to keep opening new email accounts as old ones become infected. And most disturbingly to me personally is the mail tampering I have both heard of and experienced firsthand. My tax returns vanished from my mailbox. All my larger envelopes arrive ripped straight open apparently by hand. When I show the postman, he says "That's impossible." Horrifyingly to me is the impact on my family. My childrens' report cards are returned again and again though perfectly addressed; their invitations are turned back; and my daughters many letters from camp? Vanished. All of them. Not one arrived. Try explaining that to a smart thirteen year old. Try explaining it in a way that still makes her feel secure and comfortable.

What she's saying is certainly possible, and I'm not putting it above some forces in the government to do some of those things. And, if they were doing that, they might intentionally be sloppy a) in order to make her paranoid, and b) in order to make her appear paranoid when she retells the tale. But, things like the above happen to people all the time, and certain people may bring some things like that on themselves through things like not having a secure mailbox.

However, in the case of someone who's mostly famous for encouraging Al Gore to go alpha, I don't think anyone in the government would bother.

Posted to Bloggage at 09:08 PM

John McCain promotes illegal alien amnesty to Irish group; Irish government link; no Barletta

Speaking at the Irish-American Presidential Forum earlier today in Scranton PA, John McCain promoted giving an amnesty to not just the supposed 50,000 Irish illegal aliens in the U.S., but others as well. The video is below, and per this he said:

"[There are] 50,000 Irish men and women in this country illegally who want to become citizens... we have to give them a path to citizenship... [My previous support for McCain-Kennedy] didn't make me the most popular member of my own party and it almost cost me the nomination of my party... To preserve that fragile coalition, I had to sometime take votes which were not popular... Senator Kennedy took votes that were not popular. Senator Obama took a hike... This nation is all the stronger -- this nation is stronger, this nation is stronger -- for the infusion of fresh blood and vitality that has come to this nation wave after wave: Irish, Italian, Poles, everybody who's come to this nation has enriched our nation, including our Hispanic citizenry. OK? That's what America's all about...

America is all about support for massive illegal activity and public corruption?

But, wait, it gets worse. According to this, there was no support evident for fellow Republican Lou Barletta, apparently due to his opposition to illegal activity. Instead, one of the other speakers at the event heads a group that's partly funded by the Irish government:

"Most of your parents and grandparents came here as poor immigrants and were welcomed here," said Ciaran Staunton of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform. "Immigration is not a dirty word. Immigration is our fathers' word."

Of course, the report from Sasha Issenberg of the Boston Globe doesn't indicate where ILIR gets their money.

If anyone wants to do something about this, go ask McCain a tough question about this topic and upload his response to Youtube. If he's forced to foreswear against pushing amnesty it would actually help him, and if he or his surrogates were then able to attack Obama on this issue in a pro-American way it would help McCain and have a very negative impact on the BHO campaign.

Posted to Immigration2008a at 01:46 PM

Has Winner & Associates been caught lying? (Ethan Winner, Chuck Winner)

It appears that Winner & Associates and/or key employees and/or associates thereof (Ethan Winner, Charles Winner aka Chuck Winner) have been caught red-handed trying to make a Youtube video containing a lie about Sarah Palin go viral. If I were a corporate client of Winner & Associates or even of their parent company Publicus Groupe, this is one of those things that would make my skin crawl.

Lying in order to support Barack Obama is one thing, but getting caught at it is something very, very different. Not only that, but despite all their apparent best efforts to smear Palin, their video was only able to get several thousands of views. That, to me, screams incompetence.

If you were ExxonMobil, Petronas, ChevronTexaco, or Bioengineering Resources International (BRI) [1], Shell Solar, or the Lockheed Corporation [2] how would you feel right now? Of course, I don't suggest contacting those companies and letting them know what Winner and Associates has apparently been up to, but if those companies ever decided to stoop as low as Winner & Associates apparently has, how would they like to get caught at it? They'd need to hire another PR firm in order to clean up the mess caused by their first one.

[1] winnerandassociates.com/portfolio/websites01.htm et seq.
[2] winnerandassociates.com/portfolio/training01.htm et seq.

UPDATE: Here's something interesting: within a short time of posting this, I got a visit to this page from Covington & Burling, a Washington DC law firm. That's according to Sitemeter's reverse DNS, and I haven't yet checked my server logs for the IPs that have visited this page since I posted it. However, that might prove interesting.

Especially because of this:

[Barack Obama] also has accepted tens of thousands from partners Covington & Burling, which was paid nearly a half-million dollars last year to lobby for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, or PhRMA. None of the donations came from three partners at the firm who worked as PhRMA lobbyists.

And this:

Covington partner Eric Holder Jr. is a close adviser to Obama, and a member of his vice presidential search team.

UPDATE 2: Ethan Winner takes one for the team, claiming sole personal responsibility for the video.

Posted to Politics at 10:11 AM

Should immigrants be required to disavow Sharia law? (Tancredo, Jim Harper/Cato)

Rep. Tom Tancredo has introduced H.R. 6975 (link), a very short bill that would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to say:

(G) SHARIA LAW SYSTEM- Any alien who fails to attest, in accordance with procedures specified by the Secretary of Homeland Security, that the alien will not advocate installing a Sharia law system in the United States is inadmissible.

I'm mostly all for it, and for a lot of similar things. While we certainly want to avoid requiring loyalty oaths of those who are already citizens, there's no reason we should admit those who don't buy in to our fundamental concepts, whether Constitutional or, in the case of Aztlan, our terroritorial claims.

Needless to say, the usual suspects won't like it, and one of those is Jim Harper from the Cato Institute, a supposed libertarian group with some interesting funders and which has put forth some odiously anti- and un-American ideas. Says Harper (cato-at-liberty.org/2008/09/20/fear-of-sharia-oh-please):

But more importantly, a law like this communicates precisely the wrong thing to new immigrants and the world at large. It tells the world that we’re a weak, fearful country, and that we believe Sharia law is possible in the United States. It tells the world that we’ve come off our traditional moorings and that we no longer believe in free speech and tolerance of all opinions, no matter how wrong.

Unfortunately, we have to a certain extent come off our "traditional moorings", both because of those who put money before fundamental American concepts (see Cato) and because of those on the far-left who've been mainstreamed (see the ACLU, etc.) And, of course, Sharia law barely failed in Canada but is apparently now part of England's laws.

Why take the risk just to prove something?

However, Harper is willing to make a guarantee:

There is no possibility — none — that Sharia law will be established in the United States. Not by any government body at any level.

Of course, his guarantee means nothing; if he's wrong would anyone notice? If anyone did, he'd probably just say he was wrong or just move somewhere else. It's better to be safe than sorry, and a guarantee from Harper is worthless.

Posted to Immigration2008a at 08:09 PM

Border Patrol agent allegedly intentionally poisoned (Tucson)

Earlier this year, a Border Patrol agent in the Tucson sector named Denton Moberly was allegedly poisoned using a pesticide while eating at some sort of restaurant. The details haven't been publicly released, but a summary is here and a site with updates is here. Supposedly several agencies are involved in the investigation, and presumably his co-workers are correctly hinting that it was an intentional poisoning at a restaurant.

Related:
Barack Obama at National Council of La Raza convention (ICE as terrorists)
Enrique Morones threatened Minuteman members that their food might be poisoned
Nancy Pelosi accused ICE of conducting "terrorizing raids"

Posted to Immigration2008a at 07:20 PM

Stanford University/Associated Press: only racist Dems won't vote for Obama (biased poll, Knowledge Networks)

Stanford University, the Associated Press, and something called Knowledge Networks have released a poll which is, frankly, designed to call those Democrats who won't vote for Obama racist [1]. In fact, the official title is "Poll: Racial views steer some white Dems away from Obama" (by Ron Fournier and Trevor Tompson, link). As discussed here there's a lot of data involved and I'll leave sorting through it to others. In a comment here, someone states that the survey uses the answer to "moderately well" as the mid-point of the statistics, rather than using a neutral answer. I haven't verified that and discussing how that impacts the study is left to those more familiar with how these type of things are conducted.

However, the first link has a sidebar called "Adjectives that describe blacks" featuring the answers to the question "How well does each of these words describe blacks?" And, in some ways the answers to that question are more a test of whether someone is politically correct to the verge of being delusional.

For instance, the responses from white people to "law-abiding" and "violent" are:
Democrats: around 25%/15%
all whites: around 20%/20%
Independents: around 17%/23%
Republicans: around 14%/22%

That adjective is horribly imprecise. However, considering the high rate of crime among blacks (link, link), one might consider that those who answered yes are doing so based not on prejudice so much as simple facts. Better questions would have attempted to ascertain whether respondents think all blacks, many blacks, blacks in the same socio-economic class as Obama, or many young black males are "law-abiding" or "violent".

Likewise with some of the other adjectives. 25% of white Dems said *most blacks* are "intelligent at school". What exactly that means isn't clear, but that 25% now needs to explain the differences in test scores and overall performance. There are a large number of articles along those lines (eg., link). Once again, a more precise question is needed to determine whether racism is involved or whether someone is basing their reply on statistics.

Whatever the merits of the underlying study (and the above doesn't show it to be worth much), the overall purpose is clear: Democrats who don't vote for Obama are racist.

[1] See also the "Ron Fournier is a tool of the Rethuglicans" conspiracy theory:
narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/
ap%E2%80%99s-ron-fournier-racial-arsonist-and-unethical-journalist

Posted to MultiCultiCult at 02:34 PM

Rhode Island Catholic uses strawman argument, smear in support of illegal activity (Bishop Thomas Tobin; a challenge)

The Rhode Island Catholic newspaper offers an editorial called "Rabid response to Bishops is chilling" (link). They discuss the backlash to the U.S. Catholic Church's hierarchy strong support to illegal activity, including RI Bishop Thomas Tobin's suggestion that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents should be able to have a conscientious objector option before doing raids.

However, rather than engaging the perfectly valid arguments of their opponents, they've chosen to engage in a strawman argument and also to smear their opponents:

Vile comments in letters and vicious attack e-mails have not stopped Bishop Thomas J. Tobin from speaking out against immigration enforcement raids... This latest foray by the U.S. Bishops into the national debate on immigration will most likely result in a rather “uncivilized” response by many who oppose not only their position but also that they dare speak out at all. The usual suspects, as Bishop Tobin so sadly discovered, who utter racist and offensive broadsides against immigrants, Hispanics, Bishops and the Catholic Church will shout the loudest and with the most venom. They rail against immigrants with such savagery that their commentaries are not fit for publication. However, other, more measured responses from anti-immigrant groups often maintain that Catholic Bishops should not speak about the issue of immigration, claiming it is a violation of the separation of church and state...

I'm sure they've received a lot of hate mail. However, I'm sure they've also received a large number of "measured" responses. Oddly enough, all are not fit for publication. And, separation of church and state is certainly one argument, but not the only "measured" one from opponents.

So, here's a challenge to the Rhode Island Catholic, based on this post. Let's see if they can take on this argument without resorting to logical fallacies:

1. The "comprehensive immigration reform" that the Bishops support will send the message that we don't respect our immigration laws and we don't expect anyone else to either. Despite what it's called, it will be seen around the world as an amnesty.
2. That will lead to more illegal immigration, and from many other countries besides Mexico.
3. That will lead to more people trying to cross the desert. Aside from putting pressure on Mexico - something that generally doesn't work or our leaders are too squeamish and corrupt to try - there's very little we can do about Mexicans flocking to their northern border and people from other countries coming to Mexico in order to attempt a crossing.
4. More people trying to cross the desert will lead to more people dying along the way.
5. The borders will be even less "secure" after reform and the enforcement provisions of "reform" will be largely ignored because those pushing reform have always fought attempts to secure our borders, and they will have even more power after reform from which to fight attempts to secure the borders.

Contact their editor and suggest they try their hand at a logical counterargument to the above: mobrien *at* thericatholic.com

Posted to Immigration2008a at 02:01 PM

Jeff Flake starts Pork Parade despite supporting "pork" himself (illegal immigration, twitter)

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), known around here as "Smiley", has started a site called Pork Parade (porkparade.com) which is, per him, "a place to connect and shine a brighter light on Washington's wasteful spending."

Those of you using twitter can contact him using #pork, and apparently your "twitter" will appear on their front page. And, I encourage you to send him a message.

For instance, you can ask Flake about his support for illegal immigration, a form of crypto-pork where corrupt businesses "privatize profits and socialize costs". Or, ask him about the Flake-Gutierrez amnesty. Or, about what role he played in allowing illegal aliens to take Katrina rebuilding jobs from U.S. citizens.

There's lots to ask him about, and I suggest concentrating on the things he doesn't want to talk about.

Posted to Politics at 03:59 PM

Kos promotes misleading New Democrat Network immigration poll

Subcommandante Markos Moulitsas Zuniga - better known as "Kos" - offers "Comprehensive immigration reform favored by those most affected"; "those affected" refers to voters in Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Florida. The post is a wrapper around a new poll from the New Democrat Network. You can download their PDF from here: dailykos.com/story/2008/9/18/141449/465/722/602353

Once again, Kos has selected a useless poll and used its biased findings to match his ethnic power-based goals; see the previous example in the case of this Quinnipiac University poll. That link also discusses some of the ways Kos is wrong on the general immigration issue.

As with other polls, the NDN version misleads about what exactly "comprehensive immigration reform" means. While there are several related questions, all miraculously showing support for CIR, this is the one that Kos highlights:

The federal government would grant illegal immigrants with conditional legal status permanent residency and a path to citizenship if they maintain a strong employment record, undergo a background check, learn basic English, pay any back taxes and $2,000 in fines and fees.

Those supporting that range from 72% of all voters in Nevada to 84% of all Hispanic voters in Florida. However, if the NDN had disclosed to the respondents all the fine print (and more) the results would probably be far different.

For instance, that legal status would only be "conditional" in a small number of cases; almost everyone who gets into the program would be allowed to stay if they wanted. FBI-level background checks for 10 million people would take between five and ten years at the current rate; there might be millions of new illegal aliens by the time we've finished doing checks on all the ones who applied for "reform", and the push to give those new illegal aliens their own amnesty would be on.

The recent CIR bill also only required those admitted into the program to show that they've signed up for English classes, it didn't require them to learn English. And, groups like NDN would fight to weaken English requirements in future bills. That CIR bill also briefly included a provision allowing illegal aliens to forego two out of five years of back taxes.

And, any form of amnesty would lead to more illegal immigration and more power inside the U.S. for the Mexican government.

The NDN poll, like almost all of the rest, isn't really seeking attitudes about immigration. The polls are designed to mislead those being told about them, to comfort those who support illegal and/or massive immigration, and also to guage how groups like NDN and hacks like Kos can successfully lie about this issue.

Posted to Immigration2008a at 02:21 PM

Lou Barletta - running on anti-illegal immigration - opens nine point lead against Democrat Rep. Paul Kanjorski

From this:

Democratic U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski, who is an 11-term incumbent in the congressional district centered on Scranton-Wilkes Barre... is now in serious jeopardy of losing his seat to an anti-immigration upstart.

A new Franklin & Marshall poll shows that Lou Barletta, the Republican mayor of Hazleton, has opened a sizable nine-point lead on Kanjorski, even though the economically depressed district is leaning toward Democrat Barack Obama in a year when few Democrats in Congress are seen as in jeopardy.

(Note, of course, that Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News incorrectly calls his campaign "anti-immigration".)

On a related note, see the other recent loss by Rep. Chris Cannon; that may have been related to immigration although some have claimed that other issues were in play. However, those same people also tried to portray losses by those such as Randy Graf as indicative of immigration being a losing issue when the GOP in effect almost threw that election to his opponent. And, they're doing something similar with Russell Pearce.

Posted to Immigration2008a at 12:39 PM

30% of Mexicans think U.S. was behind 9/11 attacks (second highest behind Turkey)

A recent World Public Opinion survey (link) shows that 30% of Mexicans think the United States was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the second highest percentage in the entire survey, just behind Turkey at 36%. 33% said it was al Qaeda, 1% Israel, and 37% were Other or Don't Know.

See also the Zogby poll in which 58% of Mexicans said that the U.S. Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico.

See also another poll showing that only 36% of Mexicans view Americans favorably, only 26% think Americans are hard-working, 73% see Americans as racist, and only 16% see Americans as honest.

Obviously, these are the types of polls that "liberals" and other corrupt supporters of illegal and/or massive immigration would prefer to ignore. In fact, one "liberal" was kind enough to give us a glimpse into his thought processes, such as they are. Over to Ilya Somin (link):

Obviously, I know that there is anti-Americanism in Mexico and that Mexicans have various historical grievances against the US government, some of them legitimate. At the same time, Mexico derives many benefits from its relationship with the US, including extensive trade, and remittances from the large Mexican immigrant population in this country. Certainly, I didn't expect this level of anti-American prejudice in Mexican public opinion on 9/11.

I strongly support free trade with Mexico and continued Mexican immigration and decry the recent nativist attacks on Mexican and other Hispanic immigrants. A positive relationship between the US and Mexico is, I think, very much in the interests of both countries. Before writing this post, I even wondered whether I should avoid highlighting the Mexican data, so as not to give more fodder to opponents of NAFTA and advocates of draconian restrictions on immigration.

Although I think that Somin would consider even Barbara Jordan's recommendations "draconian", regarding the rest it's too late.

Posted to Immigration2008a at 12:23 PM

Barack Obama lies about Rush Limbaugh in Spanish-language ads

The Barack Obama campaign has a new Spanish-language ad that features racial demagoguery and a distortion of Rush Limbaugh quotes. You can see the ad here:

"They want us to forget the insults we've put up with, the intolerance," the television ad's announcer says in Spanish as a picture of Rush Limbaugh appears onscreen with quotes of him saying, "Mexicans are stupid and unqualified" and "Shut your mouth or get out."

"They made us feel marginalized in a country we love so much," the ad continues. "John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One that says lies just to get our vote and another, even worse, that continues the failed policies of George Bush that put special interests ahead of working families."

[The radio ad goes on:] "Don't forget that John McCain abandoned us rather than confront the leaders of the Republican Party. Many of us were born here, and others came to work and achieve a better life for their families -- not to commit crimes or drain the system like many of John McCain's friends claim. Let's not be fooled by political tricks from John McCain and the Republicans. Vote so they respect us. Vote for a change."

This isn't the first time that Obama smeared Limbaugh, and there's much to discuss about this ad. First let's deal with the misleading Rush quotes. The first quote is actually from 1993 (link):

"If you are unskilled and uneducated, your job is going south. Skilled workers, educated people are going to do fine 'cause those are the kinds of jobs NAFTA is going to create. If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people, I'm serious, let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do -- let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work."

The Obama campaign misquoted Rush by omitting the context; the context certainly doesn't show Rush in a good light, but it's far different from what the Obama campaign is trying to do: pretend that Rush said that all Mexicans are "stupid and unqualified". The BHO campaign is lying.

The second quote is just as bad; it was actually from a satire in which Rush proposed a series of draconian immigration laws, only to reveal at the end that those were the actual laws of the Mexican government (link). "Shut your mouth or get out" was actually his distillation of one of Mexico's laws; see for instance this example of meddling foreigners being ejected from Mexico. For video of Rush's satire, see this.

And, the first quote referred to "Mexicans" in the sense of "Mexican citizens who live in Mexico". Democrats frequently have trouble understanding the fact that (according to our laws), Mexicans can't vote in U.S. elections. Only U.S. citizens can, including those of Mexican descent. Certainly, those U.S. citizens of Mexican descent will sympathize with actual Mexicans, but some in the former camp look down on, say, illegal aliens. Obviously, to the BHO campaign there's little difference between an actual Mexican and a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent.

And, of course, some segment of immigrants do come here to engage in criminal behavior, and all those in the U.S. receive a wide range of public benefits. Those who are low-wage workers - the great majority of illegal aliens from Mexico - do take more than they pay in. And, the crimes committed by immigrants would not occur if they weren't here in the first place. As is their habit, the BHO campaign is trying to shut down a discussion of vital matters rather than having an open debate.

As for who's helping Barack Obama spread his lies:

* The first link is to an Ed O'Keefe post at the Washington Post. Needless to say, he just passes the ad on without doing what I did: spend a few minutes searching. Please write the WaPo and ask them to stop helping BHO lie: ombudsman *at* washpost.com

* Ben Smith of the Politico likewise can't be bothered to do even basic research; he also refers to the largely non-existent "anti-Immigration wing of the Republican Party": politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/Obama_vs_Rush_en_Espanol.html

* Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune (mdsilva *at* tribune.com) also can't be bothered to do simple searches: swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/09/limbaugh_latinos_tv_ad_wars.html

* Eric Kleefeld is yet another searchophobe: tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/obama_spanishlanguage_ad_ties.php

UPDATE: Rush comments on this here; he also calls Obama a liar who took Rush's quotes out of context.

UPDATE 2: The end is nigh! Worthless hack Jake Tapper fact-checks the ad and the BHO campaign's response to his concerns, finishing by saying "the Obama campaign has crossed a line into misleading the viewers of its new TV ad" (blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/from-the-fact-1.html).

Meanwhile:
* Mori Dinauer passes along the lies (prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=09&year=2008&base_name=lightning_round_fiorina_gets_w)
* Jeralyn Merritt does the same, only worse (talkleft.com/story/2008/9/17/172619/529)
* Alex Koppelman comes close, but does including Rush's objections to the ad (letters.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/09/17/obama_limbaugh/view).

UPDATE 3:
* Eunice Moscoso of the Austin American Statesman does provide the McCain camp response to the ad (defending their previous support of amnesty, a support that continues) but fails to note that the BHO campaign lied. A comment I left has not been approved (link)

* Nick Timiraos of the Wall Street Journal includes some of the response from Limbaugh here, but also downplays the extent to which the BHO campaign took the quotes out of context. A quote I left was deleted; I left it again and that might be deleted as well.

* Beltway lightweight Ana Marie Cox links to the Tapper piece, but fails to note that taking quotes out of context was involved, only saying "An ad attempts to tie McCain to some particularly unpleasant Republicanness [in this case, a closed borders approach to immigration], but it turns out McCain was not at all associated with that particular nastiness." (link)

* Kathleen Hennessey of the Associated Press discusses a BHO campaign stop and works this in as well: One [BHO] commercial airing in Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado links McCain to comments apparently hostile to immigrants made by conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. (link)

UPDATE 4: Even a day after Jake Tapper called the ad misleading, others are valiantly struggling with the truth.

* Tim Gaynor of Reuters offers "Controversial Obama ad revives immigration issue". He includes the muted response from McCain and correctly points out that, at the end of day, BHO and McCain are basically on the same page on this issue. However, Gayner completely fails to point out the problems with the quotes. A comment I left was not approved. (link).

* "shovelhood" shows the level of thinking at DailyKos by noting that Rush says the quotes were taken out of context... then using other quotes in an attempt to show that Rush is a racist and without dealing with the quotes in the ad. Whether that's an intentional attempt at distraction or an issue with the thinking processes of "shovelhood" isn't clear. Some commenters don't care about the ad being misleading, but a couple do seem to expres qualms about the BHO campaign lying (dailykos.com/story/2008/9/18/154144/680/122/602969).

UPDATE 5: Ed O'Keefe at the Washington Post - the blogger who first started promoting BHO's lying ad - offers a bit of a non-correction correction in "McCain Camp Decries Obama Spanish Ads" (link), which links to both Rush's comments and those from Tapper. I suppose the latter were key; when another member of the "club" points out that you've promoted a lying ad you just have to admit defeat.

UPDATE 6: The end is nigher! In an editorial, the New York Times says "Mr. Obama’s retaliatory ad, also in Spanish, was just as fraudulent. It slimed Mr. McCain as a friend and full-bore ally of restrictionists like Rush Limbaugh, even though Mr. Limbaugh has long attacked Mr. McCain’s immigration moderation. It quotes Mr. Limbaugh as calling all Mexicans stupid and ordering them to “shut your mouth or get out,” which he never did.".

UPDATE 7: Rush offers "Obama Is Stoking Racial Antagonism" here. This has provoked a new round of those willing to lie for Obama at any cost to whatever reputations they had.

* Digby (digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/black-kettle-by-digby-limbaugh-is-so.html) offers "Black Kettle". It uses the "shovelhood" technique (see above) without even acknowledging the bit about the BHO campaign taking quotes out of context. The quote she provides as a distraction from the original lies is probably taken out of context as well.

* Jonathan Stein from MoJo links to the Rush piece, and continues to take his second quote out of context. (link) Unbelievable? No, just in line with his previous "thinking".

* Adam Serwer first admits that the quotes were taken out of context and that' was "stupid". Then, he launches into the "shovelhood" technique (link).

UPDATE 8: Joe Klein offers "Take It Down, Barack" (link). Klein is such an obsequious hack that even Jake Tapper calling BHO out wasn't enough. It took a far greater authority to spur him to action: "The New York Times editorial board--once again calling a lie a lie--slams both McCain and Obama for their Spanish-language ads about immigration policy. I've given up any hope of McCain running an honest campaign, but if Obama really wants to present an honorable alternative to McCain's non-stop sleaze, he should take down his immigration ad immediately."

UPDATE 9 (9/22/08): * Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune (mdsilva *at* tribune.com) - even after all the above - continues trying to help BHO lie (swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/09/john_mccain_immigration_reform.html) by saying "McCain's Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, has been going after McCain lately on immigration -- attempting to tag the Republican with radio's Rush Limbaugh and intolerant words that the talk show host has had for immigrants in Spanish-language ads airing in hotly contested Western states."

Posted to Immigration2008a at 12:34 PM

John McCain ad was right and Barack Obama, MSM misled about BHO's kindergartener sex education bill

Earlier this month the John McCain campaign released an ad (link, video link) saying in part:

"Obama's one accomplishment?

Legislation to teach "comprehensive sex education" to kindergartners.

Learning about sex before learning to read?

Barack Obama.

This has led to a wide variety of BHO supporters - specifically those in the MSM - calling McCain a liar. To a certain extent, they have somewhat of a point: the bill might not be an "accomplishment" for BHO since he was just a supporter and not a co-sponsor and since it never passed. And, the McCain campaign might not have correctly contextualized some of the other quotes they provide in the ad relating to BHO's educational plans.

However, their complaints don't usually involve those points but instead revolve around the middle sentences quoted above; they try to pretend that kindergarteners were just covered by the bill in order to prevent abuse when in fact the bill was much more far-reaching than BHO and his helpers would have you believe. For an example of what Obama would have you believe, see this or this quote from campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki (link):

"Barack Obama supports sensible, community-driven education for children because, among other things, he believes it could help protect them from pedophiles. A child's knowledge of the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touching is crucial to keeping them safe from predators."

Now, for the truth about the bill, read this:

Within moments of the ad's appearance, the Obama campaign called it "shameful and downright perverse." The legislation in question, a bill [Senate Bill 99] in the Illinois State Senate that was supported but not sponsored by Obama, was, according to Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton, "written to protect young children from sexual predators" and had nothing to do with comprehensive sex education for kindergartners...

Newspaper, magazine, and television commentators quickly piled on. "The kindergarten ad flat-out lies," wrote the New York Times, arguing that "at most, kindergarteners were to be taught the dangers of sexual predators." The Washington Post wrote that "McCain's 'Education' Spot is Dishonest, Deceptive." And in a column in The Hill, the influential blogger Josh Marshall called the sex-education spot "a rancid, race-baiting ad based on [a] lie. Willie Horton looks mild by comparison."

Read the rest, which includes a discussion of how what was originally meant for those in the sixth grade and up was changed to everyone in K-12 because urban areas might require different topics to be covered than more rural areas. The article also includes Byron York trying to get in touch with three of the four original sponsors and for some unknown reason or other not getting his calls returned. Only one of the four spoke with him about the bill:

After we discussed other aspects of the bill, I told [original co-sponsor state senator Iris Martinez] that reading the bill, I just didn't see it as being exclusively, or even mostly, about inappropriate touching. "I didn't see it that way, either," Martinez said. "It's just more information about a whole variety of things that have to go into a sex education class, the things that are outdated that you want to amend with things that are much more current."

So, I asked, you didn't see it specifically as being about inappropriate touching?

"Absolutely not."

That doesn't mean that the parts involving kindergarteners wouldn't be restricted to just inappropriate touching. However, the age range was lowered specifically to allow different school districts to offer teaching appropriate to their areas, and thus those in lower grades could be taught much more than BHO is letting on. For a discussion of that, see this or this.

A list of just some of those who've helped Barack Obama hide the truth about the bill is in the extended entry:

* Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times say the ad "misleadingly accused Obama of endorsing sex education for kindergarten students" (link)

* A New York Times editorial falsely states "At most, kindergarteners were to be taught the dangers of sexual predators." (link) What they could have been taught was left up to the localities.

* Following the party line boilerplate, Paul Krugman says 'In reality, he supported legislation calling for “age and developmentally appropriate education”; in the case of young children, that would have meant guidance to help them avoid sexual predators.'

* Larry Rohter of the New York Times pretends the ad was implying that "comprehensive" meant that kindergarteners would receive the information as high school students; he's probably the only person coming to that conclusion. He also takes Obama's word for his understanding of the bill rather than discussing what the bill actually says and what others intended by it (link).

* Emi Kolawole of FactCheck correctly points out some of the minor errors in the ad, but says 'It's true that the phrase "comprehensive sex education" appeared in the bill, but little else in McCain's claim is accurate.' (link)

* Michael Scherer of Time says "[t]he sex-education bill in question had called only for age-appropriate instruction..."

* Brave New Films promotes a Planned Parenthood ad (alternet.org/blogs/video/98697/ planned_parenthood_rips_into_mccain_for_sex-ed_smear_campaign): 'In an ad, they say that Obama was helping children protect themselves from sex offenders, while McCain seemingly doesn't care.'

* Nedra Pickler and Charles Babbington of the Associated Press claim that the ad "misrepresent[ed] [BHO's] position on sex education for kindergartners." (link). That's not completely inaccurate, but it fails to note that BHO either hasn't read, hasn't understood, or is misrepresenting the bill.

* Joe Garofali of the San Francisco Chronicle falsely states 'Obama doesn't support explicit sex education for kindergarteners. The bill -- which never was passed out of the Illinois legislature --included teaching "age-appropriate sex education" -- you know, what is inappropriate touching, that sort of stuff'. (link)

* Richard Cohen offered "The Ugly New McCain" (link) and called the ad a "lie". That referenced a McCain appearance on The View (!) where Joy Behar called it a lie as well.

* "Hilzoy" of the Washington Monthly pretends it was just about inappropriate touching (link).

* Joe Sudbay tries to pretend it was just about preventing abuse (americablog.com/2008/09/mccain-got-nasty-defending-his-negative.html)

* Democratic consultant Mark Mellman says "There is not an iota of reality in McCain’s attack on Obama's supporting comprehensive sex education for kindergartners. As we all know, he voted to help children avoid sexual predators."

* A Tampa Bay Tribune editorial says 'The facts: Obama, while a state lawmaker in Illinois, supported a measure to provide older students with age and developmentally appropriate sex education. Younger children, such as those kindergarten-age, would be taught "age-appropriate" things such as how to protect themselves from sexual predators.'

* A Minneapolis Star-Tribune editorial says "There is no evidence that Obama supported explicit sex education in kindergarten, as a McCain ad implied."

* Not even understanding BHO talking points, Cox Newspapers columnist Tom Teepen says 'No, as an Illinois state legislator Obama did not push for "comprehensive sex education" for kindergarteners. He supported a proposal for age appropriate sex education -- which, for kindergarteners, would have meant only making them aware of the possibility of sex abuse and teaching them means to counter it.'

UPDATE:
* Darrell West from the Brookings Institution falsely states "The McCain campaign ran another spot erroneously claiming Obama favored comprehensive sex education for kindergarteners." (link)

* It's an Anderson Cooper from CNN and "FactCheck" two-fer. CNN aired a "Fact Checking" episode that hewed to the party line (link):

[RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT]: Did Obama want to teach sex education to kindergartners? Not really. The programming question was intended to teach kids how to avoid sexual predators, says the nonpartisan group FactCheck.org.

VIVECA NOVAK, FACTCHECK.ORG: What he wanted to do was increase the range of some -- some sort of sex education, K-12. But the kind of thing he was interested in having kids at a young age learn about was inappropriate sexual advances that might be made against them.

What BHO says he wants and what was in the bill he voted for are, of course, two entirely different things.

Posted to Politics at 10:19 PM

Does Tanya Schevitz understand and support fundamental American concepts? (Chris Patti, Claudia Keith)

Tanya Schevitz of the San Francisco Chronicle offers "Undocumented students' college aid in jeopardy" (link) about the recent ruling reinstating a suit over the California law giving in-state tuition to illegal aliens. That law is explicitly anti-American: it gives citizens of foreign countries who are here illegally a better deal than some U.S. citizens, and laws like that prevent some U.S. citizens from going to college. In other words, illegal aliens take a chance at college from U.S. citizens. Such laws are a direct attack on the fundamental concept of citizenship.

The title of the article is about what you'd expect from San Francisco in general: putting the interests of foreign citizens ahead of U.S. citizens. While Tanya Schevitz might not be the one that come up with headline, the article itself is as bad as the title.

Before getting out your handkerchiefs, Tanya Shevitz does do one service: letting us in on the fact that the politicians who crafted the law (AB540) did it in such a way as to evade the spirit of federal law:

"The central issue in the case is whether or not the criteria for in-state fees is based on residency or not, and the Legislature carefully constructed the statute so that it was not based on residency," [University of California attorney Chris Patti] said. "It is based on whether you went to a California high school and graduated from a California high school, and those criteria are not based on residency."

The rest of the article wholy sympathizes with those illegal aliens who would be affected and doesn't show any concern for those U.S. citizens who will have their college educations taken away from them:

A state appellate court has put a financial cloud over the future of tens of thousands of undocumented California college students... ...If the law is struck down, it has the potential to financially devastate undocumented students, who are not eligible for state or federal aid. For many, it may mean the difference between attending school and dropping out, Patti said... ...The ruling was disturbing news to those undocumented students who need the subsidy to stay in school...

Unlike Schvitz, my concern is with the U.S. citizens who are victimized by laws like this. Those who are "undocumented" should be encouraged to repatriate themselves and their home countries should be encouraged in one way or another to take care of them. Needless to say, the California State University doesn't agree:

"What we are concerned about are the students who are caught in the middle of this legal dispute," said CSU spokeswoman Claudia Keith.

Near the end of the article Tonya Shevitz plays a common trick in articles like this, quoting a sympathetic "undocumented" victim. As has been done in countless other articles, the "undocumented immigrant" doesn't give her last name, and also stresses that she's only used to the U.S. Considering all the other articles containing those exact same components, a real reporter might consider whether they were being played:

Gesel, who declined to give her last name because of her immigration status, has lived in California since she was 9 but is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico with no path to legal status under current immigration laws... "We were raised in this country. Most of our life is here," she said.

Considering the number of times that something very similar to the above has been used in other articles, does anyone think Schveitz is a real reporter?

Note also that Tyche Hendricks was involved in some way with the article.

Send your polite thoughts to tschevitz *at* sfchronicle.com

Posted to Immigration2008a at 08:19 PM

Lawsuit challenging California in-state tuition for illegal aliens reinstated

From this:

A state appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit [Martinez v. Regents of the University of California, CV052064] challenging a policy that allows some illegal immigrants to pay lower in-state tuition to attend California's public colleges and universities.

The 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento said Monday that a lower court erred in dismissing the suit brought by 42 students who paid far more to attend college because they were out-of-state residents.

It's worth pointing out what the Associated press isn't being as clear as they should be regarding this issue: U.S. citizens were required to pay a higher rate than foreign citizens who are here illegally. That's a direct threat to the entire concept of citizenship.

The University of California is looking into appealing the ruling.

Posted to California at 12:01 PM

Jonathan Martin/Politico: please try real reporting for a change ("Holtz-Eakin: McCain helped create BlackBerry")

Jonathan Martin of the Politico is a sickening hack who's a complete failure as a reporter. His latest "scoop" is falsely titled "Holtz-Eakin: McCain helped create BlackBerry" (link). In fact, that McCain advisor was refering to McCain's role in helping develop the telecommunications infrastructure; he wasn't claiming that McCain helped invent the Blackberry specifically.

If Martin weren't a complete hack he would have pointed that out, knowing full well how much stories transmogrify as they're re-told. See, of course, Al Gore supposedly claiming to invent the Internet, something you're likely to still hear today. Even Matt Yglesias caught on, and that's saying something: yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/09/dhe_no_mccain_no_blackberry.php

What I suggest is we keep a tally of all the things that Johnathan Martin of the Politico refuses to cover, and we point out his journalistic failings before and after the election. Please leave some of the things Martin refuses to discuss in the comments.

Posted to Politics at 11:47 AM

Catherine McNicol Stock: no evidence Sarah Palin linked to white supremacists, but she comes from that area

Desperately trying to glom onto AntiPalinMania, professor Catherine McNicol Stock - chair of the history department at Connecticut College - offers a hilarious slab of absolute stupidity called "Intolerance thrives in Palin's Pacific Northwest" (link). Summary: Sarah Palin is from the Pacific Northwest; there are many white supremacists and "antistatists" in the Pacific Northwest; there's no evidence that Sarah Palin is a white supremacist, but...

It has been years since groups such as the Montana Militia, the Posse Comitatus and the Sagebrush Rebels, and individuals such as Terry Nichols and Ted Kaczynski have made us wonder why so many "angry white men" populated our rural regions. Many of us have forgotten the threat once posed by domestic terrorists and instead have turned our attention to foreign terrorists. But we should never forget that in the late 20th century, ultra-Christian, antistatist and white-supremacist groups flourished in the states of the Pacific Northwest - called by many the "Great White Northwest" - the very region that Sarah Palin and her family call home.

If you'd like to grade Stock's essay, you can contact her here: conncoll.edu/Academics/web_profiles/stock.html

Posted to Politics at 01:20 PM

Troopergate: investigation overseen by biased Democrat? (Hollis French)

From this:

A Republican state representative says the Democrat overseeing a legislative investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's dismissal of her public safety commissioner seems intent on damaging her vice presidential candidacy. The Republican wants the Democrat removed from the post.

Democratic state Sen. Hollis French "appears to be steering the direction of the investigation, its conclusion and its timing in a manner that will have maximum partisan political impact on the national and state elections," state Rep. John Coghill said in a letter dated Friday.

And, from this:

I have run across some very explosive audio from an Alaska Joint Judicial Committee Hearing. If you haven't heard about this yet, then you certainly will in the week ahead. What you will hear is the committee discussing who's really running the investigation. One of the committee members tells the "independent" investigator, Mr. Branchflower, that he has the right to put someone on the subpoena list who was omitted for some reason. However, investigator Branchflower refuses to do so, saying that he must consult with Mr. French, the Alaskan Democratic Senator leading the "troopergate" investigation. This confuses the committee member, who wonders why he has to consult with Hollis French at all...

Here's the audio:



UPDATE: The video originally embedded above (Youtube ID LJSSABGo5wg) was there before, and it had a little over 200 views. Then, it went missing for an unknown reason. Now it's back at youtube.com/watch?v=s0Efv0kbqOs You might want to save off a copy.

Posted to Politics at 11:58 AM

Nicole Gaouette/LAT: leftwing groups on the "lookout for immigration raids"

Criminal enterprises that have fixed locations usually employ lookouts in the neighborhood where they operate who warn them of impending police raids and they frequently pay off local officials or cops. There's (perhaps) only one form of illegal activity for which the Los Angeles Times would consider that acceptable: illegal immigration, of course.

Thus it is that Nicole Gaouette of the Los Angeles Times offers "On the lookout for immigration raids" (link) about various leftwing groups that organize phone trees and collect intelligence from those in small towns regarding possible Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. For "balance" (LAT-style), she includes four paragraphs relating to those who don't support these efforts, starting at the twelfth paragraph. The rest of the two-pager comes close to a how-to guide.

She also fails to go into the social fabric-related aspects of this issue. Is it healthy for our society to have millions of people - led by a small number of "community organizers" - who don't think our laws apply to them? Doesn't the embedding of support for illegal activity in one subsector of our population have a huge social cost? Shouldn't newspapers do exposes on those involved in these attempts rather than acting as a sympathetic ear? Apparently to the LAT all that matters is that there's profits to be made.

Gaouette also says that Leos from MIRA said that one of their tips came from "spouse of a local official"; whether that's true or not isn't known, but assuming it is, isn't that a potential example of public corruption? Shouldn't the LAT look into that? What if, for instance, the spouse of an FBI agent tipped off the bad guys to a drug raid? Would that be enough to make the LAT concerned, or would they turn out to be corrupt in that case as well?

Should the LAT want to stop advocating for illegal activity and start doing some real reporting, they could look into one of their quote sources: Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. She could, for instance, point out that their president is linked to the Mexican government, and she could look into their links to local officials, their lawsuit which would have supported Western Union, and so on.

Others quoted:
* Julien Ross, director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition
* Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrants' Rights Alliance
* Socorro Leos, a community organizer from that group
* Sandra Sanchez, "an immigrants' rights advocate with the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization." (also has an indirect link to the Mexican government)
* Diego Bonesatti, "a community organizer in Melrose Park, Ill."

Posted to Immigration2008a at 03:23 PM

"Tour of the Faithful": Catholic Church, others try to change immigration laws (America's Voice)

In September and October, the Catholic Church and others will be holding interfaith events [1] across the U.S. designed to support "comprehensive immigration reform", aka amnesty. This "Tour of the Faithful" (catholicsinalliance.org/node/20123) was apparently organized with the help of Frank Sharry's America's Voice [2] and includes an appearance by former president Jimmy Carter and many others [3]. On October 13 they'll be holding a forum featuring unnamed Illinois politicians; one of those will probably be Luis Gutierrez.

If you want to do something about this, go to one of their events and make points like these and get their responses on video. The only way these "leaders" are able to continue to support "reform" is by avoiding a real debate. Even a line of questioning that isn't "prosecutorial-style" would show the fallacy in their thinking. And, that would have a very great impact on this issue.

For instance, during the conference call announcing the tour, Rabbi David Saperstein said:

"In addition to our historic experience, our tradition also demands of us concern for the stranger in our midst. The Torah contains over 36 references to this principle, including Leviticus' command, 'When strangers sojourn with you in your land, you shall not do them wrong..."

Point out to him that the "reform" he supports would lead to more illegal immigration, and thus would lead to more people trying to cross the desert - with some dying along the way. If he responds that "reform" would include tougher border security, point out to him that those pushing reform have always fought attempts to secure our borders, and that they'd have even more power after reform from which to fight attempts to secure the borders.

[1] From catholicalliance.org: One of the events, "Voting American Catholic 2008: Platform for the Global Common Good," will be held Sept. 27 in Omaha, Neb., as part of the Archdiocese of Omaha Social Ministry Commission's 10th annual Faithful Citizenship Conference at the St. Cecilia Institute in Omaha, a conference co-sponsor... Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is scheduled to speak at an Oct. 9 Christian immigration forum in Lexington, Ky. The tour takes in cities like Boston, Washington, Denver, Los Angeles and Phoenix -- as well as smaller venues such as Lutz, Fla.; Conway, Ark.; and Kalamazoo, Mich. -- before winding up in Chicago Oct. 19 with two U.S. representatives and two Illinois state representatives speaking at a candidate forum on immigration.

[2] americasvoiceonline.org/press_releases/entry/
national_faith_leaders_launch_tour_of_the_faithful/

[3] Those speaking on the conference call were, per [2]:
Rabbi David Saperstein, Director, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, President, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
Dr. Jim Ryan, Council Executive, Colorado Council of Churches
The Most Reverend Bishop John C. Wester, Archdiocese of Salt Lake City and Chair of Committee on Migration and Refugee Services for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Posted to Immigration2008a at 03:45 PM

"Obama Waffles" kicked out of Values Voter Summit (Joan Lowy/AP)

From this Associated Press article by Joan Lowy:

Activists at a conservative political forum snapped up boxes of waffle mix depicting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a racial stereotype on its front and wearing Arab-like headdress on its top flap.

Values Voter Summit organizers cut off sales of Obama Waffles boxes on Saturday, saying they had not realized the boxes displayed ''offensive material.'' The summit and the exhibit hall where the boxes were sold had been open since Thursday afternoon.

...While Obama Waffles takes aim at Obama's politics by poking fun at his public remarks and positions on issues, it also plays off the old image of the pancake-mix icon Aunt Jemima, which has been widely criticized as a demeaning stereotype. Obama is portrayed with popping eyes and big, thick lips as he stares at a plate of waffles and smiles broadly.

You can see a picture of the box at the site that sells the mix here, and there are other pictures here; apparently one of the instigators of the cessation were activists from the group American Atheists.

Meanwhile, there's a picture of Aunt Jemima here, and a wide selection of Obama caricatures are available through this search (or this). Somehow there appear to be significant differences between the former and the latter including those from Obama Waffles. See also the John Kerry caricature at Obama Waffles' site. See also the long history of political satire. See also the fact that the AP doesn't mention the incident where Obama wanted to be left alone to finish his waffles. See also the multitude of images of celebrities next to products and satires of same.

See the wonderful future where president Obama's minions would play the race card in an attempt to ban anything that portrayed him in a bad light. And, see the AP trying to score two points: one in an attempt to portray conservatives as racist, and another specifically just to help out Obama.

Posted to Politics at 03:12 PM

We've received a note from Andrew Sullivan!

At one time, Andrew Sullivan was somewhat sane. Then, a series of things happened and, well, you know how he is today.

Over five years ago, I got a link from Sully, and thus I feel duty-bound to help. Using that linkage as an entree, I sent him an email expressing my hope that he seeks help.

I got this in return:

Posted to WackyHumor at 11:46 AM

Obama strategist David Axelrod owns "astroturfing" company (ASK Public Strategies)

Via this comes this article from Business Week about Barack Obama chief strategist David Axelrod:

From the same River North address, Axelrod operates a second business, ASK Public Strategies, that discreetly plots strategy and advertising campaigns for corporate clients to tilt public opinion their way... On behalf of ComEd and Comcast, the firm helped set up front organizations that were listed as sponsors of public-issue ads. Industry insiders call such practices "Astroturfing," a reference to manufacturing grassroots support...

Oddly enough, some months ago I noted a very strange blog comment in support of Obama, which seemed to me like something that had been typed out by a worker in India. I haven't seen too many comments using odd locutions like that since, but any comment thread at the Washington Post, Politico, and a host of other sites is filled with pointless comments promoting Obama.

And, of course, there's Digg. See this case for an example of an inaccurate smear that was transmitted by several blogs and by Digg. A look at one of those popular Digg posts will show an avalanche of similar pro-Obama comments, and with anti-Obama (or at least pro-truth) comments dugg down so most people will need to click a link first to see them. Could Axelrod's firm be engaging in astroturfing using sockpuppets in order to promote Axelrod's most famous client? Now, come on. Does anyone think someone linked to the Chicago machine would stoop that low?

To help out, I added the following line to the start of his Wikipedia page; let's see how long it stays there:

He operates [[ASK Public Strategies]], a company that allegedly engages in "[[astroturfing]]" [http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/mar2008/db20080314_121054.htm].

9/29/08 15:55 PST UPDATE: At this exact moment, someone else has provided a full section on ASK at his WP page, what will happen to it is anyone's guess: en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/David_Axelrod_(political_consultant)#ASK_Public_Strategies

Posted to Politics at 01:18 PM

Mexico linked groups complain about "hate group" FAIR (FIRM, SEIU, America's Voice, NCLR)

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is currently conducting the "Hold Their Feet to the Fire" rally in Washington DC where radio hosts from across the country and their listeners lobby their representatives to support pro-borders causes. Needless to say, the other side doesn't like that too much, and four such groups have joined together to place a scurrilous advertisement in the Politico and Roll Call. You can see the ad linked from seiu.org/media/pressreleases.cfm?pr_id=1753, which says:

Today the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), America's Voice, Center for New Community, and the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) launched a print ad denouncing known hate group, FAIR (the Federation for American Immigration Reform), for poisoning the immigration debate with bigoted, xenophobic hate speech. In support of the ad, SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina issued the following statement:

"It's time that everyone learns who FAIR’s founders, leaders and followers truly are. They are not reformers, but a group of extremists whose leaders are fostering a bigoted, anti-immigrant, anti-American agenda that we must stop... ...By continuing to fan the flames of hate and fear, FAIR has contributed to rising levels of hate crimes and discrimination... ...Crude attempts to shut down our border and round up anyone who looks a certain way do not begin to solve our broken immigration system..."

There is, of course, more ranting at the SEIU page. You can read FAIR's response here. The ad juxtaposes supposedly inflammatory comments from FAIR-related persons with pictures of Angry White Men, none of whom are presumably those being quoted. For instance, I don't believe that Dan Stein from FAIR is a skinhead. The comments also deserve a grown-up discussion, something that the SEIU and their friends don't want to have. In fact, as the quote above makes clear, they want to silence FAIR and others who oppose them by calling them names. The ad including a headline noting that the SPLC has designated FAIR as a "hate group". The ad also includes a link to the National Council of La Raza's WeCanStopTheHate.org.

What the ad doesn't note is that FIRM includes one member group that's allegedly collaborated with the Mexican government and another group headed by someone who serves on an advisory council to that government. The SEIU paid someone to organize immigration marches, and that person serves on that same advisory council to the Mexican government. In addition to occasionally attempting to mislead and being the subject of at least two exposes, the Southern Poverty Law Center has an indirect link to that government. And, of course, the NCLR funds extremists and gave an award to a vile racist among many other things.

Posted to Immigration2008a at 12:12 PM

Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney, Chuck Baldwin to tour U.S. in "big Partridge Family-style bus"

Earlier today at a press conference in a Beltway conference room far, far away, third party candidates Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, and Chuck Baldwin appeared with Papa Bear, aka Ron Paul, to sign on to four principles uniting all their disparate movements and to urge others to support third party candidates instead of the Democrats or Republicans. They also announced that all of them are going to be touring the U.S. countryside in a "big Patridge Family-style bus" in order to spread their message of hope, change, liberty, freedom, etc.

But, the biggest surprise was yet to come: the bus will have a blimp attached!

"This ground-breaking bus-blimp combination will surely succeed where our other attempts have failed," said a jubilant Ron Paul. "Americans thought the blimp alone was kooky and thought our period costume parades were creepy, but a bus-blimp combination will set America's heart a-fire with the quest for liberty!"

Meanwhile, Bob Barr - whose vanity campaign hasn't even brought in $1 million - was originally scheduled to attend but dropped out at the last minute in order to hold his own press conference. This caused Ron Kokesh to loudly renounce his endorsement of Barr. How Barr will make up the 5% of his voting base he thereby lost is not clear.

For more, twitter "loser".

Posted to Politics at 12:50 PM

Agriprocessors charged with over 9000 child labor law violations

From this:

The Iowa attorney general's office filed child labor charges Tuesday against the owner and managers of the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant, the site of one of the nation's largest workplace immigration raids.

The complaint alleges more than 9,000 violations of Iowa's child labor law at the plant in Postville, saying the violations involved 32 children under age 18, including seven who were younger than 16.

An affidavit said children were exposed to dry ice and chlorine solutions and were operating conveyor belts, meat grinders, circular saws, power washers and power shears.

The attorney general's office said the violations occurred from Sept. 9, 2007, to May 12, 2008, when the plant was raided by federal immigration agents.

If many on the left - including national Democrats - had had their way, there would have been no raid. While there were several investigations under way at the time of the raid, some or all could have come to little, and the abuses might have continued with the investigations were underway. For more on this issue, see the links at the end of this post.

Posted to Immigration2008a at 08:21 PM

Fired up! Anne Kornblut/WaPo wants tough questions for Sarah Palin

As pointed out here countless times, the mainstream media has a habit of asking extremely weak questions, not coming up with any sort of follow-up, accepting answers that are just stock speeches as if they contained new information, and not asking about immigration matters unless necessary.

But, all that's going to change! In fact, the Washington Post's Anne Kornblut is gleefully soliciting tough questions from their readers (link). What caused the change? Why Sarah Palin of course:

With the sequestration of Gov. Sarah Palin set to end with her ABC interview later this week, the next issue on the table is: What are the most important questions that Palin should be asked?

...We're casting a wide net -- and hoping readers of all stripes will contribute in the comment thread below. We will assess questions posted here on the Trail over the course of the day -- post your comments by 6 p.m. EST -- to come up with a "best of" list.

Bill Burton, the Obama spokesman, declined to play along, not wanting to give any assistance with the Palin interview prep...

I support her trying to have Palin asked tough questions, but I'm curious as to why when she's had access to the Obama campaign she hasn't asked them anything discomforting, at least as far as I know. For instance, this post about Obama preparing for a speech could have simply been compiled from a campaign press release, including this ground-breaking paragraph:

He said: "This speech is different."

Pravda couldn't have done it better!

Also, Kornblut was apparently among those who asked Obama about his VP choice before that became public. Everyone knew how he'd respond to inquiries, but Kornblut presented the predictable response to those inquiries as if they were breaking news and, of course, didn't ask him a real question about something else (link).

On the wacky! side of things, Kornblut "reported" on those wacky, "ridiculous" questions the Obama campaign has been faced with (link). She also rolled in some myth-building about the MSM doing real reporting.

Back in April, she thought that because Clinton and Obama agreed on so many things it was difficult to think up questions for them (link). Obviously, it's not so difficult because many people disagree with both of them, but Kornblut couldn't figure that out.

And, she's even acted as the The Trail's own TV Guide, letting us know that Hillary was going to be on SNL (link).

The bottom line is that the Washington Post should start doing real reporting by asking all the candidates tough, specific questions about their policies. Instead, they spread smears and are quite selective about who they subject to tough questions and what they ask about.

UPDATE: Apparently the above wasn't bad enough, because on 9/12 Kornblut offered "Palin Links Iraq to 9/11, A View Discarded by Bush" (link). She completely distorted Palin's point (link). The WaPo later changed part of the article... without noting that it had been changed (link). And, either the Army or the WaPo appears to have violated protocols relating to noting details about the deployment of likely enemy targets (link). Also, in "Obama Ridicules McCain's Economic Response" (link) she follows ten paragraphs transcribing and paraphrasing BHO's remarks at an appearance with one paragraph from the McCain campaign. She also included this, bolding added:

As he wrapped up his speech, Obama's advisers embraced two apparent gaffes by their rivals -- economic adviser Doug Holt-Eakin's claim that McCain had created the BlackBerry, and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina's admission that neither Palin nor McCain would be qualified to run a major corporation.

The use of "admission" is highly questionable in this case, as it means (per dictionary.com) "confession of a charge, an error, or a crime; acknowledgment... an acknowledgment of the truth of something... a point or statement admitted; concession". In this context, its use implies that there's some standard way of judging that neither McCain nor Palin are qualified to run a large corporation and that Fiorina was admitting that the standard showed them not to be so qualified. In fact, her "admission" is simply her opinion. A word like "statement" or "claim" would be more appropriate in this case. That's a minor point, but it does shed some light into Kornblut's thinking. And, have no fear: there will no doubt be more questionable articles from her in the future.

9/17/08 UPDATE: At the end of today's corrections page, the WaPo has printed a "clarification" (link):

A Sept. 12 Page One article quoted Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as telling a brigade of Iraq-bound soldiers that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans." The report linked Palin's comments with the idea that Saddam Hussein was connected to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, said Palin was referring to al-Qaeda in Iraq, a terror group that formed after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and claims to be allied with the global al-Qaeda organization.

They "forgot" to note that they changed the article shortly after it was published.

Posted to Politics at 01:19 PM

Alternet intentionally misquotes Sarah Palin (Army "on a task that is from God")

Alternet is trying to start a smear that Sarah Palin thinks the U.S. Army is on a mission from God. Needless to say, trying to claim that a vice presidential candidate thinks our troops are literally on a crusade is extremely dangerous and those who do so are putting political concerns ahead of the interests of the country. But, Alternet is desperate enough to offer this (alternet.org/story/97907/):

In June, Palin gave a speech at the Wasilla Assembly of God, her former church, in which she exhorted ministry students to pray for American soldiers in Iraq. "Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," she told them. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."

That makes it sound like she thinks the war in Iraq is a "task that is from God", but that's not really what she meant. The Alternet article takes their quote from the NYT (link), and omits a key part which is boldened below:

She also told the group that her eldest child, Track, would soon be deployed by the Army to Iraq, and that they should pray "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God, that's what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan."

Assuming that the NYT itself didn't misquote her, I read that as her hoping that our leaders aren't sending them out on a task that's disreputable, not that she thinks of the Iraq war as a modern-day Crusade. However, this smear will probably be hitting your mailbox - and mailboxes in the Middle East - any second now.

9/11/08 UPDATE: Alternet appears to have taken their smear from the Associated Press. On Sep. 3, Gene Johnson of the AP offered what's called here "Palin: Iraq war 'a task that is from God'". See the full quote here. And, in his interview with Palin, Charlie Gibson reached Alternet level (link, see also this):

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words when he said - first, he suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words.

But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side.

That's what that comment was all about, Charlie.

GIBSON: I take your point about Lincoln's words, but you went on and said, "There is a plan and it is God’s plan."

Posted to Politics at 08:52 PM

GOP asks young Republicans to take down "Build The Fence" signs?

Here's the caption of the following video:

Organizers of the Republican convention demanded that a group of young Republicans take down their "Build The Fence" signs, a reference to a border fence to fight illegal immigration, while at the Xcel Center last night [Sep. 3].

Posted to Immigration2008a at 02:30 PM

If only Ron Paul supporters had a brain (Adam Kokesh stunt at John McCain speech)

During his GOP convention speech, John McCain was interrupted by a protester named Adam Kokesh, someone who's a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a Ron Paul supporter, and a future Bob Barr voter. Kokesh held up a sign (per this interview with him) reading "McCain Votes Against Vets" and yelled "Ask him why he votes against vets!"

That's a good question: why didn't Kokesh ask McCain a specific question along those lines at a designated Q&A session, get it on video, and then upload it to Youtube?

The answer is simple: Ron Paul supporters don't have a single brain between them. In fact, stunts like this are right in line with their previous stunts, such as flying a blimp or conducting parades in period costumes. The conclusion is inescapable: RP's supporters don't have the ability to figure out how counter-productive such things are and they don't have the ability to figure out how to do things that would be effective.

Gosh knows I've tried to tell them. I made a video telling RP's supporters how to succeed almost a year ago. I posted some tips for Ronstock to a couple RP forums. I've left several comments at Digg on this topic, and most have been dugg down despite being the only ones that would help their cause.

It's extremely unlikely, but if there's even just one RP supporter who's able to think things through, ask McCain or his surrogates tough questions about his policies or his associates (or this guy) on video tape and then upload their answers to Youtube.

11/13/08 UPDATE: There are some questions for Obama or his surrogates linked from here. That was posted on October 1, and none of the bloggers listed (except for one guest blogger one time) helped push that plan; if Instapundit et al had pushed that plan hundreds of thousands of people would have seen it and, if someone had been able to ask him a tough question he might not have been elected.

And, asking questions does work, but it all depends on the quality of the questions. See the Joe the Plumber case for an example, but imagine what would have happened if he'd stumped Obama as I did with someone much less famous a few years ago. One blogger did ask a Representative a gaffe-producing question. A TV reporter asked Biden some inflammatory questions which made him look bad; very good questions would have helped discredit him.

Note also the (leftwing) protest against the NAFTA Superhighway which didn't have much of an impact; as pointed out at the link asking discrediting questions would have a far greater impact. I offered similar advice about a protest in Portland. The We Are Change group is one of the few willing to ask questions, but the problem is that their questions are so bad and sometimes so despicable that end up discrediting themselves; they might as well be working for those they pretend to oppose.

And, asking questions isn't something that should just be limited to politicians. For instance, here are three questions for the ACLU.

Posted to Politics at 11:29 AM

Washington Post: America's finest source for bad reporting (Palin "slashed" funds story)

The Washington Post recently published a blog post about Sarah Palin (in their words) "slash[ing]" funds to a non-profit group. Except, what they got from the state of Alaska alone was over three times what they got from all government sources combined in 2006. Let's take a look at the WaPo's "downstream", the three-eyed fish who gobble up what the WaPo sludges out.

First, there are several digg posts on the story. These link to the WaPo article; looking at the histories of who posted them is left as an exercise:

digg.com/political_opinion/Palin_Slashed_Funding_for_Teen_Moms (UPDATE: now has 1771 diggs, but is also marked as "May be Inaccurate")
digg.com/2008_us_elections/Palin_Slashed_Funding_for_Teen_Moms_That_s_gotta_hurt
digg.com/2008_us_elections/Palin_Slashed_Funding_for_Teen_Moms_2

Oddly enough, the last two were submitted in the same minute. These posts link to other sites:

digg.com/2008_us_elections/Palin_Slashed_Funding_to_Help_Teen_Moms
digg.com/2008_us_elections/Palin_cut_1_1_million_in_assistance_for_teen_moms_in_need
digg.com/politics/Palin_personally_cut_funding_that_gave_unwed_mothers_a_place
digg.com/political_opinion/The_Issue_IS_Sarah_Palin_She_Cut_Support_for_Pregnant_Girls
digg.com/2008_us_elections/Palin_Opposes_Funding_for_Teen_Moms_ToTheCenter

Those last five link to:

dailykos.com/story/2008/9/2/19220/39740/973/583820 (typical airhead DK "reporting" that puts an even more partisan spin on the WaPo's spin)

rawstory.com/news/2008/Palin_cut_1.1_million_from_funding_0902.html (a bare rewrite of the WaPo story from Nick Langewis)

americablog.com/2008/09/palin-personally-cut-funding-that-gave.html (Joe Sudbay simply wraps the WaPo story with his brief commnets, such as "Sarah Palin apparently wants those unwed mothers out on the street.")

allspinzone.com/wp/2008/09/02/heres-where-the-issue-is-sarah-palin-cuts-support-for-pregnant-girls/ (braindead attempt at breezy commentary that discusses the WaPo story in a couple paragraphs but takes the WaPo's word for it)

tothecenter.com/news.php?readmore=6991 (just a sploggish rewrite of the WaPo story)

Others discussing this include:

mahablog.com/2008/09/02/what-did-i-miss (mentions it in passing but completely takes WaPo's word for it)

slog.thestranger.com/2008/09/palin_to_teen_moms_drop_dead
(Dan Savage simply intros a WaPo excerpt with his own vile spin; post is titled "Palin to Teen Moms: Drop Dead")

UPDATE: These others are just as bad or worse than the ones above and all, of course, simply take the WaPo's word and none do any thinking or reporting:

salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2008/09/03/palin_slashed_teen_mom_funding (from Lynn Harris)

blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/09/03/palin-s-handling-of-other-people-s-pregnant-teens.aspx (from Michelle Cottle)

thinkprogress.org/2008/09/03/palin-mccain-mothers (from "Amanda")

truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20080902_palin_cut_funds_for_teen_moms

washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_09/014534.php (Steve Benen; links to Cottle instead of the WaPo)

jezebel.com/5044818/
ask-not-what-bristol-palin-can-do-for-you-ask-what-sarah-palin-can-do-for-your-pregnant-daughter (from "Jessica")

motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9554_palin_veto_teen_moms.html (from Jonathan Stein)

UPDATE 2: Isaac Fitzgerald and Tana Ganeva from AlterNet offer "8 More Shocking Revelations About Sarah Palin" (alternet.org/election08/97350). One of those "shocking" items is as bad as the posts above. It's got over 2600 diggs here, but it's also marked as "May be Inaccurate":
digg.com/politics/8_More_Shocking_Revelations_About_Sarah_Palin_2

UPDATE 3: As anyone familiar with his blogging could have been expecting, Matt Yglesias fell for the WaPo's tale too:
yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/09/life_begins_at_conception_and_ends_at_death.php
(The link here before was to another post where MattY got things wrong:
yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/09/palin_and_special_needs_children.php

UPDATE 4: NPR also fell for the WaPo's tale, but at least they printed a correction: npr.org/blogs/politics/2008/09/lineitem_irony.html

UPDATE 5: Somewhat surprisingly, ThinkProgress offered somewhat of a correction, noting in an update to their post that the executive director of the non-profit disagreed with the WaPo's assessment. This is similiar to past TP "corrections" in which they just slip something in at the end without making a big deal about it. But, it's at least better than most of the others above.

Posted to Bloggage at 09:29 PM

WTH: Republican National Convention speaker from NCLR's Raza Development Fund?!

According to this schedule of the 2008 Republican National Convention, one of the speakers just now was Tommy Espinoza, president of the Raza Development Fund, Inc. The RDF is a project of the National Council of La Raza, and the NCLR is a far-left, ethnic nationalist group that funds extremists and gave an award to a vile racist.

Espinoza's speech followed a video tribute to Abraham Lincoln, but since it preceded a video tribute to George H. W. Bush and a remote video feed featuring our own wonderful president George W. Bush, I guess it all fits together.

Posted to Politics at 06:20 PM

Paul Kane/WaPo's reporting skills are on par with DailyKos (Sarah Palin veto)

[See the updates, it gets a lot worse: what Paul Kane describes as a "slash[ing]" of funds to a non-profit was over a threefold increase from all the government funds they received in 2006.]

Paul Kane of the Washington Post should consider a career as a DailyKos diarist, as he offers "Palin Slashed Funding for Teen Moms" (link):

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.

After the legislature passed a spending bill in April, Palin went through the measure reducing and eliminating funds for programs she opposed. Inking her initials on the legislation -- "SP" -- Palin reduced funding for Covenant House Alaska by more than 20 percent, cutting funds from $5 million to $3.9 million. Covenant House is a mix of programs and shelters for troubled youths, including Passage House, which is a transitional home for teenage mothers.

As for why he should consider joining DailyKos instead, Kane didn't endeavor to find out why she did that. And, of course, there are many explanations.

One explanation is that Palin is a sociopath who wants teen moms to suffer. However, I believe that explanation can be discarded.

So, we have to search further, and notably, Kane didn't contact the campaign for an explanation. Perhaps she believes that private rather than state monies should be used? Perhaps, if that's the reason, her beliefs are correct; did Kane endeavor to find out whether that could be correct? Perhaps she thought it would discourage teen pregnancies? Perhaps she doesn't come with the set of assumptions Kane obviously has that there must be a state program for everything? Perhaps she has evidence that Covenant House misspends money? Perhaps there are other programs available? All those possibilities Kane does not even broach.

Please contact the WaPo's ombudsman: ombudsman *at* washpost.com

UPDATE: It's even worse than I suspected. According to their site (covenanthouseak.org/involved.htm), "Approximately 90% of our funding comes from the generous donations of friends like you". And, according to this state document (PDF link), they were only to get $155,000 in 2007. It's not clear whether that was their only source of state funding, and their executive director wasn't available.

UPDATE 2: The $3.9 million was part of a grant for a facilities expansion; see this PDF (you might need to change the extension to "PDF" after downloading).

And, Covenant House's IRS Form 990 (link) shows the funds that Paul Kane describes as "slashed" was over a threefold increase from the government funds they received from all sources in 2006 (FY2006 ending 12/31/06). In 2006, they received:

Contributions $1,667,796
Government Grants $1,194,788
Program Services $0
Investments $67,947
Special Events $271,980
Sales $0
Other $11,139
Total Revenue $3,213,650

Note that they also get money from the feds, including on the facilities expansion.

Please use the address above to send a message to the WaPo about their "reporting".

UPDATE 3: This post earlier said it was "almost a fourfold", but I changed it to "over a threefold" to be mathematically precise. Also, there's a round-up of those sites that simply followed the WaPo's lead without even considering they might be wrong here.

UPDATE 4: A comment (not the post) at corrects Matt Yglesias with this (yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/09/palin_and_special_needs_children.php#comment-629796):

If you bother looking at the documents, you can see that one program, the Alaska Challenge Youth Academy Program is included in the budget for 2007 but not in 2008. This accounts for nearly all of the discrepancy. You could also see, with a simple search, that the same program is still funded in 2008 (pdf), just on a separate program sheet (in fact, funding was increased, by the governor, by about 50%).

UPDATE 5: Even NPR - NPR! - corrected their pile-on of the story (link):

After Brian, one of our astute readers, questioned the veracity of this article, we did some additional digging. It turns out the Washington Post got this one wrong. We called the Covenant House Alaska and, according to Executive Director Deirdre Cronin, the program's operating budget was not in fact reduced. She writes in a press release: "Our $3.9 million appropriation is directed toward a multi-year capital project and it is our understanding that the state simply opted to phase in its support for this project over several years, rather than all at once in the current budget year." Thanks, Brian. We stand corrected.

Posted to Politics at 04:19 PM

NCLR, LULAC, MALDEF, NALEO, SVREP send letter to John McCain about immigration

John McCain is too corrupt to stand up to the far-left and those who support illegal immigration, prefering instead - like Bush - to court those who will never support him. Now, some of those groups [1] have sent him an angry letter (PDF link):

On behalf of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, composed of 26 leading national Hispanic organizations, we write to urge you to lead your party's platform away from the deportation and detention path that deprives newcomers and the nation of immigrants' positive economic and societal contributions.

Translation:

We want race-based power, and any form of immigration enforcement impedes our power-grasping. While we support enforcement and "reform" and we don't want open borders, we don't really support any enforcement at all and we more or less want somthing like an open border.

Back to their letter:

The Republican Party Platform language regarding immigration repudiates your efforts to provide a legal opportunity for immigrants who have lived steady, productive and crimefree lives in the United States to come forward, pay a fine, and demonstrate they are learning English. The platform language would split families, make our communities less secure by placing federal responsibilities to enforce immigration law on local police thereby harming police/community relations, and close the door to higher education to young people who have been raised here and graduated from local schools and whose parents or themselves paid local and state taxes. It also wades into the divisive English Only debate but fails to emphasize the importance of more English language classes for adults and youth.

Needless to say, it's virtually impossible for an illegal alien to lead a "crimefree" life, but I guess that depends on how they choose to define "crime". Apparently it doesn't include things like using forged documents, identity theft, and the like.

The "learning English" parts of at least McCain-Kennedy were full of holes; they didn't have to learn it first they just needed to sign up.

It's not the "platform language" that "would split families", it's those who've made the conscious decision to come here illegally that did that.

If our laws were enforced, there would be fewer illegal aliens and thus their concerns about "harming police/community relations" would approach irrelevance.

They complain about closing the door to illegal alien students, without acknowledging that every college slot or discount given to an illegal alien is one that's taken away from a U.S. citizen. Obviously, they don't care that Americans are harmed by their policies.

And, the RNC platform says:

We support English as the official language in our nation... ...To ensure that all students will have access to the mainstream of American life, we support the English First approach and oppose divisive programs that limit students’ future potential. All students must be literate in English, our common language, to participate in the promise of America.

That's definitely stronger than I would have given the GOP credit for, but I suspect that part of the letter writers' complaints conceern the implied opposition to bilingual education.

Related:
100+ Hispanic groups send letter supporting illegal immigration, opposing raids

[1] The signatories are (see if you spot a common theme in each group's name):
* League of United Latin American Citizens
* Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
* National Council of La Raza
* National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (relatively minor link to Mexican government)
* Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (leader attended "revolution in the U.S." conference in Venezuala)
* American GI Forum
* Dominican American National Roundtable
* Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities
* Hispanic Federation
* Hispanic National Bar Association
* Labor Council for Latin American Advancement
* National Association of Hispanic Publications
* National Hispanic Council on Aging
* National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts
* National Hispanic Media Council
* National Hispanic Medical Association
* National Institute for Latino Policy
* U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
* U. S. Hispanic Leadership Institute

Posted to Immigration2008a at 01:26 PM

Miguel Bustillo,Richard Fausset/LAT confused about legal vs. illegal workers (Howard Industries raid)

Last week, Howard Industries in Louisiana was raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement; as the raid was happening the legal workers at the plant reportedly cheered ICE, and the raid was initiated by a complaint from a union worker.

Needless to say, such cannot stand to those who support illegal immigration. Thus, we find Miguel Bustillo and Richard Fausset from the Los Angeles Times offering "Immigrant raid divides a Mississippi town" (link), which includes this subhed:

Many black and white residents of Laurel applaud the crackdown; it sends fear through the Latino community. Political change may end such raids.

The LAT is trying their best to racialize this issue, as well as trying to emotionalize it and make those who aren't familiar with the details of immigration feel sympathy for illegal workers. As discussed below, the last sentence shows that the LAT has been trying to fool people. Continuing with the article:

But helicopters were not what shocked [Fabiola Pena, the go-to illegal alien featured in a couple stories] the most on her last, fateful day at Howard Industries, the largest employer in this small Southern town. It was the black co-workers who clapped and cheered, Pena said, as she and hundreds of other Latino immigrant laborers were arrested and hauled away.

"They said we took their jobs, but I was working from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.," said Pena a day after the raid last week that resulted in the arrest of nearly 600 suspected illegal immigrants. "I didn't see them working like us."

So, basically she's saying that the black workers were lazy. Thank goodness she's not a Republican, or she'd end up being more than deported. And, it's interesting to see presumed "progressives" supporting Dickensian work hours, considering that that's one of the things yesteryear's "progressives" fought against.

As for the Los Angeles Times trying to fool people:

But the raids might not have much of a future after the swearing-in of Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama, both of whom have staked out moderate-to-liberal stances on immigration reform.

If the next president decides to curtail or end raids similar to the one at the Howard Industries, it will not sit well with many residents of Laurel. The raid was welcomed by a number of native-born residents in this manufacturing hub of about 25,000 people that has been transformed in recent years by the influx of Latino workers, many of whom are undocumented.

One of the selling points of that "reform" is that it includes stepped-up enforcement. Yet, here the Los Angeles Times is telling us that "reform" now wouldn't include so much enforcement. Either "reform" includes magic powers, or the LAT has been trying to fool people.

The end of the last paragraph uses a stock device: an influx of illegal labor transformed an incipient ghost town. The rest of the article contains similar stock devices, such as someone saying the illegal aliens were just there to work, and so forth.

For an example of what Los Angeles Times would be if they weren't such wimps, see the Socialist Worker's "ICE brings panic to a Mississippi town" (link).

Posted to Immigration2008a at 12:36 PM

Horrors: Jake Tapper says Sarah Palin was member of "fringe" party (Alaskan Independence Party)

On the one hand, it seems that the John McCain campaign didn't do their due diligence - in a GOP, mainstream sense - on vice presidential pick Sarah Palin. On the other hand, Jake Tapper's attempt to break news isn't as bad as the "news" recently coming from DailyKos, as he breathlessly lets us know that (link):

Officials of the Alaskan Independence Party say that Palin was once so independent, she was once a member of their party, which, since the 1970s, has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United States.

And while McCain's motto -- as seen in a new TV ad -- is "Country First," the AIP's motto is the exact opposite -- "Alaska First -- Alaska Always."

Oh, horrors! Here's their platform, and I'll bet if you lived in Alaska it wouldn't seem so "fringe", unless your point of reference is the Beltway establishment. While I'm sure some of their members are indeed "fringe", their platform isn't all that extreme. It's not like they're running around in robes, supporting race-based irredentism, consorting with foreign countries, supporting illegal activity in order to gain race-based power, or supporting giving the UN their own army or things like that. Those would be, in the eyes of hacks like Tapper, not just acceptable but admirable.

And, it's not like the article has endeavored to find out the extent to which Palin supported their platform, nor does he provide a then-current copy of their platform. And, it's not like their ideas don't deserve serious consideration rather than being smeared as Tapper does, even if someone disagrees with some or all of their ideas.

UPDATE: As it turns out, while her husband might have been and might still be a member, Sarah Palin was never a card-carrying member (link):

In recent press reports, Lynette Clark, the AIP's chairman, has been quoted as saying Palin was at an AIP convention in 1994 and was an official party member at the time. Other sources within the party tell Mother Jones that the only way to become a member of the AIP is to register to vote with the AIP. Yet the state of Alaska released records confirming what the McCain-Palin campaign had maintained: Palin never registered as an AIP member.

Posted to Politics at 05:43 PM

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All Posts(links to each post by title)

• Barack Obama supports community college for illegal aliens (North Carolina, "good citizens")
• Are you scared of Barack Obama's followers yet? (kids singing video)
• FactCheck recompresses, removes EXIF data from Obama birth certificate photos
• CBP chief Ralph Basham downplays Iranian sleeper cells in U.S.
• 1150+ arrested in SoCal immigration fugitive sweeps
• Sarah Palin rape kit smear: chronology (Mary Pemberton/AP, DailyKos, Americablog, Eric Croft, Obama campaign)
• GOP official removed for telling something that's true to a good extent (McCain)
• UCLA professor Stephen Bainbridge deletes comments showing how he was wrong
• Stephen Bainbridge, Matt Yglesias embarrass themselves in support of illegal immigration (minorities, bailout)
• Irish government gives $1.5 million to help immigrants to U.S., including lobbying for illegal aliens (ILIR)
• Felipe Calderon bringing Mexican consulate to New Brunswick, New Jersey (Jim Cahill, Richard Kaplan)
• McCain-Obama debate 9/26/08 live coverage (everybody loses! edition)
• Financial crisis: should there be a bailout? What kind?
• How the Democrats rule online, Part #94295931
• Open Debate Coalition: a failed format for fake debates
• Does Barack Obama support the First Amendment? (answer: well, it depends)
• Public officials in St. Louis/Missouri threaten Obama opponents with criminal libel? (Jennifer Joyce, Bob McCulloch)
• Barack Obama threatens licenses of stations running NRA ad (National Rifle Association)
• Shailagh Murray offers WaPo's lightest weight coverage of Barack Obama yet?
• Democrats incorrectly closed vote in order to support illegal immigration (August 2007)

My trip to Alpine County What not to do, again (September 1-2, 2002)

Boston Market Cornbread Temperatures Please help contribute to this important study (August 28, 2002)

Did The Gap Put Celebrities at Risk? An Open Web Letter to The Gap (May 20, 2002)

Humphreys Peak Arizona's highest point (May 19, 2001)

Go Heavy, Go Slow, Get Lost Bay Area highpoints (December 14, 2000)

Hubris in New England The highpoints of RI, CT, and MA (October 8, 2000)

Let's go to Utah Zion, Bryce, and Grand Canyon (August 14, 2000)

Your host, climbing Monkey Face (5.14d)

Your host's arm (circled)

Your host's hopelessly outdated conditioning progress

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