Barack Hussein Obama is a Sissy

I'm surprised that the New York Times actually published this revealing story:

Mr. Obama, it turns out, was a weak centrist. His balls rolled down the center of the lane, but much too slowly to knock over more than a half dozen or so pins.

If you can think of a better way to define a Girlie Man, I'd like to hear it.

Earth Hour: My Response

I object to this "Earth Hour" nonsense. I believe it to be fundamentally wrong-headed to begin with, arising from a belief that humanity and human ingenuity is a cause of problems rather than the solution to them, but I particularly object to the coercive and bullying sort of fashion in which the media has covered this event. The obvious implication, of course, in all of this is that if you don't fall in - if you don't accept the socialistic view that we ought to reduce our standard of living rather than improving it through technology (though, I should note, I don't expect that any of the rich backers of this sort of stuff will be reducing their own standard of living anytime soon).

Thus, my response to Earth hour is as follows. When I finish this post, I am going to get into my car and drive first to Bellingham, WA, then to Lynnwood, WA, then possibly to Seattle. Before I leave, I am going to turn on every single light in my apartment (most of which, by the way) are incandescent 100w bulbs. I am also going to leave my television on (though with the volume muted, in a concession to my neighbours) and I am going to leave all three of my computers running, specifically encoding video files.

Yeah, it'll cost me a few bucks. But, frankly, just for the pure joy of going against the grain - and of doing it while it's still legal - I'm going to do it.

Also, while I'm in Washington, I'm going to purchase expensive clothes, doubtlessly produced by Asian child labourers. Needless to say, I feel good right now.

Where Did Ron Paul's Money Go?

If I was a Ron Paul donor, I’d be feeling pretty ripped off these days. Plenty of guys (and they were mostly guys) were wandering around forums bragging about how they were scrimping and saving in order to ship money off to help fund the “Revolution.” While, as I’ve said before, I despise Paul and most of what he stands for, one can’t help but feel a degree of admiration for such ardent enthusiasm. Of course, when you scrimp and save to win, it’s empowering. When you do it to lose every single primary and caucus that you compete in, it’s got to be disheartening.

Some of the people who donated to the Paul campaign are surely wondering what happened to all of that money. Frankly, I’ve been wondering the same thing - $30 Million is a lot of money to blow through without visible effect. Sure, Mitt Romney blew through far more than that – but I saw plenty of evidence of where that money went. I don’t recall a single flashy ad campaign from Paul – certainly none that could have cost even a fraction of that amount.

After a discussion on this the other night, I decided to go and do some digging in Ron Paul’s finance reports. I didn’t expect to find anything too shocking. I figured that, well, the same thing probably happened to Paul as happened to Howard Dean in 2004 – he wasn’t prepared to run a national campaign and, when he did, expenses spiralled out of control, with plenty of unscrupulous consultants cashing in at the expense of a candidate in way over his head and, beyond that, with plenty of money being wasted on essentially improvising a Presidential campaign.
Certainly, there appears to be some of that. A lot of Ron Paul’s advertising dollars went to what seem to be second-tier companies with shoddy websites (something I’ve learned, over the years, is the be suspicious of any company which claims to be a modern firm but which has a website which appears to be at least ten years old).

For example, one wonders what exactly Paul’s donors got for the $120,000 paid to MPrinting Graphics, a firm controlled by Paul’s Congressional campaign manager which doesn’t even appear to have a website, for television advertising production in the week after Super Tuesday. I’m not suggesting that anything illegal or immoral occurred here, of course. One just wonders what ads those paid for and what experience that firm had in the field.

Indeed, paying $162,051 in the space of six days to a business controlled by your Congressional campaign manager in the week after Super Tuesday creates, at the very least, an appearance of impropriety. Especially when one recalls that, between Super Tuesday and the March Texas Primary, there was speculation that Paul was in trouble in his home district.
Nothing illegal about hiring your friends, of course, but one has to wonder how the people who donated money that they needed themselves to Ron Paul because they believed so strongly in the cause feel about their money being spent in such a fashion.

Even more interesting is the $994,339 that the Paul campaign spent – roughly 3.5% of all the money that the Paul campaign spent – at a firm known as “Campaign Marketing Strategies Inc.” based in Alexandria, Virginia. The firm has no website. It appears to have no phone number. I can find no description of what it does. The address provided by the campaign – and in what records of the company I could find – it for what appears to be a private home.
A Campaign Marketing Strategies Inc. was registered in Virginia on July 17th of last year. According to Virginia records, the firm’s registered agent is one “Chris Cupit.” I have no idea if this is the same Chris Cupit who was tied to the 2002 New Hampshire phone jamming scandal – and who was seemingly connected with the Constitution Party's 2004 candidate - but it seems possible.

The money is generically listed as being for “telecommunications” with no further elaboration. The other large expenses made under this heading appear to have been for robo-calling. Though, in the other examples I examined, the companies all had the basics of business – you know, things like offices, phone numbers, web sites, and so forth.

So, what was that $1 Million for? I don’t know. I couldn’t call up Campaign Marketing Strategies Inc. to ask what they do, since they don’t have an office, a web site, an e-mail address, or a phone number.

Now, let’s be very clear – I’m no t suggesting, hinting, or even implying that Ron Paul ran off with the money or that he blew it as a patron of the Emperor’s Club VIP or whatever else. I’m quite convinced that’s not the case. What I’m suggesting is, from a libertarian viewpoint, probably worse: I’m suggesting that he squandered it.
Caveat emptor, as the Romans used to say.

Paul’s personal history – marketing ghost-written ultra-right newsletters whose contents he disavowed as soon as they became inconvenient – ought to have been taken as a sign by his supporters. First, that he’s not a man above attempting to enrich himself through populist opportunism. Second, that someone whose entire life up until this point was strictly small-time might not be up to the challenge of effectively managing tens of millions of dollars.

Where did the money go? It evaporated. Some of it went to his friends. The rest of it – most of it probably – went to smooth-talking consultants who bamboozled him as effectively as Lyle Lanley did when he sold the people of Springfield a used Monorail.

None Dare Call it Treason

The sad part is that today's news that a 2002 trip to Baghdad by three Democratic Congressman was paid for by Saddam Hussein is hardly a surprise to anyone with more than a third of a brain. There's a reason why I casually - but justifiably - refer to the Democrat Party as "the party of treason."

After all, seriously, how long has it been since the left was on our side in a major international conflict? They're not on our side in the present war. They weren't during the Gulf War. They certainly weren't during the later half of the Cold War.
The moderate left was onside for the World Wars and the first half of the Cold War - until they bailed and/or were annexed by the far-left. But the far left, well, I think you'd have to go back to the Second World War to find a time when they didn't take the side of our enemies during a dispute. And that, I submit to you, is directly correlated to the fact that we were allied with the USSR during that conflict.

I'm not suggesting, even that these Democratic Congressmen were actually knowingly in the pay of Saddam Hussein. He was a practical man. Why would he have paid them for what they were clearly willing to give away for free? The left, for reasons which can only be described as psychologically demented, has been whoring itself out to anyone who wants to weaken, kill, or destroy us for as long as anyone reading this has been alive.

These three were, like most Democrats, against America by default. I believe them when they say that they didn't think much at all about where the money was coming from. After all - the shadowy agent of Saddam they were dealing with was on the same side as them. One doesn't ask too many questions of friends. In any case, I'm sure the left will claim that there's nothing to see here. It's certainly not something to get worked up about, like oil companies paying for research into oil!
The same, of course, applies to this country as well. The late, great James Jesus Angleton thought that Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau were Soviet agents. Well, I don't know if that's true - but I do know that they couldn't have done much more damage if they were. They destroyed our culture. They gutted our military. They shackled our economy. Whatever else they were, they were wreckers.

One wonders if we - or the Americans - will ever awake to the dangers of the enemy within.

Is Obama a Foreign Citizen?

Over at the National Review, Jim Geraghty wonders, given that passport records don't contain travel records, just what the people snooping in Obama's file were looking for.

Let me offer a suggestion.

Obama was born on August 4th, 1961 - before Kenya became an independent nation. However, when Kenya became independent two years later the Kenyan Constitution provided the following:

Every person who, having been born outside Kenya. is on llth December, 1963 a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies or a British protected person shall. if his father becomes. or would but for his death have become, a citizen of Kenya by virtue of subsection (1). become a citizen of Kenya on 12th December. 1963.

In plainer English, it's quite possible that Obama acquired Kenyan Citizenship at birth. More than that, I've been wondering - and it's possible that the people who were looking at these files were wondering the same thing - how Obama travelled to Kenya in the late 1980's.

Kenya isn't a Visa Waiver country now, and I doubt if it was in 1988. Presumably, as is the case in any other country, he'd have had to go to the Kenyan Embassy or consulate for a Visa to travel. However, I imagine that it's quite possible that, once there, he might have had a conversation with the consular official which went something like this:

OFFICIAL: Why do you want to travel to Kenya?

OBAMA: My father was Kenyan. I want to go and visit his family and see where I came from.

OFFICIAL: Oh. You don't need a Visa then. Do you have your birth certificate?
(Obama hands it over)

OFFICIAL (Con't): Yes, yes. If your father was Kenyan, then you're a citizen as well.

OBAMA: Really? Neato.

But, if you add to that, there's actually another potential issue here.
In what status did the "Barry Soetoro" of the late 1960's and early 1970's reside in Indonesia? I can't find an exact copy of the 1958 Indonesian Nationality Law online, but a brief review suggests that it's possible, especially given that Obama's step-father was an Indonesian government official, that Obama might have taken Indonesian nationality.

After all, if one reads about his background, it seems to be fairly clear that his stay in Indonesia (where he attended local schools and was taught in the local language) was intended to be permanent.

Obama: Typical Whites Are Racist

So, some people were upset because, the other day, Obama essentially claimed that his Grandmother being afraid of an aggressive black panhandler and the deranged ravings of the Rev. Wright were morally equivalent. Now, trying to back-pedal from that position, he's said something far, far dumber than that.

He said that the point he was making, in drawing such a comparison, is that his Grandmother is a "typical white person." To be clear, here's what he said about his Grandmother (who, by the way, raised him and is still alive). He described her as:

...a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

In other words, in Obama's world, all white people are afraid of black people and go around spitting out ethnic and racial stereotypes. Good to know.

Obama's Mother and Father Met in Russian Class

An interesting tidbit from this article in The New York Times:

In a Russian class at the University of Hawaii, she met the college’s first African student, Barack Obama.

While, of course, plenty of people have learned Russian over the years - and it's a fine language - surely I'm not the only one who finds it interesting that a woman described as a "fellow traveller" met a member of a communist-inspired movement in a Russian class in 1960?

Elsewhere, the Times describes her as an "idealist" and a friend describes her as someone who, "cared about the core issues" and, "was not afraid to speak truth to power." Euphemisms like that can only be hiding a red-tinged past for Senator Obama.

What's Next on Wright?

Over at the Campaign Spot, Jim Geraghty quotes a Republican source as speculating that there's more to come on the Jeremiah Wright front:

One Republican strategist told me this afternoon he cannot imagine that the Clinton camp doesn't already have something in this vein. This strategist is speculating, but he's been around the block a few times

I agree. Not for anything that I know - as my critics will attest to, I don't know very much - but because Obama just appeared in person on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News in the space of three hours. Presidential campaigns time media appearances carefully - and conduct themselves in a certain way. You don't throw your guy on all three cable news networks on a moment's notice on a Friday night unless you're in something approaching a blind panic.

Though, I don't think that Hillary even needs more footage of Obama at these services to stick the knife in. Imagine the following ad, perhaps coming from a 527:

FADE IN: A frozen image of Jeremiah Wright speaking.

NARRATOR: Jeremiah Wright has been Barack Obama's pastor and mentor for two decades.

(The image begins moving)

WRIGHT: No! No! No! Not "God Bless America" - God Damn America!

CUT TO: A still black and white image of Barack Obama in a happy pose, seated. The camera zooms in.

NARRATOR: Obama was married by Wright. His children were baptized by him. He has attended his church regularly for twenty years. The title of his second book is a quote of Wright's.

CUT TO: Wright, speaking.

WRIGHT: ...for killing innocent people, God Damn America!

CUT TO: The same picture of Barack Obama.

NARRATOR: God Bless America or God Damn America: Your Choice.

(Quickly) Paid for by (name of random 527)

For that matter, given that there are apparently DVD's of this stuff, they don't need to find Obama in the crowd the day when Wright shrieks "God Damn America" - they just need to find him somewhere and splice the footage together. After all, it'll keep the story in the news and, though they'd be sputtering with rage, what are Obama's supporters going to say?

"Hey, that's not fair! Obama wasn't there the day that he screamed "God Damn America" - he was just there all of the other days that he shouted racist lies. Oh, and he gave him $25,000 the other year. But that's it."

Can We Trust Obama?

Shall we take this moment to take stock of the evidence that Barack Hussein Obama is, in some fashion, fundamentally anti-American and therefore a threat to the people of the Western world?

Let's briefly review what we know about Barack Hussein Obama.

1) He was raised by a mother who was described by her own friends as a "fellow traveller" and who expatriated herself and would later, when asked by her husband to go to business functions in Indonesia where Americans would be President, angrily denied that they were "her people."

2) Frank Marshall Davis, who Obama describes as a mentor in his autobiography was a member of the Communist Party.

3) Obama refuses to wear a flag pin because, he claims, true patriotism consists of opposing the Iraq War. The colliery to this, of course, is that Obama must therefore believe that people who support the war are not "true patriots" a position which is, to say the least, odd.

4) One of Obama's friends is William Ayers, a man who unsuccessfully attempted to blow up an Army dance and, when asked about this terrorist activities after September 11th, said, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough."

5) His wife infamously recently claimed that the fact that her husband was doing well in the Presidential election made her feel proud of America for the first time in her adult life.

6) He belongs to a radical Church whose Pastor - a man who he is close to and who provided the title of his second book - says that we should sing "God Damn America" instead of "God Bless America" and says that American got what it deserved on September 11th.

All of this, I should add, is leaving aside the Moslem issue, his connections with radical Palestinians, and so forth. I'm not even getting into the Islamic doctrine of al-Taqiyya, which permits the faithful to conceal their true faith from infidels. I am simply offering facts here, not suppositions.

What do we know, then, about Barack Hussein Obama?

We know that he's the child of a mother with radical and seeming anti-American views. He was mentored by a communist and claims that "true patriotism" consists of trying to ensure that America loses wars. He likes to hang around with unrepentant terrorists. His wife has never been proud of American in her whole adult life. The man who married him, whose Church he has attended for two decades, and who baptized his children hates America.

Can we trust this man to defend our civilization? Should we?

Ferraro Was Right

While some might say that it takes one affirmative action candidate to know another, I don't see how there's any denying that Geraldine Ferraro was absolutely right when she said that Barack Hussein Obama is where he is today more or less entirely because of his race.

Let's get real for a minute here, folks. Do you really think that, if instead of Barack Hussein Obama, he was Barry Harold O'Brien he would even be a United States Senator, let alone a candidate for the Presidency?

Hell, do you think that - if he was a white Irish-American - Obama would have been the President of the Harvard Law Review? Who knows? I certainly don't. His sterling record of legal accomplishment doesn't exactly suggest that he was one of the nation's outstanding legal minds - surely a prerequisite for being the President of the Harvard Law Review most of the time, other factors notwithstanding.

It's a question worth asking, given how little Obama has actually accomplished. His career is mostly an extended list of places that he's been - it's very light on the things that he's actually done.

Indeed, read closely, Obama's entire career path seems to have been paved by his living his life surrounded by guilty white liberals who, like his supporters today, are enchanted by the idea of Obama as a refined black man. I'm free to note this on the grounds that I am not guilty, white, or liberal.

Leave aside his Red past. Leave aside the Moslem issue. Leave aside his radical liberalism. Leave aside his relative inexperience. The core question, which Ferraro was groping towards but couldn't quite ask is this: can America (and the world!) afford an affirmative action President?

L’Affaire Cadman: A Theory of How it Went Down

After a week of careful reading, I have a pretty good theory as to the exact origins of the Chuck Cadman “bribe.” It’s going to take a few steps, so read carefully. Imagine this, if you’d like, as being kind of like the ending of one of those Jerry Bruckheimer crime dramas that the public adores for some bizarre reason – flashing to differently-lit moments from the past.

Let’s begin with an agreed summary of the facts.

1) Before he died, Chuck Cadman told his wife, his daughter, and his son-in-law that he was offered a $1 Million life insurance policy as a “bribe” for him voting to bring down the Liberal Government of Paul Martin.

2) On May 19th, 2005 two individuals, Doug Finley and Tom Flanagan, met with Cadman to discuss obtaining his vote for the no-confidence motion against the Liberal Government.

3) The Prime Minister has stated (and Liberals have seized upon him for stating) that an offer was made to Cadman to, “replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election.”

These are universally agreed-upon facts. Stripped of context – or twisted by those with a partisan agenda – they can be slanted to sound absolutely damning (well, depending upon your view of the world). However, once we inject two other very relevant facts into the conversation, a very different picture begins to emerge.

First – no insurance company was going to write a life insurance policy for Chuck Cadman on 19 May. The premiums for a $1 Million policy for a man with terminal cancer would be in excess of $1 Million, due upon signature of the documents.

Yet, all of the reports of what Cadman said have been very specific. He claimed that he was offered a life insurance policy as a “bribe.” He – and every other statement made – has been very particular on that point. This makes no sense at all. The whole idea of a bribe is that it should be untraceable. Yet, as anyone with even a passing familiarity with insurance ought to know, a life insurance policy – especially one with odd conditions – is the exact opposite of that. It must be thoroughly documented. In triplicate. Backed up on tape drives. With multiple signatures. Bribing someone with an insurance policy would be the white collar equivalent of the criminal trying to run away from the police in the night wearing those sneakers with blinking red lights.

The second fact – about which the media and the government have been oddly silent – is this: there was a large and pre-existing insurance policy which was in play at the time.

As a Member of Parliament, Cadman would have been entitled to a death benefit equal to two years salary – for an MP an amount which would be in the range of over $300,000. Indeed, since Cadman eventually did die in office, it stands to reason that his family did receive that money. It was remarked upon at the time as a reason why Cadman, knowing he didn’t have long to live, might have voted to preserve a government he had so long opposed – to keep that death benefit for his family.

Ralph Goodale has suggested that perhaps the offer to Cadman was to cover the difference between what he’d get in death benefits as an MP or as a private citizen. I think that, at the very least, he’s closer to the truth than most others have been. But I have a slightly different theory.

Commentators have dismissed as “absurd” the notion that what the Tories offered Cadman was help in running a campaign for re-election. I think that’s probably a mistake – since I believe that it was exactly what Cadman was offered and what he considered to be a “bribe.”

Remember, even in 2005, there were rumours circulating to the effect that Cadman would vote with the Liberals in order to preserve his Parliamentary life insurance. It’s not unthinkable – it’s likely, even, that those rumours would have gotten back to Cadman. It’s also likely – if I heard about them in Coquitlam, British Columbia – that they were all over Ottawa.

Hearing this, Cadman is approached a receives an offer: if he votes to bring down the government, the Tories will ensure that his is easily re-elected to Parliament so that, when the inevitable arrives, he will be able to collect his Parliamentary Death Benefits in full.

Think about it for a second. This is the one way in which everything that everyone has been saying can be taken as basically true. The Tories offer Cadman, as they’ve claimed, election assistance in order to “replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election.” Cadman, on the other hand, is deeply offended by the notion that he would vote to retain a corrupt government in power in order to collect on his Parliamentary life insurance and goes around telling his family that he was offered a life insurance policy as a “bribe.” However, he makes no public statement to this effect for the simple reason that to do so would inject into the public sphere the idea that his vote in favour of the Liberals was a vote to retain his own life insurance benefits.

It all makes sense. The original offer. Cadman’s rejection of it. The later statements made by multiple individuals. Then, once the story falls into the hands of other people, it’s transformed into a weapon to be used against the government.

Who Were Those "Gringos"?

Over at the Campaign Spot, the most bizarre news yet to come from the South American crisis.

The following came from a memo recovered from the terrorist leader that the Colombian military killed in Ecuador:

The gringos called for a meeting with the minister to ask him to tell us they are interested in talking about several topics. They claim they new president in their country will be Obama and that these people are interested in their fellow citizens. Obama will support neither Plan Colombia nor the signature of the Free Trade Agreement.

So, this begs the question - who are these "Gringos" who are dealing with FARC, a terrorist organization, and how do they know (or why do they claim to know) how Obama would act as President?

For some reason, it brings to mind the story of Ron Dellums and Grenada.

Hillary Can Still Win This

Hillary's won Ohio. The networks haven't called it - but it's done. She's going to win there.

Looking at these numbers - the early voting and the exits - I think that she has a good chance at winning Texas. (In the interests of full disclosure: I stand to win $300 on Intrade if Hillary wins Texas).

But, even if she wins both: does she still have a chance?

I think that she does. Going into tonight, Obama has a 113 delegate lead. Coming out - if Hillary wins Ohio by a fair margin and wins Texas, it'll be a sub-100 delegate lead.

So, for the sake of argument - let's say that we come out of tonight with Hillary winning narrowly - 52% of the delegates to 48% for Obama. That means that, after tonight, Obama would have a ninety-nine delegate lead.

After tonight, Obama would then need 455 delegates to win the nomination - Clinton would need 554.

But, after tonight, there are only going to be 611 delegates, in total, left to be elected. In other words, from here, Obama will need 75% of the elected delegates to win. Clinton would need 90%.

It's mathematically impossible for either to win this just through the voters at this point.
Assuming Hillary pulls this out, there's simply no reason for her not to stay in to the bitter end. Especially as the battlefield begins to favour her.

Suppose that Hillary wins narrowly among the remaining primaries (possible, since the primaries are in territory which she ought to do well in - Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Indiana, Puerto Rico). Say 52% to 48%. That would leave the total going into the convention something like Obama 1863, Clinton 1789.

Once again, the conventional wisdom is turned on its head. This is far from Obama's.

The McCain-Obama Race: Trending in the Right Direction

A strange note - the state polls that we see with Obama v. McCain don't seem to mesh with the national polls.

On state polls, we get Obama and McCain tied, or within a few points of eachother. But then we get all of these polls with McCain leading in New Jersey, close in New York, etc.

I'm not sure what to make of that, yet. Though, my gut feeling - beyond simply hope here - is that the state polls probably don't have the funny weighting games going on that the national ones do.

It's notable that Rasmussen, the only ones running a tracking poll, have McCain opening up a five point lead on Obama now.

Like here are some recent state numbers:

New Jersey:
McCain: 45
Obama: 43

Florida:
McCain: 47
Obama: 37

Arizona:
McCain: 49
Obama: 38

New Jersey:
McCain: 38
Obama: 43

Tennnessee:
McCain: 50
Obama: 36

Pennsylvania:
McCain: 40
Obama: 42

The trend is very promising for McCain.