For My Fellow Veterans

History is Made – Like It or Not, It’s Good

Congratulations are in order for President-Elect Barack Obama

and his historic achievement of being elected the first African-American President of the United States. No matter what your politics or whether you agree with his policies or not, you must admit that history has been made tonight and it’s a good history. It’s good for our country, it’s good for our people, and it’s good for the world to see that freedom and democracy work.

America’s election of the junior senator from Illinois is not only historic in the obvious sense, it is historic in a deep and healing way. This nation has been plagued by racism since it’s inception. We have endured civil wars, riots, inequity, the civil right movement, and countless other challenges, none more felt than by the African-American community. This long lasting and deep seated racism is not only felt in the black communities and urban neighborhoods, it effects all Americans, from the immigrant workers to the most affluent CEOs. It affects how we act with one another, how we speak to each other, and many times it affects us so deeply that these feelings cannot even be uttered in public. Barack Obama’s decisive election win is one step further away from America’s tarnished past, and toward a more united future.

It is my sincerest hope that today’s election has proved to any doubters, white or black, conservative or liberal, that in this land of the free, anyone can accomplish anything no matter what the obsticals, sterotypes or preconceptions.

This is the United States of America and we are stronger when we stand as one nation, under God. We may not agree on many things, but we are all united in the fact that we are Americans and we can stand proud in front of the entire world as a shining example of democracy at it’s best.

In the months and years ahead, I will be sure to voice my opinions when I disagree with Obama and the liberals in Congress as I have always done. It is my hope that he will serve like many past presidents and govern more to the center and do the peoples work, not his parties. I trust that he will live up to his campaign promise to reach across the aisle to bring Americans closer together and work to end the divisiveness in the country. I will give him the benefit of the doubt to fix our economy, but will be watching very closely for any dangerous or civil rights infringing policy making. I will also prepare to elect a Republican president in four years.

However, I am a patriotic American and I will stand with my President against this nation’s enemies at home and abroad. I am proud of our democracy even when “my side” doesn’t win. I am proud that Americans can, and have, looked past skin color (and names) and were able to choose Obama to lead this nation.

It may seem strange but despite my guy losing and am proud to have voted today in this historic election. Most of all tonight I am proud to be an American!

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? – RhinoTimes Reprint

By Orson Scott Card

Editor’s note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

October 20, 2008
 
An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:I remember reading All the President’s Men and thinking: That’s journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It’s a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can’t repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can’t make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It’s as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn’t there a story here? Doesn’t journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren’t you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. “Housing-gate,” no doubt. Or “Fannie-gate.”

Instead, it was Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled “Do Facts Matter?” (http://snipurl.com/457to): “Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury.”

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was … the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was … the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It’s not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let’s follow the money … right to the presidential candidate who is the number two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Fred Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate’s campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an “adviser” to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama’s people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn’t listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That’s what you claim you do, when you accept people’s money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that’s what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don’t like the probable consequences. That’s what honesty means. That’s how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards’ own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women (NOW) threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That’s where you are right now.

It’s not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation’s prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama’s door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You’re just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it’s time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.

Reprint from The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro
View the complete article here:
 greensboro.rhinotimes.com 

 

 

Euro-Trash Endorses Obama then Smears Palin Family At The VMA’s

Russel Brand may be famous in the UK. He will never be famous in the United States!

Claiming to be a representative of the world, this piece of euro-trash asks Americans watching the MTV Music Video Awards to, “Please, elect Barack Obama… On Behalf of the world.” He is literally begging as if it could possibly affect him in some way.

He continues by calling Americans racists if they don’t support Obama, and think America is not ready for a black president (that alone does not make one a racist). Of course, we never hear how racist those people are that will vote for Obama just because he is black. That would be racist, would it?

He even makes a jab at President Bush, calling him a “Retarded cowboy.”

He then goes on to show his political balance by smearing the Palin family in a vile and disgusting manor. Calling the GOP VP nominee a VPILF, he continues by slamming Bristol Palin and her fiancee by suggesting that the GOP is the best form of birth control and exclaims, “Use a condom or become Republican!”

I really don’t expect much from MTV, or artist that use their celebrity (see my post about Oprah) to sway political decision, but this was way over the top.

This guy is not even American! What right does he have to say anything about our government? Especially to millions of teens who were probably watching this show. And who at MTV paid him to say it?

Russell Brand needs to be shipped back over the pond and I hope his goofy hair style catches fire at one of his shows.

Oh and don’t watch MTV…..EVER! And don’t let your kids watch either!

 

 

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Video of Gov. Sarah Palin’s Historic Speech

Last night I watched one of the most compelling speeches I think I have seen in a very long time. I was thrilled to see Sarah Palin stand up to the liberal media, Barak Obama, and Joe Biden all in one fell swoop.

More remarkably, she may have been ad-libbing much of the speech due to a problematic teleprompter. Some sources claim there was no problem, while others are claiming the operator may have been inexperienced with a new machine. In any case, her delivery was exceptional and undeniably historic, as the first woman to be the Vice Presidential nominee for the Republican party.

She was poised and spoke as a true American, one who will be able truly lead reform in Washington. Any doubt that I had regarding her ability to rally people behind her, and lead a cause was erased with last night’s powerful speech.

From her remarks on special needs children, to her understanding of the global dangers facing us today, Sarah Palin will undoubtedly serve America first. I especially enjoyed the jabs at the inexperienced Presidential nominee and his bloviating side kick.

John McCain did well to pick her as his Veep, no matter how “last minute”. Captain Leadbottom can look forward to supporting a Republican ticket once more.

Enjoy the video!

 

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Enquirer Talks Trash about Palin – McCain Threatens Legal Action

Yet another slanderous story regarding VP hopeful Sarah Palin and her family will be reported by the supermarket tabloid, The National Enquirer, tomorrow.

I wrote yesterday about the tabloids US Weekly and OK Magazine, and how these magazines need to stay away from the politics that shape our nation. Now, The Enquirer is about to publish an outright vicious story accusing the conservative Alaskan governor of infidelity and of pressuring her 17 yr old daughter Bristol to marry the father of her yet unborn child.

This story is not going to make or break the next big blockbuster movie that a star may be promoting. It is far more serious. This kind of unsubstantiated trash can only serve disrupt or even potentially destroy a major political figure on the precipice of history making nomination.  It dangerously disrupts our election process with the only motive being the all mighty dollar. 

This is not news people! This is tabloid trash that is trying to pass itself off as journalism by buying lies. Reporters don’t pay for their stories like the Enquirer does. A real journalist sources and back ups their claims with fact and documents, not quotes from second hand “friends of a friends” here-say. 

The Steve Schmidt of the McCain campaign immediately issued this press release:

“The smearing of the Palin family must end. The allegations contained on the cover of the National Enquirer insinuating that Gov. Palin had an extramarital affair are categorically false. It is a vicious lie,”

“The efforts of the media and tabloids to destroy this fine and accomplished public servant are a disgrace. The American people will reject it.”

“Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin look forward to discussing the issues that Americans care about, fixing broken government, creating jobs, making our country energy independent and securing the peace for the next generation by bringing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a victorious end.”

“Legal action will be considered with regard to this disgraceful smear.”

I do reject it, and will not fall for this sensationalist fodder and I hope you don’t either. I hope to see the National Enquirer pay dearly in court if this story is proved to be without merit.

Vote McCain/Palin in November friends! We need to kind of fresh, conservative leadership the Gov. Palin brings to the table and the kind of dedication to country that a McCain / Palin ticket promises.

Fred Thompson – The Courage and Service of John McCain

Fred Thomson give a remarkable speech at the Republican National convention. He attacks the liberal media for getting their coverage of McCain’s VP pick, Gov. Sarah Palin. Fred continues by telling a heartfelt story about McCain’s time as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton. He also points out Obama’s inexperience by calling him, “The most inexperienced candidate to ever run for the presidency.”

What a empassioned speech! Go Fred!!!

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US Weekly / OK Magazine- Painful Lies about Babies and Scandal

My wife is one of those who enjoy reading the Hollywood gossip magazines. I admit to feeling the urge to flip through these tabloid magazines every once and a while, but I can’t help but to give a chuckle after most of the stories.

US Weekly and OK magazine are a couple of those that I see her read with some regularity. Normally, I don’t pay much attention to the content of these trash mags until I saw the latest covers floating on a few blogs.

The latest issue of US Trashy blasted on the cover, “Babies, Lies, and Scandal”. Where are the lies? No scandal has been proven and probably never will be, and as for the babies, that has nothing to do with this election and it reaks of sexism. Do you think US Weekly may have an agenda when they publish trash like this, but when covering Obama in June the headline read “Michelle Obama, Why Barak Loves Her”? Would it surprise you to know that if the owner of US Weekly, Jann Wenner (founder of Rolling Stone magazine) is a staunch Barack Obama supporter and major donor?

In the latest OK edition, the front cover features Obama and his family and reads, “Life With My Girls”, and of course paints a perfect family picture. In unsurprising contrast, the flipside shows Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, John McCain’s new running mate, holding her baby boy Trig. The unabashed headline states, “A Mother’s Painful Choice,” and alludes to the blatantly false internet rumor in which Gov. Palin allegedly faked her pregnancy and birth to her Down’s syndrome afflicted son. This apparently was meant to cover up the out of wedlock teen pregnancy of her 17 yr old daughter Bristol. The story has no legs and has been rebuffed Alaskan locals who are familiar with the young Palin and her fiancé, Levi Johnston.

The bias is unmistakable and outrageous. I don’t care is these tabloids ruffle the feathers of my favorite TV and movie stars. They get paid big bucks to put up with it. However, when you attack a public citizen’s character and minor child for political motivation it is deplorable and reprehensible. Conservative and fair minded people who read these magazines should be outraged and write to the editors of this garbage. Tell them you won’t buy their junk if they keep printing this viciousness.

Unfair, lop-sided coverage of this election is unbelievable. If the “real” media would have picked up the Edwards story, as they should have, a garbage paper like the Enquirer would never have had a chance, and might have run a story about how good Britney Spears is looking these days. Everywhere you look you can’t escape the hyped up one sided stories about “the one”. Now it’s even in the checkout aisles at the supermarkets.

Entertainers should stay out of politics, and so should the tabloids that cover them. The line between Hollywood and Washington is getting blurred indeed, and frankly I am sick of it. I am tired of listening to actors and singers donating their image and time to support their “feel good” liberal candidates and causes, and I’m tired of politicians pandering to their audiences via the entertainers that I would like to enjoy.

Palin Videos

I have been collecting a few videos of Gov. Sarah Palin in action. A few of them show a great deal of insight into how she may perform as McCain’s VP. Let me know what you think and leave a few comments.

Take a look at my VodPod to the left and Enjoy!

 

I collect with vodpod

Why Pick Palin?

McCain/Palin 2008

I waited for the media leak (of which there was none to speak of) all night. Well, actually I only waited until about 2:00am. Alas, around 9:00am I catch wind of the first reports of the McCain VP pick and my first reaction is…Who? Palin, Palin the name is vaguely familiar but I can’t place it. Alaska, oh yeah, now I remember. This is that governor that is pushing to drill in ANWR. Now I’m thinking, “so far, so good”.

I had to let it sink in for a while. Why would McCain pick Palin. Virtually unknown outside of her home state until recently, and not a very experienced politician either, I struggled to put it together. Obama likes to say John McCain doesn’t “get it”. Well, on the contrary, I think he not only gets it, but gets it right.Governor Palin is the perfect choice!

Just as Obama chose an experienced Washington insider partly to augment his own lack of experience, McCain is off-setting his significant experience by choosing a running mate unfamiliar with the inner dealings of Washington. Obama missed the boat by not picking Hillary Clinton as his Vice President. She garnered a lot of votes and it would have most certainly built a massive machine to be confronted in November. In addition, the first Black/Female ticket would have diffused any attempt by McCain to do just what he did, choosing a woman as a running mate to siphon off disgruntled Hillary supporters. Perhaps, just perhaps, they will find Sarah Palin a more suitable choice for leadership not only because of her gender, but due to her common sense policies for the American family.A conservative with the bravery to confront unethical and wasteful spending who is able to reach across the aisle to get things done, is also just the type of leader America needs in the White House.

A McCain/Palin ticket seems to have just the right amount of moderate conservatism to win in November. Her age and family life also has a lot of appeal. She is at a stage in life where many Americans find themselves today and will be able to relate. As a father and husband close to 40, I can tell you that her story closely resembles mine and that of many voters, Democrats, Independents, and Republican alike. She understands what it means to raise a family with high moral standards and a good education in today’s society. She knows what it means, with our shrinking paychecks and inflated grocery bills, to have to put $50 in the tank each week, pay for health care, and what the rising cost of goods do to the middle class family. McCain and Palin will put America first. They will work to reduce spending and taxes, reduce our dependence of foreign oil, and ensure government reform, so that American families can reduce the burden they are experiencing from a struggling economy and housing market. As a lifelong NRA member Palin will fight to protect our second amendment rights so we can protect our persons, property, and family. She will work to reform government and upset the status quo in Washinton, placing country first, and cronism out the door.

The McCain/Pladin ticket has the ability to transform american trust in government and the Republican party. I would like to learn more about this “Wow” pick from Alaska. But, so far I like what I’ve learned. Yep, I think John McCain “get’s it”. And I think a McCain/Palin ticket is exactly how he shows it.