Democratic Party

For NEWSWEEK and Alter to allege  a plot by Republicans to keep blacks from voting patronizes blacks and is little more than reverse Jim Crow race baiting.

NEWSWEEK’S Senior Editor Jonathan Alter writes in next week’s issue of a GOP plot to “keep eligible African-Americans from voting in several states.” NEWSWEEK’S and Alter’s notorius biases are showing. But, for Alter to allege  a plot by Republicans to keep blacks from voting patronizes blacks and Is little more than reverse Jim Crow race baiting.

Alter’s proof is his own partisan speculation and a tissue thin “study” by the New York University Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice the leftist think tank and legal activist group, heavily financed by George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

Alter’s thesis rotates around the 2008 Supreme Court 6-3 decision, Crawford vs. Marion County (Indiana) Election Board that examined Indiana law, that voters have to produce a photo identification (driver’s license, Passport, military identification or other official photo document to vote) voters who do not have a photo ID may cast a provisional ballot just as if you forgot to reregister after moving. To have their votes counted, they must visit a designated government office within 10 days and either bring a photo ID or sign a statement saying they can’t afford one.

Alter contends that the Brennan Center study found no evidence of large scale voting fraud so the whole photo ID thing is a straw man. So, requiring photo identification must be a Republican scheme to disinfranchise blacks. He cites Indiana where more than two thirds of Indiana adults have no passports and nearly 15 percent are without a driver’s license. He says African-Americans are disproportionately “photo identificationless” relying on anecdotal conclusions like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when driver’s licenseless New Orleans blacks had on rely on public transport to escape and it failed stranding them.

Alter also cite but makes no complaint that In Ohio, a new law allows voters to register to vote and fill out an absentee ballot at the same time between Sept. 30 and Oct. 6. This will mean a week of furious campaigning and early voting in a key state. With 470,000 students enrolled in Ohio’s public colleges and universities (and nine out of 10 are Ohio residents), expect a bumper crop of pro-Obama young voters.

In California college students can register to vote if they claim their college address as permanent residence. Of course that means some vote at the college and at home too.

The court’s ruling tried to preserve and protecting an honesty voting system without raising barriers to franchise. As with almost everything else not everyone agrees about everything even that it should be fair and honest.

These two paragraphs from today’s Sigma Research, Inc, Shirmeyer Rate Market Report are worth reading.

A good day for Republican Women is a bad day for the press

The attack on Sarah Palin scares me. The media no longer even tries for impartiality. They are full force against her and are pulling out all the stops to attack this woman on all levels. They have stooped so low that they even published her Social Security number, address and phone number simply to harass and possibly endanger her and her family. The media doesn’t care if they contradict themselves or who else they take down just as long as they get Sarah Palin.

I never thought I would hear the liberal media suggest that a woman should stay at home with her infant rather than work, but I heard it. I never thought I would hear the same people who fawned over the movie Juno now imply that it is a sign that this teenage girl was “forced” to have the baby because of her mother’s values. I never thought I would hear the same people who defended Obama’s lack of experience go after someone for their supposed lack of experience.

Sometimes I feel as if I am watching a two year old having a tantrum. They are howling and screaming and stomping their feet on the ground. They were so sure that McCain would pick Romney or some other white male who they were sure they could beat. But this? McCain did it again. True to his maverick nickname he picked an unknown woman. And the liberals and media were taken unaware. They really don’t like that. The media is so damn smug because they are always in the loop and know what will happen before the little people do. Not this time.

So the media and liberals are angry. McCain didn’t play by their rules and for that they want to punish him. They will tear Sarah Palin apart and make McCain regret he ever picked her. Except in doing so they are showing their true colors. They are looking more and more like a pack of wolves going after their prey. And it isn’t simply the TV reporters but even the scandal papers like US are going after Sarah. She is being hit from every side while the liberals begin whisper campaigns to raise doubt about her by hinting that McCain might drop her. He won’t. But as I said the liberals will try everything to take down the McCain and Palin ticket. And for the stark fact that they are afraid this ticket might win. And that scares them.

Over the weekend, something by Charles Krauthammer caught my eye. Unfortunately I now can’t find the exact article but I clearly recall his question; Where are Barack Obama’s friends?

I have read a lot about Obama, seen two different biographies on him and watched him during the DNC Convention. Yet I don’t recall ever seeing any mention of or interview with his friends. Whenever a man runs for president there have always been interviews with old high school friends, basketball teammates, college roommates, and past girlfriends. But I don’t think I have seen any of these in regards to Obama. Have you?

Doesn’t that seem a little bit strange? Even now, other than his wife, who would he call his best friend? In direct contrast, John McCain seems to have made friends in every stage of his life. In the Senate, he has friends on both sides and though his Democrat friends may strongly disagree with his politics, they still like him as a man. But where are these friends for Barack Obama?

Yes, this man does give wonderful, warm and stirring speeches but that is not out of character. When you give a speech there is this invisible wall separating the speaker from the audience. Plus the speaker is in complete control and is speaking prepared lines. On the other hand, Barack does not do at all well in Town Hall forums. This forum requires that the wall separating him from the audience is gone and instead he has to interact with people and do so extemporaneously.

Not surprisingly, John McCain is the exact opposite. He does very poorly when giving speeches because there is that invisible wall separating the speaker from the audience. Instead he is wonderful in a Town Hall or one on one forum. John is definitely a people person who truly enjoys being with people and talking to them. (This must have made all those years as a POW and in solitary confinement so much worse for him.) Senator McCain comes across as someone you would enjoy having a drink with but I am not so sure the same could be said about Obama.

So to repeat my question, where are Barack Obama’s friends, roommates, teammates or even old girlfriends? I have often thought that he appears aloof and even cold at times. That he is not a people person, and is more comfortable dealing with law or procedures or strategies than dealing one on one with people. Yet it is one thing to be a loner and self sufficient but not to find anybody who was his friend is ridiculous. What does that say about how he would govern or interact with other leaders?

Ironically, the one man who has been found to be his friend was Reverend Jeremiah Wright. We know how voters thought of that friend! And was Obama really a closer friend to that 1960’s radical and former Weathermen, Ayers? Are there more “friends” like this out there but keeping quiet for fear of doing further damage to Obama’s image?

It does make you wonder. Here is this candidate for President who seems to have very few friends and the only close associates found so far are extreme radicals. Someone needs to do some more digging into Obama’s life. Either through out his entire life he never made any close friends, or his friends are like the two discovered, Wright and Ayers, who are so radical that Obama had to disown their friendship. In either case, it doesn’t bode well for someone who wants to be the next President.

It is no surprise that my mind is preoccupied with feisty ladies. The biggest one, of course, is tropical storm Fay who will be passing close to my home later today. Unlike the three hurricanes which went right over my roof during a 6-week period in 2004 this one will be more ladylike. As of this morning, Fay is taking her time as she dawdles up through Florida leaving a trail of minor wind and rain damage.

The other feisty ladies are four groups I happened to find while surfing the internet. I would look for these ladies to be raising their voices next week in support of the feistiest lady of the land, Hillary Clinton. According to The Stiletto, these different groups are now all coming together into one group, The New Agenda, to promote a variety of women’s issues.

It is more interesting, however, to look at the individual groups. I think the largest group is PUMA, which stands for Party Unity My Ass. Ever since Obama won the Democratic Primary, Howard Dean and Barack Obama have been continuously lecturing that all Democrats must now come together as one party. The name of this pro-Hillary group pretty much sums up what these women think about that!. As Hillary supporters they are demanding a roll call of votes during the DNC Convention next week to remind everyone how many votes Hillary did have and just how close Obama came to losing plus they wanted Hillary to have a prime time slot for her speech.

I Own My Vote is a group of Hillary supporters who argue that their votes do not belong to any party or candidate and that they will vote however they like. See a trend here? In fact their website http://www.iownmyvote.com/ would make a McCain staffer proud. They are also demanding a roll call of votes during the DNC Convention to remind everyone how close the race was etc.etc.etc.

Just Say No Deal appears to be a group of PUMA bloggers who are demanding a roll call of votes to remind everyone blah blah blah. Together 4US is a group of 8,739 women who have signed a pledge requesting that the DNC Convention have a roll call of votes yadda yadda yadda. You get the picture.

Four different groups of women, all furious with the Democratic primary, all continuing to support Hillary and not only wanting Hillary to be recognized during the DNC Convention but to remind Obama that he just barely won. For many, they are not only pro Hillary but have become anti Obama as evidenced by their stinging rhetoric in their websites and by their “NOBAMA” signs. Apparently some of these women have reached the tipping point where they are so angry with their party that they are actually voting for McCain. This is making an impact as the polls have been showing that Obama is not doing as well as expected in the “white women” group.

Now all these pro Hillary groups are merging together. Tropical Storm Fay might be causing havoc this week but it sounds as if these other women might do the same during the DNC Convention . I think that Howard Dean just might have his hands full if these women come out in force in Denver. I also wonder what would happen if they all start to chant for Hillary, especially if they do so while Obama is standing by himself in that stadium. Fay may have moderately high winds and even throw off some tornadoes but nothing will come close to what Dean and Obama might have to face as they are reminded of that oh so true statement: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…

By now everybody has seen the cover of the New Yorker depicting Obama and his wife as Islamic terrorists. You can almost hear the magazine’s staff laughing at the thought that less educated, less sophisticated and less enlightened people actually believe this about the Democrat candidate. This cover was meant to ridicule these rubes while the article defended Obama’s patriotism. The only problem with this satire is that, as backed up by recent surveys, there really are a significant number of people who believe that Obama is associated with Islam and US radicals. They believe that instead of being a satire the New Yorker cover actually depicted the “truth” about Obama and his wife.

No surprise that Obama is furious. He has spent millions trying to establish that he is a patriotic American and that all the rumors are lies. And yet as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and this cover erased a lot of the progress he had made. The TV news and cable shows continuously showed this cover and it is so provocative that people will remember the image long after they remember that it was to be a satire. The New Yorker cover also had an unintended result which might be a key to defeating Obama this fall.

The more I watch Obama, the more I feel that he is becoming a self righteous, self important man who believes in his own hype. Think about it. What kind of man would create a seal identical to the presidential seal? How egotistical is it to move his acceptance speech from the hall to a stadium where he can speak to the masses all gathered to worship him? Or to want to speak from the Brandenburg Gate in Germany, where only President Kennedy and Reagan have spoken? He really is beginning to think of himself as the next JFK and Martin Luther King rolled up into one.

Then along comes The New Yorker cover which seems to be ridiculing Obama and his wife rather than the intended satirizing of red state Republicans. And you know what? Obama’s reaction is showing a trait that could become an Achilles heel for him. He can’t laugh at himself. Barack has become such a stuffed shirt that he can’t tolerate anyone making fun of him or satirizing him. Sure, he has some humorous moments in his speeches but these are ones he approved and it never shows him in a negative or even awkward situation.

A few days before the latest problem he and his family had been interviewed by a tabloid gossipy TV show. It was light and fluffy and cute but he didn’t even like it when his own little girls teased him. Papa Obama was clearly uncomfortable although he laughed and went along with it. It appeared that he was also annoyed that his girls got more questions and coverage than he did. What could have been a wonderful PR moment turned negative when afterwards he said he regretted doing it and will not do any more family interviews. This interview was quickly followed by the New Yorker cover plus the callous remarks by Jesse Jackson. Barack might have diffused these situations if he laughed them off. Instead he got angry, righteous and superior which only served to prolong it all.

In the beginning of the year Obama seemed to be a likeable young man. Yet it seems as if he has changed into a pompous hypocrite who no longer tolerates anyone making fun of him and instead believes he deserves to be treated as someone who is destined for greatness. These new traits also include the inability to tolerate anyone making fun of him. And that is what the Republicans must do if they want to win. Show how rediculous he has become and laugh at him. For if he has become this arrogant and this self righteous when he is only a candidate for President, can you imagine what he will be like if he is actually elected President?

Something from the southern end of a northbound horse.

Jazz singer Rene Marie saying, as a black, she “just doesn’t feel American.” substituted the so-called “Black National Anthem” sung to the tune of the Star Spangled banner at Denver’s State of the City ceremonies on July 1^st. The Mayor, Council and attendees were stunned by her impudence, and more so when she confessed she’d been secretly planned it for weeks.

The Denver Post reported she had been interviewed by a Russian broadcaster who asked her what it was like to be American. “And I realized I didn’t feel like an American, and that bothered me a great deal,” the singer said. She said she feels like a foreigner sometimes. She also said she did not ask for permission feeling it was her right to artistic expression.

The self-styled “Black National Anthem” was written by James Johnson and first performed more than a century ago. It marked nearly four decades of freedom for blacks in America. It now still appears in some church hymnals as “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” The lyrics of the song are:

Lift ev’ry voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring.
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise,
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee,
Shadowed beneath thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

The classless stunt has inflamed many provoking harsh criticism and the ire of a broad cross section of people and offers of one-way tickets out of the country for singer Rene Maria. Denver is the site of the Democrat National Convention in August where the first black will likely be the Democrat party nominee for President of the United States, and this incident punctuates a rising sense of racism about the November General election that is already polarized along racial lines.

That STAR-SPANGLED BANNER was written by an amateur poet Francis Scott Key in 1814 as he watched the British Navy bombard Fort McHenry in Chesapeake Bay during the War of 1812. It was originally titled “The Defense of Fort McHenry” and later set to the tune of a popular English drinking song. It became the U. S. national anthem by congressional resolution on March 3, 1931

I wrote over half of an article before I realized that my conclusion wasn’t what I thought it would be. In fact, it was the exact opposite. Yet in light of these unexpected findings I am now feeling optimistic about John McCain’s chances in the upcoming election. So how did I come to this conclusion?

My initial premise was that going back to Peter lying about knowing Jesus over 2,000 years ago right up to today, people lie about liking someone if it might be dangerous or unpopular or simply uncool to admit they liked or knew that person. For example, how was it that disco was so popular back in the 70’s if everybody now say they despised it back then? Same with Barry Manilow, who everyone hated yet he still managed to sell millions of albums. Or more recently, if everyone says that Amy Winehouse is, at best, sad and, at worst, mentally deranged, how is it that her Back To Back CD is the biggest selling album of all time on Amazon.com?

I went on to say that this same phenomenon happened during this election where people are lying both for and against the candidates. Obama’s message of change is what everybody says they want. And yes, his race is also a major issue but a positive one, for to say you are voting for Obama proves you are not a racist, right? On the other hand, everybody hates Bush and the Republicans and therefore they dislike John McCain, too. Plus everyone is saying he is too old to be president, and more importantly, voting for him might indicate that you are a closet racist. Therefore if you want everyone to know that you, too, want change and are popular, cool and definitely not a racist then you tell them you are for Obama and against McCain and those awful Republicans.

I continued by saying that we saw this during the primaries. Obama easily won in the caucuses where people had to publicly indicate who they wanted and may have feared being considered a racist or even uncool if they literally didn’t stand in Obama’s corner. On the other hand when people voted in the secrecy of a voting booth where no one would know who they chose then Obama lost.

Where I got in trouble with this article is that based on all of the above I would assume that people are continuing to lie and say they are for Obama in order to look good to the pollsters. So a review of the polls should therefore show that Obama is decisively beating McCain, right? But he’s not. A few polls show he is ahead but only by single digits and one recent poll showed that they were tied!

What does this mean? How can McCain be doing so well when everyone knows that Obama is the man of the hour. He’s even on the cover of Rolling Stone and you can’t get much cooler than that! What about the historically known premise that people tend to lie to pollsters to make themselves look good? This would mean lying that they are for Obama because lets face it, nobody would lie about voting for McCain thinking that would make them look popular. So if you factor in that some people are lying about planning to vote for Obama and if he currently only leads by a few points, at most, then, oh my, it might mean that McCain is actually in the lead.

If the election were held today I wouldn’t be surprised if, to the shock of everybody, McCain is the winner. But the election isn’t for another 4 months and a lot can happen. Nonetheless, Obama shouldn’t be quite so certain that everybody will be voting for him, even including those who are standing in his corner. As for McCain? He needs to let people know that a vote for McCain is definitely not racist nor a third term for Bush. Most of all McCain needs to let us know that it is ok to support him and maybe even popular and cool to vote for him. Although just like disco and Manilow, if you want to deny you liked McCain after the fact, well, once elected and in the White House McCain probably wouldn’t even mind if you denied him three times.