P.J. Gladnick's blog

Following the controversy over the authenticity of  Barack Obama's birth certificate can be a bit confusing with all its detailed analysis. Your humble correspondent will leave that up to the experts. However, in response to the charge that Barack Obama is not an American citizen, Obama's Fight the Smears website, quoting FactCheck.Org, has made a bombshell admission...Barack Obama was once a citizen of Kenya. You read that right, Obama had Kenyan citizenship until 1982. Here is the startling admission published in Fight the Smears (emphasis mine):

 “When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children.

Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4, 1982.”

Chicago Tribune correspondent, Howard Witt, seems to have found the villain to blame in case Barack Obama loses in November: elderly prejudiced white people. However, such "prejudice" is not their fault, Witt "generously" allows,  since they suffer from atrophied frontal brain lobes. Witt's article claims that such people will be more likely to vote against Obama due to the prejudice induced by these diseased frontal lobes (emphasis mine):

As your humble correspondent noted earlier today, one needs to have some training in reading liberal tea leaves in order to determine which candidate actually wins presidential debates. In the case of this Newsweek article, written by associate editor Andrew Romano, absolutely no such training is needed.  The title flat out tells us: "McCain Won." However there is also one highly laughable caveat added on: "But Will It Matter?" First Romano tells us why he thinks McCain won (emphasis mine):

Tonight, John McCain was the more effective combatant.

Julia Roberts might not be too happy when she finds out that the woman she portrayed in a movie of the same name, Erin Brockovich, is currently praising Sarah Palin. This is considered an act of treason by the left. And that is not the only "heresy" committed by Erin Brockovich who, until recently, was considered to be a "progressive." An article by John Vidal in the UK Guardian details Brockovich's "thought crimes" (emphasis mine):

...Although she rates herself as a leading environmentalist, she is extremely keen on Sarah Palin, the huntin', shootin' Alaskan governor running for vice president with the Republican candidate John McCain.

Environmentalists have painted Palin as the arch-enemy, to the right of Bush, because until last week she was denying climate change had anything to do with man, thought polar bears could go live on land and wants to see the Arctic drilled to within a quart of its oil.

Your humble correspondent is of the opinion that, without even knowing who wins the election in November, one can easily determine the winner by simply looking at the screen shots of liberal members of the MSM on the day after the election. Are the faces of Brian Williams, Katie Couric, Chris Matthews, etc. mournful? That will pretty much tell you who won the election the previous day. Likewise, simply by reading an analysis of last night's debate in Oxford, Mississippi in liberal publications, one can determine who won that debate without even watching it. It is called reading the liberal tea leaves and, since the NewsBusters Eye of Sauron has been upon them lately, The New Republic has been chosen as an example.

The first story chosen for this liberal tea leaf reading is titled, "They Both Lost." This was way too easy. What the title really tells you, without even having to read the story, is "McCain Won." The article itself merely confirms what was pretty much shouted out in the title (emphasis mine):

The New Republic has come up with a new way to drag conservatism through the mud---Simply describe racists as "racially conservative." Get it? They are implying that if you are a conservative then you must somehow be a racist. Your humble correspondent caught them using this term in a story headlined on The New Republic front page as: "Are People Who Hang Up On Pollsters More Racist Than Those Who Don't?" The story itself pretty much goes nowhere since no voting trend by people who refuse to talk to pollsters can be discerned. However, the story does link conservatism with racism (emphasis mine):

This is a story that could only happen in Berkeley---militant tree sitters accused of racism. And the funniest part is that the Berkeley Daily Planet reported this story with a completely straight face as if tree sitters are some sort of a legitimate group like Teamsters or Ruthenian-Americans (Tom Selleck is one). It seems that the tree sitters (union or non-union?) have been living up in the Berkeley trees for almost two years protesting the construction of a high-tech gym at the UC Berkeley campus. You can see a video of the "wonderful" life of these tree sitters in the upper right.

This is probably an article that the New York Times wishes it didn't have in its archives because it reveals the true culprits behind the current Fannie Mae meltdown. You will find "uncomfortable" truths in this September 30, 1999 article by Steven A. Holmes starting with the title, "Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending,"  that you won't find in current editions of the New York Times (emphasis mine): 

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

The leftwing blogosphere has a new villain in addition to John McCain and Sarah Palin: Bill Clinton. They have been suspecting that Clinton has not been giving all out support to Barack Obama including his announcement to Larry King that he wouldn't begin campaigning for Obama until after October 9 out of respect for the Jewish High Holy Days. However, the straw that really broke the leftwing camel's back was Clinton's statement today to Chris Cuomo on ABC's Good Morning America defending John McCain's request for a debate delay until after the financial bailout crises is resolved. Here are a couple of things that Bill Clinton said that drove the left absolutely bonkers:

We know he didn't do it because he's afraid because Sen. McCain wanted more debates.

It looks like the Democrats are shocked by a nominee who actually takes the initiative to show some leadership in the economic bailout bill as evidenced by the reaction of Democrat activist and CNN political contributor Donna Brazile. Appearing on a panel yesterday hosted by Campbell Brown which also included Gloria Borger and Tony Blankley, one could almost hear the song, "Don't Worry, Be Happy," in the background as Brazile assured us over and over that "progress" on the bailout was being made so there was no need for the nominees to appear in Washington except to passively cast a vote. Here is a transcript of the proceedings (emphasis mine):

CAMBELL BROWN: John McCain's big move today, a Hail Mary pass, responsible leadership, stroke of genius, politically, strategically, what do you think?

Let me start with you, Tony.

Slate political reporter, Christopher Beam, has come up with a bizarre analysis of Joe Biden's many gaffes: He is immune to the effects of gaffes because he makes so many of them.

I kid you not as you can read Beam's own words in defense of Biden (emphasis mine):

When Joe Biden described an Obama ad attacking John McCain's inability to use a computer as "terrible," the world acted as if the Joe-pocalypse had finally arrived. Jonathan Martin of Politico called it "perhaps his most off-message statement yet." Newsday dubbed him "gaffe-a-minute Joe." National Review's Victor Davis Hanson said it raised "serious concern whether Biden is up to the job."

Martin Peretz, the editor-in-chief of The New Republic, didn't make many friends with the hard core left which nowadays makes up a large part of Democrat activists with his latest article: "Red Dusk: The Rosenberg bombshell."  It is about how many in the American left, despite the evidence that Julius and Ethel Rosenburg were indeed Soviet spies, still can't accept their guilt just as they can't accept the culpability of communists and communism in general (emphasis mine):

In America and in other Western societies, however, there still remain coteries of intellectuals and other high-minded people who have trouble absorbing the simplest historic truths, truths which ordinary workers in highly ideological Labour England, say, have had absolutely no difficulties absorbing. Even more so among unionized workers in the United States. The blindness of these meta-minds does not quite absolve Stalin of his crimes--but it willfully looks away from those of Castro or Che, who still hold a special place in the hearts of people calling themselves progressives.

Call it the Blame Game. The liberals are already coming up with excuses if Barack Obama loses in November. We have already seen how members of the MSM are blaming it on racism.  However, Huffington Post blogger, Paul Slansky, has found another villain: Bill Clinton. Slansky lays out the blame scenario in his blog:

Given that we would never have had the odious George W. Bush in the White House in the first place if it wasn't for your blow jobs, Bill, it seems obvious that you owe it to the people of this country, and especially to the parents whose kids died in the Iraq War that Gore would never have started, and to all the parents whose kids would be killed in the WarFest that would be a McCain/Palin -- sorry, Palin/McCain administration -- to do everything in your power to get Barack Obama elected.

Don't expect too much from Barack Obama at this Friday's presidential debate because his debating skills are not nearly as good as those of John McCain. That is the message from the New York Times to prepare viewers for the debate. Therefore if Obama fails to quite match up to McCain, that really should be counted as a victory for Obama...at least according to this manufactured debate expectations game. The truth is that  McCain is not really a skilled debater but that didn't keep the Times from touting his supposed oratorical skills as you can see in the very title of this story: "A Scrappy Fighter, McCain Honed His Debating Style in and Out of Politics." To read this story, you would think that McCain is one of the great debaters of our time:

Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, heads into the first debate on Friday with a track record as a scrappy combatant and the instincts of a fighter pilot, prepared to take out his opponent and willing to take risks to do so.

It sounds like the rabid rantings of some poor demented shlub posting at the Democratic Underground. Instead, it is Al Gore's former fashion adviser, Naomi Wolf, indulging in sanity-challenged fantasies on her Huffington Post blog. The target of Wolf's derangement is Sarah Palin and it is so over the top that one might suspect Wolf is an agent provocateur working for conservatives in order to discredit the left. Think I'm kidding? Check out this sampling of Wolf's plunge off the political deep end (emphasis mine):

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah "Evita" Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

Does anybody remember Bill Clinton boasting in 1992 that a vote for him means "buy one, get one free?" Of course, he was referring to the fact that  by electing him, you would also get Hillary as a virtual co-president. No big outrage in the liberal media back then about a spouse being too involved in the political affairs of her husband.

However, the Washington Post has now taken the involvement of Todd Palin in Alaska civic affairs to suggest that perhaps he is some sort of Machiavellian power behind the throne. Unfortunately for their premise, the facts dug up by Washington Post writers, Alec MacGillis and Karl Vick, actually shows Todd Palin to be an upstanding citizen with very limited involvement in political affairs. In fact, the criticisms of the "First Dude" in their article are so lame as to laughable. One is the charge that Todd sat in on a state budget veto meeting (emphasis mine):

On Friday's Situation Room, CNN's Jack Cafferty asked, "Is Sarah Palin's 15 minutes of fame over?" As you can see, Jack seems very anxious for Palin to become a has been of little consequence in this election:

Funny how a stock market crash, the failure of a few big investment banks will distract Americans from the flavor of the day. There doesn't seem to be the burning interest in who makes Sarah Palin's glasses that there was a few days ago. Former White House advisor and Republican strategist Karl Rove told the Associated Press this week that the Palin phenomenon will fade between now and the election, and that may be already happening [transcript continues below the fold].

Jonathan! Oh Jonathan! Paging Jonathan Chait! To paraphrase a certain wide stance senator, you've been a bad boy, a naughty boy. In fact, you're probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy. You see, you've written a long smear of Sarah Palin in the New Republic where you are The senior editor and yet a certain name was missing in your attack. What was that name? Why, Joe Biden. And why is Chait so reluctant to so much as mention Biden nowadays except in passing? Simple. When it looked like Biden had not a chance in the world of ever being nominated for president, Chait felt free to write what he really thought of the verbose senator last year (emphasis mine):

They say love conquers all and that might just be the case with Susan Estrich. The normally liberal columnist seems to be absolutely smitten with Todd Palin. Her recent column sounds more like a love note to him than a political analysis:

First Dude. That's what they call him in Alaska. It's OK. Todd's Ok. Whatever. He smiles at Greta Van Susteren. Not a touch of noblesse. More like plan old politesse. I always laugh a little when I see people who are very much not ordinary Americans in any respect (pay, fame, education or overall wealth, for starters) try to speak for them. "This is what ordinary Americans want," says someone whose only contact with them may be while his face is getting powdered for TV.

You can almost hear "Love Is A Many Splendored Thing" playing in the background as Susan  continues to verbally ogle Todd:

There may be only one truly regular guy, a guy regular enough that he doesn't begin to have the arrogance to believe he speaks for anyone other than himself, in this race. And therefore, of course, he does.

It was a beautiful sight to behold. The obviously pro-Obama Campbell Brown snarling throughout an interview at the heels of former Hillary Clinton fundraiser and now McCain supporter, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, for "daring" to switch sides. After several minutes of accusing de Rothschild of everything from being an elitist to acting as a traitor to the Democrats, Campbell Brown set herself up for the grand slam dunk by Ms Rothschild using the very words of the Lightworker to turn the tables on the CNN interviewer. First we see in the transcript how Campbell Brown begins with an elitism charge against de Rothschild (emphasis mine):

Get the scene. The McCain/Palin ticket wins in November and soon afterwards mobs of wild eyed bible-toting evangelicals will burn stacks of books in giant bonfires. Sound ridiculous? Well, that is exactly what Andrew Greeley is laughably claiming in his latest Chicago Sun-Times column ominously titled, "Next Chapter for radical right: Burn books."  Years ago, Greeley sounded somewhat sane but lately he has gone off the deep end such as his claim in June that it is racist not to vote for Obama. Greeley's latest sanity-challenged screed presents a bleak future of crazed book-burning evangelicals taking over the country. Try not to laugh too hard as you read Greeley's rantings (emphasis mine): 

I guess the liberal crew aboard ABC's Good Morning America train trip felt comfortable in portraying small towns across the country as suffering from economic hard times which, of course, would be helpful for the Democrats in the upcoming elections in November. However, their pre-conceived script about economic hardship is being angrily challenged by the mayor of one of the towns they painted with their liberal brush. The mayor of Rome NY, James F. Brown is furious over the way his community was portrayed by GMA as you can see in this article in the Rome Daily Sentinel (emphasis mine):

Furious over the portrayal of Rome in Tuesday’s national broadcast of "Good Morning America," Mayor James F. Brown said he’ll never watch ABC — the television show’s network — again.

Cast and crew of the news program were at the Rome railroad station on Monday afternoon as part of a 50-state Whistle Stop ‘08 tour. More than 500 people turned out to meet the train and greet television personalities Robin Roberts, Diane Sawyer and Cris Cuomo.

A stunning example of the incredible disconnect between the mainstream media and the blogosphere is this video of the interim Fannie Mae CEO, Daniel Mudd, addressing the Congressional Black Caucus, including Barack Obama, at their swearing-in ceremony in 2005. Although this video is spreading quickly in the blogosphere, you have yet to see or hear anything about it in the MSM. As you can see in the video, Mudd talks about the problems of Fannie Mae yet that didn't keep Obama and other Democrats from taking large contributions from that organization or doing anything to try to fix it. Here is a transcript of CEO Mudd addressing the Democrats (emphasis mine):

Who says Ralph Nader doesn't have a sense of humor? Here is a video of Nader in a Hamlet like discourse with Cardozo the Parrot about why his presidential campaign isn't getting much media coverage this year. Well, I can tell Ralph why he isn't getting media coverage. Because the MSM fears he will take votes away from Obama this year and don't want a repeat of 2000 where many blamed Nader for siphoning enough votes away from Al Gore in Florida to cause him to lose the election. However, let us read Ralph Nader in his own words as he pours out his campaign coverage woes to Cardozo the Parrot:

(Cardozo the Parrot squawking)

It seems that CNN reporter, Dana Bash, felt safe in reporting on Lou Dobbs Tonight a gratuitous slam against Sarah Palin that she is "carefully scripted." What she apparently didn't count on was Dobbs questioning her about Barack Obama carefully following his own teleprompter script. The result was that Bash was rendered nearly incomprehensible as she spouted gibberish defending her biased reporting while attempting to change the subject. Here are the comedy highlights from the September 15 CNN transcript (emphasis mine):

Perhaps it is time for the remaining Miami Herald employees to break out the Santeria rooster once again. Just three months after announcing job cutbacks in June, the Miami Herald has just announced that it is axing another 119 employees (emphasis mine):

Three months after announcing plans to trim 250 jobs, the Miami Herald Media Co. said Tuesday it is cutting another 119 positions, or about 10 percent of the remaining workforce.

Eighty full- and part-time employees will leave the company, while other, vacant jobs will be eliminated, Miami Herald President and Publisher David Landsberg said.

The company will ask for volunteers to leave and accept a severence package, but some of the cuts will be involuntary layoffs, Landsberg told employees in a memo Tuesday.

The cuts will include 23 positions in The Miami Herald newsroom, bringing the journalism staff to a total of 275.

Ah, you can just feel the love emanating from left-wing comedian Janeane Garofalo.

Appearing on the September 12 broadcast of HBO's "Real Time" the actress joked that it would be a great idea to jail all Republicans. 

Garofalo's tolerance humor on "Real Time," which also included guests John Fund and Salman Rushdie, on the subject of Republicans begins at the 06:33 mark in this video (emphasis mine):

The chair of the Connecticut College history department, Catherine McNicol Stock,  has suggested that Sarah Palin is somehow associated with Pacific Northwest hate groups such as Posse Comitatus and the Aryan Nations. Her proof? Well, because Palin lived in areas with low "diversity." I kid you not. Here is the professor's "learned thesis" presented in a Philadelphia Inquirer opinion column melodramatically titled, "Intolerance thrives in Palin's Pacific Northwest" (emphasis mine):

Despite her efforts to portray herself as an average, small-town, "folksy" American, Sarah Palin's political views - ardently pro-gun, pro-censorship, antichoice and antigay - make John McCain's conservative credentials pale in comparison. What few observers have said, however, is these beliefs are not just extreme - they are radical, and even bear a comparison with some of the most notorious "rural radicals" of our time.

MarketWatch columnist, Jon Friedman, has posted a column that appears to have been composed in an alternate universe in an entirely different space/time continuum than ours. It is a universe in which the media somehow built up Sarah Palin and in which the public will also become bored with her. Does this sound like our own universe? Of course not. In our universe, the real one, the media has been tearing down Sarah Palin from day one. Therefore I am using this special cross-dimensional transmitter to relay to Friedman of the alternate universe a couple of examples of the media tearing down Palin right from the start such as this putdown of Alaska by CNN's Jack Cafferty as a "state that has 13 people and some caribou,"  and this diatribe by Campbell Brown. And those are but two of scores of such examples.

It's been less than a month since Barack Obama has picked Joe Biden to be his running mate and already there are calls from liberals, made desperate by Obama's plunge in the polls, to replace Biden with Hillary Clinton. One such plea comes from Huffington Post blogger Andy Ostroy, described as a "New York City-based political analyst," with a blog entry titled, "Why Replacing Biden With Hillary Makes Perfect Sense for Obama." Here is Ostroy's rationale for one of the biggest flip-flops in political history (emphasis mine):

Sen. Joe Biden's a perfectly appropriate vice presidential running-mate for Sen. Barack Obama. He's got 36 years of Senate experience, is a true intellect, a foreign policy expert, and a genuinely nice guy. But ever since Sen. John McCain added plucky Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to his ticket, the old adage nice guys finish last is beginning to take on new meaning in this year's presidential contest. It's time to dump Biden and replace him with Sen. Hillary Clinton. I don't care how it's done. Campaign chief David Axelrod can figure that out. And the sooner the better. Because I'm starting to think that if Team-Obama doesn't do something dramatic fast, it's gonna lose this election. There's a worrisome shift in momentum and in the polls. The Palin phenomenon, while truly unfathomable to Democrats, has energized McCain's campaign and allowed him like Houdini to snatch Obama's "change" theme right out from under him. It's time to snatch it back.