One would think that with a title like Obama Avoids Partisan Rhetoric, Focuses on Unity, the Washington Post would have a flowery “gee, ain’t he just swell!” article to follow the headline up. The flowery part is there, but, it subtlety makes the point that Barack H. Obama is not Mr. Unity

On Barack Obama’s march through the red states, there is no inclination to examine the philosophical differences between the political parties.

There’s no point, he says. “We’re all in this together,” the Illinois Democrat assures the crowds who flock to his events, including one Sunday in the Colorado capital that drew between 75,000 and 100,000 supporters. “We don’t have the luxury of relying on the same political games and the same political tactics that are used every election to divide us . . . by who we are or what policies we support.”

And people are buying the kool aid in massive amounts. What, exactly, has Barack H. Obama done to bring everyone together? Can anyone name one thing he has done that crosses Party lines? That is acceptable to both Left and Right, even the closer to center Right? Anything? How does he work with those on the other side of the aisle, not withstanding his voting with the party line 97% of the time? Are there any of the “policies we support” that are acceptable to Republicans and Conservatives?

You know, at least with Kerry, I could find a few things that I liked. I thought his policy stance on the environment was wonderful, better the Dubya’s. Personally, I liked that Kerry was a beach kinda guy, and liked hockey. He may have been a bit pompous and elitist, but, at least he tried to connect with the inner sports guy, despite a few foul ups, such as the “Lambert Field” gaffe. But, with Obama, I can’t find anything. Like with Kerry, I have read all his policies. Cannot agree with anything. Can you? I can’t connect with Mr. Hope and Change on a personal level, because he seems divorced from modern day Americana. I’m not looking for a dynamic authoritarian leader, which seems to be what the Obamazombies want.

But, I digress

“Policies we support” might seem an important distinction as voters face this historic election, but it appears Obama would prefer the examination not extend beyond him and his Republican rival.

And, guess what, WP? You have contributed to this non-examination of Barack H. Obama, in what I call journalistic malpractice..

Yet, in his recent speeches in early-voting states that went for President Bush four years ago, Obama never mentions a future in which Democrats run Washington. Instead, he seeks to reassure voters that what comes after Nov. 4, if he is successful, will not be a revolution but more of a reconciliation.

“Together, we cannot fail,” he says. “Not now. Not when we have a crisis to solve and an economy to save.”

Obama, in his short tenure in the Senate, has rarely crossed Democratic orthodoxy, and McCain says his opponent cannot point to a significant issue on which he disagrees with the Democratic congressional leadership.

Words, just words. It’s easy to talk the talk, but, Obama has never walked the walked, and, if he wins, will not walk the walk, either.

There is no “together,” though. People have different opinions. And, based on the thuggery by his campaign and his supporters, if you disagree with The One, you will be destroyed. Personally. Change you can be silenced by.

Yeah, pretty easy to guess. They even use a word that is verbotin in Liberal World in describing their hope for change

There are no “Obama 2008″ buttons, banners or T-shirts visible here at U.N. headquarters, but it might be difficult to find a sliver of territory in the United States more enthusiastic over the prospect of the Illinois senator winning the White House.

An informal survey of more than two dozen U.N. staff members and foreign delegates showed that the overwhelming majority would prefer that Sen. Barack Obama win the presidency, saying they think that the Democrat would usher in a new agenda of multilateralism after an era marked by Republican disdain for the world body.

Obama supporters hail from Russia, Canada, France, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Indonesia and elsewhere. One American employee here seemed puzzled that he was being asked whether Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was even a consideration. “Obama was and is unstoppable,” the official said. “Please, God, let him win,” he added.

Is a UN official allowed to say “God?” I know that Allah is allowed, and Gaia, but, “God?”

Of course, it is no wonder the United Nations would prefer Obama. They love getting more and more money from the United States, particularly when the U.N. doesn’t have to say it came from the U.S. During Dem administrations, the money tends to go up, and let us not be unmindful of Barack’s “Global Poverty Act,” which will transfer, at a minimum, an extra $845 billion to the UN coffers. They love when they are able to use legitimate programs, such as the Oil For Food program, to enrich themselves, even if fraudulently. They like when people like the UN. And they love when America is humbled and laid low before the world.

Conservatives who are skeptical of the United Nations said they are not surprised by the political tilt. “The fact is that most conservatives, most Republicans don’t worship at the altar in New York, and I think that aggravates them more than anything else,” said John R. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “What they want is the bending of the knee, and they’ll get it from an Obama administration.”

The UN is full of thugs, criminals, and countries that are dictatorships, many of them murderous. The UN Human Rights Councilis slightly better in membership then the previous Commission on Human Rights, but not by much. And, like in their own countries, they love to have control in the world. Multiculturalism is great, dialogue beyond reasonableness is supa!, and global warming as a means to control also rocks the vote

Speaking at a gathering of US environmental journalists last week, the chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that the news media has not done enough to communicate the severity of global warming.

Like the media hasn’t already lost all standards of objectivity.

LaborPains.org brings up a good point from the 3rd debate between Mitch McConnell and Bruce Lunsford

But when it came time for the candidates to pose questions directly to each other, we learned that Bruce Lunsford is more than willing to fight for the rights of terrorists but not Kentucky workers. It’s hard to believe, but unfortunately it’s true.

Lunsford has been an avid supporter of the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act, which would strip workers of their right to a private vote when it came to the issue of unionization.

Guess who else is not only a supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act, but has promised to immediately sign the legislation if elected? That’s right, Barry!

Of course, Obama has been all over the map on the terrorist surveillence operations. First he was against it, then for it, then against it, then voted for the FISA bill which kept telecom immunity. If elected, where will he stand?

The media were incredibly interested in the BIG, MASSIVE story on Palin’s clothes. Will any of them pick up this story from the Columbas Dispatch? Government computers used to find information on Joe the Plumber

“State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about “Joe the Plumber.”

Public records requested by The Dispatch disclose that information on Wurzelbacher’s driver’s license or his sport-utility vehicle was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times shortly after the debate.

Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.

It has not been determined who checked on Wurzelbacher, or why. Direct access to driver’s license and vehicle registration information from BMV computers is restricted to legitimate law enforcement and government business.

We can guess which Party’s disciples did it, though, can’t we? Whoever it was was digging for some serious dirt, and, it appears that the person or persons that did it are being tracked down quickly. Story to buried at 6.

If it was an Obama supporter, anyone notice a pattern of them and the actual Obama campaign going after people to silence them?

Barbara West with WFTV in Orlando decided that, unlike the majority of the Credentialed Media, she would, you know, be a journalist and ask the tough questions, and Joe Biden and the Obama campaign were not amused

West wondered about Sen. Barack Obama’s comment, to Joe the Plumber, about spreading the wealth. She quoted Karl Marx and asked how Obama isn’t being a Marxist with the “spreading the wealth” comment.

“Are you joking?” said Biden, who is Obama’s running mate. “No,” West said.

West later asked Biden about his comments that Obama could be tested early on as president. She wondered if the Delaware senator was saying America’s days as the world’s leading power were over.

“I don’t know who’s writing your questions,” Biden shot back.

Biden so disliked West’s line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate’s wife.

Meltdown ensued. God forbid the Obama camp allow tough questions. And God help Ms. West if Obama wins. $100 says she loses her job, and WFTV has lots of FCC issues.

WFTV news director Bob Jordan said, “When you get a shot to ask these candidates, you want to make the most of it. They usually give you five minutes.”

Jordan said political campaigns in general pick and choose the stations they like. And stations often pose softball questions during the satellite interviews.

“Mr. Biden didn’t like the questions,” Jordan said. “We choose not to ask softball questions.”

You can watch the video of the exchange here. It’s a bit slow on buffering, because it is getting hit hard by the DUmmies, who are not happy that anyone would question The One and his Left Hand Guy. Thug Thizzle.

In the comments, Dave points out that the crisis that Joe Biden was referring to will probably be Iran and an attack on Israel, and the “unpopular response” will be Barry ignoring the situation and doing nothing, except, perhaps, some strong words and a complaint to the the United Nations, which has been oh so sympathetic to Israel over the past 30 years, eh? He could well be right

Top officials in Iran are proposing a preemptive strike against Israel to avoid an assault on its nuclear reactors, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported Wednesday.

Senior Tehran official Dr. Seyed G. Safavi said at a recent briefing in London that the proposal followed threats by Israeli authorities, but a possible preemptive strike against Israel has not yet been incorporated into Iranian policy.

Israeli Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz said in June that Israel would be forced to strike Iran’s nuclear reactor if Tehran continues to pursue its controversial uranium enrichment program, Haaretz reported.

The question is, are these “just words?” So often within the Western World, we tend to think of these types of ultimatums and threats as school yard taunts, to be ignored, right up to the point that an actual physical attack occurs, then the media and Congress tries to fix blame after the fact, usually after saying, “they are just words, so don’t worry ’bout it.”

It’s like the whole August 6th PDB “Bin Laden determined to strike the US” issue. If Bush had tried to institute measures to search people at the airports, because the time was non-specific, he would have been skewered, and we would have been told the threats were mostly empty. What happened afterwards were typical blame games. When Arabs and Muslims and others in the Middle East make these types of threats, they should be take seriously.

And when you are dealing with paranoid nutjobs, you should be even more worried

Are America and Israel using specially-trained pigeons to spy on Iran?

That’s the question being raised by new reports out of Iran that its security services have arrested two suspected “spy pigeons” near its well-guarded Nantaz nuclear site.

One of the pigeons, security officials said, had a black-coated metal ring and invisible strings.

Ah-ha!

Clearly a spy pigeon.

This isn’t the first time, either. And they arrested spy squirrels last year. Paranoia and nuclear weapons are not the greatest of mixtures.

Senor Boehner

House Republican leader John Boehner on Wednesday urged President Bush to block all federal funds to a grass-roots community group that has been accused of voter registration fraud.

“It is evident that ACORN is incapable of using federal funds in a manner that is consistent with the law,” Boehner, R-Ohio, wrote Bush, saying that funds should be blocked until all federal investigations into the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now are completed.

He also wants an investigation into ACORNS links to Fannie Mae. But they are all little darlings, I thought!

Clifton Mitchell helped register nearly 2,000 voters for the community group ACORN. But not one of them actually existed.

“I regret it. I paid the price for it,” he said.

Mitchell was convicted last year and spent nearly three months in prison. He’s one of the few ACORN workers convicted of voter registration fraud.

Mitchell said ACORN threatened to close the office if he and his team didn’t meet their quota to register 13 to 20 voters a day. So, without consulting their supervisors, he said, they came up with a plan.

“We came up with the idea: Let’s make fraudulent cards. I tell my crew, ‘I don’t care how you get ‘em, just get ‘em,’ ” Mitchell recalled.

They took addresses from homeless shelters, used fake birthdays and Social Security numbers and took names from baby books to create voters out of thin air.

OK, so, he and the others involved were just trying to make money and keep the office open. Did that translate to fraudulent votes? Probably not. And this all begs the question of how many of the fraudulent registrations lead to actual fake votes. But, there is another problem with the registrations, and that is public perception.

There are many people who do not follow politics like we do, believe it or not. I would probably not be off base to say that most Americans of voting age do not pay that much attention, except what they are fed in the news while reading a paper or watching the evening news. But there is little consideration of what they are being fed. And that makes a difference.

If you saw everyone buying tickets for a particular movie, might you not think “gee, it must be super! I think I will get a ticket and go see it, too.” When the average American reads and hears that people are registering as Democrats in a much larger proportion then as Republicans, might they not think “gee, the Dems must be doing something right. I think I might vote Democrat this time.”

And from the same trash paper that published a screed by Charlie Brooker calling for the assassination of W if he won in 2004. Beer drinkers for Obama: Many southerners are leaving behind the region’s racist history and embracing the idea of a black president

I was headed into my local grocer in Durham, North Carolinalast weekend when I saw a startling sight. A pickup truck of early 1990s era was in the carpark, and scrawled across the side of it in big, carefully-lettered permanent marker were the words “Southern White Hard-Working Beer-Drinking Gun-Owning White Man In His 50s FOR OBAMA!”, with the last two words drawn about eighteen inches high.

The “writer,” Terry Mancour, continues on for several paragraphs, mentioning how important The Pickup Truck is to Southern life, mentioning NASCAR and other means to paint pickup truck owners as sorta racist.

Admittedly, we are in a solidly-Democratic city with a large African-American population, with one of the most liberal private universities in the nation and the South’s second highest lesbian population. If you travel 50 miles in any direction from Durham, you emerge into the “real” rural South, famed in song, story and film for its quaint cultural attitudes, casual violence, extreme politeness and devout religious piety. And, of course, its racial insecurity.

Solidly Democrat. Yes. Voted 70% for Kerry in 2004. UNC Chapel Hill is certainly more liberal then Duke. Never heard the thing about lesbians. And it also has a huge segment of Hispanics, who are mostly legal workers as well as illegal aliens, since Durham is a sanctuary city.

And, if you go 50 miles, you include Chapel Hill, one of the most liberal cities in The South. You run into the state capital of Raleigh, not exactly a small town. Burlington. Cary. Apex. Get close to Greensboro. All areas that have seen a massive influx of Northerners, and the towns and counties they are in tend to vote Democrat. So, seems that Terry’s argument is painting Democrats as, you got it!!!!….. racists.

I gotta tell you, I am a bit annoyed by the article. I could probably excerpt the whole thing, but, I suggest reading it to see the standard liberal viewpoint of the South. I live right down the road from Durham, and I embrace the Southern style of living, which does not include half as much racism as one would find in the hard edged blue cities. And racism works both ways. If I was a liberal, I would probably call for a boycott, a petition, then go egg his house. But, I am a conservative, so, I will be an adult.

OK, two last excerpts

Sometimes it’s slightly more subtle. Another lady from my church, one I privately called “the Right Arm Of God” - not because of her observed piety, I should probably point out, but for her excessive zeal in protecting her daughter’s virtue - is upset that I’ve been vocal in support of Obama in public where people can see. “I hope you’ll use that intellect to get the right man elected,” she cautions me. I don’t need to be a genius to figure out what she means.

But sometimes you find relief from the ignorance in unexpected places. Like when my brother-in-law, a deputy sheriff, epitome of Southern conservative power, pulled into my driveway and nodded to my Obama sticker. “I’m gonna vote for that sumb*tch,” he expressed, colourfully. “Looks like McCain’s gonna be another term for George Bush, and I’d rather vote for a damn Muslim negro than that.” And no, he didn’t use the word “negro”. It was the same day I saw that pick-up truck with the proud pro-Obama message.

In other words, if you criticize Obama, and don’t vote for him, you are a racist. If you vote for him, you aren’t. Makes one wonder who the real racists are.

PS: One of the reasons I started blogging was that it was cathartic, getting it on “paper,” but, I’m still a bit ticked off.

The Surrender Monkey has a thrilling up his leg today. He loves that a blogger who has whined about election fraud and similar issues for years is now doing his damndest to label all the ACORN issues as no big deal and defend all the registration issues by ACORN. And he is doing it in the same rag that featured a story calling for Bush’s assassination if he won in 2004. Give a big hand to today’s featured surrender monkey, Brad Friedman!

So where’s the “voter fraud“?

Fox News, and its Rupert Murdoch-owned print brethren, the New York Post, continue to bang the GOP’s phony Acorn “voter fraud” drum, but as far as I can tell, they’ve failed to come up with a single incident of any actual voter fraud committed by those dastardly “left-wing extremists”.

Yes, Conservative firebrand Ann Coulter has committed voter fraud, but neither of the Murdoch outfits seem to report on that, even as they go wall-to-wall with misleading reports claiming that the community organization, Acorn is committing massive “voter fraud” on behalf of the Democrats.

OK, starting out with a bit of Fox News and Ann Coulter derangement. Unfortunately, Brad, if you take a look around, there are quite a few other news outlets investigating. In particular, take a look at Ohio sources, which are not amused by all the registration issues and Sec of State Brunner’s unwillingness to perform her job on the matter as laid out by federal law.

So, as it’s now been revealed that John McCain himself was a keynote speaker at a 2006 Acorn rally in Florida, where he declared the group’s volunteers to be “what makes America special”, and as I’ve been going back and forth with commenters on my “Republican Voter Fraud Hoax” piece earlier this week at the Guardian, nobody seems able to show me an instance of any actual voter fraud committed by Acorn, or even anybody who registered via Acorn.

And when McCain learned how shady the organization was, he disowned them. But, what Brad is doing is playing games: all the shady registrations haven’t voted yet, so, it is not voter fraud. Case closed!

Yet, why are there so many problems with ACORN, Brad? Rogue agents? Sounds like the group, which receives quite a bit of money from the federal government and the Obama campaign, should police itself better. Yet, many of the bad registration form seem to make it through to the State’s.

And why have so many bad registrations as it is? What do they plan on doing with them? What’s the point? That never really gets explained.

For someone who has been so worried about the all types of election fraud for years, who made a living with conspiracy theories about electronic voting machine tampering, who sees people having to wait in long lines as “voter irregularities,” etc and so on, he sure looks away from an issue that could put Democrats in a bad light, eh? So much for the high morals of the Left, who want to stop all election fraud and irregularities.

You remember the New York Times “just wondering if McCain had an affair” story from February, right? It got picked up by all the other news sources immediately after. Let’s refresh

In one of the most sensational stories of the presidential campaign, The New York Times published a 3,000-word, front-page article in February suggesting that a little-known telecommunications lobbyist named Vicki Iseman had an affair with Sen. John McCain during his first run for the White House in 1999. The story did not provide any evidence of an affair, but said that McCain’s top aides became convinced that the relationship was romantic and took steps to keep McCain and Iseman apart.

The story generated massive publicity, and media and political critics accused The Times of publishing a salacious and unfair story. The Times‘ own public editor joined the chorus of criticism saying, “Although [the newspaper] raised one of the most toxic subjects in politics — sex — it offered readers no proof that McCain and Iseman had a romance.”

McCain, now 72, hotly denied a romantic tie to Iseman and accused The Times of “a hit-and-run smear campaign.”

Iseman had refused to be interviewed by the Time, but did have email exchanges, and had flatly denied the allegations. She says she answered every question the Times put to her. And she has sat down with National Journal Magazine to answer their questions

“I did not have a sexual relationship with Senator McCain,” she said in a three-hour interview last month in a seventh-floor conference room in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. “I never had an affair or an inappropriate relationship with Senator McCain, and that means I never acted unethically in my dealings with the senator.” Iseman, a partner in the lobbying firm of Alcalde & Fay, where she has worked for 18 years, adds, “I have never even been alone with Senator McCain.”

Iseman says she answered every question put to her by The Times, but that the newspaper “chose to disregard” many of her answers. “The New York Times set out to write a story about a ‘romantic relationship’ in exchange for legislative favors…. Make the lobbyist a prostitute — pretty heady stuff. The only problem was, they were wrong on all counts.”

But, it’s OK that the Times investigated the possibility of an affair between a man who was probably going to be, at the time, the GOP presidential nominee, because, hey, they are working hard to investigate rumors of an affair between Barack Obama and Vera Baker. And y’all remember how hard the media worked to investigate the rumors of an affair by presidential contender John Edwards which supposedly led to a baby, right? And they are working hard to investigate Tim Mahoney (D-Fla) and his affair(s).

Anyhow, rather then provide lots of excerpts, read the whole story. Kinda long, but, well worth it.